kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.27 design and simulation of microstrip patch antenna for wireless applications kawan f. ahmed communication eng. dept. technical college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq kawan.ahmed@spu.edu.iq rawaz h. abdullah communication eng. dept. technical college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq rawaz.abdullah@spu.edu.iq dana s. abdalla communication eng. dept. technical college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq abstract: in this paper two rectangular microstrip patch antennas are designed to operate in and bands, using computer simulation technology (cst) microwave studio. the designed antenna can be used for industrial, scientific and medical (ism) band applications. the ro4350b hydrocarbon ceramic laminates from rogres corporation substrate is chosen in the design of the dielectric substrate of the antennas. the designed antenna has low profile, low cost, easy fabrication and good isolation. the parameters such as return loss, voltage standing wave ratio (vswr), antenna gain, radiation pattern has been simulated and analyzed. keywords: microstrip patch antenna, dielectric substrate, computer simulation technology (cst), industrial scientific and medical (ism) bands, voltage standing wave ratio (vswr), antenna gain. 1. introduction an antenna plays a very important role in wireless communication systems. microstrip patch antennas are attractive for low-profile wireless applications at frequencies above because of their low weight, cheap, and portability. as shown in figure-1, a microstrip antenna in its simplest configuration consists of three layers; a radiating patch on the top, a dielectric substrate that underlies the patch, and a ground plane at the bottom [1] [2]. figure-1: microstrip patch antenna the metallic patch normally made of conductors such as copper or gold. although it can take different configurations, rectangular and circular patches are the most popular in practice, due to their attractive radiation characteristics. the dimensions of the patch are smaller compared to the substrate and ground [3] [4]. 2. literature review in this section a review of relevant works is studied. the approaching maturity of microstrip antenna technology coupled with the increasing demand and applications for such devices has resulted in a huge volume of research work in the field of microstrip antennas. an array of rectangular microstrip antenna (rmsa) with comparison to a single patch rmsa is designed in [5] using ie3d simulator for wireless local area network (wlan) applications, at . in this work the fr4 substrate is chosen in the design process. the substrate has a dielectric constant of with a thikness of . maximum gain of is achieved by using four by two (4x2) array of eight patches as compared to for single patch. the dimensions of the designed path were , and . in [6] the substrate fr4, which has a dielectric constant of with a thikness of , is proposed to be used to design a microstrip patch antenna, with the dimensions of , and . the antenna is designed and simulated in ansoft-hfssv13 for wlan and ism applications. the designed antenna provides of bandwidth at with a gain of . a review on the design and development of microstrip patch antennas at were studied in [7]. mostly the fr4 substrate were used in the previous works with a thickness of as in [5], [6], and [7]. in this paper the ro4350b hydrocarbon ceramic laminates from rogres corporation substrate is chosen in the design of two different single-microstrip patch antennas to operate in the and unlicensed instrument, scientific, and medical (ism) bands. the proposed ro4350b substrate has the dielectric constant with a thickness of . therefore, the thickness or height of the chosen dielectric substrate is much thinner, and is about two-times less than compared to the related works, which has the advantage of the reduction in the weight, size, and dielectric loss of the antenna. beside this interesting point, the proposed antenna performance in mailto:kawan.ahmed@spu.edu.iq mailto:rawaz.abdullah@spu.edu.iq terms of bandwidth, gain and vswr is almost the same or better than the previous works 3. design considerations the resonant frequency is a key parameter for the design of microstrip patch antennas and must be selected properly to fit the application requirements. dimensions (width and length) of a microstrip patch antenna depend on the resonant frequency and value of the dielectric constant of the substrate. the width and length of a rectangular patch are calculated as follows [4] [5]: √ (1) √ (2) √ (3) where, : is the seed of light : is the effective dielectric constant : is the height of the substrate the dimension of a substrate is equal to that of the ground plane. typically, the dimension of the ground plane is assumed to be infinite during the analysis and design of microstrip patch antennas. in an actual application only a finite size ground plane can be implemented, which makes diffraction of radiation from the edges of the ground plane, and resulting in a change in radiation pattern, radiation conductance, and resonant frequency of the antenna. therefore, the size of the ground plane is to be greater than the patch dimensions by approximately six times the substrate thickness. the length of a ground plane ( ) and the width of a ground plane ( ) are calculated using the following equations [4]: (4) (5) there are different methods for feeding the microstrip patch antennas, such as feed line method, coaxial probe feeding method, etc. in this work the feed line method is used. 4. results in this work two single-microstrip patch antennas are designed to operate at and respectively. the initial or approximate dimensions of each antenna are determined based on the design equations given from (1) through (5). the ro4350b dielectric is used to design the substrate which has the dielectric constant with a thickness of . the design parameters of the antennas are shown in figure-2. lg wg w l g d wf lf figure-2: design parameters of the proposed antenna the designed antennas were simulated using the cst microwave studio. the dimensions of the proposed antennas are changed and optimized during the simulation process to get better performance of the antenna, i.e. radiation patterns, standing wave ration, bandwidth, and antenna gain. table-1 depicts the material specifications and design parameters of the designed antenna at . table-1: design parameters of the designed antenna at . center frequency, substrate ro4350b substrate height, dielectric constant, length of the patch, width of the patch, length of the substrate, width of the substrate, length of microstrip feed, width of microstrip feed, distance of inset feed, gap between microstrip feed and patch, thickness of the patch, t figures-3 shows the simulated far-field directivity or the radiation pattern for the designed antenna at . the results show that the designed microstrip patch antenna mainly radiates in the vertical direction. this is in agreement with the theoretical radiation pattern for these structures. the antenna has a gain of . figure-3: far-field directivity of the antenna the simulated s-parameter versus frequency for the designed antenna at is presented in figure-4. it can be seen that the simulated center frequency is slightly shifted from the . the antenna has a return loss of at . the bandwidth of the antenna is about , as shown in figure-5. figure-4: return loss (s11) of the designed antenna figure-5: bandwidth of the designed antenna the voltage standing wave ratio (vswr) of the antenna at the resonant frequency is about , as shown in figure-6. figure-6: vswr for the designed antenna at table-2 illustrates the material specifications and design parameters of the designed antenna at . table-2: design parameters of the designed antenna at . center frequency, substrate ro4350b substrate height, dielectric constant, length of the patch, width of the patch, length of the substrate, width of the substrate, length of microstrip feed, width of microstrip feed, distance of inset feed, gap between microstrip feed and patch, thickness of the patch, t figures-7 shows the far-field directivity radiation pattern for the designed antenna at . similarly, as the previous design, the antenna mainly radiates in the vertical direction. the antenna has a gain of . figure-7: far-field directivity of the antenna the simulated s-parameter versus frequency for the designed antenna at is presented in figure-8. it can be seen that the simulated center frequency is shifted from the designed target, but still very close to . the antenna has a return loss of at . the bandwidth of the antenna is about , as shown in figure-9. figure-8: return loss (s11) of the designed antenna figure-9: bandwidth of the antenna the vswr of the patch antenna is about at , which is practically strongly acceptable, as shown in figure-10. figure-10: vswr for the designed antenna 5. discussion in this paper two different patch antennas were designed using a dialectic substrate with a thickness of which is much narrower than the related works as done in [5], [6], and [7]. the designed antenna has comparable dimensions as given in the related works. the antenna has a maximum gain of with a main lobe in the direction of theta = 0 degrees and phi = 0 degrees was obtained. the simulated gain is a much higher compared to the results reported in [6] but comparable to that given in [5]. the return loss of the antenna is slightly less than the related works, and it has better and more desired value of vswr. the dimensions of the designed are much less than in that of the antenna. the bandwidth of the designed antenna is , while the bandwidth of the designed antenna is . these obtained values of bandwidth are less than compared the results reported in [5], [6], and [7]. therefore, it can be depicted that the proposed designs can be much useful in the design of wireless systems that require narrow bandwidth such as sensor networks that lie in the ism bands. 6. conclusion in this study the ro4350b substrate is proposed in the design of two different single microstrip patch antennas to operate at 2.4 and 5.2 ism bands. the thickness or height of the chosen dielectric substrate is much thinner which has the advantage of the reduction in the weight of the proposed antenna with a good performance in gain, return loss, and vswr is the important futures of the proposed antennas for various wireless applications including wireless sensor networks, wireless telemedicine devices, and wlans. 7. references [1] j. d. kraus and r. j. marhefka, antennas for all applications, 3rd ed., newyork: mcgraw-hill, 2002. [2] c. a. balanis, antenna theory: analysis and design, 3rd ed., new jersey: john wiley & sons, 2005. [3] p. bhartia, i. bahl, r. garg and a. ittipiboon, microstrip antenna design handbook, norwood, ma: artech house inc., 2001. [4] y. y. woldeamanuel, "design of a 2.4 ghz horizontally polarized microstrip patch antenna using rectangular and circular directors and reflectors," the university of texas at tyler, usa, november, 2012. [5] amitha.r.nair, b. a. singh and s. s. thakur, "design of rectangular microstrip 4x2 patch array antenna at 2.4 ghz for wlan application," in ieee second international conference on advances in computing and communication engineering, 2015. [6] v. asokan, s. thilagam and k. k. vinoth, "design and analysis of microstrip patch antenna for 2.4ghz ism band and wlan application," in ieee sponsored 2nd international conference on electronics and communication system (icecs), 2015. [7] c. r.salian, b. santhosh and s. vedagarbham, "review on design and development of low cost 5ghz microstrip patch array antenna," in international conference on innovative mechanisms for industry applications (icimia), 2017.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.20 sumerian character extraction by using discrete wavelet transform and split region methods moahaimen talib computer science dept. college of science al-mustansiriyah university baghdad, iraq moahaimen@gmail.com jamila harbi s computer science department. al-mustansiriyah university baghdad, iraq dr.jameelahharbi@gmail.com abstract— this paper proposed a new method to extract characters from sumerian texts in sumerian cuneiform tablets from the ur iii period. the work was confronted by the challenges posed by the fact that sumerian is not a well understood language and it is not similar to any other ancient or modern language, so we offered a new method for extracting characters from sumerian tablets, it has an accurate results and better time consuming than other methods, taking many tablet images and applying preprocessing methods to enhance and segment the image and then discrete wavelet transformation and we extract characters for each tablet image by split region algorithm, this work will be very helpful to cuneiforms and scholars in their field. keywords— sumerian texts, discrete wavelet transformation, sumerian tablets, features extract. 1. introduction sumerians an advanced people at their time which their origin still a theory till now, these great men establish a marvelous civilization in mesopotamia (the land between the rivers), they have great contributions in the humanity progress along all times, due to their advanced technology at their time they needed a way to record their achievements, victories, their gods and heroes, all of that must be recorded , so the invent the first character their first hand written that ever made by human, this system of writing they invented is known as cuneiform texts which are written on tablets mostly clay tablets, along a 30 centuries this system is used and invested in other civilization like acadian eelam, babylonian, assyrian and other great civilization[1]. at most mesopotamian tablets have two axes, the horizontal for the numerical information, and the vertical axis, for the data are assigned to different individuals or spaces [2]. the character that is shown in multiple places of tablet texts is useful to understand the sumerian words and the style of writing [3]. in the research are mainly used meaning of sumerian texts and the way of their readings from the cuneiform digital library initiative (cdli) [4], pennsylvania sumerian dictionary (psd) [5]. in the next section we will discuss the main methods used to read and understand the cuneiform texts off course with their advantage and their disadvantages 2. methods and materials reading cuneiform symbols is an important issue for learning from cuneiform tablets. cuneiformists have used two main strategies to represent and archive the clay tablets: a. hand-drawn copies (autographs) the usual registration of writes in tablets and sealing is done with pencil, and other tools. trained conformists accurately take every single detail and make a measurement and also make a copy of all details from the original drawings, the success of the method will be achieved by those how are a domain expert in epigraphy of the script and/or iconography [6]. disadvantages that the autographs that are written by hand is very exhausting, it take more time, and errors might happen and the scholar need to have an access to the tablets directly. the whole operation will be slow, sensitive, high resources, tedious, and, at last, unproductive, because the cuneiformists must travel for long distance from its home to read a tablet because they kept in certain places such museums in london, iraq, pennsylvania etc. and also the cuneiformists must travel again to compare other readings and there is a wide variety in reading and drawings of texts between scholar's [7]. b. 3d methods 3d method scans the tablet from all its sides because the tablets and cuneiform letters are in 3d (saving digital information of the clay tablets using 3d-scanning) as shown in figure 1, its good method to get the texts, in the later years, some solutions are introduces to obtain the full 3d model of tablets[8]. but it also has disadvantages such time consuming hardware problem software of scanning 3d tablets hardware is also so complex and need professional technical support some the scanning need a technician with some domain expert, but the main target of the scanning is to read the texts not all other properties of the tablet the scholar also need to travel long distance to the depots or the museums where the 3d are stored in it [9] [10]. mailto:moahaimen@gmail.com mailto:dr.jameelahharbi@gmail.com figure1: 3d impressions in the clay, and the streams of the writing extending on the tablet sides. 3. wavelet analysis wavelet analysis gives a windowing technique with variables region spaces. it allows the use of high length time intervals that have more accurate low frequency information is needed and regions with less spaces that have the information high frequency is needed [11]. the wavelet main best feature is it can do analysis locally that is" localized area can be analyzed by a signal that is much larger”. wavelet analysis has the ability of aspects can be revealed from data that other techniques of analyzing signals couldn't, aspects like self-similarity, trends, discontinuities in higher derivatives, and breakdown points. in addition, because it can give a good scene of data that is different from those presented by ordinary techniques, wavelet analysis can be used as a method of de-noising signal or compressing it with almost no degradation noticed [12]. wavelet analysis can be implemented to higherdimensional data such as the two-dimensional data images; and, in principle, the wavelet transform has taken a very wide acceptance in signal processing and image compression. wavelets can be taken from a single mother wavelet by dilations and shifting [8]. the discrete wavelet transform (dwt) also known as a method that is a high efficient and flexible for decomposing the sub band of a signal [13]. below is the two-dimensional scaling function. } where and are called horizontal, vertical, diagonal wavelets, and one separable 2-d scaling function see figure 2 [12]. the high-scale and low-frequency parts of the signal are known as approximations. the low-scale, high-frequency parts are known as details. the most primary level of the filtering process is shown in figure2: figure 2: the process of filtering 4. wavelet reconstruction dwt may have a certain job that it usually used for analyzing, or decomposing, signals and images. but how these parts can be regrouped into the signal of origin with losing no information is something to be considered. this operation known as synthesis or reconstruction. the mathematical manipulation that effects synthesis is called the inverse discrete wavelet transforms (idwt) [13]. 5. region splitting technique region splitting technique is one of the regionbased segmentation (rbs); the main target of other techniques of segmentation is splitting the image to regions, but rbs techniques are based on finding the regions directly. an image is split initially into four disjoint quadrants, separated regions and then merges and/or split the regions in try to satisfy the terms of segmentation 6. proposed sumerian character extraction methods the benefit of the image processing is we take an input image in our case is the tablet image which may has several problems such as being broken in some parts or some characters is destroyed by several factors, sometimes the tablets are stolen or missed and only their images are exist. in this paper we enhanced an algorithm to help solving many problems that the tablets as shown in figure3: figure 3: the stages involved in the proposed method input images preprocessing wavelet transformation 1.enhancment 2.segmentation 3.resizing region splitting characters extraction choose one of 1.enhancment 2.segmentation 3.resizing 7. results our offered algorithm was tested on matlab 2015b; we took 20 images from cdli cuneiform library at cornell university as shown in figure 4. figure5 illustrated the results of our proposed system. (a) (b) (c) figure 4: the output of our method: a) original image, b) wavelet image, c) some extracted characters figure 5: characters extracted from all 20 tablets by using our proposed system 8. discussion our proposed system obviously from figure5 succeeds to extract sumerian characters separable from sumerian texts that are written in the clay tablet. also, we are introduced the first research in this field and we are proposed a new method. the extract characters will be used in other stage of our proposed system to recognition and identification. . 9. conclusion sumerian language due it is the earliest known written language it’s really hard to be read and understand it is not similar to any other language whether the language was ancient or modern, in this research we provide scholars and cuneiforms with the best help they can have its better to the cuneiforms to take an image from a university website library and use our method to extract characters from sumerian texts. . 10. reference [1] n.samual kramer, “the sumerians their history, culture, and character,” chicago university press, chicago, 1963. [2] r.eleanor , “tables and tabular formatting in sumer, babylonia and assyria, 2500-50 bce,” oxford university press, oxford,2003. [3] s. gabriella, “two old babylonian model contracts,” cuneiform digital library journal, vol.24, 2014. [4] epsd, “the electronic pennsylvania sumerian dictionary project,” psd.museum.upenn.edu/epsd/index.html,(201 7). [5] cdli, “the cuneiform digital library initiative,” cdli.ucla.edu, (2017). [6] h. hendrik, w. geert, “new visualization techniques for cuneiform texts and sealings,” journal of akkadica, vol.132, pp. 163-178, 2011. [7] v. carlo, v. luc, v. karl, v. jay rompay and w. patrick, “digitizing the cuneiform tablets from beydar,” in images and artifacts of the ancient world, bowman, a. and m. brady, london, pp. 85-96,2005. [8] k. subodh, s .dean, d. donald and c. jerry, “digital preservation of ancient cuneiform tablets using 3d-scanning," in proceedings of the ieee fourth international conference on 3-d digital imaging and modeling, 2003. [9] v. daniel, hahn, c. kevin baldwin, and d. donald duncan “non-laser-based scanner for three-dimensional digitization of historical artifacts,” journal appl. opt, vol. 46, pp. 2838-2850, 2007. [10] j. kantel, p. damerow, s. köhler and c. tsouparopoulou, “3d-scans von keilschrifttafeln ein werkstattbericht,” assmann, w., hausmann-jamin, vol.26, dv-treffen der max-planck-instituut, atenverarbeitung, pp. 41-62,2010. [11] r. majeed, b. zou beiji, h. hiyam and w. jumana, “ancient cuneiform text extraction based on automatic wavelet selection,“ international journal of multimedia and ubiquitous engineering, vol.10, pp.253-264, 2015. [12] h.tzu-heng lee, “wavelet analysis for image processing,“ institute of communication engineering, national taiwan university, taipei, taiwan, 2017. [13] c. rafael gonzalez gonzalez, e. richard woods and l. steven eddins, “ digital image processing using matlab,”, 2004. biography moahaimen talib was born at 1979 in baghdad, graduated from al-rafiedien university college. computer sci, dept.2002. recently, he is in research year of msc. prof.dr.jamila was born at 1966 in baghdad. she was graduated from baghdad uni. ph.d. in 2001, from almustansiriyah uni. m.sc. in 1996 and b.sc. in1989. her interested in theoretical fields and analysis of; image processing, data compression, digital signal processing, pattern recognition, and multimedia systems. https://scholar.google.com/citations. https://scholar.google.com/citations kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.60 fryad j. mahmud college of technical engineering/ production engineering & metallurgy sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq fryad.mahmud@spu.edu.iq kawan m. abdulrahman college of technical engineering/ production engineering & metallurgy sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq kawan.abdulrahman@spu.edu.iq hawkar j. muhammed college of technical engineering/ production engineering & metallurgy sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq hawkar.muhammed@spu.edu.iq barzan a. h. seed college of technical engineering/ production engineering & metallurgy sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq barzan_72@yahoo.com the influence of annealing temperature and soaking time on the ductility of sg 255 abstrct: this study deals with the effect of annealing temperature on the mechanical properties of sg 255 steel. furthermore it aims to experimentally obtain better mechanical properties in particular ductility with lower annealing temperature and to minimize the cost of the manufacturing. the sg 255 steel is used in manufacturing of domestic lpg cylinder at halala company located in sulaimanyah/iraq. a number of samples were made according to iso 6892, and then heat treated with different annealing temperature (850, 900 and 950 ºc). moreover, the mentioned samples were broken by tensile machine to obtain the required mechanical properties, and to be compared with that of halala factory. it was shown that higher elongation percentage 34.18%el with lower annealing temperature 900 ºc can be achieved and this leads to decrease the cost of manufacturing without degrading of cylinder’s quality. keywords:annealing, ductility, gas cylinder, sg 255, soaking time, tensile test. 1. introduction it is without doubt that steel and its alloys have outstanding usage in the engineering applications in particular structural. also it is one of the crucial raw materials which plays prominent role in the production of petroleum pressure vessels, commonly for liquid petroleum gas (lpg) for household utilization. furthermore, modern technology has also made a significant development in the enhancement of the steels’ properties, specifically the mechanical properties of the steel. the crucial development illustrates the employment of annealing heat treatment to tailor the ductility of sg 255 steel. here, safety is taken into consideration so that the lpg cylinders can well possess ductility. in this work, 11 tensile samples are made, and then 9 of them are annealed at different temperatures 850c, 900c and 950c (each 3 samples with a temperature). afterwards, the samples are tensioned until fracture. the aim of this paper implies an attempt to obtain sheets with higher ductility at minimum cost which is the lowest temperature of annealing heat treatment [1], [2]. 2. literature review pitakkorraras, angroekwarasakul and chokechaithananan [3] made a study in regard to the mechanical changes along with microstructural properties of hot rolled steel part strip after normalizing heat temperature. that type of steel was used for gas cylinder production. it was discovered that the increase of temperature and time is directly proportional to the ferrite structure decarburization at the surface of the steel strip samples which tested at a temperature of 860°c. that is due to the point that the samples were soaked at same temperature similar to that of the microstructure of the steel which grows into ferrite and austenite duplex phase. the amount of carbon depletion was established by micro hardness profile as well as epma mapping analysis. moreover the ferrite and pearlite structures could be observed at 900 °c although acicular ferrite obtained at a higher temperature. ramakrishna, siddiqui and et al [4] believe that mechanical properties (tensile strength and yield strength) of (lpg) cylinder parent plates have been attempted to approximation yield strength and tensile strength of cylinder material using hardness values 55 number of national (lpg) cylinders plate destructive test data were considered to grow empirical formulas for approximating yield and tensile values. real test data are compared with projected results and recommended as the best method for approximating the tensile and yield stress by means of cylinder hardness result values. these experiential formulas can be used for approximating indicative tensile and yield strength values of parent metal without conducting a destructive test on lpg cylinder samples. fadare, fadara and akanbi [6] conducted a study in respect to the results of heat treatment processes and mechanical properties such as hardening, annealing , quenching and tempering on the micro structure and nearly selected mechanical properties of (nst 37-2 ) steel. the results revealed that the samples, which were treated by annealing with mostly ferrite structure, gave the lower most tensile strength and hardness values besides the highest ductility and toughness. however the latter sample, composing of martensite structure, supplied the maximum tensile strength, hardness and toughness values along with lowermost ductility. offor, daniel and okorie [5] indicate the outcome of intercortical heat treatment processes on contend of 0.14wt%c 0.56wt%mn 0.13wt%si structural steel. the results showed that single quenching treatment eliminated the yield strength and reduced the ductility. however it resulted in improving the tensile strength, hardness properties and notch impact toughness mailto:fryad.mahmud@spu.edu.iq mailto:kawan.abdulrahman@spu.edu.iq mailto:hawkar.muhammed@spu.edu.iq mailto:barzan_72@yahoo.com properties of the same steel samples. furthermore, the results similarly revealed that dual quenching eliminated the yield strength, and produced a better increase in tensile strength and hardness properties when it was single quenching but a better reduction in the ductility and notch impact toughness properties than single quenching of the steel samples. tempering improved the yield strength, ductility and notch impact toughness properties of the quenched steels nevertheless reduced their tensile strength and hardness properties. 3. methods and materials 3.1 material: this study was conducted by utilizing sg 255 steel sheet which was obtained from the halala company for production of gas cylinder. in fact, the mentioned sheet steel was chosen for manufacturing of domestic lpg cylinder due to their chemical and mechanical properties, which are suit the criteria of the lpg cylinder production according to is 6240 standards. the properties of the 3 mm thickness sheet are written and shown in the table below:, chemical composition and mechanical properties as outlined in jis g 3116 sg255 (3.1 and 3.2 respectively). table 3.1 chemical composition of sg 255 chemical composition c max si max mn max p max s max 0.20 0.30 0.040 0.040 table 3.2 mechanical properties of sg 255 yield point or proof stress (n/mm2) (min.) tensile strength (n/mm2) (min.) elongation (% min.) 255 400 26 3.2 procedure: the procedure plan was carried out to design different annealing temperatures which can be tested by using tensile test then making analysis for the outcome data. the main reason for this test is to compare with the steel obtained from halala company. the heat treatment condition is illustrated in table 3.3. table 3.3 annealing temperatures and soaking time procedure annealing temperature, °c soaking time, minute 950 900 850 15 30 30 3.3 tensile test: the sg 255 steels were cut off to small pieces which were machined by using cnc plasma cutting machine. the tensile test samples were produced in accordance with the (iso: 6892). specimens for annealing heat treatment were carried out in accordance with the temperatures mentioned in the above table 3.3. the most prominent point of employing tensile test machine was to determine the mechanical properties, in particular ductility. during the tensile test, the sample was held between the jaws at a constant speed rate until the fracture has occurred. 3.4muffle furnace: the samples were heat treated using electric furnace (furnace model) with different annealing as it can be seen in table 3.3. 4. results the following data contain a presentation and analysis of the annealed samples. indeed, the samples are grouped according to the annealing temperature. and for each temperature three samples are selected as shown in table5.1. subsequently, the samples are tensioned until fracture, and the mechanical properties are accomplished as shown in table2.2. according to the achieved data, the samples with 850 ºc annealing temperature can have the highest of total elongation (%) but the value of yield strength (mpa) and ultimate tensile strength (mpa) decreased when the annealing temperature was 850 ºc and higher than the results shown in fig 5.2, 5.3. in addition, the fractured surfaces as shown in fig5.2 indicate to a ductile failure mode for the majority of the samples. however, the samples with 850 ºc show more voids on their surfaces which are a clear indication of ductile failure 5. discussion the prime reason behind annealing heat treatment experiment is to increase the ductility of sg 255 and to make ductile failure in the condition of fracture. during the annealing heat treatment, minimum temperature (850ºc) is selected according to the chemical composition of sg 255 chiefly carbon % through the phase diagram of fe-c system. the mechanical properties of the received samples are significantly affected by the annealing heat treatment; this is also confirmed in the results of findings from the literature review. for instance, the ultimate tensile strength was fallen by 12 mpa, contrary to the ductility which was raised from 27.67% el to 34.18% el. various temperatures are chosen for the purpose of comparison especially the (950ºc/15 minute), which possess the same condition used in the manufacturing of lpg cylinder in halala factory. according to the obtained data table 5.3, it was shown that the samples with 900ºc annealing temperature have the highest elongation percentage34.18 el% as compared with that of halala factory 950ºc-32.79% el. in addition, comparable ductility to halala factory was obtained with lower annealing temperature 850ºc -31.11%. in fact, the use of less annealing temperature will lead to a reduction in cost of manufacturing since the heat treatment is conducted with the ease of gasoil. moreover, the necked area around the fractured surface is a clear indication of ductile failure which ensures the safety in the case of failure of the lpg cylinder. 5.1. figures and tables figures5.1 annealing temperature ºc with total elongation% for all samples figures 5.2 annealing temperature℃ with yield strength (mpa) for all samples figures 5.3 annealing temperature ºc with ultimate tensile strength (mpa) for all samples 5.2. tables table 5.1. number of samples and annealing temperature with soaking time no. number of samples condition temperature, °c soaking time minute 1. 1-2 as-received room temperature 2. 3-5 850annealed 30 3. 6-9 900 annealed 30 4. 9-12 950 annealed 15 table 5.2. number of samples and annealing temperature with soaking time no. number of samples ultimate tensile strength mpa yield strength mpa total elongation % 1. 1-2 488 38.79 27.67 2. 3-5 441 36.77 31.11 3. 6-9 384 25.1 34.18 4. 9-12 373 22.86 32.79 table 5.3.halala data and the obtained results no. number of samples condition temperature, °c ultimate tensile strength mpa total elongation % 1. 1-2 as-received 488 27.67 2. 3-5 850 annealed 441 31.11 3. 6-9 900 annealed 384 34.18 4. 9-12 950 annealed 373 32.79 conclusion it can be concluded that, although, higher ductility can be achieved with lower annealing temperature at longer soaking time, the cost is still less than that of the higher annealing temperature with shorter soaking time. reference [1] g. krauss, steels: processing, structure, and performance , asm international, ohaio, 2006. [2] f. william, foundations of material science and engineering, mcgraw-hill, new york, 2004. [3] s. pitakkorraras, p. tangroekwarasakul and n. chokechaithananan, “effect of normalizing temperature and time on microstructures and mechanical properties of hot rolled steel strip for gas cylinder production,” journal of metals, materials and minerals, vol. 20 (3), pp. 37-41, 2010. [4] a. ramakrishna, n. siddiqui and p. lal, “estimation of lpg cylinder parent metal yield strength and tensile strength from hardness values,” international journal of applied engineering and technology, vol. 4 (1), pp. 6267, 2014. [5] d. fadare, t. fadara and o. akanbi, “effect of heat treatment on mechanical properties and microstructure of nst 37-2 steel,” journal of minerals and materials characterization and engineering, vol. 10 (3), pp: 299-308, 2011. [6] p. offer, c. daniel and b. okorie, “the effects of intercritical heat treatments on the mechanical properties of 0.14wt%c 0.56wt%mn 0.13wt%si structural steel,” nigerian journal of technology, vol. 30 (3), pp: 30-34, 2011. acknowledgments the authors would like to take this opportunity to thank both azadi industrial company and halala factory for their help, valuable values and contribution. indeed, they motivated the authors to be able to finish this research in triumph. furthermore, the authors are also grateful to the production and metallurgy department’s laboratories and workshops.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 1 | june 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.1.8 designing a smart traffic light algorithm (hms) based on modified round robin algorithm miran hama rahim saeed it department, computer science institute, sulaimani polytechnic university, university of human development, sulaimani, iraq soran saeed sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, iraq hozan khalid hamarashid it deptment, computer science institute, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, iraq hozan.khalid@spu.edu.iq abstract: nowadays, traffic light system is very important to avoid car crashes and arrange traffic load. in the sulaimani city / iraq, there are many traffic problems such as traffic congestion or traffic jam and the amount of time provided manually to the traffic light system. this is the main difficulty that we try to solve. the traffic lights exist but still do not manage traffic congestion due to the fixed time provided for each lane regardless of their different load. therefore, we are proposing to change the traditional traffic system to smart traffic system (adaptive system). this paper focuses on the existing system (fixed system), then propose the adaptive one. the main crucial side effects of the existing system are: 1. emergency cases: congested traffics might block the way of emergencies for instance ambulance, which transports people to the hospital urgently. 2. wasting time of people generally and specially drivers. 3. delays, which lead people to not to be punctual, this means people arrive late to the work places. 4. wasting more fuels as staying more in the traffics, which affects the environment by increasing pollution. keywords: smart traffic light, hms algorithm, modified round robin. 1.introduction intelligent traffic light system is vitally important to control traffic light or traffic jam especially in less developed countries, like sulaimani city, which is a part of krg-iraq, to enhance their services and make traffic lights adaptive. in addition, smart traffic light facilitate traffic police works; reduce their load and people will be convenience due to they will be able to attend their works on time without traffic jam [1]. moreover, it will be able to facilitate towards the achievement of reducing vehicles crashes, reduce load, in sulaimani; the initiative has to some extend increase the efficiency of the traffic light in providing better services to its drivers. a simulation had conducted to test the proposed algorithm, which is depended on modified round robin algorithm and using statistical equation [2] [3]. even though the traffic light does exist in sulaimani city, the existing system is a fixed system, which is based on specified time to each direction in a junction manually. this is done by providing more time to the lane, that is more crowded. in some cases, all vehicles will be passed with the provided time but the time still remain, the other drivers on the other lanes must wait until the time will be finished which is inconvenience, so the proposed algorithm specifying the time to each of the lane by the number of vehicles in each lane [5][6]. the main aims are to provide a system with the following capability:  reduce waiting time: the system has ability to reduce the amount of time consuming by vehicles in a traffic light queue.  resource utilization: it aims to be ensure of maximum using roads and resources. by using the designed hms algorithm based on modified round robin algorithm, this paper will thus reveal the enhancement of traffic light services in sulaimani city. consequently, in the existing system a lot of amount of time is wasted. drivers must wait on the other lane. however, all the cars from the other lane passed through the traffic. so, they wait much longer. the given time is divided to the lanes regardless to the number of car in each lane. by the way waiting is another issue. in addition, in the proposed system the problem of wasting and waiting time will be solved due to the amount of time is divided on each lane depending on the number of car in each lane. this is conducted by using hms algorithm which is based on modified round robin algorithm. 2.background with increasing the number of vehicles on street, crowded will be happened especially in main junctions at rush time, in the morning and after work in the evening. the problem can be solved by creating a system to give longer time to the lane that has high movement than the lane that has low postponement, this is called manual or normal mode [8]. the existing system is not efficient due to vehicles in a junction will hold more time when the traffic light is red; if they pass through red light they have to pay fine. on the other hand, other lane there is no vehicles or few vehicles waiting. this issue can be solved by developing round robin algorithm as explained [4]. round robin is a basic and simple scheduling algorithms used to serve multiple queues. in this case, lanes on red light based on round robin fashion. the scheduler give a similar chance (green light time) for each queues regardless of car size and lane load [7]. however modified round robin mrr gives a weight for each queue, the weight then determine the amount of resource. in this case, it is the green light time given to each queue, in this work, the equation of the weight is been studied thoroughly and designed to be adaptive based on the lane load, and named hms algorithm [11]. as explained • the total amount of time is fixed which is 120 seconds for one round, for the first cycle the time will be divided similarly for each lane • the time of the next round will be divided based on load of the previous round of each lane • then it repeats the cycles based on the number of cars of each lane. 3.methodology this section provides the method by which the algorithms designed and works. by looking at table 1.0, it shows that how the system collects the data and provide times for each lanes. steps 1 counting the number of vehicles in each lane for a round by using the sensor network. 2 process the collected data into the useful information to be the input for the algorithm 3 calculating the given time for each lane for next round based on proposed ( hms algorithm) 4 outcome of the algorithm which are the amount of red and green time for each lanes table 1.0 illustrate the steps of the system 3.1 hms algorithm the first step is about collecting the number of vehicles in each line by using the sensor network or camera, which uses image processing to determine the vehicles passed through, and then pass the number of vehicles to the main control board, which can be an arduino board then the number of vehicles will be sent to the control system to calculate the amount of time providing for each lane. in this step, the first term algorithm will be used. after that, hms algorithm is used which is based on modified round robin and the equation one is designed for it is weight. yn (next state) = (((round time)/f (previous state))*ln (previous state)) …………………1 yn: the amount of green time given for a lane, n is the lane number yn: given time for each lane, n is lane number l1, l2 … f: total number of vehicles on the all lanes ln : number of vehicles on a lane , n is lane number after that, each lane will get their green and red seconds to backlog the cars of the lanes by round robin fashion. the following figure reveals the processes of the simulation. figure1.0 the process of the simulation the following figure shows the flowchart step by step processes of the simulation. figure2.0 the flowchart of the processes 3.2 applying hms algorithm in the simulation to simulate the outcome and comparing the existing and proposed system, a program written in c#. for the first round, the given time for all lanes, which is 120 second, divided equally. then random method in c# is used to generate number of cars randomly for each lane, after that, the total time is divided by the total number of cars on the lanes, and multiplied by number of cars for each lane differently, the results will be the amount of provided time for each lane. the simulation interface is shown in figure 3.0 figure 3.0 sample of the simulation interface 3.3 result of the simulation assuming that total number of cars for the all lanes equal to 80 for each rounds and the given green time for one round is 120 seconds, after the simulator was run for several times, the results are shown on the below graphs. looking at the figure 4.0, clearly can be seen that, the existing system wastes several seconds, especially when there are no cars on the lane, while the proposed system gives adapted time based on the number of cars, when the number of cars increases, the given time will increase as well. in addition, the high loaded lane graph in figure 5.0 shows that, the existing system causes lots of traffic jam as it does not give the necessary amount of time to backlog all cars on the lane, while the proposed system increase the time based on the number of cars. on the other hand, when the load of each lanes are equal, the proposed system gives equal amount of time. figure 4.0 given time for low loaded lane figure 5.0 given time for high loaded lane 4. discussion to sum up, according to the figure 4.0 low loaded lane; in the existing system the time is divided on each lane with ignoring the number of car in each lane. however, the number of cars in each lane are different but the amount of given time is the same which is shown in red lines. on the other hand, the proposed system divides time according to the number of car. this means that by increasing the number of car the amount of given time will be increased. consequently, there will be no wasted time. in addition, according to figure 5.0 high-loaded lane; when there is more crowded or the number of car increased in each lane. based on the existing system; however, the number of car is increased but the amount of given time is the same. so, a lot of amount of time will be wasted. based on the proposed system the number of car is taken into considerable due to the time is divided depending on the number of cars in each lane as it is shown in green lines. as a result, a lot of amount of wasted time in the existing system will be used in the new one. over all, in the existing system increasing or decreasing the number of car, low-loaded or high-loaded lanes, does not affect the amount of given time. the amount of given time will be the same. on the other hand, in the proposed system, the amount of given time depends on the number of car in each lane. consequently, there will be much less wasted time. 5.conclusion in this paper, the weight of modified round robin algorithm has designed to be used for adaptive traffic light system. the system then modelled and simulated using a c# program. after the simulation was run for several times, the data then has been collected and compared with the existing traffic light system, which is fixed time. the result shows that the designed system facilitates the cars on the traffic light to wait less by providing more time for the high loaded lane. in addition, the amount of time for each lane provided by using hms algorithm adaptively gives different times based on load of each lanes. 6.reference [1]. s. peelen, r. schouten and m. steingraover, “design and organization of autonomous systems: intelligent traffic light control”, issn 2222-1727 (paper) issn 2222-2871, vol. 3, no. 5, (2012). [2]. wen and yang, “a dynamic and automatic traffic light control system for solving the road congestion problem”, wit transactions on the built environment (urban transport),vol. 89, (2006), pp 307-316. [3]. greater amman municipality, “traffic report study 2007,” (2007), http://www.ammancity, gov.jo/arabic/docs/gam4-2007.pdf. [4]. m. tubaishat, q. qi, y. shang and h. shi, “wireless sensor-based traffic light control,” ieee ccnc, lasvegas, nv, usa, (2008), pp. 702-706. [5]. y. chong, c. quek and p. loh, “a novel neurocognitive approach to modelling traffic control and flow based on fuzzy neural techniques,” elsevier expert systems with applications, vol. 36, (2009), pp. 4788 4803. [6]. c. xiangjun and y. zhaoxia, “distributed traffic signal control approach based on multi-agent,” ieee fskd,tianjin, china, (2009) august, pp. 582-587. [7]. w. wu, w. min and x. sai, “a traffic signal control method based on large phase using fuzzy system and ga,” ieee fskd, tianjin, china, (2009), pp. 530543. [8]. c. cai, c. k. wong and b. g. heydecker, “adaptive traffic signal control using approximate dynamic programming,” elsevier transportation research part c, vol. 17, (2009), pp. 456-474. [9]. g. f. list and m. cetin, “modeling traffic signal control using petrinets,” ieee transactions on intelligent transportation systems, vol. 5, no. 3, (2004) september, pp. 177-187. [10].j. yousef and ali, “intelligent traffic light flow control system using wireless sensors networks,” journal of information science and engineering, vol. 26, no. 3, (2010), pp. 753-768. [11].(http://www.brocade.com/content/html/en/configura tion-guide/nos-700-l2guide/guid-b75bd370-b251 45a3-b3fd-87f54e35dc6e.html)  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.19 received: 19 may 2018 | accepted: 27 june 2018 attendance of patients with ophthalmological problems about eye protection from uv/blue light radiation from sun light and electronic devices in sulaimani city salah qadir mahmood muhammad babakir-mina salar ibrahim ali radiation department medical laboratory analysis department community health department sulaimani technical institute technical college of health technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq salahdeanoffice@hotmail.com m.babakir@yahoo.com salaribrahimali@yahoo.it abdulrahman m. ibrahem bakhtyar kamal talabany piramagrun hospital anesthesia department sulaimani general directorate of health sulaimani technical institute ministry of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq abdlrahman.ibrahem@spu.edu.iq bakhtyar.talabany@spu.edu.iq 117 abstract: ultraviolet (uv) and blue light are affecting eyes during the daily time and may cause many eye’s problems and diseases. therefore, this study aimed to explore the awareness of patients with ophthalmological problems on uv/blue light protection measures and to evaluate their knowledge and protection measures about radiation that emits from sun light and other electronic devices. it comprised a cross-sectional survey on a representative target population with eye diseases who visited the shahid aso eye hospital at sulaimani city (sample size = 500). a special designed cross-sectional questionnaire was performed on a random sampling for data collection from 9th september 2017 to 1st january 2018. the statistical analysis was performed using spss version 22.0. there was an even distribution between male and female participants across the groups. the highest percentage of patients with light sensitivity was (79.6%) and the lowest percentage with eye injury was (7.8%). most of participants had knowledge about the effects of uv/blue light on eye diseases by (52%), cataract (57.8%), glaucoma and red eye with percentage of (45.8%) and (43.4%) respectively. there was a significant difference for the males who were more game-player and using electronic devices like smartphone/tablet /ipad than females. there was a significant difference between male and female participants about the knowledge on harmful effects of radiation from electronic devices. furthermore, only the patients with sun light sensitivity and cataract had a significant knowledge about harmful effects of radiation from electronic devices on human eyes. finally, most of the patients with dry eyes, eye/lid infection and glaucoma and cataract had significantly more practices for taking visual breaks when using electronic devices. this study concluded that the patients with ophthalmological problems show a low level of knowledge and protection measurements on the harmful effects of uv/blue light on human eyes and radiation protection. additionally, this study has discovered that sun protection measures are commonly inadequate among the participants and on a regular basis only a small portion of participants were used the sun protection requirements. keywords: attendance, eye disease, uv/blue light radiation, eye protection, electronic devices, 1. introduction electromagnetic radiation (emr) is the flow of energy at the universal speed of light through free space or through a material medium in the form of the electric and magnetic fields that form electromagnetic waves such as radio waves, visible light, and gamma rays [1]. blue light is part of the visible light spectrum with short wavelengths which are emitting a higher energy can be divided into two bands: blue-violet light (415-455 nm) and blue-turquoise light (465-495 nm) [2,3]. blue light has a very short wavelength, and so produces a higher amount of energy. studies suggest that, over time, exposure to the high energy visible (hev) light could cause serious long-term damage to the eyes [4]. uv light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than that of visible light, but longer than x-rays. it is so named because the spectrum consists of electromagnetic waves with frequencies higher than those that human eye identifies as the colour violet. although ultraviolet is invisible to the human eye, most people are aware of the effects of uv through the painful condition of sunburn, but the uv spectrum has many other effects, both beneficial and damaging to human health [5]. the eyes are constantly exposed to solar uv effects, and much evidence attributes pathogenesis of the ocular tissues to such radiation. when uv reaches the eye, the proportion absorbed by different structures depends on the wavelength [6]. although light is essential to human vision, light exposure can also cause pathological changes in ocular tissues through absorption of photon energy. when absorbed photon energy can be dissipated short wavelength visible light, particularly violet and 118 indigo, reaches the retina in substantially greater doses than does ultraviolet (uv) radiation. indeed, the conditions associated with uv exposure are generally confined to the anterior segment of the eye, due to nearly complete absorption of uv by the crystalline lens [6]. blue light damage occurs when a photosensitizer of eye absorbs photon energy of a specific wavelength, setting in motion a series of intracellular chemical reactions [6]. almost all visible blue light passes through the cornea and lens and reaches the retina. this light may affect vision and could prematurely age the eyes. early research shows that too much exposure to blue light from computer screens and digital devices can decrease contrast leading to digital eyestrain. some studies suggest that continued exposure to blue light over time could lead to damaged retinal cells. this can cause vision problems like age-related macular degeneration [7]. therefore, this study aimed to explore the awareness of patients with eye diseases on sun/blue light protection measures and to evaluate their knowledge, attitude and practices about the electromagnetic radiation that emits from the sun light and other electronic devices such as computers, laptops, smartphones, tablets and ipads. 2. methods and materials study design and setting: this research was practiced in the shaheed aso eye hospital at sulaimani city. it is based on the cross-sectional study. this study was conducted in this hospital because it is the main public eye hospital in the city, which provides services in a wide range of specialties for person in difference age groups who have been referred from the health centres and hospitals, private clinics across the city or from outside of the city. in fact, the majority of ophthalmic therapies of the city occur in this hospital. in addition to that, there are several private eye hospitals providing the services to eye patients. target population and sample size: the target population was ophthalmic patients from sulaimani city at different age and the study population includes all patients who attended the shaheed aso eye hospital during the period of data collection from ninth september 2017 to first january 2018. a total of 500 eye patients were enrolled in the study. case definition and recruitment: a case was defined as any patient consulting at aso hospital in the different age and residence of sulaimani governorate and the cases were already diagnosed by the ophthalmologists and the hospital’s specialists. all the children less than 10 years old excluded from this study. the cases were recruited four days a week in the morning in the shaheed aso eye hospital. according to the case definition, the cases were recruited when they reported to the shaheed aso eye hospital either for initial diagnosis or follow-up processes. routinely, all patients suspected of having eye disease are referred or admitted to the shaheed aso eye hospital for diagnosis and management or followup process. data collection and processing: data on exposure to the socio-demographic characteristics and the risk factors for human eyes were obtained from the sources. face to face interview was carried out through a questionnaire and verbal consent was obtained from eye patients. also, explanation of the study was stated for the patients. collecting and checking the questionnaire as performed and each day the questionnaire was sorted according to the unique number. for the obtaining, firstly, the questionnaires were pre-tested, well formatted, pre-coded and questions asked in the native language. secondly, the interviews were done solely by the researcher himself. thirdly, the questionnaires were checked daily and completeness was made when is possible. finally, all data were entered; the data were analysed by statistical package for the social sciences (spss) version 22.0. 3. results socio-demographic characteristics a total of 500 participants were interviewed. the age of participants ranged from 10 to 87 years old. the mean age (mean ± sd) for the respondents was (43.54 ± 21.55) with range 77 years old. there was an even distribution of males and females across the groups, of which the majority of the groups were male 59% (295/500) compared with female 41% (205/500). out of 500 respondents 22% (110/500) were in the age group < 20 years old, while others 22.8% (114/500) were in the age group of 20 -39 years old, 25%(125/500) were in the age group of 4059 years old, and 27.4% (137/500) were in the age group of 60 79 years old and 2.8% (14/500) were in the age group of ≥ 80 (table 1). majority of the respondents (61%) were illiterate or having primary education, 25.6% were high school educated and 13.4% were university graduates. out of 500 respondents, 65.2% (326) respondents were married,67.2% of the respondents were from urban area and rest of the respondents was from semi-urban and rural area. on the other hand, the occupation of participants was unemployed 44.2% (221/500), government employee 13.6% (68/500), student 22.6% (113/500) and self-employee was 16.6%(98/500) (table 1). table 1: socio-demographic characteristics of participants. 119 attendance of participants on some ophthalmological problems and scientific terms the results revealed that the higher percentage of participants’ knowledge recorded with blue and uv light and cataract (52%) and (57.8%) respectively. followed by glaucoma and red eye by (45.8%) and (43.4%) respectively. however, participants’ knowledge about trichiasis, diabetic retinopathy, macular degeneration, cross red and pterygium showed very low level. figure 1: attendance of some terms by the participants comparison between electronic device users and nonusers according to gender the results revealed that out of 500 participants, computer user was (16%), smartphone/tablet/ipad user was (55.6%), game player (16%) and television user (92.8%). there was only a statistical significant difference at (p <0.05) for game player users (table 2). on the other hand, the results revealed that the association between male and female participants in related to electronic devices bothering, out of 500 participants; those that are bothering from using computer was (16.2%), smartphone/tablet/ipad user was (49.2%), game player (15.4%) and television user (92%). there was a non-significant difference between male and female participants (table 3). table 2: using of electronic devises among participants according to gender. table 3: eye bothering by using of electronic devises among participants according to gender. knowledge and practices of participants with special ophthalmological problems participants with some ophthalmological problems were asked about their knowledge and practices that related with eye diseases. the study explored that the patients with sensitivity to sunlight, dry eye, glaucoma, and eye strain have statistical significant correlation with knowledge about the uv/ blue lights and its risks on eyes. furthermore, only the patients with sun light sensitivity and cataract had significantly knowledge about the effects of electromagnetic wave of smartphone/tablet /ipad on human eyes. moreover, the patients with dry eyes, eye/lid infection and glaucoma had significantly more practice for television visual breaks as compared with the other patients. while patients with sun light sensitivity, dry eyes, eye/lid infection and cataract had significantly more practice for taking visual breaks during working on characteristics no. (%) gender male female age (year) <20 20-39 40-59 60-79 >80 education illiterate primary high school university marital status married single residence urban semi-urban rural occupation unemployed governmental employee student self-employment 295 205 110 114 125 137 14 160 145 128 67 326 174 336 55 109 221 68 113 98 (59.0) (41.0) (22.0) (22.8) (25.0) (27.4) (2.8) (32.0) (29.0) (25.6) (13.4) (65.2) (34.8) (67.2) (11.0) (21.8) (44.2) (13.6) (22.6) (16.6) 120 smartphone/tablet/ipods. surprisingly, only patients with dry eyes had visual break taking during computer using (table 4). table 4: knowledge and practices of participants that associated with ophthalmological problems. 4. discussion information about public knowledge and behaviours regarding to eye diseases in general and protection measures among kurdish people are little and none official study in kurdistan was found after a broad literature review on this topic. the climate of kurdistan has distinct high temperatures in the day-time and low temperatures during the night-time. from june to september, daytime temperatures reach 40 °c or higher throughout the area. the south has higher temperatures, which can reach as high as 48 °c during summer time. furthermore, the technological apparatus such as tv, ipad, smartphone, and computer are currently using by the people. there is not more information about the effect of those equipment on human eyes because all of these apparatuses radiate electromagnetic radiation and this radiation has the negative effect on eye [8]. for understanding the knowledge of the participants to some scientific terms (figure 1 and table 1), most of the participants had information about blue light, uv light, red eye, cataract, and glaucoma, but there was a significant difference between the male and the females only for blue and uv light knowledge (p< 0.05), this is may be referred to the society education and the study population. there are many studies demonstrated knowledge of people about uv light [9,10,11]. the study findings are potentially valuable to help guide public policy and target interventions. the participants of our study were asked about knowledge and practices related with eye diseases and the study explored that the patients with sensitivity to sunlight, dry eye, glaucoma, and eye strain have statistical significant correlation with knowledge about the uv/ blue lights and its risks on eyes. furthermore, only the patients with sun light sensitivity and cataract had significantly knowledge about the effects of electromagnetic wave of smartphone/tablet /ipad on human eyes. also, the patients with dry eyes, eye/lid infection and glaucoma had significantly more practice for television visual breaks as compared with the other patients. while patients with sun light sensitivity, dry eyes, eye/lid infection and cataract had significantly more practice for taking visual breaks during working on smartphone/tablet/ipods. surprisingly, only patients with dry eyes had visual break taking during computer using (table.4). 5. conclusion this research concluded that the patients who visited shahid aso eye hospital regarding to eye diseases and radiation, the harmful effects of uv/blue light and sun protection methods showed a low level of public attendance and self-care practice. additionally, this work has discovered that sun protection measure is commonly inadequate among the current study population and on a regular basis only a small part of participants uses sun protection requirements. reference [1] dm. barbu, “the effects of radiation on the eye in industrial environments,” annals 
of the oradea university. 2015;14(2):7-12 [2] a. shapiro, “understanding blue light. exposure to certain wavelengths of blue light carries potential blinding effects and a link to amd,” april 2016. [3] m. dunbar, r. melton, “the lowdown on blue light: good vs bad and its connection to amd,” review of optometry. www.reviewofoptometry.com/continuing education. november 21, 2013. accessed march 18, 2016. [4] j. gallas, m. eisner, “eye protection from sunlight damage. comprehensive series in photosciences,” 3: elsevier; 2001. p. 437-55. [5] w. williams, “effects of ultraviolet (uv) light on the eye.” ipswich01473252595 www.observatory.co.uk. [6] sc. saccà, am. roszkowska, a. izzotti, “environmental light and endogenous antioxidants as the main determinants of noncancer ocular diseases,” mutation research/reviews in mutation research. 2013;752(2):153-71. [7] tj. berg, “intraocular light scatter, reflections, fluorescence and absorption: what we see in the slit lamp,” ophthalmic and physiological optics.2018;38(1):6-25. [8] l. kirk, s. greenfield, “knowledge and attitudes of uk university students in relation to ultraviolet radiation (uvr) exposure and their sun-related behaviours: a qualitative study”, bmj open. 2017;7(3): e014388.doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2016014388. [9] e. bogumiła zuba, w. francuzik, p. malicki, a. osmolamańkowska, d. jenerowicz, “knowledge about ultraviolet radiation hazards and tanning behavior of cosmetology and medical students,” acta dermatovenerologica croatica. 2016;24(1):73-77. [10] rp. gallagher, tk. lee, cd. bajdik, m. borugian, “ultraviolet radiation,” chronic diseases and injuries in canada. 2010;29:(51-68). 
 [11] ja. choi, k. han, y-m. park, ty. la, “low serum 25hydroxyvitamin d is associated with myopia in korean adolescents,”investigative ophthalmology & visual science. 2014;55(4):2041-7. http://www.observatory.co.uk/ 1. introduction 5. conclusion pvc-polymer kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.24 an experimental study of torsional properties of polyvinylchloride sarkawt rostam dept. of production eng. & metallurgy college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, kurdistan, iraq sarkawt.rostam@spu.edu.iq arazw hamakarim dept. of production eng& metallurgy college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq arazwkolizhytacniky3@gmail.com avan xalid dept. of production eng& metallurgy college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq avanxalid95@gmail.com pari said dept. of production eng& metallurgy college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq parisaid54@gmail.com kashab muhammad dept. of production eng& metallurgy college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq kashabmuhammad@gmail.com abstract:in this research, an experimental study has been performed to investigate the mechanical properties through torsion testing of polyvinylchloride (pvc) polymer specimens. for the purpose of the experimentation, specimens of pvc round bars have been prepared. torsion testing machine apparatus of 200 nm motor driven was used to evaluate the torsion properties of the tested bars. the apparatus provides four deformation speeds of 50°/min, 100°/min, 200°/min and 500 °/min. the tests conducted under different conditions in a room temperature and cooling of the samples and tested at different deformation speeds given by the torsion apparatus. various tests produce the torsional momentangle of rotation diagrams and thereafter both of torsional fracture resistance and shear modulus have been calculated. the results showed the effect of temperature change on the mechanical properties of pvc by making the material harder and can resist higher value of the applied torque where the range is from 2.9 n.m for the cooled sample to 2 n.m for the received samples tested at room temperature. moreover the results showed an increase of shear modulus to 282 mpa for the cooled samples in compare to 140mpa for as received samples. finally the results provide a guideline for designers on how to use parts made of pvc in different applications where the range of both the maximum torque and failure torque with their mechanical properties of rigidity and torsional resistance were recorded. keywords: polyvinylchloride, torsion test, torsional moment, angle of rotation, shear modulus. 1. introduction among the featured properties of polymers are their light weight and ductile nature. polyvinylchloride (pvc) is a thermoplastic polymer linear in structure and contains 50% chloride [1]. normally pvc is a hard and rigid material. to give a flexible form to it, plasticizers are added [2]. today pvcis considered the third largest selling plastic type in the world after polyethylene and polypropylene. this is due to its typical features of low cost and excellent durability. pvc polymer is used in various types of industries such as transport, health care, it, textiles and constructions [3]. the mentioned typical features of the pvc encouraged the researches to investigate experiments to get better usage conditions in different applications. sugumaran [1] carried out an experimental study on mechanical properties and dielectric strength test of pvc cable insulation. in this study, the properties of pvc polymer were reinforced by adding particular fillers. the results were compared to the pvc resin. the experimental results showed an impact of the adding fillers on the mechanical properties of pvc such as higher value of elongation in compare to base pvc. kemari et al. [4] investigate the impact of the accelerated thermal aging on the dissipated energy through the insulating material of pvc used in low voltage cables insulation. two level temperature of 80 ºc and 120 ºc were used in the experiments. both the variation of mechanical properties and dissipated energy were examined. the results showed an increase of the dissipated energy due to material degradation. the mechanical and electrical properties of composite material by adding fillers to the base polymer were presented by sunanda et al. [5]. universal tensile testing machine used to conduct the mechanical tests and find out the stress, elongation, extension, tensile yield stress, strain and tensile strength of the tested samples. the results explained that the inclusion of the nano fillers reduced both tensile strength and elongation at break point of the base polymer. in addition, it was found that the hardness of the base polymer increased with an increase of nano filler concentration. bishay et al.[6] investigate the mechanical, electrical and thermal properties of pvc filled with aluminum powder. the tests conducted at temperature range from 30 to 98 ºc. it has shown that the mechanical strength decreases with an increase of aluminum powder concentration. wang et al. [7] explore the properties of adding multilayer graphene to pvc. the tests include tensile behavior, and thermal properties. they found that the presence of graphene increase the tensile modulus and glass transition temperature. colloca et al. [8] conduct experimental study of closed cell pvc foam with different densities. the experimental mailto:sarkawt.rostam@spu.edu.iq mailto:arazwkolizhytacniky3@gmail.com mailto:avanxalid95@gmail.com mailto:parisaid54@gmail.com mailto:kashabmuhammad@gmail.com results show that there is a highly dependent relationship between the foam density and the mechanical properties including strength, energy absorption, and elastic modulus. the mechanical properties of reinforced pvc were studied by ashori et al. [9] through the effect of filler form and content. different types of wood flour and pulp fiber was used. it found that the tensile strength improved by adding these fillers. the effect of torsional disorder and chemical defects in polymers were studied theoretically in a research work by grozema et al. [10]. a quantum mechanical model was used to calculate the mobility of charges. the model included the effects of torsional disorder on mobility of charges on the polymer chain. the results from the comparison between the theoretical model and experimental tests show that the influence of polymerization defects finite polymer chain length cannot be neglected. ghobarah et al. [11] conduct an experimental investigation to improve the torsional resistance of reinforced concrete beams using fiberreinforced polymer fabric. both glass and carbon fibers were used in the torsional resistance upgrade and different wrapping were evaluated. stress relaxation of pvc measured in a research work presented by povolo et al. [12]. the tensile and strain relaxation tests were done using tensile tester at different temperatures below the glass transition temperature of pvc. from the reviewed literature it can be concluded that the investigations to improve the pvc properties attract the attention of researchers and the current work is an attempt to evaluate the mechanical properties throughtorsion tests of pvc under different conditions of temperature variations and deformation speeds to find the best range of utilizing pvc in practical applications. the rest of the paper is organized as follows. section 2 presents the methods and material, the experimental setup and procedure of the experiments. section 3 details the results obtained from the different runs of the experiments followed by the discussion of the results. finally section 4 concludes the findings of the experiments and recommendations for future work. 2. methods and materials 2.1 material the samples for torsion tests are manufactured from raw material of pvc bars of 25 mm diameter provided by local market. both lathe and vertical milling machines are used to cut the bars to the standard shape shown in figure 1. screen shoot of the pvc sample is shown in figure 2. 2.2 experiment the wp 510 torsion testing unit (wp 510, 200 nm motor driven, provided by gunt company [13]) is used to test the torsion of various types of materials. the samples can be stressed to the point of fracture. the testing moment as well as the angle of rotation is measured. it is also possible to set different deformation speeds (50°/min, 100°/min, 200°/min and 500 °/min). the unit is prepared for connection to a pc. figure 1standard torsion sample (dimension in mm) figure 2pvc torsion sample during the torsion test a sample is subjected to stress via a torsional moment (torque). shear stresses occur in the sample which distorts it. to assess the torsion test, the torsional moment is plotted against the torsion angle [13]. table1 shows the categories of the samples used in different tests. the first group tested as it is samples in the room temperature while the second group tested after they have been cooled to -18 ˚c in a refrigerator. table 1categories of the tested samples 2.3 calculations to calculate the shear stress (𝜏) equation 1 is used. for the circular cross-section of the manufactured pvc samples, the polar moment of inertia (j) is calculated by equation 2. during the various tests of pvc samples, the failure moment (mtb) is recorded and used to find the torsional fracture resistance 𝜏𝑏 (equation 3). 𝜏 = 𝑀𝑡 𝐽 (1) 𝐽 = 𝜋 32 𝑑4 (2) 𝜏𝑏 = 𝑀𝑡𝑏 𝐽 (3) in the elastic range of torque-angle of rotation curve, shear modulus is calculated using equation 4. 𝐺 = 32 𝑀𝑡 𝐿 𝜋 𝜑 𝑑4 (4) where l is the sample length, d is the sample diameter (figure 1) and φ is torsion angle. 3. results and discussion the aim of this work is to monitor and find the mechanical propertiestorsion of pvc polymer under different conditions of temperature variations and deformation speeds. for this purpose, pvc specimens of round bars according to standards were prepared using lathe machine and vertical milling machine. the results show that the range of the maximum applied torque used was from 2 to 2.7 n.m for the samples tested at room temperature and from 2.6 to 2.9 n.m when the samples cooled to -18 ºc. the relationship between torque and angle of rotation for the samples tested at room temperature has been shown in figures 3 to figure 5 at different deformation speeds of 50 º/min, 100º/min and 500 º/min respectively. figure 3 torqueangle of rotation curve for as it is sample, speed=50º/min figure 4 torqueangle of rotation curve for as it is sample, speed= 100º/min figure 5 torqueangle of rotation curve for as it is sample, speed= 500º/min figure 6 shows the comparison of the three samples pv1, pvc2 and pvc3 for the testing conditions explained in table 1. it is clear from the figure that the maximum torque recorded was between 2 n.m to 2.7 n.m while the torque at sample rapture was between 0.4 n.m to 1.8 n.m. the comparison showed that with increasing the deformation speed, the torque required for rupture decreases to 0.4 n.m with a rotation angle of 2005º. figure 6 comparison of as it is tested samples at different speeds through the above curves, it was found that for the tested samples at room temperature (as it is samples), the higher the speed of deformation accompany the maximum torque at peak points of the curves and minimum torque at rupture. to show the effect of temperate change during the service of pvc, the prepared samples have been cooled at refrigerator to the available temperature given by the device. for this purpose two samples were tested at different deformation speeds. for instance, figure 7 gives the torqueangle of rotation curve for cooled sample to -18 ºc at deformation speed of 100 º/min. figure 8 shows the curve at deformation speed of 500 º/min. figure 7 torqueangle of rotation curve for cooled sample, speed=100º/min figure 8 torqueangle of rotation curve for cooled sample, speed=500º/min the two curves show the maximum torque and torque at rupture with their angle of rotations. the maximum recorded torque was 2.9 n.m at 500 º/min with 1.2 n.m rupture torque at an angle of rotation of 1814º. the results for the two samples are combined in figure 9 for comparison. figure 9 comparison of tested cooled samples at different speeds to show a clear view for the different testing conditions, all the tests are combined in figure 10. from the figure, it can be obviously observed that the torque at peak point increases where the sample temperature decreases from room temperature to a particular cooling temperature (18º c). the maximum torque range increases from 2 n.m to 2.9 n.m with less value of angle of rotation (1814º for cooling sample in compare to 2005º for as it is sample). this means that the cooling condition made the material harder and can resist a higher value of the applied torque. figure 10 comparison of tested samples at different testing temperature anddeformation speeds. from the above curves one can also observe that the cooling of the pvc changes its mechanical properties and require a higher rapture torque where the value changes from 1.3 n.m for the cooled sample to 0.4 n.m for as it is sample. the torsional fracture resistance (τb) for the tested samples is calculated by applying equations 1 to 3. the results are tabulated in table 2 and shown in figure 11. for the two tested groups of pvc, the results showed that this torsional value decreases with an increase of deformation speed. for the first three tests 1, 2, and 3 the value for torsional resistance decreases from 10.191 mpa to 3.057 mpa. and for the cooled samples (tests number 4 and 5) this valve decreases from 8.152 mpa to 6.62 mpa. in comparing the value of samples tested at 500 º/min for both received and cooled (tests number 3 and 5 respectively), the value of torsional resistance increases from 3.057 mpa to 6.62 mpa. the result above is in compatible with the results given by the previously explained curves. table 2values of torsional fracture resistance for different testing conditions figure 11 torsional fracture resistances for the tested samples lastly the shear modulus has been found (table 3 and figure 12) by using equation 4. the g values increase from 140 mpa for as it is sample tested at deformation speed of 500 ˚/min (test no. 3) to 282 mpa for the cooled sample tested at the same condition (test no. 5). this gives more strength to the pvc material and enhances its usage and applications. table 3values of shear modulus for different testing conditions figure 12 shear modulus for the tested samples 4. conclusion experimental tests conducted to show the torsional property of pvc available in the local market. standard pvc samples were prepared using both lathe machine and vertical milling machine. a torsion testing apparatus used to apply torque until the fracture of the specimens. deformation speeds of 50, 100, and 500°/min were applied. the samples were tested at different temperatures. the testing conditions were as follows: received samples at room temperate for speeds of 50, 100, and 500°/min. cooled samples to -18 ºc at speed of 100 and 500°/min. from the results, it can be concluded that: (1) changing of service temperature has a considerable effect on the properties of the tested polymer by making the material harder and can resist higher value of the applied torque (2.9 n.m for the cooled sample to 2 n.m for the received sample tested at room temperature). (2) continuing on the previous conclusion, the angle of rotation decreases for the case of cooled samples in compare to the received samples (1814º for cooling sample compare to 2005º for as it is sample). (3) as the deformation speed increases we need a higher torque for rapture, it becomes clear to us that the cooling of the pvc changes its mechanical properties and requires a higher rapture torque (1.3 n.m for cooled sample to 0.4 for as it is sample). (4) the shear modulus, g, values increase with the temperature change. the value increases from 140 mpa for the as it is sample tested at deformation speed of 500 ˚/min to 282 mpa for the cooled sample tested at the same condition. this means that the cooling conditions give more strength to the pvc material and enhances its usage and applications. (5) for the two tested groups of pvc the results showed that the torsional resistance value decreases with an increase of deformation speed. at the same time the value of torsional resistance increases from 3.057 mpa to 6.62 mpa when the sample had been cooled. the above results and conclusions give a guideline for designers of how to use parts made of pvc in different applications where the range of both the maximum torque and failure torque with their mechanical properties of rigidity and torsional resistance were recorded.the current work can be expanded in several directions. the experiments can be expanded by conducting other tests such us fatigue and impact and utilizing other types of polymers for comparison. 5. references [1] p.c. sugumaran, “experimentalstudy on dielectric and mechanical properties of pvc cable insulation with sio2/caco3nano fillers”, ieee annual report conference on electrical insulation and dialectic phenomena, pp. 503-506, 2015. [2] w. bolten, engineering materials technology, third edition, 1998. [3] polyvinylchloride (pvc)[online].available: http://www.pvc.org/en. [accessed: march10, 2017]. [4] y. kemari, a.mekhaldi, m.teguar, “investigationintothedissipatedenergyunderaccelera tedthermalaging in pvc/b used in lowvoltage cables insulation”,pp. 1-4, ieee 2016. [5] c. sunanda, m.n.dinesh, n.vasudev, “performance evaluation of silicon rubber insulating material with mgoandznonano fillers”, pp. 1-5, ieee 2016. [6] i. k. bishay, s.l. abd-el-messieh, s.h. mansour, “electrical, mechanical and thermal properties of polyvinyl chloride composites filled with aluminum powder”, journal of materials& design, 32(1), pp. 62-68, 2011. [7] h. wang, g.xie, m.fang, z.ying, y.tong, y. zeng, “electrical and mechanical properties of antistatic pvc films containing multi-layer graphene”, journal of composites part b 79, pp. 444-450, 2015. [8] m. colloca, g.dorogokupets, n. gupta, m. porfiri,”mechanical properties and failure mechanisms of closed cell pvc foams”, international journal of crashworthiness, 17(3), pp. 327-336, 2012. [9] a. ashori, h. kiani, s.a.mozaffari, “mechanical properties of reinforced pvc composites: effect of filler form and content”, journal of applied polymer science, 120, pp. 1788-1793, 2011. [10] f.c. grozema, p.t. v. duijnen, y.a. berlin, m. a. ratner, l.d.a.siebbeles, “intra molecular charge transport along isolated chains of conjugated polymers: effect of torsional disorder and polymerization defects”, journal of physics chemistry b, 106, pp. 7791-7795, 2011. [11] a. ghobarah, m. n. ghorbel, s. e. chidiac, “upgrading torsional resistance of reinforced concrete beams using fiber-reinforced polymer”, journal of composites for construction, 6(4), pp. 257-263, 2002. [12] f. povolo, g. schwartz, e. b. hermida, “stress relaxation of pvc below the yield point”, journal of polymer science part b: polymer physics, 34, pp. 1257-1267, 1996. [13] equipment for engineering education, gunt catalogue, germany. torsion testing machine, 200 nm motor driven. http://www.pvc.org/en  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.55 friction and wear resistance for polyetheretherketone filled with different filler materials: a comparative study dalia m.t. mustafa dept. of production eng. & metallurgy college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, kurdistaniraq dalia.89@hotmail.co.uk sarkawt rostam dept. of production eng. & metallurgy college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, kurdistaniraq sarkawt.rostam@spu.edu.iq abstract: friction and wear behavior of polyetheretherketone (peek) filled with different filler composites were compared. the comparisons were made for different scholar research works which were published between 1987 – 2017. the comparison took place between different filler composites such as carbon fiber (cf) reinforced polyetheretherketone, nanometer al2o3, nanometer sic, polytetrafluoroethylene (ptfe) filled peek, nanometer zro2, nanometer sio2, nanometer si3n4, cus, short fiber reinforced peek composites, peekcf30, go-si and graphite composites. the friction and wear were studied according to different factors of the filler composites such as plasma treated peek, volume percentage, weight percentage, sliding distance, surface of roughness, and size of particles. by this work we can understand the effect of some nanometer particles which act as fillers in polyetheretherketone, and by this comparison study we conclude that friction and wear properties can be decreased or increased or stay unchanged by increasing and decreasing the amount of fillers but it can be improved by adding different fillers with certain properties to obtain optimal results. keywords: polyetheretherketone, friction, wear, filler composites. 1. introduction as a result of good properties such as low coefficient of friction, good corrosion resistance and temperature resistance, and low density, polymers have many applications which are car parts, medicine, electronic components and medical supplies. polyetheretherketone (peek) is a newly developed high performance aromatic thermoplastic. it’s a semicrystalline polymer with high melting temperature. the coefficient of friction and the wear rate are two important parameters in characterizing the tribological performance of the composites. the coefficient of friction is defined as the ratio of the tangential friction force and the normal load, while wear rate is defined as the composite loss caused by wear. studies were done to show the effect of friction and wear of polymers in dry conditions, but less studies were on the effect of friction and wear of polymers in water. some studies were made to show the effect of friction and wear of peek and its composites which were filled with fibers, inorganic fillers and polymers. one of the most effective fillers to reduce wear rate was ptfe [13]. sic as filler is very important in reducing friction and wear. since carbon fiber (cf) has very good mechanical properties for example high modulus and strength, and it’s prevalent as fillers in reducing friction and wear [4-13]. studying the effect of friction and wear was obtained for 316l across peek and cfrpeek, and 9cr18mo across cfrpeek, by testing them on ring-ondisc tester. stainless steel 316l and 9cr18mo were positioned on the top respectively. the bottom specimen was made of peek and cfrpeek respectively [14]. an experimental work was made to study the act on of the particles of al2o3 on friction and wear resistance when peek is filled with it, and also when peek is filled with ptfe. the powder of peek was mixed up with the nanometers of al2o3 and ptfe by using mechanical method, with amount of 5 mass % al2o3 and 10% ptfe [15]. peek fine powders of diameter 100 micrometer and nanometer zro2 which was used as filler were used. the machine which was used for testing friction and wear was m-200 [16]. another work was to investigate the effect of si3n4 particles as filler in peek. the peek fine powders used, of a diameter of 100 micrometer, nanometer si3n4 (with size of less than 50 nm) was used as the filler. the samples were arranged by squeezing the dried composite [17]. another study was to show the effect of peekcf30 beneath lubrication circumstances [11, 13]. friction and wear resistance of peek-cf30 which was slides against steel was studied [8]. a comparison was made to show how the effect of addition of ptfe to cus on friction and wear resistance was studied; they were used in fine powder form [18]. for sic and sio2, they were also used as powders, it can be seen that sic is harder and less brittle than sio2.the test was done on an m-200 model tester [19]. for go-si, go nano-sheets graphene oxide nanosheets were prepared. for tribological behavior a universal micro-tribotester was used [20]. for short fiber reinforced peek composites, different materials were used and a ‘‘pin on ring’’ tester was used [21]. graphite is considered as an important solid lubrication which is used for improving friction coefficient. the peek matrix (melt index: 24 g/10 min) and different particle sizes of micron-graphite were used. a umt-2 model friction and wear tester was used [22]. the rest parts of this research paper are classified as follows. section 2 contains the methodology used in this work to review the literature covered from 1987-2017. this is followed by results and discussion in section 3. conclusions stated in section 4. 2. methodology a review paper, which contains different studies of many scholarly journals, were collected as a research methodology to make a framework for studying friction and wear rate in polyetheretherketone filled with different fillers. the review paper was made to collect the researches in highest ranking journals, 1987 was chosen as a starting date for search. and 2017 was chosen for the last paper research. a comparison was carried out for studying the effect of adding different filler composites to polyetheretherketone to friction and wear rate, these data were taken from different research papers. for this purpose tables 16 were made for different data according to: (1) composite material: fiber (cf) reinforced polyetheretherketone (peek), nanometer al2o3, nanometer sic, polytetrafluoroethylene (ptfe) filled peek, nanometer zro2, nanometer sio2, nanometer si3n4, cus, short fiber reinforced peek composites, peek-cf30, and graphene/peek. (2) filler composites parameters such as: volume percentage, weight percentage, sliding velocity, normal load, temperature, and size of particles. 3. results and discussion in this section the data collected from the reviewed literature tabulated in six tables to show how when peek is filled with different composites will change the friction and wear resistance. as shown in table 1, the friction coefficient of 316l– cfrpeek and 9cr18mo–cfrpeek was much lower than that of 316l–peek. we see that friction coefficient became 0.16–0.25 later when it was run for 40 min. it has shown that the friction coefficient of cfr–peek became 0.1 till the experiment came to end. from table 1 it can be appear that the friction coefficient of 9cr18mo–cfrpeek became 0.1–0.15 before 60 min [14]. table 1 carbon fiber (cf) reinforced (peek) [14] carbon fiber (cf) reinforced (peek) filler composite material friction wear rate 316 l peek 0.16-0.25 (after 40min) 316 l cfr peek 0.1 (until end) 9cr18mo-cfr peek 0.1-0.15(before 60min) < 316 l peek >316 l cfr peek table 2 peek filled nanometer al2o3 and zro2 [15,16] peek filled nanometer al2o3 filler particle size friction wear rate al2o3 15nm higher friction coefficient lowest wear coefficient 90&500nm lower friction little more than twice of 15 nm peekal2o3ptfe lower friction coefficient increased wear coefficient peek filled nanometer zro2 zro2 <15nm reduce friction sharply decreased >50nm increase slightly with increasing size on nanometer particle gradual increase table 2 shows researches on the particle size of different nanometers al2o3 and zro2. it can be seen that for al2o3 higher friction coefficient and lowest wear coefficient can be obtained at 15nm, by increasing the particle size of al2o3 to 90nm &500nm the friction coefficient is lower and the wear coefficient is little more than twice of 15nm. when ptfe is added lower friction coefficient can be obtained but wear coefficient increased, when only ptfe is added it has lower wear coefficient than when it’s not filled [15]. for zro2, when filled with less than 15nm friction will be reduced and wear coefficient will sharply decreased. but when peek is filled with more than 50nm wear rate is gradually increase and friction will increase less when the size of particles increases. it is found that all different size nanometer zro2 as fillers can make the friction less of the peek which is filled but when the nanometer size becomes more the coefficient of friction will become more on a small scale [16]. table 3 peek filled nanometer sic, nanometer sio2 [19], nanometer zro2 [16] nanometer si3n4 [17], go-si [20], and graphite composites [22] peek filled nanometer sic weight percentage wt% friction wear rate <7.5 for friction <10 for wear decreased sharply decreased sharply 20 for friction < 2.5 for wear lowest value decreased sharply 2.5 -10 lowest value and nearly unchanged >10 linearly increased peek filled nanometer sio2 up to 5 et% decreased sharply decreased sharply increasing sio2 content decreased gradually increased gradually peek filled nanometer zro2 below7.5 increasing decreased sharply 7.5 best frictional coefficient lowest value(best wear coefficient) above 7.5 decreasing linearly increasing peek filled nanometer si3n4 2.5-5 nearly unchanged <7.5 for friction <2.5 for wear decrease sharply sharply decreased 15for friction 7.5 for wear lowest value lowest value(best) >7.5 linearly increased 7.5 best peek filled go-si 0.1 lower friction higher wear life peek/graphite composites <15 for friction <5 for wear steady increase 25 for friction >5 for wear significant decrease(minimum) decrease >25 unchanged table 3 shows friction coefficient and wear rates of different weight percentages of different nanometers. for peek filled nanometer sic, when it’s filled with less than 7.5 wt% friction decreased sharply and when filled with less than 10 wt% wear rate decreased sharply. friction has lowest value at 20 wt%, and wear decreased sharply when its filled with less than 2.5%, but at (2.510) wt% wear rate has lowest value and nearly unchanged, and above 10 its linearly increased with increasing sic content and it is higher in comparison with the unfilled peek. for peek filled sio2, friction coefficient and wear rate decrease sharply up to 5.0 wt%. but with increasing sio2 content friction decrease gradually and wear rate increase gradually. usually, nanometer sio2 filled peek composite exhibits a decreased wear coefficient in comparison with the neat peek. this illustrates that nanometer sio2 is very effective in reducing the friction and wear of the filled peek [19]. for peek filled nanometer zro2, friction increased below 7.5 wt %, but wear is decreased sharply, when the amount of sic becomes more than the unfilled peek friction and wear resistance. the unfilled peek has higher wear coefficient than the peek which is filled with sio2 this shows that sio2 has an important role in improving the friction and wear resistance. for the perfect union of friction and wear resistance the amount of zro2 should be 7.5 wt.% [20]. for peek filled nanometer si3n4, when its filled with 2.5 5.0 wt%, wear rate coefficient remain nearly unchanged. and when it’s less than 7.5 wt% friction coefficient sharply decreased, but wear sharply decreased when it’s less than 2.5 wt%. friction reaches lower value at 15 wt% but wear reaches lower value at 7.5 wt%. the best weight percentage is 7.5 for friction and wears [17]. for peek filled go-si, lower friction can be obtained at 0.1 wt% with higher wear life rate [20]. it was shown that the coefficient of friction of pure peek was higher than the peek graphite composites of pure peek. when the content of graphite was below 15 wt%, the coefficient of friction was steady. and then it significantly decreased and reached the minimum at the graphite content of 25 wt%. above 25 wt%, the coefficient of friction was nearly unchanged. as already known, graphite can help in improving the tribological performance of composite materials, attributing to its unique layer structure [22]. table 4 peek filled nanometer cus [18] peek filled nanometer cus filler volume percentage friction wear rate cus 35 vol.% lowest wear(one six the wear rate of peek) peekcusptfe peek 30vol.%cus. > ( peek30vol.% cus5vol.%ptf e) & (peek25vol.%cus10vol.%ptfe) peek-30vol.% cus5vol.%ptfe <peek 30 vol.% cus <peek30vol. % cus. peek25vol.%cus10vol.%ptfe further reducing <peek30vol.% cus. friction and wear resistance of peek when it’s filled with nanometer cus (with and without ptfe) is shown in table 4. the wear rates became less when it was filled with any amount of cus. the wear rate became minimum when we had peek35 vol. % cus and it was about one-sixth the wear rate of peek. when proportions of 5 vol. % and 10 vol. of ptfe were added, friction coefficient was reduced. when 5 wt.% was added it was reduced but when 10 wt.% was added it was further reduced. the wear rate of peek-30 vol. % cus are much higher than of peek-30 vol. % cus-5 vol. % ptfe and peek-25vol. % cus-l0 vol. % ptfe which had nearly the same wear rates [18]. table5 short fiber reinforced peek composites [21] short fiber reinforced peek composites sliding velocity normal load friction wear 100rev/min 12n 3.5-5.5n lower wear rate higher velocity 12n 3.5-5.5n (5-7.5)times higher high velocity 5.5n 1.5-2n (4-6)times lower table 5 shows the wear rate under normal load of 12 n at 100 rev/min. fiber reinforcement lowers the wear rate of materials. it shows the effect of normal load and sliding velocity on short fiber reinforced composites, we can see that fiber reinforcement lowers the wear rate of materials. under the same normal load of 12 n, the revolution number (sliding velocity) affects the tribological behavior results strongly. sliding velocity markedly affects the results. wear rate is 5–7.5 times higher at higher sliding velocity. under the normal load of 12 n all materials gives the friction force values between 3.5 and 5.5 n. under the normal load of 5.5 n friction forces decreases to 1.5 and 2 n [21]. table 6 peek-cf30/steel [8] peek-cf30/steel temperature friction wear rate increasing temp. to about 90-100º c gradually increasing to max. further increasing decreases as shown in table 6, the prediction of friction coefficient of pair (peekcf30/steel) as function of contact temperature can be seen. for temperature to about 90–100 ◦c, friction gradually increases to maximum. friction coefficient decreases with further increasing of temperature [8]. 4. conclusion (1) when 316l slides to cfrpeek it shows the perfect friction and wear resistance, when it was compared to the pairs 316l with peek and 9cr18mo with cfrpeek. the wear of 316l/cfrpeek is lower than 9cr18mo/cfrpeek and wear of 316l/peek is higher than 9cr18mo. (2) we can see that when we add al2o3 particles to peek wear rate can be decreased, but it cannot decrease the friction coefficient. it can reach minimum wear rate when the composite filled with 5 mass% 15 nm al2o3. with 90 and 500 nm al2o3 filled peek; the increased wear coefficients can be seen. friction and wear resistance are decreasing when we add 10 mass% ptfe into unfilled peek, but when we add of 10 mass% ptfe into peek friction is decreasing and wear is increasing. (3) when we add zro2 we see that it has a good role in reducing wear when the nanometer size is less than 15 nm. when nanometer size is increasing the wear rate also increases. (4) when sic is added to peek we see that it has a very important role in changing friction and wear. the best amount is about 7.5wt. % to 10wt. %. (5) when sio2 is added to peek we see a great role in reducing friction and wear. (6) when we add 7.5wt.% of nanometer zro2 to peek we see that it has best friction and wear. (7) when we add si3n4 to peek we see that it affects friction and wear greatly. it can be seen that at 7.5wt.% it has minimum wear rate. (8) go-si as filler has an excellent role in affecting the friction and wear properties. (9) the coefficient of friction of peek composites reached minimum at 25 wt.%. the smaller particle size of graphite effectively improved the wear resistance. (10) when we add cf30 to peek, best friction and wear resistance can be obtained when slides against steel disc. (11) so from the comparison of these data we come to new directions of filling the gaps in the field of studying the friction and wear resistance of peek when fillers were added to it. references [1] k. tanaka, “effects of various fillers on the friction and wear of ptfebased composites”, in friction and wear of polymer composites, k. friedrich (ed.), elsevier, pp. 137174, 1986. [2] r. l. fusaro, h. e. sliney, “friction and wear behavior of graphite fiber reinforced polyimide composites”, asle transactions, 21(4), pp. 1-14, 1978. [3] q. h. wang, j. xu, w. shen, q. xue, “the effect of nanometer sic filler on the tribological behavior of peek”, wear, 209 (1-2), pp. 316-321, 1997. [4] t. okabe, n. takeda, “size effect on tensile strength of unidirectional cfrp composites— experiment and simulation”, composites science and technology, 62 (15), pp. 2053-2064, 2002. [5] m. sumer, h. unal, a. mimaroglu, “evaluation of tribological behavior of peek and glass fiber reinforced peek composite under dry sliding and water lubricated conditions”, wear, 265 (7-8), pp. 1061-1065, 2008. [6] j. p. davim, n. marques, a. m. baptista, “effect of carbon fiber reinforcement in the frictional behavior of peek in a water lubricated environment”, wear, 251 (1-12), pp. 11001104, 2001. [7] r. prehn, f. haupert, k. friedrich, “sliding wear performance of polymer composites under abrasive and water lubricated conditions for pump applications”, wear, 259 (1-6), pp. 693696, 2005. [8] x. liujie, j. p. davim, r. cardoso, “prediction on tribological behavior of composite peek-cf30 using an artificial neural networks”, journal of materials processing technology, 189 (1-3), pp. 374-378, 2007. [9] j. p. davim, r. cardoso, “effect of the reinforcement (carbon or glass fiber) on friction and wear behavior of the peek against steel surface at long dry sliding”, wear, 266 (7-8), pp. 795-799, 2009. [10] j. p. davim, r. cardoso, “tribological behavior of the composite peek-cf30 when dry sliding against steel using statistical techniques”, materials & design, 27 (4), pp. 338342, 2006. [11] j. p. davim, n. marques, “evaluation of tribological properties of polymeric materials for hip prosthesis applications”, tribology letters, 11(2), pp. 91-94, 2001. [12] h. voss, k. friedrich, “on the wear behavior of short-fiber-reinforced peek composites”, wear, 116(1), pp. 1-18, 1987. [13] n. marques, j. p. davim, “tribological comparative study of conventional and composite materials for biomedical applications”, key engineering materials, 230-232, pp. 487-490, 2002. [14] z. wang, d. gao, “friction and wear properties of stainless steel sliding against polyetheretherketone and carbon-fiber-reinforced polyetheretherketone under natural seawater lubrication”, materials & design, 53, pp. 881-887, 2014. [15] h. b. qiao, q. guo, a. g. tian, g. l. pan, l. b. xu, “a study on friction and wear characteristics of nanometer al2o3/peek composites under the dry sliding condition”, tribology international, 40 (1), pp. 105110, 2007. [16] q. wang, q. xue, h. liu, w. shen, j. xu, “the effect of particle size of nanometer zro2 on the tribological behavior of peek”, wear, 198 (1-2), pp. 216-219, 1996. [17] q. h. wang, j. xu, w. shen, q. xue, “the effect of nanometer sic filler on the tribological behavior of peek”, wear, 209 (1-2), pp. 316321, 1997. [18] j. v. voort, s. bahadur, “the growth and bonding of transfer film and the role of cus and ptfe in the tribological behavior of peek”, wear, 181183(1), pp. 221221, 1995. [19] q. h. wang, j. xu, w. shen, w. liu, “an investigation of the friction and wear properties of nanometer si3n4 filled peek”, wear, 196 (1-2), pp. 82-86, 1996. [20] h. j. song, n. li, y. li, c. min, z. wang, “preparation and tribological properties of graphene/ poly (ether ether ketone) nano composites”, journal of materials science, 47 (17), pp. 64366443, 2012. [21] t. sinmazcelik, t. yilmaz, “thermal aging effects on mechanical and tribological performance of peek and short fiber reinforced peek composites”, materials & design, 28 (2), pp. 641 648, 2007. [22] y. s. shang, y. zhao, y. liu, y. zhu, z. jiang, h. zhang, “the effect of micron-graphite particle size on the mechanical and tribological properties of peek composites”, high performance polymers, doi.org/10.1177/0954008316685410, 2017.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.52 study of optical fiber design parameters in fiber optics communications salim qadir mohammed communication eng. department sulaimani polytechnic university sulaymaniyah, iraq salim.muhammed@spu.edu.iq asaad m. al-hindawi communication eng. department sulaimani polytechnic university sulaymaniyah, iraq asaad.jasim@spu.edu.iq abstract: fiber optics is an important part in the telecommunication infrastructure. large bandwidth and low attenuation are features for the fiber optics to provide gigabit transmission. nowadays, fiber optics are used widely in long distance communication and networking to provide the required information traffic for multimedia applications. in this paper, the optical fiber structure and the operation mechanism for multimode and single modes are analyzed. the design parameters such as core radius, numerical aperture, attenuation, dispersion and information capacity for step index and graded index fibers are studied, calculated and compared for different light sources. keywords: step index, graded index, numerical aperture, multimode and single mode fibers. 1. introduction the large amount of data traffic, required for nowadays multimedia applications, increases the demand for a transmission medium with high bandwidth. the large bandwidth, high security, low interference, low attenuation, ease of maintenance, and long life span are features for the fiber optics that enable it to support high data rate services. an optical fiber is a physical waveguide that used to transmit electromagnetic waves in the optical spectrum. they are used as components in integrated optical circuits, as the transmission medium in long distances for light wave communications, or for biomedical imaging. fiber optics can be designed to operate in single-mode or multi-mode depending on the number of lights rays transmitted simultaneously. according to the refractive index distribution, fiber optics can be classified into two types, step index fiber and graded index fiber. different material can be used in the fabrication of the fiber optics such as glass, polymer, and semiconductors. the widespread use of fiber optics communication is mainly derived by the rapid increase in the demand for large telecommunication capacity and reliable communication systems. compared to wireless and copper-wired transmission media, fiber optics technology is more efficient in providing the required information capacity. due to advance in fiber optics technology, a single optical fiber can be used to carry more data over long distances. different techniques can be used to significantly improve the capacity of optical networks such as wavelength division multiplexing [1]. signal processing in the optical domain is more efficient than the electrical domain [2]. therefore it is desired for future optical systems to have the ability of information processing exclusively in the optical domain. signal processing includes amplification, multiplexing, switching, and filtering. an example of current type of optical communication system that processes the signal in optical domain is code division multiple access [3]. despite the advantages of using optical fiber for communication systems, it is vital to conduct further research to improve fiber optics communication systems, and to address a number of challenges facing it [4]. in this paper the analysis of optical fiber is presented and the design parameters is studied and calculated for optics communication system. 2. optical fiber analysis 2.1 optical fiber structure in the dielectric slab planer waveguide shown in figure (1), the wave travels primarily in the central layer (core of radius a), which has refractive , this layer is so small often, less than a micrometer that it is referred to as a film, the film is sandwiched between a bottom layer and top layer having indices . figure (1): symmetrical planar waveguide light rays are trapped in the film by total internally reflection. the critical angle value is given by [5]: ( ) (1) the angle of incident rays in figure (1) must be equal or greater than the critical angle in order the lights propagates continuously through the core of the fiber to the destination. for efficient transmission, the materials used are must has small absorption as in the table some materials refractive indexes. all ray angles for propagating waves lie between and , or and the corresponding effective refractive indices are in the range (2) where obviously, all the waves having angles greater than and 90 o will enters the fibers core but, actually the numbers of the waves propagates through the fiber will constraint by the following condition: (3) where denoting the round trip phase shift, m is an integer and represents the mode number. hence the light propagating through the core of the fiber optics in discrete modes, each described by a distinct value of (incident rays).this discrete rays are called modes for example when (m = 0, 1, 2), this denotes three lower order modes in the planar dielectric guide. the ray waves of different modes may express as [5]: tan (ha √ (4) where , a represents the core radius thickness and is the free-space wavelength of operating frequency. for higher-ordered modes the solutions (including both even and odd modes) the normalized thickness can be calculated by: ( ) ( ) (5) where m is a positive integer and represents the mode number. in the boundary as the incident angle, , approaches , the internal angle reaches the critical angle for total reflection . then, we obtain: √ √ (6) where represents fractional reflective indices or (7) the equation (6) describes the angle within which the fiber can accept and propagate light and is referred to as the “numerical aperture” (na) that is defined by: (8) when the medium with refractive index is air, the equation (7) for the na of the glass fiber is simplified to √ √ (9) therefore the acceptance angle can be calculated from eq. (8) as: (10) this equation states that for all angles of incident where the inequality 0 ≤ ≤ is satisfied the incident ray will propagate within the fiber. the parameter na is useful measure of light collecting ability of fiber to accept and propagate light within the solid cone distinct by an angle, 2 . the highest-ordered mode that can propagate has the value for m given by [5]: √ (11) therefore: ( ) (12) since the lowest-ordered mode has the value of , therefore the number of propagating te modes n is the integer value of : ( ) (13) finally, the condition at cutoff for the mth modes is described by: (14) taking into consideration that if the mth modes will propagate. it is noted that the condition of single mode fiber (first mode or called zero mode) is: (15a) while the condition of multimode fiber (of m modes) is: (15b) figure (2) shows the six te and tm modes for n1=1.48 and n2=1.46. figure (2): the first six tem modes for planner waveguide (n1=1.48 and n2=1.46) 2.2 modes in optical fiber many modes te and tm modes (transverse electric and transverse magnetic modes) are generated in the cylindrical optical fiber in addition to he and eh modes which are hybrid, and each contains components of electric and magnetic fields pointing along the fiber axis [6]. in the followings, these modes are discussed according to the types of optical fibers. three basic types of optical fibers are used in communication systems: (a) step-index multimode (sim) fiber, (b) step-index single mode (sis) fiber, (c) graded-index fiber (gi). (a) the step index multimode (sim) fiber it consists of a central core where refractive index is n1, surrounded by a cladding whose refractive index is n2. figure (3) illustrates its structure and the possible ray paths. figure (3): step index fiber the modes chart for step index fibers appears in figure (2). this chart is similar to the symmetrical slab mode chart in figure (1). one difference is that the fiber chart has been normalized by plotting the effective refractive index as a function of the parameter v, called the normalized frequency that is giving by [6]: √ (16) the chart shows the existence of many modes te and tm modes in addition to he and eh modes. each curve in figure (4) actually represents two modes one orthogonally to the other in transverse plane. for large values of v, many modes will propagate. the number of propagating modes is approximated by: (17) figure (4): the effective reflective index as a function of normalized frequency v. (b) step-index single mode (sis) fiber single-mode propagation is assured if all modes except the he11 mode are cutoff. referring to figure (4) it is noticed that this phenomenon will occur if v < 2.405. combining this result with eq (16) the core radius is calculated by: √ (19) as the condition of single mode propagation. this result is very similar to the single mode condition for the symmetrical slab eqn.(15a). if eqn. (19) is satisfied, then only the he11 mode can travel through the fiber, two orthogonally polarized he11 waves can actually exist in the fiber simultaneously, but they have the same neff and therefore, travel the same velocity. (c) graded index fiber the graded index fiber has a core material whose refractive index decreases continuously with distance r from the axis. this structure, illustrated in figure (5) appears to be quite different from the sim fiber. the index variation is decreased by: √ (20) √ (21) where  is the profile parameter which represents the refractive index profile of fiber optics core. when =2 in eq. (20), the core index becomes: figure (5): the multimode graded index fiber √ (22) this index distribution is called the parabolic profile. for parabolic profile the numerical aperture is determined as [5]: ⁄ √ (23) this function has been plotted in figure (6) for n1=1.48 and ∆=0.0135. figure (6): numerical aperture na as a function of r forn1=1.48 and ∆=0.0135. the number of modes for parabolic profile is approximated by[ref.]: (25) the condition for graded-index single mode propagation is given by[ref]: √ (24) a more precise analysis changes the factor 1.4 to 1.2. 3. calculations of design parameters 3.1 operating wavelength according to (itu) the international telecommunications union regulations the bands allocated for both intermediate-range and long-distance optical fiber communications are specified by the letters o, e, s, c, l and u, which are defined in table 1. the more common usable bands are o-band and c-band giving minimum attenuation through the fiber length. the lowest attenuation happens at wavelengths around 1.310 µm and 1.550 µm. therefore, the laser source manufacturer’s has designed a various types of laser sources for these designated bands, where attenuation is less than 0.6db per km. table 1: itu regulations bands [6] 3.2 core radius the size of optical fibers plays crucial role in the light wave propagation through fiber. therefore, radius of the core is significant to decide mode of propagation in fiber as: for step-index single mode fiber. √ for graded-index single mode fiber, otherwise the multi modes will propagate. the thickness/diameter of the core can be measured in spite of measurement of radius. the standard core sizes are 50 µm and 62.5 µm for multi-mode fiber while 5-10 µm for single mode fiber. 3.3 numerical aperture numerical aperture (na) is a light gathering property of optical fiber, which gives the quantity of light that brought into the center of optical fiber in terms of incidence angle according to equation (9). the value of the numerical aperture is about 5% lower than the value of the maximum theoretical numerical aperture namax which is resulting from a refractive index measurements trace of the core and cladding . 3.3 acceptance angle it is a semi vectorial angle that formed by the set of incident rays at the center of fiber, which helps to decide the size of core or the numerical aperture according to equation (10). 3.4 attenuation the most important transmission characteristic is attenuation or loss. the transmission losses bound the total length of the fiber communication system. rayleigh scattering losses is proportional to -4 , it becomes increasingly important as the wavelength diminishes, the rayleigh scattering loss can be approximated by the expression: name itu band wavelength λ µm original band o-band 1.260 to 1.360 extended band e-band 1.360 to1.460 short band s-band 1.460 to 1.530 conventional band c-band 1.530 to 1.565 long band l-band 1.565 to 1.625 ultralong band u-band 1.625 to 1.675 (13) where is in micrometer and is the loss in db/km due to rayleigh scattering. it is clear that the scattering severely restricts use of fibers at short wavelength below 0.8 µm. glass fibers generally have lower absorption than plastic fibers, so they are preferred for long-distance communication. 3.5 dispersion the distortion of digital and analog signals which, are transmitted in optical fibers results from dispersion. when fiber optic transmission is implemented with its essential part which involves some form of digital modulation, due to dispersion mechanisms within the fiber the transmitted light pulses spreads as they travel along the channel. it can say that the dispersion is a light spread out during transmission on the fiber. the dispersion may be categorized into two major types [7]: intermodal (modal)dispersion which exists only in multimode fibers and intra modal (chromatic) dispersion which exists in all types of fibers (single mode and multimode) which basically divided into types: waveguide dispersion and material. waveguide dispersion: the optical fiber can be considered as circular wave guide where refractive index varies with modes of propagation with wavelength causes wave guide dispersion. material dispersion: the refractive index of core causes the changes in the wavelength/frequency called material dispersion. if narrow pulse passes through fiber, causes broadening of pulse width due to material property. it can be overcome by highly monochromatic source of light. the single mode fibre could reduce the material dispersion to maximum extent. the refractive index of core causes the changes in the wavelength/frequency called material dispersion. if narrow pulse passes through fiber, causes broadening of pulse width due to material property. it can be overcome by highly monochromatic source of light. the single mode fiber could reduce the material dispersion to maximum extent. the total chromatic dispersion could be expressed as [7]: ( ) ( ) (26) where is the material dispersion, mg is the waveguide dispersion and ∆ is the source spectral width. a useful analytic approximation in this range for silica fiber is: (27) where mo is approximately (-0.095 psec./(nm 2 .km)) and o is the zero dispersion wavelength equal to 1300nm.values of mo and o are often given by the manufacturer. distortion in step index fiber signals are distorted in si fiber by material and waveguide dispersion and by multimode pulse spreading. the amount of multimode pulse spreading (due to modal dispersion) in a dielectric slab was found by: ( ) (28) the total pulse spreading ∆τ, resulting both from chromatic dispersion ( ) and from modal one is given by: (29) where (∆τ)mod is the multimode dispersive pulse spread and (∆τ)c is the chromatic dispersive spread. distortion in graded index fiber graded index fiber produces much less multimode distortion than do si fibers. an approximate expression for modal pulse in a graded index fiber is ( ) (30) generally the total modal pulse spread can be written as [5]: ( ) for l ≤ (31) or √ ( ) for l ≥ (32) where (τ/l) is the spread per unit length in the linear region and represents equilibrium length and is taken as 1km. 3.5 information capacity the information capacity of any fiber optic communication system limits by pulse spreading. the maximum allowable pulse spread requires ∆ (τ) ≤ t/2 to avoid the overlaps occurring between the sequential pulses, and then the modulation frequency is limited by [5]: therefore the optical bandwidth of the fiber is: while the electrical bandwidth is calculated from [5]: which is equal to the data rate (bits per second) of return to zero code format: (36) while the data rate of non-return to zero code format is given by [5]: (37) 4. results and discussion for this study, different fibers are selected to determine their design parameters and to compare the results with those of different sources. the sources are considered to be light emitting diode led and laser diode. firstly, it is chosen different structures for step index fibers representative of all glass, plastic cladded silica fiber pcs, and all plastics constructions. numerical aperture, acceptance angles, and fractional refractive index changes are computed using eqs.(7, 9 and 10) and listed in table 2. table 2: typical step index fiber characteristics construction core n1 cladding n2 ∆ na all glass 1.48 1.46 0.0135 0.2425 14 o pcs 1.46 1.4 0.0411 0.4142 24.47 o all plastic 1.49 1.41 0.0537 0.4817 28.79 o algaas 3.6 3.55 0.0139 0.5979 36.72 o single mode 1.465 1.46 0.0034 0.12 6.89 o for different light sources for various types of fibers, the fiber losses are calculated according to eq.(13) and the characteristics of the studied fibers are illustrated in table 3. table 3: characteristics of studied fibers. it is noted that the losses of longer wavelength are lower than those of shorter ones. the plastic fibers are cheap and used for shorter distances while glass fibers are used for long distances due to their low attenuation. now, the information capacities for step index and graded index fibers are calculated according to eq.(29, 34-37) for different sources and listed in table 4 and table 5 respectively. table 4: information capacity for step index fibers. sour ce µm ∆ nm ∆(τ/l) ns/km ghz .km ghz .km bit rate rrnz gbps. km bit rate rrz gbps. km led 0.85 20 66.24 0.008 0.005 0.011 0.005 led 1.32 50 66.22 0.008 0.005 0.011 0.005 led 1.55 50 23.3 0.022 0.015 0.030 0.015 led 1.60 30 16.65 0.030 0.021 0.042 0.021 ld 0.82 1 0.10 5 3.7 7 3.7 ld 1.55 1 0.02 25 17.5 35 17.5 table 5: information capacity for graded index fibers. sour ce µm ∆ nm ∆(τ/l) ns/km ghz .km ghz .km bit rate rrnz gbps. km bit rate rrz gbps. km led 0.85 20 1.86 0.269 0.188 0.377 0.188 led 1.32 20 0.45 1.111 0.778 1.555 0.778 led 1.55 50 1.03 0.486 0.34 0.68 0.34 led 1.60 30 0.78 0.641 0.45 0.897 0.45 ld 0.82 1 0.05 10 7 14 7 ld 1.55 1 0.015 33 23 47 23 from the previous tables, it is clear that the data rate of the transmission increases when the fiber dispersion ∆(τ/l) decreases. the multimode fibers have generally good characteristics compared with the others and the graded index fibers especially of laser diode source have high performance related to the bit rate. 5. conclusions the large amount of data traffic, required for nowadays multimedia applications, increases the demand for a transmission medium with high bandwidth. the analysis of optical fiber structure has been introduced in this paper and its design parameters, such as core radius, numerical aperture, attenuation, dispersion and information capacity have been studied and calculated for different sources. in general, multimode optical fiber continues to be the most cost-effective choice for enterprise and data center applications up to 1km range. beyond that, single-mode optical fiber of ld source is necessary for high bit rate. despite the advantages of using optical fiber for communication systems, such as the large bandwidth, high security, low interference, low attenuation, ease of maintenance and long life span. it is vital to conduct further research to improve fiber optics communication systems, and to address a number of challenges facing it. description core size µm na source λ µm loss db/km glass multi mode si 50 0.24 led 850 1.7 gi 50 0.24 led 850 1.7 gi 50 0.24 led 1320 0.29 gi 50 0.24 led 1550 0.15 gi 50 0.24 led 1600 0.15 pcs si 200 0.41 led 800 2.2 glass single mode si 5 0.12 ld 820 1.96 gi 5 0.12 ld 1550 0.15 si 10 0.12 ld 1600 0.14 6. references [1] a. m. jassim and k. a. al-khateeb, "optical wavelength division multiplexing device," in proceeding of 37 the international ilmenau conference, germany, 21-24 september, 1992. [2] f. idachaba, d. u. ike and o. hope, "future trends in fiber optics communication," in proceedings of the world congress on engineering (wce), london, u.k, 2 4 july, 2014. [3] b. wu, b. j. shastri and p. r. prucnal, "secure communication in fiber-optic networks," emerging trends in ict security, elsevier inc., 2014. [4] g. ezeh and o. ibe, "efficiency of optical fiber communication for dissemination of information within the power system network," iosr journal of computer engineering (iosr-jce), vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 68-75, jul. aug. 2013. [5] j. c. palais, fiber optic communications, 5th ed., prentice hall, 2005. [6] j. m. senior, optical fiber communications principles and practice, 3rd ed., prentice hall, 2009. [7] m. raghavendra and p. v. prasad, "a novel approach for optimized dispersion in optical fiber communication," international journal of research and reviews in applied sciences ijrras, vol. 4, august, 2010.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 3 | issue 2 | december 2018 | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.3.1 received: 02 september 2018 | accepted: 09 october 2018 comparison of growth traits and yields components of five chickpeas genotypes (cicer arietinum l.) at bakrajo/ sulaymaniyah conditions jalal omer ahmed dara yara mohammad anwar rashid abdulla industrial food and quality control industrial food and quality control industrial food and quality control bakrajo technical institute bakrajo technical institute bakrajo technical institute sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaymaniyah, iraq sulaymaniyah, iraq sulaymaniyah, iraq jalal.ahmed@spu.edu.iq dara.ahmad@spu.edu.iq anwar.abdulla@spu.edu.iq chnar hama noori meerza industrial food and quality control department bakrajo technical institute sulaimani polytechnic university sulaymaniyah, iraq chnar.meerza@spu.edu.iq 1 abstract: this study was carried out in bakrajo technical institute, affiliates to the sulaimania polytechnic university. the investigation was done to find the relationships between genotypes and sowing times of five chickpeas (cicer arietinum l.) during 2017-2018 seasons. genotypes and sowing time are two significant variables which have impact on crop performance. however, heat stress throughout reproductive growth it is possible to cause significant productivity loss. according to the environment conditions in winter season in the northern iraq; crop meets slight heat and the acceptable moisture during reproductive growth and maturity. this leads to resulting in maximum and consistent yields, as well as there is a positive correlation between maturity and seed yield (kg/h) as resulted from the experiment. experimentation was laid out in a randomized complete blocks design (rcbd) with three replications applied. results of analysis of variance outlined that there was significant difference between chickpeas varieties in the most of traits such as no. of branches per plant, 50 % flowering, no. of pods per plant ,leaf area , seeds weight per plant and the 100 seeds weight plus harvest index, which in turn give a share in to raise yields and yield components. sowing time and varieties had significant effects on all measured trait, ghab 1; filip 2 and filip 3 winters sowing genotypes gave higher seed yield, 1582.66, 1554.66 and 1533.33 kg/h respectively. minimum yield 662, 480 kg/h was recorded in the local and swrka spring sowing genotype. keywords: comparative, chickpea, growth traits, genotypes, sowing date, yield components. 1. introduction kurdistan area of iraq is somewhere located in southwest of asia, among latitudes 34-37 and longitudes 41-46, with annual ranging from 350-1,200 mm. this region is wealthy in both soil and water in form of rain in winter and spring seasons. rain in an appropriate amount during winter and spring seasons; this may additionally let kurdistan be one of the richest agricultural areas in the middle east and all over the world for legume crops, especially chickpeas [1]. one of the most critical difficulties in the agriculture sector in developing countries is insufficient devotion to agricultural research. for this cause, work in agricultural research is considered a sacred responsibility for us to contribute as much as possible to the development of the agricultural area in the future [2]. in most of the scientific research’s it has been indicated that chickpea is the third main essential legume crops in the world after soybean and faba bean [3, 4]. chickpeas contains high tiers of proteins (up to 30 %), and carbohydrates; additionally they supply a few minerals (p, ca, k, mg, zn and fe) and nutritional vitamins like niacin as nicely as unsaturated fatty acids [5, 6]. in iraq, it considers as a second grain legume after faba bean. it has been cultivating intensively in the north of the governorates including sulaymaniah, duhok in addition erbil. according to published statistics data by the ministry of agriculture , the chickpeas, covering an area of 13,000 – 14,000 hectare with an average yield of 0.70 – 0.75 t/ha [7]. despite the large area of the cultivation, still, the level of production and productivity are awfully low. moreover, there is a vast gap amidst the probable yield and real yield almost in all developing countries of chickpea [8, 9]. chickpea is one of the main crops grown which it can be cultivated on low fertility and sandy loam soils in the world [10]. generally chickpea considered one of the main important plants; this is for their significant contributor to agricultural sustainability via nitrogen fixation. participating chickpea as a rotation crops allowing the diversification of agricultural production systems [11]. for that reason, it plays a major function in crop rotations in nearly all countries around the world, upon their growing in rotation with another crop, under proven ecological conditions. soil fertility can be improved and the rate of weeds, diseases and pests can be mailto:jalal.ahmed@spu.edu.iq mailto:dara.ahmad@spu.edu.iq mailto:anwar.abdulla@spu.edu.iq mailto:chnar.meerza@spu.edu.iq 2 decreased [12, 13]. generally, chickpeas grows as mediterranean winter plants and depend on rain in the wet time, at the end of spring and summer as a whole (northern iraq, iran and turkey). following rain in a number of mediterranean countries and south asia depend on soil moisture stored [14]. several varieties or genotypes of chickpea are cultivated throughout the world. recognized chickpeas for the kurdish farmers are spring types. regarding winter type they have no sufficient data about planting as well as their productions [15].genotypes plus sowing time are the main significant factors affecting chickpea yield [16]. determine the appropriate date for sowing chickpea plays a significant role in yield and yield components. habitually delayed sowing date decreases growing period, maturity and reduces yield and yield components [6, 17]. the goal of current study was to find out the best appropriate chickpeas genotypes or varieties of chickpea for the bakrajo location. in order to achieve this goal we studied a number of growth traits and yields components. in addition to study the response of dissimilar varieties of chickpea in winter sows or spring sowing in bakrajo. 2. methods and materials this experiment was conducted in the research area of bakrajo technical institute; belong to the sulaimani polytechnic university (spu) in sulaymaniyah city during 2017-2018. the research site is situated at an altitude of 838 m above of sea level .bakrajo located about approximately 7 km north west of sulaymaniyah city center [18][19]. research area’s soil of bakrajo technical institute belongs to (clay loam), soil physical structure analyses are appeared in table 01, [19][20]. following the preparation of soil which chickpea was plant in lines, the full dimension among two lines was 0.3 m. the area of boards 2*1.5 m (3 m2), the seeds were sown in the winter and spring season. for the growing period; the temperature ranged between 10°c to 38°c. during the experiment we have relied on rain only to irrigate the plants, without the use of supplementary irrigation, rainfall during the experiment was 641.9 mm. the objective of the study was to obtain an accurate comparison in growth traits was including (plant height, number of branches, number of leaves, leaf area, total period to 50% flowering, and the period of getting to the maturity period). as well as comparison in yield components was including (number of pods, and seeds/pod, seeds weight, 100 seeds weight and seed yield). during the study we used five genotypes of winter and spring chickpea for comparison of (ghab 1, filip 2, filip 3, local and swrka). the investigation was made by randomized complete block design ’rcbd’, with three replications for five chickpea genotypes. sowing date of the winter genotypes (ghab 1, filip 2 and filip 3) was in 13th of december, 2017. but the second date for sowing was 21st of february, 2018 for the-spring genotypes (local and swrka). all of the plant traits data were recorded on 100 chickpeas plant. the grain yield (kg/ha) for all of them was counted for all the plots .data analysis was done by using spss for analysis [21, 22]. table 01: soil components structure analyses – bakrajo location soil structure properties ec ph %n available p (ppm) soluble na meq/l soluble k meq/l soluble ca meq/l %sand %silt %clay soil sample 0.32 7.09 0.23 27.9 0.222 0.359 11.61 12.09 46.12 41.78 soil analyzed by: directorate of agricultural research center in sulaymaniyah2017 3. results and discussion 1. analysis of variance: based on deferential investigation appeared in the tables 02&03 durability, significant differences were identified between genotypes in chickpea in the all traits except number of seeds per pod. throughout those results, the effect of these varieties for improving growth traits and yield has been showed. the numbers of growth traits increased gradually by application of these genotypes. at the same time the data demonstrated high potentials of the genotypes to get better chickpea yields. results proofed that the applying of these genotypes on characters such as, number of branch per plant, number of leaves / plant, leaf area/plant, days to 50% flowering, days to maturity, seeds weight/ plant, 100 seeds weight and yield per hectare, plant height, no. of pods / plant were significant while the no. of seeds/ pod were not significant at the both level probabilities. table 02: analysis of variance (rcbd) for studied growth traits of chickpea genotypes table 03: analysis of variance (rcbd) for studied yield components of chickpea genotypes s.o.v d.f. ms plant height (cm) no. of branches/ plant no. of leaves / plant leaf area (cm2 plant) 50% flowering maturity ( day) replication 2 4.26 3.95 43.40 100.89 11.27 0.20 treatment 4 52.95* 10.90** 1666.00** 1123.58** 1505.98** 3305.23** error 8 12.33 2.36 40.90 31.86 32.05 1.20 3 2. comparing of means: a. growth traits of chickpea genotypes : i. plant height: the final plant height has been appeared in the table 04. the amount of variation is that filip2 is higher than every one of other genotypes. conversely as shown in the specified table 04, swrka has got the minimum height compared to the others. ii. number of branches / plant: the difference among the final number of the plant’s brunches showed in table 04. filip3 could get the maximum number of branches which is higher than the other genotypes. as it can be notice in the same table that local variety has the minimum number of the brunches per plant. iii. number of leaves / plant: the average of the final number of the leaves per plant identified in the table 04. the ration of the ghab’s 1 was higher than the other genotypes. while swrka has got the minimum number of the leaves per plant. finally, the mean difference is statistically significant in the case of chickpea genotypes treatment among all of the genotypes. iv. leaf area: in the table 04 the difference of the final leaf area per plant has been demonstrated. swrka has got the minimum leaf area. in the case of chick pea genotypes treatment, the difference is vividly significant in compare to the other genotypes. v. 50% flowering: regarding the process of 50% flowering, the table 04 shows the means among the all of the genotypes. ghab 1 has got 50% of flowering after the other genotypes. the period required for 50% flowering is very short in local genotypes compared to all of the other genotypes. vi. maturity: table 04 clarifies the total number of the days that needed for the genotypes to get the maturity stage. the mean of filip 2 and filip 3 is the same and the appropriate period for maturity is long compared to other. at the same time local got the minimum days to maturity. the mean difference is statistically significant in the case of chickpea genotypes treatment, compared to in all other genotypes. table 04: mean comparisons in growth traits of chickpea genotypes b. yield components of chickpea genotypes: i. number of pods /plant: each of the genotypes recorded different pods per plant. table 05, identifies the means in the final results of the pods per plant. swrka was highest while filip 2 was lowest number of pods/plant. the statistically mean difference can be seen in the case of chick pea genotype treatment in compare to all of the other genotypes. ii. number of seeds / pod: in the table 05 the number of the seeds per pod has been showed. the number of seed per pod of ghab1, filip 3 and swrka are higher than flip 2 and local .the mean difference is statistically significant in the case of chickpea genotypes treatment in compare to the other genotypes. iii. seeds weight / plant: the total weight of the seeds per each plant have been recorded and showed in the table 05 also. the mean of ghab 1 is the higher than all of the other genotypes. swrka has had the minimum seeds weight per plant consider to the other genotypes. there is also a statistical mean difference in the chickpea treatment at the same time. iv. 100 seeds weight: the final weigh of the 100 seeds have been showed in the ttable 05, ghab 1 have been recorded heavier weight than the others while swrka has had the lightest weight among the other genotypes. s.o.v d.f. ms no. of pods / plant no. of seeds/ pod seeds weight/ plant (gm) 100 seeds weight (gm) yield (kg/ /h) replication 2 12.64 0.016 1.38 2.13 16568.26 treatment 4 77.84 * 0.03 482.39** 429.87** 888118.93** error 8 15.33 0.038 0.34 4.05 15806.93 plant traits genotypes plant height (cm) no. of branches / plant no. of leaves / plant leaf area (cm2 plant) 50% flowering maturity (day) ghab 1 38.06 b 8.66 b 109 a 13.05 b 117.00 a 192.66 a filip 2 45.50 a 9.33 a 108 a 14.35 a 115.33 a 193 .33 a filip 3 40.53 a 10.33 a 98 b 14.40 a 114.33 a 193.33 a local 39.90 b 6.33 c 91 b 11.13 c 69.00 c 129.00 b swrka 33.90 c 6.83 c 59 c 10.09 c 80.00 b 135.66 b 4 v. yield (kg/h): the last results of the seed yield have been demonstrated in the table 05, the yield of ghab 1 is more than the other genotypes. as shown in the mention table, swrka has the minimum seeds weight. eventually the yield is reduced because the weight of swrka genotype is very low-weight. table 05: mean comparing in yield components of chickpea genotypes 4. conclusion the current investigation appears that dissimilar genotypes have had a significant effect. every measured growth traits have had significant effect excluding number of seeds/ pod. as shown clearly in the result lowest amount yield was recorded in swrka and local spring genotype. moreover, the highest yield was recorded in ghab 1, flip2 as well as flip3 winter genotype. genotype and sowing time are two significant influences which were affecting the growth traits and yield of legume crops such as chickpea. conventionally, chickpea is sown in spring. depending on the result of this investigation it can be recommended that winter genotypes are the most suitable verities for cultivation inside sulaymaniyah. december is the greatest and suitable planting time for chickpeas cultivation. furthermore it was concluded that, plant height, number of branches per plant, 50 % flowering, leaf area, number of seeds per pod, seeds weight per plant and the 100 seeds weight, were the main important characters which contribute to yield and yield components of chickpea. . references [1] a.r.abdulla, “comparison of six different wheat genotypes (triticum spp.) and effectiveness of some growing characters and yield,” middle-east journal of scientific research 23( 9) , pp.2264-2269, 2015. [2] n. abdul-razzak tahir, and d.a. omer, “genetic variation in lentil genotypes by morphoagronomic traits and rapd-pcrthe,“ journal of animal & plant sciences, 27.(2), pp. 468-480, 2017. [3] s. hossein vafaei, n. azadbakht and r. derikvand, “integrated management of ascochyta blight of chickpea in lorestan province of iran,” technical journal of engineering and applied sciences, 3(4) , pp. 294-297, 2013. [4] a. namvar; r. s. sharifi,and t.khandan, “growth analysis and yield of chickpea (cicer arietinum l.) in relation to organic and inorganic nitrogen fertilization,” ekologija, 57(.3) , pp. 97–108, 2011. [5] h. han and b. k. baik, “antioxidant activity and pheno-lic content of lentils (lens culinaris), chickpeas (cicer arietinum l.), peas (pisum sativum l.) and soybeans (glycine max), and their quantitative changes during processing,” international journal of food science and technology, 43(11) , pp. 1971-1978, 2008. [6] w.j, kaiser; a.m, ghanekar;y.l. nene;b.s. rao & v. anjaiah,” viral diseases of chickpea. in: proceedings of the second international workshop on chickpea improvement”, chickpea in the nineties, pp. 139–142, 1990. [7] g. s. hussein, “effect of sowing date and herbicides on chickpea (cicer arietinum l.) growth, yield, yield components and companion weeds under rain-fed conditions at duhok governorate,“ kufa journal for agricultural sciences, 9(2) , pp. 263-291, 2017. [8] p. s, sharma, pm. gaur , s. tripathi, l. kaur, a. basandrai, t. khan, c.l. gowda and khm. siddique, “development of screening techniques and identification of new sources of resistance to ascochyta b. llight disease of chickpea,” australasian plant pathology, 40, pp.149-156, 2011. [9] sh. sabaghpour, d.shariari, f. mahmoodi, k. and keshavarz, m. selati, “ performance of new ascochyta blight resistance chickpea,”paper presented at the 16rd iranian plant protection congress,university of tabriz,tabriz, iran, 2004. [10] k. ahmed and m. s. awan, “integrated management of insect pests of chickpea (cicer arietinum l.) in south asian countries: present status and future strategies – a review,” pakistan j. zool, 45(4) , pp. 1125-1145, 2013. [11] yt. gan, khm. siddique, wj. macleod and p. jayakumar, “ management options for minimizing the damage by ascochyta blight (ascochyta rabiei) in chickpea (cicer arietinum l.),“field crops research , 97, pp.121–134, 2006. [12] wa. n. chemining, and k. vessey, “the abundance and efficacy of rhizobium leguminosarum bv. viciae in cultivated soils of eastern canadian prairie,“ soil biology & biochemistry 38, pp. 294302, 2006. [13] s. albayrak, c.s. sevimay and o. tongel, “effect of inoculation with rhizobium on seed yield and yield components of common vetch (vicia sativa l.),” turkish journal of agriculture and forestry, 30, pp. 31-37, 2006. [14] v. devasirvatham , d. k. y. tan, p. m. gaur, t. n. raju a and r. m.trethowan, “high temperature tolerance in chickpea and its implications for plant improvement,” crop and pasture science, 63(5) , pp. 419-428, 2014. [15] s. ozdemir and u. karadavut, “ comparison of the performance of autumn and spring sowing of chickpeas in a temperate region,“ turkish journal of agriculture and forestry 27, pp.345-352, 2013. [16] s. abbo, d. shtienberg, j. lichtenzveig, s. levyadun and a.gopher, “ the chickpea summer cropping and a new model for pulse domestication in the ancient near east,“ the quarterly review of biology 78, pp. 435–438, 2003. [17] k. shamsi, “the effect of sowing date and row spacing on yield and yield components on hashem chickpea variety under rain fed condition,“african journal of biotechnology, 9 ( 1) , pp. 007-011, 2010. [18] a.r. abdulla, j. o.ahmed and s. q. mahmood, “comparisons of six hybrids corn (zea mays l.), in terms of yields and components in sulaimania,” american-eurasian j. agric. & environ. sci, 15(.5) , pp. 848-852, 2015. [19] j. o. ahmed, a. r abdulla and r.a. mohammed, “comparative on yield and its components performance and correlation in some broad bean (vicia faba l.) genotypes at bakrajo, plant traits genotypes no. of pods / plant no. of seeds / pod seeds weight / plant (gm) 100 seeds weight/ (gm) yield (kg/h) ghab 1 22.83 c 1.33 a 37.09 a 43.25 a 1582.66 a filip 2 21.93 c 1.20 a 35.90 a 34.80 b 1533.33 ab filip 3 27.33 b 1.33a 35.70 a 39.36 ab 1554.66 b local 27.10 b 1.10 a 15.42 b 38.13 b 662.00 b swrka 34.80 a 1.33 a 11.22 c 12.91 c 480.00 c 5 sulaimani,“ american-eurasian j. agric. & environ . sci, 16(.3) , pp. 635-640, 2016. [20] d.y. mohammad, j. o. ahmed, n. a. l. m. albadree and a.r.abdulla, “the effects of seed’s size, and removal testa treatment on germination ratio and period of faba bean stored seeds (vicia faba var. ecuadelje),“ international journal of research – granthaalayah, 6( 3) , pp. 191-201, 2018. [21] o. sadeghipour and p. aghaei, “ comparison of autumn and spring sowing on performance of chickpea (cicer arietinum l.) varieties,“ international journal of biosciences, 2(6) , pp. 49-58, 2012. [22] c. iliadis, “evaluation of six chickpea varieties for seed yield under autumn and spring sowing,“ journal of agricultural science 137, pp. 439-444, 2001.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.37 human gait identification using kinect sensor mohammed h. ahmed department of computer science university of raparin ranyah ,sulaimanyah kurdistan region of iraq mohammedhussein@raparinuni.org abdulbasit k. faeq department of software engineering feng, koya university, koya, iraq abdulbasit.faeq@koyauniversity.org azhin tahir sabir department of software engineering feng, koya university, koya, iraq azhin.sabir@koyauniversity.org halgurd s. maghdid department of software engineering feng, koya university, koya, iraq halgurd.maghdid@koyauniversity.org abstract: this study investigates a novel threedimension gait recognition approach based on skeleton representation of motion by the cheap consumer level camera kinect sensor. in this work, a new exemplification of human gait signature is proposed using the spatio-temporal variations in relative angles among various skeletal joints and changing of measured distance between limbs and land. these measurements are computed during one gait cycle. further, we have created our own dataset based on kinect sensor and extract two sets of dynamic features. nearest neighbors and linear discriminant classifier (ldc) are used for classification. the results of the experiments show the proposed approach as an effective and human gait recognizer in comparison with current kinect-based gait recognition methods. keywords: gait recognition, kinect, angle features (af), distance feature (df), motion analysis. 1. introduction biometrics uses human biological characteristics for person identity verification. it can deal with physiological characteristics such as: iris, face, fingerprint, finger knuckles, dna, and hand geometry. biometric also deals with human behavioral characteristics, like human voice, signature, and gait [1]. the automatic identification of any person has widely and vitally grown recently, especially in areas with high demands of security such as check points, airports and banks [2]. the importance of biometric has been appeared based on the fact that each person has recognizable characteristics that can uniquely identify a human. gait is one of the biometrics, that can be used to distinguish individuals (from distance) based on human walking style. psychological studies show that humans is capable to recognize people from their way and style of walking [1]. unlike other biometrics, gait has the advantage of offering the ability to recognize human from a distance at a non-high resolution representation. additionally, it requires no user cooperation, at any certain level [3]. gait recognition models analyzes video stream sequence recordings. kinect sensor device (produced by microsoft) is one of the tools that supports this kind of analysis. the microsoft kinect tool is a product used initially with xbox 360 gaming console, where the user can command games by body motion from a distance with no connected sensor. kinect is also able to track various types of human involved information such as: face geometry, human skeleton and also capturing the depths axis of the image. kinect camera could be more applicable with kinect sdk for windows along with the set of apis, such that it offers an effective tool to improve a gait recognition application [4]. the current applications of gait recognition are mostly using normal cameras that records a video sequences. however, these kind of recordings face many difficulties in the feature extraction level. consequently, some researchers locate dot points in manual way on the subject in each frame[5] and [6]. determining points manually along all these motion based methods is time consuming and complex approach at the feature extraction stage. on the other hand, kinect can offer these feature more accurately in addition to provide body skeleton details. 2. related work various gait recognition approaches have been applied in the literature which are two categories: i) model-based approaches and ii) model-free approaches [7]. basically, person's body parts (legs, arms, etc.) are represented by explicit models in model based approaches [8]. along these models, the gait signature is represented through the parametric values differentiating over time, that are estimated in each frame. however, model construction, model fitting and parameter estimation, in the model based approaches, are time-consuming and costly in terms of computation [8]. consequently, they are unsuitable for a wide range of real life applications. the early parametric gait recognition method was proposed by benabdelkader et al. [9], where they estimated two spatiotemporal parameters of gait, namely stride length and cadence as two distinctive biometric traits. following to that, urtasun and fua [10] use 3-d temporal motion model on a synchronized video sequences to analyze gait. the individual gait signature is characterized later through the recovered motion parameters. in a similar way suggested by yam et al. [11] human leg motion and structure is modeled to differentiate between gait signatures extracted from walking and running samples. this method offers an effective way to view and scale independent gait representation, however, the model costly in terms of computation and sensitive to the quality of the gait sequences [12]. a model free approach utilizes the silhouette as a whole in order to construct a compact representation of walking motion instead of modeling individual body parts [8]. another tow representation are gait energy image (gei) [13] and motion energy image (mei) [14] that are two widely used model-free in gait recognition methods. the mei approach basically depends on a temporal vector mailto:mohammedhussein@raparinuni.org mailto:abdulbasit.faeq@koyauniversity.org mailto:halgurd.maghdid@koyauniversity.org image. in mei, the vector axis wieght, is a function of the motion characteristics at the corresponding frame sequences [14]. while, gei collect all the silhouette motion sequences of one gait cycle in a single image. here, the temporal information is preserved as well [13]. researchers that use model-free methods extend recently the gei to a more effective exemplification. for instance, in [15] the authors proposed frame difference energy image (fdei), to apply de-noising and clustering to decrease the effect of uncompleting of silhouette. while, in [16], the authors utilize both head energy image (hei) and foot energy image (fei) in order to structure a rich information representable energy image. model-free methods are cheap in terms of computation, however, they are sensitive to view and scale variations, and as a consequence, not convenient in out of control situations. in the past twenty years, gait recognition has been studied and kinect has shared in to the spike in the interest in kinect data-based gait recognition. kinect is a cheap consumer-level device contain an array of sensors, regarding a color camera, a depth sensor, and a multiarray microphone setup. additionally, it can record and structure a real time 3d virtual skeleton of human body [17], such that it disposes the time consumer video processing stages. these characteristics of kinect have make it applicable in different real-life problems, such as smart house [18], health care [19], surveillance [20], etc. the simple real-time skeleton feature extracting has impact on some recent gait recognition studies. for instance, the approach proposed by ball et al. [21] adopt gait data clustering using kinect. here, the lower half of the body is used for feature extraction. another example is the work of preis et al. [1] who proposed a kinect skeleton-based approach for gait recognition using 13 mostly static biometric parameters: height, the length of legs, torso, the two lower legs, the two thighs, the two upper arms, the two forearms, step-length, and speed. unlike gate biometric features, these features are not behavioral. gait is more related to the movement patterns of body parts during locomotion. gabel et al. [22] used the changes in the location of these skeletons between consecutive frames as a feature. however, the work is only evaluated for gait parameter extraction not for identification. 3. proposed method the proposed model in this study, aim to recognize gait using the skeleton provided by kinect sensor. kinect sensor along with sdk v 1.6, offers a human skeleton for up to two persons in an acceptable quality at the same time. additionally, kinect provides depth dimension image and rgb image . however, this study utilizes the skeleton model alone. basically, the proposed system includes four components: firstly, create a database based on skeleton information using kinect. secondly, detects gait cycle for each subject. third, feature will be extracted in two different sets: distance features and angle distance features described later. finally, nearest neighbour (nn) and ldc used as classification method shown in figure 1 figure 1 system overview. 3.1.database based on the fact that the kinect is somewhat new, there is no available public standard database. hence, it was compulsory to develop a specific dataset using kinect sensor. we check the accuracy of the kinect camera according to the distance between the camera and the person. ten short videos are recorded for 5 subjects at various distance like 3.5m, 3m and 2.5m. by a comparison of how accurate these distances are, we select 2.5m as the distance between kinect and the person, where the skeleton information at this distance appear clearer than the use of other distances and offers more gait cycles. in addition to that, the kinect sensor was fixed at 0.6m height, with angle of zero and recording speed at around 30 frames per second. the conducted experiment uses 16 persons who were walking in front the kinect sensor, from right to left (angle 90). the subjects are told to walk “naturally” for 5 times, end up with an 80 videos. see figure 2 figure 2 kinect dataset [23] 3.2. gait cycle a normal human style of walking starts from a specific heel-strike of a one foot to the same heel-strike after a period of walking. the stance phase of the gait cycle represent the first portion which locate 60 percent of the cycle. however, the swing phase is the rest 40 percent of the cycle [24]as in figure 3. figure 3: gait cycle detection.[25] in general, gait cycle can be detected based on two main techniques. the first technique is called double support method, in which both feet move away from each other. the second technique is the local minima, where the distance between the two feet is at the minimum [27]. in this study, double support phase technique is used to detect the gait cycle and the ankles distances is used instead of feet. ankles distance =|| right ankle (x) –left ankle (x)|…(1) 3.3. feature extraction kinect sensor with sdk provides human body skeleton and tracking of 20 different skeletal points. therefore, extracting feature based on kinect sensor is totally different from the techniques that used in normal cameras. as a result, our database includes (x,y) point values for 20 joints, and totally produces 40 attributes. based on these points, we have extracted a set of dynamic features: will be explained in the next section. 3.3.1. distance feature (df) the df features is extracted according to the changes of the distance between skeleton joint and the floor toward the y-axis. the suggested gait features here are: human height df1 and the height of (right wrist df2, right shoulder df3, right and left ankles df4 and df5). then, the mean and the standard deviation for all type of these distances in one gait cycle is computed. the final proposed feature is the triangle based area of the (hip center and straight line between the left and the right feet df6), mean of df6 is computed in one gait cycle and concatenated to the feature vector. the following equations shows the way of constructing proposed gait feature vectors: (see figure 4). df1= di (vy (4) l (0)). ………………...…(2) ……………….…(3) ……………........(4) …………..…...(5) ……………...…...(6) df6= 1/2 *(| vx(20) – vx(16)|) * vy(1). …..…(7) { } { } dff = {meandf, stddf}. ……….……….……(8) where di is distance, l is land line, vy is vertical joint, and m is the number of frames during one gait cycle. 3.3.2. angle feature (af) the proposed angle feature set is based on the spatiotemporal variation in proportional angles among various skeletal joints. here we suggested eight features to represent human body (see figure 4) which are: right and left ankle angles (af1,af2), right and left knee angles (af3,af4), right and left hip angles (af5, af6) right and left elbow angles (af7, af8). then, the mean and the standard deviation for all angle values are computed in one gait cycle. equations 9 show how to calculate the angles between vectors that starts from each skeletal joints. | || | ……………………………………..(9) figure 4 (df) and (af) features. 4. experimental results and discussion we created our dataset to test the performance of the proposed method, the dataset is recorded based on kinect sensor and contain 16 subjects captured from side view, and each subject has 5 records. the data set includes a collection of (x, y) point values that demonstrate the position of each joint in one gait cycle. next to collecting the date and detecting the gait cycle. now we extract two set of significant features which are ready to be used in the process of gait recognition, called df and af (discussed before). to create training (gallery) and test (probe) set, 2 samples from each subject have been selected for the test set and the remaining 3 samples for the training set. to provide realistic scenario we have used all the possible probability of selecting the samples for the training and test set. in our method nn and ldc are used to classify human gait. the system is tested based on each set of feature individually then we fused them based on the future level fusion. in the case of nn classifier, when df tested the system achieved 74.64% recognition accuracy, while af provided 67.18% recognition accuracy. the same pattern of being df behave better than af is appeared in the case of ldc classifier (89.68%, 67.18%). which shows the better discriminative ability of df for identity than af features. however, by combining both of the df and af features, the recognition rate increased to 85.62% and 94.37% for both nn and ldc respectively. this improvement in the accuracy shows the complementary characteristic of one af to df and vice versa. moreover, ldc classifier, seem to be more superior to nn using this data in all of the cases. ldc classifier is a simple classifier and behave very well with data that have gaussian distribution. and generally all of the data for a specific class will participate in making whether the new point belong to the current class or another one. this might have influence on the improved accuracy of ldc over nn classifier. table 1: recognition rate feature set accuracy (ldc) accuracy (nn) df 89.68% 74.64% af 67.18% 67.18% df and af 94.37% 85.62% 5. conclusion this paper started by collecting the skeleton information for 16 persons who were used to walk in front of the kinect sensor. kinect provides new field of gait parameters and more powerful skeleton based features for gait recognition. in this paper we study two new features for gate recognition: distance features (df) and angle features (af). two different classification method (nn and ldc) are used to test the performance of the proposed method. ds and af are tested separately, then combined based on the feature level fusion. in the case of using nn, the proposed method achieved 74.64%, 67.18%, and 85.62% as a recognition rate for df, af, and (df+af) respectively. father when method tested based on ldc the recognition rate increased for each of df, af and (df+af) and provided 89.68%, 67.18% and 94.37% respectively. in future work we aim to expand the database and record more participant with carrying bag or wearing coat to see how the system can deal with these challenges. 6. reference [1] j. preis, m. kessel, m. werner, and c. linnhoffpopien, "gait recognition with kinect," in 1st international workshop on kinect in pervasive computing, 2012, pp. p1-p4. [2] r. das, "an introduction to biometrics," military technology, vol. 29, pp. 20-27, 2005. [3] m. kumar and r. v. babu, "human gait recognition using depth camera: a covariance based approach," in proceedings of the eighth indian conference on computer vision, graphics and image processing, 2012, p. 20. [4] a. jana, kinect for windows sdk programming guide: packt publishing ltd, 2012. [5] j. p. singh and s. jain, "person identification based on gait using dynamic body parameters," in trendz in information sciences & computing (tisc), 2010, 2010, pp. 248-252. [6] a. k. jhapate and j. p. singh, "gait based human recognition system using single triangle," international journal of computer science and technology, pp. 128-131, 2011. [7] j. han and b. bhanu, "statistical feature fusion for gait-based human recognition," in computer vision and pattern recognition, 2004. cvpr 2004. proceedings of the 2004 ieee computer society conference on, 2004, pp. ii-ii. [8] j. wang, m. she, s. nahavandi, and a. kouzani, "a review of vision-based gait recognition methods for human identification," in digital image computing: techniques and applications (dicta), 2010 international conference on, 2010, pp. 320-327. [9] c. benabdelkader, r. cutler, and l. davis, "stride and cadence as a biometric in automatic person identification and verification," in automatic face and gesture recognition, 2002. proceedings. fifth ieee international conference on, 2002, pp. 372377. [10] r. urtasun and p. fua, "3d tracking for gait characterization and recognition," in automatic face and gesture recognition, 2004. proceedings. sixth ieee international conference on, 2004, pp. 17-22. [11] c. yam, m. s. nixon, and j. n. carter, "automated person recognition by walking and running via model-based approaches," pattern recognition, vol. 37, pp. 1057-1072, 2004. [12] a. sinha, k. chakravarty, and b. bhowmick, "person identification using skeleton information from kinect," in proc. intl. conf. on advances in computer-human interactions, 2013, pp. 101-108. [13] j. man and b. bhanu, "individual recognition using gait energy image," ieee transactions on pattern analysis and machine intelligence, vol. 28, pp. 316322, 2006. [14] a. f. bobick and j. w. davis, "the recognition of human movement using temporal templates," ieee transactions on pattern analysis and machine intelligence, vol. 23, pp. 257-267, 2001. [15] c. chen, j. liang, h. zhao, h. hu, and j. tian, "frame difference energy image for gait recognition with incomplete silhouettes," pattern recognition letters, vol. 30, pp. 977-984, 2009. [16] x. li and y. chen, "gait recognition based on structural gait energy image," journal of computational information systems, vol. 9, pp. 121-126, 2013. [17] j. shotton, t. sharp, a. kipman, a. fitzgibbon, m. finocchio, a. blake, m. cook, and r. moore, "real-time human pose recognition in parts from single depth images," communications of the acm, vol. 56, pp. 116-124, 2013. [18] e. e. stone and m. skubic, "evaluation of an inexpensive depth camera for passive in-home fall risk assessment," in pervasive computing technologies for healthcare (pervasivehealth), 2011 5th international conference on, 2011, pp. 71-77. [19] y.-j. chang, s.-f. chen, and j.-d. huang, "a kinect-based system for physical rehabilitation: a pilot study for young adults with motor disabilities," research in developmental disabilities, vol. 32, pp. 2566-2570, 2011. [20] m. popa, a. k. koc, l. j. rothkrantz, c. shan, and p. wiggers, "kinect sensing of shopping related actions," in international joint conference on ambient intelligence, 2011, pp. 91-100. [21] a. ball, d. rye, f. ramos, and m. velonaki, "unsupervised clustering of people from'skeleton'data," in proceedings of the seventh annual acm/ieee international conference on human-robot interaction, 2012, pp. 225-226. [22] m. gabel, r. gilad-bachrach, e. renshaw, and a. schuster, "full body gait analysis with kinect," in engineering in medicine and biology society (embc), 2012 annual international conference of the ieee, 2012, pp. 1964-1967. [23] m. h. ahmed and a. t. sabir, "human gender classification based on gait features using kinect sensor," in cybernetics (cybconf), 2017 3rd ieee international conference on, 2017, pp. 1-5. [24] a. sabir, n. al-jawad, and s. jassim, "gait recognition using spatio-temporal silhouette-based features," in proc. of spie vol, 2013, pp. 87550r1. [25] m. h. ahmed, "kinect-based human gait recognition using static and dynamic features," international journal of computer science and information security, vol. 14, p. 425, 2016.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq measurement the physiological properties of water pipe smokers in shekhan distract abdullah. m. al-saiegh turki sabri haji community health community health shekhan technical health college shekhan technical health college duhok polytechnic university duhok polytechnic university duhok, iraq duhok , iraq abdulla.ayoub@dpu.edu.krd turkisabri77@gmail.com jihan saado ahmed alaa azzo aslo community health community health shekhan technical health college shekhan technical health college duhok polytechnic university duhok polytechnic university duhok , country/ iraq duhok , iraq jihansaado1994@gmail.com alla.khurma@gmail.com firas faris khalaf community health shekhan technical health college duhok polytechnic university duhok, iraq firaskh32@gmail.com volume 4 – special issue: 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) doi: 10.24017/science.2019 .ichms.17 received: 28 may 2019 accepted: 25 june 2019 abstract smoking is one of the old habits used by humans before 400 years ago, where this custom was exclusively used in males with the development of time, tools, ingredients and flavors that used in hookah the women also started smoking, which led to an increase in the prevalence of use in many countries of the world smoking is one of the reasons that lead to an increase in the percentage incidence of lung cancer, chronic lung disease ,mouth disease ,teeth deformation and gingivitis the aim of study to determine physiological status before, during and after smoking water pipe. to knowledge awareness of people of harmful smoking water pipe by interview with them and explain the effect and dangerous of water-pipe smoking on their health. sample had taken from 200 peoples, 100 of them are water pipe smoker, and other 100 from non-smoker. sample had been taken through blood collection from 100 who are water pipe smoker and 100 who not smoke, and this include the following physiological test: heart rate, blood pressure, and respiratory flow rate, in addition with laboratory hematological test hemoglobin. the results showed an increase in the rate of (blood pressure, inspiratory flow rate, heart rate, hemoglobin) and rates higher after smoking as follow for blood pressure after smoking systolic was141.9±6.021 and diastolic 91.75 ±4.459 while the inspiratory flow rate reading after smoking 963.5 ±96.624, the kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 167 heart rate reading after smoking was 83.27 ±7.84 while the hemoglobin the reading was 15.68 ±0.87 as recorded after finishing smoking . water-pipe smoking has direct effect on blood pressure, heart rate and inspiratory flow rate and water pipe smoking has have indirect effect on hemoglobin in smokers keywords: smoker, water pipe, heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory flow rate and hemoglobin . 1. introduction smoking is a process in which a particular substance is burned, the most substance commonly used is tobacco, and after burning it is tasted and inhaled by a person. [1] the most common means of smoking at this time are cigarettes, whether they are industrial production or handwound, and there are other means and tools of smoking such as pipe and shisha [1]. tobacco is a species of plants in america that contains toxic substance the word is taken from the word "tabago", which is called on an island in the gulf of mexico, where it was first found, and was transferred to various parts of the world .smoking is consider as a risk factor for many disease like stroke, coronary heart disease (chd) and cardiovascular disease (cvd) , the symptoms that come after one of these diseases may cause increased nervous and psychological pressure, which adversely affects the person's life, and the skin of the person smoked appears to make the owner appear older than it is, and affect the sense of taste and may cause impotence for men [2] giving up smoking will reduce the risk of these disease [1,2] the evidence proved that the greatest damage to the hookah is located on people who switch from smoking cigarettes to nargila and the proportion of chronic heart disease is very large [3,4] . cigarette smoke contains more than 4,700 chemicals material studies have shown that 60 of these are substances that are likely to lead to cancer, and are therefore classified as cancerous. [4] when a person smokes, tobacco and other substances are subject to a range of chemical reactions to form. smoke containing more than 400 substances, including: [5] hydrogen cyanide. carbon monoxide, nicotine, arsenic, vinyl chloride, ammonia, among the carcinogens [5] cadmium. ammonia, nitrosamine, ouinoline, arsenic, hydrogen sulfur, nitrogen dioxide, formaldehyde, a harmful substance on the airway [4] hydrogen cyanide. benzopyrene, water pipe tobacco have a synonyms also known as hubble bubble goza, nargila, shisha, hookah, and argileh. it is consist of head, body, bowl and hose. a smoker breathes in through the mouthpiece in the hose. [5] smoking has increased in the recent period and the reason for the widespread prevalence of this habit among young people is because young people believe that smoking hookah is safer than smoking cigarettes and because of the presence of different flavors improve the taste of smoke as well as the spread of cafes that provide comfortable sessions and services for young people as it became a major lieutenant for young people and some girls during the health effect of a hookah depends on the length of the smoking cycle, which can range from 20-80 minutes and may be longer, and the number of suction times per cycle and the depth of suction, ranging from 50-200 suction per session with a depth of half a liter to a liter of air. research also shows that many people who smoke hookah are addicted to cigarette smoking later. therefore, it can be said that smoking hookah has become a major health problem among young people and the complications of smoking hookah is no less than smoking cigarettes as it causes addiction and increase the risk of cancer, chronic obstructive lung disease, vascular disease, gum disease, oral and esophageal tumors. and its effect in the environment or what is known as secondhand smoke is no less dangerous than cigarette smoking [6] the smoke consist of coal and tobacco. these include volatile aldehydes, nicotine, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons , nitric oxide , furans and nanoparticles [7]. the aim of study: kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 168 compare the physiological properties before smoking water pipe, during smoking water pipe, and after smoking water pipe in peoples . determine the effects that caused by the water pipe on blood pressure, heart rate, inspiratory flow rate and hemoglobin in peoples . to knowledge awareness of people of harmful smoking water pipe by interview with them and explain the effect and dangerous of water pipe smoking on their health. to determine physiological status before, during and after smoking water pipe . 2. methods and materials the study included observation, analysis level of physiological properties of the patient who smoke water pipe. the sample collection start from 1st november 2018 to 28th february 2019, sample has been taken from 200 people, 100 of them were water pipe smoker, and other 100 from non-smoker. sample had been taken through blood collection from 100 who were water pipe smoker from shekhan district and other areas and 100 who are not smoke taken from shekhan technical college and institute, as well as from shingal technical institute , and tests include the heart rate, blood pressure, inspiratory flow rate, in addition with laboratory hematological test hemoglobin. we had taken blood samples from both smokers and nonsmokers before, during and after smoking water pipe for analyze all laboratory and physiological test that mentioned above to compare the reading .the materials and equipment that used in study were: • microcentrifuge (kokusan corporation) figure 1: microcentrifuge • sphygmomanometer (mdf instruments) figure 2: sphygmomanometer • stethoscope (mdf instruments) • inspirometer (plasti-med) kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 169 figure 3: inspirometer • pcv (packed cell volume) reader • syringes • tourniquet • alcohol 70% • cotton • edta (ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid) tubes • capillary tubes • gloves • timer • capillary tube sealant 2.1 measuring blood pressure: this for the purpose of determining the ranges of blood pressure and how it affected by smoking, which is done through measuring their blood pressure rate using sphygmomanometer and stethoscope, for nonsmokers should be comfortable, back supported and leg not cross each other and not drink any think such as tea, coffee for 10-15 minutes. for smokers we measured blood pressure three times before smoking, during smoking and after smoking we compared the ranges after measuring and determined its changes 2.2 measuring heart rate: heart rate measured using stethoscope and this is done after measuring blood pressure for 2-3 minutes, for non smokers heart rate measured once after blood pressure measured and for smokers we measured heart rate three times before smoking, during smoking and after smoking after measuring done data are calculated and then we compared results. 2.3 measuring hemoglubin hemoglubin measurement done for non smokers using lancet for puncture the area we want to collect blood sample which was thumb and using capillary tubes for collection of blood, after collection we used a dry cotton for few minutes to stop bleeding, after capillary filled with blood collected from patient, one head of tube is filled with capillary tube sealant this use to block removal of blood from tube while in microcentrifuge, after that we put this tubes into microcetrifuge for smokers we collected blood using tourniquet and disposible syringe from basilic vein after that we put blood sample into edta tubes this tubes used to prevent blood coagulation, after collection capillary tubes been used to collect blood from edta tubes and using for microcentrifuge, then put capillary tubes into microcentrifuge to measure pcv after determining pcv we divide the results to 3.1 to calculate hb rate. 2.4 measuring inspiratory flow rate spiremeter is a device used to determine respiratory flow rate it's a basic test for the study of lung function, and its performance is necessary for the evaluation and follow-up of respiratory diseases , for non smokers is done one time through intense inspiration through mouth piece, and for smokers is done three times, before smoking , during smoking and after smoking through intense inspiration through mouth piece. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 170 2.5 statistical analysis: statically analysis and data entry were performed using microsoft excel and statistical package of social sciences-23 version (spss-23). 3. results the total number of participants was 200 persons, all were males and then divided into two groups, the first group included 100 samples from nonsmokers in which taken the following physiological tests blood pressure, heart rate, inspiratory flow rate and hemoglobin as shown in table 3.2. second group also included 100 samples from smokers where the physiological tests were measured included blood pressure, heart rate, inspiratory flow rate and hemoglobin, and the results was as the following as shown in table 3.1 3.1 blood pressure systolic and diastolic mean of blood pressure systolic was 119.45 ±6.7 and diastolic was78.4 ±5.983 this was about normal (120/80) before smoking water pipe , during smoking water pipe blood pressure was increased and systolic was 134.8±6.192 and diastolic 88 ±4.082 and after smoking of water pipe there was more in increase and systolic was 141.9 ±6.021 and diastolic was 91.75±4.459 this indicates that measurement of blood pressure is higher after smoking than before smoking water pipe as shown in table 3.1 3.2 inspiratory flow rate mean of inspiratory flow rate before smoking was 735.5±103.303, during the smoking phase there was an increase in the level of inspiratory flow rate 864±105.906 and after finishing smoking the degrees was 963.5± 96.624 this refers that smoking have effect on inspiratory flow rate as show in table 3.1. 3.3 heart rate smoking results showed a direct effect on people heart rate because the heart rate of people before smoking was 72.56 ±8.014 during smoking was 78.05 ±8.152 and after smoking was 83.27 ±7.84 this refers that smoking have effect on heart rate as show in table 3.1. 3.4 hemoglobin the results that recorded for examine the hemoglobin of nonsmoker was 14.8 ±1.005 and the smokers was 15.68 ±0.87 where there was found an increased in the percentage of people hemoglobin this indicates there are found a direct effect of smoking on a level of hemoglobin as show in the table 3.1 and 3.2 kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 171 table 3.1: the mean of physiological properties among water pipe smokers before, during and after water pipe smoking 3.5: mean of non water-pipe smokers as shown in table 3.2 the mean of physiological properties blood pressure , inspiratory flow rate , heart rate and hemoglobin was normal , the results were as follows the blood pressure systolic and diastolic of nonsmokers was 117.9 ±9.46, 76.4 ±6.487, this refers that people who are not smokers have healthy blood pressure and inspiratory flow rate 798.7 ±143. also were are no any effected in people who are not smokers, the heart rate was also in normal condition was 72.02 ±7.742 beat per minute the mean of hemoglobin was 14.8 ±1.005 this refers to that people who are not smokers have healthy level of hemoglobin . table 3.2: the mean of physiological properties of nonsmokers water pipe . physiological properties before smoking water pipe during smoking water pipe after smoking water pipe blood pressure systolic diastolic 119.45 ±6.7 134.8 ±6.192 141.9±6.021 78.4 ±5.983 88 ±4.082 91.75 ±4.459 inspiratory flow rate 735.5 ±103.303 864 ±105.906 963.5 ±96.624 heart rate 72.56 ±8.014 78.05 ±8.152 83.27 ±7.84 hemoglobin ------------15.68 ±0.87 physiological properties non smokers blood pressure systolic 117.9 ±9.46 diastolic 76.4 ±6.487 respiratory flow rate 798.7 ±143.081 heart rate 72.02 ±7.742 hemoglobin 14.8 ±1.005 kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 172 4. discussion aim of the study is to measure physiological properties of smoker, we have identified that systolic blood pressure increased during and after smoking water pipe by about 22 mmhg in systolic and in diastolic blood pressure by about 13 mmhg, this means there are found a direct effect on blood pressure [8] . smoking will lead to a greater effect on blood pressure in case of water pipe smoking [9] . the continuous rise in blood pressure may lead to renal disease and this is consider as a one of the reasons for high blood pressure, thus, the continuous increased in blood pressure may lead to a condition called end-stage renal disease the toxic chemicals materila that located in tobacco smoke has a directly effect on blood cells. and cases a damage in the cardiovascular function . this damage increases the risk of atherosclerosis. smoking is a major risk factor for heart disease. when combined with other risk factors such as unhealthy blood cholesterol , high levels of blood pressure, increased the weight or obesity smoking increases the risk of heart disease. it is also a major risk factor for peripheral artery disease (pad). pad is a condition in which plaque builds up in arteries that carry blood to the head, organs and extremities. people with pad are at increased risk for heart disease, heart attack and stroke. [10] . other traits that have been measured are heart rate, which has been recorded as an increase in heart rate during and after smoking, where the increase was about 11 beats per minutes and this is agree with [11] . this increase in degree consider as the risk factor for cardiovascular disease and other serious diseases. smoking is a major risk factor for development and progression of cardiovascular disease [12] . studies have shown that smoking has a direct effect on the heart where it causes myocarditis, leading to dysfunction in systolic and diastolic blood pressure arrhythmia however, the mainthe effect of smoking will formation atherosclerosis, that occurs in the coronary arteries, becouse of decrease oxygen supply and increased myocardial action. smoke contains carbon monoxide (co) which combine with hemoglobin to form carbohydrate, that inhibits oxygen uptake, causes cases called cellular hypoxia also possibly coronary and ventricular spasms carditis . the toxic material that located internal of tobacco including nicotine directly affects the lining tissues which leading to coronary vasoconstriction and increased blood coagulation [13] the results also showed an increase in the rate raise of inspiratory flow rate during and after smoking water pipe where the increase was about 125 degree bear one second this increase considers as predisposing factor for developing many serious respiratory diseases such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. some of them may have fast breathing or difficult breathing. lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are most commonly respiratory diseases that caused by smoking . [14] the effect of smoking on the respiratory system is concentrated in the epithelial membrane that enveloped the respiratory cavity. this layer is considered the first line of defense to control toxic raids, pollutants and microorganisms that are located in the air which in turn cause infections for respiratory system especially the upper part the smoke from smoking leads to infections in the eye, throat and pharynx, which confirmed by the researcher [15] the results showed an increase in the level of hemoglobin for smokers than non-smokers because it leads to a decrease in the proportion of oxygenated blood and increase in the proportion of carbon monoxide. the air of inhalation in non-smokers contains 80% oxygen, 29% nitrogen and less than 1% first carbon dioxide and water vapor, but smokers when smoked, the air contains a large proportion of carbon monoxide, this gas will combined with hemoglobin faster than oxygen and prevent the red blood cells to carry oxygen. and this will causes of hypoxia, which activates the secretion of erythropoietin hormone from the kidneys that will stimulate the bone marrow for increases the secretion of red blood cells , thus leading to feeling tired and less effort for smoker, increase the proportion of hemoglobin blood than natural may lead to clots in the legs, and then move to the lungs. [16] , other effects of smoking on the human body where it leads to neonatal weight loss and periodontal disease studies have confirmed that smoking has an effect on the skin due to the toxic substances that present in tobacco studies have shown that smokers are exposed to skin cancer, which is called squamous cell carcinoma, also increasing the risk of ectopic pregnancy reducing the baby's birth weight increasing the risk of preterm delivery damaging the fetus's lungs, brain, and central nervous system increasing the kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 173 risk of sudden infant death syndrome contributing to congenital abnormalities, such as cleft lip or cleft palate[17] 5. conclusion since the ban on smoking in 2007, the proportion of smoking nargileh has increased, increasing by 210% in cafes using nargile recent studies have confirmed that smoking hookah has a significant impact on the human body and this effect comes through pahs, volalile aldehydes, co, no, nicotine, furans and nanoparticles . as these substances have a wide impact on the human body and is represented by cancer and respiratory disorders in addition the smoking has a highly effect on blood presser, heart rate, inspiratory flow rate the smoking had no effect on the level of smoking smoking had no significant effect on the level of hemoclobin as the effect was very low . reference [1] i. ockene, n. miller “cigarette smoking cardiovascular disease and stroke circulation ” 96(9); pp.32433247,1997. [2] s. wannamethee, “smoking cessation and the risk of stroke in middle-aged men. jama,” journal of the american medical association, 274(2), p.155, 1995. [3] c. iribarren, i. tekawa, s. sidney, g. friedman, “effect of cigar smoking on the risk of cardiovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and cancer in men. ” new england journal of medicine; 340(23), pp.1773-1780, 1999. [4] a. shaper, s. wannamethee, m. walker, “pipe and cigar smoking and major cardiovascular events cancer incidence and all-cause mortality in middle-aged british men. ” international journal of epidemiology; 32(5), pp.802-808, 2003. [5] m. martinasek, r. mcdermott, l. martini, “waterpipe (hookah) tobacco smoking among youth. current problems in pediatric and adolescent health care” 41(2); pp.34-57, 2011. [6] w. maziak “the waterpipe: an emerging global risk for cancer. cancer epidemiol ” 2013;37:1–4 [7] co. cobb, k. sahmarani, t. eissenberg, a. shihadeh. “acute toxicant exposure and cardiac autonomic dysfunction from smoking a single narghile waterpipe with tobacco and with a “healthy” tobacco-free alternative”. toxicol lett 2012;215:70–5. [8] f. hakim, e. hellou, a. goldbart, r. katz, y. bentur, l. bentur , “the acute effects of water-pipe smoking on the cardiorespiratory system, ” chest; 139(4); pp.775-78, 2011. [9] s. al-safi, n. ayoub, m. albalas, i. al-doghim. f, aboul-enein, “does shisha smoking affect blood pressure and heart rate, ” journal of public health; 17(2), pp.121-126, 2008. [10] s. hu, l. neff, i. agaku, s. cox, h. day, e. holder-hayes, “tobacco product use among adults, ” united states, 2013–2014. mmwr, 2016. [11] rb. shaikh, n. vijayaraghavan, as. sulaiman, s. kazi, ms. shafi, “the acute effects of waterpipe smoking on the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, ” j prev med hyg; 49(3):101e7, 2008. [12] d. jacobs, “cigarette smoking and mortality risk, ” archives of internal medicine; 159(7), p.733, 1999. [13] f cope. graham . “the effect of smoking in the cardiovascular system, ” british journal of cardiac nursing, april 2013, vol 8, no 4 . [14] r. doll, r. peto, k. wheatley, r. gray, i. sutherland, “mortality in relation to smoking: 40 years' observations on male british doctors, ” bmj (clinical research ed.), 309(6959): pp.901–911, 1994 . [15] l. calderón-garcidueñas, g. valencia-salazar, a. rodríguez-alcaraz, tm. gambling, r. garcía, n. osnaya et al. “ ultrastructural nasal pathology in children chronically and sequentially exposed to air pollutants”. am j respir cell mol biol. 2001;24:132-8 [16] m. nadia, h.a. shamseldein , a.s. sara, “effects of cigarette and shisha smoking on hematological parameters: an analytic case-control study,” international multispecialty journal of health (imjh), 10(1), 2015. [17] k. alison, shea, meir steiner, “cigarette smoking during pregnancy,” nicotine & tobacco research volume 10, number 2 (february 2008) 267–278 . 1. introduction 5. conclusion kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.56 impact of the thickness of nickel oxide film for nitrogen dioxide gas sensing applications ehssan s. hassan physics department, science faculty, university of al mustansiriyah, baghdad, iraq ehsanphysicyan@uomustansiryah.edu.iq marwa abdul muhsien hassan physics department, science faculty, university of almustansiriyah, baghdad, iraq marwamedicalphysics@gmail.com sabah j. mezher physics department, science faculty, university of al mustansiriyah, baghdad, iraq sabah.j.m@uomustansiryah.edu.iq firas s. a. ameer physics department, science faculty, university of al mustansiriyah, baghdad, iraq firasalaraji@uomustansiryah.edu.iq abstract: nickel oxide (nio) thin films were formed by rf reactive magnetron sputtering onto glass substrates. the argon and oxygen partial pressure were (3.2×10-3 torr) and (2.12×10-2 torr) respectively at room temperature. the thickness of the films deposited was in the range of 50-150 nm. the thickness necessity structural, electrical and sensing properties of (nio) films were methodically examined. x-ray diffraction method which shows polycrystalline landscape with preferred reflection peak at (200) plane. scanning electron microscope analysis revealed that the growth of nanorods in all the films. the gas sensitivity of nitrogen dioxide gas was (67 %). it was observed that the gas sensitivity for (nio) films was increased as film thickness increases. keywords: magnetron sputtering, nickel oxide, nitrogen dioxide, dynamic resistance, sensitivity. 1. introduction nickel oxide (nio) is the most exhaustively investigated transitional metal oxide. it is a nacl p-type antiferromagnetic oxide semiconductor. it offers promising candidature for many applications such as solar thermal absorber [1], catalyst for o2 evolution [2], photoelectrolysis [3], electrochromic device [4], and functional sensor layers for chemical sensors [5] these films have been fabricated using various physical and chemical vapor deposition techniques such as thermal oxidation of nickel [6], chemical bath deposition [7], spray pyrolysis [8], sol-gel process [9], electron beam evaporation [10], atomic layer deposition [11], pulsed laser deposition [12], metal organic chemical vapor deposition [13], molecular beam epitaxial [14], and dc [15] and rf magnetron sputtering and electrodeposition [16], among these methods, reactive sputtering is the most extensively used. researchers [17] have been carried out on the dependence of film properties on sputtering parameters. numerous reference data and previous studies [18] have demonstrated that superior electric and optical properties of nio films can be obtained by reactive sputtering with a sputtering pressure in the range 0.1–1 pa and in a pure oxygen atmosphere using a heated substrate. the increase in surface area and the quantum confinement effects have made nanostructured materials are quite distinct from their bulk form in both electrical and optical properties various one-dimensional structures of nio, such as nanowires, nanorods, and nanobelts, have attracted much attention [19]. among these deposition techniques, magnetron sputtering is industrially adopted thin films preparation method because of the advantages in the generation of uniform and large area films. the physical properties of the sputtering films depend mainly on the process parameters such as oxygen partial pressure, sputter power, substrate temperature, substrate bias, thickness and post deposition annealing the influences of film thickness on the structural, optical, and electrical properties of thin films are very important. many reports on the effect of size on thin films of various materials have been published [20]. however, only a few works on the dependence of the properties nickel oxide films on film thickness have been published [21]. 2.methods and materials thin films of nickel oxide were formed onto well-cleaned glass substrates (super river w. germany) held at temperature range 40ᵒc – 50ᵒc which is the sputter chamber temperature by rf magnetron sputtering method. metallic nickel target (99.99 % pure supplied by nuclear fuel complex, india) with 50 mm diameter and 3mm thickness was used as sputter target for deposition of the films in the sputter dawn configuration. the deposition rate kept at (0.1 – 0.2) å/sec by the deposition rate and thickness controlled by crystal sensor (ftm-2000). the distance between the target and the substrate was (100 mm). the sputter chamber was evacuated to the base pressure of 4.1x10-6 torr employing molecular devotion and turbo combination. the pressure in the sputter chamber was measured with digital pirani penning gauge (adixen acs 2000) combination. argon and oxygen (99.999 % purity) were used as sputter and reactive gasses for deposition of the films. individual argon and oxygen gasses penetrate to the chamber with gas mass flue controller (ailcat scientific) controllers were employed to admit these gasses in required quantities in the sputter chamber. the argon and oxygen partial pressure were (3.2×10-3 torr) and (2.12×10-2 torr) respectively. radio frequency (13.5 khz) rf power (torr international, inc.crc600) used to feed the sputter target of 200 w. the crystal structure of deposited films was identified by the x-ray diffraction (xrd) (shimadzo 62000, with cukα radiation having wavelength λ=0.15406 nm) technique. the surface microstructure was studied by (s4160) hitachi (college of engineering and communications, iran-tehran) scanning electron microscopy (sem). 3.results and discussions structural reading of nickel oxide films: x-ray diffraction pattern of nio films prepared by rf reactive magnetron sputtering with different thickness (50, 100 and 150) nm at (5060) °c is shown in figure (1) which illustrate that all sample deposited were polycrystalline nature [22] consisting nickel oxide cubic phase with sharp and very fine peaks indicate a good crystallization and the https://doi.org/10.24017/science.2017.3.56 mailto:ehsanphysicyan@uomustansiryah.edu.iq mailto:sabah.j.m@uomustansiryah.edu.iq mailto:firasalaraji@uomustansiryah.edu.iq major peak is along (200) plane at 2 θ = 42.98 ᵒ. this is for cubic crystal structure according to astm card [no.00-0471049][23]. minor small peaks along (111) and (220) planes corresponding to the angles 2θ = 37.23ᵒ and 2θ = 62.34ᵒ respectively for thickness 50 nm, and only (111) reflection for both thickness 100 nm and 150 nm. it's observed that the higher intensity in the direction of (200) plane is for the thickness 150 that indicates that enhanced the crystallinity [24]. the lattice constant (a) was calculated by equation (2). a= d/ (h2+k2+l2)1/2 (1) a = lattice constant (nm). d= inter planer distance (nm). (hkl) = miller indices. table (1) shows lattice constant values that measured from xrd pattern for nanostructure nio films and theoretical lattice constant values of astm standard card which shows good agreement with those reported earlier by [25]. the peak intensity increase as the film thickness increase, this due to the peak intensity and crystalline are associated with the crystallinity of the deposited films [26]. according to crystal growth mechanism, the crystal orientation of the film is determined by the growth of the nuclei in the deposition of the oxide film, the film initially nucleated in a random orientation. when the film grows from the initial nuclei, the crystal plane of the nuclei with minimum surface free energy may remain parallel to the film surface because of the growth rate of the crystal plane with a minimum surface free energy another crystal plan [27]. the deposition controls processes that including controlling the deposition rate to limits close to 0.10.3 (ǻ\sec.) advantages to controlling the amount of the thickness of the film which is a key parameter, especially in the field of nanotechnology. also reaching necessary vacuum to 10-6 torr and high purity of used materials leading to achieve high crystalline materials [28]. the crystallite size (d) has been calculated by schere׳s equation (2): 𝐷 = 𝐾𝜆 / 𝛽 𝑐𝑜𝑠ɵ (2) λ = wavelength of the copper x-ray source which was equal to (1.5406 å) β = fwhm in radian. θ = bragg’s diffraction angle it was found in nanoscale and estimated about 22nm 25nm, as the film thickness increase from (50 – 150) nm. the enhancement of the crystallinity, which gives crystallite size with nanoscale, through controlling sputter power and deposition rate with small values led to decreases the fwhm value [29]. figure (2) shows the crystallite size and fwhm values varieties with a thickness of nio film the results are shown in table (1). microstrain (ε) which has been valued from equation (3): = 𝛽 𝑐𝑜𝑠ɵ / 4 (3) is caused during the growth of the film and will be raised from stretching or compression in the lattice. the microstrain (ε) reduction caused by varying displacement of the atom with respect to their reference lattice position [30]. figure (2) shows the microstrain in the films decreases with the increases in the film thickness, which may cause the increases in the crystallinity of the film [25]. dislocation density (δ) is an imperfection in the crystal associated with the registry of the lattice in one part of the crystal with another part. the dislocation density (δ) has been calculated by using the equation (4) 𝛿 = 1 / 𝐷2 (4) figure (2) shows the dislocation density decreases as the thickness increases [31]. the results of microstrain and dislocation density values are shown in table (1). figure 1: xrd pattern of nickel oxide films deposited by rf reactive magnetron sputtering figure 2: crystallite, fwhm, microstrain and dislocation density variation with thickness for nio deposited by rf reactive magnetron sputtering. scanning electron microscope (sem) the morphology of nio nanostructures film prepared by rf-reactive magnetron sputtering method is characterizes by sem images. figures (3) show the typical sem images of the prepared nio nanostructures films at a different thickness (50,100 and 150) nm respectively, homogeneous distribution, very smooth and the crystallites are very fine. no large particles can be found from sem image. particle size increases from 45 nm to 60 nm when the thickness rose from 50 nm to 100 nm and nanorods growth perpendicularly with diameter 85 nm and the surface becomes more porous. when the thickness is further increased to 150 nm the nano grains size increases to 70 nm. that is good agreement with xrd measurement for undoped nickel oxide nanostructure films. gas sensing properties: nitrogen dioxide, no2, is one of the most dangerous gasses emitted from burning of the exhaust of cars engines, home heaters, furnaces, plants [32]. table 1: structural parameters of nio thin films prepared rf. sputtering . figure 3 :se m pattern for nanostructure nio prepared by rf sputtering (a) 50 nm, (b) 100 nm and (c) 150 nm). therefore the development of sensors that are tough small size, long lifetime, and quick in response and with sufficient sensitivity for the detection of nitrogen dioxide in low concentrations, in the environment is so important and needed. the surface morphology and particle size is the key variables in the sensing properties of metal oxide gas sensors and are mostly organized by the adsorbed oxygen molecules, obviously increasing the surface-tovolume ratio or enhancing the surface adsorption which will increase the resistance change and improve the sensitivity [33]. it is known for many years that the adsorption-dependent electrical properties of metal oxide semiconductors are often sensitive to much gaseous ambient. the gas sensing properties of copper-doped and pure nio nanostructures for no2 as oxidizing gas and hydrogen as reduced gas were studied as a function of the operation time at operation temperature 150oc. figure (4) show the dynamic resistance change of nio films prepared by rf reactive magnetron sputtering method with different thickness (50, 100 and 150) nm, exposure to different concentrations of no2 gas (150, 200, 250, 300 and 350) ppm. it's obvious that lowest resistance was for the samples of 150 nm. which can be related to the highest roughness obtained from afm analysis and also due to the high surface area and porosity confirmed from data obtained from the sem image and also from the electrical resistance that shows the lowest resistance for the film of 150 nm thickness. all the samples showed p-type semiconductor performance (decreasing in resistance when exposing to oxidize gas) and the resistance of the films decrease with increasing of no2 concentration inside the chamber [34, 35], this can explain as the electrons are taken from ionized donors through conduction band and the density of majority charge carriers (holes) at the gas–solid interface is increased. this leads to the decreases of a potential barrier for electrons with increasing of the oxygen ions density on the surface. the depletion layer and potential barrier lead to the decreasing of the electrical resistivity value this value is strongly dependent on the concentration of adsorbed oxygen ions of the surface [36]. introducing the no2 ambient will change the concentration of these ions and decrease the resistance. the sensitivity can be calculated from equation (5): sensitivity = δr/ ra = (rarg/ra) ×100% (5) ra = resistance of the film sensor in air presence. rg = resistance of the film sensor in gas presence. and plotted as a function of gas concentration (ppm) as shown in figure (5). the sensitivity percentage value for nio films to nitrogen dioxide gas with different thickness, found to increases with the increasing of film thickness and the highest sensitivity value, is 67% for 350 ppm gas concentration of no2 is obtained for the film of 150 nm thickness at operation temperature 150oc. the sensitivity of the metal oxide semiconductor sensor is mainly determined by the interaction between the target gas and the surface of the sensor. the greater surface area of the materials that showed in afm measurements becomes a stronger interaction between the adsorbed gasses and the sensor surface, i.e. higher gas sensing sensitivity. figure (6) shows the response time, which is found to decrease from (140 to about 60) sec. as the gas concentration increasing, the decreasing in response time may be due to the large availability of vacant sites on thin films for gas adsorption [37]. the response time values are found convergent for all nio films to no2 gas, while, figure (7) shows the increasing in recovery time from (70 to 140) sec. as the no2 gas concentration increases, this increasing due to the saturation of the sensor by the target gas furthermore the change in the structural properties that could take place by the operating temperature. figure 5: percentage sensitivity of nio films for different concentrations of no2 gas and different thicknesses at 150◦c operating temperature. figure 4: a dynamic resistance change of nio films for different concentrations of no2 gas and different thicknesses at an operating temperature of 150 ᵒc. figure 6: response time of nio films for different concentrations of no2 gas and different thicknesses at 150ᵒc operating temperature. figure 7: recovery time of nio films for different concentrations of no2 gas and different thicknesses at 150◦c operating temperature 4. conclusions: different thickness of nio nano structures films are successfully prepared using rf reactive magnetron sputtering. the polycrystalline structure film with cubic structure of nio film is formed and the films show growth along the (200) direction for all prepared films with rod like nano structure growth. the transmittance in the uv and vis regions results the value of optical eg decreasing with thickness increases. the nio films of 150 nm thickness show the maximum sensitivity is 67% for no2 gas of 350 ppm gas concentration obtained at operation temperature 150oc. 5. refrences [1] e. fujii, a. tomozawa, h. torii and takayama “thickness influence on the synthesis of metal oxide nio using rfmagnetron sputtering “ japan. j. appl. 35, 328-330, (1996). [2] k. youshmura, t. miki, s. tanemura “ nickel oxide electrochromic thin films prepared by reactive dc magnetron sputtering” jap.j.appl.phys.34, 2440 2446, (1995). [3] m. kitao, k. izawa, k. urabe, t. komatso, s. knwano and s. yamada “electro chromic properties of sputtered nickel‐oxide films “jap. appl. phy.33, 6656-6662, (1994). [4] r. tsu, l. esaki, r, ludeke,” road to quantum boxes” physic. rev. 23 -763, (1996). [5] praveen k. sekhar, eric l. brosha, rangachary mukundan, and fernando h. garzon” chemical sensors for environmental monitoring and homeland security” the electrochemical society interface, winter 2010. [6] p. pramank, s. bhattachraga,” a chemical method for the deposition of nickel oxide thin films “ j. electrochemecal.soc.137, 3869, (1990). [7] l. d. kadam, c .h. bhosal, p. s. patil,” versatility of chemical spray pyrolysis technique” tr.j.phy.21, 1037, (1997). [8] larry l. hench and jon k. west “the sol-gel process“ chem. rev., , 90 (1), pp. 33–72, (1990). 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[15] j. s. e. m. svensson and c. g. granqvist “electrochromic hydrated nickel oxide coatings for energy efficient windows: optical properties and coloration the mechanism” applied physics letters, vol. 49, no. 23, 1566, (2003). [16] s. yamada, t. yoshioka, m. miyashita, k. urabe, andm. kitao” electrochromic properties of sputtered nickel oxide films” journal of applied physics, vol. 63, no, 6, 2116–2119, (1988). [17] m. boscarino, ferroni, d. comini, e. gnani, v. guidi, v. martielli, g. nellii, p. rigato, v. sberveglieri, g,: “selective sublimation processing of a molybdenum–tungsten mixed oxide thin film” 58. 289, (1999). [18] k. m. dooley, s.y. chen, j. r. h. ross, j. catal.” chemical capping synthesis of nickel oxide nanoparticles and their characterizations studies “ 145402, (1994). [19] a. iida and r. nishikawa, “a thin film of a ni-nio heterogeneoussystem for an optical recording medium” japanese journal of applied physics, vol. 33, 3952– 3959, (2006). [20] e. fujii, a. tomozawa, h. torii and r. “takayama” effects of substrate temperature and oxygen pressure on crystallographic orientations of sputtered nickel oxide films” jpn. j. appl. phys.35, 328–330, (1996). [21] j. huang and q. wan “gas sensors based on semiconducting metal oxide one-dimensional nanostructures” sensors (basel), 9(12), 9903– 9924, 2009. [23] d. delia puzzovio “ surface interaction mechanisms in metal-oxide semiconductors for alkane detection “ a thesis in universita degli studi di ferrara, 2008. [24] a. r. balu, v.s. nagarethinam ,” nanocrystalline nio thin films prepared by a low-cost simplified spray technique using perfume atomizer”” journal of electron devices, vol. 13, pp. 920-930, (2012). [25] arwaa fadil, “structural and morphological studies of nio thin films prepared by rapid thermal oxidation method” ijaiem , volume 2, issue 1, jan.(2013). [26] h. long chen, y. ming lu and w. sing hwang, materials transactions, vol. 46, no. 4 pp. 872 to 879, (2005). [27] m. batzill and u. diebold,"the surface and materials science of tin oxide", progress in surface science, vol. 79, pp. 47–154, (2005). [28] g. d. ca˜nizares “nanostructured nickel oxide thin films grown by reactive rf magnetron sputtering thesis universidad autonoma de madrid may 2014. [29] n. barsan and u. weimar ” fundamentals of metal oxide gas sensors” imcs– the 14th international meeting on chemical sensors (2012). [30] a. muhammad, r, mahfujur, j. m. don, coburn, nadia, d, danilo, v. johannes g., dowling, denis p. “deposition and characterization of niox coatings by magnetron sputtering for application in dye-sensitized solar surface and coatings technology“204 (16-17): 2729-2739. 2011. [31] m. tachikawa and m. yamaguchi, film thickness dependence of dislocation density reduction in gaas-on-si substrates, appl. phys. lett. 56, 484 (1990). 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[37] f. s. hashim, k. h. mohsin, “effect of li doping on structure and optical energy gap of nio films prepared by sol–gel technique” journal of kufa – physics vol.7/ no.1 (2015). http://aip.scitation.org/author/tachikawa%2c+masami kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 1 | june 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.1.7 assessment the knowledge of mothers ‘toward home accident among children less than five years in polytechnic university of sulaimani abstract: children accidents are an essential source of death and wounds among children during the first of life. annually, millions of children are constantly becoming handicap or blemished because of mishaps. objective: to assess knowledge of children mothers toward home accidents in polytechnic university of sulaimani. methodology: a simple random sample of (110) respondents were selected.. the data collected and composed during the utilization of a created questionnaire, with two parts; the first part assessed the knowledge of children mothers with (20) yes or no questions and the second part includes the mothers' demographic attributes. a pilot study was carried out for the period of december 18th to 28th 2015 in order to conclude the questionnaire accuracy during the use of (test – retest). a panel of (8) experts was include in the determination of the questionnaire content validity data were analyzed through the application of descriptive statistical data analysis approach (frequency and percentage), and inferential data analysis approach (mean of scores).). the results of the study revealed, the mean age of the mothers was (1.86) years, (58.2%) of them had completed secondary school, (88.2%) of mothers have more than five children, (89.1%) of mother’s were in moderate socio-economic status, (47.3%) of mothers have personal reading information,(58.2) of the child were male,(13.6%) of mothers have knowledge about safe housing condition held in maternal and child health centers. the conclusion of this study revealed that, inadequate children mothers’ knowledge regarding home accidents among children less than six years held in maternal and child health centers during the antenatal period. so the recommendation are suggested, reinforces the need for effective education program via mass media, for mothers. key words: mothers' knowledge ,children less than five years, emergency exit, fire extinguisher, burning appliances. 1. introduction nowadays, child safety remains an important anxiety of parents. children are exposed to injury risk as they grow, children have a very bounded ability to react quickly and properly in an emergency situation as well as they acquire little control over their environment, which increase the risk of accidents and death [1]. accidents, fatal and nonfatal, are principal hazards to the preschool child. home safety and accident prevention are thus main child health trouble today. supreme of children feel harmless and safe in their home, yet unfortunately at home is where most deaths and injuries happen [2]. injuries occure in the home are primarily related to a child's age and scale of development. it can sometimes be tricky for parents to keep up with their child’s capabilities. local episode cases replicate extra visibly than any other, the character and life of people. recent forms of injury attributable to home mishaps increase, with each cultural change or new technical [3]. episodes can happen in a widespread several of environments but the household is the most probable domestic for accidents comprising children. mishaps take place in the household are a foremost cause of wound and death that definitely connect to the years of life that are probability lost [4]. accidental injury is one of the principal single causes of death in ireland for children over the age of one. more children die each year as a consequence of accidents than from illnesses such as leukemia or meningitis [4]. in egypt in 1998, the overall prevalence of injuries in indoor home environment was 72.5% among children below 5 years [5]. consistently in 1998, the occurrence of household coincidences among children age (0-<18) year in el assara village, in assiut governorate was 59% [6]. 2. material and methods the present study was carried out through the application of quantitative design of a descriptive study which uses the assessment approach, and it was conducted on mothers in polytechnic university of sulaimani. from january 16th 2016 to april 2th, 2016. non-probability sampling a convenience sample of (110) mothers who was selected for the purpose of the study. a questionnaire was developed , it was comprised of two attallah o. qasem department of community health, sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq atta.kasem@sup.edu.iq layla a. abas department of nursing, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, iraq abaslayla@yahoo.com faisal abdula salih department of medical laboratory, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, iraq faisal.salih@spu.edu.iq muhammed s. qadir department of medical laboratory, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, iraq muhammed.qadir@spu.edu.iq burhan a. hama hussein higher health institutions ministry of health kirkuk, iraq brhanali71@yahoo.com https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=21&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahukewiipeqzr9puahwhqbokhr19bumqfgixatau&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.fhs.gov.hk%2fenglish%2fcentre_det%2fmaternal%2fmaternal.html&usg=afqjcnfg2rrdk8ki_aysokjtufti3grhmq https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=21&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahukewiipeqzr9puahwhqbokhr19bumqfgixatau&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.fhs.gov.hk%2fenglish%2fcentre_det%2fmaternal%2fmaternal.html&usg=afqjcnfg2rrdk8ki_aysokjtufti3grhmq https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=21&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahukewiipeqzr9puahwhqbokhr19bumqfgixatau&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.fhs.gov.hk%2fenglish%2fcentre_det%2fmaternal%2fmaternal.html&usg=afqjcnfg2rrdk8ki_aysokjtufti3grhmq https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=21&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahukewiipeqzr9puahwhqbokhr19bumqfgixatau&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.fhs.gov.hk%2fenglish%2fcentre_det%2fmaternal%2fmaternal.html&usg=afqjcnfg2rrdk8ki_aysokjtufti3grhmq mailto:faisal.salih@spu.edu.iq parts; the first first part includes the mothers' demographic attributes and the second part assessed the knowledge of mothers with (20) yes or no questions a pilot study was carried out for the period of december 18th to 28th 2015 in order to conclude the questionnaire acuracy during the use of (test – retest). a panel of (8) experts was include in the determination of the questionnaire content validity. the accomplished data of the respondent’s responses to the questionnaire were entered into the computer and analyzed over use (spss 11.5); the obtained data of the respondent’s responses to the questionnaire were entered in to the computer and analyzed through the use of the statistical package social sciences (spss 11.5); the data analyzed was preformed through the following approaches, which are: descriptive statistical data analysis approach such as (frequency and percentage), and inferential data analysis approach (mean of scores).). 3. results table 1. distribution of the subjects (110 mothers’) by their socio-demographic attributes table (1) illustrate that these risk factors (age, educational level of mother , socio-economic status, source of information, health education for age (years) percentage % m.s sig. a. 18-27 years 35 (31.8) 1.86 hs b. 28-37 years 57 (51.8) c 38-47 years 16 (14.5) d ≤ 48 years 2 (1.8) total (100.0) educational level of mother percentage % 4.24 hs a-read and write 4 ( 3.6) b-elementary school only 4 (3.6) csecondary school only 64 (58.2) dinstitute graduate 38 (34.5) total (100.0) family size percentage % 1.12 n.s a≥5 97 (88.2) b) <5 13 (11.8) total (100.0) socio-economic status: percentage % 2.09 hs alow 1(.9) bmoderate 98 (89.1) chigh 11 (10.0) total (100.0) source of information percentage % a media 28 (25.5) 3.45 hs b-health centers 9 (8.2) cthe physician 10 (9.1) d-relatives 11 (10.0) e-personal reading 52 (47.3) total (100.0 health education for mothers’ about safe housing condition held in mchc percentage % 1.86 hs available 15 (13.6) unavailable 95 (86.4) total (100.0) child’s age (years) percentage % 1.50 s a2 ≤ 2 years 55 (50.0) b3 ≤ 5 years 55 (50.0) total ( 100.0) child’s sex percentage % 1.42 s amale 64 958.2) b-female 46 (41.8 ) total ( 100.0) m.s= mean of scores sig. = significant hs= height significant mothers’)does have an effect on the home accidents among children less than five years in polytechnic university of sulaimani table (2).knowledge of the 110 children mothers’ concerning home accidents list items yes no percentage % percentage % 1 knowledge regarding causes of home accidents 87 (79.1) 23 (20.9) 2 fit restrictors to upstairs windows cannot be opened more than 6.5cm 51(46.4) 59 (53.6) 3 keep chairs and other climbing objects away from windows and balconies 22 (20.0 88 (80.0) 4 secure any furniture and kitchen appliances to the wall if there’s a risk to be pulled over 99( 90.0) 11 (10.0) 5 ensure there is enough light on the stairs 96(86.3 14 (12.7 6 keep balcony doors locked to prevent child from going on to it alone 97(88.2 13 (11.8) 7 have an emergency exit at home? 19 (17.3) 91 (82.7) 8 curtain and blind pull cords kept short and out of reach of children. 52 (47.3) 58 (52.7) 9 keep small objects out of the reach of small children 108 (98.2) 2 (1.8) 10 choose toys designed for the age of baby or child 101 (91.8) 9 (8.2) 11 encourage older children to keep their toys away from their younger playmates 84 (76.4) 26 (23.6) 12 have a fire extinguisher in home 52 (47.3) 58 (52.7) 13 switch off electrical items at night, before getting to bed 81 (73.6) 29 (26.4) 14 learn family what to do in case of a fire 78 (70.9) 32 (29.1) 15 always place hot drinks out of children’s reach 105 (95.5) 5 (4.5) 16 drink anything hot when a child in her arms 52 (47.3) 58 (52.7) 17 checking the water is too hot before bathing baby or child, 108 (98.2) 2 (1.8) 18 keep anything that may be poisonous out of reach, preferably in a locked cupboard 108 (98.2) 2 (1.8) 19 dispose of unwanted medicines and chemicals carefully 103 (93.6) 7 (6.4) 20 take care of carbon fuel burning appliances (such as gas, coal, wood, oil burners) serviced every year 106 (96.4) 4 (3.6) the table (2) demonstrates that children mothers have information about checking the water is too hot before bathing baby or child, keeping anything that may be poisonous out of reach, dispose of unwanted medicines and chemicals carefully, take care of carbon fuel burning appliances (98.2), 98.2, 93.6, 96.4 respectively). 4. discussion a quantitative design of a descriptive study was chosen in order to find out the causes of home accidents among children less than five years. this study carried out in from january 16th 2016 to april 2th, 2016. sulaimani is developing country in kurdistan region of iraq has good health care system,however there were many causes of home accidents that affect the health of children,in addition to the risk factors including the age of childs, because the first five years are considered as a critical period of life where the child learns to investigate and react with his surrounding [7].in term of knowledge of mothers regarding causes of home accidents, the finding show the majority (79.1%) of them has good information , awareness in a variety of settings and providing information on minimizing the causes [8]..caregiver depression has emerged as a consistent risk factor for all types of injury. other risk factors include long-term child health problems, residence and regular care of the child by a non-household member [9].first five years are taken into account, high period of life were the child learns to inspect, react with his surrounding [10]..falls are the most common causes of accidents in the home can cause mortality or disability for long time. so it’s significant to become the dispatch across the simple things that father and mother and careers can do avoid serious falls [11]. keeping chairs and other climbing objects away from windows and balcony, more than two-third of mothers didn’t recognize that .some falls and tumbles are unavoidable, as children learn to stand, walk, run, and climb. most aren't serious, but falls are actually the leading cause of nonfatal injuries for children, including head injuries, fractures and sprains, and contusions, this agrees with [12]. nevertheless, more of participants identified secure any furniture and kitchen appliances to the wall if there's a risk to be http://www.babycenter.com/0_concussion-or-head-injury_11257.bc http://www.babycenter.com/0_broken-bones_408.bc pulled over. both of poor maintenance and badly built houses like insufficient light on the stairways were a thoughtful common health problem; because avoidance and control of local accidents between children has been newly a goal and very vital area for healthcare preferment [13]. the community health nurse will attempt to confirm that people identify how to avoid accidents. in term of enough light on the stairs, the finding show the majority of mothers mentioned that. according to keep balcony doors locked to prevent a child from going on to it alone, more of mothers mentioned that the community health nurse will attempt to confirm that people identify how to avoid accidents. in term of enough light on the stairs, the finding show the majority of mothers mentioned that. according to keep balcony doors locked to prevent a child from going on to it alone, more of mothers mentioned that. fit restrictors to upstairs windows cannot be opened more than 6.5cm, in the current study less than a half of mothers did not identify that; these mothers should be more educated and more aware about fit restrictors to upstairs windows. falls are the most common cause of accidental injury to children. while most falls aren’t serious – active children often fall over – some falls can lead to death or long-term disability. so it’s important to get the message across about the simple things that parents and careers can do prevent serious falls, [11]. keeping chairs and other climbing objects away from windows and balcony, more than two-third of mothers didn’t recognize that .some falls and tumbles are unavoidable, as children learn to stand, walk, run, and climb. most aren't serious, but falls are actually the leading cause of nonfatal injuries for children, including head injuries, fractures and sprains, and contusions, this agrees with [12].nevertheless, more of participants identified secure any furniture and kitchen appliances to the wall if there's a risk to be pulled over. badly built houses and poor maintenance such as inadequate light on the stairs; make prevention and control of home accidents among children has been recently a target and very important area for health promotion [13]. the community health nurse will try to ensure that people know how to prevent accidents. when home visiting done, accidents hazards will be identified and advice given to correct them. respectively, in term of enough light on the stairs, the finding show the majority of mothers mentioned that , regarding to keeping small objects out of the reach of small children (98.2%) of mothers mentioned that. the kitchen is measured the supreme hazardous domicile in the house for children [14]. the modern study showed an apparent ignorance of mothers regarding how to keep their sharp kitchen instruments out of children's reach. this disagrees with a study by negro in new york city in usa which found that 74% of mothers knew how to safeguard their kid from the risk of knives and sharp tools in the kitchen [15]. regarding mothers in choosing toys designed for the age of baby (91.8%) of mothers agree that their were relation between age of children and design of toys .also (76.4%) of mothers encourage older children to keep their toys away from their younger playmates to prevent choking or suffocation occurs when there is a blockage in the airways and breathing is threatened. . fire extinguishers can save lives and property because it’s important to help the public understand proper training and education,because many adults might not know how or when to use fire extinguishers. unfortunately, (47.3%) of mothers in the current study recognize that; these mothers must be more educated and more mindful of utilizing fire extinguishers. when they asked about switch off electrical items at night, before mother goes to bed, fortunately, more than half (73.6%) knew that. mother knowledge regarding fire safety, (70.9) knew that, 87% of all fire-associated with deaths are because of home fires, which blowout quickly and can leave families as little as 2 minutes to run away when an alarm sounds begun. in 2008, nearly 61thousen children around the world died because of burn or fire, which mean that fires are not only truble in usa. the majority of mothers (95.5%) knew that hot food and drink scalds could happen quickly. children less than ages of 12 are the most at danger of burns that incidence in the home. maximum burns are affected in the household by mishaps including warm water and nutriment, whereas direct flame burns are more public with rising age [16]. (98.2%) of respondents had mentioned that burns also occur in the bathroom. according to (cdc), most home accidents occur where there's water in the bathroom, kitchen, swimming pools. burns can occur rapidly with very hot water [17]. (98.2%) of partakers revealed keeping poison products out of reach of children. children aged between 6 months and 6 years are involved in accidental poisonings more frequently than any other age group and the majority of incidents happen at home[18].. and prone to swallowing cosmetics and household products because children of that age are inquisitive, can move about and may mistake a brightly coloured product for a sweet or drink. [19]. mothers' information of safety precautions, essential to protect chemical materials and cleaner remote of children’s reach was very weak which can cause poisoning or extra important mishaps that may consequence in loss of life, the popular of families kept cleaner and medicines in a high or locked cabinet [20]. fortunately, (96.4%) mentioned that, home fires attitude one of the highest hazards to kid. precisely, kids that play with matches and lighters significantly start house fires [8]. likewise community health caregiver is in charge of to avert injuries in their societies, at work places, schools and homes [21]. mothers' knowledge of safety precautions, necessary to keep chemical materials and cleaner out of children’s reach was very poor which can lead to poisoning or other significant accidents that may result in loss of life, the majority of families kept cleaner, and medications in a high or locked cabinet [20]. regarding to dispose of unwanted medicines and chemicals carefully, (93.6%) of mothers identify that regarding taking care of carbon fuel burning appliances (such as matches, coal, wood, oil burners) serviced every year. fortunately (96.4%) mentioned that, domestic fires pose one of the greatest risks to children. in particular, children that play with matches and lighters considerably start house fires [8]. also community health nurse is responsible to prevent injuries in their communities, at homes, schools, and work places [(21]. home environment is a common place for unintentional http://www.babycenter.com/0_concussion-or-head-injury_11257.bc http://www.babycenter.com/0_broken-bones_408.bc injuries among children, therefore parents and caregivers are the ones who should be in charge of preventing injuries to their infants [22]. parents in all communities needed a wide range of pedagogical counseling about how to prevent accidents that injure children [23]. 5. conclusion the study concludes that: 1fitting restrictors to upstairs windows, keeping chairs and other climbing objects away from windows and balconies, having an emergency exit, curtain and blind pull cords kept short and out of reach of children ,and keeping hot drinking out of reach of children were the five leading causes of home accidents among children less than five years. 2 family size does not have an effect on causing of home accidents. 3age, education, child’s age and inadequate health education for mothers’ about safe housing condition held in mchc during antenatal period have an effect on the cause of accidents. 4 there were more need to educational program about home accidents and how manage it if occurs, especially mother's who have preschool children. 6. acknowledgment the authors wish to thank all children mothers of polytechnic university for permitting us to collect the data that formed the basis of this project. 7. limitation mothers employees responsible for the daily performance of their duties and collect information about the search extra work for them that was critical for data collection, lack of research studies concerning the issues underlying the present study. 8. references [1] c. khasnabis, world report on child injury prevention. geneva, who. 2009. [2] j. alper.home safe home, healthology", inc. www.hsh.com, 2003. [3] aggarwal r, singh g, aditya k pattern of domestic injuries in a rural area of india. internet j health, 2010, 11(2) [4] j. parkkari, p .kannus, s. niemi, s. koskinen, m .palvanen, vuori i, et al. childhood deaths and injuries in finland in 1971–1995. international journal of epidemiology. 2000; 29(3):516–23. [5] n. othman,. epidemiology of home accidents in the east mediterranean region: a systematic review. bmc public health. , 2010, 10 (83): 1471-2458. [6] w s .hamza,"epidemiology of accidents among children in a village in assiut governorate". master thesis public health and preventive medicine, faculty of medicine, assiut university, 2000. [7] wong chin khoon. home safety and prevention of home accidents in young children. bulletin 24. january 2002 mita (p) no: 161/06/ ,2002. [8] b .laursen, h. møller..unintentional injuries in children of danish and foreign-born mothers. scand j public health august, 2009, 37:577–583. [9] ld .howe, sr. huttly, abramsky trisk factors for injuries in young children in four developing countries: the young lives study. trop med int health. oct; 2006, 11(10):1557–1566. [10] e. uskun, f .alptekin, m .oztürk, an .kis¸ioğlu. the attitudes and behaviors of housewives in the prevention of domestic accidents and their first aid knowledge levels. ulus travma acil cerrahi derg., 2008, jan;14(1):46–52. [11] d. .macgregor, injuries associated with falls from beds. injury prevention. dec, 2000,. 6 (4):291-2. [12] f e .helmy, s a.labeeb, & i f .shafie,"assessment of home environmental risk factors regarding accidents among preschool children. assiut university", bulletin for environmental researchers , 2000:,5 (1), pp. 21-29. [13] m a .abd el-wahed, h h .mitwally, & n m .mahmoud,"preventive program for home injuries among rural children in egypt and oman". alexandria journal of pediatrics, 14 (1), 2000, pp. 65-71. [14] wong chin khoon ,home safety and prevention of home accidents in young children. bulletin 24. january , mita (p) no: 2002,161/06/2002. [15] jd. black,.local wellness policies and the dietary guidelines: what does it mean to you? j am diet assoc,2005, 105(6):891–893.21. [16] d.scheven, p .barker , govindasamy burns in rural kwa-zulu natal: epidemiology and the need for community health education. j. burns. dec. 2012, 38(8):1224–1230. [17] eg. kamel, sa .emam, es .mohammed. knowledge, attitude and practice among rural mothers about home-related injuries in a rural area in el-minia governorate, egypt sjph, 2014, 2:653-659 [18] m j. robinson, & d m .roberton,"practical pediatrics, (5th ed.), churchill living stone company", new york, 2003, p. 172. http://www.hsh.com/ [19] j a .allender and b w .spradley,"community health nursing concepts and practice", (5th ed.). lippincott, philadelphia, 2001, pp. 540-541. [20] mm. jan, fh. hasanain, aa .al-dabbagh ,.infant and child safety practices of parents. saudi med j. dec.2000, 1142–1146. [21] k. tsoumakas, e .dousis, f. mavridi., and a .gremou. parent’s adherence to children’s homeaccident preventive measures, international council of nurses, international nursing review, 2009: 56, pp. 369–374. [22] o.o. oyerinde and o. o. obiyemi, risk factors in the homes: a case study of the opinions of staff in ilorin township schools. nigerian school health journal vol. 2002: 14(2), 2002 [23] h. h. ibrahim, investigative epidemiology of childhood accidents in el-fatah district, doctor thesis, faculty of medicine, assiut university, 2004.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 4 | issue 1 | june 2019 | doi: 10.24017/science.2019.1.1 received: 2 february 2019 | accepted: 24 march 2019 relatedness among three native geese in erbil governorate using hematological and molecular methods mohsen a. ahmed yousif m.s. al-barzinji lanja assad ismail animal resources department animal resources department animal resources department college of agriculture college of agriculture college of agriculture salahaddin university salahaddin university salahaddin university erbil, iraq erbil, iraq erbil, iraq muhsin.ahmed@su.edu.krd yousif.noori@su.edu.krd lanja.ismael@su.edu.krd 1 abstract: the objective of present study was to determine genetic diversity among three geese color types using rapd markers and hematological parameters. the overall mean, of the live weights , hemoglobin, hetrophil %, lymphocyte %, monocyte % and h/l ratio were 3.006 (kg), 14.64, 36.896, 49.896, 2.233 and 0.736 respectively. the breed, sex and interaction between them have significant effect on live body weight, hemoglobin and monocyte %. ten primers were used and six out of them were selected based on their number of bands (nb) and polymorphic characteristics. a total of 309 bands observed, ranged from 30 in primer opb-07 to 54 bands in opa-20. five unique bands were found only in white goose, whereas the highest unique band was obtained in primer opb01 locus. overall genetic distance among native geese arrived 64.122 and phylogenetic dendrograms showed that 3 clusters, the first cluster content only white geese (male and female) breed, the second one cluster is included piebald geese breed (male and female) and third one was including gray geese (male and female) breed. it was concluded that the white geese was closer to piebald geese than to the gray geese breed. the high genetic distance (64.122%) and variation in phenotypic value such as live weight (2.375 to 3.600 kg/bird) for three native geese indicates that these native geese have a good amount of genetic resources to made genetically improvement in further and it means the three goose samples are independent breeds. keywords: geese, hematology, rapd-pcr, genetic distance. 1. introduction geese bird is important poultry commodity for asian villagers. in asian the aims of breeding geese country is not only to meat or eggs but also to use them as guard birds and to help control and limited the growth of non wonted grass and weeds. the genetic capacity of asian geese (egg or meat production) is generally accepted as less when compared with that in europe which has modern geese breeds [1]. even the goose production technology in asian is not well developed; in asia goose production is increasingly popular and has become accepted as the type of water bird production [1]. the increased for meat production from geese breeding return to as it is very appropriate for organic bird production and supporting to rural developments [2-5].live body weight was different among geese breeds were ranged from 3 to 7 kg [6-9]. assessing genetic variability within or among breeds is essential for genetic diversity among the animal populations. the complete population structure helps to plan strategies for conservation and development of a breed [10]. genetic variation is the raw material for the breeders, who utilize domestic animal species to people's needs. furthermore, the increasing genetic data on geese bird using different genetic markers will help to understand the evolutionary history of geese. in addition, it will help to refine the definition of breed [11 and 12]. recently, molecular markers, revealing polymorphism at the molecular level, has play an essential goals in poultry breeding studies. the random amplification polymorphism dna (rapd) marker has been widely used, due to its easy utilization by simple pcr, followed by a denaturing gel electrophoresis for number of fragments and fragments size determination [13]. rapd markers are adopted as a powerful molecular finger-printing technique which allows distinction even between closely related genotypes. the aim of study is to identify the genetic polymorphism for native geese in iraq using pcr-rapd technique. 2. methods and materials 2.1 geese samples, dna extraction and hematological tests: this study was conducted on three local geese breeds (fig. 1) whitse breed, piebald breed and gray breed (15 males and 15 females for each color). a total of 90 geese (12 ± 1 month) blood samples (3 ml/bird) were collected (figure 1) from jugular vein into 5 ml vacutainer tubes containing the edta for dna extractions (dna was extraction from the blood sample using qiaamp® dna blood mini kit ,qiagen gmbh qiagenstr.1 40724 hilden germany) and for hematological parameters (haemoglobin concentration (hb), packed cell volume (pcv), erythrocyte sedimentation rate (esr) and differential leucocyte count estimated according to [14-17] , respectively. all laboratory work was done in the biotechnology laboratory at the department of animal resources, college of agriculture, and mailto:yousif.noori@su.edu.krd mailto:yousif.noori@su.edu.krd 2 salahaddin university-erbil. the quantity and quality of dna were determined by nanodrop spectrophotometer and 1% agarose gel electrophoresis, respectively but for pcr products we used 1.5% agarose gel to determent the rapd bands. 2.2 rapd primers in the present study, a total of ten rapd primers (table, 1) which were obtained from cinnagen inc.; (iran) were used. six of them amplified and gives clear band. 2.3 pcr amplification of rapd primers amplifications were performed using a thermal cycler (mj research-ptc-200 gradient peltier thermal cycler ® 60well) with the final reaction volume of 20 μl. two μl sample dna was added to each tube to make the final volume (20 μl). each reaction contained: 11 μl of red master mix (ampliqon a/s stenhuggervej 22-germany), 25 units/ml taq polymerase, each dntps is 200 μm and mgcl2 was 1.5 mm), 2 μl of rapd primer (197.13 μm–599.26 μm), 2 μl (30 ng) of dna template and 5 μl of dnase free water. many protocols were used but only one protocol gives as clearly bands. the primers (opa-04, opa-14, opa-20, opb-01, opb-07 and opb-12): programmed for 35 cycles of denaturation at 95 °c for 1 min, annealing at 3740 °c for 1 min and extension at 72 °c for 1.5 min. an initial denaturation step of 5 min at 95 °c and a final extension step of 7 min at 72 °c were included in the first and last cycles, respectively. the pcr amplification products were run in a 1.5% agarose gel (staining with ethidium bromide in tris-borate edta buffer) and visualized under uv transillumination. the control reactions were set up without genomic dna to avoid any dna contamination. 2.4 genotypic and statistic analysis the rapd bands were scored as present (1) or absent (0) in each pattern. all genetic parameters in present study were calculated by using genepop software, version, 3.3 [18]. the proc glm (general linear model) procedure [19] was used to analyze the data and employed for evaluation of live weight and blood traits. strain, sex and interaction between them were fitted in the following model: yijk = μ + ai + bj +(ab)ij + εijk i = 1,…,3; j = 1,…,2; k = 1,…,6 where: yijk = observation k in level i of factor a (breed) and level j of factor b (sex) μ = the overall mean ai = the effect of level i of factor a (1= gray, 2= white and 3= piebald) gray white piebald figure 1. image of geese breeds. 3. results 3.1 phenotypic results this part of results included the performance traits under studies: 3.1.1 body weight and blood traits the overall mean, of the live weights and blood traits were presented in table (2). mean live weight was 3.006 (kg). the live weight in this study was higher than reported by [20] in same breeds was arriver (2.933 kg). in the other side's this results was lower than reported on different geese breeds at the same age [6] 5.534, [7] 6.730, [8] 3.972, [21] 3.657, and [9] 3.470 kg. the higher lives weight (p≤0.001), were recorded in piebald (3.225 kg) and white (3.158 kg) geese while lower was observed in gray (2.637kg) geese (table, 2). the sex had significant effect on the live weight (table, 3). male's geese at 1 year of age produced significantly (p≤0.01) heavier live weight than female at same age, this result may be due to the male's hormone effect, which testes male product testosterone hormone which have positive role to increasing the body weight. similar result reported by [20] for significantly of sex in body weight. a table (4) presents the interaction of breed with whereas sexes. significance interaction were found between breeds and sexes in weight higher value 3.60 recorded in male piebald and lowest value (2.375 kg) in female gray geese. these results show good variation in live weight for native geese due to phenotypic and genotypic variation between native geese and selection for above traits within native geese can speed up the performance in native geese in kurdistan. table (2) shows the differences among native geese in blood traits. the overall means of hemoglobin, hetrophil %, lymphocyte %, monocyte % and h/l ratio were 14.64, 36.896, 49.896, 2.233 and 0.736 respectively. the results show significant differences among strains in hemoglobin and monocyte% (table 2). non significant results obtained in this study for sex table 1: name, sequence and percentage content of gc for all used primers no. primer name primer sequence 5’to 3’ gc% 1 opa-04 aatcgggctg 60 2 opa-14 tctgtgctgg 60 3 opa-20 gttgcgatcc 60 4 opb-01 gtttcgctcc 60 5 opb-07 ggtgacgcag 70 6 opb-12 ccttgacgca 60 3 (table, 3) on blood traits except in monocyte % the female's geese have higher value than males. as in table (4) the significance interaction between breeds and geese sexes were found in hemoglobin and monocyte % were higher hemoglobin value (17.65 g/ 100cm3) recorded in white male goose. 3.2 genotypic results this part of results included the rapd-pcr amplification and molecular analysis for six rapd primers in all geese samples under study: 3.2.1 number (nb) and size of bands (bp) the total of six primers amplified showed clear bands and were to investigate the genetic variations among the three local geese breeds. all of the six primers were polymorphic over all geese samples (figures 2). the overall nb for the 6 primes was 309 bands, ranged from 30 in primer opb-07 to 54 bands in opa-20 (table 5). the highest nb found in white male (57 fragments) and the lowest (46 fragments) was detected in gray female (table 5). results in this study were higher than reported by [22], (2005) were found 102 bands from seven rapd primers. as in table (5) the bands size range over all the native geese, started from 100 bp and ended at 2000 bp. the smallest size of bands was recorded for opa-04, opa14 and opa-20 (100 bp) in white, piebald and gray , while the highest size bands range was recorded for primer opb-01 locus (2000 bp ) in all males and females native geese . similar results was reported by [22], (2005) in polish goose were size range of band ranged from 200 t0 1500 bp. 3.2.2 number of polymorphic bands (npb) the overall % polymorphism band for 309 bands in present study was 14.868 and 17 of 309 bands is polymorphic bands; among the primers the opa-04 have higher band with higher polymorphic bands was arrived 42.86% (table 6). depended on above results, there are possibility to recommended that these loci can be use to define genetic distances among the present native geese. the results were agreed with than reported by [23] in magpie geese and [22] in polish goose. 3.2.3 unique band out of six primers one of them gives unique band, the highest numbers was obtained by primer opb-01 locus, which had 5 bands, all of them were unique (ranged from 250 to 1500 bp) and found in white goose. 3.2.4 nei’s gene diversity and shannon’s information index (i) the gene diversity/heterozygosity and shannon’s information index in averaged 0.4815 and 0.6743, respectively. these results indicate the diversity among geese's breed are moderately high. 3.2.5 phylogenetic tree as in the dendrograms (figure, 3), the overall genetic distance among native geese arrived 64.122% and three clusters were found, the 1st cluster branch consisted of the white geese (male and female) breed, the second one cluster is included piebald geese breed (male and female) and third one was including gray geese (male and female) breed. these results indicated that the gray geese breed is most genetically distant from the white and piebald geese breeds (64.122%), while this cluster indicates a close relationship recorded between piebald and white was arrived and the results indicated that the piebald breed was closer to white breed (43.266%) than to the gray geese breed. similar results were reported by [23] in magpie geese and [22] in three line of polish goose were genetic distance ranged from 23% to 89%. 3.3 phenotypic and genotypic traits according to the hematological results in table (2) and genotypic results in figure (3) the gray geese's was different from both white and piebald goose, while the last two one is nearly to each other, it means the hematological differences return to the differences in genetic factors and can used it for characterization of bird breeds. on the other side there are high significant differences (p≤ 0.001) between white and piebald with gray geese breed for live body weight, also there are higher genetic distance between white and piebald with gray geese was arrived 64.122%.theses results give us clear idea show that the phenotypic values such as weight and hematological parameters are under genotypic effect and recording of phenotypic values are necessary to obtained better image for diversity study in poultry breeding. table 6: total band and percentage polymorphic band. no. primer name total bands no. of polymorphic bands polymorphic bands (%) 1 opa-04 21 9 42.86% 2 opa-14 19 4 21% 3 opa-20 22 1 4.5% 4 opb-01 20 0 0.00% 5 opb-07 12 1 8.33% 6 opb-12 16 2 12.5% mean 4.1 14.868% figure 3. upgma dendrograms showing differentiation among geese breeds 4 4. conclusion the high genetic distance (64.122%) and variation in phenotypic value such as live weight (2.375 to 3.600 kg/bird) for three native geese indicates that these local geese have a good amount of variation to make genetically improvement in further and it means the three goose samples are independent breeds. the above results can be use by breeders to clarify the mapping of the genetic diversity of the local iraqi geese and can depend on these results to make mating system or crossing among these native geese or selection within / among native geese to speed up the performance in native geese in kurdistan. on other side there are similar results in both genetic and phenotypic results it is mean the recording for performance traits are necessary in poultry breeding for got clear image for diversity study in this field of science. 5. acknowledgement the authors thank all persons who helped and supports during performing and done this research paper on native geese's in iraqi-krg. reference [1] t, yuwanta, “goose production in indonesi and asia” gadjah mada university,yogyakarta, 55281, indonesia, 1999. [2] n.a. cave, , a.a. grunderbutler, a. fortin and b.pawluczuk, “influence of age, sex and pre-slaughter holding conditions on live weight and carcass traits of broiler” arch. geflugelk., 58:106-110,1994. [3] s.çelebi , “ erzurum’da yetiştirilen kazların bazı önemli kesim ve karkas özellikleri üzerine bir araştırma” uluslararası hayvancılık’99 kongresi, i̇zmir,1999. [4] t. kırmızıbayrak, “kars ilinde halk elinde yetiştirilen yerli ırk kazların kesim ve karkas ö zellikleri” türk j. vet. anim. sci., 26:667-670, 2002. [5] r. bochno, d. murawska, and u. brzostowska, “ age-related changes in the distribution of lean fat with skin and bones in goose carcasses” poultry science, 85:1987-1991,2006. [6] c. larzul, r. rouvier, r. daniel and g. guy, “ estimation of genetic parameters for growth, carcass and overfeeding traits in a white geese strain” genetic sel, evol., 32: 415-427, 2000. [7] k. dublecz, l. pal, l. wagner, a. banyai, a. bartos and sz. toth, “ modification of the n-3 fatty acid profile of meat -and livertype geese tissues” 16th european symposium on poultry nutrition. 677-680, 2008. [8] t. sahin, m. tilka, i. kaya, y.unal and d. elmali, “ effect of different protein level for finishing period on fattening performance and carcass traits in native turkish geese” journal of animal and veterinary advances, 7(11):1364-1369, 2008. [9] b.celik and z.bozkurt, “ slaughter and carcass traits of native geese reared in mus province” lucrări ştiinţifice zootehnie şi biotehnologii, vol. 42 (2): 423-428, 2009. [10] m. steele, “ the tropical agriculturalist: goats. macmillan” education ltd. london and basingstoke. uk, 1996. [11] c.r. henderson, “ application of linear models in animal breeding” university of guleph publications, guelph, canada, 1984. [12] h.j. bearden and j.w. fuquay, “applied animal reproduction” prentice hall inc. upper saddle river. new jersey, 2000. [13] e.v. marle-koster and l.h. nel, “ genetic markers and their application in livestock breeding in south africa” south afri-can j. anim. sci. 33, 1-10, 2003. [14] h.varley , a. h. gownlock and m. bell, “practicale clinical biochemistry” 5th ed. william heinemann, 1980. [15] r.k. archer, “ haematological techniques for use on animals” oxford black scientific publication, 1965. [16] k.h. saeed, and o.a.m. al-habbib, “practical animal physiology” dar-alhikma and publishing company. ltd. mousul, 1990. [17] a. mualla, n.i. abdulwahid, and y. yousif, “practical clinical physiology ”1st ed . dar-al-hikma publishing company . ltdmousul, 1990. [18] m. raymond and f. rousset, “genepop (version 3.3): population genetics software for exact tests and ecumenicism” j. heredity. 86, 248-249, 1995. [19] sas, “ version 9 for windows, cary north carolina usa: 19 institute inc.,2004. [20] l. a. ismael, “ hematological and productive performance of male and female of three native geese in kurdistan region of iraq” al-anbar j. of agr. sci., vol.: 9 no. (2):1-12, 2011. [21] e. sahin, and m. yardimci, “effects of kefir as a probiotic on growth performance and carcass characteristics in geese ( anser ancer) ” journal of animal and veterinary advances, 8(3): 562567,2009. [22] a.q. maciuszonek, g. bartosz and b. marek, “ rapd-pcr analysis of various goose populations” folia biologica (krakow), vol 53:(1-2):83-85, 2005. [23] l. peggy, r. antoni, and j. peter, “molecular genetics (rapd) analysis of breeding magpie geese” the auk 113(3): 552-557, 1996. 5 table 3 : mean ± sd for effect of geese sex on weight and blood traits. sex live weight (kg) hemoglobin g/ 100cm3 hetrophil % lymphocyte % monocyte % h/l ratio male 3.072 ± 0.31 a* 15.06± 2.26 a 37.56 ± 8.01 a 50.23 ± 8.01 a 2.14 ± 0.40 b 0.735 ± 0.04 a female 2.941 ± 0.54 b 14.21 ± 2.52 a 36.56± 4.44 a 49.56 ± 4.44 a 2.33 ± 0.24 a* 0.735 ± 0.02 a table 2: mean ± sd for effect of geese breeds on weight and blood traits. strain live weight (kg) hemoglobin g/ 100cm3 hetrophil % lymphocyte % monocyte % h/l ratio white 3.158 ± 0.35 a 15.97 ± 2.98 a* 35.17 ± 8.09 a 48.17 ± 8.09a 2.14 ± 0.48 b 0.74 ± 0.4 a gray 2.637±0.30 b 12.6 ± 1.33 b 38.70 ± 7.4 a 51.70± 7.4 a 2.15 ± 0.29 b 0.74± 0.04 a piebald 3.225 ± 0.42 a*** 15.35 ± 0.81 a 36.82 ± 2.66 a 49.82± 2.66 a 2.41 ± 0.11 a* 0.73 ±0.01 a overall means 3.006 14.640 36.896 49.896 2.233 0.736 table 4: mean ± sd for interaction between sex and breed on all traits under study. strain sex live weight (kg) hemoglobin g/ 100cm3 hetrophil % lymphocyte % monocyte % h/l ratio white male female 3.467 ± 0.05 a 2.85 ± 0.15 b 17.65 ± 1.25 a* 14.3 ± 3.5 bc 52.25 ± 10.5 a 44.10± 1.6 a 1.7 ± 0.01 d 2.58 ± 0.03 a ** 34.25±10.55 a 31.1 ± 1.6 a 0.74 ± 0.05 a 0.70 ± 0.01a gray male female 2.90 ± 0.16 b 2.375 ± 0.12 c 12.75 ± 0.75 c 12.45 ± 1.95 bc 50.70± 11.4 a 52.7±2.0 a 2.105 ± 0.24 bc 2.195 ±0.39 c 37.7 ± 11.4 a 39.7 ± 2.0 a 0.73 ± 0.06 a 0.75 ± 0.009 a piebald male female 3.60 ± 0.10 a ** 2.85 ± 0.15 b 15.9 ± 0.7 ab 14.8 ± 0.5 abc 47.75± 0.15a 51.9±2.2 a 2.52 ± 0.01 ab 2.31 ±0.01 abc 34.75 ± 0.15 a 38.9 ± 2.20 a 0.72 ±0.001 a 0.74.9 ± 0.01 a table 5: band numbers and bands size range (bp) in native geese breeds primer name white piebald gray over all male female male female male female bands size range, bp no. of band size range, bp no. of band size range, bp no. of band size range, bp no. of band size range, bp no. of band size range, bp no. of band size range, bp no. of band size range, bp opa-04 13 100-880 13 100-880 16 100-880 16 100-880 16 100-950 16 100-950 90 100-950 opa-14 10 100-650 10 100-650 8 100-650 10 100-650 4 300-1000 4 100-850 46 100-850 opa-20 13 110-1250 12 110-1250 6 200-1100 6 200-1100 9 100-1100 8 100-1100 54 100-1250 opb-01 6 250-1400 6 320-1500 8 130-1700 9 130-1700 7 150-2000 7 150-2000 43 150-2000 opb-07 8 150-1500 8 150-1500 4 450-1250 4 450-1250 3 300-1250 3 300-1250 30 150-1500 opb-12 7 110-900 7 110-900 8 120-900 8 120-900 8 130-9000 8 130-900 46 110-900 total 57 100-1500 56 100-1500 50 100-1700 53 100-1700 47 100-2000 46 100-2000 309 100-2000 6 figure 2: gel electrophoresis for six rapdprimers in geese breeds. where: wm white male; wf white female; pm piebald male; pf piebald female; gm gray male; gf gray female. as in table (5) the bands size range over all the native geese, started from 100 bp and ended at 2000 bp. the smallest size of bands was recorded for opa-04, opa-14 and opa-20 (100 bp) in white, piebald and gray , while the highest size bands range w... as in table (5) the bands size range over all the native geese, started from 100 bp and ended at 2000 bp. the smallest size of bands was recorded for opa-04, opa-14 and opa-20 (100 bp) in white, piebald and gray , while the highest size bands range w... the overall % polymorphism band for 309 bands in present study was 14.868 and 17 of 309 bands is polymorphic bands; among the primers the opa-04 have higher band with higher polymorphic bands was arrived 42.86% (table 6). depended on above results, th... the overall % polymorphism band for 309 bands in present study was 14.868 and 17 of 309 bands is polymorphic bands; among the primers the opa-04 have higher band with higher polymorphic bands was arrived 42.86% (table 6). depended on above results, th... out of six primers one of them gives unique band, the highest numbers was obtained by primer opb-01 locus, which had 5 bands, all of them were unique (ranged from 250 to 1500 bp) and found in white goose. out of six primers one of them gives unique band, the highest numbers was obtained by primer opb-01 locus, which had 5 bands, all of them were unique (ranged from 250 to 1500 bp) and found in white goose. 3.2.4 nei’s gene diversity and shannon’s information index (i) 3.2.4 nei’s gene diversity and shannon’s information index (i) the gene diversity/heterozygosity and shannon’s information index in averaged 0.4815 and 0.6743, respectively. these results indicate the diversity among geese's breed are moderately high. the gene diversity/heterozygosity and shannon’s information index in averaged 0.4815 and 0.6743, respectively. these results indicate the diversity among geese's breed are moderately high. 3.2.5 phylogenetic tree 3.2.5 phylogenetic tree as in the dendrograms (figure, 3), the overall genetic distance among native geese arrived 64.122% and three clusters were found, the 1st cluster branch consisted of the white geese (male and female) breed, the second one cluster is included piebal... as in the dendrograms (figure, 3), the overall genetic distance among native geese arrived 64.122% and three clusters were found, the 1st cluster branch consisted of the white geese (male and female) breed, the second one cluster is included piebal... these results indicated that the gray geese breed is most genetically distant from the white and piebald geese breeds (64.122%), while this cluster indicates a close relationship recorded between piebald and white was arrived and the results indicated... these results indicated that the gray geese breed is most genetically distant from the white and piebald geese breeds (64.122%), while this cluster indicates a close relationship recorded between piebald and white was arrived and the results indicated... according to the hematological results in table (2) and genotypic results in figure (3) the gray geese's was different from both white and piebald goose, while the last two one is nearly to each other, it means the hematological differences return to ... according to the hematological results in table (2) and genotypic results in figure (3) the gray geese's was different from both white and piebald goose, while the last two one is nearly to each other, it means the hematological differences return to ... 4. conclusion 4. conclusion 4. conclusion 5. acknowledgement 5. acknowledgement  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.22 received:20 june 2018 | accepted: 15 july 2018 role of pulse oximetry screening for detection of life threatening congenital heart detects in newborn aso faeq salih adnan mohammed hamawand riyadh abdaljabbar sattar pediatric department pediatric department pediatric department college of medicine college of medicine pediatric teaching hospital university of sulaimani university of sulaimani ministry of health sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq aso.salih@univsul.edu.iq adnan_alhamwandi@yahoo.co.uk riyadhjabbar@yahoo.com 134 abstract: most of newborns with congenital heart defects (chds) can be detected by using echocardiography. however, if such defects are not diagnosed in earlier time, therefore a severe hypoxemia, shock, acidosis and death are considered of some potential sequelae. a prospective study from january 2012 to the end of 2013 was performed and 2181 neonates were enrolled in the study. the pulse oximetry screening (pos) for both hands and one foot were obtained within the first 3-6 hours of life, when post ductal saturation was below 90%, it was considered as a positive screening, while when the saturation is between 90-95% and the difference between pre-and post-ductal saturation was more than 3%, the baby was provisionally considered to be screening as a positive then echocardiography is planned. among 100 positive pos babies, 45 (45%) of them were detected with chs, 12 (12%) was with a major chs and 33 (33%) was with a minor chs. out of 12 patients with a major chd 6 of them (50%) were asymptomatic at the time of pos.pos result was a true negative in 2078 patients, a true positive in 45 patients, false negative in 3 patients, and false positive in 55 and 28/55 of the false positive rate with pos had other pathology. the false positive rate with pulse oximetry screening is (55/2081) = 0.26%. sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive value for pos in detection of major chd were 80%, 97.29%, 17.9% and 99.80%, respectively. pulse oximetry screening is significantly improving the detection of life threatening congenital heart disease at an early stage. keywords: pediatrics, pulse oximetry, congenital heart defects, newborn. 1. introduction congenital heart defect with a critical lesion is considered to be at risk of acute cardiovascular collapse or death. at least 18 distinct types of chd are recognized, with many anatomical variations [1]. most of newborns with chd can be diagnosed using echocardiography, however, if such defects are not diagnosed in earlier time, therefore a severe hypoxemia, shock, acidosis and death are considered of come potential sequelae. timely recognition of these conditions is likely to improve outcome and therefore the evaluation of screening strategies to enhance early detection is of importance [6]. major chds are usually resulted in death or required an invasive intervention therapy such as surgery or cardiac catheterization during the infancy period, in which the earlier detection by screening is the most important and likely to be improved outcome. we have further divided this group into two subcategories: critical and serious. critical lesions are most likely to present in the first few days or weeks of life, usually as a result of closure of the ductus arteriosus [8]. wren et al are described critical chds in their study in the accordance with a previously published uk categorization to include all potentially life-threatening duct-dependent conditions in addition to infants dying or undergoing invasive procedures such as surgery or cardiac catheterization within the first 28 days of life, although it is accepted that the death from undiagnosed chds can occur after that age. serious chds are defined as those defects are not classified as a critical that result in death or invasive intervention within 12 months of age [2]. the prevalence of major defects remains essentially unchanged at around 2.5 per 1000 live births [1,4,8]. critical lesions have an estimated incidence of 1–1.8 per 1000 live births [2,9,10] and this group accounts for between 15% and 25% of all chds, depending on the definitions used [2,7]. most of life-threatening and critical chds importantly life-threatening, critical are asymptomatic at birth and in whom deterioration or death can occur before the condition is diagnosed [11]. echocardiography is considered that it has significant limitations in term of a screening tool due to its high false positive (fp) rate. moreover, it is due to the cost and a lack of availability of trained personnel for examination performance [3,7]. generally, the rationale for pulse oximetry screening is usually depended on the presence of hypoxaemia to some degree in the majority of chds. this may result in the mailto:aso.salih@univsul.edu.iq mailto:adnan_alhamwandi@yahoo.co.uk mailto:riyadhjabbar@yahoo.com 135 obvious cyanosis. however, a mild degree of hypoxaemiais very difficult be detected by clinical observation and even though by experienced clinicians [13]. the difficulty is exacerbated in infants with pigmented skin [14]. these results have an important role in exploration the possibility of pulse oximetry, which might be useful in detection of hypoxaemia associated with chds in apparently healthy newborns. furthermore, a number of studies have been published that applied pulse oximetry as a screen for chds in this group [1017,26]. 2. methods and materials prospective study included babies born at maternity hospital in sulaimani and babies born in private hospitals and referred to pediatric neonatal care unit in the first day of life for optimizing screening performance with pulse oximetry. the study period was from 1 october 2012 to 1 march 2013. during that period, 2371 live babies born. out of these new born babies 2181 were enrolled in the study. the remaining newborns were excluded because they were premature. pulse oximeter screening was performed using b3-gima portable pulse oximeter with a neonatal oximax adhesive sensor. the accuracy of ±2% for the measurement of oxygen saturation (spo2) is applied by the manufacturer. two dimensional and doppler (spectral and color) echocardiography examinations were obtained by same operator for positive screening patient using a commercial instrument with 3vc and 7vc mhz transducers (adjusted according to patient chest wall thickness) acusons cypress, usa made, supplied by siemens company. the pos for both hands and one foot were obtained within the first 3-6 hours of life. probe will be fixed on the wrist or palm and to the sole of the foot, by a random order. the same oximeter was used for all three sequential measurements. in order to have less movement artifacts, the pulse was watched until a good waveform was observed. it usually required 3-5 minutes for all 3 measurements to be performed. the parents were informed, but no written consent was obtained on enrolment in the study, the following information of each infant was recorded: gestational age, age at echocardiography done, sex, birth weight, way of delivery, apgar score at 5 minutes, any association like idm, iugr, trisomy and any associated clinical presentation like murmur, cyanosis, tachypnea, apnea and grunting. when post ductal saturation was below 90% it was considered as positive screening while saturation between 90-95% and the difference between pre-and post-ductal saturation more than 3% the neonate regarded previously to be screening positive, but the measurement should be repeated. after three repeated positive finding, they were arranged to have an echocardiogram performed on the same day according to the study protocol. when oxygen saturation above 95 % is define as normal and no further action is done. this protocol is shown on figure 1 below. pos results were recorded and statistics were performed on the data using spss 17, version for windows. figure 1: algorithm for pulse oximetry screening for chd [27]. 3. results during the study period of five months, data from 100 babies with positive pos were recorded and analyzed. the median age at the time of echocardiography was (12 hours range from 1-3 days). table 1summarizes the baseline demographic characteristics of the study population. table 1: baseline characteristic of study population. 136 achd was detected in 45 babies (45%) 12 babies were classified as major chd and 33 babies (33%) as minor chd. an overview of the echocardiographic findings in the 100 screening-positive patients is given in (figure 2), and the diagnoses are listed in (table 2). figure 2: echo graphic finding in 100 patients with positive oximetry screening. table 2: types of congenital heart disease detected by pulse oximetry screening. there was extra clinical finding that make a decision for echocardiography among 19/45 patients: murmur (8), blue discoloration (10), trisomy (8). a separate analysis was performed for the 12 patients with major chd (table 3), 6 of these 12 patients (50%) were asymptomatic at the time of pos. table 3: clinical findings in patients with major congenital heart defects (n=12). pos was true negative in 2078, true positive in 45 patients, false negative in 3 patients, (ta in1 patient, pda in 1 patient and isolated vsd in 1 patient) and false positive in 55. pos was false-positive related to the diagnosis of chd in 55 newborns (healthy n = 27, persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn n = 6, sepsis n = 13, rds =4, birth asphyxia =5). and false positive rate with pulse oximetry screening is (55/2081) = 2, 6%. a positive pulse oximetry screening gives a (p=0.003) of having major congenital heart disease. the specificity, sensitivity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value of pulse oximetry screening for major chd were shown in (table 4). table 4: the performance of screening methods in the detection of major congenital heart disease in newborn infants. 4. discussion due to the published statistical data, about 0.8-1 babies per 1000 live births are at risk for life threatening cardiac malformation and 30% of such infants either are leaving hospital without the detection of malformation or return to hospital in a circulatory collapse or die at home [20]. an instant trial for early detection of such disorders was performed. the current investigation demonstrates that over a period of 5 months’ age; pos is allowed the early detection of chd in 45 neonates, including12 neonates with a major chd. the list of detected asymptomatic major chd in this study is mainly interested and also includes acyanotic 137 lesions such as coarctation of the aorta and atrioventricular septal defect (table 4). one of the asymptomatic cyanotic chd in our study was ta with asd and vsd, oxygen saturation was below 90% several hours after birth and echocardiography done at the same time. although in ta, there is some degree of cyanosis at birth, but here the cyanosis was not so evident, probably due to the associated shunt (pda). the normal course of postnatal oxygen saturation is well known [16]: a healthy newborn at the age of two minutes has a mean arterial oxygen saturation of 73%, which rises to 95% within one hour. this process is mainly individually and considerably being varies, which explains the high rate of false positive pos test results in investigation with screenings very soon after birth [12,28]. in the current study population, (55%)of patients were recorded with a low saturation (positive pos) and had a normal intracardiac anatomy. pulmonary hypertension accounts for at least 10.9% of these false positive test results in our study. the early diagnosis of persistent pulmonary hypertension in neonates is considered to be beneficial, which is including in the absence of chd, since it can be drawn the attention to an underlying problem such a sepsis. many previously published studies try to assess the applicability of pulse oximetry screening for congenital heart disease and the study populations ranged from (2114 to 11281) to enable a confident estimate of sensitivity, as there are no ascertainment of missed cases dying in the community that made unsupported claims of sensitivity [10,18,19,20.26.29] since wren et al. showed that an average of 5% of all babies with critical heart disease died undiagnosed in the community [2]. upon the cut-off criteria in these studies, the false positive rate of pulse oximetry screening varied between 0.009% and 5%. richmond et al. showed that the introducing of repeat pulse oximetry brought their false positive rate down from 5% to 1% [10]. in our study, the sensitivity of pos for detection of chd was 80%, and the rate of false positive result of pos was relatively high (2.6%), the reason for a high false result, it may be due to the time of screening of pos soon after birth and experience of doctor taking the measure, also the current investigation sample size is relatively small in comparison to other studies. in balu v et al shows poor sensitivity of pos (19%) [30] in comparison with clinical examination which was much higher than pos and shows high false positive rate in comparison to our study. in balu v et al study they thought that this low result may be due to the fact that only four patients in their study had critical chd. in addition, technical and human factors may also have contributed to the low sensitivity of pulse oximetry, hence, repeated testing and adequate training of manpower is required before pulse oximetry can be recommended for clinical screening of chd on a mass level [30]. in mohamed a. et al study the sensitivity of pos was 84% which is relatively similar to our study and the rate of false positive of pos was 0.17% [32] and this result is lower than our study because of large study sample in comparison to our study. in frank th et al, the sensitivity of pos was 77, 78% and positive predictive value was 25, 93% and false positive rate of pos was 0.10% [32], which is relatively similar in comparison to our study. in de wahl granelli a et al, showed that the pos sensitivity was 62% and false positive rate in detection of a major chd was 0.17% [25]. the difference in this result is attributed to large study sample in comparison to our study, and most of their sample screened after 24 hour of life, which may lead to decrease the false positive rate in their study. however, there is a limited knowledge and cooperation from the local obstetrician to send for routine fetal echocardiography in our region, and also due to the patient’s health education, therefore the percentage of chd detected by prenatal ultrasound was 0% in the current study. in wren et al the rate of antenatal detection of chd was 20% [2]. in frank th et al, there was a relatively high percentage of chd detected by prenatal ultrasound (60%) [32]. the limitation in our study were that we could not followup all cases after discharge for later diagnosis of congenital heart diseases because of insufficient data recordings and insufficient man power. another limitation in this study, is that we did not check femoral pulses routinely; since half of the babies with duct dependent circulation detected at neonatal physical examination had poor or absent femoral pulsation as a major important warning sign so neglecting femoral pulses palpations is likely to reduce the detection of duct dependent circulation on clinical examination. a strong point is relatively due to a large number was studied, pre-and post-ductal assessment of pos keeping pos results away from clinicians who performed physical examinations to reduce bias. 5. conclusion current study shows that pulse oximetry screening of all well newborn babies in maternity and pediatric units is practically applicable with a minimum use of time, and it has significant improve in the detection of life threatening congenital heart disease at an early stage. a significant number of newborns babies in the current study was diagnosed with critical congenital heart defects whom have not been detected prenatally can be detected at an asymptomatic stage, before any clinical deterioration occurs. this makes it possible to avoid cardiogenic shock in these patients before hospital discharge. the low false positive rate, suggest that such screening will be cost effective. the important thing is probably to have one pulse oximetry screening during the first 24 hours of life to prevent circulatory collapse in hospital of babies with duct dependent pulmonary circulation and to perform a second pulse oximetry screening before discharging the newborn from nursery. pulse oximetry screen performance for newborn is mainly a cost effective, because as each additional case that receives a timely diagnosis costs the same as the treatment of a child’s readmittance in circulatory collapse, but there is probably an additional long term cost benefit from reduced neurological morbidity. 138 6. recommendations this study recommends the followings: 1pulse oximetry screening should be achieved for following 3-6 hours of age. if an early discharge is planned. therefore, screening test should be performed as late as possible. 2perform the screening in a quiet area in order to provide soothe and comfort atmosphere for the infant. 3if it is possible, conduct screening while the infant is awake, quiet and calm. 4avoid to perform pulse oximetry screening on an infant, while he or she is sleeping, crying or cold due to oxygen saturations may be affected. 5if you are using disposable pulse-oximetry probes, use only one clean probe for each screened infant. if reusable probes being applied, the probe should be cleaned according to manufacturer instruction prior to use. because dirty probes are considered one of problems to decrease the reading accuracy and cause infection transmission. 6perform pulse oximetry on the right hand and one foot after 24 hours of age. measurements should be taken in parallel or one after another. if an infant was born prematurely, screening will be performed when it is medically appropriate. 7ensure that all readings are accurate by using pulseoximetry equipment confidence indicators. 8follow up all cases with a positive pos after the discharge from hospital, because it is considered to be a great importance for later diagnosis of congenital heart diseases and provide sufficient recording data. 9perform examination of femoral pulses routinely. reference [1] d. lloyd-jones, r. adams, m. carnethon, g. de simone, tb. ferguson, k. flegal, et al., “heart disease and stroke statistics 2009 update: a report from the american heart associationstatistics committee and stroke statistics subcommittee,” circulation, 119, pp. e21–181, 2009. 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[30] v. balu, m. gayathry, th. sinimol, r. karimaserry, and k. karukappilly, “clinical screening for congenital heart disease 139 at birth: a prospective study in a community hospital in kerala,” springer, 33, pp. 2fs 13312-011, 2002. [31] a. mohamed, el. hatem, b. aldeek, and b. safiyaa, “can pulse oximetry screening reduce the postnatal diagnostic gap in critical congenital heart diseases?,” med. j. cairo univ., 80, pp. 93-99, 2012. [32] th. frank, w. cornelia, d. ingo, m. andreas, k. martin, s. peter, “effectiveness of neonatal pulse oximetry screening for detection of critical congenital heart disease in daily clinical routine— results from a prospective multicenter study,” j. perinat. med., 33, pp. 455-7, 2005. 5. conclusion 6. recommendations this study recommends the followings:  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 3 | issue 1 | june 2018 | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.1.3 received: february 21, 2018 | accepted: april 7, 2018 system level study of lte-advanced multiple antenna system with inter-band carrier aggregation dana salahalddin abdalla salim qadir mohammed communication eng. department communication eng. department technical college of engineering technical college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq dana.abdala@spu.edu.iq salim.muhammed@spu.edu.iq 9 abstract spatial multiplexing (sm) multiple antenna system and carrier aggregation (ca) are techniques introduced in long term evolutionadvanced (lte−advanced) to support high data rates by increasing the number of transmission paths and the available bandwidth respectively. therefore, in this study we evaluate the performance of lte-advanced physical downlink shared channel for single and sm multiple antenna systems in two different frequency bands. the radio channel is modelled using an enhanced three-dimensional (3d) international telecommunication union-radio communication sector channel model integrated with base station and user mobile 3d antenna patterns. except the total received power, similar channel statistics are observed for both frequency bands. the study is performed considering 1x1, 2x2, 4x4 antenna systems in a macro-cell urban environment at component carries (cc) of 2600 mhz and 800 mhz to model bands 7 and 20 of ca_7-20 respectively. the performance is evaluated in terms of throughput and sm gain for many base stations and user positions considering various modulation and coding schemes. we used the computationally efficient received bit information rate algorithm to compute the throughput as a function of channel structure and signal to noise ratio. as expected higher throughput is observed for the 800 mhz band over the 2600 mhz band. this is due to the higher total received power of the 800 mhz band. the novel sm gain results show that the sm gain depends on the operating band and it’s less than the number of spatial links. moreover, the efficiency of inter-band ca in increasing the data rates is a function cell radius and the number of spatial streams. keywords: index terms -lte−advanced, rbir, carrier aggregation, mimo. 1. introduction the evolution of long term evolution (lte) cellular communication systems to 4g lte-advanced is motivated by recent capacity demands. bandwidth flexibility (from 1.4 mhz to 20 mhz) is one of the main characteristics of lte which allows radio access deployment in different frequency bands, each of which has their own unique characteristics. even the 20 mhz lte bandwidth is not sufficient to support the target peak information rates of 1 gbps in the downlink (dl) channel and 500 mbps in the uplink (ul) channel. spatial multiplexing (sm) multi-in-multi-out (mimo) antenna system and carrier aggregation (ca) are features that have been added to lte-advanced to achieve this goal. lte-advanced standard supports sm mimo of up to 8 spatial streams in the dl and up to 4 spatial streams in the ul. in addition, lte-advanced allows the aggregation of two to five standard bandwidths using ca to produce a maximum bandwidth of 100 mhz [1]. the 3gpp technical specification of lte-advanced supports aggregation of contiguous intra-bands and noncontiguous intra-bands and inter-bands. each carrier frequency is called component carrier (cc). the propagation characteristics of each cc is different from the other ccs and this difference increases as the gap between the ccs increase. table 1 shows a list of interband ca for the dl in the release 11 of the lteadvanced 3gpp specification [2]. it can be noticed from the table that the gap between the ccs is greater than 1 ghz and a maximum gap of 1845 mhz can be observed for ca_7−20. this means a large difference between the total received power and the received level of the signal to noise ratio (snr). having this difference in snr between different ccs may lead to a difference in the receiver throughput which can degrade the efficiency of ca. this represents a big challenge for lte-advanced in achieving the target peak data rates. table 1: inter-band ca in the dl (3gpp rel 11) e-utra ca band e-utra band operating band mhz cc mhz ccs gap mhz ca_1-5 1 2110 – 2170 2140 1260 5 869 – 894 880 ca_4-13 4 2110 – 2155 2130 1380 13 746 – 756 750 ca_7-20 7 2620 – 2690 2650 1845 20 791 – 821 805 ca_2-17 2 1930 – 1990 1960 1220 17 734 – 746 740 ca_3-20 3 1805 – 1880 1840 1035 20 791 – 821 805 10 the performance of inter-band ca between bands 5 and 7 are measured practically in [3] for 2x2 sm antenna system in a dense urban area with 187 m separation distance between the base stations. in [3], the bs transmit power of band 7 was set higher than the transmit power of band 5 to equalize the power spectrum density of the two bands. the study does not consider single antenna and 4x4 sm mimo systems. system-level simulation studies of communication systems is vital to understand and evaluate the overall performance of a system and optimize system parameters prior to standardization and real deployments. system level studies include many bss and ues, various modulation and coding schemes (mcs), and a number of scenarios. performing system level studies using bit accurate physical layer simulators is time consuming. instead the computational effective (rbir) algorithm is a suitable alternative to the bit level simulator when studying the system level performance of ofdm based communication system [4]. several abstraction models are available for ofdm based wireless communication systems. an rbir abstraction model for wimax ieee 802.16m wlan system is developed in [5], and for lteadvanced downlink in [6]. examples of abstract simulation models for mimo-ofdm system without considering a specific communication standard includes the model of [7] which calculates the minimum mean square error (mmse) iteratively at the receiver with soft interference cancelation (sic) and the model of [8] for maximum likelihood detector. we study in this paper the performance of lte-advanced sm mimo antenna system in the dl. we evaluate the performance at carrier frequencies of 2600 mhz and 800 mhz to model bands 7 and 20 of ca_7-20 respectively. the rbir abstraction technique proposed in [6] used in this study to quantify the packet error rate (per) and throughput in the dl for lte-advanced 1x1, 2x2, and 4x4 antenna configurations. obtained simulation results are for large numbers of urban users in an interference-free scenario. the enhanced 3d itu-r channel model, integrated with 3d radiation patterns for the macro-cell base stations (bs) and the user equipment (ue) antennas obtained from measurement, is used to model the multipath fading wireless channel between the bss and the ues. each bs-ue link is characterized by pathloss, shadowing, and multipath effect in the enhanced 3d itu-r model. the remainder of the paper is as follows: the system model is defined in section 2. section 3 describes the rbir technique and presents the validation results for single and multiple antenna systems. simulation results for system level performance are shown in section 4 and section 5 draw conclusions. 2. system model a. enhanced 3d itu-r channel modeling process the communication channels in this paper are generated using the enhanced 3d international telecommunication union-radio communication sector (itu-r) channel model [9]. the itu-r model is a geometry based stochastic channel model (gscm) that needs various randomness levels to model many bs-ue channels. as shown in figure 1, the channel generation process of the enhanced 3d itu-r gscm [10] can be described using six steps. these are classified into three phases: 1) ue parameters, 2) generation of large scale parameters (lsps) and 3) generation of channel impulse response. the user parameter part (step1) is used to setup simulation parameters, such as the type of environment, the numbers of bss and ues, the directions and speeds of the ue, and the propagation condition line of sight (los) and nonlos (nlos). in this phase, the users also can supply the antenna patterns at both the bs and ue, the spacing and orientations of the antenna elements. the second part of the channel creation process is the propagation parameter generation, which consists of path loss (pl), shadow fading (sf) calculation and the generation of lsps and small scale parameters (ssps) for the channel. lsps are generated based on a pre-defined probability distribution functions (pdf) with specific mean and standard deviation. these include the root mean square (rms) delay spread (ds), the rms angel of arrival (aoa) and angle of departure (aod) in both azimuth and elevation, the kfactor and the sf. the de-correlation distances and cross correlations are calculated for the generated lsps. for more details on these parameters please refer to [11]. the ssps are now generated based on the lsps from step 3. the ssps represent the information associated with each multipath component (mpc). this include the phase, delay, angular information for each individual cluster and ray within the cluster. this is performed based on the predefined pdfs. figure 1: enhanced 3d itu-r channel modelling bs pattern 11 step 5 represents the generation of the channel impulse response in time domain. this includes generating random phases for the rays within cluster and apply the cross-polarization effect between antenna elements. then the doppler effect is added in case of mobility. finally, in step 6, pl and sf values are applied to the channel impulse responses. this stage enables system level studies to be performed. the power radiation pattern of the antenna used in this paper are shown in figure 2 for the macro bs and ue. these are obtained from anechoic chamber measurements performed at the university of bristol [12]. all patterns are captured in 3d and consists information about the phase, polarization and directivity. table 2 summarizes the antenna patterns parameters. the code file of the channel model is available in [13] and the channel model parameters are summarized in table 2. table 2: system parameters parameter value lte bandwidth 10 mhz no. of subcarrier (nsubc) 600 no. of ofdm symbols 7 tslot (ms) 0.5 carrier frequency 800 mhz, 2.6 ghz environments urban (itu-r scenario 4) cellular deployment 3-sector hexagonal grid number of bs 20 number of sectors 3 number of ues per sector 300 bs heights (m) range of 7-77 m above ground total number of ue’s 18000 ue height (m) 1.5 ue locations 50-1000m from bs bs transmit power (dbm) 43 bs antenna downtilt 10º mimo scheme 2x2 , 4x4 spatial multiplexing antenna type bs uniform linear array with 6 dual polarized patches ue nokia mobile phone antenna (omni-directional) 3db beamwidth azimuth/elevation bs 65º/15º ue 360º/36º antenna element spacing bs 10λ ue 0.5λ b. channel model propagation staistics the propagation statistics of the enhanced 3d itu-r channel model for urban environment are shown in figure 3, which includes the cumulative distribution function (cdf) of the path loss, the k-factor, the rms values of the ds, azimuth departure angle (aodaz) spread, elevation departure angle (aodel) spread, azimuth arrival angle (aoaaz) spread, and elevation arrival angle (aoael) spread. since the study is performed for the downlink, the angles of departure refer to the base station side and the angle of arrival represents the user mobile side. comparing the results of figure 3 in terms of component carrier frequency, considerably higher total received power occurs at 800 mhz. both frequencies have approximately the same delay and angular spreads as well as k-factor. (a) base station (bs) pattern (b) user equipment (ue) pattern figure 2: bs and ue obtained radiation patterns [12] a) average received power ue pattern bs pattern 12 b) k-factor c) delay spread d) aodaz e) aoaaz f) aodel g) aoael figure 3: propagation statistics of the enhanced 3d itu-r channel model c. network layout and snr calculation the lte-advanced system is based on a hexagonal macro cellular deployment shown in figure 4. every bs site covers three sectors in urban environment (itu scenario 4) with a cell radius of 1 km for 20 bss assuming different bs antenna heights. within each sector 300 ues were randomly scattered at street level. the system was modelled at ccs of 800 mhz and 2600 mhz. the system parameters of this paper are listed in table 2. the average snr at each ue location is calculated using (1): aw gn ue ue p p snr  (1) in (1), pue represents the total received signal power at ue location and pawgn is determined using (2) which represents the additive white gaussian noise(awgn): lineareffecawgn fbtkp  (2) in (2) k represents boltzmann’s constant, t is the temperature in kelvin, beffec which is equal to 9 mhz and represents the number of subcarriers multiplied by the subcarrier frequency. in this case 600 subcarriers multiplied by 15 khz. flinear is the noise figure (linear value). in this paper a temperature value of 288 kelvin and a noise figure value of fdb=9 db is chosen based on [14]. 13 figure 4: the macro cell topology d. throughput estimation the total numbers of ues included in this study are 18000 (20 bss, 900 ues each). for every bs-ue channel, the impulse response is generated using the enhanced 3d itu-r gscm, converted into the frequency domain, and used as input into our physical downlink shared channel (pdsch) rbir abstraction engine to estimate the rate of packet error for 10 mcss at an snr value calculated using (1). note that the same process is followed when estimating the performance using bit accurate physical layer simulations for the validation study of the rbir abstract engine in section 3. a link adaptation algorithm is applied that choses the mcs that provide the highest throughput (thr) of every link. the lte-advanced pdsch throughput is calculated using (3) assuming perfect channel knowledge at the receiver [15]. )per(rthr mcsmcsmcs  1 (3) in (3) rmcs can be calculated in (mbps) using (4) as a function of modulation order (km), the coding rate (rc), the active subcarriers (nsubc) and the ofdm symbols (nsymb) in the time slot (tslot). table 2 summarizes the system parameters used here while table 3 lists the value of rmcs for each considered mcs mode. slot symbsubccm mcs t nnrk r   (4) 3. rbir algorithm and validation results as mentioned earlier rbir technique is a computational efficient technique used instead to bit level simulation when studying the system level performance of ofdm based communication. therefore, this section first describes the rbir algorithm (in sub-section a), then presents ber versus snr performance validation result of [6] for single and multiple antenna systems in sub-section b and sub-section c respectively. a. rbir algorithm the following describes the steps required in rbir technique [5]: step1: for a specific mcs, snr, and channel sample, calculate an snr vector which represents snr variations across the ofdm sub-carriers as results of frequency selective fading. step2: the snr vector is converted to a single effective value (esnr) using the effective mapping (esm) of (5). 𝐸𝑆𝑁𝑅 = 𝛷𝑚 −1 { 1 𝑁𝑠𝑢𝑏𝑐 . 𝑁𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑚 ∑ ∑ 𝛷(𝑆𝑁𝑅𝑛,𝑘 ) 𝑁𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑚 𝑘=1 𝑁𝑠𝑢𝑏𝑐 𝑛=1 } (5) where, snrn,k is the snr of the nth sub-carrier for the kth spatial link. m is the modulation type, nstream is the number of spatial streams, and φ(.) is an invertible function. for mutual information (mi) esm approach, φ(.) is defined as the symbol information (si) as given in (6). 𝑆𝐼(𝛾, 𝑚) = 𝐸𝑋𝑌 {log2 𝑃(𝑌|𝑋, 𝛾) ∑ 𝑃(𝑋)𝑃(𝑌|𝑋, 𝛾)𝑋 } (6) in (6) y is the symbol received for an snr value of γ and p(y|x,γ) is the awgn probability density for noise-free transmit symbol x. p(x) is selected as 1/m. step3: the instantaneous (ber) or (per) can be computed by mapping the esnr using a look-up-table containing ber or per performance versus snr for an awgn channel. this table can be obtained from bit accurate simulation. step4: calculate the final ber or per performance for a specific snr and mcs by averaging the instantaneous ber or per across all channel samples. figure 5 shows the block diagram of the transmitter for lte-advanced pdsch bit accurate simulator. the reverse operations are performed at the receiver. table 3: list of mcs modes and peak error free bit rates mcs modulation code rate rmcs (mbps) for siso 1 qpsk [km=2] 1/3 5.6 2 1/2 8.4 3 2/3 11.2 4 4/5 14.44 5 16 qam [km=4] 1/2 16.8 6 2/3 22.4 7 4/5 26.88 8 64 qam [km=6] 2/3 33.6 9 3/4 37.8 10 4/5 40.32 figure 5: block diagram of the lte-advanced downlink transmitter. b. single antenna system: this section presents ber versus snr performance obtained in [6] using the rbir and bit accurate simulators to prove the precision of the rbir concept for single antenna system. the simulation results are for two ue locations; location1 with los (blue colour graphs) and location2 with nlos (brown graphs). the channel channel coding sub-block interleving rate matching modulation mapper layer mapper and precoder channel and awgn ofdm generator binary data transport channel processing physical channel processing 14 parameters at these two locations are listed in table 4. as mentioned previously, 10 mcs modes considered in this paper. however, for clarity figure 6 shows the simulation results for just 3 mcs modes. a good match can be observed between the bit level and rbir abstraction simulations. c. spatial multiplexing multiple antenna system this section shows ber versus snr performance validation results of the rbir abstraction engine for sm mimo antenna system. the verification was performed in [6] for four different cases, 2x2 and 4x4 sm mimo each with low and medium spatial correlation. the low and medium spatial correlations are defined by the 3gpp technical specification [16] as a combination of spatial correlation factors (α) and (β) for bs and ue respectively as summarised in table 5. figure 7 shows the simulation results for just 2 mcs modes (for clarity). the channel parameters at the ue locations for the four cases are listed in table 6. a good match can be observed between the bit level and rbir abstraction simulations. figure 6: ber comparison between bit level and rbir simulator for single antenna system [6] table 4: channel model parameters for the two ue locations in figure 6 parameter location1 location2 channel length (samples) 7 34 k-factor (db) 17.2 -9 rms delay spread(ns) 21.2 765.7 aod rms azimuth spread(degrees) 0.73 3.17 aod rms elevation spread(degrees) 0.001 0.53 aod rms azimuth spread(degrees) 8.14 70 aod rms elevation spread(degrees) 3.13 17.27 table 5: 3gpp bs and ue spatial correlation factors parameter value low correlation medium correlation high correlation bs spatial correlation (α) 0 0.3 0.9 ue spatial correlation (β) 0 0.9 0.9 a) 2x2 sm mimo b) 4x4 sm mimo figure 7: ber comparison results of bit level and rbir simulator of 2x2 and 4x4 sm mimo for mcs2 and mcs6 [6] table 6: channel model parameters for the four cases of figure 7 parameter case1 case2 case3 case4 mimo 2x2 2x2 4x4 4x4 correlation value low med low med α 0.002 0.29 0.06 0.28 β 0.026 0.89 0.02 0.89 k-factor (db) -8.8 -1.4 -6.5 0.7 rms delay spread(ns) 38.9 146.6 198.8 61.0 aod rms azimuth spread 6.5º 3.2º 9.0º 4.9º aod rms elevation spread 1.0º 0.4º 1.6º 0.6º aod rms azimuth spread 132.5º 23.9º 30.1º 63º aod rms elevation spread 17.4º 0.5º 2.4º 14º 4. simulation results this section presents the simulation results of lte−advanced pdsch. the simulation is performed for 1x1, 2x2, 4x4 antenna systems in macro-cell urban environment at ccs of 800 mhz and 2600 mhz each with 10 mhz bandwidth. figure 8 shows the cdf of throughput in (mbps) for all ues in the 20 macro-cells considered. it is obvious from figure 8 that the throughput at 800 mhz is higher than that at 2600 mhz. this is due to the relative higher total transmit power for the 800 mhz band compared to the 2600 mhz band (see figure 3a). for instance, at 800 mhz, 30% of ues provide a throughput less than or equal to 140 mbps. however, at 2600 mhz 15 the number of ues that provide less than 140 mbps throughput increase to 60%. this means that the 800 mhz gains 30 % higher throughput compared to the 2600 mhz band. in figure 8, the throughput increases with increasing the number of antennas. however, this increase has no linear relationship with the increase in number of spatial streams (two and four in the 2x2 and 4x4 mimo system respectively). as shown in figure 9, the reason for this non-linearity is that not all the ues have a sm gain equal to the number of mimo streams. for example, considering the 800 mhz cdf graphs of figure 9, around 58% of the ues experience a sm gain less than two for 2x2 mimo system. for 4x4 mimo system, around 68% of the ues have sm gain less than 4. figure 8: cdf of ues throughput for all ues and bss. figure 9: cdf of downlink sm gain for all ues finally, figure 10 shows the throughput scattered plot for one cell for the three-different antenna configuration at both frequencies. the figure illustrates the dependency of the carrier aggregation efficiency on the number of antenna elements. the coverage area of the 4x4 mimo system significantly decreased compared to the 2x2 and 1x1 antenna system. this is due to increase interstream interference of 4x4 antenna element compared to the 2x2 and 1x1. the increase in the throughput of 4x4 and 2x2 mimo systems comes on the cost of reduced coverage area compared to the single antenna system. figure 10 also shows that efficient ca can be achieved by choosing approximately cell radiuses of 800 m, 500 m, 250 m for 1x1, 2x2, and 4x4 antenna systems respectively. to maintain good ca efficiency, the cell radius is decreased 20% in siso, 50% in 2x2 mimo, 75% in 4x4 mimo. in other words, the efficiency of ca decreases as the number of antenna elements increases. as mentioned previously, this is due to the worst per performance of multiple antenna systems because the inter stream interference increases as the number of antenna elements increases. a) siso – 800 mhz b) siso – 2600 mhz c) 2x2 mimo–800 mhz d) 2x2 mimo–2600 mhz e) 4x4 mimo–800 mhz f) 4x4 mimo–2600 mhz figure 10: ues throughput coverage map for one cell for component carriers of 800 mhz and 2600 mhz 5. conclusions this paper has presented propagation channel statistics for a large number of ues in two different frequency bands and three different antenna systems in urban environment using the enhanced 3d itu-r channel model. an rbir abstraction model for the lte advanced downlink physical layer was used to determine the throughput and per versus snr at each ue. simulation results shows that the efficiency of carrier aggregation efficiency is engaged with increasing the number of antennas. the efficiency of carrier aggregation decreases as the number of spatial stream increase due to increased inter stream interference. accordingly, the following are recommended to increase the efficiency of 16 the carrier aggregation without increasing the bs total transmit power:  heterogenous deployment with larger cell size for the 800 mhz band and small cells for the 2600 mhz band  decrease the cell radius of the 800 mhz band to 500 m instead of 1000 m.  choose a cell radius of 200 m for the 2600 mhz band. this study can be extended in the future to consider the aforementioned recommendation and other parameters such as interference and different spacing between antenna elements. 6. reference [1] e. dahlman, s. parkvall, and j. skold, 4g lte/lte-advanced for mobile broadband, elsevier/academic press, oxford, 2011. [2] 3gpp tr 36.850: “evolved universal terrestrial radio access (e−utra): inter-band carrier aggregation,” v11.0.0, 2013. [3] s. lee, s. hyeon, j. kim, h. roh and w. lee, “the useful impact of carrier aggregation: a measurement study in south korea for commercial lte-advanced networks,” ieee vehicular technology magazine, 12 (1), pp. 55-62, 2017. [4] 3gpp tsg-ran-1 meeting #35, r1-03-1298, “effective sir computation for ofdm systemlevel simulations,” 2003. [5] l. wan, s. tsai, and m. almgren, “a fadinginsensitive performance metric for a unified link quality model,” in proceedings of the ieee wireless communications and networking conference (wcnc), pp. 2110 – 2114, 2006. [6] a. ameen, e. mellios, a. doufexi, n. dahnoun, and a. nix, “lte advanced downlink throughput evaluation in the 3g and tv white space bands,” in proceedings of the ieee international symposium on personal indoor and mobile radio communications (pimrc), pp. 771-775, 2013. [7] t. huang, j. yuan, x. cheng and w. lei, “advanced link-to-system modeling of mmsesic receiver in mimo-ofdm systems,” in proceedings of the ieee international conference on signal processing and communication systems (icspcs), pp. 1-6, 2015. [8] a. medles and c. valadon, “iterative mimo effective snr mapping for ml decoder,” in proceedings of the ieee vehicular technology conference (vtc), pp. 1-5, 2015. [9] r. almesaeed, a. ameen, a. doufexi, n. dahnoun, and a. nix, “a comparison ctudy of 2d and 3d itu channel model,” in proceedings of the ieee wireless days (wd), pp. 1-7, 2013. [10] r. almesaeed, a. ameen, e. mellios, a. doufexi, and a. nix, “3d channel models: principles, characteristics, and system implications,” ieee communications magazine, 55 (4), pp. 152-159, 2017. [11] itu-r m.2135-1, “guidelines for evaluation of radio interface technologies for imt-advanced”, 2009. [12] e. mellios, z. mansor, g. hilton, a. nix, and j. mcgeehan, “impact of antenna pattern and handset rotation on macro-cell and pico-cell propagation in heterogeneous lte networks,” in proceedings of the ieee international symposium on antennas and propagation, pp. 1-2, 2012. [13] r. almesaeed and a. ameen, “enhanced 3d itu channel model”, sourceforge.net, source code, jan., 2, 2016. [online]. available: http://enhanced-3d-ituchannel-model.sourceforge.net [accesed: april. 12, 2017]. [14] 3gpp ts 36.942, “evolved universal terrestrial radio access (e−utra): radio frequency (rf) system scenarios,” v10.2.0, 2010. [15] a. doufexi, e. tameh, a. nix, s. armour, and a. molina, “hotspot wireless lans to enhance the performance of 3g and beyond cellular networks,” ieee communications magazine, 41 (7), pp.58-65, 2003. [16] 3gpp ts 36.101: “evolved universal terrestrial radio access (e−utra): user equipment (ue) radio transmission and reception,” v10.10.0, 2013. http://enhanced-3d-itu-channel-model.sourceforge.net/ http://enhanced-3d-itu-channel-model.sourceforge.net/  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 2 | july 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.2.25 association between work-relate musculoskeletal disorder and ergonomic risk factors among nursing professionals in ranya and qaladiza districts karwan mahmood khudhir department of preventive health, koya technical institute, erbil, iraq karwan.khudhir@gmail.com kochar khasraw saleh department of preventive health, koya technical institute erbil, iraq kocharkhasraw@gmail.com muhammed saeed qadir community health department, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, iraq bahast15@gmail.com ahmad azuhairi ariffin department of community health, faculty of medicine and health sciences university putra malaysia, kuala lumpur, malaysia zuhairifin@upm.edu.my kochr ali mahmood department of preventive health, koya technical institute, erbil, iraq kochrmahmood@yahoo.co.uk abstract: work related musculoskeletal disorders (wrmsds) represent one of the leading causes of occupational injury and disability among the professional nursing, due to the number and variety of risk factors associated with the work environment. this study was carried out to determine the prevalence of work related musculoskeletal disorders (wrmsds) and its association with ergonomic risk factors. a selfadministered questionnaire and observational method was used to collect information from 420 individuals and then the data were computerized and analyzed by using spss version 21. the overall prevalence of wrmsds among ranya and qaladiza districts nurses was 74%. the neck pain was the most prevalent site of wrmsds (48.4%) compared to other body parts. logistic regression analysis indicated that significant risk factors for wrmsds symptoms were older nurses aged >39.5 years old (or=3.076, 95% ci: 1.200, 7.884), medium rula risk level (or= 255.096, 95% ci: 24.078, 2702.681), very high rula risk level (or=151.675, 95% ci: 17.536, 1311.891), low rula risk level (or=9.277, 95% ci: 1.064, 80.893). prevention strategies and health education which emphasizes on psychosocial risk factors and how to improve working conditions should be introduced. keywords: work-related musculoskeletal disorders, ergonomic risk factors, nurses, rania 1. introduction ergonomics is a science that seeks to improve employee performance and wellbeing in relation to job task, equipment and environment. ergonomic application in the working environment will provide influence to the productivity of work, decrease health related problems, risk of injuries also increase job satisfaction and provide comfortable working condition while working. nowadays, work related musculoskeletal disorders are common amongst the working population and one of the main problems encountered by ergonomists in diverse workplaces around the world. this type of work-related health problem can result in serious social impacts on both individuals and communities and may lead to work restriction, work-time loss, or consequently cause work leave [1]. wrmsds is defined as an injury or disorder of the muscles, nerves, tendons, ligaments, joints, cartilage, or spinal discs, it is one of the most important occupational problems presently reported (bureau, 2006) [2]. in the literature, various terms are used to describe musculoskeletal pain, disorders, symptoms, injury, trouble, discomfort and diseases [3]. the risk factors related to wrmsds are recognized to comprise workplace activities such as manual handling, heavy lifting, strenuous task and work environment [4]. health care work has been identified as high risk for developing wrmsds [5]. according to the australian data on work-related injuries (which include wrmsds) indicate that the health and public facilities sector has one of the highest statements rates [6]. most attention has been directed towards nursing as the major occupational group in the health care sector. the profession of nursing is one of the most stressful and demanding careers in the present day, due to the number and variety of risk factors associated with the work environment. during a typical work day, nurses have to achieve numerous physically demanding occupations as well, such as transferring and repositioning patients between beds and chairs, lifting patients onto a bed, and frequently keeping bent forward or twisted postures. these type of work increases the activity of muscles and put greater stress on the ligament and joints, which can lead to fatigue and discomfort that put nurses at high risk for acute and cumulative wrmsds [7]; the most frequently reported wrmsds among nurses are low back pain, followed by neck and shoulder problems, and knee pain [8]. wrmsds are reported to considerably impact quality of life, cause loss of work time or absenteeism, increase work restriction, transfer to another job, or disability than any other group of diseases with a significant financial toll on the individual, the organization and the society as a whole [9]. according to the united states bureau of labour statistics (bls, 2013) placed nursing among the professions with the highest rate of suffering from wrmsds [10], studies in professional nursing on wrmsds reported a prevalence rate of 7090% [11, 8]. among the listed disorders, low back pain was the highest prevalence, followed by neck, shoulder and extremity pain. http://spu.edu.iq/en/ http://spu.edu.iq/en/ however, many prevalence studies have reported msds among nurses; most research has been undertaken in the developed populations [11]. iraq, in which this study was conducted, is a developing country to the best of our knowledge, no studies examining work related musculoskeletal disorders among nursing professionals, especially association between ergonomic risk factors and work related musculoskeletal disorders. therefore, acknowledge gap exists in scientific literature regarding the prevalence of wrmsds among professional nurses in kurdistan region-iraq. the current study sought to fill this gap by investigating wrmsds among nurses; the associated job risk factors and the coping strategies towards reducing the risk of development of wrmsds among nurses from selected hospitals and health care centers. 2. methods 2.1 study design and sampling technique a cross sectional study administrated to nurses working in two general hospitals (ranya and qaladiza) and seven health care centers (raparin, kewarash, chwarqurna, zharawa, sangasar, shkarta and sarwchawa) located in raparin area which is consist of (ranya and pishdar district) of sulaymaniyah city, kurdistan region-iraq. the required sample size was estimated using a formula for hypothesis testing of two group comparison [12] minimum calculated sample size was estimated at 92. after adjusting 20% for non-response and gender (multiplied by 2), the total sample size was 220 workers. simple random sampling was applied to select 220 nurses based on the inclusive criteria. nurses were invited to participate in the study with minimum one year experience working in the clinical area with no history of musculoskeletal disorders. out of 220 selfadministered questionnaires, which were distributed among nurses, 210 of them agreed to participate giving 95% respondent rate. at the end of the survey, only 192 questionnaires were analysed because 18 participants were excluded from the analysis (nurses who were pregnant at the time of study period and nurses with history of musculoskeletal disorders due to injuries). data were collected between 10th september to 30th december, 2015. the formula for the hypothesis testing of two groups that were compared was used (lemeshow et al., 1990) [12]. n = 2 2 )21( )}21(2)11(11) ~ 1( ~ 22/1{ pp ppppzppz    the prevalence of msds among office workers in male was 54.4% and 73.9 % in female in tunisian hospital staff [13] (). where: n = sample size p = prevalence z1-α/2= z statistic for level of confidence of 95%= 1.96 z1-β = z statistic for 80% power = 0.842 p1= prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders among males was 54.4% = 0.544 &p2 = prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders among females was 73.9% = 0.739 p̃= p1+p2/2 p = p1+p2/2 = 0.641 minimum sample size: n=92 after adjusting 20% for non-response and gender (multiplied by 2), the total sample size was 220 workers. 2.2 data collection data were collected from a questionnaire and direct observation. to glean subjective data a general questionnaire that covered the socio-demographic factors (age, gender) and occupational factors includes (job tenure, static work posture). also, standardized nordic questionnaire (snq) [12] was used to examine the musculoskeletal symptoms in any of nine anatomical body parts (neck and shoulder pain, upper back pain, low back pain, arm pain, knee and leg pain, ankle and foot pain) in the previous 12-months period as reported by the respondents. the body movements of the participants during work tasks were observed by the first author in accordance with the rapid upper limb assessment (rula) technique, which is known as a pen-paper observational method, is used to quantify and evaluate employee’s potential risk exposure by assessing the posture, force and muscle activities and the scores were recorded. a separate rula form was used for each employee and observation. in order to not interrupt the workers’ concentration, the observations were conducted without allowing workers know about. however, the workers were told that they would be observed before the study was initiated. the development of rula was done in three phases. the first was the development of the method for recording the working posture, the second phase involved the development of the scoring system, and the third was the development of the scale of action levels which provides a guide to the level of risk and need for action to conduct more detailed assessments. the scores were calculated for the posture of each body part. score 1 shows the most neutral posture, score 7 indicates the worst posture. the scores of this tool consist of two groups: score a includes upper arms, lower arms with wrists, score b includes the trunk, neck with legs and score c, which is called the grand score (ranging from 1-7), are obtained by adding posture scores to the muscle use and force scores. a grand score 1-2 is an acceptable level score and negligible risk (action level 1); a grand score of 3-4 is low risk and change may be required (action level 2); a grand score http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/peninsular_malaysia of 5-6 is moderate risk, which requires more observation and change as soon as possible (action level 3) and if the score is greater than 6 it means that the risk is very high and there is need for immediate change (action level 4). 2.3 data analysis statistical package for the social sciences (spss. 21) was used for statistical analysis. all variables were treated as categorical and nonnormally distributed. descriptive characteristics of the respondents were calculated as (frequency, percentage, median, and interquartile range). chi square test was used to determine the association between categorical variables and musculoskeletal disorders. totally significant variables (at p < 0.05) were included in subsequent multivariable logistic regression to estimate the adjusted odds ratios of factors associated with musculoskeletal disorders. 2.4 ethical consideration ethics approval was obtained from the ethics committee of koya technical institutes in august 2015 (ref: kti 12512). before collecting data, approval was also obtained from respective directorate of public hospitals plus health care centers and a written letter of consent was obtained from each participant. the respondents were informed about the purpose of the study and that participating in this study was voluntary. furthermore, the participants were told that their answers would be kept confidential and would only be used for research purposes. 3. results a total 210 (response rate = 95%) subjects participated in the study. details of the socio-demographic, occupational factors are presented in table 1, which, shows that the age distribution of the nurses is between 21 and 62 years and they are distributed into two groups, with 50.5% in the older group (>39.5 years) and 49.5% in the younger group (≤39.5), with median of age at 39.5 years (iqr=9.75). also, majority of kurdistan nurses were female (57.3%). based on the occupational factors, a majority of the nurses (61.5%), had history of wok ≤ 10 years; standing equal or less than two hours during working days (52.6%) and (79.7%) sitting equal or more than three hours. the median of job tenure was ten years (iqr = 9.0), as for standing median was 2 hours/working days (iqr=2.0) and median of sitting was 2 hours/working days (iqr=3.0). as for the rula risk assessment for awkward posture majority of the kurdistan nurses were in very high risk level of rula, where change needs to be implemented now. median rula risk level score was 3 (iqr=2). table 1. demographic and occupational factors nurses who participated in the study factors frequency (%) median (iqr) msds p value yes no age groups (years) 39.5 (9.75) 0.007 ≤39.5 95 (49.5) 62 33 >39.5 97 (50.5) 80 17 gender 0.77 male 85 (44.3) 62 23 female 107 (57.3) 80 27 job tenure 10 (9.0) 0.14 ≤ 10 years 118 (61.5) 83 35 ≥ 11 years 74 (38.5) 59 15 static posture (standing) 27 (6.9) 0.12 standing (≤ 2) 101 (52.6) 70 31 standing ( ) 91 (47.4) 72 19 static posture (sitting) 0.34 sitting (≤ 2) 55 (20.3) 82 25 sitting ( 3) 216 (79.7) 60 25 risk level 3 (2) < 0.001 negligible risk 18 (9.4) 1 17 low risk 32 (16.7) 12 20 medium risk 49 (25.5) 46 3 very high risk 93 (48.4) 83 10 table 2 presents the overall prevalence of wrmsds among kurdistan nurses in the past 12 months was 74%. in descending order, the body parts reported to be subjected to musculoskeletal discomfort were the neck pain 94 (48.5%), followed by shoulder, 74 (38.5%), upper back 72 (37.5%), feet/ankle 57 (29.7%), lower back 51(26.6%), thigh/ hip 50 (26%), wrists/ hands 47 (24.5), while the lowest rate were found to be in knee 43 (22.4%) and elbows 32 (16.7%). the inferential analysis in table 1 showed that there were significant associations between age, rula risk level and msds (p <0.05) among kurdistan nurses, but there are no significant associations shown by chi square (p value) between wrmsds with gender, job tenure, standing and sitting work posture (p >0.05). in addition, independent variables with p < 0.05 in the inferential analysis were simultaneously analyzed by multiple logistic regressions (table 2). the results showed that nursing professionals with older age group and rula risk level (low, medium and high) were found to be significantly associated with wrmsds. nurses who were in older age group ( >39.5 years old) were found to have 3 times (95% ci: 1.200 to 7.884) higher risk of wrmsds as compared to younger group nurses. in the same way, nurses in the medium rula risk level were found to have 255 times (95% ci: 24.078 to 2702.681) higher risk of wrmsds as compared to the nurses who were in negligible risk. nurses in the very high rula risk level were found to have 151 times (95% ci: 17.536 to 1311.891) higher risk of wrmsds as compared to those who were in negligible risk. in addition, nurses in the low rula risk level were found to have 9 times (95% ci: 1.064 to 80.893) higher risk of wrmsds as compared to those who were in negligible risk. in this modeling, the negelkerke r2 showed that about 54.8 % of the variation of wrmsds was explained by independent variables 4. discusion a high prevalence of wrmsds is (74%) was found among kurdistan nurses. our results is close with previous study among malaysian public hospital nurses, who reported prevalence of wrmsds (73.24%) [14], but also higher compared to other study findings, which reported the prevalence of wrmsds (57.2%) among nurses working in governmental health institutions of gondar town, ethiopia. [15] nevertheless, as compared to nursing employee in other asia countries, the prevalence of wrmsds was found to be much lower, (78.0%-94.6%). [16] in this study the highest prevalence of wrmsds were found in neck with prevalence of (48.5%), followed by shoulder (38.5%) and upper back 72 (37.5%). these findings are consistent with the study conducted among malaysian public hospital nurses in which neck pain, upper back were the most common and table 2. twelve-month prevalence of wrmsds according to body region body region no. (%) neck 93 (48.4) shoulders 74(38.5) elbows 32(16.7) wrists/ hands 47(24.5) upper back 72(37.5) lower back 51 (26.6) thighs/ hips 50 (26) knee 43 (22.4) feet /ankle 57 (29.7) table 3. multiple logistic regressions of predictors of musculoskeletal disorders variables β s.e sig. adjusted or 95% ci age ≤39.5 1 >39.5 1.124 0.480 0.019 3.076 1.200, 7.884 risk level negligible risk 1 low risk 2.228 1.105 .044 9.277 1.064, 80.893 medium risk 5.542 1.204 < 0.001 255.096 24.078, 2702.681 very high risk 5.022 1.101 < 0.001 151.675 17.536, 1311.891 s.e= standard error, *significant at p < 0.05, or= odd ratio, ci= confidence interval mainly occurring prevalence of msds. [12] whereas in the earlier study conducted in japan among nurses most prevalent of wrmsds reported was that of shoulder (71.9%), followed by low back (71.3%), neck (54.7%), and upper back (33.9%). [17] in the current study age was seen to be important factor in wrmsds. the results of this study are in accordance with the most of the previous researches done. [8] besides, this study shows that the prevalence of wrmsds is (82%) and much higher among the older group nurses when compared to younger age group nurses (65%). possible explanation for the increase in wrmsds prevalence among older group workers compared to the younger group could be ageing, biological changes; biological in nature due to the ageing process such as, degenerative changes that occur in muscles, tendons, ligaments, nerves, and joints. based on these two important findings among the nurses who were in older age, and the fact that the prevalence of wrmsds was higher among them, there is an essential necessary for this problem to be tackled completely by organize programs that promote physical exercise and training in ergonomics. however, the result of this study show that there is no statistically significant association was found between gender and wrmsds, the prevalence of wrmsds is slightly higher among female nurses than male nurses (75 % vs 73% respectively). this finding is in line with the study conducted among denmark nurses. [14] intrinsic risk factors may be playing an important role in the onset and deterioration of msds among women. several intrinsic factors can be altered whereas others, such as genetic predisposition, cannot. also, a number of studies, for example, have noted that a higher prevalence of work related musculoskeletal disorder among working women may be related to the fact that women are still generally responsible for doing the majority of housework. [18] similarly, there were not significant association found between wrmsds and job tenure, standing and sitting work posture. as indicate previously, rula allows a rapid assessment of work-related loads of workers musculoskeletal systems to posture, muscle use and the force exerted in performing their tasks. from the observation, nurses were involved with awkward working posture; manual material handling, lower back bending forward as transferring and repositioning patients between beds and chairs, lifting patients onto a bed, and frequently keeping bent forward or twisted postures for long hours without any adequate rest were common possible ergonomic cause to wrmsds. based on the rula risk assessment in this study majority of the kurdistan nurses were in very high risk level (48.4%) of exposure to musculoskeletal risk and besides shows statistically significant association between rula risk level and wrmsds obtained from snq (p <0.001). this indicates that nurses are exposed to extreme bending and twisting in various parts of their bodies (awkward posture), also using force and requiring muscle strength while carrying out their work related tasks. when the nurses did the work, they repetitively moved their upper and lower limbs in manners that were inconsistent with natural anatomical postures. this led to excessive workloads for both their muscles and tendons as the nurses frequently required maintaining their body balance. altogether these ergonomic factors are acknowledged causative factors for wrmsd. also, multiple logistic regression showed that the nurses in low, medium and higher rula risk levels were found to have 9, 255, 151 times respectively higher risk of wrmsds as compared to those who were in negligible rula risk level. this study finding is in agreement with the previous studies conducted by munabi et al. [19], among nursing professionals in uganda that had demonstrated high rula risk level was related to wrmsds. with regards to the study findings, it is important to note that the current research was of crosssectional design, which may not represent a causal association between risk factors studied with wrmsds. also, the twelve month prevalence of each body part and working conditions were based on self-reporting questionnaire to collect data, and, as a result, recall bias cannot be ruled out. the outcomes should therefore be seen as provisional ones that offer a starting point for further research, including cohort studies that are better able to recognise contributing factors that are related with wrmsds. future work related musculoskeletal disorders prevention efforts should emphasize the need to reduce the rula grand score via limit repetitive motions, awkward postures, and safe resident lifting program that incorporate mechanical lifting equipment can be highly effective in reducing nurse’s exposure to heavy loads and awkward working postures that contribute to back and other musculoskeletal disorders. acknowledgements the authors gratefully acknowledge riparian director of preventive health, raparin director of general health, kurdistan ministry of health, directors the hospital and health care centers and their staff who contributing in this study. declaration of conflicting interests the author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. references [1] ms. forde, l. punnett, dh. wegman, “pathomechanisms of work-related musculoskeletal disorders:conceptual issues,” ergonomics, vol.45, pp. 619-630, 2002. [2] bureau of labor statistics, “non-fatal occupational injuries and illness requiring days away from work,” 8 september 2016.[online]. available: http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/osh/case/osnr0015.pd f. [accessed: 2013]. [3] am. scuffham, sj. legg, ec. firth, ma. stevenson, “prevalence and risk factors associated with musculoskeletal discomfort in new zealand veterinarians,” applied ergonomics, vol. 41, pp. 444-453, 2010. [4] j. smedley, p. egger, c. cooper, d. coggon, “prospective cohort study of predictors of incident low back pain in nurses,” bmj, vol. 314 , pp.1225, 1997. [5] jm. tullar, s. brewer, bc. amick, e. irvin, q. mahood, la. pompeii, et al., “occupational safety and health interventions to reduce musculoskeletal symptoms in the health care sector,” journal of occupational rehabilitation, vol. 20, pp.199-219, 2010. [6] safe work australia, “compendium of workers’ compensation statistics australia 2010e11,” canberra, australia, 10. march 2016. [online]. available: http://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/sites/swa/abo ut/publication/pages /compendium-2010-11. [accessed: 2012]. [7] m. jaworek, t. marek, w. karwowski, c. andrzejczak, am. genaidy, “burnout syndrome as a mediator for the effect of work-related factors on musculoskeletal complaints among hospital nurses,” international journal of industrial ergonomics, vol. 40, pp. 368-75, 2010 [8] am. trinkoff, ja. lipscomb, j. geiger‐ brown, b. brady, “musculoskeletal problems of the neck, shoulder, and back and functional consequences in nurses,” american journal industrial medicine, vol. 41, pp. 170-8, 2002. [9] db. anap, c. iyer, k. rao, “work related musculoskeletal disorders among hospital nurses in rural maharashtra, india: a multi centre survey,” international journal of research in medical sciences, vol. 1, pp. 101-107, 2017. [10] bureau of labor statistics, “non-fatal occupational injuries and illness requiring daysaway from work,” 8. sep, 2015. [online]. available: http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/osh/case/osnr0015.pd f. [accessed: 2013]. [11] dr. smith, n. wei, l. kang, rs. wang, “musculoskeletal disorders among professional nurses in mainland china,” journal of professional nursing, vol. 20, pp. 390-395, 2004. [12] s. lemeshow, d. hosmer, j. klar, s. lwanga, & world health organization, “adequacy of sample size health studies, 1990. [13] a. jella, h. lajili, s. boudokhane, h. migaou, s. maatallah, & z. frih, “musculoskeletal disorders among tunisian hospital staff: prevalence and risk factors,” the egyptian rheumatologist, vol. 35, pp. 59-63, 2013. [14] na. amin, r. nordin, qk. fatt, rm. noah, j. oxley, “relationship between psychosocial risk factors and work-related musculoskeletal disorders among public hospital nurses in malaysia,” annals of occupational and environmental medicine, vol. 26, pp. 23, 2014. [15] a. yitayeh, s. fasika, s. mekonnen, m. gizachew, “work related musculoskeletal disorders and associated factors among nurses working in governmental health institutions of gondar town, ethiopia,” physiotherapy, vol. 101, pp. e1694, 2015. [16] yc. chung, ct. hung, sf. li, hm. lee, sg. wang, sc. chang, et al., “risk of musculoskeletal disorder among taiwanese nurses cohort: a nationwide population-based study,” bmc musculoskeletal disorders iv, vol. 14, pp. 144, 2013. [17] cd. rasmussen, ak. larsen, a. holtermann, k. søgaard, mb. jørgensen, “adoption of workplaces and reach of employees for a multifaceted intervention targeting low back pain among nurses’ aides,” bmc medical research methodology, vol. 14, pp. 60, 2014. [18] l. punnett, dh. wegman, “work-related musculoskeletal disorders: the epidemiologic evidence and the debate,” journal of electromyography and kinesiology, vol. 14, pp. 13-23, 2004. [19] ig. munabi, w. buwembo, dl. kitara, j. ochieng, es. mwaka, “musculoskeletal disorder risk factors among nursing professionals in low resource settings: a cross-sectional study in uganda,” bmc nursing, vol. 13, pp. 7, 2014. http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/osh/case/osnr0015.pdf http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/osh/case/osnr0015.pdf http://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/sites/swa/about/publication/pages http://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/sites/swa/about/publication/pages http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/osh/case/osnr0015.pdf http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/osh/case/osnr0015.pdf  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.28 received: 17 june 2018 | accepted: 18 july 2018 seroprevalence of hcmv among pregnant women and its relation to cd4 and crp staar mohammed qader medical laboratory department dibis sector for primary health care kirkuk health directorate kirkuk, iraq stardupiz@gmail.com 166 abstract: the hcmv is a widespread viral pathogen characterized by strict host specificity and is limited to humans. it has been described as an important etiological agent of intrauterine infection in during the pregnancy, which may lead to some serious results such as miscarriage, cerebellar malformation stillbirth, and fetus developmental retardation. the study carried out in kirkuk governorate from the december 2017 to may 2018 for study the relation of cd4 percentage and crp with hcmv seropositive pregnant women. the number of pregnant women under study was two hundred women attending to some private medical laboratories in kirkuk. the pregnant women were examined for the seroprevalence of hcmv igm and igg antibodies by using vidas technique. the results were (81 %), (9%) and (6%) for hcmv-igg, hcmv-igm and for both igg & igm at the same time respectively. the highest rates (41.66%) of decreased cd4 percentage were within seropositive pregnant women for both igg & igm at same time, while the highest rates (16.66%)of crp positive were found within hcmv-igm seropositive group. keywords: hcmv, crp, cd4, vidas pregnant women. 1. introduction human cytomegalovirus (hcmv) is an enveloped dna virus and a member of the herpes family and beta herpes subfamily [1]. the double-stranded dna genome is composed of 240 kilo base that code for more than 100 proteins [2]. the virus consists of a 64nm core which enclosed by a 110nm icosahedral capsid consist of 162 capsomeres. a lipid bilayer envelope which surrounds a poorly defined tegument that, in turn, surrounds the viral capsid. the diameter of mature, enveloped viral particle is about 200nm [3]. the hcmv consider as a commonest viral infection during pregnancy, and as a major cause of intrauterine and congenital infection. the most consequence of a primary infection during pregnancy, affecting newborns including; hearing loss, mental retardation, and motor and cognitive impairment [4-7]. the natural hcmv infection is complex and characterized by lifelong latency punctuated by episodes of recurrent infection following the primary infection [8]. the effect for the fetus is even high and more serious when the mother has recently had infected and has not developed any specific hcmv antibodies [9]. the cellular immune response against hcmv by different components that originate from both the adaptive and innate immune systems. the importance of the functional capacity of the hcmv-specific t cells in response to the virus directly (cd8+ and cd4+ t cells) lies in demonstrating the extreme complexity and breadth of the t cell responses that are elicited by the human host response to natural infection [10-12]. the cd4 molecule is a 62 kda glycoprotein that is found on approximately 60% of peripheral blood t lymphocytes and a variable percentage of monocytes. the cd4 molecule is responsible for the recognition of type ii major histocompatibility antigens (mhc-ii). the cd4t cells function primarily as a helper or promoter of immune functions through t cell-t cell, t cell-b cell and t cell-macrophage interactions, that have an essential role in regulation the immune response [13]. the cd4 t cells are important in the induction and regulation of the cellular immune response to pathogens during infection, and an impaired hcmv-specific cd4 t cell immune response has been correlated to the prolonged viral secretion[14]. there is increasing data which emphasizes a significant role for cd4 t cell responses in the control of infection and these cells are likely to be important in aiding control of hcmv [15,16]. the cd4 cell, a subset of t lymphocyte, is the most important immune cell of the body to regulate human's immune system. it's consider as a commander of all immune cells, provides help and guidance to other cells, thus enabling normal operations of immune system, therefore it is called “commander in chief” of immune system [17]. the c-reactive protein (crp) consider as a significant component of the innate immune system, acts as an opsonin and activates the classical complement pathway [18]. the crp reflects a measure of the acute phase response that plays a protective role against active bacterial and viral infections and also been found to be moderately elevated in the during herpesvirus infections [19-23]. it is synthesized by hepatocytes in response to factors released by adipocytes and is classified as an acute phase protein on the basis of elevated plasma concentration during the infection [24]. 167 2. methods and materials a cross sectional study was carried out at kirkuk governorate from july 2017 to january 2018 for studying the seroprevalence of hcmv among pregnant women and its relation to cd4 and crp in 200 pregnant women whose age ranges between18-42 years, attending some private medical laboratories. seven and half ml of blood was collected by vein puncture using 10 ml disposable syringe from each woman enrolled in this study. blood samples were placed into two sterile test tubes , in one of them 2.5 ml of blood was put in test tube containing anticoagulant edta and lymphocyte isolated by ficoll solution(ficollpaque plus ,from ge healthcare biosciences– sweden) and putted in clear test tube labeled for cd4 study by fluorescent microscope using cd4:fitc, (from abdsero tec-morphosys united kingdom) .the second part of sample was 5ml placed in plane tubes left for 30 minutes at 37 °c then were centrifuged at 3000 rpm for 15 minutes then the clot removed and re-centrifuged the remain for 10 minutes twice time and the obtained sera aspirated and transferred into clean test tube. label was fixed on each test tube which then stored in deep freeze at -20°c for late serological testing for detecting specific hcmv-igm and hcmv-igg by using; vidas technique, and for crp test by latex agglutination test. a computerized statistically analysis was performed using statistical package for science services(spss)version 17, inc. usa. the comparison was carried out using of chisquare (x2) and probability value (p). the p ≤ 0.05 was categorized as statistically significant (s), and less than 0.01 was considered as highly significant (h.s.) and greater than 0.05 was considered as non-significant(n.s.). 3. results a total 200 pregnant women were examined for the seroprevalence of hcmv antibodies (hcmvigg and hcmv-igm) by using vidas techniques. the seroprevalence of hcmvigg, hcmvigm and both hcmvigg /igm seropositive at the same time were; 162 (81.00 %), 18 (9.00 %) and 12 (6.00 %) respectively, while the rates among 110 control (non-pregnant women) were 24(21.81%), 3(2.72%) and 2(1.81%) respectively as shows in (table 1). table (4) shows the relation of crp with seroprevalence of hcmv antibodies during the pregnancy, so the rates of positive results of crp test were 7.40% ,19.66% and 8.33% among hcmv-igg, hcmvigm and both hcmvigg /igm at the same time seropositive respectively. regarding to the correlation of hcmv antibodies with cd4 percentage and crp test, the highest rate of positive crp was seen among pregnant with hcmv seropositive with decreased the level of peripheral cd4% as shown in table 5. table 1: seroprevalence of hcmv antibodies among pregnant women and control. seroprevalence of hcmv antibodies seroprevalence of hcmv antibodies pregnant women control group (non-pregnant married women) no. % no. % igm (-) and igg (+) 162 81.0 24 21.82 igm (+) and igg (-) 18 9.0 3 2.73 igm (+) and igg (+) 12 6.0 2 1.81 igm (-) and igg (-) 8 4.0 81 73.64 total 200 100 110 100 2 = 168.166 p = 0.0001 p < 0. 01 h.s. table 2: relation of hcmv antibodies with cd4 percentage. seronegative hcmv (pregnant women) and 81 time respectively. while increased cd4 percentage seen only in one hcmvigg seropositive pregnant woman. table (3) shows the cd4 percentage in control groups; 8 hcmv seronegative (pregnant women) and 81 time respectively. cd4 percentage seropositive of hcmv antibodies hcmvigg hcmv igm hcmv (igg & igm) no. % no . % no . % normal (31-64 %) 135 83.3 11 61.1 7 58.3 increased (more than 64 %) 1 0.6 0 0 0 0 decreased (less than 31%) 26 16.0 7 38.8 5 41.6 total 162 100 18 100 12 100 2 = 9.286 p = 0.045 p < 0.05 significant 168 table 3: comparison the cd4 percentage of hcmv seropositive with seronegative groups. table 4: relation of hcmv antibodies with crp. table 5: correlation of hcmv antibodies with cd4 percentage and crp. cd4 percentage results examined groups hcmv seropositive pregnant women control groups hcmv (seronegative pregnant women) hcmv (seronegative non-pregnant women) no. % no. % no. % normal 153 79.68 8 100 79 97.60 increased 1 0.53 0 0 1 1.20 decreased 38 19.79 0 0 1 1.20 total 192 100 8 100 81 100 2 = 18.073 p = 0.0012 p < 0. 01 h.s. crp results seropositive of hcmv antibodies hcmvigg hcmvigm hcmv (igg & igm) no. % no. % no. % positive 12 7.40 3 16.66 1 8.33 negative 150 92.60 15 83.34 11 91.67 total 162 100 18 100 12 100 2 = 1.818 p = 0.40 p > 0.05 n.s. cd4 percentage crp test results hcmv antibodies seropositive hcmvigg hcmvigm hcmv (igg & igm) no. % no. % no. % normal positive 6 4.44 1 9.09 0 0 negative 129 95.56 10 90.01 7 100 total 135 100 11 100 7 100 increased positive 0 0 0 0 0 0 negative 1 100 0 0 0 0 total 1 100 0 0 0 0 decreased positive 6 23.07 2 28.57 1 25.0 negative 20 66.93 5 71.43 4 75.0 total 26 100 7 100 5 100 total 162 100 18 100 12 100 2 = 23.860 p = 0.0074 p < 0.01 h.s. 169 4. discussion the hcmv remains a major cause of congenital infection and disease during pregnancy around the world1.hcmv seroprevalence across the globe varies substantially both between and within countries [25]. the lower socioeconomic groups have a higher incidence of hcmv exposure and resource-poor countries also have higher seroprevalence levels of hcmv-igg ranged from 84% to 100% [26]. in the presented study indicated the rate of hcmvigg seropositive that that past infection among 200 pregnant women was 162(81.0%) .although the current study recorded the rate of hcmv-igg seroprevalence closed to world seroprevalence range of hcmv-igg 40% to 100% , and slightly lower than levels of the ranges of poor countries with regardless to different serological tests used in this study , in addition the most previous studies in iraq and other countries used only elisa technique for hcmv in pregnant women , these studies showed occasionally the same or close results, where lower than recorded by other study in iraq (thi-qar) revealed 90%, in egypt 96.0% ,in nigeria 94.8% , in iran 93.34 % and in singapore 87.0%, while higher than that recorded in other countries ;in france 46.8%, in the united kingdom 54.4% and in australia 56.9%. regarding to the rate of hcmvigm that indicate the primary infection in the present study the rates was 18(9.0%), also this finding was close to world hcmvigm prevalence 0-10 %, but still higher than recorded; where by others study in iraq revealed 2.5%, while in finland 4 % and in australia 1.2% [25-32]. these different rates may be due to differences in hygienic, socioeconomic, and cultural factors, also most of these countries regarded as to developed countries. many studies from different countries indicated that the seroprevalence of hcmv antibodies among women of childbearing age in developing countries and in populations with low socioeconomic status is generally higher than that in developed countries[33].the variation of results may attributed to the kinetics of anti-hcmvigm responses during the primary infection which vary greatly among individuals ,also this variation may be due to variability of viral accessibility and its circulation rate in the community. considering the rate of both hcmvigg and hcmv igm seropositive at same time in pregnant women that indicate re-infection or sub-acute infection the presented study revealed 12(6.0%) seropositive among the total 200 examined pregnant women , so this result were close to that recorded ; in iraq which revealed 6.4 % ,while in australia 4.2% , and lower than recorded by other studies as in iran (8.0% ), while higher than reported in turkey (1.9%) and in italy( 0.9 %)[25-32,34,35].this variation in results may be due to follow or ignorance the right rules of health to limit the infection again or re-exposure to infected people or their excretion, which considered as the most important modes of hcmv transmission. in comparison, the rates of hcmv antibodies among pregnant women and control group (non-pregnant women) the rates were relatively higher in pregnant women with highly significant relation p<0.01 as shown in (table 1), this finding may due the immunological and physiological with hormonal imbalance increasing susceptibility of pregnant women to infecting by microorganism especially hcmv. the hcmv infects the majority of human population in their life time and triggers strong immune responses from all arms of the immune system characterized by a dynamic, life-long interaction that the host immune responses, particularly t-cells, restrain viral replication and prevent the disease. t lymphocytes is critical for protection from active hcmv infection [36,37]. the current study revealed that the rate of cd4 percentage decreased among hcmv seropositive pregnant women with different rates depending on the antibody type ,so the highest rate of decreased seen within seropositive group for both hcmv-igm and igg at the same time were 41.66% with significant relation p<0.05 as shown in (table 2), also in comparison the rates with seronegative groups this study revealed highly significant relation p<0.01 , which the higher rates of cd4 percentage were within normal rates among most seronegative groups. this finding may due the effect of hcmv to stimulate the immune system and evading by modulation this system through prevent production and differentiation of important immune cells especially t-cells that differentiate to cd4. when the human body is invaded by bacteria or virus, or its immune system is misbalanced, cd4 percentage will fluctuate significantly, thus directly reflecting human body's immune status [17]. the percentages of cd markers are of great importance in the clinical diagnosis, disease progression monitoring and efficacy evaluations of diseases as viral infection including cytomegalovirus. any alteration in any parameter of the immune system can affect the health of the pregnant woman as well as the outcome of pregnancy. thus, the immune status of the mother plays an important role in this process [38]. regarding the effect of these cd markers on some cytokines, ithas been reported that cytokines play an important role in success and failure of pregnancy [39]. cytokines are immunomodulatory proteins representing a group of proteins and peptides that are used in organisms as signaling compounds allowing communication between the cells. they are particularly important in both innate and adaptive immune responses. due to their central role in the immune system, cytokines are involved in a variety of immunological, inflammatory and infectious disease [40]. the hcmv is a common viral infection among pregnant women and in addition their effect of pregnancy and the fetus, which may be a cause of systemic inflammation. the interleukin-6 (il-6) is mainly produced by circulating and peripheral cells and induces the hepatic to synthesis the crp [41]. the current study indicated that rate of positive results of crp test among hcmv seropositive pregnant women were ranged from 7.40% to 16.66% among all seropositive state , so the highest rate of positive was among hcmv-igm seropositive group with nonsignificant relation p>0.05 as shown in (table 4), while in regard to the correlation of crp with cd4 percentage among hcmv seropositive pregnant women the present study indicated the highest rates of positive crp ranged from 23.07% to 28.57% within decreased cd4 percentage groups with highly significant relation p<0.01 as shown in (table 5). these findings may due to the effect of hcmv during the infection induce crp through systemic 170 inflammation and mainly when depressed the rates of peripheral cd4 count. the crp expression is assumed to be restricted mainly to the liver where produced under the control of various proinflammatory cytokines including il-6, so the il-6 has escorta hcmv replication and could a favor for crp production in the liver during hcmv-infection and the crp levels were increased. therefore, the hcmv infection is strongly associated with high crp levels as a marker of underlying inflammation in individuals [4144]. higher crp concentrations have been associated with lower peripheral cd4 counts and many studies have revealed a significant association between increased crp concentration and some viral infection, so the clinically elevated crp concentration was significantly associated with reduced mortality risk of infection [45]. moreover, the hcmv may mediate inflammatory responses, so the hcmv antibodies up-regulation may increase inflammatory cytokines and elevated levels of crp [46]. 5. conclusion the presented study concluded the rate of hcmv seroprevalence among pregnant women was high and relatively hcmv-igg higher than hcmv-igm, so the peripheral cd4 percentage decrease during hcmv infection and the ability of hcmv to act a systemic inflammatory causative to induce crp production, with highly significant correlation in decreasing the cd4 percentage during hcmv infection in pregnancy. reference [1] e. u. umeh, t. o. onoja, c. u. aguoru, j. c. umeh. “seroprevalence of cytomegalovirus antibodies in pregnant women”, j infect dis ther ,3:5,2015, [2] m. s. chee, a. t. bankier, s. beck, r. bohni, c. m. brown, r. cerny, t. horsnell et al.“ analysis of the protein-coding content of the sequence of human cytomegalovirus strain ad 169”, curr top microbiolimmunol 154, 125, 1990. 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[46] l zhen, “high anti-human cytomegalovirus antibody levels are associated with the progression of essential hypertension and target organ damage in han chinese population,” plops one 12.8, e0181440, 2017 [46] l zhen, “high anti-human cytomegalovirus antibody levels are associated with the progression of essential hypertension and target organ damage in han chinese population,” plos one 12.8, e0181440, 2017. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19178878 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19178878 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19178878  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 3 | issue 2 | december 2018 | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.3.8 received: 02 october 2018 | accepted: 09 december 2018 effect of tick and lice on some blood constitute and trace elements of local black goat in sulaimani, kurdistan region of iraq bawan mustafa abdalrahman bahzad hama salih mustafa animal sciences animal sciences college of agricultural sciences college of agricultural sciences university of sulaimani university of sulaimani sulaymaniyah, iraq sulaymaniyah, iraq bawan.abdalrahman@univsul.edu.iq bahzad.mustafa@univsul.edu.iq 42 abstract: in this study isolated 100 adult female of local black goat (capra hircus) examined in spring and fall season for tick and lice investigations, then divided into two groups: 50 infested goats with ectoparasite and 50 non-infested goats. three species of ticks (rhipicephalus sanguinus, r. turanicus and r. bursa) and one species of lice (bovicola caprae) were observed. biochemical values (serum proteins and some trace elements) analyzed, in infested goats emerges decline in serum protein value 7.12±0.08 µg/dl, albumin value 4.12±0.03 µg/dl and increase of globulin value 3.04±0.09 µg/dl, in serum protein and globulin values shows not significance differences, while described highly significance differences in albumin value at p≤0.01, when compare to control goats. in trace elements decline of zinc level 48.97±1.20 µg/dl and copper level 114.15±3.75 µg/dl levels with a highly significant differences at p≤0.01 in infested goats when compare to control goats. it is observed that mixed infestation has much effects than tick or lice infestation on goats, which led to reduction in serum protein value 6.89±0.20 µg/dl, albumin value 4.11±0.09 µg/dl and raise in globulin value 3.10±0.11 µg/dl without any significance differences, also noticed insignificant declines in zinc level 45.67±2.40 µg/dl, while decrease in copper level 99.33±9.86 µg/dl significantly at p≤0.05. keywords: goat, tick, lice, blood constitute. 1. introduction ectoparasites are most critical disorders and diseases, which encounter to animals; they led to lose in their productions and disturb animal health entirely. it may be accompanied by more disorders, deficiencies such as decrease in some blood biochemical parameters, blood trace elements and mineral levels, which are seems as a severe health problem in livestock [1]. hypersensitivity, marked blood loss, secondary infestation, excoriation and ultimately death in few cases, whole of them related to ectoparasitisms, also indirect harm, rubbing and reducing time spent for grazing or rumination as increasing levels of behavior, self wounding in some cases, also referred to the influences of ectoparasites [2]. tick and lices are involve of about 70% of ectoparasites that naturally infested goat according to [3]. an economical and short-day breeder of goat make of them an appropriate small ruminant to rearing, which are adaptable in the various ecological situations as like as pathological resistance [4]. main challenges which exposed with kurdistan region’s livestock health and productivity, are ticks and tick-borne blood parasites disease [5]. widely ectoparasites especially tick and lices, causes more lesion and disorders for livestock as blood loss, which is led to growth retards and loss of weight (ticks and sucking lices), irritation and discomfort in animal which is called tick worry also in lices, wound which is way of endoparasites and germs of entering to animal’s body. crusting, dermatitis and wool or skin debilitation, especially in chewing lices [6, 7]. one of the most vital parameters are blood biochemical constitutes which that through knowing of them can detect any disorder and infections in human and animals [8], common and important biochemical component is a serum protein and its differentials (albumin and globulin) which they are contribute in immunity, catalytic, regulation system and any imbalance or dysfunction of serum protein component led to emerges disease [9]. trace elements are essential for maintain, healthy and productivity of each animals, some of the well known established (fe, cu, zn, co, se among others) is fundamentally present in most biochemical operation, in animal living body and during any infection, serum trace element alters in their concentration [10]. our objectives are to carrying out this study, to detect influences of these ectoparasites and also effects of the type of each ectoparasites on serum proteins and some trace elements (zinc and copper) of goat, with identifying the genera and species of these ectoparasites that presence in present study. 2. methods and materials 2.1 study area: this study was conducted in sulaimani governorate, kurdistan region. the samples were collected on the local black goats, during spring (april and may) and early fall (september) of 2018. mailto:bawan.abdalrahman@univsul.edu.iq mailto:bahzad.mustafa@univsul.edu.iq 43 2.2 sampling: in this study, adult local black doe (capra hircus) were examined for tick and lices, after investigation, infested goats (n=50) were isolated from non-infested goat (control, n=50), whereas infested goat divided into three groups depend on types of the ectoparasite, as follows: 1tick infestation 2lice infestation 3mixed infestation (tick and lices) 2.3 collection of ticks and lice: tick and lice or mixed of them were collected from the suspected parts of the goats such as ears, teats, outers reproduction parts, breast, abdomen, mouth and under tails. in the process of tick collection, a fine and smooth forceps was used to remove the ticks with consideration to remain all parts of body healthy and not defected by mechanical pressure. in the lice collection, the procedure was done through brushing the hair of goat, and then lices were placed on a white paper or other like this. finally tick and lices were collected and placed in the glass vials of 25 mm diameter and 75 mm long that contain 70% alcohol till examination. 2.4 specimens’ examination: the specimens were examined by using motic digital microscopy 4x magnification., motic educator, japan, for studying the minute parts of the body, such as mouth parts, ornamentation, legs, body shape and to comparisons between species or in genus of arthropods according to [11]. 2.5 blood collection and examination: blood was drawn from jugular vein with 10 ml sterile syringe and 18 gauge needles (hoshin medical instrument co., ltd, p.r.c). blood are placed in the free anticoagulant tube and left to clot and then centrifuged at 3000 rpm for 15 min (hettich, zentrifugen, d-78532 tuttlingen, germany), and collected serum kept frozen at −20°c until examined it [12]. 2.6 blood smear and fecal examination: geimsa stained blood smear and fecal direct smear examined through motic digital microscopy,40x, 60x and 100x, motic educator, japan., were carried out, to ensuring lack of any endoparasites in blood and feces, to avoid any interaction with ectoparasites effect in infested goat and to distinguish control goats with its each declines in their blood values. 2.7 serum protein examination: serum protein, albumin and globulin were determined by automatic biolis 24i premium analyzer (tokyo boeki medisys inc. ©diamond diagnostic®). determination in this apparatus, operation was carried out by beer lambert laws, globulin portion of serum protein was determined through the deduction of albumin portion from total serum protein: 𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆 𝑝𝑝𝑆𝑆𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑆𝑆𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝 − 𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝 = 𝐺𝐺𝐴𝐴𝑝𝑝𝐴𝐴𝑆𝑆𝐴𝐴𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝 2.8 zinc and copper determination: zinc and copper were determined manually by spectrophotometer (pd303, apel., co., ltd. japan). specific commercial kits were used in both determinations. for zinc was used commercial kit (colorimetric test with 5-brom-paps, egypt biotechnology co.), mdss gmbh. schiffgraben 41, 30175 hannover, germany, and its procedure run on, by preparing at first blank as (1ml of reagent and empty of standard and sample), standard as (1 ml of reagent, 50 µl of standard and empty of sample) and sample as (1ml of reagent, 50 µl of sample and empty of standard), and using 560 nanometer wave length with turn apparatus on an absorbance reading, their records for blank is 0.076 and for standard is 0.295. also for copper was used commercial kit (egypt biotechnology co.), mdss gmbh. schiffgraben 41, 30175 hannover, germany, and its procedure ran on by preparing at first blank as (1ml of reagent and empty of standard and sample), standard as (1 ml of reagent, 66 µl of standard and empty of sample) and sample as (1 ml of reagent, 66 µl of sample and empty of standard), and using 580 nanometer wave length with turn apparatus on an absorbance reading, their records for blank is 0.081 and for standard is 0.243. 2.9 data analysis: data after rearrangement and designed in the table, were analyzed through t. test independent sample and one way anova uni-factor crd and using both (p≤0.01) and (p≤0.05), analysis process carried out by spss program, release of 16.0.0 (sep. 13, 2007). 3. results and discussion as by examination in local goat, founds that there were two types of ectoparasite, which are hard ticks (ixodidae) family and chewing lice (mallophaga), through detection of important parts such as mouth parts and legs and presence of ornamentation in hard ticks, also head and body part and shapes in lice, were founds that, in hard ticks, that three species which are rhipiciphalus sanguinus, rhipicephalus turanicus and rhipicephalus bursa, in lice one species of chewing type observed, which was bovicola caprae as illustrated in the table 1. table 1: prevalence of ectoparasites on goat in sulaimani. ectoparasites tick lice species r. turanicus r. sanguinus r. bursa b. caprae number 68 77 16 210 total 161 210 percentage% 42.23 47.82 9.95 100 in the ticks as founds there were three species of rhipicephalus: r. sanguine (47.82%), which is known a brown dog tick, also infested small ruminants especially animals that reared close to dog [13], r. turanicus (42.23%) and r. bursa (9.95%) which is known as brown ear tick. rhipicephalus spp refers to important genus of hard ticks, which are indicated through having short mouth parts, eyes and presence of festoons with hexagonal basis of capitulum, and absence of ornamentation on their backs as identified by [14]. these three species were mostly similar in their future, especially they have a dark scutum, u shaped genital aperture in female and short pedi palpus except of some differences as in fed male of r. bursa caudal appendage is absent or small while in r. sanguinus and r. turanicus are abroad and visible, genital aperture in female of r. turanicus is narrow but in r. sanguinus is abroad according to [11, 14]. in spring months as april and may r. sanguinus and r. turanicus were high prevalence while in fall tick was absent generally as shows in our results, so its concur with results of the study which was observed that, rhipicephalus spp is 44 most frequently appear in the spring months in sulaimani [15] as their environment are favorable for growth, activity, reproduction and development of ticks [16], also our results is agreed with [17] in sulaimanikurdistan region in the infestation with r. sanguinus and [18] in ilam province in iran which they found that r. sanguinus is most prevalence tick on goat but in the distribution of percentage of r. bursa is contrast with results of this study as they said that this species distribution is 41.5% on goat and in another study also contrast with present study as they said that 89% of goat in urmia, iran are infested with r. bursa [19], also the present study is agreed with the observation of [3] in duhok-kurdistan region, which founds that r. turanicus and r. sanguinus are most prevalence species on goat by 45.54% and 33.93% respectively. present study is agreed with another examination by some researcher which mentioned in their works that rhipicephalus spp is appeared after rainy seasons, as spring season and also agree with their states of some researchers which mentioned that they are not founds any other genera especially hyalomma spp. and haemaphysalis spp in their works [19]. lice examination in both mentioned season shows, that bovicola caprae is most prevalence on goat while in autumn is less than in spring and might be due to in spring these animal are not shorn yet, in contrast to autumn, [19] urmia in iran and [17] in sulaimani in kurdistan region-iraq, they founds in that bovicola caprae is most prevalence lice on the goat with 71.4% which is like to our observation, also is agree with result of the study in duhok in kurdistan region, which pointed that bovicola caprae is most distributed on local goat by 80.7% [3]. in the results variance between infested and control animal and also between individual effect of each ectoparasite in about of biochemical values (serum protein, albumin, globulin, zinc and copper) were determined and illustrated in (table 2&3). table 2: effects of ectoparasites on serum protein and some trace elements. parameters non infested c.i (95%) infested c.i (95%) s. protein (µg/dl) 7.32±0.07 (7.17-7.46) 7.12±0.08 (6.94-7.29) albumin (µg/dl) 4.34±0.04 (4.25-4.44) 4.12±0.03** (4.04-4.20) globulin (µg/dl) 2.97±0.08 (2.80-3.13) 3.04±0.09 (2.84-3.23) zinc (µg/dl) 57.21±1.96 (53.2561.16) 48.97±1.20** (46.5451.39) copper (µg/dl) 127.02±2.35 (122.29131.76) 114.15±3.75** (106.60121.71) (** is signs to presence significance differences at p≤0.01) despite that these values are declined slightly about to reference values but they having differences according to their situation which are in serum protein value (7.12±0.08µg/dl) of infested goat shown decreases and globulin value increases (3.04±0.09µg/dl) but not enough to make any differences (p≥0.05) while albumin value (4.12±0.03µg/dl) emerges reduction statistically (p≤0.01) in naturally infested goat with compare to control goat. in zn and cu, infested goats shows decrease in their levels (48.97±1.20 µg/dl and 114.15±3.75 µg/dl) sequentially and variation in their levels enough to make highly significance differences (p≤0.01) as compare to non infested goat. table 3: effects of tick, lice and mixed of them on serum protein and some trace elements. parameters tick c.i (95%) lice c.i (95%) mix c.i (95%) s. protein (µg/dl) 7.10±0.19 (6.68-7.52) 7.22±0.11 (6.99-7.45) 6.89±0.20 (6.44-7.34) albumin (µg/dl) 4.11±0.05 (4.01-4.22) 4.13±0.08 (3.94-4.32) 4.11±0.09 (3.89-4.33) globulin (µg/dl) 2.97±0.20 (2.52-3.42) 2.95±0.28 (2.31-3.60) 3.10±0.11 (2.87-3.33) zinc (µg/dl) 48.89±1.29 (46.24-51.55) 52.74±3.49 (44.95-60.53) 45.67±2.40 (40.38-50.96) copper (µg/dl) 110.48±8.90a (90.89-130.07) 121.82±3.63a (114.35-129.30) 99.33±9.86b (106.60-121.71) (different letters are signs to presence differences significantly at p≤0.05). goat which naturally infested with mixed (tick and lice) ectoparasite at the same time, shown decrease in value of serum protein (6.89±0.20 µg/dl), albumin value (4.11±0.09 µg/dl) with increases in serum globulin value (3.10±0.11 µg/dl), with compare to goat which infested only with tick or merely with lice, but without any statistical differences (p≥0.05) among them. in the previous table that, goat which naturally infested with mixed ectoparasite (tick and lices) at the same time, shows decrease in zn (45.67±2.40 µg/dl) and cu (99.33±9.86 µg/dl) levels, with comparing to goat which infested only with tick or merely with lice, but without any significance differences (p≥0.05) in zn among them, while in cu has significance differences (p≤0.05) when comparing to their values in goat which infested with only ones of these ectoparasite. these results are contrast to result of the study which is done by [20, 21] as they stated in their study, were serum protein is increased significantly (p≤0.05) and (p≤0.01) respectively, while the present results have supporting by some results of the same study as albumin decreased with highly significance differences (p≤0.05) and (p≤0.01) respectively and increases of globulin in goat and sheep infested with ectoparasite, with a compare to control group. present study in agreement with [22] as they showed decrease of serum protein and significance decrease (p≤0.05) of albumin in infested goat, as compare to control goats while our results not agreed with decline globulin as in this study mentioned, also is contrast to observation of [17] as they detect of serum globulin decreased. the present study is agreed with its reached by [1] in infested sheep and [4] in the infested goat, as they said that, serum protein and albumin decreased and globulin increased significantly (p≤0.05) but in our results is not significantly (p≥0.05) in serum protein and globulin. as [21] were stated that, increases of serum globulin is a sign of development response of antibody to antigen presence in the area. decrease of albumin and serum protein might be also related to malnutrition as [22] they emphasis in their work, also as [1] illustrated in his investigation that decrease of serum 45 protein might feature of increasing blood cortisol in an infected animal, hence some clues said that elevation of cortisol led to protein catabolism and then nitrogen imbalance, ultimately increases secretion of nitrogen through the urinary tract, while as [17] stated that decrease of serum protein and its differentials might be related to liver dysfunction as a primary and secondary impact of parasites as diarrhea, fever and loss of appetite. in the measureable reduction of zinc and copper in the infested goat statistically (p≤0.01) in compares with control goats, the present study is parallel to which it reached by [1] in high zinc decreased (p≤0.01) in infested sheep with compare to non infested sheep in sulaimani and also agree with the same cached result by [10] in the diseased animal. also the present study is absolutely concur to [23] was observed highly decreased in zn and cu, statistically (p≤0.01) in infected sheep, also agree with [24] as they detected significance differences (p≤0.05) in some trace elements particularly in zn, in infested goats, while our results are vary to [25] as they observed, increase of cu with significance differences (p≤0.05) and decreases of zn without any significances (p≥0.05) in diseased sera in comparing with healthy sera. as in the table 3 was illustrated, in all results, influence of lice is less than both mixed infestation and tick infested goat, this result have agreement with [17] but with varying in serum protein as in their study effect of lice are more on this parameter than ticks, except of copper whole other parameters (serum proteins and zinc) has not any differences (p≥0.05) among them. this variation of effects and minimal impact of lice might be related to its types as in this study merely present on genus of chewing lice bovicola caprae and also its not sucking blood, mainly has secondary effects on blood parameters as [26] pointed in their study. reduction of zinc concentration also can seen as hepatic disorders as [27] stated that, also as mentioned in fao and who [28] that 70% of zn and cu are bound with albumin and any alteration of albumin as in this study showed statistically remarkable decreased (p≤0.01) in infested goat, led to decrease of these trace elements as a secondary infestation. zn declined might be reverses to immune response for any infections [10]. nutrition and especially in animal which fed on natural pasture and grazing are the most factors to fluctuating trace element in the animal blood as [1] is mentioned in his research that low content of each trace element in pasture might be predisposing the factor to decrease its concentration in animal, also alkaloid soil or ph above 6.5 makes obstacle to absorption of zn, cu and some other elements by the plant and ultimately low concentration in serum of animal. forage plants which increase in calcium concentration is another factor to decrease in the some trace element especially in zn. interaction as cooperation and antagonism between elements are major factors to imbalance and deficiency of any of them in animal blood, as mustafa [1] that high calcium or high calcium-phosphorus intake led to less absorption of zn. decrease of trace element in control animals might be due to mal absorption or as [29] and [23] mentioned that is due to animals are not benefit of trace element in their feeding and water, and also cadmium, molybdenum or any heavy metals can limit of absorption and normal concentration of any trace element especially cu, fe and zn or interaction in them as level of cobalt and cu, cadmium, manganese limit of fe absorption. 4.conclusion in this study that rhipicephalus spp and bovicola caprae were most prevalence on goat in sulaimani-kurdistan region of iraq. also present study shows marked impacts of ectoparasites on the biochemical values of local goat. mixed infestation and tick infested goat were mostly affected than infestation of lice and it might be related to the type of lice. more investigation required to detecting ectoparasites effect on another trace element and biochemical parameters, also in various periods or twice as early and late infestation, for this purpose animal tagging (numbering) is required. references [1] b. mustafa, "level of zinc and some blood phenomena in sheep infested naturally with hard tick (ixodidae) in sulaimani province-iraq," al-anbar j. vet. sci. , vol. 6, 2013. [2] w. m. ahmed, s. m. habeeb, f. m. e. moghazy, and e. m. hanafi, "observation on pediculosis in buffalo-cows with emphasis on its impact on ovarian activity and control by herbal remedies," world applied sciences journal vol. 6, pp. 1128-1138, 2009. [3] i. k. zangana, b. a. ali, and i. a. naqid, "distribution of ectoparasites infested sheep and goats in duhok province, north iraq.," bas.j.vet.res., vol. 12, 2013. [4] p. sahu and s. gaherwal, "biochemical changes in ticks infected goats (capra hircus) in mhow region," international journal of science and research (ijsr), vol. 5, 2016. [5] s. renneker, j. abdo, m. a. bakheit, b. kullmann, d. beyer, j. ahmed, et al., "coinfection of sheep with anaplasma, theileria and babesia species in the kurdistan region, iraq," blackwell verlag gmbh • transboundary and emerging diseases, vol. 60, pp. 113–118, 2013. [6] dais, "the effects of ticks on animals," ed. pretoria, south africa directorate agricultural information services,department of agriculture, 2008. [7] m. rahman, "investigation of caprine ectoparasitic infestations in southern districts of bangladesh," chittagong veterinary and animal sciences university2014. [8] i. z. bani, a. al‐majali, f. amireh, and o. al‐rawashdeh, "metabolic profiles in goat does in late pregnancy with and without subclinical pregnancy toxemia," veterinary clinical pathology, vol. 37, pp. 434-437, 2008. [9] r. pieper, c. l. gatlin, a. j. makusky, p. s. russo, c. r. schatz, s. s. miller, et al., "the human serum proteome: display of nearly 3700 chromatographically separated protein spots on two‐dimensional electrophoresis gels and identification of 325 distinct proteins," proteomics, vol. 3, pp. 1345-1364, 2003. [10] m. m. h. mohammed, m. m. a. a. makoush, n. a. a. a. mohammed, r. a. o. ahamed, r. d. a. m. aibed, and t. f. a. o. ahamed, "a study of some trace minerals status in serum of sick animals," sudan university of science and technology, 2016. [11] a. r. walker, a. bouattour, j.-l. camicas, a. estrada-peña, i. g. horak, a. a. latif, et al., ticks of domestic animals in africa: a guide to identification of species: bioscience reports edinburgh, 2003. [12] s. al-bulushi, t. shawaf, and a. al-hasani, "some hematological and biochemical parameters of different goat breeds in sultanate of oman “a preliminary study”," veterinary world, vol. 10, pp. 461-466, 04/30 01/04/received 03/21/accepted 2017. [13] c. d. matos, "species composition and geographic distribution of ticks infesting cattle, goats and dogs in maputo province, mozambique," department of veterinary tropical diseases, 46 faculty of veterinary science, university of pretoria, university of pretoria, 2008. [14] w. richard. bristol university tick id, online photographic guide to ticks [online]. available: http://www.bristoluniversitytickid.uk/ [15] b. h. s. mustafa, "study on some epidemiological factors of hard tick (ixodidae) in sheep in sulaimani province/kurdistan region-iraq with trial to immunize rabbits against larval extract of hyalomma anatolicum anatolicum," ph.d dissertation, 2011. [16] m. a. kadir, i. k. zangana, and b. h. s. mustafa, "a study on epidemiology of hard tick (ixodidae) in sheep in sulaimani governorate iraq," iraqi journal of veterinary sciences, supplement iii, proceedings of the 6th scientific conference, college of veterinary medicine, university of mosul, vol. 26, pp. 95-103, 2012. [17] r. m. hassan, a. a. essa, and b. h. s. mustafa, "influence of two species of ticks and lice on some hematological parameters in black goats during spring and summer seasons in sulaimani governorate kurdistan region.," tikrit applied science journal, vol. 21, 2016. [18] a. l. monfared, m. mahmoodi, and r. fattahi, "prevalence of ixodid ticks on cattle, sheep and goats in ilam county, ilam province, iran," journal of parasitic diseases, vol. 39, pp. 3740, 2015. [19] m. yakhchali and a. hosseine, "prevalence and ectoparasites fauna of sheep and goats flocks in urmia suburb, iran," veterinarski arhiv, vol. 76, pp. 431-442, 2006. [20] k. arvind, v. vihan, and h. sharma, "haematological and biochemical effects of tick infestation in common indian goat," advances in bio research, vol. 1, pp. 163-168, 2010. [21] g. gökҫe and ş. kizil tepe, "alterations in haematological and biochemical parameters in morkaraman sheep with natural psoroptes ovis infestation," kafkas univ vet fak derg, vol. 19, pp. 975-978, 2013. [22] n. u. khan, m. shafee, j. a. khan, k. ashraf, r. khan, a. khan, et al., "sero-epidemiological study of ecto-and endoparasites and their hematological effects in small ruminants reared under pastoral system in district bannu, pakistan," pure and applied biology, vol. 4, p. 50, 2015. [23] a. a. hatem, "field and laboratory study of trace elements deficiency in sheep in al-najaf province," مجلة الكوفة للعلوم الطبیة ,kufa journal for veterinary medical sciences, vol. 6 |البیطریة 2016. [24] e. rakhshandehroo, s. m. razavi, and s. nazifi, "experimental caprine coccidiosis: the pattern of changes in antioxidant micronutrients and vitamins," veterinary science development, vol. 4, 2014. [25] k. seyrek, s. paşa, f. kıral, a. bildik, c. babür, and s. kılıç, "levels of zinc, copper and magnesium in sheep with toxoplasmosis," uludag univ j fac vet med, vol. 23, pp. 1-2, 2004. [26] a. tadie, g. terefe, and y. gizaw, "hematological profile of sheep experimentally infested with bovicola ovis," vet sci technol, vol. 9, 2018. [27] y. takuma, k. nouso, y. makino, m. hayashi, and h. takahashi, "clinical trial: oral zinc in hepatic encephalopathy," alimentary pharmacology & therapeutics, vol. 32, pp. 1080-1090, 2010. [28] fao and who, "vitamin and mineral requirements in human nutrition," 2005. [29] m. e. or, a. kayar, a. kiziler, c. parkan, r. gonul, b. barutçu, et al., "determination of levels of some essential (iron, copper, zinc) and toxic (lead, cadmium) metals in the blood of sheep and in samples of water, plants and soil in northwest turkey," veterinarski arhiv, vol. 75, p. 359, 2005. http://www.bristoluniversitytickid.uk/ 1. introduction 4.conclusion kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 46 theoretical evaluation of pluralism concept in architecture aya shukri mohammed kadhim fathel khalil architecture department architecture department college of engineering college of engineering university of duhok university duhok duhok, iraq duhok, iraq ayamuffti@gmail.com kadhim.khalil@uod.ac article info abstract volume 7 issue 2 december 2022 doi: 10.24017/science.2022.2.4 article history: received: 31/09/2022 accepted: 17/11/2022 pluralism as a manifestation of the universe and nature that is felt and understood by all human beings is not a new idea, but rather it could identify as a divine principle and eternal, pluralism applies in all creation fields, especially in architecture, this paper discusses the term of pluralism in different fields such as philosophy, linguistic, literacy, art, until it reaches to the architectural field, and discusses the effect of the term in architecture. the aim is to understand pluralism with its different branches and determine the indicators of the term in architecture. studies that discussed the concept of pluralism are taken as case studies to reach the goal. as a result, it appeared that pluralism has several types, and each type is associated with indicators. in conclusion, these types are arranged under five levels and each type led to a specific feature in architecture. keywords: pluralism, postmodern, multivalued, inclusive, multivalent, diversity, intertextuality kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 47 1. introduction pluralism as an architectural phenomenon, its roots appeared around the fifth century b.c., with three great philosophers named anaxagoras, achelous, and empedocles that founded the greek presocratic philosophical school that would later come to be known as pluralism. monism, the idea that nature's diversity could be distilled down to a single principle, was rejected by these philosophers [1]. pluralism is a philosophical concept that may be defined in various forms. in general, the belief that there is more than one primary reality or principle refers to the idea that reality is made up of a wide variety of different things; this sets it apart from monism, which sees reality as a single entity or whole [2]. pluralism refers to the state of society in which members of diverse ethnic, racial, religious, or social groups maintain and develop their traditional culture within the confines of a common civilization [3]. the plural is a word that signifies multilateral, and the suffix -ism is used to make nouns that refer to social, political, or religious views, studies, or ways of acting. pluralism is derived from the words plural + ism [4]. after philosophy, the concept of pluralism in linguistics was introduced by de saussure for the first time in the meaning of linguistics [5], which argued the relationship between signifiers and signified. as a result, according to de saussure, the language has a plurality of meanings [6]. based on de saussure’s theory, jacques derrida stated that “pure language” has a plurality of senses and that writings may include a variety of purposes that differ from one another or have similar qualities [7]. also, roland barthes was one of the most influential structuralist philosophers of the twentieth century that developed ferdinand de saussure’s ideas. each text, according to barthes, has several interpretations or pluralism of interpretations [8]. de saussure’s theories about pluralism in linguistics were also translated to art by claude levi-strauss, that art might be studied using linguistic means [9]. modern art was distinguished by its unpopular character—separation from the general public and dehumanization of the past and present. postmodernism is explicit in its opposition to this separation, referring to its plurality, friendship, and democracy of taste [10]. after art, christian nordberg schulz’s work “meaning in western architecture” introduced the term pluralism in architecture with the works of le corbusier and louis kahn. le corbusier’s change from early ‘white architecture,’ influenced by de stijl and cubism, to more organic and tectonic works in the 1950s was regarded as a watershed moment for a more pluralistic language [11]. also, the ciam, which had a dogmatic grasp on the vocabulary of modernism, was broken in 1958 by these new emergent sensibilities, as well as the early work of scandinavian moderns like aalto. a new generation of modernists evolved due to this break, led by corb and they inherited the history of humanitarian modernism and the benefits of pluralism [11]. however, the importance of this term appears through its appearance in any field that led to a radical change. therefore, it became a motivation for this research to investigate this termmore broadly in architecture and determine the indicators of pluralism. the research question is: why is pluralism a critical idea in architecture? 2. methodology according to the studies discussed above thefeatures of pluralism started unintentionally in the work of le corbusier in france and louis kahn in americain the late 1950s. after that, the power of this concept has been demonstrated in postmodern architecture. however, to answer the research question, and to reach the objectives of the study which is clarifying and evaluating the concept of pluralism in architecture, previous studies about pluralism in architecture will be considered case studies which will be chosen according to the place of appearing pluralism and the period of demonstrating the concept which is mainly postmodern architecture, late of modern architecture, and deconstruction as secondarily. however, the studies are arranged chronologically from oldest to newest, using the qualitative methodology, which is an interpretive approach,to show how the concept is developing. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 48 these studies are criticized according to thematic criticism, which is a form of archaeology that excavates the layers of a text and compares that text with those found in other excavations: it is almost always comparative. the study used thematic criticism because it is situated within theoretical approaches such as modernism, deconstruction, postmodernism, and structuralism. it also focused on just one text and deployed in comparative work to create clusters of texts that can be discussed together [12]. the process of thematic criticism can be understood as a deconstructionist route into a text’s deeper meaning, finding it more affluent and meaningful than it might otherwise be read [12]. therefore, in this section, the original text that relates to pluralism is borrowed and theninterpreted and criticized in a separate paragraph. 3. studies about the pluralism concept in architecture 3.1. learning from las vegas, robert venturi, denise scott brown, steven izenour,1972 this study criticized the modern architecture in las vegas, which compared guild house, one of the famous buildings of early postmodern architecture, and crawford manor. in the case of guild house, it indicates that the denotation is singular, which is the primary meaning of the object. however, the connotation is the idea or the feeling of the object, and it’s pluralistic, where the implied pluralism of physiognomic character creates the sense or the view of the building, which is the material in the guild house example that connotes the entering of the building [13]. by ignoring historical architecture’s denotative ornamentation and iconography, crawford manor is characterized by the study as an example of modern architecture that subtly illustrates the anti-pluralism of time and anti-identity. by ignoring or instead using the connotative expression, it substituted for decoration by limiting itself to strident articulations of the pure architectural elements of space, structure, and program [13]. the study, however, shows the irony as a technique that architects use to face and combine divergent and pluralistic ideals in architecture for a pluralist society, as well as to accommodate variations in values that develop between them. social classes seldom come together, but if they can form temporary alliances in designing and constructing multivalued communal architecture, both sides will require a sense of paradox, irony, and wit [13]. robert venturi, denise scott brown, and steven izenour in learning from las vegas indicate three types of pluralism indirectly: physiognomy pluralism, pluralism in materials, and arranging of physical elements that can refer to several connotations. time pluralism, by simply referencing the present and employing pure architectural features, in this way it rejects the past and the future; as a result, it loses its identity and means of connotative representation. finally, pluralism in architectural values treats pluralist societies, social classes, and multivalued communities by irony as a tool, which these types are characteristics of postmodern architecture. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 49 3.2. meaning in western architecture, christian norberg-schulz,1975 in this study, pluralism officially appeared in the 1950s and discussed its aim of it, which is to make the totality of significant human experiences potentially available again. as a result, history becomes a dimension of fundamental importance in the pluralistic world. another goal is to analyze regional character not only in terms of physical considerations but also in terms of implicit way of life and historical and cultural context [11]. pluralism does not conflict with functionalism, instead extends the idea of function beyond its physical dimensions, according to the research. while pluralism’s architecture is new, it draws into account the past. the pluralist architecture of inclusion bears the risk of environmental chaos if it is misinterpreted. only through grasping the concepts of “character” and “spatial organization” can this hazard be avoided [11]. the study shows that pluralism started with modern architecture in the works of le corbusier and louis kahn; due to the individuality in modern architecture, each architect is associated with a specific pattern of spatial organization. as a result, the pluralism of patterns of spatial organization is ever more felt. while the writer mentioned the primary aims of pluralism, the main objective is the identity of the building and understanding of the real character of each task, pluralism of time, by reliving the human experience in history. also, the study mentioned that pluralism becomes chaos without understanding the concepts of character and spatial structure. 3.3. complexity and contradiction in architecture, robert venturi,1977 this study mentioned ambiguous relationships are a characteristic of postmodern architecture, and the conjunction “or” with a question mark can frequently be used to characterize them. is the villa savoye, for example, a square layout or not? therefore, this indicates that conjunction “or” refers that there being more than one possibility or pluralism of possibilities [14]. also, this study criticized modern architecture under the principle of “either-or,” which is selecting only one thing (monism). for example, sunscreen is probably nothing more, support is seldom an enclosure. in contrast to postmodern architecture, which is with the principle of “both-and” at the same time, both-and emphasizes multifunctioning building, which is complex in program and form. however, in renaissance architecture, there is pluralism in structure-function as structure element and aesthetic element [14]. this study specifies three types of pluralism in different architectural styles. first, the pluralism of possibilities of forming relationships in postmodern architecture cause ambiguity. also, pluralism is in function in modern architecture, so the term multi-functioning means pluralism of function or plurality in the program and form that led to the complexity. lastly, pluralism in structure-function in renaissance architecture. 3.4. the language of postmodern architecture, charles jencks,1977 according to this study, postmodern architecture has a pluralistic language that includes traditional and modern features, vernacular, and high art meanings. to learn and use the particular architectural codes that prevail among the subcultures that persist in any large city, the architect of pluralistic language will have to be trained in four or five different styles and trained as an anthropologist, or at the very least a good journalist. also, the architect will have to learn the particular metaphors and symbolic signs with short-lived potency and the slowchanging traditional characters. however, the multivalent and inclusive architectural language uses all of them with wit and accuracy [15]. charles jenks, in his book, proposes the term multivalent and inclusive, which means the pluralistic language that combines traditional and modern elements, vernacular with high art. however, pluralism language contains several styles and codes that relate to different subcultures that led to interculturalism and contextualism in the city. also, it relates to anthropology, which studies human societies, cultures, and their development. 3.5. pluralism in postmodern perspective, ihab hassan, 1986 the study produced a catena of postmodern characteristics; among that catena, phrases like indeterminacy or indeterminacies relate to pluralism. therefore, the study mentioned that fragmentation frequently leads to indeterminacy. decanonization, as a postmodern feature, also applies to all canons in the broadest sense [16]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 50 the study presented several terms associated with pluralism; for example, indeterminacy means the diversity of possible interpretations of given textual elements, in other words, there is pluralism of possible interpretations, but one cannot specify one of them; pluralism leads to indeterminacy. also, the term fragmentation is the process of fragmenting elements to the pluralism of parts. as well, decanonization, considered “literature” or “art” open, blurs the line between “high art” and “low art,” which means merging pluralistic types of art. 3.6. deconstruction: the pleasures of absence, charles jencks,1989 the study described the scheme of parc de ia villette as a combination of opposed systems that are layered on each other; this layering of opposed systems so that they are randomized and discontinuous amounts to a formal deconstruction. it was an interesting new landscape strategy that dealt with an overly complex and detailed brief. bernard tschumi divided the extended site plan into lateral bands of different activities and planting. these thin bands have small elements, or confetti sprinkled randomly over the site. then comes a layer of essential details. including the existing buildings, circulation, and connecting layersthus, the superimposition of five separate systems results in a rich texture that copes with the complex program and its uncertain growth and funding. however, tschumi’s plan, as mentioned, makes a fresh combination of previous formulae, which are acknowledged as historical: the layering of three systems points, lines, and surfaces [17]. the study discussed the concept of pluralism indirectly in the deconstruction style. it appeared that pluralism in deconstruction is associated with the idea of layering with multi-layers and systems combined to form a deconstructivist project. 3.7. the architecture of the jumping universe, charles jencks,1997 the notion of folding was discussed in this study as an architectural approach that may achieve contradictory traits reflecting a quick shift of direction, assumption, or attitude. in contrast, it can reconcile disparities uniquely from other architectural techniques to pluralism, such as collage. also, the study discussed the pluralism of building types. in addition to social pluralism, the notable benefit is the intoxicating ambiguity: one is never sure what building type it is. the environment slips from one category to another, from house to workplace to church to museum to bazaar. this category of no-category or all categories is known in postmodern poetics as the carnivalesque because it represents an escape from the habitual norms of control [18]. moreover, the study discussed the concepts of diversity and variety composed of differing elements, qualities, or pluralist elements. and continuous improvement of these qualities without organization leads to future chaos and complication. also, some technics support diversity: collage, radical eclecticism, and superposition. most building tasks are complex, not simple, and demand a mixed response that takes on the requirements of history, urbanism, pluralism of function, and tastes due to the composition of different elements or pluralism qualities (diversity and then this diversity becomes chaos). because architecture is coded and experienced through an architectural language, the formal system bears as much responsibility as the content. as the environment’s public language, architecture should embrace a shared symbolism, which includes local and global, cosmogenic languages [18]. as previously mentioned, postmodern architecture has a double meaning or double coding, old/new, high/low, traditional art, and modern art jointly, so it’s pluralistic in all these aspects. here the study indicates that folding is a technique that combines pluralistic, diverse, and diversity aspects like elements, languages, directions, and styles, in a smooth transition to create public language. 3.8. peter eisenman: theories and practices, kormoss, b. (2007) in this study, the author explains the folding process that doesn’t follow a single or uniform design pattern but that it should instead be conceived as a combination of methods, in which a series of essential elements (grids, diagrams, and volumes) are successively superposed, scaled, projected and folded. in this sense, the folding process is not an entirely new architectural strategy since it builds on a series of formal techniques like the superposition and scaling of grids, diagrams, and volumes, which were already used in earlier scientific projects. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 51 it is clear from the definitions and explanations of peter eisenman that the concept of folding cannot be reduced to a strictly architectural process and that it should be rather conceived as a multi-layered strategic concept with multiple levels of implications and ramifications—not only in the field of architecture and urbanism but also in the broader field of philosophy, cultural theory, and media [19]. in this study, eisenman’s theories and practices have been discussed that in deconstruction, there is pluralism of processes that have several previous techniques combined by folding to create new architecture by earlier formal strategies. 3.9. modernism and postmodernism in architecture an emphasis on the characteristics. similarities and differences, niki amiri,2016 in this study, niki amiri stated that the postmodern creates eclecticism and humor by combining past and present styles and one of postmodernism’s ideas is to make an artwork using a combination of “multimedia” [20]. jencks defines postmodern architecture as having characteristics of pluralistic, extremely eclectic architecture that embraces variety, differentiation, and otherness in praise of diverse styles and languages. a plurality of styles and a plurality of languages. the postmodern building has multi-aspects or multivalence. it is a blend of rituals, imitations, and ridicules and stimulates other structures to expand around it, implying it can have a wide range of meanings, in contrast to modern architecture with a singlemeaning or singleaspect. postmodern architecture is multivalent, nonexclusive, enigmatic, resonant, and symbolic. however, contemporary architecture with a worldwide purpose (i.e., international style) has stepped into the area while considering postmodern architecture and paying regard to the traditions of each race and nation. modern architecture has a form of unitarianism based on a lack of historical awareness and globalization, yet we see pluralism based on tradition and contextualism in postmodern architecture. because postmodern architecture is a kind of plurality, the spirit of a postmodern structure is compatible with democracy. in contrast, the heart of a modern building is consistent with dictatorship [20]. the study indicates the term multimedia to describe the plurality in postmodern architecture, pluralism styles and pluralism languages, and multivalence which has multi meanings or pluralism of meaning, that all of these aspects led to democracy in architecture. 3.10. intertextual reading of postmodern architecture (based on historicist postmodern architecture and deconstruction), s. rahimi atani, k. bazrafkan, i. raeisi,2018 depending on postmodern theories, architectural work is a mixture of all traditions; and recognizes multiple readings or interpretations of a text and values eclecticism rather than one method [21]. depending on the observer of the postmodernism work, which has several interpretations. however, it believes in the necessity of a plurality of elements in contrast to modern architecture’s lack of features or purity. it is transitioning from being single-valued in modern architecture to a multivalued discipline which means it has value pluralism; postmodernist architecture takes an intertextual approach, which seeks to reflect the existence of different users in the building. the most apparent form of pluralism in postmodern architecture is its openness to the past. postmodern architects practice in a style called “intertextual architecture,” which appropriates styles from different eras and combines them in a way that attempts to reflect the historical and social contexts of pluralism within which their buildings now have to exist [21]. the study indicates that the plurality of aspects can be combined in postmodern architecture through intertextualities, such as merging several cultures, traditions, and times in one text. table 1 summarizes the previous studies that discussed pluralism in architecture according to the types and classifications of pluralism indicators used. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 52 4. results after analyzing the previous studies, it appeared that most studies covered various types of pluralism directly or indirectly, while others appeared to only discuss pluralism's indications. as a result, each kind gave rise to significant architectural characteristics that became either specific or generic indications of pluralism, as shown in table 1: table 1: pluralism types and indicators study name pluralism type specific indicators general indicators learning from las vegas physionognomy pluralism material pluralism invisible unusual elements arrangement time pluralism identity value pluralism irony paradox meaning in western architecture pattern pluralism chaos invisible time pluralism identity tradition pluralism identity complexity and contradiction in architecture shapes possibilities pluralism ambiguity invisible function pluralism multi functioning structure-function pluralism multi functioning the language of postmodern architecture traditions pluralism contextualism invisible cultures pluralism interculturalism pluralism in postmodern perspective interpretations pluralism indeterminacy invisible parts pluralism fragmentation de canonization deconstruction: the pleasures of absence systems pluralism layering invisible the architecture of the jumping universe element pluralism variety invisible diversity direction pluralism folding peter eisenman: theories and practices processes pluralism folding invisible modernism and postmodernism in architecture an emphasis on the characteristics. similarities and differences invisible invisible inclusive multimedia multivalence intertextual reading of postmodern architecture (based on historicist postmodern architecture and deconstruction) element pluralism impurity intertextuality interpretation pluralism indeterminacy multivalued users pluralism multifunctioning the analysis of previous studies indicates two main findings: first, many types of architectural pluralism exist. second, each class is related to one or more indicators that are classified into two categories: specific and general indicators. particular indicators are only associated with a specific type of architectural pluralism, while general indicators include all kinds of pluralism. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 53 5. conclusion the study concludes by answering the study question that the concept of pluralism is a critical idea because it has a huge impact on the architectural field like the other fields and it works on five levels (form, design strategies, meaning, function, and regional) each level contains several types and each type has its indicators. the first level which is the form level includes all the pluralities that relate to the exterior appearance of the architectural mass like physiognomy pluralism which relates to the plurality in virtual material features for example color and texture. also, elements and qualities of pluralism contain plurality in architectural shapes and forms. however, fragmentation and decanonization are considered pluralism of parts. also, pluralism works on architectural design strategies which is the second level, for example when more than one system is used as a layering system. also, the folding technique by connecting that which is different in a smooth transition. the third level, meaning, is when the architecture has more than one meaning or more than one interpretation, possibility, and value. however, these types of pluralism led to indeterminacy, ambiguity, and irony. the fourth level, function, includes patterns of pluralism that become chaos without continuousthoughtfuldevelopment. moreover, user pluralism is when more than one type of user uses the building, or when a structural element has more than one function like resistance and aesthetic. also when an area in the plan is used for several purposes it is considered pluralism in the plan function. the last level, regional, contains all the pluralities that relate to one specific place o regional area, like traditions, social, context, and time. these types create identity and contextuality in the specific region. there are major indicators for pluralism that are applied to all the mentioned levels like intertextuality, multivalent, multivalued, inclusive, and, multimedia. however, it deserves to mention that each type or indicator of pluralism can translate architecture from one direction to the opposite direction. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 54 figure 1: level one of pluralism in architecture (authors). figure 2: level two of pluralism in architecture (authors). figure 3: level three of pluralism in architecture (authors). systems pluralism directions pluralism processes pluralism folding folding layering d e si g n s tr a te g y physionognomy pluralism parts pluralism element pluralism feeling, idea fragmentation de-canonization impurity diversity variety f o rm value pluralism irony paradox possibilities pluralism ambiguity indeterminacy interpretations pluralism m e a n in g kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 55 reference [1] d. furley, and r. allen. studies in presocratic philosophy volume 2: the eleatics and pluralists,routledge, new york, 2016. [2] e. mason, value pluralism, in the {stanford} encyclopedia of philosophy, e.n. zalta, editor. metaphysics research lab, stanford university, 2018. [3] merriam. webster pluralism, 2021. [4] r. barnhart, r. beekes, and c. buck. pluralism, in online etymology dictionary, 2017. [5] w. al-hangaweh. pluralism in architecture. iraqi journal of architecture and planning, 2009. [6] f. saussure. nature of the linguistic sign. in the critical tradition: classic texts and contemporary trends. david h. richter, ed. boston: bedford/st. martin’s press, 1998. [7] c. yegen, and m. abukan, derrida and language: deconstruction. international journal of linguistics, 2014. [8] r. barthes. the rustle of language, univ of california press, california, 1989. [9] a. brenner. the structuralism of claude lévi-strauss and the visual arts. leonardo. 10(4): p. 303-306, 1977. [10] r. salama. .مجلة بحوث التربية النوعية التعددية الفکرية و إعادة قراءة فلسفة ما بعد الحداثة (37): p. 565-576, 2015. [11] c. norberg-schulz. meaning in western architecture. new york,: praeger publishers, 1975. [12] d. jarrawa, mosaic modernism: anarchism, pragmatism, culture, and: beyond solidarity: pragmatism and difference in a globalized world. american literature. 74(3): p. 652-654, 2002. [13] d. robert venturi. s. izenour. learning from las vegas,cambridge,1972. [14] r. venturi., m. stierli, and d. brownlee. complexity and contradiction in architecture, museum of modern art (new york, n.y.),1977. plan function pluralism structure function pluralism users pluralism pluralism of patterns multifunctioning multifunctioning chaos multifunctioning f u n c ti o n figure 4: level four of pluralism in architecture (author). figure 5: level five of pluralism in architecture (authors). culture pluralism context pluralism social pluralism traditions pluralism time pluralism interculturalism contextualism identity contextualism identity r e g io n a l https://www.google.iq/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22museum+of+modern+art+(new+york,+n.y.)%22&source=gbs_metadata_r&cad=8 https://www.google.iq/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22museum+of+modern+art+(new+york,+n.y.)%22&source=gbs_metadata_r&cad=8 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 56 [15] c. jencks. the language of post-modern architecture, london, 1977. [16] i. hassan, i. pluralism in postmodern perspective. critical inquiry. 12(3): p. 503-520, 1986 [17] c. jencks. deconstruction: the pleasures of absence. deconstruction omnibus volume, 119, 1989. [18] c. jencks, the architecture of the jumping universe, london, 1997. [19] b.kormoss, p. eisenman. theories and practices, technische universiteit eindhoven, eindhoven, nederland, 2007 [20] n. amiri, modernism and postmodernism in architecture, an emphasis on the characteristics, similarities and differences. the turkish online journal of design, art and communication, 6: p. 1626-1634, 2016 [21] s. atani., k. bazrafkan, and i. raeisi. intertextual reading of postmodern architecture (based on historicist postmodern architecture and deconstruction). int. j. architect. eng. urban plan. 28(1): p. 1524, 2018. assessment the knowledge of mothers regarding diarrhea of children less than five years at internally displaced persons (idps) arbit camp: a descriptive study kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 1 | june 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.1.3 assessment the knowledge of mothers regarding diarrhea of children less than five years at internally displaced persons (idps) arbit camp: a descriptive study layla abdulkhalk abas attallah omer kasem shahow abdulrahmanezzaddin department of nursing department of community health, department of community medicine sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani medicine university kurdistan region, iraq kurdistan region, iraq kurdistan region, iraq abaslayla@yahoo.com atta,kasem@sup.edu.iq shahoae67@yahoo.com ibrahimtofiqahmed rozhgar abdulla saleem awaz kamal maulud head of planning department, head of primary health care head of children nutrition preventive directorate preventive directorate preventive directorate kurdistan region, iraq kurdistan region, iraq kurdistan region, iraq ibrahim972@yahoo.com rizhgar.saleem@gmil.com awazk.maulud@yahoo.com abstract: diarrhea is the 2nd chief reason of child death widespread. lowand middle-income countries are especially exhausting with this both avoidable and treatable condition. aim: to investigate how children’s health less than five years affected by diarrhea at internally displaced persons (idps) in arbit camp. this study was carried out from december22th 2015 to march 20th 2016. non-probability sampling a convenience sample of (103) mothers of internally displaced persons (idps) arbit camp were selected for the purpose of the study.. it was comprised of two parts; the first part includes the mothers' demographic attributes and the second part assessed the knowledge of diarrhea with (20) yes or on questions. the main results obtained from the study are as follows, more than the half (54.40%) of mothers are (18-25) years old, the (49.50%) of mothers have moderate socioeconomic status, (99.00%of mothers are housewife,, also (54.40%) of the mothers have one child less than five years. the (46.60%) of mothers are illiterate and only (32.00%) of husband read and write and according to the family size of the study (51.50%) of mothers has five children. about the distance of water sources (56.30%) of mothers needs more than 5 minutes to reach water sources, (47.60%) of them have received health education regarding diarrhea held in primary health care center. there was statistically significant relationship between mother’s knowledge of diarrhea and (age group, educational level of husband, educational level of the mother, and occupational status of mother, socioeconomic status, and source of information). so the following recommendation is suggested, highlight the need for excessive nutritional educational program, about diarrhea should be implemented for mothers, good sanitation and improvement of housing conditions especially water resources at arbit camp key words: mothers' knowledge ,children less than five years, internally displaced persons, poor sanitation, water contamination. food hygiene 1. introduction obviously diarrhea is regarded as a key cause of death in children aged less than 5 years old. diarrhea diseases are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality among young children in low-income countries [1, 2]. although oral rehydration has been shown to reduce early child mortality, the diarrhea-specific mortality in children less than 5 years of age in africa has been estimated at about 10.6 per 1,000 [3]. young children are especially susceptible to diarrhea ailment and the common of deaths associated with diarrhea occur in south asia and africa. this is unfortunate since the condition can be easily treated with oral rehydration therapy [4, 5]. diarrhea is known as a child with watery stool for 3 or more times during a 24-hour period [6, 7]. the incidence and austerity of diarrhea are serious by lack of entree to adequate clean water and healthy disposal of human waste, insufficient nourishing practices and hand washing, poor housing conditions, and avoid of admission to sufficient and affordable health care [7]. the etiology of diarrhea must be understood to accelerate additional preventive measures. optimal infant and young child feeding practices could prevent more than 10 percent of deaths from diarrhea and acute respiratory infections [6, 7]. better hygiene practices, particularly hand hygiene with cleanser and the secure disposal of waste, could reduce the incidence of diarrhea by 35 percent [8, 9]. diarrhea is usually a symptom of an infection in the intestinal tract, which can be caused by a variety of bacterial, viral and parasitic organisms. infection is spread through contaminated food or drinking-water, or from person-to-person as a result of poor hygiene [10, 11]. the occurrence of diarrhea advances in the second half of the infant’s life when inborn immunity is fragile and publicity to unclean weaning foods surges [12, 13]. health education about significance of rehydration and feeding practices for mothers, in general are a major contributor to child morbidity and mortality [6, 14]. oral rehydration solutions (ors) or commercially available solutions made of appropriate amounts of sodium, potassium, and glucose should be used for rehydration if patients can consume or drink the required volumes; otherwise mailto:shahoae67@yahoo.com mailto:rizhgar.saleem@gmil.com https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc87621/#b13 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc87621/#b18 appropriate intravenous fluids may be used [15, 16]. the most important aspect of treating diarrhea involves the resolving dehydration and replacing of lost fluid [15]. 2. material and methods the current study was implemented during the application of quantitative design of a descriptive study was utilized the assessment method and applied on mothers from december22th 2015 to march 20th 2016. non-probability sampling an expediency sample of (103) mothers of internally displaced persons ((idps) at arbit camp for following up the health status of their children, was elected for the aim of the study. a questionnaire was developed for the purpose of the study. it was encompassed of 2 parts; the first part comprises the mothers' demographic attributes and the second part evaluated the knowledge of diarrhea with (20) questions marking correct answer or incorrect answer official approval was taken from the primary health care center at arbit camp and assuring them that all information collected would be kept strictly confidential and would not be used for purposes other than research a pilot study was carried out for the period of december 10th to 20th, 2015 to determine the questionnaire reliability through the use of (test – retest). a panel of (7) experts was involved in the determination of the questionnaire content validity. the gained data of the participant’s entered in to the computer and analyzed over utilize of (spss 11.5); the data analyzed was preformed during the subsequent methods, which are: descriptive statistical data. cross tap of data analysis approach such as (frequency and chisquare) were used as methods for data analysis. test of significant with a p values of ≤ 0.05 were considered level of significance. 3. results figure (1) shows that more than half (54.40%) of mother’s among internally displaced persons (idps) in arbit camp are (18-25) years old. figure (1) percentage of mother’s age group figure (2) shows the educational level of mother’s and their husbands at internally displaced persons (idps) at arbit camp. less than half (46.60%) of mother’s were illiterate and only (32.00%) of husband read and write figure (2) percentage educational level of the mother’s and their husbands figure (3) shows the percentage of maternal knowledge about causes of diarrhea among internally displaced persons (idps) in arbit camp. figure (3) percentage of maternal knowledge about causes of diarrhea figure (4) shows the percentage of maternal knowledge about diarrhea management among internally displaced persons (idps) in arbit camp,(32.9%) of mothers revealed continues breast-feeding for children is best,(53.7%) of mother shows continues formula feeding for children is good figure (4) percentage of maternal knowledge diarrhea management table 1. distribution of the subjects (103 mothers) by their socio-demographic attributes age (years) frequency percent p value significan ce 18-25 56 54.40% < 0.001 hs 26-30 31 30.10% 31-35 14 13.60% ≤ 35 2 1.90% total 103 100% educational level of mother frequency percent illiterate 48 46.60% 0.02 s read and write 28 27.20% primary school only 27 26.20% total 103 100% educational level of husband frequency percent illiterate 31 30.10% < 0.001 hs read and write 33 32.00% primary school only 30 29.10% secondary school only 8 7.80% more than secondary school 1 1.00% total 103 100% socio-economic status: frequency percent low 48 46.60% < 0.001 hs moderate 51 49.50% high 4 3.90% total 103 100% occupational status of mother frequency percent housewife 102 99.00% < 0.001 hs employee 1 1.00% total 103 100% family size frequency percent -<5 children 50 48.50% 0.77 ns ≥5 children 53 51.50% total 103 100% frequency percent distance of water source <5 minutes 45 43.70% 0.2 ns 5≥ minutes 58 56.30% total 103 100% frequency percent number of children less than 5 years 0 – 1 child 56 54.40% 0.38 ns ≥2 47 45.60% total 103 100% source of information frequency percent media 30 29.10% 0.01 s health centers 26 25.20% the physician 12 11.70% all of the above 35 34.00% total 103 100% visiting primary health care center during the antenatal period frequency percent available 49 47.60% 0.62 ns unavailable 54 52.40% total 103 100% table (1) illustrate that these risk factors (age, educational level of mother , educational level of husband socio-economic status, occupational status of mother, source of information) does have an effect on diarrhea of children less than five years at internally displaced persons (idps) arbit camp. table 2 knowledge of the subjects (103 mothers) concerning diarrhea list items correct answer incorrect answer frequency percent frequency percent 1. knowledge about cause of diarrhea 96 94.1% 6 4.9% 2. water contamination is the leading cause of diarrhea 72 70.6% 30 29.4% 3. poor sanitation one of the leading causes of diarrhea. 15 14.7% 87 85.3% 4. raw vegetables & fruits are common causes of food-borne illness). 13 12.7% 89 87.3% 5. eating food from street vendors (uncovered food)caused diarrhea 8 7.8% 94 92.2% 6. the best food for children with diarrhea 73 70.9% 30 29.1% 7. continue breast-feeding for children with diarrhea 27 32.9% 55 67.1% 8. continue formula feeding for children with diarrhea. 44 53.7% 38 46.3% 9. diarrhea and causes of dehydration in children 41 50% 41 50% 10. (covered container) used for water transportation. 97 96% 4 4% 11. good scrubbing of drinking water tanks. 40 39.6% 61 60.4% 12. boiling of drinking water 39 38.6% 62 61.4% 13. using chlorine for drinking water 22 21.8% 79 78.2% 14. food hygiene better before preparing food. 96 94.1% 6 5.9% 15. hand washing before handling food. 50 48.5% 53 51.5% 16. cleaning of vegetables and other foods 53 51.5% 50 48.5% 17. cleaning of cooking and eating utensils. 8 7.8% 95 92.2% 18. information about proper food hygiene 94 91.3% 9 8.7% 19. proper home management of diarrhea 74 74% 26 26% 20. using an oral rehydration solutions package. 71 68.9% 32 31.1% http://rehydrate.org/faq/how-to-use-ors-package.htm the level of mother’s knowledge regarding diarrhea was measured through (20) questions, marking true or false for each question .table 2 shows that (94.1%) of mothers has knowledge about causes of diarrhea among internally displaced persons (idps) in arbit camp. more than half (70.6%) water contamination, (14.7%) poor sanitation, (12.7%) raw vegetables and fruits,(7.8%)eating food from street vendors, more than half (70.9%) revealed that the best food for children with diarrhea,(32.9%) of mothers revealed continues breastfeeding for children is best,(53.7%) of mother show continues formula feeding for children is good,(50%) of mothers knew diarrhea cause dehydration in children, covered container used for water transportation, food hygiene better before preparing food, information about proper food hygiene(96%, 94.1%, 91.3 respectively),(74%) of mothers had information about proper home management of diarrhea, more than half (68.9%) has information about using an oral rehydration solutions package for diarrhea treatment. 4. discussion diarrhea diseases are amidst the most frequent childhood illnesses and driving cause of avoidable death, particularly between children less than 5 in developing countries [17]. diarrhea consequences in huge losses of water and electrolytes, particularly potassium and sodium, and habitually is complicated by severe systemic acidosis [18]. additionally, 4.9 children per 1000 per year decease as a effect of diarrhea ailment in the first 5 years of life in developing countries [19]. when they asked about cause of diarrhea, all of them unless six mothers (94.1% knew cause of diarrhea, because the utmost public cause of acute diarrhea is a viral infection [20]. while, other causes comprise bacterial infections; side effects of antibiotics and infections not associate with the gastrointestinal system. however, there are numerous less public causes of diarrhea. bacterial, viral and parasitic infections are all infectious [21]. water pollution is a major global problem which requires ongoing evaluation and revision of water resource policy at all levels (international down to individual aquifers and wells). it is the leading worldwide cause of deaths and diseases [22, 23], so that it accounts for the deaths of more than 14,000 people daily [23]. fortunately, (70.6%) of mothers knew that. (14.7%) of mothers had information regarding poor sanitation one of the leading causes of diarrhea. having adequate latrines. decrease contact between host and causative organisms of diarrhea .this finding was similar to study [24]. mothers had low knowledge regarding eating raw vegetables and fruits because only (12.7%) of them knew that raw vegetables and fruits are common causes of food-borne illness. most camps either don’t allow migrants share of agriculture, or there isn’t adequate rainfall or water to do so. consequently, emigrants have established innovative instruments for obtaining more nourishment. [25]. recycling in itself is a risky procedure and also takes part to the attendance of a black market in many immigrant camps. however, low knowledge about eating food from street vendors cause diarrhea seen among (7.8%) the mothers in the present study. these ready to-eat foods and drink beverages are intended and/or sold by sellers essentially in the streets or other proper public places such as around places of hospitals, schools, work and bus terminals, are commonly prepared and sold under in sanitary conditions, with constrained entree to safe water, hygienic services, or refuse disposal facilities. nevertheless (70.9%) of participants identified that continue to be fed small meals throughout the day. world health organization recommends a kid with diarrhea constantly to be nourished. sustained nourishing hustles the recovery of normal intestinal function. regarding the importance of breastfeeding of babies with diarrhea, (32.9%) of partakers said that they would breastfeed their child if they infected with diarrhea. it is still a big issue that dietary forms through acute diarrhea disease isn’t acknowledged to many mothers in the present study, as it has a main impact on recover from diarrhea [26]. fifty three percent of the mothers in the present study has knowledge regarding formula feeding. formula-fed babies should continue to take their usual formula, while they have diarrhea. through a diarrhea incident, water and electrolytes (bicarbonate, sodium, potassium and chloride) are lost during watery stools, vomiting, perspiration, urine and breathing. dehydration incidences when these losses are not substitutes [27]. the baby may be having diarrhea if they have unexpected increase in the number of bowel movements. stool with a very bad smell may also be a sign of diarrhea if the diarrhea is very severe or notice signs of dehydration [28]. respectively, (96%) of mothers has mentioned that the covered container used for water transportation .because collected water is more susceptible to pollution during transportation and storage which increase risk of diarrhea diseases .this finding is in agreement with study in kenya [29]. it is scrubbing the internal surfaces of the tank. use a mixture of detergent and hot water (household laundry soap powder will do) to scrub and clean all internal surfaces of the tank. but, in the present study only (39.6) of mothers knew that and more than two-third of them could not identify that; this may be attributed to their disorientation about good scrubbing of drinking water tanks. when the mothers asking what they will do for making drinking water safe, one-quarter (38.6%) of them described that the responsibility for making drinking water safe falls to community residents by default. the traditional emergency prevention measure, boiling the water, is economically and environmentally unsustainable [30]. it takes a kilogram of firewood to bring a liter of water to boil for a minute [3], and a person requires a minimum of 2l of drinking water per day [31]. alternatives to fuel wood, such as kerosene and other fossil fuels are expensive and also pose environmental hazards [27, 20]. mothers had low knowledge regarding using chlorine for drinking water, because only (21.8%) of them knew that chemical disinfectants are a practical alternative to boiling, although only the safest and least expensive disinfectants are suitable for household use in the developing world. chlorine and filtering, the most commonly used https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/water_resource_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/water_pollution#cite_note-death-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/water_pollution#cite_note-death2-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/water_pollution#cite_note-death2-2 http://www.uniteforsight.org/refugee-health/module3#_ftn16 http://www.uniteforsight.org/refugee-health/module3#_ftn8 disinfectant in water treatment plants, is hazardous, and impractical. however, sodium and calcium hypochlorite are relatively safe [32]. when added to water in tightly covered containers, volatilization is minimal and hypochlorite disinfectants provide residual protection for many hours to days [33]. the majority of the mothers (94.1%) knew that food hygiene better before preparing food. good food hygiene isn’t just something for restaurants to worry about. it’s important to know how to prepare food safely and hygienically in the home too. before making nourishment preparation, hands, equipment, clothes and kitchen surfaces are most be clean. hand-hygiene before making food is a mainly significant opportunity to inhibit childhood diarrhea and it is the best mechanism when it is become of a package of behavior change interventions [34]. washing hands with detergent can decrease the hazard of diarrhea ailments by (42-47%) [35]. food-hygiene practices of mothers have an effect on the spread, of diarrhea among children ,cutlery (like knives and other cutting apparatuses) can be utilized for nourishment preparations in a kitchenette and as intake utensils when eating [36]. both of forks and spoons are other cutlery kitchen and eating utensils. unfortunately, in the current study more than two-third (92.2%) of partakers didn’t recognize that. therefore poor knowledge mothers requires more conscious about washing of a kitchen utensil. correspondingly, (91.3%) of mothers had information about proper food hygiene; good food hygiene isn’t just something for restaurants to worry about. it’s important to know how to prepare food safely and hygienically in the home too. in both developed and developing countries food transmitted ailment stays a serious and enormous problem, causing excessive human suffering and important economic losses. up to 1/3 of the inhabitants of developed countries may be affected by illnesses, which borne annual through food-borne, then the problem is possible to be even more occurrence in developing countries, every year an estimated 2.2 million people killed because of food and water-borne diarrhea illnesses. (74%) of participants identified the benefit of proper home management of diarrhea through the use of oral rehydration solution[37] this was because culturally, mothers used their treatment at home and wait many days before visiting the health facility. these results are more or less comparable with the study conducted by [37], in egypt (a developing country) which showed that in the past (2 wks) of diarrhea episodes. 5. conclusion the study demonstrates that (poor sanitation, raw vegetables & fruits, eating food from street vendors, hand washing, using chlorine for drinking water ) were the five major causes of diarrhea diseases in children aged under five years old. these risk factors (occupational status of mother, socio-economic status of mother; educational level of husband and age of mothers ) have an effect on the diarrhea diseases, however (family size , distance of water source, number of children less than 5 years , visiting primary health care center during antenatal period) does not an effect on the causes of diarrhea diseases) , personal communication, concentrated group discussion, and home visits accomplished during volunteers produced an important enhancement in mother’s knowledge with respect to household healthcare for children less than the age of five with diarrhea ailment, the results of this study can be useful in the development of future interventions, effective health education can only be provided on the basis of an accurate understanding of prevailing knowledge aiming to reduce diarrhea appearance in similar camps 6. acknowledgment we would like to express our thanks to the work of (dr. nawroz a. tahir) for his valuable guidance and review of the article. we must also acknowledge the staff of the preventive directorate in sulaimani city for their cooperation and all staff of the health center in arbit camp, who gave so freely of their time in facilitating the study. 7. references [1] ab patel, r ovung, nb badhoniya, mj dibley. risk factors for predicting diarrheal duration and morbidity in children with acute diarrhea. indian j pediatr. 2012; 79:472–477. 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[37 ah ei gilany, hammeds epidemiology of diarrhoeal diseases among children under 5 years of age in dakahlia, egypt. eastern mediterranean health journal. 2005; 11:4. ad received ors and (75%) had received antibiotics.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.1 received: 10 may 2018 | accepted: 25 june 2018 assessment of knowledge and practice of various eye diseases in sulaimani: a descriptive study abdulrahman m. ibrahem salah q. mahmood muhammed babakir-mina piramagrun hospital radiation department community health department sulaimani general directorate of health sulaimani technical institute technical college of health ministry of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq abdlrahman.ibrahem@spu.edu.iq salah.mahmood@spu.edu.iq m.babakir@yahoo.com salar ibrahim ali bakhtyar kamal talabany community health department anesthesia department technical college of health technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq salaribrahimali@yahoo.it bakhtyar.talabany@spu.edu.iq 1 abstract: knowledge and practice of public, especially patients about eye diseases are important to reduce magnitude of human blindness. vision and sight are very essential because they allow us to connect to each other’s. in accordance to the recently published data; the estimation of 253 million people lives with vision impairment, 36 million are blind and 217 million suffer from moderate to severe vision impairment. a descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted at shahid dr. aso hospital in sulaimani city-iraq, from april to august 2017 by face-to-face interview through close ended questionnaire for data collecting. all data were analyzed by statistical package for social sciences version 22.0 software. p-value of < 0.05 was considered as a statistically significant. a total of 430 patients were randomly chosen to participate in the study. they were 254 (59.1%) males and 176 (40.9%) females. 76.7% of respondents was worrying about vision loss, 0.7% was worrying about hair loss. of the participants, 32.8% was with a good knowledge level and 40.5% was with a poor knowledge level, as well as 3.1% was in a good practice and 58.8% was in a poor practice level. female knowledge mean score was 9.53±4.96 and male knowledge mean score was 8.42±5.45, the practice mean score of males was 4.33±1.96 and mean practice score of females was 4.13±1.93. the study data indicate the worrying of participates about vision loss is in the highest proportion and the awareness and practice of patients about eye diseases is unsatisfactory. health education campaigns are needed to improve personal awareness about vision related problems and for better eye health. keywords: cataract, glaucoma, vision, knowledge, practice, prevention. 1. introduction globally, eye diseases and blindness are the important public health problem because they cause human disability that is resulting enormous social and economic consequences [1]. vision and sight are very essential because they allow us to connect with each other’s and also it is vital in how we view the world around us and interpret the colors, shapes, and dimension of objectives. loosing of vision has a negative effect on the quality of life. it has been demonstrated in relation with different eye conditions such as cataract [2, 3], age related macular degeneration [4], and diabetic eye disease [5]. as by increasing the world population and average of life expectancy, the prevalence of visual impairment and blindness was increased [6]. in accordance to the recently published data, the estimation of 253 million people lives with vision impairment; 217 million suffer from moderate to severe vision impairment and 36 million are blind [7, 8]. an estimating 82% of all blind people are from those with 50 years old or older, and the major causes of visual impairment are uncorrected refractive errors by 43% and cataract by 33%; the most common cause of blindness is by cataract (51%) [9]. good knowledge of people about eye related health and some practices such as a regular eye examination and using of appropriate treatment are necessary, and both of knowledge and practice are a good indicator to determine the community expectation about eye care [10]. several studies have been conducted to assess and determine the level of awareness and practice through the developed and developing countries [11-14]. there is no available survey on the awareness and practice on eye disease in iraq. therefore, the objective of current study is to determine the level of knowledge and practice about various eye disease among eye patients at sulaimani city in iraq. 2 2. methods and materials study population: a descriptive and cross-sectional survey based study was conducted from april to august 2017 in sulaimani, kurdistan region of iraq. in this study, 430 eye patients were randomly selected, their ages were ranging between 10 and 87 years old from shahid dr. aso hospital. the data was collected by face to face interview through close-ended questionnaire. the participants were allowed to respond at their convenience and adequate time and in the consideration to their confidentiality. also, the study’s participation was completely voluntary. oral consent was taken from each participant, patients were informed about the nature of the study and official permission was also taken from the hospital’s ethics committee. the patients not willing to participate in the study are excluded. the study was reviewed and approved by an ethics committee at technical college of health in sulaimani polytechnic university. data collection methods. a total of 43 study question was prepared and reviewed by two experts from technical college of health. the survey was originally created in the kurdish language. the study questionnaire was divided into several sections which are: the sociodemographic characteristics of the participants, distribution of eye problems among participants, the most worry about losing of human body part, and their knowledge and practices about eye diseases. the participants’ demographics are (age, gender, race, marital status, education and occupation). a pilot study was conducted to check questionnaire length and level of understanding of patients to study questionnaire. a questionnaire was anonymous and didn’t require any identity and all data were kept confidential. section regarding knowledge about diseases consists of 18 questions. the participants could choose between three predetermined options which were (yes), (no) and (do not know). each correct answer received one points and zero point for incorrect and (do not know) answers. the scale classified knowledge levels as: poor knowledge level from 0-6 points, moderate knowledge level from 712 points and good knowledge level from 13-18 points. section about practices towards eye disease, which contains of 12 questions, the participants had two predetermined options to choose between which were (yes) and (no). each correct answer received one points and zero points for incorrect answers. the scores of practices were classified also into three levels: poor, moderate, and good level. statistical analysis. statistical analysis was performed using the spss program (spss for windows, version 22.0). descriptive statistics were used to illustrate respondents’ demographic characteristics and the results were presented as the frequencies and percentage. the continuous variables were expressed as mean ± standard deviation, while categorical variables were measured as percentages. pearson chi-square test (χ2) was used to determine if data were significant differences between the age groups in related to the history of some eye disease, compare knowledge and practice level and demographic characteristics as well as compare of some eye disease and knowledge and practice level. test results with p-value of <0.05 were accepted as statistically significant. 3. results socio-demographic characteristics the individual characteristics of eye patients are presented table 1. a total of 430 eye patients participated in the study. of these, mean age of the study was 42.76 ±21.25 years with age range of 77 years. age groups of ≥ 60 years was the highest percentage 122 (28.4) and age groups of < 20 years old was the lowest percentage (22%). males was the dominant gender 254 (59.1%) and female gender was (40.9%). one hundred and seventy (39.5%) were unemployed and vast majority 291(67.7) were from urban population and rural population was (21.6%). more than half of participants 256(59.6%) had both illiterate and primary level of education. thirty (7.0%) currently every day smoker and 27(6.3%) currently someday drinking. previous eye treatment and previous eye injury/surgery was 265 (61.6%) and 262 (60.9%) respectively. table1: individual characteristics of participants (no.= 430) characteristics n (%) age (years) <20 95 (22.1) 20-39 103 (24.0) 40-59 110 (25.6) ≥ 60 122 (28.4) gender male 254 (59.1) female 176 (40.9) occupation unemployed 170 (39.5) government employee 59 (13.7) students 104 (24.2) others 97 (22.6) residence urban 291 (67.7) semi urban 46 (10.7) rural 93 (21.6) marital status married 279 (64.9) unmarried 151 (35.1) education illiterate 137 (31.9) primary 119 (27.7) high school 112 (26.0) university 62 (14.4) smoking history every day smoking 30 (7.0) someday smoking 35 (8.1) former smoking 64 (14.9) never smoking 301 (70.0) drinking history every day drinking 5 (1.2) someday drinking 27 (6.3) former drinking 7 (1.6) never drinking 391 (90.9) previous eye treatment 265 (61.6) previous eye injury/surgery 262 (60.9) 3 distribution of eye diseases among participants as shown in table 2, the highest percentage of participants had sunlight sensitivity 296 (68.8) and difference between the 4 groups was significant (p<0.05), as age groups of ≥ 60 was in a higher percentage. eye stain comes in second most prevalent by 244 (56.7). 219 (5.9) had itchy/watery eyes and the difference between age groups was significant (p<0.05). only 67(15.6%) of participants had conjunctivitis and difference between the 4 groups was significant (p<0.05), as groups of ≥ 60 yeas had the highest percentage (8.01%). the study results show no significant difference between age groups and eye infection, eye strain and dry eye diseases. table 2: distribution of eye diseases among participants by age groups. worrying about loss human body part figure 1 shows the most worrying about loss human boy part by participants, of these 330(76.7%) was worry about vision loss and then worry about memory loss by 39(9.1%). the smallest percentage was about hair loss by 3(0.7%). figure 1: most worry about losing body parts knowledge and practice level about eye disease figure 2 shows level score knowledge and practice of participants, as figure shows 32.8% of participants had good knowledge regarding various eye disease and 40.5% with poor knowledge. as well as only 3.1% of participants had good practice level score and 58.8% of participants had poor practice level toward eye disease. the result of our study shows that almost one quarter of participants had medium knowledge level and nearly one third of patients had moderate practice score level about eye diseases. figure 2: knowledge and practice level score. association between individual variables with knowledge and practice level table 3 shows the differences between personal characteristic of participants with knowledge and practice level score. as table shows there are significant difference (p-value = < 0.05) between knowledge level and age groups, as the age group of 20-39 years had more knowledge than other groups and group of < 20 years had higher percentage of poor knowledge level. also, the table shows that non-employed personal had higher knowledge level (10.2%), while group of governments employed personal had lowest knowledge level (2.8%) and the difference is significant (p-value < 0.05). participant those with higher school and university education had more knowledge than others, but illiterate and primary education had less knowledge and the differences are also significant. participants with both previous eye treatment and previous eye injury had poor knowledge with percentage of (23.7%) and (23.3%) respectively, while good knowledge percentages are (18.8%) and (18.4%) respectively, also the differences are statistically significant (p-value < 0.05). regarding practice level score, table 3 shows that very small percentage of participants had good practice toward eye disease, while majority of patients had either poor or moderate practice level score and there are statistical significant different (pvalue < 0.05) between practice level and type of occupation, residency, level of education, previous eye treatment and previous eye injury. on the other hand, the 4 study results did not find any differences between practice level and other individual variables such are age groups, gender, marital status, and both of smoking and drinking history. table 3: association between individual variables with knowledge and practice level. association of various eye disease with knowledge and practice level as table 4 shows the association of eye disease of participants with their knowledge and practice level score, glaucoma patients had (20%) good knowledge level, while (49.3%) had poor knowledge and the difference is statistically significant (p-value < 0.5). in addition, good knowledge for blurred vision/distant, dry eye and itchy/watery eye was (24.3%), (23.3%), and (27.4%) respectively, as well as their poor knowledge was (39.6%), (24.2%), and (41.1%) respectively; the results also was statistical significant (p-value < 0.5). the study results show that no statistical significant differences between knowledge level score of patients with sunlight sensitivity, conjunctivitis, cataract, eye infection, blurred vision/near and dry eye diseases. regarding practice level score, patients with sunlight sensitivity had higher percentage with poor practice (56.8%), while only (2%) had good practice score level and the difference was significant (p-value <0.05). eye infection patients had zero practice score, while (49.3%) with poor practice level and the result is statistically significant (p-value <0.05). furthermore, patients with blurred vision/distant and dry eye had good practice level (3.5%) and (1.4%) respectively, and their poor practice level with percentage of (48.6%) and (63.7%) respectively, the results are also significant (pvalue <0.05). the detail of other results was shown in table 4. table 4: association of eye disease patients with knowledge and practice score. 4. discussion to the best of our knowledge, our study is the first study examined the knowledge and practice about common eye disease amongst eye patients in iraq. people at different age groups facing differently many vision disorders [15]. although eye problems may affect anyone but several eye problem are more common as people age like; cataract, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, retinal detachment and conjunctivitis [16]. part of this study is to determine distribution of various eye diseases among participants, the result of this study revealed that increase of eye problem with increasing of age as age from 40 and older had higher proportion of all type of eye disease, the study result is consistent with the study assessed age-related diseases in united state [17] and the study conducted in india [18]. there is major impact on people from all ages in our community as a result of vision disorders. young children, adolescents, teenagers, adults, and the elderly people all are affected. the proportion, types of eye problem and their effect on human vary among different age groups, but to decrease the deterioration or secondary outcomes mostly needs special management. most of people think that vision is so important to see objects from front us, vision helps us to sew, read, write, paint and watching everything. william shakespeare once said “the eyes are the window to your soul ". many people worry about their health so sight is being more worrying about losing. the study result show that vast majority of patients (76.7%) worried about vision loss rather than loss of other human parts. no relevant study was found in eastern mediterranean region, but numerous researches conducted in developed world to examine the impact of sigh loss on human life [19-21]. similarly, a study conducted in usa, reported worrying about loss eyesight is greater than loss of limb, memory, hearing and speech[22]. both temporary and long term psychopathology have been reported as a result of visual restoration and blindness [23]. many eye disease appears without any previous symptom and become more complicated at stage when there is limited effective of treatment. some of eye diseases produce as a result of systemic disease such as diabetic retinopathy in diabetic patients and some others such as glaucoma appear in helpless family [24]. this study was undertaken to identify the level of knowledge and practice of participants. the main findings of this study were that the 5 overall knowledge related common eye diseases in sulaimani was poor, in which 40.5% of participants within poor knowledge level about eye disease, this results is similar to other study result assessed knowledge level of eye disease among hong kong chinese population [25] and india [26]. this result of our study disagree with other study results in saudi arabia [27] and yamen [28]. poor knowledge about common eye disease and their complication cause delay of chance of early diagnosis and treatment, thus more prone to increase rate of blindness. the finding of this study indicates that there is poor practice level regarding common eye disease, in which 58.8% of participants within poor practice level. this result is agree with the results of study conducted in pakistan [29] that indicate poor practice level among participants about various eye disease and different with other study result conducted in australia [10]. the result of current study show that age group of 20-60 years old, non-employed people, urban population, married person, higher level of education, those with previous history of eye treatment and previous eye injury had significantly higher proportion of knowledge level about various eye diseases. consistent result was obtained in the study conducted in melbourne-australia [30], in which revealed those with higher educational level more likely to have higher knowledge of eye related disease. michielutte et al [31] found that people with higher education level had the highest levels of knowledge of eye disease. similarly, population based study on knowledge of glaucoma from a rural area in china [32], and rural [33] and urban areas of india [34] have shown poor knowledge among rural communities. individuals who were higher level of education were much aware about the various eye diseases. whereas the study conducted in iran reported no significant relation between age groups and knowledge level[35]. the study result show no significant relation between gender, smoking history, drinking history and their knowledge of participants. similar to this study, al zarea revealed on a study in saudi arabia there is no correlation between age group and knowledge of eye diseases [36]. this result of this study show that more than half of respondent within poor practice regarding eye disease such as; regular eye check, wearing sunglass and taking visual break during watching tv or mobile phone. current result display significant correlation between practice levels of respondent and the occupation, residency, level of education, previous eye treatment and previous eye injury of participants. meanwhile, participants with previous eye treatment and previous eye injury have more knowledge and practice level because it could be learnt when they an ocular disease from books, magazines, tv or medical staff. whereas, there is no significant correlation of age group, sex, marital status, smoking and drinking history. unlike our study results, livingston, pm et al reported that females more likely to have practice toward eye disease[10]. further research is required to identify the reason why people practice is not sufficient. concerning the relationship of knowledge and practice with various eye disease of respondents, the study results show significant relation between knowledge level and glaucoma, blurred vision/distant, dry eye and itchy/watery eye. similarly relation between participant knowledge and cataract was revealed in other studies [11, 36]. furthermore, practice of our participants toward sunlight sensitivity, eye infection, blurred vision/distant and dry eye was also statistically significant. it is extremely important to educate people about eye diseases and took information to minimize the accountability of eye related disease and inform them to make practice that help to protect eye from the hazards. limitations of the study should be in consideration, the questionnaire in closed ended questions format, which mean some time the respondent choose the first answer and closed end questionnaire can be influenced by recall bias and there is no space for respondent idea. there are no published studies in our setting in which to compare the study findings. in addition, we only studied patients that visited the shahid dr. aso hospital, which indicates that the results of data from a single location and would obviously need to be repeated in a random sample of 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[36] b. k. al zarea, "assessment of awareness, knowledge, attitudes and practices associated with eye diseases in the population of aljouf and hail province of saudi arabia," red, vol. 580, p. 76.01, 2016. 1. introduction 5. conclusion  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.25 received: 26 june 2018 | accepted: 18 july 2018 cardiovascular risk assessment among adults in primary health care settings in sulaimani using who risk prediction charts vian najim edeen zhian salah ramzi woloba health centre college of nursing directorate of health, sulaimani university of sulaimani ministry of health sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq zean.ramzi@univsul.edu.iq email: najimedeen_vian@yahoo.com 150 abstract: who adopted world health organization/international society of hypertension (who/ish) risk charts to predict cardiovascular disease risk in low and middle income countries. the aim of this study was to estimate the cardiovascular risk in adults ≥40 years old by using the two versions of the who/ish risk prediction charts “with and without cholesterol”, and to find out the risk by other parameters not found in the chart; also, to evaluate concordance between the two approaches. a crosssectional study was conducted from august 2016 to february 2017 in two primary health care centers in sulaimani city among 500 persons aged 40-82 years. the desired information was collected by using a pretested questionnaire; anthropometric measurements and laboratory investigations were also carried out for the participants. cardiovascular risk was assessed by the who/ish risk prediction charts for the eastern mediterranean region in category d. mean age of the participants was 52.5(±9.55) years and 70.4% of the participants were females. only 260 participants had the results of total cholesterol and triglycerides. the results revealed that, using the risk assessment charts with and without cholesterol, 22.3% and 19.2% respectively of the study population were in the tenyear cardiovascular risk category of ≥20%. risk categories were concordant in 86.2% of the population; and when we applied single risk factor approach 51.5% would require drug treatment. the who/ish risk chart is an affordable and simple tool to estimate cardiovascular disease risk. nearly one fifth of adults aged ≥ 40 years in sulaimani city are at high-very high risk of developing cardiovascular event in the next ten years as assessed by who/ish risk prediction charts. the use of the without cholesterol version of the chart to estimate cardiovascular disease risk could be useful is settings where cholesterol cannot be measured. keywords: world health organization/international society of hypertension (who/ish) risk chart, cardiovascular risk assessment, primary health care centers, sulaimani city. 1. introduction cardiovascular disease (cvd) is one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality in adults that negatively affects the public health infrastructure, and increases the direct and indirect healthcare costs all over the world [1, 2]. nearly 17.5 million people died from cvd in 2012 and this number is expected to reach 23.6 million by the year 2030 [3]. about 80% of deaths from cvd occurred in low and middle income countries (lmic) usually before the age of 60 [4]. nearly 10% of the global disease burden (daly) is attributed to cvd and this burden is substantially higher in lmic countries than in high income countries (hic) [5]. 2. literature review cardiovascular diseases are the diseases of the heart, vascular diseases of the brain and diseases of blood vessels, and deaths from cvd are mainly due to heart attack, stroke and heart failure [6]. cardiovascular diseases are caused by a range of modifiable and non modifiable risk factors; the foremost are age, smoking, hypertension, diabetes and dyslipidemia. these factors are prone to be changed and be controlled by health counseling [7, 8]. since multiple factors are responsible for the causation of cvd, so it will be wrong to depend on single risk factor in our assessment, and evidence proposed that cvd risk assessment will be more accurate when we depend on a combination of multiple risk factors than depending on single risk factor [9, 10]. the total risk approach was first used in developed nations depending on cohort data from their own populations and the most commonly used score is the framingham risk score (frs), other similar scores and studies are the munster study, the procam study, the score study, the ukpds tool, progetto coure study and the most recent score is the nhanes [1114]. these scores cannot be applied in developing countries since the populations of these countries were not included in the development of any of the abovementioned scores [15, 16]. the world health organization (who) and the international society of hypertension (ish) have 151 developed cvd risk prediction charts in the year 2000 to be used in different parts of the world. for the development of these charts, who and ish used the best available mortality and risk factor data. it is a simple and cost effective tool to estimate cvd risk for people ≥ 40 years in primary health care settings in all the 14 who sub regions and it shows the risk’s percentage for developing cvd event in the next ten years. the simplicity and the cost effectiveness of these charts are due to the fact that they can be used by physician and non-physician health workers [11, 17]. according to who and world bank income classification, iraq is a middle-income country that falls into the eastern mediterranean region in category d. the challenge in health sector is the non-communicable diseases (ncd) and mainly cvds, they are responsible for 26.5% of all cause of death and are the second cause for disability adjusted life years (daly) lost in 2012 [14, 17, 18]. the who/ish risk prediction charts can assist the prevention of cvd, particularly if they can be used by health workers in primary health care settings, because in many lmic the non-physician health worker is the first contact for medical assistance. health systems in lmic do not have the basic infrastructure facilities to use risk scores that are utilized by hic to predict cvd risk, particularly in primary health care settings. as the who/ish charts use simple variables, they can be applied even in low resource-settings [19]. the present study was carried out to determine the distribution of cvd risk in adults’ ≥ 40 years by using the who/ish risk prediction charts with and without cholesterol in sulaimani city, and to compare the concordance between the two versions of the chart by using the version of cholesterol as the gold standard; also, to determine the proportion of people who are in need of treatment. 3. methods and materials from august 2016 to february 2017, a cross-sectional study was conducted in two primary health care centers (phc) in sulaimani city, ibrahim ahmed and wooloba phcs among adults aged 40 years and more. there are 40 phc in sulaimani city center and these phc were divided into two groups, those who deliver their services to low socioeconomic districts and the second group was those phcs that are located in districts with middlehigh socioeconomic standards of living. one phc was selected randomly from each of the above 2 categories; wooloba phc was chosen randomly to represent the low socioeconomic region and ibrahim ahmed phc was also selected randomly to represent the middlehigh socioeconomic region. sample size was estimated using sample size equation, to detect the prevalence of 12.6% of diabetes (cvd risk factor with the lowest prevalence), the minimum sample needed was 481. all people who attended the phc who were ≥40 years males and females had been invited to participate in the study. persons with established atherosclerotic cvd and pregnant women were excluded from the study. overall 500 subjects took part in the assessment. a semi-structured questionnaire was used for the collection of data from each participant after obtaining the verbal consent. before the usage of these questionnaires, they were piloted on 30 individuals. height, weight and the waist circumference (anthropometric measurements) were taken for each participant, blood pressure was also measured, blood sugar (fasting or random) was estimated by the researcher using a glucometer. lipid profile is not one of the routine investigation in all the phc in sulaimani, so the results of total cholesterol and triglycerides were obtained by sending all the participants to sulaimani public health laboratory. cardiovascular risk was estimated for each participant by using the who/ish risk prediction chart for the eastern mediterranean region in category d. the variables that we depend on the prediction of cvd risk were age, gender, systolic blood pressure, smoking status, the presence or absence of diabetes; these variables were used for the version of the chart without cholesterol and with the addition of serum cholesterol level for the version of the chart with cholesterol. blood glucose has been measured by a glucometer and study participants were classified as diabetics based on the definition of who and the diagnostic criteria of the american diabetic association (ada) for fasting blood sugar of 7mmol/dl (>126 mg/dl) and/or random blood sugar 11.1mmol/l (>200 mg/dl) [20, 21]. in addition, participants that were previously diagnosed as having diabetes and who were on treatment were also classified as diabetic regardless their blood glucose status. blood pressure was measured for the participants and they were labeled as hypertensive when systolic blood pressure ≥140 mm hg and/or diastolic blood pressure ≥90 mm hg or in case they were on antihypertensive medication (14). waist circumference (wc) was measured in line halfway between the lowest rib and the iliac crest using a regular tailor tape. according to the measurement, respondents were grouped into 3 categories: normal, elevated, and substantially elevated wc (sewc). this categorization followed sex-specific cut-off points suggested by who: elevated wc indexed as a waistline measurement of 94 cm or more for men and 80 cm or more for women, and sewc indexed as a waistline measurement of 102 cm or more for men and 88 cm or more for women [22]. ibm spss statistics 21 was used for data entry and analysis. chi-square test was used for statistical significance with a threshold of p ≤ 0.05. the method described in the who guideline was used for data analysis [1]. concordance between the two prediction charts was calculated for the different risk levels using the chart with cholesterol as gold standard. 4. results a total of 500 participants (aged 40-82 years), mean age was 52.5(±9.55) years, 70.4% of the participants were females; nearly half (47%) of the participants were from the age group 40-49 years (table 1). 152 table 1: age and gender distribution of the study participants gender age group (years) 40-49 50-59 60-69 ≥70 total n (%) mean±sd male 62 (26.4) 40 (31) 33 (32.4) 13 (38.2) 148 (29.6) 53.53±9.57 female 173 (73.6) 89 (69) 69 (67.6) 21 (61.8) 352 (70.4) 52.07±9.52 total (%) 235 (47) 129 (25.8) 102 (20.4) 34 (6.8) 500 (100) 52.50±9.55 about two thirds of the participants were from the low income phc (wooloba phc), nearly 83% of the participants were married and about 52% were illiterate. housewives represented around 63% of the study participants. mean number of family members was 5.34(±2.35) and mean crowding index was 1.26(±0.63). table 2 shows the prevalence of cvd risk factors that are used in the assessment of cvd, in which fasting blood cholesterol ≥ 5.18 mmol/l showed the highest prevalence of 45.8%, followed by systolic blood pressure ≥ 140 mmhg (41.8%), then diabetes showed a prevalence of 17.4% and at last smoking with a prevalence of 8.8%. in addition to the above-mentioned cvd risk factors, age and gender should also be noted as they are two important demographic characteristics used in who/ish risk prediction charts. mean cigarette index was calculated by using both variables, the number of cigarettes smoked/day variable and the duration of smoking in year variable; it was equal to 27.66 (±27.08) pack/year. diabetic participants represented 12.8% of the study subjects that was equal to 63 participants. out of the 437 participants that didn’t have diabetes 28 participants (5.6%) were with undiagnosed d.m (fig.1). fig.1 frequency of diabetes among the participants the number of participants with established hypertension was 135 participants (27%); out of the 365 participants who mentioned that they do not have hypertension, 161 participants (32.2%) were with undiagnosed hypertension (fig.2). fig.2 frequency of hypertension among the participants. table 2 reveals the distribution of total cvd risk in the study population by using both sets of the who/ish emr d risk prediction charts, with and without cholesterol. for risk assessment using the with cholesterol version of the chart, 77.7% had a ten-year risk < 20%; the equivalent proportion was 80.8%. the proportion of risk ≥ 20% (highvery high) were 22.3% and 19.2% with and without cholesterol respectively. when we used the charts without cholesterol, the percentage of the participants in the high (20-29% 10year risk) and very high risk groups (≥30%) was less than chart with cholesterol (13% vs 14.6% and 6.2% vs 7.7% respectively). generally, male had higher cvd risk than females when assessed by both versions of the chart. table 2: ten-year total cvd risk prediction by gender, using who/ish emr d charts, with and without cholesterol sex no. (%) a ht b dm smoking c hc male 148 (29.6%) 76 (51.4) 30 (20.3) 27 (18.2) 34/d260 (44.2) female 352 (70.4%) 133 (37.8) 57 (16.2) 17 (4.8) 85/260 (46.4) total 500 (100%) 209 (41.8) 87 (17.4) 44 (8.8) 119/260 (45.8) in this study, the chart with cholesterol was found to be concordant for 224/260 (86.2%) with the without cholesterol version of the chart. without information about cholesterol, there was overestimation of cvd risk in 24 (9%) and underestimation in12 (4.6%). out of the 36 individuals with non-concordant cvd risk estimates, 66.7% (24/36) were overestimates; 33.3% (12/36) related to low and moderate cvd risk groups that would not have drug intervention at a cvd risk threshold risk ≥20% with either chart. only 2.7% (7/260) of the total sample was misclassified regarding the need for drug intervention: risk was overestimated in 1.9% (5/260) and underestimated in 0.8% (2/260) (table 3). 153 table 3: cvd risk factors prevalence in association with gender table 4 shows the comparison of drug requirements for cvd prevention between total cvd risk assessment, with and without cholesterol on one hand and single risk factor approach on the other hand. by using who guidelines for cvd risk assessment and management (12), the assessed proportions of participants who required medication to reduce cvd risk in our studied sample were different when we used the with and without cholesterol chart. using a threshold of ≥30%, 4.6% of the participants studied without measuring cholesterol were regarded as in need for drugs; while when we used a threshold of ≥20% risk of developing cvd, 20.4% of the studied participants required drugs. for the chart with cholesterol the respective proportions were 7.7% and 22.3%. when we applied the single risk factor approach, 158 out of the total 260 participants (51.5%) would require drug treatment (22.3% antihypertensive drugs and 29.2% lipid-lowering drugs); almost tenfold higher than without cholesterol and sixfold higher than with cholesterol risk approach. table 4: concordance of who/ish emr d cvd risk charts with and without cholesterol. cvd risk without cholesterol (n / %) total (%) with cholestero l low (<10%) n (%) modera te (10%– <20%) n (%) high (20%– <30%) n (%) very high (≥30%) n (%) low 181 (69.6) 7 (2.7) 0 (0) 0 (0) 188 (72.3) moderate 8 (3) 4 (1.5) 5 (1.9) 0 (0) 17 (6.5) high 0 (0) 0 (0) 31 (11.9) 12 (4.6) 43 (16.5) very high 0 (0) 2 (0.8) 2 (0.8) 8 (4) 12 (4.6) total (%) 189 (72.7) 13 (5) 38 (14.6) 20 (7.7) 260 (100) concordance: 86.2%(224/260) no concordance: 13.8%(36/2) overestimate: 9%(24/260) underestimate: 4.6%(12/260) misclassification for cvd risk threshold ≥20%: 2.7%(7/260) overestimate: 1.9%(5/260) underestima 0.8%(2/260) 5. discussion this study is the first in iraq and especially in kurdistan that used the who/ish risk charts “with and without” cholesterol for the prediction of cvd event. it revealed that about 20% of adults aged ≥ 40 years in sulaimani city at highvery high risk of developing cvd in the next ten years, and one third of these individuals are in the very high risk category. these proportions are nearly the same in case the “with or without” cholesterol version of the chart is used. the proportions in this study seem to be very high if we compare it with that observed by mendis in eight lmics (1.1%-10%) [23], by khanal in nepal (4.3%) (24), by fatema in bangladesh (4.6%) [5], by otogontuya in mongolia (6%) [25], and by ghorpade in india (10%) [26]. we found significant differences between estimates without cholesterol version of the chart, but estimates with cholesterol version of the chart showed no significant difference. the main aim of these charts is to identify people at high risk who need immediate intervention, and this aim was achieved in our study by the version of the chart without cholesterol. our study revealed that 5.6% of the study participants had undiagnosed diabetes. basically because of the epidemiological transition that has been experienced in this country; also, due to the fact that screening for diabetes in developing countries is difficult because of limited resources, blood tests may be challenging, and we may need to depend on inexpensive tests available to predict persons at high risk of developing diabetes [27, 28]. significant number of participants (32%) with hypertension were unaware of their condition; it is higher than the rates of a recent study that was done in cairo (egypt) (11%) [29], but it is less than of that done in india (40%) [30]. finding out the level of agreement between the results achieved by the “with and without” cholesterol versions of the who/ish risk prediction chart was the heart of this study. the percentage of concordance in this study (86.2%) was similar to that of a cuban study [31] in which the percentage of concordance was 88.1%, 10.6% overestimation and 1.3% underestimation. it is also similar to that of a study that was carried out in bangladesh [15]; they found 89.5% concordance, 7.6% overestimation and 1.1% underestimation among the non-concordant. but it was higher than that reported by green in washington (usa) applying framingham cvd risk scoring using cholesterol and/or bmi formulae. they found 78.2% concordance, 20.3% overestimation and 1.4% underestimation among the no concordant [32,33,34,35]. this study showed that using the version of the chart without cholesterol would result in only 1.9% of the participants receiving drugs due to overestimation, a figure lower than that of the two studies that were done in cuba and bangladesh (2.2% and 3.4% respectively). the results of this study also revealed that 0.8% not receiving them due to underestimation, which indicated that when we use the cvd version without cholesterol, the risk of error in leaving a person in need for intervention without pharmaco-prevention is quite small. the cuban study showed lower figures than that of our study (0.5%); but the study that was done in bangladesh 154 showed higher figures than ours in which 1.1% didn’t receive drugs due to underestimation. the agreement between the two versions of the chart was further investigated by a practical technique depending on the need for medication as indicated by the two versions of the who/ish risk chart. it was clear that, compared to single risk factor approach, a considerably less proportion of participants would require medication if they were assessed by the who/ish risk chart. nevertheless, the percentage of the participants was about sixfold to tenfold higher (when the threshold of the absolute risk is ≥30%), and the percentage of participants was about 2-2.5 times higher (when the threshold of the absolute risk is ≥20%) when suggestion is made by the with cholesterol version in comparison with the without cholesterol version of the chart. in bangladesh [15], the percentage of participants was about fivefold to sevenfold higher (when the threshold of the absolute risk is ≥30% or ≥20%), but in cuba [31] the single risk factor approach would more than triple drug usage if we compare it to the need for drug treatment as assessed by the two versions of the who/ish charts. these differences of the findings from that of our study may be attributed to the small sample size (260 participants) as compared to bangladesh (sample size=563) and cuba (sample size=1287). reducing the threshold of cvd risk from ≥30% to ≥20% didn’t obviously increase drug requirement, but it increased the ability to detect persons at risk, as established by the mendis eight lmics study [23]; the same results was also found by the cuban study [31, 32] and the study that was done in bangladesh [14]. however, the assessment of cvd using both versions of the chart better targeting persons who are prone to develop cvd, so the number of participants in need of drugs will be limited; in contrast to single risk factor approach that showed overestimation i.e., more need for drugs in large proportion of participants. this study revealed that using the without cholesterol version of the chart enabled us to diagnose participants who are at high cvd risk, hence we will be able to take the right steps in managing them; this is substantially important because the majority of primary health setting in lmics lack testing for cholesterol. since this study is the first to use the who/ish in primary health care setting in sulaimani city; similar studies in other phc in kurdistan and especially in sulaimani city will be needed to confirm the findings of our study. in addition, there is no cohort or any other longitudinal studies of cvd risk factors regarding morbidity and mortality in almost all lmics, therefore no justified or calibrated cardiovascular risk scores have been developed for their populations. 6. conclusion in conclusion, about one fifth of adults aged ≥ 40 years in sulaimani city at highvery high risk for developing cvd in the next 10 years, and one third of these individuals are at very high risk, with males being more vulnerable to develop cvd event than females. the very high concordance between the two versions of the chart (with and without cholesterol versions) indicates that the use of the without cholesterol version of the chart is an effective tool to focus on persons who are more prone to develop cvd, without causing overuse of drugs for the prevention of cvd event; 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[32] bb. green, ml. anderson, aj. cook, s. catz, pa. fishman, jb. mcclure, et al., “using body mass index data in the electronic health record to calculate cardiovascular risk,” am j prev med, 42(4), pp. 342–7, 2012. http://www.who.int/gho/countries/irq.pdf http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/type-2-diabetes/diagnosis-treatment%20/diagnosis/dxc-20169894 http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/type-2-diabetes/diagnosis-treatment%20/diagnosis/dxc-20169894 https://www.sipri.org/commentary/blog/2012/world-diabetes-day-diabetes-conflict-areas https://www.sipri.org/commentary/blog/2012/world-diabetes-day-diabetes-conflict-areas 1. introduction 6. conclusion  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.35 demand side management using the internet of energy based on lorawan technology om-kolsoom shahryari department of computer engineering, sanandaj branch islamic azad university sanandaj, iran shahryari.k@iausdj.ac.ir amjad anvari-moghaddam department of energy technology aalborg university aalborg, denmark aam@et.aau.dk shadi shahryari department of computer engineering university of kurdistan sanandaj, iran shadi.sharyari2@gmail.com abstract: the smart grid, as a communication network, allows numerous connected devices such as sensors, relays and actuators to interact and cooperate with each other. an internet-based solution for electricity that provides bidirectional flow of information and power is internet of energy (ioe) which is an extension of smart grid concept. a large number of connected devices and the huge amount of data generated by ioe and issues related to data transmission, process and storage, force ioe to be integrated by cloud computing. furthermore, in order to enhance the performance and reduce the volume of transmitted data and process information in an acceptable time, fog computing is suggested as a layer between ioe layer and cloud layer. this layer is used as a local processing level that leads to reduction in data transmissions to the cloud. so, it can save energy consumption used by ioe devices to transmit data into cloud because of a long range, low power, wide area and low bit rate wireless telecommunication system which is called lorawan. all devices in fog domain are connected by long range wide area network (lora) into a smart gateway. the gateway which bridges fog domain and cloud, is introduced for scheduling devices/appliances by creating a priority queue which can perform demand side management dynamically. the queue is affected by not only the consumer importance but also the consumer policies and the status of energy resources. keywords: internet of things, internet of energy, fog computing, cloud computing, lorawan, microgrid, demand side management. 1. introduction the internet of things (iot) is considered as the next phase in the evolution of the internet. internet of things has been identified as one of the emerging technologies in it as noted in gartner’s it hype cycle. it has been forecasted that iot will take 5–10 years for market adoption [1]. iot devices rapidly grow and are used in industries and various domains. iot connects people, machines and devices to each other and to the internet and enables bidirectional information transmission and realtime decisions [2]. two key factors which affect growth rate of iot, are reduction in size and cost of iot devices. iot can play an essential role in applications related to private users such as smart homes, wearable tools, learning ad applications related to business users such as automation and industrial manufacturing, intelligent transportation, smart city, smart grid and e-health [3]. iot has huge potentialities for developing new intelligent applications in nearly every field. the various applications can be grouped in three major domains: (a) i n d u s t r i a l domain, (b) smart city domain, and (c) health well-being domain. each domain is not isolated from the others but it is partially overlapped since some applications are shared. fig. 1 shows the subdivision in the aforementioned domains and provides a nonexhaustive list of iot applications for each of them [4]. bob metcalfe, inventor of ethernet and expert in technology domain, says that: “over the past 63 years it has been tried to provide clean and cheap information for world by internet; however in the next 63 years the need of world for cheap and clean energy should be fulfilled by enernet” [5]. enernet is the idea that we can learn from the history of the internet “how to meet accelerating world needs for cheap and clean energy”. private industries and governments are accelerating the promotion of using innovations for smart grid applications. some investments should be done in this domain to provide an agile platform for power generation and distribution in smart energy system that allow customers save money by scheduling the proper time for effective device usages [6]. historical data shows that a large part of energy has been generated from fossil fuels (in 2011, 82%) [7]. the widespread use of fossil fuels has damaging and undesirable environmental impacts such as global warming caused by co2 emissions from them [8]. also, there is another political challenge, energy insecurity which denotes that most imported oil comes from politically volatile regions [9]. so, a sustainable approach to face this problem is to replace fossil fuels by renewable energy resources [10]. therefore, there is an increasing pervasive focus on renewable energy systems to replace fossil fuels and how to meet future demand for electricity. the international energy agency in [11] says that the share of renewable energy in global power generation will rise up to 26% by 2020. using renewable energy resources such as solar and wind generation for homes and buildings presents a new challenge for balancing energy on the power grid because they do not supply constant power and have stochastic behavior over the time [6],[12]-[13]. there are some challenges regarding the wide spread adoption of renewable energy such as ability mailto:aam@ mailto:shadi.sharyari2@ to store and control the wide variety of different energy resources which typically require complex control of diverse and distributed energy sources and storage to meet demand [9]. smart grid is an intelligent distributed infrastructure that manages energy needs in a sustainable, reliable and economic manner with the help of reliable high-speed communication networks for monitoring and control [14]-[15]. convergence of smart grid and iot is called internet of energy (ioe) and can be seen as an extension of the smart grid concept [16]. the goal of ioe is to provide a robust system for energy exchange between prosumers. one of the issues raised in ioe is demand side management (dsm). dsm refers to techniques and technologies to planning, monitoring and implementing activities and behaviors of electrical utility which the ultimate goal is encourage consumers to optimize their energy usage. distributed and intermittent energy production and storage needs to be monitored and controlled intelligently via internet. ioe will allow energy exchange between a wide variety of sources and loads, including renewable energy sources, distributed energy storage, plug-in electric vehicles, domestic and industrial prosumers, etc. to overcome increasing complexity and enormous amount of data that generated by a large number of devices such as smart meters, sensors, actuators and relays, which has to be stored, processed, and accessed, the powerful processing resources are required which can be provide by cloud computing. the combination of cloud computing and iot for creating ioe platform which can enable ubiquitous sensing services and allow the sensing data to be stored and used intelligently for smart monitoring and powerful processing of sensing data streams. however, increasing the number of ioe devices leads to an increase in response time and latency in cloud computing which causes deviations from the time requirements for some delay-sensitive devices and applications [17]. to conquer these challenges, the fog computing has been suggested in [18]. fog computing pulls the cloud computing to the edge of the network and allows data to be preprocessed whenever latency limitation is required [19] and leads to an increase in interoperability, scalability, consistency and better connectivity between smart devices [17]. the most important features of fog area which can be mentioned are: low latency and location awareness, wide-spread geographical distribution, mobility, very large number of nodes, predominant role of wireless access, strong presence of streaming and real-time applications and heterogeneity [19]. iot faces some challenges such as stringent latency requirements, network bandwidth constraints, resource-constrained devices, cyberphysical systems that connected to iot, uninterrupted services with intermittent connectivity to the cloud, new security challenges, keeping security credentials and software up to date on a large number of devices, protecting resource-constrained devices, assessing the security status of large distributed systems in a trustworthy manner and figure 1 list of iot applications responding to security compromises without causing intolerable disruptions which cannot be satisfied by cloud computing. fog is a computing and networking architecture that distributes computing, control, storages and networking functions closer to end-user devices [20]. in our previous work [21], an effective platform for ioe based on combining two technologies: cloud computing and fog computing was proposed. in order to more reduction in energy consumption by devices, the lowpower wide-area network (lpwan) can be used which is a type of wireless telecommunication wide area network designed to allow long range communications at a low bit rate among things (connected objects), such as sensors operated on a battery [22]. lora is one of the lpwan protocols which is a new wireless protocol designed specifically for long-range, low-power communications. lora stands for long range radio and is mainly targeted for m2m and iot networks [23]. thus, this paper elaborates on presenting an effective platform for demand side management which integrated iot, cloud computing, fog computing and uses the lorawan technology in fog domain. the paper is organized as follow: section 2 describes the cloud computing briefly. in section 3, the fog computing is presented. in section 4 the lorawan technology is discussed. then, the fog computing application for smart grid is discussed in section 5. finally, section 6 draws the conclusions. 2. cloud computing cloud computing is an internet based infrastructure which enables on-demand access to shared configurable resources (applications, services, storages, servers, network and etc.) via internet. the main features of cloud computing are: self-service, broadband network access, reliability, manageability, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured service. cloud computing considered everything as a service (xaas). infrastructure as a service (iaas), platform as a service (paas) and software as a service (saas) are three types of cloud services that provided to users. enormous amount of data that generated by various iot applications can be processed, stored and handled by cloud computing. however, the transmission of huge amount of data to/from cloud leads to a challenge because of limited bandwidth. 3. fog computing fog computing can be seen as a layer between the underlying network and the cloud computing. indeed, fog computing extends the cloud computing to where the things are [24]. these devices, are called fog nodes. fog computing is a platform, which provides computation, storage, and networking capabilities between the end devices and traditional cloud computing. since number of connected devices are increasing, traditional cloud computing is not designed for the volume, variety, and velocity of data that the iot devices generate. analysis of big data generated by iot devices, mostly must be realtime or near real-time. in order to attain this, data transmission, data storage and data processing must be performed in very short time intervals. analyzing and storing iot big data on devices which are physically close to the things, minimizes the latency. by this way, network traffic toward the core network can be reduced and realtime processing can be achieved. also fog computing speeds up the sharpness and the response to events by analyzing data/event near to where it is generated [24]. these advantages can be met by following three parallel approaches:  a considerable amount of data can be stored at or near the end-user (instead of storing whole data in remote data centers).  a considerable amount of computing and control actions can be performed at or near the end-user (instead of doing all in remote data centers).  a considerable amount of communication and networking can be carried out at or near the enduser (instead of routing all network traffic through the backbone networks). therefore, fog computing increases the overall performance of iot applications as it performs a substantial part of highlevel services inside the local resources and near the end-users rather than in the cloud. of course, it cannot totally replace the cloud computing. it is obvious that, fog and cloud complement each other to build an adaptable and scalable platform for iot. fig 2. presents architecture supporting iot platform based on cloud and fog computing. in this architecture model, fog nodes do as following:  receive data/events from iot heterogeneous devices in real-time using any protocol,  run iot applications for real-time control, monitoring and analytics, with minimum response time,  provide temporary storage,  forward periodic data summaries to the cloud. in a similar fashion, the cloud platform is responsible for:  aggregating data summaries from many fog nodes,  analyzing iot data and data from other sources to gain business insight,  sending new application rules to the fog nodes based on these insights [24]. if iot devices equipped with access network technologies such as 3g/4g/5g lte, they would connect to internet directly. otherwise, a smart gateway is required. since some of the iot devices are power-constrained, they use short-range wireless technologies such as zigbee, ble, ieee 802.15.4 and z-wave to connect to gateway. these technologies have limited range up to a few hundred of meters [22]. therefore, they are not suitable to connect low power devices distributed over large geographical areas such as a microgrid. a long range, low power, wide area and low bit rate wireless telecommunication system which is called lorawan is used over a microgrid to connect devices into the gateway. iot gateway can have two different approaches. first, it makes a simple connection between iot devices and internet. second, it allows performing multiple operations (such as data refinement, filtering, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/wireless_telecommunication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/wide_area_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/wide_area_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bit_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/internet_of_things https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/battery_(electricity) trimming, and security measures) locally through fog computing and then to send important updates and necessary data to the cloud for synchronization [2]. thus, realtime processing, low latency, bandwidth saving and traffic reduction are met. figure 2 architecture supporting iot platform based on cloud and fog computing. 4. lorawan low power wide area (lpwa) networks expose a new communication model, which will supplement traditional cellular and short range wireless technologies to overcome varies requirement of iot applications. lpwa is known by support for low power devices, with low data throughput requirements and long range operations. lorawan is one of the lpwa technologies which designed to optimize range, energy consumption and bit rate in iot applications. lorawan is mac protocol, build to use the lora physical layer [25]. lora is a physical layer technology that modulates the signals in subghz ism band using a proprietary spread spectrum technique [26]. it provides a bidirectional communication by a special chirp spread spectrum (css) technique, which spreads a narrow band input signal over a wider channel bandwidth. technical specifications of lorawan is described in table 1. the long range and low power nature of lora makes it an interesting candidate for iot and its application in smart grid. a lorawan network includes of end-devices, gateways and a server which collects and analyzes information extracted by the end-devices. the network topology is a "star of star topology", which means that groups of devices are connected to gateways via lora wireless links while the gateways are connected to a remote server via ip network (fig 3). the server is located in a cloud [25]. lorawan has three different classes of enddevices to address the various needs of applications: class a; bi-directional: this class of devices allows bidirectional communications, whereby each uplink transmission is followed by two short downlink receive windows. it provides the lowest energy consumption for end-devices, but this case has long delay in downlink.  class b, bi-directional with scheduled receive slots: class b end-devices open extra receive windows at scheduled times. a synchronized beacon from the gateway is thus required, so that the network server is able to know when the end-device is listening.  class c, bi-directional with maximal receive slots: class c end-devices have almost continuous receive windows. they thus have maximum power consumption. table 1. technical specification of lorawan modulation css band sub-ghz ism:eu (433mhz 868mhz), us (915mhz), asia (430mhz) data rate 0.3-37.5 kbps (lora), 50 kbps (fsk) range 5 km(urban), 15 km (rural) num. of channels/orthogonal signals 10 in eu, 64+8(ul) and 8(dl) in us plus multiple sfs link symmetry  forward error correction  mac unslotted aloha topology star of stars adaptive data rate  payload length up to 250b (depends on sf & region) handover end devices do not join a single base station authentication & encryption aes 128b 5. proposed model as mentioned previously, a smart grid is a smart energy hub which includes a variety of devices, including smart meters, smart appliances, renewable energy resources, etc. [27]. it can intelligently integrate the behaviors and actions of all users connected to it; including generators, consumers and prosumers, in order to efficiently deliver sustainable, economic and secure electricity supplies. it uses digital communications technology to detect and react to local changes in application. in addition, it enables demand side management through the integration of smart meters, smart appliances and consumers’ loads, micro-generation units, energy storage options (electric vehicles) and by providing customers with information related to energy usage and prices. it is anticipated that customers will be provided with information and motivations to modify their consumption pattern to conquer some of the constraints in the power system. it also incorporates and comforts all renewable energy sources, distributed generation, residential micro generation, and storage options [28]. demand-side management is done by reducing the overall load on an electricity network. in fact, there are numerous connected devices to interact and cooperate with each other. the load shedding or load reduction is one of the demand side management approaches which is used in network scheduling and management phases. in traditional networks, the load shedding program is determined as the priority of loads based on some predefined factors. in fact, this priority may be changed during different time intervals. however, in grid environment there are some uncertain parameters such as renewable energy resources which behave randomly during time. therefore, it can affect the load shedding program in a way that the load decrement is changed according to the status of renewable energies in addition to the status of peak-load in the utility. in a microgrid with high penetration of renewable energy resources and local loads, the load shedding is determined mainly based on the priority of the loads and renewable energy status which can be changed dynamically. hence, there are numerous data that should be transmitted and processed. however, to overcome increasing complexity and enormous amount of data generated by a large number of figure 3 lorawan topology. figure 4 microgrid considered as a fog domain. devices such as smart meters, sensors, actuators and relays, which has to be stored, processed, and accessed, the powerful processing resources are required which can be provide by cloud computing. the combination of cloud computing and iot for creating ioe platform can enable ubiquitous sensing services, allowing the sensing data to be stored and used intelligently for smart monitoring and powerful processing of sensing data streams. at a same time, increasing the number of ioe devices leads to an increase in response time and latency in cloud computing, which causes deviations from the time requirements for some delay sensitive devices and applications. to conquer the cloud computing issues, the fog computing is suggested. the fog computing pulls the cloud computing to the edge of network and allows data to be preprocessed whenever latency limitation is required and leads to increase in interoperability, scalability, consistence and connection between smart devices. in a bulk electrical figure 5 smart gateway: point of connection between the fog and other components. figure 6 queue sorting flowchart in a fog domain. network, the fog computing can be done on the local subnetworks, which are called microgrids. a microgrid is a small-scale local power grid that can operate independently or in connection with the utility grid, which constitutes of power resources, generation and loads and definable boundaries. microgrid applications require realtime processing which can be carried out in the fog domain. hence, data transmission rate into cloud, communication latency, traffic and bandwidth consumption are decreased. since, in the proposed model it is tried to have the lowest data transmission from fog to cloud through core network, hence security and privacy are almost provided. as fig. 4 shows, each microgrid considered as a fog domain and microgrid elements can communicate peer to peer to each other as well as to iot gateway. in fact, smart gateway as shown in fig. 5, bridges the fog and the cloud. gateway as a fog node has computing, storage and networking capabilities. moreover, two key components, local battery status and local weather forecasting, are connected to the gateway. as it can be seen in fig. 5, there is a queue for microgrid which determined the priority of loads. the priority in queue can be changed dynamically based on the price and consumer’s policies and importance. in addition, the status of renewable energies, which is predicted by weather forecast unit, can affect the priority in the queue and the amount of load shedding. let’s consider a scenario in a typical microgrid and in a peak-load situation where a priority queue can be made in gateway and scheduling can be done accordingly. in this case, gateway sends “off” or “reduce load” signals to lowest priority devices/ appliances. therefore, due to local decision about load control, consumer’s consumption turns economic. the queue sorting flowchart in fog domain is shown in fig. 6. the load information, resources status and network price are the input data. the load information includes importance degree, consumption pattern and purchase policy of all loads. the purchase policy is defined according to local price by consumers. the local price is determined based on network price and the status of resources; e.g., in case of high price in network, if the renewable resources in microgrid can produce more, then the local price can be less than the network price. there are some important loads which should not be curtailed even in peak situation. therefore, they will be at the beginning of the queue. the other loads approximately have the same importance degree which they can be curtailed. these loads would be sorted according to their purchase policies which are based on the price. these policies are announced by consumers to the gateway in each fog domain and they can be changed dynamically. finally, the queue is sorted based on importance degrees and purchase policies momentary. 6. conclusion load shedding or load reduction is one of the demand side management approaches which is used in network scheduling. in traditional networks, the load shedding program is determined as the priority of loads based on some predefined factors. in fact, this priority may be changed during time intervals. however, real grid environment there are some uncertain parameters such as renewable energy resources that have stochastic behavior during time. therefore, it can affect the load shedding program in a way that the load decrement is changed according to the status of renewable energies in addition to the status of peak-load in the utility. in a microgrid, with high penetration of renewable energy resources and local loads, the load shedding is determined based on the priority of the loads and renewable energy status which can be changed dynamically. hence, there are numerous data that should be transmitted and processed. in order to handle this multiplicity, the internet can be used in electricity grid to monitor and control distributed loads. a large number of connected devices and the huge amount of data generated by iot and issues related to transmit, process and storing it, force iot to be integrated by cloud computing. furthermore, in order to increase performance and reduce the volume of transmitted data and process data in acceptable time, fog computing is suggested as a layer between iot layer and cloud layer. iot devices equipped with access network technologies such as 3g/4g/5g lte, they would connect to internet directly. otherwise, a smart gateway is required. since some of the iot devices are power-constrained, and are distributed over large geographical areas such as a microgrid, therefore, a long range, low power, wide area and low bit rate wireless telecommunication system which is called lorawan is used over a microgrid to connect devices into the gateway. 7. reference [1] 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[28] j. ekanayake, k. liyanage, j. wu, a. yokoyama, and n. jenkins, smart grid: technologies and applications. 2012. http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3a%2f%2fwww.iea.org%2fnewsroom%2fnews%2f2015%2foctober%2frenewables-to-lead-world-power-market-growth-to-2020.html&sa=d&sntz=1&usg=afqjcnfanasnjvpcfupy6yv7ve0cgqsj4g http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3a%2f%2fwww.iea.org%2fnewsroom%2fnews%2f2015%2foctober%2frenewables-to-lead-world-power-market-growth-to-2020.html&sa=d&sntz=1&usg=afqjcnfanasnjvpcfupy6yv7ve0cgqsj4g http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3a%2f%2fwww.iea.org%2fnewsroom%2fnews%2f2015%2foctober%2frenewables-to-lead-world-power-market-growth-to-2020.html&sa=d&sntz=1&usg=afqjcnfanasnjvpcfupy6yv7ve0cgqsj4g  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.30 improving accuracy of missing data imputation in data mining nzar a. ali computer dept. cihan university sulaimani, iraq nzar@mail.com zhyan m. omer statistics and informatics university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq zhyan.omar16@gmail.com abstract: in fact, raw data in the real world is dirty. each large data repository contains various types of anomalous values that influence the result of the analysis, since in data mining, good models usually need good data, databases in the world are not always clean and includes noise, incomplete data, duplicate records, inconsistent data and missing values. missing data is a common drawback in many real-world data sets. in this paper, we proposed an algorithm depending on improving (migec) algorithm in the way of imputation for dealing missing values. we implement grey relational analysis (gra) on attribute values instead of instance values, and the missing data were initially imputed by mean imputation and then estimated by our proposed algorithm (pa) used as a complete value for imputing next missing value. we compare our proposed algorithm with several other algorithms such as mms, hdi, knnmi, fcmocs, cri, cmi, niia and migec under different missing mechanisms. experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm has less rmse values than other algorithms under all missingness mechanisms. keywords: data mining; missing value; missing value ; data preprocessing , 1. introduction data mining (dm) known as knowledge discovery in databases (kdd) is "the non-trivial process of identifying valid, novel, potentially useful, and ultimately understandable patterns in data" [1]. databases in the world includes big amounts of data, every day millions of peoples send data over the web through social media, banks applications, governmental offices, mobile applications, university portals, etc. today with powerful storage devices and large network for computer connections, data growth exponentially. the organization of this big data and preprocessing them so that useful knowledge extracted automatically from them are lead to new branch of science known as data mining (dm). in data mining process the quality of results depends on the quality of the data, for that the data pre-processing is one of the important steps to reach clean and quality data and has grate effect on the success of the mining results data pre-processing is one of the main step in the the knowledge discovery in databases (kdd) process that decreases the complexity of the data and gives better conditions to subsequent analysis. through this process the nature of the data is understood and the analysis of the data is performed more accurately and efficiently. the next important step is the data itself. input data must be suitable in structure and format that suit each dm task perfectly. it is unrealistic to expect that data will be perfect after they have been extracted. since good models usually need good data, a thorough cleansing of the data is an important step to improve the quality of data mining methods. not only is the correctness, also the consistency of values important. missing data can also be a particularly pernicious problem. especially when the number of missing data is large, not all attributes (instances) with missing values can be deleted from the sample [3] 2.literature review  j. tian , b. yu , d. yu , sh. ma , (2014) [4] ,in this paper a hybrid missing data completion method is proposed named “multiple imputation using graysystem-theory and entropy based on clustering (migec)”. first step the non-missing data records are distributed on several clusters. then, the imputed missing value is estimated after multiple calculations by utilizing the information entropy of the proximal category for each incomplete records in terms of the similarity metric based on gray system theory (gst).  x.y. zhou , j. s. lim , (2014) [5] , they studied a new method, the nb-em (naïve bayesian-expectation maximization) algorithm, for handling missing values .the comparison between their method and traditional em(expectation maximization) and non-substitution approaches for dealing with datasets containing randomly missing value is performed. they proof the most effective method, compared with the traditional em algorithm, the nb-em algorithm has a higher accuracy rate, which suggests that the nb-em algorithm can obtain a better results on missing values in practice.  o. b. shukur , m.h. lee , (2015 ) [6] , in this paper, the hybrid artificial neural network (ann) and autoregressive (ar) method is studied for finding the missing values. they use ann for finding the missing values in wind speed data with nonlinear characteristic and they use ar model for determining the structure of the input layer for the ann. they use lisewise deletion https://www.omicsonline.org/searchresult.php?keyword=data%20mining https://www.omicsonline.org/searchresult.php?keyword=treatment%20of%20missing%20value before ar modeling to handle the missing values. a case study is carried out using daily iraqi and malaysian wind speed data. they compare their prosed imputation method with linear, nearest neighbor, and state space methods. the comparison has shown that ar-ann outperformed the classical methods. as a result they conclude that the missing values in wind speed data with nonlinear characteristic can be impute more accurately using ar-ann. therefore, imputing the missing values using their algorithm tends to more accurate performance of time series modeling and analysis. 3.missing value many databases in the world such as governmental and nongovernmental contain missing values (mvs) in their attribute values. mvs is a value for attribute that was lost in the recording process. there are various reasons for their lost, such as manual data entry errors, equipment fail and incorrect measurements. the process of preparing clean data usually requires a preprocessing stage in which the data is prepared and cleaned, in order to be useful for the knowledge extraction process. the simplest way of dealing with mvs is to delete the record that contains them from the data set. however, this method is not practical when the data contains a large number of records with mvs which make bias during the inference. mvs make data analysis difficult. the occurrence of mvs can also lead to serious problems for researchers. in fact, unsuitable handling of the mvs in data analysis may found bias and can result in ambiguous conclusions being drawn from a research study, and can also limit the generalizability of the research findings [5] . three types of problems are usually associated with mvs in dm [7] : a) efficiency loss. b) complexity in handling and analyzing the data. c) unfairness resulting from differences between missing and complete data. 2.1: missing data mechanisms the algorithm of missingness describes the relationship between the likelihood of a value being missing and the other variables in the data set. if y perform the complete data that can be partitioned as (yobs, ymis) where yobs is the observed part of y and ymis is the missing part of y, and r be an indicator random variable (or matrix) indicating whether or not y is observed or missing. let r = 1 present a value which is observed and let r = 0 present a value which is missing. the statistical model for missing data is p (r\y, ø) where ø is the parameter for the missing data process. the mechanism of missingness is determined by the dependency of r on the variables in the data set [8] . the following are different mechanisms of missingness [9] . imissing completely at random (mcar) the first mechanism of missingness is a special case of mar known as missing completely at random (mcar). in this case, the mechanism of missingness is given by: p (r\y, ø) = p (r, ø) ………………... (1) that is, the probability of missingness is not conditional on any observed or unobserved values in y. one example of mcar might be a computer malfunction that arbitrarily deletes some of the data values. iimissing at random (mar) the second mechanism of missingness is missing at random (mar), this mechanism of missingness is given by: p (r\y, ø) = p (r\yobs, ø) ……….… (2) that is, the probability of missingness is only conditional on observed values in y and not on any unobserved values in y. a simple example of mar is a survey where subjects over a certain age refuse to answer a particular survey question and age is an observed covariate. iiinot missing at random (nmar) the third mechanism of missingness is referred to as missing not at random (mnar). this mechanism of missingness is given by: p (r\y, ø) = p (r\yobs,ymis, ø) …….. (3) this mechanism observed when the conditions of mar are break so that the likelihood of missingness is dependent on ymis or some unobserved covariate. one instance of mnar might be subjects who have an income above a certain value refusing to report an income in the survey. here the missingness is dependent on the unobserved response, income. 2.2methods for handling incomplete data (missing data) there are different methods and strategies exists to handle missing-data. managing missing data can be classified into three categories: tolerance, ignoring and imputation-based procedures. a. tolerance the simplest method point to preserve the source entries in the incomplete mode. it may be a functional and computationally low cost solution, intime it requires the techniques to work strongly even if the data quality stays low . b. ignoring missing data obscurity often refers to “case deletion”. it is the most repeatedly applied procedure nowadays, this method undergo from a loss of information in the insufficient cases and risk of alignment if the missing data is not mcar and it is lying down to reduce the data quality. the strength lies in the ease of application: deleting the records with missing values is done in two ways [10] (i) list-wise/case-wise deletion(complete-case analysis): delete the entire records including missing values. the main hitch of this method is that the dataset may lead to large loss of data, which may result in high inexactness in particular if the main dataset is itself too small or the migec algorithm improved steps incomplete dataset complete dataset raw dataset preparation gsabased on attribute clusters imputation via mean & classification all missing values imputation finished full datasets with nonmissing values rank instances by missing amount in decreasing order convert incomplete dataset to binary dataset combining complete dataset with imputed dataset fcm no yes number of records that contain missing value is too large. (i) pairwise deletion (available-case analysis): insufficient records are deleted on an analysis-byanalysis basis, unlike list wise deletion which deletes records that have missing values on any of the variables under analysis, pair wise deletion only deletes the specific missing values from the analysis (not the entire records) such that any given record may participate to some analyses but not to others. c. imputation “imputation is the process of replacing missing data with substituted values”. missing data create problems for analyzing data; imputation is seen as a way to avoid difficulty involved with list wise deletion of records that have missing values. that is, when one or more observations are missing for a case, statistical applications default to discard any records that has a missing value, which may introduce partiality in the results. imputation preserves all records by replacing missing values with an estimated value based on other information. when all missing values have been imputed, the data set can then be analyzed using standard techniques for complete data 4: proposed algorithm our proposed algorithm depends on improving existing algorithm (migec) proposed by [4] after adding the following steps: 1converting incomplete data set to binary dataset. 2gra based on attribute instead of instance. 3attribute merging instead of instance merging. 4after each missing elements of attributes imputed by mean imputation, next times we use the result of new imputation (imputation by pa) instead of mean to calculate imputation of reminders missing values of specific attribute. the procedure of the proposed algorithm is schematized in figure (1). figure (1): the diagram of the proposed algorithm 4.1 steps of algorithm let denote an incomplete dataset with attribute { } and instances. for each elements of incomplete dataset is defined by , it contains two parts: { } where is observed values and is missing values. [ ] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/missing_data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/listwise_deletion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/list_of_statistical_packages a binary matrix from incomplete dataset ( ) in which converting each observed values ( ) to one and each missing values ( ) to zero is produced, in this case becomes a matrix of missing data indicators, when this r matrix has the same number of rows and columns as the data matrix . { for example: a= [ ]  r= [ ] • na=missing value (not available) after each time that one attribute has been assigned to the most nearest cluster via (gst) in our proposed improvement, finally one instance inserted to binary matrix and called it class (target): ( ) associates with the data matrix of the cluster. then imputation technique starts as follows: step 1. calculate expected information (entropy) after partitioning each instance due to class. ∑ ………. (4) where : • is the likelihood of event occurring . • is number of records • is number of clusters ( ) information needed after split due to j ∑ | | (5) • • step 2. the coefficient of difference for the records computed : ……….. (6) performs the attendant contrast intensity of the f th parameter. the greater value of express the more important parameter. step 3. extract the coefficient of weight for the f th copy: ∑ …………………..… (7) step 4.the mean mode substitution (mms) is appoint to set missing values in the first imputation. the straightforward technique could implement well only when the data is normally separated. then, estimate the j th attributive missing value of : ∑ after each missing elements of attributes imputed by mean imputation, next times the result of new imputation (imputation by pa algorithm) used instead of mean to calculate imputation of reminders missing values of specific attribute. 5: experimental results in this section experimental results of proposed algorithm for both wine and simulated dataset are displayed and discussed, also comparison between both proposed algorithms with other previous techniques for dealing with missing data is described. 5.1 :wine data set the first dataset that we depend on to implement our algorithm is the wine dataset that we used in this paper is achieved from the uci (university of california, irvine) machine learning repository database, this dataset contain 13 attributes and 178 instances. the purpose of selecting this dataset is to compare the efficiency of our algorithm with previous (migec) algorithm implemented by (j. tian , b. yu , d. yu , sh. ma) [4] . 5.2: simulated data data mining already work with massive quantities of data. for this reason we simulated data to know the performance of (proposed algorithm) with large amount of data. we used simple random samples of size 1000. we consider simulations under a normal distribution, this dataset contain 13 attributes and 1000 instances and all of them are numeric. the computer limitation (intel(r) core(tm) i5 cpu m 430 @ 2.27ghz) for implementing our algorithm doesn’t allow us to increase the amount of simulated data. we used (rnorm) command from (r programing language) to generate 1000 sample of data under normal distribution based on mean and standard deviation of wine dataset . 5.3 generating missingness: to introduce artificial missingness, we look for two important factors which may affect the imputation results: missing rate and missing data mechanism. three different levels of missing rate were considered, i.e., 5%, 10% and 20% and three missing mechanisms were taken into consideration, namely mcar, mar and nmar. for mcar , in order to simulate missing values on attributes, the original datasets are run using a random generator and every data in the dataset have the same likelihood α to be missing, where α was the missing rate . “nonparametric missing value imputation using random forest” package from r programing language used to generate mcar. http://uci.edu/ http://uci.edu/ http://uci.edu/ 0.13 0.14 0.15 0.16 0.17 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 r m s e iterations 0.13 0.14 0.15 0.16 0.17 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 r m s e iterations simulating mar was more challenging and it worked as follow: in case there is a complete dataset with two attributes ( ), where was the attribute in to which missing values were introduced, and was the attribute that affected the missingness of . given a pair of attributes ), and missing rate α , first split the instances into two equal-sized subsets according to their values at and find the median of and then assigned all the instances into two subsets according to weather the instances have lower (or higher) values than the median at ( ) . after the splitting of instances, randomly selected one subset of instances and let their values at to be missing with the probability of 4α. the probability of 4α will result in a missing rate of 2α on the whole variable which is equivalent to have a missing rate of α on the two variables ) . for multi-attributes pair selection of attributes was based on high correlations among the attributes, different pairs of attributes were used to generate the missingness. each attribute is paired with the one it is highly correlated to. the process of generating missing values by nmar was similar to mar. the only difference was that there was no need to split variables into pairs, nmar produced missingness on every variable directly. for a given variable and specified missing rate α , first calculated the median of and then randomly let the values that are lower (or higher) than to be missing with probability of 2α . 5.4 :performance measure to evaluate the precision of various data imputation algorithms the root mean square error (rmse) used in this paper . √ ∑ ̂ ……….…… (9) where is the original value, ̂ is the predicted plausible value, is the total number of estimations and is standard deviation. the larger value of rmse suggests the less accuracy that the algorithm holds. before the comparative demonstrations, to capture the result of the data imputation accurately, it is requisite to select the optimum values for number of iteration (number of imputations) and clusters, by another expression mean that which clusters or iteration gives us minimum rmse. 5.4.1 number of iteration firstly we tested for number of iterations for each missingness mechanism (mcar, mar, nmar) with 10 % missing rate and five clusters as initial value (cluster), for wine dataset. for mcar: as seen in figure (2), the rmse declines to the least which is (0.1418) when number of iteration is 5 times. so it is the optimum iteration for mcar. figure (2): checking optimality by number of iterations (for mcar) for mar figure (3), illustrate that the best number of iteration for mar also is 5 which give minimum rmse which is (0.1388). figure (3): checking optimality by number of iterations (for mar) for nmar: finally, for nmar as appeared in figure (4), iteration (10) give us lower rmse which is (0.1347) and the worst iteration, which yield the maximum rmse is iteration (15). 0.13 0.14 0.15 0.16 0.17 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 r m s e iterations 0.12 0.13 0.14 0.15 0.16 0.17 0.18 0.19 r m s e 0.12 0.13 0.14 0.15 0.16 0.17 0.18 0.19 r m s e figure (4): checking optimality by number of iterations (for nmar) 5.4.2 number of clusters second step for checking optimality is number of clusters, we obtained it via (fcm) by applied it to complete dataset. we can match number of clusters that is affect the accuracy of our algorithm for imputation directly, since we used it for calculating classification therefore classification is a main part of imputing incomplete data in proposed algorithm. for each three types of missing mechanism (mcar, mar, nmar), we checked for optimal number of clusters from 2 to 10 by using %10 missing rate. for mcar: figure (5), shows that when the whole data is mass into 7 groups, the rmse fall to the minimum that is (0.1330). in contrast the worst value obtained when 2 clusters exist. figure (5): checking optimality by number of clusters (for mcar) for mar: in figure (6), mar performs best when data partitions into 2 groups, it`s rmse is (0.1321). figure (6): checking optimality by number of clusters (for mar) for nmar: from figure (7), results of rmse for nmar are between [0.12 0.15], minimum rmse (0.12) yield when number of clusters is 8. figure (7): checking optimality by number of clusters (for nmar) 6 comparative experiments in investigation of making comparisons as extensively as possible, we select eight other approaches, which are mms (mean mode substitution), hdi (hot deck imputation), knnmi (k nearest neighbour imputation with mutual information), fcmocs (fuzzy c-mean based on optimal completion strategy ), cri (clustering-based random imputation) , cmi (clustering-based multiple imputation) , niia (the non parametric iterative imputation) and migec (multiple imputation algorithm using gray system theory and entropy based on clustering) . after selecting optimum number of clusters and iterations for all three types of missingness, we compared proposed algorithm with various methods with varying missing rates by using rmse (average of each rmse) as displayed in figures (8), (9) and (10). 0.12 0.13 0.14 0.15 0.16 0.17 0.18 0.19 r m s e 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 5% 10% 15% 20% r m s e missing rate mms hdi knnmi fcmocs niia cmi cri migec pa figure (8): comparison between proposed algorithm (pa) and other methods for imputation (mcar) figure (9): comparison between proposed algorithm (pa) and other methods for imputation (mar) figure (10): comparison between proposed algorithm (pa) and other methods for imputation (nmar) figures (8), (9) and (10) show some results that we would like to discuss as follows: i outcome results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm performs better than the other eight approaches under all missingness mechanisms at varying missing rates. iidifferent missing rate have different impacts on imputation accuracy. the rmse increases with increasing missing proportion for all the methods approximately. this is understandable because with more missing rate introduced into the datasets, more information of data will be loss. however sometimes the nature of data, outlier and noise also effect on accuracy of imputation. iii-the worse rmse achieved by methods are for mcar mechanism, followed by mar and mcar mechanism.. 6: conclusions and future works 6-1: conclusions the problem of incomplete data is one which researchers must handle it. many researchers fail to consider missing values of varying natures in their analyses, treating them as a singular type or not considering the impact of the missing values at all. in this paper an extension algorithm based on migec for dealing with incomplete data has been proposed. the experimental results show 1experimental results on wine dataset from university of california irvine (uci) repository illustrate the superiority of proposed algorithm to other imputation methods on accuracy of imputing missing data on three different missing types mcar, mar and nmar. 2 the rmse shows that our proposed algorithm has better results (namely, the minimal value of rmse) than migec algorithm, with average absolute difference beyond (0.025108). 3when calculating gra on attributes instead of instances we work with more homogeneous values in comparison with calculating gra based on instances and as a result the attribute belong to proper cluster. 4increasing rate of missing records suffer the precision of the fulfillment in rmse. it states that incomplete values negatively impact on the completion. 5proposed algorithm can handle missing values and perform better either with small or huge amount of the raw data, we can conclude that proposed algorithm remain stable with increasing the size of dataset which means our proposed algorithm is suitable for large data repositories. 6proposed algorithm reach results with less imputed iterations in comparison with other algorithms which means less run time needed in case of huge amount of data in data repositories. 7the drawback of our proposed algorithm on migec is appeared in cases when there is large amount of 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 5% 10% 15% 20% r m s e missing rate mms hdi knnmi fcmocs niia cmi cri migec pa 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 5% 10% 15% 20% r m s e missing rate mms hdi knnmi fcmocs niia cmi cri migec pa heterogeneity inside the attributes since gra in our proposed algorithm depends on attribute values instead of instance values. this conclusion appears when we run the algorithm on difference simulated data. 6.2: future works 1working with data mining techniques need powerful computer to implement our work speedily and not restrict us. in this paper because of computer limitation we cannot increase the size of simulated dataset because it needs days to get results of proposed algorithm with vast size of dataset. 2hybrid proposed algorithm with another data mining or statistical techniques like (neural network, nearest neighbor, …). 3extending proposed algorithm to work with categorical attributes. 4distortion and noise has a great effect on the imputation techniques, while real-world data often contain much noise, therefore, another preprocessing algorithm can be implemented to clean the data before implementing pa. 5implementing different data mining algorithms such as association rule mining on pa and compare the results with other existing algorisms. biography nzar ali: is an associate professor of computer science at the cihan university, and his ph.d. degree from the sulaimaniya university. his research interests in data mining, spatial database and database indexing. he has published over 9 research papers and supervise one phd and 6 msc students. . zhyan omer: is an associate lecture of statistics and informatic at the sulaimaniya university and her msc. degree from the sulaimaniya university her research interests include statistical data mining and missing value estimation . reference [1] u. fayyad, g. piatetsky-shapiro, p. smyth ,(1996) “from data mining to knowledge discovery”, american association for artificial intelligence, san francisco, vol. 17, no. 3. [2] r. nisbet , j. elder, g. miner , (2009) “handbook of statistical analysis and data mining applications” . academic press, boston. [3] j. han and m. kamber, (2011) “data mining: concepts and techniques”, morgan kaufmann,san francisco . [4] j. tian , b. yu , d. yu , sh. ma , (2014) “a hybrid multiple imputation algorithm using gray system theory and entropy based on clustering” appl intell 40:376–388, doi 10.1007/s10489-013-0469x, springer science+business media new york. [5] x.y. zhou , j. s. lim , (2014) “replace missing values with em algorithm based on gmm and naïve bayesian” international journal of software engineering and its applications vol.8, no.5, pp.177-188. [6] o. b. shukur, m.h. lee , (2015) “imputation of missing values in daily wind speed data using hybrid ar-ann method ”, published by canadian center of science and education ,modern, issn 1913-1844 e-issn 1913-1852, applied science; vol. 9, no. 11 . [7] j.barnard, x.meng, (1999) “applications of multiple imputation in medical studies: from aids to nhanes”, stat. methods med. res. 8(1), 17–36 . [8] j.a. boyko, (2013) “handling data with three types of missing values” , ph.d. thesis , university of connecticut . [9] r.j.a. little, d.b. rubin, (1987) “statistical analysis with missing data” , 1st edn. wiley series in probability and statistics, new york. [10] s .zhang , (2011) “shell-neighbor method and its application in missing data imputation ”, appl intell 35(1):123–133. http://www.aaai.org/ojs/index.php/aimagazine/issue/view/120  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.30 received: 18 may 2018 | accepted: 25 june 2018 prevalence and molecular characterization of cysticercus tenuicollis isolated from some intermediate host in kurdistan-iraq abdullah ahmed hama rostam hama zorab fatima mohammed ali medical laboratory department directorate of veterinary in sulaimani research center | nursing department technical college of health sulaimani, iraq technical institute of sulaimani sulaimani polytechnic university rostamhama@gmail.com sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq research center/ sulaimani polytechnic university fatimah.ali@spu.edu.iq abdullah.hama@spu.edu.iq awaz m. salih amer abdullah hassan research center, sulaimani polytechnic university medical laboratory department | research center general directorate of health in sulaimani technical college of health sulaimani, iraq sulaimani polytechnic university awaz.salih@yahoo.com sulaimani, iraq amer..hassan@spu.edu.iq 177 abstract: cysticercus tenuicollis (c. tenuicollis) is the larval stage infection of taenia hydatigena, a common tapeworm of dogs and other canidae, which has a wide range of intermediate hosts including sheep, goat, cattle, deer, camel, horse, human and other wild ruminants, the disease spreads through a contaminated water, soil and food with feces of infected dogs or other carnivores, t. hydatigena lives in the intestinal of the definitive host (carnivores) and excretes a huge number of eggs with feces daily. the present study conducted to determine the prevalence rate and molecular characterization of c. tenuicollis among sheep and goats in sulaimani province. a total of 14088 slaughtered animals were inspected postmortem from the new sulaimani abattoir comprise, which involves 13395 sheep and 693 goats. the selected cysts were preserved in 70% ethanol for dna extraction and molecular study, the mt-co1 gene was amplified with a conventional polymerase chain reaction (pcr), the pcr product purified and dna sequencing for reverse and forward strands was determined by a genetic analyzer, the obtained sequences aligned with the dna sequences of t. hydatigena in iran, turkey, and palestine, which deposited in genbank under the following accession number (jq710588), (jn827307) and ( km032284) respectively. the prevalence rate of c. tenuicollis was 2.63% in sheep and 2.58% in goats. this result shows no significant differences of c. tenuicollis between sheep and goats (p>0.05). the nucleotide sequence alignment of cytochrome oxidase subunit 1 (co 1) gene revealed that the amplified dna fragment belongs to taenia hydatigena and echinococcus granulosus and the nucleotide sequences of t. hydatigena deposited in genbank under accession number (mh638348). this finding concludes that the amplification of mt-co1 gene cannot be depended on discriminate hydatid cyst and c. tenuicollis while the partial dna sequences of the mtco1 gene are significantly valuable to differentiate c. tenuicollis from hydatid cyst, which is completely different in the pathology and control. keywords: cysticercus tenuicollis, taenia hydatigena, mt-co1, dna, molecular marker. 1. introduction taenia hydatigena is a cestode of the family taeniidae, the adult stage of the parasite lives in the intestine of dogs and other canidae (definitive host), while the larval stage, which is called metacestode (cysticercus tenuicollis) develops and residing in domestic and wild mammalians (intermediate hosts), the cyst is developed as fluid-filled larvae in tissues [1, 2]. the adult bladder worm is a large thin, measure about 75-500 cm and is mostly called a slender thin worm [3]. the life cycle of t. hydatigena is indirect and required both definitive and intermediate hosts to complete its life cycle, adult worm lives in the small intestine of dogs, wolves, jackals, and foxes, the gravid segments are detached and eggs are expelled out and spread in the environment, the eggs will contaminate soil, grass, water, and vegetables. eggs transmit to the intermediate hosts when it is eaten with plants or grasses. the egg will be hatched after ingestion and the hexacanth embryo penetrates the intestinal wall and then enters the blood circulation to reach the liver and another organ. most of the embryo leaves the liver and they enter the peritoneal cavity to grow and develop to cysticercus tenuicollis. the definitive host becomes infected when fed on infected animal’s offals. the scolex evaginates in the small intestine and attaches to the mucosa, then grows to an adult in 51days post-infection [4]. metacestode (c. tenuicollis) is a cyst loosely filled with transparent fluid, with size varies from one cm up to seven cm, and long necks which are usually found mailto:abdullah.hama@spu.edu.iq 178 attached to the omentum, mesentery, and sometimes on the liver surface, particularly among the sheep and goat; however, unusual locations of c. tenuicollis have been described as the lungs, kidneys, brain, ovaries, uterine tubes, uterus, cervix, and vagina [5, 6]. tenuicollosis is responsible for a high degree of morbidity and mortality in livestock and particularly the domestic animal; sheep and goat [7], it is frequently associated with hemorrhagic tracts of the liver in acute cases [8]. in slaughter animals, it has an important economic loss due to the condemnation of offal’s containing larvae of t. hydatigena [9]. the metacestode may serve as a predisposing cause to black disease or may lead to acute traumatic hepatitis as well as a contributory agent of peritonitis [10]. diagnosis of taenia infection and cysticercosis is based on the morphology and molecular characterization of the parasites [11,12]. number and length of the large and small hooks, number and layers of testes, number of uterine branches, and structure of cirrus sac are important characteristics for morphological identification [1]. usually, the prevalence of infection by c. tenuicollis was different according to animal geographical distribution and it had taken a high level in poor countries and could not be controlled among wild animals [13]. numerous surveys on the prevalence have been reported in different parts of the world and iraqi neighbor countries for c. tenuicollis. in iraq, for the first time, it was isolated from the peritoneal cavity of sheep by leiper [14]. the parasite was also recorded from the peritoneal cavity of sheep in north of iraq [15], from slaughtered sheep in basra [16], also the c. tenuicollis were isolated from sheep, goat, and cow in erbil city [17], in another epidemiological study in mosul and diwania, the high prevalence rate of c. tenuicollis was recorded among slaughtered sheep [18]. while the low prevalence rate (0.7%) of cysticercosis among sheep was reported in dohuk [19]. the present work was conducted to determine the prevalence rate and molecular characterization (strain identification and genotyping) of c. tenuicollis among slaughtered sheep and goats in sulaimani province for the first time. 2. methods and materials 2.1 study area: this study was carried out in sulaimani, kurdistan, northeast of iraq, which is located on the longitude (44.5046.16) east and latitude (35.04 36.30) north. the samples (cysts) of cysticercus tenuicullis (fig.1) were collected from november 2017 to april 2018 at the new abattoirs of sulaimani (qragol). the total inspected animal was 13395 sheep and 693 goats, the samples collected from different organs including liver, lung, mesentery, and momentum, the cysts were preserved in sterile containers contain one volume (v/v) of 70% ethanol at 4 °c [20]. 2.2 dna extraction: the cysts of (t. hydatigena) were washed with phosphate buffer saline /or normal saline three times to remove the ethanol [21], the genome (total dna) was extracted from the cyst by the modified genomic dna extraction kits (miniprep tissue) provided by (geneaid, korea), the extracted dna preserved in the te buffer at -20°c until use [22]. 2.2 pcr process: the amplification of a partial gene of the cytochrome oxidase one (co1) gene was performed according to nejad et al. [23]. briefly, 50 μl of a master mix containing 10-100 ng of dna and 50 pmol of each primer; forward (5’ ttt ttt ggg cat cct gag gtt tat 3’) and reverse (5’ taa aga aag aac ata atg aaa atg 3), the thermocycler (ab biomed) was used: an entail step (denaturation) at 950c for four minutes followed by 35 cycles at 94 0c for 45 seconds, 55 0c for the 30s, 72 0c for 45s and 72 0c for seven min, as a final extension step. the pcr product was detected on 1.5% ethidium bromide-stained agarose gel under uv illuminator (gel-documentation with the computerized system). 2.3 nucleotide sequence analysis: the pcr products purified from the residual of protein, rna, primers, enzyme, salts, free nucleotides, to be ready for dna sequencing. the pcr product was purified with a pcr product purification kit (amersham uk), the nucleotide sequencing was performed by the genetic analyzer after amplification of the partial gene (co1) with forward and reverse primers separately to obtain forward and reverse sequences in cbar laboratory in malaysia (kualalampur malaysia). the sequence analysis, multiple sequence alignment, sequence editing, and correction was done with genetic analyzing software mega5 and bioedit. 2.4 statistical analysis: the epidemiological data analyzed with one way anova and chi-square by statistical software spss version 17. 3. results the overall prevalence rate in the current study of c. tenuicollis (fig.1), among slaughtered animals (14088) including (13395) sheep and (693) goats was 352 (2.63%) and 18 (2.59%) respectively (table 1). the statistically significant differences among sheep and goat were not observed (p > 0.05). based on sex, also there were no significant differences (p>0.05) between male and female (table 2). the used primer in the current study was designed for identification of taenia spp. [20], it has the ability to amplify a part of co1 gene of e. granulosus and co1 gene of t. hydategena according to the molecular result of this study, some cysts were belonged to e. granulosus, which has same dna molecular weight and they excluded in this study. generally, all the cysts were identified as taenia spp. and the pcr product of mt-co1 yielded 446 bp (fig. 2). the partial nucleotide sequence of (mt-co1) gene was submitted to the genbank and recorded under accession number (mh638348), the result was corresponding with t. hydatigena. the multiple sequences alignment of the nucleotide with published references (jq710588, km032284, jn827307, and jq710627) for t. hydatigena, the result shows that our finding is 100% identical with t. hydatigenia strain in iran (jq710588) and t. hydatigenia strain in palestine (km032284), 179 while 99% was similar with t. hydatigena isolated from turkey (jn827307) and iran (jq710627) the alignment and differences of nucleotide were represented in (fig.3). figure (1): full developed cyst (cysticercus tenuicollis) on the liver surface of sheep. table (1): the prevalence rate of cysticercus tenuicollis among slaughtered animals (sheep and goats) in sulaimani province hosts total examined animals negative animal positive animal n0. n0. % n0. % sheep 13395 13043 97.37 352 2.63 goats 693 675 97.41 18 2.59 total 14088 13719 97.38 369 2.62 x2=0.0789 p-value=.778818. (p>0.05) table (2): the prevalence rate of cysticercus tenuicollis among slaughtered animals (sheep and goats) according to the sex in sulaimani province. hosts total examined negative animal positive animal p v a lu e n0. n0. % n0. % sheep 624 m 610 97.75 14 2.24 0.53 12771 f 12433 97.35 338 2.65 goats 86 m 84 97.67 2 2.33 0.86 607 f 591 97.36 16 2.63 figure (2): the gel-electrophoresis of pcr product of mtco1 gene shows dna bands (446 bp). m: marker, 1=negative control 10 20 30 ....|....|....|....|....|....| mh638348 kurdistan attattagtcatatatgtttgagaataagc jq710588.1iran-go .............................. km032284.1palastin .............................. jn827307.1 turkey .............................. jq710627.1iran .............................. 40 50 60 ....|....|....|....|....|....| mh638348 kurdistan atgagtcctgatgcttttggattctatgga jq710588.1iran-go .............................. km032284.1palastin .............................. jn827307.1 turkey .............................. jq710627.1iran .............................. 70 80 90 ....|....|....|....|....|....| mh638348 kurdistan ttattatttgctatgttttcaatagtctgt jq710588.1iran-go .............................. km032284.1palastin .............................. jn827307.1 turkey .............................. jq710627.1iran .............................. 100 110 120 ....|....|....|....|....|....| mh638348 kurdistan ttgggtagaagtgtgtggggtcatcatatg jq710588.1iran-go .............................. km032284.1palastin .............................. jn827307.1 turkey .............................. jq710627.1iran .............................. 130 140 150 ....|....|....|....|....|....| mh638348 kurdistan tttactgttggattagatgttaagactgct jq710588.1iran-go .............................. km032284.1palastin .............................. jn827307.1 turkey .............................. jq710627.1iran .............................. 160 170 180 ....|....|....|....|....|....| mh638348 kurdistan gttttttttagttctgtcactatgattata jq710588.1iran-go .............................. km032284.1palastin .............................. jn827307.1 turkey .............................. jq710627.1iran .................t............ 190 200 210 ....|....|....|....|....|....| mh638348 kurdistan ggtgtgcctactggtataaaggtgtttact jq710588.1iran-go .............................. km032284.1palastin .............................. jn827307.1 turkey .............................. jq710627.1iran .............................. 180 220 230 240 ....|....|....|....|....|....| mh638348 kurdistan tggttatatatgcttttaaactctcatgtg jq710588.1iran-go .............................. km032284.1palastin .............................. jn827307.1 turkey ..a.......................... jq710627.1iran .............................. 250 260 270 ....|....|....|....|....|....| mh638348 kurdistan aataagagtgatcctgttgtttgatgaatt jq710588.1iran-go .............................. km032284.1palastin .............................. jn827307.1 turkey .............................. jq710627.1iran .............................. 280 290 300 ....|....|....|....|....|....| mh638348 kurdistan gtttcttttatagttttgtttacttttggt jq710588.1iran-go .............................. km032284.1palastin .............................. jn827307.1 turkey .............................. jq710627.1iran .............................. 310 320 330 ....|....|....|....|....|....| mh638348 kurdistan ggggttactggtattgtgttgtcagcatgt jq710588.1iran-go .............................. km032284.1palastin .............................. jn827307.1 turkey .............................. jq710627.1iran .............................. 340 350 360 ....|....|....|....|....|....| mh638348 kurdistan gtattagataaagttcttcatgatacctgg jq710588.1iran-go .............................. km032284.1palastin ............----------------- jn827307.1 turkey ......a....................... jq710627.1iran .............................a 370 380 390 ....|....|....|....|....|....| mh638348 kurdistan tttgtagttgctcattttcat jq710588.1iran-go ..................... km032284.1palastin -------------------- jn827307.1 turkey ..................... jq710627.1iran ..................... figure (3): nucleotide sequences of partial mt-cox1 of t. hydatigena (mh638348) aligned with the published sequences of the t. hydatigena as a reference. 4. discussion cysticercus tenuicollis is a parasitic infection of herbivores caused by the larval stage (metacestode) of t. hydatigena with a global distribution, which has a veterinary, medical, and economic importance. the disease spreads through the contamination of water, soil, and vegetable with feces of infected dogs and other carnivores [24]. the present study recorded a low prevalence rate of c. tenuicollis among slaughtered animal sheep and goat (2.6%), this finding is considered a low prevalence rate in comparison with the most studies that carried out in iraq; esa and al-aziz [25] in basra, they recorded 40.55% and 26.25% infection rate among sheep and goats respectively. moreover, khadair [26] in baghdad recorded a higher prevalence rate among slaughtered animals; (14.22%) in sheep and (16%) in goats. in the recent study for haddawee et al. [27] in karbala, they recorded a high prevalence rate of cysticercus tenuicollis among animals in the different months and session, the prevalence rate was (42.65%) in september, (45.57%) in august and (30.91%) and (28.40%) in october and november respectively, the authors explained the reason for the high prevalence rate of cysticercus tenuicollis among sheep and goats may be due to inadequate knowledge and awareness about this disease among the iraqi population and a lack of medical incinerator in the most slaughterhouses to collect and burn the infected organ and illegal slaughtering animals outside the abattoirs (on the street) makes difficult to control the disease, also the mostly infected organ (animal offal) will be accessed to the stray dogs due to improper management and a lack of medical incinerator, the national strategical plan to management and control of stray dog is required to reduce the infection with dog tapeworm e. granulosus and t. hydatidena [27]. while our result disagrees with al-saqur and gorani [27] they recorded a lower prevalence rate of cysticercus tenuicollis (1%) among sheep. although albakri [28] in naynava recorded a low prevalence rate (2%) of c. tenuicollis in sheep, which supports our finding. this variation may be due to the difference in management practice, environmental factors, also the knowledge about the disease and separating dogs from sheep and goats, also frequently cleaning of the domestic animal house has a direct effect on reducing the infection. the significant differences in c. tenuicollis infection between sheep and goat were not observed, this finding disagrees with some studies [25, 29], they recorded a higher infection rate of c. tenuicollis among sheep than in goats, while rdfar et al.[2] recorded 26.7% in sheep and, 27.9% in goats the infection rate among goats is slightly higher than in sheep, the author stated that grazing behavior and management can be considered as the major reasons, also nejad et al. [23] stated that the high prevalence rate among sheep due to the immune system of sheep, the immunity of the sheep is developed quickly in comparison with goat’s immune system and this immunity regulate and limited the parasite infection. the prevalence rate of c. tenuicollis among male and female relatively have the same prevalence rate of infection this may be due to both male and female have the same chance to get an infection after ingestion of the egg during feeding of contaminated food or water. in the present study, the significant differences of infection rates were not observed between a male and female of sheep and goat, while the females will be more susceptible this result agreed with [25] the slight differences of infection rate with c. tenuicollis between male and female may be due to physiological and hormonal effect. the inspection of meat for c. tenuicollis is more difficult if cysts are degenerated or low developed, the meat inspection procedure has a probability to detect about 20-50% of actual infected animals [30]. the molecular-based methods are not alternative of inspection methods for cyst detection, while the combination between direct inspection and dna markers are important to understanding the nature and origin of cysts [31] the morphological and biochemical markers are helpful for species and strain identification of taenia spp. while the molecular and dna markers are more accurate and dependable for molecular epidemiology study [32]. the 181 dna marker and molecular characterization are valuable for species and strain identification of taenia species [33, 34]. the alignment and blast of the present sequences which deposited in genbank (mh638348) shows that 100% similar with (jq710588) in iran [35] and with (km032284) in palestine while 99% similar with (jn827307) in turkey and (jq710627)in iran, this may be due to close contact of the kurdistan region of iraq with iran and turkey and they relatively have the same climate, culture, and lifestyle also the majority of domestic animals were imported from iran and turkey to kurdistan-iraq [36, 37]. different molecular markers have been developed for molecular characterization and species, strain identification of taenia, the most common approaches are dna sequencing, restriction enzyme fragment length (rflp), pcr-linked rflp, aflp, and pcr-rflps of the rdna internal transcribed spacers 1 and 2 (its1 and its2) [12]. in the current study the partial cytochrome oxidase gene (co1) which is a mitochondrial dna was studied, the mitochondrial dna sequences have been used widely in world as a genetic and dna marker to evaluate the genetic population structure, the dna sequencing of met-co1 is useful for evolutionary and relationship and also it can be used for species and strain identification of the taenia and another worm. 4. conclusion our result concludes that the prevalence rate of c. tenuicollis among sheep and goat in kurdistan region of iraq is (2.6%), which is lower than those of most iraqi neighbor countries. the amplification of co1 gene with the current primer is not dependable to discriminate hydatid cyst (hc), which is caused by dog tapeworm echinococcus granulosus and c. tenuicollis, dna sequencing and accurate methods for species and strain identification of taenia worm are required. molecular techniques are not an alternative to direct meat inspection, but the combination of both methods will be the most valuable for confirmation of c. taenicollis infection. 5. acknowledgment the authors would like to thank sulaimani abattoir veterinarian and administration staff and special thanks for the technical college of health and research center of sulaimani polytechnic university for their support and facilities. references [1] t. kassai. 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[37] w. m. s. mero, j. m. s. jubrael, a. a. hama, “prevalence of hydatid disease among slaughtered animals in slemani province/ kurdistan-iraq,” journal of university of zakho 1, (2) pp. 1–5. 2013.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.6 received: 25 june 2018 | accepted: 16 july 2018 effect of different dietary oils and fat on body weight, food intake, some haematological and biochemical parameters in female albino rats zerawan sadiq abdullah mohammed yaseen rasoul nazar mohammed shareef mahmood department of biology department of biology department of biology faculty of science faculty of science faculty of science soran university soran university soran university soran, iraq soran, iraq soran, iraq zerawan.sadiq@gmail.com mumadyasen390@gmail.com nazar.mahmood@soran.edu.iq 38 abstract: the present study investigates the influence of different dietary plant oils included sunflower oil (so), olive oil (oo) corn oil (co), and animal (af) on different parameters in female albino rats. twenty-two animals were divided equally and randomly into five groups, the treatment was performed by needle gavage. first group fed on basal diet and served as control. second group fed on a basal diet with 0.3ml/rat animal fat orally. third group fed on a basal diet with 0.3ml/rat sunflower oil orally. fourth group fed on a basal diet with 0.3ml/rat olive oil orally. fifth group fed on a basal diet with 0.3ml/rat corn oil orally. it continued for 28 days. several parameters were measured during and after the study such as body weight, food intake, organ weight (kidney, liver and spleen) haematological parameters (hb, rbc, wbc, plt, hct and mcv), lipid profile (total cholesterol, tg, hdl and ldl). commonly plant oils and animal fat showed both benefits and harmful effects on the mentioned parameters; the corn oil and olive oil played important role through generating the healthy signs among other oils and animal fat. the present results concluded that both corn oil and olive oil may own positive effect than the other animal fat sunflower oil of people used in their daily diet. keywords: corn oil, olive oil, sunflower oil, animal oil and lipid profile. 1. introduction fats and oils play supplied high energy, taste and desirable flavor of the food preparation. each gram of oil or fat provides 9 kilo calories (kcal) energy which is the double of the quantity of energy as is provided by proteins or carbohydrates. they contain more unsaturated fatty acids than the saturated fatty acids are particularly susceptible to oxidation. the food intake containing oxidized lipid increase the concentration of secondary peroxidation products in the liver. metabolism of these components ultimately affects the activity of different lipogenic enzymes and causes various types of liver injury[1]. therefore, this study was aimed to investigate the influence of different dietary fats oils included animal fat (af), sunflower oil (so), olive oil (oo) and corn oil (co) on body weight bw, food intake, some haematological and biochemical parameters in female albino rats. 2. literature review each of cholesterol, saturated fatty acids, trans fatty acids of fats and oils increase the risk of coronary heart diseases by increasing the blood cholesterol [2]. however, co is a good source of essential fatty acids and their nutritional properties are excellent and the fatty acids found in their structure are palmitic acid, stearic acid, oleic acid, linoleic acid, and linolenic acid [3]. besides that, it responsible for hyperlipidemia, increase of total lipids, triglycerides (tg) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (ldl-c) along with a decrease in high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (hdl-c). hyperlipidemia is the predictor of coronary artery disease, fatty liver disease and carcinogenesis and is a predominant risk factor for cardiovascular diseases [4]. on the other hand, oo is extensively used in europe as well as mediterranean countries as a cooking and seasoning medium for many centuries. this oil is established to have a higher content of unsaturated fatty acids and has been widely recommended to be superior to other oils in maintenance of health, although no detailed comparative study has been reported on its efficacy in humans or animals. nevertheless, some reports have mentioned the decreased cardio-vascular dysfunction in persons using oo and the relatively decreased incidence of heart related problems in mediterranean countries [5]. however, others in western europe have been attributed to increased use of oo by these populations, in their daily diet both as a cooking and a seasoning medium. the beneficial effects of this oil on cardiovascular system [6] in humans can be attributed to the presence of phenolic compounds reported by some investigators [7] this edible oil has also been reported to have constituents that provide protection against reactive oxygen species (ros) and lipid peroxidation [8]. beneficial effects of oo in reducing lipid 39 peroxidation and in enhancing cardio protection have been corroborated by other investigators as well [9]. one of the most reasons for the popularity growing of so using to its magnificent fatty acid content, oleic acid (omega-9) and linoleic acid (omega-6) which are the predominant monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats [10]. both of so and co reduce cholesterol synthesis, they are considered as risk factors for the sensitivities to free radical formation because of their high contents of polyunsaturated fatty acids (pufas) [11], another study indicated that corn oil offering health benefits through decreasing of cholesterol, tg, and ldl concentrations [6]. it has been reported that co administration increased both tga and phospholipids level which may positively correlated with hepatic lipogenic enzyme activity. in addition, it decreases the activity of mitochondrial carnitine palmitoyl transferase-1 (pts-1), resulted in impairment in fatty acid oxidation and lipid accumulation in corn oil fed rats [7], while a. f. contain higher proportions of saturated fatty acids (sfa), may increase the risk of vascular system diseases. numerous studies indicate that butter elevates the level of total cholesterol, ldl-c and tg. it has also been reported that consumption of dietary butter contributes to hypercholesterolemia due to its high content of sfa [12]. a high dietary fat meal is known to induce obesity in animals and humans [2] this is accomplished even without hypercaloric intake, indicating an elevated feeding efficiency induced by high-fat feeding [3] other research findings have documented that not only quantity, but also fat type used in the diets will affect the amount of weight gained. saturated fatty acids (sfas) have been shown to produce higher rates of weight gain compared with other types of fatty acids [4]. as an important constituent of cell membranes, lipids also play specific roles in membrane signaling events. thus cell development certain lipids are indicators of cellular events, and lipid concentration can represent physiological conditions of cells [5]. 3. methods and materials animals and housing the female of inbred rats rattus norvegicus [6] were bred in the animal house of biology department, faculty of science, soran university, soran, erbil, iraq. they were acclimatized in an environmentally controlled room at constant temperature 22 ± 2 ◦ c, they were maintained at free access to tap water ad libitum and were fed at a standard pelleted feed according to pico lab. the pellets contained (wheat 66.6%, soya bean 25.6%, sunflower oil 4.4%, lime stone 1.5%, salt 0.63%, methionine 0.158%, choline chloride 0.062% and trace elements 0.05%). during the experiment the cages were cleaned once a week. olive, corn, sunflower and animal fats were purchased from local markets in soran city, iraq they were mostly used by the people of food cooking. experimental design the present study was performed on 24 female albino rats weighing (132-288) gm were randomly and equally divided into five groups as following: group i (control group) (n=4): rats were given, control diet and tap water ad libitum. group ii (af group) (n= 5): rats were given control diet, tap water ad libitum and 0.3ml animal fat daily by gavage orally. group iii (so group) (n= 5): rats were given control diet, tap water ad libitum and 0.3ml sunflower oil daily by gavage orally. group iv (oo group) (n=4): rats were given control diet, tap water ad libitum and 0.3ml olive oil daily by gavage orally. group v (co group) (n=4): rats were given control diet, tap water ad libitum and 0.3ml corn oil daily by gavage orally. the experiment was performed for four weeks. body weight and food intake determination at the beginning of the experiment and the end of each week, the weight of animals and food intake were recorded. collection of blood samples at the end of experiment, they anesthetized after 24 hours fasting with ketamine hydrochloride (50 mg/kg). blood samples were taken by cardiac puncture into chilled tubes with or without ethylene diamine tetra acetic acid (edta) (4.5mm) as anticoagulant and centrifuged at 3000 rpm for 15 minute. absolute organ weight measurements after animal dissection the weight of liver, spleen and right kidney were recorded by precision electronic balance. haematological parameters measurement haematological parameters (hb, rbc, wbc, plt, hct and mcv) were measured by coulter counter (nihon kohden, mek-6410k, japan) for each group[7]. serum lipid profile determination serum total cholesterol (tc), hdl-c and tg were estimated by the enzymatic colorimetric test –chodpap method, while ldl was estimated using the formula of friedewald [8]. statistical analysis the data analyzed statistically by one-way analysis of variance (anova) using statistical package for the social sciences (spss) version 16.0 with significant level fixed at p<0.05. data were expressed as mean ± standard error (mean ± s.e.). 4. results effect of different dietary oils and fat on food intake the effect of af, so, oo, and co on food intake of female rats are shown in table 1, non-significant changes was occurred in week1 in af group as compared to the control group, meanwhile both of s.o and co were increased significantly p< 0.05 as compared to the control. in contrast food intake was decreased 40 significantly p< 0.05 in the oo as compared to the control. in week 2 food intakes significantly p< 0.05 increased in af, so and co groups respectively as compared to the control group, whereas it decreased significantly p< 0.05 in oo group as compared to the control group, but in week 3 and week 4 the food intake significantly p< 0.05 increased in af, so and co groups as compared to control group, while the nonsignificant change was occurred in oo group. effect of different dietary oils and fat on body weight the effect of af, so, oo, and co on bw are shown in table 2. the non-significant change was occurred in a.o., so and oo groups in week 1 as compared to the control group, while it decreased significantly p< 0.05 in co group as compared to control group. furthermore, the non-significant change was occurred in week 2, week 3 and week 4 in all experimental groups as compared to the control group. effect of different dietary oils and fat on liver, kidney and spleen absolute weight the effect of af, so, oo, and co on liver, kidney and spleen are shown in table 3. the liver weight was significantly p< 0.05 increased in all experimental groups as compared to control group. on the other hand, kidney weight of af was significantly p< 0.05 decreased as compared to the control group; in addition, the nonsignificant change was occurred of kidney weight of so, oo and co groups as compared to control group. conversely the weight of spleen in both so and oo groups were significantly p< 0.05, increased as compared the control group, instead that non-significant changes were occurred of af and co groups as compared the control group. effect of different dietary oils and fat on some haematological parameters the effect of af, so, oo, and co on some haematological parameters are shown in table 4. nonsignificant changes were occurred of wbcs parameter in all experimental groups in comparison with control group. also, the non-significant change was occurred of rbcs in all experimental groups except in af group which was significantly p< 0.05 increased as compared to the control group. in addition, the hb level of all experimental groups changed non-significantly as compared to the control group. in contrast the hct level in af and oo groups were significantly p< 0.05 decreased as compared to control group. in contrast, hct of so and co groups changed non-significantly as compared to control group. the platelets in a. f. and oo groups were decreased significantly p< 0.05 as compared to control group, while it changed nonsignificantly in so and co groups as compared to control groups. furthermore, the non-significant changed was occurred of mcv parameter in af, so and oo groups as compared to control group, but mcv in co group was decreased significantly p< 0.05 as compared to control group. effect of different dietary oils and fat on lipid profile parameters the effect of af, so, oo, and co on lipid profile parameters are shown in table 5. tc in af and so groups changed non-significantly as compared to control group; meanwhile it decreased significantly p< 0.05 in oo and c. o. groups as compared to control group. on the other hand, the non-significant change was occurred hdl parameter in all experimental groups as compared to control group, in addition the non-significant change was occurred of ldl in af and co groups as compared to control group, whereas the ldl level in so and co groups were decreased significantly p< 0.05 as compared to control group, but tg was changed nonsignificantly in all experimental groups as compared to control group. 5. discussion the different dietary oils and fat used in the current study affected food intake during the four weeks feeding period. rats were fed co (table 1) in their diet increased their food intake in agreement with previous study [9] who suggested that rats fed the co diet increased their food intake and also agreed with finding of [10] at the same manner, similarly the elevation of food intake in so group (table 1) during 4 weeks is agreed with the finding of [11] who reported that rats fed so during 90 days treatment consumed more food. on one hand, our food intake data disagreed with finding of [12] who reported that rats administered 10 mg/kg co in diets significantly lowered it. on the other hand, our previous work [13] suggested that oral administration of male rats with co (0.3 ml/rat) by gavage for four weeks didn’t change rat’s food consumption significantly. the increased food intake by co may it attributed for providing the appetite stimulation. on the other hand, our results disagreed with finding of [14] who showed that the oo administration significantly decreased food intake. the significant increase in af is supported by [15] who demonstrated that the ‘high-fat diet’ to induce obesity by a nutritional intervention. the significant decrease in bw in co group (week 1) (table 2) is supported by the findings of [16] who investigated that the female rats given co by gavage had 3-7% lowered bw, also these differences in bw are similar with observed in an earlier finding [17]. on the other hand, the non-significant decrease in bw of rats treated with different oils af, so, oo, and co (table 2) in other three weeks may return to their high activity of female rats during day. therefore, female rat’s activity during day may decline bw (table 2). the significant increase of liver weight in co group (table 3) is supported by the finding of [18], and disagreed with previous finding [13]. on the other hand, the significant increase in liver weight negatively matched with bw insignificancy (table 1). conversely , the liver weight also in rats treated with af diet may attributed to insulin action supported by both [2] who showed that high fat feeding is known to induce insulin resistance. furthermore, the fatty acid profile of the diet also influences insulin action. also in the so group the significant increase in liver weight is disagreed with previous data [19]. besides that, liver weight increased is disagreed with finding of [20] who demonstrated that rats fed 20% saturated fatty acid combined with different oil included oo kidney weight in so group also disagreed [19]. meanwhile the increased weight of 41 spleen in oo group was disagreed with the finding of [21] who demonstrated that wister rats treated with 1ml/kg bw lead to decrease spleen weight, besides that, it needs additional investigations in order to explain the effect of oo on rats’ spleen. nevertheless, sunflower oil also increased spleen weight may it attributed that this oil contains fibers (26.7%) ratio in their seeds structure. in the af group each parameters included rbc, plt and hct (table 4) are decreased in rats treated with af is supported by the finding of [22] indicate that af plays a differential role in modulation of the rbcs. on the other hand, oo decreased hct and plt significantly, whereas previous findings showed any harmful effect of oo on haematological parameters [23]. besides that, the significant decrease in rats treated with oo is supported by the findings of [24] who showed that rats treated with unheated cooking oo (0.10 ml) via oral gavage for 28 days lead to reduce their mcv. non-significant change in tc (table 5) in so was supported with the study of [25]. on the other hand, the significant decrease of tc in oo group is supported by the attempt of [26] who showed that oo administration provoke their effect by their oleic acid. however, the significant decrease of tc level in rats treated with co is supported by the finding of [27] who suggested that co is highly effective in decreasing serum cholesterol. besides that, cholesterol and ldl significantly declination is supported by the finding of [13] who demonstrated that co offering health benefits through decreasing both parameters. also previous study investigated that oo is one of richest sources of monounsaturated fatty acids (mufa), whose effect on glycemic status and lipid profile [28]. therefore, our result is agreed with findings of [29] who showed that rats treated with supplemented diet containing oo for six weeks lead to decrease both tc and ldl level. [19]. sun flower oil decreased ldl-c in our result and it disagreed with previous works [30, 31], we believe that the significant reduction of ldl-c may return to delay of absorption of fatty acids from digestive tract. 5.1. tables table 1: effect of different dietary oils and fat on food intake groups paramete rs contr ol anima l fat (af) sunflow er oil (so) olive oil (oo) corn oil (co) week1 (gm) * 68.920 ± 1.078 a 67.240± 0.331 a 96.840± 0.312 b 63.600 ± 0.748 c 82.000± 1.414 d week2 (gm)* 72.800 ± 0.200 a 77.1200 ± 0.280 b 100.0152± 0.1200 c 62.600 ± 1.326 d 83.7000 ± 1.003 e week3 (gm)* 76.660 ± 0.213 a 96.3600 ± 0.348 b 100.030± 0.233 b 76.680 1.148 a 94.680± 0.527 c week4 (gm)* 80.580 ± 0.516 a 86.660± 0.446 b 94.520± 3.096 c 78.200 ± 1.019 a 88.480± 0.886 b data presented as mean ± s.e the same letters mean nonsignificant differences while the different letters mean significant differences *= p< 0.05 table 2: effect of different dietary oils and fat on body weight groups parameter s contr ol anima l fat (af) sunflow er oil (so) olive oil (oo) corn oil (co) before treatme nt (gm) 202.75 ± 8.498 a 205.25 ± 5.437 a 234.80± 3.157 b 241.50 ± 15.256 b 198.20 ± 4.737 a week1 (gm)* 225.75 ± 11.198 a 214.25 ± 9.830 ab 220.60± 8.686 ab 211.50 ± 13.592 a b 187.00 ± 12.633 b week2 (gm) 241.50 ± 14.885 a 224.50 ± 12.278 a 222.80± 14.619 a 216.50 ± 16.291 a 192.60 ± 18.131 a week3 (gm) 249.50 ± 14.002 a 234.00 ± 11.423 a 231.00± 11.991 a 230.75 ± 186.16 4 a 206.80 ± 20.177 a week4 (gm) 253.75 ± 15.450 a 240.75 ± 11.898 a 240.40± 11.578 a 237.50 ± 13.799 a 211.20 ± 21.055 a data presented as mean ± s.e the same letters mean nonsignificant differences while the different letters mean significant differences *= p< 0.05 table 3: effect of different dietary oils and fat on liver, kidney and spleen weight groups parameter s contro l anima l fat (af) sunflowe r oil (so) olive oil (oo) corn oil (co) liver (gm)* 21.020 ± 4.597 a 28.340 ± 0.782 b 33.140± 0.723 b 27.340 ± 0.515 b 33.220 ± 0.487 b kidne y (gm)* 4.400± 0.109 b 3.540± 0.092 a 4.700± 0.054 b 4.500± 0.130 b 4.508± 0.133 b spleen (gm)* 3.180± 0.115 a 3.320± 0.139 a 4.024± 0.134 b 4.186± 0.193 b 3.520± 0.142 a data presented as mean ± s.e the same letters mean nonsignificant differences while the different letters mean significant differences *= p< 0.05 table 4: effect of different dietary oils and fat on some haematological parameters groups parameters contr ol anima l fat (af) sunflow er oil (so) olive oil (oo) corn oil (co) wbc (10 3 /µl) 7.650± 0.064 ab 5.425± 0.596 a 10.500± 0.371 b 9.875± 1.024 b 7.340± 1.979 ab rbc (10 6 /µl) * 7.700± 0.111 a 5.770± 0.825 b 6.812± 0.144 ab 6.665± 0.678 ab 7.378± 0.426 a hb (g/dl) 14.600 ± 0.108 a 12.550 ± 0.377 a 12.340± 0.515 a 12.500 ± 1.447 a 13.320 ± 0.421 a hct (%)* 43.325 ± 0.458 a 36.250 ± 1.493 b 38.620± 1.124 ab 35.900 ± 4.314 b 38.040 ± 1.480 ab plt 747.252 436.002 605.202± 280.502 620.402 42 (10 3 /µl) * ± 24.658 a ± 53.214 bc 56.824 ab ± 1.098 c ± 49.639 ab mcv (fl)* 56.275 ± 0.432 a 54.400 ± 0.481 ab 52.820± 0.757 ab 53.500 ± 1.326 ab 52.060 ± 1.634 b data presented as mean ± s.e the same letters mean nonsignificant differences while the different letters mean significant differences *= p< 0.05 table 5: effect of different dietary oils and fat on lipid profile parameters groups parameters contr ol anima l fat (af) sunflowe r oil (so) olive oil (oo) corn oil (co) tc (mg/dl) * 66.250 ± 4.643 a 58.000 ± 2.738 ab 46.200± 4.211 ab 49.000 ± 3.488 b 53.000 ± 6.603 b hdl-c (mg/dl) 37.000 ± 2.483 ab 42.250 ± 3.350 b 37.000± 2.073 ab 30.500 ± 4.974 a 31.200 ± 3.800 ab ldl-c (mg/dl) * 24.250 ± 2.462 a 20.000 ± 1.779 ab 14.880± 1.433 b 16.250 ± 1.750 b 19.800 ± 2.835 ab tg (mg/dl) 48.500 ± 5.751 a 42.000 ± 3.696 a 43.000± 7.245 a 33.750 ± 6.625 a 46.000 ± 6.082 a data presented as mean ± s.e the same letters mean nonsignificant differences while the different letters mean significant differences *= p< 0.05 6. conclusion in view 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[31] p. chaturvedi, p. moseki, and k. mazunga, "effects of used sunflower oil and ghee (clarified butter) on lipid profile and antioxidants in sd rats," 2016.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.3 received: 10 may 2018 | accepted: 23 june 2018 evaluation of serum bilirubin as a predictive marker for simple and complicated appendicitis in sulaimani emergency teaching hospital seerwan hama shareef dara ahmed mohammed goran ameer ahmed department of general surgery department of anatomy department of general surgery college of medicine college of medicine college of medicine university of sulaimania university of sulaimania university of sulaimania sulaimania, iraq sulaimania, iraq sulaimania ,iraq quaradaghi@gmail.com dara.marif@univsul.edu.iq kurdagoran@gmail.com 15 abstract: diagnosis of acute appendicitis can be challenging in some cases as the differentials can be exhaustive. previous studies have demonstrated that hyperbilirubinemia is a more specific marker for appendicitis than white blood count (wbc) and creactive protein (crp), but this investigation is still not commonly used in the diagnostic workup of appendicitis. this prospective study aims to evaluate serum bilirubin as a laboratory marker for simple and complicated appendicitis. we also investigated the diagnostic value of bilirubin in acute appendicitis and compared it with the wbc. in this prospective study, all patients who underwent appendicectomy at the sulaimani emergency teaching hospital between 1 st november 2016 to 1 st january 2017 were included. preoperative total serum bilirubin was measured and compared with the final histopathology report. patients were divided into 3 groups: non-inflamed appendix, simple appendicitis and complicated appendicitis. one hundred and 75 patients were analysed, 90 of them were females and 85 were males. hyperbilirubinemia was found in 63% of patients with complicated appendicitis (p=0.001). mean of bilirubin was significantly different between patients with complicated appendicitis and non-complicated appendicitis (1.101 vs 0.75 mg/dl; p= 0.0017). bilirubin had a higher specificity (85%) than wbc (36%), but a lower sensitivity (63% vs 89%) for differentiating complicated appendicitis. patients with suggestive features of acute appendicitis and raised serum bilirubin indicate a complicated case requiring early intervention to prevent peritonitis and septicaemia. hyperbilirubinemia is a good indicator for complicated appendicitis and serum bilirubin measurement can be included in the work up of patients with suspected appendicitis. keywords: acute appendicitis, appendectomy, hyperbilirubinaemia, diagnostic markers. 1. introduction acute appendicitis (aa) is one of the most common surgical emergencies. appendectomy is among the most frequently performed emergency operations worldwide [1-3]. the first appendectomy was performed by claudius amyand, on a boy (11 years old) in 1736 [4]. the lifetime risk of developing appendicitis is 8.6% for males and 6.7% for females. the highest incidence is in the second and third decades of life [5]. it is a polymicrobial infection with some series reporting up to 14 different organisms cultured in patients with perforation. the main organisms cultured from peritoneal fluid of the patients, are escherichia coli and bacteroides fragilis [5]. obstruction of the lumen due to fecaliths or hypertrophy of lymphoid tissue is proposed as the main etiologic factor in aa [1,5]. other less common causes are tumours, vegetable and fruit seeds, and intestinal parasites [5]. the obstruction causes elevation of intraluminal pressure. this ultimately leads to venous outflow obstruction, ischaemia, loss of epithelial integrity and bacterial invasion of appendiceal wall. as the pathology progresses, gangrene and perforation of the appendix occur forming a periappendicular abscess or local/generalized peritonitis [4,6]. diagnosis of aa is made primarily on the basis of the history and the physical examination [6,7]. however, it is not always straight forward, as there are a number of causes leading to pain in right iliac fossa (rif) particularly in female patients [8]. the variation in the pathophysiological development of the disease, along with the wide range of possible locations of the organ explain why only 50% of patients have a classical history on presentation [9]. in fact, the differentials include almost all causes of abdominal pain. a useful rule is never to place appendicitis lower than second in the differential diagnosis of acute abdominal pain in a previously healthy person [10]. aside from symptomatology and specific physical examination findings, ultrasonography and computed tomography (ct) scans have become useful tools, with accuracies up to 85 to 99% [11-14]. however, these diagnostic adjuncts may be expensive, may involve a high radiation exposure, and may not always have accurate and reproducible results [15]. scoring systems such as the alvarado score and the appendicitis inflammatory response score have been devised to assist in the diagnosis [16-22]. these scores are based on clinical presentations, white blood count (wbc) and/or c-reactive protein (crp) [23]. the diagnostic and 16 discriminatory value of wbc and crp in aa has been studied extensively but it remains controversial [24-28]. furthermore, some studies have shown that neither of these markers are a diagnostic indicator nor specific for aa [29]. jaundice in the context of appendicitis has been well described in the literature over 60 years ago [30]. in 1969, miller and irvine showed in a prospective series of appendectomies that jaundice in patients with aa correlated with peritoneal positive cultures for e. coli [31]. more recent studies suggest that elevated serum bilirubin in patients with clinically suspected appendicitis may be a predictor for appendiceal perforation with high specificity and positive predictive values [29,32-39]. furthermore, a study showed that serum bilirubin has been found to have a sensitivity of 70% and specificity of 86% for perforated appendicitis [34]. moreover, emmanuel a et al concluded that bilirubin is a specific marker for simple aa, not necessarily complicated, with a good positive predictive value, and suggested that it should be included in the overall assessment of suspected patients of having appendicitis [29]. the recent attention to the association between hyperbilirubinemia and appendicitis could be explained by the over ordering of „„routine‟‟ blood tests in the emergency department. as a result, more studies are needed to test this hypothesis [8]. hyperbilirubinemia, defined as elevated serum bilirubin, either because of increased production or impaired clearance, is not well known as a laboratory marker for complicated appendicitis. both mechanisms, increase production and alteration of bilirubin clearance, might play a role in the observed hyperbilirubinemia of patients with appendiceal perforation [34]. as previously mentioned, the most common bacterial species which is cultured from the appendiceal wall of patients with aa has been e. coli and bacteroides fragilis [5,34], both of which have been shown to cause a portal sepsis and interfere with hepatocyte microcirculation, inducing sinusoidal damage as shown in a rat liver model [40,41]. e. coli–associated lipopolysaccharides have been shown to have an effect on hepatocyte uptake and excretion of bile acids [42]. also, e. coli endotoxin leads to a dosedependent bile stasis, which has been shown in a rat liver model [43]. in addition, e. coli infection has been shown to induce hemolysis of erythrocytes [44]. the resulting inflammatory-mediated cholestasis, along with the proposed hemolysis leads to an increased bilirubin load in infected individuals, which likely promotes hyperbilirubinemia [34,42-44]. histopathologic studies are considered as the gold standard for diagnosis of aa [45]. the criterion standard is neutrophilic infiltration of muscularis propria [46]. various sources have divided aa into two broad categories: uncomplicated or simple, with no gangrene, perforation or abscess formation, and complicated (perforated/gangrenous) appendicitis [5,10,29,38]. recent evidence from a large multi-center study has suggested that patients with simple appendicitis can undergo short in-hospital observations prior to having their appendicectomies [47]. some studies are even suggesting that non-operative management with antibiotics is possible [48-51]. however, urgent surgery is still the treatment of choice for complicated (gangrenous/perforated) appendicitis due to the higher rate of complications and the need to control the source of sepsis [5,10,39]. therefore, it is important to classify patients into those with simple appendicitis who can undergo surgery at a safe opportunity or even managed non-operatively and those with complicated appendicitis that require surgery more urgently [39]. presence or absence of hyperbilirubinemia may aid in the distinction between these two groups of patients [29]. diagnosing aa clinically still remains challenging in some instances. the presence of hyperbilirubinemia, that is not explained by liver disease or biliary disease, as a predictor of appendicitis has been studied so that serum bilirubin levels measured upon admission can be used in conjunction with other diagnostic tests such as ultrasonography and ct [37]. total serum bilirubin is a commonly requested blood test. unlike imaging modalities, it is relatively inexpensive, and carries no risks such as irradiation from ct scans. a safe, cheap, rapid, widely available, accurate diagnostic marker for appendicitis would be useful to the emergency general surgeon to manage suspected appendicitis [38]. 2. methods and materials this single-center cohort, prospective study was conducted in sulaimani surgical teaching hospital from 1 st november 2016 to 1 st january 2017. to conduct this study, ethics approval was obtained from kurdistan board for medical specialties (kbms) ethics committee, and informed consent was obtained from the patients. a total of 211 patients, who underwent appendicectomy at the emergency department of sulaimani teaching hospital were initially enrolled in the study. the diagnosis of aa was made with a combination of clinical, laboratory and imaging findings. the patients underwent emergency or urgent appendicectomy according to their condition. all appendicectomies were carried out by an open method. collected data included patients‟ age, gender, preoperative wcc, crp (not always present), ultrasound finding and operative finding. total serum bilirubin (tsb) was also performed preoperatively on the collected blood sample. determination of tsb was done using kenza 240tx machine (biolabo diagnostics). the normal levels for the above markers based on the reference ranges of the hospital, were: wcc 4–10 x 109cells/l, crp <10mg/l, and bilirubin 0.2-1.1mg/dl. inclusion criteria: all patients admitted with a provisional diagnosis of appendicitis and who underwent appendicectomy during the study period. exclusion criteria were: history of liver or biliary tract disease (including viral hepatitis positive patients), history of hemolytic disease, patients who were taking known hepatotoxic medications, and patients who did not have preoperative serum bilirubin for technical reasons. all the specimens were analysed by histopathological examination. accordingly, patients were divided into three groups according to their clinical and histological findings. group 1 comprised of patients with noninflamed appendices, group 2 comprised of those with uncomplicated acute appendicitis or reactive lymphoid 17 hyperplasia, and group 3 comprised of patients with a perforated or gangrenous appendix (complicated appendicitis). comparisons were made between each group and their respective laboratory markers. statistical analysis: statistical package for the social science (spss) version 20.0.0 used. a p value of < 0.05 was considered a statistically significant. 3. results a total of 211 patients who underwent appendicectomy for acute appendicitis were included in the study. from all, 36 patients could not fulfill the criteria and were excluded. two patients had thalassemia major, two patients were hepatitis b positive and 32 patients did not have their serum bilirubin measured preoperatively, so they were excluded. the remaining of 175 patients were analysed. out of the 175 included patients, 90 patients were female (51.4%) and 85 were male (48.6%) (table 1). table 1: shows gender distribution of the study population. gender frequency percent femal e 90 51.4 male 85 48.6 total 175 100.0 the age of the patients ranged from 5 to 56 years with a mean of 24.9 years (sd: +/10.42). figure 1 shows the age and gender distribution with the most common age group between 11-20 years old (36%). figure 1: bar chart shows age and gender distribution of the participants. according to the operative finding and the final histopathology report: 34 patients had normal appendices (19%), 103 patients (59%) had uncomplicated acute appendicitis or reactive lymphoid hyperplasia, and 38 patients (22%) had complicated appendicitis (perforated/ gangrenous), as shown in (table 2). table 2: shows comparison between gender and the final diagnosis. frequency percent female male frequency normal 34 19.4% 22 12 uncomplicated 103 58.9% 61 42 complicated 38 21.7% 7 31 total 175 100.0 90 (51.4%) 85 (48.6%) figure 2: shows comparison between gender and the final diagnosis. overall, tsb was elevated in 41 patients (23.5%). in group 1, 2 out of 34 patients had raised preoperative tsb (6%), in group 2, 15 patients out of 103 (14.6%), and group 3, 24 out of 38 patients (63%). this difference was statistically significant (p value =0.001), as demonstrated in (table 3). the mean tsb of the groups 1, 2 and 3 were 0.54, 0.75, and 1.101 mg/dl respectively. this shows that the value of tsb increased with progression of appendicitis severity. using unpaired t-test, comparing the differences in mean tsb between patients with normal histology and those with simple appendicitis showed no statistically significant difference (p-value < 0.05). while the difference in mean bilirubin between uncomplicated appendicitis and complicated appendicitis was statistically significant (p-value < 0.01). table 3: correlation between tsb and final diagnosis tsb final diagnosis normal elevated percent count count normal 32 2 6% uncomplicated 88 15 14.6% complicated 14 24 63% total 134 41 23.5% 18 figure 3: correlation between tsb and clinicopathologic classes. to analyse the diagnostic value of serum bilirubin in appendicitis, we compared patients with appendicitis (complicated and uncomplicated) to the patients with normal histopathology. we found that a specificity of 94% for hyperbilirubinemia in appendicitis, with a positive predictive value (ppv) of 95%. sensitivity and negative predictive value (npv) were lower (28% and 24% respectively). white blood count had a higher sensitivity (71%) but a lower specificity (47%). details are shown in (table 4). table 4: shows sensitivity, specificity, ppv and npv of wbc and tsb for appendicitis vs normal histology sensitivity % specificity % ppv % npv % serum bilirubin 28% 94% 95% 24% wbc 71% 47% 85% 28% hyperbilirubinemia in complicated appendicitis vs simple appendicitis had a specificity of 85% for perforated /gangrenous appendicitis, a sensitivity of 63%. bilirubin had a higher specificity (85%) than wbc (36%), but a lower sensitivity (63% vs 89% respectively). details are shown in (table 5). table 5: shows sensitivity, specificity, ppv and npv of wbc and tsb for complicated appendicitis vs simple appendicitis sensitivity % specificity % ppv % npv % serum bilirubin 63% 85% 62% 86% wbc 89% 36% 34% 90% by inspecting the mean values for bilirubin and wbc within our three groups, we found that all values increased with increasing appendicitis severity. this difference was statistically significant (p<0.0001). details are given in (table 6). table 6: mean marker values for each study group marker group 1 group 2 group 3 p value bilirubin 0.54 0.75 1.101 p < 0.0001 wbc 10.52 11.80 15.47 p < 0.0001 4. discussion previous studies have found hyperbilirubinaemia to be a marker with high specificity for perforated appendicitis [29, 32-39]. serum bilirubin levels in the adult surgical population are usually raised due to liver or gallbladder problems. gilbert‟s syndrome may cause an idiopathic, benign, isolated unconjugated hyperbilirubinemia. however, the prevalence of gilbert‟s syndrome is expected to be around 3-8% [33], which is considerably less than the ratio in simple appendicitis in the current study (15%) and perforated appendicitis (63%). gilbert‟s syndrome may explain the finding of this current study of hyperbilirubinemia in 2 patients (6%) with ultimately normal appendix histology. mean age, age distribution and gender distribution was similar to most other studies [8, 23, 29, 34, 38]. rate of negative appendectomy was (19.4%) in comparison to d‟souza et al (22%) [38], emmanuel et al (18%) [29] and atahan et al (14%) [35]. but it was lower than panagiotopoulou et al (33.9%) [53], who conducted a large retrospective study analysing 1,169 patients. their explanation was that they removed all appendices during diagnostic laparoscopy for rif pain if no other pathology was found. our figures are within the acceptable rate of negative appendectomy worldwide. negative appendectomy was more commonly performed on females. this is again in accordance with findings in the literature [8, 23, 34]. the rate of complicated appendicitis namely gangrenous/ perforated appendicitis is commonly around 25% [5], varies greatly in the literature. panagiotopoulou et al reported a rate as low as 3.5%, while others reported figures ranging from 14% 26% [8,23,33,38,39,53]. the current study showed a rate of complicated appendicitis of 21.7%. males outnumbered females in the complicated group of patients, which goes with findings of ran hong y et al [23], estrada et al [33], and sand et al [34]. with regard to the predictive value of hyperbilirubinemia for simple and complicated appendicitis, our study showed that hyperbilirubinemia was more common in patients with simple appendicitis group than those with normal appendix histology (15% vs 6%, p=0.06). but this difference was not statistically significant in the study. also, mean bilirubin levels were higher for patients with appendicitis than patients with normal appendices (0.54 vs 0.75, p= 0.072). this finding is similar to that of estrada et al [33] and sand et al [34], who could not find a statistically significant relationship between hyperbilirubinemia and simple appendicitis. however, d'souza et al found a statistically significant difference by including gangrenous appendicitis in the "simple appendicitis" group and also including a group of patients with rif pain managed conservatively [38]. 19 emmanuel a et al showed that hyperbilirubinaemia is a significant marker for simple acute appendicitis and not only appendiceal perforation [29]. these findings can be explained by including a larger number of patients from both groups. in contrast, in our study hyperbilirubinemia was found in 63% of patients in the complicated appendicitis group, which is highly significant (p value =0.001). furthermore, mean tsb in group 3 patients (1.101) was significantly higher than mean of group 1 and 2 (p value =0.0017). this reflects that hyperbilirubinemia maybe secondary to appendicitis. in fact, the value of tsb increases with progression of appendicitis severity. this is supported by estrada et al who observed that the prevalence of a positive peritoneal culture was significantly higher in patients with gangrenous/perforated appendicitis [33]. the development of jaundice in sepsis is well recognised and has been associated with a variety of causative bacteria, gram-negative bacteria being most commonly implicated [52]. several mechanisms leading to hyperbilirubinaemia in systemic infections have been described. haemolysis causes an increased bilirubin load and has been associated with several bacteria including e. coli [44, 52]. also, bacterial endotoxin causes a cytokine mediated inhibition of bile salt transport mechanisms, leading to cholestasis [42]. this dosedependent cholestatsis explains why serum bilirubin increases with appendicitis severity. escherichia coli is associated with the endotoxin lipopolysaccharide and is the most common organism cultured from intraperitoneal fluid in appendicitis [40]. hyperbilirubinaemia presumably occurs in appendicitis as a result of bacteraemia or endotoxaemia, which could occur both in simple appendicitis and perforated or gangrenous appendicitis but more commonly in the latter group [29]. several studies have shown that the hyperbilirubinemia observed in patients with appendicitis is isolated with no elevation in the other liver enzymes [8,29,32,33,34]. also, the hyperbilirubinemia was found to be of mixed type (both conjugated and unconjugated) by chaudhary p et al [37]. for our secondary aim, we found that tsb has a high specificity (94%) and ppv (95%) for appendicitis in general, but has a lower sensitivity than wbc (28% vs. 71%). furthermore, hyperbilirubinemia has a higher specificity (85%) and npv (86%) than wbc but a lower sensitivity (63% vs 89%) for differentiating simple from complicated appendicitis. these findings are supported by the findings of d‟souza et al [38] and emmanuel et al [29]. this confirms the use of hyperbilirubinaemia as a confirmatory test rather than to exclude appendicitis. these findings have two potential benefits. firstly, serum bilirubin can be used in female patients who present with rif pain, whose clinical findings may mimic other causes. secondly, in patients who are diagnosed clinically as aa, the finding of hyperbilirubinemia may indicate a perforated appendix and thus expedite surgery. keeping in mind that the rate of morbidity and mortality in patients operated on for perforated appendicitis is about 5%, which is higher than for patients operated on for appendicitis without perforation [5]. there were some limitations to this study. firstly, the relatively small sample compared to the frequency of the appendicitis. our sample size was limited by the short duration of sample collection. also, preoperative crp values were only available in a few patients, so they were not included in the analysis. 5. conclusion our findings suggest that assessment of bilirubin level may help in the diagnosis of acute appendicitis. this is particularly important in 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[53] ig, panagiotopoulou, d, parashar, r, lin, s, antonowicz, ad, wells, fm, bajwa, b, krijgsman. “the diagnostic value of white cell count, c-reactive protein and bilirubin in acute appendicitis and its complications” the annals of the royal college of surgeons of england. 2013 95(3), pp. 215-221.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 3 | issue 2 | june 2018 | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.3.6 received: 26 october 2018 | accepted: 09 december 2018 effect of planting distances and humic acid application on some vegetative growth and yield of broad bean (vicia faba l. var. somar) in outdoor condition chnar hama noori meerza arsalan azeez marif ardalan jalal majeed department of protected agriculture department of horticulture & landscape design department of horticulture & landscape design bakrajo technical institute bakrajo technical institute bakrajo technical institute sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq chnar.meerza @spu.edu.iq arsalan.marif@spu.edu.iq ardalan.majeed@spu.edu.iq 32 abstract: the seeds of the somar variety (local production) were planted in mid of october (after being soaked with water for 16 hours) in panels 1.5 x 2 meters. broad bean (vicia faba var. somar) was studied in outdoor to determine the effect of three planting distances (20, 25 and 30 cm), four different humic acid (ha) concentration doses (zero, 1.5, 3.0 and 4.5) ml / liter h2o, with three replicates on some of the plant’s vegetative and yield traits; plant height (cm), plant diffusion (cm), number of branches /plant, number of flowers / plant, number of pods / plant, % percentage of pods set, total pods yield /plant (gm), pod weight (gm). the (ha) were added by spray way directly to the top of the soil with two applications, the first after 3 weeks from complete germination, while the second after branching immediately. the experiment was designed as randomized complete block design (rcbd). based on total pods yield / plant (gm), the best interaction between the plant distance and different concentration of (ha) was a combination of the planting distance 30 cm, and treated the soil with 3.0 ml/ literh2o. keywords: broad bean, planting distance, humic acid, vegetative and yield traits. 1. introduction broad bean, faba bean, fava bean or horse bean (vicia faba l.) belongs to fabaceae papilionaceae family is one of important vegetable crops, which contains highest nutritional value from the rest of the legume crops (contain protein 21.6, carbohydrate 61.2 gm / 100 gm dry seeds) compared with the second legume crop (lemma bean), which contains protein 17.1 and carbohydrate 57.3 gm /100 gm dry seeds [1]. there are many factors affecting on vegetative growth and yield in broad bean cultivation, these are: plant density varieties ,which are used, irrigation system, fertilization treatment and the length of growing season from seeds sowing until the end of harvesting [2]. the distances within plants and (ha) concentration sprayed on the soil between agriculture lines is one of effective factors, which deserve study and research, but caution should be taken from the fall of (ha) spray on the leaves of cultivated plants because it causes burns in them [3]. the agricultural distances lower or higher than the ideal distance and its effect on the vegetative growth characteristics and production are studied by many researchers. [4] has studied the effect of plant distances (20, 30 40. 50 cm within plants) on plant height (cm), number of branches / plant, number of pods/ plant, mean pod weight (gm), number of seeds / pod, mean seeds weight/ pod (gm) under drip irrigation system. they indicated that the higher the planting distances, the lower in the plant height, because in small spaces the competition between plants increases on sunlight. the number of branches / plant are increased with increasing the plant distances, while [5] indicated that planting 12 plants / m2 achieved significant lower plant height cm compared with 10 plants / m2 and this plants number / m2 achieved significant lower plant height than 8 plants / m2, under the conditions of the irrigation. however, [6] cultivated five faba bean varieties (cairo -4, cairo -5, cairo -25, nubaria -1 and giza -843) each with 24, 21, 18, 15 and 12 plants/m2 in newly reclaimed sandy soils. results indicated that faba bean varieties varied significantly in all studied characters, indicated that in this type of soil 18 followed with 16 plants/m2 were better plant density than others. the broad bean is from a short day plant, which needs than 12 hours light / day (about 8 – 10 hours), with cold humid weather to achieve better blossom and pods set [7]. these conditions are located in the meddle and northern regions of iraq [8], and that increasing the length of the day to 12 hours and the high temperature of 17 c0 will lead to a decline in flowering and fall of flowers [2]. it is also necessary not to spray any foliar fertilizers or pesticides during the flowering period because this causes flowers fall off [9]. the development of pod, seed growth of faba bean in the field in early and late planting of early-middle ripening varieties were studied by [10], deciding that early 33 sowing seeds for these varieties, resulting in poor pollination of flowers due to lower temperatures (frosting) during the floral period, and as the end the pods set are greatly reduced, while late sowing seeds of these varieties resulting in floral fall down, due to high temperatures during the floral period, that lead to the death of flower pollen, especially in the case of low humidity in such circumstances. for this reason, the varieties are grown on suitable time for the conditions of the cultivated area, so the local variety somar can be cultivated in the beginning of october to the mid november in the central of iraq, and from midnovember to the end of december in the northern of iraq [11]. (ha) is located at the ubiquitous of the earths layer which is known as plants brown-black colored polymeric acids at the earth’s surface. when all of the organic compounds is available in the soil this kind of soil is known as humus. the mineral nutrients can be converted into an available form of nutrient by the availability of (ha). the viability and germinations of the plant seeds is stimulated by (ha) however; it impacts mostly on the root parts of the plant [12]. many researchers have investigated for several decades that the microbial changes in the plant lignin cause the formation of the above mentioned (ha) however, an experiment to test whether these (ha) were formed prior to plant matter reaching the soil, one of the first recognized supplies of leonardite originated from the dakotas, (named after a mr. leonard). these layer of the soil were not very deep by which a few depth of the soil required mining. at the beginning all of the humic and fulvic acid which contained mined products were known as leonardine term. mined products. according to the results of this study due to recycling of plants and algal matter the soil can be filled with (ha) or the addition of the outer layer of the plant decomposition or algal matter which includes, composts, mulch, peat, and lignite known coals in the roots of faba beans crop [13]. according to a study done by [14] 85% of (ha) impacted on the root part of the plant while used with concentration of 2 – 4 ml / liter distilled water which caused root growth stimulation as well as caused formation of a strong radicle which consequently the floral and vegetative growth increased. based on the final result of this study the number of fruits set (pods set) is high as well as maturity stage which consequently led to an increase in the plant pods set due to the treatment of soil with (ha). in addition, these increases in the pods set were due to the raises of the roots surface area and depth. despite of the significant effect of (ha) on plant but there is a limitation in the applied concentration of (ha) in which when higher concentration than the permissible amount is used leads to the death of the root parts of the plant as well as the foliar application of (ha) causes burning in the leaf parts [15]. the addition of the (ha) to the soil leads to reduce the ph of soil’s solution, and then it is used for reclamation of alkaline land to reduce the alkalinity from ph 8 or more to ph 6 or at least ph 7, when trying to cultivate two faba bean varieties in the alkaline fields of the faculty of agriculture, diyala university [16]. the objective of the present study was to determine the effect three planting distances, four different (ha) concentration doses on some vegetative growth and yield of broad bean (vicia faba l.) cultivar. 2. material and methods half kg seeds of broad bean (somar local variety) were obtained from the agricultural research center in sulaymaniyah, soaked in water about 16 hours, then water was removed from the seeds and planted on lines in panels 1.5 x 2 mater (the distance between lines 40 cm) using two seeds in one hole. the research was designed according to the complete random design in the factorial experiment, with two factors, first was the planting distances, which include three distances (20, 25 and 30 cm), while the second factor was the (ha) concentrations, which include four concentrations (zero, 1.5, 3.0 and 4.5 ml/ liter distilled water). the physical and chemical properties of the soil used in the study: was shown in table 1 defined by [17, 18, 19]. table 1: characteristics of the soil used in the study parameters sample value ph 7.65 electric conductivity (mmhos/cm) 1.56 calcium carbonate (%) 32.1 organic matter (%) 2.48 calcium (mgkg-1) 4322 magnesium (mgkg-1) 280.78 potassium (mgkg-1) 245 phosphor (mgkg-1) 3.47 zinc (mgkg-1) 1.37 couper (mgkg-1) 1.06 manganic (mgkg-1) 35 the concentration of (ha) in liquid fertilizer used was 87% and it is used as a soil additive or as a spray between plants or with irrigation water (in this research we used those four concentrations by springing on the soil within planting lines), while avoiding spray’s downfall on the plants, because the spray solution leads to burns the leaves of plants. where the spray was completely wet to soil and was irrigated after 3 days of each sprayed. soil treated with that (ha) different concentration two times during the growing season, first after 3 weeks from complete germination and the second immediately after plant branching, with caution and raking care from the fall of the (ha) spray with any concentration on the leaves because it causes burns in them. all agricultural services were done (supplementary irrigation, hoeing or weeding, patching by sowing seeds in the empty holes, sandal by keeping one plant at a distance…) knowing that fertilization was not done, in order to know the effect of hemic acid on vegetative and yield characteristics. vegetative growth and yield produced data over cultivation distances and concentrations of (ha) and their interaction of all studied traits (plant height (cm), plant diffusion (cm), number of brunches / plant, 34 number of flowers / plant were recorded after 90 days from sowing the seeds. while the mean number of pods / plant, % percentage of pods set, total pods yield gm / plant and mean pod weight gm), were recorded at the end of the growing season, and then the statistical variance analysis was performed to determine the significant differences within planting distances, (ha) concentration and their interaction. the mean of these factors was compared with a test of significant difference below the level of l. s. d 0.05. [20]. 3. results and discussions plant height (cm): the results indicated in table 2 showed that, the higher distance between plants, the lower in plant height (inverse relationship). cultivation of plants on a distance of 20 cm achieved a significant increase (81.32 cm) in plant height, followed by a decrease in plant height when cultivating at a distance of 25 cm (74.98) and this distance achieved a significant decrease from the distance of 30 cm (65.91 cm), this is due to decreasing the spaces, plants are more competitive with sunlight and such competition decreases as the increases of distance [4], these results obtained from cultivated broad bean under drip irrigation in that research, also our results were coincide with the findings of [21], but the researcher was conducted his research under rainy conditions . the mean concentration of 3.0 ml (ha) organic fertilizer / liter water, achieved the highest mean length of the plant (82.07 cm) followed by the concentration of 1.5 ml /liter water (75.29 cm). it is noteworthy that the concentration of 4.5 ml /liter water (67.31 cm) had achieved lowest average of plant length, compared with zero concentration (67.31, 71.60 cm). this result corresponds to the finding of [22]. table 2: effect of cultivation distances (cm), and (ha) concentration ml / liter water and their interaction on plant height of somar broad bean local variety. a b mean factor a b 0 b 1 b 2 b 3 a 1 76.23 83.13 90.70 75.20 81.32 a 2 73.90 76.93 80.26 68.86 74.98 a 3 64.67 65.83 75.26 57.87 65.91 mean factor b 71.60 75.29 82.07 67.31 l. s. d 0.05 factor a (the distance between plants) = 6.32 l. s. d 0.05 factor b (the (ha) concentrations) = 5.12 l. s. d 0.05 interaction a x b = 2.68 a1: 20 cm, a2: 25 cm, a3: 30 cm b0: zero, b1: 1.5 ml / liter, b2: 3.0 ml / liter, b3: 4.5 ml / liter. interaction between mean plant lengths and mean concentrations of the (ha) treatments, showed that the concentration of 3.0 ml / liter water achieved the highest mean length of the remaining plants at a planting distance of 20 cm followed by the concentration of 1.5 ml / liter water at a planting distance of 20 cm and the concentration of 3.0 ml / liter water at a distance of 25 cm (90.70, 83.13, 80.13 cm respectively). plant’s diffusion (cm): result obtained from table 3 showed that there were no significant differences within the mean of cultivation distances (cm) on plant’s diffusion. this result contradicts with the results in research [4] in which the distances of agriculture had a significant effect on the diffusion of plants, because the researchers used agricultural distances greater than the distances we used in our research (20. 30, 40 cm). the concentration of (ha) showed that 3 and 1.5 ml / liter water had significant differences together in plant diffusion (21.05 and 20.64 cm) compared with zero and 4.5 ml / liter water (19.55 and 19.09 cm). interaction within plant distances and concentrations of (ha) represented that cultivation on distance 20 and 30 cm and treated with 3.0 ml / later water (ha) achieved significant differences (21.33 and 21.30 cm). table 3: effect of cultivation distances and the (ha) concentrations ml / liter water and their interaction on plant diffusion of somar broad bean local variety. a b mean factor a b 0 b 1 b 2 b 3 a 1 19.90 20.63 21.33 19.30 20.22 a 2 19.52 20.36 20.53 18.93 19.90 a 3 19.23 20.93 21.30 19.03 20.12 mean factor b 19.55 20.64 21.05 19.09 l. s. d 0.05 factor a (the distance between plants) = 1.12 l. s. d 0.05 factor b (the (ha) concentrations) = 0.66 l. s. d 0.05 interaction a x b = 0.37 a1: 20 cm, a2: 25 cm, a3: 30 cm b0: zero, b1: 1.5 ml / liter, b2: 3.0 ml / liter, b3: 4.5 ml / liter. number of branches / plant: the results obtained in table 4 indicated that the plant distance of 30 and 25 cm between plants had indicated significant differences together (5.58 and 5.13 branches / plant) comparing with 20 cm (4.10 branches / plant), those results contrary to what they got by [23] where it was found that the distance 40 cm between the plants made a significant difference from 30 cm. concentrations of 3 and 1.5 ml / liter water of (ha) achieved significant differences together comparing with zero and 4.5 ml / liter water, knowing that the concentration of zero was significantly higher than the 4.5 ml / liter water, those results coincide with the finding of [22] , whereas the researchers finding that the concentration of 3 ml / liter water was significantly than 1.5 ml / liter water in that research, this is due to the addition of (ha) to the tank of the drip irrigation system and adding it in the drip irrigation method . interaction within plant distances and different concentrations of (ha) showed that cultivation faba bean at the distance of 30 cm and treating the soil with 3.0 ml / liter water (ha) achieved higher significant differences (6.8 branches / plant). followed significantly by cultivation with the same distance and treated the soil with 1.5 ml/ liter water (6.3 branches / plant), then comes after this, cultivation at a distance of 25 cm and treated soil with 3.0 ml/ liter water (5.9 branches/ plant), these results were relatively consistent with what reached by [3], but the researcher used plant distances 35 (20, 30, 40 cm within plant and 50 cm between rows) and soil treated with zero, 2, 4, 6 ml / liter water concentrations of (ha) in his work. table 4: effect of cultivation distances (cm), and (ha) concentrations ml / liter water and their interaction on number of branches / plant of somar broad bean local variety. a b mean factor a b 0 b 1 b 2 b 3 a 1 4.1 4.8 4.3 3.2 4.10 a 2 5.3 5.6 5.9 3.7 5.13 a 3 5.2 6.3 6.8 4.0 5.58 mean factor b 4.89 5.57 5.67 3.63 l. s. d 0.05 factor a (the distance between plants) = 1.11 l. s. d 0.05 factor b (the (h a) concentrations) = 0.68 l. s. d 0.05 interaction a x b = 0.39 a1: 20 cm, a2: 25 cm, a3: 30 cm b0: zero, b1: 1.5 ml / liter, b2: 3.0 ml / liter, b3: 4.5 ml / liter. number of flowers / plant: results from table 5 indicated that there were not significant differences within plant distances. for (ha) different concentrations, those results were explained that 3.0 and 1.5 ml / liter water together achieved significantly (5.67 and 5.57 flowers / plant) comparing with zero and 4.5 ml / liter water (ha) concentrations (4.89 and 4.63 flowers / plant), knowing that zero achieved a relative superiority than 4.5 ml / liter water concentration (ha) (33.67, 30.56 flowers / plant respectively), but this superiority was not significant, those results did not corresponded with the findings of [9] because the researchers treated the soil 3 times during the season in that research and not twice as in our research. table 5: effect of cultivation distances (cm), and (ha) concentrations ml/ liter water and their interaction on number of flowers / plant of the broad bean local variety (somar). a b mean factor a b 0 b 1 b 2 b 3 a 1 36.67 46.33 51.00 31.67 41.42 a 2 34.67 40.00 43.67 31.00 37.34 a 3 29.67 41.33 44.67 29.00 36.17 mean factor b 33.67 45.55 46.45 30.56 l. s. d 0.05 factor a (the distance between plants) = 9.44 l. s. d 0.05 factor b (the (ha) concentrations) = 6.13 l. s. d 0.05 interaction a x b = 3.18 a1: 20 cm, a2: 25 cm, a3: 30 cm b0: zero, b1: 1.5 ml / liter, b2: 3.0 ml / liter, b3: 4.5 ml / liter. interaction within plant distances and (ha) concentrations achieved significantly when cultivated plants on 20 cm within plants and spread the soil with concentration of 3.0 ml / liter water (ha) (51.0 flowers / plant), these results contradict what they had reached by [3], where they obtained significantly on a distance of 30 cm and treatment of soil at a concentration of 4.5 ml / liter water (ha). number of pods / plant: results from table 6 indicated that there were no significant differences among plant distances. the concentration of 3 and 1.5 ml / liter water (ha) were obtained together a significant effect comparing with zero and 4.5 ml / liter water, these results coincide with the findings of [9]. interactions between plant distances and the (ha) concentrations showed that there were significant effects when the cultivation distance of 30 cm between a plant and another and the soil treated with concentration of 3.0 ml / liter water (ha) , followed by cultivation with the same distances and the soil treated with concentration of 1.5 ml / liter water . table 6: effect of cultivation distances (cm), and (ha) concentrations ml / liter water and their interaction on number of pods / plant of the broad bean local variety (somar). a b mean factor a b 0 b 1 b 2 b 3 a 1 11.67 14.00 17.67 11.67 13.75 a 2 13.00 17.33 20.00 13.00 15.83 a 3 13.67 21.67 23.67 14.33 18.34 mean factor b 12.78 17.67 20.45 13.00 l. s. d 0.05 factor a (the distance between plants) = 6.47 l. s. d 0.05 factor b (the (ha) concentrations) = 4.18 l. s. d 0.05 interaction a x b = 1.93 a1: 20 cm, a2: 25 cm, a3: 30 cm b0: zero, b1: 1.5 ml / liter, b2: 3.0 ml / liter, b3: 4.5 ml / liter. % percentage of pods set: table 7 illustrated that increasing the agricultural distances between plants led to increasing in hundred percentages of pods set, since the cultivation of plants at 30 cm distance within plants achieved significantly (50.96 % percentage pods set) than cultivation on 25 cm (42.69 % percentage pods set) and this distance achieved significant effect than 20 cm (34.14 % percentage pods set). table 7: effect of cultivation distances (cm), and (ha) concentrations ml / liter water and their interaction on the % percentages of pods set of the broad bean local variety (somar). a b mean factor a b 0 b 1 b 2 b 3 a 1 31.82 22.33 34.65 36.85 14.34 a 2 37.50 43.33 48.00 41.94 42.69 a 3 46.07 52.43 55.91 49.41 50.96 mean factor b 38.46 42.99 46.18 42.73 l. s. d 0.05 factor a (the distance between plants) = 8.16 l. s. d 0.05 factor b (the (ha) concentrations) = 5.19 l. s. d 0.05 interaction a x b = 3.09 a1: 20 cm, a2: 25 cm, a3: 30 cm b0: zero, b1: 1.5 ml / liter, b2: 3.0 ml / liter, b3: 4.5 ml / liter. this is due to the increased distance within plants leads to increases the dynamic range of root growth and its branching, which provides more water and food to the plant in order to form more flowers and hence the formation of pods [3]. for the (ha) concentration, the 36 treatment of 3.0 ml/ liter water achieved significant effect (46.18 % percentage pods set) comparing with zero concentration (38.46 % percentage pods set), this result did not match what had reached [24], because the researchers conducted their research under rainy conditions. interaction within cultivation distances and (ha) differences concentrations showed that cultivation plants at distance of 30 cm and soil treated with 3.0 ml / liter (ha) achieved significant effect (55.91 % percentage pods set), followed significantly by the same distance and soil treated with 1.5 ml / liter water (ha) (52.43 % percentage pods set), then come after this treatment, the plants cultivation at 25 cm and treating the soil with 3.0 ml / liter water (ha) (48.00 % percentage pods set), this results corresponding with the findings of [3]. total pods yield /plant(gm): results in table 8 illustrated that the greater distance within plants, the greater total yield gm / plant, so the cultivation of plants with distance 30 cm had got significant effect (356.75 gm / plant) of cultivation on the distance 25 cm (292.08 gm /plant), and this treatment was significant compared to the distance 20 cm (234.20 gm / plant), those results were relatively consistent with the findings of [25], but the researchers used six plant densities (13, 25,38, 50, 63 and 75 plants. m-2) in there research. for the (ha) concentrations, those results showed that 3.0 ml / liter water had achieved significant effect (378.45 gm / plant) followed significantly by concentration of 1.5 ml / liter water (322.11 gm / plant) comparing with 4.5 ml / liter. and zero concentrations (242.11 and 234.78 gm / plant), those results were relatively consistent with the findings of [22], but the research was done under aluminum toxicity in growth room. table 8: effect of cultivation distances (cm), and (ha) concentrations ml / liter water and their interaction on total yield (gm / plant) of the broad bean local variety (somar). a b mean factor a b 0 b 1 b 2 b 3 a 1 204.00 248.33 273.67 211.00 234.20 a 2 243.33 310.33 391.00 223.67 292.08 a 3 257.00 407.67 470.67 291.67 356.75 mean factor b 234.78 322.11 378.45 242.11 l. s. d 0.05 factor a (the distance between plants) = 47.11 l. s. d 0.05 factor b (the (ha) concentrations) = 30.29 l. s. d 0.05 interaction a x b = 15.88 a1: 20 cm, a2: 25 cm, a3: 30 cm b0: zero, b1: 1.5 ml / liter, b2: 3.0 ml / liter, b3: 4.5 ml / liter. interaction within plant distances and different concentrations of (ha) showed that cultivation broad bean at a distance of 30 cm and treated the soil with 3.0 ml / liter had got significant effect (470.67 gm / plant) followed significantly by cultivation with the same distance and treating the soil with 1.5 ml / liter (ha) concentration (407.67 gm / plant), and then this was follows significantly by cultivation the plants at 25 cm distance and soil’s treated with 3.0 ml / liter (ha) concentration (391.00 gm / plant). mean pods weight (gm): from table 9 indicated that cultivation broad bean at the distance of 30 cm had got significant effect (7.25 gm / pod) comparing with the distance of 20 cm (5.15 gm / pod). for the different concentrations of humic acid, the treatment of 3 ml / liter had achieved significantly (7.33 gm / pod) followed significantly by the treatment of 1.5 ml / liter (6.43 gm / pod) comparing with zero and 4.5 ml / liter (5.67 and 5.26 gm / pod). interaction within plant distances and different concentrations of (ha) showed that, cultivation broad bean plant at the distance 30 cm and soil treated with 3.0 ml / liter water had achieved significant effect (8.7 gm / pod) followed significantly by cultivation with the same distance and treating the soil 1.5 ml / liter water, then follows significantly by cultivation plants at the distance 25 cm and treating the soil with 3 ml / liter water (7.3 gm / pod). table 9: effect of cultivation distances (cm), and (ha) concentrations ml / liter and their interaction on total yield (gm / pod) of the somar broad bean local variety. a b mean factor a b 0 b 1 b 2 b 3 a 1 5.0 5.3 6.0 4.3 5.15 a 2 5.7 6.3 7.3 5.2 6.13 a 3 6.3 7.7 8.7 6.3 7.25 mean factor b 5.67 6.43 7.33 5.26 l. s. d 0.05 factor a (the distance between plants) = 1.55 l. s. d 0.05 factor b (the (ha) concentrations) = 0.83 l. s. d 0.05 interaction a x b = 0.39 a1: 20 cm, a2: 25 cm, a3: 30 cm b0: zero, b1: 1.5 ml / liter, b2: 3.0 ml / liter, b3: 4.5 ml / liter. 4. conclusion through the results obtained in our research, we can conclude the following: for the cultivated distances: the higher distance between plants significantly (inverse relationship) with plant height. the 30 and 25 cm distances significantly increase number of branches comparing with 20 cm. the 30 cm distances increases percentage of pods set, and yield (gm /plant). for the different concentrations of (ha): the concentration of 3.0 ml /liter water was affected significantly to increase plant height (cm), yield (gm / plant) and mean pod weight. while the concentration of 3.0 and 1.5 ml /liter water were affected significantly to increase plants diffusion (cm), number of branches / plant, number of flower / plant, number of pods / plant and % percentage of pods set. for the interaction: the cultivation plants with distance 20 cm and soil treated with 3.0 ml /liter water had achieved significant in plant height (cm) and number of flowers / plant. while in the rest characters, the cultivated plants as a distance of 30 cm and treated the soil with 3.0 ml /liter water such as number of brings / plant, total yield (gm / plant) and mean pod weight or cultivation with the same distance and treated with 3.0 or 1.5 ml / liter water such as number of pods / plant and % 37 percentage of pods set. these results indicated that cultivated faba bean plants at a distance of 30 cm between plants and treating the soil with 3.0ml /liter water obtained on better characteristics in most studied traits references [1] h. allayer, t. brady, “classification and botanical description of legumes”,university of cambridge – annual report (england), 2010. [2] f. etemadi, dr.m. hashemi, dr.f. mangan, dr.s. weis, fava beans: growers guide in new england, massachusetts amherst university (new england), 2015. [3] k. l. peterson,” effect of humic acids and plants densities on growth, and productivity of two broad bean varieties”,a thesis submitted to the faculty of miami university in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the master degree of science. miami university. ohio, 2017. [4] n. n. ameer, d. ahmad, a. s. abdullahi, “the effect of planting distance on the growth and yield of beans (vicia faba l.) under drip irrigation system”, african journal of agricultural research vol. 7(46), pp. 6110-6114, 2012. [5] n.al-suhaibani, s. el-hendawy1, u. schmidhalter, “influence of varied plant density on growth, yield of faba bean vicia faba, l”, turkish journal of field crops 18(2), and 185-197, 2013. 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[15] v. mora, j. m.garcia-mina, m. olaetxea, jean-c. yvin, “main mechanisms involved in the effects of humic substances on soilplant systems”. agrociencia 16:188-190. universidad de navarra, 2012. [16] a. a. hassan, a. m. salim, “effect of spraying of (h.a) on the growth and yield of two varieties of potatoes”,diyala journal of agricultural research. volume 3 (2): 712 – 721. diyala – iraq, 2011. [17] m. a. ali and a. j. mjeed, “biochar and nitrogen fertilizers effects on growth and flowering of garland chrysanthemum (chrysanthemum coronarium l.) plant,” kjar, 2(1), pp. 8–14, 2017. [18] a. j. mjeed, m. a. ali, “effect of gyttja and nitrogen applications on growth and flowering of snapdragons (antirrhinum majus l.) plant in the two soils depth,” kjar, 2(1), pp. 1–7, 2017. [19] r. a. qadir, h. m. amin,a. j. mjeed, “effect of growing seasons, plant extracts with various rates on black bean aphid, aphis fabae (aphididae: homoptera),” kjar, 3(1), pp. 22–26, 2018. [20] h. j. seltman,”experimental design and analysis”, book is on the world wide web, 2018. [21] a. n. n. kakahy, d. ahmad1, a. s. abdullahi, “the effect of planting distance on yield of beans (vicia faba l.) under drip irrigation system”. african journal of agricultural research vol. 7(46), 110-114. academic journals, 2012. [22] t. b., ş. akinci, a. e. eroğlu, “effects of (ha) on root development and nutrient uptake of vicia faba l. (broad bean) seedlings grown under aluminum toxicity”. communications in soil science and plant analysis, 46:277– 292, 2015. [23] a.m. gezahegn; k. tesfaye, j.j. sharma, m.d. belel,” determination of optimum plant density for faba bean (vicia faba l.)”, on verticals at haramaya, eastern ethiopia. soil & crop science research, 2016. [24] a.kholdi, s. sedaghathoor, e.poursafarali, “effect of nitroxin and (h.a) on yield andyield components of faba bean under rainy condition”, journal of agricultural sciences vol. 60, no. 3, pages 361-367. islamic azad university, rasht, iran, 2015. [25] r. j. grav, g. g. rowi, “effect of plant density on yield and components of yield of faba bean”, canadian journal of plant science. vol. 67 (1); 1 – 10 agronomy section, 1987. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 57 a novel classification of uncertain stream data using ant colony optimization based on radial basis function tahsin ali mohammed amin sabah robitan mahmood department of database technology department of information technology technical college of informatics technical college of informatics sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaymaniyah, iraq sulaymaniyah, iraq tahsin.ali@spu.edu.iq sabah.robitan@spu.edu.iq rebar dara mohammed pshtiwan jabar karim department of database technology department of computer science technical college of informatics college of science sulaimani polytechnic university university of garmian sulaymaniyah, iraq kalar, iraq rebar.dara.m@spu.edu.iq pshtiwan.jabar@garmian.edu.krd article info abstract volume 7 issue 2 december 2022 doi: 10.24017/science.2022.2.5 article history: received: 12/09/2022 accepted: 21/11/2022 there are many potential sources of data uncertainty, such as imperfect measurement or sampling, intrusive environmental monitoring, unreliable sensor networks, and inaccurate medical diagnoses. to avoid unintended results, data mining from new applications like sensors and location-based services needs to be done with care. when attempting to classify data with a high degree of uncertainty, many researchers have turned to heuristic approaches and machine learning (ml) methods. we propose an entirely new ml method in this paper by fusing the radial basis function (rbf) network based on ant colony optimization (aco). after introducing a large amount of uncertainty into a dataset, we normalize the data and finish training on clean data. the ant colony optimization algorithm is then used to train a recurrent neural network. finally, we evaluate our proposed method against some of the most popular ml methods, including a k-nearest neighbor, support vector machine, random forest, decision tree, logistic regression, and extreme gradient boosting (xgboost). error metrics show that our model significantly outperforms the gold standard and other popular keywords: uncertainty data, machine learning, radial basis function, ant colony optimization (aco). internet of things (iot), applications. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 58 ml methods. using industry-standard performance metrics, the results of our experiments show that our proposed method does a better job of classifying uncertain data than other methods. 1. introduction information that contains noise and thus deviates from the values that were intended for it or those that were initially stored is known as uncertain data. the degree to which information is questionable or invalid today is a distinguishing feature. measurement error, sampling error, conducting research on the environment, conducting market research, utilizing sensor networks, and making a medical diagnosis are all examples of activities that can introduce uncertainty into data [1]. in addition, many data mining applications risk losing a significant amount of fundamental performance and efficiency if data uncertainty is not properly handled. classifying massive datasets is a major challenge in the field of data mining. classifications are used in many different data mining methods. data mining enables you to discover the categories to which particular data points belong [2]. decision trees [3] are just one example of the many heuristics and machine-learning techniques that have been applied to the problem of classifying data under conditions of uncertainty. such methods include bbns, fuzzy sets [4], and other related approaches. the rbca [5] rule-based classification algorithm, computer models of the brain called neural networks (nn) [6], the naive bayes technique [7], and genetic models. in addition, investigators' interests in clustering uncertain data have recently been brought together. however, this is constrained by the need for methods that can handle ambiguous data, as well as the necessity of employing clustering techniques on specific data [8]. significant data uncertainty is caused by the iot network's unique characteristics and architectures. the fast pace of change, insufficient available resources, and the ever-increasing complexity of the internet of things all contribute to less-than-accurate data mining. the internet of things (iot) shouldn't be viewed as if it were autonomous, in order to properly characterize the causes of data uncertainty in iot and the ways of addressing it [9]. the sensors, measurements, and user data collected by the internet of things all introduce a great deal of uncertainty into the mix. because of this, there is some evidence to suggest that data obtained from the iot may be unreliable. information technology and medical data classification are the focus of this work. blood glucose levels (bgl) and values for various external body parts make up the dataset used. the provided data set includes the ages of individuals who did or did not have diabetes, as well as their blood glucose levels and other demographic and health-related data. uncertain information gleaned from the internet of things is dealt with in this paper. we use a radial basis function (rbf) network to categorize the hazy data. in order to train the rbf network, improve its performance in terms of precision and accuracy, and bring the network together as quickly as possible, we used the ant colony optimization algorithm, which is known for its efficiency and accuracy when dealing with uncertain data. the primary intent of the ant colony strategy (acs) was to boost aco's efficiency in solving the recommendation system problem [23]. its layout is also inspired by a colony of real ants going out on a hunt for food. to sum up, experimental results show that our approach is superior to other, more well-known machine learning methods. standard measures of performance also indicate that our proposed method outperforms alternatives when searching for uncertain data. as for the rest of the paper, the outline looks like this: the second part provides summaries of relevant literature on approaches to the classification of ambiguous data. third, describe the strategy you will use to accomplish your goals. submit your explanation of the experiment and its analysis in section 4. in the final section, we draw some conclusions. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 59 2. literature review there has been a recent uptick in research on the topic of uncertainty in data mining. other data mining methods were also proposed by the study's authors. based on massive amounts of data, ran wang et al. [10] were able to refine elm tree's method of reducing uncertainty. in the nodes of their decision tree (dt), they used information entropy and ambiguity to quantify the degree to which a given outcome was uncertain. over-partitioning in dt induction is remedied by including elms as leaf nodes when the available split gain ratios tend to fall below a predefined threshold. to cut down on computation time for a massive dataset, they subsequently used parallel computing for five parts of the elm-tree model. the amount of time it took to find a solution was shown to be significantly affected by their strategy. however, they can't use mixed-type properties in their developed method for estimating dynamic distances in mobile wireless communication by clustering unknown data streams. they came up with a method called dynamic distance estimation employing uncertain data stream clustering, which estimates distances between points in time based on the variability of data streams (ddeudsc). the rssi-d mapping connection for interval data was discovered using the statistical information provided by the rssi data. later, they assumed the data pattern consisted of a series of adjacent cluster hubs and estimated the dynamic communication distance using their uncertain rssi data stream clustering method. the experimental results demonstrated that the proposed strategy was an effective means of enhancing the precision of rssi-d estimates in uncertain and dynamic rssi data streams. for vague and imprecise numerical data, myriam bounhas et al. [12] proposed naive probabilistic algorithms. they looked at how well naive probabilistic classifiers work when there is inconsistency. expanded probabilistic analyzers can now adjust the numerical values used to represent data in the face of uncertainty. a probability distribution was used to encode the underlying gaussian probabilities. both the uncertainty in the training class set, which was built with a probability distribution over the class labels and the uncertainty in the indistinctness of the interval scale were accounted for. the data on the target class uncertainties were used to fine-tune an intuitionist classification model. they devised a method that relied on misleading attribute values. results and discussions in the paper indicate that possibility classifiers outperformed state-of-the-art approaches in the experiment. to better categorize uncertain information, decision trees were recommended by kiran and venugopal [13]. in their research, they implemented a relevance-based boostingstyle technique to build an improved lazydt ensemble. researchers recommended a distance-based pruning strategy to deal with lazydt overfitting. they discovered that their proposed method was highly effective, and could also be used to create decision trees using the conventional algorithm if there were numerous data tuples. for unlabeled and positive values in uncertain data streams, chunquan liang et al. [14] developed a fast dt learning method. they classified the ambiguous data in their study by comparing it to positive and unlabeled samples. they created a novel algorithm called puucvfdt by modifying the concept-adapting very fast decision tree (cvfdt) method. data demonstrated that the puucvfdt algorithm can handle concept drift in both rewarded and unrewarded pedagogical approaches. lei xu and edward hung [15] argued that taking into account numerous classes would improve the classification performance of uncertain data. the study looked at the drawbacks of using probability density functions (pdf) to represent data when the data's locations were unknown. they introduced the uncertain k-means technique and several different subclasses in their research (sums). if a thing is considered to fit into multiple categories, then subclasses can be made for it (sums). also, to prevent overfitting via numerous subclasses, they introduced constrained supervised uk means (bsums). the results of the comparison tests indicated that both sums and bsums were superior to the gold standard. for unreliable data, biao qin et al. [16] developed a bayesian classifier. they incorporated statistical and probabilistic thinking into their method in order to account for improbability. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 60 they developed a method to determine conditional probabilities based on the bayes hypothesis. in order to deal with uncertain information, the bayesian classification scheme was developed. the results of the experiments showed that compared to the naive bayesian classifier (nbc), the a bayesian classifier method performed better when sorting uncertain data. this method was also more trustworthy than the state-of-the-art extended naive bayesian approach. one method of defuzzifying it2fs that makes use of iterative km was proposed by sadegh aminifar [17]. for real-time it2fss, the computational cost of iterative km-type reduction could be a significant bottleneck. due to poorly specified variables associated with uncertainty, many interval type-2 defuzzification algorithms fail to provide a meaningful connection between membership function uncertainties and system output. in this paper, we propose a new method for defuzzifying it2fs by rearranging uncertainty and interval type-2 fuzzy sets. in this study, we examine the use of centroid or bisection algorithms to produce it2fs results at locations with lower uncertainty, with the goal of avoiding uncertainty wherever possible. the t1fs response is influenced by uncertainty. numerous studies and a working prototype of it2fs demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed strategy for defuzzification and reduction of uncertainty. table 1: analysis of properties of methods authors problem method qinghua luo et al. [11] uncertain data stream clustering (ddeudsc) myriam bounhas et al. [12] uncertain numerical data classification naive probabilistic algorithms kiran and venugopal [13] classification of uncertain data decision tree chunquan liang et al. [14] uncertain data stream classification puucvfdt lei xu and edward hung [15] uncertain data classification uncertain k-means (ukmeans) biao qin et al. [16] classification for uncertain data bayesian classifier 3. proposed method after the data has been prepared, it is processed by multiple classifiers in a hierarchical fashion. we used our novel approach to successfully process features. ant colony optimization based on a radial basis function (rbf) network was used to categorize data with some uncertainty. we conclude by contrasting our proposed approach with some well-known alternatives, including the k-nearest neighbor (knn), the support vector machine, the random forest, the decision tree, the logistic regression, the extreme gradient boosting, and the rbf with the support vector machine (svm). the following subsection provides an overview of the proposed method and these different classifiers. 3.1. radial basis function network when it comes to artificial neural networks, the radial basis function (rbf) network is often used to address function approximation issues in artificial neural networks (ann). the rbf network stands out among neural networks (nns) because of its near-universal approximation and rapid learning speed [18]. fig. 1 depicts a basic rbf network architecture, which consists of an input layer, a hidden layer, and an output layer as part of a feed-forward neural network. each input feature is given a neuron in the input layer, and the layer sends the features unmodified to the hidden layer. the hidden layer creates a nonlinear map between the input space and the desired higher-dimensional output space. when everything is said and done, it's the job of an output layer to generate a weighted linear sum [19]. traditionally, activation functions (afs) in rbf networks have been constructed using gaussian functions. the sigmoid activation is used in the output layer, which is typical for classification tasks. when rbf networks are trained, their topologies are determined by a process of trial and error. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 61 there are two stages to establishing a network's parameters: in the first stage, the k-means clustering technique can be used to pinpoint the hidden layer's nodes of mass centroid [20]. in the second phase, we use a linear regression model to determine the relative importance of each connection. figure 1: the rbf network architecture is based on the radial basis function. 3.2. training rbf network using ant colony optimization it is possible to obtain approximations to complex optimization problems by employing ant colony optimization (aco), a population-based meta-heuristic. in aco, artificial ants construct a solution to a combinatorial optimization problem by moving along a construction graph that is both directed and fully connected. first, each instantiated decision variable xi=v j i, x is leading to a total inhibitory input, v j i is an input vector of the corners called a solution component and is denoted by cij. c stands for the complete set of components for any given solution. after that, we define the building graph gc(v, e) by linking the components c to the vertex set v or the edge set e, respectively[23]. each cij has an associated value of τij that represents the pheromone trail it contributes to. (remember that the pheromone values are generally proportional to the number of iterations of the algorithm, t:τij=τij(t).) different components of the solution can have their probabilities modeled using pheromone values. at various points in the search process, the aco algorithm uses and updates pheromone values[23]. the ants iteratively create a solution by traversing the building graph from vertices to vertex along its edges, using the data provided by the pheromone values. in addition, the ants leave behind a trace amount δτ of pheromone on the parts they visit, either at the vertices or along the edges. the efficacy of the solution may determine how much pheromone is released. subsequent ants use the pheromone data to narrow their search to more fruitful areas[23]. a group of m ant colonies create solutions by combining elements from a finite set of available solution components, { } the renovation of a solution begins with a non-empty partial solution s p =∅. after that, a global optimal element is added to the existing partial solution s p from the set of feasible neighbors at each step of the design process n (sp) ⊆ c. designing and building a solution can be thought of as a route along a construction graph gc (v, e). given a partial solution s p , gc, the solution construction mechanism identifies the set n(s p ) that can be taken as a solution. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 62 selecting an element from among those available to complete a solution n(s p ) is performed in a probabilistic fashion during each stage of building. various aco variants have slightly different guidelines for the stochastic selection of possible solutions. the ant system [23] has the most well-known rule. (1) where τij is the pheromone value associated with the component cij and ηij is the heuristic value. further, α and β parameters whose values, in the positive real parameters, evaluate the weight given to pheromones as opposed to heuristics. the purpose of the update to the pheromone values is to boost the pheromone values linked to good solutions and decrease the pheromone values related to bad ones. to do this, you either i evaporate all the pheromones, lowering their value, or pheromone value denoted by (ii) increase the pheromone to emphasize the ability with a selected group of desirable solutions mupd [23]. (2) where vupd represents the pool of updated solutions, ρ ∈ (0,1] is measured by a metric known as the evaporation rate, and f:s→r + 0 has the form is a function where [23], m: is regularly called the fitness function and u is the chosen set of good solutions. (3) f(⋅) referred to as the fitness function. the ibupdate principle is one illustration of a pheromone optimization method that is employed quite frequently in practice; this principle is an instance that stands for iterationbest. (4) in this study, we apply aco to the rbf network to optimize the weights of the connections and the thresholds. training the network with the aco algorithm helps to accelerate convergence, increase accuracy, and improve precision. aco has a higher success rate than other methods in locating the globally optimal solution (1). that's because (2) aco boosts efficiency (precision and accuracy). aco is more effective because (3) it achieves a higher rate of convergence. the weights, centers, and spread width of our rbf network's training approach are parameters of a hidden layer that should guarantee this is calibrated accurately. between the input and the hidden layer, the weight is always 1. each neuron's initial weights, centers, and spread width were completely arbitrary. the best neuron is the one with the lowest mean squared error (mse), calculated by comparing all the neurons' mses. when it comes to the remaining particle swarms, they take a mean center of gravity and mass. this process will continue until either the stop condition you specify is met or all of the neurons have the same minimum squared error (mse). traditionally, activation functions (af) for rbf networks have been derived from gaussian functions. the sigmoid activation is used in the output layer, which is kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 63 typical for classification tasks. a hidden layer's neurons use a gaussian function as a recurrent basis function (rbf) network. equation 5 shows that this is the case. ( ) (5) where , , and (x)are, in order, its well-pointed center, its spread width, and the response of the 𝑡h hidden neuron to input x. in this formula, the expression ǁ x − ǁ shows the euclidean distance between the parts of the input vector x and the center of the gaussian . this distance can be found in the following way: (6) here, x = [x1, x2, x3, ...., xn], where xi is featured i of the input layer and n is the number of attributes in the input layer. making sure the nonlinear function of the hidden layer neurons encompasses critical regions of the input vector space is crucial when developing rbf networks. before sending it on to the neurons in the output layer, the result values of the neurons in the hidden layer are multiplied by the weights associated with each neuron. each neuron in the output circuit adds the weighted values. to determine whether the data is uncertain or certain, the sigmoid activation function is applied to the final neuron. the result function is shown in equation 7. (7) the sigmoid activation function is represented by the symbol in eq. 7. rbf networks are used in the proposed method due to their speed and accuracy in identifying data uncertainty. it was a good idea to go with the rbf network. training our rbf network with aco, as shown in fig. 2. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 64 figure 2: the flowchart of our novel technique 3.3. model training by supervised learning one of the earliest and most fundamental classification methods was k-nearest neighbor (knn). it makes a record of each sample and then sorts them according to their similarities. commonly, this measure of similarity takes the form of a distance in the feature space. both the euclidean and minkowski distance systems are widely used for determining physical distances. when classifying data, the random forest (rf): classifier considers the outcomes of multiple independently developed decision trees. these trees are built by first selecting a random subset of features and samples from the original training data. the most popular answer from each tree will be used to make the final prediction. for the purposes of this article, we have settled on a total of ten decision trees. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 65 the support vector machine (svm) is a useful tool for solving classification problems of high dimensionality. in support vector machines, classification is achieved by drawing a line or a hyperplane between two points. this method seeks out a hyperplane that is farthest from the closest data in each category (margin). a smaller margin of error in drawing broad conclusions is possible. data mining and ai researchers have paid a lot of attention to the classification problem known as the decision tree (dt). a decision tree can organize data by asking questions to determine which characteristics each data point shares. dts are similar to flowcharts in that they are hierarchical tree diagrams. it has three primary characteristics: decision nodes, features, and edges/branches that correspond to the different possible attribute values. when the outcome can be represented by only two possible values, statisticians turn to a technique called logistic regression (lr). it is helpful because it can be used to predict binary outcomes regardless of whether the independent variables are continuous or discrete. improve the computational power of massively increased tree methods with extreme gradient boosting (xgboost), a modular and extremely accurate implementation of gradient boosting. for the most part, it was developed to hasten the processing speed and enhance the efficiency of machine learning models. radial basis function (rbf) svm: this is a technique used for determining the degree of similarity (distance) between two samples. this iteration of support vector machines employs the rbf kernel to perform the necessary calculations. 3.4. data pre-processing in this section, concentrate on data preprocessing. blood glucose levels (bgl) and values for various external body parts make up the dataset used. the provided data set includes the ages of individuals who did or did not have diabetes, as well as their blood glucose levels and other demographic and health-related data. the primary objective of the data collection is to get an understanding of the impact that a person's bgl has on their body. the dataset contains 10 features and, 16969 records, and it requires some preliminary preprocessing before it can be used. the procedures outlined below were used to prepare a standard dataset for subsequent processing. 1. tuple numerical features in the [0, 0.2] range using the probability. 2. include the blood-type attribute in the final dataset as the categorical feature. there are eight possible blood group values in this column: (a+, b+, o+, ab+, a-, b-, o-, and ab-). 3. it is recommended to use the z-score function to normalize the numerical feature data. 4. in order to select the probability of any blood type for the new attribute added to the dataset, we will use the euclidean distance. 4. results and discussion analysis of how well the suggested research approach works is the topic of the current subsection. the dataset consists of people's body-geometric-length measurements and their corresponding values. the dataset contains, 16969 labeled and organized numerical entries. the model was built using python's ml libraries. python distributions come with supplementary libraries like numpy, pandas, and sklearn. we use a radial basis function (rbf) network to categorize the hazy data, and our experiments are implemented by python 3.9 on google colaboratory pro with 2 x vcpu, nvidia k80 gpu, and 12 gb ram. since the rbf network performs so well when presented with ambiguous information, we trained it using the ant colony optimization (aco) algorithm to increase its accuracy and efficiency. next, we compared the efficacy of our proposed strategy to that of seven wellestablished classification ml models, including k-nearest neighbor (knn), support vector machine (svm), radial function (rf), logistic regression (lr), decision tree (dt), xgboost, and radial basis function (rbf) with svm. more specifically, we create a train set and a test set out of the dataset. seventy percent of the data is in the train set, while only 30 percent is in the test set. the machine will be trained using the data in the training set, and then put to the kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 66 test using the data in the test set. the rbf network coupled with the aco technique is used to categorize unreliable data. we are using the following success metrics to evaluate the efficacy of the proposed technique: the confusion matrix is a table that lists both the correct and incorrect predictions. table 1: error matrix predicted positive negative positive true positive (tp) false positive (fp) negative false negative (fn) true negative (tn) accuracy: it is calculated by dividing the total amount of predictions by the amount of true positive and true negative values. (8) the success evaluation of aco + rbf was 98.5% in this investigation. when compared to other ml techniques, its success rate is unparalleled. on average, the proposed algorithm is 4.9 times more precise than the state-of-the-art machine learning-based methods. this demonstrates that the proposed model outperforms conventional ml techniques when it comes to classifying data with a high degree of uncertainty. the performance of the proposed method is compared to that of conventional machine learning (ml) algorithms in figure 3. figur 3: the proposed novelty's accuracy in comparison to other algorithms the accuracy is calculated by dividing the number of correct predictions by the sum of the correct and incorrect ones. it is a metric used to assess the reliability of a classifier. if there are a lot of "yes" results that are actually "no," then the accuracy is low. as shown in figure (4): kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 67 figure 4: the proposed novelty's precision in comparison to other algorithms (9) table 2 displays the results of our analysis, which demonstrates that our proposed method has a higher precision rate than other ml models. in this case, aco+rbf yields a 97.5% improvement. our new approach improves precision by 4.5% on average compared to traditionally used ml methods, as fig. 4 shows the precision of our novelty and others. remember that we divide the number of positive test values by the number of false negative test values to get the proportion of true positives. a different name for it is true positive rate (tpr). it is a metric for evaluating the all-encompassing nature of a classifier. a low recall can be inferred from numerous false negatives. (10) aco + rbf had a 97.1% recall rate in this study as figure. 5 shows the recall of our novelty and others. this is the highest success rate amongst ml algorithms. figure 6 depicts the recall of various ml approaches. the recall is improved by 6.2% on average using our novel approach compared to previously used ml techniques. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 68 figure 5: recall the measurement of our novelty and others. f-measure: the sum of a measurement's recall and precision weights[25]. (11) table 2 shows that when combined with other methods, our proposed method, aco+rbf, has a 96.7% success rate. compared to other machine learning algorithms, it achieves the highest percentage of f-scores as figure. 6 shows the f-measure of our novelty and others. the aco algorithm can be used to train the rbf network to recognize ambiguous and noisy information. figure 6: f-measure of our novelty and others. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 69 we implemented our proposed method and various ml approaches, as provisionally mentioned, to obtain results and compared which ones were most effective. experiments comparing our approach to standard ml methods produce the results shown in table 2. table 2: comparative metrics to classify uncertain data. metrics dt lr xgboost knn svm rf rbf + svm aco + rbf accuracy 0.92 0.96 0.9 0.95 0.94 0.93 0.97 0.985 f-measure 0.91 0.95 0.89 0.94 0.93 0.92 0.96 0.967 precision 0.9 0.96 0.9 0.96 0.94 0.91 0.95 0.975 recall 0.88 0.94 0.88 0.94 0.9 0.89 0.94 0.971 aco was then used as the optimization algorithm for the rbf network. metrics show that our approach is superior to the most popular and established machine learning algorithms. the results also show that our proposed method is superior to others in locating uncertain data. our novel approach improves accuracy by an average of 4.9% compared to historically used ml techniques, using industry-standard metrics of performance. with reference to fig. 7. figure 7: evaluation of our novelty and other methods for classifying uncertain data 5. conclusion in this work, we propose a machine learning-based method for classifying data with some degree of uncertainty. the proposed method combines elements of the rbf network and the aco algorithm to achieve optimal results. the rbf network is trained with aco and then used for the classification of uncertain data. a number of experiments were conducted to evaluate the proposed method and to compare it to other popular methods such as the k-nn classifier, the svm, the dt, the rf, the lr, the xgboost, and the rbf svm. accuracy = 98.5%, precision = 97.5%, recall = 97.1%, and f-measure = 96.7% were the specific results of the simulation. this is conclusive evidence that the proposed model outperforms baseline ml techniques when it comes to classifying data with a degree of uncertainty. on average, the proposed method is 4.9% more precise than the ml-based method. in the future will kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 70 modifying the ant colony which is a fully connected graph into a clustering graph for better performance and efficiency of the system. references [1] t. agrawal, rakesh, imielinski and a. swami, ieee transactions on knowledge and data engineering, vol. 5, pp. 5(6): 914-925., 1993. [2] v. choudhary and j. pranita, "classification: a decision tree for uncertain data using cdf, international journal of engineering research and applications," pp. 3(1): 1501-1506., 2013. [3] s. tsang, k. ben, y. y. kevin, h. wai-shing and d. l. sau, "decision trees for uncertain data, ieee transactions on knowledge and data engineering.," pp. 23(1):64-78, 2011. [4] g. suresh, s. shaik, o. reddy, & munibhadrayya, b. "classification of uncertain data using fuzzy neural networks, world of computer science and information networks, world of computer science and informationtechnology journal.," p. 1(4), 2011. [5] q. biao, y. xia, prabhakar and y. tu, "a rule-based classification algorithm for uncertain data, in proceedings of ieee international conference on.," 2009. [6] j. ge and x. yuni, "unn: a neural network for uncertain data classification," pp. 6118: 449-460., 2010. 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[17] a. sadegh, "uncertainty avoider interval type ii defuzzification method,mathematical problems in engineering," 2020. [18] c. s. k. dash, a. k. behera, s. dehuri and s.-b. cho, "radial basis function neural networks: a topical stateof-the-art," p. 6:33–63, 2016. [19] r. wang, d. li and k. miao, "optimized radial basis function neural network based intelligent control algorithm of unmanned surface vehicles," 2020. [20] k. ivan, h. marta, v. jan, k. jan and l. ondrej, "radial basis function neural networkbased modeling of the dynamic thermo-mechanical response and damping behavior of thermoplastic elastomer systems ,polymers," 2019. [21] j. kennedy and r. eberhart, "particle swarm optimization," in in proceedings of the ieee international conference on neural networks,, 1995. [22] e. assareh, m. ,. behrang, m. r. assari and a. ghanbarzadeh, "application of pso (particle swarm optimization) and ga (genetic algorithm) techniques on demand estimation of oil in iran," p. 5223–5229, 2010. [23] s.r.. mahmood, m. hatami and moradi, p., 2020, october. a trust-based recommender system by integration of graph clustering and ant colony optimization. in 2020 10th international conference on computer and knowledge engineering (iccke) (pp. 598-604). ieee. [24] c.w. fisher, e.j. lauria, and matheus, c.c., 2009. an accuracy metric: percentages, randomness, and probabilities. journal of data and information quality (jdiq), 1(3), pp.1-21. [25] g. hripcsak, and a.s rothschild, 2005. agreement, the f-measure, and reliability in information retrieval. journal of the american medical informatics association, 12(3), pp.296-298.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq laborer’s efficiency of gypsum plastering in sulaimani city’s projects atta shekh karim abdullah noori sadeq ali deanery civil engineering department college of engineering, college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university cihan university sulaimani, iraq erbil, iraq atta.karim@spu.edu.iq noori.ali@cihanuniversity.edu.iq payjor ali shonm civil engineering department college of engineering university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq payjor@gmail.com volume 4 issue 2 | december 2019 doi: http://doi.org/ 10.24017/science.2019.2.3 received: 31 august 2019 accepted: 01 october 2019 abstract in this study the laborer’s efficiency (le) in building projects in sulaimani city practically on field sites were investigated for gypsum plastering (gp). accordingly, four constructional different buildings as multistory, commercial and houses were considered. overall 11 main important factors during 30 practical records on field sites were practically observed. as a result, for the first time the laborers’ efficiency (le) was measured and classified in to three categories high, medium and low for two specific heights which were 0-2 m and 2-3 meters height of walls. on the other hand, concluded that the le for the height of 0-2m affected on lp from 15.18 to 21.35 m2/hr., with a proportion of 40.6%. in addition to the le affected-on lp for the height of 2-3m and varied the lp range between 13.33-15 m2/hr., with a proportion of 12.5%. keywords: gypsum plastering, interior finishing works, laborer’s efficiency, labor productivity, skillful, skillfulness, powerful, powerfulness. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 25 1. introduction the construction field was growing up in the last decades in krg, the labor productivity (lp) in some fields of construction was considered by previous researchers, especially in the fields of concrete forming. the lp affected by several factors which considered by previous researchers as summarized in table 1 and shown in figure 1, but there was an important factor which was not visible and not measurable affected lp which was call by laborer efficiency (le). gypsum plastering considered as one of the most popular finishing works that used in construction fields. gypsum plastering was an economic material to cover the walls, workable, easy obtaining any were, fast result, nice finished decoration. therefore, the gypsum plastering was selected in this study to find out the le. the building’s materials and types of the walls were built by hollow block concrete, and the ventilation was in an open are and free ventilation. finding the le was depended on fixing variables and find out various results. 1.1. limitations and hypotheses limitations and hypotheses of the study summarized as following: 1. the study was limited to find the laborer efficiency of the first coat of the gypsum plastering, because it was the most popular use in the sulaimani city. 2. the gypsum materials, was rounded up near to the work place by the owner before starting the works.[1]. 3. the lp were not considered for (roundup the materials, transportation, cost of materials and equipment). 4. gypsum material provided from bazian gypsum factory with coordination (35.632561° n, 44.964601° e) 5. the research depended on site measurement to find lp for the gp1_iq, finding the le and classifying the le to three classes. moreover, practically onsite the effects of le that were indicated on lp. 6. the statistical data analysis was depended on analysis of variance (anova)test, which is a statistical equation to test the variance of the data from the mean of overall the data. 1.2. study aim the aim of the study was to: study the actual le practically on field sites, for first coat of gypsum plastering in sulaimani city. on the other hand, classify the le to three classes and defined the lprange of each class. 2. background 2.1. definitions 2.1. efficiency: is the ratio of the existing work experience of the laborer to the minimum required work experience. skillfulness is specified based on the ratio of the existing work experiences of the laborer to the minimum required work experiences. [2]. collins english dictionary defined the skilled laborers the job that demanded skill which the worker usually had to be trained for, or the workers that provide this laborer. [3]. skillful, skilled, expert, efficiency refer to readiness and skillfulness in a work, craft or art. skilled implies having had a lot of experience and thus having acquired a high degree of proficiency. expert laborer’s means who have highest degree of proficiency; it may mean much the same as skilled or skillfulness [4] [5] . 2.2. productivity: in construction projects, the productivity commonly is a unit of work that is located or produced per man.hour. productivityis defined in many ways the inverse of definition for labor productivity, which is man.hours per unit (unit rate), is also frequently used. productivity is the ratio of output to all or part of the resources that were used to produce that output. the output can be homogenous or heterogeneous. resources comprise: laborer, capital, energy, and raw materials. [6]. labor productivity is the physical advancement of the work per man.hr. [7]. there is no a standard definition in https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/demand https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/skill https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/worker_1 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 26 previous researches of the labor productivity and existing confusions about the definition of productivity seem to un availability or lack of a typical terminology [8], [6]. labor productivity is the most widely used to measure working efficiency. labor productivity is the ratio of output work per labor. [9]. labor productivity is also known as the proportion of production (output) to the required time to proceed [10]. [6] 2.2. literature review factors affecting lp: according to previous researches, lp is affected by more than 108 factors. in this study only 47-factors are included and considered, only those who has come up three times or more in the previous researches considered as summarized in table 1 and shown in figure 1. some factors had a direct and dramatic effect, but the other some had a slight effect on the lp. [11] classification of factors: factors that affecting construction productivity are classified into 2 categories: external and internal. external factors represent those outside the control of the firm’s management, and the internal are those originated within the firm. external factors include the nature of the industry, client knowledge of construction procedure, weather, and level of economic development. internal factors include management, technology, laborer, and laborer unions. meanwhile adnan enshassi, classified the that affect construction productivity to technological and administrative factors [12]. serdar durdyev, jasper mbachu, gerges and michael classified the factors affecting lp in to two categories; external constrains of (statutory compliance, unforeseen events and other external forces), and internal constrains of (finance, workforce, technology, characteristics and management) [13], [14]. rex asibuodu ugulu, stephen allen, investigated the effect of age on lp and found out that increase in age affected lp by 73%, and that confined space affected %53 [15]. further, yebichaye dires claims the experience and skillfulness of the client affect lp [16]. kumaraswamy, daniel w m chan and nohan m, also studied the effect of contractor’s experience on lp and found out that it affects lp by rii 76.3% [17]. while farnad nasirzadeh and pouya nojedehi effect believe that the working area, skillfulness, weather and temperature are the most important factors that affect lp. they found skillfulness is depend on the ratio of the existing work experiences of the labor to the minimum required work experiences. on the other hand, they found that the lack of working area negatively affects lp. [2].two different studies measured gypsum plastering lp by previous researches in a practical way as 4 m2/hr., for suspended slab with thickness 15 mm[18], [19]. summary of previous studies and literature reviews the result of the survey of the previous studies indicates that it is difficult to find studies measuring lp in a practical way. moreover, is difficult to find studies depending on practical tests and measurements on the project sites. it is also noticed from the references [1] to [30] except [17] and [18], there is a gap in the previous researches and studies due to lack of implementing practical ways for measuring and finding out lp on the works’ sites.various studies depended on questionnaires survey to collect data. according to previous studies[11], [12], [17],[20],[21],[22], [23], [24], [25],[26].47-other factors had been indicated, and they were sorted out in this study according to their rii% that were measured. in different countries the researchers conducted researches and included the same factors that are mutual with this study. the 6-most important factors were selected and sorted out according to their rii% from highest to the lowest which were (years of experience, age, skillful of laborers, height of walls, working space and crew size) and the rii% were (85.8, 73.4, 72.5, 65.4, 59.2, 58.9 % respectively) as they were shown in figure 2. [11], [12], [17],[21],[22], [23], [24], [25],[26] table 1: factors affecting on lp and their rii% in view of previous researches, mutual with this study’s factors and considered 3 or more times in their studies reference no. [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [11] [25] [26] [12] [17] se r. n o. title 1 0c ou nt ri es es ti m a te o f la bo re r pr o d u ct iv it y in s u d a n es e co n st ru ct io n in d u st ry fa c t o r s a ff e c t in g l ab or er pr o d u c t iv it y in b u il d in g pr o je c t s o f pa k is t a n c ri tic al fa ct or s af fe ct in g co ns tr uc tio n l ab or er p ro du ct iv ity in e gy pt fa ct or s in fl ue nc in g c on st ru ct io n l ab or er p ro du ct iv ity : a n in di an c as e st ud y l ab or er p ro du ct iv ity in th e c on st ru ct io n in du st ry -f ac to rs in fl ue nc in g th e sp an is h c t ti l b p d ti it fa ct or s af fe ct in g c on st ru ct io n l ab or er p ro du ct iv ity in t ri ni da d an d t ob ag o fa ct or s in fl ue nc in g c on st ru ct io n l ab or er p ro du ct iv ity in e gy pt st u d y o f fa c t o r s a ff e c t in g l ab or er pr o d u c t iv it y a t a g c o s c o fa ct or s af fe ct in g l ab or er pr od uc tiv ity in b ui ld in g pr oj ec ts in th e g az a st ri p a c om pa ra tiv e st ud y of c au se s of tim e ov er ru ns in h on g k on g co ns tr uc tio n pr oj ec ts fr eq ue nc y author a bd ul az iz t aj e ls ir m oh am ed o sm an , y ou si f h um m ai da a hm ed m u h a m m a d a sa d u l l a h t a h ir , h a sh im h a n if , z u h a ib a sl a m s h a h id , sh er if m . h af ez , r em on f . a zi z, e na s s. m or ga n, m ad eh a m . a bd ul la h, e m an k a h d a nu v . t ho m as a nd j . su dh ak um ar g . r ob le s, a . s tif i, jo sé l . po nz -t ie nd a, s . g en te s b re nt g . h ic ks on a an d l ei gh to n a . e lli s k ha le d, m ah m ou d e lg oh ar y an d r em on , f ay ek a zi z m ah es h m ad an g un de ch a a dn an e ns ha ss i, sh er if m oh am ed , z ia d a bu m us ta fa & p et er e du ar d m ay er d an ie l w m c ha n an d m oh an m k um ar as w am y year a ve ra ge r ii % 2017 2015 2014 2014 2014 2013 2012 2012 2007 1997 country su da n pa k is t a n e gy pt in di an sp an is h t ri ni da d an d t ob ag o e gy pt u sa g az a h on g k on g factors rii (%) rii (%) rii (%) rii (%) rii (%) rii (%) rii (%) rii (%) rii (%) rii (%) 1 experience of laborers* 85.81 89.0 84.0 83.2 90.0 93.3 88.0 84.2 74.8 8* 2 lack of laborer supervision 84.00 84.0 70.2 95.0 87.4 83.4 5 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 28 3 payment delay 82.67 83.0 87.0 82.5 85.8 79.0 78.7 6 4 clarity of technical specifications 82.23 79.3 86.4 81.0 3 5 shortage of materials 79.59 93.8 72.0 72.0 44.0 83.3 90.3 100.0 89.5 71.5 9 6 the extent of variation/change orders during execution 79.05 72.4 81.7 88.0 74.1 4 7 construction manager's lack of leadership 77.67 70.0 80.0 80.0 88.3 88.4 59.3 6 8 unrealistic scheduling and expectation of laborer performance 77.33 68.0 75.1 91.7 74.5 4 9 motivation of laborer 77.26 74.0 83.3 77.5 82.5 69.0 5 10 site restricted access 77.15 90.6 63.3 72.1 71.7 88.0 5 11 construction method 74.64 84.4 64.0 75.6 75.6 65.5 83.3 86.6 62.1 8 12 inadequate lighting 74.21 78.1 63.0 91.0 64.7 4 13 insufficient supervision of subcontractors 73.75 81.0 69.1 71.8 73.1 4 14 age of laborers* 73.68 81.0 78.1 73.0 62.6 4* 15 drawings and specifications alteration during execution 73.32 84.0 36.0 76.6 90.0 80.0 5 16 laborer disloyalty 73.17 74.0 67.0 78.5 3 17 rain 72.90 68.5 64.4 85.8 3 18 skill of laborer* 72.47 86.9 32.0 83.2 87.5 93.3 51.9 6* 19 inspection delay by the engineer 72.15 60.0 74.8 68.3 80.0 77.6 5 20 high quality of required works 71.67 61.0 86.0 68.0 3 21 rework 71.60 81.0 73.8 30.0 73.2 84.2 84.0 75.0 7 22 design changes 70.97 74.3 83.0 55.6 3 23 high temperature 70.33 76.7 69.5 64.8 3 24 accidents as a result of poor site safety program 69.47 77.0 69.5 27.6 73.3 97.0 72.4 6 25 unsuitability of storage location 68.90 73.5 75.4 57.5 69.2 4 26 unavailability of suitable tools 68.90 28.0 81.7 97.0 3 27 bad weather condition 68.67 80.0 34.0 63.3 79.7 91.0 64.0 6 28 unavailability of safety engineer on site 68.07 64.0 87.0 53.2 3 29 lack of training offered to operatives 67.65 63.0 83.3 74.0 50.3 4 30 working overtime 67.61 74.0 81.1 22.0 69.8 66.7 74.9 90.0 62.4 8 31 poor project planning and scheduling 67.14 33.0 78.1 84.5 74.7 65.4 5 32 rest time(s) during the work day 66.63 65.0 62.7 72.2 3 33 absenteeism 66.24 78.0 35.0 77.2 86.0 55.0 5 34 height of the work* 65.57 64.4 73.6 58.7 3* 35 lack of providing laborer with transportation 64.67 60.0 78.0 56.0 3 36 incomplete/revise drawing 63.00 69.0 33.0 87.0 3 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 29 37 poor relations between laborer and supervisors 62.75 84.0 29.0 75.0 63.0 4 38 lack of experience of supervisor 62.63 30.6 83.2 74.1 3 39 inadequate safety plan 62.15 76.0 30.0 75.0 67.6 4 40 low quality of raw materials 62.08 69.0 30.0 78.0 71.3 4 41 design complexity level 60.02 25.0 66.9 72.5 78.0 57.7 5 42 laborer interference and congestion 59.63 25.0 73.9 72.5 67.1 4 43 space of work* 59.20 70.0 29.0 67.5 70.3 4* 44 crew size* 58.87 73.8 27.0 75.8 3* 45 communication problems between site 58.74 29.0 34.0 80.9 85.8 64.0 5 46 tool and equipment shortages 56.77 63.0 32.0 75.3 3 47 lack of periodic meeting with laborer 51.60 71.0 27.0 56.8 3 note: (*): means that the factor comes up and considered three times or more by previous researches and mutual with this study’s factors figure 1: factors affecting lp and their rii% view of previous researches mutual with this study which considered three or more than three times in their studies. 85.81 84.00 82.67 82.23 79.59 79.05 77.67 77.33 77.26 77.15 74.64 74.21 73.75 73.68 73.32 73.17 72.90 72.47 72.15 71.67 71.60 70.97 70.33 69.47 68.90 68.90 68.67 68.07 67.65 67.61 67.14 66.63 66.24 65.57 64.67 63.00 62.75 62.63 62.15 62.08 60.02 59.63 59.20 58.87 58.74 56.77 51.60 8 5 6 3 9 4 6 4 5 5 8 4 4 4 5 3 3 6 5 3 7 3 3 6 4 3 6 3 4 8 5 3 5 3 3 3 4 3 4 4 5 4 4 3 5 3 3 45 55 65 75 85 experience of labourers labourer supervision payment delay clarity of technical specifications shortage of materials variation order construction manager's leadership scheduling for labourer's performance motivation of labourer site restricted access construction method lighting supervision of subcontractors age of labourers drawings deficiencies in execution labourer disloyalty rain skill of labourer inspection delay by the engineer high quality of required works rework design changes high temperature site safety program unsuitability of storage location unavailability of suitable tools bad weather condition unavailability of safety engineer on site lack of training offered to operatives working overtime poor project planning and scheduling rest time(s) during the work day absenteeism height of the work providing labourer with transportation incomplete/revise drawing relations between labourer and… lack of experience of supervisor inadequate safety plan low quality of raw materials design complexity level labourer interference and congestion space of work crew size communication problems between site tool and equipment shortages lack of periodic meeting with labourer fa ct or s average rii % 10 countries average rii% frequency (no.) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 31 3. methods and materials 3.1. site measurement: 1. four constructional sites were selected; they were different in types such as (multistory, commercials and houses). a total of 30 records were collected from the sites. the lp was measured and recorded on the sites. 2. an inspection data sheet was prepared, and used on daily bases to facilitate the recording of all the available data on sites. the gypsum plastering was usually started after 5:00 am and was finished in the different times before 6:00 pm. 3. gypsum shall be fresh, completely dry, shall not leave residuals on 56 mesh/cm sieve, shall be free from extraneous which may be affected by spontaneous slating. the gypsum material was kept in a dry area, covered and protected from moisture[1]. at the beginning of work activity, the time span was measured and recorded using stopwatch. the stopwatch was used from the start to the end of each work. then the dimensions of the product were measured using measuring tape. other data and factors that had effect on the lp, were also recorded on the inspection data sheet as summarized in table 2. figure 2: the relative importance index of factors affecting labor productivity for the factors that are mutual in previous and this study which considered three or more than three times in the previous studies. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 32 table 2: lp data gathered on field sites for gypsum plastering works. zone ser. no. sample no. lp (m2/hr.) skl (no.) cz (no.) age (years) ex (years) country of residential height (m) 2 5 17.55 1 3 26 5 iraq 0-2 1 9 12.65 1 3 28 11 iraq 0-2 3 2 23.73 1 4 30 13 iraq 0-2 4 16 15.19 2 3 35 14 iran 0-2 5 17 15.50 2 3 35 14 iran 0-2 6 15 15.87 2 3 35 14 iran 0-2 7 18 15.87 2 3 35 14 iran 0-2 8 19 16.30 2 3 35 14 iran 0-2 9 20 16.30 2 3 35 14 iran 0-2 10 21 16.30 2 3 35 14 iran 0-2 11 14 21.35 2 3 35 14 iran 0-2 12 4 20.97 1 4 30 13 iraq 0-3 13 12 10.80 2 3 35 14 iran 0-3 14 8 13.91 2 3 39 6 iran 0-3 15 1 9.00 5 17 29.6 8.4 iraq 0-3 16 13 2.36 8 9 35 14 iran 0-3 20 7 14.62 1 3 26 5 iraq 2-3 19 10 10.78 1 3 27 10 iraq 2-3 17 6 10.53 1 3 28 11 iraq 2-3 18 11 10.76 1 3 28 11 iraq 2-3 21 3 16.27 1 4 30 13 iraq 2-3 22 23 13.33 2 3 35 14 iran 2-3 23 24 13.95 2 3 35 14 iran 2-3 24 27 14.46 2 3 35 14 iran 2-3 25 30 14.60 2 3 35 14 iran 2-3 26 22 14.63 2 3 35 14 iran 2-3 27 28 14.71 2 3 35 14 iran 2-3 28 26 14.81 2 3 35 14 iran 2-3 29 25 15.00 2 3 35 14 iran 2-3 30 29 15.00 2 3 35 14 iran 2-3 1 2 the six-main important varied factors were (age (ag), years of experience (ex) of the skilled laborers, height of walls (h), space of the works (wks), size of crew (cz) and the number of skilled laborers(skl)). in addition to the five fixed secondary factors were also considered as (country of residential of labors, payment basis, weather, temperature and building walls material type). the lp for each individual work was calculated dependingon the time durations and product area of each work that were recorded on the inspection data sheet form. then the lp was calculated for each individual work through using the lp equations no. 1.[8], [27] , [28]. 𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿 = 𝑂𝑂𝑂𝑂𝑂𝑂𝑂𝑂𝑂𝑂𝑂𝑂 𝑊𝑊𝑊𝑊𝑊𝑊𝑊𝑊𝑊𝑊𝑊𝑊𝑊𝑊 ℎ𝑊𝑊𝑂𝑂𝑊𝑊𝑜𝑜 (1) a summary sheet included all factors and the lp was prepared as summarized in table 2. lp column for over all the 30 records were compared together, as a result the records selected that their lp was changed while the other factors were kept constant. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 33 • work procedure of the first coat of gypsum plastering in national style (gp1_iq): the walls were covered with gypsum plastering of 2 cm thick. the work was conducted according to the following steps shown in figure 3: [1]. i. all the walls were washed and cleaned up by water before the covering started. ii. the walls were rendered with a prime coat usingtrowelsto spread the cement mortar on the wall in a ratio of 1:4 (cement to sand). this would make the wall obtain a rough surface to facilitate the paste of the gypsum plastering. iii. vertical gypsum shimming was made by vertical leveled shims 5*2 cm each 60-80 cm with gypsum plastering to ensure the vertical alignment of the walls. iv. after waiting a day or more,covering the walls with 2-3 cm of first coat of the gypsum plastering were started using trowels.then after a period of 1-2 minutes, skimming and adjustmentto that layer of the gypsum plastering were performedusingbrown rods and then smoothened by steel trowels[1]. 4. results and discussion project site work measurement: 4.1 effects of factors on labor productivity data analysis depended on statistical analysis tests and equations; anova test was carried out for all the works. the correlation of the lp and the factors was found using linear multiple variable equation. the significant f was tested for all types of the works. in addition, two tails f-test, the p-value for all factors were calculated using confident interval 95%. the study included different types of buildings such as multistory, commercial buildings and houses; besides, different numbers of skilled and non-skilled laborers, various ages, years of experience and heights of buildings were included. the lp was measured, and standardized for the data of first coat of the gypsum plastering in the national style as follows: the standardized statistical process control (spc) was used to check the normality of the data, ±1 standard deviation (±1 std), ±2std, ±2.5std and ±3std was indicated on the lp charts with the standardized lp on y-axis for all the samples. the results indicated that: the data for the lp within the range of ±1 stdv was 73.3%. the data for the lp within the range of ±2 stdv was 93.3%. the data for the lp within the range of ±2.5 stdv was 96.7%. the data for the lp within the range of ±3 stdv was 100.0%. as all residuals, statistical results of the std’s, outlier points, the point within the range of standard deviations and their proportions were presented for (gp1-iq,) as summarised in table fig. 3, typical section of wall covered by gypsum plastering. gypsumplastering with thickness 2-3 cm shim for leveling 2*5cm each 60-80 cm wall covered with gypsum plastering 60-80 cm kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 34 table 3: statistical process control (spc), residuals, and the proportion of outlier points for gypsum plastering. sample no. sample no. residuals (variations) = (lp-mean)/s tdv 1 -0.061 16 -0.095 2 2.770 17 0.441 3 -0.087 18 0.091 4 -0.027 19 0.189 5 0.430 20 0.831 6 -1.371 21 0.441 7 0.031 22 0.305 8 0.031 23 0.441 9 -0.083 24 2.024 10 -0.705 25 -1.850 11 -1.300 26 1.903 12 -1.292 27 -0.796 13 -0.491 28 -1.286 14 -0.297 29 -0.310 15 -0.139 30 0.305 status of data range number % 22 73.3% 28 93.3% 29 96.7% 30 100.0% 8 26.7% 2 6.7% 1 3.3% 0 0.0% stdv -1<data>+1 -2<data>+2 -2.5<data>+2.5 -3<data>+3 residuals (variations) = (lp-mean)/s tdv within the range outleir -1>data<+1 -2>data<+2 -2.5>data<+2.5 -3>data<+3 figure 4: sensitivity of collected data through statistical process control for gypsum plastering in national style. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 35 table 4: summary of spc for labor productivity and affecting factors for gypsum plastering in national style (gp1_iq) average min max unit r2 % adjusted r2 % significan t f stdv c.v p-value lp 15.20 10.53 23.73 m2/hr. 2.86 0.19 7e-10 high (m) 2.56 0.00 3.00 m 0.51 0.20 2e-04 no. of skilled lab 1.32 1.00 2.00 no. 0.48 0.36 3e-13 crew size 3.04 2.00 4.00 no. 0.89 0.29 1e-12 age 32.72 26.00 35.00 years 3.49 0.11 3e-13 experience 12.68 5.00 14.00 years 2.61 0.21 7e-11 country 5e-09 model to predict lp 96.1 8e-13 lp = ( -52.36 2.079 * h 16.168 * skl + 7.763 * cz + 3.093 * ag 1.709 * ex 5.308 * cty ) 97.1 table 5: summary of laborer’s efficiency, its effects on lp and it’s classification for three classes for h=0-2 and h=2-3m. gp1_iq laborer efficiency class lp h(0-2) m lp h(2-3) m effect of le on lp % h(0-2)m effect of le on lp % h(2-3)m l 15.18 17.24 13.33 13.88 13.6% 4.1% m 17.24 19.29 13.88 14.44 11.9% 4.0% h 19.29 21.35 14.44 15 10.7% 3.9% 40.6% 12.5% skl 2 1 cz 4 2 ex 14 14 ag 35 35 factors lp (m2/hr.) total effect of le on lp the linear multiple variable regression was checked. the correlation between lp and the factors was considered a strong relation according to the r2=97.1%; the significant f=8e-13. the pvalues of the factors (h, skl, cz, age, ex.) were (2e-04, 3e-13, 1e-12, 3e-13, 7e-11);the r2, std and the coefficient of variance (c.v). were measured as summarized in the table 4 4.2 the effects of laborer’s efficiency: finding the laborer’s efficiency for the gypsum plastering work in national style: laborer efficiency for the wall height 0-2m finding the minimum and the maximum le of the wall height 0-2m: the results are arranged and summarized in table 2 within zone 1column under the serial number 4 to 11; it shows that the lp has increased from 15.19 to 21.35 m2/hr., while all other six factors remained constant as skl:2, cz;3, ag;35, ex;14, country; in height; 0-2m.itis concluded that there are another non visible factor affecting lp. this factor is called efficiency of the laborers. in other words, le causes variation in the lp between 15.19 and 21.35 m2/hr., as summarized in table 5. laborer efficiency for the wall height 2-3m finding the minimum and the maximum le of the wall height 2-3m the results are arranged and summarized in table 2 within zone 2 column under the serial number 22 to 30. the results showed that the lp increased from 13.33 to 15.00m2/hr., while all other six factors remained constant; skl:2, cz;3, ag;35, ex;14, country; in height; 2-3m, it is concluded that there are another non visible factor affecting lp which is called efficiency of the laborers. in other words, the le caused to variation in the lp between 13.33 and 15 m2/hr., as summarized in table 5. 4.3 classification of laborers’ efficiency (le) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 36 neither the le for-gypsum plastering was found nor classified by previous other researchers, but in this study the le for two different heights (0-2) m and (2-3) m was found and classified to three classes: the results showed that the lp for the height of (0-2) m was between (15.19-21.35) m2/hr., and lp for the height of (2-3) m was between (13.33-15) m2/hr. the procedure of classification of skilled laborers efficiency for the height of (0-2) m: laborer efficiency (le) has not been found before by other researchers, but in this research the le, as a unique procedure, was classified to three categories as low-class, medium class and high-class categories, as summarized in table 5, and according to the following procedure: 1 the maximum and minimum lp was indicated as (21.35 -15.18) m2/hr. 2 the range between high and low lp was found as follows: a. lp rang = lp max. – lp min. = 21.35 – 15.18 = 6.17 m2/hr. 3 to classify the lp to three categories, the (lp rang 6.17 m2/hr.)is divided by 3 in order to find the lprange for each of the three categories as follows; a. lp rang for one category = lp rang / 3 = 6.17 m2/hr. / 3 = 2.057 m2/hr. b. limit of lp for each category was found by finding the lpmin. and lpmax. for each category as follows: i. finding le of low-class lp: a. lpmin. for low-class = lpmin. = 15.18 m2/hr. b. lp max. for low-class = lp min. for low-class + lp rang for one category = 15.18 + 2.057 = 17.24 m2/hr. ii. le of low-class wasindicated by lpmin. and lpmax. as follows: a. lemin. for low-class = lp min. for low-class = 15.18 m2/hr. b. lemax.for low-class = lp max. for low-class = 17.24 m2/hr. iii. limit of le for low-class of skl for gypsum plastering was found as (15.18-17.24) m2/hr. 4 finding le of medium-class lp as follows: i. lp min. for medium-class = lpmax. for low-class = 17.24 m2/hr. ii. lp max. for medium-class = lp min. for medium-class +lp rang for one category = 17.24 + 2.057 = 19.29 m2/hr. iii. le of medium class was indicated by lp min. and lp max. as follows: a. lemin. for medium-class= lp min. for medium-class = 17.24 m2/hr. b. lemax. for medium-class = lp max. for medium-class = 19.29 m2/hr. c. le limit for medium-class of skl for gypsum plastering was found as (17.24-19.29) m2/hr. 5 finding le of high-class lp as follows: i. lp min. for high class = lpmax. for medium class = 19.29 m2/hr. ii. lp max. for high class = lp min. for high class +lp rang for one category = 19.29 + 2.057 = 21.35 m2/hr. iii. le of high-class was indicated by lp min. for high class and lp max. for high class as follows: a. lemin. for high-class = lp min. for high-class = 19.29 m2/hr. b. lemax. for high-class = lp max. for high-class = 21.35 m2/hr. c. le limit for high-class of skl for gypsum plastering was found as (19.2921.35) m2/hr. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 37 the same procedure that was used for the classification of the le for (0-2) m height was also used to find the le for (2-3) m height. the lp for the height of (2-3) m varied between (13.33-15) m2/hr. and the results of le of skilled laborers for the height of (2-3) m were calculated as follows and also summarized in table 5: • le limit of low-class skl = (13.33-13.88) m2/hr. • le limit of medium-class skl = (13.88-14.44) m2/hr. • le limit of high-class skl = (14.44-15) m2/hr. 5. conclusion first coat of gypsum plastering in national style (gp1_iq): the le has a significant effect on lp while these factors kept constant (h, wks, skl, cz. ag, ex). moreover, the effect of le on lp varied between (4.0 671.5%) . • le has a significant effect on the first coat of gypsum plastering lp on the height 0-2 m. when the le increases from class low (l) to class high (h), the lp increases from 15.18 to 21.35 m2/hr., or the lp increases by a proportion of 40.6%. • le has a significant effect on the first coat of gypsum plastering lp on the height 2-3 m. when the le increases from class low (l) to class high (h), the lp increases from 13.33 to 15.00m2/hr., or the lp increases by a proportion of 12.5%. recommendation to improve future studies in the field of laborer efficiency, it is recommended that the range of factors are expanded to include other areas or other specialties related to the skilled laborers, such as: • physical factors, including weight and height of the skilled laborers. • sociological factors, including personal problems, family issues or financial means. • medical factors, including chronic diseases, depression, diabetes, hypertension and cardio diseases. • nicotine and drug factors, including the products that addict human, such as cigarettes, cigars, pipe tobacco, chewing tobacco, and wet and dry snuff and the dried leaves from the tobacco plant. • extension of medical situation especially the chronic disease like depression, diabetic, hypertension, cardio diseases. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 38 reference [1] r. o. i. iraqi ministry of planning, technical specifications for finishing work, 2015, pp. 206-207. 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[30] d. w. m. c. a. m. m. kumaraswamy, "a comparative study of causes of time overruns in hong kong construction projects," project managemen, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 55-63, 1997. 1. introduction kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.28 automatic water level control using labview hemin ismael azeez communication engineering department technical college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq hemin.azeez@spu.edu.iq narongrit pimkumwong electrical engineering department southern taiwan university of science and technology tainan, taiwan da42b204@stust.edu.tw shih-chung chen electrical engineering department southern taiwan university of science and technology tainan, taiwan chung@mail.stust.edu.tw abstract: shortage in water supply is one of the major issues that some major cities throughout the world are facing nowadays. due to not having full day water supply, households will have to efficiently manage the problem of water shortage and overcome the crises. this paper presents a system that indicates and controls the level of water in overhead tanks. ultra-sonic sensors are employed to detect the level of the water between predefined minimum and maximum levels. labview which is a graphical programming language that uses a dataflow model is used to program microcontroller board arduino uno that is an interface between the software and the rest of the circuit components. from measured results good performance and accurate results are achieved. keywords: labview, microcontroller, absolute error. 1. introduction dwindling water supplies will affect city citizens and exacerbate conflict in the cities throughout the world. due to not having full day water supply and besides public response to water conservation regulations, households need to think of effective solutions like installing water reservoir tanks down the floor and overhead tanks to efficiently manage the problem of water shortage and overcome the crises. in this regard, water pumps are being used to pump up water from the down water tank to the overhead tank. the main purpose of this research is to use labview to control arduino uno board to automate the water level in an overhead tank and indicating the level of the water. ultrasonic sensors are used as an alternative to conductors as a sensor based on distance measurement of the water surface from the predefined minimum and maximum levels and more importantly the water level is continuously detected. 2. literature review variety of controlling systems are introduced in [1][4] to overcome the problem and to automatically pump up and control the water level in the overhead tank. in [1] a microcontroller based automatic water level control system using at89c52 microcontroller is introduced. authors in [2] have addressed the problem and presented a system of an automatic water level controller with sms notification. arduino uno is also employed as controller system as it has an open source libraries. for the sms circuit motorola c261 model supports serial communication with headset plug has been employed that can support at commands which can be used for global system for mobile (gsm) control system. in addition, authors in [3] an automatic water level controller is developed and implemented. arduino uno has been chosen to automate the process of water pumping. water level detection in both source and overhead tanks, switch on/off the pump accordingly are the main controlling signals the circuit. liquid crystal display (lcd) display is used to show important data. moreover, a microcontroller based automated water level sensing and controlling is proposed that covers both design and implementation issues[4]. pic 16f84a microcontroller which is a family of risc microcontrollers made by microchip technology is used and integrated to the circuit. it is worth mentioning that throughout these literatures, context of electrical conductivity of the water is used to employ copper and aluminium conductors as water detecting sensors and only discrete levels of the water are detected. 3. system model and description the overall scope of the project is presented in figure 1. the proposed system is composed of down and overhead water tanks, a pump to pump up water from down reservoir to the overhead tank. the arduino uno board operates based on the program written in labview will detect the water level via ultrasonic sensors as well as instructs the relay circuit when predefined water level limitations reached. the whole process and control signalling are exchanged in a wired environment. to protect the water pump from working when there is no water in the down reservoir, to be cost effective extra sensors are not used in the down reservoir but the arduino uno board is programed in a way if there is no increment in the water mailto:hemin.azeez@spu.edu.iq mailto:da42b204@stust.edu.tw mailto:chung@mail.stust.edu.tw level, the relay circuit will be instructed to turn off the water pump. the detail of the system components that are used to make the prototype are described below. figure 1over all block diagram of the proposed system 4. system schematic diagram the schematic diagram of the system is shown in figure 2. figure 2schematic diagram of the system ultrasonic sensor: 4.1 the ultrasonic ranging module hc sr04 provides 2cm 400cm non-contact measurement function. the ranging accuracy can reach to 3mm. the modules includes ultrasonic transmitters, receiver and control circuit[5]. the basic operation of the sensor is as following:  using io trigger for at least 10us high level signal.  the module automatically sends eight 40 khz and detect whether there is a pulse signal back.  if the signal back, through high level , time of high output io duration is the time from sending ultrasonic to returning. distance = (high level time × velocity of sound (340m/s) / 2. arduino uno board 4.2 arduino uno is a “microcontroller board based on the atmega328p. it has 14 digital input/output pins (of which 6 can be used as pwm outputs), 6 analog inputs, a 16 mhz quartz crystal, a usb connection, a power jack, an icsp header and a reset button”[6]. the technical specifications of the board which taken from its data sheet is shown in table1. table1: technical specifications of arduino uno board microcontroller atmega328p operating voltage 5v input voltage (recommended) 7-12v input voltage (limit) 6-20v digital i/o pins 14 (of which 6 provide pwm output) pwm digital i/o pins 6 analog input pins 6 dc current per i/o pin 20 ma dc current for 3.3v pin 50 ma flash memory 32 kb (atmega328p) of which 0.5 kb used by bootloader sram 2 kb (atmega328p) eeprom 1 kb (atmega328p) clock speed 16 mhz led_builtin 13 http://www.atmel.com/images/atmel-42735-8-bit-avr-microcontroller-atmega328-328p_datasheet.pdf water level indicators predefined values water pump indicators length 68.6 mm width 53.4 mm weight 25 g water pump (rio plus aqua pump) 4.3 the pump provides versatile water pump system designed with high efficiency and reliability at lower cost. the pump used here has capacity of pumping 262 litres per hour[7]. relay circuit 4.4 this component is controlled by the arduino uno board based on the measured water level signals received back by ultrasonic sensors [8]. 5. program flowchart figure 3program flowchart that shows process of monitoring and controlling flowchart description  the overhead tank has two levels, maximum and minimum.  ultra-sonic sensors are used to continuously detect the level of water (wl) in the water tank.  via arduino uno, labview monitors the water level and shows the current level of the water.  if wl min, the relay will turn the water pump on to pump water into the water tank. and the water level will also be monitored.  if no, the second scenario is wl ≥ max, the relay will be instructed to turn off the water pump.  if none of the above conditions achieved, the program will be continued in monitoring the water level until a predefined condition will be achieved. 6. labview system design software “labview is an integrated development environment designed specifically for engineers and scientists. native to labview is a graphical programming language that uses a dataflow model instead of sequential lines of text code, empowering us to write functional code using a visual layout that resembles our thought process”[9]. 6.1 the front panel figure 4 shows the front panel of the labview program written to control the ciruit. in this front panel indicators and controlling signals are existed. the water level history chart will show the continuos instant values of the detect water level wave by the sensors over a period of time. in addition, the water level tank indiator indicated the current discrete detected level of the water in the overhead tank. the two boolean buttons show the states of the water pump. the two round knobs are used to adjust the minimum and maximum predefined water levels in labview program so that when limit reached out, the relay circuit will correspondly be getting commands to turn on and off the water pump. figure 4front panel of the labview program start read water level turn off water pump delay 200 ms turn on water pump display water level yes press stop switch? end yes no no no yes 6.2 the block diagram 6.2.1 block diagram description 1 initial block: this block is responsible to initialise a connection between arduino uno board and labview through giving information about the usb port, baud rate and board type which is arduino uno. 2 flat sequence structure: this structure is used to prepare the water pump off via the relay circuit before the program starts running. within this structure digital write pin is employed to follow the structure’s function. figure 5description of the labview block diagram 2-1 digital write pin: this block is used to send the turning off data which is binary 0 (0 volt) to pin number 7 on arduino uno board to instruct the relay to be open circuit. 3 while loop: this block includes the main program that is responsible to detect and control the overhead water level automatically. and the loop executes every 200 ms. 3-1 ultrasonic sensor block: this block is mainly responsible to detect and measure the water level in the overhead tank by setting trigger pin and echo pin of the sensor to pin number 8 and 9 on the arduino board respectively. 3-2 moving average filter: this filter is employed to filter out the noise and distortions from the actual measured distance or the water surface level. 3-3 comparator and 3-4 comparator: these comparators are used to compare the actual measured water level to a predefined maximum and minimum levels in the programme. if specific conditions are met, the program will automate the water pump on and off. 3-5 case structure: this block is directly connected to (3-3 comparator), and has two cases true or false. if actual measured water level in the overhead tank is larger or equal to the preassigned maximum water level, then the case is true and the case structure will send turn off command to the relay circuit to turn off the water pump, else nothing to do. 3-6 case structure: this block has the same functionality as (3-5 case structure). it is connected to the (3-4 comparator) and when minimum water level condition is reached. the true case of this structure will command the relay circuit to turn on the water pump to pump up water from down reservoir to the overhead tank. 3-7 stop button: through this section, the program can be stopped whenever an error is occurring or the program is manually stopped. 4 flat sequence structure: the main function of this structure is to command the relay circuit to turn off the water pump whenever an error occurs or the program will be manually stopped. 1 2 2-1 3 3-1 3-2 3-3 3-4 3-5 3-6 3-7 4 5 6 5 close block: this block closes the active connection of labview to arduino uno board. 6 simple error handler: this block shows an automatic error message when an error happens in the program. the description of the error will also be presented in this block. 6.2.2 ultrasonic sensor block diagram figure 6description of the ultrasonic sub vi block diagram in labview 7. results and discussions figure 7 shows the photo of the system prototype when tested to get real measurements. the data shown in table2 is representing desired and actual water level values in the overhead tank. the difference between the actual and desired values is expressed as absolute error. as it can be seen from the table, the maximum error occurred is 2.3 mm, this shows that the system to a great extent is accurate in readings. the graphical presentations of relationship between desired and actual water level values for the prototype as well as the absolute error curve is shown in figure 8 and figure 9 respectively. as it can be noticed the curve between the actual values and desired values is almost linear. in addition, the absolute error stays below 2.3 mm during real measurements. figure 7photo of the prototype during measurements table 2: measured actual water level and calculated absolute error desired water level (cm) actual water level (cm) absolute error (cm) 2 1.8744 0.1256 2.5 2.3774 0.1226 3 2.8637 0.1363 3.5 3.3685 0.1315 4 3.8637 0.1363 4.5 4.3981 0.1019 5 4.8464 0.1536 5.5 5.3706 0.1294 6 5.8843 0.1157 6.5 6.3671 0.1329 7 6.8637 0.1363 7.5 7.3492 0.1508 8 7.8671 0.1329 8.5 8.3706 0.1294 9 8.8995 0.1005 9.5 9.4016 0.0984 10 9.9292 0.0708 10.5 10.4706 0.0294 11 11.0395 0.0395 11.5 11.5435 0.0435 12 12.0537 0.0537 12.5 12.5464 0.0464 13 13.1154 0.1154 13.5 13.6395 0.1395 14 14.2119 0.2119 14.5 14.6878 0.1878 15 15.1464 0.1464 15.5 15.6464 0.1464 16 16.2326 0.2326 16.5 16.6981 0.1981 17 17.1119 0.1119 17.5 17.5602 0.0602 18 18.0808 0.0808 18.5 18.6119 0.1119 19 19.1809 0.1809 19.5 19.5395 0.0395 20 20.0429 0.0429 figure 8actual-desired water level graph figure 9absolute error graph 8. constraints during conducting the experiment it has been observed that more accurate and better performance results can be achieved and obtained is the following constrains are taken into considerations.  the ultrasonic sensor measuring angle is 15 degree, due to this limitation for the prototype, larger size of bucket must be used to avoid destructive interferences in the received signal to increase the accuracy of measurement.  a smooth and surface level for installing water tanks is needed, this is also one way to avoid destructive interferences among the received back signals to eliminate error.  suitable water pump and water pipes with specific capacities should be chosen with respect to the size of the overhead tank to allow enough time to the program to do calculations. 9. conclusion the prototype has been programed and implemented successfully. good accuracy is achieved in detecting the water level, and controlling system when introduced constraints are taken into consideration. linearity in the relationship curve between desired and actual water level values achieved. staying absolute error below 2.3mm maximum is the marker of the system accuracy. 10. references [1] e. v. ebere and o. o. francisca, “microcontroller based automatic water level control system,” int. j. innov. res. comput. commun. eng., vol. 1, no. 6, pp. 0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25 a c t u a l w a t e r l e v e l( c m ) desired water level(cm) 0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0 5 10 15 20 25 a b s o lu te e r r o r (c m ) desired water level(cm) maximum sensor error = 2.3 mm 1390–1396, 2013. [2] s. pudasaini, a. pathak, s. dhakal, and m. paudel, “automatic water level controller with short messaging service (sms) notification,” int. j. sci. res. publ., vol. 4, no. 9, pp. 518–521, 2014. [3] a. a. m. eltaieb and z. j. min, “automatic water level control system,” int. j. sci. res., vol. 4, no. 12, pp. 1505–1509, 2015. [4] s. m. k. reza et al., “microcontroller based automated water level sensing and controlling: design and implementation issue,” world congr. eng. comput. sci. vols 1 2, vol. i, pp. 220–224, 2010. [5] “ultrasonic sensor hc-sr04 sen-13959 sparkfun electronics.” [online]. available: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13959. [accessed: 18-mar-2017]. [6] a. store, “arduino uno rev3,” online, 2014. [online]. available: https://store.arduino.cc/usa/arduino-uno-rev3. [accessed: 22-mar-2017]. [7] “taam, aquarium products.” [online]. available: http://www.riopump.net/products_pumps/rioplus_de sc.html. [accessed: 26-mar-2017]. [8] “srd-05vdc-sl-c datasheet pdf srd relay songle.” [online]. available: http://www.datasheetcafe.com/srd-05vdc-sl-cdatasheet-pdf/. [accessed: 26-mar-2017]. [9] n. instruments, “образовательные , научные и инженерные приложения в среде labview и технологии national instruments,” 2010.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 11 a secure image steganography using shark smell optimization and edge detection technique pshtiwan j. karim omar y. abdulhammed department of computer science department of computer science college of science college of science university of garmian university of garmian kalar, iraq kalar, iraq pshtiwan.jabar@garmian.edu.krd omar.y@garmian.edu.krd dashne r. arif twana s. ali computer center department of computer science sulaimani technical institute college of science sulaimani polytechnic university university of sulaimani sulaymaniyah, iraq sulaymaniyah, iraq dashne.raouf@spu.edu.iq twana.ali@univsul.edu.iq avin o. abdalrahman arkan a. saffer department of civil engineering department of information technology college of engineering kalar technical college university of garmian sulaimani polytechnic university kalar, iraq kalar, iraq aveen.othman@garmian.edu.krd arkan.saffer@spu.edu.iq abstract volume 7-issue 2 december 2022 doi: 10.24017/science.2022.2.2 article history: received 25/07/2022 accepted 20/09/2022 the steganographic system provides premium secrecy and ability of conserving the secret information from gaining stalked or cracked. the suggested method consists of five phases which are masking and divided image, edge detection, apply shark smell optimization (sso), embedding and extraction. this paper concentrated on three significant basic parts which are payload, quality, and security also introduces a new steganography method through using edge detection algorithm and sso. the process of concealment is carried out through the following steps: firstly, to promote the hiding ability and to realize altitude standard of secrecy the secret message is separated into four parts and the cover image is masked and divided into four sections, then the edge detection algorithm and sso is performed on each section respectively. edge prospectors were utilized to produce edge pixels in every section to hide secret message and attain the best payload. to increase security, the shark smell optimization is used to select the best pixels among edge pixels based on its keywords: steganography, security, payload, shark smell optimization, edge detection https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11042-022-12677-7 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11042-022-12677-7 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11042-022-12677-7 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 12 nature in motion, then reflect these best pixels on original cover image. finally the secret message bits are hidden in the selected edge best pixels by using lest significant bit technique. the experimental out comes appreciated utilizing several image fitness appreciation fashion, it displays best hiding ability, achieve higher image quality with least standard of deformation and provide altitude standard of secrecy, also the results shows that the suggested method exceeds previous approaches in term of the psnsr and mse, additionally demonstrate that the secret information cannot be retrieved from stego image without knowing the algorithms and the values of parameters used 1. introduction with the fast development of internet and technology life [1] and advancement of image purports, the difficulty of protecting secrecy of such purports through the network has become a main apprehension in the recent years. using effective image retrieval techniques, the intruders constantly attempt to access relevant image content [2] before launching a surprise attack using image malware [3, 4].so, the field of data and multimedia secrecy has become very important and the field of its applications is extending [5]. various ways were utilized to maintain the message through transportation like ciphering and steganography [6]. ciphering is the process of transforming the sensitive information into unintelligible format but with observable existence via cipher algorithms [7]. the scrambled information in an unreadable format can be indicated to as encrypted message, whereas the genuine mystery text is recognized as normal message. in cryptography, there are two steps: ciphering and deciphering. ciphering changes original message to encrypt message by stratifying an appropriate encryption method at the dispatcher aspect. while deciphering performs the opposite of encryption, turning encrypted message to original message at the recipient aspect. the network hacker might still make an attempt to change the encryption message to plain text. additionally, the frequency of offensive on the web has no decreased because the adversary might readily deduce that the network is carrying some sensitive information. [8,9]. data hiding is the actual tendency for safe connection [10], it is the procedure of hiding mystery data inside a media wanting alteration its perceptual quality [8,11]. the significant method which is utilized in concealment is steganography [12]. steganography conceals the secret message into an carrier (digital media) while preserving the un predestine existence of mystery message [13,14]. images, videos, audio, and other types of digital media are all possible. cover media is the name given to the original digital media. stego-media is the name for the form of media that conceals sensitive information. it is important to keep the stego media's quality high so that it doesn't alert any unauthorized users to any hidden information. [15], therefore, in order to increase communication security, steganography is consequently important for many computer applications [9]. the cover image, hidden message, stego image and stego key are the primary elements of the steganography data concealment strategy. [16, 17]. the original image that contains the hidden message [18] is called a cover image. the cover media may be a still image or a video in several formats, including digital devices [19], server or chat programs [20]. secret message refers to the text that the transmitter inserts in the carrier image to create the stego image and transmits to the receiving end across an unsafe connection path [16],any file type, including text, images, audio files, and videos, can be used for the hidden message. a voluntary motif that perhaps employed to strengthen the secrecy of the data kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 13 concealment is the encryption key. [21]. stego image is the primarily carrier media that includes the mystery data hidden [22]. stego key may refer to a key or to the algorithm used to embed or retrieve the secret message [23]. the hidden message is concealed inside the cover image created by the sender using an embedding method. the receiver side receives the stego media. the mystery text is extractor from the stego media on a receiver's side using an extraction technique [22,24]. the fundamental benefit of steganography is the ability to hide information in image with a way that a human visual system cannot see, making it challenging to retrieve information without knowing the proper steps [25]. in order to carry out image steganography, a variety of techniques are available. these methods have either been developed in a spatial (sd)or transformed domain (td) [26]. using (sd) methods that forth right hide the bits of the mystery textin original image's pixel is the simplest way to conceal the pixels of the mystery image in (lsbs) of the cover image's pixel [27]. other spatial domain techniques (pvd) [28] and (emd) [29]. generally, the spatial steganography method has minimal computing complexity, a reasonably high embedding capacity, and is easy to apply [30]. the original image will be altered by using (dct) or (dwt), while the hidden image will be inserted by modulating coefficients in the relevant domain in the modified domain (dft) [27]. the spatial domain system is more vulnerable to attacks than the transform domain method. as opposed to that, it has a high computational time complexity and offers less room for message embedding. any stenographic scheme must meet the following four crucial evaluation criteria: payload, quality, robustness, and embedding effectiveness [2]. the quantity of information that is encoded within the carrier media is indicated by the payload, which is also known as capacity. on the other hand, the quality of the stego image is crucial for imperceptibility, which determines whether the genuine carrier media and the mystery data could be distinguished [31]. the term robustness refers to the ability to withstand various types of attacks, hacker attacks, and other intrusion-related manipulations. the number of cover pixel modifications required for a specific embedding rate is known as the embedding efficiency [2]. 2. related work a lot of data hiding approaches for telemedicine applications and other fields have been proposed in the past decade. in this section, the literature review of the existing works has been done. kich et al. in [32] suggested a novel method that replicated the hidden information in the edge pixels. it was based on over-segmenting images using modified simple linear iterative clustering, which allowed for the split of each image into a set of k regions known as a super pixel. the approach was superior in terms of embedding ability and imperceptibility, according to experimental results. the primary drawback of this strategy was the fact that it wasn't secure against all kinds of stego analysis assaults. dube et al. in [33] proposed a revolutionary edge-based steganography technique where the images' sharp edge areas were utilized to merely conceal the data. for this, the image was divided into groups of two pixels each, and the variation in pixel values between those groups was noted. the combination was utilized to conceal the data if this difference exceeded a predetermined value. compared to previous lsb and pvd techniques, this method produced better results, and enhanced the stego image's quality. this approach was unable to resist off outside stego attacks. gujjunoori et al. [34] suggested a reversible edge detection and data embedding method based on difference expansion (de). the der scheme, der layer-2 scheme, and deed scheme were the three suggested schemes that were used. despite the simplicity of the approach, the payload and psnr were low and complexity was substantial. suneetha [35] the method of canny edge detection was utilized. the key was retrieved after the message had been encoded using encryption methods. its edge image was obtained in order to conceal this key in the cover image. from this edge image, fibonacci pixels were chosen. then, these edge pixels were used to conceal the encryption key. fibonacci calculations added complexity to the process, which resulted in decreased psnr. wang et al. in [36] proposed an approach to increase the ability for health care images that scramble a cover image using the logistic map kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 14 before embedding the data while preserving the image's seed points (roi). it is manually excluded before to the embedding operation, and an adaptive embedding approach is used to conceal sensitive information inside the cover image utilizing the usual four least significant bits (4 lsb) of the cover image. puteaux et al, [37] suggested a reversible data concealing approach utilizing two methods depend on correction error prediction and linear chaotic method to cipher pixels of cover image by utilizing a reserved room before encryption and vacating room after encryption principles. the authors utilized msb concealing in the encrypted domain to avoid lsb attacks, and they achieved superior image quality with a high capacity on selected gray image only and does not use color images. kordov and stoyanov [38] suggested a new least significant bit stenography method depend on a hitzl-zele chaotic map to hide text in color images. they embedded three bits of the input sequence into the lsb of three-channel rgb and score a good visual image results compared with others similar methods but not mention to different geometric attacks analysis elkamchouchi et al. [39] proposed a method for concealing an 8-bit grayscale image. in order to facilitate insertion, writers use both 1d and 2d chaotic maps for time-consuming and attack-robustness inside 24bit true-color images in the selected spatial domain. to embed the hidden image in one or more lsbs on the chosen color channel, they used the red channel from the cover image's rgb color model. the authors only discussed the fundamental image quality metrics psnr and mse; other evaluations, such as ssim, correlation degree, etc., are essential for higher perceptual quality 3. edge detection as the point where rapid changes in intensity value occur, the edge is realized as the disparities in intensities. where the brightness of the image varies significantly between segments, the pixel values are recognized. the human visible system is extra critical to the sleek regions than the edge regions. the alteration in the edge regions are not visible because it has higher randomization properties. canny, sobel and laplace of gaussian (log) are the most often used edge detectors (ed) [25]. 3.1 (log) for edge detector recognizing target outlines inside an image and grouping the pixels into edge and non-edge classes are the main tasks of the(ed) in the scope of image operation. edges, which may be thought of as a collection of interconnected curve lines, are nothing more than an abrupt change in discontinuity of the density values of image's pixel. numerous edge detectors, including prewitt, canny, sobel, and (log), among others, have been proposed over the years [40]. because pixels are extremely sensitive to noise, the sobel and prewitt operators' drawback is erroneous results for the edge area. similar to this, the canny operator deals with complicated calculations and false zero crossing. the (log) uses gaussian smoothing with a bigger sigma's value and has the noise invariant property. additionally, the log operator tests a larger area surrounding the pixel and locates edges with greater accuracy. the laplacian approach uses the second derivative of the image to determine edges by looking for zero crossings. the laplacian is a metric of an image's second order spatial derivation that can be used to locate edges and other areas of abrupt change.. due of the laplacian filter's high sensitivity to noise in edge detection, gaussian smoothing is added before laplacian to mitigate its effects. the log operation is the name of this two-step procedure. the laplacianl(z,y) for the image's pixel intensity values i(z,y) is as follows: ( ) ( ) there are various methods for locating a roughly discrete convolution kernel that approximates the laplacian's effect. one potential kernel is kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 15 ( ) it is referred to as a negative laplacian because the focalsalient is negatory. by switching the components' signs, the positive laplacian can be established. the laplace and gaussian equations can be used to create the smoothing gaussian filter as follows: ( ) [ ] ( ) the image's homogenous area results in log being zero. the log now responds positively on the murkierpart and negatively on the illuminationpart when change happens. the response is zero distance away, positive to one.negative to the other, and zero distance away from the edge itself when two regions are separated by a sharp edge [8]. 4. shark smell optimization algorithm (sso) the shark smell optimization approach, which was developed in 2014 and can be regarded as one of the best optimization tools [41]. it was modeled after the way sharks naturally seek for prey in the ocean. a shark is an apex predator with a keen sense of smell that allows it to find even the smallest amount of blood in the vast ocean. the keen noses are capable of quickly identifying the smell's source. consequently, allow the shark to turn toward the location of possible prey. the shark's body has lateral lines that allow it to sense any pulses or vibrations made by its prey in the water. the ability of sharks to detect their prey and capture it is what allows them to survive in the ocean. similar to pso, sso provides a straightforward formula that only needs the shark's updated position and velocity. the concentration of the damaged prey's odor has a significant impact on how the shark moves. this indicates that the shark will move ahead and rotate in order to approach an area with a higher concentration of the odor. with the advent of local search, searching has become more precise and effective. in addition, it is simple to include the algorithm into software. as a result, sso method outperforms all previous algorithms. the sso algorithm has so far been utilized in a broadscope of implementation such as the power, medical, and energy systems. in addition, it has undergone minor changes in a few editions to enhance its functionality. sharks are noted for their foraging movements of forward and rotation, which enable them become a dominant predator in the ocean. they also have an excellent sense of smell. the initiation of the traditional sso method starts when a shark looks for injured prey inside of a randomly generated initial position of the shark. one blood source is assumed to exist for each wounded prey. the current situation can be stated as follows: [ ] ( ) when a shark detects the smell of blood, it moves with a particular velocity that is determined by: [ ] ( ) when a shark detects a lot of blood odor, its speed rises. as a result, it is possible to conceptualize the smell concentration as a tendency of the optimization objective function. the gradient of this objective function is used to alter the velocity. ( ) ( ) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 16 where 𝑗 = 1, … , 𝑁𝐷, 𝑖 = 1, … , 𝑁𝑃, =1, … , 𝑚𝑎 . the nd indicates number of decision variables of the optimization problem, np is population size and 𝑚𝑎 is number of iteration. shark quickens at a particular velocity submissive to adormancyrestriction ( ) 𝑎 ( ) 𝑎 is momentum rate. r1 and r2 in random number, the following equation describes a velocity limiter that restricts shark acceleration:: 𝑚𝑖 [ ( ) 𝑎 ] ( ) is velocity limiter. the updated position of shark in forwarding motion is determined by: ( ) where is the new shark’s location and is time interval.on the contrary, when looking for a better candidate solution, sharks also use a circular motion for a local seeking at everyphase. the formula is provided by: ( ) where 𝑚 = 1, … , 𝑀𝑖 = 1, … , 𝑁𝑃, = 1, … , 𝑚𝑎 . where a random number and m is the overall spots in local seeking in rotational motion and m is the number of every rotation grade. when joining m spotsbesetment local seeking, a close contour as rotational motion of shark can be acquired. the next location of sharks is chosen depend on the better location gainedamidst forward motion, and rotational motion, until reach kmax [42]. the algorithm of sso is summarized in algorithm (1) begin step1: initialization set parameters np, ,, 𝛼 , , ( = 1,2 … 𝑚𝑎 ) generate individual’s initial population generate each decision variable randomly initialize the stage counter = 1 for = 1 ∶ 𝑚𝑎 step2: forward movement calculate the updated velocity vector. gain new location of shark depend on the forward movement. step3: rotational movement obtain position of shark based on rotational movement, (𝑚 = 1, … ,) select next the best location of shark depend on the two movements, rotational and forward movements. end for set = + 1 step 3. best position choose the best location of shark depend on the optimum objective function in the last step of iteration. end algorithm (1): sso algorithm kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 17 5. suggested approach in this part, an effective approach for hiding the mystery information in the edges of the given cover media by using shark smell optimization is proposed by using java language. the proposed algorithm has 2 various parts, the transmitter’ part and the recipient’ part and comprises of three phases which are: edge detection, information hiding (embedding) and message extractor. the block scheme of the suggested method is displays in figure (1) figure 1: block scheme of the suggested approach 5.1 masking and divided image phase in order not to change the pixel values of the cover image and implement the hiding steps a mask of the cover image (ci)is taken and then divided it into four parts. where a set of operations is performed on this temporary image (masked image) and the results of those operations are projected onto the cover image, where the main goal of dividing the image into four sections is to facilitate apply edge detection and sso algorithms on the image, reduce complexity and increase security 5.2 edge detection phase edges, which can be described as a collection of interconnected curve lines, are nothing more than the abrupt change in discontinuities of the density pixels, values. due to the human visual system's limitations in identifying differences in the edge region, the edges of the cover media are appropriate regions for hiding information, the original media (ci) is separated into four non-superposition blocks. to construct edges image, log is enforced on a four blocks masked image (mi) instead of the four block cover image (ci). a non-edge pixel cannot withstand as many embedding bits as an edge pixel can. the proper selection of the threshold value which directly affects how the edge detection procedure turns out and is the main element of edge detection in this case. if the threshold value is set very small, several thick and fake edges will be produced. on the opposite hand, many edges might not even be detected if the threshold value selected is very big and the detected edges might be excessively segmented. to ensure hide all bits of secret message a high value of the threshold was chosen then it is iteratively decreased until number of edges are greater or equal to bits of secret message. next, whole of the traced edges' positions are identified. coinciding to every of the edge position value discovered, mystery message bits is embedded in pixels of cover media staying at that specific position by executing the suggested embedding method. during this stage, it is made sure that no more edge data will be stored when secret bits are inserted into the ci's pixel data. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 18 consequently, the payload grows significantly without sacrificing the goodness of stego image. figure 2 displays the cover media with dividing them to four sections and extracting their edges. algorithm (2) shows the steps of split (mi) and its edge detection figure 2: divided and edges detection of cover images (a) lena image (a) divided of lena(a) edges detection of lena (b) baboon image (b) divided of baboon (b) edges detection of baboon (c) pepper image (c) divided of pepper (c) edges detection of pepper (d) boat image (d) divided of boat(d) edges detection of boat (e) airplane image (e) divided of airplane (e) edges detection of airplane kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 19 input cover image (ci) output edge image (ei) begin step1: read cover image (ci) step2: perform pre-processing on the cover image (ci) to gain the (mi) step3: divide the (mi) into 2x2 non-overlapping blocks as (o), (m), (a) and (r) step3: determine edge of (o), (m), (a) and (r) blocks based on the variations in the values of its pixels step4: determine corner pixels of blocks (o), (m), (a) and (r) based on its intensity step5: set threshold (ts) value based on the edges number (en) of (mi) and bits secret number (bsn) where (bsn) > (en), where (ts) used to control the number of edge pixels step6: apply fuzzy detector on (o), (m), (a) and (r) step7: get edge region blocks (fo), (fm), (fa) and (fr) end algorithm (2): steps of edge detection phase 5.3 apply sso and embedding phase in this stage, the process of hiding a mystery text into the cover media is disputed.  firstly, secrecy data is changed into binary form and then split into four sections equally so that each section is hidden in a different section of the cover image.  secondly, store the edge pixels of the (ei) with its physical address of four block that determined by the log in a two-dimensional array (search spaces) as (omn), (mmn), (amn), (rmn) and (pmn) for the physical address.  thirdly, find the fitness value of each pixels and the best (optimal) pixel for each of the four blocks based on fitness function.  fourthly, after the distinctive positions were determined by the shark smell optimization, these positions are assigned (reflect) onto the cover image in order to be used to hide secret data using least significant bit technique. after completing the process of hiding in the four blocks, these blocks are merged together and the stego image is obtained. one of the major donating of the suggested method is chosen the positions of the optimal pixels in the all search spaces for the hiding procedure. this paper suggests the fitness function of the shark smell optimization to select the pixel location. the suggested fitness function based on the variance between optimal pixel and other pixels, entropy, and intensity of the seed points. the calculation of the variance, entropy, and intensity based on the mean of the adjacent seed points of the shark. algorithm (2) shows the steps of embedding phase kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 20 input edge region blocks (fo), (fm), (fa), (fr), secret message (sm) output stego image (si) begin step1: set parameters np, ,, 𝛼 , , ( = 1,2 … 𝑚𝑎 ) of sso step2: convert (sm) into binary form (bsm) step3: divided the (bsm) into four equal parts (p1,p2,p3,p4) step4: store the blocks (fo), (fm), (fa) and (fr) in 2-d array (search spaces) as (foa), (fma), (faa) and (fra) step5: store the physical pixels address of each four blocks in twodimension array as (ppa) step6: determine the number of pixels needed to hide the binary message step7: generate individual’s initial population of sso step8: assign one sso for each (foa), (fma), (faa) and (fra) step9: determine the start point of each sso in the (foa, fma, faa, fra) step10: define fitness function (fn), where (fn) = (intensity (i) + entropy (e) + variance (v))/3 step11: rest lsb of each pixels step12: find best pixel in each (foa), (fma), (faa) and (fra) based on fitness function where variance equal to zero step13: find fitness values by apply sso and using fitness function step14: update velocity, forward movement, rotational movement of sso of each block step15: repeat steps 10-14 until the optimal location (pixels) to achieve hiding gets selected step16: reflect the selected optimal pixels on the (ci) based on (ppa) step 17: divide secret message into four part step18: embed each part of secret message in the optimal pixels of (p1,p2,p3,p4) of the (ci) by using lsb technique step19: get stego image end algorithm (3): steps of embedding phase 5.4 extraction phase the stego and cover media have the same width, height and size of bits, without knowing the embedded algorithm, the recovered stego image cannot be decoded. the extractor procedure is the opposite of the concealing procedure, the details of this phase is shown in algorithm (4) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 21 input stego image output secret message begin step1: read stego image step2: set parameters np, ,, 𝛼 , , ( = 1,2 … 𝑚𝑎 ) of sso step3: get four blocks (fo), (fm), (fa), (fr) from stego image step4: apply log edge detector on four blocks step5: store (fo), (fm), (fa) and (fr) in 2-d array (search spaces) as (foa), (fma), (faa) and (fra) step6: store the physical pixels addresses of each four blocks in twodimension array as (ppa) step7: generate individual’s initial population of sso step8: assign one sso for each (foa), (fma), (faa), (fra) step9: determine the start point of each sso in the (foa), (fma), (faa) and (fra) step10: define fitness function (fn), where (fn) = (intensity (i) + entropy (e) + variance (v))/3 step11: rest lsb of each pixels step12: find best pixel in each (foa), (fma), (faa), (fra) based on fitness function where variance equal to zero step13: find fitness values by apply sso on (foa), (fma), (faa), (fra) based on fitness function step14: update velocity, forward movement, rotational movement of the sso of each block step15: repeat steps 10-14 until selected all embedding positions step16: reflect the selected positions on the stego image based on (ppa) step17: extract secret message from each blocks by using lsb technique step18: aggregate secret message from blocks step19: get secret message end algorithm (4): steps of extracting phase 6. results two widely accepted criteria, namely payload and stego-image quality, have been considered so as to examine the effectiveness of the proposed system. the payload metric reveals how many hidden bits are concealed in each pixel of the original media of distance m x n, also the (psnr) (mse), correlation coefficient (cc), unified averaged changing intensity (ucai), embedding capacity (payload), entropy, and histogram have all been utilized to examine the goodness of a stego media. five benchmark grayscale images with a dimension of 512 x 512 were utilizedto conduct the experiment. figure (2) displays set of cover media, divide cover image and edge cover image of the "lena", "baboon", "pepper", "boat" and airplane. as a result of the variation in image pixels, the number of edge pixels varies from one cover media to other. to visually examine the differences in pixel distribution between the original and stego images, histograms are used. in figure (3) the histograms of the cover media and stego media are contrasted where the displayed the histograms' pixel distribution is similar and there is not discernible various amidst the original and stego media. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 22 figure 3: cover images before and after divided and edges detection the (psnr) is calculated to gauge the visual goodness between the original media and stego media. the larger psnr value reference to best goodness of stego media while reverse reference to deformation, while the mse represents the quality of the stego media and it is smaller value reference to lower error rate. correlation coefficient (cc) is a technique for promotion the grade of eventuality that a linear relation subsists amidst two menstruation amounts where the (cc) has the value equal to one when the two images are conformable, and the value equal to zero when two images not conformable. the ucai test calculates the average intensity change amidst plain media and a stego media also used to analyze and test kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 23 the stego image resistance against differential attacks. the concealing payloadis measurement by the utmost number of concealing bitsper pixel (bpp). entropy is use to assessment the amount data of an image and to contrast the difference of data of plain media and stego media. table (1) shows the results of the measures that were applied on five images in evaluating the proposed system. the results proved the strength and effectiveness of the proposed system table 1: metric results image mse psnr cc uaci entropy lena 0.6512 49.99 0.999868 0.04170 5.22209 baboon 0.7763 49.23 0.999843 0.04330 5.22212 pepper 1.0353 47.97 0.999790 0.04998 5.22219 airplane 0.9824 48.20 0.999801 0.04816 5.22214 boat 0.8433 48.87 0.999829 0.04498 5.22213 the effectiveness of the suggested approach is contrasted with another approaches [43, 44, 45, 46, 47] in idioms of capacity and psnr on ‘lena’, ‘baboon’, ‘pepper’’ images which have been outlined in table 2 and figure (4). where the suggested approachrealizedbestoutcomes than another approaches, where it could hide more bits of information with decreased image fineness castration. nevertheless, the entire psnr values guarantee that the stegomediagoodness deviation is very low and that watcher cannot readily distinguish amidst the cover media and the stego media table 2: compare between suggested approach and other approaches methods c & psnr lena image baboon image pepper image arham et al. [43] c 0.74 0.72 0.74 psnr 42.06 31.68 38.63 wang et al. [44] c 0.74 0.72 0.74 psnr 44.8 31.33 39.82 parah et al. [45] c 0.75 0.75 0.75 psnr 46.36 46.37 46.12 parah et al. [46] c 0.75 0.75 0.75 psnr 46.37 46.37 46.38 govind et al [47] c 0.75 0.75 0.75 psnr 48.01 48.21 47.69 proposed method c 0.75 0.75 0.75 psnr 49.99 49.23 47.97 figure 4: comparison between proposed method and other methods in the terms of psnr and payload 0 20 40 60 lena image baboon image pepper image p s n r v a lu e s arham et al. [35] wang et al. [36] parah et al. [37] parah et al. [38] govind et al.[39] proposed method kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 24 7. conclusion in this paper the steganography is executed using log and sso algorithm, where the original image is disintegrated into four parts. log is applied on each block for finding edge areas, where hiding the secret message in severe edges causes minimal castration in compare to the sleek regions. sso technique is used to fine the better pixels location in the edge area to hide the mystery information. the aim of using log algorithm is to raise the payload capability that can preserve the goodness of imperceptibility, while the aim of using sso and divided the cover image into four parts is enhance the goodness of stego media and raise the security where the secret message cannot be retrieved from the stego image without knowing the algorithm used and its parameters. the empirical outcomes display that the suggested method do best results in idioms of psnr, mes, uaci, cc, histogram and entropy also it confirm the efficacy of the suggested approach above some other approaches in idioms of payload and stego-image goodness also enhance the concealing capability with an admit domain of imperceptibility, robustness and security. reference [1] b. t. ahmed and o. y. abdulhameed, "fingerprint recognition based on shark smell optimization and genetic algorithm," international journal of advances in intelligent informatics, vol. 6, no. 2, , pp. 123-134, https://doi.org/10.26555/ijain.v6i2.502, july 2020. 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2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.39 designing, manufacturing and testing of a micro combined heat and power (micro-chp) system masood ebrahimi mechanical engineering dept. university of kurdistan, iran ma.ebrahimi@uok.ac.ir mansour lahonian mechanical engineering dept. university of kurdistan, iran mlahonian@uok.ac.ir sirwan farhadi mechanical engineering dept. university of kurdistan, iran s.farhadi@uok.ac.ir abstract: in the present paper a micro-chp is designed, built and tested based on a 5 kw diesel engine that is chosen to recover its water jacketing and exhaust waste energy and convert it into hot water. the hot water may be used as heating source or domestic hot water. heat recovery for the lube oil, radiation, convection, and conduction to ambient is not used since they all count for only 13% of the inlet fuel energy. the results include the main characteristics in the design section, some pictures of the main components, the temperature of exhaust, water jacketing and tap water at different points of the system. in addition the heat recovery at different engine loads is also given. the experiments and results show that the overall efficiency of the chp system can reach 60% which means more than 30% increase of efficiency when comparing with the case when only electricity was supposed to be produced by the engine. keywords: combined heat and power, chp, heat recovery, energy efficiency 1. introduction while lots of works and investigations are devoted to encourage renewable energy and its related technologies such as wind turbines, hydro-power systems, solar panels, biogas reactors, etc, it is essential to pay more attention to the fossil fuels, its related technologies and possible methods to increase the overall efficiency of energy conversion. statistics and predictions published by energy information administration (eia) [1] has proved that until 2012 only 12% of the total world energy consumption was supplied by renewable energies, and the remaining 88% was supplied by different fossil fuels. eia has also predicted that the share of renewable energies would become 16% until 2040. it means that at the year of 2040 still 84% of the world energy demand would be supplied by the fossil fuels. consequently, consistent with these results the fossil fuels would be the main energy source for the human to the mid-century. as a result, although developing the renewable energies and the related technologies to raise their share in the world energy consumption is important; optimizing the existing energy processes and related technologies is essential to reduce emission production and increase the overall efficiency of energy systems. hence, cleaner energy systems and optimized energy processes in industry are the foundation of cleaner production. in addition to the methods introduced to enhance power generation efficiency, regular energy audit, punctual maintenance and correct operation of rotary and stationary energy converter equipments, and energy management can assist to keep the thermal efficiency of energy systems as high as possible [2, 3]. however, the fuel energy utilization can be improve further especially in power generation systems such as gas turbines and internal combustion engines [4]. combined heat and power or chp, is among the most popular methods that is still under investigation to increase fuel energy utilization in power generation units [5]. if the heat recovered in the chp system could be used for cooling purposes the system is called combined cooling heating and power or cchp which is also called trigeneration. the cchp units are capable of producing simultaneous cooling, heating and power/electricity by using a single energy source. the cooling system is usually an absorption chiller, adsorption chiller, ejector cooling system, heat pump, compression chiller, or a combination of these systems. the cchp and chp cycles can be coupled with different renewable energy systems such as solar heating, photovoltaic cells, and wind turbines as well. the main components of a chp cycle are the prime mover, heat recovery, and control system. if the chp is supposed to become a cchp the cooling system will be another main component of the cycle. the power generator unit (pgu) or prime mover of a chp system may be chosen among different types of fuel cells [6], micro steam or micro gas turbines [7], industrial large size gas turbines [8], industrial steam turbines[9] , stirling engines [10], internal combustion engines [11] etc. deciding about the pgu of a chp cycle requires gathering and analyzing so much technical, economical, environmental and social data about the pgus. the technical data may include the thermal efficiency, power to heat ratio, exergy efficiency, etc. the environmental characteristics to be considered in the decision making are noise generation and emission productions such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxide, soot, particulates etc. the economical criteria usually used are net present value, payback period, internal rate of return, present value premium, etc. the social or miscellaneous concerns also important in the decision making step. examples of these concerns include footprint of equipment, easiness of operation and maintenance, availability of spare parts, guarantee/ warrantee services, sanctions over some technologies for some countries, etc [12-14]. since some of the characteristics can be found only qualitatively, general statistical methods cannot be used for decision-making. therefore by using decision making methods such as grey incident method [12], and fuzzy logic [13] right prime mover would be chosen. m. ebrahimi et al [14] used grey incident approach and fuzzy logic simultaneously to choose the right prime mover for a residential-cchp system in five different climates of iran; they also made a comparison between the results of two algorithms. they concluded that internal combustions engines are the best choice for all climates of iran. in the present paper a micro-chp system is designed, manufactured and tested. except for the engine the rest of components were built by the team and assembled to produce 5 kw of electricity and recover at least 5 kw of heat at the full load operation. it means that in this case the cycle efficiency would be doubled. the waste heat of exhaust gases and water jacketing are recovered as hot water that can be used for heating purpose or hot tap. the results show significant fuel saving. 2. modeling and design: the heart of the micro-chp which is supposed to be built is a diesel engine with the following characteristics given in table 1. table 1. the diesel engine characteristics parameter magnitude nominal electricity, e (kw) 5 fuel consumption, f (kg/s) 0.0004 electrical efficiency, (%) 27 exhaust temperature, ( ) 540 exhaust flow rate, ̇ ( ) 0.0111 water jacketing, ̇ ( ) 0.17 water jacketing inlet temperature, ( ) 95 water jacketing outlet temperature, ( ) 103 the fuel energy would be consumed by engine for producing electricity and heat losses. the heat losses appear in the exhaust gases, water jacketing, oil, and other losses such as friction and radiation. the energy balance for the engine can be modeled as below: (1) e roilwjexe roilwjex e qqqqf qqqqef       (2) tcmq p   in which ex q is the exhaust energy, wj q is the water jacketing, oil q is the oil energy, and r q is the other losses such as friction and radiation. a heat recovery system has been designed to recover the heat losses from the exhaust and water jacketing. a the heat recovery system for the exhaust gas is a shell and tube heat exchanger and a plate heat exchanger is used to recover the heat from the water jacketing. the schematic of the micro-chp cycle is presented in fig.1. figure 1. the schematic diagram of the micro-chp and shell and tube (he1) and plate (he2) heat exchangers as it can be seen from the fig.1, the main water first enters the plate heat exchanger at point 1 and receives heat from water jacketing. this exchanger is supposed to decrease the water jacketing temperature from 103 to 95 . then the preheated water enters the shell and tube exchanger at point 2 to be heated by the exhaust gases. to avoid condensation and corrosion in the gas side of shell and tube exchanger its temperature should stay above the dew point. considering the discussions presented, the temperature and mass flow rate at each point of the cycle can be predicted by using the first law of thermodynamics. after determining the thermodynamics of the cycle, the heat recovery systems should be designed and their heating surface should be calculated. to achieve the highest possible heat transfer the hot and cold streams in both the he1 and he2 are supposed to be counter flow. in this case the logarithmic mean temperature difference (lmtd) of the hot and cold streams can be calculated as below: (3) out,coldin,hot in,coldout,hot lmtd ttt ttt ) t t ln( tt t     2 1 2 1 21       to determine the heat surface area of each heat exchanger the following equation should be used: (4) in which u is the total heat transfer coefficient and a is heat surface area of the exchanger. q can be the part of heat which is supposed to be transferred from the water jacketing or exhaust gases to the main water. the heat transfer coefficient for a clean plate or tube having cold and hot stream on each side (or inside and outside of tube) can be determined as below: (5)          w oo w w w coldcoldhothot lk )ddln( forplate ak t r r hahaua 2 111 in which t and l are the plate thickness and tube length , w k is the conduction heat transfer coefficient of tube or plate. in addition hot h and cold h are the convection heat transfer coefficient for the hot and cold streams. in the shell and tube heat exchanger exhaust gases flow in the shell side and water is in the tube side. furthermore hot a and cold a are the area which that hot and cold streams is in contact with. 3. results: the micro-chp system is now designed, built and tested. in the following some sample results for the design, structure and test are supposed to be presented. 3.1. design results: the cycle presented in fig. 1 is modeled thermodynamically, the energy balance for each component is calculated, the temperature and mass flow rate at each point is determined. the results of energy balance are given in table 2. table 2. the energy balance of engine parameter kw % fuel energy rate, f 18.4 100 electricity, e 5 27 exhaust energy rate 5.38 29 water jacketing energy rate 5.75 31 oil and other energy rate losses 2.6 13 as it can be seen only 27% of the fuel energy is converted to electricity, and the rest of 73% is wasted through exhaust, water jacketing, lube oil, friction, radiation and etc. since the share of oil and other energy losses is small, heat recovery for this part is not designed. however the waste heat through exhaust and water jacketing are significant with high quality. therefore heat recovery systems are designed for the exhaust and water jacketing. the temperature at each state point of the fig. 1 is also given in table 3. as reported in table 3. table 3. the temperature and mass flow rate at each point of the cycle point ̇ 1 20 0.0666 2 40.6 0.0666 3 60 0.0666 4 103 0.17 5 95 0.17 6 540 0.0111 7 70 0.0111 according to the results the water jacketing increases the main water temperature from 20 to 40.6 and then the exhaust increases it temperature to 60 . it is convenient since each of water jacketing and exhausts count for same share of fuel energy that is about 30%. the heat recovery systems for the jacketing and exhaust are also designed and the results are reported in table 4. table 4. the main characteristics of the designed heat recovery systems magnitude the main characteristics of the plate heat exchanger (he1) 3.30 total heat transfer coefficient, u p la te h e a t e x c h a n g e r 0.026 heat surface area, 60.21 lmtd ( ) 0.0041 effective area of each plate, 0.0035 projected area of each plate, 9 total number of plates 0.122 total heat transfer coefficient, u s h e ll a n d t u b e h e a t e x c h a n g e r 0.175 heat surface area, 200 lmtd ( ) 8 tube inside diameter(mm) 10 tube outside diameter(mm) stainless steel shell/tube material 19 number of tubes 70 shell inside diameter (mm) 0.2 tube length (m) 5 clearance between tubes(mm) 0.1 baffle to baffle distance (m) 3.2. construction results: the data presented in the previous section was used to build the heat recovery systems. for example fig. 2 shows the shell and tube heat exchanger built for the exhaust heat recovery. figure 2. the shell and tube (up) and plate (down) heat exchangers in addition filters are constructed for the engine inlet air and exhaust before entering the shell and tube heat exchanger. figure 3. the filters used for the exhaust (up) and engine air inlet (down) in addition to these components other components such as silencer, fittings, monitoring system, etc. were built and the components assembled as shown in fig. 4. figure 4. the micro-chp package 3.3. test results: the constructed micro-chp is equipped with a monitoring system to monitor different important parameters of the cycle, including voltage, ampere, temperature at different points and water flow. fig.5 shows the electricity and heat production by the micro-chp cycle at different loads. as it can be seen in all load conditions heat production is higher than the electricity generation, especially when the engine is operating below 50% of its full load or overloaded. figure 6. heat and electricity produced by the microchp 4. conclusions: a micro-chp is designed, constructed, and tested to produce combined heat and power. the results showed that the micro-chp is able to recover the heat from the exhaust and water jacketing and the overall efficiency is above 60% which means at least 30% increase in efficiency. this system can save significant amount of fuel and reduce emission production. 5. reference [1] international energy outlook (ieo) 2016 and eia, analysis of the impacts of the clean power plan (may 2015). http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=527&t=1 , accessed on 20 september 2016 [2] a. hasanbeigi, l. price, industrial energy audit guidebook: guidelines for conducting an energy audit in industrial facilities, china energy group energy analysis department environmental energy technologies division, october 2010 [3] s. das, m. mukherjee, s. mondal, detailed energy audit of thermal power plant equipment, world scientific news, 22, 106-127, 2015 [4] j. h. horlock, advanced gas turbine cycles, elsevier science ltd, 2003 [5] m. ebrahimi, a. keshavarz, combined cooling, heating and power, decision-making, design and optimization, elsevier, first edition, 2014 [6] m. ebrahimi, i. moradpoor, combined solid oxide fuel cell, micro-gas turbine and organic rankine cycle for power generation (sofc-mgt-orc), energy conversion and management, 116:120– 133, 2016 [7] m. ebrahimi, k. ahookhosh, integrated energyexergy optimization of a novel micro-cchp cycle based on mgt-orc and steam ejector refrigerator, applied thermal engineering, 102: 1206–1218, 2016 [8] c. yang, z. huang, z. yang, x. ma, analytical off-design characteristics of gas turbine-based cchp system, energy procedia, 75: 1126 – 1131, 2015 [9] m. ameri, a. behbahaninia, a. a. tanha, thermodynamic analysis of a tri-generation system based on micro-gas turbine with a steam ejector refrigeration system, energy 35: 2203-2209, 2010 [10] x.q. kong, r.z. wang, ,x.h. huang, energy efficiency and economic feasibility of cchp driven by stirling engine, energy conversion and management 45(9-10)1433-1442, 2004 [11] m. ebrahimi, a. keshavarz, designing an optimal solar collector (orientation, type and size) for a hybrid-cchp system in different climates, energy and buildings 108, 10-22, 2015 [12] j.-j. wang, y.-y. jing, c.-f. zhang, x.-t. zhang, g.-h. shi, integrated evaluation of distributed triple-generation systems using improved grey incidence approach, energy, vol. 33, no.9 , 1427– 1437, 2008 [13] y.-y. jing, h. bai, j.-j. wang, a fuzzy multicriteria decision-making model for cchp systems driven by different energy sources, energy policy, vol. 42, pp. 286–296, 2012 [14] m. ebrahimi, a. keshavarz, prime mover selection for a residential micro-cchp by using two multicriteria decision-making methods, energy and buildings,55, 322–331, 2012 acknowledgments the authors would like to acknowledge the electricity distribution company of kurdistan, iran for the financial support of this project. http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=527&t=1 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0196890403002528 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0196890403002528 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0196890403002528 https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=nzwqnfsaaaaj&citation_for_view=nzwqnfsaaaaj:nhqrsupf_l8c https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=nzwqnfsaaaaj&citation_for_view=nzwqnfsaaaaj:nhqrsupf_l8c https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=nzwqnfsaaaaj&citation_for_view=nzwqnfsaaaaj:nhqrsupf_l8c  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.25 enhancing fire resistance of steel bridge girders using external fire insulation esam m. aziz department of city planning technical college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq esam.m.aziz@gmail.com abstract: fire in steel bridges can be a significant hazard; however, no provisions are specified for fire resistance of bridge structural members in current codes and standards. this paper presents results from numerical analysis on the response of steel bridge girders under fire conditions. a finite element model is developed to evaluate the fire resistance of typical steel girders in bridges using fire insulation with different configurations and thicknesses. the first configuration comprised of applying fire insulation on the web plate of the steel girder, while in the second configuration, the steel section is insulated. results from numerical analysis indicate that fire resistance and failure mode in steel bridge girders is highly influenced by the insulation configuration and thickness. applying 25.4mm fire insulation on web plate of steel bridge can increase the fire resistance up to 53 minutes, while applying same insulation thickness on steel section can result in 110 minutes fire resistance. keywords: bridge fires, fire resistance, steel bridge girders, finite element analysis. 1. introduction bridges are to be designed for many hazards such as earthquake, impact, and wind. one of the hazards that might occur in case of bridges is fire. fire in bridges has become an increasing problem in recent decades due to increasing of transportation of combustible materials, [1, 2]. damage or collapse of bridges arising from such fires can lead to significant economic loss and traffic delay. (see figure 1). however, to date there are no specific fire resistance provisions in bridge design codes and standards to enhance structural fire safety of bridges [3, 4]. this is in contrast to buildings where enough fire resistance is provided to prevent collapse in the event of a fire. the main reason of bridge fires is crashing of fuel transporting trucks and burning of gasoline underneath the bridge. these hydrocarbon fires are much more intense, as compared to building fires, and grow at a rapid heating pace and produce very high peak temperature within first five minutes. in some cases, such severe fires can pose a risk to stability of structural members and can result in partial or complete collapse of bridges. stability of a bridge under such fire exposure depends on key factors, namely; fire intensity, material type, and characteristics of structural members [2]. the fire response of structural members in bridges can be different than those in building. this is due to differences in fire severity, applied load ratio, boundary conditions, fire insulations, and sectional dimensions of structural members. therefore, the fire safety information that is specially established for structural members in buildings might not be applied directly for bridge structural members. there is only limited research that has been carried out on fire resistance of structural members of bridges [5-12]. most of these studies focused on assessing fire response of steel bridge, while very few of these studies aimed to enhance the fire resistance of steel bridge girders [2, 12]. this paper discusses results from numerical studies on enhancing the fire resistance of steel bridge girders exposed to fire using application of fire insulations. figure 1. oakland highway bridge collapse under fire due to gasoline tanker crashing, california, usa, 2007 2. numerical modeling a numerical model is developed using ansys software program for tracing the response of fire exposed steel bridge girders [13]. uncoupled thermo-mechanical analysis was undertaken for tracing thermal and structural response of a bridge girder. structural components of the composite girder (shown in figure 2(a)), including steel girder, concrete slab, shear studs and stiffeners, were discretized with different elements available in ansys. the thermal analysis of the steel-concrete girder is carried out using solid70 and surf152 elements. to simulate the steel girder, slab, and the stiffeners, solid70 elements are used. solid70 is a 3-d element, capable for three-dimensional thermal conduction. surf152 element is utilized for simulating surface effects such as thermal radiation and heat convection. the discretization used for thermal analysis is shown in figure 2(b). in thermal analysis, thermal properties for mailto:esam.m.aziz@gmail.com steel and concrete at elevated temperatures; including thermal conductivity, specific heat and thermal expansion, were provided as input into ansys program and these properties are assumed based on relations specified in eurocodes 1, 2, and 3 [14, 15, 16]. in structural analysis, shell181 elements were used to model the bottom flange, web, top flange and stiffeners of the steel girder, while the concrete slab was modeled with solid185 elements. these elements have the capability to account for plasticity, stress stiffening, and large strain effects. to simulate the composite action between the top flange of the steel girder and the concrete slab, 3-d nonlinear surface-to-surface fully bonded contact elements (conta174/ targe170) are used. temperatures generated from thermal analysis were applied as a thermal loading on the structural elements to simulate conditions of fire exposure on steel girder. the high temperature mechanical properties (stress-strain relationships) of steel and concrete from eurocode 2 and eurocode 3 provisions are used and these relations are provided as input into ansys program [15, 16]. the 3-d structural model for structural analysis is shown in figure 2(c). under fire exposure, steel bridge girders experience high temperatures and thus web shear buckling might be the dominant failure mode due to higher thickness of web plate as compared to the flanges. furthermore, significant deflections can occur under fire conditions due to high thermal gradients along the girder crosssection, and due to rapid deterioration of strength and stiffness of steel. therefore, web shear buckling (instability) and deflection criteria were also applied in defining failure. the failure is attained when the midspan deflection of the girder exceeds (l/30) or when web out-of-plane displacement leads to runaway displacement [17]. figure 2. 3-d discretization of the typical steel girder used in numerical analysis 3. model validation the developed numerical model was validated against data from fire resistance tests on typical steel bridge girders (named as sg2 and sg3) carried out at michigan state university [8]. steel girders sg2 and sg3 are plate girders with web slenderness (d/tw) of 123. these girders were tested under astm e119 fire exposure and subjected to applied loading of 40% and 33% of their flexural capacity, respectively. this is equal to 56% of their shear capacity. the developed model was validated for both thermal and structural response. results from numerical analysis were compared with data measured during fire tests. for thermal response validation, predicted steel and concrete temperatures are compared against corresponding temperatures measured in fire tests as shown in figure 3(a). predicted temperatures from the analysis match well with data measured from fire tests for entire fire exposure duration, with minor differences. this is due to variation of heat transfer parameters used in numerical analysis as compared to actual conditions present in the furnace conditions. as part of structural response validation, mid-span deflections predicted by numerical model are compared with those measured in fire tests (see figure 3(b)). mid-span deflections from ansys compare well with those measured during fire tests. also, failure time predicted from analysis match well with failure time observed during fire test with slight variation in case of girder sg3. (a) thermal response (b) structural response figure 3. comparison of predicted and measured thermal and structural response in steel girders sg2, and sg3 4. numerical analysis the validated numerical model is applied to trace the fire response of a typical steel bridge girder. in the analysis, the selected girder shown in figure 4 is subjected to a given fire scenario and load level of 30% of room temperature flexural capacity of the girder. results from structural analysis are evaluated in terms of mid-span deflection and web out-of-plane displacement (near the support) as a function of fire exposure time to quantify the effect of fire insulation on fire resistance of steel girders. (a) longitudinal section (b) traverse section near supports figure 4. typical steel bridge girder used in analysis 4.1. enhancing fire resistance in steel bridge girder in this study, two insulation configurations are proposed to enhance fire resistance of steel bridge girders using different thicknesses. summary of the numerical analysis results are illustrated in table 1. table 1: summary results of test parameters from numerical analysis insulation configuration insulation thickness (mm) constant parameters fire resistance (minutes) applying insulation on web plate (2 sides) 6.4 load level=30%, hydrocarbon fire, d/tw =50 19 12.7 31 19 43 25.4 53 applying insulation on steel section (3 sides) 6.4 load level=30%, hydrocarbon fire, d/tw =50 28 12.7 48 19 80 25.4 110 4.2 apply fire insulation on web plate results from previous research studies on fire response of steel bridge girders show that high web slenderness in steel bridge girder (thinner web plate as compared to flanges) makes steel girder more susceptible to web bucking due to rapid increase of temperature in the web as compared to flanges [10, 18]. this result in failure through web shear buckling that occurs earlier than flexural failure mode. therefore, one of the feasible ways to enhance the fire resistance of steel girder in bridges is through insulating the web plate from both sides. to study the effect of insulating web plate on the fire response of steel bridge girder, four insulation thicknesses are applied including; 6.4mm, 12.7mm, 19mm, and 25.4mm. the cross-sectional temperature profile in the girder for 25.4mm insulation thickness case under hydrocarbon fire is plotted in figure 5, while the structural response of the steel girder under these cases is plotted in figure 6. results show that applying 12.7mm of fire insulation on web increases the fire resistance from 14 to 31 minutes. furthermore, using thicker insulation on the web (of 25.4mm) can increase fire resistance to 53 minutes. this is due to thermal effect of insulation that results in lower temperatures in the web. as a result, the shear capacity of the girder degrades at a slower pace. therefore, no web buckling is indicated in figure 6(b) when insulation applied on the web. the insulated web results in lower temperature progression in the bottom flange to some extend due to redistribution of the heat in the section, but without decreasing the thermal gradients across the section significantly. for these reasons, the failure mode in the girder altered from web shear buckling to flexural bending. figure 5. progression of cross-sectional temperatures in steel bridge girder with 25.4mm insulation thickness on web plate (a) mid-span deflection (b) web out-of plane displacement figure 6. enhancing fire resistance of a steel bridge girder through applying fire insulation on the web plate (2 sides) 4.3 apply fire insulation on steel girder section results from previous section (applying fire insulation on web plate) show that insulating web plate from two sides, enhances the fire resistance in steel bridge girders by protecting web plate, as a result prevent failure through web shear buckling. however, when the web is well insulated, the failure occurs through flexural yielding since the bottom flange is not insulated and can experience rapid raise in temperature. therefore, the other way to enhance the fire resistance of steel bridge girders is to insulate the steel girder on all three sides. to see the effect of insulation the steel section on the fire response of steel bridge girders, four insulation thicknesses are applied; 6.4mm, 12.7mm, 19mm, and 25.4mm. the temperature profile in the girder for 25.4mm insulation thickness case under hydrocarbon fire is plotted in figure 7, while the structural response of the steel girder under these cases is plotted in figure 8. figure 7. progression of cross-sectional temperatures in steel bridge girder for 25.4mm insulation thickness on steel section it can be seen that using 12.7 mm fire insulation increases fire resistance from 14 to 48 minutes. furthermore, increasing the insulation thickness to 25.4 mm can increase the fire resistance to 110 minutes. this is due to the presence of insulation that leads to slower raise in web and flanges temperatures. also, it can be seen the extent of mid-span deflection in figure 8 is much lower as compared to mid-span deflection in figure 6 for the first 10 min of fire exposure. this is due to low thermal gradients generated in the case of insulating the whole section of the girder as compared to high thermal gradients generated in the case of insulating only the web. (a) mid-span deflection (b) web out-of plane displacement figure 8. enhancing fire resistance of a steel bridge girder through applying fire insulation on the steel section (3 sides) 5. conclusions based on the results of numerical studies the following points can be concluded: 1. steel girders in bridges can experience failure in less than 20 minutes under hydrocarbon fire exposure. 2. under hydrocarbon fire exposure, web shear buckling is the dominant failure mode. therefore protecting web plate can enhance the fire resistance of steel bridge girder. 3. the most effective way to enhance fire resistance of steel bridge girders is through provision of external fire insulation. 4. applying 25.4mm thick fire insulation on the web in steel bridge girder can enhance fire resistance from 14 minutes to 53 minutes. 5. applying insulation thickness greater than 12 mm on the web changes the failure mode from web shear buckling to flexural yielding. therefore, in order to enhance the fire resistance beyond an hour rating, fire insulation is to be applied on three sides of the steel girder section. 6. applying 25.4mm thick fire insulation on the entire steel bridge girder section can enhance fire resistance up to 110 minutes. 6. references [1] v.k. kodur, l. gu, m.e. garlock “review and assessment of fire hazard in bridges”. transportation research board, (2172): pp. 2329, 2010. [2] v.k. kodur, e.m. aziz, m.m. dwaikat “evaluating fire resistance of steel girders in bridges”. asce journal of bridge engineering, vol. 18: pp. 633-643, 2013. [3] aashto. aashto lrfd bridge design specifications. edition 4, american association of state highway and transportation officials, washington dc, 2007. [4] nfpa 502. standards for road tunnels, bridges, and other limited access highways. edition 2011. [5] e.m. aziz, v.k. kodur “an approach for evaluating the residual strength of fire exposed bridge girders”. journal of constructional steel research, vol. 88: pp. 34-42, 2013. [6] v. vimonsatit, k. tan, z. qian “testing of plate girder web panel loaded in shear at elevated temperature”. journal of structural engineering, vol. 133(6): pp. 815-824, 2007. [7] v.k. kodur, e.m. aziz “effect of temperature on creep in astm a572 high-strength lowalloy steels”. journal of materials and structures, vol. 48(6): pp. 1669-1677, 2014. [8] e.m. aziz, v.k. kodur, j. d. glassman, m. e. garlock “behavior of steel bridge girders under fire conditions”. journal of constructional steel research, vol. 106: pp. 11-22, 2015. [9] e.m. aziz, v.k. kodur “effect of temperature and cooling regime on mechanical properties of high-strength low-alloy steel”. journal of fire and materials, vol. 40 (7): pp. 926-939, 2015. [10] e.m. aziz “response of fire exposed steel bridge girders”. dissertation (phd) submitted to department of civil and environmental engineering, at michigan state university, east lansing, usa, 2015. [11] j.d. glassman, m.e. garlock, e.m. aziz, v.k. kodur “modeling parameters for predicting the ultimate postbuckling shear strength of steel plate girders”. journal of constructional steel research, vol. 121: pp. 136-143, 2016. [12] e.m. aziz, v.k. kodur, m.z. naser “strategies for enhancing fire performance of steel bridges”. journal of engineering structures, vol. 131: pp. 446-458, 2016. [13] ansys. ansys metaphysics. version 14.5 ansys inc. canonsburg, pa, usa, 2013. [14] european committee for standardization (cen). en 1991-1-2: 2002. eurocode 1: actions on structures. part 1.2 general action-action on structures exposed to fire. cen, brussels, belgium, 2002. [15] european committee for standardization (cen). en 1992-1-2: 2004 eurocode 2: design of concrete structures. part 1.2 general rulesstructural fire design. cen, brussels, belgium, 2004. [16] european committee for standardization (cen). en 1993-1-2: 2005 eurocode 3: “design of steel structures. part 1.2 general rules-structural fire design. cen, brussels, belgium, 2005. [17] d.e. wainman, b.r. kirby compendium of uk standard fire test data for unprotected steel-1. published by british steel technical and swinden laboratories, rotherham, uk, 1989. [18] v.k. kodur, e.m. aziz “factors governing response of steel bridge girders under fire conditions”. proceeding of 9th structural in fire (sif) conference. princeton university, princeton, usa, 2016. biography esam m. aziz, has ph.d in structural fire engineering from michigan state university in usa. his research work mainly focuses on evaluation of fire resistance of concrete and steel structural system through fire experiments and numerical modeling; characterization of materials at elevated temperatures. also, he is involved in designing structures for fire safety, and assessing structural system in buildings/ bridges after fire exposure. https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3i801g4aaa aj kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) journal homepage: http://www.spu.edu.iq/kjar issn 2411-7684 (print) – 2411-7706 (online) march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 66 kjar short article dactylogyrus dulkeiti bychowsky, 1936 (monogenea: dactylogyride): first occurrence on the gills of carassius auratus linnaeus, 1758 from dukan lake in kurdistan region, iraq younis s. abdullah1* and shamall m. a. abdullah1,2 1department of medical laboratory, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, kurdistan region, iraq. 2department of fish resource and aquatic animal, salahaddin university, erbil, kurdistan region, iraq. *corresponding author: younis.abdullah@spu.edu.iq received│december 28, 2015 accepted│february 02, 2016 abstract this study presents the first record of the monogenean parasite dactylogyrus dulkeiti bychowsky, 1936 on gill filaments of the crucian carp carassius auratus in the kurdistan region of iraq. fifty two fishes were collected from dukan lake that is located in the northwest of sulaimani city from april to the end of july 2015. the prevalence of this parasite was 7.69% and the mean of intensity was 8.5. the description and measurement of this parasite has been discussed in details in the current work. the aim of the study is to indicate the parasitic fauna of an exotic species of fish that introduced in dukan lake in kurdistan region of iraq. key words: dactylogyrus dulkeiti, carassius auratus, dukan lake, kurdistan region, iraq. introduction it has been estimated that nearly 53 species of freshwater fishes inhabit iraqi territory. among them, approximately nine species of fish considered to be imported to the freshwater of iraq (coad, 2010). carassius auratus is one of those exotic freshwater species that introduced into the iraqi freshwater, the native distribution is in northern asia and china (coad, 2010). c. auratus linnaeus, (1758) has been widely introduced to garden ponds and released from aquaria in temperate to warm waters worldwide including iraq. monogenea are permanent ectoparasites on the body surface or gills of marine, brackish, or fresh water fishes and in rare cases are exist as endoparasites in nasal cavities, ureters, urinary bladder, or alimentary canal of fishes, amphibians, reptiles, or mammals (margolis and kabata, 1984). the most important monogenean parasites (flukes) in fish are the dactylogyrids and gyrodactylids (amlacher, 1970). dactylogyrus causes irritation, excessive mucus production and create portals for entry for bacterial invasion (reed et al., 1996). the genus dactylogyrus from iraqi freshwater fish was first described by ali et al. (1986). this study describes monogenean dactylogyrus dulkeiti from the gill of c. auratus (family: cyprinidae) which has not been recorded before in kudistan region of iraq. this parasite was caught http://www.spu.edu.iq/kjar mailto:younis.abdullah@spu.edu.iq kjar short article dactylogyrus dulkeiti in kurdistan, younis & shamall, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 67 in the dukan lake located in the northwest of sulaimany city of kurdistan region of iraq. materials and methods study area: dukan lake is the largest lake in the iraqi kurdistan region. it’s located about 65 km northwest of sulaimaniy city, in the north of kurdistan region-iraq. it is situated 34º.5¯ 36º.3¯ north latitude and 43º.17¯46º.24¯ east longitude, at an altitude of 511 m of the sea level. the surface area is between 48270 km2 and the lake capacity is 6.8x10 m3 (abdullah, 2009). sampling: a total of 52 c. auratus were collected from dukan lake, by local fishermen using gill netting twice monthly during the period from april to the end of july 2015. the fishes were placed in a cool box with the local lake water, and transferred immediately to the laboratory as soon as possible and were examined within 24 hours after their capture. the fishes were identified according to coad (2010). in the laboratory, the gill arches from both sides were separated, kept moist in petri dish examined under dissecting microscope for counting dactylogyrus on each gill lamella, which were stained by aqueous neutral red, and permanent slides were prepared with glycerol-gelatin (gussev, 1993). photos were taken by sony optical steady shot digital camera model dscw570, 16.1 megapixels. the measurements of parasites were achieved by ocular micrometer, and the terminology was used as recommended by pugachev et al. (2010). the parasite identification and the terms were used as recommended by pugachev et al. (2010) and bykhovskayapavlovskaya et al. (1962). results c. auratus were surveyed for parasitic monogenean in the present study. the survey showed the occurrence of one monogenean that belongs to the genus dactylogyrus. the following is a brief account of this parasite as shown in (figure 1): host: carassius auratus linnaeus, 1758 site infection: gill filaments percentage incidence of infection: 7.69% mean of intensity: 8.5 description: small worms, total length 0.32-0.52 mm, width 0.07-0.15 mm. the length of marginal hooks 0.018-0.025 mm. the total length of median hook 0.045-0.055 mm. connecting bar 0.0020.003 x 0.025-0.037 mm. total length of the copulatory organ 0.020-0.030 mm. tube of the copulatory organ with slightly expanded root, supporting plate with straight handle, expanded spatulate terminally. tube of copulatory organ thin-walled, terminal expansion of supporting plate flat, plate is crescent shaped (bykhovskayapavlovskaya et al. (1962). discussion the description and measurements of the present specimens are similar to those reported by bykhovskaya-pavlovskaya et al. (1962) detected on gill filaments of golden and silver crucian carps from basins of caspian and white (sukhona river) seas, waters of kazakhstan (lake kurgal'dzhin), western siberia (barabinskie lake) and far east (table 1). kjar short article dactylogyrus dulkeiti in kurdistan, younis & shamall, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 68 figure 1: dactylogyrus dulkeiti. a) photomicrograph of the worm (100x). b) photomicrograph of the worm’s copulatory organ (600x). c) photomicrograph of the haptor (500x). d) camera lucida drawing of the haptor. e) camera lucida drawing of the copulatory organ. c, connecting bar; co, copulatory organ; meh, median hook; mh, marginal hook; sv, seminal vesicle. d. dulkeiti bychowsky, 1936 has been recorded for the first time in iraq from cyprinus carpio from al-zaafaraniya fish farm in baghdad (mohammad-ali et al., 1999). after that, it was reported from four different fish hosts (barbus sharpeyi, carassius auratus, carassius carassius and chondrostoma region (mhaisen, 2015). the present monogenean shows a great similarity to the specimens which were recorded previously in iraq. since, there is no any previous report about recording this species in kurdistan region, the present record represents the first record of d. dulkeiti in this region. a total of 78 species of dactylogyrus were known from different species of fishes in iraq. among this number, 49 species were recorded in kurdistan region and most of them were found on gills of cyprinid fishes (mhaisen, 2015). table 1: comparison between the measurements of the present specimens of dactylogyrus dulkeiti with that previously reported from the same host. parameters (mm.) our results bykhovskayapavlovskaya et al., (1962) total length 0.320-0.520 0.360 total width 0.070-0.150 0.070 marginal hooks 0.018-0.025 0.015-0.026 median hooks 0.045-0.055 0.015-0.057 connecting bar 0.025-0.037 0.024-0.037 copulatory organ 0.020-0.030 0.020-0.029 conclusions during the external examination for the gill filaments of c. auratus the monogenean trematode (dactylogyrus dulkeiti) is recorded for the first time in the present study in the kurdistan region. the fishes were collected from dukan lake in the northwest of sulaimany city in kurdistan region of iraq. the prevalence of infection and the mean of intensity were 7.69% and 8.5 respectively. acknowledgment the authors wish to thanks professor dr. furhan t. mhaisen for his help in providing useful references and materials. references abdullah, s. m. a. (2009). neoechinorhynchus zabensis (acanthocephala: neoechinorhynchidae) in capoeta damascina and c. trutta (osteichthyes: cyprinidae) from dokan lake and greater zab river, northern iraq. jordan j. of agric. sci., 5(1), 38-48. kjar short article dactylogyrus dulkeiti in kurdistan, younis & shamall, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 69 ali, n. m., al-jafery, a. r., abdul-ameer, k. n. (1986). new records of three monogenetic trematodes on some freshwater fishes from diyala river, iraq. j. biol. sci. res., 17(2), 253-266. amlacher, e. (1970). textbook of fish diseases. engl. transl. t.f.h. publ., jersey city, 302 pp. bykhovskaya-pavlovskaya, i. e., gusev, a. v., dubinia, m. n., izyumova, n. a., smirnova, t. s., sokolovskaya, i. l., shtein, g. a., shul'man, s. s., epshtein, v. m. (1962). key to parasites of freshwater fish of the u. s. s. r. akad. nauk, s. s. s. r., moscow, (in russian). coad, b. w. (2010). freshwater fishes of iraq. pensoft publisher, sofia-moscow. gussev, a. v., ali, n. m., abdul-ameer, k. n., amin, s. m., molnár, k. (1993). new and known species of dactylogyrus diesing, 1850 (monogenea, dactylogyridae) from cyprinid fishes of the river tigris, iraq. syst. parasitol., 25, 229-237. margolis, l., kabata z. (1984). guide to the parasites of the fishes of canada part i. national printers press, (ottawa) canada inc, 209 pp. mhaisen, f. t. (2015). index-catalogue of parasites and diseases agents of fishes of iraq. unpuble. (personal communication). mohammad-ali, n. r., balasem, a. n., mhaisen, f. t., salih, a. m., waheed, i. k. (1999). observation on the parasitic fauna in alzaafaraniya fish farm, south of baghdad. vet. 9(2), 79-88. pugachev, o. n., gerasev, p. i., gussev, a. v., ergens, r., khotenowsky, i. (2010). guide to monogenoidea of freshwater fish of palaeartic and amur regions. ledizioni ledipublishing, milano: 567pp. reed, p., francis-floyd, r., klinger, r. e., petty, d. (1996). monogenean parasites of fish. institute of food and agricultural sciences, university of florida, fa28: 10pp. dactylogyrus dulkeiti bychowsky, 1936 (monogenea: dactylogyride): first occurrence on the gills of carassius auratus linnaeus, 1758 from dukan lake in kurdistan region, iraq younis s. abdullah1* and shamall m. a. abdullah1,2 abstract introduction materials and methods results discussion conclusions acknowledgment references kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.21 understanding student’s learning & e-learning style before university enrollment: a case study in five high schools / sulaimani-krg http://dx.doi.org/10.24017/science.2017.3.21 mazen ismaeel ghareb computer science dept. college of science and technology university of human development, sulaimani,iraq mazen.ismaeel@uhd.edu.iq sazgar hamameen karim school of humanity sciences, media department public relations university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sazgar.kareem@univsul.edu.iq zanyar ali ahmed information technology department technical college of informatics sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq zanyar.ahmed@spu.edu.iq jamal kakbra sulaimani polytechnic university, university of human development sulaimani,iraq jamal.kakbra@spu.edu.iq abstract: in spite of the advantages of e-learning which have been talked about in different past researches; it is a basic issue to better understand the reasons why a few numbers of students have been disappointed with the e-learning background. along these lines, these examinations of the researches among students are fulfillment, behavioral goals, and the adequacy of the conventional learning framework that krg utilizes with worldwide using of e-learning system. a total of 500 secondary school students of 11 and 12 grades was surveyed using a standard survey of questionnaires. the outcomes demonstrated that apparent self-viability is a basic factor that impacts students' fulfillment with the e-learning framework and shows how the customary framework has numerous disadvantages. seen convenience and saw fulfillment both add the student’s behavioral expectation to utilize the e-learning framework. besides, e-learning viability can be affected by multimedia guideline, intuitive learning exercises, and e-learning framework quality. this examination proposes an applied model for student’s fulfillment, behavioral aim, and viability of utilizing the e-learning framework before enrolling in the university. keywords: education system, e-learning, blended learning, course management, students’ behaviors and engagement 1. introduction experts in psychology and sociology fields have divided the types of human personality. one of the useful divisions in the process of learning and education is the division called (kinesthetic, visual, and auditory). in this paper, we stepped to define the percentage of all the three types of (k,v,a) to find out the students’ personality according to each type which is the equivalent personality of student to get higher quality and less cost. this study surveyed 500 students, 475 answers have been received from five high schools in sulaimani city. it so reaches (of minimum ability and farthest product) as well as studying qualitative of personality. educating and learning through on the web. training industry encountered a changeover from customary face to face classes either full time or through separation instruction to a handheld smaller circle with advantage of constant course. the development of elearning is considerably higher in creating nations when contrasted and creating countries. e-learning has developed towards the length and width of the globe as the public medium of teaching for both training and education objective. the educational manufacture as fully as many strategies make a material development in the technology qualify learning elearning systems [2]. learners and understudies may see great instructing and normal for good educators in an unexpected way. a few scientists have investigated educators' impression of good instructing and great educators while others have analyzed understudies' recognitions [3]. to beat this issue, the utilization of data advances, for example, the web with pcs, pdas and cell phone applications in checking school exercises and systems administration among school groups has been expanded [4] [5]. 2. literature review as of now a lot of research has been conducted on student’s learning style, e-learning definition, engagement and benefits of e-learning but the following are most relevant to this paper: 2.1 definitions of e-learning a comparative analysis of traditional education system vs. e-learning: according to this [1] e-learning term is defined as, “innovative approach to education delivery via electronic forms of information that enhance the students’ skills, knowledge, or other learning performance”. other scholars define the term e-learning as “the usage of new and modern information and communications technology (ict) with the help of networks of computers to provide learning materials, teaching, and information to stakeholder”.[4] . another definition is from this paper a study on the relationship between demographic factor and e-learning readiness among students in higher education “the way of communication and learning through electronic medium is known as e-learning or online learning.” [2] 2.2 learning style students can learn in different style. a learning style is the way in which a learner acquires information. four learning styles have been defined. these are:  activists learn by doing and experiences  theorists like to understand the theory behind their actions  reflectors learn by observing and thinking about what has happened  pragmatists need to be able to see how to put their learning into practice in the real world .[11] “learning problems are frequently not related to the difficulty of the subject matter but are associated with the type and level of cognitive process required to learn the material.”[10] to be a successful person in this knowledge based society, it is important to improve the ability of learning. according to bloom’s taxonomy, there are three domains of learning, i.e. cognitive domain, affective domain and psychomotor domain. the cognitive domain involves the development of mental skills and the acquisition of knowledge. thinking is the main part of this category, such as knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. affective domain includes feelings, emotions, attitudes, values, and motivations. psychomotor domain includes physical movement, coordination, motor and sensory-skills. [9] 2.3 benefits of e-learning e-learning has a lot of benefits which of them have been discussed in many articles some of them are:  e-learning reaches geographically across and capable of spreading knowledge to remote areas.  cost of education is reduced  e-learning aimed in flexibility, scalability and rapid deploy ability of web based learning, promoting innovation.”[6]  “effective interaction among students and instructors.  easy accessibility of information.”[5]  freedom to express thoughts, and ask questions, without limitations.  the accessibility to the course online materials at the students’ own election.[12] 2.4 current status and development of elearning in krg ict development in kurdistan region kurdistan is in its preliminary stages. current statistics show that it is one of the world's largest industries. in 2002, worldwide it spending reached us$1 trillion and the projected growth rate was about 9.4% from the period from 2001 to 2006. most countries whether they are developed or developing, rich or poor, small or large appear to spend between 1% to 3% of their total budget on ict. the kurdistan region spends 0.02%, which is not a healthy situation and is not in line with global trends and best practices. at this percentage kurdistan region will fall behind if the budget for ict does not reach at 1.00 % at least, at this, kurdistan region has to increase this percentage to target it.[7] figure.1 it spending as percentage of the total government budget 3. methods and materials in this research, an investigation on the learning styles among high school students have been performed. it has been analyzed the three types of learning styles: auditory learners, visual learners and kinesthetic learners (a,v,k) [1]. this study surveyed among 500 students and 475 answers have been received from five high schools in suliamani city. the main aim of this work is to identify the student’s style of learning. another point is to distinguish the student’s learning style in order to improve the quality of learning. adding more this study helps to propose a new education system includes e-learning materials and techniques. this study also helps in reducing the current system extra cost of finding the drawbacks of the current educational system. the goal is also to generalize the study to all other students in krg in all the cities. the survey was composed of 13 questions: the first 3 questions were about general information about the students, the other 10 questions concerned of learning style for students and the categories for each style of learning (a, v, k). the survey have been divided into three categories as shown in table1 table 1 survey learning style categories question number auditory learners answers visual learners answers kinesthetic learners answers 1 answer 1 2 3 2 answer 2 1 3 3 answer 1 2 3 4 answer 1 2 3 5 answer 2 1 3 6 answer 2 1 3 7 answer 1 2 3 8 answer 1 2 3 9 answer 3 1 2 10 answer 3 2 1 4. results the first questions of the survey show the age range for the students as it appears in table2. table 2 age information student no. age percentages 372 17 78% 71 18 15% 32 19 7% total 475 100% the results show that most of students complete their levels of study in 17 years which means that they complete successfully in time, while the 7% shows that their stage will be delayed due to one year failure. these results give a start that most of the students can pass in all the stages. the second question is gender; however three high schools of girls and two high schools of boys have been surveyed that makes the number of female be higher than males. as it appears in table3 table 3 gender percentage students no. gender percentage 184 male 39% 291 female 61% total 475 100% the third question is about the high school study branch whether scientific or literary in. the result shows that 66% are scientific and 34% are literary branch. table 3 shows the percentages of students distributions. table 4 study branch students no. study branch percentages 314 scientific 66% 161 literary 34% total 475 100% the above table shows that most of the students in these schools prefer scientific study branch not a literary one. students’ comprehension of the subjects, the question was if the teacher explains the subject for the first time; what he would like to start with. fig1. explain the students’ answers. figure 2 student’s comprehension about the subjects it is obvious from the results that 60% of the students prefer to start a lecture with practical example or real example for any subject. question 5 is about student’s way of seating while studying. as it appears in figure 3. figure 3 student’s way of studying the results show that the common study type of the students is reading information and repeating it, this concludes that students have to be learnt the methods for reading regarding the subject. question six is dealing with the factors that affecting student’s focus and understanding in learning process. figure 4 shows the answers of the students. figure 4 student’s focus in the learning process students study focus 392 loud of noise 61 change study location the results show that the main factors that leads to students distraction in the classroom is highly noisiness so, this factor have to be eliminated in order to achieve good quality of the learning process. question number seven is about students’ activities in their free times. the results show in figure 5. figure 5 students free times activities the results show that the majority of the students will enjoy their free times by listening to music which helps teachers to focus on auditory materials that helps students as well to consider on the subjects, while 33% of students like outdoor activity which also encourages the teachers to have some extra teaching outside the class. question 8 concerns with the class environments. figure.6 illustrates the results. figure 6 class environment the results show that 67% of the students prefer a calm class over good design and big space that have 24% and 9% percentage, however, it is mixed between good design and calm class that will get a very suitable environment for learning. the answers of question 9 in the survey ,focuses on teacher’s attitude or behavior in the class. figure 6 explains the result. the data show that 52% of the students prefer clear voice over the tidiness which is 34% of the teacher. this is an important factor that the teacher should have a clear voice as a basic characteristic of the lecture than other professionals. figure.7 teacher’s attitude or behavior in class question 10 is about the teacher who awards, activities in class to the students. in kurdistan region, there are many methods that in general the people get used to it. figure 8 shows the results. figure 8 teacher’s reward in class figure 7 gives the student’s thankfulness letter which will improve the lecturing process and encourage the students as shown that the percentage is 47. while mentioning his/her name, giving them sweets will be more likely by the students, so it is recommend for the teacher to use different methods and make it as certificate seems better. question 11 is dealing with remembering techniques for the knowledge. there are many techniques but the results show only these three which used by the students. figure.9 illustrates the results. 53% 14% 33% precentages 251 listen to music 68 watch movies 156 outdoor activities 24% 67% 9% class environments 115 good design 317 calm and comfort 43 have big spaces 34% 52% 14% teachers attitudes 161 the teacher wears tidy clothes 245 the teacher has a clear voice 61 the teacher gesture 29% 47% 24% teacher in class reward 137 mention your names and thank you 222 give you a thanks letter 116 shake your hands give you sweets figure 9 remembering technique the result shows that 50% of students can remember the information by photo or color text. the other results focus on voice of reading and action on the information which is 28% and 22% respectively. this means that the teacher should always use new techniques for helping students to retrieve the information. nowadays there are many online tools helping teachers to use them in this manner. question 12 deals with teacher punishment in class in order to control it. figure 10 illustrates the results. figure 10 teacher warning in class the results show 56% would like to be warned in class before further action. while 20% likes to be ignored and other 12% prefers shouting and giving embarrassing tasks respectively. this means that the personality of the students would like still to have a physical contact even in punishments. because these students may need more explanation or more attention so, the teacher should take care of these situations as well according to the table1: the results are distributed in three categories. so figure.11 explains that most of the students are auditory learners, 43% following with the visual learners and 30%, then kinesthetic learners 27% for a total of 475 students. to conclude: the ministry of education has to think about new techniques in elearning that will help to accomplish these tasks to the best learning styles. figure.11 students learning style 5. discussion methodology results that students in high schools are not convenient to be learned in a traditional way, they are really in need of a new system of e-learning and intuitive experiences to improve and fulfil quality of education through self-viability as well as teachers needs training with the e-learning systems. we have specific features and the formative-evaluation pilot study of a multirepresentational of how teacher act in classroom of 475 students in 5 different schools. it has been conducted survey and literature review show that the new education system for the students and teachers will be more effective, less costing and better in quality of learning. the drawbacks of the current education system have as well been found out through the last results of the k.v.a. percentages. 6. conclusion this paper concerns the evaluation of learning style with student’s behavior in current situation in 5 high schools as a case study. the chosen schools depends on the level of the students according the ministry of education, they divided between high, medium and law level of students. the study shows that the behavior of the students are vary to regarding auditory style. the lecturer is recommended to have training of how to control the voices of different situations using technological audio tools for subjects such as mobile, laptop and recorders. according to visual learning styles, the lecturer has to research about new way of visually interact with the remembering knowledge techniques 237 remembering by color or images of the information 105 remembering by an action of the information 132 remembering by the voice of reading it before 264 warning me and tab on my shoulder, 56% 59 shout at me in the class, 12% 56 give me an embarrassin g task in class, 12% 96 ignore me, 20% other, 32% teacher warning in the class auditory learners visual learners kinesthetic learners 1993/4653 1397 / 4653 1263/4653 43% 30% 27% learning styles students with many multimedia techniques, for instance making posters with powerpoint, data shows, color images or short movies and so on. finally regarding the kinesthetic style of learning, the lecturer has to have a good training of gesture control according to the subject. in addition, changing the classroom environment and making more outdoors, activity regarding the subject are necessary. also it is necessary to change the style of the classroom design as much as possible. it is clear that obstacles are there to apply these methods ideally but if each lecturer has a minimum understanding of these technological simple methods, it leads to a big change in student’s education in couple of years. future plan includes the introduction of new e-learning system of the ministry of education in krg. a strategic plan for 5 years to partially transform to new online system for students in krg will be proposed. . 7. reference [1] h. pashler, m. mcdaniel, d. rohrer, and r. bjork, “learning styles,” psychological science in the public interest, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 105–119, 2008. [2] k. d. bruin, “the relationship between personality traits and self-directed learning readiness in higher education students,” south african journal of higher education, vol. 21, no. 2, 2007. [3] f. n.-a. alhija, “teaching in higher education: good teaching through students’ lens,” studies in educational evaluation, vol. 54, pp. 4–12, 2017. [4] y. p. chua and y. p. chua, “how are e-leadership practices in implementing a school virtual learning environment enhanced? a grounded model study,” computers & education, vol. 109, pp. 109–121, 2017. [5] m. i. ghareb and s. a. m. mohammed, “the role of elearning in producing independent students with critical thinking,” international journal of engineering and computer science, mar. 2016. [6] r. s. gowda and v. suma, “a comparative analysis of traditional education system vs. e-learning,” 2017 international conference on innovative mechanisms for industry applications (icimia), 2017. [7] j. f. kakbra and h. m. sidiq, “measuring the impact of ict and e-learning on higher education system with redesigning and adapting moodle system in kurdistan region government, krg-iraq,” proceedings of the 2nd e-learning regional conference, at state of kuwait, volume: 1, vol. 1, 213adad. [8] k. d. bruin, “the relationship between personality traits and self-directed learning readiness in higher education students,” south african journal of higher education, vol. 21, no. 2, 2007. [9] u. jayasinghe, a. dharmaratne, and a. atukorale, “students performance evaluation in online education system vs traditional education system,” proceedings of 2015 12th international conference on remote engineering and virtual instrumentation (rev), 2015. [10] j. c. tseng, h.-c. chu, g.-j. hwang, and c.-c. tsai, “development of an adaptive learning system with two sources of personalization information,” computers & education, vol. 51, no. 2, pp. 776–786, 2008. [11] j. j. vinales, “the learning environment and learning styles: a guide for mentors,” british journal of nursing, vol. 24, no. 8, pp. 454–457, 2015. [12] s.-s. liaw, “investigating students’ perceived satisfaction, behavioral intention, and effectiveness of e-learning: a case study of the blackboard system,” computers & education, vol. 51, no. 2, pp. 864–873, 2008. acknowledgement special thanks to the 5 high schools in sulaimani,krg for their supporting in this study. we would like to thank as well the university of human development for making the connection with headmasters of the high schools (roshnber, safin, rezheen, razaw and sulaimani).  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq| email: kjar@spu.edu.iq multivessel coronary artery disease in diabetes mellitus patients amanj k. mohammed thoracic and cardiovascular surgery department school of medicine university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq amanj.mohammed@univsul.edu.iq volume 4 issue 2 | december 2019 doi: 10.24017/science.2019.2.12 received: 20 september 2019 accepted: 15 november 2019 abstract: coronary artery disease is the most common cardiac disease with a worldwide distribution, and it is responsible for most of the mortalities regarding cardiovascular diseases if not detected early and treated properly. there are many lines in the treatment of coronary artery disease, starting from medical therapy, percutaneous coronary intervention, and coronary artery bypass graft surgery, preference of the choice of the type of the treatment depends on many factors. in fact when coronary artery bypass graft is indicated, although it carries a considerable risk of surgery, but the long-term survival is notably better than the other ways of treatment. this study done to determine that the prevalence of multivessel coronary artery disease is more in diabetic patients than non-diabetic patients. and more in female than male. in this study hundred ninety patients were retrospectively studied, all of them underwent coronary artery bypass graft surgery with or without other concomitant cardiac procedure (like valve surgery), but most of them were coronary artery bypass graft alone. we found that the number of the coronary arteries affected is strongly related to the presence of the diabetes mellitus. and females are more prone to have coronary artery disease than male. thus diabetes mellitus is the most common risk factor for the development of cardiovascular disease, and the severity of the condition is confirmed by the number of the coronary arteries involved as well as the calcification or multiple stenosis in the same vessel. key words: cardiac surgery, coronary artery bypass graft surgery, diabetes mellitus, multivessel coronary artery disease. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 122 1. introduction coronary artery disease is the commonest cardiovascular disease, and it is the leading cause of death in the united states in both men and women. coronary artery disease is caused by the occlusion of the coronary vessels by atherosclerosis. atherosclerosis is the accumulation and deposition of fat in the wall of arteries and subsequent obstruction of the affected vessel, which is regarded as metabolic disease as far as there are many different biochemical and molecular interaction and responses[1]. coronary arteries are tertiary arteries that could be involved by these inflammatory processes and subsequent presentation of acute coronary symptoms and myocardial infarction. there is aggressive progression in the inflammatory process in atherosclerosis arteries in patients with diabetes mellitus, this is more prominent in type two diabetes than type one, although the exact mechanism behind that is not well known, but on pathological and clinical level there is tendency of calcification in these vessels and markedly increased necrotic cores in the plaques of the affected coronary arteries with the presence of macrophages and tlymphocytes in the inflamed coronary arterial walls, which in turn lead to more sever presentation and even burden on the treatment. in the last few years incidence of cardiovascular diseases increased due to the fact that prevalence of the diabetes is notably increased in the general population [2]. one of the major risk factors for cardiovascular disease is diabetes mellitus, even near controlled blood sugar doesn’t seem to reduce these cardiovascular events. this is true for type 2 diabetes mellitus, which carries a very poor outcome in cases of coronary artery disease despite the presence of different modalities of treatments like percutaneous coronary intervention, and coronary artery bypass graft surgery [3], [4]. blood supply of the heart is composed of right and left coronary arteries arising from right and left coronary sinuses respectively, the rca gives small branches and continue posteriorly in the inter ventricular groove, or might bifurcate to be posterior descending artery (pda) and posterior-lateral vessel (plv). on the other hand left main stem of variable distance gives rise to left circumflex artery (lcx) and the left anterior descending artery (lad). there might be some variations in the number of the arteries or the portion of the myocardial supplement, according to the dominance of left or right coronary artery, which means that if the pda and the plv arising from the rca (80%) it’s right dominant, if they both arise from lcx (8-10%) it’s left dominant, or they might be both dominant [5]. among other additional branches that could be present include ramous intermedius (ri), diagonal branches (d1, or d2). each one of these vessels could be of good and acceptable caliber of diameter to be grafted and revascularized in cases of coronary artery bypass graft surgery (cabg). indication of cabg based on the presence of symptom despite the optimal medical therapy, or who have prognostic indications. according to esc/eacts guidelines of 2010 it is emphasized that cabg is indicated in patients with coronary artery disease of left main coronary or proximal left anterior descending artery involvement or three vessels disease, and the patient is symptomatic despite the optimal medical therapy or intolerant to the omt. on the other hand the prognostic indication can only be justified by the presence of demonstrable ischemia of the myocardium, which should be more than 10% of the myocardial mass. it is important to ensure that all patients should be provided with the optimal medical therapy before the decision of cabg. evidences from many randomized trials showed that almost 79% of patients with three vessels disease and nearly two thirds of left main artery involvement have long-term survivor and reduced need for repeat of revascularization when they are treated with surgical revascularization cabg in comparison to stent, that is to say cabg is the treatment of choice for those patients [6]. the same is true regarding lesion in the left main stem, as far as lesions in lms is equivocal to the three vessel disease, when it has been tried to be treated by stenting it carries the risk of restenosis, and the occlusion in the lms is like occlusion in multiple vessels, carrying high mortality and bad long-term outcome. the reason why the coronary artery bypass graft surgery is superior to the percutaneous coronary intervention in patients with three vessel disease kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 123 regarding the long-term benefit, is in the fact that three vessel disease usually formed by proximal lesions and the surgical revascularization puts the graft on the mid-coronary artery which in turn nullifies any lesions proximal to the anastomosis regardless of the severity or nature of the stenosis. furthermore when such lesions are treated with pci there is possibility of development of de novo disease in the artery weather proximal or distal to or even within the stent, while the treated similar vessel with cabg will reduces the effect of that de novo disease or the development of proximal lesions, in reverse to the use of stent in pci which is only suitable for culprit proximal lesions when they are technically suitable for stenting, and has no prophylactic effect on proximal lesions at all. so cabg is regarded as standard care for three vessel disease, if considering reduction of cerebrovascular accidents or major adverse cardiac events, which might happen when three vessel disease is treated with pci stent [6], [7]. 2. methods and materials a retrospective cross sectional study design approach was used for the implementation of the study. we conducted a retrospective chart review for 190 patients whom underwent coronary artery bypass graft surgery (cabg), majority of the patients underwent cabg alone, but some of other patients in addition of cabg had other cardiac procedure like valve surgery. all of the included patients in the study were surgically approached through median sternotomy incision. internal mammary artery on the left side harvested whenever left anterior descending artery was among the diseased coronary arteries and needed to be revascularized. patient data were collected from april 2012 to september 2013, at sulaimani hospital for cardiac disease, sulaimani, kurdistan, iraq. patient ages were between 44 years to 70 years. all of the surgeries were conducted after obtaining inform consent of the patients, basic information were collected such as, age and gender. the researcher then reviewed clinical data of patients’ records regarding the presence of type two diabetes mellitus (t2dm), and the numbers of the coronary vessels revascularized. all of the patients with diabetes were treated with hypoglycemic agents and/or insulin, to have a good control of the diabetes preoperatively. all of the patients in this study did the cardiac surgery with the help of cardiopulmonary bypass machine and aortic cross clamp, no one of them was done by off-pump cabg. this study has not included data to determine the outcome of the cases postoperatively like any morbidity or mortality. data were analyzed using the spss version 25.0. frequency and percentages were calculated to determine characteristics. all data were coded, using the appropriate table. analyses were applied to assess the association between different variables at significance level (p value) of 0.05. 3. results in our study we have noticed that majority of the patients needed coronary artery bypass graft surgery were female. (73.6%) that is to say 140 patients out of the total number of the cases 190, were female. and 132 cases out of the total number of cases (190 cases) were having diabetes mellitus (69.5%).in our study patient ages were between 44 years to 70 years, with an average of 57.8 years. cases were sub grouped to age groups of five years intervals we found that the commonest age group needed coronary artery bypass graft surgery in our study is 55-59 years, it was 63.2%. all of the above mentioned descriptive data are shown below in table (1). kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 124 table 1: number and percentage of cases to the corresponding variables dm non dm 58 30.5% dm 132 69.5% total 190 100% age groups 44-49 11 5.8% 50-54 17 8.9% 55-59 120 63.2% 60-64 18 9.5% 65-70 24 12.6% total 190 100% there is a strong relation between the number of affected coronary arteries by atherosclerotic changes, which need to be revascularized and the presence of type two diabetes mellitus. from the 121 cases of multivessel cabg, 117 cases (96.7%) got diabetes mellitus. while out of 69 cases of single or double vessel cabg, only 15 cases (21.7%) got diabetes. with p-value far less than 0.05, the correlation is regarded to be significant. shown in table (2) table 2: multivessel coronary artery disease in relation to diabetes mellitus non dm dm total p-value single or doublevessel cabg count 54 15 69 0.000 % 78.3% 21.7% 100% multivesselcabg count 4 117 121 % 3.3% 96.7% 100% total count 58 132 190 % 30.5% 69.5% 100% there were also a significant correlation between the number of the coronary vessels needed to be revascularized and gender. more numbers of arteries needed to be revascularized in female than in male. from those 121 cases of multivessel cabg, 119 cases (98.3%) were female patients. whereas 30.4% of single or double vessel cabg were female, that is to say 21 cases out of 69 cases. and the p-value was far less than 0.05 indicating a significant correlation between female gender and multivessel cabg. as shown in table (3) frequency percent gender male 50 26.3% female 140 73.7% total 190 100% kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 125 table 3: multivessel coronary artery disease in relation to gender male female total p-value single or doublevessel cabg count 48 21 69 0.000 % 69.6% 30.4% 100% multivesselcabg count 2 119 121 % 1.7% 98.3% 100% total count 50 140 190 % 26.3% 73.7% 100% 4. discussion the severity of the situation or the affected percentage of myocardium by ischemia is correlated to the amount of the coronary artery involved, or other structural damages to the heart like involvement of the cardiac valves. many factors affect the severity of the symptoms at the time of presentation or cabg indication, including age, gender, t2dm, smoking, etc. and it is obvious in our study that we found the relation between the indication of the coronary artery bypass graft surgery and some of those common risk factors, patients referred for cabg surgery were female (140 cases out of total 190 cases, 73.7%) than being male (50 cases out of 190 cases, 26.3%), in addition most of the total number of the patients were with t2dm, more significantly from the total number of the female patients, large percentage of them having t2dm. although in our study we couldn’t compare these values with previous ones as far as there is no such a study conducted in our hospital so far. studies emphasize that most of hospital admissions for acute myocardial infarction, stroke, pci, and cabg surgery, are still high among female patients with type two diabetes mellitus, precisely comparing similar findings with previous ones, and showing that the increasing rate of cabg among diabetic male patient was increased five folds 5.01 [4.59-5.05],whereas increasing rate of cabg among diabetic female patient was increased6.2 folds 6.24 [5.66-6.88]. however the definite risk is higher in men [8]. age presentation of coronary artery disease varies from study to another, as far as there many factors involved as notable risk factors for it, but when it happens in younger age groups is more severe and need special attention regarding the main causative factor and/or the strong family history. in our study the youngest age presentation at the time of cabg surgery was 44 years, and the oldest age was 70 years, mean age of 57.8 years. although we have not included those patients younger than this figure, whom could be treated with other modalities of treatment for acute coronary syndrome like medication and/or percutaneous coronary intervention and stenting, and we haven’t included smoking index in our study to evaluate it as a dependent risk factor, but many other studies showed that there is possibility of occurrence of coronary artery disease at early age of 35 years or less, in which smoking was found to be commonest association with such an early presentation of coronary artery disease (71%), although the same study showed that 23.5% of them were with completely normal coronary angiogram, and the majority were treated conservatively 54.5%, while other 45.5% of them needed percutaneous coronary intervention (pci) or coronary artery bypass graft surgery (cabg) [9].as mentioned earlier our study does not include patients over the age of 70 years did coronary artery bypass surgery, as far as we had not such an age presentation at the given period of time of the study. but studies showed that patients underwent coronary artery bypass graft surgery over the age of 80 years, analyzing the outcome of the revascularization surgery. in the current study data were collected from 51 patients over the age of 80 years underwent coronary artery bypass graft surgery, their mean age was 81.7 years. the outcome of surgery in such an age depends on many factors that those patients could have them like hypertension in 76.5%, renal impairment in 62.7% [10]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 126 in our study most of the cases were multivessel diseases coronary artery, the few numbers of the single vessel involvement notably presented in younger age groups, between the age of 44 years and 58 years. among all of the cases only 6 cases were having single vessel coronary artery involvement, five of them were having diabetes mellitus, which gives an impression of the development of coronary artery disease early in age when the patient already have diabetes mellitus. but the small number could not be dependable for such an explanation, but possibly if larger sample were collected we will be able to find out the relation between early age presentation and the presence of diabetes mellitus. on the other hand studies showed a correlation between smoking and early age indication of cabg, not the presence of diabetes mellitus [9]. nevertheless in our study this relation could be possible due to the fact that inflammatory reaction with complex cellular and biochemical responses, could happen in the wall of the arteries of the coronaries, that is strongly associated with diabetes mellitus presence [1], [2]. regardless of the presence of diabetes mellitus, single vessel coronary artery disease rather than multivessel disease could happen in younger age group, but was not the case in our study, sample was small in number and most of them were having diabetes. studies reported that single vessel coronary artery disease occurs more frequently than multiple vessel involvement in younger ages, but the long-term prognosis in young patients having myocardial infarction is unfavorable [10].supporting the fact that the outcome of the coronary artery bypass graft surgery is not favorable in young age patients, other study reported that the quality of life is significantly improved in patients underwent cabg surgery between the age of 60-69 years, also age group of 50-59 got similar outcome regarding the quality of life but to a lesser extent[11]. throughout the period of our study and from the data collected we have noticed that female patients with cabg need more than three vessels to be revascularized rather than single or double vessel coronary artery disease, which there was a significant correlation between the female gender and the number of the involved coronary artery to be revascularized, this is the reverse as noted in a study done in 2017 enrolling 106,881 coronary angiographies done for significantly diseased coronary artery disease patients. in case of single vessel disease, females were less likely to perform pci. on the other hand those with three-vessel disease or left main stem involvement, males are less likely to undergo pci. in another meaning coronary artery bypass graft were notably common in female rather than male[12].moreover, older women (70± 12.7 vs. 63.8 ± 12.9 years), got higher risk profile in cardiovascular disease, for which there were admitted to the coronary care unit with unstable angina or non st-elevation myocardial infarction (mi). data analyzed from multicenter registry of 64,932 acute coronary syndrome patients from 2004-2008 [13]. obtaining such a significant number of diabetic patients with absolute indication of coronary artery bypass graft surgery in our study is due to the fact that they have been referred by the cardiologists for better long-term benefits by cabg surgery, rather than treating them with pci. that is because many studies especially most recent published ones have proven over all superiority of cabg surgery in patients with diabetes mellitus together with other comorbidities like cardiac failure, renal disease[14]. in our study we haven’t collected data from those cases with multivessel coronary artery disease and diabetes treated with other modalities of treatments like pci to compare the outcome of both groups (pci versus cabg), but study showedthat diabetic patient and multivessel disease better to be revascularized surgically rather than pci, this has been reported in individual level data meta-analysis in 2018 [14].this fact is applicable even for pci with drug-eluting stents also, which is confirmed by a study that coronary artery bypass graft surgery provides much more significant benefit for diabetic patients and multivessel disease when it is presented with acute coronary syndrome, in comparison to that kind of stents. in the same study shown that patients randomized to cabg surgery had reduced death rate and myocardial infarction compared to percutaneous coronary intervention[15]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 127 5. conclusion in our study it has been confirmed that patients with type two diabetes mellitus, as well as female gender have higher risk than non-diabetic and male patients of having coronary artery disease indicating cabg. that’s why it is crucial to diagnose the diabetes in the patient as early as possible, to be well prepared and predict the development of unfavorable cardiovascular events other than coronary artery disease like cerebrovascular accidents, stroke, and others. on the other hand it is necessary to assess any chest pain or suspicion of acute coronary syndrome thoroughly in patients aged between 55-60 years, as far as it has been confirmed in our study that the commonest age group of cabg was in that range of years of age. reference [1] s. pant, a. deshmukh, g. s. gurumurthy , j. l. mehta, n. v. pothineni, f. romeo and t. e. watts, "inflammation and atherosclerosis--revisited," j cardiovasc pharmacol ther, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 170-178, 2014. [2] k. yahagi, f. d. kolodgie, c. lutter, h. hori, m. e. romero, a. v. finn and r. virmani, "pathology of human coronary and carotid artery atherosclerosis and vascular calcification in diabetes mellitus," arterioscler thromb vasc biol, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 191-204, 2017. [3] d. aronson and e. r. edelman, "coronary artery disease and diabetes mellitus," cardiol clin, vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 439-455, 2014. [4] r. naito and k. miyauchi, "coronary artery disease and type 2 diabetes mellitus," int heart j, vol. 58, no. 4, pp. 475-480, 2017. [5] n. agrawal, "superdominant left-circumflex artery supplying significant proportion of rca and lad territory," bmj case reports, 2015. [6] d. p. taggart, "cabg in 2012: evidence, practice and the evolution of guidelines," glob cardiol sci pract. , vol. 2012, no. 2, pp. 21-28, 2012. [7] s. j. head, p. m. davierwala, s. r. redwood , a. colombo, m. j. mack, m. c. morice, d. r. holmer jr, t. e. feldman, e. ståhle, p. underwood, k. d. dawkins, a. p. kappetein and f. w. mohr, "coronary artery bypass grafting vs. percutaneous coronary intervention for patients with three-vessel disease: final five-year follow-up of the syntax trial," eur heart j, vol. 35, no. 40, pp. 2821-30, 2014. [8] a. a. laverty, a. bottle, s. h. kum, b. visani, a. majeed, c. millett and e. p. vamos, "gender differences in hospital admissions for major cardiovascular events and procedures in people with and without diabetes in england: a nationwide study 2004-2014.," cardiocasc diabetol, vol. 16, no. 1, p. 100, 2017. [9] t christus, a. m. shukkur, i. rashdan, t. koshy, m. alanbaei, m. zubaid, n. hayat and a alsayegh, "coronary artery disease in patients aged 35 or less – a different beast?," heart views, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 711, 2011. [10] e. pietrzyk, k. michta, i. gorcyca-michta and b. wożakowska-kapłon, "coronary artery bypass grafting in patients over 80 years of age: a single-centre experience," kardiol pol, vol. 72, no. 7, pp. 598-603, 2014. [11] p. vladan, j. m. snežana, p. dejan and r. dragisa, "quality of life in patients of different age groups before and after coronary artery by-pass surgery," ann thorac cardiovasc surg, vol. 21, no. 5, pp. 474-480, 2015. [12] g. s. gudnadottir, k. andersen, i. s. thrainsdottir, s. k. james, b. lagerqvist and t. gudnason, "gender differences in coronary angiography, subsequent interventions, and outcomes among patients with acute coronary syndromes," am heart j, vol. 191, pp. 65-74, 2017. [13] m. a. isorni, d. blanchard, n. teixeira, h. le breton and n. renault , "impact of gender on use of revascularization in acute coronary syndromes: the national observational study of diagnostic and interventional cardiac catheterization (onaci)," catheter cardiovasc interv, vol. 86, no. 2, pp. 58-65, 2015. [14] l. c. godoy, v. rao and m. e. farkouh, "diabetes and multivessel disease: coronary artery bypass grafting remains king," curr opin cardiol, vol. 33, no. 5, pp. 551-557, 2018. [15] s. n. burgess, c. j. mussap and j. k. french, "management of acute coronary syndromes in patients with diabetes: implications of the freedom trial," clin ther, vol. 35, no. 8, pp. 1069-75, 2013. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.38 the effect of elevated temperature on the lightweight aggregate concrete rahel khalid ibrahim department of civil engineering, faculty of engineering, koya university, university park, kurdistan region of iraq rahel.khalid@koyauniversity.org abstract: the use of lightweight concrete has become widely spread in concrete structures in the last years. fire can be considered as a destructive hazard that attack concrete structures. in this research the effect of elevated temperature on lightweight aggregate concretes is studied. for this purpose, 81 cube shaped specimens were prepared from three different lightweight aggregate concrete mixes. after moist curing periods for 3, 7 and28 days, the specimens were subjected to ambient and elevated temperatures of 450⁰c and 650⁰c for 2hrs.the weight of the specimens before and after exposure to elevated temperatures was determined and the residual strength results for the specimens were compared. the results showed that, the elevated temperature induces a decrease in strength and significant weight losses in lightweight aggregate concrete. keywords: lightweight aggregate concrete, elevated temperature, compressive strength, residual strength, weight loss 1. introduction lightweight aggregate concrete was first presented by the romans in the mediterranean region 2000 years ago where ‘the roman temple pantheon, port of cosa and the coliseom have been built using lightweight aggregate [1]. from there on, the use of lightweight concrete has been widely spread across other countries such as usa, united kingdom, sweden and malaysia. the main specialties of lightweight concrete are its low density and thermal conductivity. its advantages are; that there is a reduction of dead load, faster building rates in construction, and lower transport and handling costs. the building of ‘the pantheon’ of lightweight concrete material is still standing eminently in rome until now for about 18 centuries, shows that the lighter materials can be used in concrete construction and brings many economical advantage [2]. the lightweight aggregates that are used for producing lightweight concrete can be natural aggregate such as pumice, scoria and all of those of volcanic origin and the artificial aggregate such as expanded blast-furnace slag, vermiculite and clinker aggregate [3]. fire causes real defects in the structures, exposing concrete to elevated temperature results in a loss in strength and occurrence of cracking. elevated temperature weakens the bond between cement paste and aggregate, and breakdown of the cement gel structure which leads to the consequent loss in the load bearing capacity, increased tendency of drying shrinkage and structural cracking [4, 5]. strength deterioration of concrete exposed to elevated temperature may be due to several factors: temperature level, rate of heating, heating time, cooling method, applied load, type of aggregate, type of mineral admixture and air humidity [6-8]. therefore, there are broadly variable results regarding the exposure of concrete to elevated temperature [9]. a number of studies have shown that an increase in temperature in cement pastes causes the release of physically absorbed water, chemically bonded water and the decomposition of hydration products [10, 11]. a wellhydrated cement paste generally consists of calcium silicate hydrate, calcium hydroxide and calcium sulphate aluminate hydrate. a saturated paste also contains a large amount of free water, capillary water and gel water (chemically bonded water). when concrete is heated to 300°c, the free water and some of the chemically bonded water of hydration products are lost. exposure to 500°c results in further dehydration due to the decomposition of calcium hydroxide. a complete decomposition of calcium silicate hydrate occurs at temperatures beyond 900°c [12]. lightweight concrete is more fire resistant than ordinary normal weight concrete because of its lower thermal conductivity, lower coefficient of thermal expansion and the inherent fire stability of lightweight aggregate. exposing to elevated temperatures up to 800ᵒc induces in a sharp drop of compressive strength for lightweight concrete made with fly ash and lightweight aggregate [13]. due to its widely usage in construction sector in the last years, investigating the behavior of lightweight aggregate concrete after exposure to elevated temperature is of prodigious importance. the main objective for this research is determining the residual strength for lightweight aggregate concrete after exposure to elevated temperatures of 450⁰c and 650⁰c. 2. materials and methods in this research, ordinary portland cement (type i) obtained from mass company was used. the fine aggregate (crushed leca), passed from sieve 4.75 mm, having the fineness modulus of 2.7 and specific gravity of 1.3 was used. the used coarse aggregate was leca having the maximum size of 12 mm and the specific gravity of 1.087. three different lightweight aggregate concrete mixes c1, c2 and c3 were prepared. the mix proportions, by weight, per one meter cube of lightweight concrete are shown in table 1. the slump test was performed to determine the consistency for the mixes. the density for c1, c2 and c3 mixes was 1315, 1350 and 1370 kg/m3 respectively. from each mix 27 (100*100) cubes were casted. the specimens were moist cured for 3, 7 and28 days in a water tank. after curing, the specimens were taken out from the water tank, surface dried and exposed to elevated temperatures of 450⁰c and 650⁰c for 2 hrs. by using an electrical oven. the heated specimens were cooled to room temperature and subjected to compression test, beside the non-heated control specimens. the weight of the specimens before and after exposure to elevated temperature was determined. table 1 mix proportions per one meter cube of concrete slump mm concrete density kg/m3 water kg. sand kg. gravel kg. cement kg. mix. 70 1315 200 280 465 370 c1 60 1350 190 300 520 340 c2 60 1370 210 290 550 320 c3 3. results and discussion 3.1 compressive strength the compressive strength and relative compressive strength results for all of the specimens are given in table 2 and fig. 1. for relative compressive strength, the average compressive strength of 28 day moist cured non-heated specimens’ for each concrete mix was taken as 100% (control specimen) and the compressive strength for the specimens was determined relating to this percentage. 3.1.1 compressive strength at ambient temperature (26ᵒc) before exposure to elevated temperature the compressive strength for 3 days moist cured c1, c2 and c3 lightweight aggregate concretes were 6.82, 5.68 and 5.1 mpa respectively. for 3 day moist cured c1, c2 and c3 specimens the compressive strength was in the percentages of 69, 63 and 60% respectively when they related to control 28 day moist cured specimens. the strength was increased by increasing moist curing periods to become 9.89, 8.95 and 8.5 mpa for 28 day moist cured c1, c2 and c3 concrete specimens respectively. the higher recorded strength for c1 concrete is due to its higher cement content, and higher consistency which made the concrete to be more compacted when compared with the other lightweight aggregate concretes. 3.1.2 compressive strength after exposure to 450ᵒc the exposure to 450ᵒc resulted in a strength reduction for all 7 and 28 day cured specimens in different ranges. slight or no decrease in compressive strength for 3 days moist cured specimens was recorded when compared to 7 and 28 day cured specimens once they related to their strengths before exposure to elevated temperature. the relative strength rates for 3 days specimens remains approximately around 69, 61 and 61%, of the 28 day control specimens, for c1, c2 and c3 specimens respectively before and after exposure to 450ᵒc. early age concrete specimens contain a reasonable amount of non-hydrated cement particles which by the presence of heat and moisture get hydrated to produce high amounts of calcium silicate hydrate that is responsible for the strength of concrete which by turn made the early age lightweight aggregate concrete specimens to show higher residual strength. the lower residual strength for later age specimens is due to the deterioration for the binder material after exposure to 450ᵒc. 3.1.3 compressive strength after exposure to 650ᵒc the exposure to 650ᵒc caused a dramatic reduction in compressive strength for all specimens. the residual strength for 28 day moist cured lightweight aggregate concrete specimens was around 58 to 59% of their original strengths before exposure to 650ᵒc. when the comparison is made within the curing age for each group of the specimens, once again the early age specimens showed higher residual strength than the later age specimens. table 2the compressive strength results for the specimens compressive strength for different curing periods after exposure to different temperatures (mpa) c1 c2 c3 3day 7day 28day 3day 7day 28day 3day 7day 28day 26ᵒc 6.820 7.563 9.893 5.680 6.727 8.947 5.120 6.150 8.547 450ᵒc 6.813 6.203 7.607 5.427 5.207 7.267 5.200 5.000 7.547 650ᵒc 6.430 5.993 5.790 4.440 4.600 5.177 4.053 4.500 5.033 fig. 1 relative compressive strength for c1, c2 and c3 concrete before and after exposure to elevated temperatures at different moist curing periods 3.2 weight loss the relative weight loss for the specimens upon exposing to elevated temperatures of 450ᵒc and 650ᵒc is given in fig. 2. for determining the relative weight loss, the average weight for the specimens before exposure to elevated temperature was accounted as 100%. then the relative weight for the specimens after exposure to elevated temperature was calculated according to this rate and subtracted from 100. from fig. 2 it can be seen that by elevating the exposure temperature from 450ᵒc to 650ᵒc, the weight loss of the specimens increased at all curing periods and for all three lightweight aggregate concretes. this phenomenon is due to the higher degradation of the binder material (calcium silicate hydrate) at 650ᵒc by losing a part of the chemically bonded water which the reduction in compressive strength at this temperature is related to. the higher loss in the weight of the specimens after exposure to high temperature indicates higher loss in compressive strength. the 3 day moist cured specimens showed lower weight loss than 7 and 28 days moist cured specimens after exposure to elevated temperatures of 450ᵒc and 650ᵒc. this behavior is mostly due to the participation of heat and moisture in accelerating the hydration process of nonhydrated cement particles in this early age for producing further binder material. fig. 2 weight loss for lightweight aggregate concrete specimens after exposure to 450ᵒc and 650 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 3day 7day28day 3day 7day28day 3day 7day28day r e la ti v e c o m p r e ss iv e st r e n g th % 26ᵒc 450ᵒc 650ᵒc c1 c2 c3 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 3day 7day 28day 3day 7day 28day 3day 7day 28day r e la ti v e w e ig h t lo ss % moist curing periods 450ᵒc 650ᵒc c1 c2 c3 4. conclusions the following conclusions are drawn from this research:  28 day moist cured lightweight aggregate concrete loses 12 to 23% of their compressive strength after exposure to 450ᵒc.  the residual strength for 28 day moist cured lightweight aggregate concrete is around 58 to 59% of their original strength after exposure to 650ᵒc.  the residual strength after exposure to elevated temperatures at early ages is higher than the later ages for each age group of the specimens.  lightweight aggregate concrete loses 24 to 37% of its weight after exposure to elevated temperatures of 450ᵒc and 650ᵒc.  the higher exposure temperature related to the higher weight loss.  the higher loss in the weight of the specimens after exposure to high temperature indicates higher loss in compressive strength. 5. references [1] aci, aci 213r-03, guide for structural lightweight-aggregate concrete, aci, michigan usa, 2003, p. 38. [2] l.b. satish chandra, light weight aggregate concrete science, technology and applications, noyas publication, norwich, usa, 2002. [3] s.k. duggal, building materials, new age international2009. [4] g. khoury, compressive strength of concrete at high temperatures: a reassessment, magazine of concrete research 44(161) (1992) 291-309. [5] s. handoo, s. agarwal, s. agarwal, physicochemical, mineralogical, and morphological characteristics of concrete exposed to elevated temperatures, cement and concrete research 32(7) (2002) 10091018. [6] g.a. khoury, effect of fire on concrete and concrete structures, progress in structural engineering and materials 2(4) (2000) 429447. [7] a. lau, m. anson, effect of high temperatures on high performance steel fibre reinforced concrete, cement and concrete research 36(9) (2006) 1698-1707. [8] a.f. bingöl, r. gül, effect of elevated temperatures and cooling regimes on normal strength concrete, fire and materials 33(2) (2009) 79-88. [9] a.m. neville, properties of concrete, pearson 2005. [10] g. ye, x. liu, g. de schutter, l. taerwe, p. vandevelde, phase distribution and microstructural changes of self-compacting cement paste at elevated temperature, cement and concrete research 37(6) (2007) 978-987. [11] r.k. ibrahim, r. hamid, m.r. taha, strength and microstructure of mortar containing nanosilica at high temperature, aci materials journal 111(2) (2014). [12] p. klieger, j. lamond, significance of tests and properties of concrete and concretemaking materials, astm international1994. [13] h. tanyildizi, a. coskun, the effect of high temperature on compressive strength and splitting tensile strength of structural lightweight concrete containing fly ash, construction and building materials 22(11) (2008) 2269-2275. biography rahel khalid ibrahim was born in erbil/iraqi kurdistan in 1973. he got his; bsc degree from civil engineering departmen/salahaddin university in 1996, msc from department of civil engineering/ege university izmir/turkey in 2001 and phd degree from the department of civil and structural engineering/university kebangsaan malaysia in 2013. currently he is director of research center and lecturer at civil engineering department faculty of engineering koya university. his google scholars cite is as following: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&imq=rahel+k halid+ibrahim&user=ax-tyr0aaaaj kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.4 abstract: a dual band f-shaped printed mono-pole antenna (usb dongle) with two meandered strips is proposed and tested. the two strips that resonating at 2.45 ghz and 5.2 ghz have uniform and fixed width of 0.5 mm. a thin layer of 0.8 mm thickness fr4 substrate (permittivity =4.4, loss tangent=0.0245) which is economically cheap is used for the unit fabrication. the two resonant modes will best support bluetooth (bt) and wlan (wireless local area network) having enough supportive bandwidth which is defined by 10db reflection coefficient. the proposed unit is low profile, compact and simple to fabricate. the whole unit that has an overall size of (0.8mm x 10 mm x 40 mm) is efficient for having 97% and 94 % total radiation efficiency at both operating frequencies respectively. through applying different simulation scenarios to the unit such as varying the feeding location and changes in the strips length, it has been revealed that the antennas is sensitive and reactive. the proposed antenna has provided good performance and omni-directional radiation pattern. good matching between the simulated and measured reflection coefficient results for the antenna prototype has been achieved. keywords: low profile, impedance band width, radiation efficiency, reflection coefficient. 1. introduction nowadays universal serial bus (usb) dongle antennas are widely used in small and portable wireless electronics. to be user friendly [1] and [2] argued that the usb antenna must keep its profile small and compact. double sided dongle antenna design is one way of art in antenna design which is proposed in [3] but it’s worth mentioning that the antenna is more complex to manufacture. in this manner, non-planar dongle antennas will also add complexity to manufacturing process is proposed [4]. simple and small antenna structures to be a good choice for portable dongle antennas are the drawback of some researchers carried out in both [5] and [6] regarding antenna design. dongle antennas are desired to be small in size, compact, planar and multi band. to add more, the antenna performance and omni-directional radiation patterns are from the key points that need to be taken into serious consideration. in this paper, a small size meandered monopole antenna proposed for wlan applications. the following sections will describe the antenna structure and operation bands then discuses simulation and measured results for the antenna parameters. 2. antenna design and operation bands the proposed antenna unit geometry for universal serial bus (usb) dongle applications is presented in figure 1. the planar unit is printed on fr4 substrate with 0.8mm thickness which is very cheap material having the material specifications of (4.4) permittivity and (0.0245) loss tangent. the low profile dongle antenna has overall dimensions of 40 mm x 10 mm (w x l) which is mainly composed of two parts. the larger section is the ground plane with 10mm x 30mm (w x l1) which is lossy copper conductor with almost 0.035 mm thickness. the upper section with 10mm x 9.5mm (w x l2) is the dual band mono-pole antenna, with two meandered strips each of fixed 0.5mm conductor width. the upper part is modelled in a way that each strip mainly is responsible for a band of frequency, in addition there is interaction between the two paths on each band performance. the longer path on one hand is mainly responsible in controlling the 2.45 ghz band frequency and the shorter path on the other hand is controlling the higher band 5.2 ghz frequency. the details of the proposed unit dimensions is summarized in table 1. figure 1: geometry of the proposed usb dongle antenna the mono-pole antenna is fed with rf at the centre with a 50 ohm coaxial line. the proposed unit in this paper is l l1 w l2 w1 50 ohm coaxial line w2 w3 w4 l3 l4 l5 l6 l7 y x z design of low profile multiband usb dongle antenna hemin ismael azeez 1 shorsh kareem ahmed 2 mohamed abdullah husain 3 1 sulaimani polytechnic university, technical college of engineering, communication engineering department, sulaimani, kurdistan region, iraq hemin.azeez@spu.edu.iq 2 sulaimani polytechnic university, darbandikhan technical institute, electrical department, darbandikhan, sulaimani, kurdistan region, iraq shorsh.ahmed@spu.edu.iq 3 sulaimani polytechnic university, technical college of engineering, communication engineering department, sulaimani, kurdistan region, iraq zheermo@yahoo.com mailto:hemin.azeez@spu.edu.iq mailto:shorsh.ahmed@spu.edu.iq mailto:zheermo@yahoo.com kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.4 modelled using hfss high frequency structure simulator. the antenna provides good matching between the simulated and the measured s-parameter results. as it is shown in figure 2 which depicts simulated and measured return loss for the unit, the 10 db return loss bandwidth supports ieee 802.11 a/b/g standards operating at (2.4-2.484 ghz) and (5.150-5.350ghz). moreover, from measured return loss results, it can be noticed that the antenna has a wide impedance band width at the higher band frequency by which other applications such as hiperlan ( high performance radio local area networks) and upper frequency band of ism (industrial, scientific and medical ) are also supported. table 1: details of the proposed antenna dimensions paramete r l l1 l2 l3 l4 l5 l6 l 7 unit(mm) 4 0 30 9.5 0.8 5.7 1.5 1 2 paramete r w w1 w 2 w 3 w 4 copper thicknes s unit(mm) 1 0 4.7 5 1.5 5.5 1.5 0.035 figure 2: simulated and measured return loss of the unit 3. results and discussions in antenna design, one of the key points is finding the exact position that the antenna can be excited with the operating radio frequency. this means proper impedance matching can be achieved at the specified feeding point that will help engineers to keep the design simple and not insert extra impedance matching networks to increase the antenna performance. figure 3 presents how changing the feeding point will affect the return loss (-s11). the fabricated unit which is fed at the centre can also be fed at point 1 which is exactly (2.5 mm) away from the right edge of the f-shaped monopole antenna. as it can be observed from simulated return loss, better impedance matching can also be achieved at both (2.45 ghz and 5.2 ghz) bands, with slight shift in lower band resonance frequency that can also be mitigated with slightly decreasing the length of the longer strip. it is worth to mention that, in consistence to impedance matching, the antenna has a wider impedance band width which is taken at -10 db and implies only 10 % of the excited power is reflected back and vswr < 2. however, moving the feed point to point 2 on the left side of the antenna, will enhance impedance mismatching of the antenna. figure 3: testing for different feeding points of the unit figure 4 depicts that the scenario of controlling the resonance modes by slightly increasing and decreasing the length of each of the strips individually. from the simulated results for return loss, it can be seen that the lower operating band 2.45 ghz is mainly controlled by the longer strip (strip 1), increasing the length of strip 1 slightly by 2 mm from the end , significant shift in the lower band resonance frequency will occur. in addition, any changes in the length of strip 2 will result in frequency shifts in the upper band frequency 5.2 ghz. figure 4: testing for different strip lengths more simulation tests about far field radiation pattern, antenna gain and radiation efficiency are carried out in the following sections. in figure 5(a,b) 3-d radiation pattern for the proposed antenna at both 2.45 ghz and %.2 ghz are presented. the radiation pattern in all the cartesian planes (x-y, x-z and y-z) are observed. the y-z plane view for radiation pattern reveals that the antenna is roughly providing omni-directional radiation pattern for both the frequency band 2.45 ghz and 5.2 ghz. the radiation pattern is smooth for the lower band and minor lobe radiation can be seen along the x-z plane for upper band frequency. figure 6a and 6b show gain and radiation efficiency simulated results of the unit. as it can be seen from the results, the antenna has almost a steady state for gain and radiation efficiency at both lower and upper bands. for lower band frequency 2.45 ghz, antenna gain is between 1.64 and 1.70 dbi with radiation efficiency 97-98.8%. figure 6b presents that the antenna is more efficient at the upper band 5.2 ghz, the antenna gain is gradually -35 -30 -25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 4.5 5.5 6.5 s 1 1 (d b ) frequency (ghz) simulated measured -35 -30 -25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 s 1 1 (d b ) frequency (ghz) feeding at ceneter feeding at 2.5mm(p1) feeding at 2.5mm(p2) c e n t e r p 1p 2 -25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 4.5 5.5 6.5 s 1 1 (d b ) frequency (ghz) proposed antenna with given dimentions increasing the length of strip2 by 2mm increasing the length of strip1 by 2mm strip1 strip2 kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.4 increases from 5.16 to 5.8 dbi with radiation efficiency of above 94% -99 %. figure 5a: 3-d simulated radiation patterns in y-z, x-z, and x-y plane at 2.45 ghz figure 5b: 3-d simulation radiation patterns in y-z, xz, and x-y plane at 5.2 ghz figure 6a: antenna simulated gain and radiation efficiency at 2.45 ghz band to show the clarity of this research the antenna structure and its performances in this paper is compared to two of the previously conducted works regarding dongle antenna design and analysis. as it can be seen from table 2, the proposed antenna over all profile is smaller to the antennas presented in the other two papers. in addition, the proposed antenna performance in terms of bandwidth, gain and radiation efficiency is same or better than other proposed units. figure 6b: antenna simulated gain and radiation efficiency at 5.2 ghz band table 2: comparison of the proposed antenna with previous works 4. conclusions a compact low profile and simple f-shaped usb dongle is proposed in this paper. the simulated and the measured return loss results were best matched. the antenna is a good choice for small portable wireless local area networks (ieee 802.11 a/b/g (2.4 – 2.484 ghz and 5.15 – 5.35 ghz) for its satisfactory impedance bandwidth at 10db return loss. smooth omni-directional radiation pattern with good performance in gain and radiation efficiency is the key futures of the proposed antenna. x yz x yz 0 20 40 60 80 100 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 2.4 2.4125 2.425 2.4375 2.45 2.4625 2.475 2.4875 2.5 r a d ia t io n e ff e c ie n c y ( % ) )i b d ( ni a g a n n e t n a frequqency (ghz) antenna gain radiation effi ciency 0 20 40 60 80 100 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 5 .1 2 5 5 .1 3 7 5 5 .1 5 5 .1 6 2 5 5 .1 7 5 5 .1 8 7 5 5 .2 5 .2 1 2 5 5 .2 2 5 5 .2 3 7 5 5 .2 5 5 .2 6 2 5 5 .2 7 5 5 .2 8 7 5 5 .3 5 .3 1 2 5 5 .3 2 5 5 .3 3 7 5 5 .3 5 5 .3 6 2 5 r a d ia t io n e ff e c ie n c y ( % ) )i b d( ni a g a n n e t n a frequency (ghz) antenna gain radiation effi ciency this paper reference (1) reference(2) overall size 40x10x0.8 60x17x0.8 45x10x0.8 structure complexity planar and modest planar and modest planar and complex 10db return loss bandwidth acceptable at both 2.45 and 5.25 ghz bands acceptable at 5.2 ghz band and narrow at 2.4ghz band acceptable at both 2.45 and 5.25 ghz bands antenna gain(dbi) 1.4 average at 2.4 ghz 5.3 average at 5.2 ghz n.a. -0.5 at 2.4 ghz 2.5 at 5.2 ghz total radiation efficiency n.a. n.a. application s wlan (2.45,5.25)gh z bands wlan 2.4ghz and 5.7 ghz bands wlan (2.45,5.5) and 3.5 ghz bands kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.4 references [1] wen s. c., bau y. lee, jing j. l., ke m. l. , ching y. h. nd chin k. y.(2013). a pifa type usb dongle antenna for wlan applications. cross strait quad-regional radio science and wireless technology conference (ieee). pp. 203206. [2] bruno r. f., hans a., mauricio h. c. d. and tan p. v. (2014). a compact ifa-based dual-band planar antenna for wifi usb dongles. the 8th european conference on antennas and propagation (ieee). pp. 325-329. [3] wen s. c., chia y. h. and wen. h. h. (2016). coupled-fed printed multi-arm monopole antenna for usb dongle application. ieee international workshop on electromagnetics: applications and student innovation competition. pp. 1-2. [4] wen. j. l., shih. h. c., jiun. t. y. and bo r. h. (2014). compact dual-band wlan diversity antennas on usb dongle platform. ieee transactions on antennas and propagation. vol. 62, no. 1, pp. 109-118. [5] luo q., pereira j. r., salgado h. m.(2009) “fractal monopole antenna for wlan usb dongle,” loughborough antennas & propagation conference(ieee), pp. 245-247. [6] chaimool s., chokchai c. and akkaraekthalin p.(2012). multiband loaded fractal loop monopole antenna for usb dongle applications. electronics letters, vol. 48, pp. 1446-1447.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.20 received: 03 june 2018 | accepted: 08 july 2018 dyslipidemia among patients with end stage renal disease on maintenance hemodialysis mohammed ghazi abdulhadi mohammed omer mohammed fenk bakir maarouf dep. of medicine dep. of medicine dep. of biochemistry ibn sina teaching hospital college of medicine college of medicine mousel/ iraq university of sulaimani university of sulaimani kurdistan / iraq kurdistan / iraq mohammedghazi82325@gmail.com mohammed.raheem@univsul.edu.iq fenk.marouf@univsul.edu.iq 123 abstract: dyslipidemia has been suggested to be one of the factors that contribute to the high incidence of cardiovascular disease in hemodialysis patients. previous studies suggest that end-stage renal disease may contribute to dyslipidemia. the aim of the study: to assess the prevalence of dyslipidemia in patients on maintenance hemodialysis. patients and methods: a case-control study was conducted from february 2015 until august 2015 in ibn-sena teaching hospital on 100 participants (52 males and 48 females), 50 were patients with end-stage renal disease on regular hemodialysis and 50 were age and gender-matched apparently healthy subjects as the control. questioner used to collect data, a thorough examination was done including height and weight and bmi. a blood sample from all participants in fasting state was sent for the renal function test, complete blood picture, serum albumin, electrolytes, tg, total cholesterol, ldl and hdl measured by the enzymatic method, plasma atherogenic index calculated as [log (tg/hdl)]. results: age of the participants ranged between 18 70 years and the mean age was (44.45 ± 13.6) years. in hd group, the mean cholesterol was (3.29 + 0.73) mmol/l, serum tg (2.38 ± 0.56) mmol/l, ldl (1.91 ± 0.66) mmol/l, hdl (0.88 ± 0.2) mmol/l, atherogenic index (0.434 ± 0.16), while in control group, the mean cholesterol was (4.17 ± 0.69) mmol/l, serum tg (1.6 ± 0.43) mmol/l, ldl (2.69 ± 0.63 ) mmol/l, hdl (1.066 ± 0.13) mmol/l, atherogenic index (0.177 ± 0.12). the lipid abnormalities in hemodialysis group were high plasma atherogenic index in 84%, hypertriglyceridemia 50%, hypercholesterolemia 8% and high ldl 6% and low hdl in 48%, while in control group, high plasma atherogenic index in 34%, hypertriglyceridemia in 26%, hypercholesterolemia 14% high ldl 7% and low hdl in 16%. conclusions: patients with end-stage renal disease on hemodialysis have significant dyslipidemia compared to control group characterized by hypertriglyceridemia, low hdl and high atherogenic index of plasma. keywords: dyslipidemia, end-stage renal disease, hemodialysis, atherogenic index of plasma. 1. introduction lipids are transported in plasma through water-soluble molecules known as lipoproteins, besides their transport characteristics, different enzymes in the lipid metabolism also function as chemical reaction platforms converting transported lipids into one another. lipoproteins have a core consisting of non-polar lipids such as triglyceride and cholesterol and a surrounding structure consisting of polar lipids such as apolipoprotein and phospholipids. [1]. the end-stage renal disease is associated with distinctive changes in lipoprotein metabolism and dyslipidemia [2], uremic dyslipidemia is presented as an abnormal apolipoprotein profile and alteration in the composition and concentrations of lipoprotein groups. [3]. the mechanism of lipid derangements in dialysis patients is multifactorial. the most important abnormalities are impaired catabolism of the major triglyceride containing lipoprotein fraction, disproportionate hepatic synthesis of triglyceride because of carbohydrate intolerance and stimulation of hepatic synthesis of free fatty acid released from tissue triglyceride stores by lipolytic hormones. a number of factors specific to hemodialysis patients may lead to hyperlipidemia, such as, acetate in the dialysate may be transformed into long chain fatty acids and cholesterol in the liver, the use of high concentration of glucose in the dialysate associated with an increase in the carbohydrate load and has been reported to increase serum triglyceride in dialysis patients, in patients on hemodialysis carnitine deficiency has been blamed to be a factor in the lipid abnormalities in these patients [4]. aims of study: to assess lipid profile and atherogenic index of plasma in patients with end-stage renal disease on regular hemodialysis and to compare it with healthy people, and to correlate this lipid profile with age, gender, and bmi. 124 2. methods and materials across-sectional case-control study, it was conducted in ibn-sena teaching hospital during the period from february 2015 until august 2015. a total of 50 patients (mean age = 46.82 ± 12.6) with esrd on regular hemodialysis (28 male and 22 female; from the department of internal medicine, centre for kidney disease, ibn-sena teaching hospital were enrolled in the study. inclusion criteria: patients with esrd on regular hemodialysis. age of patients between 18 and 70 years. exclusion criteria: patients with diabetes mellitus, patients with nephritic syndrome, acute kidney injury, renal transplant recipients, pregnants and those receiving drugs known to alter lipid profile. fifty apparently healthy subjects, 24 male, 26 female and age (mean age = 34.16 ± 14.4, ranged between 1870years) matched to hd group none of them were diabetic, alcoholic or using drugs that affect lipid profile. a written consent was taken from each candidate to be enrolled in the study and confidentiality was taken into consideration. the data were collected through direct interview using a special questionnaire, and clinical examination was done including height and weight to calculate bmi, the body weight was measured for the hd group after the dialysis session. laboratory methods: six ml of venous blood were taken from each candidate after 12 hours of the overnight fast. in hemodialysis group blood were taken before the dialysis session, 2 ml of blood were drawn into edta tube and send for a complete blood count, the rest 4 ml were put in gel tube and left to clot then centrifuged up to 3000 rpm to separate serum which was sent for measurement of albumin, electrolytes, fasting blood glucose, serum tg, total cholesterol, ldl and hdl by enzymatic method. reference range of serum albumin is (35 – 50 g/l) and for fasting blood glucose is (3.3-5.8 mmol/l) (11). for definition of an abnormal lipid values: s.cholesterol. ≥ 5.2 mmol/l, ldl ≥ 3.3mmol/l, hdl ≤0.9mmol/l (12), s.tg ≥ 2.25mmol/l. (13) atherogenic index of plasma calculated as [log (tg/hdl)], levels > 2.1 considered as high risk. (14) statistical analyses: statistical analyses were carried out using the microsoft excel 2007, statistical analyses used: student t-test: to compare between means, linear regression analysis, chisquare for categorical variables. p value <0.05 significant, p value < 0.01 highly significant. 3. results a total of 100 participants, 50 patients with end-stage renal disease on regular hemodialysis and the other 50 were apparently healthy subjects. gender, age, and bmi distribution are shown in table 1 and table 2. table 1.: characteristics of the patients and control groups. p value c ontrol h d g roup t otal g roup group 50 50 100 total no. 0.78 25 50% 27 54% 52 52% male no. % gender 0.77 25 50% 23 46% 48 48% female no. % 0.09 43.16 ±14.4 46.82 ±12.6 44.45 ±13.6 mean ±sd age (years) 0.36 ⃰ 24.23 ± 3.37 24.5 ± 4.52 24.37 ± 3.97 mean ±sd bmi (kg/m2) table 2.: distribution of patients and control according to age groups. groups age (years) hd group n (%) control n (%) 18 – 24 4 (8%) 6 (12%) 25 – 34 6 (12%) 9 (18%) 35 – 44 12 (24%) 14 (28%) 45 – 54 10 (20%) 8 (16%) 55 – 64 12 (24%) 11 (22%) 65 – 75 6 (12%) 2 (4%) total 50 (100%) 50 (100%) those with end-stage renal disease on maintenance hemodialysis have significantly lower hdl levels than the control (p-value = 0.008), higher tg levels than the control (p-value = 0.03) and higher plasma atherogenic index (p-value = 0.02) but they have lower total cholesterol and ldl levels but it did not reach statistical significance as shown in table 3 and figure 1. figure 1. comparison between lipids profiles in study groups. 125 table 3: comparison between the lipid profile of hd group and control. p value control mean ± sd hd group mean ± sd group lipid profile 0.34 4.17 ± 0.69 3.29 ± 0.73 s. chol. mmol/l 0.03 1.6 ±0.43 2.38 ±0.56 s.tg mmol/l 0.35 2.69 ±0.63 1.91 ±0.66 ldl mmol/l 0.008 1.066 ±0.13 0.88 ±0.2 hdl mmol/l 0.02 0.177 ±0.12 0.434 ±0.16 aip table 4 shows that (84%) of patients on regular hemodialysis have a high plasma atherogenic index, (50%) with hypertriglyceridemia, (48%) have low hdl level, (8%) have hypercholesterolemia, (6%) have high ldl. table 3.5. shows that patients with end-stage renal disease on maintenance hemodialysis have significantly lowered. albumin than control (p-value = 0.005). there were no significant differences in the lipid profile between males and females, table 3.6. table 3.7. showed that participants with bmi ≥ 25 kg/m2 had significantly lower hdl and higher serum triglyceride and atherogenic index than those with bmi < 25, while total cholesterol and ldl was not significantly higher in those with bmi ≥ 25 kg/m2. table 5: comparison of s. albumin in study groups. p value s. albumin (g/l) mean ± sd group 0.005 36.38 ± 4.2 hd group 41.96 ± 2.89 control there was a positive correlation between bmi and s. cholesterol in the hd group, fig. 3.2 (r = +0.45, p = 0.001). figure 2: correlation between s. chol and bmi in hd group there was an inverse correlation between bmi and hdl in hd group (r= -0.43 p-value = 0.001) figure 3. table 4: the frequency of lipid abnormalities in the study groups. control no. (%) hd group no. (%) group lipid abnormalities 7 (14%) 4 (8%) s. chol ≥ 5.2 mmol/l 13 (26%) 25 (50%) s.tg ≥ 2.25 mmol/l 7 (14%) 3 (6%) ldl ≥ 3.3 mmol/l 8 (16%) 24 (48%) hdl ≤ 0.9 mmol/l 17 (34%) 42 (84%) aip ≥ 0.21 table 7: lipid profile according to bmi in all participants. lipid profile mmol/l bmi < 25 kg/m2 no. = 64 mean ± sd bmi ≥ 25 kg/m2 no. = 36 mean ± sd p value s. chol. 3.66 ± 0.69 3.84± 1.02 0.16 s.tg 1.84 ± 0.52 2.22± 0.72 0.01 ldl 2.22 ± 0.65 2.43± 0.89 0.099 hdl 1.05 ± 0.15 0.84± 0.2 0.04 atherogenic index of plasma 0.23 ± 0.14 0.41± 0.21 0.001 126 figure 3: correlation between hdl and bmi in hd group. there was no significant correlation between bmi and s. triglyceride in hd group (r=+0.01 p-value = 0.92), figure 4. figure 4: correlation between s.tg and bmi in hd group. figure 5 showed no significant correlation between lipid profile and age in the study population. figure 5: correlation between age and lipid profile in the study population. 4. discussion the end-stage renal disease leads to intense lipid disorders in a form of dysregulation of high-density lipoprotein (hdl) and triglyceride-rich lipoprotein metabolism, as a result of impairment in the maturation of hdl and alteration in its composition. in addition, clearance of triglyceride-rich lipoproteins and their atherogenic remnants is impaired and their plasma concentrations are elevated [5]. patients with the end-stage renal disease on regular hemodialysis were found to have significantly higher triglyceride and lower hdl levels than control, whereas total cholesterol and ldl levels were lower than control (not statistically significant). these findings are consistent with the description of uremic dyslipidemia in most studies lokesh r. et al [6], hariom s. et al [7], sara s. et al [8], luca v. et al [9] and şükrü u. et al [10], and which show high serum triglyceride and low hdl with normal or near normal total cholesterol and ldl as a result of changes in lipid catabolism and to some extent lipogenesis. decreased lipolysis is primarily the result of the diminished activity of lipoprotein lipase and hepatic lipase which leads to decreased catabolism of lipoproteins and chylomicrons [11]. other studies like nzere n. et al. [12] which shows elevated total cholesterol, serum triglyceride and ldl with low serum hdl in patients with end-stage renal disease on regular hemodialysis and somia m. et al. [13] which shows elevated total cholesterol and serum triglyceride, which may be due to exclusion of diabetic patients in our study. regular usage of erythropoietin supplement which may increase plasma lipoprotein lipase that leads to decrease plasma concentrations of total cholesterol, triglycerides, and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol after treatment of anemia [14, 15] and effects of conventional heparin on lipid profile in hemodialysis patients [16]. regarding plasma atherogenic index calculated as [log(tg/hdl)], there are significantly higher levels in hemodialysis in comparison with control group possibly, the hdl related protein destructs the oxidized ldl, which may explain hdls protective ability against heart disease. on the other hand oxidized atherogenic lipoprotein is taken up by immune system cells, which becomes gathered in foam cells which become trapped in the wall of the blood vessels and leads to the formation of atherosclerosis plaques that causes arterial narrowing and lead to heart diseases which is consistent with study done in baghdad in 2012 [17]. in this study, (34%) of patients on regular hemodialysis have triglyceride more than 2.5 mmol/land (50%) > 2.25 mmol/ l, (48%) have low hdl level, (8%) have hypercholesterolemia, (6%) have high ldl. in comparison with tetsuo s. [18] the prevalence of patients with hypertriglyceridemia was 20%, decreased levels of hdl found in 35.6%, elevated ldl levels found in 15.5%, in this study they include 45,390 patients treated with three times weekly hemodialysis, age ranged between 20 and 90 years, so different sample size and the hours of hd (usually 6hours/week for our patients) may be the cause for these differences. in a study by hiroaki o. et al [19], the prevalence of elevated total cholesterol was 38.7% and elevated serum 127 triglyceride (> 2.25 mmol/l) was found in 49.2%, the prevalence of high ldl was 30.5% and low hdl < 1.3 mmol/l was found in 87.6%, they didn’t exclude diabetic patients from their study which may explain this higher prevalence of both total cholesterol and ldl, regarding high prevalence of low hdl may be due to including every patient his hdl level < 1.3 mmol/l in their study. in this study serum albumin in patients with end-stage renal disease on regular hemodialysis is significantly lower than in control group which is consistent with allon n. et al [20] that may be due to inflammation from concurrent illnesses and chronic metabolic acidosis. lipid profile differences between males and females were not significant, which was comparable in hariom s. et al [7] while in buthainah a. et al [21] s. chol and serum tg was higher in the female group that may be due to narrow age range in their study which was 19 – 20 years. we found that participants with bmi ≥ 25 kg/m2 had significantly higher serum triglyceride and plasma atherogenic index with significantly lower hdl, while total cholesterol and ldl were not significantly higher in those with bmi ≥ 25 kg/m2, which is in accordance with shamai l et al. [22] and aziz j et al. [33]. somesh r. et al. [34] study showed no relation between bmi and total cholesterol, hdl and s.tg, which may be due to their sample that contains only healthy males, while in our study there are 50 patients with esrd on hd and 48 females. there was no significant correlation between lipid profile and age in our study, in comparison with tariq a. et al. [25)], that showed the same results except for s.chol. and ldl, which may be due to exclusion of obese subjects in their study and their age ranged from 55 to 84 years. 5. conclusion in conclusion, high atherogenic index of plasma, low hdl and hypertriglyceridemia are the commonest abnormalities found in patients on maintenance hemodialysis. there is a significant difference in lipid profile between those who are overweight and obese and those who are normal and underweight characterized by higher aip and s.tg with lower hdl in the overweight and obese group. no significant correlation was found between age, gender and lipid profile. references [1] m.h. dominiczak, m.j. caslake, “apolipoproteins: the metabolic role and clinical biochemistry applications,” ann clin biochem, vol. 48, pp. 498-515, 2011. [2] p.o. attman, p. alaupovic, “lipid abnormalities in chronic renal insufficiency,” kidney int, vol. 39, pp. 516–523, 1991. [3] p. alaupovic, “apolipoprotein composition as the basis for classifying plasma lipoproteins. characterization of apoa and apob-containing lipoprotein families,” prog lipid res, vol. 30, pp. 105–138, 1991. [4] x. wang, s.k. peesapati, m.f. renedo, s. moktan, “haemoglobin a1c levels in non-diabetic patients with endstage renal disease (esrd) receiving haemodialysis,” j endocrinol invest, vol. 27, pp. 7335, 2004. [5] c. douglas, “malnutrition and nutritional assessment,” harrison's principles of internal medicine, 18th edition, mcgraw hill company, vol. 75, pp. 609, 2012. [6] r. lokesh. m. anwar, a. sandhya, “a study of lipid profile in chronic renal failure patients undergoing hemodialysis,” iosr journal of dental and medical sciences (iosrjdms), vol. 15, pp. 01-03, 2016. [7] s. hariom, j. tejas, h.g. jignesh, p.b. dipika, “lipid profile and lipoprotein(a) in chronic renal failure patients with and without hemodialysis, govt,” medical college, bhavnagar, gujarat, india, m.p.shah medical college, jamnagar, gujarat, india, 2012. [8] s.p. sarah, “impact of dyslipidemia in end-stage renal disease,” department of medicine, mcgill university, montreal, canada, j am soc nephrol, vol. 14, pp. 315–320, 2003. [9] v. luca, b. salvatore, l. antonio, c. valeria, b. annamaria, c. giovanni, “lipid disorders in patients with renal failure: role in cardiovascular events and progression of chronic kidney disease,” vol. 14, pp. 12 – 15, 2016. [10] u. şükrü, ö. gülsüm, “lipid abnormalities in hemodialysis patients,” karadeniz technical university, school of medicine, department of nephrology, turkey, vol. 27, pp. 13, 2013. 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[15] g. tetsuya, s. hiroko, t. toshio, m. akefumi, m. masatoshi, y. susumu, “erythropoietin supplement increases plasma lipoprotein lipase and hepatic triglyceride lipase levels in hemodialysis patients,” department of internal medicine, kodama hospital, and third department of internal medicine, wakayama medical college, wakayama, japan, pp. 213–215, 1999. [16] m.s. elisaf, n.p. germanos, h.t. bairaktari, m.b. pappas, e.i. koulouridis, k.c. siamopoulos, “effects of conventional vs. low-molecular-weight heparin on lipid profile in hemodialysis patients,” am j nephrol, vol. 17, pp. 153–157, 1997. [17] f. wafa, m.h. elham, a.a. zean, “evaluating the utility of plasma atherogenic index among several atherogenic parameters in patients with chronic renal failure on maintenance hemodialysis,” journal of the faculty of medicine, baghdad university, 2012. [18] s. tetsuo, m. ikuto, w. yuzo, i. kunitoshi, t. yoshiharu, “elevated non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (non-hdlc) predicts atherosclerotic cardiovascular events in hemodialysis patients, japanese society for dialysis therapy,” 2011. [19] o. hiroaki, f.k. william, “lipid abnormalities in end stage renal disease, minneapolis,” minnesota, usa, nephrol dial transplant, vol. 13, pp. 45–49, 1998. [20] n.f. allon, z.f. stephen, “reassessment of albumin as a nutritional marker in kidney disease, division of nephrology,” indiana university school of medicine, indianapolis, indiana, kidney associates, houston, texas, 2010. [21] a. buthainah, a. ajile, “lipid profile in relation to gender and body mass index in students of al-qadisiya medical college,” journal of kufa for chemical science, vol. 2, pp. 105-115, 2012. [22] l. shamai, e. lurix, m. shen, g.m. novaro, s. szomstein, r. rosenthal, “association of body mass index and lipid profiles: evaluation of a broad spectrum of body mass index patients including the morbidly obese,” cleveland clinic florida, weston, usa, 2011. 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[24] r. somesh, b. singh, n. verma, t. sunita, n. jagdish, c. tulika, “study of body mass index (bmi) and lipid profile of blood donors of north indian population: across sectional study,” 2015. [25] a. tarig, a. abdelkarim, f. mohamed, “effects of age and gender on serum lipid profile in over 55 years-old apparently healthy sudanese individuals,” asian journal of biomedical and pharmaceutical sciences, vol. 3, pp.10-14, 2013. 1. introduction 5. conclusion [22] l. shamai, e. lurix, m. shen, g.m. novaro, s. szomstein, r. rosenthal, “association of body mass index and lipid profiles: evaluation of a broad spectrum of body mass index patients including the morbidly obese,” cleveland clinic florida, weston,... [23] j. aziz, n.a. siddiqui, i.a. siddiqui, a. omair, “relation of body mass index with lipid profile and blood pressure in young healthy students at ziauddin medical university,” medical university, karachi, 2003. [24] r. somesh, b. singh, n. verma, t. sunita, n. jagdish, c. tulika, “study of body mass index (bmi) and lipid profile of blood donors of north indian population: across sectional study,” 2015. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) journal homepage: http://www.spu.edu.iq/kjar issn 2411-7684 (print) – 2411-7706 (online) march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 70 kjar short article the effectiveness of amniotic membrane as skin graft fixator and graft take accelerator, a clinical research study ari raheem qader1, dana a abdilkarim2*, abdulsalaam m. yonis3,4 1department of surgery, university of sulaimani, sulaimani, kurdistan region, iraq. 2department of community health, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, kurdistan region, iraq. 3department of health, general directorate of health, mosul, iraq. 4sulaimani burn and plastic surgery hospital, sulaimani, kurdistan region, iraq. *corresponding author: dana.abdilkarim@spu.edu.iq received│december 18, 2015 accepted│january 21, 2016 abstract the amnion is a thin semi-transparent tissue forming the innermost layer of the fetal membrane. it has been claimed to be one of the most effective biological skin substitutes used in burn wounds, with efficiency of maintaining low bacteria count. this study was set to evaluate the effectiveness of amniotic membrane as skin graft fixator and graft take accelerator. this work is a prospective study carried out in burns and plastic surgery hospital in sulaimani for period from 1st of april to end of august 2015 on convenient sample of 33 burned patients. mean age of burned patients was 24±19 years, most (93.9%) of burned patients were treated by covering raw area with meshed ssg and only two patients were treated by covering with sheet ssg. most (90.9%) of burned patients who had treated with covered ssg had taken in comparison with non-covered ssg with amniotic membrane. postoperative complications for skin areas treated with covered technique were 3; graft loss due to infection, graft loss due to shearing and graft loss due to hematoma. amniotic membrane induces the graft take among burned skin and fastening the skin healing with fewer complications. key words: amniotic membrane, biologic dressing, split skin graft (ssg), graft take. introduction amnion the amnion is a thin semi-transparent tissue forming the innermost layer of the fetal membrane. as fresh amnion carries risk of contaminations and disease transmission, amnion is collected from placentae of selected and screened donors. various preservation methods have been introduced, including cryopreservation in liquid nitrogen, preservation in silver nitrate, storage in antibiotics solution, glycerol-preserved sheets, dried sheets and gamma-irradiated sheets (halim et al, 2010). it has been claimed to be http://www.spu.edu.iq/kjar mailto:dana.abdilkarim@spu.edu.iq kjar short article amniotic membrane as skin graft fixator, ari et al, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 71 one of the most effective biological skin substitutes used in burn wounds, with efficiency of maintaining low bacteria count. it also has advantages of reducing loss of protein, electrolytes and fluids, decreasing the risk infection, minimizing pain, acceleration of wound healing and good handling properties (bujang et al., 2010). several methods of graft fixation have been described (sangwan et al., 2007, rudge, 2007). a common technique is to use stitches but this is time consuming and the stitches need to be removed after graft take. placing surgical drapes over the graft is another method but these must be removed on the second or third day when the grafts are still not well vascularized, and this can lead to graft failure. fixation with skin staples was introduced as a fast and reliable method for graft fixation (alexander et al., 2005) however it is expensive and stressful for the patient as these staples must be removed which can be painful and frightening, particularly for children. forgotten staples are another troublesome complication (mohammadi et al., 2009). another technique uses steri-strip micro porous tapes for fixation, but the surrounding skin must be completely healthy to retain the tapes (rudge, 2007). other methods applying different materials such as honey (ilteris murat, 2007) or cyanoacrylate (adler et al., 2007) have been designed. we would like to present a method of graft fixation pioneered at our burn center and found convenient for both patient and surgeon, using amniotic membrane as fixator. several studies have shown that the application of amniotic membrane as a biological dressing in the management of burns is accompanied by rapid reepithelialization and healing (mohammadi and ghoddusi, 2008, mohammadi and ghoddusi, 2010, antasov et al., 1994). patients and methods patients a prospective study carried out in burns and plastic surgery hospital in sulaimani to evaluate the effectiveness of amniotic membrane as skin graft fixator and take accelerator in a period from 1st of april to end of august 2015 on convenient sample of 33 burned patients was selected from patients presented to burns and plastic surgery hospital in sulaimani. the patients were evaluated preoperatively by taking history, clinical examination and laboratory investigations. fresh amniotic membrane was obtained from caesarean section patients, seronegative of hepatitis and venereal diseases, no jaundice history, no history of malaria and toxemias. the amniotic membrane was stripped from the placenta and all blood, mucus and debris was removed using 4x4 moist gauze pieces. the membrane was cut into pieces of 10x10 cm and spread over sterile piece of surgical gauze (singh and chacharkar, 2011). surgical technics after covering the raw area with ssg half of the grafts is covered and fixed with amniotic membrane and another half fixed by staples and covered with gauze impregnated with oil based ointment. this is followed by the placement of a thick layer of fluff gauze that is then covered with kjar short article amniotic membrane as skin graft fixator, ari et al, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 72 an elastic bandage. dressings were checked daily soakage, discharge and foul smell. subsequently the dressings were opened in day 4. the state of graft take was checked for two areas. results a total of 33 burned patients were treated surgically by covering the raw area with split skin graft (ssg). mean age of burned patients was 24±19 years, 54.6% of them were ≤20 years old. about two thirds (69.7%) of burned patients had flame burn and 30.3% of them had the scald burn. most (93.9%) of burned patients were treated by covering the raw area with meshed ssg and only two patients were treated by covering with sheet ssg (table 1). most of burned patients (90.9%) who had treated surgically by covering ssg with amniotic membrane had taken in comparison with non-covered ssg, (table 2). postoperative complications for areas treated with non-covered technique were 6 complications (3 graft loss due to infection, 2 due to shearing and 1 due to hematoma), while postoperative complications for areas treated with covered technique were 3 (1 graft loss due to infection, 1 due to shearing and 1 due to hematoma) (table 3). table 1: surgical operation characteristics. variable no. % surgical technique meshed split skin graft 31 93.9 sheet split skin graft 2 6.1 total 33 100.0 table 2: graft take for covered ssg with amniotic membrane in comparison with non-covered technique. variable non-covered covered χ² p no. % no. % graft take 0.5 0.2 yes 27 81.8 30 90.9 no 6 18.2 3 9.1 total 33 100.0 33 100.0 kjar short article amniotic membrane as skin graft fixator, ari et al, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 73 table 3: distribution of postoperative complications according to covered ssg with amniotic membrane in comparison to non-covered technique. variable non-covered covered χ² p no. % no. % postoperative complications 0.3* 0.8 graft loss due to infection 3 50.0 1 33.3 graft loss due to shearing 2 33.3 1 33.3 graft loss due to hematoma collection 1 16.7 1 33.3 total complications 6 100.0 3 100.0 discussion indications of amniotic membrane usage continue to expand and encompass varying range of procedures. there are three representative forms of amniotic membrane available; fresh, cryopreserved and dried amniotic membrane. studies seem to indicate that freeze dried-air preserved amniotic membranes show no qualitative changes in growth factor and cell contents even after 5 years of storage as compared to the other two types (kesting et al., 2010, singh and chacharkar, 2011). in any form, the membrane is easy to handle as a dressing material and adheres well to the bare connective and osseous tissue (chopra and thomas, 2013, kim et al., 2009). in the present study, covered skin graft with amniotic membrane had a graft take in 90.9% compared to 81.8 areas had taken by using non covering technique. this finding is consistent to results of ganatra, et al. study in pakistan (ganatra and bhura, 2004) which was observational study on 30 burned cases treated surgically with ssg with two areas, one covered with amniotic membrane and the other was not covered and concluded that amniotic membrane was decreasing healing time. amniotic membrane immediately adheres to the grafted areas and fixes skin graft to their bed, which eliminates suturing on extremities and diminishes the need for suturing on other body parts. it also eliminates painful suture removal, accelerates graft take and decreases traumatic graft loss induced by suture removal. the revascularization of a skin graft depends on immobilization of the graft on the wound bed. in cases where circular dressings are needed, the graft may be displaced under the dressing, leading to partial graft loss (rudge, 2007). current study revealed that covered areas with amniotic membrane had less complication than non-covered areas. this finding agreed with results of kumar a, et al study in india (kumar et al., 2015) which found that amniotic membrane has the potential to function as a barrier for infection and the unique properties associated with kjar short article amniotic membrane as skin graft fixator, ari et al, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 74 this material can augment its potential as a matrix for tissue regeneration. the current consensus is that the intimate adherent property of the biological dressing to an open wound in some way suppresses bacterial proliferation and helps to eliminate existing bacteria (gonce et al, 1990). a number of factors may contribute to this effect. in a clean surgical wound, the collagen of the graft or biological dressing, via its hemostatic properties, will help to stop bleeding and thus prevent subsequent hematomas, which would provide opportunities for bacterial proliferation. in addition, the very close bonding between graft and wound eliminates dead space in which serous exudates could collect and encourage bacterial growth (kearney, 1996). when wounds are contaminated, grafts or biological dressings can not only suppress bacterial growth but also reduce the existing microbial population density. a likely explanation for this phenomenon is the bonding of the graft to the wound bed by fibrin: the bacteria are trapped in the thin fibrin matrix linking the collagen fibers of the graft with the collagen of the wound bed. the fibrin matrix provides an ideal substratum for migration of phagocytes and ensures that all the bacteria are within reach of the phagocytes (kearney, 1996). amniotic membrane has been found an effective biological dressing for burns, as it diminishes the oozing of plasma, bacterial count, and fluid, protein and heat loss (mohammadi and ghoddusi johari, 2008; mohammadi and ghoddusi, 2010, antasov et al., 1994). conclusions amniotic membrane induces the graft take among burned skin and fastening the skin healing. split skin graft covered with amniotic membrane is associated with fewer complications. references halim as, khoo tl, mohd. yussof sj (2010). biologic and synthetic skin substitutes: an overview. indian journal of plastic surgery. 43(l):s23-s28. bujang-safawi e, halim as, khoo tl, dorai aa (2010). dried irradiated human amniotic membrane as a biological dressing for facial burns: a 7-year case series. burns. 36:876–82. sangwan vs, burman s, tejwani s, mahesh sp, murthy r (2007). amniotic membrane transplantation: a review of current indications in the management of ophthalmic disorders. indian j ophthalmol. 55(4):251-60. rudge r (2007). an easy and safe method of splitthickness skin graft fixation. burns. 33:1074-5. alexander g, al-rasheed aa (2005). skin stapler removal by artery forceps: a hazardous practice? burns. 31:116. mohammadi aa, ghoddusi johari h (2009). forgotten staples. burns.35: 611. ilteris murat e (2007). a different and safe method of split thickness skin graft fixation: medical honey application. burns. 33:782-7. adler n, nachumovsky s, meshulam-derazon s, adel d (2007). skin graft fixation with cyanoacrylate tissue adhesive in burn patients. burns. 33:803. mohammadi aa, ghoddusi johari h (2008). amniotic membrane: a skin graft fixator convenient for both patient and surgeon. burns. 34:1051-1052. mohammadi aa, ghoddusi johari h (2010). anchoring sutures: useful adjuncts for amniotic membrane for skin graft fixation in extensive burns and near the joints. burns. 36:1134-1141. antasov w, mazalova j, todorod r, stereva k, trencheva w (1994). use of amniotic membrane as biological dressing in contemporary treatment of burn. ann medit burns club. 7:202-5. kesting mr, loeffelbein dj, classen m, slottahuspenina j, hasler rj, jacobsen f, et al (2010). repair of oronasal fi stulas with human amniotic membrane in minipigs. br j oral maxillofac surg. 48:131-5. kjar short article amniotic membrane as skin graft fixator, ari et al, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 75 singh r, chacharkar mp (2011). dried gammairradiated amniotic membrane as dressing in burn wound care. j tissue viability. 20:49-54. chopra a, thomas bs (2013). amniotic membrane, a novel material for regeneration and repair. j biomim biomater tissue eng. 18:1-8. kim ss, song ck, shon sk, lee ky, kim ch, lee mj, et al (2009). effects of human amniotic membrane grafts combined with marrow mesenchymal stem cells on healing of fullthickness skin defects in rabbits. cell tissue res. 336:59-66. ganatra ma, bhura s (2004). management of skin graft donor site by irradiated amniotic membrane. pakistan journal of surgery. 19 (2): 82-85. kumar a, chandra v, reddy aa, reddy bh, reddy c, naveen a (2015). evaluation of clinical, antiinflammatory and anti-infective properties of amniotic membrane used for guided tissue regeneration: a randomized controlled trial. surgical research journal. 12 (2): 127-135. gonce s, miskell p, waymack jp (1990). a comparison of biobrane vs homograft for coverage of contaminated burn wounds. burns. 14: 409-412. kearney j (1996). banking of skin grafts and biological dressing. in: “principle and practice of burns management”, john a.d. settle (ed.), churchill livingstone, new york, 329-51. the effectiveness of amniotic membrane as skin graft fixator and graft take accelerator, a clinical research study ari raheem qader1, dana a abdilkarim2*, abdulsalaam m. yonis3,4 abstract introduction patients and methods results discussion conclusions references  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.53 preparation and investigation of some properties of acrylic resin reinforced with siwak fiber used for denture base applications sihama i. salih material engineering department university of technology baghdad, iraq 130005@ uotechnology.edu.iq. jawad k. oleiwi material engineering department university of technology baghdad, iraq 130041@ uotechnology.edu.iq hwazen s. fadhil material engineering department university of technology baghdad, iraq 130143@uotechnology.edu.iq abstract: natural fibers have recently become attractive to researchers due to their low cost, fairly good mechanical properties, high specific strength, non-abrasive, eco-friendly, bio-degradability and biocompatibility characteristics, they are exploited as a replacement for the conventional fibers, such as glass, aramid and carbon. this study investigated the influence of fiber length and weight fraction of natural siwak fiber, with the selected length of (2, 6 and 12 mm) and weight fraction (3, 6 and 9 wt %), on some of mechanical and physical properties such as (tensile, impact and hardness), in addition to test the infrared spectroscopy ftir of the prepared denture base resin and all of these tests were carried out at laboratory temperature. the properties of pmma reinforced by natural fiber are mainly affected by the interfacial adhesion strength between the matrix and the fiber, and in order to improve interconnection between the siwak fiber and pmma matrix, so the siwak fibers were treated with alkali (sodium hydroxide) solution prior to use as reinforcement materials. the results illustrated that the tensile strength, young modulus, fracture toughness and hardness tended to be improved with length and concentration ratios of siwak fiber, while the impact strength and elongation percentage at break decrease with fiber content in composite samples. keywords: acrylic resin, natural fibers, siwak, denture. 1. introduction tooth loss is one of the manifestations of aging. dentures and dental implants are the major prosthetic devices given to restore physiological and esthetic functions of oral tissues of patients. an ideal denture base material is the one that possesses biocompatibility with the oral tissues, excellent esthetics, and superior mechanical properties especially modulus of elasticity, impact strength, hardness, sufficient bond strength with artificial teeth and lining materials. dentures made from resin based polymeric systems were popular because of their ability to be molded easy with excellent esthetic appearance and suitable mechanical characteristics in most clinical condition and low cost compared with metal-base denture. among the polymers, (pmma) is the most commonly used material for this purpose. one of the main drawbacks of this material is considered to be its poor mechanical performance [1]. fracture of acrylic resin removable dentures occurs frequently during service through heavy occlusal force or accidental damage [2]. therefore, improvements in the mechanical performances of denture base structures have been sought by adding reinforcing compounds to the pmma matrix, thus creating a reinforced denture base resins [3]. the aim of this study is to prepare pmma composites reinforced by the natural siwak fiber, with the different lengths and different weight fraction, and their characterization study. 2. methods and materials in this research the duracryl plus self-curing base resin, manufactured by spofa dental company used as a matrix. this type of material characterized by many properties compared with other kind of pmma polymer, such as: softer feel, low molecular weight, color stable in the long run, minimized shrinkage, stable polymerization cycle with a perfect end result, the acrylic is long pourable and modulate for a long period of time [4]. siwak fibers in three different length (2, 6 & 12 mm) and three concentration (3, 6 & 9 wt. %) used as reinforcing materials in acrylic resin. figure (1) shows the methyl methacrylate powder and monomer and the siwak fiber that are used to fabricate composite specimens in this study. methods according to required selection ratio of weight fractions of the reinforcement materials weighing the amount of reinforced material (siwak fibers) by using electronic balance with accuracy (0.0001) digits depending on total weight of the matrix material pmma required for filling the mould cavities by using theory of rule of mixtures. the fibers treated with 5% (w/v) alkali (sodium hydroxide) solution at 25 ° c for 24 h, maintaining a fiber-to-liquor ratio of 1:30 (w/v). the fibers which alkali treated washed several times with distilled water to remove excess alkali sticking on their surface, then neutralized (ph-7) with distilled water containing a few drop of acetic acid and finally washed with distilled water, then the treated fibers were dried at room temperature for 5 days and finally kept in hot air oven at (50-60 ° c) until dry. the liquid monomer (mma) with one type of reinforcement fibers (siwak) should be mixed together at room temperature homogeneous and continuously, so, it must be sure of homogeneity of the mixture, before added powder to it to produce composite materials. the powder then added to the mixture and gradually mixed, then cured in same manner which indicated above. the acrylic resin samples were de-molded to remove from the metallic mould cavities with smooth surfaces, followed by heat treatment at 55°c for 3hr to remove residual stresses as a result of de-molding of the specimens from the metallic mold cavity. 3. results fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy (ftir) fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy (ftir) was used, to fully characteristic band of pmma composite specimens. figure (2) illustrated the infrared spectrum of neat pmma and shows that the asymmetric and symmetric correspond to the (c–h) stretching of methyl group (ch3) assigned to peaks at 2990.53 and 2853.28 cm -1 respectively. furthermore c=o and c-o bands appear at range (1500-2000 cm -1 ) and (1000-1400) respectively [5]. so, the medium strength of c=o stretching assigned at 1722 cm 1 and the bands at (1447.03 and 1385) cm -1 are associated with (c–h) symmetric and asymmetric stretching modes respectively. the 1239.54 cm-1 band is assigned to torsion of the methylene group ch2 and the peak at 1189.98cm -1 for the band corresponds to vibration of the ester group (c–o), while (c–c) stretching band are at (984.77 and 840.98) cm -1 [5 and 6]. in this spectrum medium strength of c=o bending assigned at 748.98 cm 1 . the infrared spectrum of pmma composites reinforced with different ratios of siwak fiber (0, 3, 6 and 9%) for different lengths (2, 6 and 12mm) is shown in figures (3, 4 and 5). it can be seen from the infrared spectrum of these group composite specimens, no other new peak or peak shifts were observed for the pmma composite specimens with the addition of siwak fiber. this is due to the find physical bond and absence of any cross linking in these specimens. furthermore, there is a clear increase in peaks intensity for all of characteristic peaks of pmma with increasing siwak fiber ratio, and it reaches a maximum at ratio of 3% siwak fiber. then the peaks intensity of pmma composites decrease to lower than the peaks intensity of neat pmma, when the ratio of siwak fiber increases to higher than 3% ratio. from ftir test we can observed that there is no other peak or peak shift of ftir spectra for pmma composite specimens with addition of siwak fibers, also increase in ratio of fibers led to increase in peak intensity and reach maximum at 3%, then peaks intensity of pmma composites decrease to lower than the peaks intensity of neat pmma, when the ratio of fibers increases to higher than 3% ratio. tensile test results the composite specimens with siwak fiber have the highest tensile strength than the neat acrylic (pmma). this is due to the presence of fibers in resin thus ensuring transmission of loads from matrix to fiber. mostly pmma matrix is much weaker in strength than samples with strengthening fibers, since the matrix alone is unable to resist the tensile force applied on it and fails with strength lower than specimens with strengthening fibers that withstand the tensile load [7]. the relationship between the tensile strength and weight fraction of siwak fibers is shown in figure (6). figure shows the increasing in the mechanical properties with the fiber length. however, the optimal condition is at a fiber length of 12 mm. the fiber length of (2, 6 mm) has a lower tensile strength and the reason behind this is that shorter fiber may not be compatible composites due to the improper bonding between the matrix and fibers [8]. it can be noted that the tensile strength increases with increasing weight fraction of reinforcing fibers. the reasons behind such behavior is that the strengthening mechanism of reinforcing fibers in which, the amount of these fibers plays an important role impedes increasing the slipping of pmma resin chains. figure (7) shows the relation between modulus of elasticity of pmma composites as a function of weight fraction and fiber length of siwak fibers in composite. it can be noted that the modulus of elasticity increases with increasing fiber length and weight fraction in composite samples. so, the weight fraction of (9 wt.%) and (12 mm) fiber length represent the greatest value for the modulus of elasticity for pmma reinforced with siwak fibers. the reason behind increasing young’s modulus value with increasing content of fibers, may be related to good interfacial adhesion strength between the matrix (t will be explained later by sem morphology), in addition to that the siwak fibers have good stiffness than acrylic resin because they have young modulus higher than matrix and that leads to improving the stiffness of the composite. also as the fiber weight fraction increased, there is possibility of fiber-matrix interaction leads to an increase in efficiency of stress transfer from the matrix phase to the fiber phase. the percentage of elongation determined at fracture for pmma composites as a function of weight fraction and fiber length of siwak fibers in composite, and is shown in figure (8). increasing the fiber length and weight fraction of siwak fibers leads to reduce the percentage of elongation of composite specimens. this is because the presence of reinforcement imparts the stiffening effect within the resin and thus imposes a mechanical restraint on the composite. also decrease of elongation percentage depend on the interface that is between fiber and matrix [9 &10]. from tensile test we observed that pure pmma had the lower value of tensile strength and modulus of elasticity which equal (47.6 mpa &1.7 gpa.), respectively. tensile strength and young modulus, increase with the increase in the weight fraction and fiber length of the siwak fibers in pmma resin. elongation percentage at break decrease with increasing the weight fraction of siwak fibers. the largest values of tensile strength and young's modulus for specimens reinforced with siwak fibers are (71 mpa. & 4.9gpa.) at optimum condition of weight fraction ( 9% ) and fiber length (12 mm). hardness test results a figure (9) shows the relationship between the hardness and the weight fraction of the reinforcing fibers (siwak), as a function to fiber length, which were added to the poly methyl methacrylate resin. figure illustrate that, the hardness increases with increasing weight fraction and fiber length of siwak fibers, and reaches its maximum amount at (9 wt.%) and 12mm length. this is because of the increase of fiber content, the composite becomes stiffer and harder, as compared to the matrix polymer. the fiber has superior mechanical properties such has hardness, modulus, strength etc. therefore the additional high modulus fiber increases the hardness of the composite [11]. also the increase in hardness may be attributed to increasing wettability or bonding (interaction) between the matrix and fibers due to alkali treatment of fibers [12]. also, the results for specimens increase with increasing fiber length of fibers. hardness increase with the increase in the weight fraction and fiber length of the siwak fibers in pmma resin. impact test results a figure (10) shows the relationship between the impact strength and the weight fraction as well as, the fiber length of the reinforcement (siwak fiber), which were added to pmma resin. figures illustrate that impact strength for neat pmma resin is equal to (8.75 kj/m 2 ), and higher than a composite specimen with reinforcing fibers. the impact strength decreases with increasing weight fraction and fiber length of reinforcing fibers of composite materials. this is because the presence of reinforcement such as siwak fibers it will increased the stiffness of pmma composite (as mentioned earlier) and thus imposed restraint the movement of polymeric chain, and this lead to decreased in impact strength of the composite samples with increased the fiber length and fiber content in composite. furthermore, due to the stress concentration sites in the composite samples, which result from clustered fibers especially with the high ratios of fiber content in composite and that may be reduction in bonding between fiber and pmma resin [13]. it can be also noted from this figure that specimen which have higher length about (12mm) have higher impact strength than specimen with a lower length. the results of fracture toughness for samples with siwak fibers in pmma resin is illustrated in figure (11). which, illustrates that the fracture toughness increase with increasing weight fraction and fiber length for composite specimens reinforced by siwak fibers. the maximum values of fracture toughness were observed at (12mm) fiber length and (9%) weight fraction and reach (6.03 mpa.m½) for siwak specimens. impact strength decrease with increasing the weight fraction of siwak fibers. fracture toughness increase with the increase in the weight fraction and fiber length of the siwak fibers in pmma resin. pure pmma have impact strength value higher than composite specimens reinforced by siwak fibers and equal to (8.75 kj/m 2 ). morphological analysis scanning electron microscopy sem micrographs were done to the tensile tested fractured surface for the neat pmma polymeric material and pmma composite samples with different composition at different magnification (1000x and 3000x). the fractured surface morphology of the neat pmma sample, as shown from figure (12 a and b), in the most case, it appeared as a homogeneous morphology. sem photography of the fracture surface morphology of pmma composites reinforced by 3% ratio of siwak fiber with 2mm fiber length, and pmma composites reinforced by 9% ratio of siwak fiber with 12mm fiber length are shown in figure (13 a and b) and figure (14 a and b) respectively at different magnifications (a:1000x and b: 3000x). it is noticed from the fracture surface morphology of sem photography. this microscopic imaging exhibited a heterogeneous morphology. as well as, figure (14 a) shows a continuous long fiber morphology embedded in the matrix material and these fibers remained coated with a matrix material, even after the failure which occurred in the sample, as designated by the red coloured arrows in figure (14 a). the fracture surface morphology of neat pmma appeared homogeneous morphology in (sem) test, while the pmma composite reinforced by siwak fibers the fracture surface appeared sem-continuous. 4. figures and tables figure 1: where (a): (pmma) powder, (b): monomer and (c): siwak fibers. a b c figure 2: ftir spectrum that obtained for the cold cure pmma specimens. figure 3: ftir spectra for pmma composites as a function of siwak fiber content in composite samples at constant length (2mm) of fiber. figure 4: ftir spectra for pmma composites as a function of siwak fiber content in composite samples at constant length (6mm) of fiber. figure 5: ftir spectra for pmma composites as a function of siwak fiber content in composite samples at constant length (12mm) of fiber. figure 6: tensile strength of pmma composites as a function of weight fraction and fiber length of siwak fibers in composite. figure 7: young’s modulus of pmma composites as a function of weight fraction and fiber length of siwak fibers in composite. 0 20 40 60 80 0 3 6 9t e n si le s tr e n g h t (m p a ) weight fraction (%) of siwak fibers 2mm 6mm 12mm 0 2 4 6 0 3 6 9 e la st ic m o d u lu s (g p a ) weight fraction (%) of siwak fibers 2mm 6mm 12mm pure pmma pmma+3% siwak fiber with 2mm length pmma+6% siwak fiber with 2mm length pure pmma pmma+ 3% siwak fiber with 6mm length pmma+ 6% siwak fiber with 6mm length pmma+ 9% siwak fiber with 6mm length pure pmma pmma+ 3% siwak fiber with 12mm length pmma+ 6% siwak fiber with 12mm length pmma+ 9% siwak fiber with 12mm length figure 8: elongation percentage at break of pmma composites as a function of weight fraction and fiber length of siwak fibers in composite. figure 9: hardness (shore-d) of pmma composites as a function of weight fraction and fiber length of siwak fibers in composite. figure 10: impact strength of pmma composites as a function of weight fraction and fiber length of siwak fibers in composite. figure 11: fracture toughness of pmma composites as a function of weight fraction and fiber length of siwak fibers in composite. figure 12: sem image of fractured surface morphology of neat pmma different magnifications ((a) 1000x and (b) 3000x). figure 13: sem image of fractured surface morphology of pmma composites reinforced by 3% ratio of siwak fiber with 2mm fiber length at different magnifications ((a) 1000x and (b) 3000x). figure 14: sem image of fractured surface morphology of pmma composites reinforced by 9% ratio of siwak fiber with 12mm fiber length at different magnifications ((a) 1000x and (b) 3000x). 0 1 2 3 0 3 6 9 e lo n g a ti o n ( % ) weight fraction (%) of siwak fibers 2mm 6mm 12mm 65 70 75 80 85 90 0 3 6 9 h a rd n e ss ( s h o re -d ) weight fraction (%) of siwak fibers 2mm 6mm 12mm 0 5 10 0 3 6 9 im p a ct s tr e n g h t (k j/ m 2 ) weight fraction (%) of siwak fibers 2mm 6mm 12mm 0 2 4 6 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this model is evaluated using yelp restaurant data set, imdb reviews data set, and arabic qaym.com restaurant reviews data set under various classification model, the system was efficient in predicting rating from reviews. keywords: recommender systems, sentiment analysis, opinion mining, natural language processing, text classification. 1. introduction recommender systems collect information on user’s preferences for particular items and try to predict user needs in the field of products, information services [1]. recommender systems are constructed using two paradigms: content based recommender systems and collaborative filtering recommender systems. the content based recommender systems are depending on item features. content based recommender systems. recommend items that similar in the feature with that chosen by the user before. collaborative filtering (cf) recommender systems depending on the similarity between users, collaborative filtering. filtering considers two users are similar if they chose same items before, and recommended the same item to each other [2]. so recommender system needs user or objects data to work fluently, but most rs. suffering from cold start problems (new user cold start and new item cold start) that are caused by lack of information about the new user or new items added to the recommender system database, and the second problem of data sparsity which is caused by insufficient user rating during purchasing process in the recommender system. this yield many works to tackle these two problems [3] [4] ]. beyond the traditional methods to build a recommender system, there is a growing paradigm to exploit additional unstructured text reviews as an added source of information about products and services [3]. user review and opinions could be useful in recommender system especially in the area of services like restaurants, movies, hospitals, doctors, more rather in measurable products [5] [6]. the contribution of this paradigm is, firstly, it decreases the effect of data sparsity problem in collaborative filtering systems by using the user review as for additional information about an item. second, it provides a way to extend recommender system to measure services where numerical rating could be impossible or insufficient, third this research handle both english and arabic languages for sentiment analysis 2. literature review sentiment analysis (sa.) or opinion mining is the study of emotions toward an item or entity [7]. sentiment analysis can be treated as a classification problem; sentiment analysis will determine whether the sentence expresses positive or negative opinion [7] [8]. the most important application of sentiment analysis is product reviews; these reviews are important for the business holders as they can decide according to user’s opinion, and also for users because they can be recommended for products according to opinions of other users [8]. pmi-ir (point wise mutual information and information retrieval) was proposed by turing, who computed sentiment orientation is (so) to two adjectives (poor, and excellent) and measure the synonymy of the word according to these two terms. pmi-ir used to build a synonymy lexicon [9]. qumsiyeh. and ng. is urged a recommender system. that provides recommendations about multimedia items, by using data about features extracted from users reviews about a specific movie or picture [10]. kim proposed a movie search engine depends on previous user ratings, reviews. when a user types a query which is expanded by selecting an item appeared which is an issue from the last review, but this approach leads to the overfitting problem and decreasing in diversity in recommender results [11]. content based recommender system also exploits user reviews in building review based product profile [5]. ganu et al. proposed restaurant recommender system, that cluster users based on their reviews and the items which liked by them [12]. in recent years after the revolution of the social network, directions appeared to apply sentiment analysis on social network text posts, molla. made a sentiment analysis by using a post about samsung products using a mailto:110018@uotechnology.edu.iq mailto:ahmed80.ab@gmail.com different account for samsung company [6]. dmah. h. and xiao zheng develop this direction and deploy sentiment analysis on twitter post for a trusted friends relate to a particular person account [13]. this work proposes a technique to alleviate the problem of data sparsity (poor user ratings), by training a naïve bays classifier to specify user preferences from the review (like/dislike) depending on review features and word net corpus. 3. sentiment classification techniques sentiment classification methods can be classified into: 3.1 machine learning techniques this paradigm for sentiment analysis uses well-known machine learning algorithms to classify text according to linguistic features [7] [14]. 3.1.1 probabilistic classifiers probabilistic classifiers are based on hypothesizing a generative model which comes from product distribution over original features space, two probabilistic important classifiers are:  naïve bays classifier: this classifier is founded on bayes theorem, this model computes the positive probability of the class, based on word distribution in a document; this model needs a bag of words feature extraction and ignore the position of the word in document [7] [14].  maximum entropy classifier: also known as a conditional exponential classifier, it uses labeled feature set as a vector, then calculates the possibility of each feature that could be computed to specify the most likely class for the feature set. 3.1.1.2 linear classifier linear classifier trains a model to classify objects to their class with a line. assume ̅ { } is a vector of word frequencies, ̅ = {a1, a2, an} is a vector of features, so linear classifier would predict a line that is p= ̅ ̅ , where b is a scalar, and p is a line spreading plan between classes. linear classifier is divided into:  support vector machine: support vector machine is a supervised classifier used for classification and regression analysis. the idea behind the svm is to determine a line that is separating in a search space, which separates different classes. svm works well with text data, because of sparse nature of the text data. text data are irrelevant, but somehow are correlated and could be organized in linearly separable categories [7] [14] [15].  neural networks: -this paradigm is based on the neuron, nn consists of many neurons, multilayer neural networks can be used for nonlinear boundaries. the input to the neuron is x which is a vector of word frequencies in the document and set of weights paired with each neuron to calculate class prediction ̅̅̅ . [14] 3.1.1.3 decision tree classifier: decision tree uses the division of training data, in which the data is partite based on the condition of feature value, here we can use division by appearance or absence of a word to classify a document [14] [15]. 3.1.1.4 rule based classifier: it depends on modeling the data with a set of rules. if a word holds positive emotion text, it considered as positive, while if the word holds negative emotion, it classified as negative [14]. 3.1.2 unsupervised learning this machine learning approach has no target to learn from, it is learning by observation. the most used approach in sentiment analysis and recommender system are clustering, which operates by gathering the similar items into one cluster based on euclidian distance or other distance measurements. k-means, hierarchical clustering, gaussian mixture model, hidden markov are known clustering methods [14]. 3.2 lexicon based approach this method uses opinion words by determining positive words to specify the desired state, and negative words to define unacceptable state [7].lexicon based method is divided into two categories:  dictionary based approach: this mechanism a collected opinion word with known orientation. this detection could be expanded by searching word net corpora for synonyms and antonyms.  corpus based approaches: this method tries to measure the sentiment orientation by finding co-occurrence pattern words to determine their sentiment, and get another opinion words which have similar context [7] [14] [15]. 4. the proposed system the proposed system consists of three components. the first one is web scraper which is used to scrap user’s reviews from web sites and other social networks, while the second component is responsible for analyzing user reviews and specifying positive and negative sentiments from collected review data set, the third one is a collaborative filter that provides recommendations. this paper focus on a study the second part which is the sentiment analyzer for reviews see figure below: figure 1. overview of proposed system the sentiment analysis component system begins by scraping reviews from the web and preprocess the reviews data set for sentiment analysis operation. the preprocessing process aims to refine the reviews text from parts that decrease the efficiency of machine learning for sentiment analysis operation like stop words and finding the stems (root) of words in each review text and saving the result refined text in corpus list, preprocessing algorithm below illustrate this procedure: the resulted corpus of reviews is ready for next step which is building the bag of words, dividing the dataset of a bag of words into a training set, and testing set. after that machine learning naïve bays system or any other machine learning model would be trained to predict the positive sentiment and negative one from reviews as algorithm below: this research also handles the sentiment analysis for the arabic language, which has a specialty in the process because it's an oriental language. the word in the arabic language contains the word's character and vowel diacritical marks that specify the pronounce of the character that formulates the word. the existence of vowel diacritical marks may cause under fitting for the machine learning system, so this vowel diacritical marks have to be removed in the normalization preprocessing, we can notice algorithm 3 , its begin with read the review and unify the characters than contains vowel diacritical marks like ٱ ,آ , أ, , و to ؤ , ى to ي , ا to be إ and ئ to ى and removing the noise (vowel diacritical marks) like ّ tashdid, ّ fatha, ّ |damma, ّ tanwin damm, ّ kasra, ّ tanwin kasr, ّ sukun. then complete the preprocess as in english preprocessing by removing stop words and stemming for all words in the normalized review. algorithm 3:arabic reviews preprocessing input: n arabic reviews data set output: corpus of normalized reviews i=0, n= number of reviews in dataset 1. while (i<n) do : 2. input review(i) 3. normalize arabic characters cases: a. إأٱآا to ا b. ى to ي c. ؤ to ء d. ئ to ء 4. delete noise in arabic text reviews: ّ | # tashdid ّ | # fatha ّ | # tanwin fath ّ | # damma ّ | # tanwin damm ّ | # kasra ّ | # tanwin kasr ّ | # sukun tatwil/kashida # ـ 5. for all words in reviews (i) do remove arabic stop words stem (word) in review (i) 6. add a normalized review to list corpus [ ] 7. end. 5. results in the experiment of the sentiment analysis system, we use three datasets, yelp data set for restaurant reviews which contain 1000 reviews and imdb movie reviews data set that contains 1582000 reviews, and arabic restaurant reviews data set scraped from qaym.com contains 8364 reviews. the reviews text file consists of three headers, the user_id; the review is one line text written by a visitor to a restaurant in yelp restaurants data set or movie audience in imdb or qaym.com and rating that takes either 1 for like or -1 for dislike. the sentiment analysis system is implemented using anaconda python 3.6 with the nltk. library for natural language processing. the system read the data from reviews file, execute preprocessing operations (splitting, stemming, and remove stop words) then we divide the data set into 80% training set and 20% test set. then we implement three machine learning models to compare for the better one and to observe their issues in this area (sentiment analysis), naïve bays, logistic regression, and decision tree.these models are trained using training data; then the model predicts set of values to be compared with the original test set to compute the confusion matrix (cm). in order to calculate accuracy and recall the system use cm matrix which is used to understand the accuracy of our system and how data gets misclassified before tunning our model. the result for experiments illustrated table1. table 1: results of sentiment analysis system dataset machine learning precision recall accuracy yelp naïve bays 0.88 0.73 0.73 logistic regression 0.46 0.75 0.71 decision tree 0.47 0.47 0.71 imdb naïve bays 0.78 0.73 0.82 logistic regression 0.91 0.81 0.89 decision tree 0.65 0.53 0.67 arabic qaym.com naïve bays 0.75 0.79 0.80 logistic regression 0.82 0.83 0.82 decision tree 0.80 0.78 0.80 we compute the accuracy, precision, and recall using following laws from confusion matrix ∑ ∑ ⁄ (1) (2) (3) 6. discussion from testing sentiment analysis in three datasets, the smaller one is yelp restaurant, the big imdb, and the arabic qaym.com restaurant reviews. we can observe the accuracy and efficiency of the prediction of the user sentiment reviews to an either positive or negative. the reader can notice that the naïve bays approach work efficiently and accurately with yelp, imdb, and qaym.com data sets in adequate training time. while the logistic regression was not efficient with a small dataset (yelp) in compare with naïve bays, its accuracy is 0.71 while in imdb it registered 0.89 and 0.82 in qaym.com datasets as logistic regression build an efficient classifier with large training data sets. lastly, the decision tree yielded lower accuracy in two datasets (yelp and imdb) while it does well with arabic qaym.com data set. decision tree needs a lot of features and consuming training time about 4 minutes to be trained for imdb and qaym.com, and its accuracy according to the required training set feature size cannot be as good as naïve bays or logistic regression. 7. conclusion we propose a sentiment analysis system that can feed ratings extracted from user reviews to a recommender system. sentiment analysis success in predicting user satisfaction or dissatisfaction by classifying reviews into either positive or negative. this approach could compensate the deficiency in user rating about an item in recommender system (data sparsity). user reviews could be more suitable to rate things that are not appropriate to be evaluated numerically, and this could yield to explain for a specific recommendation. for future directions, the researchers can build recommender systems depend on attribute about items taken from reviews. in more than one languages like arabic and english to reduce new item cold start, also this would open the way to treat the recommender system as information retrieval problem by retrieving relevant recommendation from relevant user reviews 8. reference [1] j. babodilla, f.ortega, a.hernando, a.gutiersz, ”recommender system survey," knowledge-based systems journal, vol 46, p 109-132,2013. [2] francesco ricci, lior rokach, bracha shapira, paul b.kantor, recommender systems handbook. springer, 2011. [3] r. martinas, garcia," a collaborative filtering approach based on user's reviews," in the proceeding of brazilian conference on intelligent systems, pp: 204-209, 2014. [4] f.o isinkaye, y.o. folajimi, b.a. ojokoh, 2015, “review: recommendation systems: principles, methods, and evaluation,” egyptian informatics journal, issue 16, pp: 261-273. [5] l. lu, m. medo, c. ho, yeung, y. zhang, z. zhang, tao, zhou,”recommender systems," physics reports, vol 519, pp 1-49,2012. [6] c.weng, s.chi-fai, f.chung, "integrating collaborative filtering and sentiment analysis: a rating inference approach," in the proceeding of ecai workshop on recommender systems, pp: 6266, 2006. [7] w.medhat, a. hassan, h. korashy, " sentiment analysis algorithms and applications a survey," ainshams engineering journal, vol5, pp: 10031113, 2014. [8] m.issa, v. piek "a lexicon model for deep sentiment analysis and opinion mining applications," decision support system journal, vol 2, pp: 680-688, 2012. [9] p.turneg, "thumbs up or thumbs down? sentiment orientation applied to unsupervised classification of reviews", in the proceeding of the 40 th annual meeting of the association for computational linguistics, pp: 417-424, 2002. [10] r. qumsiyeh, y.ng. ,"predicting the rating of multimedia items for making personalized recommendations," in the proceeding of the 35 th international acu sigir conference on research and development information retrieval, pp" 475484, 2012. [11] h. kim, k. han, j. cho, j.hong, "movie mine: personalized movie content search by utilizing user comments," ieee transactions and consumer electronics, volume 58, pp: 1416-1426, 2012. [12] g. ganu, y.kakadkar, a. marian, "improving the quality of prediction using textual information in online user reviews," information system journal, vol 38, issue 1, pp: 1-15, 2013. [13] d.alahmadi, x.zeng, " isits: implicit social trust and sentiment based approach to recommender systems," expert systems with applications journal, vol. 42, pp: 8840-8849, 2015. [14] a. bhardwaj, y. narayan, v. anarj, pawnan, m. dutta, " sentiment analysis for indian stock market predictor using sensex and nifty," in proceeding 4 th international conference on eco-friendly computing and communication systems, pp: 85-91, 2015. [15] m. giatsoglou, m.vozalis, k.dimantras, a. vakali, g.sarigiannidis, k. chatzisavvas, " sentiment analysis leveraging emotions and word embedding's," expert systems and applications journal, volume 69, pp: 214-224, 2017. biography assist. prof. dr. alia k. abdul hassan, computer science dep. /university of technology. b.sc. computer science/ university of technology/1993, msc.from computer science/ university of technology/ 1999, ph.d. computer science/ university of technology /2004. assistant professor since 20/3/2008, position deputy dean of computer science department since feb 2015 till now. supervised on 22 msc. &phd thesis in computer science since 2007. publications published more than (45) papers in international conferences and journals. current research interests soft computing, green computing, ai, data mining, software engineering, document recognition, electronic management, computer security. ahmed b. abdul wahhab. ph.d. student in dept. of computer science/university of technology. b.sc. in computer science and education uob. 2001, msc computer science from iraqi commission for computer and informatics 2005, lecturer in the middle technical university/ technical college of management (dept. of informatics) since 2005, teaching data structure, database, and data compression, and programming. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.5 drain versus non drain in thyroid surgery fadhil ahmed mohialdeen 1 abdul-wahid m salih 2, mohammed im gubari 3, soran ameen hama-law 4 1sulaimani polytechnic university, technical college of health, fadhilahmed@hotmail.com 2sulaimani university, school of medicine, abdulwahid.salih@univsul.edu.iq 3sulaimani polytechnic university, technical college of health dr78mo @yahoo.com 4sulaimani polytechnic university, technical college of health soranmn@yahoo.com abstract: the use of a suction drain in thyroid surgery is common practice in order to avoid hematomas or seromas. the aim of this study was to determine the efficacy of inserting a routine drainage tube after thyroid surgery. in this retrospective study, 102 patients who underwent either a total thyroidectomy for thyroid disorders were assigned to either the drained or the non-drained groups. the length of hospital stays, postoperative pain, patient comfortability and complications were retrieved. both groups were homogeneous according to age, gender, type of procedure performed, histopathological diagnosis residency and marital status. no significant difference was found between the two groups in post operative complications, but the length of hospital stay was significantly reduced in non-drained group (p<0.0001), and drained group needed one more dose of analgesics compared to non-drained group to alleviate the post-operative pain. our findings, suggesting that the use of drain for thyroid surgery cannot lower the incidence of complications. furthermore, the use of drains may increase length of hospital stay, postoperative-pain, and the need of analgesic and contribute to the discomfort of the patients. hence, the routine insertion of drains after total thyroidectomy for benign disorders might not be necessary. key words: drain, nondrain, and thyroidectomy 1. introduction thyroidectomy is one of the most commonly performed operative procedure in general surgery with a prevalence of between 4.2 to 51.3% [1, 2]. the likelihood of hematoma after thyroid surgery ranges between 0 to 30%, hematoma, if developed, may enlarges then compresses respiratory airway and it will be a life threating complication. [3]. therefore, for many surgeons, placing a drain routinely after any type of thyroid surgery is essential to perceive early postoperative hemorrhage [4], and to avoid its risk of blocking the respiratory passage [5]. the blockage of the drain with clotted blood is a common problem that making the drains become useless in alerting the surgeon even if major bleeding occurs[1]. additionally, past study have failed to confirm that the insertion of drains prevents the hematoma formation. however the chances of postoperative seromas forming is higher in the absence of drains but they can be noticed and allowed to resorb themselves or, if severe, aspirated [6]. past study conducted on the usefulness of drain placement after thyroid surgery have failed to show any benefits [7]. instead, it was found that usage of drains increased the chances of surgical wound infections[8]. numerous studies in deferent places reported that, if strict principles of haemostasis are followed, the use of drains is not mandatory after thyroidectomy[6, 9]. in contrast drains may increase rate of wound infections, patients discomfort and analgesic required to alleviate pain. additionally, use of drain prolong the hospital stay and consequently rise the cost. furthermore, in a study done in 2005 no difference in the prevalence of post thyroidectomy hematoma formation was observed whether drains were used or not [6] while another study reported greater fluid collection and more postoperative complications in the group of patients with drains than those without [9]. despite the fact that, the use of drains after thyroid surgery is being questioned worldwide now, and regardless of improvements in surgical techniques for thyroid disorders, in our clinical setup, drains are still commonly placed postoperatively. we have conducted this study to see if our results are relevant to others, and if disadvantages of the use of drains significantly outweigh its advantages in our setting. so, this study aims to assess the necessity of drains and to evaluate their routine use after thyroid surgery. 2. subjects and methods 1.1. study setting: the study was conducted at four hospitals in sulaimani city, shorish, shar, zhian, and international hospitals. 1.2. study design: a retrospective study (review cases) was used for the implementation of the study. 1.3. target population: a single cohort of patients with thyroid diseases diagnosed within the past 7 years (between 2/1/ 2008 and 30/12/2015) were enrolled, in order to compare the effect of drain versus no drain thyroidectomy in term of postoperative complications and hospital stay. mailto:fadhilahmed@hotmail.com mailto:abdulwahid.salih@univsul.edu.iq mailto:soranmn@yahoo.com mailto:soranmn@yahoo.com kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.5 outcomes drain (n=48) no drain (n=54) p value mean los (in days) 6.1±2.4 3.4±1.2 < 0.0001 mean amount of analgesics 3.5±1.4 doses 2.5 ± 1.2 doses 0.0002 patient comfort 50% > 85% < 0.0001 discharge 2-3 post operative date 1st post operative date 1.4. study procedures: the medical records of a single cohort of a group of patients whom underwent surgery between 2008 and 2015 of the above hospitals diagnosed as thyroid diseases were retrospectively reviewed. then the patients were divided in to two groups (drain versus no drain groups). the researchers then contacted the patients by phone, or home or clinic visit to request a meeting with the researchers for obtaining informed consent. following consent, socio-demographic data were collected using a structured interview questionnaire, which was researcher-administered. clinical data were retrieved from the patients’ hospital records under the supervision of the managing physician. surgeries performed included total thyroidectomy. all operations were performed by a senior surgeon. 2. procedure under general anesthesia with endotracheal intubation, positioning the patient in the supine position with 15 degree neck tilt, through putting pillows under the shoulders, a transverse collar incision done with sub-platysmal dissection, creating upper and lower flaps, then separating the strap muscles in the midline, then opening the pretracheal fascia using electro-cautery, the middle thyroid veins ligated or ultrasonic dissector was used and cut, then the thyroid lobes mobilized sequentially then ligating the superior thyroid vessels separately and cut in between or by using ultrasonic dissector(focus 9mm) ,then focusing on the inferior thyroid pole vessels ligation or ultrasonic dissector were used for dissecting them, then the parathyroid glands with the recurrent thyroid nerve were found ,then either through ligation or using harmonic ultrasonic dissector the inferior thyroid arteries were dissected and ligated or cut, then the drain was put in the cavity in the drained group ,but not put in the nondrained group. then closure of the anatomical layers were done using absorbable sutures, until the skin which was closed through sub-cuticular non-absorbable monofilament sutures. 3. data collection tools and methods: a structured interview questionnaire was used. the questionnaire was including the following: 1. socio demographic data such as; age, gender, address, occupation and marital status were obtained. 2. data on the complications neurological symptoms. 3.2. ethical consideration the researchers obtained the approval of the ethics committee of the sulaimani medical school for conducting of the study and it was in compliance with the international ethical research guidelines. informed consent was obtained from the participants 4. results of 102 patients 26 (25%) were males and 76 (75%) were females and male to female ratio was 1:3, with mean age of 43 (±8.9). the drained group include 48 patients with mean age of 42 (±8.2), 12 (25%) male and 36 (75%) female and the non-drained group were 54 with mean age of 44 (±8.6). 14 (26%) male and 40 (74%) female. the patients’ characteristics are presented in table 1. there were no significant differences between groups in age, gender, resident and marital status at p < 0.05. table 1: characteristic of the patients in the two groups patients characteristic (drain) (no drain) total number of patients 48 54 102 mean age (years) 42(8.2) 44(8.6) 43 (8.9) gender male female 12 (25%) 36 (75%) 14 (26%) 40 (74%) 26 (25%) 76 (75%) address inside city outside city 32 (66.7%) 16 (33.3%) 38 (70.4%) 16 (29.6%) 70 (69%) 32 (31%) marital status married unmarried 41 (85.4%) 7 (14.6%) 40 (74.1%) 14 (25.9%) 81 (79%) 21 (21%) the mean length of hospital stays (los) was significantly lower in non-drain group 3.4 (±1.2) days compared to drained group 6.1 (±2.4) days with p value < 0.0001. the mean analgesics requirement was higher in patients who received a drain as compared with those who didn’t (p= 0.0002). the patients’ comfortability was significantly higher in non drained compared with those who drained (p <0.0001). all non-drained group discharged from hospital on first post operative day, whereas drained group were discharged after second or third post-operative day. those outcomes presented in table 2. table 2: outcome of drained and non-drained groups. 3.1. statistical analysis: data was collected and coded. the collected data was reviewed and analyzed using the statistical package for social sciences (spss version 22). descriptive statistics such as frequency and percentage was calculated. measures of central tendency and dispersion around the mean were used to describe continuous variables. p value was obtained for the continuous variable using independent t test and was considered significant if it was less than 0.05 kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.5 the complication rates were similar between the groups (p value = 0.418). overall 14 (13.7%) complications were recorded, 8 (16.6%) complications in drained group included one case wound infection, one case haematoma, two cases seroma, two cases of hypertrophic scar, and two cases of transit hypoparathyroidism. while 6 (11%) complications in non-drained group included one case wound infection, one case haematoma, two cases seroma and two cases of transit hypo-parathyroidism occurred. the post-operative complications were showed in table 3. table 3: postoperative complications (n= 102) complications drain (n=48) no drain (n=54) p value wound infection 1 (2.1%) 1 (1.9%) 0.93624 haematoma 1 (2.1%) 1 (1.9%) 0.93624 seroma 2 (4.2%) 2 (3.7%) 0.90448 nerve injury 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 0 layrgeal odema 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 0 hypertrophic scar 2 (4.2%) 0 (0%) 0.13104 transit hyperparathyroid ism 2 (4.2%) 2 (3.7%) 0.90448 the cost of the operation of drained group was more than non drained group by 100 $. the operation with drain tube insertion takes further 5-10 minutes compared to non-drain tube insertion operations. 5. discussion: it was common practice for surgeons to routinely insert a drain after every case of thyroid surgery, whether it is total thyroidectomy, subtotal thyroidectomy or lobectomy[5]. this is mainly due to the fear of postoperative hemorrhage[4] or accumulation of excess lymphatic fluid which needs to be drained as it can compromise the airway [5]. postoperative bleeding after thyroid surgery is reported to be as rare as 0.3 to 1% [1], while the probability of a postoperative cervical hematoma forming ranges between 0.1 to 4.7% [10]. in the current study, our aim was to compare the benefit of the drained versus non drained in thyroidectomized patients. our results showed that there is no significant difference between drained and non-drained in preventing post-operative patients’ morbidity, whereas the difference was significant between the two groups, regarding the length of hospital stay, analgesic requirement, post-operative patients’ comfortability, hospital discharge and costs. many studies showed no benefit of using drains after thyroid surgery, and it has been observed that if correct surgical techniques and hemostatic procedures were followed, excessive post-operative bleeding can be avoided, decreasing the incidence of hematoma formation [11-13]. precautions such as staying within the subplatysmal plane during surgery and using coagulation tools and hemostatic principles along with proper securing of bleeding vessels will reduce chances of postoperative hemorrhage[6]. drains should be inserted on the basis of its value according to the operative procedure performed for complicated cases such as resection of substernal goiter, large dead space, raw thyroid bed [12, 14] or in hyper-vascular conditions of thyroid gland (e.g. grave’s disease) or certain carcinomas [15]. in the present study, there were two cases of seroma formation in either the drain or nondrain group, which coincides with the fact that seroma formation does not specifically occur when drains are not used. this result is consistent with the result of prichard et al., 2010 that showed there was fluid collection in the surgical field regardless of the use of a drain, the reason being, either the drain triggered inflammation and fluid formation itself or the negative pressure created by the drain sealed off the lymphatics [2]. whereas studies in other places showed that the insertion of drain after every thyroid surgery increases the risk of wound infection. [1, 7]. in our study there was no significant difference in two groups regarding the rate of wound infection. this can be explained by the difference in procedures of the wound management and aseptic surgical techniques used during surgery that play the major role in the development of wound infection. similarly, our study also revealed that insertion of drain after the thyroid surgery increases the post-operative hospital stay [6.1 (±2.4) days] as compared to the nondrained group [3.4 (±1.2) days]. it was found that the length of hospital stay was increased in these patients, which obviously increased overall costs[2] . another study concluded the use of drain in uncomplicated thyroid surgeries, not only increases the duration of hospital stay but also the chances of infection [16]. hence, this also increased the cost burden by the hospital. patient discomfort and pain were assessed on day 1 and 2 after surgery, it showed that the patients in the drained group felt a less degree of comfortability (50%) than those in non-drained group (85%). this consequently led to a greater use of analgesics. our results coincided with those of an african study done in 2011 [7]. in current findings, the placement of drains may have been associated with poor cosmetic results and create separate two hypertrophic scars while there is no hypertrophic scar in non drained group (p value= 0.1310). it also increases operating time by 5-minute s due to the need for an extra, irregularly shaped stab wound to be made in the lower neck or chest. in the current study the other complications such as transient hypoparathyroidism and hypocalcemia, of which there were two cases in each group and it was non-significant deferent between groups (p value= 0.9044)[17]. 6. conclusion the present study is comparable with international clinical studies, that did not show any difference of routinely placing drains after every thyroidectomy, this study demonstrated that prevention of postoperative hematoma did not require drain placement as much as performance of correct hemostatic techniques were needed and also that seroma formation can be triggered by drains themselves. the use of drain after thyroid surgery is not effective in decreasing the rate of postoperative complications, besides, it increases the hospital stay, more use of analgesics, more time is needed for the operation, and the cost of operation is more after total thyroidectomy kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.5 reference [1] t. colak, et al., drainage after total thyroidectomy or lobectomy for benign thyroidal disorders. journal of zhejiang university science b, 2008. 9(4): p. 319 323. [2] r. prichard et al., the routine use of post-operative drains in thyroid surgery: an outdated concept. irish medical journal, 2010. [3] s. w., lee, et al., is lack of placement of drains after thyroidectomy with central neck dissection safe? a prospective, randomized study. the laryngoscope, 2006. 116(9): p. 1632-1635. [4] o. wihlborg, l. bergljung, and h. mårtensson, to drain or not to drain in thyroid surgery: a controlled clinical study. archives of surgery, 1988. 123(1): p. 40-41. [5] j. khanna, et al., is the routine drainage after surgery for thyroid necessary?-a prospective randomized clinical study [isrctn63623153]. bmc surgery, 2005. 5(1): p. 1. [6] m r gooda, z.g. oonwala, and s. khan, use of drainage after thyroid surgery: is it evidence based. pak j surg, 2007. 23(3): p. 173-176. [7] p. chalya, j. gilyoma, and m. mchembe, drain versus no drain after thyroidectomy: a prospective randomized clinical study. east and central african journal of surgery, 2011. 16(2): p. 55-61. [8] n. ozlem, et al., should the thyroid bed be drained after thyroidectomy? langenbeck's archives of surgery, 2006. 391(3): p. 228-230. [9] i. ishaq, et al., the role of drainage after thyroid surgery. is it mandatory. annals of punjab medical college, 2008. 2: p. 46-49. [10] p. g. calo, et al., postoperative haematomas after thyroid surgery. ann ital chir, 2010. 81: p. 343-47. [11] d.c ariyanayagam, et al., thyroid surgery without drainage: 15 years of clinical experience. journal of the royal college of surgeons of edinburgh, 1993. 38(2): p. 69-70. [12] a.rshaha, and b.m. jaffe, selective use of drains in thyroid surgery. journal of surgical oncology, 1993. 52(4): p. 241-243. [13] a.r shaha, and b.m. jaffe, practical management of post‐ thyroidectomy hematoma. journal of surgical oncology, 1994. 57(4): p. 235-238. [14] g. schoretsanitis, et al., does draining the neck afiect morbidity following thyroid surgery? 1998. [15] l m. hurtado‐ lópez, et al., selective use of drains in thyroid surgery. head & neck, 2001. 23(3): p. 189 193. [16] n. suslu, et al., is the insertion of drains after uncomplicated thyroid surgery always necessary? surgery today, 2006. 36(3): p. 215-218. [17] t.w khanzada, et al., post thyroidectomy complications: the hyderabad experience. j ayub med coll abbottabad, 2010. 22(1): p. 65-8. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq chemotherapy-related side effects in childhood cancer in hiwa hospital sulaimani city/kurdistan region, iraq awayi ghazy abdulkareem zhian salah ramzi pediatric nursing community health department college of nursing college of nursing university of sulaimani university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq awayi.abdulkareem@univsul.edu.iq zean.ramzi@univsul.edu.iq jamal ahmad rashid heshu sulaiman rahman pediatric medicine department of clinic and internal medicine college of medicine college of veterinary medicine university of sulaimani university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq jamal.ahmad@univsul.edu.iq heshusr77@gmail.com . volume 4 – special issue: 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) doi: 10.24017/science.2019 .ichms.19 received: 10 june 2019 accepted: 3 july 2019 abstract cancer cells tend to grow fast, and chemo drugs kill fastgrowing cells. however, since such drugs move to almost all part of the body, they might have an influence on healthy cells which are normal and grow fast. if healthy cells are damaged, there will be several side effects. the side effects of chemotherapy in children are reported by cancer treatment teams; however, only little evidence is available on the routine clinical care. the present study aimed to assess chemotherapeutic side effects in children with cancer. a single chemo drug can treat cancer; however, in order to come up with better and quicker results, sometimes a number of drugs are used in a specific order or combination which is referred to as combination chemotherapy. more cancer cells can be killed using different drugs which have different working mechanisms. as a result of this method, the cancer will have more limited chances to become resistant to an of the chemo drugs. the present descriptive study consisted of 300 children who underwent chemotherapy, and interviews were carried out with them. the severity of side effects was calculated according to three grades: low, moderate, and high. the collected data was collected through direct interview with the child greater than 6 years old on side kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 183 effects of chemotherapy on physical health. chemotherapy affects the entire cell inside the body among children. the results demonstrated that chemotherapy commonly affects the gastrointestinal tract and musculoskeletal system. keywords: chemotherapy, childhood cancer, side effects, routine clinical care, oncology, hematology 1. introduction according to it definition, cancer is as a group of diseases characterized by uncontrolled proliferation and metastasis of abnormal cells [1]. as reported by the world health organization (who), cancer is a major public health issue in iraq and worldwide and is the second leading cause of deaths among children. there are different types of cancer which are different in many aspects, such as diagnosis and response to treatment [2]. different methods such as surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy have been proposed as the effective treatment methods for cancer. chemotherapy is a systemic approach in which certain types of drugs are utilized in order to stop or slow down abnormal cell growth, aimed at controlling or preventing the spread of abnormal cells and also relieve cancer symptoms such as pain, especially in children in the end-stage (palliation). treating any disease through any drugs is referred to as chemotherapy. however, most people interpret and understand the word chemotherapy as using certain drugs to treat cancer. “chemo” is the short form for chemotherapy which is widely utilized. treating cancer through radiation therapy and surgery can lead to damage to and removal of cancer cells in some particular areas, while chemotherapy can affect the body as a whole and influence all its parts. as a result, by utilizing chemotherapy, all cancer cells which have spread to and affected other body parts that are far from the main tumor (metastasized) can be eradicated. moreover, chemotherapy affects both normal and abnormal cells because it has effect on cellular activity during the various phases of the cell cycle [3]. despite the abovementioned advantages of chemotherapy, it can be associated with some certain disadvantages and cause some side effects. as far as some cancers are concerned, children are prone to develop numerous side effects while they undergo chemotherapeutic treatment. these side effects might have a significant impact on the treatment, management, morbidity, and mortality. the side effects of chemotherapy remain a major concern for patients with cancer specially children. as a result of undergoing chemotherapy, the receivers will confront a number of changes in their lives, body, emotional state. moreover, there will be some changes in their and their family members’ daily routines. although the type and dose of the chemo drug can significantly affect and promote its collateral impacts, the most widely reported influences include diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, mucositis, epistaxis and mouth bleeds, bruising, alopecia, weight loss, appetite loss, and apathy. neutropenia is one of the most significant collateral effects which has been reported to result in a highly remarkable rise in mortality and morbidity among the patients with the disease because it is associated with several infectious processes. such patients usually undergo feelings of depression, anxiety, fear, and sadness. however, although chemotherapy is associated with some adverse effects, it has been considered as an essential method to help people get back to life and restart doing their daily activities. new approaches to improve tolerance and reduce squeal of cancer chemotherapy are urgently needed and the present research topics focus on this issues and highlights several areas of .given the frequent use of chemotherapy as number one treatment method of cancer and because of its negative effects on different aspects of the patients’ lives and health, the present study was aimed at finding out the prevalence of different side effects of chemotherapy among children with cancer in sulaimani city, the kurdistan region of iraq. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 184 2. methods and materials the setting of the study: in order to obtain the optimum results, the current study was carried out in two main settings as follows. hiwa hospital was the first setting where presents as a department of internal medicine since (1993-1994) where later was established hiwa hospital in (2007) in qrga / sulaimani city / kurdistan region of iraq. actually, this setting consists of two major parts first for adult’s client and the second one for pediatric clients where medical cares as well as medical hematological and oncological are provided. data collection the present quantitative descriptive study was conducted from september 20, 2017 to july 18, 2018 in hiwa hospital, sulaimani, the kurdistan region of iraq. in order to take the ethical considerations into account, the approval for the study was obtained from the health authorities in the hiwa hospital. in addition, informed oral consent was obtained from the parents of the children with cancer after they were provided with sufficient explanations about the purpose, objectives, and duration of the study. they were also made sure that their information would be kept confidential. sampling of the study the study sample consisted of 300 children who were chosen through a non-probability purposive sampling method. the children aged less than 6 years. children in poor medical conditions with mental disability or any other chronic disease were excluded from the study. direct interviews were carried out with the children in order to collect the required data. each of the interviews lasted for an average of 30 to 35 minutes. tool of data collection the required data were collected using a questionnaire which was designed by the researcher through extensive revision of the relevant international and local literature. the questionnaire contained information regarding the sociodemographic characteristics of children with cancer, such as age, gender, nationality, and residency. the other parts were designed to gain information regarding the types of cancer, birth order, number of siblings, age at diagnosis, and the effect of the child’s condition on school attendance. the last part of the questionnaire sought information about the different side effects of chemotherapy on physical health, including gastrointestinal, neurological, integumentary, musculoskeletal, respiratory, cardiovascular, and urological effects. the frequency of side effects of chemotherapy on the physical health of the children was never, sometimes, and always. the effects were distributed as low (1–1.66), moderate (1.67–2.33), and high (2.34–3.0). statistical analysis all of the collected data were analyzed using spss version 23, and the results are presented in relative frequency. this section must include a good technical information to allow the experiments to be repeated. the sources of all media (like name and location of manufacturer) or components of a new formulation must be provided. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 185 3. results table 1: sociodemographic attributes of the sample (300 cancer patients) in hiwa hospital items children’s socio-demographic characteristics f % age group (years) 7–10 161 53.7 11–14 121 40.3 15–18 18 6.0 gender male 160 53.3 female 140 46.7 ethnicity kurdish 277 92.3 arabic 23 7.7 residency urban 110 36.7 suburban 184 61.3 rural 6 2 total 300 100 the results of analyzing the collected demographic data of the patients are presented in table 1. as demonstrated in this table, the age of the majority of the child cancer patients in the sample was 7–10 years (53.7%), followed by the age group 11–14 years (40.3%), while the 15–18 year age group was the least represented (6.0%). males represented 53.3% of the sample, and the male-to-female ratio was 1.41:1. the majority of the sample consisted of kurdish individuals (92.3%), while a limited number of them (7.7%) were arabs. moreover, most of the patients were from suburban areas (61.3%), followed by 36.7% living in cities, and 2% in villages. the cohort also consisted of children who were second in birth order and those with 1–4 siblings. table 2: clinical characteristics of 300 cancer patients in hiwa hospital items clinical conditions of children f % types of cancer all 128 42.7 neuroblastoma 37 12.3 ewing sarcoma 26 8.7 osteosarcoma 23 7.7 rhabdomyosarcoma 20 6.7 medulloblastoma 17 5.7 aml 10 3.3 nasopharyngeal carcinoma 10 3.3 astrocytoma 8 2.7 non-hodgkin lymphoma 7 2.3 ependymoma 6 2 wilms’ tumor 5 1.7 hodgkin’s lymphoma 3 1 birth order 1st 75 25 2nd 109 36.3 3rd 81 27 kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 186 4th 21 7 5th 8 2.7 6th 2 0.7 7th 4 1.3 number of siblings 1–4 252 84 5–8 48 16 age at diagnosis/years 1–9 163 54.3 10–18 137 45.7 children’s condition affecting school attendance yes 300 100 total 300 100 the results of analyzing the data collected on the patients’ clinical characteristics are indicated in table 2 which shows the distribution of children according to the types of cancer, indicating that the majority of the patients (41.7%) have acute lymphoblastic leukemia (all), followed by neuroblastoma (12.3%), and in the declining order of prevalence by ewing sarcoma (8.7%), osteosarcoma (7.7%), rhabdomyosarcoma (6.7%), medulloblastoma (5.7%), aml (3.3%), nasopharyngeal carcinoma (3.3%), astrocytoma (2.7%), non-hodgkin lymphoma ependymoma (2.3%) and wilms’ tumor (1%). second in birth order was reported to be 36.3% of the participants, followed by third in order (27%) and firstborn (25%). most of the children (84%) had 1-4 siblings, and 16% had 5 to 8 brothers or sisters. the majority of the patients were diagnosed before 10 years of age (63%), while the remaining were diagnosed later. all the child cancer patients in the sample had experienced problems during schooling, and their condition had affected the school attendance. table 3: side effects of chemotherapy on the physical health of children with cancer no. side effects of chemotherapy on the child’s physical health always sometimes never mean of score severity f % f % f % a. gastrointestinal tract 1 abdominal pain 54 18 61 20.3 185 61.7 1.56 low effect 2 taste change 105 35 123 41 72 24 2.11 moderate effect 3 loss of appetite 124 41.3 119 39.7 57 19 2.22 moderate effect 4 nausea 116 38.7 101 33.7 83 27.7 2.11 moderate effect 5 vomiting 43 14.3 89 29.7 168 56 1.58 low effect 6 sore mouth or ulcer 42 14 62 20.7 196 65.3 1.48 low effect 7 diarrhea 6 2 23 7.7 271 90.3 1.11 low effect 8 bloating 25 8.3 29 9.7 246 82 1.26 low effect 9 constipation 21 7 21 7 258 86 1.21 low effect b. neurological system 1 headache 61 20.3 90 30 149 49.7 1.7 low effect 2 drowsiness 15 5 113 37.7 172 57.3 1.47 low effect 3 sleep disturbance 43 14.3 100 33.3 157 52.3 1.62 moderate effect 4 numbness 58 19.3 49 16.3 193 64.3 1.55 low effect 5 convulsion 21 7 47 15.7 232 77.3 1.29 low effect c integumentary 1 itching 0 0 74 24.7 226 75.3 1.24 low effect 2 sweating 12 4 50 16.7 238 79.3 1.24 low effect kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 187 3 skin dryness 8 2.7 44 14.7 248 82.7 1.2 low effect 4 skin ulceration 7 2.3 19 6.3 274 91.3 1.11 low effect 5 skin discoloration 21 7 21 7 258 86 1.21 low effect d. musculoskeletal 1 muscle spasm 116 38.7 68 22.7 116 38.7 1.97 moderate effect 2 muscle pain 150 50 80 26.7 70 23.3 2.26 moderate effect 3 joint pain 143 47.7 86 28.7 71 23.7 2.24 moderate effect 4 back pain 112 37.3 92 30.7 96 32 2.05 moderate effect e. respiratory system 1 cough 34 11.3 64 21.3 202 67.3 1.44 low effect 2 dyspnea 6 2 14 4.7 280 93.3 1.08 low effect 3 cyanosis 1 0.3 7 2.3 292 97.3 1.03 low effect f. cardiovascular system 1 palpitation 1 0.3 19 6.3 280 93.3 1.07 low effect 2 tachycardia 1 0.3 5 1.7 294 98 1.02 low effect 3 bradycardia 2 0.7 6 2 292 97.3 1.03 low effect 4 fever 34 11.3 82 27.3 184 61.3 1.5 low effect 5 chill 10 3.3 31 10.3 259 86.3 1.17 low effect g. urological system 1 difficulty in urination 6 2 1 0.3 293 97.7 1.04 low effect 2 dysuria 3 1 9 3 288 96 1.05 low effect 3 edema 1 0.3 1 0.3 298 99.3 1.01 low effect the results of analyzing the side effects of chemotherapy are presented in table 3. as shown in this table, chemotherapy protocol can be associated with the different side effects on the physical health of children in terms of effects on different body systems. according to table 3, the highest score for the effects of chemotherapy on the musculoskeletal system was based on the moderate effect scores (2.26–1.97). among these symptoms, the highest score (2.26) was reported for muscle pain, followed by that for joint pain (2.24), back pain (2.05), and muscle pain (1.97). moreover, the next highest scores for the children’s complaints of side effects from chemotherapy were for the gastrointestinal tract. the most prevalent complaint was loss of appetite (81%), recording a moderate score of (2.2), followed by nausea and change in taste, both recording a moderate effect of severity (2.11). the remaining symptoms, such as vomiting, abdominal pain, sore mouth, diarrhea, bloating, and constipation recorded scores for low severity (1.58, 1.56, 1.48, 1.11, 1.26, and 1.21, respectively). also, the neurological complaints also exerted effects on children receiving chemotherapy; approximately, half of them complained of sleep disturbance, which recorded a moderate effect of severity (1.26). subsequently, numbness in the extremities was scored at 1.55, followed by drowsiness (1.47). about 20% of the children complained of convulsions scored at 1.29 with a low severity effect. finally, the headache recorded a low effect score (1.7), and about half of the children complained of headache (50.3%). among the side effects representing other systems, cough was most prevalent, recording a low effect score of (1.44), followed by dyspnea (1.08) and cyanosis (1.03). next, the integumentary system included itching and sweating in terms of low effect severity of the side effects (1.24), followed by skin dryness and skin discoloration (1.2), and finally skin ulceration (1.11). in terms of the effects of chemotherapy on the cardiovascular system, an increase in the child’s body temperature had a low effect scored at 1.5 and chill at 1.17. the feeling of palpitation was scored at 1.07, while tachycardia and bradycardia recorded low severity effects at 1.02 and 1.03, respectively. finally, regarding the urological system, difficulty in urination received a low effect score of 1.04, followed by dysuria (1.05) and edema (1.01). kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 188 4. discussion the present study found that childhood cancer was more prevalent in males (53.7%) than in females. this finding was in agreement with the reports published by the american cancer society declaration. similarly, dorak at (2012) pointed out that very few cases of cases are more prevalent among females, while males are more prone to most types of cancer [4]. according to the results of the present study, all was the most prevalent type of cancer observed among the studied child patients with cancer. this finding is in good agreement with the reports published by the institute of medicine, national research council and national cancer policy board in usa at (2003) which postulated that all is the most prevalent type of cancer [5]. siegel in (2017) also reported that acute lymphoblastic leukemia (all) is the most prevalent type of cancer [6]. as revealed by the results of the present study, cancer affected the lives of the children in the study sample, especially their school attendance. this finding is in line with previous studies. for example, the results of the study carried out by parsons at (2012) revealed that the nature of the disease affected education and work of more than 72% of adolescents and young adults [7]. this finding is also similar with the one reported by tsimicalis at (2018) who reported that children with cancer are most affected by cancer in terms of their school attendance [8]. most children and families consider hospitalization as an anxiogenic situation that can have its own effects and manifestations in the future, depending on the patient’s familial relationship and his/her family members; the level of emotional, cognitive and physical development; the patient’s adaptive capacity; the medical procedures; the severity of the disease; and the frequency and length of the hospitalization. children and teenagers usually have a dual attitude toward hospital, such that they feel that hospital causes suffering, while it is a place for receiving treatment. therefore, for them, hospital is a place to receive medical examinations and treatment, helping them save their lives and regain their wellbeing and health. strikingly, the present study demonstrated that many children experience persistent side effects during chemotherapy. the moderate score in a subset of kids emphasized the significance of tracking side effects throughout therapy. the results also revealed that maximal side effects were reported for the gastrointestinal and musculoskeletal systems; this finding is in agreement with previously published reports chui in (2008) [9]. to the best of our understanding, this is the first study to comprehensively describe the experiences of local cancer children with side effects related to chemotherapy. therefore, an in-depth insight into the backgrounds of patients can enable the healthcare experts to introduce an efficient approach to manage the side effects related to chemotherapy and provide significant data. about two-thirds of the kids undergoing the last cycle of chemotherapy experience nausea, taste shift, and appetite loss. studies conducted by schnell in (2003) and farrell in (2013) discovered similar results [10, 11]. similarly, sullivan in (2018) concluded that children with cancer have various symptoms such as diarrhea, abdominal cramps, weight loss, change in the way food tastes, lack of appetite, nausea, and dry mouth [12]. as mentioned above, chemotherapy can lead to big changes in the everyday lives and activities of the children and teenagers; however, it is the responsibility of their families to attempt to keep their children’s lives on the normal routine prior to the final diagnosis and help them stop feeling dependent, powerless or incapacitated because the symptoms of chemotherapy usually cause the children to feel and even believe that the cancer is “more real” in their lives [13], resulting in enormous changes in their family routines including restrictions and losses [14]. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 189 4. conclusion the most common side effects of chemotherapy were recorded for the gastrointestinal and musculoskeletal systems. as a result, checklists are essential to monitoring every child who has undergone chemotherapy in order to set up appropriate therapeutic interventions. however, the side effects that influence children with cancer are not frequently documented, and therefore, there is a lack of data and guidance on optimal management of the disease. references [1] r. l. siegel, k. d. miller, and a. jemal, "cancer statistics, 2015," ca: a cancer journal for clinicians, vol. 65, pp. 5-29, 2015. [2] r. w. ruddon, cancer biology, 4th ed. us: oxford university press, 2007. [3] a. turkcan, b. zeng, and m. lawley, "chemotherapy operations planning and scheduling," iie transactions on healthcare systems engineering, vol. 2, pp. 31-49, 2012. [4] m. t. dorak and e. karpuzoglu, "gender differences in cancer susceptibility: an inadequately addressed issue," frontiers in genetics, vol. 3, p. 268, 2012. [5] n. r. council, childhood cancer survivorship: improving care and quality of life: national academies press, 2003. [6] d. a. siegel, s. j. henley, j. li, l. a. pollack, e. a. van dyne, and a. white, "rates and trends of pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia—united states, 2001–2014," mmwr. morbidity and mortality weekly report, vol. 66, p. 950, 2017. [7] h. m. parsons, l. c. harlan, c. f. lynch, a. s. hamilton, x.-c. wu, i. kato, et al., "impact of cancer on work and education among adolescent and young adult cancer survivors," journal of clinical oncology, vol. 30, p. 2393, 2012. [8] a. tsimicalis, l. genest, b. stevens, w. j. ungar, and r. barr, "the impact of a childhood cancer diagnosis on the children and siblings’ school attendance, performance, and activities: a qualitative descriptive study," journal of pediatric oncology nursing, vol. 35, pp. 118-131, 2018. [9] c. h. chui, m. y. chan, a. m. tan, y. low, t. l. yap, and a. s. jacobsen, "appendicitis in immunosuppressed children: still a diagnostic and therapeutic dilemma?," pediatric blood & cancer, vol. 50, pp. 1282-1283, 2008. [10] f. m. schnell, "chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting: the importance of acute antiemetic control," the oncologist, vol. 8, pp. 187-198, 2003. [11] c. farrell, s. g. brearley, m. pilling, and a. molassiotis, "the impact of chemotherapy-related nausea on patients' nutritional status, psychological distress and quality of life," supportive care in cancer, vol. 21, pp. 59-66, 2013. [12] c. w. sullivan, h. leutwyler, l. b. dunn, b. a. cooper, s. m. paul, j. d. levine, et al., "stability of symptom clusters in patients with breast cancer receiving chemotherapy," journal of pain and symptom management, vol. 55, pp. 39-55, 2018. [13] r. l. woodgate, l. f. degner, and r. yanofsky, "a different perspective to approaching cancer symptoms in children," journal of pain and symptom management, vol. 26, pp. 800-817, 2003. [14] g. pentheroudakis and n. pavlidis, "late toxicity in survivors from adolescent cancers," cancer treatment reviews, vol. 33, pp. 656-663, 2007. 1. introduction 4. conclusion abstract internally displaced persons are peoples displaced in it is own country but not crossed a border kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 3 | issue 1 | june 2018 | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.1.10 received: january 9, 2018 | accepted: may 8, 2018 assessment of knowledge and practices of internally displaced pregnant women attending to antenatal clinic center at arbat camp in sulaimani, kurdistan region of iraq layla abdulkhalk abass department of nursing technical institute sulaimani sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani ,iraq abaslayla@yahoo.com 52 abstract internally displaced persons are peoples displaced in it is own country but not crossed a border. after (islamic state of iraq and syria attacked in 2014 to iraq, millions of iraqi people flee from their own city war zone to safe camps in kurdistan region north of iraq, arbat camp is one of these camps. iraqi civilian people constitute most new displacement persons around the world as at least 2.2 million were displaced in 2014. an important part of basic maternal health care is antenatal care that must be provided during pregnancy. aim of this study is to provide demographic data of internally displaced persons pregnant women and the effect on antenatal care knowledge and practices among of arbat camp that visits to camp health centers on their health. assessment of knowledge and practices of pregnant women about antennal care. a cross sectional descriptive study been conducted to assess the knowledge and practices of (103) women attended to antenatal care of internally displaced persons) at arbat camps between 1 january to 30 june 2016. data collected through the questionnaire form by face-to-face interview. statistical analyses performed by using spss version 16.0, to find descriptive analysis like percentage and frequency and for relative statistical analysis. the results have revealed that most of the pregnant women were in the active reproductive age group 18-25 years old 56(54.4%) pregnant women, housewives 102(99%), illiterate 48(46.6%) pregnant women, were in families that have low income with 48(46.6%) pregnant women with significant relation to the knowledge and practices to antenatal care. in conclusion, most pregnant women have very good knowledge about antenatal care except about performing oral health hygiene during pregnancy. the majority of pregnant women in camps have very good knowledge about all practices that must be do during antenatal except taking medication without physician prescription. keywords: internally displaced persons antenatal care, pregnant women, arbait camps, kurdistan region camps, islamic state of iraq and syria attack on iraq. 1. introduction internally displaced persons are peoples displaced in it is own country, but not crossed a border to find safety places unlike refugees or people run at home. the government protects idps peoples within their own country in safe areas. after isis (islamic state of iraq and syria) attack in 2014 in iraq, millions of people flee from their own city war zone to safe camps in the iraqi’s kurdistan region; arbat camp is one of these camps that supervised by iraq and kurdistan governments with assistance of international and local non-governmental organizations. at the end of 2014, a record-breaking 38 million people had become displaced because of violence in their within their own countries, iraqi civilian people consist most new displacement around the world by at least 2.2 million displaced in 2014. the idmc’s (the internal displacement monitoring centre) global overview of 2015 reported that the majority of new displacement was the result of prolong crises in these countries. the democratic republic of the congo, nigeria, south sudan, iraq and syria. in total, these five countries constituted about 60% incidence of displacement globally [1]. it became very difficult for the governmental and non-governmental organizations to provide health care to pregnant women like antenatal care, knowledge and health practice that associated with morbidity and mortality of mother and baby. in the developing countries, there is a high maternal mortality, which has become an important public health anxiety [2] .for every woman who dies, 30-50 more women suffer childbirth-related injuries, infections, or diseases [3]. it negatively affects the children, increases risk of dying before the adult period, reduces nutritional status, mental health outcome, and lowers educational attainment [4], [5], [6]. 53 to reduce the risk of maternal morbidity and mortality, an effective health interference care like antenatal care is important in particular when there is poor general health status of women [7]. the death of a woman during pregnancy or delivery is a disaster, which affects not only the families but also the society in general [8]. pregnancy and delivery death risk among the developing countries like african women is 175 times higher than the risk in the developed countries [9]. aim of study to provide demographic data of pregnant women among internally displaced persons (idps) of arbat camp and to identify the antenatal care knowledge and practice of pregnant ladies attending the camp health centers. 2. methods and material a cross sectional descriptive study, conducted to assess the knowledge and practices of women attended to antenatal care of internally displaced persons at arbat camp between january 1st to june 30th 2016. data collected from 103 women attending the camp’s health center via face-to-face interview and filling the questionnaire form prepared by the researchers for that purpose. the questionnaire form was consisted of three parts; the first part was about the mother’s demographic attributes. the second part consists of ten choice method questions that relate to pregnancy and antenatal care knowledge like knowing pregnancy symptoms, performing oral health during pregnancy, the importance of sleep and rest during pregnancy, knowing discomforts during pregnancy, visited primary health centers, preferring delivery at the hospital, performing physical activity during pregnancy, preferring breast feeding for infant nutrition and knowing the benefits of colostrums. the third part consists of seven choice questions about the knowledge of women regarding their health practices during pregnancy like performing a blood test prior pregnancy, taking medication without doctor prescription, performing ultrasound at 6-12 weeks of gestation, performing antenatal visits, received tetanus toxoid vaccination, taking folate and iron during pregnancy and eating usual diet during pregnancy. a panel of experts and pilot study determined validity and reliability of the questionnaire form. statistical analyses performed by using spss (statistical package for the social sciences) version 16.0, to find descriptive analysis like percentage and frequency and for relative statistical analysis, bar charts and pie charts were used to demonstrate the data diagrammatically 3. results the majority of the pregnant women were in the active reproductive age (18-25 years) as 56 (54.4%) of them were 18-25 years old, 31(30.1%) were 26-30 years old, and 14(13.6%) were 31-35 years old, while only 2(1.9%) of them were more than 36 years old. figure 1 the distribution age group of pregnant women. about half of pregnant women were illiterate with 48(46.6%), followed by read and write only 28(27.2%), primary school only 27(26.2%) (figure 2). figure 2 percentage of education level most of pregnant women were in families that have low and moderate income, with 48(46.6%), 51(49.5%) respectively, and only 4 (3.9%) were coming from high income families . figure 3 socio-economic status of pregnant women almost all women were housewives 102(99%), only one was employed. regarding the family size of women attending the hc about half of them had a less than three children, i.e. their family size were less than 5 members 50 (48.5%), while 53 (51.5%) had a family of 5 or more members. 54 figure 4 family sizes of pregnant women pregnant women were taking information from media 30(29.1%), health centers 26(25.2%) and the physician 12(11.7%) respectively, but most of the women took information from all sources mentioned 35(34%). figure 5 frequency of source of pregnant women information the majority of the pregnant women had not received any health education at primary health centers 54(52.4%) and 49(47.6%) pregnant women received health education. figure 6 received health education during the antenatal period at primary health centers the majority of the pregnant women had good knowledge about all categories of antenatal health except in performing oral health during pregnancy as shown in table 1. table 1: knowledge of the pregnant women relates to antenatal care variable correct answer incorrect answer 1-knowledge about antenatal care 55(53.4%) 48(46.6%) 2knowing pregnancy symptoms (cessation of menses, tenderness of the breasts, frequent urination) 93(90.3%) 11(10.7 %) 3performing oral health during pregnancy 15( 14.6% ) 88(85.4%) 4importance of sleep and rest during pregnancy 66(64% ) 37(35.9%) 5knowing discomforts during pregnancy (nausea, vomiting, fatigue, and backache 92(89.3%) 11(10.7%) 6visiting primary health center for child growth and development 88(85.4%) 15(14.6 %) 7preferring delivery at hospital 85(82.5%) 18(17.5%) 8performing physical activity during pregnancy 92(89.3 %) 11(10.7%) 9preferring breast feeding as ideal milk for infant nutrition 60(58.2 %) 43(41.7%) 10benefits of colostrums 65(63.1%) 38(36.9%) the majority of pregnant women answer all questions correctly that relate to practices during pregnancy except for question (taking medication without doctor prescription?) were 69(67%) women answers this question incorrectly as shown in table 2. table 2 knowledge of pregnant women regarding health practices during pregnancy variable correct answer incorrect answer 1performing a blood test prior to the pregnancy to identify carriers of hereditary diseases 65 (63.1%) 38 (36.9%) 2-taking medication without doctor prescription 34(33%) 69(67%) 3performing ultrasound at 6 12 weeks of gestation 77(74.8 %) 26(25.2%) 4performing antenatal visit 82(79.6%) 21(20.4%) 5knowledge about the need of receive tetanus toxoid vaccination during pregnancy ( between 4th and 8th month of gestation) 64(62.1%) 39(37.9%) 6taking folate and iron during pregnancy 75(72.8%) 28(27.2%) 7eating usual diet during pregnancy (fruit, vegetables and meat) 85(82.5%) 18(17.5) 55 4. discussion antenatal care is the clinical assessment of mother and fetus during pregnancy. the finding of the study indicated that most of pregnant women were in 18-25 years old, which are the best years to be pregnant and have birth according to royal college of obstetrics and gynecology [10]. the majority of pregnant women were having a low educational certificate and 46.6% of pregnant women were illiterate, according to joseph study the mothers of low education level are less likely to attend for antenatal care visits to health centers [11], so they are more vulnerable to get reproductive health problems during pregnancy and problems during child delivery as mentioned in to bah study[12]. husbands of 43.7% pregnant women’s were smokers. an exposure of pregnant women to smoke environment will result in certain per-natal health problems like miscarriage, low birth weight, preterm birth, learning and behavioral deficiencies in the child as mentioned by. habek [13]. most pregnant women (86.4%) have other living children and 35.9% pregnant women had more than five living children. having more than one child will make pregnant women to be less careful to attend and visit primary care health centers to take care to knowledge and practices of pregnancy, as they prefer a health provider to visit them at home as mentioned by. oladapo [14]. prenatal care given to pregnant women is essential to have a safe pregnancy and healthy baby [15]. more than a half of pregnant women of the participants had good information about health services; this result is similar to the study of the utilization of maternal health care services in kenya [16] and china [17]. the majority of pregnant women ,82.5% prefer to give birth at hospital because it is the safest childbirth environment for mother and baby [18]. most of pregnant women answered to breast-feeding and colostrums question correctly, but still 41.7% of pregnant women not prefer breast-feeding as ideal milk for children and 36.9% of pregnant women not know the benefits of colostrums to baby the result which is similar to study conducted in europe by a cattaneo et al. [19] about preferring breast feeding as exclusive milk for 6 months, and as recommended by who and reported (who 2007 report) that in developing countries most important potential advantage of exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months versus exclusive breastfeeding for 4 months, followed by partial breastfeeding to 6 months relates to infectious disease morbidity and mortality especially that due to gastrointestinal infection [20]. most of pregnant women, 89.3 % have good knowledge about performing physical activity, this is important based on [20]. study (2004) who found that women who engage in regular and moderate exercise during their pregnancy tend to have shorter and less complicated labors [21]. the majority of pregnant women, 85.4% not have any information about oral hygiene and dental care during pregnancy, this result is similar to karen (2004) who reported 70% of pregnant women have no any information regarding their personal hygiene and dental care [22], poor oral hygiene and increase level of hormone during pregnancy make pregnancy at risk of gum diseases. regard to comfort and sleep most of pregnant women, 64% have good knowledge, rest and good sleep during pregnancy are necessary for all mothers to feed, growth of their children and the energy they need to delivery process [23]. more than a half, 62.1% of pregnant women were aware about tt vaccine during pregnancy, with the correct number of doses for the prevention of infectious diseases from transmission to the fetus and could be life threatening for both mother and baby. the majority of pregnant women, 63.1% performing a blood test prior to the pregnancy to identify carriers of hereditary diseases. these results are similar to the study of the utilization of maternal health care services in kenya [24] and china [25]. most of pregnant women, 82.5% in our study had knowledge about eating usual diet during pregnancy (fruit, vegetables and meat), while 72.8% were taking folate and iron during pregnancy, this is similar to alam ay [26] reports on kap study. less than a half, 33% of pregnant women have information about the safety of medical treatment for every pregnant women if it is taken with caution and if their doctors prescribed it [27] this goes with done by a.f. sawalha in palestine in which only 21% pregnant women of them haven't used medication during their pregnancy, many of them do utilize different medications and herbs during their pregnancy, without being aware that some of them might have harmful effects [28] . 5. conclusion the results of this study conclude that pregnant internally displaced persons (idps) women’s, who visits, health camps centers are women in reproductive ages, illiterates and take information from a variety of sources but not from camp health centers. most pregnant women have very good knowledge about healthy habits for pregnant women as taking a good rest, healthy foods during pregnancy, and the antenatal care except about performing oral health hygiene during pregnancy. the majority of pregnant women in camps have very good knowledge about all practices that must be done during antenatal except taking medication without physician prescription. 6. references [1]. t. i. d. m. centre. (2015, 23 february). global overview 2015: people internally displaced by conflict and violence. available: http://www.internaldisplacement.org/library/publications/2015/global-overview-2015people-internally-displaced-by-conflict-and-violence. [2]. n. prata, p passano, a sreenivas, ce. gerdts, “maternal mortality in developing countries: challenges in scaling-up priority interventions”, women’s health (lond engl), vol. 6, pp. 311-27, 2010 [3]. r. karkee, ah. lee, cw. binns. “birth preparedness and skilled attendance at birth in nepal: implications for achieving millennium development goal”. midwifery 2013; 29:1206-10. [4]. c. ronsmans, me. chowdhury, sk. dasgupta, a ahmed, m koblinsky. “effect of parent′s death on child survival in rural bangladesh: a cohort study”. lancet 2010; 375:2024-31. [5]. fw. anderson, su. morton, s. naik, b. gebrian. “maternal mortality and the consequences on infant and child survival in rural haiti”. matern child health j 2007; 11:395-401. http://www.internal-displacement.org/library/publications/2015/global-overview-2015-people-internally-displaced-by-conflict-and-violence http://www.internal-displacement.org/library/publications/2015/global-overview-2015-people-internally-displaced-by-conflict-and-violence http://www.internal-displacement.org/library/publications/2015/global-overview-2015-people-internally-displaced-by-conflict-and-violence 56 [6]. j rivers, j. mason, e. silvestre, s. gillespie, m. mahy, r. monasch. “impact of orphanhood on underweight prevalence in sub-saharan africa”. food nutr bull 2008; 29:32-42. [7]. t. belay. “the influence of husbands’ approval on women’s use of prenatal care .results from yirgalem and jimma towns”, south west ethiopia 2006; 84 -55-56. [8]. f. shaheen, t khalid, “zamir nsatisfaction of women with the antenatal care at holy family hospital”. pak j med res 2008; 50(2):67-70. [9]. c. shipman, f payne, j dale and l jessop “patient perceived benefits of and barriers to using out-of-hours primary care centers”. family practice 2001) 18: 149–155. [10]. v. e. alberto, l. c. marta, g. a. olga, and c. a. raul, "obstetric outcomes at advanced maternal age," journal of gynecology and obstetrics, vol. 2, pp. 7-11, 2014. [11]. m. turyasiima, r. tugume, a. openy, e. ahairwomugisha, r. opio, m. ntunguka, et al., "determinants of first antenatal care visit by pregnant women at community based education, research and service sites in northern uganda," east african medical journal, vol. 91, pp. 317-322, 2014. [12]. t obah. “obstetrical complication in grandmultiparity”. medical channel. 2010; 15(4): 5358. [13]. d. habek, jc. habek, m .ivanisević. “djelmisfetal tobacco syndrome and perinatal outcome”. fetal diagnosis and therapy [fetal diagn ther] 2002; 17 (6): 367-71. [14]. ot. oladapo, ca iyaniwura, ao sule-odu. “quality of antenatal services at the primary care level in southwest nigeria”. afr j reprod health 2008; 12:71-92. [15]. p. agarwal, mm singh, s garg. “maternal health-care utilization among women in an urban slum in delhi”. indian j community med 2007; 32:203-5. [16]. r ochako, jc fotso, l ikamari and a khasakhala. “bmc pregnancy and childbirth 2011”; 11: 10: 239311 9-10. [17]. q zhao, a kulane and xu. “knowledge and attitude on maternal health care among rulerto-urban migrant women in shanghai”, china. bmc women’s health 2009; 9: 10: 6874-9-5. [18]. s, lui, s wen, d, mcmillan d, fowler, “increased neonatal readmission rate associated with decreased length of hospital stay at birth in canada”. canadian journal of public health, 2000. 91(1), 46.50. [19]. a cattaneo, t burmaz, m arendt. “protection, promotion and support of breast-feeding in europe: progress from 2002 to 2007”. public health nutr. 2010; 13(6):751-759. [20]. t. darlin, “healthy moms give birth to healthy babies”, (2004).11(1): 14-16. available at www.next step fitness.com. [21]. world health organization (who), “standards for maternal and neonatal care”. 2007; 42 (4): 1-6. [22]. [22] s. karen. “is prenatal care really ineffective?” department of economics: hunter college: september 2004: 30. [23]. ka lee, me zaffke, and g mcenany. “parity and sleep patterns during and after pregnancy”. obstet gynecol 2000; 95:14-8. [24]. r .effendi, s isaranurug, j chompikul. “factors related to the utilization of antenatal care services among postpartum mothers in pasarrebo general hospital, jakarta, indonesia”. j public health dev, 2008; 6: 113–122 [25]. z. matthews, s mahendra. k kilaru, et al, “antenatal care, care seeking and morbidity in rural karnataka, india: results of a prospective study” asia-pacific pop 2001; 3. 16: 11.28. [26]. ya alam, aa qureshi, mm adil, a ali. “comperative study of knowledge, attitude and practices among antenatal care utilizing and non-utilizing women”. jpma 2005; 55: (2) 55-56. [27]. k osaki, t hattori, s kosen. “factors affecting the utilization of maternal, newborn, and child health services in indonesia” the role of the maternal and child health handbook. public health. 2015; 129(5):582–6. [28]. a.f. sawalha. consumption of prescription and non-prescription medications by pregnant women: a cross sectional study in palestine. iugns vol.15, no. 2, pp 41-57, 2007, http://www.iugaza.edu.ps/ara/rese  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.10 received: 09 june 2018 | accepted: 15 july 2018 epidemiological characteristics and family relatives among thalassemic patients in sulaimani city, kurdistan region, iraq kamal jalal rashid anesthesiology department technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq kamalashty73@yahoo.com 62 abstract: thalassemia is a well-known inherited hematologic disorder caused by a decrease or an absence of globin production. patients with thalassemia suffer from chronic hemolytic anemia and its sequelae. a descriptive study was undertaken in sulaimani thalassemia and congenital blood disease center. the self-administered questionnaire was used to 140 patients who had thalassemia and visited to the hospital during the study periods to assess the patients’ characteristics and parent’s relative’s relation to thalassemic patients. data were entered into spreadsheets and analyzed in statistical package for social sciences (spss) version 22. descriptive analysis was performed and frequencies and percentages were reported. associations between categorical variables were checked using chi-squared test. out of 140 patients 50.0% of patients were males and 50.0% were female; the mean age was 12.8 years-old. the most frequent thalassemic patents were come from rural area 95.0%. majority of patients have major type of thalassemia 84.3%. most of the patients cannot continue to the study accounted 66.4%. about number of children most of the patient’s family had more than 3 children 99.3%. majority of patient’s parents is carrier for thalassemia and accounted with 90 (65.0%), from those patients with major thalassemia are 77 (85.6) and few cases with minor thalassemia 4 (4.4%). these relations are statistically significant at (p<0.05). majority of patients who have major type of thalassemia were from rural area followed by urban area 113 (95.8%) vs. 7 (5.0%), these differences are statistically significant at (p≤0.01), from major types of thalassemic patients; 85 (94.4%) of them were both father and mother are carrier of thalassemia. statistically significant relation was found at (p<0.05). in conclusion, thalassemia is an important cause of morbidity among thalassemic patients. in our community, thalassemia is more frequent in rural population. therefore, it is a crucial for monitoring and examination of those who are carriers. moreover, the lack of health education on thalassemia was the major problems related with awareness of families. keywords: epidemiology, thalassemia, sulaimani city, family relation, hereditary. 1. introduction thalassemia is an inherited blood disorder which is passed from parents to their off-spring, [1] also it’s a genetic disorder lead to decreased and defective production of hemoglobin, a molecule found inside all red blood cells (rbcs) that transports oxygen throughout the human body [2]. thalassemia is a global public health problem affecting both developing and developed countries with major consequences for human health as well as social and economic development. as per the world health organization (who) database on anemia globally, anemia affects 1.62 billion people (95%), which corresponds to 24.8% of the population. who also estimates that thalassemic anemia contributes to about 20% of maternal and perinatal death in developing countries [3]. thalassemia clinically classified according to their severity into three types; thalassemia major requiring a regular blood transfusion throughout life, thalassemia intermediate characterized by anemia but not of such severity as to require regular blood transfusion, and thalassemia minor which is the symptomless carrier status [4]. there being no positive cure for thalassemia, the case-management depends solely on palliative repeated bold transfusion; thus, imposing a huge burden on the health system on the financial status of affected families. the mental agony of the affected family cannot be quantified and cannot actually be perceived by those who do no experience the trauma themselves. the most effective approach to reduce the burden on the society and reduce the disease incidence is through implementation carrier-screening program, offering genetic counseling, prenatal diagnosis and selective termination of affected fetus. in the prevention of thalassemia, social scientists and counselors have a major role to play [5]. in our community, thalassemia is more frequent in rural population. therefore, it is a crucial for monitoring and examination of those who are carriers. moreover, the lack of health education on thalassemia was the major problems related with awareness of families. 63 2. methods and materials a cross-sectional study was conducted among children and adolescents, aged from 1 to 18 years-old with thalassaemia major, thalassaemia intermediate and thalassaemia minor who received regular treatment at sulaimani thalassemia and congenital blood disease center, kurdistan region of iraq, from august 2017 till january 2018. the caregivers were defined as either the father or mother of the patient. written informed consent was obtained from all participants. the self-administered questionnaire was used to 140 patients who had thalassemia and visited to the hospital during the study periods to assess the patients’ characteristics and parent’s relative’s relation to thalassemic patients. socio demographic data and clinical parameters were obtained from the patients’ medical records. these included demographics of the patients (gender, age, ethnic and educational level) and clinical information. statistical analysis was carried out using statistical package for social sciences (spss) version 22. general characteristics of the patients were presented in terms of percentage and mean. the chi-square test was used to examine the relationship between questions and each demographic/clinical parameter. a p value of ≤ 0.05 was considered statistically significant. 3. results demographic characteristics of patients a total of 140 thalassemic patients were studied, of which 70 (50.0%) patients were males and 50 (50.0%) were females. the majority of patients were from rural residency 133 (95.0%), and few patients from urban residency 7 (5.0%). majority of cases age were 8-18 years, followed by less or equal 7 years 81 (57.9%). the mean age was 12.8 years (ranged from 1 month to 33 years). (table1) table 1. demographic characteristics of the patients characteristics no. % gender male 70 50.0 female 70 50.0 residency rural 133 95.0 urban 7 5.0 age group <=7 36 25.7 8-18 81 57.9 >=19 23 16.4 mean age (95% ci) 12.8 (11.6-14.0) types of thalassemia according to type of thalassemia, majority of patients have major thalassemia followed by intermediate and minor 84.3%, 107% and 5.0% respectively. (figure 1) figure 1. distribution types of thalassemia. family and daily living relatives to thalathimic patients other parts of questioner focused on specialized questions related to the patient’s family and some problems who interacting in daily living. 47.9% of patient brother and brother & and sisters with the same diseases, while 52.1% of them without having disease among their brother and sisters. majority of patients have no relation relatives for patient’s father & mother 51.4%, but 48.6 of them have relation relatives for father & mothers. 66.4% of patients can continue the study. majority of cases without obstruct treatments on getting blood transfusion 75.7% (table 2). table 2. patients problem observe living and family related to the disease questions no. % patients brother & sister with the same disease yes 67 47.9 no 73 52.1 parents relation relatives for patients yes 68 48.6 no 72 51.4 any thalassemia cases in patient’s fathers or mothers family yes 50 35.7 no 90 64.3 patients can be continuing to study yes 93 66.4 no 47 33.6 are the blood group obstructing the treatment yes 34 24.3 no 106 75.7 majority of families with 3-5 children and more than 6 children 41(50.7%) and 68 (48.6%) (figure 2). figure 2. frequency of the children in patient’s family. according to the history of presenting father and mothers to thalassemia, majority of patients both of 64 father and mother have the disease accounted 90 (65.0%), from those patients 77 (85.6) were with major thalassemia and few cases with minor thalassemia 4 (4.4%) and these relations statistically significant (p=0.04). (table 3) table 3. distribution types of thalassemia in relation to history of fathers and mothers with the disease. f ather or m other have the disease type of thalassemia no. (%) total n o. (% ) p-value m inor interm ediate m ajor both 4(4.4) 9 (10.0) 77(85.6) 90(65.0) 0.04 father 1(5.9) 2(11.8) 14(83.3) 17(12.0) mother 2(16.7) 1(8.3) 9(75.0) 12(8.0) none of them 0(0.0) 3(14.3) 18(85.7) 21(15.0) total 7(5.0) 15(10.7) 118(84.3) 140 residency relation to thalassemia . the result of residency of patients shows from 133 rural patients, 85 (94.4%) of them were from rural area which both father and mother have the disease. while in 7 (50.0%) patients, 5 (5.6%) of them were from urban area. statistically significant relation was found p=0.02 (table 4). table 4. distribution residency of thalassemic patients in relation to history of parents with the disease father or mother with the disease residency no. (%) total no. (%) p-valpue rural urban both 85(94.4) 5(5.6) 90(65.0) 0.02 father 17(100.0) 0(0.0) 17(12.0) mother 12(100.0) 0(0.0) 12(8.0) none of them 19(90.5) 2(9.5) 21(15.0) total 133(95.0) 7(5.0) 140 the result shows that majority of patient who have major type of thalassemia were from rural area 113 (95.8%) and few cases from urban area 5 (4.2%). however less frequent cases were from rural area which has minor type of thalassemia. these differences statistically significant (p=0.01) (table 5). table 5. distribution types of thalassemia in relation to residency of the patients. types of thalassemia residency no. (%) total no. (%) p-value rural urban major 113(95.8) 5(4.2) 118(84.3) 0.01 intermediate 14(93.3) 1(6.7) 15(10.7) minor 6(85.7) 1(14.3) 7(5.0) total 133(95.0) 7(5.0) 140(100.0) blood transfusion according to the days of blood transfusions majority 72 (51.5%) of the patients are receiving blood transfusion each less 2 weeks, while 8 (1.9%) patients requires transfusion at longer 5 weeks. from 72 patients were receive blood transfusion less 2 weeks 68 (94.4%) patients have major type of thalassemia, while there is no patient who receive blood transfusion with minor type of thalassemia. statistically significant relation was found (p=0.03) (table 6). table 6. association between types of thalassemia and patient’s day receiving blood transfusion. d ay of blood transfusion type of thalassemia no. (%) total no. (%) p-value m inor interm ediate m ajor < weeks 0(0.0) 4 (5.6) 68(94.4) 72(51.5) 0.03 3-5weeks 4(6.7) 7(11.8) 49(81.7) 60(42.8) >5 weeks 3(37.5) 4(50.5) 1(12.5) 8(5.7) total 7(5.0) 15(10.7) 118(84.3) 140 4. discussion demographic characteristics of the patients gender for this study 140 thalassemia patients from thalassemia and congenital blood disease center in sulaimani were reunited, the study shows that gender distribution was found to be 50% female and 50% male (table 1), because according to the current study, there is an equal chance of male and female to be effected by this thalassemia. it is nearly consistent to previous study in low–income country such as in pakistan [2], but in malaysian study has a little difference between male 52% and female 48% [6]. residency this study that shows that thalassemia in the rural area was 95% more than urban area 5% (table 1), living between in rural and urban area are more difference, peoples in rural area are in our country had no information about cause and occurrence of thalassemia, prevention, diagnosis and treatments, but in the urban area they had information about it, also low educational level about risk of disease and process about presence of diseases by clinical investigations before marriage between couples who tend married to for diagnosis. in addition, number of children with thalassemia diseases are more frequent among families living in the rural area, thus because of our culture and live style which they are more likely to get children. age: in the current study, 81 patients 57.9% were aged between 8-18 years, which is nearly accordance to the 65 previous study in malaysia revealed that 75 patients aged between 11-12 years [6], however another study have a different report and showed that thalassemic patient were more frequent below 7 years of age [7]. in the present study, the thalassemia disease more appear among (8-18) years of age and decreased among the age group older than 19 years, this could be due to the quality of live and they will be dying during this age. distribution types of thalassemia in our study, majority of patients have major type of thalassemia followed by intermediate and minor 84.3%, 107% and 5.0% respectively, this indicated that most of the patient in the bad condition don’t impotence to nutrition or may be due to their parents married regardless carrier to the diseases. we observed that 47.9% of patient’s brother and sisters with the same diseases, (table 2), so the rate show that nearly half of patient have another brother or sister with the same disease, it means it is not important to patient's parents to have another thalassimic patient or they haven't information about the next kid. our study shown that majority of patients have no relation relatives for patient’s father & mother 51.4%, but 48.6 of them have relation relatives for father & mothers (table 2), this finding is in agreement with the previous study which was done by rami m. al haddad , this indicated that consanguinity haven't important role in the occurrence of thalassemia [8]. in our study, 33.6% of patient cannot continue to study (table 2), it is danger proportion because of literacy has a significant role in our life which will help prevention and spread of thalassemia and it is consistence to the previous study [9]. we found that 24.3% of patients their blood groups obstruct the treatment during receiving medical care (table 2) and it considered bad condition, because thalassimic patient have a great need to blood transfusion especially major type. the result shows that majority of families had more than 3 children or more than 6 children (figure 2). it is due to elevate proportion or prevalence thalassemia appearance in our population. so, arrangement and decrease child birth among those families is more important to prevent and reduce the disease level in the population. a total of 90 (65.0%) patients who their mother and father have thalassemia 77 (85.6%) of them had major type of thalassemia, but when one of mother or father had thalassemia the proportion of major type of thalassemia will decrease among the children disease will appear. this indicate that the major type of thalassemia will transmit from parent to their off-spring when both of mother and father with the disease. this finding is agreement to the previous study [10]. in the current study, 95.8% of patients who affected to thalassemia major they are lived in countryside (village), this indicate that those population did not yet to test before marriage of maybe they are not had information about the disease and mode of transmission. same result was conducted in previous study [11]. blood transfusion our study shows majority the patients who receive blood transfusion every 2 weeks or less, in which most of them have major type of thalassemia (table 6). this indicate that our patients need to critical monitoring and cost, also they are high risk for other infection which are transmit to them during medical care. same result shows in the previous study [12]. 5. conclusion • major type of thalassemia accounted high proportion in our community. • most of parent’s patients (father and mother have thalassemia together). • families in rural area are main causes for elevating thalassemia in our community. • the rate of major type of thalassemia present in rural population. • patients with thalassemia in our country need more frequent blood transfusion during weeks. reference [1] k. ishfaq, the knowledge of parents having thalassemia child vol. 8, 2016. [2] hira tahir, syeda amna shahid, and k. t. mahmood, "complications in thalassaemia patients receiving blood tranfusion," j biomed sci and res., vol. 3, pp. 339-346, apr 2011. [3] b. a. kumar and m. kaushik, "blood group and anemia: exploring a new relationship," journal of public health and epidemiology vol. 5, pp. 43-45, 2013. [4] r. m. a. haddad, "molecular, biochemical and hematological investigations of -thalassemic children in gaza," faculty of science, the islamic university-gaza, library.iugaza.edu.ps, 2012. [5] bhaswati b., saswatin., and k. m., "a comparative study on prescriptions among parents of thalassemic children attending two different institutins," indian j of community medicine, vol. xxviii, pp. 128-132, 2003. [6] e. george and t. j. ann, "genotype-phenotype diversity of beta-thalassemia in malaysia: treatment options and emerging therapies," med j malaysia, vol. 65, pp. 256-60, dec 2010. [7] i. a. wahab, m. naznin, m. z. nora, a. r. suzanah, m. zulaiho, a. r. faszrul, et al., "thalassaemia: a study on the perception of patients and family members," med j malaysia, vol. 66, pp. 326-34, oct 2011. [8] s. akhlaghpoor, "chorionic villus sampling for betathalassemia: the first report of experience in iran," prenat diagn, vol. 26, pp. 1131-6, dec 2006. [9] nikam s. v., dama s. b., p. s.s., and d. l. b., "literacy status in thalassemic patients from solapur district, maharashtra, india: a statistical study," an international peer-reviewed j, vol. 1, pp. 22-24, jul-aug 2012. [10] f. arif, j. fayyaz, and a. hamid, awareness among parents of children with thalassemia major vol. 58, 2008. [11] f. ishaq, h. abid, f. kokab, a. akhtar, and s. mahmood, awareness among parents of β-thalassemia major patients, regarding prenatal diagnosis and premarital screening vol. 22, 2012. [12] d. langhi jr, e. m. a. ubiali, j. f. c. marques jr, m. d. a. verissimo, s. r. loggetto, a. silvinato, et al., "guidelines on beta-thalassemia major regular blood transfusion therapy: associação brasileira de hematologia, hemoterapia e terapia celular: project guidelines: associação médica brasileira 2016," revista brasileira de hematologia e hemoterapia, vol. 38, pp. 341-345, 2016. 1. introduction 5. conclusion  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.57 the roles of landscape features in re-making sense of place in mosul city centre musaab sami al-obeidy assistant lecturer, architectural engineering cihan university – sulaimaniya arch.musaabsami@gmail.com shuhana shamsuddin professor, department of civil engineering university technology malaysia shuhana.kl@utm.my abstract: due to the unfit development of street characteristics, and negligence of maintenance, street loss what is precious and its sense, here the people’s feelings and perception of the streets have been negatively affected. this paper highlights landscape features as physical characteristics of streets including soft landscape (trees) and hard landscape (street furniture). this is to identify the roles of these two types of landscape features in securing sense of place. nineveh street in mosul city center, iraq is selected as a case study. mixed methods were selected for this research, quantitative technique by using 330 questionnaire survey, and qualitative technique by using 30 semi-structured interviews and direct observation. the study concludes that landscape features of streets contribute to create sense of safety and comfort that in turns give sense of place. the lack of the role of landscape features in providing safety and comfort has a negative effect on reducing the influence of sense of place in the street. keywords: landscape features, sense of place, commercial streets. 1. introduction streets are an important part of open public spaces that reflect the character and the sense of place of cities [1]. streets have many functions that give them their sense of place, thus this sense is reflected generally in the city. meanwhile, the physical characteristics of streets, such as building and landscape features, contribute to make the street safe, comfortable [2] and [3]. nowadays, rapid development has made an impact towards streets’ development that acts as a public space, particularly the streets of the city centres. in iraq, mosul city centre has witnessed a negligence crisis that can threaten the character of the city and reduce the physical roles of public spaces [4]. although, in the last years, there were serious attempts by architects, planners, and sociologists for renewal and rehabilitation, but until now mosul city centre has not witnessed factual and visual changes in its context. this issue puts the architects and designers in front of difficult challenges to strengthen the character, identity, and sense of place of mosul city centre. hence, this study is significant in further informing the street character of the city. the author of study [4] explained some problems of mosul's scenario. he confirms that mosul city has suffered from the lack of thoughtful maintenance, causing the demise of many of its ancient monuments, besides the repulsion of its buildings, lack of feeling secure, and the large number of un-aesthetic, undesirable scenes. he also mentioned that the presence of negligence and the destruction of what remains of landmarks, such as buildings, has led to the collapse of the traditional environment in mosul city centre. the narrowness of street pavements in mosul city centre, which is caused by the display of the goods on the sidewalk either by stall owners or shop owners, has led to the loss of the pavements’ features in people's perception, thus pavements or sidewalks of the street lose their role as one of the landscape features which make the street recognisable [5]. furthermore, the illegibility of the pavement and its narrowness force street users to leave the pavement and use the street for walking. this issue creates an uncomfortable environment for street users. meanwhile, the street user faces difficulty for access when he wants to pass by or shop to [5]. however, due to the unfit development of street characteristics, the people’s feelings and perception of the streets have been negatively affected. in most cases, changes in the physical setting, may consequently erase what is precious [6]. 2. literature review according to [2], landscape features are one of the physical elements of the place. it is generally natural physical characteristics [7]. landscape features refer to soft landscape (trees) and hard landscape (street furniture) as suggested by [8], where soft landscape features are the landscape elements that represent nature such as plant, water and topography [8]. however, hard landscape was categorised as the manmade features designed to complement the soft landscape [9] and [10]. the success of any given place is highly influenced by the safety, comfort and convenience which people experience while pass through and/or go to places, spaces, and buildings [11]. according to [2], the presence of signs, lighting at night, sitting areas, trees, beautiful views, parking areas, facilities, and pavements with suitable width to walk on, contribute to making a comfortable environment. their study reveals that natural elements play a significant role in contributing towards the positive feeling of the place, thus making it comfortable for its users. a comfortable environment is also associated with the quality of the view, which is created by river, vegetation, and topography, as suggest by [12] and [13]. the reflections of buildings along the river and the colourful lighting at night create a beautiful visual effect. moreover, it has been proven from previous studies that trees create a good human relationship with nature and this creates a peaceful environment [14] and [15]. the researchers in reference [2] mentioned that mature trees are considered as a street symbol and contribute to the comfort of the environment. according to [16], six features, namely; benches, dustbins, bicycle racks, bus stops, the quality of view, and pavements, contribute in making the environment in streets uncomfortable. it has been established that the attractiveness of the street decreases due to the presence of too much traffic management, which means that uncomfortable environment on streets is partially attributed to an over-presence of traffic lights [16]. furthermore, the untidy appearance of transformer vaults and manholes adds to the decline in the quality of view, leading to an uncomfortable environment. according to [17], a sidewalk is an important feature; however, the vertical designation (level of changes) of it is not compulsory in the ‘shared space’ concept. this type of concept is suitable for streets with narrow width as in the study area. on the other hand, to create a safe environment it is important to provide appropriate street lighting. this is consistent with the findings of [2], who found that positive and negative feelings are influenced by a feeling of safety, particularly through street lighting, the lack of which, especially at back lanes, creates an insecure feeling, while the opposite leads to a safe environment. lighting assists in the protection of property, discourages vandalism and crime, and as a result residents and street users build a feeling of security [18]. furthermore, [19] has observed that the, continuous presence of pedestrians along the way, the presence of security officers and a safe traffic environment, walkways that extend from one destination to another, and lighting at night all have a vital role in making the street a safe place. 3. methods and materials this research uses mixed methods, quantitative and qualitative techniques. mixed methods were selected for this research because the two methods have strengths and weaknesses, thus it helps balance out any potential weaknesses in each data collection method [20]. in this matter, [21] motivate researchers to use mixed methods in doing their research because the combination of both forms of data (quantitative sense and qualitative sense) provides the most complete analysis of research problems. the quantitative method used the 330 questionnaire surveys technique, based on 5.5% sampling error at 95% confidence level, which are employed by many considerable researchers [2], [3], [15], [19], [22], [23], and [24]. the questionnaire survey technique is defined by [25] as a formalised instrument for asking information directly from a respondent concerning behaviour, demographic characteristics, level of knowledge, and/or attitudes, beliefs, and feelings. the questionnaire survey of this study will ask respondents about their perception and feeling in identifying the role of landscape features of nineveh street in contributing to the sense of place. besides, this study has employed 30 semi-structured interviews and direct observation. these two qualitative techniques are used to support findings that come out from the quantitative methods. according to [26], the interview is the most prominent data collection tool in qualitative research. it is a very good way of accessing people's perceptions, meanings, definitions of situations, and constructions of reality. one the other hand, the observation can give additional, and more accurate information on the behaviour of people compared to interviews or questionnaires, as [27] mentioned. this study uses direct observation to record and write notes, and evaluate the physical elements and features in the nineveh street in terms of landscape features. all data collection will work together to get convenient interpretations. 4. case study nineveh street is one of the first streets to be established in the beginning of the last century in the historical commercial centre of mosul, particularly in 1917 [28]. it is the first street founded in the city in the beginning of the twentieth century with about two kilometres of length [29]. it is located within the main commercial district of mosul city centre, and in the core of mosul city [29] and [30]. it was chosen based on the physical characteristics that represent the character of mosul city centre, after the first decade of the last century, which emerged after the british occupation of mosul. recently, nineveh street became one of the most important and famous commercial streets in mosul city centre [29] (see figure 1). figure 1: a recent view of the nineveh street 5. results & discussion landscape features are physical characteristic of commercial streets. these types of features contribute in making a sense of safety and a sense of comfort in places, thus giving a unique sense of place. according to conducted data, a total of 330 respondents participated in the survey, but only 319 questionnaire survey was used in analysis and interpretation due to having full answers. the majority of the survey respondents were aged between 18-24 and 25-49 years old whereas 75% (n=240) of them were males and 25% (n=79) were females. the next part discusses the role of landscape features in making streets safe and comfortable, respectively. 5.1 the role of landscape features in making the street safe landscape features played an important role in making nineveh street safe to mobile and static users on this street. these features included the presence of security offices, the continuous presence of people along the way, walkway that extend from one place to another, good lighting system at night, the presence of a safe traffic environment, and no crimes and robberies. according to the survey, most of the respondents feel safe while on the street. the dominant reason that makes them feel safe was the continuous presence of people along the way which was mentioned by 70% (n=222) of the respondents (see figure 2). this finding supports the opinion of [2] that the presence of people in a place is a feature that contributes to generating a safe environment in the street. the presence of a safe traffic environment also contributed in making a safe environment. it was observed that there was only one traffic light at the nineveh street junction with ghazi street, and all junctions along nineveh street were without traffic lights (see figure 3). moreover, nineveh street is located at the centre of mosul city, and many streets are linked with it. thus, the presence of many vehicles throughout the day made this street crowded. the cars stopping or moving very slowly. this jam in nineveh street reduced dangerousness brought about by the speed of vehicles, thus raised the rate of sense of safety. this was mentioned by many respondents during the field interview. in contrast, 26% (n=83) of the respondents felt unsafe on this street. the major reason behind this case was because of the presence of some crimes and robberies which were mentioned by around 39% (12%) of the respondents. many interviewees considered the street as an unsafe space because of some theft accidents that have occurred, especially on fridays and saturdays, which are the weekend days, during which the number of users increases. hence, it was apparent that the landscape features played a significant role in making nineveh street have a safe atmosphere. this also confirms [31] idea of landscape elements as important components of a street that contribute in making the street safe. (case study area) al-farooq street the old bridge al-najafi street figure 2: reasons respondents feel safe and unsafe when they walk along the street figure 3: the only traffic light in nineveh street 8% (n=27) 70% (n=222) 2% (n=7) 2% (n=6) 16% (n=50) 2% (n=7) the presence of security officers the continuous presence of people along the way the walkways extend from one destination to another good lighting system at night the presence of a safe traffic environment this street has not witnessed any crimes and robberies (n=236) (n=83) 5% (n=17) 6% (n=19) 4% (n= 13) 8% (n=26) 12% (n=39) the absence of officers patrol boxes less / no people along the way the walkways are not connected to the destination scene of traffic is too busy and fast poor lighting system at night 5.2 the role of landscape features in making the street comfortable landscape features played some role in making nineveh street comfortable to street users. the landscape features that contributed in making a comfortable environment included signs, traffic lights, lighting system, sitting area, shaded areas, beautiful views, comfortable pavement to walk on, the presence of parking areas, and the presence of public toilets. according to the survey, more than half of the number of respondents felt uncomfortable when they walk along this street. the narrowness of pavement was the dominant reason that made 51% (n=162) of the respondents feel uncomfortable when walking along the street (see figure 4). figure 4: reasons why respondents feel uncomfortable when they walk along the street 8% (n=25) 6% (n=20) 3% (n=11) 4% (n=12) 20% (n=63) 7% (n=22) 4% (n=14) 5% (n=17) 1% (n=2) it has signs no traffic lights it has lighting at night it has sitting areas it has buildings which make the pavement shaded there are beautiful views the pavement has suitable width to walk on there are many parking areas and good facilities 8% (n=24) 2% (n=5) 14% (n=45) 17% (n=55) 13% (n=41) 26% (n=83) 51% (n=162) 14% (n=45) 27% (n=85) no signs there are many traffic lights no lighting at night no sitting areas street pavement is not shaded there are bad views the pavement is very narrow for walking no enough parking there are no public wcs it was also observed that multi levels of pavements as well as the presence of a large number of stalls surpassing sidewalk space and even on the street space affect the comfort of pedestrians on the street. these issues lead many people to use the street space for walking instead of the sidewalk. hence, there is a need to design the pavement and push more attention to make it comfortable for pedestrians because pavements are considered as one of the physical elements that create a feeling of relaxation, as mentioned by [32]. in addition, the sidewalk itself had many levels of the pavement, moreover, in some places it is cracked and broken that make it very hard to walk on it. that is why the most or the respondents felt uncomfortable in walking in the street. on the other hand, the lack of public toilets along the street reduced the sense of comfort in nineveh street as mentioned by 27% (n=85) of the respondents in the survey. from the field interviews, many respondents confirmed that many people, especially women, suffer from the lack of public toilets in the whole of mosul city centre. they were forced to wait for prayer time to use the toilets of the mosques along the street or in the alleys of mosul city centre. approximately the same percentage of respondents felt uncomfortable in the street due to the bad scenes. it was also noted that the spread of littering, the presence of destroyed and ramshackle building, as well as the spread of military points and bridges of the iraqi army along nineveh street, especially at the junctions, reduced the sense of comfort to respondents. moreover, the lack of other landscape features like road signs, lightings at night, sitting areas, and parking areas reduced the sense of comfort in nineveh street. some interviewers accentuated that there is nothing in the street that makes them feel comfortable. this street needs a lot so far, so it can be called as a street because it is just a mess. there is no sufficient parking provided. it is not supplied with lighting at night. the billboards of shops and doctors are in a mess. there are no plants in the street. there are no road signs. the only thing there is plenty of waste and wires of private electricity generators. these problems require serious efforts by decision-makers in the municipality of mosul and at mosul university who wish to improve the physical characteristics of nineveh street and other streets in mosul city centre. these results support the view of [2], conforming the importance of road signs, lighting at night, the presence of greenery and plants, and the presence of public toilets in making the place comfortable. this is also in parallel with [33] study who found that the presence of night settings create an enjoyable environment which contributes toward a sense of place in the form of a place symbol. on the other hand, 43% (n=138) of the respondents felt comfortable walking along this street. the main reason of that is due to the presence of buildings that shade the pavement. other reasons such as the presence of signs, traffic lights, lighting and so forth were mentioned by a few respondents. from these remarks, it can be seen that landscape features played an important role in making the street safe, but played a moderate role in making the street comfortable for those using the street. the lack of landscape features as one of the physical elements influenced negatively on the sense of comfort in nineveh street, thus influenced the sense of place. 6. conclusion landscape features including soft landscape (trees) and hard landscape (street furniture) are strongly related to achieving sense of safety and comfort that in turn contribute in securing sense of place in streets. in nineveh street, the landscape features played a significant role in making the street safe much more in making it comfortable. it was observed that the most distinctive features that made this street safe were the continuous presence of people along the street. it was also observed that the most distinctive of these elements that made the street uncomfortable to the users was the narrowness of pavement and its bad finishing. this does not mean that the street needs only these features to be comfort and safe for users. the diminishing of the street furniture like lighting system, billboards, sitting area, littering area, and street services like public toilets, and car parking area may lose their significant role in street recognition and orientation by street users, thus the sense of place is threatened. furthermore, the untidy appearance of electricity generators and manholes add to the decline in the quality of view, leading to an uncomfortable environment. hence, urban designers and architects should identify the characteristics that are most attractive to street users to create and enhance the sense of place in places. the research has established that sense of place can be one of the factors to consider in the design of urban space and places especially, in these days when redevelopment and reconstruction of mosul city center are one of the options considered. 7. recommendations the study recommends to emphasis on the features that have a role in providing a sense of comfort, such as shaded sidewalks, comfortable seating areas, public toilets, and near public transportation places. besides, emphasis on features that provide a sense of safety, such as the presence of a safe traffic environment, good lighting system at night, the continuous presence of pedestrians along the way, and the presence of security officers. these recommendations can be relevant as guidelines in improving the quality of places, thus giving a good sense of place. 8. reference [1] m. najafi, and m. k. b. m. shariff, “the concept of place and sense of place in architectural studies.” international journal of human and social sciences, 6 (3), p. 187193, 2011. [2] n. h. ja'afar, a. b. sulaiman, and s. shamsuddin, “traditional street activities in kuala lumpur city centre.” international journal of multidisciplinary thoughts, vol. 2 (1), p. 93-105, 2012. [3] s. shamsuddinn, “identity of place: a case study of kuantan town centre, malaysia.” unpublished phd thesis, university of nottingham, 1997. [4] m. m. mustafa, “local identity of mosul city in the urban design academic products.” the 2th engineering conference of the golden ubeel, mosul university, pp. 1-19, 2013. [5] s. al-janabi, “nineveh street in mosul: its functional importance and future.” the iraqis news agency, may 13, 2013. [online]. http://iraqyoon.net/articles/news_details.php?detai ls=459. [accessed: july 15, 2013]. [6] s. shamsuddin, and n. ujang, “making places: the role of attachment in creating the sense of place for traditional streets in malaysia.” elsevier journal, 32, p. 399-409, 2008. [7] f. a. abbaszadeh, “characterization of physical elements of street design.” unpublished phd thesis. universiti teknologi malaysia, skudai, malaysia, 2011. [8] london borough of croydon, landscape design; supplementary planning guidance no. 12, london borough of croydon, 2009. [9] a. a. a. r. hassan, and l. r. hamid, “effect of furnishing street space on harmony and consistency of construction environment.” altaqani journal, 24(3), pp. a102-a119, 2010. [10] v. mehta, “lively streets support social behavior.” journal of planning education and research, 27(2), p. 165-187, 2007. [11] cabe, delivering great places to live: 20 questions you need to answer; building for life. london. seacourt ltd, 2008. [12] s. l. handy, m. g. boarnet, r. ewing, and r. e. killingsworth, “how the built environment affects physical activity views from urban planning.” american journal of preventive medicine, 23(02), pp.64-73, 2002. [13] g. cullen, concise townscape. great britain: the architectural press, 1985. [14] d. appleyard, livable streets. united states of america, university of california press, ltd, 1981. [15] n. h. ja'afar, and i. m. s. usman, “physical and transportation elements of traditional street in malaysia.” european journal of social sciences. vol. 9 (4), p.669676, 2009. [16] south dublin county council, adamstown street design guide: south dublin county council, adamstown, 2011. [17] north shore city, design of streets; a reference handbook for high quality streets, north city council, 2011. [18] t. telford, manual for streets. thomas telford ltd. the great britain, 2007. [19] n. h. ja'afar, “criteria success in the traditional way to attract visitors: kuala lumpur: a case study.” unpublished master thesis. universiti teknologi malaysia, skudi, malaysia, 2006. [20] d. e. gray, “doing research in the real world.” (4th ed). british, sage publication, 2014. [21] j. w. creswell, and v. l. p. clark, “designing and conducting mixed methods research.” (2nd ed.). usa. sage publication, inc., 2011. [22] himilia “apek keselamatan jalan dan kemudahan pejalan kaki di dalam pusat bandar dr perspektif wanita: kajian kes jalan tuanku abdul rahman, kuala lumpur.” fakulti alam bina. malaysia, universiti teknologi malaysia, skudai, malaysia, 2005. [23] n. ujang, and k. dola, “linking activity and place attachment dimensions in enhancing the sense of place.” alam cipta, international journal on sustainable tropical design research and practice, 2 (1). pp. 59-67. issn 1823-7231, 2007. [24] n. ujang, “place attachment and continuity of urban place identity.” elsevier. pp. 156-167, 2012. [25] j. taylor, science research methodology. new castle, usa. nyx academics, 2012. [26] k. f. punch, “introduction to social research: quantitative and qualitative approaches.” (3th edition). great britain. sage publications, 2014. [27] a. tandon, research methodology: methods and techniques. anmol publications pvt ltd, 2010. [28] m. h. d. al-dewaji, “urban renewal of the markets of old mosul: planning study methods in maintaining the old commercial centres and developing iraqi cities.” unpublished master thesis. mosul university, iraq, 1989. [29] a. w. al-nuami, “nineveh street: the master of mosul streets.” mosul city: cultural and heritage illuminations. al-nuami, a. w. ed., baghdad: house of books and documents, 2012, 256-260. [30] s. al-janabi, “nineveh street in mosul: its functional importance and future.” may 13, 2013, the iraqis news agency. http://iraqyoon.net/articles/news_details.php?detai ls=459 [accessed: july 15, 2013]. [31] n. h. ja'afar, a. b. sulaiman and s. shamsuddin, “the contribution of landscape features on traditional streets in malaysia.” asean conference on environment-behaviour studies, july 16-18 2012. bangkok, thailand, elsevier, 2011, p. 2-15. [32] c. moughtin, urban design: street and square. london: architectural press, 2006. [33] lillebeye, “the architectural significance of the street as a functional and social arena.” in the sustainable street: the environment, human of http://iraqyoon.net/articles/news_details.php?details=459 http://iraqyoon.net/articles/news_details.php?details=459 economic aspect of the street design and management. norwegian public roads administration, 2001. biography my name is musaab sami younus al-obeidy. i received the b.e. degree in architectural engineering from mosul university, mosul, iraq, in 2009, and the master degree in architecture, specialization in urban design from university technology malaysia, malaysia, johor bahru, in 2015. from 2015 till now, i have been working the department of architectural engineering, cihan university – sulaimaniya, as an assistant lecturer. google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=i3t_qtuaaa aj&hl=en researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/musaab_alobeidy/publications https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=i3t_qtuaaaaj&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=i3t_qtuaaaaj&hl=en https://www.researchgate.net/profile/musaab_al-obeidy/publications https://www.researchgate.net/profile/musaab_al-obeidy/publications  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 4 | issue 1 | june 2019 | doi: 10.24017/science.2019.1.3 received: 03 march 2019 | accepted: 11 june 2019 effect of indoleacetic acid and zinc sulphate application on growth and some physiological parameters of cowpea (vigna sinensis savi) plants ikbal muhammed-gharib al-barzinji sargul ahmad khudhur arol muhsen anwar department of biology, department of biology, department of biology, faculty of science and health, faculty of science and health, faculty of science and health, koya university koya university koya university koya, erbil, iraq koya, erbil, iraq koya, erbil, iraq ikbal.tahir@koyauniversity.org sargul.khudur@koyauniversity.org arol.anwar@koyauniversity.org 15 abstract: this study was conducted in koya city, iraq on cowpea (vigna sinensis savi) plants california black eye variety by factorial experiment including the effects of foliar spraying of zinc sulphate znso4.7h2o (zs) or the plant growth regulator indoleacetic acid c10h9no2 (iaa). analysis of data revealed that zs and iaaapplication affects significantly on the studied traits. 100 ppm of iaa increased significantly the leaves content of each of chlorophylls a, b, and total, although it decreased the content of total carotenoids. the results showed that the leaf area significantly increased by increasing the amount of zs to 2.0 g/l compare with other treatments except 1.0 g/l zs application. foliar application of iaa increased significantly the dry matter percent of shoots and roots as well as the number of nodules per plant. it has been found that leaves content of zinc is related to the concentration of zs applied significantly compared to the control and iaa treatments, however the application of iaa caused to decrease k and zn contents in leaf of the plants compared to other treatments. finally, based on the results the best ratio of iaa for increased stomata number on the abaxial and adaxial leaves surfaces was 75 ppm. keywords: cowpea, chlorophylls, iaa, stomata, zs. 1. introduction cowpea plant is a summer crop considered an important crop in iraq which is cultivated for their green pods or/and their dry seeds in all iraqi regions; it belongs to fabaceae family [1]. it is well known that nutrient elements are very vital for physiological and biochemical processes in plants. the use of plant elements as nutrition has a wide application all over the worldwide including iraq. zinc is an important micro-elements used in these fields, for example, using zinc at 0, 5, 10 and 15 kg/ha as znso4 increased significantly each of plant height, branches, leaves, dry matter, effective nodules weight and plant grain yield of cowpea (vigna unguiculata) [2]. in a study [3], application of znso4 at 25 kg/ ha through soil or as a single spray of 0.5% znso4 either at 25 or 45 days after sowing (das) or two sprays of 0.5% znso4 at 25 and 45 das were seen effective increasing in cowpea (vigna unguculata l. walp) plant high, number of branches and yield components compared to the control treatment. also, it is found that zinc application increased the grain yield of pea (vigna radiate) as a result of auxin synthesis, nodules performing, and nitrogen fixation, which leads to estimating plant growth, and development, thus influenced the grain yield positively [4]. the best response of zinc application (2.5kg/ha and 5kg/ha) on plant growth parameters including plants height, number of nodules/plant, number of branches/plant and plant dry weight due to zinc effect on the metabolism of growing plants, which may effectively explain the observed response of zinc application [5], whereas [6] reported that foliar spray application at 1.5% znso4 plays a significant role in increasing cowpea growth parameters when applied with 2% urea. another application used widely in agriculture is plant growth regulators which have great advantages for improving the growth, development and crops productivity. the phytohormone auxin is used nowadays on the plants for change their response toward different physiological processes, auxin is an important regulator for many aspects of plant growth and development, it promote cell elongation and division in stem, differentiation, tropisms and apical dominance, whereas it inhibits root growth, bud formation, senescence and leaves and fruits abscissions [7,8]. the major natural auxin is indole-3-acetic acid (iaa). there are three major classes of synthetic auxins, the first one is the aryl acetic acids, which include indoleacetic acid (iaa) itself [9]. the phytohormone auxin is affected by several factors including the microelement zinc, which is considered as a stimulating for auxin synthesis. for instance, in plants growing in a medium deficient of zinc, the stem fails to elongate and fail of leaves to expand to the normal and mature size, and elongation of the stem is almost reduced. growth forms can stunt when zinc elements inefficient [10]. the aim of this study was to make a comparison between zs salt and the auxin iaa on the growth and some physiological characteristics of cowpea plants. mailto:ikbal.tahir@koyauniversity.org mailto:sargul.khudur@koyauniversity.org mailto:arol.anwar@koyauniversity.org 16 2. methods and materials 2.1. plant material and treatments cowpea (vigna sinensis savi) var. california black eye seeds were planted in the faculty of science and health, koya university, erbil-iraq (44°38 e, 36°4n and 517 m of altitude), and a randomized complete block design (rcbd) were conducted by using foliar spraying of one of the following solutions: distilled water (control), 0.5, 1.0 or 2.0 g/l of zs salt or 50, 75 or 100 ppm of the plant growth regulator iaa. 2.2. studies characteristics at the end of the stage of vegetative growth three separated plants were harvested from each experimental unit, and the following characteristics were determined: pigments of chlorophylls a, chlorophyll b and total carotenoids are calculated as it mention by [11] by taking pre-weighted samples with extracting by acetone with 1:50 extraction ratio. the samples were grained using pestle and mortar and then filtered by filter paper. the supernatants were speared and the concentration of the pigments was measured spectrophotometrically (7212000 spectrophotometer, china). the amount of pigments presented in each sample was calculated according to the following equations, each of chlorophyll-a, b and total carotenoids content in fresh materials were determined. chl.a = 11.75a662 – 2.35 a645 chl.b = 18.61a645 – 3.96 a662 car. = 1000 a470 – 2.27 chl.a – 81.4 chl.b/227 where a = absorbance, chl.a = chlorophyll a [mg/l], chl.b = chlorophyll b [mg/l], car. = total carotenoids [mg/l], then for converting the concentrations from mg/l to mg/g fresh weight, each value multiplied by (extraction volume/ (sample weight*1000)). leaf area was calculated by the method that described by [12] by spreading each leaf over a paper, and the outline of the leaf was drawn. by using a scissor, the area of the paper covered by the outline was cut and weighed on an electronic balance. one cm2of the same paper was also cut and weighed. the following equation was used to calculate the leaf area: 𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿 𝐿𝐿𝑎𝑎𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿 (𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐2)=𝑥𝑥/𝑦𝑦, where x is the weight of the paper covered by the leaf outline (g) and y is the weight (g) of the cm2 area of the paper. the percent of shoot, root, and nodules dry matter were calculated as it described by [13] by dividing the dry weight of leaves or roots or nodules samples by the wet weight of them multiplied by 100, number of nodules per plant, total potassium determined by using flame photometer as it mentioned by [14], total zinc determined by using atomic absorption spectrophotometer by using acetylene gas at 213.9 nm [15], number, length, and width of stomata in the adaxial and abaxial leaf surfaces measured by the method of lasting impressions [16] by painting approximately 1 cm2 of leaves surfaces by transparent nail polish. when the nails polish was dried, a piece of transparent tape was stick to the dried nail, and peeled out gently, to represent the leaf impression that contains the stomata apertures which were putted on slides to represent the abaxial and adaxial leaves surfaces. 400x magnifications were used to examine the leaf impressions by light microscope. stomata numbers were counted per mm2 area. leaf stomata length and width were measured in micrometer by an ocular micrometer. 2.3. the statistical analysis an experiment was performed by randomized complete block design (rcbd) with three replications was used in this study to test main effects. the differences among treatments were investigated by analysis of variance (anova) using sas program [17]. the duncan`s multiple comparison test was used to evaluate the main effects of treatments that differed when the f-value was significant at ≤0.05. 3. results and discussion analysis of data revealed that zs and iaa application effects significantly on the studied traits. the results in table 1 show that the foliar spraying with 100 ppm iaa increased significantly the leaves content of each of chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b and total chlorophylls to 5.77, 5.94 and 11.71 mg/g fresh weight compared to the control and 0.5% zs for chlorophyll a and in addition to 50 ppm iaa for chlorophyll b and total chlorophylls. applying zs and iaa treatments decreased leaves content of total carotenoids where the control treatment recorded the highest value reached 1.16 mg/g fresh wet followed by the lowest concentration of zs and iaa which were 1.14 and 1.11 mg /g fresh wet respectively. the increase in chlorophylls content at the highest concentration of iaa may due to the role of auxin in synthesizing chlorophyll and plastids development, whereas it decreased the carotenoids content as it mentioned by [18], zinc ions are required for many enzymes for completion their activities, also zinc may be required in some plants for chlorophyll biosynthesis [19]. from the results shown in table 2, it appears that increasing the concentration of zs to 2.0 g/l increased significantly the plant`s leaf area to 3281.9 cm2 in comparison with other treatments except for the treatment 1.0 g/l of zs. increasing plant leaf area with increasing zs concentration due to micronutrients generally increase the area of leaves, so more assimilate in the plant will produce [20], in addition to the role of zinc in activating many enzymes, like tryptophan synthetase superoxide dismutase and dehydrogenases [5], enolase and peptidase and it has an important role in synthesizing the amino acid tryptophan which is a necessary material for tryptophan-dependent iaa biosynthetic pathway in the chloroplast [21, 22].the effect of zinc sulphate compared to the iaa is that zinc encouraged the graduate synthesizing of iaa which is oxidizedenzymatically or by light. recently the zinc metallo proteins which are a new class of zinc-dependent protein molecules identified in the replication and transcription of dna, and as a result regulates gene expression [23, 24]. [25] attributes the low level of iaa in plants poor of zinc caused by inhibiting their synthesis. 17 table 1: effects of foliar spraying with zs and iaa on chlorophyll a, b, total carotenoids of cowpea leaves. treatments chlorophyll total carotenoids a b total mg/g fresh weight control 4.51 b 3.54 c 8.05 c 1.16 a zs (0.5 g/l) 4.73 b 3.96 bc 8.69 bc 1.14 ab zs (1.0 g/l) 5.44 ab 5.64 a 11.09 ab 0.89 bc zs (2.0 g/l) 5.43 ab 5.06 ab 10.48abc 0.97 abc iaa (50 ppm) 5.04 ab 3.74 bc 8.79 bc 1.11 ab iaa (75 ppm) 5.27 ab 4.70 abc 9.97 abc 0.99 abc iaa (100 ppm) a5.77 5.94 a 11.71 a 0.85 c means in the same column followed by the same symbol are not significantly different at p ≤ 0.05 level based on duncan test. from the same table, we see that foliar spraying with iaa increased significantly shoot dry matter percent as compared to the control (table 2), which may due to decreasing their leaf area which leads to concentrate the photosynthates in less area and increasing their dry matter. increasing the concentration of iaa increased the root dry matter percent significantly compared to other treatments. spraying iaa increase the root development which reflects positively on water and nutrition absorption, and as a result increasing plant growth characteristics [26], especially the shoot and root dry matter. this result agrees with that of [27] whom reported that foliar spraying by 25 and 50 mg/l of iaa increased each of plant height, shoot dry weight, number of leaves and branches compared to the control treatment, whereas 100 mg/l decreased these characteristics compared to the control treatment. increasing the iaa concentration to 100 ppm increased the number of nodules per plant significantly to 10.67 nodules/plant compared only to 6.67 nodules per plant for the 2 g/l zs treatment which increased the percent of nodules dry matter significantly to 69.39% in compared to 75 ppm iaa and 1 g/l zs that records 55.60 and 57.50% respectively. this increase in nodules number in 100 ppm iaa treatment may due to iaa is playing an essential role in nodule and nodule bacteria for the nodule development and symbiotic relationship between that plant and these bacteria [28]. also, agree with the results of [29] who stated that rhizobial iaa biosynthesis increased number of nodules/ plant in medicago truncatula and m. sativa plants that nodulated with sinorhizobium meliloti bacteria which is engineered genetically to increase the synthesis of iaa auxin or control strain.[30] reported that the root nodules of black gram phaseolus mungo plants are considered as tryptophan pool which have a role in indoleacetic acid synthesis, when the synthesis of iaa increased in the treatment of supplementing of l-tryptophan by 2 mg/ml by the symbiont compared to the control treatment. the results of table 3 show that leaves content of total potassium increased significantly to 180.67 when 1.0 g/l zs was applied compared to other treatments, however applying iaa decreased the percent of total potassium significantly especially the high concentrations 75 and 100 ppm. the increase in potassium concentration in 1 g/l zs treatment may due to the synergistic relationship between sulfur and potassium ions, which determined in several studies [19]. the decrease in potassium and zinc concentration with increasing iaa may due to high concentration was used, this result does not agree with the results of [31] who stated an increase in cowpea leaves content of these elements when sprayed with iaa at 12.5, 25 and 50 ppm, which were low concentrations compared to ours. table 2: effects of foliar spraying with zs and iaa on some of the vegetative growth characteristics of cowpea plants. treatments leaf area (cm2) shoot dry matter (%) root dry matter (%) number of nodules/ plant nodules dry matter (%) control 2022 b 18.72 c 24.67cd 8.33ab 66.70ab zs (0.5 g/l) 1837 b 20.06ab 24.37cd 8.33ab 61.97abc zs (1.0 g/l) 2550 ab 19.55bc d22.72 8.67ab 57.50bc zs (2.0 g/l) a3281 21.16ab 26.52bc 6.67b 69.39a iaa (50 ppm) 1753b 20.94ab 27.62ab 9.33ab 62.80 abc iaa (75 ppm) 1799b 21.40 a 28.92ab 8.67ab 55.60c iaa (100 ppm) 1706b 20.94ab 30.12 a 10.67a 59.21 abc means in the same column followed by the same symbol are not significantly different at p ≤ 0.05 level based on duncan test. from the results of table 3 it is appear that zinc concentration increased significantly with increasing the zs concentration where the leaves content of zinc increased to 1.57, 1.77 and 2.27 ppm with increasing the concentration of zs from 0.5 to 2 g/l significantly compared to the control and all iaa concentrations. the general decrease in zn concentration in plant leaves for all treatments including the control may due to increasing the k concentration, where [32] reported that macronutrient cations such as calicium, magnesium and potassium inhibit the absorption of zinc by plants from solutions. regarding potassium concentration, it has both positive and negative interaction effects as it has shown in table 3, where increasing zinc concentration increased potassium concentration in leaves, which agree with [33] who stated that zinc interacts positively with potassium, whereas in this study, also the negative effect was appeared when the concentration of zinc increased to 2 g/l which leads to decreasing potassium concentration. 18 table 3: effects of foliar spraying with zs and iaa on leaves content of total potassium and zinc of cowpea leaves. means in the same column followed by the same symbol are not significantly different at p ≤ 0.05 level based on duncan test. from the results of table 4 and figure 1 and 2, it appears that using 75 ppm of iaa increased stomata number on the abaxial and adaxial leaves surfaces compared to other treatments, whereas this treatment decreased stomata lengths significantly compared to other treatments for abaxial leaves surfaces. from the same table, it is shown that increasing the concentration of zinc and auxin decreased stomata lengths significantly on the adaxial leaves surfaces (table 4). decreasing stomata length significantly in the 0.5 and 1 g/l may due to increasing the potassium concentrations in guard cells (table 3) which leads to increase osmotic solute that results in water uptake into the guard cells [14]. neither zs nor iaa had significant effects on stomata width for different treatments on each of abaxial and adaxial leaves surfaces. the results are in line with [34] and [35] who reported that the characteristics of stomata such as number, length and width is affected by several factors viz. genetic constituents, ecological condition, environmental factors, season, physiological process, leaf position and leaf surface. table 4: effects of foliar spraying with zs and iaa on stomata number, length and width for cowpea leaves. means in the same column followed by the same symbol are not significantly different at p ≤ 0.05 level based on duncan test. figure 1: stomata of upper (adaxial) leaves surfaces of vigna sinensis savi at 400x for plants of the: (a) control (b) 0.50 (c) 1.00 (d) 2.0 g/l zs(e) 50 (f) 75 (g) 100 ppm iaa treatments. figure 2: stomata of lower (abaxial) leaves surfaces of vigna sinensis savi. at 400x for plants of the:(a) control (b) 0.50 (c) 1.00(d) 2.0 g/l znso4(e) 50 iaa(f) 75 (g) 100 ppm iaa treatments. 4. conclusion this study results showed that the application of foliar spraying of the salt, zs and the auxin iaa had a significant effects on the characteristics of vegetative growth, photosynthesis pigments and stomata characteristics of cowpea plants. the iaa application had stronger effects on the photosynthesis pigments through increasing chlorophylls and decreasing total carotenoids. while, leaf area, nodules dry matter and leaves content of k and zn affected more by zs compared to the iaa. treatments total potassium (ppm) total zinc (ppm) control 151.33 b 0.73 b zs (0.5 g/l) 148.33 b 1.57 a zs(1.0 g/l) 180.67 a 1.77 a zs(2.0 g/l) 114.67 c 2.27 a iaa(50 ppm) 135.00 bc 0.60 b iaa(75 ppm) 52.33 d 0.65 b iaa(100 ppm) 52.67 d 0.53 b t re at m en ts stomata number/mm2 stomata length (micrometer) stomata width (micrometer) a ba xi al su rf ac e a da xi al su rf ac e a ba xi al su rf ac e a da xi al su rf ac e a ba xi al su rf ac e a da xi al su rf ac e control 400d 240bc 10.0ab 12.0 a 7.0 a 4.0 a zs (0.5 g/l) 676ab 270 b 10.0ab 10.0b 8.0 a 4.0 a zs (1.0 g/l) 660 b 250 bc 10.0ab c8.0 7.0 a 3.0 a zs (2.0 g/l) 630b 223 c 9.0bc 9.0 bc 6.0 a 4.0 a iaa (50 ppm) 600 b 260 b 11.0a 12.0a 8.0a 4.0a iaa (75 ppm) 750 a 343 a 8.0 c 9.0 bc 6.0 a 4.0 a iaa (100 ppm) 480 c 220 c 11.0a 8.0 c 8.0 a 3.0a 19 references [1] a.n. matlob, e. sultan and k.s. abdul, vegetable production, dar al-kutub publ., mosul univ., iraq, 1989. 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[35] e.m. peksen, a. peksin and c. artik, “comparison of leaf and stomatal characteristics in faba bean (vicia faba l.)”, journal of biological sciences,6(2), pp.360-364, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12870-015-0495-4 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12870-015-0495-4 https://www.iasj.net/iasj?func=issues&jid=169&uilanguage=en https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2229-7-21 1. introduction 4. conclusion treatments  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.29 received:1 june 2018 | accepted: 12 july 2018 evaluation the efficacy of elisa igg, igm and iga tests for diagnosis of helicobacter pylori hogir mohammed shukri saadi ali yahya saeed department of biology department of biology college of science college of science university of duhok university of duhok duhok, iraq duhok, iraq dna_proten@yahoo.com ali.saeed@uod.ac 172 abstract: it has been well recognized throughout the world that helicobacter pylori is the main cause of gastric ulcer and stomach carcinoma. laboratory diagnosis of h. pylori infection is made by invasive and non-invasive methods. invasive methods require endoscopy which is uncomfortable an unacceptable by the most patients. therefore, non-invasive methods particularly serological tests are easier and comfortable for patients. a total of 86 patients with ages ranging from 18-77 years old (43 males and 43 females) who were referred to the duhok hepatology & gastroenterology center/azadi teaching hospital for endoscopic examination from june to october, 2013 were enrolled in the study. from each patient 5 ml of blood was collected under a septic condition and sera were separated for serology. data from each participant were recorded in a special questionnaire form after consent agreed upon on ethical and scientific committee of the azadi hospital. the efficacy of three different elisa tests (igg, igm, iga) was assessed taking culture as a gold standard method. h. pylori was found in 70.93%, 30.23% and 5.81% by elisa igg, iga and igm tests respectively. the highest percentage (70.93%) of h. pylori positive cases were found by elisa igg and the lowest percentage (5.81%) was recorded in elisa igm. the study found a significant relationship between age groups and h. pylori positive cases by elisa igg in which positive cases increased with the increase of ages. no statistical correlation was found between the sex, smoking status and residency of studied patients with h. pylori infection. a significant correlation was found between patients without endoscopic lesions and positive cases for h. pylori by elisa igg in which 75.67% of patients without endoscopic lesions were positive for anti-h. pylori antibodies compared to 41.66% in patients with endoscopic lesions. the efficacy of igg, igm and iga tests was calculated compared with golden standard tests and elisa igg characterized by the highest values of sensitivity (75.75%), negative predictive value (36.00%) and accuracy (86.00%) but with lowest specificity (45.00%) and similar positive predictive value (81.96%) with igm and iga. the lowest sensitivity was 5.97% and accuracy 25.56% with elisa ig m. from the results of the present study we can conclude that among elisa tests, anti-h. pylori igg is a reliable serological test for the diagnosis of h. pylori infection. keywords: elisa, antibody, evaluation, h. pylori 1. introduction since the discovery of h. pylori by barry marshall and robin warren from perth, western australia in 1983, a pivotal change has occurred in the overview of both microbiologists and clinicians toward peptic ulcer etiology and treatment strategies. before this discovery, microbiologists believed that no microorganisms could thrive in such harsh destructive gastric environment and physicians also believed that peptic ulcer is mainly due to the overproduction of gastric acids against which treatment was directed to suppress acid production. nowadays, it is well recognized that h. pylori is the principal cause of gastric ulcer and the main hazard factor for the development of gastric carcinoma and mucous associated lymphoid tissue lymphoma. clinicians started to change their treatment strategy from acid suppressing drugs to both anti-acid and antimicrobial drugs regime ]1[. h. pylori is a gram negative, curved bacilli with 4-6 unipolar sheathed flagella. it grows slowly. it is also fastidious in its growth requirements in that needs special media supplemented with antimicrobial agents and provided with micro aerobic conditions (5% o2, 5-10% co2, 85% n2) ]2[. h. pylori was first named campylobacter like organism, later named campylobacter pylori. based on the dna sequence, h. pylori was placed under new genus of helicobacter ]3[. the distribution of h. pylori infection varies among developed and developing nation in which 70-90% of the people living in developing nations are colonized by h. pylori compared to 50% in those living in developed countries ]4[. colonization with h. pylori varies even among populations of the same country according to age, socioeconomic status, hygienic practice, geographical area and overcrowding conditions ]5[. laboratory identification of h. pylori infection is made by several different techniques including both invasive and non-invasive method. invasive methods are based on gastric biopsies taken during endoscopy like culture, histopathology and rapid urease test (rut). invasive methods are costly and inconvenient for most patients 173 they might also give false negative results, particularly in patchy colonized and treated patients. furthermore, these methods are not suitable as a screening test for large scale of population studies. therefore, non-invasive methods particularly serological tests remain the alternative choice for screening the sero-prevalence of h. pylori in large populations during epidemiological studies ]6[. serological tests like elisa may be superior to invasive methods in cases with gastric atrophy in which the number of microorganisms is so small to be undetectable by invasive methods. serological tests also reveal antibodies generated by intracellular survival h. pylori after treatment ]7[. 2. literature review among serological tests, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (elisa) is the most commonly used for detecting specific antibodies in the serum, as it is easy to perform, in-expensive, widely available, and suitable also for largescale screening ]1[. h. pylori elisa kit (acon lab, usa) was used by [17] for detecting anti-h. pylori igg antibodies in the serum samples collected from patients with gastritis. they found that 81% of 58 patients were positive. h. pylori igg and iga elisa kits (germany) was used by [14] and found that 41(58.5%) and 48 (68.5%) from 70 studied patients were positive by igg and iga, respectively. the efficacy of elisa igg for the detection antih. pylori antibodies was assessed by [27] and found that 119 (39.1%) out of 304 tested serum samples were positive with a sensitivity of 99% and specificity of 82%.another study by ]24[ found that 487 (69.0%) out of 706 tested serum samples were positive for anti-h. pylori igg by elisa technique (orgenics® immunocomb ii), while ]12[ found 85 (73.91%) from 115 patients were positive for anti-h. pylori igg antibody titers by elisa igg kit. they found that the test had high sensitivity (100%) but with low specificity (55.3%) in comparison to urease test, culture, histopathology and leukostix test. a study conducted by [13] in iran using elisa igg, igm and iga kits (ibl international gmbh) for detecting seroprevalence of h. pylori in 339 patients (114 male and 225 female) who suffered from gastric symptoms from northwest of iran. they found that the overall seropositivity rates were as follows: anti h. pylori igg 73%; anti h. pylori igm 43% and anti h. pylori iga 25%. in a study carried out by ]16[ and used elisa igg, igm and iga (monobind inc., usa) for serological distribution of antih. pylori ab in population of sulaimani governorate/iraq. a total of 335 adult and children volunteers from chamchamal and sulaimani cities in kurdistan region/ iraq were tested and found that 20.4% had positive igm, 32.3% positive igg and 58.2% positive iga. elisa igg, igm and iga kits (novalisa, novatec, germany) used by [15] to screen the seroprevalence of h. pylori among asymptomatic healthy omani blood donated individuals. among 133 healthy asymptomatic individuals, igg h. pylori antibody was found in 83 (62.4%), igm h. pylori antibody in 21 (15.1%) and iga h. pylori antibody in 11 (8.7%). in another study by [11] using elisa kits for igg, iga and igm and found that 68 from 102 patients were positive .out of these, igg type was positive in 49 (72%), iga in 56 (82.3%), and igm in 25 (36.8%). 3. materials and methods serological tests each serum sample was analyzed by elisa igg, igm and iga kits (monobind inc., usa) following the procedure supplied by kits. statistical analysis data was statistically analyzed using (statistical analysis system) sas software (version, 2010) by log linear model. the first model: yij = µ+ai+eij used for analyzing the effect of age, smoking, gender and resident on serological tests (igg, igm and iga). yij = the studied test µ =over all mean ai = the independent factor eij = random error the second model: yijk=µ+ai+bi+(a٭b)ij+eijk used for analyzing the effect of culture on serological test(igg, igm and iga). yijk = the studied serological test. µ = over all mean ai = the effect of first standard bi = the effect of second standard (a٭b)ij = the interaction of both standard eijk= random error (sas, ltd, 2010) 4. results three different elisa kits (igg, igm and iga) were used for the detection of h. pylori infection in 86 patients using a culture method as a gold stander method. h. pylori was detected in 37.2%, 70.93%, 5.81% and 30.23% by elisa igg, elisa igm and elisa iga respectively compared to 37.2% by cultural method as shown in table 1. the maximum percentage of h. pylori was recorded with elisa igg (70.93%) followed by elisa iga (30.23%), while the lowest percentage of h. pylori was recorded with elisa igm test (5.81%). table 1. serological tests and cultural methods used for detection of h. pylori. tests positive for h. pylori negative for h. pylori number % number % igg 61 70.93 25 29.06 igm 5 5.81 81 94.18 iga 26 30.23 60 69.76 culture 32 37.2 54 62.79 a high percentage of h. pylori infection was found with increased ages with elisa igg in which a high percentage 88.23% was found in individuals with the age group 41-50 years old compared to 50% in the age group less than 20 years old. elisa iga recorded high percentages of positive cases 70% in young age less than 20 years old compared to low percentages with increasing 174 ages, while in elisa igm, the picture was irregular in which only 11.53% and 12.5% of cases were positive for h. pylori in age 20-30 and 31-40, respectively, as shown in figure 1. an important correlation was found between ages and h. pylori positive cases with elisa igg in which positive cases increased with the increase of age but no significant correlation was detected between age groups elisa igm and iga tests for h. pylori infection. figure1. percentages of h. pylori infection in age groups using elisa techniques. h. pylori was detected in 34 (74.06%), 3 (6.97%) and 15 (34.88%) in female patients by elisa igg, igm and iga respectively. among male patients, h. pylori was detected in 27 (62.79%), 2 (4.65%) and 11 (25.58%) by elisa igg, igm and iga, respectively, as shown in figure 2. no significant correlation was found between sex and elisa (igg, igm and iga) methods for screening h. pylori. figure 2. percentages of h. pylori infection in sex groups by elisa igg, igm and iga tests. h. pylori was detected in 13 (65%), 1(5%) and 2 (10%) smoker patients by elisa igg, igm and iga, respectively, while 14 (21.21%, 0 (0%) and 8 (12.12%) were positive for h. pylori in non-smoker patients by elisa igg, igm and iga respectively, as shown in figure 3. no significant correlation was found between smoking and elisa techniques. figure 3. percentages of h. pylori infection in smokers and non-smokers patients by elisa igg, igm and iga tests. h. pylori was found in 33 (60%), 2(4%) and 14 (28%) in patients lived in the urban areas by elisa igg, igm and iga, respectively, while 28 (77.77%), 3(8.33%) and 12 (33.33%) were positive for antih. pylori antibodies in patients who lived in rural areas by elisa igg, igm and iga respectively, as shown in figure 4. no significant correlation was found between residence and elisa tests. figure 4. percentages of h. pylori infection among resident groups using elisa techniques. the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and accuracy of elisa igg, igm and iga were calculated using culture as golden standard methods. among 86 patients, 61 were positive and 25 were negative by elisa igg test in which the true positive, false positive, true negative and false negative results were 50, 11, 9 and 16 cases, respectively. only 5 cases were positive and 81 cases were negative by elisa igm test in which the true positive, false positive, true negative and false negative results were 4, 1, 18 and 63 cases, respectively. by elisa iga test 26 cases were positive while 60 cases were negative in which true positive, false positive, true negative and false negative results were 22, 4, 16 and 44 cases, respectively, as shown in table 2. 0 20 40 60 80 100 ≤ 20 20-30 31-40 41-50 51-60 ≥ 60 p e rc e n ta g e ( % ) age groups igg igm iga 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 smoker non smoker p e rc e n ta g e % smoking igg igm iga 175 table 2. true positive, false positive, true negative and false negative results of elisa igg, igm and iga tests. 5. discussion among serological tests, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (elisa) is the most commonly used for detecting specific antibodies in the serum, as it is easy to perform, in-expensive, widely available, and suitable also for largescale screening [1]. the results of elisa igg were in agreement with those recorded by other researchers [8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13] who found 76%, 69%, 73.68%, 73.9%, and 73% respectively. while the results were in disagreement with the results of ]14,15,16,17] who found 58.5%, 62.4%, 32.3% and 81%. the causes of these dissimilar results may be attributed to the kind of captured antigens used for detection of igg, geographical distribution of the h. pylori infection and stage of infection. the elisa iga results were similar to those found by ]13[, who found that 25% of patients were positive for h. pylori infection, while dissimilar to that found by ]14,11,15,16], who found 68.5%, 82.3%, 8.7% and 58.2% respectively. this dissimilarity in the results can be attributed to the same factors mentioned in elisa igg. the results of elisa igm were dissimilar to those found by most studies, such as ]1,11,13,15,16] who found 44% ,43%, 36.8%, 20.4%, 15.1%, respectively. this dissimilarity of the results may be due to the low number of samples covered by the study or the patients were in the chronic stages of the infection. positive cases of h. pylori increased with the increase in age by elisa igg in which a high percentage (88.23%) of positive cases was in the age group 41-50 years old patients compared to 50% in the age group less than 20 years old (figure 1). a significant relation was found between h. pylori positive cases and the increase of ages. the picture was different with the results of elisa iga in which a high percentage (70%) of positive cases was found in young patients under 20 years old compared to 40% in older patients more than 60 years old, but did not show significant correlation. the results were in disagreement with those of ]13[, who found that h. pylori seropositivity for iga increased with the increase in age. the pattern of positive cases by elisa igm was not significant and irregular in which no positive cases were found in the age group less than 20 years old, 41-50, 51-60 and above 60 years old patients. the findings of the study were similar to those found by ]18,16,19, 20, 13, 21[ who found a significant effect of age on the levels of h. pylori positive cases in which high percentages of positive cases for anti-h. pylori igg antibodies were increased with the increase in ages, these results in disagreement with those of ]12[ who found no correlation between h. pylori seropositivity and age. this may be due to the chances of acquisition of infection which tend to increase with age. the results of elisa igm were inconsistent and not significant this may be due to several factors, such as low number of patients tested because of the cost constraint, the nature of the antigen used in the kit or the patients were in the chronic stage of infection and igm antibodies appeared in the early stage of infection then decline. no significant correlation was detected between sex and (igg, igm and iga elisa`s tests) for finding of positive cases of h. pylori. the results were similar to those found by ]1 [ for igm, ]23, 22, 24[ for igg and ]16[ for igg, igm and iga, while in disagreement with the results of ]15[ who found that males were more infected than females by elisa igg, igm and iga. no significant correlation was found between the smoking factor and seroprevalence of h. pylori. the results were dissimilar to those found by ]18,21,10[, who found a significant effect of smoking on the prevalence of h. pylori. this discrepancy in the results could be contributed to the number of analyzed samples, methodology, socio-economic status and geographical location. in this study, no statistical correlation was found between residence and h. pylori seropositivity by serology igg, igm and iga tests. the results were comparable to the results of ]22[ and ]19[ who found no significant impact of residence on the seropositivity of h. pylori by elisa techniques. the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and accuracy of elisa igg were 75.75%, 45.00%, 81.96%, 36.00% and 68.60% respectively, for elisa igm were 5.97%, 94.73%, 80.00%, 22.22% and 25.58%, respectively and for elisa iga were 33.33%, 80.00%, 84.61%, 26.60% and 44.18% respectively, as shown in table 2. in the present study, elisa igg was characterized by high sensitivity, high negative predictive value and high accuracy in comparison to both igm and iga. lowest sensitivity, lowest positive predictive value, lowest negative predictive value and lowest accuracy were found with igm. the results were analogous to those reported by ]14,25], but generally the results of this study were lower than those found by ]26,27]. the lower results of the present study may be due to inadequate number of analyzed serum samples because of the cost constraints and the antigenicity of the antigens used in the kits. 4. conclusion 1. elisa igg was superior to elisa igm and iga for the detection of anti-h. pylori antibodies. 2. elisa igg was characterized by high sensitivity, negative predictive value and accuracy but with lower specificity. 3. elisa igm was characterized by the highest specificity but with the lowest sensitivity. 4. elisa iga was characterized by moderate sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and accuracy. 5. no significant effect of smoking and residence was found on h. pylori infection. 6. a significant correlation was found between age and h. pylori infection by elisa igg in which h. pylori infection increased with the increase in age. test +ve true +ve false +ve -ve tru e – ve false -ve igg 61 50 11 25 9 16 igm 5 4 1 81 18 63 iga 26 22 4 60 16 44 176 reference [1] r. m. abu-mughesieb, "risk factors associated with helicobacter pylori infection 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[27] s. redéen, f. petersson, e. törnkrantz,; h. levander, e . mårdh, and k. borch, " reliability of diagnostic tests for helicobacter pylori infection," gastroenterology research and practice, pp.1-6, 2011.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq relevant sms spam feature selection using wrapper approach and xgboost algorithm diyari jalal mussa noor ghazi m. jameel information technology department computer networks department technical college of informatics technical college of informatics sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq diyari.mussa@spu.edu.iq noor.ghazi@spu.edu.iq volume 4 issue 2 december 2019 doi: 10.24017/science.2019.2.11 received: 5 september 2019 accepted: 15 november 2019 abstract in recent years with the widely usage of mobile devices, the problem of sms spam increased dramatically. receiving those undesired messages continuously can cause frustration to users. and sometimes it can be harmful, by sending sms messages containing fake web pages in order to steal users’ confidential information. besides spasm number of hazardous actions, there is limited number of spam filtering software. according to this paper, xgboost algorithm used for handling sms spam detection problem. number of structural features was collected from previous studies. 15 structural features were extracted from tiago’s dataset, which is the most frequently used dataset by researchers. for selecting the optimal relevant features, two different types of wrapper feature selection algorithms were used in order to reduce and select best relevant features. the accuracy and performance obtained by the selected features via sequential backward selection method was better comparing to sequential forward selection method. the extracted nine optimal features can be a good representation of a spam sms message. additionally, the classification accuracy obtained by the proposed method using nine optimal features with xg boost algorithm is 98.64 using 10-fold cross validation. keywords: sms spam, wrapper methods, sequential feature selection, sequential forward selection, sequential backward selection, boosting classifier, extreme gradient boosting, xg boost. mailto:diyari.mussa@spu.edu.iq mailto:noor.ghazi@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 111 1. introduction text messaging considered as one of the common transmission mechanisms between users of mobile devices. texting has remarkably increased in recent years due to fast delivery, lowcost, and easily global reach. this expansion of text messaging has invited spammers to perform mobile spam message problem similar to spamming in e-mails. essentially cell phone spam or sms spam is whichever junk message or undesirable message reached to the user’s mobile device as text via the short message service (sms). sms spam usually sent automatically in bulk to randomly generated or selected mobile numbers. these types of texts can come in various forms – sometimes recipients were asked to respond to an email address or mobile number that does not lead to expected identity of the sender. in many cases, sms spam may include free services, promotions, advertisements, etc., in order to manipulate recipient to provide personal information, defraud for economic purposes or political benefits[1][2]. this practice has recorded different stats in various countries. for instance a survey showed that 69% of mobile users in usa have received spam messages[3]. while in some countries of asia such as india, pakistan and china, spam messages are causing a disaster because more than 30% of the messages that users received were spam [2]. fortunately, in recent years, governments around the world have presented serious involvement regarding the spam problem by objecting cost-effective, lawful and technical abilities for handling concerning issue. but still there are many countries suffering from this problem because of the absence of law and economic penalties. technical measures to counter spam problem can be a convenient and powerful way to handle this issue. for instance, there are many applications for devices based on android operating systems and even ios which can be used to filter spam texts while there are few who are familiar with such new techniques. in a different way the available filtering methods mostly concentrates on spamming of email, because it is considered as an earlier issue comparing to sms spam[4]. while mobile devices are widely used around the world, spamming of sms is one of the main problems nowadays. this issue has become common in peoples’ everyday communication channels. it can be categorized as a threat, since spam contents could be fraudulent and lead users to harsh effects [5][6]. in addition, spamming could become a reason for an increase in internet crimes. previously, spamming was used as a platform for advertisement and announcement of sale. while nowadays it became a tool for publishing lies, profanity; hence, determining an atmosphere for illegal activities. for instance, harmful attack that can be done through sms spamming is smishing. it is dealing with deceiving target users into revealing confidential information. considering sms spam as a problem and potential threat led researchers to define many methods for detecting and filtering it. in this proposed method our intention is on detecting spam and normal sms in an accurate way using a type of gradient boosting algorithm. selecting most relevant features among structural attributes that are collected from previous studies using two different wrapper feature selection methods. the aim of this study is to compare among the relevant features via sequential wrapper selection methods, then choose the best relevant structural (binary and numeric) features that can make a distinction between a spam and a ham sms and lead to better accuracy using xg boost algorithm. the rest of this study is arranged as follows: in section 2 some relevant studies that are related to sms spam detection are discussed, section 3 is about describing our proposed approach in details containing selection of the dataset, features extraction, features selection methods and the classification algorithm, section 4 presents results and other details about the tests outcomes, section 5 is comparing this study to another study in discussion and section 6 explains conclusion and a future study. 2. literature review nowadays there are different approaches for sms spam filtration, while spamming is not limited to emails and web pages any longer. various techniques of sms spam detection lead kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 112 to availability of android applications to filter spam text messages, using classifications methods. in this section a review of most relevant studies related to this topic has done, with regard to some essential concepts such as dataset, feature selection and algorithms of machine learning. yadav et al. [7] proposed sms assassin that deals with proposing a system based on mobile which is capable of spam detection using two methods; first one is using bayesian algorithm and the second one is blacklisting. they used a dataset which was gathered in india, and it is a real world spam dataset collected in a span of two months which contains 4318 messages. moreover, the features set that were used in their experiment contained 20 lightweight structural features. as for the dataset they split it into two part, 2000 messages for training and other half which contain 2318 messages determined for testing. the training data contained 2000 messages equally divided by two, 1000 messages for each ham and spam. the remaining data determined for testing via learning algorithms such as support vector machine and bayesian algorithm, the rest of the data were divided between ham (1195) and spam (1123). in their approach while the user receives a text via their cell phone, the proposed mobile system automatically detects the text without awareness of the user, and gets values of features and transmit them to the server in order to classify them. the message will be in spam folder if it is reported as spam. uysal et al. [8] have examined the effect of various types of feature extraction and selection techniques on spam detection in two different languages: english and turkish. the turkish dataset were collected from volunteers which consists of 420 text messages of spam and 430 normal texts while the english corpus includes 425 spam texts with 450 determined for normal short texts. moreover, the feature set consists of two types of features, the first one is bag-of-words (bow) method, the second method is structural features (sf) with regard to problem of spam. various features of bow determined using methods of feature selection. different sequence of sf and bow were input into broadly applied pattern classification methods for detecting text messages that are spam or not. then datasets of turkish and english were used in order to evaluate detection models on the datasets. the results showed that the combination of both bow and sf provides better outcome of classification most of the time rather than only bow feature. ahmed et al. [9] proposed a hybrid approach of sms classification in order to filter ham or spam by using apriori algorithm and naïve bayes classifier. the dataset collected from repository of uci machine learning under the name of “sms spam collection data set”, it includes 5574 text messages containing both spam and ham. moreover the features that extracted were all word attributes. the proposed system for detecting spam messages has gained levels of accuracy that is competitive to state of art algorithm. akbari et al. [10] presented a boosting method for sms spam detection and determined that boosting classifiers are good option among other classifiers when used dataset is unbalanced. they used tiago’s dataset, it consisted of 4,827 legitimate and 747 spam messages. word attributes were used as features, removing unused ones leads to less number of features without affecting the accuracy, gentle boost was the used boosting classifier to classify the sms messages. zhang et al. [11] used ada boost algorithm as machine learning classifier in order to filter chinese sms spam messages. they introduced three types of filters that are weak and content-based for increasing final classification performance. according to the obtained outputs via receiver operating characteristics (roc) presented approach has some advantages; it has higher efficiency withless parameters comparing to already available spam detection models. presented method’s application is anticipated to filter most of the spam messages for mobile users. the proposed technique can be implemented on the text message classification with simple data processing and small number of training parameters. choudhary et al. [12] proposed new approach that is able to filter and identify spam texts by applying learning classifier. according to their research, they studied the attribute of sms spam messages comprehensively and they found 10 attributes while the dataset used in their study includes 2608 text message. they gathered publically available 2408 message from sms spam corpus and they gathered 200 texts manually which contain 25 spam and 175 normal text messages. their proposed technique which examined on multiple learning models and obtained topmost when random forest classification used, with scores of 96.5% recall and 1.02% false positive kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 113 rate. wang et al. [13] contributed a new categorized sms spam dataset which named hit sms spam corpus. the new dataset consists of 13,078 messages which contain 4,204 spam and 8874 legitimate messages. they proposed a new technique for sms spam detection that can reduce the feature sparse issue in the process of sms spam classification. furthermore, no preprocessing rules and non-linguistic attributes are used in their approach. nivaashini et al [14] proposed sms spam detection system using a deep learning algorithm. the features were extracted using restricted boltzmann machine (rbm), which classifies the sms into spam and ham by deep neural network classifier they used sms spams dataset from uci machine learning repository. then the results are compared with other machine learning algorithms such as naïve bayes, support vector machine and random forest. the proposed approaches achieved highest accuracy 98.18 compared with the other algorithms. most of related works used textual features as an indicator for sms spam detection. textural features extraction requires many preprocessing steps such as tokenization, stop words removal, stemming before classification and detection phase. others used combination between textual and structural features. in this paper, just 9 optimal structural features which consists of binary and numeric features used for sms spam detection by xgboost algorithm. using optimal structural features with xgboost algorithm is considered as an added point to this work since no preprocessing is required to extract these features. xgboost is one of the new gradient boosting algorithms designed for speed and performance and deals with unbalanced dataset. 3. methods and materials the proposed approaches suggested detecting spam and hamming messages with xgboost algorithm. the input to xgboost algorithm is the most relevant features from wrapper feature selection algorithm. in this paper a comparison between two approaches of wrapper features selection are used: sequential forward and backward features selection algorithms. relevant features from the two approaches are applied which considered input for the classifier to detect sms spam messages. according to the accuracy of the classifier the best feature selection approach is used. the process starts with selecting a suitable dataset which is publically available dataset. then, the collected features from previous studies were extracted from spam and ham messages to generate a vector of features. the decision in this proposed system is made after selecting the best relevant features from comparing two wrapper feature selection methods. then the specified classifier which takes outcome of optimal selected attributes from feature selection methods, will be ready for filtering spam and ham sms efficiently. the proposed approach is demonstrated in figure 1. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 114 figure 1: proposed system architecture 3.1. dataset loading in spite of the fact that there are many e-mail datasets, or collections are available in order to be used by researchers [15], in this area of study there are few publically accessible sms datasets. for this paper we chose the biggest publically existing spam corpus namely tiago’s dataset, which is widely used by researchers. it can be downloaded at uci repository freely under the name “sms spam collection v.1”[16], it is imbalanced dataset, it made up of 5,574 messages which4,827 are normal texts and 747 are spam short messages. in figure 2, statistics regarding chosen dataset is demonstrated. figure 2: sms spam collection statistics 3.2. feature extraction primarily sms spam detection is same as e-mail spam filtering problem. sms text message contains solely text constrained with 160 characters [17], on the other hand emails can kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 115 include hyperlinks, visuals, and files beside text [18]. therefore; spam message filtration is considered as binary classification issue and labels are identified with “legitimate (ham)” or “spam”. there are different ways implemented for features extraction, most of them based on using bag-of-words model [19] for extracting terms frequencies. while [12] used different approach, they studied spam messages attributes in detailbesideextracting10 structural variables, each feature will obtain value 0 or 1 according to their existence in the message. in this paper, the same approach was used but 15 features were extracted which consists of binary and numeric features. the filtration of sms spam deals with the task of normal text classification, but undoubtedly there are differences between spam structure and formal text. for instance, spam messages may contain url [12] [7], where spammer perhaps deceive the receiver to click on the phishing web address. as the spammers use various sorts of symbols for representing their messages, for instance plus sign (+) represents services messages that are free. math characters such as (+, -, /, >, <, ^) will be identified as structural feature. besides using upper case words, lower case words can also represent as spam features. studies also consider having phone number and special symbol such as (£, $, !, *, &, #, ~,') in a text message represents a distinctive indicator for spam message. the existence of dots (.) and emotions for instance ( :) , ;) , :p , -_, etc. ), the presence of suspicious key words which spammers use, mostly should be a good spam features [12]. the 15 features which were extracted in this study are illustrated in table 1. table 1: all 15 binary and numeric features feature no. feature1 feature type reference mathematical symbols ( +, -, /, >, <, ^) binary [12] feature2 presence of full url binary [12], [7] feature3 dots binary [12] feature4 special symbol (£, $, !, *, &, #, ~,') binary [12] feature5 emotions (emoji or smiles) binary [12], [7] feature6 lowercase words binary [12] feature7 uppercase words binary [12] feature8 phone number binary [12] feature9 message length numeric [12] feature10 count of “/” slash numeric [7] feature11 count of numeric words (numbers) numeric [7] feature12 count of alphanumeric words (ex: na18) numeric [7] feature13 number of words numeric [7] feature14 count of spam words numeric [7] feature15 presence of spam words binary [12] the extracted binary structural features are in binary format means if the feature exists in the message, the feature value will be one otherwise it will be zero in the feature vector. 3.3. feature selection variable selection or feature selection is one of the vital parts of spam filtering. it helps in improving performance and decrease models logical errors via eliminating unimportant attributes. there are different feature selection methodologies such as filter, wrappers and embedded. in this paper two types of wrapper methods based on sequential search algorithm are compared. primarily, sequential selection considered as suboptimal techniques that attains series of feature subsets, for instance by increasing or eliminating worst or the best variable from the feature set [20]. these methods evaluate all possible sequence of the attributes and select the combination that produces the best outcome for particular machine learning algorithm. here we concentrate on only two types: sequential forward selection and sequential backward selection.  sequential forward selection (sfs) has number of phases in order to be implemented, the first phase starts with classifiers performance evaluation with respect to each features. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 116 the feature that achieves the best is chosen out of all attributes. in the second step, the first selected feature from first step is tried in combinations of all other attributes. the sequence of two attribute that yield the best algorithm performance is selected. the process goes on until particular number of attributes is selected.  while sequential backward selection (sbs), is exact opposite of step forward feature selection. the first step of its implementation, one attribute is removed in round-robin fashion from the attribute set also the classifiers performance is evaluated. the set of attributes that obtains best performance is maintained. in the second step, repeatedly one feature is removed in a round-robin fashion and the performance of all the sequence of features excluding the two features is assessed. this process goes on until the particular number of features remains in the dataset. in figure 3 wrapper feature selection is demonstrated in general. in this study 15(binary and numeric) features were extracted. two wrapper feature selection algorithms are used to select an optimal feature subset. a comparison between the two algorithms: sequential forward selection and backward selection been applied depending on extreme gradient boosting algorithm (xgboost) as classifier. for measuring the classifier accuracy, 10-fold cross validation approach in which the dataset is divided into 10 fold, in each iteration one fold is used for testing and the others are used for training the model. figure 3: wrapper method for feature selection [21] 3.4. classification in this part, an extreme gradient boosting (xgboost) is used in the proposed approach as a classifier for sms spam detection and very good performance and accuracy is obtained by using this algorithm. primarily xgboost have been selected as the classifier because it has a very good result when it comes to handling imbalanced dataset [20]. xgboost is a library of distributed gradient boosting developed as vastly flexible, convenient and efficient. xgboost grant tree boosting in parallel that handle various problems of data science rapidly and in accurate manner [22]. 3.5. evaluation metrics for determining xgboost’s performance regarding spam filtering problem, a number of possible results is dealt with. these results based on outcome obtained from the confusion matrix which used for evaluating the performance classification model. the evaluation metrics used in this study contains recall (true positive rate), specificity, precision and accuracy. while the confusion matrix includes true positive (tp), true negative (tn), false positive (fp), and false negative (fn). moreover, for evaluating spam filtering system, those standard metrics should be considered. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 117  true positives (tp) – refers to the case in which the classifier predicted that the message is spam and actually is spam.  true negative (tn) – the classifier predicted that the message is ham and actually is ham.  false positive (fp) – the classifier predicted the message is spam, but actually it is not.  false negative (fn) – in this case the classifier predicted that the message is ham, but actually is spam.  accuracy – refers to the ability to differentiate the messages correctly. 𝐴𝑐𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑦 = 𝑇𝑃+𝑇𝑁 𝑇𝑃+𝑇𝑁+𝐹𝑃+𝐹𝑁 (1)  recall – refers to the percentage of classified truly spam messages in spam detection problem. 𝑅𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙 = 𝑇𝑃 𝑇𝑃+𝐹𝑁 (2)  specificity – in spam filtration problem true negative rate refers to the percentage of classified truly normal text messages. 𝑆𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑡𝑦 = 𝑇𝑁 𝑇𝑁+𝐹𝑃 (3)  precision –determines spam messages measurement that are truly identified by specified classifier besides demonstrating the definite propriety. 𝑃𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛 = 𝑇𝑃 𝑇𝑃+𝐹𝑃 (4) 4. results in this section, sequence of experiments implemented on tiago’s dataset aiming to find the best combination of features. at first we collected features on the basis of normal messages and spam short messages behavior, there after derived 15attributesof the dataset for creating the vector of features. after features extraction from sms spam corpus, xgboost algorithm is implemented to detect sms spam messages. python programming is used for features extraction and classification beside the usage of 10-fold cross validation for training and testing. the main objective is to select the best among 15 features using two different feature selection methods based on wrapper approach. different outcome obtained when sequential forward selection and sequential backward selection been applied. table 2 shows the output of the optimal feature subset regarding to each method. table 2: the best 9 selected features regarding sbs and sfs selected features by sbs selected features by sfs feature no. feature feature no. feature feature2 presence of full url feature2 presence of full url feature4 special symbol (£, $, !, *, &, #, ~,') feature5 emotions (emoji or smiles) feature6 lowercase words feature8 phone number feature7 uppercase words feature10 count of “/” slash feature8 phone number feature11 count of numeric words (numbers) feature9 message length feature12 count of alphanumeric words (ex: na18) feature11 count of numeric words (numbers) feature13 number of words kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 118 feature13 number of words feature14 count of spam words feature14 counting spam words feature15 presence of spam words those selected features scored almost the best accuracy in each separate test regarding each wrapper method. for instance, 9out of 15 features led to the best accuracy when sbs implemented. in figure 4 and 5 accuracy result is demonstrated with selected number of features regarding each sbs and sfs. figure 4: sbs accuracy regarding feature number figure 5: sfs accuracy regarding feature number when optimal 9 feature accuracy and their evaluation metrics compared to each other as demonstrated in table 3, both of them is almost close to each other in terms of accuracy. but there are some differences that can be pointed out, which makes the results obtained by sbs better than sfs. table 3: comparison between the evaluation metrics of sbs and sfs accuracy and evaluation metrics sequential backward selection sequential forward selection accuracy 98.64 98.40 recall 0.9224 0.909 specificity 0.9963 0.9957 precision 0.9745 0.97 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 119 5. discussion depending on the results achieved by xgboost classification algorithm, it obtained that the performance and accuracy can be considered very well in this context based on using structural features which needs less time for features extraction phase compared the textual features or words attributes. as a sort of gradient boosting algorithm can be a good competitor to other algorithms used in this area. a comparative study is done with [10] in which different types of boosting algorithms used words attributes and tiago’s dataset. results of the comparison is demonstrated in table 4 which shows the proposed approach with structural features gave better accuracy compared with other boosting algorithms with words attributes. we should also note that for comparison among methods there are some aspects such as simplicity, storage and accuracy that should not be neglected. table 4: comparison between the proposed approach and other boosting algorithms in [10] features type accuracy tp tn fp fn xgboost (proposed method) 9structural features 98.64 689 4809 18 58 gentleboost[10] textual features (32 words) 98.30 677 4800 25 70 totalboost [10] 98.17 682 4788 37 65 logitboost [10] 98.24 664 4810 15 83 lpboost [10] 97.22 637 4780 45 110 adaboost [10] 93.95 416 4819 6 331 robustboost [10] 91.04 253 4820 5 494 rusboost [10] 91.04 253 4820 5 494 6. conclusion nowadays as text messaging usage is increasing, the problem of spam message has increased. this paper proposed using extreme gradient boosting algorithm (xgboost) for sms spam filtration and detection. to select the optimal feature subset from 15 structural features; two wrapper feature selection algorithms are used. a comparison between two different algorithms of wrapper feature selection methods has been applied. according to the results the sequential backward algorithm selected most 9 relevant structural features in terms of accuracy comparing to sequential forward selection. xgboost gave %98.64 of accuracy when used for handling this imbalanced dataset. for future study, we need to find or create even better spam and ham features in order to handle spam message filtration problems and obtain better accuracy, and also try to find more spam corpus in different languages in order to create one spam filtration system that is compatible to different languages. reference [1] t. a. almeida, j. m. g. hidalgo and t. p. silva, "towards sms spam filtering: results under a new dataset," international journal of information security science, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 1-18, 2013. [2] s. j. delany, m. buckley and d. greene, "sms spam filtering: methods and data," expert systems with applications, vol. 39, no. 10, pp. 9899-9908, 2012. [3] x. hu and f. yan, "sampling of mass sms filtering algorithm based on frequent time-domain area," in third international conference on knowledge discovery and data mining, phuket, thailand, 2010. [4] d. puniškis , r. laurutis and r. dirmeikis , "an artificial neural nets for spam e-mail recognition," elektronika ir elektrotechnika, vol. 69, no. 5, p. 73 –76, 2006. [5] w. l. huang, y. liu, z. q. zhong and z. m. shen, "complex network based sms filtering algorithm," acta automatica sinica, vol. 7, no. 35, p. 990–996, 2009. [6] x. zheng , c. liu and z. yu, "chinese short messages service spam filtering based on logistic regression," journal of heilongjiang institute of technology, vol. 4, no. 24, p. 36–39, 2010. [7] k. yadav, p. kumaraguru, a. goyal, a. gupta and v. naik, "smsassassin: crowdsourcing driven mobile-based system for sms spam filtering," in proceedings of the 12th workshop on mobile computing systems and applications, phoenix, arizona, 2011. [8] a. k. uysal, s. gunal, s. ergin and e. s. gunal, "the impact of feature extraction and selection on sms spam kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 120 filtering," elektronika ir elektrotechnika, vol. 19, no. 5, p. 2013, 2013. [9] i. ahmed, d. guan and t. c. chung , "sms classification based on naïve bayes classifier and apriori algorithm frequent itemset," international journal of machine learning and computing, vol. 4, no. 2, 2014. [10] f. akbari and h. sajedi, "sms spam detection using selected text features and boosting classifiers," in 7th conference on information and knowledge technology (ikt), urmia, iran, 2015. [11] x. zhang , g. xiong, y. hu, f. zhu, x. dong and t. r. nyberg, "a method of sms spam filtering based on adaboost algorithm," in 12th world congress on intelligent control and automation, guilin, china, 2016. [12] n. choudhary and a. k. jain, "towards filtering of sms spam messages using machine learning based technique," advanced informatics for computing research, 2017. [13] j. ma, y. zhang, z. wang and b. chen, "a new fine-grain sms corpus and its corresponding classifier using probabilistic topic model," ksii transactions on internet and information systems, vol. 12, no. 2, 2018. [14] m. nivaashini, r.s.soundariya, a.kodieswari, and p.thangaraj,"sms spam detection using deep neural network", international journal of pure and applied mathematics, volume 119 no. 18, pp. 2425-2436 , 2018, [15] i. androutsopoulos, j. koutsias, k. v. chandrinos, g. paliouras and c. d. spyropoulos , "an evaluation of naive bayesian anti-spam filtering," in proc. of the workshop on machine learning in the new information age, pp. 9-17, 2000. [16] sms spam collection v.1 dataset, https://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/sms+spam+collection. [17] "technical realization of the short message service (sms). point-to-point," etsi, gsm 03.40, 1992. [18] s. günal, s. ergin, m. b. gülmezoğlu and ö. n. gerek, "on feature extraction for spam e-mail detection," in lecture notes in computer science, , pp. 635-642, 2006. [19] s. gunal, "hybrid feature selection for text classification," turkish journal of electrical engineering and computer sciences, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 1296-1311, 2012. [20] p. su, y. liu and x. song, "research on intrusion detection method based on improved smote and xgboost," in proceedings of the 8th international conference on communication and network security, qingdao, china, 2018. [21] b. kumari and t. swarnkar, "filter versus wrapper feature subset selection in large dimensionality micro array: a review," international journal of computer science and information technologies, vol. 2 (3),pp. 1048-1053, 2011. [22] t. chen and c. guestrin, "xgboost: a scalable tree boosting system," in proceedings of the 22nd acm sigkdd international conference on knowledge discovery and data mining, san francisco, california, usa, 2016. https://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/sms+spam+collection  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.26 received: 03 june 2018 | accepted: 17 july 2018 isolation of karanjin from pongamia pinnata and its identification by difference analytical techniques sushil kumar dhanmane faisal a. salih chemistry medical laboratory fergusson college technical college of health savitribai phule pune university sulaimani polytechnic university pune , india sulaymaniyah , kurdistan region , iraq sushnmr@gmail.com faisal.salih@spu.edu.iq 156 abstract: karanjin is the medicinal drug that used as antiinflammatory and anti-cancer. the object of this study is to isolate karanjin in karanja (pongamia pinnata linn.) seed oil. the seed oil was subjected to triple petroleum with continuously constant shaking for first 48 hours, 24 hours for each second and third extraction then separated under reduced pressure at 50˚c on rotatory evaporate to get yellow viscous oil. separate non-fatty components using ethanol solvent and reduced under 50˚c with pressure to get (43.33 g) yellow oil. the oil was kept for 3 days at 45˚c in refrigerator white deposited at bottom of oil, the residue recrystallized with methanol it should be done fast and carefully to prevent solubility of karanjin in methanol partially, the purity of isolated karanjin was found to be (99.623%). from tlc, hpl, ir, 1hnmr, 13cnmr spectra data, structure elucidation was done and the structure was confirmed as karanjin. keywords: karanjin, pongamia pinnata, karanja oil, medicinal plant. 1. introduction pongamia pinnata pierre belonging to the family fabaceae (papilionaceae). it is also called derris indica and pongamia glabra [1]. pongamia piñata is a medium in sized and evergreen tree and a short bole. the tree is planted for shade and is grown as ornamental tree [2]. classification of pongamia pinnata, botanical classification kingdom: plantae, division: magnoliophyta, class: magnoliopsida, order: fabales, family: fabaceae, genus: pongamia, species: p. pinnata, common name is karanja [2]. botanical name pongamia pinnata (l.) pierre synonyms derris indica (lam.) bennett millettia novo-guineensis kane. and hat. pongamia glabra vent. pongamia pinnata merr. • native bangladesh, india, myanmar, nepal, thailand. • exotic australia, china, egypt, fiji, indonesia, japan, malaysia, mauritius, new zeeland, pakistan, philippines, seychelles, solomon islands, sri lanka, sudan, united states of america [3] . • botanical description of p. pinnata karanja is a drought tolerant, semi-deciduous and leguminous tree. a spreading crown up to 18m height or sometimes even more and (1.5m) in girth. pod are compressed, woody , indehiscent , yellowish-gray when ripe , varying in size and shape ( 4.0-7.5cm) long and ( 1.7-3.2cm ) broad, bark grayish green or brown, smooth or covered with tubercles, leaves compound, imparipinnate, leaflets opposite, 5-9 in number, ovate or elliptic; flowers white tinged with pink or violet, fragrant, in axillary racemes, , seeds usually one, rarely two, elliptical or reniform ( 1.7-2.0cm ) long and ( 1.21.8cm ) broad, wrinkled with reddish brown leathery testa. brawn in color and poisonous in fact which should be considered in placing the tree in the landscape if many children present [4-5]. the potential of this oil as a substitute for diesel [6] and as lubricating in tuning industries is recognized [7] . • distribution: karanja is believed to be originated in india and distributed throughout india in tidal and beach forest, often as a mangrove plant [8]. it is grow in the hills of south india up to elevation of about 1200 meters (4000 feet.) and in the himalayas up to about 610 meters (2000 feet). it is widely grown from tropical dry to sub-tropical dry forest life zones. it is a shade bearer and is considered to be a good tree for planting in pastures, as grass grows well in its shade. 157 the tree is suitable for afforestation especially in watershed areas and drier part of the country. p. pinnata is reported to be a native of india, myanmar, malaysia and indonesia [6] that is distributed in tropical asia, australia, polynesia, philippine islands [5] unite state new zealand, china [6,9]. • collection of seeds and processing the seed collection is prolonged due to nonsynchronization of flowering & fruiting. therefore, one time harvesting is usually not possible. the collected pods are dried for 2-3 days in the sun. the kernels are separated from the hell manually by a wooden hammer or manually operated decorticator. however, the electric decorticators of karanja fruits have also been fabricated and being used for efficient processing. the average seed yields of karanja is about 40-90 qtl/ha. properties of karanja seeds karanja kernels are reddish brittle in colour. the air-dried kernels contain 19% moisture, 27-39% oil, 17.4 % protein 6.6% starch, 7.3% crude fibers and 2.3% ash. the kernels also contain mucilage (13.5%) and traces of essential oil. in addition, a complex amino acid glabrin is also present. • physical-chemical properties and fatty acid composition of karanja oil. it is known as pongam oil in trade. fresh extracted oil is yellowish orange to brown, getting darkened during storage, having disagreeable odour and bitter quality of oil, the important properties of oil and fatty acids are given below: ……………………………………………. properties of oil………………………………………… colour dark brown odour repulsive refractive index at 40°c 1.434-1.4790 specific quantity at 30°c 0.925-0.940 iodine value 80-96 saponification value 185-195 non-saponification value 2.6 – 3.0 composition of important fatty acids found in karanja oil palmitic 3.7-7.9% stearic 2.4-8.9% oleic 44.5-71.3% linoleic 10.8-18.3% lignoceric 1.1-3.5% eicosenoic 9.5-12.4% arachidic 2.2-4.7% bethenic 4.2-5.3% • use of pongamia pinnata the plant known to have a very high medicinal value [11]. the bark skin, leaves, flowers seeds and seed oil are used for medicinal purpose, karanja is used both into internally as well as externally. bark is known to be the remedy for beriberi, leaves are actives against microccus and their juce is used for cold cough, diarrhea [3] antibacterial, anti-giardia and anti-virial [12] antihyperammonemic. its flowers are used for diabetes [3,13] skin disease, renal disorders [13. externally roots are good for cleaning foul ulcers, cleaning teeth, antiinflammatory [14], gastroprotective anti-stress activity and anti-oxidant [15]. the fruits and sprouts are use in folk remedies for abdominal remedies in india [3]. seeds figure 1a: pongamia pinnata tree. figure1b: pongamia pinnata fruit. figure 1c: pongamia pinnata seeds. figure 1d: pongamia pinnata flower. 158 are anthelmintic, bitter, acrid and carminative [14], inflammation, rheumatism [16], skin disease [11] , pectoral diseases , chronic fever and anemia [17] , keloid tumors in sri lanka and powder derived from plants for tumors in vietnam, skin ailments and the oil of seeds used as an ointment for rheumatism [3] , leucodermal, scabies, herpes [16] against herpes simplex virus type-í (hsv-1) and type 2 (hsv-2) was evaluated in vivo cell and antibiotics [18] leucocoderma, leprosy, lumbago [13], ulcer protective and healing effects and antiinflammatory activity of alcoholic extract of seeds and root [13,14] high toxic to fish , alcoholic extract of oil showed activity against both gram positive and gram negative bacteria [16] , extract of the opulent possess significant antidiarrhea , anti–fungal , anti–plasmodial, anti ulerogenic, anti-inflammatory and analgesic activities [5] . • properties and activity the flower furnishes an aliphatic waxy matter kaempferol, pongamin (c15h12o5), γ-sitosterol glucoside, quercertin, neoglabrin (a complex amino acids) resembling glabrin and galbrosaponin (c50h84o23) [19]. a furanoflavone i.e., pongone has been isolated from flowers [19] .p. pinnata contains flavonoids and other compounds including flavones, furanoflavonoids, chromenoflavone, chromenocalchones, coumarins, flavone glycosides sterol, terpenes and modified phenylalanine dipeptide [20] . the seeds contain 13.5% mucilage, traces of essential oil and complex amino acids, termed glabrin. four furanoflavones karanjin, pongapin (c19h12o6), kanjone (c18h12o4) and pongaglabrone (c18h10o5), identified as 3',4'methylenedioxy furano [2',3',7,8] flavone, have been isolated from indian karanja seed [21]. three furanoflavonoids (pongamosides a, b and c) and a flavonol, glucoside pongamoside d, have been reported from the n-butanol-soluble fraction of the ethanolic extract p. pinnata fruit [22]. pongaglabol, a hydroxyfuranoflavone, and aurantiamide acetate, a rarely occurring modified phenylalanine dipeptide, have been isolated together with four furanoflavones (karanjin, lancheolatin b, kanjone and pinnatin) [23]. two hydroxychalcones – onganones i and ii – have been isolated from bark and characterized. moreover, two phenylpropanoids – pongapinone a and b – have been isolated from bark of indonesian karanja plants [24] . five flavonoids (pongamone a, b, c, d and e) have been isolated from p. pinnata [25]. seed is considered useful in the treatment of scabies, leprosy, piles, ulcers, bronchitis and whooping cough [26] . seeds are mainly valued for their oil, in cosmetic industry and ayurvedic herbal medicine [27], antihyperglycemic and antilipidperoxidative [29] antiulcer [30], analgesic [28], antimycobacterial [10] and antifilarial activity [17]. 2. methods and materials . • isolation procedure powder of dried kernels (500 g) was suspended in petroleum ether (1l). the suspension was, then, filtered. through glutted filter paper and repeated the same procedure twice. then all the extract was combined and was concentrated under reduced pressure at 50º on rotatory evaporator to a get yellow viscous oil. the non-fatty components were extracted from yellow viscous oil with ethanol. the ethanol extract was combined and it was concentrate under reduced pressure at 50º to get a 43.33 g of yellow oil. the oil was kept for 3 days at 4-5º in refrigerator. while residue was deposited at the bottom of oil. the oil was decanted and the obtained residue was recrystallized with methanol. tlc was taken but the t.l.c. gave 2 spots on with very small rf value so the sample on column was loaded approximately 500 mg sample. the column was made up of silica gel having mesh size of 60-120. but still sample did not get separated. the preparative plate chromatography was used. due to excess loading of sample it got failed. so the sample was recovered whole from preparative plate and then again recrystallization was done. then tlc was taken. tlc gave a single spot. from this conclusion was drawn that the compound gets rearranged when it exposed to sunlight for (1 or 2) days to give another compound as an impurity. • tlc test solution extract 2 g of powdered drug with 15 ml of ethanol in a soxhlet apparatus for 18 h. remove the solvent under reduced pressure at 50º yielding the 0.160 g crude residue. dissolve 5 mg of the residue in 5 ml of methanol and use the solution for tlc profiling. standard solution dissolve 2 mg of karanjin in 5 ml of methanol. solvent system hexane: ethyl acetate (80:20) • procedure for tlc: apply 20 µl of test solution and 5 µl of standard solution separately on a precoated silica gel 60 f 254 tlc plate (e. merck) of uniform thickness of 0.2 mm. develop the plate in the solvent system till the solvent rises to a distance of 8 cm. • hplc assay hplc chemical and physical discretion chromatographic conditions: mobile phase: acetonitrile (100%) flow rate: 0.5 ml/min column: zorbax eclipse, xdb, c8, 4.6 mm x 150 mm, reverse phase detector: ua detector at 254 nm test solution extract 2 g of powdered drug with 15 ml of ethanol in a soxhlet apparatus for 18 h. remove the solvent under reduced pressure 50º yielding the 160g crude residue. dissolve 10 mg of residue in 10 ml of methanol. filter through 0.45 µ membrane and use the solution for chromatography. standard solution dissolve 3 mg of karanjin in 10 ml of methanol. from this stock solution prepare a standard solutions of 0.018, 0.037, 0.037, 0.075, 0.15 and 0.3 mg/ml by transferring 159 aliquots (0.62, 1.25, 2.5 and 5 ml) of stock solution to 10 ml volumetric flasks and adjusting the volume of each solution to 10 ml with methanol. calibration curve run the hplc of each of the standard solutions and record the respective peak area. prepare a calibration curve by polluting peak area vs concentration of karanjin. • procedure for hplc subject 5 µ of standard and sample solutions to high performance liquid chromatographic system and record the respective peak area for the test solution and the standard solutions. 3. results and discussion different analytical techniques were used to confirm isolated structure of karanjin. white needles, melting point 163-164 º, literature melting point1 161º, specific rotation: not applicable solubility soluble in benzene, ether, chloroform, acetone, alcohol. practically insoluble in petroleum ether. elemental analysis c 74.13%, h 4.03%, o 21.84%, expected elemental analysis: c 73.97%, h 4.14%, o 21.90 % karanjin structure • percentage of the marker compound calculate the amount of karanjin present in the sample from the calibration curve. the percentage of karanjin ranges from (0.06% to 0.08%) in the sample analyzed and the purity of isolated karanjin was found to be (99.623%) 400 mg; 0.08% w/w of kernels of pongamia pinnata. figure 2: hplc chromatogram of karanjin. • characterization of the marker compound uv– vis spectrum table 1: uv-vis spectrum of karanja. uv-vis spectrum indicates absorptions at 308 nm (έ = 9.7 x 10), 260 nm (έ = 1.61 x 10) and 208 (έ = 2.21 x 10) descriptions: the uv spectrum indicates the presence of strong chromophore. the three peaks obtained at 308, 260 and 208 nm suggest the presence of three chromophoric systems in the structure. this is in complete agreement with the structure ir spectrum: table 2: ir spectra of karanjin. 2930 (c-h stretching), 2851, 1635, 1625, 1605, 1570, 1525, 1409, 1340 (c-o), 1285, 1225, 1079, 1051, 956, 795 cm ֿ◌¹ ¹h nmr spectrum table 3: 1h nmr spectra of karanjin δ 3.9 (3 h, s, och³, h-11), 7.1 (1h, m, h-4”), 7.14 (1h, d, j=2 hz, h-3’), 7.45 (1h, m, h=5”), 7.49 (1h, m h=3”), 7.50 (1h, m,h=6”), 7.70 (1h, m, h=2”), 7.75 (1 h, d, j=2hz, h=2’), 8.10 (1hd, j=8.5 hz, h=6), 8.20 (1h, d, j=8.5 hz, h=5), ¹³c nmr spectrum table 4: 13c nmr spectra of karanjin. δ 60.9, 104.09, 109.82, 116.82, 119.47, 121.64, 128.18, 128.48, 130.52, 130.73, 141.58, 145.57, 149.64, 154.55, 157.86, 174.48 table 5: spectra matching to each carbon in karanjin. sr. no. dept δ (ppm) assignment 1 ch3 60.9 c11 2 ch 104.09 c3’ 3 ch 109.82 c2’ 4 quaternary 116.82 c8 5 quaternary 119.47 c1” 6 ch 121.64 c4” 7 ch 128.18 c3” 8 ch 128.48 c5” 9 ch 130.52 c6” 10 ch 130.73 c2” 11 quaternary 141.58 c10 12 ch 145.57 c5 13 quaternary 149.64 c9 14 quaternary 154.55 c2 15 quaternary 157.86 c3 16 quaternary 174.48 c4 17 ch 146.82 c6 18 ch 128.2 c7 • visualization of uv observe the plate under uv light at 366 nm. note the rf and colour of the resolved bands. 160 • evaluation tlc a band (rf 0.58) corresponding to karanjin is visible in both test and standard solutions as a fluroscent blue band when observed under uv light at 366 nm. table 6: tlc details of test solution of pongamia pinnata l. seeds. rf value colour of the band 0.11 blue 0.23 white 0.36 fluorescent white 0.48 fluorescent white 0.58 fluorescent white karanjin 0.77 fluorescent white 0.92 blue • mass spectrum mass spectrum could not be recorded as karanjin does not elute under gas-chromatographic conditions used for mass spectrometry. 4. conclusion a simple viable method has been standardized for isolation of karanjin from p. pinnata seed oil where in higher yield of karanjin purity 99.623% was achieved and the product was stored in a sample vial and it was sealed with para foil as well as aluminum foil to avoid photoreaction with sunlight, also, it would help pharmaceutical industry, for this molecule in pure form would be more useful in understanding of mechanism of its action instead of crude extract of the seed. references [1] o. n. allen, e. k. allen, “the leguminosae,” the university of wisconsin press; p. 812, 1981. [2] v. v. chopade, a. n. tankar, v. v. pande, a. r. tekade, n. m. gowekar, s. r. bhadari, s. n. khandake, “international j. of green pharmacy,” apriljune, 2008. [3] s. a. dahanukar, r. a. kulkarni, n. n. rege, “pharmacology of medicinal plants and natural products,” indian journal of pharmacology; 32: s81-s118, 2000. [4] c. orwa, a, mutua, r. kindt, r. jamnagass, s. anthony, “agroforest tree database,”; 491p, 2009. [5] b. meera, s. b. kalidhar, “chemical components of pongamia pinnata l,” j ind chem soc; 81: 891-892, 2004. [6] m. bimla, s. kumar, s. b. kalidhar, “a review of chemistry and biological activity of p. pinnata’” j med arom plant sci 25: 441-465. [7] p. lakshmni, g. srimannaragana, s. n. v. rao, “pongaflavone, a new chromenochromone and an analog of karanjin isolated from pongamia pinnata,” indian j chem; 12: 8-9, 1974. [8] r. n. khanna, t. r. seshadri. “pongaglabrone, a new component of the seeds of pongamia glabra, its constitution and synthesis,” tetrahedron; 19: 219-225, 1963. [9] k. simin shameel, m. usmanghani, s. ali and v. u. amad, “chemical constituents from the seed of pongamia pinnata (l.) pirre,” pakistan journal of pharmaceutical sciences january, 9 ,: 11-20, 1996. [10] s. koysomboon, i. van altena, s. kato, k. chantrapromma, “antimycobacterial flavonoids from derris indica,”. phytochemistry 67: 1034-1040, 2006. [11] h. g. champion, s. k. seth, “revised survey of forest types of india,” manager of publication, gol, new delhi, 1968. [12] b. j. vinay, t. c. sindhu kanya, “effect of detoxification on functional and nutritional quality of proteins of karanja seed meal,”. food chem. 106, 77–84, 2008. [13] t. prabha. m. dorababu, g. shalini, p. k. agarwal, v. k. joshi, r. k. goel, “effect of methanolic extract of p. pinniata linn seed on gastro duodenal ulceration and mucosal offensive factors in rats,” indian journal of experimental biology august, 47, 649-659, 2009. [14] m. m. essa, s. perumal, s. ganapathy, m. tamilarasan, b. d. kadiyala, “protective influence of p. pinnata on blood ammonia and urea levels in ammonium chloride induced hyperammonemia,”, j. appl. biomed,3: 1-5, 2005. [15] m. raghavendra, a. trigunayat, r. k. singh, s. mitra, r. k. goel, r, k. acharrya, “effect of ethanolic extrac of root of pongamia pinnata pongamia pinnata on stress, behavioral and histopathological alterations induce by cerebral ischemia,” ali indian journal of experimental biology , october, 45: 868876, 2007. [16] p. p. joy, j. thomas, s. mathew, p. skaria, “aromatic and medicinal plants research station odakkali, asamannoor p.o., ernakulam district, kerala, india,” [17] u. d. din q, n. parveen, n. u. khan, k. c. singhal, “antifilarial potential of the fruits and leaves extracts of pongamiapinnata on cattle filarial parasite,” setariacervi. phytotherres 17: 1104-1107, 2003. [18] m. elanchezhiyan, s. rajarajan, p. rajendran, s. p. thyagarajan, “antiviral properties of the seed extract of an indian medicinal plant p. pinnata against herpes simplex viruses in vitro studied on vero cells,” j med. microbiol,38: 262-264, 1993. [19] s. lakshmni, “the wealth of india a ready reckoner on biodiversity and bioresources of india,” niscair, csir, new delhi, india, 2003. [20] c. p. khare, “indian medicinal plants, an illustrated dictionary,” springer-verlag berlin/heidelberg, new york, usa, 2004. [21] r. p. rastogi, b. n. mehrotra, “compendium of indian medicinal plant,” central drug research institute and publication and information directorate, new delhi, india, 1993. [22] g. ahmad, p. p. yadav, r. maurya “furanoflavonoid glycosides from pongamiapinnata fruits,” phytochemistry 65: 921-924 ,2004. [23] s. k. talapatra, a. k. mallik, b. talapatra, “pongaglabol, a new hydroxyfuranoflavone, and aurantiamide acetate, a dipeptide from the flowers of pongamiaglabra,” phytochemistry 19: 1199-1202, 1980. [24] r. p. rastogi, b. n. mehrotra, s. sinha, p. pant, r. seth r, “compendium of indian medicinal plants,” central drug research institute and publications & information directorate, new delhi, india, 2011. [25] l. li , x. li, c. shi, z. deng, h. fu, “pongamone a–e, five flavonoids from the stems of a mangrove plant, pongamiapinnata,” phtochemistry 67: 13471352, 2006. [26] k. r. kritikar, b. d. basu, “indian medicinal plants,” 2nd edn. international book distributions, dehradune, india, 1995. [27] l. d. kapur, “traditional uses of medicinal plants,” ayurvedic medicinal plants 327, 2001. [28] r. k. singh, v. k. joshi, r. k. goel, s. s. gambhir, s. b. acharya, “pharmacological action of p. pinnata seed –a preliminary study,” ind j expbiol 34:1204-1207. 1996. [29] r. punitha, k. vasudevan, s. manoharan, “effect of pongamia pinnata flowers on blood glucose and oxidative stress in alloxan induced diabetic rats,” ind j pharmacol38: 62-63, 2006. [30] t. prabha, m. dora babu, s. priyambada, v. k. agrawal, r. k. goel, “evaluation of pongamia pinnata root extract on gastric ulcers and mucosal offensive and defensive factors in rats,” ind j expbiol41: 304-310, 2003.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq| email: kjar@spu.edu.iq evaluation of nurses’ performance regarding personal protective equipment at rania teaching hospital bayan omar sharif frishta m. khdir ministry of health nursing department directorate of health collage of nursing health development and training center university of raparin sulaimani, iraq rania, sulaimani, iraq omerbayan82@gmail.com frishta.ns16068@raparinuni.org padasht m. khdir sarezh a. rasul nursing department nursing department collage of nursing collage of nursing university of raparin university of raparin rania, sulaimani, iraq padasht.ns16107@raparinuni.org rania, sulaimani, iraq sarezh.ns16041@raparinuni.org volume 4 – special issue: 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) doi: 10.24017/science.2019. ichms.20 received: 14 june 2019 accepted: 5 july 2019 abstract personal protective equipment (ppe) refers to protective clothing that acts as a barrier between infectious materials such as viral, bacterial contaminants and the skin, mouth, nose, eyes and mucous membranes. it includes gloves, mask, eye goggles and gown. it is a shortage of study of the university students. the aim of the current study was perform to provide demographic data and to evaluate nurse’s performance regarding ppe at rania teaching hospital in kurdistan region of iraq, during the period of 10th october up to 7th of march. a nonprobability purposive sample of (72 nurse), data collection of the study instrument was constructed of total (42) items. a professional team that contain of (11) experts were performed validity of the instrument. reliability of the instrument was determined through the use of equivalence (inter-rator or inter observer), the data were collected through the use of evaluation technique then organized and coded into computer files. statistical approaches were uses for data analyzed, also data analysis by (spss version 25). the result have revealed that highest age of the sample were between 30-39 years and most of them were institute nurses and more than half of nurses had less than 10 years of employment but most of them not trained yet . the majority of nurses were performed many nursing kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)|191 procedures such as wound dressing, suturing, suctioning, naso-gastric tube and foley catheter insertion without using ppe properly and without washing hands before procedures. also there were no significant relationship between personal protective equipment and some socio demographic data. the researchers recommended training course regarding personal protective equipment by ministry of health/infection control department and participants of symposia. keywords: nurses, evaluation, personal protective equipment, rania teaching hospital. 1. introduction personal protective equipment (ppe) is a vital tool in health care setting. so these tools are barrier between the nurses and disease that may be present during nursing care for the clients. a specialized clothes that worn by nurses staff for defense against infectious materials is a ppe that defined by occupational safety and health act(osha)[1]. it is taken into account as a physical barrier between organism and health care employee. preventing of contaminating hands, eyes, clothing, hair and shoes with microorganisms result in shield the human’s health[2]. gloves, mask, eye goggles, gown, head cover, boots/shoe cover are the components of ppe such as gloves, mask, eye goggles, gown, head cover, boots/shoe cover. every health care worker should be use ppe during their procedures when they contact with blood, body fluids to protect them and the clients[3]. 2. related work american centers for disease control and prevention (cdc) and also the world health organization (who) in their guidelines supported that hand hygiene is the most vital purpose for all the nursing procedures as a result of several infective agent that transmit from the hands than other different components of the body; at the moment full coverage of attention worker’s body particularly secretion membranes as contact with infected bodily fluids is incredibly important to forestall further risks on their health, therefore acceptable and hygiene and ppe along keep health care employee and to forestall transmission to patients. the guidelines of who,2014 explained that the most common important ways to protect nurses staff from infections disease is wearing ppe because it can protect the mucosa, mouth, nose and eyes from many infections which can spread by infect blood, emesis, seed and body secretion[4].using ppe has a major task for facilities, despite of the setting or places, to wear ppe influentially and high advantage of infection bar arrange embrace follow nationwide recognized pointers and standards for interference of transmission of organisms from health care employee to patient, patient to health care worker and patient to patient because of these vital tools the ppe has developed as health care worker requirements also inflated and become tougher over the centuries[5]. hands are the most parts that carry microorganisms than other parts of the body because hand hygiene and gloves are very important to prevent transmission of disease. the mucosa of mouth, nose and eyes must be kept from patient’s droplets and fluids by face mask. gown is protecting lower part and foot of the body, and head cover prevent transmission through nonintact skin and insensible contamination of mucosa from soiled skin[6]. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)|192 the easiest and very essential technique to stop or prevent contact from body fluid and move of microorganisms are wearing ppe appropriately, because nosocomial infections transmitted by direct-contact with patient’s secretion and excretion also easily can be prevented by adapting guidelines and standard precautions of infection control, so it is important to assess the level of compliance with use of ppe by the health care workers who make direct contact with patients[7]. after cleaning/disinfecting of the hands, wearing gloves is one of a significant standard in infection prevention during checking blood sugar, because the hands of nurses staff have play a vital role in transmission of pathogenic microorganisms in hospital settings [8].sterile techniques is considered as the most element for management of the wound especially during the dressings wound to prevent contamination of the wound [9].also aseptic technique is a gold standard for the management of surgical wounds and it helps to avoid infection and facilitate healing process [10]. nosocomial infection can reduced by most favorable nursing management of wounds by nurses staff [11], because of this, center for disease control and prevention recommends application of aseptic technique for dressings within the first and second day after operation and then clean dressing changes after 2-3 days and this follow up lead to reduce the cost of antibiotics especially in a developing country like ours [10].the nurse must use mask and non-sterile gloves during suctioning procedure especially if caused splashing with body fluids [12].aseptic technique must be strict by the nurses staff and used for preparation and administration of inject able of drugs[13].one of the purpose of inserting of a catheter through the urethra into the bladder is to remove urine or elimination of urine is called urinary foley catheter or indwelling catheter procedure, it must be performed under full sterile technique and must be only disposable sterile equipment used to help or ensure that pathogenic microorganisms are not passed into the bladder, using eye goggles, mask with face shield and gown are used optionally according to the situation of the procedure and patient’s condition[14].disposable gloves should only be worn if the nurse performing a procedure that involves a risk of contact with body fluids, broken skin, dirty instruments. ppe is used to protect nurses from patient’s (blood, saliva, sputum, vomit, urine and feces) the nurses are attentive of the rationale for hand hygiene procedures. and they symbolize a large working set that performs the most amount of direct patient care in health setting. hand hygiene is one of the most effective measures to prevent nosocomial infections [15]. the objective of this study is to evaluate nurses’ performance regarding personal protective equipment at rania teaching hospital in rania city. this purpose will attend these objectives: 1to describe socio-demographic data of the study. 2 to detect the relationship between some socio-demographic data of the study sample and performance of nurses concerning ppe. 3. methods and materials a cross sectional study was done within the period of 10th october 2018 to 7th march 2019 at rania teaching hospital in rania city. all nurses’ that performed the nursing procedures for the patients closely were participated in medical, surgical and emergency department. and then the informed consent has gotten, so the data collected by pretested designed questionnaire. the data analyzed by spss version 25. 4. results the nurses’ staff who performed nursing care for the patients included in the current study was 72 nurses. among there were 6 (8.3%) secondary school nursing, 46 (63.9%) institute nurses and 20 (27.8%) graduated from collage of nursing out of all of nurses who worked kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)|193 inside the medical , surgical and emergency department, appropriate using ppe by the nurses’ staff were nearly (0%). table1.sociodemographic descriptive: variables categories no. (%) age 20-29 19 26.4 30-39 44 61.1 ≥ 40 9 12.5 gender male 29 40.3 female 43 59.7 level of education secondary school nurse 6 8.3 institute nurse 46 63.9 academic nurse 20 27.8 number of training course no trained 68 94.4 trained 4 5.6 years of employment >10 39 54.2 10 19 27 37.5 ≤ 20 6 8.3 table (1) described that highest level of age group was female institute nurse between 30-39 years and the most years of employment of them were between 10-19 years but most of them not trained regarding the ppe. table (2): using mask during the procedures: no. using mask during these procedures f always some times never 1. dressing 63 0 (0%) 22(35%) 41(65%) 2. suturing 33 0 (0%) 5(1%) 28(9%) 3. naso gastric tube 29 0 (0%) 3(10%) 26(90) 4. foley catheter 20 0 (0%) 2(10%) 18(90%) 5. suctioning procedure 14 0 (0%) 6(43%) 8(57%) kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)|194 table (2)showed that the nurses’ staff did not wear the mask every time with the procedures and only a few of them used it sometimes. table (3) using gloves during the procedures table (3) demonstrated that all nurses’ were wore gloves only in dressing and removing previous gauzes before dressing, but the few number wore it for checking blood sugar as usual. no. using gloves with these procedures f always some times never 1. preparing equipment for cannulation 60 3(5%) 17(28.3%) 40 (66.7%) 2. iv cannulation 61 6(9.8%) 20(32.8%) 35(57.4%) 3. removing previous gauzes before dressing the wound 60 60(100%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 4. sterile gloves for dressing wound. 63 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 63(100 %) 5. sterile gloves for suturing 33 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 33(100%) 6. ng tube 29 29(100%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 7. checking blood sugar. 71 7(9.8%) 39(55%) 25(35.2%) 8. measuring body temperature. 71 4(5.6%) 6(8.4%) 61(86%) 9. o2supplement. 63 1(1.5%) 23(36.5%) 39(62%) 10. suctioning. 14 14(100%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 11. id injection 48 1(2%) 6(13%) 41(85 %) 12. im injection. 47 0 (0%) 21(44.7%) 26(55.3%) 13. sc. injection 62 0 (0%) 2 (3%) 60 (97%) 14. iv. injection 58 11(19%) 18(31%) 29 (50%) 15. insertion of foley catheter 20 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 20 (100%) kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)|195 table (4): wearing gown during the procedures: table (4) described that there are nobody wore gown for dressing, suturing,foley catheter and suctioning procedures (0%). table (5): wearing eye goggles during the procedure: table (5) indicated that there are nobody wore eye goggles for suturing, procedures (0%) table (6): performing hand washing before thenursing procedures: no. using gown during these procedures f always some times never 1. dressing 63 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 63(100%) 2. suturing 33 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 33(100%) 3. foley catheter 20 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 20(100%) 4. suctioning 5 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 5(100%) no. wearing eye goggles f always some times never 1. suturing procedure 33 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 33(100%) no. the nurses washed their hands by alcohol or soap before the procedure f always some times never 1. preparing equipment for cannulation procedure. 59 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 59(100%) 2. intravenous cannulation 60 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 60(100%) 3. dressing procedure 63 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 63(100%) 4. suturing procedure 33 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 33(100%) 5. insertion of naso-gastric tube 29 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 29(100%) 6. checking blood sugar 71 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 71(100%) 7. measuring body temperature 71 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 71(100%) 8. o2 supplement 63 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 63(100%) 9. suctioning procedure 14 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 14(100%) 10. intra dermal injection 48 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 48(100%) 11. intra muscular injection 47 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 47(100%) 12. subcutaneous injection 62 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 62(100%) 13. intra venous injection 58 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 58(100%) 14. before foley catheter insertion 20 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 20(100%) kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)|196 table (6)showed thatthere are no any nurses’ washed hands before any procedures every time table (7): performing hand washing after the nursing procedure: table (7) demonstrated that there are only one nurse did not washed hands after procedures but the majority of them washed their hands after every procedure. table (8): relationship between some socio-demographic data and performance of personal protective equipment: table (8) showed that there were no significantrelationship between personal protective equipment and gender, number of training course at p value more than 0.05. 5. discussion quantitative design, a descriptive study was performed on nurse’s staff at the rania teaching hospital in rania city to evaluate nurses’ performance regarding personal protective equipment. the socio-demographic data demonstrated that the female nurses were more than half percent in the study sample, nearly quarter of the participants were graduated from institute, and they had less than ten years of employment, but unfortunately the majority of the participants were not trained yet, which is measured as a big tragedy to prevent nosocomial infection inside the hospitals. the results of this study showed that the nurse’s staff had a poor performance of using ppe, this outcome is nearly agree with the study done by hakim et al,2016 in egypt, a quarter percent among health care workers had a poor performance of the nurse washed his/her hands by alcohol or soap after each procedure f always some times never 72 61 (84.7%) 10 (13.90%) 1 (1.4%) variables f mean sd p-value age 20-29 19 .3939 .10728 0.000 30-39 44 .2964 .11196 more than and equal to 40 9 .2201 .08157 gender male 29 .2998 .11454 0.459 female 43 .3212 .12329 years of employment > 10 39 .3515 .11752 0.001 10 – 19 27 .2874 .10480 more than or equal to 20 6 .1730 .04536 level of education secondary school nursing 6 .2033 .08772 0.000 institute graduation 46 .2765 .09612 college of nursing graduation 20 .4284 .09170 number of training course no trained 68 .3097 .11959 0.406 trained 4 .3612 .12301 kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)|197 using ppe[16], and emmanuel et al, 2016 less than five percent used ppe properly [17].regarding using mask the outcome of the present study demonstrated that, there are no any nurse wore the mask usually but 35% used it some time for dressing, 1% for suturing, 10% for each of foley catheter and naso gastric tube insertion also 43% for suctioning procedure. but unfortunately about wearing eye goggle and gown there are nobody used them at all, this outcome is slightly agree with the study of punia, et al, 2014 in india[17] and jeong et al.,2008 which they had a poor performance of wearing ppe less than five percent [18]. concerning wearing gloves the current study demonstrated that all nurses’ were wore gloves only in a procedure of wound dressing and removing previous gauzes on wounds before dressing, but the few number wore it for checking blood sugar as usual however using gloves is very important point during checking blood sugar to prevent transmit of blood born pathogen between patients and nurses staff. this outcome is disagree with study of asare, et al., 2009 that showed the majority of them were wore gloves and changed it between procedures[19]. table (6) showed hand washing or disinfectant of nurses’ before starting the procedures, but there were no any nurses’ performed it before the procedures ; however the cdc and however osha suggested that some nursing procedures are not required for wearing gloves such as practices of immunization from intramuscular or intra dermal except the nurse who administering the drug has lesions on their hands or are likely to come into contact with a patient’s body fluids, but every health organizations are agree with hand hygiene before and after every nursing procedures to prevent contamination[20]. the most single significant point to prevent spread of infection in health setting is hand hygiene pre and post contact with every patient in nursing procedures when hands become dirty or contaminated with infected materials or clearly dusty, after contact the blood or body fluids with non intact skin must be washed by antibacterial soap and running water instead of use alcohol-based hand products and then dry it by paper towels before wearing gloves [21].the researchers in the present study return the reason for inappropriate use of ppe for non availability of some materials of ppe, busy schedule, patients might get upset by use of ppe by nurses however there are several study detected barriers that interfere in matters of ppe such as work overload, physical structure, accessibility of ppe, and determined by the context practiced in the biological point[22]. but the outcome of the present study showed that there was no any nurse washed their hands before each nursing procedure, but they believe inappropriate hand hygiene before and after procedures results of lack of information regarding infection control issues. eventually the researchers believe that the nurses have no the subspecialty in nursing care especially infection control issue in the country of iraq and kurdistan region, also the continuation of limitations on the way of staff of nurses for studying and achieving a high degree concerning their specialty is considered as a main dilemma for them. because of that the researchers recommend these points: 1design the training course for the staff of nurses regarding infection control department by the ministry of health 2extra opportunities to attend symposia for nurses concerning infection control issues is very important and evaluating them by a special team of infection control after training. 6. conclusion the results of the present study demonstrate that the staff of nurses were used ppe inappropriately; however appropriate use of ppe is considered as a vital tool for protecting both of health care workers and patients and to prevent spread of infection in community. also the current study indicated that hand washing and disinfection before starting procedures is really very poor. steps infection control issues should be taken to ensure adequate kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)|198 accessibility and continuous following of infection control guidelines should be designed to improve nursing procedures. reference [1] j. d. siegel, e. rhinehart, m. jackson, and l. chiarello, "2007 guideline for isolation precautions preventing transmission of infectious agents in healthcare settings," 2007. [2] j. sreedharan, j. muttappallymyalil, and m. j. i. j. o. p. h. venkatramana, "knowledge and practice of standard measures in occupational exposure to blood and body fluids among nurses in a university hospital in the united arab emirates," vol. 7, no. 1, 2010. [3] a. c. d. oliveira, m. d. d. m. silva, j. l. j. t. garbaccio, and contexto-enfermagem, "clothing of health care professional as potential reservoirs of micro-organisms: an integrative review," vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 684-691, 2012. [4] d. pittet, b. allegranzi, j. boyce, w. h. o. w. a. f. p. s. f. g. p. s. c. c. g. o. e. j. i. control, and h. epidemiology, "the world health organization guidelines on hand hygiene in health care and their consensus recommendations," vol. 30, no. 7, pp. 611-622, 2009. [5] p. segal, "the role of personal protective equipment in infection prevention history," 2016. [online]. available: available online: https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/personal-protective-equipment/rolepersonal-protective-equipment-infection-prevention-history. [6] w. h. organization, personal protective equipment for use in a filovirus disease outbreak: rapid advice guideline. world health organization, 2016. [7] a. lakshmi, c. m. j. i. j. o. c. m. paul, and p. health, "a study on personal protective equipment use among health care providers, tamil nadu," vol. 5, no. 5, pp. 1771-1774, 2018. [8] w. h. organization, "hand hygiene in outpatient and home-based care and long-term care facilities: a guide to the application of the who multimodal hand hygiene improvement strategy and the “my five moments for hand hygiene” approach," 2012. [9] j. b. j. t. j. o. t. a. c. o. c. w. s. shah, "the history of wound care," vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 65-66, 2011. [10] s. i. berríos-torres et al., "centers for disease control and prevention guideline for the prevention of surgical site infection, 2017," vol. 152, no. 8, pp. 784-791, 2017. [11] b. gillespie and c. j. p. i. t. a. j. o. w. m. fenwick, "comparison of the two leading approaches to attending wound care dressings," vol. 17, no. 2, p. 84, 2009. [12] m. jeanne, b. gemender, and d. j. a. n. t. reising, "investigating nurses’ dressing change techniques," pp. 53-55, 2007. [13] j. mcneely, j. h. arnsten, and m. n. j. h. r. j. gourevitch, "sterile syringe access and disposal among injection drug users newly enrolled in methadone maintenance treatment: a cross-sectional survey," vol. 3, no. 1, p. 8, 2006. [14] r. c. feneley, i. b. hopley, p. n. j. j. o. m. e. wells, and technology, "urinary catheters: history, current status, adverse events and research agenda," vol. 39, no. 8, pp. 459-470, 2015. [15] s. hakim, n. abouelezz, and e. j. e. j. o. m. el okda, "use of personal protective devices among health care workers in a teaching hospital in cairo, egypt," vol. 40, no. 2, pp. 287-300, 2016. [16] s. scheithauer et al., "compliance with hand hygiene in patients with meticillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus and extended-spectrum β-lactamase-producing enterobacteria," vol. 76, no. 4, pp. 320-323, 2010. [17] e. n. aguwa, s. u. arinze-onyia, and a. ndu, "use of personal protective equipment among health workers in a tertiary health institution, south east nigeria: pre-ebola period," 2016. [18] s. punia, s. nair, and r. s. j. i. s. r. n. shetty, "health care workers and standard precautions: perceptions and determinants of compliance in the emergency and trauma triage of a tertiary care hospital in south india," vol. 2014, 2014. [19] i. jeong, j. cho, and s. j. a. j. o. i. c. park, "compliance with standard precautions among operating room nurses in south korea," vol. 36, no. 10, pp. 739-742, 2008. [20] a. asare, c. c. enweronu-laryea, and m. j. j. t. j. o. i. i. d. c. newman, "hand hygiene practices in a neonatal intensive care unit in ghana," vol. 3, no. 05, pp. 352-356, 2009. [21] h. m. el shazly, n. a. khalil, r. a. ibrahem, and s. a. a. j. m. m. j. wahed, "knowledge and practice of healthcare providers as regards routine children vaccination in primary healthcare facilities of quewisna district, menoufia governorate," vol. 29, no. 4, p. 1018, 2016. [22] h. c. c. neves, a. c. s. souza, m. medeiros, d. b. munari, l. c. m. ribeiro, and a. f. v. j. r. l.-a. d. e. tipple, "safety of nursing staff and determinants of adherence to personal protective equipment," vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 354-361, 2011. https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/personal-protective-equipment/role-personal-protective-equipment-infection-prevention-history https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/personal-protective-equipment/role-personal-protective-equipment-infection-prevention-history 1. introduction 6. conclusion  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.23 received: 29 may 2018 | accepted: 13 june 2018 epidemiological survey of toxoplasmosis among aborted women in garmian district, kurdistan region, iraq salar ibrahim ali community health department technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq salaribrahimali@yahoo.it 140 abstract: toxoplasmosis is a zoonotic infection that caused by an obligated intracellular parasite toxoplasma gondii of many types of tissues, including nervous, muscular and intestinal epithelial tissue. congenital toxoplasmosis is most severe condition when occurs in early period of pregnancy. the main aim of this study is to determine prevalence of toxoplasmosis among aborted women in garmian region by using both latex agglutination test (lat) and enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (elisa). the study was carried out in kalar general hospital to detect toxoplasma antibodies among 350 samples, in which 250 samples were from aborted women and 100 samples were from normal birth women as a control. participants’ age was range from < 18 to > 35 years old. the data were collected form 15th january 2009 to 25th june 2010 by using a special questionnaire form to obtain full information from each participant. for statistical analysis of the data, statistical package for social sciences (spss) version 22 was used. the study showed that (112) cases out of 250 were seropositive for toxoplasma gondii by using lat, (65) cases for igg and (50) cases for igm by using elisa. in the abortion group, it showed (87) cases out of 150 were seropositive by using lat, (51) cases for igg and (40) cases for igm (26.6%), whereas in normal birth group (control), it showed (25) case out of 100 were seropositive by using lat, (14) case for igg and (10) case for igm by using elisa. a high seropositivity percentage was recorded among housewives (35.2%) than teachers and employees (29.4%), (28.5%) respectively. furthermore, a higher percentage of toxoplasma seropositivity was recorded in rural area than urban area. the aborted women who were in contact with soil showed the higher rate of toxoplasma seropositivity (38.7%) than those were not in contact with soil (25%). this study concluded that the prevalence of toxoplasmosis was higher in garmian region and especially among those women who have lower education level and who live in rural areas. keywords: epidemiological survey, toxoplasmosis, aborted women, garmian, immunological tests. 1. introduction toxoplasmosis is a zoonotic disease caused by an obligatory intracellular protozoan parasite toxoplasma gondii, which appears to have broad host specificity. cats and wild felines are the only definitive hosts while all other warm-blooded animals including humans are intermediate hosts [1]. infection is acquired by ingestion of viable tissue cysts in meat or oocysts excreted by cats that contaminate food or water [2]. congenital transmission may occur when an uninfected mother acquires primary infection during pregnancy [1]; the infection may also be transmitted through blood or leukocyte transfusion [3], or organ transplantation [4, 5]. toxoplasmosis infection in immunocompetent adults and adolescent are generally asymptomatic, but symptoms may include mild malaise, lethargy and lymphadenopathy [6]. when the disease occurs during pregnancy 20-30% of cases terminate either with spontaneous abortion, stillbirth and premature delivery or birth of infected baby with undesirable sequels later in life as blindness and deafness; it is considered as a main infection which causes blindness all over the world [7]. the gestational age at which the infection is contracted is a key variable affecting the clinical fetal outcome ([8]. t. gondii can also cause severe encephalitis via acute infection or reactivation of latent infection among immunosuppressed patients, including those with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (aids), those with immunosuppressive cancer, and transplant recipients on immunosuppressive drugs (e.g. cyclosporine). toxoplasmosis is the most frequent severe neurological infection among persons with aids [9]. the risk factors that are often associated with acute infection in pregnant women were eating raw or undercooked meat and soil contact. weaker associations were observed for tasting raw meat during preparation of meals, eating salami, drinking unpasteurized milk and animal contact [10 ,2]. the aim of this study is, to determine epidemiological survey of toxoplasmosis among aborted women in 141 garmian region by using serological method, such as enzyme–linked immunosorbent assay (elisa) and to investigate the effect of some factors such as age, job style, soil contact and obstetrical history including (number of pregnancy, type of abortion, gestational age), educational back ground, residence area on the incidence of toxoplasmosis. 2. methods and materials the study was performed in garmian area, iraqi kurdistan region. the sample size was 250 samples, which divided into normal birth women (100 samples) and aborted women (150 samples); the study was started from 1st november 2016 till june of 2017 at kalar general hospital, in addition to private clinics in garmian area. data were collected from all aborted and normal birthed women by interviews using a specially designed, pretested questionnaire. interviews were conducted face to face at the kalar general hospital and private clinic by staff nurses or medical technologist. women firstly asked about age, place of residence (urban or rural) and occupation, obstetrical history (total number of pregnancy, stillbirths, abortions and live birth). the blood samples were collected after cleaning the area by using denaturized 70% medical spirit. five ml of venous blood was taken in a 5ml tubes size disposable syringe the transferred to 10 ml disposable sterile test tubes. the blood was then centrifuged at 3000 rpm for 5 minutes then serum samples were aspirated by using automatic micropipette transferred to 3 ml sized micro test tube with screw cap, each serum was labeled and numbered before keeping at 4-8 c˚ for 24-48 hrs. if longer periods of storage are required sera kept in deep freeze at -20 c˚ for a late serological testing. all isolated sera were tested serologically for detection of specific antibodies to t. gondii by the using of lat and igm, igg by elisa technique. analysis of data was performed by using statistical package for social science (spss) version 22.0. chi square test was applied to find association between categorical variables. continues variables were checked using t-test. p values p ≤ 0.05 were considered statistically significant. 3. results prevalence of toxoplasma gondii seropositivity using lat the results in (table 1) show the prevalence of toxoplasma seropositivity using lat. in 250 samples, there were 112(44.8%) seropositive in overall groups; in normal birth group, there were 25(25%) seropositive cases out of 100-screened samples and in abortion group from 150 samples 87(58%) were seropositive. the statistical analysis appears significant difference at p< 0.01. table 1: prevalence of toxoplasma seropositivity using lat. prevalence of toxoplasma gondii seropositivity using elisa technique. the results in (table 2) show that the prevalence of t. gondii seropositivity using elisa technique, screening for igg type antibodies specific to t. gondii in 250 samples, there were 65(26%) seropositive in overall groups; in normal birth group there were 14(14%) seropositive cases out of 100-screened samples and in abortion group from 150 samples 51(34%) were seropositive .the statistical analysis appears significant difference at p< 0.01,while screening for igm type antibodies specific to t. gondii in 250 samples, there were 50(20%) seropositive in overall groups; in normal birth group there were 10(10%) seropositive cases out of 100-screened samples and in abortion group from 150 samples 40(26.6%) were seropositive .the statistical analysis appears a significant difference at p< 0.01. table 2: prevalence of toxoplasma gondii seropositivity using elisa technique. seropositivity of anti-toxoplasma by elisa technique and lat in relation to gestational age of aborted women the results in (table 3) show that the distribution of toxoplasma seropositivity using elisa technique and lat in relation to gestational age of aborted women. screening for igg type antibodies specific to t. gondii. in 150 samples, there were 51(34%) seropositive cases out of 150-screened samples, the highest seropositivity in second trimester were 17(45.9%) out of 37 samples, followed by first trimester were 33(33.3%) out of 37 samples and lowest seropositivity in third trimester were 1(7.1%) out of 14 samples. screening for igm type antibodies specific to t. gondii. in 150 samples, there were 40(26.6%) seropositive cases out of 150-screened samples, the highest seropositivity in second trimester were 11(29.7%) out of 37 samples, followed by first trimester were 29(29.2%) out of 37 samples and lowest seropositivity in third trimester were 0 (0%) out of 14 samples. while in lat screening for antibodies specific to t. gondii. in 150 samples, there were 87(58%) seropositive cases out of 150-screened samples, the 142 highest seropositivity in first trimester were 66 (66.6%) out of 120 samples, followed by second trimester were 19(51.3%) out of 37 samples and lower seropositivity in third trimester were 2 (14.2%) out of 14 samples. statistical analysis appears significant difference at p< 0.01. table 3: seropositivity of anti-toxoplasma by elisa technique and lat in relation to gestational age of aborted women. table (4-8) shows the distribution of toxoplasma seropositivity using elisa technique and lat in relation to gestational age of control group. screening for igg type antibodies specific to t. gondii, in 100 samples, there were 14(14%) seropositive cases out of 100-screened samples, the highest seropositivity in third trimester were 14(14%) out of 100 samples and lowest seropositivity in both first and second trimester were 0 (0%) out of 0 samples. screening for igm type antibodies specific to t. gondii, in 100 samples, there were 10(10%) seropositive cases out of 100-screened samples, the highest seropositivity in were third trimester 10(10%) out of 100 samples and lower seropositivity in both first and second trimester were 0(0 %) out of 0 samples. while in lat screening for antibodies specific to t. gondii, in 100 samples, there were 25(25%) seropositive cases out of 100-screened samples, the highest seropositivity in third trimester were 25 (25%) out of 100 samples and lower seropositivity in both first and second trimester were 0 (0%) out of 0 samples. statistical analysis appears no significant difference at p< 0.05. table 4: seropositivity of anti-toxoplasma elisa technique and lat in relation to gestational age of control group. seropositivity of anti-toxoplasma by elisa technique in relation to residence area of aborted women. the results in (table 5) show that the distribution of toxoplasma seropositivity using elisa technique in relation to residence area of control group. screening for igg type antibodies specific to t. gondii. in 100 samples, there were 14(14%) seropositive cases out of 100-screened samples, high seropositivity in urban area were 8 (12.5%) out of 64 samples and low seropositivity in rural area were 6 (16.6%) out of 36 samples. screening for igm type antibodies specific to t. gondii. in 100 samples, there were 10 (10%) seropositive cases out of 100-screened samples, high seropositivity in urban area were 6(9.3%) out of 48 samples and low seropositivity in rural area were 4 (11.1%) out of 36 samples, while in lat screening for antibodies specific to t. gondii. in 100 samples, there were 25(25%) seropositive cases out of 100-screened samples, high seropositivity in rural area were 10 (27%) out of 36 samples and low seropositivity in urban area were 15 (23.4%) out of 64 samples. statistical analysis appears no significant difference at p< 0.05. table 5: seropositivity of anti-toxoplasma by elisa technique in relation to residence area of aborted women. the results in (table 6) show that the distribution of toxoplasma seropositivity using elisa technique in relation to residence area of aborted women. screening for igg type antibodies specific to t. gondii. in 150 samples, there were 51(34%) seropositive cases out of 150-screened samples, high seropositivity in urban area were 31(37.3%) out of 83 samples and low seropositivity in rural area were 20(29.8%) out of 67 samples. screening for igm type antibodies specific to t. gondii. in 150 samples, there were 40(26.6%) seropositive cases out of 150-screened samples, high seropositivity in urban area were 21(25.3%) out of 83 samples and low seropositivity in rural area were 19 (28.3%) out of 67 samples. statistical analysis appears significant difference at p< 0.01. table 6: seropositivity of anti-toxoplasma by elisa technique in relation to residence area of control women. 143 seropositivity of anti-toxoplasma by elisa technique and lat in relation to cat contact of control women. table (4-20) show the distribution of toxoplasma seropositivity using elisa technique and lat in relation to cat contact of control group. screening for igg type antibodies specific to t. gondii. in 100 samples, there were 14(14%) seropositive cases out of 100-screened samples, higher seropositivity in cat contact were 11 (16.1%) out of 68 samples and lower seropositivity in non-cat contact were 3 (9.3%) out of 32 samples. screening for igm type antibodies specific to toxoplasma gondii. in 100 samples, there were 10 (10%) seropositive cases out of 100-screened samples, higher seropositivity in cat contact were 8(11.7%) out of 68 samples and lower seropositivity in non-cat contact were 2 (6.2%) out of 32 samples. while in lat screening for antibodies specific to t. gondii. in 100 samples, there were 25(25%) seropositive cases out of 100-screened samples, higher seropositivity in cat contact were 20 (29.4%) out of 36 samples and lower seropositivity in non-cat contact were 5 (15.6%) out of 32 samples. statistical analysis appears no significant difference at p< 0.05. table 7: seropositivity of anti-toxoplasma by elisa technique and lat in relation to cat contact of aborting women. table (4-19) shows the distribution of toxoplasma seropositivity using elisa technique and lat in relation to cat contact of aborted women. screening for igg type antibodies specific to toxoplasma gondii. in 150 samples, there were 51(34%) seropositive cases out of 150-screened samples, high seropositivity in cat contact were 38(38.7%) out of 98 samples and low seropositivity in non-cat contact were 13(25%) out of 52 samples. screening for igm type antibodies specific to toxoplasma gondii. in 150 samples, there were 40(26.6%) seropositive cases out of 150-screened samples, high seropositivity in non-cat contact were 14(26.9%) out of 52 samples and low seropositivity in cat contact were 26 (26.5%) out of 98 samples, while in lat screening for antibodies specific to t. gondii. in 150 samples, there were 87(57.9%) seropositive cases out of 150-screened samples, high seropositivity in cat contact were 68 (69.3%) out of 98 samples and low seropositivity in non-cat contact were 19 (36.5%) out of 52 samples. statistical analysis appears significant difference at p< 0.01. table 8: seropositivity of anti-toxoplasma by elisa technique and lat in relation to cat contact of control women. 4. discussion toxoplasmosis has been established that has a worldwide distribution in human and other warmblooded vertebrates but the frequency of the infection varies from one country to another and also in different part of a given country [11]. one half billion human infection is a conservative estimate [12]. the current study is the first study performed in garmian district to determine the seroprevalence of t. gondii infection between normal birth and aborted women groups. the seroprevalence of toxoplasmosis in the present study was 58 % of aborted women, whereas 25% of normal birth by using lat test and 34% for igg and 26.6% for igm in aborted women, whereas 14% for igg and 10% for igm in normal birth women by using elisa technique. these results in consistence with those of [13] in diala province, altimimi, (2004) in baghdad [14] and fatohi, (1985) in musol city [15], al-attar, (2000) in kirkuk [16], showed that the seroprevalence of toxoplasmosis were 54.0%, 55.26%, 52.6% and 42.6% respectively. but the results of the present study are not in agreement with which showed of some studies in iraqi provinces, as in baghdad showed that the seroprevalence of toxoplasmosis, in the first study was 12.3% by using skin test and in the second study was 33.42% by using dat test [17,18]. the results reported in (table 1 and table 2), which shows the seroprevalence of t. gondii seropositivity in aborted women were (58%) by lat and (34%) for igg antibodies and (26.6%) by elisa technique which they are significantly higher than seroprevalence of t. gondii seropositivity in control (normal birth) women in which they show (25%) by lat and (14%) for igg antibodies and (10%) by elisa technique. such results were comparable to those obtained by saeed (1998), she concluded in her results that t. gondii agglutinins prevalence in women suffering from abortion in erbil city [19], also the same findings were indicated on aborted women in mosul city, duhok and baghdad [20,21,17]. these results were in contrast with the observation of akoijaam, et al., (2002), they found that no significant association between abortion and 144 infection with t. gondli [22]. this variance may be explained by the presence of different source for distribution of the parasite in this locality and may be due to the difference in sanitation and hygienic way of living; or the difference may be due to the influence of climate on the survival of toxoplasma oocysts in the environment, in addition different eating habits and differences in husbandry of domestic animals may affect exposure to infection [23]. the relationship of seropositive toxoplasmosis with residency was also studied. the higher seropositivity of t. gondii among aborted women in rural resident than those in urban resident, this result is in consistence with that of [24,25]. this finding is similar to that reported in malaysia [26] and in egypt [27]; in india [28] and in erbil city [19] in which they observed that the disease is apparently more prevalent among rural aborted women than those living in urban community, but with no significant difference. the seroincidence variation between the two communities depends on the basis of poor standards of hygiene and lower socioeconomic status in rural area than in the urban, also rural women are more in contact with domestic and other animals than urban women. the pattern of risk factors and their relative importance are likely to vary appreciably across national boundaries in accordance with cultural patterns and climatic factors affecting the survival of oocysts [29]. this study revealed that there was significant relationship between soil contact and frequency of t. gondii seropositivity, while in normal birth women group show no significant difference. but in both groups frequency of t. gondii seropositivity using lat and elisa technique are higher in women who work on land or had contact with soil than that who without soil contact. this result is in consistence with that [30]. the association of cats and human toxoplasmosis is difficult to assess by epidemiological surveys because soil, not the cats, is the main culprit. oocysts are not found on cat fur and often buried in soil along with cat faeces, and soil contact is universal and difficult to avoid. contact with soil was identified as a risk factor for toxoplasma infection in pregnancy in this study and in 2 of 3 previous studies that adjusted for confounders [31,29]. 5. conclusion the current investigation has concluded that the prevalence of toxoplasma infection is highly prevalent among aborted women in garmian district. 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[15] f. a.m. fatohi, “detection of toxoplasmosis among different groups of populations in mousl city by using ifat and cft,” m.sc. thesis, college of medicine, university of mousl. 1985. [16] s. a. al-attar, “epidemiological study of toxoplasmosis in kirkuk city,”. m.sc. thesis, college of education. tikrit university, 2000. [17] a. n. jasim, “seroepidemiological studies of toxoplasmosis in iraq: evaluation of serological tests used in diagnosis,” m.sc. thesis, college of medicine, university of baghdad, 1979. [18] a. r. al-jubori, “parasitological and immunological study of toxoplasma gondii in kirkuk province,” m.sc. thesis, college of medicine, baghdad university, 2005. [19] v. d. saeed, “seroprevalence of toxoplasmosis in women with repeated abortion and in children with congenital blindness and mental retardation in erbil,” m.sc. thesis. college of education, university of salahaddeen, 1998. [20] f. h. o. al-khaffaf, “isolation and seroepidemiological study of toxoplasmosis among women in child bearing age in nineveh governorate,” m.sc. thesis, college of science, university of mosul, 2001. [21] b. d. al-doski, “seroepidemiological study of toxoplasmosis among different groups of population in duhok city by using latex agglutination test and indirect haemoagglutination test,” m.sc. thesis, college of medicine, university of duhok, 2000. [22] b. akoijaam, s. shashikant, s. kapoor, “seroprevalence of toxoplasma infection among primigravid women attending antenatal clinic at a secondary level hospital in north india,” j. 145 indian. med. asso., 100:591-601, 2002. [23] d. ashburn, “history and general epidemiology. human toxoplasmosis,” volume 3. edited by: ho yen do, joss awl. oxford university press chapter: 56-76, 1992. [24] e. sema, o. pinar, t. munevver, y. hasan, “seroprevalence and risk factors for toxoplasm infection among pregnant women in aydin province,” turkey. bmc public health. (5): 66. ,2005. [25] a. e. ades, s. parker, r. gilbert, p. a. tookey, t. berry, m. hjelm, a. h. wilcox, d. cubitt, c. s. peckham, “maternal prevalence of toxoplasma antibody based on anonymous neonatal serosurvey: a geographical analysis’” epidemiol. infect., 110(1):127-133, 1993. [26] s. yazar, b. altunoluk, a. akman, i. şahin, “investigation of antitoxoplasma gondii antibodies in women during pregnancy,” acta parasitologica turcica., 24(4):343-345, 2000. [27] r. attia, m. elzayat, h. rizk, s. motawea, “toxoplasma igg and igm antibodies. a case control study,” j. egypt. soc. parasitol., 25: 866-82, 1995. [28] y. r. joshi, s. v. yas, k. r. josh, “seroprevalence of toxoplasmosis in jodhpur, india,” j. commun. dis., 30 (1) :3237, 1998. [29] g. kapperud, p. a. jenum, b. stray-pedersen, k.k. melby, a. eskild, j. eng, “risk factors for toxoplasma gondii infection in pregnancy: results of a prospective case-control study in norway,” obstet. gynecol. surv., 52: 158-9, 1997. [30] d. h. m. joynson, “epidemiology of toxoplasmosis in the u.k,” scand. j. infect. dis., 84 (suppl.): 65, 1992. [31] l. baril, “facteurs de risqué d acquisition de la toxoplasmose chez les femmes enceintes en 1995 (france). risk factors for acquiring toxoplasmosis in pregnant women in 1995 (france),” bulletin epidemiologique hebdomadaire. 16: 73-75, 1996. 5. conclusion  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.31 received: 17 june 2018 | accepted: 18 july 2018 nurses’ knowledge regarding cardiac catheterization at general hospital in rania city bayan o. sharif shara h. salih niga a. sailh bahar i. salim nursing department nursing department nursing department nursing department ministry of health collage of nursing collage of nursing collage of nursing cardiac specialty hospital university of raparin university of raparin university of raparin sulaimani, iraq rania, iraq rania, iraq rania, iraq omerbayan82@gmail,com shara.ns@raparinuni.org niga.ns15050@raparinuni.org bahar.ns15050@raparinuni.org 183 abstract: cardiac catheterization is a common word for a set of procedures that are implemented using this method, such as coronary angiography and left ventricle angiography. coronary angiography is that invasive procedure which assumed as the golden standard for the diagnosis, estimation, and curing of heart diseases. there is a shortage of research of undergraduate students. the purpose of this descriptive cross-sectional study has been conducted to assess nurses’ knowledge regarding cardiac catheterization and associated factors at general hospital in rania city. data were collected from a stability sample of 60 nurses using demographic form instead of the section with the conductive questionnaire of knowledge regarding cardiac catheterization . the majority of study participants were female (81.7%) therefor, 70% of nurses were married. about 43.3% of study participants were academic nurse while (40%) of them were institute nurse, however level of knowledge form institute graduated nurses has a highest level and the majority of participants were not trained (95%). results acquired have shown that there is no sufficient knowledge of nurses regarding cardiac catheterization, among all levels of nurses and there is a significant relationship between most socio-demographic data in true question but there are opposite result for false questions. we therefore recommend the training course by ministry of health for nurses to improve the knowledge and health awareness regarding cardiac catheterization. keywords: nurses, knowledge, cardiac catheterization, education. 1. introduction “cardiac catheterization (cc) is the insertion of a catheter into a chamber or vessel, it is done for diagnostic and interference purposes”. the main purpose of this method is toanalytic test that allows the interventional cardiologist to visualize the coronary thrombosis vessels. percutaneous coronary intervention involves the use of mechanical stents to enhance the blocked blood.[1]. measuring heart chambers and evaluating pressure differences across of the major heart valves, which is done by cardiac specialist are considered as diagnostic test of heart function, also the cardiologist can use this method to assess the amount of blood that pumped by the heart per instant. [2]. heart attack (stemi, nstemi), new onset unknown heart failure, sudden cardiac death or serious arrhythmia of the heart, those people who suffer from acute coronary ischemic syndrome, permanent chest pain, dubious coronary spasm are considered as a most mutual character for (cc). major contraindication for this process is patient’s refuse for performing the cc procedure also comparative contraindication such as: electrolyte abnormalities acute renal failure decompensated heart failure severe allergy to radiographic contrast agentive role febrile illness hemorrhage disorder hypertension gain sensitivity for ischemia and/or pulmonary edema but all problems must be striped pre and through the procedure. [3]. fasting for at least eight hours before the procedure is one of the main responsibility of patients, also the client must be use the medications for there chronic disease such as insulin, antihypertensive drugs) as the physician’s order. also the patient need full information about prophylaxis treatment and history of contrast media allergy. investigating need before the procedure such as (chest x-ray and an electro cardiogram, complete blood cellular, blood urea nitrogen, electrolytes, creatinine, coagulation field , cardiac biomarkers, and urinalysis). [4]. the majority of cardiac catheterization are done without participate of anesthesiologist because this process is not routinely required general anesthesia but some conscious sedation and analgesia with short acting agents such as midazolam or fentanyl at low doses are used, however commonly used to enhance patient comfortableness and relieve anxiety during the procedure. monitoring vital signs is very important during (cc) procedure. [5], so the client will be arouse inwards the technique and must be adviced to take a deep breath at certain times .the client should directly tell the cardiologist if experienced disturbance breathing or chest problem and other symptoms of angina pectoris likewise must be assess the client for nausea or back pain from lying still and provide medication as the cardiologist ordered [6]. after process the client will leave the anesthesia room and will be transmited to a recovery room and to a special ward, after that the nursse or technician who has removed the sheath will apply pressure level to the insertion site of the catheter, this 184 usually need sixty minutes of time. the flexible sheath put in the femoral, neck or arm will be removed soon. if put in the groin the patient should be lie flat for several hours after the procedure to avoid serious hemorrhage and to allow the artery to restore. the client able to eat and drink after the technique. the period for staying in the hospital will be influenced by the patient’s health condition and may be able to go home at the same day of the procedure. [7]. also the patient can return to most rule of bodily function soon after the process. using the affected limb for checking blood pressure must be avoided or prevented especially in the recovery period. the brachial site is monitored for bleeding, bulge, distal pulses, sensation, and motor role and the patient should take medication as prescribed by the physician, take sponge baths for a few twenty-four hour period if the insertion site was in the mole, avoid lifting anything over 4.5kg for at least seventy two hours. avoid strenuous activities for about a seven days. the client should be given full information about driving, sexual intercourse and return to work after performing the procedure. after fifteen days of the procedure the patient should contact the cardiologist if notice any trouble such as severe pain, swollen, redness, warm to the touch, bluish color, draining of the insertion site, increase body temperature , bleeding, any signs of angina or chest pain, difficulty of urination or having bloody urine [8].this procedure has some risks, but main risks are unusual. peril of cardiac catheterization such as bleeding, myocardial infarction, cerebrovascular accident , kidney injury (very rare), blood coagulum , infection, bruising, tearing the tissue of the heart or arterial blood vessel , atypical heart rhythms, allergic chemical reaction to the contrast dye or some drugs. the common peril of coronary angiography are higher in people who are older and in those who suffer from certain diseases such as chronic kidney disease and diabetes mellitus. [9]. in conclusion nurses who are caring for clients with heart catheterization must be careful to recognize vascular related complications, like hematomas, retroperitoneal bleeding, pseudo aneurysms, arterio venous fistulas, nerve compression, and atheroembolism [10]. post process the nurses have to develop a customary and safe protocol of look after or take care the patients and connective tissue coronary intervention as a result of patient outcomes may be improved if there's a larger amount or quality of medical aid [11]. nurses knowledge play an important role to decreasing the client’s anxiety and stress. informing patients regarding the procedure help to reliable and will inform the patient to minimize the complications after the procedure, but unfortunately, in kurdistan region/rania general hospital in rania, the nurses has no standardiz knowledge that required for the patients regarding (cc). therefore, the researchers were started to study about assessment of nurse’s knowledge regarding cardiac catheterization the aim of this study is to assess nurse’s knowledge regarding cardiac catheterization at general hospital in rania city from the 18 th october 2017 to 1 st april 2018. this aim will address the following objectives: 1to describe socio-demographic characteristics of the study sample. 2to find out the relationship between some sociodemographic characteristics of the study sample and knowledge of nurses regarding cardiac catheterization. 2. methods and materials this cross sectional based study was carried out at general hospital in rania city for the period of about six months from 18th october 2017 to 1st april 2018. the main sample of this study involved 60 nurses which worked there. a well-constructed questionnaire was used to record information about the nurses such as: socio demographic data, which includes (nurse’s age, gender, marital status, monthly income, level of education, residential area, number of training course and years of employment). and some question regarding cardiac catheterization. permission was taken from the rania directorate of health to carry out this study at the rania general hospital in rania city. data was analyzed using package known as statistical package for social science 21. descriptive statistics such as (frequency, percentage, cross tabulation , chi square and p-value. 3. results table 1. distribution of the sample according to socio-demographic characteristic of nurses by frequency and percentage table one shows that (55%) of the nurse’s age more than 30 years old, most of them were female in barely sufficient, 43.3% of them were university nurses and lives in a suburban parameters f % age (years) 30 ≥ 33 55 31 ≤ 27 45 gender male 11 18.3 female 49 81.7 marital status single 18 30 married 42 70 monthly income sufficient 17 28.3 barely sufficient 40 66.7 insufficient 3 5 level of education secondary school 10 16.7 institute 24 40 university 26 43.3 residential area urban 11 18.3 suburban 49 81.7 training course not trained 57 95 trained 3 5 years of employement 1 ˂ 4 6.7 1 10 33 55 10 20 17 28.3 20 ˃ 6 10 185 area , the employment of 55% of them ranged between 1-10 years but 95% of them not trained yet. table 2. assessment of the (secandary, institute and academic) nurse’s knowledge regarding cardiac catheterization by frequency and percentage level of education level of nurse’s knowledge regarding cardiac catheterization low medium high secondary school nurses 0 9 (15%) 1 (1.66%) institute nurse 0 18 (30%) 6 (10%) academic nurse (1.66%) 21 (35% 4 (6.66%) total (1.66%) 48 (80%) 11 (18.32%) table two shows that the level of knowledge of institute nurses has a highest level of knowledge more than secondary school nurses and academic nurses. table 3. assessment of the level of nurse’s knowledge regarding cardiac catheterization with level of scale by frequency and percentage: table three show that true questions, in item 1 (96.7%), item 2 (78.3%) , item7 (55%), item 9 (80%),and item 10 (65%) of the nurses were answered correctly, but concerning false questions in item item 3 (15%), item 4, (16.7%), item5 (15%), 6 (43.3%) and item 8, (50%), of the nurses answered correctly. table 4. association between nurse’s knowledge and some sociodemographic characteristics (for true questions). table four shows that there is a significant relationship between, gender, years of employment and number of no. nurse’s knowledge relating to cardiac catheterization f % 1. information about cardiac catheterization is very necessary for nurse especially regarding diagnosis and treatment procedure for coronary artery occlusion and patient’s preparation for before and after the procedure. true 58 96.7 false 2 3.3 i don’t know 0 0 total 60 100 2. vital sings and ecg should be checked before the procedure. true 47 78.3% false 5 8.4% i don’t know 8 13.3% total 60 100 3. one of the important point is explaining procedure for the patient especially drinking a little amount of water daily after the procedure. true 35 58.3 % false 9 15.0 % i don’t know 16 26.7 % total 60 100 4. the patient cannot take a shower until ten days after the procedure. true 30 50 % false 20 16.7 % i don’t know 10 33.3 % total 60 100 5. the patient should take full rest for 9 hours after the procedure. true 43 71.7 % false 9 15.0 % i don’t know 8 13.3 % total 100 186 training courses with nurse’s knowledge regarding cardiac catheterization. table (5) association between nurse’s knowledge and some sociodemographic characteristics (for false questions) table five shows that there are non significant relationship among age, level of education, years of employment with nurse’s knowledge regarding cardiac catheterization except gender and number of training courses. 4. discussion quantitative design, a descriptive study was conducted on nurses at the general hospital in rania city to assess knowledge of nurses regarding cardiac catheterization. regarding distribution of nurses’socio-demographic characteristics showed that more than half of them were married female, and the age of nurses were equal or above thirty years old, most of them were academic nurses, and more than half of them were barely sufficient and therie years of employement ranged between (1-10) years, the majorities of nurses lived in sub urban area but unfortunately no trained at all that is considered as a big disaster. the study found that the nurses who works in patient care in the coronary care unit should be trained to raise theire knowledge and skills scientifically in order to manage the patients regarding cardiac catheterization procedure which require to apply a standard nursing care that based on and depends on the guideline [12]. the current study found that the institute nurses have a higher level of knowledge than secondary school nurses and academic nurse, the reason behind that due to years of practical experience compared to the more theoretical background. the analysis of the current study showed that the false questions which include questions number (3,4,5,6,8) in the questionnaire and present in table three they were in item 8 which is talking about uncontrolled hypertension during (cc) procedure (50%) and item 6 which dealing with avoiding activity for three months after the process (43.3%), item 3 that asking about explaining procedur for the patient pre procedure (15%), item 4 which talks about the time of taking a shawer after (cc) process (16.7%), and item 5 which deals with taking full rest after the (cc) method (15%) of the nurses answered correctly, this result related to lack of regular training for nurses and theses questions were much more scientific and critical for them, also related to lack of library for special books and journals regarding (cc) procedure and lack of general network at the hospital, but concerning true questions which are questions number (1,2,7,9,10) in the questionnaire and present in table three too the item 1 which deals with importance of information for nurses regarding (cc) (96.7%), item 2 which talks about checking vital signs for patients before the process (78.3%), item 7 which talks about some complications after (cc) method (55%), item 9 which asks regarding using medication before the procedure (80%), and finally item 10 that deals with the main important investigation for the patients before (cc) process (65%) of the nurses were answered correctly, this result due to repeated these things daily during working at the hospital and they heared them many times and these questions were simple for nurses. also this study found the association between nurse’s knowledge and some sociodemographic characteristics of the sample for sixty nurses and it is present in in table foure, the result showed that there are significant relationship among age, gender, years of employement and number of training course with nurse’s knowledge except level of education. this outcome disagrees with a descriptive study conducted in baghdad who reported that there is no association between nurses knowledge and age, gender ,number of teaching , years of work in (cc) [13], but regarding false questions which are questions number (3,4,5,6,8) which deals with the association between nurse’s knowledge of the sample and some socio-demographic characteristics the result shows that there is no relationship between age, level of education and years of employement with nurse’s knowledge regarding cardiac catheterization except gender and number of training courses. this outcome disagrees with a cross sectional study conducted in pakistan that reported knowledge of registered nurses' knowledge regarding cardiac catheterized patients' caring has a good level [14]. the researchers believe that the reason of this result related to the area of the collecting data which has been collected in a suburban area and the nurses that work in coronary care unit are far from canter and from catheterization laboratory, which is not available there but the cardiologist ordered the patients for doing (cc) procedure. as a general in iraq and kurdistan region, the nurses have no the subspecialty in nursing care, finally, the existence of barriers on the way of nurses for studying and obtaining a high degree regarding their specialty is considered as a big problem for nurses. 187 based on the previous conclusion, the researchers recommends the following: 1-training course should be designed by ministry of health for nurses to provide adequate knowledge about cardiac catheterization procedure especially for nurses who work in coronary care unie. 2nurses should be given more apportunities to attend symposia regarding ischemic heart disease. 3evaluation for nurses knowledge annually. 4this field need to much more scientific research to provide adequate knowledge for patients during preparation of patients regarding cardiac catheterization 5. conclusion based on the results of this study, this research concluded that there is no sufficient knowledge of all levels of nurses regarding cardiac catheterization. also the study found a significant relationship between most socio-demographic characteristics in true questions, but there are no significant relationship between most sociodemographic data and level of knowledge regarding cardiac catheterization. references [1] j. m. larsen, j. ravkilde. “acute coronary angiography in patients resuscitated from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest—a systematic review and meta-analysis,” resuscitation, 83(12), pp. 1427-33, 2012. [2] a. c. camuglia, vk. randhawa, s. lavi, dl. walters, “cardiac catheterization is associated with superior outcomes for survivors of out of hospital cardiac arrest: review and meta-analysis,” resuscitation, 85 (11), pp. 1533-1540, 2014. [3] l. harold, g. constantine, s. brad, s. harjit, m. chadwick, e. danie, “ct angiography for safe discharge of patients with possible acute coronary syndromes,” new england journal of medicine, 366 (15), pp. 1393-1403, 2012. [4] j. morton, s. paul, l. michael, “cardiac catheterization handbook e-book,” elsevier health sciences, 2015. [5] m. tavakol, s. ashraf, s. j. brener, “risks and complications of coronary angiography: a comprehensive review,” global journal of health science, 4 (1), pp. 65-93, 2012. [6] c. l. grines, r. o. bonow, d. e. casey, t. j. gardner, p. b. lockhart, d. j. moliterno, “prevention of premature discontinuation of dual antiplatelet therapy in patients with coronary artery stents: a science advisory from the american heart association, american college of cardiology, society for cardiovascular angiography and interventions, american college of surgeons, and american dental association, with representation from the american college of physicians,” journal of the american college of cardiology, 49 (6), pp. 734739, 2007. [7] m. clonic, “cardiac catheterization,” mayoclinic.org, jan. 5, 2018 [online]. available: https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/ cardiaccatheterization/about/pac-20384695. [accessed: jan. 5, 2018]. [8] k. cooper, and g. kelly, “study guide for adult health nursinge-book,” elsevier health sciences, 2015. [9] national heart, lung, and blood institute (nhlbi), “lung and blood institute,” nhlbi.nih.gov jan. 15, 2013 [online]. available: https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health-topics/coronaryangiography. [accessed: jan. 5, 2013]. [10] b. shoulders-odom, “management of patients after percutaneous coronary interventions,” critical care nurse, 28 (5), pp. 26-40, 2008. [11] m. ahmed, “predictors of post-cardiac catheterizationfemoral artery hematoma and bleeding,” journal of american science, 11(3), pp. 16-22, 2015. [12] t. chen, and ja. crozier, “endovascular repair of thoracic aortic pathologies: postoperative nursing implications,” journal of vascular nursing, 32 (2), pp. 63-69, 2014. [13] a. f. hassan, “assessment of nurses knowledge about patient safety after cardiac catheterization for adult patients in ibn al-biter specialist center cardiac surgery,” international journal of science and research (ijsr), 6 (5), pp. 2763-66, 2017. [14] f. mariam, m. afzal, h. sarwar, a. galani, and s. afshan, “knowledge and practice of registered nurses about patient safety after cardiac catheterization in punjab institute of cardiology hospital in lahore, pakistan,” international journal of musculoskeletal pain prevention, 2(2), pp. 233-238, 2017. https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health-topics/coronary-angiography https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health-topics/coronary-angiography kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 95 an approach to study the effects of gbp/usd exchange rate and gold prices on brent oil prices using autoregressive distributed lag (ardl) shaho muhammad wstabdullah muhammed ali kamal department of statistics and informatics department of computer science college of administration and economics college of basic education university of sulaimani university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq shaho.wstabdullah@univsul.edu.iq muhammed.kamal@univsul.edu.iq hozan khalid hamarashid department of information technology computer science institute sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq hozan.khalid@spu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 7 issue 2 december 2022 doi: 10.24017/science.2022.2.8 article history: received: 14/11/2022 accepted: 02/01/2023 the autoregressive distributed lag (ardl) is possible when cointegration analysis is applied to experimentally to shape the relationship between the variables without considering the regressors are stationary at its first difference or level, there is an integration of order one or both of the variables are mixed. being based on one equation framework is a benefit of using the ardl model, in order to take sufficient lags’ number and directing process data generation process in a modelling framework that goes from general to specific. the aim of this study is to focus on the trend of the relation between the gbp/usd rate and brent oil prices, which is done through the adoption of dependent variable which the oil price and the independent variable which is the dollar exchange rate. another target of the research is to show the relationship between gold price and oil prices. the result shows that there are a number of likely influenced variable through by which the dollar-pound rate has effects on the demand and supply of oil as a result of its prices. that is done through the analysis of the relations between the variables of the study. moreover, correlation coefficient values are given that there exists a positive explanatory correlation between the variables of the study. on the whole, there exists a positive long-term equilibrium relation between the gbp/usd exchange rate, price of oil and price of gold. any change in the exchange rate of gbp/usd is causing the changes in prices of brent oil. consequently, the results are consistent with and not consistent with other researches that show opposite relationship. keywords: autoregressive distributed lag, oil prices, gbp/usd exchange rate, gold prices kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 96 1. introduction according to [1] the ardl model is thought to be a standard squares regression where both explanatory and response variables fall behind as regressors. despite of its usage in both econometrics and statistics for tens of years, the ardl model only became popular recently as a way to examine cointegration between variables which were extended by [2] after their suggestion by[3].there are many techniques for cointegration in the literature, among those [4] consider the expression of “cointegration” as a technique being used for the reflection of the equilibrium long-term among the variables which tend to meet with time, while ardl approach is known to be the newest technique of cointegration to check equilibrium and dynamic relations between explanatory and response variables. some instances cointegration techniques are those which [2][5] supposed. the usage of the ardl model started as they realized that the variables to be studied are found to be non-stationary and there is an integration of the same order between them, after that there is a possibility to study the cointegration relationship (i.e the likelihood the variables move with each other) by the ardl approach between explanatory and response variables in long-term. the adoption of ardl is possible when cointegration analysis is applied to experimentally to shape the relationship between the variables without considering the regressors are stationary at its first difference or level, there is an integration of order one or both of the variables are mixed [2]. being based on one equation framework is a benefit of using the ardl model, in order to take sufficient lags’ number and directing process data generation process in a modelling framework that goes from general to specific[6]. in addition to all these, the argument by [7] states that the cointegration test of johansen needs a big sample in order to get reasonable, although, it indicates that ardl approach works better with a the sample of a small [8]. 1.1 objective of the research the aim of this study is to focus on the trend of the relation between the gbp/usd rate and brent oil prices, which is done through the adoption of dependent variable which the oil price and the independent variable which is the dollar exchange rate. another target of the research is to show the relationship between gold price and oil prices. 1.2 hypothesis • there exists a correlation between the prices of gold and the prices brent oil. • there is a correlation between the exchange rate of gbp/usd and the prices brent oil. • there exists a relation that is sourced from the prices of gold toward the prices of brent oil. • any increase or decrease in the exchange rate of gbp/usd will cause important changes in the prices of brent oil in the long run. • there exists a relation that is sourced from the exchange rate of gbp/usd towards the prices of brent oil. 2. literature review the study conducted by [9] which is one of the most recent studies using ardl, searches for another treatment for spurious regression, that is caused by the unit root and analysis of cointegration, these are frequently used for the treatment of spurious regression but because of some specification as, innovation process distribution, structural breaks choice of the deterministic part and autoregressive lag length choice, they are not stable. the research which for the most part concentrated on monte carlo simulations, discovered that the main reason of spurious regression is caused by variables that are missing in the values of lag, which the treatment is an alternative method that leads us to the variable that is missing and as a result to ardl model. as a conclusion the study comes up with the confirmation that we can benefit from ardl as different way to the spurious regression problem. [10] which benefited from using a small t (number of time periods) and a big n (number of cross section data), concentrated on a single estimation equation of ardl model from panel kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 97 data. while micro panel data on individuals and firms are represented by the mentioned structure, to acquire consistent parameter estimates, the estimation ways don’t need the time dimension to be bigger. single equation models with internal independent variables and dynamics autoregressive, the estimators of generalized method of moments (gmm) which were extensively used in this situation, are the focus eras of the study. two instances are put into the discussion as a simple autoregressive model for rates of investment and a basic production function, using firm-level panel data. the conclusion from the paper is that to get consistent parameter estimation an extensive range of microeconomic applications, we can benefit from using gmm estimators. although these estimators may face biases of large finite sample, when the estimator of consistent gmm is compared to an estimator of a simple kind such as the level ordinary least square, these biases can be detected and prevented in experimental studies [11]. financial and economic with statistics indicators are the three topics that most ardl research is done about. the research which studies the long-term relation between the rate of inflation and its factors in iran using ardl is done by [12]. the study concluded that the most statistically significant reasons affecting the rate of inflation in the country are the liquidity, inflation (imported), the exchange rate and the gdp. the ardl cointegration technique is used by[13] to study the relation between the chinese share market and the rate of exchange. the conclusion of the study is that the stock market is affected positively by the rate of exchange and money supply. the approach of ardl bounds testing was used by[14] to investigate relations between the rates of inflation and the reserves of foreign exchange in pakistan, for almost half a century (from 1960 to 2007). the paper concluded that a long-term cointegrating relation between the rates of inflation and the reserves of foreign exchange in the country.[15] implemented research using the approach of ardl bounds testing for a period of 28 years from 1982 to 2010 to study how volatility of oil prices affects the rate of inflation in taiwan. the conclusion of the paper indicates to a relation between the two but of a long-term and in addition to that the paper concluded any global increase in the prices of oil causes inflation merely in the long-term. 3. methods and materials 3.1 data collection the data to investigate the impact of the exchange rate of gbp/ usd and the prices of gold on the prices of oil from 2000 to 2022 on a monthly basis in the world were collected from various sources such as the exchange rate of gbp/ usd (e.x): the exchange rate of the united states. dollar against a great britain currency (pound), the prices of brent oil (b.o.): brent oil barrel price. (g.p) price of gold per ounce in us dollars (usd/oz). the response and explanatory variables are compounded monthly and based on nominal values (01/200008/2022). the data were collected from [16]. 3.2 methods an ardl methodology is being adopted to investigate the long-term relation between the response and explanatory variables under examination [2]. the time series not being integrated from the second degree or more i (2) is the only criterion that makes this test different from the other tests of its kind. although, the method of self-regression accepts chains of stability at the levels of i (0) and i (1) or both together. prior to the equation analysis, we should be ensured that the variables under study are stationary; which means our variables do not have unit root problem. later on, the co-integration test of (ardl) is implemented while estimation of the model in short and long term and the test of granger causality are done. lastly, the results of the analysis are shown as followings. the autoregressive distributed lag model adopts the following form: ln〖bo〗_t=δ_0+∑_(k=1)^n▒〖δ_1k ∆ln〖bo〗_(t-k)+ ∑_(k=1)^n▒〖δ_2k ∆ln〖ed〗_(t-k) 〗〗+∑_(k=1)^n▒〖δ_3k ∆ln〖gp〗_(t-k)+π_1 ln〖bo〗_(t-1) 〗+π_2 ln〖ed〗_(t-1)+π_3 ln〖gp〗_(t-1)+εt ……………….. (1) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 98 δ shows variables differences of the first level, the response variable parameter (b.o.) decelerated for a single period to the left side of the equation; π indicates long-run relations parameter, (δ) represents first differences parameters for the short period where random stroke errors and segment are represented by ԑ and δ0 respectively. the first step in the ardl bounds testing approach is to estimate equation (1) by ordinary least squares (ols) in order to test for the existence of a long-run relationship among the variables by conducting an f-test. estimation of the above equation is the first step of the testing approach which is done by (ols) so that we can test if there is long-term relation between the variables through applying an f-test to determine the lagged levels coefficients for response and explanatory variables in joint significance. h_0: π_1=π_2=π_3=0 h_1: π_1≠π_2≠π_3≠0. a test for co-integration is provided by two asymptotic critical values bounds when the explanatory variables are i(d), while (0≤d≤1): the smallest value representing the regressors are i(0), and the largest value representing the regressors are i(1). regardless, the integration orders of the time series null hypothesis is being rejected if the f-statistic value is greater than the upper critical value. on the other hand, null hypothesis is being accepted if the f-statistic value is smaller than the lower critical value. finally, the result is inconclusive if the f-statistic value is in the range between the upper and lower critical values [17]. 3.3 stationarity tests the dickey-fuller test is one of the most common tests to examine the unit root test. the simplest formula of this test dates back to 1979 named as the test of simple dickeyfuller (d.f.), estimating the autoregressive model of first-order ar (1) is the basis of the test as follows: ∆x_t=αx_(t-1)+ε_t ……………. (2) where ε_t shows the stochastic error with the following conditions supposedly: e(ε_t )=0,var(ε_t )=e(x_t-μ)=σ^2,cov(ε_i,ε_j )=0 i≠j, e_t follows normal distribution according to [18] under the above assumptions a suitable estimation technique is the least square estimation as the estimation is straightforward. if the value of α equals to 1, the variable (x_t) has a unit root and its non-stationary then it is called the white noise error term. if we subtract (x_(t-1)) from both sides of the above equation, it will be as follows: ∆x_t=(α-1〖)x〗_(t-1)+ε_t …….. (3) the equation becomes as follows if we set (α-1 = p) ∆x_t=px_(t-1)+ε_t using ols method for estimation, the three models become as follows: ∆x_t=px_(t-1)+ε_t ……… (4) ∆x_t=θ_0+px_(t-1)+ε_t ……… (5) ∆x_t=θ_0+θ_1+px_(t-1)+ε_t …….. (6) all the above have been done so we can test the following null hypothesis: null hypothesis h0: p = 0 (1) alternative hypothesis h1: p ≠ 0 (2) the time series is non-stationary at the level if p = 0 is calculated to be ∆x_t=ε_t. if the conditions for the alternative hypothesis are applied, the time is called stationary and it is of order i (0). taking the first difference or second differences we can make the time series stationary. that is when the time series under study is said to be stationary. in case of a serial correlation, the dickey-fuller test in its simple formula is not reliable and appropriate to examine if the time series is stationary or not. that is when the test of augmented dickey-fuller should be used which is based on estimating of the following models: ∆x_t=px_(t-1)+∑_(j=2)^p▒〖φ_j ∆px_(t-j+1) 〗+ε_t…….. (7) ∆x_t=θ_0+px_(t-1)+∑_(j=2)^p▒〖φ_j ∆px_(t-j+1) 〗+ε_t ………. (8) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 99 ∆x_t=θ_0+θ_1 t+px_(t-1)+∑_(j=2)^p▒〖φ_j ∆px_(t-j+1) 〗+ε_t…….. (9) firstly, the optimal lag (p) is chosen which leads to the removal of the self-correlation with stochastic errors using specific tolls in statistics. the two criteria of akaik and schwarz are the most significant of these tools. however, there will be a false significance of the parameters if there exist a too short lag length that is caused by the information which is not explained. the akaike information criteria (aic) which is a statistical method is often used to determine the lags number. this method is a way of balancing between the underfitting case and overfitting case. as it does not depend on accepting or rejecting the null hypothesis, the akaike information criteria are not a classic hypothesis test. it depends on scoring system and choosing the “most suitable” model as follows: aic=-2log(l)+2m …… (10) where m represents the number of parameters and the estimated model likelihood function of log value. hannan quinn criterion (hq) and bayesian information criterion (bic) which are the other frequent lag selection criteria are used as followings: bic=-2log(l)+ m log(n) ……. (11) hq=-2log(l)+ 2m log (log(n)) ……. (12) where n denotes the number of observations or the sample size. 4. results and discussion the description of the main statistics measurement such as mean and standard deviation etc. for the variables are shown in table 1: table1: main descriptive statistics variables abbreviation mean standard deviation maximum minimum oil price bo 4.0766 0.49690 4.94 2.95 gold price gp 6.7857 6.3077 7.59 5.56 exchange rate ex 1.2021 0.16044 1.58 0.85 as shown in the table (1) that the mean and standard deviation of oil price are (4.0766, 4.94) respectively, (6.76857, 6.3077) for gold price and (1.2021, 0.16044) for exchange rate. table 2: correlation matrix of variables variables abbreviation bo gp ex oil price bo 1 0.733 ** 0.721 ** gold price gp 0.733 ** 1 0.416 ** exchange rate ex 0.721 ** 0.416 ** 1 ** significance with alpha equals 0.01. table 2 indicates that there is a positive correlation between the rate if exchange and the price of oil with statistically significance because p-value of it were less than 0.05. there is a moderate correlation coefficient between the price of oil and the rate of exchange with statistically significance and almost approximately high correlation between gold price and oil and price. according to the result of correlation coefficient is that the problem of multi-collinearity does not exist among explanatory variables because the result for all were less than 0.08. 4.1 unit root tests the conduction of this test is needed to make sure that response and explanatory variables are not integrated of second difference i (2), the time series not being integrated from the second degree or more i (2) is the only criterion that makes this test different from the other tests of its kind. although, the method of self-regression accepts chains of stability at the levels of i (0) and i (1) or both together [2]. the unit tests of response and explanatory variables show in the table 3 and table 4. table 3 illustrates the test of augmented dickey-fuller result and table 4 illustrates the test of phillips-perron result. the null hypothesis is that the time series a stationary in level and first difference or both. result shows that the null hypothesis accepts kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 100 because p-value was less than 0.05 in first difference. the results are similar with the test of augmented dickey-fuller and the cointegration tests of ardl can be proceed with these tests because response and explanatory variable are stationary in first difference. table 3: unit root test of augmented dickey-fuller variable adf test stat * 1%level ** 5% level p-value at level (0) ln bo -2.297963 -3.454443 -2.872041 0.8299 ln ex -1.689155 -3.454353 -2.872001 0.4449 ln gp -0.753304 -3.454353 -2.872001 0.8299 1 st difference i(1) ln bo -12.39297 -3.45444 -2.872041 0.000 ln ex -16.30667 -3.45444 -2.872047 0.000 ln gp -18.63172 -3.45444 -2.872041 0.000 table 4: unit root test of augmented dickey-fuller phillips-perron variable adf test stat * 1%level ** 5% level p-value at level (0) ln bo -2.037016 -3.454443 -2.872001 0.2709 ln ex -1.791431 -3.454353 -2.872001 0.3844 ln gp -0.651940 -3.454353 -2.872001 0.8552 1 st difference i(1) ln bo -12.39471 -3.45444 -2.872041 0.000 ln ex -16.31323 -3.45444 -2.872041 0.000 ln gp -18.71194 -3.45444 -2.872041 0.000 4.2 normality test it is indicated in the table (5) that the value of jarquebera equals to 1.430124 and the probability of it is 0.491024 which is greater than the common alpha 0.05. thus, residuals are normally distributed. table 5: normality test mean std.dev skewness kurtosis jarque-bera probability 3.69 0.05321 -0.251234 4.21354 1.430124 0.491024 4.3 correlation lm test it is clear in the table (6) that the null hypothesis (there is no serial correlation exist in the model) were rejected because p-value of obs*r-squared were less than the common alpha 0.05 and accepts the alternative hypothesis (there is serial correlation exist in the model). in conclusion, there is serial correlation exist in the model. table 6: breusch-godfrey serial correlation lm test f-statistics 3.01243 prob (2, 261) 0.1425 obs*r-squared 11.9824 prob.chi-square (2) 0.00597 4.4 heteroskedasticity tets it is clear in the table (7) that there is no heteroskedasticity problem exists in the model because the prob. chi squar (6) of obs*r-squared were greater than 0.05. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 101 table 7: breusch-pagan-godfrey f-statistics 1.69576 prob (6, 263) 0.2096 obs*r-squared 12.98542 prob.chi-square (6) 0.2199 scaled explained ss 3.74521 prob.chi-square (6) 0.9487 4.5 lag selection after we have found the order of integrating, twosteps of cointegration of ardl procedure is applied. in the first stage, likelihood ratio (lr) criteria, sbc (schwarz bayesian criterion) and aic are used to determine the length of optimal lag of vector autoregressive. table 8 illustrates the optimal lag chosen for vector autoregressive, it is crucial that we can choose high enough lag to make sure that the optimal order is not exceeding it. five vector autoregressive (var (p)) p = 0,1,2,3,4 models are expected from 2000 to 2022. because of minimization of the lost in the degree of freedom and the selection of smallest possible lag length, schwarz bayesian criterion is for lag selection. as a result, lags two are selected in this research. table 8: selection of optimal lag lags lr fpe aic sc hq 0 na 1498861 22.7385 22.77448 22.75018 1 2505.751 104.6792 13.16452 13.38694 13.22984 2 33.46569 * 98.38573 * 13.10249 * 13.38694 13.21679 3 6.040995 102.8597 13.55325 13.55325 13.31018 4 7.206401 107.0148 13.18636 13.71462 13.39863 4.6 stability tests according to [19] the cusum square (cusumsq) test and the cumulative sum of recursive residuals (cusum) are applied to study the stability of the model. cusum test helps to indicate if there is systematic change in the regression coefficients. the parameters of the null hypothesis are stable and the ones of the alternative hypothesis are not. consequently, in the beginning of the figure, the blue line is not within the red lines but later it is within the two red lines, which implies that the parameters are going to be stable. cusum of square test helps in indicating if there is a sudden change in the coefficients of regression. if we interpret that, in the beginning the blue line was within red lines and then it was within the red line, it means at first that the null hypothesis were accepted and the alternative hypothesis is rejected, but it was going to be stable because the blue line was going be within the red lines. -0.2 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 25 50 75 100 125 150 175 200 225 250 cusum of squares 5% significance -60 -40 -20 0 20 40 60 25 50 75 100 125 150 175 200 225 250 cusum 5% significance kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 102 figure1: cusum test figure2: cusum of squares test 4.7 co-integration rank  h0: there exists no co-integration relationship (no longterm relationship between response and explanatory variables)  h1: there exists at least one co-integration (longterm relationship between response and explanatory variables) table 9: unrestricted co-integration hypothesized eigenvalue trace statistic 0.05 critical value prob. ** none * 0.081792 30.00113 29.79707 0.0474 at most 1 0.016753 7.217613 15.49471 0.5525 at most 2 0.010086 2.706767 3.841466 0.0999 hypothesized eigenvalue trace statistic 0.05 critical value prob. ** none * 0.081792 22.78351 21.13162 0.0290 at most 1 0.016753 4.510847 14.26460 0.8019 at most 2 0.010086 2.706767 3.841466 0.0999 table (9) displays the johnson test in co-intergration test under 95% of confidence level. as the p-value was greater than the common alpha 0.05 or the value of statistics was more than the common alpha 0.05, the null hypothesis there exists no co-integration relationship (no longterm relationship between response and explanatory variables) is rejected and the alternative hypothesis there exists at least one co-integration (longterm relationship between response and explanatory variables) is being accepted. consequently, there is long-run relation among the response and explanatory variables. 6.264 6.268 6.272 6.276 6.280 6.284 6.288 a r d l (2 , 1 , 1 ) a r d l (2 , 2 , 1 ) a r d l (3 , 1 , 1 ) a r d l (2 , 1 , 2 ) a r d l (2 , 0 , 1 ) a r d l (2 , 3 , 1 ) a r d l (3 , 2 , 1 ) a r d l (2 , 2 , 2 ) a r d l (2 , 1 , 3 ) a r d l (3 , 1 , 2 ) a r d l (4 , 1 , 1 ) a r d l (2 , 1 , 4 ) a r d l (2 , 4 , 1 ) a r d l (3 , 0 , 1 ) a r d l (2 , 0 , 2 ) a r d l (2 , 3 , 2 ) a r d l (3 , 3 , 1 ) a r d l (2 , 1 , 6 ) a r d l (6 , 1 , 1 ) a r d l (2 , 2 , 3 ) akaike information criteria kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 103 figure 3: akaike information criteria appropriate the test of lag periods from table 5 and figure 3, it is obvious that the most suitable models using aic are ardl (2, 1, 1) for oil price, lgold price, lgbp/usd, respectively. 4.8 co-integration test of ardl after establishing the long-run cointegration relation, the estimation of equation (2) was done. table 10 shows the results acquired by normalizing oil prices in the long term. we can notice significant effects of independent variables lags on the oil price. first and second lag of oil price have a statistically significant impact at 1% confidence level. first and second lag of gold price have a statistically significant impact on oil price too which shows as a highly statistically significant impact from first and second lag of exchange rate of lgbp/usd. in addition, the negative value of gold price and exchange rate in the first lag means that those have a negative impact on oil price in the first lag. table 10: ardl co-integration test variable coefficient std. error tstatistic prob.* lbo(-1) 1.109304 0.058376 19.00283 0.0000 lbo(-2) -0.205508 0.059017 -3.482171 0.0006 lgp 0.255899 0.120368 2.125970 0.0185 lgp(-1) -0.218031 0.110245 -1.977660 0.0411 lex 0.820413 0.198258 3.810541 0.0002 lex(-1) -0.628727 0.196142 -3.205468 0.0015 c -0.019040 0.070195 -0.271250 0.8764 r-squared 0.961099 mean dependent var 65.80085 adjusted rsquared 0.961099 s.d. dependent var 29.61642 s.e. of regression 5.563761 akaike info criterion 6.296010 sum squared resid 8141.281 schwarz criterion 6.389302 log likelihood -842.9613 hannan-quinn criter 6.333472 f-statistic 1226.534 durbin-watson stat 1.982265 prob (f-statistic) 0.0000 4.9 f-bounds test as a result, we have reached an establishment that none of the selected series i(2) or above and the optimal lag order determination, long run cointegration presence test was done using bounds test. table 11 illustrates the results of ardl bound test of cointegration. f-statistics is greater (6.503655) than critical value of the upper bound, according to [2], (at 1% significance level) is 5.0. therefore, there are enough reasons for the rejection of the null hypothesis which states no long-term relation at 1% significance level and probably there exists cointegration between variables under investigation. table 11: bound test results test statistics value k f-statistic 6.503655 2 significance critical value bounds i0 bound i1 bound 10% 2.53 3.25 5% 3.2 3.77 2.5% 3.45 4.28 1% 4.23 4.99 4.10 long-run relationship table 12 displays the long-run result. the gold price coefficient is statistically significant with a value of 0.393679, which implies that an increase with the rate of 1% in supply of relative kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 104 gold price, causes an increase of 0.393619 in oil price in the long term. the relative coefficient of gbp/usd exchange rate is 1.317447 and it is significant, that indicates an increase of 1% in the relative gbp/usd exchange rate results in an increase of 1.317447 appreciation in oil price in the long term. table 12: estimated long run coefficients variables coefficient long run coefficient standard error t-statistics prob. lgp 0.393619 0.110915 3.548827 0.0005 lex 1.317447 0.446136 2.953016 0.0034 c -0.197918 0.720404 -0.274732 0.7837 4.11 estimations of ardl-based error correction model after estimating parameters of long-term, the estimation of short-term parameters is needed, specifically for the estimation of error correction model. in table 13, it was found that error correction model parameters are significant at level of 1% and 5%. short term and long term signals are positive as well excluding the parameter of error correction which equals to −0.096204. it was found that the statistically significance is at level 1% with a negative signal leads to an increase in the long term equilibrium relation. there is no mechanism for error correction in the model and the parameter is used to measure the returning speed in the long term to an equilibrium position. the returning speed to equilibrium position equals to −0.096204. table 13: estimations result of long run from ardl-based error correction model selected model ardl (2, 1, 1) variable coefficient std. error t-statistic prob. d(lbo(-1)) 0.205508 0.058424 3.517545 0.0000 d(lgp) 0.255899 0.137735 2.857907 0.0165 d(lex) 0.755470 0.194697 3.880234 0.0001 cointeq (-1) -0.096204 0.024762 -3.885118 0.0001 4.12 granger causality test table 14 shows a summary of a unidirectional causal relation that was seen between the oil price and gbp/usd exchange rate, which is significant at 1.83%, as the p-value is smaller than 5%. it illustrates that the exchange rate of gbp/usd has effects on of brent oil price, but price of brent oil has no effect on the gbp/usd exchange rate. table 14: granger causality test of brent oil price and gbp/usd null hypothesis obs f-statistic prob l ex does not granger cause lbo 269 4.05930 0.0183 lbo does not granger cause lex 0.55357 0.5756 table 15 shows a summary of a one-way causal relationship that was seen between the oil price and gold price, which is statistically significant at 1.92%, as the p-value is less than 5%. it shows that gold price has effects on the price of brent oil, but price of brent oil has no effect on the gold price. table 15: granger causality test of brent oil price and gold price null hypothesis obs f-statistic prob l gp does not granger cause lbo 269 3.87116 0.0192 lbo does not granger cause lgp 0.45639 0.6347 table 16 shows a summary of a one-way causal relationship that was found between the gbp/usd and gold price, which is not significant, because the p-value is more than 5%. it shows that gold price has no effect on lgbp/usd has no effect on gold price. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 105 table 16: granger causality test of gold price and gbp/usd null hypothesis obs f-statistic prob l ex does not granger cause lgp 269 0.16014 0.8521 lgp does not granger cause lex 0.12959 0.8785 5. conclusion in this research, we tried to investigate the nature of the relation between the gbp/usd exchange rate, the brent oil price, and the gold price. result shows that there are several possible channels influenced through which the dollar-pound rate affects in one way or another oil supply and demand and as a result oil prices. that is done through the analysis of the relations between study variables. moreover, correlation coefficient values are given that there exists a positive explanatory correlation between the variables of the study. we have found a causal relationship between the gold price and the brent oil price, which is unidirectional. this relationship demonstrates that the gold price has effects on the price of brent oil, but not vice versa. in addition, when the exchange rate varies it leads to changes in oil prices. this is a unidirectional relationship from the gbp/usa towards oil prices which was shown by the granger causality test. finally, in this study, there is a co-integration relationship between the interpreting variables and the brent oil price in us dollars per barrel (b.o), represented in gbp/usd exchange rate and the gold price in us dollars per ounce (g.p.). on the whole, there exists a positive long-term equilibrium relation between the gbp/usd exchange rate, price of oil and price of gold. any change in the exchange rate of gbp/usd is causing the changes in prices of brent oil. consequently, the results are consistent with and not consistent with other researches that show opposite relationship. references [1] h. greene. econometric analysis, 7th edition. prentice hall, 2008. 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[13] g. tian, and s. ma. the relationship between stock returns and the foreign exchange rate: the ardl approach. journal of the asia pacific economy, 15 (4), pp. 490–508, 2010. [14] m. chaudhry, m. akhtar, and k. mahmood. foreign exchange reserves and inflation in pakistan: evidence https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/83973/ kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 106 from ardl modelling approach. international journal of economics and finance, 3 (1), pp. 69–76, 2011. [15] k. chou, and y.tseng. pass-through of oil prices to cpi inflation in taiwa. international research journal of finance and economics, 6 (9), pp. 73–83, 2011. [16] data. available at: <www.investing.com>. [17] m. pesaran, and b. pesaran. working with microfit 4.0: interactive economic analysis. oxford, university press, oxford, 1997. [18] r. hill, w. griffiths, and g. lim. principles of econometrics, john wiley & sons, 2012. [19] r. brown, j. durbin, and j. evans. techniques for testing the constancy of regression relationships over time. journal of the royal statistical society, series b, 37(2) pp. 149–92, 1975.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 3 | issue 2 | december 2018 | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.3.4 received: 14 october 2018 | accepted: 20 november 2018 a novel cloud-based temperature monitoring service to datacenter environment najmadin wahid boskany mustafa ibrahim khaleel miran taha abdulla department of computer department of computer department of computer college of science college of science college of science university of sulaimani university of sulaimani university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq najm.wahid@univsul.edu.iq mustafa.khaleel@univsul.edu.iq miran.abdullah@univsul.edu.iq 20 abstract: as temperature-efficient of cloud datacenters becomes one of many challenges faces the engineers in today’s business environment, virtualized monitoring the resources over these datacenters is the cloud provider’s interest in a way the providers can control their temperature remotely anywhere around the world. techniques proposed by existing works are focused on executing many cloud modules on less cloud-server which cannot be practical because massive volume of cloud modules will be scheduled by cloud tenants. this motivated us to present a novel solution and propose a real-time temperature aware for cloud network datacenters. the proposed paradigm is constructed based on defining dual thresholds per datacenter to control the level of temperature. moreover, we have set the upper threshold to 25 degree and the lower one to 15 degree. surpassing these values alerts network administrator through cloud-based software service to operate the cooling unit(s). the microcontrollers that have been incorporated are both arduino and gsm shield. the simulation results showed that our heuristic had the ability to control the temperature per datacenter approximately 63%. keywords: cloud monitoring, temperature awareness, arduino microcontroller, cloud underlying network. 1. introduction growing the large-scale of computation modules executed on cloud servers has increased. seeking for an effective cloud scheduler to achieve optimal network performance has been attracting provider desire to establish many real network deployment experiments in cloud datacenters [1]. hundreds of thousands of internetworks connected servers are operated inside these datacenters in order to retrieve requiring instants made by cloud tenants. however, troubleshooting and maintaining the temperature of these datacenters has become crucial in cloud network system [2] which motivated provider to call for some novel real-time monitoring techniques to adjust the level of temperature to avoid system disturbed. factors such as number of racks, number of servers, and electricity power cloud raise the temperature of a datacenter. several heuristic algorithms have been proposed to cumbersome the problem of lowering down the temperature of datacenters. most of these paradigms had the ability to adjust the measure of temperature locally. with advanced cloud network techniques, today, monitoring the temperature of these servers can be done remotely using the concept of cloud web-based and wireless-sensor temperature monitoring systems [3]. in this paper, we present a novel solution and propose a realtime temperature aware for cloud network datacenters. the proposed paradigm mainly optimizes three objectives. in the first step, a dual threshold has been predefined to maintain the level of temperature and keep the values between these two thresholds. in the second step, a message will be directed to the network administrator in case of violating either the upper threshold or the lower threshold. moreover, the statistics data will be reported and directed to the cloud-based storage. finally, based on the necessities of datacenter, a cooling unit or units will be initiated to lowering down the temperature of the computational servers. the simulation is based on sim900 quad-band gsm/gprs and arduino microcontrollers. the temperature of the server room will be sensed by arduino sensor and when it reaches the upper threshold, which we set it to 25 degree, two actions will be placed; first an alter message will be redirected to the administrator through sim900 quad-band gsm/gprs microcontroller and then an operate signal will be sent to the cooling units. however, the same situation occurs for the lower threshold. when it surpasses 15 degree, the same two messages will be redirected while in this time is to tear down the cooling units. the simulation results showed that our heuristic had the ability to control the temperature per datacenter approximately 63%. 2. related work the problem of adjusting the temperature of datacenters has been addressed by many research works. some of these studies proposed ideas based on scheduling cloud loads onto less computing hosts as much as possible to decrease the level of generated heats by these centers. however, these solution cloud give a tremendous benefit when cloud tenants schedule moderate modules. but the issue arises when these assigned jobs get heavier. one of the most advanced techniques to overcome such concern is to define multi-threshold per cloud inter-network servers and keep the rates of the temperature between these two thresholds for system reliability. according to [4], more than 60% of the energy consumed in the datacenter is wasted by the cooling system in inefficient 21 ways. so, a wireless sensor prototype was presented to enhance the energy consumption per datacenter and improve the system performance. the proposed system was constructed based on arduino open source microcontroller integrated with xbee rf module which was programmed to operate with the zigbee mesh network systems [5]. the problem of mismatching between the requirement of it equipment and the supplement by the facility fans is discussed to overcome the issue of cooling inefficiency [6]. two virtual sensors namely, volumetric airflow and outlet temperature sensor, are proposed to decease the heat generated by servers. both sensors are exposed to the intel data center manager (dcm) using ipmi commands. a web-based temperature monitoring system was presented to allow the administrator to follow the temperature rates for the server rooms via any node with data connection [7]. when the temperature reaches undesired value, the system automatically will direct a text message to the administrator. a microcontroller was programmed using mp lab ide to justify the temperature of the room [8]. the proposed system allows the administrator to input different temperature ranges through four-key keypad. interestingly, when the temperature surpasses the heat threshold, the opto-coupler will switch the room heater to ac and vice versa. a new paradigm has been proposed in [9]. the technique predicts the temperature level of cloudbased virtual machines through cross-cutting datacenter infrastructure parameters such as server capacity and initiating cooling system. 3. proposed cloud framework cloud tenants submit their modules within the qos requirement to the cloud scheduler to be dispatched over cloud resources. this massive of scheduled modules need instant process which in turn heats up the level of temperature for executing vm-based units. our heuristic architecture includes four main entities. the cloud application, cloud meta-mapper, cloud scheduler, and cloud underlying hardware. 3.1 cloud software multitenancy: within this software architecture, a single instance of cloud network software initiates over a server and multiple cloud-based service users. however, users submit their module requests (i.e., single task, dagstructured workflow applications, qos requirements, etc.) from anywhere around the world to the cloud-meta mapper. 3.2 cloud network meta-scheduler: meta-scheduler (mapper) considers as an interface between cloud-based tenants and cloud-based infrastructure to enable utilization efficient services. this includes satisfying requirements such as tenants specified deadline, transfer user’s demands to the most temperature-aware datacenter and keep monitoring both energy consumption for the cloud hardware and cooling system. 3.3 cloud local scheduler: receives modules from the main meta-mapper and dispatch them over cloud resources when they are inter-network connected. however, these schedulers are operating based on both arduino and gsm shield microcontrollers. 3.4 cloud network underlying hardware: handers of thousands of servers are operated in this based infrastructure. the temperature consumption from these servers will be sensed by lm35 arduino temperature sensor. dual temperature thresholds have been predefined per room and monitored by cloud local scheduler to keep the temperature status in steady level. figure 1: proposed cloud system framework [14] 4. methodology the massive scheduled workloads by cloud consumers increase the rate of energy consumption by cloud data centers which in turn affects not only the system utilization interest but also the environments. based on aforementioned facts, cloud providers are highly required to design an automated monitoring system to adjust the layer of temperature generated by the servers within a datacenter. our intention is to define dual-thresholds, the upper and lower thresholds, to maintain the temperature consumption at steady level. to attain such objectives, our paradigm periodically senses the temperature consumed by cloud resources through lm35 temperature sensor circuit. the values are directed to the arduino microcontroller to either initiate the cooling units or 22 tearing down them. when the temperature surpasses the upper-thresholds, 250, a signal will be directed to turn on the cooling systems. however, this system will be turned off when the temperature falls down under lower threshold, 150. this back and forth will save a tremendous amount of energy. network administrator will be alerted in both cases, when the temperature surpasses the upper threshold or falls down lower threshold, via sim900 gsm module. the statistic values of these variations are directed to a database server for further processing. as mentioned before, two main microcontrollers have been conducted in this work namely atmega328 microcontroller which consumes low power [10] and a sim900 quad-band gsm/gprs microcontroller has been applied to notify cloud admin via portable node by sending short message using gsm network. figure 2: microcontroller components moreover, we also adapted a temperature sensor namely lm35 to monitor the temperature of established cloud rooms. this type of sensor prior to the others by having more storage capacity and ability to instant process [10]. the lm35 does not require any external calibration or trimming to provide typical accuracies of +_-1/40c at room temperature and +8/40c over a full -55 to +1500c temperature range. the lm35’s low output impedance, linear output, and precise inherent calibration make interfacing to readout or control circuitry especially easy. it can be used with single power supplies, or with plus and minus supplies. the lm35 thus has an advantage over linear temperature sensors calibrated in 0 kelvin, as the user is not required to subtract a large constant voltage from its output to obtain convenient centigrade scaling. the lm35 is rated to operate over a -550 to +1500 temperature range [7]. 5. system flow chart the proposed cloud system model first set its parameters (i.e.; reading sensor input). then temperature values continually sent to file in attached cloud web server, if received temperature value exceeded a certain threshold which is equal to 25c (i.e.; yes in flow chart), it means the sensor received high temperature value, then microcontroller sends signal to activate alarm (buzzer and led), turn on cooling fan, and send notification through sms to admin’s mobile phone. otherwise, if the temperature value is under 15c value then microcontroller sends signal to turn of cooling fan in order to reduce power consumption. the flow chart of the system is provided in figures 3. therefore, the message flow includes an input node that provides the messages that are processed in the system, as shown in figure 4, it explains that the connected temperature sensor to the arduino which sends data to the equipment, this is in order to obtain the information of datacenter’s temperature then the information is sent to cloud computing to monitor, when the system detects abnormal information, the system sends a message to arduino to active the cooling system. figure 3: cloud system flowchart 6. energy consumption model according to [11-14], essentially, a watt-minute/hour meter is designed to measure energy of power consumed within a period of time. it can be shown as energy = power * time. in simple terms, the average of power can be calculated by the following equation: 𝑤𝑤 = 1 𝑇𝑇 � (𝑣𝑣 ∗ 𝑖𝑖 ) 𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑 (1) 𝑇𝑇 0 where: 𝑣𝑣 is instantaneous voltage, 𝑖𝑖 is instantaneous current, t = time and t= period. the method used to measure power, which is taken from the basic definition of power equation. the integration is performed by lm347 module sensing transferring reset usb usb drive chip battery management battery power arduino microcontroller processor gsm module sim card antenna web server adminis trator voltage measurement current measurement surpasses 250 under 150 turn on cooling system turn off cooling system relay programming header start detect assigned cloud workloads measure temperature per vm detect overall temperature per dc value > 250 value < 150 yes tearing down cooling units yes operate cooling units direct sms to the administrator process continued 23 numerical method, where integration can be depicted in equation 2. 𝑤𝑤 = 1 𝑁𝑁 �𝑣𝑣𝑖𝑖 ∗ 𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 (2) 𝑁𝑁 1 means that taken from the instantaneous values and then divide it by a number of times to get the average power which equals the real power. the system can measure instantaneous voltage and current, and real power. 7. energy consumption algorithm in this section, we explain the parameters are used to provide the decision on proposing our algorithm for reducing power consumption. generally, the operating areas of the electric motor can be classified into three levels of power consumption; when the cooling system starts to rotate, which consumes higher energy (startup time: time of higher consumption). the operation time, which is the best performance of the system (operation time: time of controlling rotation of fan speed) and turnoff time, which is the fan stopped to rotate or very slow rotating (off time: time of low consumption or nothing). therefore, the parameters of our proposed algorithm include; maximum and minimum temperature values, startup time of rotating the fan while cooling the datacenter, controlled rotation of the fan and sleep time of the fan. in order to consider power saving relative to upper and lower level of temperature, the values of 25 and 15 are selected as maximum and minimum temperature value for the datacenter environment. when temperature is greater than maximum threshold, the fan starts up to rotate in the system however the fan is stopped when the temperature under the minimum threshold. in order to reduce power consumption, the operation time of rotating speed of cooling system is divided into three series of rotation such as high rotation, medium rotation and stop rotation. startup time of the fan is based on rotating from low speed to high speed. high rotation and medium rotation related to the availability of a certain temperature degree. pseudo code 1 explains the process of energy consumption related to fan speed. moreover, revolution value of fan speed is determined in different scales, which is provided better efficiency for power consumption in the system. 8. performance evaluation in this section, we explain the approach is taken to obtain data and evaluate the results. the complete hardware prototype of cloud cooling datacenter system is based on monitoring the temperature of these cloud datacenters to save extra energy consumption. in order to provide the prototype, we employed arduino uno microcontroller, processing unit, fan as system cooling, and relay to generate high volte. within a datacenter, the cooling system attached to arduino to turn on/off automatically when the temperature of the system reaches a threshold value. the system can detect the maximum and minimum temperature of the datacenters current values. generally, underlying cloud hardware is made up of these components; the main cloud servers, which provide cloud web service, cloud tenant’s application and gsm service. the cloud web server is the unit responsible for holding all temperature data. it is developed using mainly apache server and php programming language. however, cloud tenant’s application provides accessing the system from a remote location. it provides a graphical user interface (gui) for client’s operation to facilitate excellent userfriendly experience to monitor the environment’s temperature. gms service can deliver alert messages to the clients in emergency case. accordingly, the experiments phases are explained as follows. 8.1. temperature monitoring in this experiment, in order to monitor the accurate temperature value of cloud datacenter, three types of temperature sensors have been installed to monitor temperature of the cloud datacenter. this includes lm35, max665 and tmp36. environmental temperature is monitored to show stability and precise of values. in this case, these types of sensors are connected to three arduinos separately; arduinos have same characteristics and versions. the first phase of the experiment is shown in figure 5. in this layer, we monitor the temperature when the degrees have the highest values. the red line depicts lm35 sensor, blue line corresponds to max6675 and green line presents temperature of tmp36 sensor. according to the experiment in figure 6, diversity of the both sensors max6675 and tmp36 is higher than lm35 where lm35provides stable recording temperature value when the environment temperature of the datacenter is changed according to variability of devices temperature. the next phase of the experiment is related to monitoring the temperature of the cloud datacenters using aforementioned sensors. as explained in figure7,at the beginning, the sensors are recording the lower ranges of the temperatures, then the temperature of the environment raise up to high range. according to this experiment, the blue line depicts the temperature value of lm35, red line presents max6675 and green line presents tmp36 respectively, the blue line shows better stability of 24 recording the environment temperature then other sensors. 8.2. energy consumption in order to present the performance of our proposed cloud heuristic in terms of power consumption [15], we have evaluated some measures to show the comparison between our proposed algorithm and conventional approach for cooling system in cloud datacenter. the scenario states as follow. 4 pins fan are boxed with 12volte input where pwm (pulse width modulation) control is used to control fan speed. the fan speed is related to the temperature of cloud execution units. therefore, the fan speed records values in percentage; when the fan reaches its high percentage, this means fast rotation and low percentage, which presents slow rotation of the fan system cool. according to the algorithm, the cooling system will be on when the temperature reaches to 25 c°, then the relay will be activated, and the fan starts to rotate. therefore, speed of the fan will be changed according to temperature of the datacenter. the fan speed rotates to high percentage it can be estimated 59-99% when temperature between 20 -25 c° and for the temperature under 18 c° the rotate can be estimated to 590%. 0 means the fan stops rotating. difference speeds are purposed to provide energy consumption. for this experiment, 30 seconds are taken as shown in figure8. when the system booted up, the current temperature is pointing in high, and the fan speed is rotating 90% duty cycles. when the temperature reaches to lower degree, fan’s rotation is slowly decreased to close to 0. as demonstrated in the figure, red line shows temperature of the environment, at beginning of the scenario the temperature is 23.3 c° and then it raised to 24 c°, when the temperature reaches to 24.9 the fan starts to rotate to cool the equipment. accordingly, green line shows proposed approach, rotation of the fan is stopped at 12thto 16thand this duration is less in traditional approach which is 13th to 15th therefore, in traditional approach high percent of rotation is used to cool the equipment as shown at times; 10th and 16th. in the last experiment, energy consumption is observed according to sort of dramatic mount of fan’s speed for the cooling system as shown in figure5. green line presents proposed algorithm and red line presents traditional approach, the observation is done for one hour, it is aimed to show accurate observation and efficient consumption of power at long period. as depicted in the figure the green line shows lower range of energy consumption at 14th min. to 24th min. and 32th min. to 36th min. the ranges are different in traditional approach, which are shorter to save energy. as a result, the proposed algorithm is presented better efficiency of power consumption in watts than traditional approach. 8.3. benchmark comparison in order to show the benchmark comparison between our proposed algorithm and another recent work on reducing energy consumption for cooling system in the datacenters, we consider some parameters in order to show the comparison. the parameters are included; maximum and minimum temperature values are considered for experiments, rotation speed of the cooling system, and sleep time of the fan. selecting all these parameters is related to our contribution as aforementioned in the proposed algorithm for energy consumption. according to the paper [16], the considered maximum and minimum temperature respectively is 25 c° and 45 c°, and fan speed revolution is categorized into four levels: 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%. when the temperature between 30 c° and 25 c° fan speed is rotated 25%, furthermore the temperature between 40 c° and 30 c° the fan speed is rotated 50%, moreover the temperature between 40 c° and 45c° the fan speed is rotated 75%, on the other hand, temperature greater than 45 c° the fan figure 4: flow message procedure of the system. ws message flow system setup to shutdown tsamc al cu sensing temp. value >250 initiate cooling unit shutdown cooling unit value < 150 send alter msg. sr how much energy conserved how long the cu operates set on send alter msg. set off amc ardiun o microc ontr. ts temp eratu re senso r al system alert signal ws system web server cu co oling system sr statistic s repo rts 25 speed is 100%. according to the results obtained in test experimental as shown in fig. 7 and fig. 8, our algorithm is provided better approach to reduce power consumption than [16]. although, three parameters such as control of fan revolution and startup time and off time are not considered in [16] to reduce power consumption. figure 5: high temperature sensing figure 6: low temperature sensing figure 7: cooling system rotation figure 8: underlying energy consumption 9. conclusion temperature-aware workload management in cloud infrastructure has been shown promising in maximizing utilization rates of cloud resources. the massive assigned cloud tenant demands require providers to establish energy-efficient cloud datacenters to have remotely access to resources such as servers, storages, and software. monitoring the temperature of these resources is challenged engineers and designers to come up with schedulers that can increase system throughput and decrease energy consumption. this paper is proposing a smart hybrid algorithm that takes into account both over and underutilized cloud resources computation. in this paradigm a dual threshold is predefined to control the level of power consumption and continue to stable the system performance. the upper threshold has been set to 25 degree while the lower one has been set to 15 degree. therefore, the proposed energy consumption algorithm provided better-reduced power consumption for cooling system in datacenters. surpassing any of these two values results in directing an automatic message to the network administrator to take action and control the environment whether by switching on or off the cooling systems. two main microcontrollers have been conducted in this simulation namely arduino and gsm shield. in future work, we will work on a utilizing machine learning to design the algorithm to provide energy efficient for system cooling. references [1] m. khaleel and m. m. zhu, “energy-aware job management approaches for workflow in cloud.” ieee international conference on cluster computing,, chicago, il, usa,2015, pp. 506-507. doi: 10.1109/cluster.2015.85. 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[10] f. k. handhal and a.turky rashid“design and building a singlephase smart energy meter using arduino and rf communication https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/mostrecentissue.jsp?punumber=6126166 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/mostrecentissue.jsp?punumber=6126166 26 system.”,the 3rd international scientific conference for renewable energy, iraq, 2018. [11] a.chalakshakir and n. wahidboskany, “design and implementation of counter system using arduino wireless motion sensor.”international journal of advanced scientific and technical research, vol. 3, no. 3, 2015. [12] available online on http://www.rspublication.com /ijst/index.html issn 2249-9954. last accessed on june 10 2018. [13] n. wahid boskany and, r. m. abdullah, “intelligent anti-theft car security system based on arduino and gsm network”. international journal of multidisciplinary and current research, vol. 4, 2016, pp. 538-541. [14] m. i. khaleel, “load balancing and thermal-aware in geodistributed cloud data centers based on vlans.” science journal of university of zakho, vol. 6, no 3, 2018, p. 113-117. doi:https://doi.org /10.25271/sjuoz.2018.6.3.515 [15] l. garcia, j. m. jiménez, m. taha and j. lloret, " wireless technologies for iot in smart cities". network protocols and algorithms, vol. 10, no. 1, 2018 pp. 23-64,doi: 10.5296/npa.v10i1.12798 [16] j. m.kumaran,i.vikram,s.kishore kumar,r.rajesh kumar and s.lokesh, “design of an automatic fan speed controlling system using arduino uno”, international journal of intellectual advancements and research in engineering computations vol. 6 no. 2, 2018.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 1 a comparative study of the early and short-term outcomes of aortic replacement in patients with stanford type a aortic dissection and ascending aortic aneurysm. shkar raouf haji saeed aram baram department of surgery department of surgery college of medicine college of medicine university of sulaimani university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq shkar@doctor.com aram.baram@unvisul.edu.iq erfan omer anwar sulaimani cardiac hospital sulaimani general directorate of health ministry of health sulaimani, iraq erfanhalabja88@gmail.com article info abstract volume 7 issue 2 december 2022 doi: 10.24017/science.2022.2.1 article history: received:25/07/2022 accepted:21/09/2022 ascending aortic replacement is a challenging and complex surgery. the mortality, morbidity, and outcomes depend on the causes of the ascending aortic pathology and the type of operation. the research was conducted utilizing an observational, prospective, and cohort study of patients at a single center with ascending aortic replacement because of aneurysm and dissection. in thehospital, mortality, morbidity, and short-term outcomes were measured. a total of 85 patients participated in this research. 65.9% of the participants were male, while 34.1% were female. furthermore, thirty-three patients had stanford type a aortic dissection (staad), whereas 52 had ascending aortic aneurysm (asaa). early mortality was (21.21% and 1.9%) for staad and asaa, respectively, while the survival rate after one year was (75.8% and 96.15 %) for ascending dissection and aneurysm, respectively. the results of our study show higher early surgical mortality and morbidity and a lower short-term survival rate for staad surgery compared with asaa surgery. keywords: aorta, ascending aorta, aortic dissection, ascending aortic aneurysm. early mortality and morbidity. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 2 1. introduction the discussion of aneurysm and dissection is difficult without a complete understanding of the aorta, which is the biggest blood vessel. it is an artery that starts at the upper part of the left ventricle and continues down to the back of the body at the area of the fourth lumbar vertebra that splits into the left and right common iliac arteries [1]. it is composed of four various segments as the following: ascending aorta, aortic arch, descending aorta, and also abdominal aorta. three layers form the aortic wall from the outside to the inside of the vessel, including adventitia, media, and also intima. [2, 3] (figure 1a). aortic dissection is a dangerous and common condition that affects the aorta. it has a high mortality and morbidity rate as a result of fatal and potential complications if untreated. the incidence of aortic dissection is 3 per 100,000 population years [4, 5]. there are two anatomical classification systems for aortic dissection: the stanford and debakey classifications. the first classification is stanford categorizes dissections into stanford type a and stanford type b. the stanford type a dissection (staad) affects the ascending aorta (before and closer to the brachiocephalic artery). in contrast, when the dissection involves the descending aorta that does not affect ascending aorta is called stanford type b dissection (stabd) [6, 7]. aneurysm of the ascending aorta is a localized, permanent aortic dilatation with a diameter at least 50% larger than average and includes all three layers of the aorta [8]. the frequency of the developing ascending aortic aneurysms is approximately 5-10/100000 people [9]. (figure 1c). figure 1: (a) normal aorta. (b) aortic dissection. (c) aortic aneurysm *this picture is drawn by zryan mejio many risk factors are causing the development of aortic dissection or aneurysm, including hypertension, male gender, bicuspid aortic valve (b.a.v.), dyslipidemia, atherosclerosis degeneration of the aorta, smoking, congenital abnormality, and connective tissue disorder for example marfan syndrome (m.f.s.). they are among the most common risk factors for aortic dissection. in addition to infection, vasculitis and trauma are three additional, less common causes of this condition [6, 10]. sudden and intense chest pain are among the most common symptoms of stanford type a. the pain is usually retrosternal or substernal [6]. the absence of upper limb pulses on physical examination is a sign of ascending aortic involvement. other clinical manifestations include low blood pressure, cerebrovascular accident, lower limb paralysis, kidney failure, and abdominal pain [5]. the enlargement of the ascending part of the aorta is very slow, needs kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 3 years to grow, and has no symptoms in the beginning. this pathology continues unnoticed unless it is accidentally shown on cardiovascular imaging tests linked to other conditions or when catastrophic complications occur [8]. there are various imaging tests exist for the detection of the aneurysm and ascending aortic dissection. the chest roentgenogram (x-ray) shows a large mediastinum in ascending aortic aneurysm. still, the aortic dissection cannot be excluded by a normal chest x-ray test [8, 12]. transthoracic echocardiography (t.t.e.) offers a straightforward method that does not involve invasive procedures for analyzing the morphology of the aortic root, proximal ascending aorta, aortic valve, and left ventricle. in addition, it is very effective for diagnosing most patients. more detailed information is obtained with transesophageal echocardiography (t.e.e.), especially to identify fluid in the pericardium and aortic valve diseases. in many cases, it is able to determine the location of the primary intimal tear in the aortic root. furthermore, transesophageal echocardiography (t.e.e.) is an effective diagnostic test, and its sensitivity and specificity are one hundred percent accurate when used by trained professionals [13]. the computed tomography scan (c.t. scanning) of the aorta is the test that is the most reliable and the fastest mechanism for verifying the diagnosis. the purpose of c.t. is to illustrate the false and true lumen of the aorta when the aorta is being dissected. it also evaluates the degree of the dissection and the involvement of the aorta and its arch branches. furthermore, it detects tears in the intima that are located in between the lumen. c.t. also contributes to the process of planning the surgical procedure and the cannulation sites. the c.t. method has a sensitivity and specificity that can reach up to 100%. the benefits of c.t. angiography in patients with impaired kidney function or an allergy to contrast are still debatable. other radiographic measures, such as magnetic resonance angiography (m.r.a.), may be considered an alternative since they provide precise measurements and documents of all parts of the aorta [14]. it is recommended that patients diagnosed with staad all be evaluated for possible emergency surgical repair of the ascending aorta [6, 7]. in the case of degenerative asaa, indications for elective repair include a diameter of 5.5 centimeters or greater or a growth rate of 0.5 centimeters per year [15]. when the patient is undergoing other cardiac surgeries, it is preferable to replace the ascending aorta if the internal diameter of the ascending aorta is five centimeters or greater. patients who have connective tissue abnormalities like m.f.s., b.a.v., or family background of dissection of the ascending aorta must have their aortas replaced preventatively at a diameter of 4.5 centimeters or over [8]. surgical technique for ascending aortic dilatation or dissection includes: supra coronary ascending aortic replacement (scaar), supra coronary ascending aortic replacement and sub coronary aortic valve replacement (scaar+avr), the bentall procedure, and hemi arch replacement surgery [16, 17, 18]. the particular aim of the research was to compare the mortality and morbidity of the ascending aortic replacement in staad and asaa in the early period (intraoperative, inhospital, or outside the hospital within the first month) and measure short-term outcomes and survival rates (from the time of the operation until one year postoperatively). 2. patients and methods this study was an observational, prospective, and cohort study at a single center with a total of 85 patients included between january 1 st , 2014 to june 30 th , 2021, who underwent ascending aortic replacement because of staad and asaa at the sulaimani cardiac hospital, cardiac surgery department, and they were followed up for one year. a scientific committee of the university of sulaimani/college of medicine (no. 186 on 17/11/2021) and the ethics committee of the university of sulaimani / college of medicine (no. 235 on 19/12/2021) approved this study. all patients were given the opportunity to provide their informed consent in writing, allowing them to use their operation images and photos solely for scientific purposes. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 4 patients who underwent ascending aortic replacement surgery were classified into two groups. group a (n = 33) includes patients with staad, while group b (n = 52) includes patients with asaa. all patients' age, sex, and risk factors were pre-operatively documented. in the preoperative stage, following a detailed clinical assessment, specific investigations were performed, such as chest radiography, electrocardiography (e.c.g.), transthoracic echocardiography (t.t.e.), computed tomography of the aorta, thyroid function test, complete blood count (c.b.c.), liver function test, virology, renal function test and pulmonary function tests for elective patients. in addition to blood preparation, fresh frozen plasma and platelets. intraoperatively, the time of cardiopulmonary bypass (cpbt), time of aortic cross-clamp (acct), the need to decrease the body temperature till 16 c0 (deep hypothermic circulatory arrest), and the type of operations were documented. postoperatively, re-exploration, duration of intubation, acute kidney injuries, stroke, respiratory complications, arrhythmia, gastrointestinal bleeding (gitb), and death were documented. the procedure was performed under general anesthesia, through a median sternotomy incision. an arterial cannula was inserted into the femoral artery, axillary artery, and sometimes into the distal ascending aorta during surgery, while a venous cannula was placed to the right atrium or femoral vein. the surgery was done on cardiopulmonary bypass (c.p.b.) after an aortic cross-clamp, and the patient was given cardioplegia. inclusion criteria: patients undergoing ascending aortic replacement due to ascending aortic dissection or aneurysm. exclusion criteria: patients aged less than 18 years old and re-operative patients. statisticalanalysis: the statistical analysis was conducted by utilizing statistical package for the social sciences (ibm spss 24) and an appropriate statistical test for the research data set to determine the significant differences between the two groups. patient scoring: neurological complication was scaled according to the nihss [19]. acute kidney injuries are classified according to the (rifle) criteria [20]. 3. results eighty-five patients underwent ascending aortic replacement, and the patients were classified into two groups, group a (staad) (n = 33) and group b (asaa) (n = 52). the mean age ± standard deviation (s.d.) for group a was 54 ± 9.8 years, while for group b was 52 ± 10.8 years, without any significant difference in age for both group a and group b with (p-value = 0.38). twenty-two patients from group a, and 34 from group b were males, and the male: female ratio was (1.9:1). in addition to a male predominance, the most frequently detected risk factor was hypertension (h.t.) (75.8% -and 63.5%) for group a and group b, respectively, followed by dyslipidemia (dys), diabetes mellitus (d.m.), smoking, and bicuspid aortic valve (b.a.v.) without any statistically significant difference between group a and group b with (p-value > 0.05). (table 1). table 1: patients’ risk factor diagnoses staad asaa number percent % number percent % pvalue h.t. yes 25 75.8% 33 63.5% 0.23 no 8 24.2% 19 36.5% gender male 22 66.7% 34 65.4% 0.9 female 11 33.3% 18 34.6% dys yes 12 36.4% 18 34.6% 0.89 no 21 63.6% 34 65.4% b.a.v. yes 5 15.2% 14 26.9% 0.2 no 28 84.8% 38 73.1% d.m. yes 8 24.2% 17 32.7% 0.4 no 25 75.8% 35 67.3% kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 5 smoking yes 9 27.3% 16 30.8% 0.73 no 24 72.7% 36 69.2% c.l.d. yes 5 15.2% 5 9.6% 0.44 no 28 84.8% 47 90.4% m.f.s. yes 1 3.0% 2 3.8% 0.84 no 32 97.0% 50 96.2% coa yes 1 3.0% 1 1.9% 0.74 no 32 97.0% 51 98.1% staad: stanford type a aortic dissection. asaa: ascending aortic aneurysm. h.t.: hypertension. dys: dyslipidemia. b.a.v.: bicuspid aortic valve, d.m.: diabetes mellitus, c.l.d.: chronic lung diseases, m.f.s.: marfan syndrome. coa: coarctation of the aorta. intraoperatively there is a significant difference between the groups (p-value <0.05) for intraoperative measure and duration of intubation, as shown in (table 2). table 2: intraoperative and duration of intubation measure variables diagnosis mean std. deviation p-value cpbt (min) staad 207 49 0.008 asaa 177 51 acct (min) staad 144 37 0.023 asaa 125 39 duration of intubation (hrs.) staad 25 15 0.089 asaa 21 8 cpbt: cardiopulmonary bypass time. acct: aortic cross-clamp time all patients in this study underwent the ascending aorta replacement, with or without concomitant replacement of the aortic valve or aortic root. the most frequent kind of operation for group a is scaar+avr, while the bentall procedure is the most frequent type of surgery for group b. there is not any significant difference between the two studied groups. furthermore, only one patient participant of group a and two patient participants of group b underwent concomitant mitral valve replacement (m.v.r.), and three from group b underwentcoronary artery bypass graft (cabg) surgery with ascending aortic replacement. the concomitant procedure and circulatory arrest through hypothermic are illustrated in (table 3). table 3: distribution of type of the operation and concomitant surgery diagnoses staad asaa number percent % number percent % type of the operation scaar+avr 11 33.3% 14 26.9% scaar 8 24.2% 12 23.1% bentall procedure 9 27.3% 22 42.3% hemiarch replacement 5 15.2% 4 7.7% need htca yes 26 78.8% 15 28.8% no 7 21.2% 37 71.2% concomitant operation mvr 1 3% 2 3.8% cabg 0 3 5.8% the frequent early postoperative complications were arrhythmia-related with a ratio of (21.21% and 19.23%) for group a and group b, while the renal impairment (according to rifle criteria) was (21.21 % and 17.3%) for the first group, which is a and group b, shown no statistical differences were found among the groups. some degree of stroke (according to nihss criteria) occurred in 4 patients (12.12%) in group a and four patients (7.69%) in kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 6 group b. finally, one patient from group b developed a complete heart block. the details of early postoperative complications are illustrated in (table 4). table 4: early postoperative complications diagnoses staad asaa n % n % pvalue arrhythmia a.f. 6 18.2% 8 15.4% 0.84 no 26 78.8% 42 80.8% v.f. 1 3.0% 1 1.9% heart block 0 0.0% 1 1.9% a.k.i. no risk for a.k.i. 26 78.8% 43 82.7% 0.65 risk for a.k.i. 4 12.1% 6 11.5% a.k.i. 2 6.1% 3 5.8% failure 1 3.0% 0 0.0% loss 0 0.0% 0 0.0% stroke no stroke 29 87.9% 48 92.3% 0.43 minor stroke 2 6.1% 3 5.8% moderate stroke 1 3.0% 0 0.0% moderate to severe 0 0.0% 1 1.9% severe stroke 1 3.0% 0 0.0% reexploration for bleeding yes 5 15.2% 5 9.6% 0.4 no 28 84.8% 47 90.4% respiratory complication yes 2 6.1% 1 1.9% 0.31 no 31 93.9% 51 98.1% sternal wound infection yes 1 3.0% 1 1.9% 0.7 no 32 97.0% 51 98.1% a.f.: atrial fibrillation, v.f.: ventricular fibrillation, a.k.i.: acute kidney injuries the mortality rate and cause of death are explained in (table 5). the overall hospital mortality (defined as in-hospital death or within 30 days after surgery) was 21.21% in the first group and 1.9% in the second group, with a statistically significant difference among the first and second groups (p-value = 0.003). during short-term follow-up, one patient from group a died due to hepatic failure, and another one from group b died because of a rupture of the descending thoracic aneurysm. only a patient of group a and two patients of group b developed a new attack of a.f. while gitb happened in two patients from group b and only a patient from the group while one patient from group b developed a stroke. overall, the survival rate at one year was 75.8% for group a and 96.15% for group b (table 5). table 5: mortality rate, cause of death, and survival rate diagnoses staad asaa pvalue mortality rate (in the hospital or within 30 days) 21.2% 1.9% 0.003 multiorgan failure (n=3) 2 1 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 7 cause of early mortality bleeding and d.i.c. (n=2) 2 not weaned from the c.p.b. machine (n=2 2 severe stroke (n=1) 1 survival rate at in 1 year 75.8% 96.2% 0.004 d.i.c.: disseminated intravascular coagulation, c.p.b.: cardiopulmonary bypass 4. discussion the most dangerous type of aortic pathology that presents in an acute manner is aortic dissection. when acute ascending aortic dissection goes undiagnosed and untreated, the risk of morbidity and death among patients is very high. aneurysms of the aorta are vessel expansions due to medial weakening, and they do not have any signs and symptoms. for this reason, they are diagnosed incidentally when searching for other diseases. on the other hand, ascending aortic dissections must be differentiated from aneurysms of the aorta in specific ways. aortic operations have attained outstanding expertise and efficiency. now, we can replace each part of the aortic in open and thoracic endovascular aortic repair. [?] to avoid catastrophic complications of an aortic dissection, aneurysms of the ascending aorta are electively operated on according to the size and cause of the aneurysm. in our study, the mean age of the patients who underwent ascending aortic replacement was (54.5 ± 9.8 and 52.45 ±10.8) for staad and asaa, respectively, which is younger compared to a study done by mcclure at al. [21]. on the other hand, the major causes for the development of ascending aortic dissection or aneurysm are hypertension, male sex, bicuspid aortic valve, diabetes mellitus, and dyslipidemia; these findings are in line with those of gudbjartsson, tomas, et al. [22]; saliba, emile, at al. [8]; and hernandez-vaquero, daniel, et al. [16]. regarding the cpbt and aortic acct, there was a significant difference between the two studied groups with a (p-value <0.05). cpbt and acct were (207 ± 49 and 144 ± 37) respectively, for group a and it was shorter compared to another research, such as that of lu et al. [23]. in contrast, b. chiappini et al. [17] reported a shorter duration of cpbt and acct than our study. on the other hand, cpbt and acct were (177 ±51 and 125 ±39) respectively for group b, which was a slightly longer duration than a study done in spain by hernandezvaquero, daniel, et al. [16] and a study conducted in german by kallenbach, klaus, et al. [24]. the reason for the slightly longer duration in group b compared to previous studies was that most patients had aortic root dilatation and needed complex surgery like bentall or scaar+avr. our results have shown statistical differences in early postoperative mortality rates between the two groups (p-value = 0.003). early operative mortality for group a was 21.2%, which was higher than some other studies, such as that of lu et al. [23] which was 16.2%. in contrast, hagan, peter g., et al. [26] found that in-hospital mortality was (26%), which was more than our research. another research from italy done by d. paciniet al. [26], showed that early mortality for ascending aortic dissection was 22.1%, which was close to our study. our study's higher in-hospital mortality rate is related to delays in diagnosis because most patients are referred from primary health care centers or outside governorates and lack proper equipment such as left ventricular assist devices and biological glue. most studies showed higher in-hospital mortality associated with surgery for ascending aortic aneurysms (4.55.96 %) compared with our study (1.9%) [16, 21, 24]. this high mortality may be due to the total arch replacement involved in that study. early postoperative complications were more frequent in group a than in group b except for arrhythmia; these may be due to patients with aortic dissection needing an emergency operation, hypothermic circulatory arrest, more blood transfusions, and the long duration of kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 8 the operation. the survival rate in the first year was 75.8% and 96.2% for groups a and b, accordingly. there was a significant difference between these two groups (p-value = 0.004), which is slightly higher than in previous studies [16, 26]. during short-term follow-up, only a patient from both group a and group b developed gitb, and stroke happened in only one patient from group b due to inappropriate taking of warfarin and international normalizing ratio (i.n.r.) control. strengths: this study includes a clear and detailed comparison of risk factors, intraoperative parameters, postoperative complications, and early and short-term outcomes of dissection and aneurysm of ascending aorta. limitation: the sample size of our groups of patients is small, and stanford type b aortic dissection is not included in our study since no endovascular surgery is done in our center. in addition, this study had a short follow-up. 5. conclusion the morbidity and mortality for ascending aortic replacement in our study varies according to aortic pathology. since staad is a potentially fatal cardiovascular emergency, so immediate surgical intervention is needed for the patients. the early mortality rate and postoperative complications of ascending aortic replacement in staad were higher compared to asaa replacement. however, the one-year survival rate of staad surgery was lower than asaa surgery. reference [1] p. komutrattananont, p. mahakkanukrauh, and s. das, “morphology of the human aorta and age-related changes: anatomical facts,” anatomy & cell biology, vol. 52, no. 2, pp. 109– 114, jun. 2019, doi: 10.5115/acb.2019.52.2.109. 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[22] t. gudbjartsson et al., “acute type a aortic dissection – a review,” scandinavian cardiovascular journal, vol. 54, no. 1, pp. 1–13, sep. 2019, doi: 10.1080/14017431.2019.1660401. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 10 [23] y. lu et al., “management strategy of type a aortic dissection in a developing center from china: 16 years experiences,” journal of thoracic disease, vol. 12, no. 11, pp. 6780– 6788, nov. 2020, doi: 10.21037/jtd-20-1866. [24] k. kallenbach et al., “treatment of ascending aortic aneurysms by different surgical techniques: comparison of early and long-term results,” the thoracic and cardiovascular surgeon, vol. 60, no. s 01, jan. 2012, doi: 10.1055/s-0031-1297910. [25] p. g. hagan et al., “the international registry of acute aortic dissection (irad),” jama, vol. 283, no. 7, p. 897, feb. 2000, doi: 10.1001/jama.283.7.897. [26] d. pacini et al., “acute aortic dissection: epidemiology and outcomes,” international journal of cardiology, vol. 167, no. 6, pp. 2806–2812, sep. 2013, doi: 10.1016/j.ijcard.2012.07.008.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.34 a proposed lossy image compression based on multiplication table mohammed salih mahdi bit dept. business information college university of information technology and communications baghdad, iraq mohammed.salih@uoitc.edu.iq nidaa falih hassan computer science dept. university of technology baghdad, iraq 110020@uotechnology.edu.iq abstract: lately, internet improved in the various trends, especially, the use of the image increased due to the daily use in several scopes like social media (facebook, twitter, whatsapp, etc.), connected devices (sensor, ip camera, internet of things (iot) internet of everything (ioe), etc) and smart phone devices that users interchanged images estimated in the billions. so, images issues in internet can be summarized into two criteria, the first criteria is considered with transmit image size. the second criteria is considered with low bandwidth through transmission. this paper exhibits a methodology for image compression using an idea of multiplication table. the suggested algorithm helpful in realizing a preferable achievement by presenting a high compression ratio, preserve image quality with a high psnr, small losing in the original image and efficiently in running time. keywords: lossy compression, multiplication table, iot 1. introduction data compression is a major role in transmission and memory space, especially image compression which is minifying the images size that it requires to be sent, so that it is lead to increase the speed of transmission [1,2]. data compression is one of interested mechanisms in computer science. it is utilized to minify the length of data. it is done by minifying the amount of bits that are needed to act for each an individual byte of data [3]. the objective of compression process is minifying the recurrence of input by producing the compressed data from the input [4]. on the other hand, the objective of decompression process is reestablishing the data value m from compressed data; m either is the same or is not the same to input but close to input [3]. data compression is classified into two types. the 1st type refers to lossless compression method which it is potential to precisely reestablish the original input stream from the compressed data. through the compression process in this method, there is no damage for each an individual element of data. therefore, it is called reversible compression. this compression type method process data like exe files, text files and images kept for legal purpose. the 2nd type is referred to lossy compression method which it is not potential to reestablish the precisely original input stream from the compressed data. during the compression process in this method, there is a little loss of data, so it is called irreversible compression. this loss of data will not perceive by the human [5, 6]. two factors can be used for testing the performance of suggested algorithm:  compression ratio (cr): it refers to the size of the difference between compressed data (c) and original data (o) bit per bit as shown in eq. (1) [5,7].  distortion: it refers to the amount of lost in the compression. its calculated after decompressing the data based on two standard, mean sq,uare erro,r (mse) and peak_signal to noise_r.atio(psnr) as shown in eq.(2) and eq.(3) respectively[5,7]. therefore, the character s refers to source data. the character d represents the decompressed data. the max (s) value is the largest possible value in the source file. lower psnr and higher mse led to higher distortion. while, higher psnr and lower mse led to lower distortion [8]. the suggested imag.e lossy compression is depends on an idea of intensity quantization is presented using multiplication table (shortly called mt). 2. literature review there are various papers applied to improve image compression. in [9] offered image compression using svd transform to act any image with a set of useful features, it leads to reducing the size of the image, which is stored in the memory. in [10] presented three composite wavelet (wt) methods according to compressed color image, those methods consist of stationary wt, composite wt and composite multi methods. these methods are combined to provide images with high compression. in[11] presented a technique for image compression according on a concept of data folding which is linked on shading with different volumes of color image, it starts by using column folding followed by row folding and this process repeated until the image size minify to potential esteem as indicated by the different levels of folding. mailto:mohammed.salih@uoitc.edu.iq mailto:110020@uotechnology.edu.iq regarding the previous works discussed above, the contribution of this paper is presents suggested algorithm for lossy image compression to achieve image with high compression, good image quality, solving images issues in the internet. 3. suggested algorithm the main idea of proposed algorithm is to process images issues by present a lossy compression technique based on mt to accomplishment the intensity quantization, where the intensity of pixels are collected based on the number of mt. according to the concept of the many multimedia, the correlation of the nearby intensity is the rife characteristic. figure (1) shown structure of mt algorithm compressed. figure (2) shown structure of mt algorithm decompression. figure 1: structure of mt algorithm compression figure 2: structure of mt algorithm decompression the following steps described the suggested mt algorithm compression process:  input data: the first step in the suggested mt algorithm is to read data, which are gets from different area like pc, mobile, sensor, iot, etc.,. different sizes of images are used in suggested mt algorithm.  subtraction operation: obviously, the range of values of images for each pixel between 0 to 255. so, it is represented by one byte for each pixel in grayscale images and three bytes for each pixel in color images. during the study on bytes of images, four least significant bits can be deleted from each byte, and this will not perceived by human visual system (hsv). thus, the maximum deleting is 4 bits. so, for each value between 0 to 15 represented by 1 bit instead of 4 bit and value 16 represented by 1 bit instead of 5 bit, etc. table (1) shows values after removing 15 from each byte.  n-multiplication table transform: this step is the core of the suggested mt algorithm. the values quantization can be done by converting each value into closest double value by n. i.e. convert each value into a nearest value divided by n. the range of n, which be, used greater than 2 and less than 13. the best of range n between 4 to 10. table (2) shows values after this step. table1: original and update represented table2: n-multiplication  dividing by n: dividing each value by n so values changed from values in table (2) to values in table (3) which can be shown how changed. table3: dividing by n  storing values file: the final step, two methods are proposed to be accomplished. the first method (run length) by storing a value and concatenation with symbol then occurrences and so on. while, the second method requires kernel (l*l), for each kernel, finding the smallest value and subtracted this value from each value in the selected kernel. storing small value and concatenation with symbol then next value in kernel and so on. the character represent in binary 2 bit (10) instead of space which represented by 6 bit (100000) in and this symbol used to split the value from occurrences of it in first method. in addition, the same symbol used to split the minimum value and normalized in each kernel of second method. the following steps described the suggested mt algorithm decompression process:  file: the first step in the decompression process is to read data from file then convert it to appropriate form based on the same principle which be used in compression process but by the reverse way.  multiply by n: multiply each value by n, so values are changed from values in table (3) to values in table (2).  adding operation: this step is optional, adding k to each value in previous step, where k is (1, 3,7,15). if k does not added then there is no effects on the hsv. however, the adding operation is used to preserve image quality with a high psnr  reconstructed data: the values from previous step can be represented the decompressed data based on either run length method or kernel(l*l). the extracted data are similar to original data but not the same due to the suggested mt algorithm is lossy compression. algorithm (1), (2) shown the basic operation of suggested mt algorithm compression and decompression. 4. results a proposed algorithm is implemented using c# 2015. the performance factor of the proposed mt algorithm is extracted based on compression ratio (cr) and peak to signal ratio (psnr). a proposed algorithm is applied on standard images like: color image (lena and penguins) and grayscale image (einstein and elaine) with different sizes (256*256 and 512*512) based on mt with run length method and kernel (l*l), as shown in the following tables. table 4: cr for test images using run length method image / 256 size mt(5) mt(7) mt(9) elaine 74% 81% 94% penguins 73% 79% 83% table 5: psnr for test images using run length method image / 256 size mt(5) mt(7) mt(9) elaine 24.45 24.26 24.01 penguins 38.91 36.008 33.72 table 6: cr for test images using 4*4 kernel image / size mt(5) mt(7) mt(9) lena 512 75% 78% 80% penguins256 73% 76% 78% einstein 256 64% 69% 72% elaine512 73% 77% 79% table 7: c.r for test images using 8*8 kernel image / size mt(5) mt(7) mt(9) lena 512 72% 76% 79% penguins256 69% 72% 74% einstein 256 59% 63% 67% elaine512 69% 73% 76% table 8: c.r for test images using 16*16 kernel image / size mt(5) mt(7) mt(9) lena 512 66% 70% 74% penguins256 60% 64% 67% einstein 256 50% 56% 65% elaine512 61% 66% 70% table 9: psnr for test images using 4*4 kernel image / size mt(5) mt(7) mt(9) lena 512 45.13 42.13 39.90 penguins256 45.30 42.33 40.13 einstein 256 45.20 42.09 39.93 elaine 512 45.16 42.09 39.97 table 10: psnr for test images using 8*8 kernel image / size mt(5) mt(7) mt(9) lena 512 45.13 42.13 39.90 penguins256 45.30 42.33 40.13 einstein 256 45.20 42.09 39.93 elaine512 45.16 42.09 39.97 table 11: psnr for test images using 16*16 kernel image / size mt(5) mt(7) mt(9) lena 512 45.13 42.13 39.90 penguins256 45.30 42.33 40.13 einstein 256 45.20 42.09 39.93 elaine512 45.16 42.09 39.97 5. conclusions this paper presents a lossy compression technique based on mt to achieve the intensity quantization and solving images issues in the internet. from the conclude results of applying the suggested algorithm, it could be used to compress images into various scopes like pc, mobile, sensor, iot, etc. different size of images has been used in suggested mt algorithm, with two types of images (grayscale and color images). the suggested algorithm is helpful in realizing a preferable achievement presented by high cr; furthermore, it is preserving image quality with a high psnr, small losing in the original image. 6. discussion in this section some important issues have to be confirmed, and they are: table (4) expressed compression ratio (cr) for two images (elaine and penguins) with equal size (256*256), and table (5) expressed psnr for these images by using the first method (run length), which is suggested for storing data based on (mt (5), mt (7) and mt (9)). the high cr is 94% in mt (9) as showing in table (4) but it has higher distortion due to the value of psnr is 24.01 as shown in table (5). the low cr is 73% in mt (5) but it has lower distortion due to the value of psnr is 38.91. the run length produced a high c.r with low psnr either large size image or small size. from table (6) to table (11) explained cr and psnr for the second method (l*l kernel) which is suggested for storing data. 4*4, 8*8 and 16*16 kernels are tested for four images and provided lower distortion. so, it has the ability to preserve image quality with a high psnr (45.13, 45.3, 45.2 and 45.16) in mt (5) for the three chosen kernel. the (l*l kernel) produced a high cr either large size image or small size. table (12), illustrates the comparison of the suggested algorithm with literature review and finally figure (3) illustrated the simple images of standard images which is used in this research. table 12: comparison with related work system paper methodology psnr cr % p. dhumal, s. deshmukh [9] svd high 45% z. abood [10] three composite wavelet (wt) good 60% n. asia , r. heba[11] folding technique not tested 20% suggested method (mt) multiplication table and set of techniques high in l*l kernel, good in run length 73% as average in two method figure 3: standard images 7. reference [1] s. kaur, v. sulochana, "design and implementation of lzw data compression algorithm", international journal of information sciences and techniques (ijist) vol.2, no.4, july 2012. [2] k. sayood,” introduction to data compression”, third edition, university of nebraska, lincoln, morgan kaufmann is an imprint of elsevier,2000. [3] m. nelson, l. gailly, "the data compression" 2nd edition. m&t books new york. 1996. [4] m. pu, "fundamental data compression",1st edition, butterworth-heinemann. 2005. [5] m. pu, "fundamental data compression", butterworth-heinemann is an imprint of elsevier linacre house, jordan hill, oxford ox2, corporate drive, 2006. [6] d. salomon, m. giovanni," handbook of data compression", fifth edition, springer london dordrecht heidelberg new york, british library cataloguing in publication data springer-verlag london, 2010. [7] j. santoso, l. nugroho, g. suparta, r. hidayat, " compression ratio and peak signal to noise ratio in grayscale image compression using wavelet", international journal of computer science and technology 2 (2): 7–11, 2011. [8] o. khalifa, "wavelet coding design for image data compression", the international arab journal of information technology 2 (2): 118– 127, 2005. [9] p. dhumal, s. deshmukh, "survey on comparative analysis of various image compression algorithms with singular value decomposition", international journal of computer applications, vol. 133, no. 6, pp. 1821, 2016. [10] z. abood, "composite techniques based color image compression", journal of engineering number 3 volume 23 march, baghdad, 2017 [11] n. asia , r. heba, "lossless color image compression based on folding technique", the forth scientific conference of the college of science university of kerbala, journal of university of kerbala, 2016. mohammed salih mahdi is currently a phd candidate under the supervision of assist.prof.dr. nidaa falih.hassan in computer science dept, at university of technology, iraq, baghdad. his bsc degree in hiding data in 2010 from university of technology and his msc degree in a security of cloud computing in 2012 is from university of technology. currently. lecturer in business information college, university of information technology and communications. his research interests include data mining, arterial intelligent, computer security, image processing, data compression, healthcare, mobile application, cloud computing, internet of things, internet of everything. assist. prof .dr. nidaa f. hassan received themsc. and phd. in computer science from university of technology, iraq, 1996 and 2005 respectively. she has around 21 years of teaching experience. her areas of interest's computer security and image processing. 21 kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.4 received: 08 may 2018 | accepted: 18 june 2018 outcome and management of sepsis at rozhhalat emergency hospital in erbil –kurdistan region of iraq samir qader ahmad shakawan muhamad ismaeel dara ahmed mohammed department of emergency medicine department of emergency medicine department of anatomy rozhhalat emergency hospital kurdistan board for medical specialties college of medicine general directorate of health ministry of higher education and scientific research university of sulaimani erbil, kurdistan region, iraq erbil, kurdistan region, iraq sulaimani, kurdistan region, iraq samir.kurd@ymail.com shakawan56@aol.com dara.marif@univsul.edu.iq halgurd fathulla ahmed department of internal medicine kurdistan board for medical specialties ministry of higher education and scientific research erbil, kurdistan region, iraq fhalgurd@gmail.com abstract: sepsis is a very common condition in emergency hospitals and presentation is variable, it is under diagnosed with very high mortality rate. all patients with infection are at risk of developing sepsis. sepsis is a complex condition characterized by activation of inflammatory process and coagulation system in response to microbial insult. an observational prospective study was carried out at rozhhalat emergency hospital in erbil-kurdistan region of iraq between february 2017 to january 2018.the study was approved by the scientific and ethical committee of kurdistan board of medical specialties. 50 patients aged between (10 80) years old presented to this hospital with sign and symptoms of infection were recruited to this study. 50 patients with signs and symptoms of sepsis were recorded in this study. the mean age was 47 with male to female ration of 2:3 (42% male and 58% female). the overall mortality rate was high at 68% with higher rate among female and older age group. the blood culture was positive in 74% of cases of which 52% were gram positive and 22% were gram-negative microorganisms. a positive blood culture associated with higher mortality rate of 81% compared with 21% if the blood culture was negative. in majority of cases the site of infection was from multiple source (34%) followed by respiratory infection (26%).skin and soft tissue infection was associated with the lowest mortality of 2.9%. high number of cases (82%) developed complications and 52% of cases developed more than 2 organ failures. all patients received empirical antibiotic therapy however 46% of cases received the wrong antimicrobials. the survival rate was higher (44%) among patients given the right antibiotics. similarly patients had better chance of survival if appropriate fluid resuscitation therapy was give. the overall mortality among vasopressor treated patients were 72% compared with 78% chance of mortality if they were not treated with any vasopressor therapy, among those who received inotropic support noradrenaline associated with higher survival rate(72%). a qsofa score of more than 2 associated with 86.4 % of mortality compared with 75.5% mortality with similar sirs criteria. factors associated with high mortality were: female gender, older age group, positive blood culture, wrong antibiotics therapy, less fluid resuscitation, multisource of infection, multi-organ failure, high lactic acid level and high qsofa score. this study shows that sepsis is associated with high overall mortality rate of 68% in the rozhhalat emergency hospital and higher rate of death among female and older age group. negative blood culture, appropriate use of antibiotics and fluid therapy associated with better chance of survival. vasopressor therapy did not result in better survival outcome except for noradrenaline. the qsofa score is as good as sirs criteria in predicting mortality. high lactate, multi-organ failure and multisource of infection associated with the worst outcome. keywords: sepsis, blood culture, lactic acid, vasopressor. 1. introduction sepsis is defined as life-threatening organ dysfunction caused by a dysregulated host response to an infection. mailto:shakawan56@aol.com 22 probably the most often related article on the epidemiology of sepsis is the 2001 publication by angus and colleagues, which used administrative data to estimate that there were 751,000 cases (3.0 per 1,000 population) in the united states each year, resulting in more than 200,000 deaths [1]. more recent research suggests that sepsis causes or contributes to between one-third and one-half of all deaths occurring in hospitals in the united states, with the majority of patients presenting to hospital with sepsis rather than acquiring sepsis in hospital [2]. all available data confirm that sepsis is a major public health problem. in the most recent report, published in 2015, sepsis is considered a cause of death from an infection and death being attributed to the infection that initiated sepsis if not recognized [3]. there is a gradual increase in the frequency of hospital-based sepsis. extreme age groups, patients with chronic disease, common use of immunosuppressive drugs, and invasive procedures for diagnosis or treatment purposes like central lines or mechanical ventilation, immunocompromised diseases like carcinoma and aids increase the frequency of sepsis. hospitalization for a long time especially icu admission has more risk to complicated sepsis and septic shock [4]. the definition of sepsis was updated in 2016 following publication of the third international consensus definitions for sepsis and septic shock (sepsis-3) [5]. the 2016 consensus definitions also recommend that the sequential (sepsis-related) organ failure assessment (sofa) criteria and “quick” (q)sofa criteria to be used to identify sepsis, in place of the currently used systemic inflammatory response syndrome (sirs) criteria, which was the basis for the previous definition of sepsis [5] [6]. sofa required multiple laboratory investigations and it is an intensive care unit (icu) dependent mortality score based on respiratory, cardiovascular, hepatic, renal, and neurological parameters. the qsofa is a rapid, shortened version of sofa for quick sepsis assessment, which designed for use outside the icu, and parameters of this score are: 1. respiratory rate of 22 breaths /min and more, 2. systolic blood pressure of 100 mmhg and less, 3. altered mental state with a glasgow coma scale (gcs) of 14 and less. the sofa score is useful in predicting the clinical outcome and effective method to describe organs dysfunction in critically ill patients [7]. the third international consensus (sepsis-3) definitions state that the term “severe sepsis” doesn’t necessarily need to be used and no longer recommended. septic shock has also been redefined as a subset of sepsis in which profound circulatory, cellular, and metabolic abnormalities are associated with a greater risk of mortality than with sepsis alone [5]. therefore, in sepsis 3 guidelines, patients with sepsis are categorized into 3 groups of: infections, sepsis and septic shock. in 2016, the uk national institute for health and care excellence (nice) published guidance on the recognition, diagnosis, and early management of sepsis and categorize patients into 3 groups according to severity of illness or death from sepsis: high risk; moderate to high risk; or low risk [4]. depending on guideline of management and outcome of sepsis we can deal with basic therapies that should be completed in the first 24 hour of recognition of sepsis. the following sepsis therapy protocol is known as sepsis 6 resuscitation bundles: 1. high flow oxygen to maintain oxygen saturation more than 94% 2. taken blood culture before initiation of antibiotic therapy 3. intravenous empirical antimicrobial therapy 4. intravenous fluid resuscitation 5. serum lactate level measurement 6. monitoring urine output hourly [8]. blood culture should be obtained before starting empirical antimicrobial therapy to isolate microorganism that caused infection and to detect proper antimicrobial therapy [9]. early administration (within one hour) of appropriate antimicrobials is central to management of sepsis or septic shock. each hour delay in administration of appropriate antimicrobials is associated with significant increase in mortality [10]. earliest possible administration of appropriate iv antimicrobials following diagnosis of sepsis or septic shock causes best result in outcomes [11]. broad spectrum antimicrobial therapy must be given in order to cover all likely pathogens, the choice of empirical antimicrobial therapy depends on patient’s history, clinical status and local epidemiological factors. key patient factors include site of infection, concomi tant underlying diseases, chronic organ failures, medications, indwelling devices, the pre sence of immunosuppression or other form of immunocompromised, recent known infection and receiving of antimicrobials within the previous three months [12]. fluid resuscitation is another crucial line for management of sepsis and septic shock, sepsis especially in case with tissue hypo perfusion may be manifested by acute organ dysfunction and/or decreased blood pressure and increased serum lactate [13]. initial fluid resuscitation begins with 30 ml/kg of crystalloid within the first 3 hours. this fixed volume of fluid enables clinicians to initiate resuscitation while obtaining more specific information about the patient and while awaiting more precise measurements of hemodynamic status [14]. serum lactate is a sensitive marker to defined tissue hypoxia and it is a more objective indicator for tissue perfusion as compare with physical examination or urine output. an increased in serum lactate indicates more severe sepsis and associated with increase in mortality [15,16]. international guidelines recommend norepinephrine and dopamine regarded as first line vasopressor agents in septic shock. phenylephrine, epinephrine, vasopressin and terlipressin are considered second line agents. norepinephrine shows improved survival and has less adverse effect and hemodynamically more beneficial than dopamine because of these norepinephrine remain 23 as a first line vasopressor superior to dopamine for treatment of septic shock [17]. steroids may be used for those who are on chronic steroid therapy or adrenal dysfunction, but there is no clear evidence for use low dose steroid to prevent or reduce sepsis and septic shock in critically ill patients, a recent large multicenter rct demonstrated no reduction in the development of septic shock in septic patients treated with hydrocortisone versus placebo [18]. patients with sepsis and multiple organ system failure have a high mortality rate, although the outcome of intensive care treatment in critically ill patients may be difficult to prognosis accurately, establishing realistic icu treatment goals is paramount [19]. the aim of the current study is to investigate the management and outcome of sepsis at our local hospital and how it compares with the international standards for sepsis management. 2. patients and methods: a prospective observational study carried out on 50 consecutive patients of all age groups regardless of gender with signs of life at presentation from the 1 st of february 2017 to the 31 st of january 2018. all patients who were admitted to rozhhalat emergency hospital with suspected sepsis were recruited and patient who did not give consent were excluded. data recorded on a specially designed questionnaire, collected and entered in the computer and then analyzed using appropriate database system which is called statistical package for social science (spss) version 22 and the result were compared between patients with different variables, with a statistical significance level of <0.05. the results will be presented as rates, ratio, frequencies, and percentages in tables. the chi square test was performed to compare between the groups. this study was granted approval by the ethical and research committee of kurdistan board of medical specialties. permission to access patient data was obtained from hospital manager and written informed consent of permission was also obtained from all participants or their next of kin if patients did not have capacity to give consent. 3. results overall mortality was high as 34/50 (68%) that shows in figure (1). as shown in figure (2) the total study group consisted of 50 consequential patients, 21(42%) male and 29 (58%) female with the male to female ratio of (2:3). patients died in hospital 13 (38.2%) were male and 21 (61.8%) were female. figure (3) shows age distribution which the mean age of the participants was (47.1422.71sd) years old ranging from 10-80 years and the majority of patients 60% (30/50) were above the age of 40 years old. figure 1: outcome 34 patients, 68% 16 patients, 32% in hospital death discharged alive 24 figure 2: gender distribution figure 3: age distribution as shown in table (1) the qsofa was as good as sirs criteria in predicting mortality. a qsofa score of more than 2 associated with 86.4 % of mortality compared with 75.5% mortality with sirs score of more than 2.a score of less than1 for both qsofa and sirs criteria were associated with low mortality rate of 5.9% and 0% respectively. for the qsofa the highest mortality of 55.9% was with score of 2 while the highest mortality of 47.1% associated with sirs score of 3. table 1: scores scores outcome total in hospital death discharged alive qsofa p: (0.001) 0 0 5 5 0.0% 31.3% 10.0% 1 2 6 8 5.9% 37.5% 16.0% 2 19 4 23 55.9% 25.0% 46.0% 3 13 1 14 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 in hospital death discharged alive 13 8 21 8 n o . o f p a ti e n ts male(42%) female (58%) 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 less than 20 20-40 40-60 more than 60 8 12 11 19 5 10 6 13 3 2 5 6 n o . o f p a ti e n ts age groups total in hospital death discharged alive 25 38.2% 6.3% 28.0% total 34 16 50 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% sirs criteria p: (0.006) in hospital death discharged alive 1 0 5 5 0.0% 31.3% 10.0% 2 12 5 17 35.3% 31.3% 34.0% 3 16 5 21 47.1% 31.3% 42.0% 4 6 1 7 17.6% 6.3% 14.0% total 34 16 50 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% lactic acid measured for all patients. table (2) shows that in 30 patients have lactic acid below 2-mmol/liter, among this group mortality rate was (63%). while 20 patients have lactate 2 mmol/liter and more which 15 patients and mortality was 75%. table 2: lactate level lactic acid (p: 0.06) outcome total in hospital death discharged alive < 0.9 0 3 3 0.0% 18.8% 6.0% 0.9 – 1.9 19 8 27 55.9% 50.0% 54.0% 2 4 14 5 19 41.2% 31.3% 38.0% > 4 1 0 1 2.9% 0.0% 2.0% total 34 16 50 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% blood culture was done for all patients by the main investigator and in 30/50 (60%) it was taken before patients received antibiotics. the blood culture result did not grow any organism in 13 (26%) of patients, while it was positive in the remaining 37(74%) patients of which 26/50 (52%) grew gram positive and 11/50 (22%) gram-negative organism. the commonest gram-positive organism was streptococcus (24%) followed by staphylococcus (22%) while the e. coli (12%) was the most comment gramnegative infective agent. the overall mortality rate for gram-positive organism was 84.6% compared with 72% for gram-negative causative agents while mortality was lower (31%) if the blood culture was negative. table 3: blood culture and microorganisms microorganisms (p:0.04) outcome total in hospital death discharged alive negative blood culture 4 9 13 11.8% 56.3% 26.0% g+ staphylococcus 9 2 11 26.5% 12.5% 22.0% g+ streptococcus 11 1 12 32.4% 6.3% 24.0% g+ enterococcus 2 1 3 5.9% 6.3% 6.0% ge.coli 4 2 6 11.8% 12.5% 12.0% gklebsiella 3 1 4 8.8% 6.3% 8.0% 26 gacinetobacter 1 0 1 2.9% 0.0% 2.0% total 34 16 50 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% regarding the site of infection (figure 4) the commonest site of infection was from multiple sources (34%) with a high mortality of 47.1%, the second most common site was the respiratory source (26%) with the overall mortality of (29.4%). the skin and soft tissue sepsis was associated with the lowest mortality rate of 2.9% figure 4: site of infection all patients received empirical antibiotic therapy however 20/50 (40%) received antibiotics before obtaining the blood culture. the patients who received the right empirical antibiotics 27/50 (54%) they had a lower mortality rate (55.5%) compared with 82% mortality if they did not receive the correct empirical antibiotics 23/50 (46%). likewise, if the antibiotics were changed correctly after blood culture results the mortality were lower (58.6%) compared with 80% chance of death if the antibiotics were not changed. table 4: empirical antimicrobials right empirical antibiotic (p:0.8) outcome total in hospital death discharged alive yes 15 12 27 44.1% 75.0% 54.0% no 19 4 23 55.9% 25.0% 46.0% total 34 16 50 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% antibiotic change after result of blood culture (p:0.09) in hospital death discharged alive yes 17 12 29 50.0% 75.0% 58.0% no 17 4 21 50.0% 25.0% 42.0% total 34 16 50 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% table (5) reveal that fluid therapy (crystalloid) used at two pattern, the bolus fluid therapy in the first one hour of admission and maintenance fluid in the first 24 hour of admission. among 47 of patients who received more than one litter maintenance crystalloid fluids in the first hour, 16 patients (34%) discharged alive. while none of the 3 patients who received less than one litter of maintenance fluids were discharged alive table 5: fluid therapy bullous dose of iv fluid (p:0.24) outcome total in hospital death discharged alive < 250 ml 0 1 1 0.0% 6.3% 2.0% 1 1 3 3 10 16 4 1 2 5 3 1 0 5 10 15 20 skin & soft tissue (10%) gus (4%) cns (10%) git (16%) respiratory & cvs (26%) two systems and more (34%) no. of patients s it e o f in fe c ti o n discharge d alive in hospital death 27 250 – 500 ml 26 13 39 76.5% 81.3% 78.0% 500 – 1000 ml 8 2 10 23.5% 12.5% 20.0% total 34 16 50 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% maintenance dose of iv fluid (p:0.3) in hospital death discharged alive total 0.5 – 1 lit. 3 0 3 8.8% 0.0% 6.0% 1 – 2 lit. 15 10 25 44.1% 62.5% 50.0% > 2 lit. 16 6 22 47.1% 37.5% 44.0% total 34 16 50 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% majority of patients 36/50 (72%) received vasopressor therapy and 14/50 (28%) did not receive inotropics. the overall mortality among vasopressor treated patients were 72% compared with 78% chance of death if they were not treated with any vasopressor therapy. noradrenaline therapy associated with the highest survival rate (72%) while combined inotropic use associated with the lowest survival rate. table 6: vasopressors vasopressor (p: 0.005) outcome total in hospital death discharged alive not received 11 3 14 32.4% 18.8% 28.0% noradrenaline 3 8 11 8.8% 50.0% 22.0% dopamine 13 4 17 38.2% 25.0% 34.0% dobutamine 0 1 1 0.0% 6.3% 2.0% combination 7 0 7 20.6% 0.0% 14.0% total 34 16 50 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% figures (5,6) shows the rate of complications in this study group. majority of cases (82%) developed organ failure. the highest overall mortality rate (73.5%) was associated with more than 2 organ failures. if there were no complications the survival rate was 88.8% (8/9 cases). figure 5: type of complications figure 6: outcome of complications 18% 12% 8% 8% 2% 52% no complication(9 patients) renal failure (6 patients) respiratory failure (4 patients) liver failure (4 patients) heart failure (1 patient) two systems & more failure (26 patients) 28 4. discussion sepsis is a serious consequence of infection; it has a high mortality rate worldwide. septic shock is the most severe and life-threatening complication of sepsis that has irreversible damage that could end up with multi organ dysfunction and death, therefore early recognition and management of septic patients is crucial to reduce mortality rate [5]. the new sepsis definition is designed to identify patients with sepsis with easier criteria’s such as qsofa and categories sepsis into three new main groups of: infection, sepsis and septic shock. sever sepsis deemed not to be relevant according to the new consensus of sepsis guideline [5]. adherence to the sepsis 6 bundle of resuscitation is very important to treat sepsis with effective treatment to reduce mortality and morbidity from all categories of sepsis [8]. multiple international studies revealed that sepsis is more common in the older age group, a study reported in 2006 in the united states shows that 64.9% of patients with sepsis aged more than 65 years of age [20]. another study reported in india in 2012 shows that severe sepsis and septic shock in elderly patients are not only more common but also associated with higher mortality rate [21], in this study 38% of patients were aged more than 60 years old resulted in 68.4 % of mortality. in this study female patients were affected more than male to have sepsis and also mortality rate was higher in females compared to male (68.2% and 31.85 respectively) [22] [23]. three separate studies done in 2017, (usa, brazil and south korea) found that qsofa provided better discrimination than sirs criteria for predicting mortality. in this study the qsofa score higher than 2 associated with 86.4% mortality, while similar sirs criteria score resulted in 75.5% mortality [24] [25] [26]. serum lactic acid measurement has a predicting rule for mortality in sepsis and recommended in first hour for early recognition of sepsis. in our study mortality rate was high (75%) for those patients whom serum lactate level more than 2 mmol/liter, this result is comparable to other studies done in sao paulo brazil in 2016 [27], vancouver canada in 2012 [28] and seoul south korea in 2011 [29]. in our study 26% have negative blood culture which was lower compared to other studies done in singapore (41.5%) in 2013 [30] and in spain (35%) in 2008 [31]. higher mortality rate is seen among gram positive causative microorganism which was 67.4% in this study, a similar result is seen in a study reported in denmark in 2011 [32]. the finding of this study shows that respiratory infection where the second most common source (26%) for septic patients and mortality rate in patient with respiratory source sepsis was 29.4% .in 34% of patients two or more systems were infected and in those patients mortality rate was very high(47.1%), these results comparable to a similar studies done in denmark in 2016 [33] and another carried out in pennsylvania u.s.a. in 2014 [34]. empirical antimicrobial therapy was proved to be inappropriate among 46% of patient recorded in our study with a high mortality rate of 82.6%. while those with appropriate antimicrobial therapy (54%), mortality rate was less (55.5%), this finding is identical to a study done in thailand in 2012 [35]. following blood culture results the antimicrobial therapy were changed in some patients which resulted with lower mortality rate of 58.6%, compared with 80% mortality if the antibiotics were not changed, a study done in indonesia in 2013 revealed that appropriate empirical antibiotic has better result in outcome for septic patients [36]. in our study the mortality rate was not significantly different if they received vasopressor therapy or not (72% versus 78%). in patients who received noradrenaline as a vasopressor they had higher survival rate (72.7%) compared to those whom received dopamine (23.5%), same result reported in studies done in belgium in 2012 [37] and in washington u.s.a in 2015 [38]. failure of two or more vital organ systems is termed multi-organ dysfunction syndrome and associated with 0 5 10 15 20 25 no complication renal failure liver failure heart failure respiratory failure 2 systems & more failure 1 4 1 1 2 25 8 2 3 0 2 1 n o . o f p a ti e n ts compications in hospital death discharged alive 29 high mortality. in this study 34% of patients had two or more organ dysfunction and mortality rate among them were 94%. respiratory failure was detected in 26% of patients and with mortality rate (76.9%), which was highest rate in compare to other study [39]. high mortality rates for sepsis and septic shock in our study was (68%), this figure also has been in other studies in other middle and low-income countries, the overall mortality rate of severe sepsis was (55.7%) in brazil in 2015 [40], (64.6%) in india in 2007 [41] and (49.7%) in thailand in 2009 [42]. the poor survival rate in developing countries related to many factors such as lack of resources, lack of standardized sepsis local protocol, unavailability of blood cultures, and lack of awareness. in the hospital that this study was carried out all these factors were present that would explain higher mortality rate compared with the developed countries. we hope that these findings will lead to development of local and national protocol in the kurdistan region of iraq to manage sepsis with a better standard of care that will lead to reduction of mortality from such a common and deadly condition [43]. 5. conclusion this study shows that sepsis is associated with high overall mortality rate of (68%) in the rozhhalat emergency hospital and higher rate of death among female and older age group. negative blood culture, appropriate use of antibiotics and fluid therapy associated with better chance of survival. vasopressor therapy did not result in better survival outcome except for noradrenaline. the qsofa score is as good as sirs criteria in predicting mortality. high lactate, multi-organ failure and multisource of infection associated with the worst outcome. references [1] l.-z. w. l. j. c. g. c. j. p. m. angus dc, "epidemiology of severe sepsis in the united states: analysis of incidence, outcome, and associated costs of care," society of critical care medicine and lippincott williams, vol. 29, no. 7, pp. 1303-1310, 2001. 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[43] s. m. b. r. e. a. dagher ga, "descriptive analysis of sepsis in a developing country," international journal of emergency medicine, vol. 8, no. 19, 6 6 2015. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) journal homepage: http://www.spu.edu.iq/kjar issn 2411-7684 (print) – 2411-7706 (online) march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 1 kjar research article assessment of eating behaviour in obese children of bangor city attallah o. qasem biomedical research unit, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, kurdistan region, iraq. corresponding author: atta.kasem@spu.edu.iq received│november 2, 2015 accepted│january 04, 2016 abstract obesity is a major health problem for people living in the uk, and it currently affects many children. the objectives of this study is to assess the psychometric measures of eating behaviour associated with obesity in primary school-aged children in the city of bangor (north wales, uk). across-sectional survey of children’s eating behaviours and their relationship to obesity was done in four primary schools in the city of bangor (north wales, uk). the study utilized the method of cross-sectional survey of wales’s children’s eating behaviour in association with obesity using two groups of children aged 7–8 years and 10–11 years through four junior schools in bangor. it was assessed using the child eating behaviour questionnaire (cebq) and body composition was estimated using bmis. total of 153 children 81 were boys and 72 were girls. the statistical analysis used is based on multiple regression analysis with the dependent or predicted variable being bmi and the independent or predictor variables being food responsiveness, emotional under eating and exercise. it was found that exercise was significant at p value< 0.042 and negatively associated with bmi, which means that there is a significant difference between exercise and bmi. two behavioural characteristics derived from the cebq which are food responsiveness and emotional under-eating. this is statistically significant at p value <0.01 and positively associated with bmi, show that increase food responsiveness and emotional under-eating is different with increases of bmi. the psychometric measures of children’s eating styles obtained from cebq showed that exercise change as above, with bmi; that is children who were rated as having more exercise were more likely to have a lower bmi. key words: bmi, exercise, appetite, satiety, food responsiveness, under-eating. introduction obesity is now known as a worldwide epidemic condition (who, 2003) and has been predicted to become the largest drain on health service resources in the uk in the near future. nonetheless, there are 14 million overweight school-age children in the european union (eu), of whom three million are obese (international obesity taskforce, 2004a). the number of overweight children in the eu is rising by around 400,000 per annum, of whom 85,000 are obese (international obesity taskforce, 2004b). http://www.spu.edu.iq/kjar mailto:atta.kasem@spu.edu.iq kjar research article eating behaviour & obesity, attallah o q, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 2 in the uk, there are approximately one million obese individuals who are less than 16 years of age (educari, 2004). butriss (1995) showed a similar picture through a survey in the uk, with 75% of children aged 10-11 exceeding the recommended target level for percentage of energy derived from fat. therefore, wardle et al (2005) and currie et al. (1997) have reported comparable results. also, the health survey for england (hse) illustrated the prevalence of obesity doubled between 1984 and 1994 among 412 year olds children in england, rising from 0.6% to 1.7% in boys and from 1.3 to 2.6% in girls. in 2004; the health survey for england illustrated an overall increase in obesity amongst the number of children aged 210 who are obese from 9.9% in 1995 to 13.4% in 2004 (house of commons committee of public accounts, 2007). a previous survey by cameron and colleague (2006) showed that the consequences of childhood obesity in developed countries have extended into the most widespread nutritional disease. in 2006, the national institute for health and clinical excellence nice indicated morbidities in children and adolescents that include dyslipidaemia, hyperinsulinaemia, hypertension, psychosocial dysfunction, type 2 diabetes and asthma (nice, 2006). many studies have presented evidence indicating that dietary habits acquired in childhood often continue during adulthood (e.g. kelder, et al., 1994; nicklas, 1995; steptoe et al., 1995). as the severity of childhood obesity increases the risk of obesity throughout the growing age of the child, the persistence of childhood obesity into adulthood is the most significant concern (nice, 2006).the risk factor of a number of chronic diseases in adult life such as heart disease, osteoarthritis, and some cancers are linked to childhood obesity (british medical association, 2005). likewise, psychological problems such as rejection, shame, depression and stress are also more likely to occur in obese children than nonobese children (reilly, 2003). the uk government has reacted to decreasing childhood obesity with a public service agreement goal to stop increase in obesity among children below the age of 11 by 2010 (department of health, 2007a). the present measure is aimed at primary school children from the reception year (ages 4–5 years) and (ages 10–11 years) by primary care trusts (pcts) (department of health, 2007b). the welsh health survey shows that the number of children under 16 who are classed as obese jumped by 3% in 2009. recently one out of five children in wales is obese (brindley and mail, 2010). this takes childhood obesity in wales to near the peak suggested by the international childhood obesity association (brindley and mail, 2010). furthermore, leigh (2010) shows that the proportion of children aged between (2 and 15) classed as obese increased to 19% in 2009 from 16% in 2008, which has led to the present situation where wales has become the country with the highest childhood obesity rates in the world. there is no clear explanation of the primary cause of overweight and obesity in children and adolescents, although dietary and/or physical activity patterns are likely to be important factors http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/ http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/ http://www.walesonline.co.uk/authors/madeleine-brindley/ http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2010/05/27/ http://www.walesonline.co.uk/authors/madeleine-brindley/ http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2010/05/27/ kjar research article eating behaviour & obesity, attallah o q, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 3 to obesity (janssen et al., 2005). thus, the relationships between various dietary and physical activity and paediatric weight need to be determined (janssen,et al., 2005).wardle 2001suggest that obese children are behaves differently from non-obese children they prefer different types of food, eat for different reasons, and eat with a different style (wardle, et al., 2001). materials and methods the cross-sectional survey was used in four primary schools of wales’s children’s eating behaviour and their association with obesity using two groups of children aged 7–8 years and 10–11 years through four junior schools in bangor. child eating behaviour questionnaire (cebq) been used and also body composition was estimated using bmis. the study information was gained by the parents on behalf of their children. in total 153 parents gave their consent and information on 153 children was obtained of whom 81 were boys and 72 were girls. the statistical analysis used is based on multiple regression analysis with bmi as the dependent or predicted variable and food responsiveness, emotional under eating and exercise as the independent or predictor variables. participants 153 children's parents were recruited in this study and their children were classified in two age groups, 7–8 years and 10–11 years old, from four junior schools in bangor (north wales, uk). the children were approached by the staff at the school and asked them to take the questionnaires to their parents for their approval to participate in the survey. seventy four of the children were in the first age group and 79 in the second age group, and their gender was 81 boys and 72 girls. measures two measures were used: the children’s eating behaviour questionnaire (cebq) (wardle, et al., 2001a) and the child’s bmi. the cebq consists of 35 items and another item added by the researcher to make 36 items divided into seven subscales. the questions are answered by ticking one of the following five options (never, rarely, sometimes, often, always, numbered 0 to 4 respectively). the questions provide information on seven behavioural components (satiety/slowness in eating, fussiness, food responsiveness, enjoyment of food, drinking, emotional under-eating and over-eating). and a question on exercise was added to the questionnaire. therefore, questions were probably ordered according to components, and some are “reversed” i.e., they go in the opposite direction from those of other measures of the same component. see appendix a, b, for the specific components and the questions that be relevant to them. data analysis spss version 18 was used to achieve data management and computations of descriptive and inferential statistics. in statistical testing a p – value of 0.05 or below was considered to indicate statistical significance. the main analysis was in two stages, by using multiple regressions. multiple regressions with entry were used to find out the relationship between several independent or predictor variables and a dependent or criterion variable. kjar research article eating behaviour & obesity, attallah o q, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 4 the initial regression model is thus shown in equation 2. bmi = β0 + β1satiety/slowness etc+ β2fussiness + β3food responsiveness + β4enjoyment of food + β5drinkingi + β6emotional under-eating + β7emotional over-eating+ β8 exercise + β9 gender+ β10 two age groups+ ε (eq.2) results about 310 children took the questionnaires for their parents’ consent and 50% returned the questionnaires. this means that 153 pupil's parent who took part, of whom 81 were males and 72 were females. the means of heights of the children b 12.17 cm2 to 13.23 cm, and their weights ranged from 12.09 kg to 30.23 kg as indicated in (table 1). table 1: shows the biographical data. n boys girls means of height (cm2) ranged means of weight (kg) ranged 153 81 72 12.171830.2338cm 12.090030.2338 kg table 2 shows that the f-ratio = 3.597. f is highly significant at 0.001 levels. therefore the linear regression model as a whole is highly significant, which indicates that the combined effect of the independent variables is associated with the dependent variable bmi is highly significant as revealed in (table 2). however, it was found that exercise was significant at 5% and negatively associated with bmi with coefficient (-0.471). this indicate that when exercise increases the bmi decease. two behavioural characteristics derived from the cebq, food responsiveness and emotional under-eating were significant at 1% and positively associated with bmi, meaning that when food responsiveness and emotional undereating increases so does bmi as shown in (table 3). the rest of the independent variables in the model appear to have no significant effects on bmi like and some have positive and others have negative coefficients like. when we use stepwise method instead of enter method in order to know relationship between the dependent variable bmi and the independent variables we obtain only three independent variables are selected, as having significant effects on bmi, these are food responsiveness, emotional under eating and exercise, as shown in (table 4) table 2: shows anovaa for model 1. model sum of squares df mean square f sig. regression residual total 140.115 705.655 845.770 3 149 152 46.705 4.736 9.862 0.000 b a) dependent variable: bmi kg/m2. b) predictors: (constant), exercise, 7-8=1,10-11=2, food responsiveness, male 1, female 2, emotional undereating, enjoyment of food, satiety/slowness, desire to drink, fussiness, emotional over-eating kjar research article eating behaviour & obesity, attallah o q, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 5 table 3: shows anovaa for model 1. model sum of squares df mean square f sig. 1 regression residual total 170.949 674.821 845.770 10 142 152 17.095 4.752 3.597 0.000 b the stepwise regression criteria used was probability-of fto enter ≤ 0.05 and probability f toremove ≥ 0.1. therefore, 3 independent variables in the model are more significant compared with the corresponding results of the full model; the effects of these 3 independent variables on bmi are significant with positive and negative coefficients. table 4: shows coefficients for model 1. discussion during the present study, the relations between bmi and the independent variables were analysed using multiple regression methods (enter and stepwise). as a whole is highly significant, where the p-value is less than 0.001. this means that the combined effect of independent variables on bmi is highly significant. in the present study, the effects of the ten independent variables on bmi show that only 3 variables, food responsiveness, emotional under eating and exercise, have significant or near significant effects on bmi. on the other hand, webber et al. (2009) found that six independent variables had significant effects on bmi including food responsiveness. noticeably, according to the current study results, there appears to be a significant relationship between food responsiveness, which means that when food responsiveness increases, then bmi also increases and conversely. technically, it means that people with higher amounts of food responsiveness also tend to have higher bmis. coefficients a model unstandardized coefficients standardized coefficients t sig. b std. error beta (constant) food responsiveness emotional under-eating exercise 17.395 0.912 0.799 0.471 1.271 0.284 0.299 0.299 243 0.209 0.160 13.690 3.217 2.676 2.048 0.000 0.002 0.008 0.042 a) dependent variable: kg/m2. b) predictors: (constant), food responsiveness, emotional under-eating, exercise a) dependent variable: bmi kg/m2 kjar research article eating behaviour & obesity, attallah o q, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 6 this finding supports webber et al. (2009) result, which showed that there is a positive relationship between food responsiveness and obesity. epstein et al. (2007) showed that obese children were prepared to try comparatively harder to obtain more food than normal-weight children. recently, another result showed that eating rich food at age 7 predicted weight gain prospectively over time (hill, et al., 2009). llewellyn, et al. (2008), and webber et al. (2009) found that the speed of eating, as a potential indicator of obesity was higher in obese children. when a child is upset the emotional state under eating could be the result of tiredness, anger behaviour which is related to the emotional and physical state of a child. moreover, through the present study, the researcher found that emotional under-eating increases, and then bmi also increases. our findings showed that children, who exhibited a higher level of ‘emotional undereating’, were those who eat less when happy or sad and had a higher bmi. this result has been found in some previous studies. according to other studies, braet and strien, (1997), emotional stress may act as an appetite stimulant for child eating behaviour, and also may lead to risk of developing obesity, which has a direct effect on children. furthermore, predictors of emotional distress induce changes in eating behaviour are important because emotional disorder may cause overeating (wadden and stunkard, 2002, rand and stunkard, 1978). emotional distress and other mood disorders are associated with both increased eating behaviour and obesity. goodman and whitaker (2002) found that stressed adolescents were two times more likely to become obese during the one-year follow-up than teens who did not suffer from depression. while in our study we considered only children up to age 11 years. in this study considered the effect of emotional under eating on bmi, which was significant and positive. while in our study we considered only children or lower to age 11 years. in this study even if this is a result of study which considered the effect of emotional status or disorder under eating on bmi, which was significant and positive. keith et al. (2006) identified that increase of emotional disorder may be a component of a large range of obesity risk factors and, thus may contribute to the rising occurrence of obesity (renie and jebb, 2005, steptoe et al., 2004). during emotional stress some individuals increase their caloric intake, particularly of saturated fat and carbohydrate (dallman et al., 2004, yaconofreeman and gil, 2004). this is related to emotional under eating discussed in present work. the eating behaviours disorder children often consist of periods of chronic dieting interrupted by episodic bingeing, and this exposes the children to the risk of weight gain. polivy and herman, (1999), cattanach and rodin (1988) showed emotional eating disorder and its effects on eating behaviour and obesity, which had a significant positive effect on bmi. nevertheless, the present study showed a negative significant relationship between the predictor variable exercise and bmi and also agrees with present results. this result agrees with many other studies which have shown that bmi increased significantly when kjar research article eating behaviour & obesity, attallah o q, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 7 physical activity per day decreased (marty et al., 2006, patrick et al., 2004).hill and others (1995) demonstrated that decreasing levels of physical activity would possibly reduce energy spending, and, if not coordinated with reduced food consumption, may produce significant energy imbalance and weight gain. whereas, bell et al. (2004) and hill and commerfod (1996) identified that a decrease in physical activity would lead to an obvious restriction in the energy expended and may lead to body weight gain. also other studies, suggest that moderate to high levels of physical activity prevents weight gain and obesity (di pietro et al., 2004, french et al., 1994).therefore, a low level of physical activity is associated with an increased risk of weight gain (roberts et al., 1988, griffiths et al,. 1990, williamson et al., 1993). conclusions childhood obesity is an epidemic that continues to dramatically increase resulting in a large percentage of children developing diabetes, and parents cannot recognize when their own children overweight. although obesity is not yet considered a disease by dsm-iv criteria, recent studies show that the number of obese children has increased medically. we conclude that assessment of exercise, food responsiveness and emotional under eating could be used as indicators of susceptibility to weight gain. exercise and food responsiveness are in agreement with the results of other researchers however, emotional under eating agrees with some, but not all previous studies. a further study should be undertaken to further detect and quantify the effect of sport and exercise on child’s eating behaviour and obesity, and also research necessary to explore the relationship between these factors and bmi in the future. acknowledgment i am very grateful to many people for making this study possible. i am grateful to dr. graham clarke for this support and advice at every stage of this study and his helpful comment and feedback on numerous drafts of this study. my gratitude also goes to prof. dr. jani kassab for support and advice on the presentation, the analysis of the data, and for helping to correct my grammar. references bell, c., day, d.s., jones, p.p., charistou, d.d.; petitt, d.s., osterberge, k., melby, c.l. and seals, d.r. 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(2004). daily stress, coping and dietary restraint in binge eating. int j eating diosrd. 36, 204–212 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/1521690x http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/1521690x kjar research article eating behaviour & obesity, attallah o q, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 10 supplementary materials index 1: child eating behaviour questionnaire (cebq) please read the following statements and tick the boxes most appropriate to your child’s eating behaviour. question never rarely some times often always 1. my child loves food □ □ □ □ □ 2. my child eats more when worried □ □ □ □ □ 3. my child has a big appetite □ □ □ □ □ 4. my child finishes his/her meal quickly □ □ □ □ □ 5. my child is interested in food □ □ □ □ □ 6. my child is always asking for a drink □ □ □ □ □ 7. my child refuses new foods at first □ □ □ □ □ 8. my child eats slowly □ □ □ □ □ 9. my child eats less when angry □ □ □ □ □ 10. my child enjoys tasting new foods □ □ □ □ □ 11. my child eats less when s/he is tired □ □ □ □ □ 12. my child is always asking for food □ □ □ □ □ 13. my child eats more when annoyed □ □ □ □ □ 14. if allowed to, my child would eat too much □ □ □ □ □ 15. my child eats more when anxious □ □ □ □ □ 16. my child enjoys a wide variety of foods □ □ □ □ □ 17. my child leaves food on his/her plate at the end of a meal □ □ □ □ □ 18. my child takes more than 30 minutes to finish a meal □ □ □ □ □ 19. my child undertakes physical exercise □ □ □ □ □ 20. given the choice, my child would eat most of the time □ □ □ □ □ 21. my child looks forward to mealtimes □ □ □ □ □ 22. my child gets full before his/her meal is finished □ □ □ □ □ 23. my child enjoys eating □ □ □ □ □ 24. my child eats more when she is happy □ □ □ □ □ 25. my child is difficult to please with meals □ □ □ □ □ 26. my child eats less when upset □ □ □ □ □ 27. my child gets full up easily □ □ □ □ □ 28. my child eats more when s/he has nothing else to do □ □ □ □ □ 29. even if my child is full up s/he finds room to eat his/her favourite food □ □ □ □ □ kjar research article eating behaviour & obesity, attallah o q, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 11 30. if given the chance, my child would drink continuously throughout the day □ □ □ □ □ 31. my child cannot eat a meal if s/he has had a snack just before □ □ □ □ □ 32. if given the chance, my child would always be having a drink □ □ □ □ □ 33. my child is interested in tasting food s/he hasn’t tasted before □ □ □ □ □ 34. my child decides that s/he doesn’t like a food, even without tasting it □ □ □ □ □ 35. if given the chance, my child would always have food in his/her mouth □ □ □ □ □ 36. my child eats more and more slowly during the course of a meal □ □ □ □ □ assessment of eating behaviour in obese children of bangor city attallah o. qasem abstract introduction materials and methods results discussion conclusions acknowledgment references supplementary materials kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) journal homepage: http://www.spu.edu.iq/kjar/index.php issn 2411-7684 (print) – 2411-7706 (online) march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 35 kjar research article the effectiveness of posturicular fascial flap as an adjunct to suture otoplasty ari raheem qader1, dana abdulmagid abdilkarim2*, salah ahmed mohammed3 1department of surgery, university of sulaimani, sulaimani, kurdistan region, iraq. 2department of community health, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, kurdistan region, iraq. 3department of health, dohuk general directorate of health, dohuk, kurdistan region, iraq. *corresponding author: dana_dr77@yahoo.com received│november 29, 2015 accepted│january 13, 2016 abstract mustardé technique of otoplasty is probably the most famous and practical among all otoplasty procedures especially in our centers. yet it possesses the risk of suture extrusion, stitch granulomas and recurrence. such complications have been reported, albeit few, yet they are bothersome to patients and their families. placing tissues between the suture lines and the postauricular incision whether grafts or fascial flaps have been reported to reduce these complications. this study was set to evaluate the effectiveness of elevating a post-auricular fascial flap to cover the sutures in mustardé and furnas techniques for reducing the risk of suture extrusion and granulomas and possibly recurrence. eleven patients with prominent ears (21 ears) fit our inclusion criteria. nine of them were males and two females. they underwent suture otoplasty with post-auricular fascial flap in burn and plastic surgery hospital in sulaimania from december 2011 to july 2015. their mean age was 15.5 years, with a mean follow-up period of 242 days (ranged from 66 days to 431 days. polydioxanone suture was used in (6 ears), and polypropylene suture was used in (15 ears). we achieved 91% satisfaction rates among patients and their families (only one patient was unsatisfied). one patient developed partial recurrence of the middle half of antihelix in one side (4.7%). another one developed bleeding that only needed pressure and change dressing in the left ear (4.7%). adding fascial flap to cover the sutures appears to be beneficial in preventing suture extrusions and granulomas and possibly recurrence by acting as another supporting layer. key words: mustardé otoplasty, concho-mastoid sutures, postauricular fascial flap, suture extrusion, stitch granulomas and recurrence. introduction prominence is the commonest congenital abnormality of the ear, affecting about 5% of population with 8% of those having a positive family history (firmin et al., 2008, yugueroes et al., 2001). it is inherited as autosomal dominant with incomplete penetrance (janis et al., 2005, san martín et al., 2011). there is no apparent http://www.spu.edu.iq/kjar/index.php mailto:dana_dr77@yahoo.com kjar research article fascial flap and suture otoplasty, ari et al, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 36 sex predilection (tan and gault, 1994). the two most common deformities that account either individually or in combination; are an overdeveloped or deep conchal bowl (>1.5 cm) and an underdevelopment of the antihelical fold (conchoscaphal angle greater than 90°) (figure 1). prominence of the antitragus and lobule are other causes that are probably the most resistant to correction. cranial abnormalities (influencing the base on which the ear rests), and anterolateral displacement of the tail of the helix account for the remaining minority of ear prominence (cortes and gosain, 2009). despite its benign physiologic consequences, numerous studies attest to psychological distress, emotional trauma, and behavioural problems this deformity can inflict on children (songu and adibelli, 2010; bradbury et al., 1992; cooperhobson and jaffe, 2009). they found increased happiness and self-confidence in majority of cases with improvement in social integration (97%, 92%, and 78% respectively) and decreased bullying by their peers (100%) (cooper-hobson and jaffe, 2009). in the last century, at a range of two new methods per year have been described indicating that there is no single widely adopted procedure by most surgeons, including methods that excise, bend, suture, scratch or reposition the auricular cartilage (janis et al., 2005). history: dieffenbach (1845) is credited with the first otoplasty for the protruding ear (posttraumatic). ely described his technique for elective correction figure 1: the main deformities contributed to the prominent ears. 1; loss of antihelical fold. 2; conchoscaphal angle greater than 90o and 3; conchal excess. of the prominent ear in 1881 using a postauricular skin excision, conchomastoidal fixation, and conchal strip excision in a two stage procedure performing on each site separately. in 1903, morestin devised a method of excising the conchal cartilage at the medial wall to break the “spring” of the cartilage; this served to medialise the antihelix and decrease the projection of the concha (adamson et al., 2010). luckett identified the failure of scaphal folding to be the cause of ear prominence and described a combination of cartilage excision with horizontal mattress sutures to create the antihelical fold that is in 1910 (adamson et al., 2010). becker, in 1952, introduced the concept of conical antihelical tubing (adamson et al, 2010). this technique was later refined by converse in 1955 and then converse and wood-smith (converse kjar research article fascial flap and suture otoplasty, ari et al, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 37 and wood-smith, 1963). mustardé’s approach to the creation of antihelical tubing was to use permanent conchoscaphal horizontal mattress sutures (mustardé, 1963, mustardé, 1967). gibson (gibson and davis, 1958) identified the ability of injured cartilage to warp away from the injured surface. this led to the rise of cartilage scoring techniques in like chongchet (chongchet, 1963) who used sharp scoring of the lateral scaphal cartilage (with a blade) to form antihelix and (stenström, 1963). chonchomastoidal suturing was popularized by furnas (furnas, 1968). the first medical publications on non-surgical correction of congenital auricular deformities in neonates were published in the late 1980s by japanese plastic surgeons. (kurozumi and ono, 1982; yotsuyanagi et al, 1998). gosain approved a novel approach to correct the prominent ear lobule during otoplasty by three point sutures on skin-dermofatty-mastoid periosteum (gosain et al., 2003). horlock, misra and gault advanced a fascial flap from postauricular area to cover sutures in an attempt to prevent suture extrusion (horlock et al., 2001). after eight years, shokrollahi and co-workers modified this flap as being raised laterally on the auricular rim (shokrollahi et al., 2009). anatomy of the external ear: the auricle: it possesses many involutions and folds. the most important of these structures are the helix, antihelix, triangular fossa, scapha, concha, lobule and tragus. other areas of lesser surgical importance antitragus, intertragic notch, darwinian's tubercle, root of the helix and tail of the helix should be recognized since they might contribute to the overall prominent ear deformity (figure 2) (janis et al., 2005). the embryologic second (hyoid) branchial arch is the predominant contributor leading to the formation of helix, scapha, antihelix, concha, antitragus, and lobule, whereas the first (mandibular) arch only contributes to the tragus and helical crus (cortes and gosain, 2009). the auricular layers: owing to a layer of subcutaneous tissue as well as connective tissue that separates the skin from underlying cartilage in the posterior auricular surface characteristically make this surface more mobile than its counterside, which is more adherent (cortes and gosain, 2009). since this connective tissue layer contains its own blood vessels and nerves, and is an extension of the intrinsic auricular muscle layer, it is regarded as a distint layer and skin flaps of the postauricular region can be viewed in terms of being a fasciocutaneous flap. histological examination of the postauricular layers, revealed well-developed vascular channels in both the fascial and perichondrial layers, also, there are many small vascular channels immediately below the dermal layer (park and roh, 2002). the blood supply of the external ear: the arterial supply of the external ear is manily from the superficial temporal artery and posterior auricular artery, both branches of the external kjar research article fascial flap and suture otoplasty, ari et al, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 38 carotid artery, with some contribution from the occipital artery (park et al, 1992). figure 2: the most important anatomical structures of ear. sc; superior crus, ic; inferior crus, h; helix, ah; antihelix, s; scapha, tf; triangular fossa, cy; cymba concha, cc; cavum concha, t; tragus, at; antitragus, itn; inertragal notch, ht; helical tail, hc; helical crus and l; lobule. the posterior auricular artery constitute the majority of auricular blood supply. it ascends through the groove between the meatal cartilage and mastoid process and gives off three to five auricular branches. ultimately it gives off multiple perforating branches to the anteroauricular skin, including perforators to triangular fossa, cymba conchae, helical root, cavum conchae, and earlobe (figure 3) (park et al., 1992). the venous drainage accompanies the arterial supply yet in a much less organization. the lymphatic drainage is to the pre-auricular, postauricular and pre-parotid lymph node groups. the sensory innervation to the auricle is supplied by contributions from auriculotemporal branch of mandibular nerve (v3), the great auricular and lesser occipital nerves from cervical plexus, the auricular branch of vagus nerve (arnold’s nerve) and contributions from the facial and glossopharyngeal nerves (nathan et al., 2002). auricular development: the auricle is formed between the 5th and the 9th week of gestation. in the postnatal period, the auricle develops rapidly relatively to other components of the face. on the basis of the examination of 2300 ears, adamson and colleagues (adamson, 1965) stated that 85% of ear development is completed by the age of three years. ear width reaches its mature size in boys at 7 years and in girls at 6 years. ear length matures in boys at 13 years and in girls at 12 (janz et al., 2009). matsuo et al. observed that the percentage of protruding ears also increase with time from 0.4% at birth to 4.4% at one month to 5.5% at one year of age (matsuo et al., 1984). timing for otoplasty: the optimal timing of surgery for prominent ears continues to be a topic of debate and is poorly understood. based on auricular development, many feel that otoplasty should not be undertaken until age 4-6 years. objective criticisms include aesthetic risk in young patients, and possible delay and/or restriction of growth from early surgical intervention and the potential for increased recurrence of auricular prominence. gosain, kumar and huang have demonstrated that negative growth disturbance does not occur in patients who have undergone otoplasty before 4 years of age (gosain et al., 2004). kjar research article fascial flap and suture otoplasty, ari et al, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 39 figure 3: the arterial blood supply of the external ear. a) superficial temporal artery branches u; upper, m; middle, and l; lower. b) posterior auricular artery branches namely u; upper, m; middle and l; lower. c) posterior auricular artery perforators through the cartilage; {the larger the dots the larger the perforator is}. tr; triangular fossa, cyc; cymba concha, hr; helical root, cac; cavum concha and lb; lobule [from: (park c, et al, 1992). mustardé after ten years of follow-up demonstrated a 1.8 percent versus 30 percent recurrence rates among patients younger and older than 6 years respectively (mustardé, 1967). preoperative evaluation: achieving success as an otoplasty surgeon requires an appreciation of facial aesthetics, intimate knowledge of ear anatomy, a firm understanding of the rationale for the surgical technique employed, and meticulous attention to technical detail. to objectively evaluate the abnormal anatomy and the characteristics of aesthetically pleasing ear, certain goals are to be achieved (table 1). preoperative evaluation includes measuring the auriculocephalic distance at the frankfort horizontal line (a line drawn connecting the infraorbital rim and the superior aspect of the external auditory meatus) on both ears pre and postoperatively. the difference between the two measures (change in medialisation) is used as an objective mean of follow up (figure 4). table 1: mcdowell’s goals in otoplasty for prominent ears (from: mcdowell a j, 1968). 1 all traces of protrusion in the upper third must be corrected. 2 from the front view, the helix of both ears should be seen beyond the antihelix (at least down to the mid-way). 3 the helix should have a smooth and regular line throughout 4 the postauricular sulcus should not be markedly decreased or distorted 5 the ear should not be placed too close to the head especially in children (10-12mm at the top, 16-18mm at the middle portion and 2022mm at the lower third). 6 position of the two ears should match fairly closely to within 3 mm at any given point. ba c kjar research article fascial flap and suture otoplasty, ari et al, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 40 figure 4: illustrates how to measure the auriculocephalic distance depending on a fixed bony landmarks (from: schaverien et al., 2010). materials and methods eleven patients (10 with bilateral and one with unilateral prominent ears) (21 ears), aged 6-32 years with mean age of 15.58 years, two of them were females and nine males (4.5:1 male/female ratio), underwent otoplasty technique described by (shokrollahi, 2009). patients with stahl’s ear deformity, moderate to severe constricted ear, cryptotia, question mark ear deformity and macrotia were excluded from the study since different approach precluding flap elevation are considered. the reason for undergoing surgery, the expected result, the family history, drug history, smoking and past medical and surgical history was taken from all of the patients. history of defective wound healing and scar history was also taken. all of our patients were healthy young patients with no history of medical or surgical procedures and no one gave a positive family history of ear prominence. all the patients were evaluated before surgery for the degree and the cause of prominence, and measurement of the auriculocephalic distance at the frankfort horizontal line to be compared with post-operative results. surgery was performed under general anesthesia in all cases. both ears were prepped and draped to allow comparing intra-operatively. dumpbell skin incision is marked on the posterior surface with the outer (lateral) marking line being away from the helical rim by 12-15mm. (figures 5a and 5b). although the surgeries were performed under general anesthesia, local anesthetic infiltration of lignocaine 2% with adrenaline 1:160000 to the posterior auricular surface and to the conchal bowl on the anterior surface was also performed. the technique involves shaving of the dumpbell marking as thin as possible to leave thicker fascial flap (figure 5b), followed by incising the more medial marking line to elevate the flap supraperichondrally until the sulcus of the helical rim as illustrated by the tip of scissor in (figure 5c) where the fascia is adherent to the entire helical surface. hemostasis was secured with bipolar cautery after elevating the flap indicating its robust blood supply (figure 5d). all of our patients had loss of antihelical fold underdevelopment and ten of them were also having conchal excess. adjuvant procedures to the flap are listed in (table 2). sutures that were used include; round half circle polydioxanone (pds) (4/0) (6 ears) and round half circle polypropylene (4/0) (15 ears) for mustardé holding the cartilage. flap were fixed in two to three points by round half circle 5/0 (pds) kjar research article fascial flap and suture otoplasty, ari et al, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 41 sutures to the mastoid periosteum (figure 5e) and finally the skin with continuous simple running suturing using pds 5/0 again. table 2: list of adjuvant procedures performed with flap elevation. adjuvant procedure ears mustardé suturing 21 furnas concho-mastoid suturing 20 conchal cartilage excision 20 scoring 4 lobule repositioning 5 we performed dissection of the anterior auricular skin in the area of conchal cartilage resection for a periphery of at least one centimeter in addition to placement of bolster dressing placed on the concha for a period of 2 weeks. an illustration of the steps of the surgery is drawn in (figure 6). dressing composed of four layers; paraffin soaked gauze placed in the postauricular groove and pledged into the concavity of concha, fluffy gauze over the ears, cotton balls and crepe bandage. postoperatively the patients were discharged on the same day if no signs of bleeding and hematoma were observed with full recovery from anesthesia and seen after three days and then after one week, followed by another week visit for suture removal. they were advised to come back if they noticed blood on the dressings, disproportionate pain or dressing took off spontaneously. figure 5: a) the dumpbell epidermis and dermis shaving site on the sulcus which was later modified to lie more laterally. b) removal with the lateral edge being away from the helical rim by 12-15mm (black dashes). c) the end of dissection as illustrated by the tip of the scissors. d) the flap have been elevated with hemostasis of the bleeding points (white arrows). e) the flap have covered the three suture lines and fixed to the periosteum with buried knots. a b c d e kjar research article fascial flap and suture otoplasty, ari et al, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 42 all were advised to wear head bandages for remaining 4 weeks (total of 6 weeks). results this procedure was performed on eleven patients with prominent ears (ten with bilateral and one with unilateral deformity), their median age was 15.5 years (range 6-32 years). nine of them were males and two female cases with a male to female ratio of 4.5:1. figure 6: illustration of the main steps in our procedure. a) 1; excision of epidermis and part of dermis, 2; elevation of the posterior auricular flap, its tip hold with a hook, 3; conchal reduction and suturing, 4; mustardé sutures and 5; concho-mastoid sutures is placed pulling the cavum away from the auditory canal precluding its narrowing. b) the flap have covered the three suture lines and fixed to the mastoid periosteum with a purple colored polydioxanone suture. the white arrow is pointing to the excess skin on the anterior surface after conchal reduction. the median follow-up period was 242 days (66– 431 days) nearly eight months. all procedures were performed under general anesthesia. the median auriculo-cephalic distance was 30.2mm for the right ear (27-34mm) and 28.4mm for the left sides (24-33mm) preoperatively and 17.4mm (13-21mm) and 18.2mm (16-21mm) postoperatively respectively, where the immediate postoperative measurements were kept below 21mm (figure 7). figure 7: preand postoperative measurement for ears at frankfort horizontal line in millimetres in both sides. eight patients were very satisfied with the final shape, position and form of their ears (72.7%), two patients were satisfied (18.18%) and only one patient was unsatisfied (9.09%). early postoperative complications included postoperative edema in three patients (4 ears, 19%), and bleeding in one patient (4.7%) controlled with simple pressure measures. no wound dehiscence, hematoma or infections were observed. late postoperative complications yielded; hidden helix beyond antihelix in two patients (3 ears, 14.2%), and partial relapse, prominent ear lobule, residual upper pole prominence in one ear in one of the patient 4.7% and respectively. neither major nor minor suture related complications were observed with no keloids or hypertrophic scars. a b 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 preoperative postoperative f ra nk fo rt h or iz on ta l l in auriculocephalic distance right left kjar research article fascial flap and suture otoplasty, ari et al, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 43 although there are some shortcomings in this comparison, yet the present study favourably yielded fewer complications namely a partial recurrence in one ear (4.7%). absence of both major and minor suture related complications for a mean follow-up period of 242 days (nearly 8 months) is largely attributed to the flap coverage. the preand postoperative photos of three cases are shown in (supplementary figures s1, s2, and s3). discussion the ultimate goal for prominent ear correction is the reproduction of natural, symmetrical looking ears with no obvious signs of surgery and minimal complications and recurrences (schaverien et al., 2010). the patients, or their parents, are concerned about the gross outline, gross contour and gross position of the ears as a whole. (janz et al., 2009). high suture extrusion and stitch granulomas as reported by different authors (yugueroes et al., 2001; tan, 1986; thomas and fatah, 2001) beside high recurrence rates (tan, 1986) in patients who underwent prominent ear correction with mustardé sutures made it less preferable. but with the innovation of medially based postauricular fascial flap covering the sutures as an adjunct by horlock, misra and gault that was modified basing laterally by (shokrollahi et al., 2009) in an attempt to reduce these complications, the cartilage sparing technique rose up again. none of our patients gave a positive family of the disease despite the fact it some cases run in families but the most commonly it is sporadically. it might be due to small sample size. male to female ratio in this study was 4.5:1. this regards as another difference with previous articles as they found no sex predilection, which might be explained due to fact that female patients in our area still use scarfs and with certain hairstyles, they could possibly hide their deformity in order to avoid surgeries and bullying. the preoperative measures of the auriculocephalic distance were 30.2mm for the right side and 28.4mm for the left side while the postoperative measures were 17.4mm and 18.2mm for both ears respectively. the change in medialisation (the difference between the two measures) is greater on the right side because one of our patients had a postoperative value of 13mm on the right side decreasing the mean. furthermore, we were more conservative on the side of lesser distance than on the wider side suspecting that a degree of lateralization might occur with time. rigg et al., (2001) in a series of 101 patients found that all of cases of suture granulomas and extrusions were related to mustardé antihelical tubing. and in order for the flap to have complete coverage on the three suture lines, mustardé, furnas and conchal excision, especially on the antihelix we modified the position of the skin marking and shaving to lie more laterally. it would also prevent postauricular sulcus distortion and thereby reducing stuck-on appearance. lastly the scar resulting from closure will lie in the posterior auricular groove made by tubing of the antihelix. it is important to reach almost the rim during dissection for providing good exposure for suture placement near the rim. it also decreases the risk of flap entrapment when tying the sutures and kjar research article fascial flap and suture otoplasty, ari et al, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 44 most importantly it provides uniform pull on the helical rim giving a smooth round antihelix. it is well known that conchal reduction through posterior approach is associated with redundant anterior conchal skin that may not conform to the remodeled conchal bowl, leaving a wrinkled appearance. this was the rationale for chondrocutaneous resection. but with our cases we tried to solve this problem with anterior skin dissection for about one centimeter periphery of conchal resection plus molding paraffin soaked gauze in to the conchal bowl for two weeks. and a comparison of patients is given in (figure 8). figure 8: shows the difference between; a) left ear of a patient ten months after surgery without dissection and paraffin soaked bolsters causing wrinkling (blue circle) and b) left ear of another patient five months after dissection and paraffin soaked bolsters with very minimum wrinkling despite the excision was 10mm in width in both patients. with this technique, patients and their parents were generally satisfied with the results in terms of shape, and symmetry. seventy-two percent were very satisfied, 18.18% were satisfied and only one patient (9.09%) was dissatisfied owing to obvious asymmetry and underwent surgery to deal with residual deformities. major suture related complications included signs of chronic inflammation, (redness, itching, pain and discharge) stitch granuloma, sinus formation or extrusion. minor complications include palpable knots or visible fine threads that are asymptomatic. neither major nor minor suture related complications were observed in these patients. no keloid or hypertrophic scar has been seen in these patients. bleeding occurred in one ear (4.7%) that was treated with pressure and wound care and stopped without the need for reoperation or hematoma formation. in reviewing other complications in this dissertation like prominent upper and lower poles in one patient and hidden helix in two patients, those complications could occur with any procedure and they might be due improper technique rather than to be caused by the flap. the following table contains a comparison of our method with some of the published articles and the original papers of (shokrollahi et al, 2009) in terms of their number of patients, the method and the suture material they used and their final complication rates (table 3). comparing our results with those published data, the absence of suture related complications in flap series is largely attributed to the use of the fascial flap. (shokrollahi et al., 2009) in another report had only 1.7% suture extrusion in one ear that is again lower than other articles. in a period of 8 months, none of our patients report neither major nor minor suture related complication. the flap also produces a smooth outline of antihelix by applying a uniform pull of differing degree on each of the ear poles. a b kjar research article fascial flap and suture otoplasty, ari et al, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 45 table 3: a comparison table illustrates the differences in complication rates between our technique and some of the published researches. accurate description of the problem is to calculate complications in each ear separately as it was recommended by (limandjaja, et al., 2009) who reviewed more than 205 articles. compiling to this recommendation we calculated complications in our series rated on number of ears affected by the problem rather than the number of patients. a 4.7% recurrence in one ear that was partial in one of the first cases in whom polydioxanone (pds) suture have been used could be explained to be due the inherent properties of late absorption of this suture material. this was the reason why we used polypropylene for both mustardé and furnas concho-mastoid suturing in the rest of patients. while still we used polydiaxonone for the flap fixation as the time needed for complete absorption of this material is nearly (6) months a time fair for the fibrosis and adhesion to occur holding the flap in its position. conclusions the post-auricular fascial flap as described by (shokrollahi et al., 2009) yields excellent patients and parent satisfaction with natural harmonious look and minimal complication especially those a ut ho r n o. o f p at ie nt s m et ho d su tu re m at er ia l r ecu rr en ce % su tu re e xt ru si on % h em at om a % b le ed in g % r ev is io n tan k, 1986 45 mustardé white silk 24.4 15 ns 33 nm thomas ss and fatah f 2001 32 sculpting + mustardé prolene 3.1 3.1 0 0 3.1 yugueroes p and friedland j a 2001 100 sculpting + mustardé nylon 6 19 0 0 6 sinha m et al 2012 94 mustardé & furnas ethibond prolene 8 occur but no % nm nm 6.6 shokrollahi k et al 2009 15 mustardé plus the flap prolene 0 0 0 0 0 schaverien mv et al 2010 60 mustardé plus the flap prolene 4.5 1.7 0 0 5 sinha m et al 2012 227 mustardé prolene 3.7 2.64 0 nm 1.32 present study 11 mustardé plus the flap prolene 4.7 0 0 4.7 0 kjar research article fascial flap and suture otoplasty, ari et al, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 46 related to sutures demonstrating its efficacy in preventing these complications. although a (4.7%) partial recurrence that appeared may be attributed the use of polydioxanone suture or suture cheese wiring through the cartilage, yet when comparing with other studies it favourably much less without complete recurrence that appeared in some well-known published references. dissecting the anterior skin for a periphery of one centimetre through the conchal excision wound beside placement of bolsters in the concha reduces the risk of anterior skin wrinkling associated with conchal excision through posterior approach. references firmin f, sanger c, and o’toole g (2008). ear reconstruction following severe complications of otoplasty. j plast reconstr aesthe surg. 61: s13-20. yugueroes p. and friedland j a (2001). otoplasty; the experience of 100 consecutive patients. plast reconstr surg. 108(4): 1045-51. janis j e, rohrich r j, gutowski k a (2005). otoplasty. plast reconstr surg. 115(4):60e–72e. san martín re, et al. otoplasty (2011). results after anterior versus posterior approach. acta otorrinolaringol esp. 62(3):188-93. tan s t and gault d t (1994). when do ears become prominent? br j of plast surg. 47, 573-4. cortes w and gosain ak (2009). prominent ears, in: guyuron b, editor. plastic surgery; indications and practice. 1st edition. saunders elsevier. vol.1 p.701-716. songu m and adibelli h (2010). otoplasty in children younger than 5 years of age. international journal of pediatric otorhinolaryngology. (74) p.292–296. bradbury e, hewison j, timmons m (1992). psychological and social outcome of prominent ear correction in children. br j plast surg. 45:97-100. cooper-hobson g and jaffe w (2009). the benefits of otoplasty for children: further evidence to satisfy the modern nhs. j plast reconstr aesthe surg. 62, 190-194. adamson pc, doud galli s k and chen t (2010). otoplasty, in: flint pw, et al. (eds) otolaryngology: head and neck surgery. 5th edition. philadelphia: mosby (elsevier). 1134i. converse j m and wood-smith d (1963). technical details in the surgical correction of the lop ear deformity. plast. reconstr. surg. 31: 118-128. mustardé jc (1963). the correction of prominent ears using simple mattress sutures. br j plast surg 16:170-8. mustardé j c (1967). the treatment of prominent ears by buried mattress sutures; a ten year survey. plast. reconstr. surg.37:382-6. gibson, t., and davis, w. b (1958). the distortion of autogenous cartilage graft: its cause and prevention. br. j.plast. surg.10: 257. chongchet v (1963). a method of antihelix reconstruction. br j plas surg.16:268–72 stenstrom s (1963). a natural technique for correction of congenitally prominent ears. plast. reconstr. surg. 32:509–18. furnas, d. w (1968). correction of prominent ears by conchamastoid sutures. plast. reconstr. surg.42: 189. kurozumi n, ono s, ishida h (1982). nonsurgical correction of a congenital lop ear deformity by splinting with reston foam. br j plast surg.35:1812. yotsuyanagi t, yokoi k, urushidate s, et al 1998). nonsurgical correction of congenital auricular deformities in children older than early neonates. plast reconstr surg (101:907-14. gosain ak, recinos rf (2003). a novel approach to correction of the prominent lobule during otoplasty. plast reconstr surg.112 (2):575-83. horlock n, misra a, gault dt (2001). the postauricular fascial flap as an adjunct to mustarde´ and furnas type otoplasty. plast reconstr surg. 108: 1487-90. shokrollahi k, cooper ma, hiew ly (2009). a new strategy for otoplasty. j plast reconstr aesthet surg. 62(6):774-81. park c and roh ts (2002). anatomy and embryology of the external ear and their clinical correlation. clin plastic surg . 29: 155– 174. park c, lineaweaver wc, rumly to, et al (1992). arterial supply of the anterior ear. plast reconstr surg. 90:38-44. nathan n et al. otoplasty (2002). in facial plastic and reconstructive surgery. ira d papel (editors) 2nd ed. thieme medical publishers. p 309. adamson j e, horton c e, and crawford h h (1965). the growth pattern of the external ear. plast. reconstr. surg. 36: 466. kjar research article fascial flap and suture otoplasty, ari et al, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 47 janz b, cole p, hollier l and stal s (2009). treatment of prominent and constricted ear anomalies. plast reconstr surg.124; p 27e-37e. matsuo k, hirose t, tomono t, et al (1984). nonsurgical correction of auricular deformities in the early neonate: a preliminary report. plast reconstr surg. 73:38-50. gosain ak, kumar a, huang g (2004). prominent ears in children younger than 4 years of age: what is the appropriate timing for otoplasty? plast reconstr surg. i l4 (5):1042-1054. mcdowell, a. j (1968). goals in otoplasty for protruding ears. plast. reconstr. surg. 41: 17-27. schaverien mv, al-busaidi s, stewart kj (2010). long-term results of posterior suturing with postauricular fascial flap otoplasty. j plast reconstr aesthet surg. 63(9): 1447-51. tan k (1986). long term survey of prominent ear surgery: a comparison of two methods. br j plast surg. 39:270-3. rigg bm (1979). suture materials in otoplasty. plast reconstr surg. 63(3): 409-410. thomas ss, fatah f (2001). closed anterior scoring for prominent ear correction revisited. br j plast surg. 54: 581-7. mandal a, bahia h, ahmad t, stewart kj (2006). comparison of cartilage scoring and cartilage sparing otoplasty; a study of 203 cases. j plast reconstr aesthet surg. 59:1170-6. sinha, m and richard b (2012). postauricular fascial flap & suture otoplasty; a prospective outcome study of 227 patients. j. plast, reconstr. aesth. surg. 65, 367-371. limandjaja g.c, breugem c.c, mink van der molen, and kon m (2009). complications of otoplasty: a literature review. . j plast reconstr aesthet surg. 62, 19-27. march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 48 supplementary figures: figure s1: shows case number (1) who is 28 years old man with bilateral asymmetrical prominent ears with preoperative photos on the left side (a-c) and six months post-operative views on the right side (d-f). a b c d e f march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 49 figure s2: shows case number (2) who is a 6 years old boy with mild degree of constricted ear deformity and prominence. preoperative photos on the left side (a & b) and postoperative views on the right (c & d) eight months later. figure s3: shows case number (3) who is a 10 years old boy with bilateral prominent ears both anterior and posterior views preoperatively on the left side (a & b) and postoperatively on the right side (c) eight months after surgery. note: permission was taken from these patients and their families for taking and publishing their photos in the contest of the dissertation and its presentations only. a b c d a b c the effectiveness of posturicular fascial flap as an adjunct to suture otoplasty ari raheem qader1, dana abdulmagid abdilkarim2*, salah ahmed mohammed3 abstract introduction materials and methods results discussion conclusions references supplementary figures: kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.26 flexural behavior of cfrp laminate at elevated temperature rzgar m. abdalrahman production engineering and metallurgy sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq rzgar.abdalrahman@spu.edu.iq abstract: a carbon fibre reinforced polymer (cfrp) laminate forms the surface part of an integrally heated tool. it was made up of carbon non-crimp triaxial fibre and sr8100 epoxy in accordance to the stacking sequence of [(0, ±45)/ (90, ±45)] s, using the resin infusion (ri) method. the laminate is heated up to 90ºc when the tool is operated; therefore understanding the effect of temperature on the flexural properties is quite significant. this experimental study is carried out to investigate the flexural behaviour of the cfrp laminate and finding its flexural properties under the effect of elevated temperatures. for this purpose, various cfrp specim-ens were prepared and tested, using three point bending test method, at different temperature levels from room temperature to 90ºc. the results show that each of the flexural peak load, modulus and strength of the laminate decreases consistently with the increase of temperature. also the laminate becomes slightly more flexible and significant loss occurs in its flexural modulus when the temperature elevates from 75ºc to 90ºc. the reduction in the flexural behaviour of cfrp is imputed to thermal softening of the epoxy polymer matrix whenever becomes closer to (hdt). keywords : cfrp laminate, flexural modulus, high temperature and flexural test. introduction nowadays, application of carbon fibre reinforced polymer (cfrp) composites have become quite popular in aerospace, automotive, defence, marine, sporting goods and infrastructure industries, because cfrp compared to aerospace aluminium and steel alloys can provide lower density and expansivity (low cte) as well higher specific modulus (modulus/density) and higher specific strength (strength/density) and chemical inertness [1]. the cfrp structure is polymer matrix composites (pmc) reinforced by carbon fibre. the premixed advanced compound of cfrp, known as prepreg, is be produced by retaining the polymer matrix in cfrp combination in a partially cured condition over prolonged period of time [2]. both the fibre and reinforcement components are insoluble in each other and they are differing in their physical form and chemical composition. properties of the fibre content are generally dominant in composites and improve their mechanical properties such as strength and stiffness. however the matrix stiffness and its mechanical strength are lower than those of reinforcement, it acts as binder, holds the fibre together, transfers mechanical loads through the fibres to the rest of the structure and protects fibres from mechanical (impact, abrasion and corrosion) and environmental actions [3, 4]. one of the important characteristic specific to solid materials is flexural modulus, therefore many researchers have determined this characteristic, using the three point bending test, to understand the effect different factors on the adaptable mechanical properties of composites [5]. cfrp composite can provide well-bonded structures with excellent strength and hardness after curing, but the viscoelastic properties of polymers causes the main problem of polymeric materials that results in creep and a high sensitivity to temperature [6]. the test material, in this study, is a cfrp laminate used in building an integrally heated tool. the laminate structure is an epoxy system of sr8100 reinforced by non-crimp fabric (ncf) triaxial carbon and it is exposed to heat up to 90°c when the tool is been used. therefore, the current study aims to investigate the flexural behaviour of the cfrp laminate at elevated temperature and base on this a number of cfrp specimens are tested to failure, using three points bending, at different levels of temperature between room temperature and 90ºc. results presented that the increase of temperature reduces the flexural properties consistently and drastic decrease is observed in the flexural modulus after increasing the test temperature from 75ºc to 90ºc that a reaches the heat distortion temperature (hdt). literature review many studies have been conducted to define effects of different factors on the bending stiffness of different anisotropic composite plates, using a three-point support bending test. they deduced that the composite properties are tailorable and they are not only functions of the constituents but they are also affected by many other factors, such as; the nature of matrix and reinforcement, fibre volume fraction, the compatibility between the components, materials processing technology and conditions, the dispersion or distribution of the filler in the matrix, working environment (temperatures, humidity. etc.), the interfacial structure and morphology, fibre orientation, laminate stacking, surface waviness and moulding temperature [5, 7-10]. for instance; azzam a. & li w. [5] deduced that quasi-isotropic types of stacking sequences of composite laminate structure exhibits a brittle behaviour, while the unbalance type exhibits a progressive failure mode consisting of fibre failure. considerable amount of research were conducted recently to investigate the effect of different environment mailto:rzgar.abdalrahman@spu.edu.iq factors, such as; humidity, vibration and especially temperature on various cfrp structures [11]. most of the researches have been carried out on fibre reinforced polymers (frps) that are used in construction, strengthening and repairing of reinforced concrete structures [12-14], for example; gamage et al. [15] concluded that that epoxy loses its strength rapidly at the temperature around 73ºc. also, reis, j. m. l. [16] studied the effect of a range of temperatures varying from room temperature to 90ºc on the performance of epoxy and polyester polymer mortars (mixture of foundry sand with the thermoset resin binder) and they concluded that both the flexural and compressive strength are changing inversely with the increase of temperature and the epoxy polymer mortars are more sensitive to temperature variation. during testing several concrete specimens externally bonded with cfrp, di tommaso et al. [17] obtained that the failure load at 40ºc lower than that at room temperature, while klamer et al. [18], found contradictory results because the failure load increased at 40ºc and 50ºc and suddenly decreased above a threshold temperature of 65ºc. that behaviour was due to the fact that the epoxies will undergo a transition from a hard rigid state to a more pliable (rubbery state) when it reaches the glass transition temperature (tg), (midpoint of a transition temperature range) that depends on the resin or the polymer type [19]. aforementioned review illustrates that the mechanical properties of polymers change considerably at high temperature, especially when it reaches its hdt. experimental work material: the material is a cfrp laminate of 3.1 mm thick and 0.53 fibre volume fraction (vf), which forms the surface part of an integrally heated tool. the laminate is prepared according to the stacking sequence of [(0, ±45)/ (90, ±45)] s, using resin infusion under flexible tooling (rift) processing method. four layers of non-crimp fabric (ncf) triaxial carbon of 660 g/m2 areal-weight from sigmatex industries [20], are applied as the reinforcement, each layer consists three lamina of parallel fibres laid in three different orientations of (0, ± 45) figurer 1. table 1: properties of the sr 8100 epoxy (at 20ºc) [21] properties value viscosity (m.pas) 930±100 density (g/cm3) 1.158 tg (°c) 74-81 hdt (°c) 85 tensile strength (mpa) 60 tension modulus of elasticity (mpa) 2700 flexion modulus of elasticity (mpa) 2850 elongation at break (%) 12 the matrix is the two components, injection and infusion, epoxy system sr8100 with sd8824 standard hardener from sicomin composites [21]. the resin properties at room temperature provided by the manufacturer illustrated in table 1. the combination was allowed to cure for 3 days at room temperature and then the laminate is post-cured in an oven for 16 hours at 80ºc with a ramp rate of 3ºc/min. the laminate is considered as the most appropriate material due to its good structural performance at room temperature, but there is lack of information about its flexural behaviour, when the tool works and temperature rises to 90ºc. figure 1: the cf layers before processing according to stacking sequence of [(0, ±45)/ (90, ±45)] s. test procedure: different uniform rectangular specimens, figure 2, are cut from the produced cfrp laminate with the dimensions illustrated in table 2 and at a span to depth ratio of 32, in accordance with iso 14125 [22]. table 2 : the main dimensions of the test specimen according to iso 14125 [22] figure 2 : cfrp specimens prepared for flexural test. a number of flexural tests are carried out for the specimens at 22ºc, 35ºc, 50ºc, 65ºc, 75ºc and 90ºc on an instron 3367 machine (figure 3) at a loading speed of 0.03 mm/sec using the three-point bending method in accordance with astm d790-07 [23]. each test is repeated three times to verify results. prior to each bending test, the specimen is exposed to heat inside a temperature controlled oven to reach the desired test temperature. then the heated specimen is wrapped by insulator during transferring to the test jig to prevent heat loss. dimensions value (mm) depth (h) 3.13 width (d) 14.8 span length (ls) 120 total length (l) 150 figure 3 : three-point bending test on the instron 3367 machine. results and discussion this research work was achieved with the aim of understanding the flexural behavior of cfrp laminate and finding its flexural properties under the effect of different levels of temperature from room temperature to 90ºc. different rectangular cfrp specimens, according to standards, were prepared for this purpose, using cutting saw and grinder equipment. the bending test results of the cfrp specimens, at each particular temperature level, are illustrated as loaddeflection curves in figure 4. the figure shows that with the increase of temperature the cfrp material loses 60% of peak load (flexural load resistance) at a rate of about 4 n/ºc from 500 n to 198 n. also it shows that the flexural behaviours of elastic deformation and sudden drop of the load for all the cfrp specimens tested at the temperatures range from room temperature to 75 ºc. the initial part of each load-deflection curve that has a linear appearance exhibits the bending stiffness to peak load and elastic deformation of the specimen because no delamination and oscillations were observed before the peak load. figure 4 : load-displacement curves of the cfrp specimens at different test temperatures the sudden drop of the load, after reaching the peak value, represents brittle behaviour of the laminate due fibre cracking as it was noticed during the tests and presented in figure 5a. after the load drop, it was observed that the specimens continued to afford flexural load but never exceeded previous peak load because only the reinforcement resisted. compared with the loaddisplacement curves for the specimens tested at temperatures below 90ºc, obvious difference can be noticed in the curve shape of that tested at 90ºc, also the tested specimen, as shown in figure 5b, was the only that formed around the test machine indenter without fracture. this difference in behaviour indicates a sudden change in the property of the specimen material that becomes pliable and less brittle because its temperature has reached the hdt of the epoxy component, table 1, which relates closely to the resin glass transition temperature and corresponds to the initial softening point. figure 5: failure of the cfrp specimens in flexural test (a) at 35ºc (b) at 90ºc the flexural modulus (𝐸𝑓𝑙) and flexural strength (𝜎𝑓𝑙) of each test specimen at each specified temperature level are calculated from the specimen dimensions (table 2), the slop (𝑚) and the peak load (𝐹𝑃) values of the correlated load-displacement curve, as shown in figure 4, according to the following equations [22]. 𝜎𝑓𝑙 = 3𝐹𝑝𝐿 2𝑏ℎ2 (1) 𝐸𝑓𝑙 = 𝑚𝐿3 2𝑏ℎ2 (2) the obtained values are plotted in figure 6 versus the test temperatures range from room temperature to 90ºc. accordingly a consistent decrease of 60.4%, over the entire increasing of test temperatures, can be observed in the flexural strength of the cfrp laminate at a rate of 10-2 gpa/ºc from 0.61 gpa to 0.24 gpa. furthermore, between the room temperature and 75 ºc, the laminate loses 29% of its flexural modulus gradually from 45 gpa to 31.8 gpa at a rate of 0.2 gpa/ºc, but significant decrease of 40% occurs from 32 gpa to14 gpa at a rate of 1.2 gpa/ºc when the temperature elevates from 75 ºc to 90 ºc. thus it could be deduced that the effect of temperature is quite significant, despite the flexural properties being dominated by the fibres at the outer surfaces, because the laminate loses properties constantly whenever the specimen temperature becomes closer to the hdt of the epoxy component. this will be important to select proper epoxy with suitable hdt for designing the cfrp laminates that are working at elevated temperatures and providing high thermal degradation resistance. on the other hand, however, temperature elevation 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 0 4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 l o a d [ n ] midspan deflection [mm] 22ºc 35ºc 50ºc 65ºc 75ºc 90ºc a b figure 6 : flexural modulus and ultimate stress of the cfrp specimens as function of temperature. decreases the laminate properties of flexural strength and modulus; it softens the laminate and makes it slightly more pliable that can improve some features like impact and vibration resistance as well as slightly higher peel strength. this flexible feature is also useful for the cfrp laminates that are bonded to dissimilar materials with different coefficients of thermal expansion (cte) as occurred in the integrally heated tool and increases the delamination resistance of the tool. conclusion in this study, the flexural test results of the cfrp laminate specimens at different levels of temperature up to 90ºc show that: 1. the temperature dependency of the cfrp laminate properties related strongly to the resin hdt. this will be important in selecting proper epoxy with suitable hdt during designing the cfrp laminates that are working at elevated temperatures to achieve high thermal degradation resistance. 2. the cfrp laminate retains its behaviours of elastic deformation, sudden load drop and brittle fracture at the temperature levels from room temperature to 75ºc. 3. after load drop, the laminate continues in resisting the flexural load till final failure but never exceeds the previous peak load because only the fibre resists. 4. the cfrp laminate loses consistently 60% of peak load (from 500 n to 198 n) and flexural strength (from 0.61 gpa to 0.24 gpa) at rates of about 4 n/ºc and 10-2 n/ºc, respectively, over the entire test temperatures from room temperature to 90ºc. 5. the cfrp laminate loses 29% of its flexural modulus from 45 gpa to 32 gpa, at a rate of 0.2 gpa/ ºc, gradually due to the temperature change from the room temperature to 75ºc but the losing increases drastically to 40% (from 32 gpa to 14 gpa) and the rate to 1.2 gpa when the temperature elevated from 75ºc to 90ºc. 6. the cfrp laminate becomes slightly more flexible with the increase of temperature and more when it reaches hdt. references [1] q. shen, m. omar, and s. dongri, "ultrasonic nde techniques for impact damage inspection on cfrp laminates," journal of materials science research, 1(1), pp. 34-36, 2012. 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[online]. available: http://resindesigns.com/2016/05/10/theimportance-of-epoxy-glass-transitiontemperature/#top. [accessed: sept. 12,2016] [20] sigmatex, "global carbon composite solutions," in "material innovation," sigmatex uk limited, uk2014. [online]. available: http://www.sigmatex.com/technical/technicalspecifications/, [accessed: june 17, 2017. [21] sicomin-composites, "epoxy resin systems multi purpose for composites applications," 2013. [online]. available: http://www.matrixcomposites.co.uk/prod-data-sheet/old/sr-8500860x-uk.pdf, [accessed feb. 06, 2017]. [22] iso 14125, "fibre-reinforced plastic compositesdetermination of flexural properties," european committee for standardization1998, [online]. available: http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnum ber=23637, [accessed: may, 05, 2015. [23] ast d790-07, "standard test methods for flextural properties of unreinforced and reinforced plastics and electrical insulating materials," 8 (1), 2007. acknowledgements the author would like to acknowledge the support that both the polytechnic university of slemani and the university of plymouth have given to complete this work. also the author would like to thank barzan akram mohammed (sulaimani polytechnic university) who assisted with some aspects of the experimental work. biography dr. rzgar mhammed abdalrahman is a member of teaching staff at the production engineering and metallurgy department of technical college of engineering at sulaimani polytechnic university. he started as an assistant lecturer in 1990 then promoted to lecturer in 2010. he awarded b.sc. degree in production engineering in 1981-1985 and m.sc. degree with a thesis entitled (behavior of cutting tool in threading) in 1988 at production engineering and metallurgy department of university of technology / baghdad-iraq. also awarded diploma of membership of plymouth university in 2015-2016 and phd in recognition of a programme of work entitled (design and analysis of integrally-heated tooling for polymer composites) in 2015-2016 at faculty of science and engineering / school of marine science and engineering of plymouth university / uk. he published six articles in the journals of; zankoy sulaimani in 2010, pure and applied sciences / salahaddin university in 2010, materials and design in 2014, reinforced plastics and composites in 2016 as well as in 2017 and an article at the proceeding of eccm16 conference in 2014. http://resindesigns.com/2016/05/10/the-importance-of-epoxy-glass-transition-temperature/#top http://resindesigns.com/2016/05/10/the-importance-of-epoxy-glass-transition-temperature/#top http://resindesigns.com/2016/05/10/the-importance-of-epoxy-glass-transition-temperature/#top http://www.sigmatex.com/technical/technical-specifications/ http://www.sigmatex.com/technical/technical-specifications/ http://www.matrix-composites.co.uk/prod-data-sheet/old/sr-8500-860x-uk.pdf http://www.matrix-composites.co.uk/prod-data-sheet/old/sr-8500-860x-uk.pdf http://www.matrix-composites.co.uk/prod-data-sheet/old/sr-8500-860x-uk.pdf http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=23637 http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=23637 kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq volume 4 – special issue: 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) doi: 10.24017/science.2019 .ichms.15 received: 26 may 2019 accepted: 30 june 2019 abstract a green reduction of copper ions cu2+ has been achieved by onestep process and at room temperature utilizing malva sylvesteris. the extract of malva sylvesteris leaf has been identified using qualitative tests to detect the bioactive compounds such as flavonoids, polyphenols, terpenoids and carbohydrates. characterization of copper nanoparticles was diagnosed by ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy that confirms the band characteristic for copper nanoparticles in the range of 200–700 nm and the role of malva selvesteris leaf extract biomolecules was confirmed by fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. the crystal shape of nanoparticles was confirmed by x-ray diffraction (xrd) at average (20.96 nm) and the peaks correspond to the face centered cubic structure of cooper metal. effective antiseptic activity of copper nanoparticles determined by measurement of inhibition zone showed against representative microorganism of bacteria (grampositive: clostridium staph.aureus;) and (gram-negative: escherichia col; pseudomonas; klebsiella keywords: fabrication, nanoparticles, malva sylvesteris , microbial susceptibility antibacterial activity of copper nanoparticles fabricate via malva sylvesteris leaf extract osama ismail haji zebari samie yaseen sharaf zeebaree akre directorate education dept. of medical lab. technology duhok general directorate shekhan technical college of health ministry of education duhok polytechnic university duhok, iraq duhok, iraq osama.hajin@gmail.com samie.ysain@dpu.edu.krd aemn yaseen sharaf zeebaree hardan ismail haji zebari dept. of medical lab. technology akre directorate education shekhan technical college of health duhok general directorate duhok polytechnic university ministry of education duhok, iraq duhok, iraq aemanzebari2002@gmail.com oihaji84@yahoo.com hadeel ridha abbas maternity & obstetric department sulaimani technical institute sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, kurdistan region, iraq hadeel.abbas@spu.edu.iq mailto:osama.hajin@gmail.com mailto:samie.ysain@dpu.edu.krd mailto:aemanzebari2002@gmail.com mailto:oihaji84@yahoo.com mailto:hadeel.abbas@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 147 1. introduction in the last two decades synthesis of nanomaterials, nanoparticles and their applications have improved dramatically due to their unique abilities, physico-chemical properties compared to bulk materials [1]. one of the cheap, available, efficient noble metal that involve in the field of nanotechnology is copper nanoparticles [2]. it has been synthesized by various methods; such as chemical, physical and biological techniques. parameters and experimental condition that used in such methods to synthesis cunps play an significant role of the efficiency of fabricated nanoparticles [3]. in the synthesis copper nanoparticles cu-nps, various methods have been used; including sonochemical technique, hydrothermal approach, thermal decomposition, microemulsion method and etc. all mentioned methods had involved toxic chemical compounds and energy demanding routes. theses lead to synthesized cunps less valuable in term of biological and medical applications as well as hazardous to environment [1],[2]. thus, it needs to an alternative method which is low cost, environmentally friendly, and available row materials [2]. green syntheses methods could be a good alternative to produce noble metals nanoparticles that their properties correspond to environment friendly, nontoxic and efficient in the chemistry and biology applications [2]. green reduction chemistry for fabrication of cu-nps is an alternative method to replace conventional methods which is using sever (inorganic) reducing agent. a green method has many advantages due to less cost effective, eco-friendly, environmentally and non-toxic solvents are involved in such methods [3]. so in this context recently, many research turn to use plant extracts which is having redox capacity in the synthesis of noble metal nanoparticles, due to it has a vast range of secondary metabolites such as flavonoids, terpenoids, polysaccharides and phenolics. synthesized of copper nanoparticles by green reduction have widely considerable interest particularly because of the crystal size structure depends on physical and chemical properties and its enormous technological potential [2] 2. introduction copper nanoparticles were synthesized from all the parts of the plant separately like leaf, stem, seed, flower and peels.malva sylvesteris are as commonly known mallow is a famous plant in medicinal filed. the composition malva sylvesteris (mallow) which have a (phenolics and flavonoids) group component of all leaves, flowers, stems and seeds have a suitable and high antioxidant capacity as well as infusions of it used in traditional medicine for antiinflammatory and mucilaginous action [4], [5]. and also due to high efficiency of active composition which consist of bioactive compounds consider as good source used in clinical efficacy of an herbal mouth wash composed in chronic periodontitis patients[5].among several metal nanoparticles, copper nanoparticles (cu-nps) are favorite and attractive due to their specific chemical, physical properties and cheap cost preparation plays as important role in many applications such as in medical field used as a novel as anti-microbial[6]anti-fungal [7]anti-fouling efficiency against growth of algae [8]also as cytotoxicity on human breast cancer cells [3] the main objective of this study is to synthesis of copper nanoparticles using green and ecofriendly approach without addition any chemicals or undesirable solvent and surfactant and to observe the effect of the malva sylvesteris leaf extract (msle) as reducing and stabilizing agent in the process of synthesis of cu-nps (shape and size). we also confirmed the shapes of formed nanoparticles according to the standard jcpds (no. 04-0836) data and evaluate antibacterial characteristics of the synthesized copper nanoparticle. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 148 3. methods and materials 3.1. materials copper (ii) sulfate anhydrase (cuso4 99.5% purity), was purchased from scharlau lab spanish co. with no further treatment. during the month of april 2019 at the garden of the shekhan technical college of health, a healthy green malva sylvesteris leaves were collected (figure.1a). all representative microorganisms bacteria (gram-positive: clostridium staph. aureus;) and (gram-negative: pseudomonas; e. coli; klebsiella) are locally isolated in bacteriology lab of shekhan technical college of health and the antibacterial activity evaluated with prepared copper nanoparticles. bacterial strains were sustained on nutrient agar slants at 4 0c. 3.2. preparation of malva sylvesteris leaf extracts (msle) washing malva sylvesteris leaves for 10 minutes and dried by microwave for 5 minutes the (10 g) powders of dry leaves were dissolved in 200 ml deionized water in erlenmeyer flask 250 ml and boiled at 70 c0 for 2 hrs. the mixture followed by double filtration to remove undesirable compounds in order to obtain yellow solution of msle (figure 1.b). the filtrate solution of msle was stored in refrigerator -4 0c for further studies. 3.3. preparation of 0.1m copper sulfate anhydrous solution accurate amount of 0.1m copper sulphate anhydrous as precursor can be prepared by dissolving 1.595g of cuso4 in erlenmeyer flask 200 ml of distilled water were completed and stored in dark place until use (figure1.c). 3.4. green synthesis of copper nanoparticles using msle (ms-cunps) green synthesis of cunp was achieved in ratio 1:3 which is adding 45 ml of msle in separatory funnel dropwise into 15ml of 0.1m copper sulfate anhydrous aqueous solution in erlenmeyer flask of 250 ml with stirring for 2 hrs. and at room temperature. when the extract react with the copper ions, the color of the solution show spontaneous change from blue color copper ions to intensive green color. these changes in color of the reaction clearly indicate fabrication of cu-nps. the mixture were centrifuged at 4000 rpm for 10 min and the precipitate of nanoparticles then handled with washing by distilled water and left over one day to dry. the next day copper nanoparticles collected (figure 1.d) figure 1. preparation of (a) healthy green malva sylvesteris leaves, b) malva sylvestris extract, c) 0.1 m cuso4 solution (d) ms-cu-nps synthesized. 3.6 characterization 3.6.1. phytochemical screening – qualitative analysis for msle preliminary phytochemical screening was carried out using standard phytochemical analysis methods for identification of bioactive compounds in malva sylvesteris leaf which showed that this plant contains: carbohydrates, reducing sugar, proteins, glycosides, phenols, α-amino acids, tannins, alkaloids, flavonoids, saponins and terpenoids (show table 1 & figure 2) kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 149 3.6.2. ultra violet-visible (uv-vis) spectrophotometer green reduction of the cu+2 to cu0-nps achieved by bioreductant aqueous msle were monitored by using uv-vis spectrophotometer (jenesa 752n mod.220v). the spectrum analysis of cu-nps was scanned from 200 nm to 750 nm and measured after stabilized color after 24 hours at room temperature using quartz cuvette for the measurement (show figure 4). 3.6.3. fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ftir) the precipitate of copper nanoparticles and msle were characterized by ftir spectroscopy (nicolet 6700, atr) with scanning range 4000–500 cm−1 by. the resolution was 4 cm−1 with 64 scans and the measurement was done with kbr pellet (show figure 5a&4b). 3.6.4. x-ray diffraction (xrd) measurement and analysis of xrd pattern of ms-cu-nps are shown in (table 3 & figure 6) was obtained by using (philips x'pert pro) x-ray diffractometer with 2θ configuration radiation and cukα (l = 1.540 å). the diffraction angle was varied in the range of 10–80° while the scanning rate was 0.026/minutes, operating at a voltage of 40 kv and the current of 30 ma. 3.6.5. antimicrobial assay determination of antimicrobial activity for msle and ms-cu-nps this way was used to make the difference between the antimicrobial activity of msle and ms-cu-nps were investigated by utilizing agar well-diffusion assay by using mueller-hinton agar as growth area to measure the sensitivity of tested microorganism against ms-cu-nps. the tested microorganisms (bacteria only) on mueller-hinton agar plates using sterile cotton were swabbed uniformly then two wells of 6 mm diameter were made using sterile well borer then twenty microliter of msle and (0.1 mm) ms-cu-nps solutions was injected into the corresponding well then at 37 0c for 24 hours the plates were incubated. the diameter of inhibition zone measured to determine the effect of ms-cu-nps as antibacterial (grampositive: clostridium staph.aureus;) and (gram-negative: e. col; pseudomonas; klebsiella). [4]. 3.6.6. antimicrobial activity assessment of ms-cu-nps culture medium nutrient stock was done for the elaboration of inoculums of the intended bacteria and mueller hinton agar was made for the examination method. the experience bacteria were subcultured using medium of nutrient agar. the tubes include sterilized environment were injected with respective bacterial strains. the bacteria at 37 ± 1 °c for 24 h were incubated then stored in cool condition. the stock cultures were preserved. preparation of bacterial inoculums is made by transmitted a loop of stock culture to the nutrient broth (100 ml) in conical flask (250 ml) then incubated at 37 ± 1 °c (bacteria) and 25 ± 1 °c (fungi) for 24 h before the testing. antimicrobial susceptibility testing antimicrobial sensibility experiment was carried out according to the national committee for clinical laboratory standards which is by using the agar dilution methods. measuring of the inhibitory zone diameter is done on the nutrient agar for bacteria, with conventional correct well (6mm in diameter) containing particular doses of ms-cu-nps. the caliper was used to read the inhibitory zone diameters (mic), and whole results were approximated to the nearest whole numbers (millimeter) for analysis. [5] minimum inhibitory concentration determination green synthesized ms-cu-nps were examined antiseptic activity versus (gram-negative: pseudomonas; e. coli; klebsiella and (gram-positive: staph. aureus; clostridium) by agar well dilution method. investigation of (mic) of the ms-cu-nps versus intended bacteria was kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 150 executed by agar well dilution broth method. matching the mcfarland (turbidity) standard by standardization of all bacterial dilution, exhibiting a bacterial density of 1.5×108 cfu/ml. therefore, the mha medium is seeded by 24-hour of microbial strain the media tray. plates were stand for 10–15 min in order to the culture to absorb in the medium. four 6-mmdiameter of solidifies agar were produced in each petri plate and filled with 40 μl (100 μg / ml) of ms-cunps dissolved in dmso, antibiotics (ciprofloxacin) as beneficial control and dmso as adverse control. ms-cu-nps mic is assessed by preparing with various concentrations starting from 0.5-20 μg / ml plates were incubated at 37 ° c for 24 hours. effects were verified based on the inhibition area existence and the area size is measured. the smallest ms-cu-np concentration that totally inhibits the development of microorganisms was firm and (mics) were measured using the recorded approach [6]. 4. results table 1. phytochemical screening – qualitative analysis for msle active comp. in mle name of test methodology result(s) 1) carbohydrate mollisch 1 ml of molisch’s reagent mix with 1 ml of extract in tube then add h2so4 conc. drop by drop violet ring color appeared 2) reducing sugar benedict add 2 ml of benedict reagent to 1 ml of extract in test tube, and boil for 10 min in water bath green precipitate appeared 3) protein’s biuret 1 ml of 10% naoh mix with 1 ml of extract then add 1 ml of 0.7% cuso4 with shaking green precipitate observed 4) glycosides salkowski 1 ml of extract mix with chloroform in 2 ml. shaking then adds 2 ml of h2so4 con. carefully brown-red ring appeared 5) amino acid ninhydrin extract 0.5 ml when boiled with 1 ml of 0.2% ninhydrin solution violet color showed 6) phenols ----------1 ml of. 2% fecl3 solution mix 1 ml of extract black or blue coloration 7) tannins braemer 1 ml of the extract was poured with drops of 1% lead acetate. yellow ppt was formed 8) alkaloids dragendroff 2 ml of dragendroff reagent mix with 1 ml of extract with yellowish turbidity of precipitate forming 9) flavonoids shinoda 1 ml of extract mix with 1 ml of 40% methanol and shake, then add 1 ml of naoh formation of pink/ yellowish color 10) saponin frothing add 0.5ml of filtrate extract with 5 ml of distilled water and shake well. establishment foam layer 11) terpenoids liebermann burchardt 1 ml of chloroform mixes with 1 ml of extract and evaporated to dryness. heated about 2 minutes 1 ml of concentrated h2so4. a grayish color indicated 12) steroid ---------------- a 1 ml extract was blended with 2ml of chloroform and added slightly to the side concentrated h2so4. the bottom layer becomes red and the layer of sulfuric acid is yellow. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 151 5. discussion 5.1. qualitative phytochemical screening of malva sylvesteris leaf extract in table 2 the results of qualitative phytochemical analysis of the malva sylvesteris (msle) revealed different color belong to the bioactive compounds that found in leaf of the malva sylvesteris plant which confirmed by known chemical tests in table.1 which proved the presence of the bioactive compounds such as carbohydrates, flavonoids, alkaloids, glycosides, tannins, saponins, phenols and terpenoids. active groups in these compounds such as carbonyl, hydroxyl and amine will play an important role as capping and stabilizing agent to reduce cu2+ to cu0. table 2. qualitative phytochemical screening of malva sylvesteris leaf extract active comp. in mle name of test result(s) color 1) carbohydrate mollisch’s test (+ve) violet ring color appeared 2) reducing sugar benedict test (+ve) green precipitate appeared 3) protein’s biuret test (+ve) green precipitate observed 4) glycosides salkowski test (+ve) brown-red ring appeared 5) amino acid ninhydrin test (+ve) violet color appeared 6) phenols ----------(+ve) blue or black coloration 7) tannins braemer’s test (+ve) a yellow precipitate was formed 8) alkaloids dragendroff test (+ve) yellowish turbidity of precipitate forming 9) flavonoids shinoda test (+ve) formation of pink/ yellowish color 10) saponin frothing test (+ve) formation of foam layer 11) terpenoids liebermann burchardt test (+ve) a grayish color indicated 12) steroid ----------------(+ve) the bottom layer becomes red and the layer of sulfuric acid is yellow (+ve) present active compound in msle. figure 1. phytochemical screening – qualitative analysis for msle kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 152 5.2. ultra violet-visible (uv-vis) spectrophotometer the addition of msle extract to copper (ii) sulfate anhydrase solution resulted in color changing from blue to intense green due to formation of cu-nps and the maximum absorption peaks of copper nanoparticle at 560 nm. this is happened due to surface plasmon absorption of copper nanoparticles which is collective oscillation of free electrons from conduction band move to exciton band by the incident electromagnetic radiation. and there were two band appear in red shift 250 nm (band ι) and 310 nm (band ιι) assigned to cinnamoyl system of benzoyl type phenolic compounds (show figure .3) figure 3. uv-vis spectra of msle and ms-cu-nps synthesized 5.3. ftir spectrophotometer ft-ir spectrogram is used to identify and propose a possible interaction that occurs during synthesis of metal nanoparticle by plant extract which is resultant of involving a biomolecules in the reduction. in figure. 4a&b clearly showed many changing in their spectrum before and after copper nanoparticles fabrication by the malva sylvesteris leaf extract. a strong broad band at 3447 cm-1 revealed the presence the o-h vibration of alcohols and phenols and also to the presence of secondary amines n-h of amide. both 2928 and 2850 cm-1 bands attributed to –ch2 and c-h widening mode in pristine extract while in those peaks shifted with decreasing intensity. the bands appearing at 1628 cm-1and 1449 cm-1 recognized (c-o) stretching in carboxylic group in the formation of oxygen functional groups are shifted in lower and higher filed in the formation of cunps to1608 cm-1 and 1469 cm-1 respectively. interesting peak appear at 1540 cm-1 which attributed to c=c stretching of aromatic ring. the small sharp peak at 1701 cm-1in malva sylvesteris leaf extract is for c=c stretching. 698-1449 cm-1 range peaks observed related to alcohols and phenolic groups. the band in the finger print region was detected to be 525 cm-1should be a stretching of o-cu-o[3], [7]. 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 200 300 400 500 600 700 a bs or ba nc e nm msle ms-cu-nps kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 153 figure 4. ftir spectrum of (a) msle (b) ms-cu-nps synthesized 5.4. x-ray diffraction studies in figure. 5 shows particular xrd patterns of shaped ms-cu-nps with distinctive peaks of 2θ = 43.23o, 50.12o and 74.12o, with indices of 111, 200 and 220, corresponding to the fcc structure of copper nps and consistent with the conventional jcpds structure (no. 04-0836) data (table 3). the xrd chart showed no impurity peaks other than cu showing the elevated purity of the stage. calculation average size of the ms-cu-nps by the formula of debye – scherrer as: d= kλ/βcosθ. where; d is the particle size (nm). k is a constant equal to 0.9. λ is the wave length of x-ray radiation (0.15418 nm), full width of the peak at half maximum (fwhm) is β and 2θ is the bragg angle (degree). the average size of crystallite was discovered to be 14-25 nm in the spectrum. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 154 figure 5. xrd spectrum of ms-copper nanoparticles fabricated by malva sylvesteris leaf extract 5.5. antibacterial activity of ms-cu-nps firstly, msle & ms-cu-nps have been tested against representative microorganism of bacteria (gram-negative: klebsiella pseudomonas; e. coli) and (gram-positive: staphy. aureus; clostridium) at constant volume to show the variation of activity for each one of them (figure.6), then mic of ms-cu-nps activity was measured against representative microorganism of bacteria (gram-negative: klebsiella pseudomonas; e. coli) and (grampositive: staphy. aureus; clostridium) by micro-dilution broth method and comparing with standard drugs to show the best antibiotic activity at mic. in agar well-diffusion procedure, the ms-cu-nps exhibited important antibacterial effectiveness with the five pathogenic bacteria strains as a function of bio-copper volumes are showed in figure. 6 were ms-cu-nps showed antimicrobial activity against intended pathogenic microorganisms which represented by (gram-negative: klebsiella pseudomonas; e. coli) and (gram-positive: staphy. aureus; clostridium) with different degrees, as indicated by the inhibition diameter area, whereas msle show smallest antimicrobial activity (figure. 6). ms-cu-nps ' antimicrobial characteristics were evaluated using mic. agar – well dilution technique is one of the most frequently used procedures to investigate the mic of antimicrobial agents; the mic is described as the smallest antimicrobial agent concentration that prevents a microorganism's noticeable development under specified circumstances. after 24 h of incubation, a heights zones growth have been determined from (16.5-22.5 mm) belong to e. coli, klebsiella with (mic12.5, 10, 7.5 mg/ml) and (12-18 mm) for pseudomona while staphylococcus, clostridium showed heights inhibition from (15-20.4 mm) with (mic12.5, 10, 7.5 mg/ml) supplemented by ms-cu-nps respectively (figure. 7). therefore, ms-cu-nps show excellent antibiotic activity comparing with standard drug. in case of assessment of mic for ms-cunps, the gram-negative bacteria (e. coli and klebsiella) showed greater inhibition and good with (pseudomonas) compared to the gram-positive fungi (staphylococcus aureus; clostridium) (figure.7), which may be due to variability in the structure of the cell wall. of gram-positive bacteria cell wall consists of a dense peptidoglycan layer composed of linear polysaccharide strands crossed by brief peptides, forming a more rigid framework leading to hard penetration of ms-cu-nps, while the cell wall has a lower peptidoglycan layer in gram negative bacteria [8]. some studies are accessible for the antimicrobial activity mechanism. anti-bacterial experiments have stated that the escherichia coli is more efficient bacterial activity and was possibly eliminated with an inhibition area of 35 mm at 20 μl ms-cu-nps kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 155 (figure.6) and 31.4 mm at 20 μl mic-20 mg/ml ms-cu-nps (figure.7). the findings show that nps mediated the dissipation of cell membrane potential was the likely reason why cell filaments were formed. on the other side, cu-nps have been discovered to cause several toxic impacts such as reactive oxygen species generation, lipid peroxidation, protein oxidation, and degradation of dna in e. coli cells [9]. ms-cu-nps ' bactericidal property is primarily due to releasing of the copper cation(cu+) and attached to the cell wall of bacteria due to electrostatic interactions. in addition, metal ions not only interact with the surface of the membrane [10], but can also cross the bacteria and eventually bind with dna molecules and cause helical structure disturbance by networking the nucleic acid strands within and between them [11]. figure 6. inhibition zone of msle and ms-cu-nps represent antiseptic activity against representative microorganism of bacteria (gram-negative: klebsiella pseudomonas; e. coli) and (gram-positive: staphy.aureus; clostridium) figure 7. mic (mg/ml) of ms-cu-nps against several bacteria 1.5 1.4 1 2.7 2 30 22 16 35 20 z on e of in hi bi tti on (m m )/ c on c. 2 0 μl msle ms-cu-nps 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 zo ne o f i nh ib itt io n (m m ) mic of ms-cu-nps μg/ml staphylococcus aureus clostridum pseudomonas e. coli klebsilla kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 156 6. conclusion in this work we first report a clean, cheap cost, environmentally-friendly and suitable method for the synthesis of ms-cu-nps utilizing malva sylvesteris leaf extract. no chemical reagent or surfactant template in the synthesis of cu-nps and even elevated temperature. this technique therefore allows the bioprocess to be environmentally friendly. the extract of malva sylvesteris identifies by qualitative test and the nanoparticles produced were distinguished by measurements of uv – vis, ftir, xrd and had excellent antibacterial activity mic. a significant prospective benefit of the nanoparticles synthesis technique outlined using malva sylvesteris, which is quite stable in solution and is a very precious advantage compared to other biological techniques presently in use. this green reduction technique can be a successful method for preparing other nanoparticles of metals and metal oxide and can be useful in environmental, pharmaceutical, medical and biotechnological applications. references: [1] m. b. gawande et al., “cu and cu-based nanoparticles: synthesis and applications in catalysis,” chem. rev., vol. 116, no. 6, pp. 3722–3811, 2016. [2] a. umer, s. naveed, and n. ramzan, “a green method for the synthesis,” pp. 197–203, 2014. [3] a. y. ghidan, t. m. al-antary, and a. m. awwad, “green synthesis of copper oxide nanoparticles using punica granatum peels extract: effect on green peach aphid,” environ. nanotechnology, monit. manag., vol. 6, pp. 95–98, 2016. [4] a. nanda and m. saravanan, “biosynthesis of silver nanoparticles from staphylococcus aureus and its antimicrobial activity against mrsa and mrse,” nanomedicine nanotechnology, biol. med., vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 452–456, 2009. [5] k. m. el-gamal, m. s. hagrs, and h. s. abulkhair, “synthesis, characterization and antimicrobial evaluation of some novel quinoline derivatives bearing different heterocyclic moieties,” bull. fac. pharmacy, cairo univ., vol. 54, no. 2, pp. 263–273, 2016. [6] p. p. n. v. kumar, u. shameem, p. kollu, r. l. kalyani, and s. v. n. pammi, “green synthesis of copper oxide nanoparticles using aloe vera leaf extract and its antibacterial activity against fish bacterial pathogens,” bionanoscience, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 135–139, 2015. [7] m. nasrollahzadeh, m. atarod, and s. m. sajadi, “green synthesis of the cu/fe 3 o 4 nanoparticles using morinda morindoides leaf aqueous extract: a highly efficient magnetically separable catalyst for the reduction of organic dyes in aqueous medium at room temperature,” appl. surf. sci., vol. 364, pp. 636–644, 2016. [8] s. shrivastava, t. bera, a. roy, g. singh, p. ramachandrarao, and d. dash, “characterization of enhanced antibacterial effects of novel silver nanoparticles,” nanotechnology, vol. 18, no. 22, 2007. [9] a. k. chatterjee, r. chakraborty, and t. basu, “mechanism of antibacterial activity of copper nanoparticles,” nanotechnology, vol. 25, no. 135101, pp. 1–12, 2014. [10] m. j. hajipour, k. m. fromm, a. a. ashkarran, d. j. de aberasturi, i. r. de larramendi, and t. rojo, “antibacterial properties of nanoparticles,” trends biotechnol., vol. 30, no. 10, pp. 499–511, 2012. [11] j. kim, h. cho, s. ryu, and m. choi, “effects of metal ions on the activity of protein tyrosine phosphatase vhr : highly potent and reversible oxidative inactivation by cu 2 ϩ ion,” arch. biochem. biophys., vol. 382, no. 1, pp. 72–80, 2000. 1. introduction 6. conclusion  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 2 | july 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.2.24 echocardiographic morphological classification of aortic stenosis in sulaimani pediatric teaching hospital/kurdistan/iraq aso faeq salih pediatric dept. college of medicine sulaimani university, sulaimani, iraq asofaek@hotmail.com ammar mohammed azeez pediatric teaching hospital in sulaimani city, iraq abstract: aortic stenosis occurs when the heart's aortic valve narrows. this narrowing prevents the valve from opening fully, which obstructs blood flow from the heart into the aorta and onward to the rest of the body. the aim of the study was to performed the echocardiographic study of the major morphological types of aortic valve stenosis in the pediatric cardiac unit in suliamani. a retrospective study including 127 patients aged from birth to 14 years done in the cardiac unit / sulaimani pediatric teaching hospital. the data were collected from the recorded files of the patients examined in that unit during the period from 2006 to 2016.collected data included name, age, sex, residency, consanguinity, clinical presentation, associated syndromes and echo findings. statistical analysis was performed by spss 21. chi-square test was used to find out the correlation between categorical variables, p value of (≤ 0.05) was regarded significant. overall, 80 were males (63%) and 47 were females (37%). forty patients (31.5%) were below one year. the valvular type found in 96 cases (75.6%). subvalvular and supravalvular types found in 22 cases (17.3%), 9 cases (7.1%) respectively. we found 91 cases (94.8%) of bicuspid, 3 cases (3.1) of tricuspid and 2 cases (2.1%) of the unicuspid valve. in subvalvular type we found 14 cases (63.6%) of sub aortic ridge, 5 cases (22.7%) of tunnel type and 3 cases (13.6%) of systolic anterior motion. in supravalvular type we had 7 cases (77.8%) of hourglass and 2 cases (22.2%) of the long segment. aortic regurgitation was the most common associated cardiac defect. there was a significant association between the types of aortic stenosis and the mild grade of ar; p value <0.05. in conclusion the valvular aortic stenosis was the most common type of aortic stenosis in this study. bicuspid aortic valve found to be the most common congenital anomaly associated with aortic stenosis. most of the patients with aortic stenosis were discovered to have an accidental murmur. keywords: stenosis, echocardiography, bicuspid, valvular, regurgitation, congenital. 1. introduction congenital aortic stenosis occurs in different forms, usually classified with respect to the site of the obstruction relative to the aortic valve: valvular, subvalvular and supravalvular [1]. congenital aortic valvular stenosis itself forms 5% of all cardiac abnormalities. it is difficult to know the true incidence, however, because of congenitally abnormal aortic valves may not be recognizedinchildhood [2]. it is more common in males with male to female ratio of 4:1. associated anomalies can be detected in as high as 20% of patients [3]. echocdiography defines the anatomy of the aortic valve and severity of aortic valve obstruction. left ventricular muscle is hypertrophied depending on the severity of aortic valve obstruction. doppler flow velocity across the aortic valve is useful tool in assessing the severity and planning the intervention [3]. subvalvular aortic stenosis: fixed subvalvular aortic stenosis accounts for approximately 10% to 20% of patient of aortic stenosis in children, and the male to female ratio is 2:1 to 3:1. associated cardiac defects are present in more than half of patients. common associated cardiac defects include vsd, coarctation of the aorta, atrioventricular septal defect, and valvular aortic stenosis. most commonly, a discrete fibrous membrane or fibromascular collar encircles the left ventricular outflow tract just beneath the aortic valve . rarely, a long diffuse fibro muscular obstruction narrows the left ventricular outflow tract for several centimeters, forming a tunnel sub aortic stenosis [4]. echocardiographywith doppler study is highly sensitive and specific for the diagnosis of sub aortic stenosis and to define the anatomy of the lesion diagnostic cardiac catheterizationis not mandatory in the evaluation of sub aortic stenosis, but may provide useful information in cases where the clinical data and noninvasive evaluation are not consistent [1]. supravalvular aoertic stenosis: supravalvular aortic stenosis is the least common type of aortic stenosis. it is rare. approximately 30% to 50% of patients with supravalvular aortic stenosis have williamsbeuren syndrome [1]. the anatomic diagnosis of svas can reliably be made from twodimensional echocardiography that uses multiple views, including parasternal, apical longaxis, and suprasternal. in svas with hourglass deformity and diffuse hypoplasia, the diameter of the ascending aorta is smaller than that of the aortic root. in svas with fibrous diaphragm, the external ascending aortic diameter is mailto:email@univ.com normal, although an echogenic membrane is commonly observed above the sinuses of valsalva. turbulent color flow mapping indicates the site of hemodynamically significant obstruction in relation to the origin of the coronary ostia. the incidence of coronary artery involvement is high in svas [5]. doppler peak gradient overestimates and, therefore, does not predict cathetermeasured gradient well in patients with svas and may not be dependable in assessing its severity and guiding the need for intervention [6]. 2. methods and materials this is a retrospective study including 127 patients aged from birth to 14 years; diagnosed as cases of aortic valve stenosis: conducted in the pediatric cardiac unit / sulaimani paediatric teaching hospital.thedata werecollected from the recorded files of the patientsexaminedin that unit during 10 yearsfrom 2006 to 2016. the data of study included name, age, sex, residency, and consanguinity, symptoms of the presentation which include (accidental murmur, fatigability, chest pain, syncope, shock and feature of congestive heart failure). associated syndromes included william syndrome (elfin facies, intellectual disability,heart problems, especially supravalvular aortic stenosis, and periods of high blood calcium),turner syndrome(webbed neck, low-set ears, low posterior hairline, shield chest ,short stature, and lymph edema), crouzon a_ acquired: sam sub aortic tissue ridge b _congenital (tunnel type) supravalvular aortic steno all cases included in this study were examined by the same echo machine using two dimensional, and doppler(spectral and color) with 3v2c and 7v3c mhz transducers (adjusted according to examinations were obtained for each patient chest wall thickness) using a commercial accuson cypress, usa made, supplied by siemens company and by the same examiner (pediatric cardiologist). trans-thoracic cross-sectional echocardiography usually allows clear demonstration of all the intra cardiac anatomy. echo done according to standard echo views from sub costal, apical, parasternal, suprasternal position according to the standards recommended by the american society of echocardiography [7]. all patient’s data entered using computerized statistical software; statistical package for social science (spss) version 21 for windows. chi square test was used for categorical variables, p value of ≤ .005 was regarded as significant and the results presented as tables. 3. results we have 127 cases of aortic valve stenosis, 80 patients were males (63.0%), while 47 patients were females (37.0%). the ages ranged from birth to 14 years, 40 pts. wereless than one year (31%).as shown below,88 patients (69.3 %) were from sulaimani. all these details mentioned in table (1). table (2) shows that 96 cases(75.6%) were vas, which makes the most common type of as, while 22 cases(17.3%) were sas and 9 cases (7.1%) were svas. bav cases were found in 91 patients (94.8 %); the most common type of vas. the cases of satr were 14 (63.6%), makes it the most common type of sas. in pts with svas, cases of hourglass were 7 (77.8 %); the most common one. table 1. descriptive features regarding sex, age and residency variables numbers % sex male 80 63.0 female 47 37.0 total 127 100.0 age less than one year 40 31.5 1-5 years 30 23.6 6-10 years 30 23.6 10-14years 27 21.3 total 127 100.0 residence sulaimani 88 69.3 out of sulaimani 39 30.7 total 127 100.0 table 2. descriptive features regarding the morphological classification of as. variables no. % vas 96 75.6 sas 22 17.3 svas 9 7.1 total 127 100.0 valvular aortic stenosis unicuspid 2 2.1 bicuspid 91 94.8 tricuspid 3 3.1 total 96 100.0 subvalvular aortic stenosis sam 3 13.6 sub aortic tissue ridge 14 63.6 congenital tunnel type 5 22.7 total 22 100.0 supravalvular aortic stenosis hourglass 7 77.8 long segment 2 22.2 total 9 100.0 table (3) shows that 57 cases (44.9%) of the patients presented with accidental murmur. other clinical features were included chf in 33 cases (26%), fatigability which is seen in 19 cases (15%), chest pain in 11 cases (8.7%), critical as with shock in 4 cases (3 %) and syncope in 3 cases (2.4%). table 3. patterns of clinical presentations % number variable 44.9 57 accidental murmur(auscultation) 26 33 chf 15 19 fatigability 8.7 11 chest pain 3 4 shock 2.4 3 syncope 100 127 total there is a significant association (p value < 0.05) between the cases presented with features of chf and the types of aortic valve stenosis; as 32 cases of vas presented with congestive heart failure, as shown in table (4). we have 7 cases of williams’s syndrome, 3 cases with turner syndrome, 2 cases of down syndrome and one case of crouzon disease. there was a significant association between williams’s syndrome and the types as (p value < 0.05). there was no significant association between the types of aortic stenosis and other syndromes (p value >0.05),as mentioned in table(5). the most common associated cardiac defect in patients with valvular and subvalvular aortic stenosis was aortic regurgitation; while we had no reported cases of svas associated with ar; in spite of that vsd and pda were the most common associated cardiac anomalies in those patients (svas). cardiac anomalies were reported in all cases of sas (no isolated cases).these details and other associated cardiac defects arranged in table (7) we found that 49 cases of aortic valve stenosis associated with aortic regurgitation; which further subdivided according to the severity into mild, moderate and sever ar. the mild one was the most frequently encountered defect; which is detected in 38 cases of vas and sas. there was a significant association between the types of as and the mild grade of ar (p value < 0.05). table (8) does clarify all these data. table 4. association between the types of as and patterns of clinical presentation. variable vas sas svas p value accidental murmur yes 38 13 6 0.100 no 54 9 3 fatigability yes 11 6 2 0.141 no 85 16 7 chf yes 32 1 0 0.004 no 64 21 9 chest pain yes 10 1 0 0.428 no 79 18 8 syncope yes 1 1 1 0.124 no 95 21 8 shock yes 4 0 0 0.513 no 92 22 9 table 5. association between associated syndromes and types of aortic stenosis variable vas sas svas p value turner syndrome yes 3 0 0 0.609 no 93 22 9 williams syndrome yes 0 0 7 0.000 no 96 22 2 down syndrome yes 2 0 0 0.720 no 94 22 7 crouzon syndrome yes 1 0 0 0.850 no 95 22 9 table 6. association between sex and consanguinity with the types of aortic stenosis. variables vas sas svas p value sex male 59 14 7 0.624 female 37 8 2 consanguinity positive 47 9 3 0.566 negative 49 13 6 table 7. associated echocardiographic cardiac defects. types of as variable svas sas vas 0 15 34 no ar 0 68.2 34.4 % 0 2 11 no coa 0 9.1 11.5 % 0 3 5 no mr 0 13.6 5.2 % 2 0 4 no pda 22.2 0 4.2 % 2 2 4 no vsd 22.2 9.1 4.2 % 0 0 2 no hlhs 0 0 2.1 % 0 0 2 no dcm 0 0 2.1 % 0 0 1 no asd 0 0 1 % 0 0 1 no tr 0 0 1 % 1 0 1 no ps 11.1 0 1 % 0 0 1 no ms 0 0 1 % 5(9) 22(22) 66 (96) no total 55.5% 100% 68.9 % % table 8. association between the grades of ar and the types of avs. variable vas sas svas p value mild ar yes 28 10 0 0.041 no 68 12 9 moderat ar yes 5 3 0 0.246 no 91 19 9 sever ar yes 2 1 0 0.703 no 94 21 9 4. discussion in the current study male gender was predominant in all types of aortic stenosis with male/female ratio (1.6:1 _ 3.5: 1). this statement agreed with the reports of perry et al. and rothman and flyer who reported 64%–78% for aortic stenosis in boys [8,9], and close to ibnsena (mousl) teaching hospital report in which 69.2% patients with aortic stenosis were male [10]. male also is the predominant sex (67% male) in a study has done at liverpool [11]. we found that most of our patients (44.9%)have presented with an accidental murmur (asymptomatic) eitherduring hospital admission for other reasons (chest infection, gastroenteritis, etc.) or before preparing for surgery. the treating physicians have referred these pts. due to positive auscultatory findings. features of chf seen in 33 pts. (26%), 32 pts. of them belong to the valvular type. there was a significant relation between the types of aortic valve stenosis and those pts. presented with chf, p value was 0,004.thismight being explained by the severity of vas as all affected patients were below one year of age. others presentations were fatigability, chest pain, shock state due to critical as and syncope in decreasing frequencies. a study done in china in which 51 cases with aortic stenosis were included; shows that most of patients (56.9%) were asymptomatic [12]. chf was noted in 31.2% of cases, exertional dyspnea in (17.6%) of cases, syncope in (9.8%) of cases, and chest pain in (7.8%) of cases. other study has done in toronto; in which 313 cases with as were conducted, showed that most of the pts. with aorticstenosis have presented with an accidental murmur (67%) [13]. the most common morphological type of aortic stenosis in our study was valvular aortic stenosis which occurred in 96 children (75.6%) followed by subvalvular stenosis which affect 22 children (17.3%), then supravalvular stenosis affecting 9 children (7.1%).this morphological classification is close to a study done in liverpool, showed that vas occurred in 71.2% cases, sas in13.7%cases and svas in 7.7%cases. a study done in china; in which51children diagnosed with aortic stenosis was included, vas occurred in 39 children (76.5%), sas in 5 children (9.8%), and svas in 7 children (13.7%) [12]. regarding vas, bicuspid aortic valve was the most common type in the current study, seen in 91 cases (94.8%), tricuspid av and unicuspid av founded only in 3 pts. and 2 pts. respectively. these findings were different somewhat from the findings found in a study done in turkey [14] on 266patients, showed that 127 patients (48%)were bicuspid, tricuspid in 136 patients (51%) and unicuspid in 3 patients (1%).aortic valve was mostly bicuspid in 371 patients (73%), tricuspid in 107 cases (21%), and unicuspid in 30 cases (6 %) in another study done in indiana [15]. one single-center study done by roberts wc and ko jmincluded 932 patients who underwent aortic valve replacement for as without mitral stenosis (thus excluding most rheumatic disease) found definite congenital abnormalities in 54% of the aortic valves, with 5% being unicuspid valves and the remainder bicuspid, i.e. in 95% [16]. regarding sas; sub aortic tissue ridge (membrane) was the most common pathological type in the present study. thisstatement is in agreement with the report of brownw et al [15]; in which 132 patients with subvalvular as were studied, they found 110 cases (83%) have presented with discrete sub aortic membrane and 22 patients (17%) with tunnel type. fifty one children with discrete subvalvular aortic stenosis were studied by newfeld e et al. [17] . the three morphological types of obstruction found were the thin membranous type (43 cases), the fibro muscular collar type (5 cases) and the tunnel type (3 cases). regarding patients with svas, the cases with hourglass defect were the most common in our study; found in 7 cases (77.8%) while long segment defect documented only in 2 pts. (22.2%).these findings are close to the results of brown w et al [15]; showed that (72.5 %) of pts. with svas had a localized type (hourglass) and (27.5%) of them were belong to the diffuse type and it was also close to the results of van son et al study in which (83.8 %) of pts. diagnosed with svas had localized type and (16.2%) had diffuse type [18]. the most common encountered associated cardiac defect in our study was ar. we found it most commonly in patients with subvalvular as (68.2%). robison r et al study reported that ar is the most common associated defect. they were found it in (59%), (41%), (35%) of pts. diagnosed with subvalvular, supravalvular and valvular aortic stenosis respectively [19]. regarding the relation between the types of aortic stenosis and the grades of aortic regurgitation, we found that there is a significant association between mild ar and the aortic stenosis type’s, p value was 0.041. this may be because that all ar defects were detected early at the time of first presentation. we found that william’s syndrome was the most common syndrome documented in the current study and it was presented only inpatients of svas. we found a significant association between the types of aortic valve stenosis and the patients diagnosed with william's beuren syndrome, p value was 0.000. this statement is close to a study done in france [20], in which they found that williams beuren syndrome was the most common syndrome; sixcases from atotal of 14 cases diagnosed as cases of svas were williams syndrome. a retrospective study done in turkey included files of 24 patients diagnosed with svas, 15patients of them were found to have williams' syndrome [21]. conclusion 1. valvular aortic stenosis is the most common type of aortic stenosis in this study. 2. bicuspid aortic valve is the most common congenital anomaly associated with aortic valve stenosis. 3. most of the patients with aortic stenosis were discovered to have an accidental murmur either by clinical examination before preparing for surgery or during admission to hospital for other reasons. recommendation 1. we recommend a further study to evaluate the prevalence of bicuspid aortic valve in the general population and to compare it to the percentage of the diseased bicuspid aortic valvein our community. 2. we recommend improving neonatal examination at birth in all nursery units for earlierdetection of the serious cardiac defects. references [1] d. schneider and j. moore, h. allen, d. driscoll, r. shaddy, t. feltes, “heart disease in infants, children, and adolescents, 8th edition, philadelphia, lippincott williams & wilkins, pp. 1023-1040, 2013. [2] j. smallhorn, a. redington, and r. anderson, “congenital anomalies of the aortic valve and left ventricular outflow tract,” paediatric cardiology, 3rdedition, philadelphia, churchill livingstone, pp. (917 -918, 2010 [3] c. detter, t. fischlein, c. feldmeier, “aortic valvotomy for congenital valvular aortic stenosis: a 37-year experience,” ann thorac surg, vol. 71, pp. 1564–71, 2001. [4] s. gokalp, f. oztunc, “clinically asymptomatic myocardial bridging in a child with familial sub aortic stenosis,” cardiol young, vol. 28, pp. 1-3, 2013. [5] ge. pieles, v. ofoe, gj. morgan, “severe left main coronary artery stenosis with abnormal branching pattern in a patient with mild supravalvar aortic stenosis and williams-beuren syndrome,” congenital heart dis, 2013 [6] sb. jureidini, cj. marino, gk. singh, “main coronary artery and coronary ostial stenosis in children: detection by transthoracic color flow and pulsed doppler echocardiography,” j am soc echocardiograph, vol. 13, pp. 25563, 2000. [7] t. geva, g. shiral, p. frommelt, “guidelines and standards for performance of a pediatric echocardiogram: a report from the task force of the pediatric council of the american society of echocardiography,” j am society of echocardiography, vol. 19, pp. 1413-1430, 2006. [8] lw. perry, ca. neill, c. ferencz, “infants with congenital heart disease: epidemiology of congenital heart disease. the baltimorewashington infant study 1981–1989, perspectives in pediatric cardiology. 4. new york: mount kisco futura publishing co, pp. 33–62. 1993. [9] kj. rothman, dc. fyler, “association of congenital heart defects with season and population density,” teratology, vol. 13, pp. 29–34, 1976. [10] m. shakir, “pattern of congenital heart disease at ibn-seena teaching hospitalmosul/iraq,” tikrit medical journal, vol. 18, pp. 115-120, 2012. [11] d. kitchiner, m. jackson, n. malaiya, “incidence and prognosis of obstruction of the left ventricular outflow tract in liverpool (1960-91).a studyof 313 patients,” br heart j, vol. 71, pp. 588-95, 1994. [12] cw. liu, b. hwang, bc. lee, “aortic stenosis in children: 19-year experience,” taipei, vol. 59, pp. 107-113, 1997. [13] gb. peckham, jd. keith, jr. evans, “congenital aortic stenosis: some observations on the natural history and clinical assessment,” can med assoc j, vol. 19; 91, pp. 639–643, 1964. [14] ag. eroglu, k. babaoglu, l. saltık, “echocardiographic follow-up of congenital aortic valvular stenosis,” pediatric cardiology, vol. 27, pp. 713–719, 2006. [15] w. brown, m. ruzmetov, p. vijay, “surgery for aortic stenosis in children: a 40-year experience,” the annals of thoracic surgery, vol. 76, pp. 1398–1411, 2003. [16] wc. roberts, jm. ko, “frequency by decades of unicuspid, bicuspid, and tricuspid aortic valves in adults having isolated aortic valve replacement for aortic stenosis, with or without associated aortic regurgitation,” circulation, vol. 111, pp. 920–5, 2005. [17] e. newfeld, a. muster, m. paul, “discrete subvalvular aortic stenosis in childhood: study of 51 patients,”the american journal of cardiology, vol. 38, pp. 53-61, 1976. [18] ja. van son, gk. danielson, fj. puga, “supravalvular aortic stenosis. long-term results of surgical treatment,” j thorac cardiovasc surg, vol. 107, pp. 103-114, 1994. [19] j. brown, l. stevens, s. holly, “surgical spectrum of aortic stenosis in children. a thirty-year experience with 257 children,” the annals of thoracic surgery, vol. 45, pp. 393-403, 1988. [20] g. chehab, j. darido, i. el-rassi, “supravalvular aortic stenosis with and without coronary lesions in pediatrics,” the lebanese medical journal, vol. 63, pp. 81-86, 2015. [21] ag. eroglu, k. babaoglu, f. oztunc, “echocardiographic follow-up of children with supravalvular aortic stenosis,” pediatric cardiology, vol. 27, pp. 707–712, 2006.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.2 received: 6 june 2018 | accepted: 15 july 2018 comparing iraqi regional differences on infant feeding through breastfeeding and formula anna grace tribble anthropology and epidemiology college of arts and sciences, school of public health emory university atlanta, united states of america anna.grace.tribble@emory.edu 7 abstract: research tends to focus on the health implications of breastfeeding, but understanding associations that might drive maternal choice in infant feeding practice is also very important. to understand the relationship between women’s feeding strategies for their children and the context in which they live in iraq, mixed methods are deployed through analysis of surveys and interviews. using data from the 2000 and 2011 multiple indicator cluster survey, trends are quantitatively examined in breastfeeding and infant formula use for iraq using linear probability models. interviews are qualitatively analyzed that were collected from women in sulaimani governorate in the kurdish region of iraq to begin understanding the reasons why iraqi women initiate breastfeeding and formula use. being urban, wealthier, and more educated increases the probability of a mother using infant formula, while only increasing wealth and increasing education are associated with increasing the probability of breastfeeding. in 2000, governorates significantly differ in the probability of mothers using infant formula (e.g. karbala = 24.32 percentage points lower probability of using infant formula relative to sulaimani, (p<0.0001), but differences in breastfeeding seem to be between the southern and northern governorates (e.g. karbala = 6.78 percentage points higher probability of breastfeeding relative to sulaimani, (p<0.01). over the ensuing decade, the probability of breastfeeding decreases, and the probability of infant formula use increases across most governorates. interviews provide narratives that help explain these trends such as mothers continuing to breastfeed during stressful times but using infant formula when working outside of the home. between governorate differences could be driven by differences in conflict over the decade. this study contributes to a more nuanced perspective on infant feeding practices in iraq at the governorate level, suggesting that future maternal-child nutrition studies need to account for the effects of where a mother lives within iraq. keywords: breastfeeding, formula, iraq, maternal-child nutrition, infant feeding practices. 1. introduction infant feeding practices focus on breastfeeding and its substitutions, including formula use or animals’ milk. breastfeeding is preferred by healthcare providers and nutrition researchers [1], while infant formula holds the promise of buffering the children of poorly nourished mothers who cannot produce enough milk. both strategies carry certain challenges, such as breastfeeding’s stigma regarding feeding in public, limiting maternal mobility, while infant formula is typically associated with a higher cost and higher risk of infant death in unsanitary conditions [2]. breastfeeding builds an infant’s immune system, provides a sterile source of food, and contains a balanced source of nutrition for the infant. however, infant formula has retained its popularity through the efforts of companies with alluring advertisements [2], hospital distribution of formula upon discharge [3], and local country norms and aid organization responses to formula use during crises [4]. while the consensus that breastfeeding is healthier for children’s long-term health has been established, debate still exists on best practices when maternal malnutrition is high, such as during war and other situations where mothers are severely malnourished [5]. associations have been shown between the likelihood of mothers breastfeeding and their increasing education level in high-income countries, but these same trends are reversed for middleand low-income countries with breastfeeding incidence and duration associated with a decrease in urbanization, wealth, and education [6]. breastfeeding often faces additional cross-cultural challenges in a context of increased exposure to maternal malnutrition, violence, displacement, and war. a study in iraq recently showed that an increase in casualties from conflict, higher household income, and higher supplementation were associated with a reduction in the incidence and duration of breastfeeding [7]. this paper contributes to the literature on infant feeding in iraq through a mixed methods approach. i quantitatively examine trends in breastfeeding and infant formula use for iraq in 2000, before the u.s. invasion, and in 2011, after the country stabilized as they relate to the location of women’s residence, their education level, their income, and their child’s age and health. i also qualitatively analyze interviews collected from women in slemani governorate, iraqi kurdistan to begin understanding the reasons why iraqi women initiate breastfeeding and formula use. being urban, wealthier, and more educated increases the probability of a woman using infant formula, while only increasing wealth and 8 increasing education are associated with increasing the probability of breastfeeding. in 2000, governorates only significantly differ on their probability of infant formula use, where most governorates have a lower probability relative to slemani governorate. over the ensuing decade, the probability of breastfeeding decreases, and the probability of infant formula use increases across most governorates. interviews provide potential mechanisms to explain these trends, such as sharing narratives that help explain these trends in education and wealth such as mothers continuing to breastfeed during stressful times but using infant formula when working outside of the home. 2. literature review in the 1990s, bombing during the war, subsequent economic sanctions, and a u.s. trade embargo dismantled iraq’s previously effective public health system and caused a public health crisis [8-11]. before the iraq war began in 2003, the health of iraqi women and children was already degraded due to the harsh economic sanctions levied against the country in the 1990s [12, 13]. the public distribution system (pds) was created and sustained under the regime of saddam hussein during the late 1980s and 1990s in response to the humanitarian chaos at the end of the iran-iraq war, but the food distributed through the program from the mid-1990s through the early 2000s came from the united nations’ oil for food program [14]. eligibility applied to every iraqi citizen and foreign resident in iraq, and for 250 iraqi dinars (~$0.08), a pds food basket could be received, which included wheat flour, rice, sugar, tea, vegetable oil, and sometimes dried whole milk, dried beans, salt, soap, and detergent [14]. families with children under the age of one were also eligible to receive 2.7kg of infant formula, 0.9 kg of cereal, 0.25kg of soap, and 0.35kg of detergent [14]. while the pds buffered iraqis from experiencing food insecurity for decades it also normalized infant formula. receiving infant formula through pds has performed positive functions like buffering food insecure families to protect basic child health [14]. receiving formula from the government through pds made using infant formula a more financially and physically accessible option for families to consider. infant feeding infant feeding practices among iraqi women have been studied since the 1990s, with a range of studies at the national and local levels. a national study conducted from 1992 to 1994 found that wasting was more frequent among children fed with formula rather than breastfed (49.3% vs 28.9%, p < .01), using this information as a reason to recommend breastfeeding-promotion programs to iraqi women [15]. more recently, a 2008 national study of 3,413 iraqi mothers and their adult relatives showed that the majority of women (73.1%) initiated breastfeeding early after delivery [16]. rural women with less education knew less about breastfeeding than more educated urban women, but more rural women also continued breastfeeding for longer [16]. many recent studies have examined breastfeeding practices and programs in more localized contexts across the northern and southern regions of iraq. differences in regional stability and infrastructure provide useful points of comparison that should be kept in mind when studying this literature. local studies are also useful when conflict makes a nationally representative study difficult. in the kurdish region, a recent study assesses the impact of the baby-friendly hospital initiative on breastfeeding indicators in shaqlawa district and reports low early initiation of breastfeeding (38.1%) and exclusive breastfeeding (15.4%) [17]. though a significant relationship is found between delivery at the baby friendly accredited hospital and early initiation of breastfeeding, the other breastfeeding indicators are not significantly associated with the program [17]. these results differ from a study in the southern area of basra in 1998, where 91% of women exclusively breast-feed at one week of age, and through one year, 52% of children receive breast milk [18]. however, these regional differences could be due to differences in income or other factors between the north and the south. challenges to breastfeeding have been examined in southern iraq, and sociocultural beliefs about pre-lacteal feeding as well as education level and socioeconomic status influence feeding practices [19]. recent evidence from southeastern iraq also suggests that the cost of feeding infant formula is burdensome to families and less cost-effective than breastfeeding [20]. however, many of these studies assume that breastfeeding is always the best option and that women will breastfeed if only they have education and other such resources. this study contributes to the literature by combining the statistical power of national level multiple indicator cluster survey data with qualitative interviews with iraqi kurdish women to begin understanding how women negotiate between these different feeding practices. research questions: what factors explain an iraqi woman’s response to questions about breastfeeding and formula? did those responses change before and after the iraq war? how have women characterized their experiences with breastfeeding and infant formula in slemani governorate? 3. methods quantitative: mics dataset and statistical analysis multiple indicator cluster survey (mics) was developed by the united nations children’s fund (unicef), and then the surveys were collected by the central organization for statistics and information technology and the kurdistan regional statistics office via collaboration with the ministry of health [7]. mics data have been collected around the globe since 1995 and 1996 with 60 initial countries. the sixth wave of data collection began in 2016. unicef’s project aims to provide information about the status of women and children across different countries, and the survey includes sections for individual women and children under five years old as well as the household at large. the multiple indicator cluster surveys (mics) from 2000 and 2011 in iraq are being used for these analyses. the 2000 survey includes 99,478 people of which 22,997 are women. the 2011 survey includes 238,327 people of which 56,445 women. the outcomes of interest are “currently breastfeeding” and “currently using infant formula”. each variable is a 9 yes or no response on the child’s questionnaire. the independent variables of interest are the governorates which are classified as follows: dohuk, ninevah, sulaimani, kirkuk, erbil, diyala, anbar, baghdad, babil, karbala, wasit, salahadin, najaf, qadisiya, muthanna, thi-qar, maysan, and basrah. location is categorized as either urban or rural. wealth is collected as a score first and then is divided into quintiles. maternal level of education is rated from 0 to 3 representing no education, primary education, secondary education, non-standard education. child age ranges from 0 to 4 completed years because of age constraints on child eligibility. child weight is measured in kilograms, while child height is measured in centimeters. child weight for height is expressed as a z-score. a linear probability model is used to estimate the effect of location on breastfeeding and infant formula consumption over time [21]. more specifically, in the 2000 and 2011 surveys, the breastfeeding outcome of interest is “currently breastfeed” with a yes or no response. the measure for formula consumption changes slightly between 2000 and 2011. in the 2000 survey, the formula outcome of interest asks if a bottle with a nipple/teat is given to the child, yes or no. in the 2011 survey, the formula outcome of interest asks if the child drank infant formula yesterday, yes or no. the primary independent variables of interest are which governorate the woman resided in. the year of the survey is included as a dummy variable with 2000 omitted as a reference group. to allow for changes in the effect of governorates on the outcomes of interest over time, each governorate dummy variable is also interacted with the year dummy variable in the final model. additional dummy variables for urban, wealth quintile, and maternal education level, as well as continuous variables for child age, child weight, child height, and child weight by height z-score are also included in the model. qualitative data collection and analysis this was an exploratory pilot study conducted in 2017 that sought to compile qualitative data about the life histories of older women in sulaimani governorate, iraqi kurdistan. qualitative data were gathered among women across class and ethnicity. life history interviews were conducted with 18 women. snowball sampling for the life history interviews included internally displaced and host women from both the arab and kurdish communities. participants were drawn from the urban center of slemani, the smaller city of chamchamal one hour south of slemani, a village 40 minutes south of chamchamal, and an internally displaced people camp 20 minutes south of sulaimani. snowball sampling was utilized among this population in particular due to currently low levels of social trust caused by the war in iraq. during the life history interviews which ranged from 30 minutes to three hours, women were guided through questions about their childhoods and current adulthood focusing on topics related to nutrition, such as the relationship between income and food purchasing and preparation, infant feeding through breastfeeding and formula, and her access to education. interviews were translated from audio recordings kurdish and arabic directly to english through the research assistants approved under emory university’s institution review board. the transcripts were de-identified and transferred to the qualitative data software maxqda. in maxqda, these data were coded and organized along thematic lines. 4. results quantitative data descriptive statistics are presented in table 1 below. of the respondents to the survey who discuss breastfeeding and infant formula use (n2000 = 13,521; n2011 = 32,829), 29.45% of respondents were currently breastfeeding in 2000 which decreased slightly to 27.58% by 2011, while 13.30% of respondents were currently bottle-feeding in 2000 which increased to 18.17% by 2011. generally, the samples for 2000 and 2011 contain equal numbers of people from each governorate and from urban and rural areas. the data from both 2000 and 2011 contain a majority of women who only have a primary education (41.20% in 2000, 50.32% in 2011). there were an approximately equal number of children aged <1 year, 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, and 4 years in completed years. children are marginally taller and weighed slightly more on average in the 2011 sample. finally, the children’s average weight for height z-score is slightly lower than the mean in 2000 (whz = -0.11) and slightly higher than the mean in 2011 (whz = 0.11). table 1: descriptive statistics 2000 (n=13,521) n % 2011 (n=32,829) n % currently breastfeeding yes 3,982 29.45 9,055 27.58 no 9,539 70.55 23,774 72.42 currently using infant formula yes 1,798 13.30 5,966 18.17 no 11,728 86.70 26,863 81.83 governorate duhok 713 5.27 2,081 6.34 ninewa 910 6.73 2,472 7.53 sulaimani 452 3.34 2,328 7.09 kirkuk 644 4.76 1,267 3.86 erbil 527 3.90 1,719 5.24 diyala 595 4.40 1,455 4.43 anbar 1,039 7.68 2,553 7.78 baghdad 689 5.10 2,115 6.44 babylon/babil 860 6.36 1,250 3.81 kerbela 871 6.44 926 2.82 wasit 666 4.93 1,713 5.22 salahaddin 838 6.20 2,537 7.73 al-najaf 759 5.61 938 2.86 al-qadisiya 842 6.23 1,467 4.47 al-muthanna 755 5.58 1,531 4.66 thi-qar 808 5.98 1,802 5.49 maysan 805 5.95 2,274 6.93 basrah 748 5.53 2,401 7.31 area rural 6,350 46.96 15,280 46.54 urban 7,171 53.04 17,549 53.46 mother’s education level none 4,960 36.68 8,254 25.14 primary 5,570 41.20 16,519 50.32 secondary 2,991 22.12 8,056 24.54 wealth index quintiles poorest 4,502 33.30 11,336 34.53 second 2,792 20.65 7,910 24.09 middle 2,621 19.38 6,033 18.38 fourth 1,878 13.89 4,420 13.46 richest 1,728 12.78 3,130 9.53 child age 10 <1 years 2,908 21.51 6,949 21.17 1 year 2,759 20.40 6,698 20.40 2 years 2,519 18.63 6,649 20.25 3 years 2,948 21.80 6,540 19.92 4 years 2,388 17.66 5,993 18.26 child anthropometrics mean sd mean sd child weight (kg) 11.39 3.45 12.05 3.88 child height (cm) 83.39 13.88 84.72 14.63 child weight for height z-score -0.11 1.80 0.11 1.44 results from the linear probability models are presented in table 2 below. time alone does not have a statistically significant effect on the probability of breastfeeding or using infant formula. the effect of living in urban versus rural areas is negligible for breastfeeding, while in model 2 the probability of infant formula consumption is 2.49 percentage points higher for mothers in urban areas relative to rural residents. generally, changes in wealth produce more significant differences in infant formula use than breastfeeding practice. holding all else equal, the probability of breastfeeding is 0.96 percentage points lower for mothers at the median wealth level relative to the poorest mothers and is marginally significant. increasing wealth quintiles are associated with statistically significant increases in infant formula consumption, where the probability of infant formula use increases by 6.61 percentage points for the richest wealth quintile relative to the poorest quintile, holding all else equal. additionally, as the level of maternal education increases, the probability of breastfeeding decreases, and the probability of infant formula use increases. for example, compared to mothers with no formal education, women who complete secondary school see a statistically significant 2.93 percentage point decrease in probability of breastfeeding, while the probability of infant formula consumption for mothers with secondary education statistically significantly increases by 4.51 percentage points, holding all else equal. among child anthropometric measures, the probability of breastfeeding and the probability of infant formula use both significantly decrease as height increases, while increasing child weight non-significantly increases the probability of breastfeeding and significantly increases the probability of infant formula use. finally, as child age increases, the probability of both breastfeeding and infant formula use decrease. the probability of breastfeeding a child aged less than 1 year old statistically significantly increases by 59.15 percentage points relative to the probability of breastfeeding a 4 year old child, while the probability of infant formula use for a child less than 1 year old increases by 37.21 percentage points relative to a 4 year old. in 2000, the probability of breastfeeding in most governorates is not statistically different from sulaimani, a northern kurdish governorate where the interviews are based. meanwhile, the probability of infant formula use significantly decreases by 12-24 percentage points in most middle and southern governorates relative to slemani. in other kurdish areas during 2000, being a mother living in erbil significantly increases the probability of infant formula use by 6.61 percentage points relative to sulaimani. living in duhok significantly decreases the probability of infant formula use by 1.77 percentage points, which is a small decrease relative to middle and southern governorates. the change in the difference in the relative probability of a woman breastfeeding in another governorate relative to sulaimani over 2000 to 2011 is generally negative, while the same change for a woman using infant formula is generally positive. for example, the probability of breastfeeding among mothers in erbil is 3.24 percentage points lower than mothers in sulaimani in 2000 and 1.79 percentage points lower than mothers in sulaimani in 2011. thus, while the probability of breastfeeding increases in erbil from 2000 to 2011, it still remains below that of the sulaimani governate. contrastingly, the probability of infant formula use among mothers living in erbil relative to sulaimani significantly decreases over time from a probability of infant formula use that is 6.01 percentage points higher than sulaimani in 2000 and 1.43 percentage points higher than sulaimani in 2011. table 2: linear probability models for current breastfeeding and current infant formula use. variables model 1 breastfeeding model 2 infant formula rural ref. ref. urban -0.0029 (0.0036) 0.0249 (0.0038) **** survey 2000 ref. ref. survey 2011 0.0127 (0.0160) 0.0087 (0.0172) child whz+ -0.0098 (0.0020) **** -0.075 (0.0022) *** child age (4 yrs) ref. ref. child age (3 yrs) -0.0301 (0.0049) **** 0.0203 (0.0053) **** child age (2yrs) -0.0211 (0.0058) *** 0.0795 (0.0062) **** child age (1yr) 0.2793 (0.0072) **** 0.2412 (0.0077) **** child age (0yrs) 0.5915 (0.0098) **** 0.3721 (0.0105) **** child weight 0.0012 (0.0019) 0.0061 (0.0020) ** child height -0.0065 (0.0005) **** -0.0015 (0.0006) * maternal ed (0) ref. ref. maternal ed (1) -0.0124 (0.0036) *** 0.0068 (0.0039) maternal ed (2) -0.0293 (0.0046) **** 0.0451 (0.0049) **** wealth (poor) ref. ref. wealth (2nd) 0.0001(0.0043) 0.0132 (0.0046) ** wealth (mid) -0.0096 (0.0048) * 0.0280 (0.0052) **** wealth (4th) -0.0069 (0.0056) 0.0394 (0.0060) **** wealth (rich) -0.0144 (0.0062) * 0.0661 (0.0066) **** sulaimani ref ref. erbil -0.0324 (0.0199) 0.0601 (0.0214) ** duhok -0.0509 (0.0187) ** -0.0177 (0.0201) **** ninewa 0.0083 (0.0179) -0.1778 (0.0193) **** kirkuk 0.0250 (0.0192) -0.1292 (0.0206) **** diyala -0.0030 (0.0195) -0.2147 (0.0210) **** salahaddin -0.0207 (0.0182) -0.1406 (0.0196) **** wasit 0.0231 (0.0191) -0.2338 (0.0205) **** karbala 0.0678 (0.0181) *** -0.2432 (0.0195) **** babil 0.0520 (0.0182) ** -0.1927 (0.0196) **** baghdad 0.0217 (0.0190) -0.1620 (0.0205) **** anbar -0.0022 (0.0177) -0.1548 (0.0190) **** basrah 0.0431 (0.0187) * -0.1978 (0.0201) **** maysan 0.0229 (0.0184) -0.2276 (0.0198) **** thi-qar 0.0545 (0.0184) ** -0.2243 (0.0198) **** muthanna 0.0379 (0.0186) * -0.2011 (0.0200) **** qadisiyah 0.0428 (0.0183) * -0.2095 (0.0196) **** najaf 0.0529 (0.0187) ** -0.1907 (0.0201) **** 2011 x sulaimani ref. ref. 2011 x erbil 0.0145 (0.0223) -0.0461 (0.0239) 2011 x duhok 0.0222 (0.0209) 0.0199 (0.0225) 2011 x ninewa -0.0169 (0.0200) -0.0125 (0.0215) 2011 x kirkuk -0.0818 (0.0220) *** -0.0297 (0.0237) 2011 x diyala -0.0338 (0.0221) 0.1066 (0.0237) **** 2011 x salahaddin -0.0094 (0.0202) 0.0160 (0.0218) 2011 x wasit 0.0020 (0.0215) 0.0390 (0.0231) 2011 x karbala -0.0499 (0.0217) * 0.0245 (0.0234) 2011 x babil -0.0406 (0.0211) -0.0143 (0.0227) 2011 x baghdad -0.0041 (0.0211) 0.0413 (0.0227) 11 2011 x anbar 0.0241 (0.0197) 0.0853 (0.0212) **** 2011 x basrah -0.0369 (0.0207) 0.0070 (0.0223) 2011 x maysan -0.0142 (0.0206) 0.0503 (0.0221) * 2011 x thi-qar -0.0079 (0.0208) 0.0318 (0.0223) 2011 x muthanna 0.0100 (0.0212) 0.0560 (0.0228) * 2011 x qadisiyah -0.0166 (0.0210) 0.0604 (0.0225) ** 2011 x najaf -0.0523 (0.0222) * 0.0008 (0.0238) constants 0.6471 (0.0339) **** 0.1543 (0.0364) **** observations 46,350 46,350 r2 (adjusted) 0.5224 0.2005 f-statistic 1035.82**** 238.24**** *p<0.05, **p<0.01; ***p<0.001; ****p<0.0001 + weight for height z-score qualitative data preliminary themes from the interviews conducted help illustrate potential mechanisms behind the patterns described in the quantitative data above. mothers describe the choice of breastfeeding or infant formula use within the context of (1) stress during times when they had small children, (2) situations where the mother worked outside the home, (3) situations when siblings performed the functions of parents, and (4) situations when the children were close in age. stress women recount nursing children through becoming widows, being impoverished, giving birth on the street, and other jarring scenarios. however, stress does not appear to be cited as a reason for lack of breastfeeding or a substitution for infant formula. a woman from chamchamal describes, “…when we had the exodus (in 1991), their father passed away, their father…you know what? i had a little daughter, who was two months old but still breastfeeding, so thanks be to god for helping me see my children grow up.” meanwhile, a displaced woman from the south shares that, “all of my children were breastfed, even though one time i gave birth on the street.” mother working outside home and food aid when women are describing their own childhoods, mothers needing to work outside of the house to provide an income for their family are often cited as a reason that bottle-feeding and infant formula became a viable, necessary option for them or their siblings. when a displaced woman from the south is asked why her younger sister was bottle-fed, she describes how “my mother was working outside of the house. i bought formula milk from my own money. it was not expensive because of the pds aid program…it was normal.” a wealthy professional woman also mentions the assistance of the pds program in feeding her child, saying “i am in management now….and later when my daughter was born, she was born in 97, the pds was introduced, and i did not have much problem.” siblings as parents situations where mothers are working outside the house or have many children prompted descriptions of women taking over as mothers for their younger siblings, necessitating the use of infant formula and milk as a way to feed their siblings until their mothers returned home. a woman from chamchamal describes staying with her younger sister and “feeding her with milk in bottles…because mother worked outside.” meanwhile, a woman from sulaimani talks of taking care of a younger brother through giving him milk and “always holding him” in her arms. children close in age when women have children close together in age, this can create a physical stress on their body, leaving them unable to provide breastmilk for two nursing children. typically, exclusive breastfeeding can buffer against additional pregnancy, but introducing supplementation or halting breastfeeding can allow mothers to quickly become pregnant again [22] the reason behind having those children close together is not discussed during the interview, but low income is often cited as a reason for why taking care of multiple young children was so challenging. a woman from sulaimani describes how “me and my other sister, we have a two-year age difference between us, and my mother didn’t know which one of us should be breastfed. there were times when my sister drank canned milk, but i did not. or vice versa.” meanwhile, another woman from chamchamal speaks of the struggle of feeding the many children she had, saying “i had many children in need because i was giving birth to them one after another, and there was nothing… i breastfed my eldest son, and that's it. the rest of my children were bottle-fed. i was also trying to breastfeed them too, but there wasn't enough milk in my breast.” 5. discussion to understand the relationship between iraqi kurdish and arab women’s feeding strategies for their children and the context in which they live, mixed methods are deployed that emphasize the relevance of wealth, maternal education, child’s current health, rural and urban differences, differences across time between 2000 and 2011, and differences between governorates. formula and breastmilk are both meant to provide a nutritious food source for infants, but formula is a commercial product, whereas breastmilk is produced by the mother’s body [23]. thus, many arguments in favor of breastmilk take the complementary approach of showing that formula is more expensive, while breastmilk protects children against disease [20]. these arguments are complicated in iraq by pds and the provisioning of infant formula during the 1990s as well as issues of birth spacing and maternal work [14]. increasing wealth is statistically significantly associated with decreases in breastfeeding and increases in infant formula use. wealth and education are often coupled in the literature on maternal feeding practices, and maternal education similarly shows that as maternal education level increases, breastfeeding decreases, and infant formula use increases. this trend agrees with the regional literature. a saudi arabian cross-sectional study shows an association between low-income, less-educated women and the likelihood they will exclusively breastfeed their infants [24], while a jordanian cross-sectional study suggests that women working are less likely to exclusively breastfeed [25]. interviewees’ narratives help explain these trends in education and wealth such as mothers continuing to breastfeed during stressful times but using infant formula when working outside of the home. interviewees’ stories included the continuity of breastfeeding during stressful periods of their life. however, both poor and wealthy 12 women describe working outside of the house. women with higher education levels seem to be more likely to work outside of the house professionally and be wealthier, while poor women use outside work as an economic buffer. the interviews further suggest a possible mechanism by which poorer families need to use formula –siblings parenting their younger siblings because mothers work outside for needed additional income. however, more research is needed on potential reasons why wealthy women use infant formula. both income levels also described benefiting from the presence of infant formula in the pds system. the affordability of infant formula around the 1990s and early 2000s seems to remove the main deterrent often emphasized in discussions of infant formula, perceived cost. a crosssectional study in southern iraq finds that the mean cost of formula consumed per day is over 2,000 iqd by 6 months old [20], but this study concludes that this amoutn is a financial burden without qualitatively interviewing families to understand their opinion. some existing work suggests that infant formula was coupled it to a narrative of modernization in aggressive marketing campaigns, wielding symbolic power in lowand middle-income contexts that might make its use appealing [26]. additional research is also needed to understand how working mothers can be better supported to make healthy decisions about infant feeding practices that make sense for their lives. while socio-demographic variables like wealth and maternal education have been heavily addressed in the literature on breastfeeding in the middle east, there is a dearth of engagement on location. often location is reduced to a rural/urban dichotomy [24]. the mics data show that living in an urban location does not affect the probability of breastfeeding but does significantly increase the probability of infant formula use. urban areas likely have increased access to infant formula. additionally, interviewees in rural and urban areas discuss the challenges of having multiple children close in age, while urban residents might have more access to infant formula to nutritionally buffer children in those situations. short intervals for spacing births can tax the mother’s physical resources to produce breastmilk, making complementary or mixed feeding necessary to protect the health of both offspring [22, 27] . the reasons for this distinction between rural and urban areas needs further investigation through interviews to understand whether location is simply a proxy for income and education or if other factors are at work. iraq as a country has experienced political, social, cultural, and economic upheaval over the past 20 years, so using the mics data for 2000 and 2011 allows for the examination of the effect of time on women’s responses to breastfeeding and infant formula practices. breastfeeding generally decreases between 2000 and 2011 across other governorates relative to slemani, while infant formula use generally increases across governorates over the same time period relative to sulaimani. sulaimani is not only the governorate from which the interviews came but also the governorate with one of the lowest poverty rates, making it a useful benchmark for comparison [28]. in 2000, the probability of breastfeeding is not statistically different between sulaimani and the other governorates, while infant formula use is statistically lower in most governorates compared to sulaimani, except erbil, where it is higher. this trend could be due to issues of maternal access or preference regarding formula, or maternal health knowledge. within research conducted in the kurdish region of iraq, mothers who are giving birth for the first time at the maternity teaching hospital in erbil are shown to have some knowledge about the health and economic benefits exclusive breastfeeding in over 40% of the survey population, but maternal age and occupation (housewife, employee, or student) are shown to be associated with the level of the new mother’s knowledge [29]. beyond the mother herself, there are regional differences in women’s engagement in the labor force, which might also impact the use of formula. by 2011, the hussein regime had toppled, and the ensuing iraq war perpetuated violence in specific areas of the country throughout the 2000s [7]. increased exposure to violence has been shown to decrease breastfeeding in iraq, which could also affect infant formula use [7]. for example, in kirkuk, a disputed area between the kurdish region and the rest of iraq, violence has been a recurrent problem [7], and the probability of breastfeeding significantly decreases between 2000 and 2011 relative to sulaimani. the probability of infant formula use also decreases in kirkuk relative to slemani between 2000 and 2011, which suggests potential issues with formula supply and resources that would also be an expected consequence of increased violence. diyala governorate had the highest casualty rate in 2007 from the iraq war that began in 2003 [7], and looking at diyala’s patterns over time, the probability of breastfeeding as a mother in diyala in 2000 is slightly lower than sulaimani, decreasing even further in 2011 to 3.68 percentage points lower relative to sulaimani. however, the probability of infant formula use has statistically significantly increased over time in diyala by 10 percentage points from a probability that 21.47 percentage points lower than sulaimani in 2000 to 10.81 percentage points lower relative to sulaimani in 2011. thus, mothers in diyala might have been able to use infant formula when breastfeeding was a less favorable infant feeding strategy during times of violence. baghdad and najaf, two governorates that saw many battles during the iraq war [7] show similar trends in a decreasing probability of breastfeeding over time that remains higher relative to sulaimani. even interviewees from governorates that experienced less direct war remember periods of exposure to violence while having young children, such as the mother who fled in the 1991 mass exodus from the kurdish region with her two-month old. thus, more research into the lived experiences of violence and infant feeding in iraq would be helpful to understand maternal choice. there is an already established precedent for differences across the country regarding health and breastfeeding. between the kurdish region in the north and the south/central areas of iraq, communities already interact with health systems and ideas of healing differently [30]. studies of breastfeeding suggest that the south breastfeeds more than the northern governorates in the kurdish region, with some variation in beliefs associated with breastfeeding [17, 18], although the interpretation from these studies is limited by a large time difference between the two cross-sectional surveys. thus, the significant 13 differences shown by the linear probability models cohere with existing literature. more work is needed to understand how geographical differences in politics, economics, society, and culture might contribute to these differences in breastfeeding and infant formula use. previous research conducted in the middle east regarding infant feeding practices has generally focused on what mothers know about exclusive breastfeeding and examining breastfeeding practices. much less work has been done regarding infant formula use, and most literature takes a critical stance towards infant formula use without presenting the mother’s perspective on why she makes her choices between breastfeeding and infant formula use. this study contributes to a more nuanced perspective on infant feeding practices in iraq at the governorate level and shows that when accounting for time, location, wealth, maternal education, and child anthropometrics, governorate differences in breastfeeding and infant formula practice exist, suggesting that future maternal-child nutrition studies need to account for the effects of where a mother lives within iraq. limitations and future research the limitations of this research include the slight differences in mics questions across years, and the geographical and numerical limitations of the qualitative data. questions for infant formula were not exactly the same across the two years (giving a bottle (2000), and child had formula yesterday (2011) (mics). however, bottle-feeding and infant formula likely refer to the same feeding strategy, so the two were combined. breastmilk would not have been included in bottle feeding, since pumps were not available, but animal’s milk could have been used in the bottle. qualitative and quantitative research is needed to more extensively understand the common practice of mixed and complementary feeding strategies. among mothers surveyed in a cross-sectional study conducted in primary health care centers in erbil, the majority of them used a mixed feeding strategy that is efficient but does not emphasize exclusive breastfeeding as recommended by the who [31]. mixed feeding was not addressed in the quantitative or qualitative methods of this study. to carry this research forward in the future, more extensive qualitative research needs to be done to understand what local realities obstruct or facilitate breastfeeding and infant formula use across the country. additionally, more research needs to be done on the differences in the use of infant formula and milk, which interviewees mentioned. 4. conclusion this study contributes information on the heterogeneity of infant feeding practices across iraq at the governorate level, suggesting that future research into maternal-child nutrition needs to better account for the effects of where a mother lives within iraq. additionally, by taking a mixed methods approach, researchers can begin to understand why iraqi mothers are choosing to breastfeed and use infant formula, which can lead to more locallyappropriate and culturally-informed public health programs in the future. reference [1] u. shaikh and o. ahmed, "islam and infant feeding," breastfeeding medicine, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 164-167, 2006. 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[31] s. i. i. al-azzawi, k. a. hussein, and n. z. shaker, "knowledge, attitude and practices (kap) of mothers toward infant and young child feeding in primary health care (phc) centers, erbil city," kufa journal for nursing sciences, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 118-126, 2012. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/889801468189231974/pdf/97644-wp-p148989-box391477b-public-iraq-poverty-map-6-23-15-web.pdf http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/889801468189231974/pdf/97644-wp-p148989-box391477b-public-iraq-poverty-map-6-23-15-web.pdf http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/889801468189231974/pdf/97644-wp-p148989-box391477b-public-iraq-poverty-map-6-23-15-web.pdf 1. introduction 4. conclusion  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.40 design and implementation of smart home energy management system based on gsm network noor h. saleh electrical eng. department university of technology baghdad, iraq noor.hadi.salih@gmail.com bilal a. mubdir electrical eng. department sulaimani polytechnic university sulaymaniyah, iraq bilal.mubdir@spu.edu.iq asaad m. al-hindawi communication eng. department sulaimani polytechnic university sulaymaniyah, iraq asaad.jasim@spu.edu.iq adel h. ahmed electrical eng. department university of technology baghdad, iraq dradilh152@yahoo.com abstract: the aim of this research is to design and implement a prototype of a home energy management system based on sms service on gsm network. the proposed system can remotely monitor and control the home appliances using a mobile phone. the proposed system consists of a microcontroller connecting home appliances and lighting through sensors and relays. the microcontroller is also connected with a gsm module to support this system operate with an existing gsm network. this system is implemented using a gsm module that is connected with the personal computer representing the designed microcontroller. the home appliances, sensors and relays are modeled and simulated using visual basic programs. software programs are developed and built into the personal computer to activate and control the home appliances according to received commands from the user mobile phone or to monitor and send their status to the mobile phone according to user request. the implemented system is tested practically with several cases at different times and it operates successfully with reasonable flexibility and secure operation. a good compatibility of the developed programs is achieved, since the system is running continuously without interruption under normal conditions of gsm network operation. it is found that the execution times for control and monitoring massages are 19.63 seconds and 19.33 seconds respectively. keywords: energy management, gsm module, microcontroller, sensor, relay. 1. introduction the development of information technologies has led to rapid changes in human lifestyle. the use of electricity is very important as one of the main source of energy that is vital in current modern life. some kinds of mechanism based on available technology could be used to reduce wastage in electricity usage [1].the smart home concept is the integration of different services within ahome using smart or intelligent system that is mostly based on a common communication system. it assures an economical, secure and comfortable operation of the home and includes a high degree of intelligent function ability and flexibility. the smart home concept virtually includes all technical services within a home. the main advantages of smart home systems are, basically, increased personal comfort and safety, reduced energy cost, simplified installation and flexibility [2]. energysaving technologies have become more readily available for residential purposes. such technologies can be classified into two broad categories: energy generation systems and consumption reduction solutions. technologies for smart appliances are being developed that allow the appliances to shut off or switch to an energy saving state when not in use [3]. home energy management (hem) describes a class of technologies, including sensors, smart thermostats, and feedback devices seeking to manage residential energy consumption profiles to reduce peak electric demand and consumers’ electric bills. a growing number of hem products and companies have emerged over the past decade, ranging from basic energy displays tow holehome control systems and smart phone apps [4, 5].conte and scaradozzi have viewed home automation systems as multiple agent systems (mas). in this paper, home automation system has been proposed and includes home appliances and devices that are controlled and maintained for home management [6]. alkar and buhur have proposed an internet based wireless home automation system for multifunctional devices. this paper proposes a low cost and flexible web-based solution, but this system has some limitations such as the range and power failure [7]. jawarkar ahmed, ladhake, and thakare have proposed remote monitoring through mobile phone involving the use of spoken commands. the spoken commands are generated and sent in the form of text sms to the control system and then the microcontroller on the basis of sms takes a decision of a particular task [8]. manouchehr ghahramanian golzar and hamid reza tajozzakerin have discussed a design and implementation of an internet-based smart remote control system for home automation, dedicated to power management that adapts power consumption of available power resources according to user comfort and cost criteria [9]. mansour h. assaf, et al have presented the design and implementation details of home control and security system based on field programmable gate array (fpga) by using their system, the user can interact directly with the system through a web-based interface over the internet, while home appliances like air conditioners, lights, door locks and gates are remotely controlled through a user-friendly web page. an additional feature that enhances the security aspect of the system was its capability of monitoring entry points such as doors and windows so that in the event any breach, an alerting email message is sent to the home owner instantly [10]. hyung-chul jo, et al had discussed scheduling method for hems the smart heating and air conditioning that considers customer convenience as well as characteristics of thermal appliances in a smart home environment. the prototype software based on the proposed method for hems is also implemented [11]. f. baig, et al, in this paper, the proposed method was encouraging and cost effective. it has given an incentive to consume. the consumer can easily control its appliances remotely with the click of a button using the microcontroller interface with the zigbee transceiver is on standard rs232 interface. a graphical user interface is provided to the user where the data of its consumption are stored in a file [12]. bilal mubdir, et al has proposed a design of smart home energy management system shems for saving energy [13]. the paper has aimed at reducing the consumption energy by detecting the residents’ activity and identifying it among three states: active, away, or sleep. the shems is designed with an algorithm that is based on hidden markov model (hmm) in order to estimate the probability of the home being in each of the above states [13]. the objectives of this research are: (a) design a home system consists of a microcontroller connecting with home appliances and lighting through sensors and relays. the microcontroller is also connected with a gsm module to support this system operate with an existing gsm network. (b) implement the proposed system by using a gsm module connecting with the personal computer representing the designed microcontroller. the home appliances, sensors and relays are modeled and simulated using visual basic software. (c) develop programs to control the home appliances and monitor their status. 2. description of proposed system the proposed system is illustrated in figure 1.the mobile phone and gsm module represent the physical components of the system while the microcontroller unit mcu, relays, motion sensors and home appliances are modeled and simulated using the personal computer pc, based visual basic (vb.6). figure1: block diagram of the designed system. the microcontroller unit controls the home appliances according to the received commands from the user mobile phone (by using sms service on the gsm network) or monitors and sends their status to mobile phone according to user request. the software programs are developed to operate the proposed system remotely (by using the sms) with the capability if switching on or off the home appliances instantaneously, monitoring the current status of the individual appliance 2.1. mobile phone mobile phones that can be used in the proposed system are normally of second generation 2g or third generation 3g phones, because these phones use more powerful digital communication techniques, which have allowed them to provide a wider range of services than before and they send and receive their signals in a very different way from their predecessors. this allows them to support much higher data rates than before, and hence to provide more demanding services such as video calls and high speed internet access [14]. .2.2. gsm module the used type of gsm module is sm5100b-d gsm/gprs module and is pictured and shown in figure.2a.figure.2b shows the functional block diagram of sm5100b-d that is made through a 60 pins board-toboard connector, which provides all hardware interfaces between the module and customers’ boards except the rf(radio frequency) antenna interface [15]. based on an advanced design scheme sm5100b-d integrates the rf and baseband onto one small pcb. it can fulfill all the functions of rf signal receiving and transmitting, baseband signal processing and audio signal processing so that we can develop all kinds of our own wireless terminal products with very few extra components. the main hardware interfaces of sm5100b-d consist of power supply interfaces, serial interfaces, audio interfaces, spi serial lcd interface, 4x6 matrix keypad interface, standard sim interface, rf antenna interface, etc. it is integrated with the tcp/ip protocol and supports an extended at commands which are very suited for developing all kinds of the customized applications [15]. (a) figure 2: sm5100b-d gsm/gprs module: (a) module picture and (b) functional block diagram of sm5100b -d. figure 2 (b) continued 2.2.1. uart interface sm5100b-d provides two uart (universal asynchronous receiver & transmitter) interface: uart0 and uart1whose circuit diagrams are illustrated in figure 3. the uart0 supports full function uart and supports baud rate up to 460800 bps. it is generally used as at command or download. by default, uart0 support 3-wire standard, cts0, rts0, dcd0, ri0 is invalid. [15]. (a) (b) figure 3: (a) uart0 and (b): uart1 interface of the sm5100b-d module. 2.2.2. antenna interface sm5100b-d has an rf interface impedance of 50ω. the user can plug the antenna to the rf pad or gnd pad [15]. 2.2.3. sim card interface sm5100b-d supports both 1.8v and 3.0v sim cards (5.0v not supported). 2.2.4. ft232r ic ft232r ic is a usb to uart communication ic which is an important communication bridge between the sm5100b-d gsm/gprs module device and pc (haven’t a physical serial port) through an existing usb. the ft232r ic circuit diagram as a usb to uart interface is shown in figure 4 [16]. figure 4: pin configuration of the usb to uart interface through ft232r ic [16]. 3. modeling and simulation of system components the mcu, motion sensors, relays and home appliances are modeled and simulated using visual basic.6 (vb6) program. the system modeling and simulation have been applied to a prototype of a proposed home drawing shown in figure 5. figure 5: the modeled motion sensors and appliances in the proposed home prototype. the above prototype consists of living room, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom as well as a corridor. by using vb6, the motion sensors and the appliances have been modeled using the tools provided in the vb6, such as shapes, option buttons, etc. the prototype, including the modeled motion sensors and appliances. when the system simulation software program is running, the following options related to the system are displayed: 1. system setting for automatic mode 2. gsm module setting 3. mcu i/o status. the above options are displayed as shown in figure 5 when the system simulation main program which is called “system simulation”, is executed. the “system simulation” is the main interface of the software that establishes the whole software system. the software system architecture is illustrated in figure 6. the three options which are available in the main interface are linked to separated interfaces of other sub-programs and could be activated only by clicking over their buttons as shown in figure 5. 3.1. simulation of mcu the microcontroller unit described in figure 1 is modeled and simulated to display the input/output status for the pins proposed mcu as shown in figure 7. figure 6: architecture of main system program. figure 7: modeled and simulated mcu pin status 3.2. representations of home appliances the proposed home appliances are represented by the symbols and shapes given in table 1. in the programming, the home appliances are represented by flags, as described in table 2. these flags may have a logical value (0, or 1) and they are responsible to operate the appliances (on, or off) by changing the i/o pins of the mcu and consequently through the connected relays. the flow chart of the simulation sub-program for home appliance operation is shown in figure 8. table 1: home appliances and their representations. table 2: flags of home appliances. figure 8: flow chart of simulation of home appliances operation sub-program. 3.3. occupancy and lighting operation the principle of motion sensor’s operation is to generate a signal representing the occupancy or the presence of a person in a specified place or room, and send it always to the mcu for the rest necessary processing. according to this signal, the mcu excites the relay always to switch on or off the lighting. the lighting is set on for a certain time (occupancy time setting) that is predefined. in the designed software, the occupancy time setting could be selected in the range of minutes, according to the customer convenience versus energy consumption. this time works as a duration value for a programmable delay (occupancy delay), this delay is activated only at that instant of place occupancy changed from the unoccupied state into occupied state and the lighting is turned on. when the occupancy delay duration ends, the occupancy and lighting operation sub-program checks the motion sensor signal, and so the room or place occupancy. two cases could be expected here: case (1): if the room or place still occupied, then the lighting stays on and the occupancy delay will re-activate and repeated. case (2): if the room or place is not occupied by any person, the lighting will be turned off and occupancy delay will be deactivated. in all of our operations, the selected occupancy time setting was five (5) minutes. the sensor operation is simulated according to the flow chart described in fig. 9. this sub-program is called “occupancy and lighting operation”. figure 9: flow chart of sensor operation simulation. 3.4. gsm module settings in this part of the software, the connection settings of the gsm module with proposed system can be controlled. generally, it consists of two subprograms, the first sub-program is to set the computer’s serial port and test its operation, where the second sub-program is to set the gsm module and test its operation. the gsm module can be set by using its at commands. each operation and parameter in the gsm module can be controlled by using the at commands. also, in this part of the software the mobile phone number should be defined as an input as shown in figure 10. 3.4.1. pc serial port settings in pc, many ports are used for i/o purposes. as shown in fig.10, the port number should be specified, as well as, the port baud rate. the system has been operated by using a baud rate of 9600 bps which is compatible with that of the gsm module. this first sub-program is executed by click on the “connect” button as shown previously in figure 10. the flow chart of the first subprogram developed to works as shown in figure 11. figure.10: gsm module setting interface. figure11: flow chart of computer serial port setting and test. 3.4.2. gsm module settings and test the setting and the test of the gsm module can be achieved by clicking on the “test” button in as shown previously in fig.10. here, the second subprogram is executed to perform the followings: a) set sms format b) change the method of the new incoming message’s indication. the sms format consists of two modes, pdu and text mode (more details in appendix a). whereas, the incoming message may be received in different ways, such as saving it in the gsm module’s internal memory, sim card, or receive it directly by the data terminal equipment (dte), which is here the pc. in this subprogram, by using the at commands, the sms format will set to the text mode and the method of new incoming message’s indication will set to the direct indication method. then, the gsm module will be tested after the performing the setting. each setting change should be followed by a reply from the gsm module, the reply either “ok” or “error”. so the gsm module will be tested by testing the reply each time after changing the settings. if the reply is “ok”, a pop-up dialog box will be appeared indicating that the “gsm module is ready” as shown in figure 12. the flow chart of the gsm module settings’ subprogram is shown in figure 13. figure 12: indication of readiness of gsm module. figure 13: gsm module settings’ sub-program flow chart. figure 14: flow chart of decoding the incoming sms based on its format. 3.5. sms decoding and executing program the incoming sms decoded using a decoding program that decodes the incoming message from the gsm module according to its format as illustrated in the flow chart in figure 14. according to the flow chart of figure 14, there are three formats of text messages could be used. one is sent for controlling the home appliances and the other for the monitoring the status of the appliances while the third message for selecting the mode of system operation, manual or automatic. if there is any mistake in the format of the sent message, this can be considered as an error message. 3.5.1. control message it consists of four parts as shown in table 3. the first part is the “message type”, it means control message represented by a letter “c”. the second one is the “location”, while the third and the fourth parts represent the “appliance” and its “new status” respectively. taking into consideration, there is a single space between each part and the next one, and the letters are not case sensitive for the example, if ones want to change the status of the hvac in the living room: the text message is written as follows: c living room hvac on table 3: the parts of control message format. controlling any appliance remotely can be achieved by using the same format of the above message. after the incoming sms is decoded as previously shown in figure 14, the control message sub-program is running, as well as, location, appliance, and new status are assigned and ready for further processing. this sub-program changes the current status of the assigned appliance to the assigned new status at the assigned location. then, a feedback returns and confirms the control operation. the control message subprogram illustrated in the flow chart in figure 15. 3.5.2. monitoring message the format of this message consists of three parts as shown in table 4. the first part is the “message type”, it means monitoring message represented by a letter “m”. the second one is the “location”, while the third one represents the “appliance”. taking into consideration; there is a single space between each part and the next one, and the letters are not case sensitive for the example, if ones wants to know the status of the boiler in the bathroom whether it is off or on, the text message is written as follows: m bathroom boiler table 4: the parts of monitoring message format. figure 15: flow chart of control message subprogram. figure 16: flow chart of monitoring message sub-program. monitoring any appliance remotely can be achieved by using the same format of the above message. after the incoming sms decoded, as previously shown in fig.4, the monitoring message sub-program is running, as well as, location and appliance are assigned and ready for further processing. this sub-program reads the current status of the assigned appliance (read the appliance flag) at the assigned location. then, a feedback returns and includes the current status of the appliance. the monitoring message sub-program is illustrated in the flow chart in figure16. finally, the proposed system included all of its divisions; the personal computer, gsm module and the mobile phone are operated and ready for test as shown in figure 17. figure 17: the final proposed system included gsm module and mobile phone. 4. system tests and results different tests can be performed to examine and evaluate the proposed system. three system tests are performed for controlling and monitoring purposes, as well as the test in case of error state. the execution time is also measured for the proposed system. 4.1. test 1 in this test, the status of hvac in the living room is changed from off to on status. to change the hvac’s status, the message should be written and sent as follows: c livingroom hvac on as shown in figure 18, the expected received message as a reply to the control action stating as follows: “dear user the hvac in the livingroom now is on”. at the same time the status of hvac changes to the on status (the color of the hvac symbol becomes green) as shown in figure 19. figure 18: the sent and received sms of test 1. figure 19: the on status for the hvac in the living room. 4.2. test 2 in this test, the status of the boiler in the bathroom is changed from off to on status. figure 19 shows the status of the boiler in the bathroom (off). to change the boiler’s status, the message should be written and sent as follows: c bathroom boiler on as shown in figure 20, the expected received message as a reply to the control action states as follows: “dear user the boiler in the bathroom now is on” at the same time the status of the boiler changes to the on status (the color of boiler symbol becomes red) as shown in figure 21. figure 20: the sent and received sms of test 2. figure 21: shows the status on for the boiler in the bathroom. 4.3. test 3 in this test, the status of hvac in the corridor is changed from off to on status. fig.21 shows the status of hvac in the corridor (off). to change the hvac’s status, the message should be written and sent as follows: c corridor hvac on as shown in figure 22, the expected received message as a reply of control action stating as follows: “dear user the hvac in the corridor now is on” at the same time, the status of hvac changed to the on status (the color of hvac symbol becomes green) as shown in figure 23. figure 22: the sent and received sms of test 3. figure 23: the status on for the hvac in the corridor. 4.4. error message format test this test is achieved when there is an error in the format of the sending message. for example, if the following mistake message is written as: g living room hvac it is wrong, because there is no letter g in the format of monitoring or controlling statement, even in changing the system mode. therefore a message is received as follows and shown in figure 24. “dear user the request format that you sent is not accepted by the system” the set of the above tests is repeated for many times and the same results are obtained and confirm that the proposed system operates successfully. it is seemed that a good compatibility of the developed programs is achieved. figure 24: the sent and received sms of the error format test. 4.5. measurements of execution time during the above tests, the execution time of the proposed system starts when the sms is sent by the user mobile phone until the message is received under normal conditions of the existing network (not busy), this time has been measured. all the measurements are given in the table 5 for command messages and table 6 for monitoring messages, where: tmg: the measured time from sending the control command (by mobile phone) to receiving this command (by gsm module at home system). tre : the measured time from receiving the control command (by home system) to executing this command by the mcu. tem: the measured time of executing the control command (by the mcu) to receiving the sms of the current appliance status (by mobile phone). tmsm: the measured time from sending the monitoring command (by mobile phone) to receiving the message of current appliance status (by mobile phone). from the above tables the execution time for controlling (average of 19.63sec.) greater than the execution time for monitoring (average of 19.33 sec.). this means that 0.3sec or 330ms are the differences between the times. this time difference is equivalent to the time spent to change the appliance status. the measured times are recorded and depended on the processing time of the microcontroller. table 5: measured execution time for control’s command messages. table 6: measured execution time for control’s command messages. 5. conclusion in the present research, a proposed system of energy management for the home appliances has been designed, and implemented using sms services of the gsm network. by this system the home appliances have remotely been controlled using mobile phones and the statuses of these appliances have been monitored. developed programs with a simple algorithm have been implemented. the proposed system has been tested and it has seemed to work successfully. since the system has a simple algorithm, it can be developed according to the user requirements. it is found that the execution time for the control function is 19.63 seconds and 19.33 seconds for the monitoring function. a good compatibility of the developed programs is achieved because the system is running continuously without interruption. the proposed system is considered to be a good security system for the home owner. 6. references [1] m. abd wahab, n. abdullah, a. johari and h. abdul kadir, “gsm based electrical control system for smart home application,” journal of convergence information technology, pp. 33-39, vol.5, no.1, 2010. [2] r. lutolf, "smart home concept and the integration of energy meters into a home based system," in proceedings of the seventh international conference on metering apparatus and tariffs for electricity supply, pp. 277-278, glasgow, 1992, [3] j. w. chuah, a. raghunathan and n. k. jha, "an evaluation of energy-saving technologies for residential purposes," ieee pes general meeting, pp. 1-8, minneapolis, mn, 2010. [4] m. pritoni, j. lamarche, k. cheney and o. sachs, “home energy management: products & trends,” in proceedings of the summer study on energy efficiency in building conference (aceee), pp. 165-175, 2012. [5] z. yu, l. jia, m. c. murphy-hoye, a. pratt and l. tong, "modeling and stochastic control for home energy management," in ieee transactions on smart grid, vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 2244-2255, dec. 2013. [6] g.conte and d. scaradozzi, “viewing home automation systems as multiple agents systems,” in proceedings of the robocup2003, padova, italy, 2003. [7] a. z. alkar and u. buhur, "an internet based wireless home automation system for multifunctional devices," in ieee transactions on consumer electronics, vol. 51, no. 4, pp. 11691174, nov. 2005. [8] n. jawarkar, v. ahmed, s. a. ladhake, and r. d. thakare, “microcontroller based remote monitoring using mobile through spoken commands,” journal of networks, pp. 58-6, vol. 3, no. 2, 2008. [9] m. g. golzar and h. tajozzakerin, "a new intelligent remote control system for home automation and reduce energy consumption," in proceedings of the fourth asia international conference on mathematical/analytical modelling and computer simulation, pp. 174-180, kota kinabalu, malaysia, 2010. [10] m. h. assaf, r. mootoo, s. r. das, e. m. petriu, v. groza and s. biswas, "sensor based home automation and security system," in proceedings of the ieee international instrumentation and measurement technology conference, pp. 722727, graz, 2012. [11] h. c. jo, s. kim and s. k. joo, "smart heating and air conditioning scheduling method incorporating customer convenience for home energy management system," in proceedings of the ieee transactions on consumer electronics, vol. 59, no. 2, pp. 316-322, may 2013. [12] f. baig, a. mahmood, n. javaid, s. razzaq, n. khan and z. saleem, “smart home energy management system for monitoring and scheduling of home appliances using zigbee,” journal of basic and applied scientific research, vol. 3, no. 5, pp. 880-891, 2013. [13] b. mubdir, a. al-hindawi and n.hadi, “design of smart home energy management system for saving energy,” european scientific journal. edition, pp. 521-536, vol. 12, no. 33, 2016. [14] christopher cox, “essentials of umts”, © cambridge university press, 2008. [15] shanghai sendtrue technologies co., “sm5100bd gsm/gprs module hardware specification”, www.sparkfun.com. [16] future technology devices international limited, “ft232r usb uart ic datasheet”, version 2.10, 2010. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/marco_pritoni https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/70565751_janelle_lamarche  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.27 received:19 may 2018 | accepted: 20 june 2018 the effect of child abuse on university student’s psychological status: a retrospective study pary m. azize farida a. kadir lavin luqman othman nursing department midwifery department information technology department technical institute of sulaimani technical institute of sulaimani vise president of the action group (tag) sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university the american university of iraq, sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq pary.azize@spu.edu.iq farida_barwari3@yahoo.com ll14096@auis.edu.krd 161 abstract: child abuse commonly underpins adult depression. child abuse is classified into four categories; physical, sexual, mental and neglect. this paper will study and discuss the rate of depression caused by child abuse at the time of the abuse, the data collected from the first section of the survey, which consisted of two categorical questions. there are two questions that this research will try to answer; have more females experienced one or multiple types of abuse during their childhood compared to male? and have the ones who have experienced abuse suffered from a degree of depression at the time of the abuse. the depression test that consisted of four questions that determined the participant’s depression percentage the result and tables have been duplicated from the public service pension plan (pspp), 21 females and 36 males participated in the survey. in total 57 students answered the questions that were sent through email. 73% of the participants said that they were not abused as a child in any of the forms. 27% of the participants have been abused in one or more of the ways as a child., further, 71.4% of the abuse were physical followed by mental and neglect (28%. 28%, respectively). likely there were zero records of sexual abuse. most of the abuse was happening around age 1-5 years and less likely on age 1-5 and above. females become more depressed than males. 57.2% of the abused children were suffering from anxiety followed by an interruption in their relationship and low self esteem it can be concluded that more female were abused as a child. we can see that the constant (male) is 49.29 and the female participants are 26.34 more than the constant. this proves that females become more depressed than men. therefore, much work will need to protect the children from harm. keywords: child abuse, depression, perception, physical abuse, sexual abuse. mental abuse, neglect 1. introduction the world health organization defines child abuse as “intentional or unintentional behavior by adults, society, or a country with negative consequences for the health and physical development of the child” [1:71]. globally, 40 million children have suffered annually from abuse [2]. child abuse commonly underpins adult depression. child abuse is classified into four categories; physical, sexual, mental and neglect [3]. the harm caused by child abuse as any detrimental effect of a significant nature on the child's physical, psychological or emotional wellbeing (child protection act 1999). recently, child abuse has accounted as one of the most complicated psychosocial issues around the world that is linked to depressive symptoms [4]. physical abuse appears when the child is suffering from the risk of non accidental physical trauma, such as hitting, shaking, throwing, biting, burning and poisoning, which, sometimes can lead to injury and trauma and in some severe cases the child will be left with a permanent scar, childhood sexual abuse (csa) is a well-established risk factor for adult depression, that occur by involving the child in a sexual activity by an adult and adolescent [5]. although, emotional abuse also appear when the child’s social, emotional, cognitive and intellectual ability has impaired mostly through family violence. when a child fails to meet the basic needs across their life by the lack of attachment or mistreated in terms of health care, adequate clothing, food and personal hygiene these might cause neglect, that related to the fail parental responsibility to seek help in order to provide a healthy environment for their children [6]. thus, bowlby in his theory reported that the range of attachment between caregiver and children play an important role in forming a romantic relationship, which, focus mostly on parent-child interaction [7] stated that maltreatment sometimes can lead to post traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) in life and also they found it difficult to make the relation between maltreatment and future stress [8]. therefore, there is a direct relationship between child abuse and depression and parents are responsible for that. the higher the level of abuse the child has experienced, the more chance the child can get depression disorder in the future. the current study seeks to find out and discuss the rate of depression caused by children at the time of the abuse. 2. methods and materials a retrospective quantitative study was chosen in order to seek and discuss the rate of depression caused by children at the time of the abuse. the current study examined abuse perceptions, among 57 university mailto:farida_barwari3@yahoo.com https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/conditions/child-abuse https://www.google.iq/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=22&ved=2ahukewjlq_xdnmhcahvgbiwkhahuc_iqfjavegqibxab&url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.pspp.ca%2f&usg=aovvaw0oqz1zp5ejmhu4upmbchho https://www.google.iq/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=22&ved=2ahukewjlq_xdnmhcahvgbiwkhahuc_iqfjavegqibxab&url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.pspp.ca%2f&usg=aovvaw0oqz1zp5ejmhu4upmbchho https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/conditions/child-abuse 162 students through a google form/ email. the forms were sent to 60 students, 57 of which sent their responses anonymously (email addresses were not collected). there are two sections that this research attempted to find; some demographic data such as having more females experienced one or multiple types of abuse during their childhood compared to male? and have the ones who have experienced abuse suffered from a degree of depression at the time of the abuse. description of data section a this section demonstrates the data collected from the first section of the survey, which consisted of five categorical questions. the first question asked the participant if they have been abused during their childhood, second, to specify their gender; then question about types of abuse, age of being abused and finally asked about the effect of abuse on the psychological and behavioral status. section b this section will demonstrate results acquired from the depression test that consisted of four questions that determined the participant’s depression percentage. data analysis (model applications) i had trouble finding the right model to explain all of the data. since the regression model is unable to explain 100% of my data it was hard to make decisions. another challenge was cleaning up the data and representing it in a format that was obtainable by pspp. 3. results section a table 1 illustrates that (21, 36.8%) females and (36, 63.2%) males were participated in the survey . in total 57 out of 60 subjects answered the questions that were sent through email. table 1. gender ration (table has been duplicated from pspp). figure 1 represents that 27% of the participants have been abused in one or more of the ways (sexual, neglect, mental and physical) as a child. the participants that have not been abused were stated 73% of the participant figure 1: abused status (graph taken from pspp). figure 2: it shows the types of abuse. in (figure 2), shows that a physical abuse addressed as the most type (70%), followed by mental and neglect abuse. figure 3: it shows the age of the participates that faceed abuse. figure 3 shows that 1-5 years old addressed as a highly age of being abused, followed by 5-10 years. gender and abused figure 4: gender and abuse (graph taken from pspp). figure 4 illustrates the number of and males that were abused. the x-axis represents the two genders and the y-axis shows the number of participants that were abused. from the bar chart, it can be concluded that more female were abused as a child. 73% 27% abuse status not abused abused 0 50 100 physical abuse sexual abuse mental abuse neglect types of abuse 0 100 1year5 years 5years-10 years 15 and above age age and abuse value table value frequency % valid % cum % female 1 21 36.8 36.8 36.8 male 2 36 63.2 63.2 100.0 total 57 100.0 100.0 1= female 2=male abused 163 section b this section will demonstrate results acquired from the depression test that consisted of four questions that determined the participant’s depression percentage. figure 5: it shows the percentages of depression and abuse. a histogram shows the percentage of depression of the participants. the mean of the graph is 63.3%. this shows that there is a normal distribution. figure 6: it shows some psychological and mental effects of child abuse. this figure shows that 57.2% of the abused children were suffering from anxiety followed by an interruption in their relationship and low self esteem, which showed to be on the same percentage. figure 7: child abuse and some behavioral status this figure shows that most of the abuse was effected sleeping and eating habits, self harm and constant absence from school were also effected of abuse. model in this research regression model has been used to analyze the data. regression model: dependent=depression, independent=female, constant=male. table 2: gender and abuse (table taken from pspp). table 2 is a regression model that was run at female and depression rate, making the male the constant. the model explains 42% of the data. from the anova model we can see that the model is scientifically significant since the significance 0.009. we can see that the constant (male) is 49.29 and the female participants are 26.34 more than the constant. this proves that females become more depressed than men. 4. discussion it is hard for a person to speak about abuse since the act is difficult to indicate. therefore, a retrospective quantitative study was chosen in order to seek and discuss the rate of depression caused by children at the time of the abuse. this study reported that, 73% of the participants said that they were not abused as a child in any of the forms. while, 27% of the participants have been abused in one or more of the ways as a child, we understand that this confession must have been hard for this number of participants as it is always counted as taboo for a child to talk about the abuse they are receiving. in fact, this study expects parents to abuse their child in order to discipline their child be “behaving”. in contrast to bowlby theory [7] ‘attachment theory’ in (1982) who reported that the range of attachment between caregiver and children plays an important role in forming a significant relationship, which focus mostly on parent-child interaction [9]. stated that attachment is one specific aspect of the relationship between a child and a parent with its purpose being to make a child safe, secure and protected. regarding the types of abuse, this study was found that our participants were suffering most from physical abused with fortunately no sexual abuse. there is a a study [10] reported that ‘child maltreatment" are most likely cover as an umbrella of the physical abuse (affecting 8.0 percent of the children globally) followed by sexual abuse (1.6 percent), emotional abuse (36.3 percent), and neglect (4.4 percent). therefore, depending on this finding, emotional abuse is a leading type of abuse among the other, in terms of the age and child abuse, this study found that 1-5 years old were more likely abused followed by 5-10 years old. this proved by the fact that 70% of the abuse were taking action below the age of 3[11]. regarding gender and child abuse, this study was expecting to see an almost equal amount of females and males saying yes to being abused. however the finding of the study [9] revealed that, and stated that more female were abused as a child than male, in the analysis showed 0 20 40 60 80 anxiety low selfe steem maintaining relationships p e rc e n a g e o f su b je ct s a ff e ct e d psychological and mental effect what are some psychological and mental effects of child abuse? 0 20 40 self harm eating disorder trouble sleeping absent from school oftenbehavioral effect what are some behavioral effects of child abuse? depression rate 164 that there is a significant association between gender and child abuse. keeping in mind that male participants were more than female participants, this means that the percentage of abuse among female participants and male participants is significantly high. this finding was surprising, since it was unexpected that there would be inequality between female and male from such a young age, knowing that males have a more badly behaved nature than females. male children are often more outgoing, taking more risks and trying to push boundaries more than female children. female children are usually quiet and are able to take directions easier than males. the participants who had been abused have suffered from a high degree of depression at the time. further, the findings show that the constant (male) is 49.29 and the female participants are 26.34 more than the constant. this proves that females become more depressed than male. as it is well known that female were depressed twice as male because of normal hormonal change [10,11,12]. regarding the impact of being abused on the mental, psychological and behavioral health. this study found that a majority of the people that have been abused having a significantly higher rate of depression. since the topic of mental health and depression is almost a taboo, therefore, children feel ashamed and are not allowed to show signs of sadness [13]. this makes the child feel even more depressed and lost, and in the long run this will impact the mental, social and behavioral state of the child. as humans, we are socializing species, speaking and sharing our feelings with other human beings makes us feel safer and releases out stress, when the person forbidden or too frightened to share their thoughts and feelings, as a consequence, this might start to develop anxiety as a consequence of abuse [14]. this study represents that anxiety has the highest influenced followed by low self esteem and communication. in terms of the impact of abuse on the behavior of the victim, most of the participants reported that, they were suffering from eating disorder and sleeping disturbance. this result being supported by the who report, which said that eating disorder, sleeping disturbance, poor relationship and ptsd are all counted as another consequence of being abused [15]. as human nature stress and fear affects sleeping patterns and eating habits. some people might be eating too much during difficult times and start developing numerous of diseases, while others take the opposite approach and stop eating food, which also leads to numerous diseases respectively. [16] supported this finding and states biological, physiological and social processes of a victim are the cause of eating disorders and a few factors that have an impact on one’s relationships and social life, trust, self worth, and communication. as mentioned before abuse in childhood is usually carried out by a close person to the victim, this would lead to the breakage of that trust bridge between the victim and other people around them, which, makes them find it hard to keep a healthy relationship with others, once the anxiety and the depression make their way into a human brain, that person will start to believe that they have lost their self worth, and will lose the knowledge of their place in the relationship. [17] browne angella in his study about child sexual abuse states that there are long term and short term effects of abuse. based on his study, long term effects of child sexual abuse and child abuse in general include low self-esteem, difficulty in trusting others. 5. conclusion in conclusion, this study confirms that, physical child abuse is a significant type of abuse, which most common among female victims and cause depression. abuse mostly takes place from the age 1-5. this problem needs to be solved and we need to provide help for these children. this study will recommend to develop an application or a software that would provide 24/7 service of professional counselors that are online to help children who are suffering from any of the four types of abuse. since most children in kurdistan have access to device, the software can be installed on all the devices that are imported into the country and children should be trained and informed on the use of the software through schools and child supporting groups. we also recommend another approach that would guarantee that information will be passed on to all of the children in the country and that is through hiring dedicated people who would go and talk to all children in all of the schools and kindergartens. informing children and training children on what needs to be done when abuse takes place will be very effective, it will help the child build a trust bridge with the school or the kindergarten (the place that they have received the information from). reference [1] z. cetin, m. a. ozozen-danaci. “multivariate examination of the child-abuse potential of parents with children aged 0-6,” eurasian journal of educational research, 66, 71-86, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.14689/ejer.2016.66.4 [2] department of communities, child safety and disability services:, what is child abuse? international, c. c. (july 6, 2017) retrieved december 13, 2017, from queensland government; https://www.communities.qld.gov.au/childsafety/protectingchildren/what-child-abuse [3] m. rostami, m. abdi, h. heidari. “study of various types of abuse during childhood and mental health,” social and behavioral sciences 159; 671 – 676. 2014. [4] m. c. cutajar, p. e mullen, j. r. ogloff, s. d. thomas, d. l. wells. “psychopathology in a large cohort of sexually abused children followed up to 43 years,” child abuse negl; 34(11):81322, 2010. [5] a. r. jasmer, “medical news: physical child abuse sends thousands to hospitals in pediatrics, domestic violence from medpage today,” medical news and free cme from medpage today. paediatr child health; 9(8): 541–545, 2014. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc272416/ [6] k. rodd, “childhood psychological maltreatment and neglect, intimate relationships,” adult. b. a., queen’s university, 2015. [7] j. bowlby, “attachment and loss,” tavistock institute of human relations. 2nd edition. new york. 1982 https://www.abebe.org.br/files/john-bowlby-attachmentsecond-edition-attachment-and-loss-series-vol-1-1983.pdf. [8] a. dias, l. sales l, r. mota-cardoso; t. mooren, r. kleber, “child maltreatment, revictimization and post-traumatic stress disorder among adults in a community sample,” international journal of clinical and health psychology 17, 97-106, 2017. [9] d. benoit, “infant-parent attachment: definition, types, antecedents, measurement and outcome of sexually abused children followed up to 43 years,” child abuse negl.; 34(11): 81322, 2010. [10] safe horizon. “child abuse facts,” accessed march 3, 2015. [11] d. d. vachon, r. f. krueger, f. a. ragosch, d. cicchetti, “comparable consequences across different forms of child maltreatment,” jama psychiatry, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.14689/ejer.2016.66.4 https://www.communities.qld.gov.au/childsafety/protecting-children/what-child-abuse https://www.communities.qld.gov.au/childsafety/protecting-children/what-child-abuse https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20888636 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc2724160/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc272416/ https://www.abebe.org.br/files/john-bowlby-attachment-second-edition-attachment-and-loss-series-vol-1-1983.pdf https://www.abebe.org.br/files/john-bowlby-attachment-second-edition-attachment-and-loss-series-vol-1-1983.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=benoit%20d%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=19680481 165 [12] world health organization. “gender disparities in mental health,” geneva: world health organization, 2013. [13] c. may-chahal. “gender and child maltreatment: the evidence base,” social work & society.4(1), 2006. [14] j. klevens, k. ports, “gender inequity associated with increased child physical abuse and neglect: a cross-country analysis of population-based surveys and country-level statistics,” journal of family violence doi 10.1007/s10896-017-9925-4, 2017. [15] world health organization, “child abuse and neglect,” geneva: world health organization, 2002. [16] m. manja, a. keizer, “body representation disturbances in visual perception and affordance perception persist in eating disorder patients after completing treatment,” scientific reports, 7, 1, 2017. [17] b. angela, f. david, “impact of child sexual abuse: a review of the research,” psychological bulletin, 99(1), 66-77, 1986. microsoft word complement protein and immunoglobulins serum levels in normal pregnant and spontaneous aborted women kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.21 received:14 may 2018 | accepted: 21 june 2018 complement protein and immunoglobulins serum levels in normal pregnant and spontaneous aborted women hiwa abdulrahman ahmad mehrimirhajmuhammdsalih kamal ahmed khidir science and health research center radiology department animal resource department faculty of science and health research koya technical institute university of raparin koya university erbil polytechnic university qaladuzi, sulimani, iraq koya, erbil, iraq koya, erbil, iraq kamal.ahmed@uor.edu.krd hiwa.abdulrahman@koyauniversity.org mehri.merhaj@gmail.com 129 abstract: disorder of maternal immune responses during pregnancy triggers immunological rejection of fetus antigens by maternal immune components, contribute to spontaneous abortion or miscarriage. the study was designed to concentrated on immunoglobulins (igm, igg and iga) and complement elements (c3 and c4) serum levels changes in normal pregnant and abortion women. study groups were classified into normal pregnant women (20), spontaneous abortion (30) and non-pregnant women (16) as a control group, attending to shahid dr.khalid hospital/department of gynecology and obstetrics/koya city. serum levels of immunoglobulins (igg, igm, and iga), complement proteins (c3 and c4) were determined and analyzed for normal pregnant, abortion and control groups by using single radial immunodiffusion (srid) technique. the results demonstrated that concentration of igg levels in abortion differed significantly in compare to normal pregnancy (p ≤0.05), while there were no significant differences in igm and iga serum levels among groups (p >0.05). also, statistical analysis revealed that serum levels of c3 and c4 significantly decreased in abortion group compared to normal pregnant and non-pregnant groups (p ≤0.05). concluded that complement proteins (c3 andc4) are a good defense line during normal pregnancy, sometime activation (hyper-consuming) of complement elements may provoke spontaneous abortion, while immunoglobulins are a little role in inducing of miscarriage in pregnant women. keywords:pregnant, abortion, igg, igm, iga, c3, c4. 1. introduction pregnancy is one of the most important periods in human life with hormonal, immunological, vascular, metabolic and psychological changes. abortion is a common complication of pregnancy and may either be spontaneous or induced [1]. the causative agent for approximately 50% of pregnancy is unknown, it is postulated that the mother immune system invades the paternal antigens on the feto-placental part, which affect placenta development or deterioration of endometrium resulting in abortion of fetus [2]. several investigations on women with recurrent pregnancy losses demonstrated that the numbers of uterine natural killer (unk) cells elevated in the peripheral blood of women during or prior of pregnancy in compare to fertile healthy pregnant and non-pregnant women, it’s also been reported that the levels of cd56+ nk cells are a causative agent of miscarriage in the pregnant women. [3,4,5]. cd56+ cells produce cytokines and growth factors required to provoke regional immunosuppression andassist fetus developments [6,7]. imbalance of th1/th2 toward th1 lead to more production of pro-inflammatory cytokines by th1 cells (ifn-gamma, tnf-α, and il-2), activation of macrophage and nk cells resulting in thrombosis in the maternal and placental blood circulation by increasing production of fg-12. immunoglobulins production stimulated by th1 cytokines are able to activation of complement cascade which participate in the abortion process [8]. complement system contributes in non-specific immunity by direct lysis target cell through the membrane attach complex (mac), followed by activation and infiltration of inflammatory cells [9]. normally complement proteins play a critical role in protecting both fetus and mother against harmful agents, while hyperactivation of complement system due to infection by pathogens can lead to pathogenesis and be very dangerous to embryo [10]. regulation of complement activation by regulatory proteins, such as decay accelerating factor (daf) and complement receptor 1-related gene protein/y (crry) is a critical factor for a successful of pregnancy [11]. recognition of paternal antigens on the surface of syncytiotrophoblast by mother immune system could activate complement proteins, contributing in death of trophoblastic cells [12]. in animal model deficiency in crry regulatory protein, result in spontaneous deposition of c3 protein on the surface of tropoblast, and fetus loss, for that reason, it has been proposed that restriction of complement system is required for normal pregnancy [9, 13]. miller in (2009) demonstrated in their investigation, innate immunity markers (total wbcs and neutrophils) levels are higher in pregnant women, while adaptive 130 table 1: difference in mean serum level of igg (mg/dl) between study groups immunity markers (immunoglobulins and lymphocytes) will be lower in compare to non-pregnant women [14]. a study conducted by horleret al., (2002) [15], reported the role of complement in pathology during pregnancy on mouse model characterized of anti-phospholipid syndrome (aps), the level of igg markedly increased against negative charge of phospholipidprotein in patients suffered by aps, also the same study showed that anti-phospholipid (apl) antibody deposits in the placenta cause necrosis and miscarriage, or retardation of fetus development [14]. activation of complement cascade is essential and trigger in apl antibody enhanced injury in fetus, the apl induced pregnancy loss done following by c3 activation [15]. this study was designed to assess whether abortion is related to immunoglobulins and complement proteins levels in the blood circulation of pregnant women and compare to normal pregnancy. 2. methods and materials the present study carried out on (66) women, aged between (20-41) years, they were divided into three groups, first group included (16)non-pregnant married healthy women as control group, the second group was (20) normal pregnant of the first trimester andthird group included (30) cases of first trimester spontaneous abortion. all groups were attended to shahid dr. khalid hospital/department of gynecology and obstetrics in koya. five ml of peripheral venous blood samples were collected from, non-pregnant control, patients with first trimester abortion before curettage and so from ongoing first trimester pregnant women in sterile plane tube and left to clot for (15 -30) minutes at room temperature, then centrifuged for 5 minutes at 3000 round per minutes (rpm). sera were separated and divided into eppendorf tubes and immediately stored in deep freeze at – 20 ºc. until test. serum levels of immunoglobulins (igm, igg and iga) and complement proteins (c3 and c4) determined by using single radial immunodiffusion (srid) method, according to the instruction of manufacture’s (lta sri, milan,italia). statistical analysis was performed by spss (statistical package for social science) version 17.0. using descriptive statistic, lsd (least significant differences) test for multiple comparisons after anova, p value ≤ 0.05 was considered as significant. 3. results the study of serum immunoglobulin levels of (30) spontaneous aborted women in comparison to (20) normal pregnant and (16) non-pregnant groups revealed that the mean serum level of igg significantly increased (p≤0.05), lsd test showed that this difference is between abortion and normal pregnancy, while there were no significant differences between non-pregnant with normal pregnant and abortion groups (p>0.05), as shown in table and figure (1). however, the data analysis illustrated that the serum concentration of igm and iga non-significantly lower in abortion group than other groups (p>0.05), table (2, 3).statistical analysis reveals a significant decrease of serum complement protein (c3) in abortion group in compare to normal pregnant group (p≤ 0.01) as showed in table (4) and figure (3), while there was no significant differences between abortion with normal pregnant group in one hand and nonpregnant with normal pregnant group on other hands (p>0.05).moreover, the concentration of c4 protein in the sera of abortion individuals differedsignificantly (33.49±2.45 mg/dl) in comparison to normal pregnancy (48.18±2.27 mg/dl) and non-pregnant women (43.5± 3.5 mg/dl) (p<0.001), explained in table (5) and figure (3). lsdtest analysis revealed highly significant decrease in the serum of c4 level of spontaneous abortion compared with normal pregnant women (p<0.001) and with non-pregnant group (p<0.05), but no significant relation was reported between normal pregnant and nonpregnant women (p>0.05). study groups no. igg p value anova mean ±se abortion 30 1589.11 ±103.41 0.032 normal pregnant 20 1235±70.09 non-pregnant 16 1347.21±110.97 lsd test p value abortion vs normal pregnant 0.012 abortion vs non-pregnant 0.104 normal pregnant vs non-pregnant 0.483 figure 1: serum level of igg in study groups 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 abortion normal pregnant non-pregnant s er um ig g l ev el ( m g/ dl ) p<0.05 ns ns 131 table 2: difference in mean serum level of igm (mg/dl) between study groups 0 25 50 75 100 125 150 175 200 225 250 abortion normal pregnant non-pregnant c 3 co nc en tra tio n (m g/ dl ) p<0.01 ns ns 0 10 20 30 40 50 abortion normal pregnant non-pregnant c 4 co nc en tra tio n (m g/ dl ) p<0.01 p<0.05 ns study groups no. igm p value anova mean ±se abortion 30 242.29±22.91 0.154 normal pregnant 20 237.79±24.53 non-pregnant 16 309.13±33.22 lsd test p value abortion vs normal pregnant 0.922 abortion vs non-pregnant 0.079 normal pregnant vs non-pregnant 0.088 study groups no. c3 p value anova mean ±se abortion 30 152.09±13.63 0. 023 normal pregnant 20 202.96±11.77 non-pregnant 16 186.16±14.03 lsd test p value abortion versusnormal pregnant 0.008 abortion versus non-pregnant 0.093 normal pregnantversus non-pregnant 0.44 study groups no. c4 p value anova mean ±se abortion 30 33.49±2.45 0.001 normal pregnant 20 48.18±2.27 non-pregnant 16 43.5±3.5 lsd test p value abortion vs normal pregnant 0.001 abortion vs non-pregnant 0.015 normal pregnantvs non-pregnant 0.28 study groups no. iga p value anova mean ±se abortion 30 203.29±14.82 0.93 normal pregnant 20 211.88±17.42 non-pregnant 16 207.75±19.55 lsd test p value abortion vs normal pregnant 0.71 abortion vs non-pregnant 0.85 normal pregnant vs non-pregnant 0.87 table 3: difference in mean serum level of iga (mg/dl) between study groups figure 2: serum level of c4 in study groups table 4: difference in mean serum level of c3 (mg/dl) between study groups figure 2: serum level of c3in study groups table 5: difference in mean serum level of c4 (mg/dl) between study groups 132 4. discussion immunological mechanisms are involved in successful implantation. miscarriage may, therefore, be a consequence of inappropriate humoral or cellular immunological responses towards the embryo that have been investigated is the possible immunologic rejection of paternal antigen by the maternal immune system, resulting in abnormal immune cells and cytokine production [16]. the present study revealed that the concentration of igg in abortion group significantly increased (p<0.05), in comparison to normal pregnancy and non-pregnant groups, while levels of serum igg among pregnant mother non-significantly decreased compared to non-pregnant women (p> 0.05), all groups showed no significant changes in total igm and iga sera concentration (table 1, 2). these results are partially in agreement with a study by saleh et., al in baquba (2015) [17], antibody levels in pregnant mothers decreased, this may be because of hemodiluton, hormonal changes, such as progesterone which inhibit immunoglobulin production by b lymphocytes. the activity of innate immunity dramatically elevated, while the activity of specific immunity obviously decreased, these dual mechanism reactions is a critical point required for immunotolerance and survive of the fetus. it has been noted that stress is characterized in pregnancy and inhibit antibody productions by b lymphocytes and associated with pregnancy loss. (14,7], another study has shown that there is no relation of igm, iga, and igg serum levels in patients with recurrent miscarriage, it is well characterized that autoantibodies (igg, igm, and iga) against phospholipids are linked with recurrent abortion [18]. we found out that concentrations of c3 and c4proteins significantly decreased in abortion group compare to normal pregnancy group (p<0.01), sugiura-ogasawara et al.,(2006) [18] and alkhayatet al., (2014) [19], documented that c3 and c4 serum levels were low in recurrent pregnancy loss, and they proposed those complement elements have a role in the pathogenesis of abortion, another investigation determined c3 and c4 protein levels significantly lower in patients with unknown habitual miscarriage with subclinical lower autoimmune diseases than explained habitual abortion. excessive complement activation from mother circulation or local placenta cell sources interfaces with a hazard of fetal loss [15]. the major structural components of decidual cells are a trophoblast, which associated in the local production of complement components in maternaldeciduas as a basic source of c3 and c4 feto-maternal connection [20]. placenta is vulnerable by complement proteins because trophoblast encounters maternal blood and tissue alteration in maternal decidua stimulate complement components during pregnancy [11]. another finding of the present study is that serum levels of c3 and c4 non-significantly elevated in normal pregnancy compared to non-pregnant, richani and coworkers (2005) have shown similar results [21], normal activation of mother and embryo complement system protected them against infections by pathogens. a local synthesize and release of complement components may participate in tissue destruction, kidney graft rejection done by the c3protein produced in epithelial renal tubules [22]. activation of complement components by parental antigens presented on syncytiotrophoblast consequence in the destruction of trophoblast then may increase of barrier permeability opening the gate to pathogens, such as bacteria, viruses as well as toxic materials that a risk for fetus survives [23]. the function of complement is crucial to maternal reproductive tract during pregnancy because theimplanted fetus is exposure to invading by microorganisms that habitat in the cervicovaginal area, therefore protection is required to avoid embryo from infectious agents [24]. 5. conclusion immunological alteration in pregnant women required for fetus survival and successful pregnancy. break of immunotolerance and attack of immune components of the maternal immune system may result in pregnancy loss. this study demonstrated that the level of immunoglobulins decreased during normal pregnancy, elevation of igg may contribute in miscarriage. while concentration serum levels of c3 and c4 proteins markedly decreased in abortion, it may refer to high consumption of complement components because of over activation of the complement system, eventually may be associated with the fetus loss. further studies need to be conducted to explain the role immune components as an etiology and relation with spontaneous abortion. refernces [1] a. n. akkoca, t.z. ozdemir, r. kurt, b.b sen, e. yengil, c. karatepe, o.s.karapınar, c. ozer, “the physiological changes in pregnancy and their distribution according to trimester,” j.gyn. obs. vol.2, no.6, pp. 86-90, 2014. [2] j. aplin, “maternal incenses on placental development, “semin. cell. dev. biol. vol.11, pp.115-125, 2000. [3] k.aoki ,s. kajiura, y. matsumoto, m. ogasawara, s.okada, y.yagami, n. gleicher, “preconceptional natural killer cell activity as a predictor of miscarriage,” lancet, vol. 345, pp.1340-1342. 1995. [4] c.b. coulam, c. goodman, r. g. roussev, e. j. thomason, k.d. beaman, “systemic cd56+ cells can predict pregnancy outcome,” am. j. reprod. immunol., vol.33, pp.40-46. 1995. [5] p. m. emmer, w.l. nelen, e.a. steegers, j.c. hendriks, m. veerhoek, i.joosten, i., “peripheral natural killer cytotoxicity and cd56+cd16+ cells increase during early pregnancy in women with a history of recurrent spontaneous abortion,” hum. reprod., vol. 15, pp.1163-1169, 2000. [6] a. moffett, f. colucci, “uterine nk cells: active regulators at the maternal-fetal interface,” j. clin. invest.,vol. 124 pp.18721879, 2014. [7] d. p.robinson, s.l. klein, “pregnancy and pregnancyassociated hormones alter immune responses and disease pathogenesis,” hor. beh., vol.62, no. 3, pp.263-271, 2012. [8] d. a. clark, j.w. ding, g. yu, g. a. levy, r. m. gorczynski, “fgl2 prothrombinase expression in mouse trophoblast and deciduas triggers abortion but may be countered by ox-2.” mol. hum. reprod., vol. 7, pp.185-194, 2001. [9] c. xu, d. mao, v. m. holers, b. palanca, a. m. cheng, h. molina, “a critical role for murine complement regulator crry in fetomaternal tolerance,” science vol. 287, pp.498–501, 2000. [10] a. l. conroy, c. r. mcdonald, k. l. silver, w.c. liles, k.c. kain, “complement activation: a critical mediator of adverse fetal outcomes in placental malaria?,” tr. par, vol.27, pp.294299, 2011. 133 [11] j. s. gilbert, c.t. banek, v. l. katz, s. a. babcock, j. f. regal, “complement activation in pregnancy: too much of a good thing,” hypertension, vol. 60 pp.1114-1116, 2012. [12] o. thellin, b. coumans, w. zorzi, a. igout, e. heinen, “tolerance to the foeto-placental graft: ten ways to support a child for nine months,” cur. opin. imm., vol. 12 pp.731-737, 2000. [13] g. girardi, j.b. salmon, “the role of complement in pregnancy and fetal loss” autoimmunity, vol.36, pp. 19–26, 2003. [14] e.m. miller, “changes in serum immunity during pregnancy” am. j. hum. biol., vol. 21, pp.401-403, 2009. [15] v. m. holers, g. girardi, l. mo, j.m. guthridge, h. molina, s. s.pier angeli, r. espinola, l.e. xiaowei, d. mao, c.g. vialpando, j. e. salmon, “complement c3 activation is required for antiphospholipid antibody-induced fetal loss,” j. exp. med., vol. 195, pp.211–220, 2002. [16] b. toth, u. jeschke, n. rogenhofer, c. scholz, w. würfel, c.j. thaler, a. makrigiannakis, “recurrent miscarriage: current concepts in diagnosis and treatment,” j. repro. immunol, vol. 85 no.1, pp.25–32, 2010. [17] m.a. saleh, a. a. farhan, h. h. alwan, (2015). evolution the physiological effect of pregnancy on some immunological parameters for pregnant women. iosr-jdms, vol.14, no. 6, pp.35-41,2015. [18] m. sugiura-ogasawara, k. nozawa, t. nakanishi, y. hattori, y. ozaki, “complement a predictor of further miscarriage in couple with recurrent miscarriages.” human reprod., vol.12 no. 10, pp.2711-2714, 2006. [19] z a al-khayat, n e waheda, n f shaker, “complement c3 and c4 levels in recurrent aborting women with or without antiphospholipid and anticardiolipin autoantibodies,” ibnosina j. med. bs., vol.6, no.5, pp.213-218, 2014. [20] r. bulla, f. bossi, c. agostinis, o. radillo, f. colombo, f. deseta, f. tedesco, “complement production by trophoblast cells at thefeto-maternalinterface,” j. reprod.immunol., vol. 82, pp.119–125, 2009. [21] k. richani, e. soto, r. romero, j. espinoza, t. chatiworapongsa, j. k. nien, s. edwin, y. m. kim, j. s. hong, m.mazora, “normal pregnancy is characterized by systemic activation by systemic activation of the complement system.,” matern fetal neonatal med., vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 239– 245, 2005. [22] j. r. pratt,s. a, basheer, s. h. sacks, “local synthesis of complement componentc3regulates acute renal transplant rejection,” nat. med., vol., 8, pp.582–587, 2002. [23] r. bulla f. bossi and f.tedesco “the complement system at the embryo implantation site: friendorfoe?,”frontier immunol , vol. 3 no. 55, pp.1-7. 2012. [24] v. pellis, f. deseta, s. crovella, f. bossi, r. bulla, s. guaschino, o. radillo, p. garred, f. tedesco, “mannosebindinglectinandc3act as recognitionmoleculesforinfectiousagentsinthevagina,” clin. exp. immunol., vol.139, pp.120–126, 2005. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 3 | issue 1 | june 2018 | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.1.2 received: january 4, 2018 | accepted: march 16, 2018 infantile nephropathic cystinosis in sulaimani pediatric teaching hospital: a retrospective cohort study hunar jamal hussein khalid hama salih adnan mohammed hasan mbchb, kbms trainee mbchb, dch, fibms ped., lecturer professor pediatrics pediatrics pediatrics kurdistan board for medical specialties school of medicine school of medicine erbil, iraq university of sulaimani university of sulaimani hunarjamal85@yahoo.com sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq khalidh976@yahoo.com dr.adnanhasan@yahoo.com 5 abstract cystinosis is a rare metabolic autosomal recessive disorder which characterized by intralysosomal accumulation of cystine. there are three forms; infantile nephropathic is the commonest forms. to evaluate clinical presentations and outcome of infantile cystinosis. a retrospective cohort study conducted in sulaimani pediatric teaching hospital on 25 patients with infantile cystinosis during may 1, 2014, to june 1, 2017. this study has depended on clinical symptoms and signs, and corneal crystallization for the diagnosis of cystinosis. gender of the patients was 13 (52%) females and 12 (48%) males. the ages were ranged between (1-12 years) with a mean age of (6.25 years). eight (32%) patients were from sulaimani city, but the other 17 (68%) patients were from outside of sulaimani. moreover, a 17 (68%) of them were arabic and the other eight (32%) were kurdish ethnic groups. the study showed a 20 (80%) positive consanguinity with 19 (76%) positive family history of infantile cystinosis. additionally, the age of first presentations was between (0.252 years) with a mean of (0.8 years). clinical features included a 100% for polyuria, polydipsia, and failure to thrive. furthermore, 10 (40%) presented with constipation, 23 (92%) photophobia and 5 (20%) blond hair. complications included 24 (96%) rickets, 14 (56%) renal insufficiency, 5 (20%) hypothyroidism, 4 (16%) genu valgum, 3 (12%) growth hormone deficiency, and 3 (12%) developed end-stage renal disease. subsequently, two patients died (8%) due to endstage renal disease. finally, there was a statistically significant relationship between both renal insufficiency (pvalue = 0.042) and hypothyroidism (p-value < 0.001) with kurdish ethnicity. conclusion: incidence of cystinosis was high among consanguineous parents and those patients who had a positive family history of cystinosis. furthermore, the delay in diagnosis was due to atypical presentations and unavailability of specific investigations. keywords: infantile cystinosis, clinical presentations, consanguinity, family history. i. introduction: cystinosis is a rare autosomal recessive metabolic disease [1] that characterized by cystine accumulation inside lysosome because of a defect in transport system of cystine [2]. there are three types of cystinosis which are as follows [3]: 1. infantile nephropathic cystinosis: it is the severe and most common type which make infant to suffer from symptoms and signs of fanconi syndrome during the first year of their life. 2. juvenile nephropathic cystinosis: it presents with proteinuria and a mild form of fanconi syndrome. 3. ocular cystinosis: this type is rare before adulthood [1] and it is characterized by cystine deposition in the cornea and conjunctiva. the cause of all types of cystinosis is by ctns (cystinosin, lysosomal cystine transporter) gene mutation on the short-arm of chromosome number 17. furthermore, it has been mentioned in the literatures that more than 80 mutations are present [4]. the prevalence is 1 in 100,000 200,000 [5] and the highest prevalence was found among the pakistani group who lives in the west of the united kingdom which was 1 in 3600 [6]. during the first year of their life, the patients with infantile type present with polyuria, polydipsia, vitamin d resistance rickets, and hypochloremic metabolic acidosis [7]. moreover, during the second year, they develop cystine deposition in the cornea [8], and at the end of the first decade, 75% of them develop hypothyroidism [9] and pancreatic dysfunction [10]. subsequently, in the second or third decades, the child has normal intelligence [10, 11] and they may develop cerebral atrophy during the older lifetime [12]. additionally, few of them suffers with hypopigmentation, blue eyes, blond hair [13], craves for spicy and salty food [14]. finally, a severe form of failure to thrive is the cardinal feature of infantile cystinosis [15]. the followings are diagnostic methods: 1. cystine level in the leukocyte which is the gold standard [16]. 2. corneal crystallization by corneal examination under slit lamp [17]. 3. genetic analysis searching for ctns gene [18]. 4. antenatal investigation of chorionic villous tissue or amniotic fluid [19]. the management is mostly supportive. moreover, cysteamine (oral or eye drop) is the specific treatment 6 for lowering intralysosomal cystine [20]. although the life-span of the patients will be prolonged by the usage of cysteamine, they will suffer from significant problems. additionally, the study of cherqui [21] showed with treatments mean survival age of 28 years. hematopoietic stem cell transplantation may be the next step for the treatment of cystinosis in the future [22]. the purpose of our study was to evaluate the clinical presentations and outcome ─ mortality and morbidity ─ of infantile nephropathic cystinosis among patients seen in the department of chronic diseases in sulaimani pediatric teaching hospital. ii. methods and materials a retrospective cohort study was performed and all the patients (25 patients) who suffered from cystinosis were collected in the sulaimani pediatric teaching hospital, kurdistan region, iraq. the patients were from sulaimani and other parts of iraq whom recorded in the department of metabolic and endocrine diseases of sulaimani pediatric teaching hospital during may 1, 2014, to jun 1, 2017. we collected the biographical data of the patients with their clinical features including: age, gender, the age of presentation, the age of diagnosis, residency, ethnicity, consanguinity, family history, presentations and complications. for the diagnosis, we depended on the clinical symptoms and signs, and corneal crystallization which was being detected under the slit lamp by ophthalmologists. inclusion criteria: all cases of infantile nephropathic cystinosis. exclusion criteria: all cases of juvenile and ocular cystinosis. the (ibm spss statistics 21) statistical program was used for the analysis of the data including descriptive and inferential statistical methods. furthermore, we considered the p-value of ≤0.05 to be statistically significant. iii. result the genders of the patients were 13 (52%) females and 12 (48%) males. the patients' age ranged from 1 to 12 years with a mean of 6.25 years ─ 1 (4%) was 11 months, 8 (32%) was between 13 months to 5 years, and 16 (64%) was older than 5 years. the residency of the patients was 8 (32%) inside the city of sulaimani and 17 (68%) cases from outside of the city. 17 (68%) of the patients were arabic ethnic group and the other 8 (32%) cases were kurdish ethnic group. the study also showed a positive consanguinity for 20 (80%) of the patients. moreover, there was a 19 (76%) positive family history for the patients. the distribution of the age at the presentation of symptoms and signs was as follows: five (20%) younger than seven months, 15 (60%) between seven to 12 months, and five (20%) between 13 months to 24 months. adding to that, there was a statistically highly significant relationship between the age at the presentation and symptoms and signs (p-value of <0.001). furthermore, the ages of the diagnosis were one (4%) at three months, eight (32%) was between seven to 12 months, 13 (52%) was between 13 months to five years and three (12%) was above five. the clinical features of all patients (100%) presented with polyuria, polydipsia, and failure to thrive. the other clinical features were as follows: 23 (92%) had photophobia, 10 (40%) had constipation and five (20%) presented with blond hair. the complications that happened in the patients were 24 (96%) rickets, 14 (56%) renal insufficiency, five (20%) hypothyroidism, four (16%) genu valgum, three (12%) growth hormone deficiency, and three (12%) end-stage renal disease. additionally, 8% of the patients died due to end-stage renal failure and there was a statistically highly significant relationship between end-stage renal disease and death (p-value <0.001). the results showed a statistically very highly significant relationship between hypothyroidism and ethnicity (pvalue <0.001) and all the patients with hypothyroidism were kurdish but no arabic ethnic group. moreover, there was also a statistically significant relationship (pvalue = 0.042) between renal insufficiency and ethnicity ─ kurdish ethnic group suffered more (table 1). table 1: shows a statistically very highly significant relationship between hypothyroidism and ethnicity, and a statistical significant relationship between renal insufficiency and ethnicity complications ethnicity p-values kurdish arabic hypothyroidis m yes 5 0 <0.001 no 3 17 total 8 17 renal insufficiency yes 7 7 0.042 no 1 10 total 8 17 iv. discussion the female: male ratio in the studies of nakhaii et al. [23] in iran and a.azat [17] in baghdad was showed an increased incidence of cystinosis among females (female: male ratio of 1:1.94). moreover, the results of our study showed a slightly increased incidence among the females with a male: female ratio of (0.92). furthermore, the ages of infantile nephropathic cystinosis in our study (ranged 1-12 years, mean= 6.25) were compatible with the studies performed in turkey [24] (ranged 1.5 – 12 years) and the study of shahkarami et al. [25] in iran (ranged 7 months – 11 years). sequentially, the age of the first presentation in our study was (mean=0.8 year, ranged 0.25-1 year) which was about the same as found in the study of a.azat [17] in baghdad (mean = 1.1 years, ranged 0.3-3.5 years). additionally, the study also showed a mean age at the time of diagnosis of 2.25 years (ranged 0.5 – 7 years) which is twice less than the study of a.azat [17] in baghdad (mean = 4 years, ranged 0.6 – 12 years), while the study of bertholet-thomas et al [26] in developed countries showed about the same result (mean = 1.3 years, ranged 0.9 – 7 years). the family history of the disease will increase the chances of occurrence of cystinosis as well as a positive 7 parental consanguinity because the mode of inheritance is autosomal recessive. our study showed a positive family history and consanguinity of 76% and 80% respectively. these results are compatible with the study performed in baghdad [17] (37.9% and 86.2% positive family history and consanguinity respectively), and the study of shahkarami et al. [25] in iran (92% positive consanguinity). there are common clinical presentations among patients with infantile nephropathic cystinosis [27]. the present study and the study of a.azat [17] in baghdad and shahkarami et al [25] in iran all showed a 100% presentation of polyuria, polydipsia, and failure to thrive. furthermore, there are features that are not same in different populations. our study showed a 40% frequency of constipation which differs from the study of a.azat [17] in which all patients were presenting with constipation. the results in our study may be explained by the early diagnosis and management of the patients in our population. other clinical presentations included photophobia which found in (92%) patients in our study. the result is near to the study result of a.azat [17] (photophobia = 62%). reasonably, photophobia is a common sign of infantile cystinosis with an onset at toddler ages due to the deposition of cystine crystal in the cornea. the study also showed a 20% frequency of blond hair occurrence which is about the twice less than to what is found by chiaverini et al. [28] (40.7%). the change in hair color may be due to an alteration of melanogenesis [29]. the cystinosis complicated by many complications including rickets, renal insufficiency, hypothyroidism, end-stage renal disease, genu valgum, and growth hormone deficiencies [17]. our study showed a 96% patients with rickets which is about the same of what is mentioned by shahkarami et al. [25] (88%) and a.azat [17] (75%). rickets is one of the early complications of infantile cystinosis due to renal tubular fanconi syndrome. renal insufficiency is another complication that occurred in 56% of our patients which is near to the results found by a.azat [17] (41.3%) and doğan et al. [24] (36.3%). moreover, hypothyroidism was 20% in our study while its frequency was 3.44% in the study of a.azat [17]. this may be explained by the age difference between both studies ─ the mean age in our study was 6.25 years while that of the study of a.azat [17] was at 4 years ─ because the occurrence of hypothyroidism is at the end of first decade of life [9]. the end-stage renal disease is a serious complication of cystinosis. our study showed a 12% occurrence which is compatible with the study of a.azat [17] (13.79%) while differs from the study of bertholet-thomas et al. [26] in the developed countries (37.4%). one explanation may be due to that, although there is a clinical improvement in the usage of cysteamine, most of the patients develop the end-stage renal disease at second or third decades of their life [9]. furthermore, the study of bertholet-thomas et al. [26] used a large sample size (104 patients) with a mean age of 13 years (ranged 1.2 – 38.6 years) compared to the small sample size in our study. genu valgum was considered in the studies that concerned with bone problems. the study of bacchetta et al. [30] who took only three patients of cystinosis who had bone problems, two of them had genu valgum. furthermore, patients with genu valgum were 30.4% in the study of besouw [31] who took 23 patients with cystinosis who had bone problems. meanwhile, the present study showed 16% genu valgum in our patients. one of the explanations of bone diseases in cystinosis and fanconi syndrome is the presence of the reduction in the abilities of osteoblast precursor cells to transform into mature osteoblast that capable of osteoid production and mineralization [32]. growth hormone deficiency is a lesser complication in infantile cystinosis. the study of dyck et al. [33] showed only one patient who complicated with deficiency of growth hormone. conversely, our study showed a 12% frequency of growth hormone deficiency. the explanation for growth hormone deficiency may be due to the fact that there is a high urinary excretion of growth hormone and igf-1 [34]. additionally, the high frequency of growth hormone deficiency in our study may be due to alteration in the timing of growth hormone peak after stimulation test, thence, may indicate a subclinical alteration in its secretion. moreover, diabetes mellitus occurred (25%) in the study of robert et al. [35] while we did not have any patients with diabetes mellitus (0%). this may be caused by the fact that diabetes mellitus occurs during adolescence or adulthood [1] and the mean age in the study of robert et al. [35] was 22.1 years. there was a statistically significant relationship between the mortality (8% in our study) and end-stage renal failure (p-value was <0.001), and all the patients (100%) died in our study had the end-stage renal failure. moreover, the study of a.azat [17] showed 20.8% mortality with a 50% chronic renal failure as a cause. in contrast, the study of bertholet-thomas et al. [26] showed 0% mortality rate in developed countries because they performed a renal transplant for most of their patients (31/38). this study and a.azat [17] did not perform a renal transplant for the patients with end-stage renal failure which is usually indicated [36]. finally, our study showed a statistically significant relationship between renal insufficiency and kurdish ethnic group (p-value = 0.042), and a statistically very highly significant relationship between hypothyroidism and kurdish ethnic group (p-value <0.001) (table 1). this may be explained by the variation in the ages of both kurdish and arabic ethnic groups ─ mean ages were 7.75 years and 4.75 years for kurdish and arabic ethnic groups respectively. v. conclusion the present study shows a high incidence between parents with a positive consanguinity and those patients 8 who had a positive family history of cystinosis. furthermore, the explanation for the high incidence among patients with positive family history can be due to poor medical counseling, antenatal and postnatal screening tests. the delay in its diagnosis was due to atypical clinical presentation and unavailability of specific genetic tests. moreover, the early onset complications were due to the inadequacy of specific medications. vi. acknowledgement we are very grateful to the help of the staffs of the department of metabolic and endocrine diseases of sulaimani pediatric teaching hospital. vii. references [1] w. a. gahl, j. g. thoene, j. a. schneider. 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[35] j.-j. robert, m.-j. tete, g. guest et al. "diabetus mellitus in patients with infantile cystinosis after renal transplantation". pediatric nephrology, vol. 13, pp. 524-529, jul. 1999. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s004670050651 [36] f. emma, g. nesterova, c. langman et al. "nephropathic cystinosis: an international consensus document". nephrol dial transplant. vol. 29, pp. 87-94. 2014. http://ndt.oxfordjournals.org/content/29/suppl_4/iv87. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00467-010-1641-8 https://doi.org/10.2215/cjn.02000311 http://ndt.oxfordjournals.org/content/29/suppl_4/iv87 [26] a. bertholet-thomas, j. berthiller, v. tasic et al. "worldwide view of nephropathic cystinosis: results from a survey from 30 countries". bmc nephrol, vol. 18, pp. 210, jul. 2017. doi: 10.1186/s12882-017-0633-3 [30] j. bacchetta, m. greco, a. bertholet-thomas et al. "skeletal implications and management of cystinosis: three case reports and literature review". bonekey rep, vol. 5, pp. 828, aug. 2016. doi: 10.1038/bonekey.2016.55. [32] a. conforti, a. taranta, s. biagini et al. "cysteamine treatment restores the in vitro ability to differentiate along the osteoblastic lineage of mesenchymal stromal cells isolated from bone marrow of a cystinotic patient". j transl med. vol. 13,... [35] j.-j. robert, m.-j. tete, g. guest et al. "diabetus mellitus in patients with infantile cystinosis after renal transplantation". pediatric nephrology, vol. 13, pp. 524-529, jul. 1999. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s004670050651  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq hybrid onboard smartphone sensors measurements to improve heading estimation for indoors positioning solutions haval d. abdalkarim halgurd s. maghdid network department department of software engineering computer science institute faculty of engineering sulaimani polytechnique university koya university sulaimani, iraq koya, erbil., iraq haval.darwesh@spu.edu.iq halgurd.maghdid@koyauniversity.org volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 doi: 10.24017/science.2019 .2.5 received: 20 september 2019 accepted: 15 october 2019 abstract in the last decade, there is a significant progression and huge demand in using technology; specifically, those technologies are embedded in smartphones (sp). examples of these technologies are embedding various sensors for multi-purposes. positioning sensors (accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer) are one of the significant technologies. besides this, indoor positioning services on smartphones are the main advantage of these sensors. there are many indoor positioning applications, for instance; billing, shopping, security and safety, indoor navigation, entertainment applications, and other point-of-interest (poi) applications. nevertheless, precise position information through current positioning techniques is the main issue of these applications. the pedestrian dead reckoning (pdr) technique is one of the techniques in which the integration of onboard sensors is used for locating smartphones. estimated distance, heading, and typical speed can be measured to determine the estimated position of the smartphone via using the pdr technique. the pdr technique offers a low positioning accuracy due to existing accumulated errors of the embedded sensors. to solve this issue, this article proposes a hybrid multi-sensors measurement to reduce the existing sensors drifts and errors and to increase estimated heading accuracy of the smartphone. further, the sensors’ measurements with the previously estimated position are fused by using kalman filter to determine the current location of the smartphone in each step of walking with better angular displacement accuracy. proposed algorithm depends on increasing estimated angular displacement of the smartphone using combination of the integrated sensors’ measurements. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 51 the achieved positioning accuracy through the proposed approach and based on trial experiments is around 2 meters, which is equivalent to 10% improvement in comparison with state of the art. keywords: localization; sensors; heading estimation; fusing multi-sensor. 1. introduction the developing and progressing of onboard smartphone sensors and wireless devices have made researchers in academia and big technology companies such as google to enable various services, specifically in the 21st century [1]. among all these services, the location-basedservice (lbs) is one of the attracted services. several lbs applications are produced for better facility and serving. generally, the position of a device, when outdoors, could be defined via using the global navigation satellite system (gnss). still, for indoor environments, such service by using gnss cannot provide accurate positioning due to the weakness or blocking of the gnss signals. thus, tracking indoor mobile-devices become a significant issue. equally, there are different services which they are based on the ability to track indoor people. examples of such kind of services are patient tracking in hospitals, the guidance of people in airports, shopping in malls, and localizing elderly people. in this manner, the conducted researches predict indoor location service market value to go as high as 10 billion usd in 2020 [1]. to this end, various technologies on smartphones are used to enable such services. wi-fi [2], bluetooth [3], near-field communication (nfc) [4], ultra-wideband (uwb), and inertial sensor [5] are the examples of the utilized onboard technologies. however, each of these technologies has its limitations. for example, wi-fi offers poor positioning accuracy. the bluetooth, nfc, and uwb provide limited coverage signals and need massive cost due to the necessity of deploying extra hardware. inertial sensors technology provides a temporary positioning accuracy at a lower cost. therefore, integrating these technologies into a single positioning solution would be a possible approach at the expense of their advantages. to solve these issues mentioned above a hybrid solution based on wi-fi rss and onboard pdr is proposed in [3]. the solution depends on using kalman filter (kf) to integrate two independent positioning techniques. however, the obtained positioning accuracy within 2.5 meters via the integrated solution is not enough for most of the indoors lbs applications. therefore, in this article, a new approach is proposed to improve the positioning accuracy. the approach is to improve the heading estimation by using the obtained kf parameters. as a rule of thumb, with the pdr technique, the heading could be estimated by using gyroscope sensor readings. the readings will offer accurate heading estimation for a short time. however, for a long period of time, due to the existing huge drift-error of the sensor, the heading estimation is useless. this is because, within 5 minutes of walking in the same direction, the error of the heading estimation of the smartphone is around 40⁰ which causes a huge positioning error [6]. also, according to [4] magnetometer and accelerometer measurements together could be used for estimating the smartphone heading as well as for a long time of period will offer a good heading estimation. in this article, macc is designated as a name for both magnetometer and accelerometer sensors. however, within a short period of time, the gravity will make fluctuation readings over macc measurements, due to the existence of material around the smartphone and then it will accumulate errors in the sensors reading [7]. to mitigate this issue, this study proposes a new method of heading estimation via fusing multi sensorsmeasurements from gyroscope with macc sensors. this will be on taking the advantages of the sensors’ readings and avoiding the limitations. the fusing approach can also improve the heading estimation. figure 1 shows the principles of pdr. the structure of the article is organized as bellow: section 2 is a background about the pdr localization technique. section 3 presents our proposed algorithm in detail. section 4 demonstrates the experiment setup. and finally, section 5 concludes the achievements of the kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 52 study and future works. figure 1: positioning of the smartphone with pdr. where; xk, yk position of the smartphone in x and y coordinates. dk covered distance of the smartphone from position k1 to position k2. θ displacement angle of the smartphone. 2. state of art in this section, we review the pdr technique for indoor positioning using onboard sensor measurements and present the limitations of existing pdr-based solutions when used indoors [4] [6] [8]. typically, the pdr technique is a simple and inexpensive technique. since it does not need additional hardware and it depends on the heading estimation and distance between any two steps of walking. however, the accuracy of the obtained position will be degraded over a short time. therefore, the pdr should be integrated with other positioning techniques to overcome the existing limitations, including accumulated error and drift error. fortunately, because these sensors are built-in on the smartphone, they can be easily and smoothly integrated with other positioning techniques to improve accuracy [4]. the performance of pdr will be decreased due to the poor sensors’ measurements and high magnetic interference caused to sensors. to address this issue, a study in [9] proposed a novel algorithm to improve the heading estimation of the sensors to increase the accuracy of pdr. in the study, a simplified calibration of the magnetometer is used by calculating the anticipated velocity along the moving direction using the frequency domain velocity features and implementing direction limitations to available routes rather than free space position limitations. also, the study recommends a high-dimensional particle filter, namely mpf, which involves location, heading, parameters of step length, movement label, lifespan, number of present particles and the weight variable based on external measurements. the results achieved an average positioning error of fewer than 2.5 meters. further, the achieved positioning accuracy is provided by 1) reducing the available interference from the surrounding environment, and 2) improving heading estimation by decreasing the ambiguities of the sensors. therefore, a robust algorithm for heading estimation and precise positioning is introduced. the proposed algorithm is highly remarkable due to using onboard inertial sensors for positioning. however, the performance of the system is extremely decreased since the algorithm needs lots of processing and calculation. in another work [4], a new algorithm is presented to estimate smartphone position in different situations where the smartphone is placed with hand, in a pants pocket, swaying, and calling near the ear. in the study, a comparison between the pdr gait model and state of the art is analyzed from the three aspects: 1) position estimation, 2) heading estimation, and 3) step detection. a set of experiments are conducted on basic smartphone position situations. instead of using only pseudo-velocity measurements, a gait model and the motion constraints are used to provide pseudo-measurements. this is to increase positioning accuracy and to provide a new pdr algorithm. the main idea of the algorithm is that the initial position of the smartphone is detected by integrating acceleration (twice) and angular rate measurements. this is followed by (x0, y0) (x1, y1) (x2, y2) (xi, yi) θ1 θ4 initial point distance heading xk = xk-1 + dk * cos (θk) yk = yk-1 + dk * sin (θk) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 53 defining the current position, velocity, and attitude of the smartphone at each step walking. the algorithm relies on reducing tri-accelerometer bias error by using a hand calibration method (which is static calibration), also calibrating tri-magnetometer by using an ellipsoid fitting method via an extended kf. the proposed algorithm showed that better performance and accuracy for position and heading estimation of the smartphone could be obtained. further, the step detection technique is more accurate than normal pdr except with the calling situation since it produced low position accuracy. however, the inertial sensors still suffer from misalignment angle estimation, and the accumulated error of the sensors should be specified to tackle the alignment issue. on modern smartphones, compass and gyroscope sensors can be used for finding heading of the device, according to the study in [7]. however, the accuracy of the gyroscope is higher than the compass while the compass is subject to errors due to magnetic materials around. in the study, using a gyroscope for estimating the heading is analyzed instead of a compass. the constant bias error of the gyroscope will be zero when taking the long-term average of the output of the rotation. once the bias is known, each output value will be subtracted from the gyroscope. according to the results of the paper, heading estimation of the smartphone using the gyroscope shows a better attitude than using the compass. again, the problem of the proposed algorithm is also gyroscope is subject to error, which may cause huge drifts and produce imprecise position accuracy. our proposed method of heading estimation does work without the need for predefined constraints or pre-installed localization infrastructure and does away with static calibration. the uniqueness of this method is to provide a new heading estimation that fuses onboard smartphone sensors by taking advantage and mitigating the limitations of the sensors. the fusion process is to provide better positioning accuracy, and it is based on using kf parameters. besides, the kf parameters are calculated when various localization techniques including pdr technique and wi-fi rss-based technique, are integrated. 3. proposed algorithm the smartphone progression and enhancements lead to more precise location-based services’ applications. to take advantage of a variety of applications, smartphone position detection is in demand. in open-sky areas, gnss is the preferable way to detect smartphone position as satellite signals can be received easily. though in urban areas or indoor situations, the signal of the gnss satellites will be blocked, and it cannot employ position detection effectively [10]. moreover, according to researches, smartphone users spend most of their time indoors. thus, the issue is with localizing smartphone in covered areas using an influential technique with the lowest cost and minimum hardware requirements. various algorithms and technologies presented for localization, for instance, wi-fi, cellular network signal, bluetooth, nfc, and built-in sensors are the broadest technologies [4]. however, each of these technologies, if they are used as a stand-alone technology, cannot be dependable due to having its limitations. therefore, in this study, a combination of inertial sensors combined with wi-fi rss values is proposed to estimate smartphone position. using an embedded sensor of a smartphone is a low cost, and without poverty of any extra appliances’ technique for positioning [11]. typically, orientation such as spinning and turning (heading) of the smartphone can be detected using the gyroscope sensor [12]. a distance displacement between any two steps of the smartphone can be estimated using accelerometer sensors. accelerometer uses mechanical motion to detect acceleration such as shaking or tilting. the strength of the earth’s magnetic field can be measured using the magnetometer sensor. note, the direction of the smartphone can also be estimated using the macc sensors measurements. however, the sensor is subject to noises due to earth gravity and the surrounded material in the vicinity; as a result, noticeable changes in the sensor measurements can be detected [13] [14] [15]. to solve this issue, as a preprocessing step of the proposed algorithm, a low pass filter is applied on the macc sensors measurements to remove movements cause. figure 2 shows estimated heading via macc sensor measurements before and after applying a low pass filter. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 54 further, the sensor measurements and wi-fi rss values are also can be combined by using kalman filter (kf) at each step of walking to improve the smartphone position. the kf is a well-organized, efficient method for combining reading from multiple sources. generally, kf consist of two stages, which are: the first stage is known as the prediction stage, which predicts the current position of the smartphone using noisy sensor measurement. mainly, the accuracy of the prediction stage is frail. the second stage is called the update stage, which corrects the predicted position using measurement information from the collected waps rss values. kalman gain (kg) is an influential part of kf. in this study, the kg is used to remove errors that exist in the results of sensor measurement to increase positioning accuracy [3]. figure 3, expresses kalman filter stages with equations of each stage. figure 2: heading estimation using macc sensor. figure 3: principles of kalman filter. xo p0 initial state x k-1 p k-1 previous state initial state becomes previous xk − = 𝐴 ∗ 𝑋𝑘−1 + 𝐵 ∗ 𝑈𝑘 + 𝑊𝑘 pk − = 𝐴 ∗ 𝑃𝑘−1 ∗ 𝐴 𝑇 + 𝑄𝑘 new predicted state 𝐾 = pk − ∗ 𝐻 𝐻 ∗ pk − ∗ 𝐻𝑇 + 𝑅 kalman gain 𝑌𝑘 = 𝐶 ∗ 𝐾𝑘 + 𝑍𝑘 sensor measurements 𝑋𝑘 = xk − + 𝐾 ∗ (𝑌𝑘 − 𝐻 ∗ 𝑋𝑘) 𝑃𝑘 = (𝐼 − 𝐾 ∗ 𝐻) ∗ pk − state and covariance update x k p k output of update state current state becomes previous kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 55 where: a and b are adaptations matrices used to convert input state to process state. xk-1 is the previous state. u is the control variable matrix. w represents the predicted state noise matrix. 𝑷𝒌 − is the predicted error covariance matrix. q is the predicted error noise, keeps the state covariance matrix becoming too small or going to 0. y is the measurement state. c is an adaptation matrix, to convert input state to process state. z is measurement noise. k is the kalman gain. r is the sensor noise or measurement covariance matrix. h is a conversion matrix to make sizes consistent. i is the identity matrix. generally, the proposed algorithm in this study is as follows: initially, the smartphone position is estimated by calculating the distance displacement (between any two walking steps) via using readings of the accelerometer and calculating the heading of the smartphone according to the north pole. the heading of the smartphone is estimated using the macc sensor (integration between accelerometer and magnetometer) combined with gyroscope measurements to improve heading accuracy. both macc and gyroscope sensors are subject to interference and may suffer from fluctuation. to settle the measurements, kg is used. in each step of the walking, kg value is compared to the previous value; depending on the error ratio of kg. for example, more weight is given to the macc if a huge drift exists in the gyroscope. contrariwise, if high fluctuation exists in the macc sensor, gyroscope measurement will be more dependent. figure 4 shows a flowchart of how kg controls the combination of the sensor measurements. to normalize values in between 0 and 1, min-max normalization is used. equation 1 expresses the heading calculation using sensor measurements. finally, both sensor measurements integrated to introduce a new precise estimated heading. this is followed by estimating the smartphone position (x’, y’) by using the pdr technique, which uses the calculated distance displacement and the estimated heading. the wi-fi rss values will be used to correct/update the estimated position (x’, y’) by using kf to produce a new improved position. figure 5 shows a block diagram of the study proposed algorithm. the wi-fi rss values are used to calculate the distance between the smartphone position and the wap location at each step of walking. the distance calculation is based on the proximity technique [3]. this distance calculation is useful to update the estimated smartphone position (x’ and y’) when there is an unpredictable error with the sensor measurements. figure 4: sensor measurements weighting based on kg values. start kg values (k) k (i) < k (i-1) ratio 1(i) = k (i) – k (i-1) yes k (i-1) < k (i) no ratio 2(i) = k (i-1) – k (i) yes no exit data 1(i) = 𝑅𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜1(𝑖)−𝑀𝑖𝑛 (𝐾)(𝑖) 𝑀𝑎𝑥 (𝐾)(𝑖)−𝑀𝑖𝑛 (𝐾)(𝑖) 𝑌 data2(i) = 𝑅𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜2(𝑖)−𝑀𝑖𝑛 (𝐾)(𝑖) 𝑀𝑎𝑥 (𝐾)(𝑖)−𝑀𝑖𝑛 (𝐾)(𝑖) 𝑌 x (i) = data 1(i) – data 2(i-1) x (i) = data 1(i-1) – data 2(i) x (i) = data 1(i-1) – data 2(i-1) exit kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 56 figure 5: general block diagram of proposed algorithm 𝑯𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈 (𝑯) = 𝑿 × (𝑴𝑨𝑪𝑪 (𝒋,𝒎𝒂𝒙𝒊𝒏𝒅𝒙(𝒊,𝒋)) − 𝑴𝑨𝑪𝑪 (𝒋,𝒎𝒂𝒙𝒊𝒏𝒅𝒙(𝒊−𝟏,𝒋)) ) + (𝟏 − 𝑿) (𝑮𝑮 (𝒋,𝒎𝒂𝒙 𝒊𝒏𝒅𝒙(𝒊,𝒋)) − 𝑮𝑮 (𝒋,𝒎𝒂𝒙 𝒊𝒏𝒅𝒙(𝒊−𝟏,𝒋)) ) (1) where; h heading changes of the smartphone. macc heading change readings of accelerometer and gyroscope. gg heading change readings of gyroscope. max.indx(i) value of the sensor in i position. max.indx(i-1) value of the sensor in i-1 position. 4. experiment setup for the experiment environment, four tests placed in sulaimanyah university computer science building, which is a rectangular shape. two smartphones are used for collecting data, a samsung galaxy s4 mini and a samsung galaxy s7 edge. ten waps are placed around the building, including six mikrotik, three linksys, and one tp-link. the waps signals have normally covered the building. an android application created with android studio 3.3.1 and installed on the smartphones for reading measurements from the smartphone sensors as well as reading wap rss values. exact position walked during the tests produced using matlab 2018a and collected data simulated to show the performance of the estimated position based on the smartphone sensors. the methodologies and the practical part of the algorithm include the following. the test area of the building is around 179 meters are marked every 50cm for each step of walking (which is the length of the normal walking step). consequently, the real position of the smartphone can be mapped easily; furthermore, the number of steps can be counted. the android application on the smartphones named (testsensor) is used to collect x, y, and z-axis sensor measurements of the smartphone, together with the waps signal received by the smartphone. then the readings are saved in a csv file that can be imported later to the matlab program. the smartphone-user runs the testsensor application and starts to walk normally on marked points in the testbed area as well as holding the smartphone in his hand. at the beginning of the tests, the galaxy s4 is used. after completing seven trials and processing the data in matlab. significant drifts detected in gyroscope sensors of the smartphone. as can be seen in figure 6, the true position, and the estimated position using gyroscope are drawn, respectively. the acc x , acc y , acc z mag x , mag y , mag g x , g y , g z acceleromete r magnetomete r gyroscope rss 1 , rss 2 , rss 3 , … wap s rss distance measurement (d) heading estimation h macc heading estimation h gyro estimate position (x’, y’) heading h kg (macc + gyro) distance d rss  distance between sp & wap kalman filter kalman gain value current position x y heading study contribution kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 57 figures show that gyroscope sensors of the galaxy s4 mini is suffering from errors and cannot be used anymore for the positioning of the smartphone. this is due to old material of the gyroscope sensor. age of the device (sensor chips) may affect quality and reliability of the sensor measurements, that may make the sensor not usable and dependable for localization. the same scenarios are repeated by using galaxy s7 edge. after completing the survey, data collected by the application saved in a csv file, again. the excel file imported to a matlab program. in the matlab true position of the test is simulated. this is to do the comparison process of the true position with the estimated position via the proposed approach. for each trial, the initial position of the smartphone is defined along the test area via three different heading estimation methods such as 1) using only the macc sensor, 2) using only the gyroscope sensor and 3) using macc plus gyroscope fusion measurements. the fusion of macc and gyroscope is utilized to estimate the heading of the smartphone. the measurements of all heading estimation methods, separately, are integrated with wap rss values using kf to estimate the position of the smartphone. figure 6: heading and position estimation with the gyroscope of the galaxy s4 mini. 5. results to compare the proposed algorithm with state-of-the-art methods, the heading estimation error and the positioning accuracy are used as positioning-performance metrics. from the conducted experiments, figure 7-a shows the estimated heading using only macc (drawn graph-line in blue color) and gyroscope (drawn graph-line in red color), and figure 7-b shows estimated heading using macc, gyroscope, and the fusion approach (drawn graph-line in green color). results show that the macc sensor measurements suffer from fluctuation issue, and the estimated position is imprecise. as can be noted from figure 7-b, the heading estimation of macc at the beginning of the test is between 160 to 200 degrees. while heading estimation in the same area of the gyroscope is in between 100 and 120 degrees. in spite of that, the heading estimation via the proposed approach is more precise, as shown in figure 7-b which is, in most cases, within 100 degrees. also, the macc average position estimation error (positioning accuracy) of all the four tests is 2.3609 meters. the localization of the smartphone using the kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 58 gyroscope reading shows better accuracy. the mean positioning accuracy of the gyroscope for all the tests is 2.0561m. achieved results of such indoor localization solution using only integrated sensor with wi-fi measurements (such as in [3] indoor human tracking mechanism using integrated onboard smartphones wi-fi device and inertial sensors which is published in oct 2018) was within 2.5m, while accomplished results of state of art is less than 2.1m. further, the fusion method from both sensors shows great accuracy and precise position. the result of the average positioning accuracy of the proposed approach is 2.0100m which is equivalent to 10% improvement. note: for all the three methods, the estimated position is updated by the wifi rss values. figure 7: estimated heading using macc, gyroscope, and fusion between both. for further analysis, table 1 shows a comparison between the positioning accuracy of the test results. while table 2 shows the heading estimation comparison in the tests. true heading, estimated heading using macc, gyroscope, and proposed algorithm are presented. the mean error for each test is shown. because of the headings have fluctuation in every sample, a fixed number cannot be used. so, the mean of error degree is used. as shown from the results, the average heading accuracy of the proposed approach in all four tests is about 182.06 while the average heading accuracy of macc is 210.07 and for gyroscope is 197.06 (203.92 combined). with the proposed algorithm, the heading accuracy is 21 degrees higher than the average accuracy of both other methods. in addition to that, the positioning accuracy of the proposed approach is almost 2 meters, and it is about 19 cm less than the average of the other two methods. acquiring above accuracy without employing any extra hardware is a great achievement. graphically, figure 8 shows the true position (drawn graph-line in black color) along with the estimated position based on macc, gyroscope, and fusion between both sensors with wi-fi rss values. the graph line in blue color indicates the estimated position where only macc measurements are used to calculate the heading at each step of walking. while the graph line in red color indicates the estimated position of the smartphone, where the gyroscope sensor measurement is used to calculate the smartphone heading. the green line indicates the estimated position via the developed fusion approach (our proposed approach) where the heading is calculated based on both macc and gyroscope measurements. also, the spot circles with the filled-red color indicated the place of the waps in the building. a b kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 59 table 1: positioning accuracy using macc, gyroscope, and fusing. test name accuracy with macc accuracy with gyroscope accuracy with fusion suli-1 2.3453 2.0399 1.8456 suli-3 2.4127 2.0094 1.9512 suli-4 2.2318 1.9344 1.9239 suli-5 2.4536 2.2405 2.3192 average 2.3609 2.0561 2.0100 average 2.2085 table 2: heading accuracy (in degree) when macc, gyroscope, and fusing are separately used test name true headings heading with macc heading with gyroscope heading with both suli-1 90 180 270 179.34 270.28 314.48 (254.7) 112.65 223.02 287.98 (207.88) 95.37 203.68 264.04 (187.69) suli-3 90 180 270 118.64 202.18 254.55 (191.79) 98.83 207.23 274.18 (193.41) 87.03 193.88 263.5 (181.47) suli-4 90 180 270 109.92 211.65 269.73 (197.1) 101.15 235.63 291.55 (209.44) 99.95 201.12 241.61 (180.89) suli-5 90 180 270 85.73 219.31 293.68 (199.57) 77.92 181.61 272.99 (177.5) 90.08 181.99 262.56 (178.21) average 180 210.79 197.06 182.06 203.92 figure 8: positioning using macc, gyroscope, and fusion of both. in the above figure real position (which is a rectangular path of 179 meters) taken by the smartphone is drawn in black color. estimated position of the smartphone based on accelerometer and magnetometer is sketched in blue line. while, the red color indicates estimated position of the smartphone detected by the gyroscope. estimated position of the smartphone depending on the proposed algorithm is shown in green line. also, waps and start point position is indicated in the graph. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 60 6. conclusion a positioning solution for indoor an environment is presented. the solution depends only on utilizing built-in smartphone sensors along with the received wi-fi signals information. in addition, by consolidating measurements of the inertial sensors as well as wi-fi transceivers, the smartphone position accuracy inconstancy is improved. the pdr technique (using the builtin sensors measurements) is integrated with the waps rss values via kf to estimate the smartphone position. further, a precise heading of the smartphone is estimated by using the fusion process of sensors measurements (macc and gyroscope). this is to improve smartphone position estimation accuracy. the obtained accuracy (2 meters) from consolidating sensors of all the tests is elegant due to precise localization accuracy without using any extra hardware. however, such positioning accuracy is not enough for most of the lbs applications on smartphones. therefore, our next future work is to 1) combining other positioning technique (including map-matching technique) with the proposed solution to provide further improvements, 2) avoiding the issue of the style of holding smartphones by a user and improving step detection within pdr technique will be our future work, as well. reference [1] c. langlois, s. tiku and s. pasricha, "indoor localization with smartphones: harnessing the sensor suite in your pocket," in ieee consumer electronics magazine, vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 70-80, oct. 2017. [2] a. correa, m. barcelo, a. morell and j. l. vicario, "a review of pedestrian indoor positioning systems for mass market applications," sensors, vol. 17, no. 8, p. 1927, aug 2017. [3] s. a. maghdid, h. s. maghdid, s. r. hmasalah, k. z. ghafoor, a. s. sadiq and s. khan, "indoor human tracking mechanism using integrated onboard smartphones wi-fi device and inertial sensors," telecommunication systems, pp. 1-12, 2018. [4] j. kuang, x. niu and x. chen, "robust pedestrian dead reckoning based on mems-imu for smartphones," sensors, vol. 18, no. 5, p. 1391, may 2018. [5] z.-a. deng, g. wang, d. qin, z. na, y. cui and j. chen, "continuous indoor positioning fusing wifi, smartphone sensors and landmarks," sensors, vol. 16, no. 9, p. 1427, sep 2016. [6] v.-c. ta, "smartphone-based indoor positioning using wi-fi, inertial sensors and bluetooth" m. s. thesis, school of mathematics, sciences and technologies of information, computer science, university grenoble alpes, saintmartin-d'hères, france, 2017. accessed on: sep, 12, 2019. available: https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel01883828. [7] j. ying, k. pahlavan and l. xu, "using smartphone sensors for localization in ban, medical internet of things (m-iot) enabling technologies and emerging applications," 28 5 2019. [online]. available: https://www.intechopen.com/books/medical-internet-of-things-m-iot-enabling-technologies-and-emergingapplications/using-smartphone-sensors-for-localization-in-ban. [8] w. sakperea, m. adeyeye-oshinb and n. b. mlitwac, "a state-of-the-art survey of indoor positioning and navigation systems and technologies," south african computer journal vol 29, no. 3, pp. 145-197, 2017. 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[13] a. solin, s. cortes, e. rahtu and j. kannala, "inertial odometry on handheld smartphones," in proc. international conference on information fusion, fusion 2018, 2018, pp. 1361-1368. [14] v. marotto, a. serra, d. carbouni, m. sole, t. dessì and a. manchinu, "orientation analysis through a gyroscope sensor for indoor navigation systems," in proc. the fourth international conference on sensor device technologies and applications, 2013, pp. 85-90. [15] r. zhang, a. bannoura, f. hoflinger, l. m. reindl and c. schindelhauer, "indoor localization using a smart phone," 2013 ieee sensors applications symposium, sas 2013 proceedings, pp. 38-42, sep 2017.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq enhancement of voltage stability by using svc for 30-bus power system dara h. amin mohammed communication department technical institute of sulaimani sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq dara.amin@spu.edu.iq volume 4 issue 2 | december 2019 doi: 10.24017/science.2019.2.14 received: 15 september 2019 accepted: 21 november 2019 abstract voltage stability refers to maintaining the value of the voltage in all busses of the electric network at a steady level (initial operating point) during any sudden disturbance. voltage instability may happen due to an increase in the demand of the load or in case of any change in the reactive power, thus, the system will goes into uncontrollable and unstoppable decline in the voltage level. the effect of static var compensator (svc) on voltage stability is discussed in the paper, as well as the improvement of the voltage profile. usually, svc and facts devices were used for enhancing the voltage level profile and so the stability. choosing the optimal location for the facts devices is essential due to its expensive costs. this paper used sensitivity factor to helpful to determine the most correct placement of facts devices in the system. simulations are performed on kurdistan region 30-bus power system using matlabpsat tool. as a result, the voltage of all 30 buses calculated. based on the “voltage sensitivity factor”, the nominated weak buses has been marked which are suitable for placing the facts devices in order to improve the limits of the voltage stability of the system. moreover, depending on the obtained optimal locations, a full analysis of the voltage and powers for the system has applied in two cases, before and after placing svc respectively which is result in notable stability improvement and losses reduction. keywords: voltage collapse, voltage stability improvement, facts, svc, psat simulation, kurdistan region power system. mailto:dara.amin@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 129 1. introduction among the emerging technologies in all over the world, voltage stability problems become a notable issue. voltage collapse phenomenon and overall system breakdown may be happen as a result of a sudden increase load demand or the existence of a non-linearity load [1]. monirul islam eta al. [2] have proposed a mitigation strategies to improve the effect of dynamic voltage stability. they considered the issues and affects resultant from the photovoltaic units on the distribution network and how it is affect the network when unbalanced penetration of these units is applied to the network. the authors developed dynamic models of a single phase photovoltaic units. they conclude that whenever the degree of imbalance increased, the level of the instability of the voltage will increase. according to that, modified ieee 4 bus distribution system was used as a case study to investigate the effect of the proposed strategies. one of the proposed strategies is to let photovoltaic inverters inject a reactive power to the network. the strategy proved that its effectiveness to enhance the dynamic voltage stability. other scenarios are applied, where in all scenarios the transient voltage severity index has been evaluated. mengqi yao and his colleagues [3] have measure the smallest singular value of the power flow in order to improve the steady state stability of the voltage. they used demand responsive loads to build a multi period approach based an optimum power flow. their proposed approach is different than the old techniques, in which they kept the total load steady to prevent the system from any frequency change by using the smallest singular value method to control individual load in the network. the worked on developing an intelligent program that uses singular value sensitivities to find optimal ac feasible solutions. the results of testing the developed program on two different ieee standard system reveal that the voltage stability has been improved depending on the demand response actions. finally, the researchers proved that their developed program is working six times faster when applied on ieee 9-bus system. comparing the developed program with a transitional iterative nonlinear type also has been performed to prove the performance of the developed one. when an increase in load demand or a change in the condition of the system occurs, or any disturbance in the load demand subject to the system, there is a chance for the system to goes into instability state, which leads to uncontrollable continues or sometimes progressive decrement in the voltage [4]. in general, the uncontrollable continues or progressive decrement in the voltage at some buses will definitely result in voltage instability for the system if the operation of the system utility not able to maintain the voltage within the allowable limits. keeping the voltage within s specific allowable limits is essential to provide the best service quality for the customers [5]. the risk of maintaining the buses required voltage within the allowable limits and so keeping the system stable is a challenge for those power system networks that operated under highly stressed conditions due to its limited ability to expand the transmission system [6]. at particular points in power systems, flexible alternating current transmission systems (facts) can be installed to provide adjustment capabilities for the altering voltage, phase angle and/or impedance. facts device are innovative new technology which provide a method to ad control ability to the power system network. on other hand, supporting the voltage during sudden events can be provided by static var compensator (svc) which behaves as a fast acting dynamic reactive compensation [7]. effective and fast control over the electrical systems’ parameters can be achieved by using facts technology. in facts, with the help of computerized solutions and the usage of the latest advances in power electronics and physics, facts considered as the most valuable and popular compensation technique in power systems applications. in addition to its popularity among the other compensation techniques, fatcts are essential device in the modern power systems where it provides more flexibility and controllability in the power flow along the transmission lines [8] [9]. in power systems, the bus voltage affected in case of any mismatch in the balance of the kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 130 generated and absorbed reactive power. keeping that balance is essential to maintain the voltage of the bus within the allowable limits. with svcs characteristics, over wide range of loads, an accurate voltage control can be applied on the buses. svcs are provide a step less and soft variation of reactive power that can feed the buses and hence the transmission lines [10]. in transmission network, the power transfer capability and the power stability as well could be effectively enhanced by using the static var compensator (svc) which is one of the promising solutions, cost effective and best for improving the power factor by compensating the reactive power. [11][12]. many features may archived by using the svcs. when the reactive power is monitored and controlled on a certain point in the system, voltage breakdown could be prevented in addition to enhancing the power factor of the systems. moreover, the transient stability of the system has proven to be improved by using the svcs [13]. compensating the instable voltage may occur in two cases; either decreasing or increasing the voltage level of the system in both cases the svcs are used to regulate the transmission voltage by connecting them to the power system in specific points. thyrsitor controlled reactors are activated by the svc to consume vars from the system in order to decrease the system voltage in case of leading (capacitive) load. on other hand, capacitor banks are activated and used to increase the voltage level of the system in case of lagging (inductive) load conditions [14]. identifying the optimal location for the svcs and other types of facts is an importance factor to practically improve the voltage stability fi the power system. in addition, direct and flexible control of power transmission can be achieved by utilizing facts devices which are enhance the performance of the power system and hence the system stability [15]. direct and flexible control of power transmission can be achieved by utilizing facts devices which are enhance the performance of the power system and hence the system stability. the svc is basically used to regulate the transmission voltage and providing a damping effect over the power swings by controlling the reactive power. controlling the reactive power in optimum way leads to a significant power loses reduction [1]. if the voltage of the system intended to be kept within a specified allowable range, a continuous adjustment of the reactive power must be made through the svc [16]. 2. svc compensator svcs is acting as reactive power generators or loads when they are connected in shunt at the buses of electrical networks, where practically they are applied to rapidly control the voltage of the desired weak bus in the transmission section of the network [17]. figure 1 shows the equivalent circuit of the svc, while figure 2 illustrates the detailed diagram of a standard configuration of svc. svc in figure 2 is specified to be thyristorcontrolled-reactor fixed capacitor (tcr-fc) which is power electronics and electronics components for harmonic filtering purposes, and coupling transformer [18]. figure 1: svc equivalent circuit diagram [19] kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 131 figure 2: tcr-fc svc configuration [19] 3. case study 132kv, 30-bus power systems in kurdistan region, iraq, were used as a case study in this paper. it consists of 30 buses, 5 generation stations, and 42 hv transmission lines. 3.1. the system simulated model the considered system under this study has been modeled by using matlab/simulink application program, considering that the voltage sources are representing the generation station and the combination of the resistance-reactance is the equivalent to the transmission lines as shown in figure 3. 3.2. bus mathematical analysis the transmission line between any two given buses in figure 3 could be modeled as shown in figure 4, including resistance-reactance combination from bus i to bus k. where; vi = complex voltage at bus i vk = complex voltage at bus k rik = resistance for any given transmission xik = reactance for any given transmission iik = complex current flowing from bus i to k zik = impedance for any given transmission line from figure 4, the voltage drop between buses i and k given as vd=vi-vk (1) according to ohm’s law, the complex current flowing from bus i to bus k is expressed as: 𝐼𝐼𝑖𝑖 = 𝑉𝑉𝑖𝑖−𝑉𝑉𝐾𝐾 𝑍𝑍𝑖𝑖𝐾𝐾 (2) 𝑍𝑍𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 = 𝑅𝑅𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖+𝑋𝑋𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 an admittance form of eq. (2) can be written as: 𝐼𝐼𝑖𝑖 = (𝑉𝑉𝑖𝑖 − 𝑉𝑉𝑖𝑖)𝑦𝑦𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 (3) where: 𝑦𝑦𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 = 1/𝑍𝑍𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 and is defined as the admittance of the transmission line. refering to [20], the complex power 𝑆𝑆𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 is expresses as: 𝑆𝑆𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 = 𝑉𝑉𝑖𝑖 ∗ 𝐼𝐼𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 ∗ (4) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 132 with respect to real and reactive power, p and q respectively, eq. (4) re-written as: 𝑆𝑆𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 = 𝑃𝑃𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 + 𝑄𝑄𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 = 𝑉𝑉𝑖𝑖 ∗ 𝐼𝐼𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 ∗ (5) figure 3: krg 30-bus power system. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 133 figure 4: transmission line model. 3.3. indexes based voltage instability measure the voltage sensitivity factor is represented by the absolute ratio of the per unit voltage change dvi to the total active power change dptotal for the ith bus in the power system of the study case, where it could be written as |dvi/dptotal|. knowing that the total active load change for any given bus is the same for all other buses in the same network, therefore the voltage stability factor can be considered as an index of the differential change of the voltage for the given ith bus [21]. the ith bus that gives an index value (dvi) closest to 1, that ith bus is considered as a critical bus and may lead to instability in the system. as a result, the critical ith bus is the weakest bus which is nominated to be the optimal location for placing the svcs [22]. 4. results and discussion 4.1. voltage sensitivity factor of buses table (1) and figure 5 are explaining the voltage sensitivity factors, |dvi/dptotal| for all buses in the network of the study case considering buses 1 to 5 as generation buses. bus-29, bus-18 and bus-12 have higher voltage sensitivity factor than other buses. in addition, referring to the voltage sensitivity factor criteria, it can be clearly seen that bus-15 is most strong bus among the other load buses. figure 5: voltage sensitivity factors of buses. table1: voltage sensitivity factors of buses. bus no. voltage sensitivity factor 01 0 02 0 03 0 04 0 05 0 06 0.001587 07 0.005427 08 0.006792 09 0.004445 10 0.007743 11 0.008068 0 0.002 0.004 0.006 0.008 0.01 0.012 bus 01 bus 02 bus 03 bus 04 bus 05 bus 06 bus 07 bus 08 bus 09 bus 10 bus 11 bus 12 bus 13 bus 14 bus 15 bus 16 bus 17 bus 18 bus 19 bus 20 bus 21 bus 22 bus 23 bus 24 bus 25 bus 26 bus 27 bus 28 bus 29 bus 30 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 134 12 0.009164 13 0.000646 14 0.00547 15 0.0000126 16 0.004429 17 0.00251 18 0.010118 19 0.007587 20 0.003248 21 0.000842 22 0.002809 23 0.002696 24 0.006795 25 0.003617 26 0.000522 27 0.003924 28 0.00081 29 0.01012 30 0.000811 4.2. svcs placing in order to improve the voltage stability margin in the network, the optimal locations for placing the svcs are the weakest buses that identified previously from table (1) or figure 5. where bus-29, bus-18 and bus-12 have the highest voltage sensitivity factors from the most to the least critical bus respectively, which are selected to place the svcs as its clear in table (2), the results of svcs placing on the weakest buses result in an improvement in voltage profile of all buses, the percent increase in bus voltages of buses 10, 11 and 12 are 13.19%, 15.29%, and 16.17% respectively. furthermore, percent decrease of total losses for the active and reactive power in the network is 14.81%, 5.26% respectively. figures (6), (7) and (8) indicate buses 10, 11 and 12 voltage profiles respectively for base case and after svcs placing. without svcs, the system reaches its steady state stability limit with load scaling factor of 3.6387, while with svcs the scaling factor increases to be 3.6562; i.e. the percent increase in loading factor is 0.47%. table 2: bus voltages for base case and after svcs placing. bus no. bus voltage before svcs placing after svcs placing 01 1 1 02 1 1 03 1 1 04 0.984 0.984 05 0.982 0.982 06 0.882275 0.881722 07 0.722914 0.774475 08 0.676491 0.681983 09 0.787712 0.789812 10 0.62813 0.711025 11 0.60914 0.702292 12 0.604213 0.701937 13 0.968738 0.973639 14 0.733361 0.784146 15 0.979250 0.979252 16 0.768444 0.773911 17 0.858702 0.861487 18 0.503827 0.519718 19 0.628595 0.639851 20 0.83803 0.843209 21 0.957981 0.959062 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 135 from figure (6) after insertion svc the voltage profile improved from 0.62813 p.u. to 0.711025 p.u., from figure (7) after insertion svc the voltage profile improved from 0.60914 p.u. to 0.702292 p.u. and from figure (8) after insertion svc the voltage profile improved from 0.604213 p.u. to 0.701937 p.u. figure 6: voltage profile of bus -10 before and after insertion of svc. figure 7: voltage profile of bus -11 before and after insertion of svc. figure 8: voltage profile of bus -12 before and after insertion of svc. 5. conclusion in this research, the optimal buses for placing svcs are identified by using the voltage sensitivity factor determination criteria. placing svcs at the weakest buses result in notable improvements in the voltage stability limit and a clear reduction of the active and reactive power losses in the system. the increment of the loading factor after placing the svcs in the optimal buses that identified had proved that the voltage stability is enhanced. also, it can be 22 0.859937 0.865655 23 0.86508 0.869851 24 0.670592 0.670704 25 0.826197 0.824839 26 0.970329 0.970165 27 0.809639 0.808161 28 0.962176 0.961844 29 0.50391 0.519803 30 0.963204 0.962872 active power looses 9.113798 7.763851 reactive power losses 41.42701 39.24775 loading factor 3.6387 3.6562 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 136 conclude that buses that have better voltage characteristics than other buses are the buses that have smaller sensitivity factor which are either close to the generating units or light loaded. it could be clearly seen that the average change in voltage profile for the system results in about 2.3% in per unit change for the buses which is provide the system with a good improvement in stability. reference [1] s. raja, a. anandhi, “voltage stability improvement by static tatic var compensator”, international journal of science, engineering and technology research (ijsetr), volume 4, issue 5, may 2015. [2] i. monirul, m. nadarajah, h. jahangir, s. rakibuzzaman, “dynamic voltage stability of unbalanced distribution system with high penetration of single-phase pv units”, the journal of engineering. vol. 2019, no.17, pp. 4074-4080, 2019. [3] m. yao, d. k. molzahn and j. l. mathieu, “an optimal power-flow approach to improve power system voltage stability using demand response,” ieee transactions on control of network systems, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 1015-1025, sept. 2019. doi: 10.1109/tcns.2019.2910455 [4] n. k. sharma, a. n. tiwari, “prevention of voltage instability by using facts controllers in power systems: a literature survey”, international journal of engineering science and technology, vol. 2(5), pp 980-992, 2010. [5] n. natasha, m. sujata, “voltage collapse: causes and prevention”, international journal of engineering research & technology (ijert), vol. 4, no. 2, 2016. [6] b. singh, “applications of facts controllers in power systems for enhance the power system stability: a state-of-the-art”, international journal of reviews in computing, vol. 6, 2011. [7] n. mark ndubuka, “voltage stability improvement using static var compensator in power systems”, leonardo journal of sciences, issue 14, p. 167-172, january-june 2009. [8] k. naseeb, s. sajida, “a survey on different types of flexible ac transmission systems (facts) controllers”, ijedr | volume 5, issue 4, 2017. [9] k. rajesh, g. prashant, y. balram, ” survey paper on ieee 14-bus system with facts technology”, international journal of innovative research in computer and communication engineering, vol. 5, issue 10, october 2017. [10] p. manan, j. g. jamnani, “closed loop control and harmonic analysis of svs for maintaining voltage profile of power system” international journal of engineering research and development (ijerd) recent trends in electrical and electronics & communication engineering (rteece 17th – 18th april 2015). [11] s. sita, h. jitendra, k. ashutosh, “application of svc on ieee 6 bus system for optimization of voltage stability”, indonesian journal of electrical engineering and informatics (ijeei) vol. 3, no. 1, march 2015. [12] g. vijay s., c. dinesh m., “power quality improvement by svc using pic18f4”, international journal for research in applied science & engineering technology (ijraset), vol. 5, no. vi, 2017. [13] s. reza, i. khodakhast, h. b. mohammad, a. m. navid, “enhancement of power system dynamic performance using coordinated control of facts devices”, indian journal of science and technology, vol.7, no.10, pp. 1513–1524, 2014. [14] p. kaibalya, s. soumyakanta, r. sreyasee, “prototype design of power factor correction circuit for transmission lines using thyristor switched capacitor scheme”, world journal of modelling and simulation, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 314-321, 2017. [15] l. abdelaziz, b. mohamed, “optimal location of svc for voltage security enhancement using mopso”, third international conference on electrical engineering-icee'09, 19-21 may, 2009. [16] a. pabla, electric power distribution. new york: mcgraw-hill, 2005. [17] a. banga, s. s. kaushik, “modeling and simulation of svc controller for enhancement of power system stability,” international journal of advances in engineering and technology, vol. 1, pp.79-84, 2011. [18] m. m. biswas, k. d. kamol, “voltage level improving by using static var compensator,” global journal of researches in engineering, vol.11, pp.12-18, 2011. [19] m. nwohu, “voltage stability improvement using static var compensator in power systems”, leonardo journal of sciences, issue 14, pp. 167-17, 2009. [20] a. j. conejo, 2011, load flow lecture, university of castilla – la mancha. [21] b. kessk-n mehemet, “continuation power flow and voltage stability in power systems”, master of science thesis, middle east technical university, september, 2007. [22] a. ramasamy, r. verayiah, h. i. zainal abidin, i. musirin, a. a. rahim, “performance of fast voltage stability index (fvsi) as an indicator for under voltage load shedding scheme in a bulk power system network”, international journal of power, energy and artificial intelligence, no.1, pp 157-165, 2009. 1. introduction  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.59 a new control strategy for pmsg based wind turbine to improve power smoothing mehrdad gholami department of electrical engineering. university of kurdistan sanandaj, iran mehrdad.pr@gmail.com om-kolsoom shahryari department of computer engineering, sanandaj branch, islamic azad university sanandaj, iran shahryari.k@iausdj.ac.ir abstract: this paper presents a new simple control strategy for direct driven pmsg wind turbines, using no wind speed sensor. there are several strategies for wind turbine control. operation of different strategies in terms of power smoothing is compared. new strategy is proposed to have more power smoothing. performance of the proposed strategy is evaluated by matlab/ simulink simulations and its validity and effectiveness are verified. keywords: permanent magnet synchronous generator (pmsg), power smoothing, wind power fluctuation, wind turbine generator (wtg). 1. introduction in recent years, there has been a growing interest in wind energy power systems because of the environmental advantages and the economic benefits of fuel savings [1].because of intermittency in wind speed, the output power of wind turbine has large fluctuation which may cause frequency deviation in a power grid specially when there are wind farms injecting large amount of power into the grid[2][3]. therefore, the wind energy conversion systems (wecss) are increasingly expected to be able to control their output real power, while fully using their capacity, such as retaining their maximum power-point tracking (mppt) operation [4]. the effect of wind farm penetration into the grid on frequency deviation has been analyzed in [5]. it has shown that very low frequency fluctuation can be compensated by automatic generation control system in conventional power plants. also the power plant inertias can compensate the high frequency components. the medium frequency components, however, that is to be compensated by governor control system, cannot be compensated effectively. as will be shown, the output power of wind turbine has the low and medium frequency components, but the high frequency component in the wind speed is damped by the turbine inertia. because of some grid requirements, the output power has to be as smooth as possible. some methods have been suggested to smooth the output power in the variable-speed wind turbine systems. in one category, the pitch angle control has been employed for smoothening the power fluctuations. to control the pitch angle, the proportional-integral (pi) pitch controller has been often used for the power smoothening [6]. also some fuzzy logic controller [7-8], predictive controller [9] have been used to guarantee the power smoothing reliably. these methods, of course, are suitable for wind speeds above the rated value and because of the slow response of the mechanical pitch actuator system; the smoothing cannot be fully accomplished. also, the need for rapid changes in pitch angle causes mechanical stress on the actuator. another pitch control method has been proposed for full speed range operation in [10]. while the pitch angle control is necessary above the rated speed to limit the input power, below the rated speed, operation of pitch angle leads to lose maximum power extraction. also, the slow response of pitch angle mechanical system makes is suitable for low frequency compensation. using the dc link voltage control has been suggested for medium frequency compensation in [11]. this method needs extra chopper circuit and causes electrical stress on the dc link capacitor. since the grid connected inverter requires constant and controllable dc link voltage, so the suggested method might cause some interference in the control objectives. there are also other methods to control pmsg based wind turbines, such as constant power and constant torque strategies [12]. the constant power strategy needs the value of wind speed to determine the amount of reference power. also below the rated speed, since the oscillating component of the wind energy is exchanged with the rotor inertia, it may cause large fluctuations in the rotor speed and, in turn, intensive mechanical stresses on the shaft. furthermore, to have a stable operation in this condition, some reduced value should be selected as the power reference, which results in losing some of the wind power. the constant torque strategy has less rotor speed fluctuations but unlike the constant power method, the power has some fluctuations, in fact the mechanical input power fluctuation is shared between the output and the rotor inertia. again, similar to the previous methods, it needs the amount of wind speed to determine the reference torque for below the rated wind speed. another control strategy that doesn't consider power smoothing issue is the so called mppt strategy. mppt strategy is based on maximum power extraction and is done either with wind speed sensor or sensor less. the with sensor method uses the anemometer data and power curves to calculate optimum rotor speed. the sensor less method uses optimum torque or optimum power relations and perturb & observe algorithm to achieve mailto:email@univ.com mppt. some examples are, dtc control method [1315], dpc control method [16-17], vector control in dq frame [18], power limit search (pls) algorithm [19]. in these methods both output power and rotor speed have fluctuations according to the wind speed profile. the main advantages of this method are stable operation and maximum power extraction assurance. in this paper new strategy is proposed to have better power smoothing operation. in section ii different strategies are compared in terms of power smoothing. in section iii, new control method is proposed and a comparison between different methods is made. then in section iv simulations are carried out and the results are discussed. finally the conclusion is made in section v. 2. control strategies this section allow the authors to describe the problematic proposed in this paper as well literature review regarding the discussed subject in this section some available strategies are analyzed and compared. the selected methods are constant power, constant torque, mppt and constant rotor speed. the output powers in these methods are as below (in per unit system): 1) constant power method 2) constant torque method 3) constant rotor speed 4) mppt method in which, is the output power and is the rotor speed. in direct driven pmsg based wind turbines, since there is no gear box and the shafts of turbine and generator are connected directly, one mass mechanical model can be used: ( ) for simplicity of analysis the damping term is neglected. the turbine input power by wind is a non-linear function of wind speed ( ), rotor speed ( ) and pitch angle ( ) and is given by (3). (3) in which, is air density, s is the area swept by turbine blades of radius r, is tip speed ratio ( ) and is a nonlinear wind power coefficient. because of nonlinearity, small signal analysis is employed to analyze (2). in small perturbation form, it can be written as follows: (4) from [12], the transfer function for output power in terms of wind speed variation for below the rated speed can be written as: ( ) ( ) ( ) in which , . from (5), it can be deduced that smaller slope leads to less fluctuation in the output power. this is reasonable because the variation of rotor speed is larger in this condition. therefore, most of the wind fluctuation is damped by the rotor speed variation. the constant power method has zero gain ( ). this method produces a constant power, so it is the best in terms of power smoothing, provided that the wind speed is known and the reference power is selected below the available value. this means that the maximum power extracting is lost. similar to former, the constant torque method needs to wind speed to determining the torque reference and also it has been selected below maximum power condition. for the method of constant rotor speed, as there is no rotor speed variation, all of the wind fluctuation is reflected on the output power. this can be deduced from (5) with . in the following the mppt method is analyzed. as mentioned before, this method is stable for all regions. the mppt method can be done in two way, the first one uses lookup table for optimum rotor speed as a reference for the control system(optimum tip speed ratio), while the other uses cubic function ( ; optimum power method) [20]. the first method is based on the fact that there is an optimum rotor speed for each wind speed at which maximum power is extracted from wind [6]. even though both methods are based on maximum power extraction, but the output power traces are different. to illustrate this fact, small signal models for the two ways are compared. for the second way it was presented before (cubic curve) as in (5). here the small signal model for first the way is extracted. for each wind speed ( ), there is a rotor speed ( ) at which the power extracted from wind is maximized. according to this fact, the following relation can be defined in per unit. of course because of high perturbation in the wind speed, it is required to use a low pass filter ( ), so (6) is changed as below: according to (4) and (7), the perturbation model for this condition can be written as: ( ) ( ) | ( ) | in which; ( ) | ( ) | the bode diagram for gain functions in the two methods are shown in fig.1. as it is seen, in the first method the wind fluctuation is highly reflected onto the output power, whereas the second method, i.e. the cubic method ( ) behaves as a low pass filter and suppresses the high frequency components. therefore, the second way of mppt implementation is smoother than the first way. in section v, simulation result of a typical wind speed will be shown to compare these two methods. 3. proposed method this section must include a good technical information to allow the experiments to be repeated. the sources of all media (like name and location of manufacturer) or components of a new formulation must be provided. according to (5), lesser slope leads to smoother power, therefore, choosing a function with a slope smaller than that of the cubic curve would result in smoother output power. constant, linear and square functions ( ), have lesser slope, but they need the wind speed value to determine their coefficients to have stable operation. on the other hand, functions with higher order such as , have more slope than cubic curve, so they cannot be smoother than mppt method. therefore, to have stable operation and smoothed power without the need for wind speed value, the only option is using cubic curve with lesser slope. the following function is proposed for this aim. since the slope is always less than that of mppt function. the bode diagram for this method is shown in fig. 2 for comparison with that of the cubic method. as it is seen, this method is smoother than mppt method. in addition, as fig.3 indicates, this method is always stable because there is an operating point for each wind speed. lesser value of the coefficient leads to smoother power, but as it can be deduced from fig.3, there are two problems. first; at rated power the rotor speed exceed the rated value and second; the extracted power is reduced. therefore, to have smoother power, the rotor speed should be allowed to exceed the rated value, as well as accepting some reduction in power extraction. in this paper 10 percent rotor over speed is considered to be allowable. according to the power curves, is a suitable value for the function coefficient. for this value, as it is observed in fig. 3, with the increased rotor speed there is insignificant reduction in power extraction as compared to mppt method. comparison between different methods according to discussions of the previous section is presented in table i. in this table, different methods are compared in terms of power smoothing and stability. using the proposed method rated speed results in smoother power than that of mppt method. table 1: control methods method wind speed smoothing power capturing mppt method (look up table) required weak mp* mppt method (cubic curve) not required rather good mp proposed method (near to cubic) not required good near to mp constant torque required good lower than mp constant power required very good lower than mp *maximum power (mp) figure 1 gain function 𝐆𝐏𝐠 𝐕𝐰 in two ways of mppt method (lookup table and cubic); below rated speed. figure 2 comparison of gain function 𝑮𝑷𝒈 𝑽𝒘for three methods; constant torque, mppt (cubic curve) and proposed method; below rated speed region. figure 3 operating point in mppt method and proposed method. 4. simulation results in this section, include the rationale or design of the experiments as well as the results; reserve interpretation of the results for the discussion section. present the results as precisely as possible. for a 2mw pmsg based wind turbine with the data presented in appendix [21], simulation is carried out using the proposed control method and conventional method, and the results are compared. for a typical wind speed profile below the rated value, given in fig.4, output power obtained by simulation of three methods; mppt (lookup table and cubic curve) and the proposed method are presented in fig.5. as it was mentioned in previous section, look up table method has a fluctuated profile. there is a significant difference between the results of lookup table method and the other two methods. it is quite clear that the proposed method results in much smoother output power profile than mppt methods. 5. conclusion in this paper, different control strategies for pmsg based wind turbine at below and above rated speed were compared in terms of power smoothing. performance of methods were analyzed based on perturbation models. a new control strategy was presented for blow rated wind speed, which presents a smoother output power compared to the mppt method, while it does not require wind speed information. furthermore for above rated speed, since the pitch angle controller is slow and cannot set the output power exactly to the rated value, so in this paper another degree of freedom is added to control system. this strategy uses constant torque method for converter control instead of constant rotor speed that is used in conventional strategy. consequently, the proposed method led to smoother output power and soft operation of pitch angle system. appendix table 1-a: wind system parameters wind turbine parameters rated power 2mw blade radius 39m air density 1.205 rated wind speed 12 m/s pmsg parameters rated output power 2mw rated line-line voltage 690v number of pole pairs 30 stator winding resistance 0.00344 p.u d-axis inductance 0.7685p.u q-axis inductance 0.4026p.u moment of equal inertia 5 p.u 6. reference [1] z. chen, f. blaabjerg, “wind farm—a power source in future power systems”, renewable and sustainable energy reviews, vol. 13, no. 6-7, pp. 1288-1300 issn: 1364-0321, 2009. [2] v. akhmatov, “analysis of dynamic behavior of electric power systems with large amount of wind power,” ph.d. dissertation, technical university of denmark, kgs. lyngby, denmark, apr. 2003. [3] l. jin, s. y. zhang, p. sorensen, l. g. jie and g. w. zhong, “method for assessing grid frequency deviation due to wind power fluctuation based on “time-frequency transformation”,” ieee trans. sustainable energy, vol. 3, no. 1, 2012. [4] w. qiao and r. g. harley, “grid connection requirements and solutions for dfig wind turbines,” ieee energy 2030 conf., atlanta, ga, usa, pp. 1–8, feb. 2009. [5] c. luo and b. t. ooi, “frequency deviation of thermal power plants due to wind farms,” ieee. energy conversion, vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 708–716, sep. 2006. [6] a. uehara, a. pratap, t. goya, t. senjyo, a. yona, n. urasaki, and t. funabashi, “a coordinated control method to smooth wind power fluctuations of a pmsg-based wecs,” ieee trans. energy conversion, vol. 26, no.2, pp. 550-558, jun. 2011. [7] s. m. muyeen, j. tamura, and t. murata, “stability augmentation of a grid-connected wind farm,” london, u.k.: springer-verlag, oct. 2008. [8] t. l. van, t. h. nguyen, d. ch. lee, “advanced pitch angle control based on fuzzy logic for figure 4 typical wind speed profile for below rated speed. figure 5 output power profile for below rated speed in three methods; mppt (cubic curve and look up table) and proposed method. variable-speed wind turbine systems,” ieee trans. energy conversion, vol. 30, no.2, jun. 2015. [9] m. soliman, o. p. malik, d. t. westwick, “multiple model predictive control for wind turbines with doubly fed induction generators,” ieee trans. sustainable energy, vol. 2, no. 3, 2011. [10] a. uehara, a. pratap, t. goya, t. senjyum, a. yona, n. urasaki and t. funabashi, “a coordinated control method to smooth wind power fluctuations of a pmsg-based wecs,” ieee trans. energy conversion, vol. 26, no. 2, jun 2011. [11] h. geng, d. xu, b. wu, g. yang, “active damping for pmsg-based wecs with dc-link current estimation,” ieee trans. industrial electronic, vol. 58, no. 4, apr 2011. [12] c. luo, h. banakar, b. shen, b. k. ooi, “strategies to smooth wind power fluctuations of wind turbine generator,” ieee trans. energy conversion, vol. 22, no. 2, june 2007. [13] y. zhao, c. wei, z. zhang, w. qiao, “a review on position/speed sensorless control for permanent-magnet synchronous machine-based wind energy conversion systems,” ieee journal of emerging and selected topics in power electronics, vol. 1, no. 4, 2013. [14] w. qiao, x. yang, x. gong, “wind speed and rotor position sensorless control for direct-drive pmg wind turbines,” ieee trans. industrial electronic, vol. 48, no. 1, 2012. [15] z. zhang, y. zhao, w. qiao, l. qu, “a discretetime direct torque control for direct-drive pmsg-based wind energy conversion systems,” ieee trans. industry applications, vol. 51, no. 4, 2015. [16] y. xia, k. h. ahmed, b. w. williams, “a new maximum power point tracking technique for permanent magnet synchronous generator based wind energy conversion system,” ieee trans. power electronics, vol. 26, no. 12, 2011. [17] j. mohammadi, s. vaez-zadeh, s. afsharnia and e. daryabeigi, “a combined vector and direct power control for dfig-based wind turbines,” ieee transactions on sustainable energy, vol. 5, no. 3, 2014. [18] s. li, t. a. haskew, k. a. williams and r. p. swatloski, “control of dfig wind turbine with direct-current vector control configuration,” ieee transactions on sustainable energy, vol. 3, no. 1, july 2012. [19] j. c. y. hui, a. bakhshai, p. k. jain, “an energy management scheme with power limit capability and an adaptive maximum power point tracking for small standalone pmsg wind energy systems,” ieee transactions on power electronics, vol. 31, no. 7, 2016. [20] m. nasiri, j. milimonfared, s. h. fathi, “modeling, analysis and comparison of tsr and otc methods for mppt and power smoothing in permanent magnet synchronous generator-based wind turbines,” energy conversion and management, volume 86, pp. 892-900, 2014. [21] b. wu, y. lang, n. zargary, s. kouro, “power conversion and control of wind energy systems,” new jersey, willey-ieee press, august 2011. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01968904 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01968904/86/supp/c  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 3 | issue 1 | june 2018 | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.1. 15 received: june 1, 2018 | accepted: june 25, 2018 copyright protection for digital certificate using blind watermarking technique harith raad hasan computer science institute sulaimani polytechnic university kurdistan technical institute sulaimani, kurdistan, iraq harith.hasan@spu.edu.iq | harith.hasan@kti.edu.krd 75 abstract this paper proposes a copyright protection system for digital certificate image using blind watermarking technique by applying discrete wavelet transform algorithm (dwt). the proposed technique utilizes three interrelated watermarks namely, red watermark (rw), green-watermark (gw) and bluewatermark (bw). firstly, rgb cover and rgb watermark image are divided for three color space r,g,b. then the r component is chosen for embedding (rw), the b component is selected for embedding the (bw) and the g component is selected for embedding the (gw), r,g and b of the cover image are converted into the transform domain using dwt, and is subsequently decomposed into three levels viz. lh1, ll2 and ll3 sub-bands. rw, gw and bw are then embedded onto ll3. experimental results show that the performance of the proposed technique is very encouraging with average psnr of 44 db, and ncc value of more than 0.99 for extracted watermarks after performing several types of attacks. keywords: digital copyright protection, blind watermarking systems, transform domain, robustness, discrete wavelet transform (dwt). 1. introduction in recent years, the internet and multimedia technologies due to the rapid growth, digital watermarking has become one of the important fields in image processing and multimedia research. this way can be driven to the need to protect multimedia digital contents from any person who want to make a manipulation in order to remove the ownership identity or to change the originality. in the past decades algorithms have been proposed like digital watermarking systems algorithms to solve the such issues. digital watermarking methods can be classified into three main types which are non-blind, semi-blind and blind techniques. in non-blind watermarking schemes the information for original image and embedding information about watermarked image are known prior to watermark detection and extraction [1,2,3,4,5]. while, in semi-blind approach a little information or a basic data is needed to extract watermark. in the blind watermarking system, extraction of the watermark image is performed which technically means no information is required [1,2,3,4]. nevertheless generally, the blind approaches are more difficult than the non blind and semiblind schemes in extraction stage especially after attacks. moreover, in term of security and robustness stay the better [1,2,3]. for most application, security is considered as a vital aspect of digital watermarking techniques. therefore, several studies suggest repeating the embedding for the same watermark, and this id known as a multiple watermarking [4,7]. 2. literature review digital watermarking techniques can be categorized into two domains: the spatial domain and the transform domain [1,4,5,6]. the spatial domain watermarking enjoys the lower computational complexity [7,8,9], and is advantageous with respect to capacity and imperceptibility [10]. on the other hand, the transform domain is more superior in terms of robustness. the last but not the least the combination of the two domains is termed as the hybrid domain. transform based watermarking technique is well-known for its robustness against many types of attacks. in order to embed a watermark image, a transformation algorithm is applied to decompose the host image. then, modifications are made to its coefficients. possible transformation techniques include the discrete fourier transform (dft) [11], discrete cosine transform (dct), and discrete wavelet transform (dwt) [1,5,12,13,14,15,16,19,20,21,22,]. on the other hand, spatial domain watermarking has been the fundamental scheme since the 90’s. this domain makes use of selected bit-planes in a given host image for the watermark embedding process, consequently, some pixels of the host image are directly modified with respect to the image pixel values [3,17,18,23,24,25,26,27]. in 2009, dejun et al [8] proposed a conversion of the cover image from the spatial to transform domain. the low-low (ll) sub-band of the image was used as the background for embedding the watermark. then, the intermediate significant bit (isb) (4th bit-plane) of the cover image is used as a background for embedding the watermark in the spatial domain. the same watermark image was then formatted using the arnold transform so that the spatial relationship of the visual recognizable part of the watermarked image can be distributed. although their technique achieved good robustness and imperceptibility; however, its capacity is limited and computationally complex. moreover, perumal and kumar [13] proposed a dwtbased watermarking technique using thresholds on 76 fig. 2: extraction stage of the watermarking technique intermediate bit values. in their work, they utilized four stages in the embedding process, which are: 1) the computation of dwt, 2) determination of thresholds based on intermediate bit values, 3) execute watermark embedding in isb and 4) computation of inverse dwt. the l-level dwt transform was performed on the host image to obtain discrete wavelet components. subsequently, a triple or a quad of pixels was utilized instead of pair of pixel, and then, the bits of the digital watermark bit-stream were embedded within the isb bit values. the transformed image was then converted to the watermarked image via l-level inverse dwt conversion. however, performance of the method is poor in terms of both computational cost and robustness. this paper focuses on capitalizing on the advantages of using three watermark images to increase the security and the robustness to ensure the originality of the digital certificate. in subsequent subsection, a brief discussion on discrete wavelet transform (dwt) is presented. the discrete wavelet transform (dwt), which is used for embedding through filter bank iteration, is one of the most popular transforms, dwt is a transform algorithm which uses haar wavelets and operates as a high-pass filter and low-pass filter simultaneously decomposition of 2d haar wavelet is processed using 1d haar wavelet decompositions on 1d horizontal arrays (row) determined by the horizontal scanning raster followed by 1d haar wavelet decompositions on 1d vertical arrays (column) determined by the vertical scanning raster on the resulting image. 3. methods and materials the proposed technique utilizes three interrelated watermarks namely, red watermark (rw), greenwatermark (gw) and blue-watermark (bw). firstly, rgb cover and watermark images are divided for three color space r,g,b. then the r component is chosen for embedding (rw), the b component is selected for embedding the (bw) and the g component is selected for embedding the (gw), r,g and b of the cover image are converted into the transform domain using dwt, and is subsequently decomposed into two levels viz. hl1 and ll2 sub-bands. rw,gw and bw are then embedded onto ll2. the advantage of using three components of watermark image is to ensure the integrity of the watermarked image beside the high robustness. two block diagrams are given in fig. 1 and fig. 2 below that represent the flow of the abovementioned methodology. pre-processing stage: at first, the rgb color image is divided to red (r), green (g) and blue (b). then r,g and b components are selected as the background for embedding the three watermark image red watermark image(rw),green watermark image (gw) and blue watermark image (bw). [5] embedding stage: it consists of three parts. for the first part, the embedding is performed on r component using dwt. the original size for the watermark image is a (64 x 64) pixels. then, watermark image will divided to fig. 1: embedding stage of the watermarking technique 77 fig.3: embedding rw in transform domain fig. 4: embedding process in transform domain create rw,gw and bw then rw is subsequently embedded onto the r. the embedding process will repeat in same procured on g and b components to embed the gw and bw. the embedding process is illustrated in fig. 3. the dwt decomposes the r component from spatial domain to transform domain by changing its coefficient values and divide the r component two four sub-bands as low-low (ll), high-low (hl), low-high(lh) and high-high (hh). then three levels of dwt are applied on the r. level 1 is further divided into four frequency sub-bands, which are ll1, hl1, lh1, and hh1. the hl1 sub-band is then selected and level 2 is applied on it for further subdivision to four parts, which are ll2, hl2, lh2 and hh2. at this point the ll2 sub-band is then selected and level 3 is applied on it for further division to four more parts, which are ll3, hl3, lh3 and hh3. after all these divisions, the ll3 is finally selected for embedding the rw. the watermarked image is obtained by using the following equation: 𝑳𝑳𝟑 (𝒊, 𝒋) = 𝛼 𝑥 𝑅𝑊(𝑖, 𝑗) (1) where α denotes a strength factor, (α between [0,1]), where α = 0.3 is chosen empirically; rw (i,j) represents a r component of rgb watermark image. next, 3-level of idwt is applied to create rwatermarked image (rrw). the embedding step is depicted in fig. 4. upon the completion of the embedding phase, rrw, ggw and bbw components are merged, and then rgb color space to obtain a watermarked image is created. finally, an extraction process is performed to extract the watermarks rw,gw and bw. the same procedure as mentioned above is applied except it is done in reversal order. 4. results & discussion the proposed technique is applied on the kurdistan technical institute (kti) certificates after normalized the size to 512*512 pixels. meanwhile, a rgb image of kti logo sized 64*64 pixels is used as the main watermark image. a number of standard different attacks viz. compression, rotations, resizing and some enhance filters are also applied to measure the robustness. 4.1. performance evaluation two measurements are used to evaluate the performances of the proposed method namely, the peak signal-to-noise ratio (psnr) and normalized cross correlation (ncc). the psnr is used to measure the ratio of image quality between the original host image and watermarked image. psnr value above 30 db is considered as the perceptual fidelity value [16]. the following formulae are used to calculate the psnr value: 𝑷𝑺𝑵𝑹 = 𝟏𝟎. 𝐥𝐨𝐠𝟏𝟎 ( 𝑴𝑨𝑿𝑰 𝟐 𝑴𝑺𝑬 ) (2) = 𝟐𝟎. 𝐥𝐨𝐠 𝟏𝟎 ( 𝑴𝑨𝑿𝑰 √𝑴𝑺𝑬 ) 𝑴𝑺𝑬 = 𝟏 𝒎𝒏 ∑ ∑ [𝑰(𝒊, 𝒋) − 𝑲(𝒊, 𝒋)]𝟐𝒏−𝟏𝒋=𝟎 𝒎−𝟏 𝒊=𝟎 (3) where m and n denote the image size of watermarked and host images; i(i , j) represents pixel(i,j) value of host image; k(i , j) denotes pixel(i,j) value of the watermarked image; and max denotes the image maximum intensity, which is usually equal to 255. the ncc, on the other hand, is used to determine the quality of the watermarked image after the extraction [22], and is defined as: 𝑵𝑪𝑪 = ∑ ∑ ( 𝑾𝒙,𝒚 𝑿 𝑾𝒙,𝒚 ′ )𝒚𝒙 ∑ ∑ (𝑾𝒙,𝒚) 𝟐 𝒚𝒙 (𝟒) where wx,y is the pixel value of the original watermark image at (x,y) coordinate, and w'x,y is the pixel value of the extracted watermark image in the same position as that of the original watermark image. 4.2. before attack results. table 1 illustrate the experimental results before the attack is taken place. the results revealed that average psnr value is between 43 44db was achieved, which is 78 considered very high with respect to high capacity of the embedding three watermark images are used. the results also showed that the ncc values prior to attack for the extracted watermarks rw, gw and bw almost equaled to 0.99, which indicates that the watermarks are not affected at all (i.e. identical with their original copies). table 1: psnr and ncc values before attacks 4.3. after attack results. when the standard attacks are gaussian noise, salt & peppers, sharpening, median filter, rotation and jpeg compression, applied on the watermarked image when the cover image was c1 and the watermark image a kti logo, the key measurements are as in tables 2. table 2: ncc values after standard attacks when tested using all dataset images and the c1 is selected to calculate and evaluate the performance of the proposed technique was found the ncc after applied jpeg compression was found the worst possible case which equal to 0.9777, but in the rest of test almost high performance was achieved. this is means the proposed method has a strong robustness that can withstand all the prescribed attacks. 4.4. comparison in the proposed technique, a three watermark is embedded on to three components of cover image using discrete wavelet transform. the selected of lh1 area, then chosen of the low frequency areas give the proposed technique more robust than high and middle frequency areas. this technique optimally searches for the best quadrant for embedding on to the host image and chooses three channels to achieve a high level of security. to gain security and robustness, it embeds the three watermark images in the low frequency sub-band (ll3). this strategy helps the proposed technique have the advantage of capacity and robustness while, at the same time, making the embedding process simple and easy to implement. it is hoped that ongoing research which will implement the use of dwt for embedding and extracting rgb images, will result in improved efficiency of the proposed technique. the proposed technique is compared to the system suggested by r. thanki et al. [3]. comparison between the proposed technique to that proposed by r. thanki et al. is displayed in tables 3 when applied the on the same cover image which used in r. thanki et al. [3]. table 3: comparative with r. thanki et al. [3]. 5. conclusion in this paper, a new system which improves copyright protection for digital certificate image using blind watermarking technique is proposed. the new technique fulfills the two requirements which are important to identify the original certificate, namely: security and robustness. current research work is focused on embedding a multiple watermark image in different component of rgb image to see if it is advantageous with it. finding the best ratio between the high frequency and low frequency parts of the watermark image and sorting out which part is suitable for embedding on to the cover image for both high and low frequency bands, is a challenge. the proposed technique takes into account security and robustness beside to capacity and very good imperceptibility, which are a vital aspect of effective watermarking. finally, the purpose of this proposed technique is to keep the digital certificate in secure mode and all the time the second party who will receive the digital certificate will be sure that the certificate is an original certificate after verifying the extracted watermark. 6. future work this section highlights some interesting future research directions laid down by this work. which requires further work will be how to connect this method with one of the optimization algorithms such as: genetic algorithm (ga), particle swarm optimization (pso), and etc. to determine the optimal location of embedding for cover image based on the values of psnr and ncc. reference [1] y.chang “a blind watermarking algorithm” international research journal of engineering and technology (irjet), volume: 04 issue: 01 | jan -2017. 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(general internet site). http://nl1.vnunet.com/news/1116995  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.23 extensibility interaction flow modeling language metamodels to develop new web application concerns karzan wakil sulaimani polytechnic university-iraq university of human development-iraq university technology malaysia-malaysia karzanwakil@gmail.com dayang n.a. jawawi software engineering department faculty of computing, university technology malaysia skudai, 81310, johor, malaysia dayang@utm.my abstract: web engineering is a systematic approach to develop web applications, and numerous web engineering methods have been proposed. these methods were extended through defining new models by using different mechanisms to capture the web application concepts. due to the complexity rising of web applications, the web engineering methods cannot provide web solutions anymore. even though interaction flow modeling language (ifml) is recently proposed as a new method for developing web applications, it has limitations. therefore these methods need to be improved. in this paper, we present the ability of ifml extensibility to support new concerns from web applications. moreover, we extend ifml through uml mechanisms to support new concerns from the context to the user interface. the new ifml solves the lack of context web application through defining a new model and becomes a new direction to develop concerns modern web applications. keywords: web engineering, ifml, extensibility, metamodel. 1. introduction the model-driven development (mdd) approach of software development utilizes three key elements in the development process. these are; models, model transformation, and metamodels. in the recent past, the world has witnessed an evolution in most of the modeldriven approaches to web engineering owing to the emerging challenges in web systems design. these challenges are attributable to new requirements in the web domain together with changes in implementation technologies. here, evolution refers to the adoption of new models and processes that take into consideration new concerns and aspects. such changes in a methodology are a risky and error-prone process. over the years, web hypermedia applications have improved in scope, becoming some of the best approaches for ensuring proper information access to web users. however, in the development of these applications, the different hypermedia modeling activities face several design issues [1]. a large number of researchers have experienced design issues when such as modeling complex business processes, navigation access structures, activities and transactional workflows, user dependent processes [2-3]. to deal with these design issues, a number of hypermedia methods that utilize different modeling concepts and alternative design features are proposed. they include uml-based web engineering (uwe) [4-7], object-oriented hypermedia design method (oohdm) [8], object oriented hypermedia (ooh) [6-7], and the website design method (wdm) [9]. lastly, interaction flow modeling language (ifml) [10] is considered a standard approach to solving current issues associated with the development of web applications. for example, it helps solve issues relating to mobile applications and the interaction user-interface. many researchers made attempts to define “common” meta-models, yielding very interesting results. the web engineering interoperability (wei) initiative was the most thorough systematic approach applied by these researchers with the aim of providing an easy exchange of models and addressing the new concerns that had been incorporated into the existing methods [11]. the best practices of defining terms are utilized to define the ifml metamodel. these include reuse, abstraction, extensibility, and modularization. the ifml metamodel has various characteristics. for instance, it works by reusing the basic data forms derived from the uml metamodel. it forms ifml metaclasses by specializing several uml databases, and assumes that either a uml class diagram or an appropriate notation is used to represent a domain model [10]. however ifml is a standard method and designed after ten year experience of webml, but it needs more extensions and improvements especially for new concern and features of web applications. the problem is that most previous works have extended ifml to support user interface. we extend ifml metamodels furthermore to support new concerns from content to user interface through uml mechanisms. the paper is organized as follows: section 2 explains the related work for the web engineering metamodels especially ifml metamodel. section 3 analyzes of ifml metamodels and capability ifml for extensibility. section 4 defines a framework to further extend ifml. in section 5 we implement framework with case study and evaluation the framework. in section 6 we present some concluding remarks and points to future works. 2. related work several existing web engineering methods that address the systematic development of web applications through extend models and metamodels. based on[12], 5.5% publication on web engineering worked on metamodels. in this section, we reviewed some related work about extension metamodels in web engineering methods, extension mechanisms, ifml metamodels, and ifml extension metamodels. today, many of the available works have defined new models and metamodels using the extension technique of uml. the definitions are provided for a variety of purposes. the uml extension provided in [13] enables modeling system audits by supporting an event-based modeling approach. this extension makes it possible to integrate different audit properties for a wide range of uml models. reference [14] documents the details of a rood traffic management system that is based on stereotypes, while [15] offers a use case metamodel. the proposed metamodel models the structural view of the use cases as well as the behavioral view. a new element notation is proposed in another work [16]. it is defined by an expanded form of the unified modeling language through the creation of new uml concepts. an extension of the uml metaclasses “association” and “class” yields some stereotypes presented in this work. source [17] utilizes scientific techniques to suggest a new set of notations that is an extension of the uml state charts notation. an industrial survey was conducted online to assess the perceptions of the proposed notational set with regards to its coverage of state-based security aspects and its semantic transparency. reference [18] explored the process of extending uml in web information systems on the basis of a context-based navigation framework. the framework encompasses various navigation phases and models including analysis, design, and realization. an android application used in modeling specifically described by the extended uml metamodel. this extended uml metamodel also helps improve communication between developers and other parties because it adheres to the concepts and notation of the uml metamodel [19]. in addition, uml profile is presented as an aspect-oriented form of modeling founded on aspect language [20]. earlier on, the uwe navigation model was extended in support of new web application models, while the uml extension technique was applied in defining new elements. comparisons were also made among capability metamodels [21-23]. laaz and mbarki provide a new approach mde that assembles two essential abstract specifications, described by the omg, for deriving uis rich internet applications (rias). the proposed approach assumes that it is possible to induce uis for ria from ontology and ifml. ifml allows for an abstract representation of the organization of user interfaces. it also shows how different elements interact as demonstrated in figure 1 [24]. further, other researchers [24] provide an alternative approach for the generation of ria. this model-driven approach uses the omg standard ifml. they also define a ria metamodel that adheres to the model view presenter pattern, and develop a transformation engine that automatically generates the output model. figure 1 ifml extension [24] in [25] the authors designed and implemented a customized mduid process that integrates graphic user interface (gui) patterns. then presented their gui pattern catalogue and its formalization based on the general ui language ifml. the feasibility of their approach given by a tool support which extends the current ifml editor by combined gui patterns. the implementation of the customized mduid process and the practical usage of the tool support were presented in the context of creating rias. gotti and mbarki defined an ifvm virtual machine for the effective performance of ifml models, which can be performed on many platforms due to java virtual machine advantages [2627]. m. brambilla et al. suggested an extended form of the ifml language used in modeling. the extension was specially created for mobile applications. the researchers describe their experiences during the implementation process, which includes the creation of automatic code generators applicable in cross-platform mobile applications. the code generators were built on css, html5, and javascript, modified to suit the apache cordova framework [28]. 3. analyzing extensibility for ifml metamodels ifml [10] has been completed to improve the platformindependent definition of gui with applications installed on systems like desktop, laptops, smart phones, tablets, and pdas. the key focus is on the application’s behavior and structure as observed by the end user. in this section, we analyze ifml metamodels in the process development mobile applications and web applications. then we extract previous extensions. 3.1 ifml-artifacts ifml officially defined by omg, the technical artifacts explained by [10] we explained most important artifacts below:  ifml metamodel, specify the structure and associations between the elements;  the ifml is uml profile, meaning used uml concepts for designing and extending class diagram, state machine and elements.  the ifml visual syntax, it has graphical notations for representing elements and models.  the ifml model entertainment in installments and switch format, for tool portability. altogether, these artifacts compose the ifml language specification. each of them is specified according to the omg standards:  the metamodel is defined through the mof metamodeling language.  the uml profile is defined consistent with uml 2.4 profile policy.  the visual syntax is defined through diagram definition (dd) and diagram interchange (di) omg-standards.  the model serialization and exchange format is defined founded on xmi. 3.2 ifml metamodels definition of ifml metamodel is completed as the best approach of the language description. incorporate abstraction, modularization, recycle as a best extensibility. it is composed of three packages that are; “core package,” “extension package,” and “data type package.” the first package is core package that contains all concepts for creating interaction infrastructure of the method such as "interaction flow elements, interaction flows, and parameters.", the second package is extension package when extended the ideas that defined by core package, the third package is data‐ types package, it has data types that determined by metamodel of uml, and specializes some uml metaclasses as the origin for ifml meta-classes, and presume that the ifml domain model is represented in uml [10], as explained in figure 2. figure 2 ifml metamodels packages[10] ifml model is known as the top-level component of the other model components. it involves a domain model, an interaction flow model, as well as view points. interaction flow model offers the application view of the user, by reference to the “interaction flow model elements” sets, together defining a wholly functional portion of the system. 3.3 extensibility ifml metamodels in this section, we have been a discussion about extension metamodels in web engineering methods, extensibility ifml metamodels; then we discuss extension mechanisms that used for ifml and uml metamodels. moreover, at the end of this section, we analyze existing work about ifml extension from previous work. for addressing the new concern in web engineering methods three ways defined; 1combining current original methods with additional models, 2merging two or three methods, 3defining new models or new method through extension or generating [29]. furthermore, uml allows extending package in meta model[30]. in another hand uml extensibility mechanism allows designers customize and extend the uml by adding new building blocks that consist of stereotypes, tagged values, and constraints[31]. extension classified for extension mechanism and extension purpose by [32]. the aspect “extension purpose” covers the objective that is related to the aimed extension and reflects the purpose that needs to be fulfilled. an extension mechanism is understood as either an explicit mechanism of an eml for the extension of this language or a more general approach for extension. we have evolved the following mechanisms based on the review of both the literature [33-34] and existing eml specifications as shown in figure 3 and figure 4. figure 3 consolidated extension purpose [32] figure 4 consolidated extension mechanisms [32] 3.4 ifml extension from existing work ifml as new method from 2014 can support most interaction aspects but also need to extension, because web applications and mobile applications growth day by day, the following table we collected all papers that extended ifml models and metamodels. table 1: ifml extension from existing work no ref. mechanism aspect contributio n 1 [24] defining uml metamodel and uml meta class for modify core package for defining gui ontology represent complete ria interfaces. 2 [35] webratio extensions feature primitives web and mobile applications 3 [28, 36] html5, css and javascript for platform mobile applications to mobile applicatio n developm ent the development of automatic code generators 4 [37] integration with wsdm smantic web to develop web semantic design according to the philosophy of the language, not all possible extensions are allowed. valid extensions should refine or adapt the core concepts to specific cases, specializing their semantics without altering them. the ifml specification explicitly mentions that only the following concepts (and their specializations) can be extended while retaining compliance with the standard:  view container (for defining specific screens or interface containers),  view component (for describing specific widgets or controls),  view component part (for specifying particular properties of existing or new view components),  event (for covering platform-specific events),  domain concept and feature concept (for covering additional content sources), and behavior concept and behavioral feature concept (for covering integration with additional behavioral models or modeling languages). extensions of other elements are disallowed by the standard. any other extended concept will be considered proprietary and outside the ifml notation ifml is uml profile, ifml uses uml extension mechanism, and four common mechanisms for extension uml are: specifications, common divisions, adornments, and extensibility mechanisms. 4. methodology in this section, we define a new framework for extending ifml metamodels to support a new concern for developing web applications. preparing our new model focused on enhancement and augmentation as extension purpose, and focused on metamodel customization as extension mechanism. figure 5 explains our framework that consists of five steps; the step1 is ifml before extension when explained in previous sections, step2 showed ifml metamodel is three packages that are; core package, extension packages and data type packages, in step3 we explained the metamodel packages, this packages analyzed in section 3, the detail of packages very important because guide us how we can extend it, in the step4 we use uml extension mechanism for extending ifml to support the new concerns of web applications, final step is new ifml after extension. figure 5 a new framework for extension ifml metamodels based on process development ifml to cover lifecycle [38], our framework extends all steps, in the extended metamodels from content to user interface, we extend interaction flow elements, interaction flow, and parameters. then by using uml mechanism, we define the new elements. this demonstrated that the added features in the metamodels lead to more usability in concluding web applications. extension mechanism helps the researchers to improve the web engineering methods for the web applications development. in the following, we present the steps of defining new elements from a mechanism that prepared by [39] as shown in figure 6. figure 6 uml extension mechanism [40] 5. design case study in this section, we extend payment execution that designed by ifml for ria as new concept, however ifml can support ria, but here for proving our framework we extend ifml model front-end, the payment execution previously we designed in [38]. as shown in figure 7. figure 7 inner process of the module payment execution [38] ria features focused on client (c) and server (s), in figure 8 we extend view component, view container, and parameters, and moreover we define an event for checking client or server side. figure 8 inner process of the module payment execution (extended for ria) after extension we define ria element based on uml extension mechanism as explained the steps: 1. name : ria 2. stereotype: clientserver 3. attribute {title clintserver=” clintserver”, number elements=n, name of elements=”string”} 4. list of attributes (name, number, elements) 5. context: clientserver inv: name.size()<=40 inv: number >= 0 && number <= 100 inv: elements.size()<=4. 6. graphical icon is . our extension successfully completed for supporting new cancers that is ria features. the researcher can follow same steps and mechanism to extend ifml for the new concerns. we can evaluate our framework as a success framework for extending ifml metamodels for supporting new concerns. 6. conclusion and future work in this work, we proposed a new framework for extending ifml metamodels, and then we extend ifml through uml mechanisms to support new concerns from content to user interface of the modern web application. the extension ifml solves the lack of context, and become to a new direction to develop modern web application features. our future plan is to improve our framework for defining an adaptive model for ifml to develop multi web applications. 7. references [1] a. h. 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[39] p. desfray, "uml profiles versus metamodel extensions: an ongoing debate," in omg’s uml workshops: uml in the. com enterprise: modeling corba, components, xml/xmi and metadata workshop, 2000, pp. 6-9. [40] d. philippe, "uml profiles versus metamodel extensions: an ongoing debate," in omg’s uml workshops: uml in the. com enterprise: modeling corba, components, xml/xmi and metadata workshop, 2000, pp. 6-9.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.33 flexible pavement evaluation: a case study shamil ahmed flamarz al-arkawazi building and construction engineering department university of garmian kalar, sulaimani, iraq shamil.flamarz@garmian.edu.krd abstract: this study is a survey to evaluate the flexible pavement conditions to determine and specify the types of the failures in the pavement for the selected highway. it is very significant to evaluate and identify the causes of the flexible pavement failures and select the proper and best treatment and maintenance type. the study had two major and critical goals which covered by considering the following three tasks; the first was the visual evaluation and inspection of existing flexible pavement conditions including the failures, the second to determine and find out the actual causes of these failures in the pavement, and the third is to select the most and effective treatments and maintenance types. as a case study, khanaqinkalar 2-way 2-lane rural highway was selected for evaluation and inspection purposes. the field evaluation works were achieved on the existing flexible pavement conditions of the selected rural highway. the results were most of the damages and failures in the pavement are serious and extreme surface deformation, cracks, disintegration, and surface defects. these damages and failures are caused by fatigue and other types of failures resulted from the movement of heavy vehicles and trucks, poor drainage design, unsuitable pavement layers thickness design, and improper pavement mix design and selected materials. keywords: flexible pavement, failure, deterioration, rural highway, evaluation survey. 1. introduction ordinarily the term pavement only means the surface layer [1]. but in the designing of the highways, it means the pavement total thickness including wearing (surfacing) course, base course and sub-base course. it is hard and tough crust constructed over the natural subgrade in order to provide stable and leveled or flat surface for vehicles. it is a structure consist from overlies layers of materials over the natural subgrade which its primary and major function is to transfer and distribute the vehicles’ axle loads to the subgrade. the structure of pavement should provide acceptable riding quality surface, sufficient skid resistance and minimum noise pollution [2]. for designing purposes and depending on structural function and behavior, the road pavements types are generally divided or classified into two types: i. flexible (bitumen) pavement. ii. rigid pavement. other pavement types include semi rigid or composite pavement and interlock (behartoon) cement concrete blocks pavement. these pavement types are less familiar than flexible and rigid pavement [1]. flexible pavement design is the process and method of selecting the most effective and economical composition of flexible pavement courses or layers (taking in consideration the thickness of the pavement and type of selected materials) to fit the subgrade foundation. and cumulative traffic axle load to be carried and handled during the pavements’ design life. flexible pavement structure design is different from building design and the bridges because of the fact that the design of pavement until today is based on semi-empirical or empirical method and there is no rationalistic design method. flexible pavement design consists mainly from two steps or parts: 1material mix design to be used in each layer of the pavement. 2design the structure of the pavement (design the thickness of each layer with its component). the main and major factors to be taken in consideration in the flexible pavement design are: 1traffic volume. 2climate and weather conditions along the year. 3the road geometric design. 4position. 5soil or subgrade 6drainage. road maintenance is one of the significant components of the complete road system. even if the highways are designed and constructed in a good way, they may still require maintenance, the range that will depend on several factors which include the type of pavement [3]. a flexible pavement consists from several layers of granular materials covered with bituminous material (waterproof), and as its name mean, it is considered to be flexible. the flexible pavement will bend (flex) under the applied load of the tyre. the objective of designing a flexible pavement is to avoid extreme flexing of any of the layers, failure or un-ability to achieve its cause over stressing of a layer, which finally will cause the failure of the pavement. in the flexible pavements, the distribution pattern of load changes from one pavement layer to another, because the strength of each pavement layer is different. the least flexible and strongest material is in the top layer and the most flexible and weakest material is in the lowest layer. the reason for that is at the surface the wheel load is applied over small area, the result will be high stress level, and deeper down in flexible pavement, the load will be applied over a larger area and the result will be lower stress levels, consequently enabling the use of less quality or weaker materials [4]. pavement failure and deterioration process starts immediately after opening the road to vehicles (traffic). the process of failure and deterioration starts very patiently therefore it may not be noticeable, and over the time it get faster and accelerates at quicker rates. to minimize premature failure and deterioration, it is vital to implement the best method in planning, the designing, construction and maintenance of the highway or the road. it can be accomplished by testing and inspecting pavements that have early failed. the focus was to determine the causes of failure and deterioration in order to be prevented in the future. the biggest understanding of flexible failures which can be gained from detailed evaluation and investigation could be significant in reducing the costs related to pavement failures and deterioration in the future. in many cases the failure and deterioration of flexible pavement structure can be directly justified by insufficient maintenance and insufficient programs of evaluation. under a limited budget it is very important to reduce and minimize the maintenance costs. for the mentioned purpose it is very important to consider and select a simple way or method for inspection (surveying) and evaluation of flexible pavement failures [5]. flexible pavement (bituminous) failure and deterioration generally occurs due to combined action of traffic volume and load, weather conditions and changes, drainage and environmental agent. generally the flexible pavement fail and deteriorate at very fast rate when compared to rigid pavement because the mentioned above factors. flexible pavements continue to fail and deteriorate at slow rate even without vehicles (traffic) movement on the flexible pavement surface as a result of the weather and environmental factors action. rate of failure and deterioration of flexible pavement (bituminous pavement) rapidly increase when water is hold in the void spaces of the flexible pavement layers. oxidation and aging of asphalt (bituminous) binder also lead to the failure and deterioration of the asphalt (bituminous) surfacing [1]. 2. literature review transportation system takes a special role in the economical development of any country. by the good transportation system means; comfortable, safe, rapid, and convenient, the people communication becomes possible and which is fundamental for various goods distribution in the country that is important and basic for its economic, industry and environment. the good highway system is very significant for the developing country to get the way to the modern society. in order to have good transportation system, various factors of failure and deterioration of the highway or road should be taken in consideration. highway maintenance is very important for the traffic management as a whole. the various defects in the roads resulted from weak maintenance of transportation system are the main accident causes. therefore a successful and good engineer is a person whose is not only able to design the highway or roads, but also have sufficient skills to maintain the highways and roads [6]. a flexible pavement (bituminous) failure and deterioration is defined by consistence of ruts, cracks, potholes, settlements, localized depression, etc. normally the localized depression is followed with rising in the proximity (vicinity). the sequence creates waves in the surface of the pavement. the failure or deterioration of any one or more of flexible pavement structure components creates the corrugation and waves on the surface of the pavement or rutting and shoving. unleveled (unevenness) flexible pavement may itself consider as a failure and deterioration when it is excrescent. the flexible pavement failure and deterioration subject is considered to be complicated as several factors participate to its failure and deterioration. the oxidation and aging of asphalt (bituminous) films cause the failure and deterioration of flexible pavement (bituminous pavement). destructive actions in flexible pavement are quickly increased when surplus water is retained in the flexible pavement void spaces [3]. flexible pavement failure and deterioration can be considered as functional, structural, materials failure, and a combination of the mentioned factors. structural failure and deterioration is losing the ability of carrying load, when the flexible pavement not any more able to absorb, transmit and distribute wheels load through the road structure without causing extra or more failure and deterioration. functional failure is a boundary (border) term which may refer to the loss of any function of the flexible pavement such as structural capacity, skid resistance, and serviceability or passenger comfort. material failure result from the loss or disintegration of material characteristics of any of pavement component materials [7]. flexible pavement deterioration and failure is defined as a decreasing in the serviceability resulted from the development of surface failure and deterioration such as rutting, cracking and potholes [8]. it was reported that the highway engineers should look into the causes of flexible pavement (bituminous pavement) before going into the strategies of the maintenance. it was found that deterioration and failure of flexible pavement are resulted from combination or many of reasons. it has been noticed that only three factors; rutting, unevenness index and cracking are considered while other failures have been neglected while going to maintenance [5]. the major types of flexible pavement failures are failure of surface texture or deformation failure. deformation failures and deterioration include rutting, shoving, depression, corrugation and potholes. these failures and deterioration may result from traffic volume (load associated) or environmental influences (non-load associated). it might reflect serious problems in materials or underlying structure that may cause cracking. failure in the surface texture includes polishing, bleeding, cracking, raveling and stripping. these failures in the flexible pavement show that while the road pavement could be structurally sound, the surface is not functionally performing which designed for, which normally providing skid resistance, water tightness and smooth is running surface. other various types of flexible pavement failures and deterioration include patching, edge defects and roughness [5]. the evaluation survey and assessment of the flexible pavement roads and highways is advantageous for transportation engineers because the reasons in the following: 1it gives and provides accurate reason of flexible pavement failure and deterioration which makes the maintenance works easy. 2will provide good knowledge about flexible pavement failure and deterioration, which make the transportation engineers able to design and make high quality and performance roads and highways flexible pavement. 3study the failure and deterioration of flexible pavement in specific area helps in improving the design of flexible pavement which can be more effective in term of safety, quality, and performance in the area. the objective of current study can be summarized in the following: 1visual evaluation and inspection of existing flexible pavement conditions including the failures and deterioration. 2determine and find out the actual causes of these failures and deterioration in the flexible pavement. 3select the most proper and effective treatments and maintenance types. 3. factors effecting and influencing the flexible pavement performance the major factors that influencing the flexible pavement performance [4]: 3.1. traffic volume and load  it is the most significant and influential factor effecting and influencing flexible pavement performance. the flexible pavement performance is mostly affected and influenced by the traffic load magnitude, loading configuration, and heavy vehicles load repetitions number.  3.2. moisture or water moisture is considerably and significantly affect the flexible pavement by weaken the natural gravel materials especially the subgrade support strength. moisture or water enter the flexible pavement structure through holes and cracks in pavement surface, laterally (horizontally) through subgrade soil and from the water table (underlying) by the action of capillary. the results of moisture or water entry are lubrication of particles, interlock loss between the particles and later particles displacement which cause flexible pavement failure and deterioration. 3.3. subgrade soil subgrade is the flexible pavement underlying soil that support and handle the applied vehicles wheel loads. too weak subgrade will fail to support and handle the vehicles wheel loads, which cause the pavement to flex extremely which finally cause the failure of the flexible pavement. if the flexible pavement designer not taking the difference in natural composition of subgrade soil in consideration, significant and important differences in the flexible pavement performance will be witnessed. 3.4. construction quality failure to provide adequate compaction, inappropriate moisture content or conditions during the pavement construction, materials quality, and providing accurate flexible pavement layers thickness (after the compaction is finished) all mentioned conditions will effect directly on the performance of the flexible pavement. it is very important and significant to provide skillful staff, good and adequate inspection and a procedure of quality control during the construction works.  3.5. maintenance regardless how well the flexible pavement is built, it will start to deteriorate and fail over the time. the performance of flexible pavement depend on what type of maintenance, when to be done and how to be performed. 4. types of flexible pavement failure or deterioration the common types of failure or deterioration in flexible pavement are classified in to the following four major groups [1]: i. surface deformation  corrugations  rutting  shoving  shallow depressions  settlement and upheaval ii. cracking  fatigue cracking  transverse cracking  longitudinal cracking  edge cracking  reflective cracking iii. disintegration  potholes  patches iv. surface defects  raveling  bleeding the common types of flexible pavement failure or deterioration and its expected or possible causes are listed in table 1 [8] [3] [4]. table 1: the common flexible pavement failure types and their expected or possible causes [3] [4] [8] . failure type expected or possible causes alligator cracking  fatigue failure due to flexible/brittle base.  inadequate pavement thickness. block cracking  reflection of joints cracking in underlying base. longitudinal cracking  reflection cracking.  poor paving lane joint.  pavement widening.  cut/fill differential settlement.  fatigue failure of asphalt concrete. transverse cracking  reflection of shrinkage cracking.  construction joints. rutting  inadequate pavement thickness.  post construction compaction.  instability of base surfacing. shoving  poor bond between layers.  lack of edge containment.  inadequate pavement thickness. depression  settlement of service trench or embankment.  isolated consolidation.  volume change of subgrade corrugation  instability of asphalt concrete or base course. edge drop  inadequate pavement width.  erodible shoulder material (lack of plasticity). edge break  inadequate pavement width.  inadequate edge support.  traffic travelling on shoulder edge drop.  weak seal coat/loss of adhesion. raveling  it is a result of insufficient adhesion between the asphalt cement and the aggregate.  initially, a fine aggregate break loose and leaves small, rough patches in the surface of the pavement. potholes  potholes are often located in areas of poor drainage.  potholes are formed when the pavement disintegrates under traffic loading, due to inadequate strength in one or more layers of the pavement, usually accompanied by the presence of water. polishing caused by traffic movement (vehicles movement). patches  filling the holes with asphalt concrete without cleaning and preparing and doing the required works for maintenance.  filling the holes without doing proper leveling and compaction. 5. methodolgy the deformation response of flexible pavements under traffic loading is characterized by recoverable deformations and permanent deformations. the permanent deformation is much smaller than the recoverable deformation and, as the number of load repetitions increases, the plastic strain due to each load repetition decreases. the deformation of materials is the result of three mechanisms: the consolidation mechanism (the change in the shape and compressibility of particle assemblies); the distortion mechanism characterized by bending, sliding, and rolling of the particles; and the crushing and the breaking of the particles occur when the applied load exceeds the strength of particles [9]. this study conducted to estimate and predict the flexible pavement road failure rate with particular references to cracking and other types of failures and deteriorations using available data. data for the study was collected from related government departments (data related to the history of the selected highway and its construction) and an exploratory evaluation survey of the selected highway. the exploratory survey is a method employed in road performance modeling and is chosen in this study in order to scientifically evaluate the road. the adopted methodology is as follows: 1. identification and selecting the proposed study area. 2. review of the performance, behavior, failure and deterioration of flexible pavements exposed and subjected to traffic and local climatic conditions. 3. collection of relevant data from related government departments. 4. analyzing the collected data in order to create clear and scientific evaluation of the selected highway. 5. discuss the suitable and appropriate solutions based on the pavement failures and deteriorations. 6. the case study and study area for the purposes of this study khanaqin-kalar 2-lane 2way rural highway selected. this rural highway is connecting khanaqin city the center of khanaqin district with kalar city the center of kalar district. the length of this rural highway is 33 km of flexible pavement, and it is one of the very important highways because it is working as a connecting link between diyala governorate with sulaimaniya and kirkuk governorates from the northeast of iraq in addition to that it is leading to iraq-iran border (see figure 1 and 2). in 2005 kurdistan ministry of rehabilitation and housing\ garmian directorate of roads and transportation, established this 2-lane 2-way rural highway by repaving existing two sections (marked with red color in figure 1) by new asphalt layer and connected them by constructing new section (marked with green color in figure 1), and since then this highway is maintained only one time during its life but still suffering from severe types of failure and deterioration. figure 1 khanaqin-kalar 2-lane 2-way rural highway route location (google map) figure 2 khanaqin and kalar locations in the northeast of iraq (google map) 7. results of the evaluation survey and assesment as mentioned above khanaqin-kalar 2-lane 2-way rural highway, established in 2005 by kurdistan ministry of rehabilitation and housing\ garmian directorate of roads and transportation. this highway consists of three sections with the following information (see figure 3):  section 1: from khanaqin city to sauz-balakh village (20 km length). it was existed flexible part re-paved in 2005 with new layer of asphalt.  section 2: from sauz-balakh village to saleh agha villages (8 km length). it completely new construction in 2005.  section 3: from saleh agha village to kalar city (5 km length). it was existed flexible part re-paved in 2005 with new layer of asphalt. figure 3 khanaqin-kalar rural highway three sections (google map) in order to determine and evaluate the existing conditions of the selected rural highway, a several field assessment survey conducted on the three sections of the highway. the results of the evaluation filed assessment survey showed that the pavement of this rural highway is suffering from the following types of failure and deterioration:  rutting (see figure 4)  cracking (alligator cracking, block cracking and edge cracking) (see figures 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 13).  potholes (see figures 9, 10, 12 and 13)  polishing (see figures 9, 11 and 12)  depression (see figures 6, 10 and 11)  raveling (see figures 9 and 10)  patching (see figure 10 and 13) figure 4 rutting in the pavement of khanaqinkalar rural highway figure 5 severe blocking cracking failures in the pavement of khanaqin-kalar rural highway figure 6 severe edge cracking and breaking, alligator cracking and depression failures in the pavement of khanaqin-kalar rural highway figure 7 severe edge cracking and breaking, block cracking, and alligator cracking failures in the pavement of khanaqin-kalar rural highway figure 8 edge and block cracking failures in the pavement of khanaqin-kalar rural highway figure 9 severe edge break and cracking, block cracking, alligator cracking, potholes, polishing, raveling and polishing failures in the pavement of khanaqin-kalar rural highway figure 10 severe potholes, raveling, alligator cracking depression and bad patching failures in the pavement of khanaqin-kalar rural highway figure 11 polishing, depression and alligator cracking failures in the pavement of khanaqin-kalar rural highway figure 12 polishing and pothole failures in the pavement of khanaqin-kalar rural highway figure 13 bad patching, block cracking, alligator cracking, and pothole failures in the pavement of khanaqin-kalar rural highway the results of the evaluation survey and assessment for khanaqin-kalar rural highway total length and its three sections are illustrated in table 2 and figures 14, 15, 16 and 17. table 2: the results of the evaluation survey and assessment for khanaqin-kalar rural highway as a whole and its three sections type of the failure or deterioration percentage of the damage in the highway based on the failure type (%) section 1 (20 km) section 2 (8 km) section 3 (5 km) total length of the highway (33 km) rutting 15 0 100 24.24 alligator cracking 27 5 0 17.57 block cracking 20 2 0 12.6 edge cracking 15 2 2 9.87 potholes 42.5 50 5 38.63 polishing 35 90 40 49 depression 30 1 1 18.57 raveling 20 50 0 24.24 patching 3 2 2 2.6 figure 14 the results of the evaluation survey and assessment for section 1 of khanaqin-kalar rural highway figure 15 the results of the evaluation survey and assessment for section 2 of khanaqin-kalar rural highway figure 16 the results of the evaluation survey and assessment for section 3 of khanaqin-kalar rural highway figure 17 the results of the evaluation survey and assessment for the total length of khanaqin-kalar rural highway 8. discussion the results of the evaluation survey and assessment showed that khanaqin-kalar rural highway suffer from several types of pavement failures or deteriorations. each section of the three sections of the rural highway is evaluated separately, as sections 1 and 3 were existed parts and re-paved and section 2 was completely new construction in establishing khanaqin-kalar rural highway in 2005. the results of evaluation survey and assessment for the three sections of khanaqin-kalar rural high clearly indicated that there are number of severe failures and deteriorations in the pavement of these sections as in the following: i. section 1: a significant percentage of the length and area of this section of the rural highway suffer from most of the types of pavement failure and deterioration (see table 2 and figure 14). the types of the failures with its percentages in section 1 and the expected causes of the failures are listed in below:  rutting (15% of section 1): the expected cause of this failure is in 2014 the highway used as alternative way by big number of traffic with heavy axel load resulted from big trucks, big trailers and military trucks and machines due to closing kirkuk-baghdad highway because of military operations (war against isis terrorist groups). the thicknesses of pavement layers of this section were not designed to carry such big number of traffic and heavy axel loads, therefore rutting failure occurred.  alligator cracking (27% of section 1): the expected causes are fatigue failure and unadequate pavement layers thickness to carry un expected traffic loads (in 2014 the highway used by big number of traffic with heavy axel load resulted from big trucks, big trailers and military trucks and machines due to closing kirkuk-baghdad highway because of the military operations of the war against isis terrorist groups). 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 r u tt in g a ll ig a to r c ra ck in g b lo ck c ra ck in g e d g e c ra ck in g p o th o le s p o li sh in g d e p re ss io n r a v e li n g p a tc h in g 15% 27% 20% 15% 42.5% 35% 30% 20% 3% f a il u re o r d e te ri o ra ti o n (% ) failure or deterioration 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 r u tt in g a ll ig a to r c ra ck in g b lo ck c ra ck in g e d g e c ra ck in g p o th o le s p o li sh in g d e p re ss io n r a v e li n g p a tc h in g 0% 5% 2% 2% 50% 90% 1% 50% 2% f a il u re o r d e te ri o ra ti o n ( % ) failure or deterioration 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 r u tt in g a ll ig a to r c ra ck in g b lo ck c ra ck in g e d g e c ra ck in g p o th o le s p o li sh in g d e p re ss io n r a v e li n g p a tc h in g 100% 0% 0% 2% 5% 40% 1% 0% 2% f a il u re o r d e te ri o ra ti o n (% ) failure or deterioration 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 r u tt in g a ll ig a to r c ra ck in g b lo ck c ra ck in g e d g e c ra ck in g p o th o le s p o li sh in g d e p re ss io n r a v e li n g p a tc h in g 24.24% 17.57% 12.6% 9.87% 38.63% 49% 18.57% 24.24% 2.6% f a il u re o r d e te ri o ra ti o n (% ) failure or deterioration  block cracking (20% of section 1) : the expected causes are hot mix asphalt shrinkage and daily temperature changing (cycling). generally caused by un-ability of asphalt binder to expand and contract with temperature changes (cycles) because of asphalt binder (bitumen) aging.  edge cracking (15% of section 1): caused by excess moisture resulted from bad drainage and lack of shoulders support due to weak materials.  potholes (42.5% of section 1): in general, potholes are the final result of alligator cracking. as alligator cracking becomes severe, the interconnected cracks create small blocks of pavement which displaced as vehicles pass over them. the remaining hole after the pavement block is displaced is called a pothole.  polishing (35% of section 1): caused by repeated big traffic volume on an aging flexible pavement. it can cause a dangerous low friction surface with a low skid resistance.  depression (30% of section 1): caused by subgrade settlement resulted by insufficient compaction during construction or soft (poor quality) subgrade.  raveling (20% of section 1): caused by inadequate adhesion between the asphalt (bitumen), filler and the aggregate. this type of failure typically occurs on an older pavement that has already oxidized, and it can be accelerated by the environmental conditions and traffic volume.  patching (3% of section 1): resulted from bad maintenance, where the damaged or failed pavement to cleaned or removed in proper way before laying the new pavement and also the new pavement is not leveled and compacted in proper and standard way. ii. section 2: this section of the rural highway suffer from 8 types of failures (see table 2 and figure 15), but in general most of the failures and deteriorations in this section are less severity than in section 1. the types of the failures with its percentages in section 2 are listed in below:  alligator cracking (5% of section 2)  block cracking (2% of section 2)  edge cracking (2% of section 2)  potholes (50% of section 2)  polishing (90% of section 2)  depression (1% of section 2)  raveling (50% of section 2)  patching (2% of section 2) the causes of the failures and deteriorations in section 2 are the same as for section 1 of the rural highway. iii. section 3: this section of the rural highway suffers from 6 types of failures (see table 2 and figure 16). the percentages of 4 types of failures and deteriorations in this section are small (edge cracking, potholes, depression and patching). the types of the failures with its percentages in section 3 and the expected causes of the failures are listed in below:  rutting (100% of section 3): the expected causes of this failure are: this section is carrying additional traffic which is going to and coming from parwiz-khan border point with iran. all the additional traffic is heavy axel load vehicles (big trailers and truck). in 2014 the highway used as alternative way by big number of traffic with heavy axel load resulted from big trucks, big trailers and military trucks and machines due to closing kirkuk-baghdad highway because of military operations (war against isis terrorist groups). the thicknesses of pavement layers of this section were not designed to carry such big number of traffic and heavy axel loads, therefore rutting failure occurred.  edge cracking (2% of section 3)  potholes (5% of section 3)  polishing (40% of section 3)  depression (1% of section 3)  patching (2% of section 3) except the rutting failure, the causes of the failures and deteriorations in section 3 (edge cracking, potholes, polishing, depression and patching) are the same as for section 1 of the rural highway. the result of the evaluation survey and assessment of the full length of khanaqin-kalar rural highway show that this rural highway suffers from serious problems. the pavement of this rural highway suffers from 9 types of failures and deteriorations (see table 2 and figure 17). 9. conclusion 1most the types of the failures and deterioration were found along the khanaqin-kalar rural highway. 2the severity of the failures and deteriorations ranges from medium to high in the pavement of the rural highway. 3the major causes of the failures and deteriorations in the selected rural highway are:  additional traffic volume with high axel loads which were not taken in consideration during designing the pavement layers thicknesses of the selected rural highway.  poor or absent of drainage design.  unsuitable pavement layers thickness design.  improper pavement mix design and selected materials. 4the suggested maintenance or treatments are:  the highway shoulder improvement.  removing the heavily damaged or structurally destroyed pavement and patching its places.  overlying with new layer of asphalt pavement with adequate thickness. 10. reference [1] m. t. highway, t. engineering, c. engineering, and j. national, “bituminous pavement failures surajo abubakar wada,” vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 94– 100, 2016. [2] t. v mathew and k. v. k. rao, “introduction to pavement design,” pp. 1–7, 2007. [3] n. g. sorum, t. guite, and n. martina, “pavement distress : a case study,” vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 274–284, 2014. [4] s. s. adlinge and p. a. k. gupta, “pavement deterioration and its causes,” pp. 9–15. [5] m. m. e. zumrawi, “failures survey and evaluation of flexible pavement failures,” no. january, 2015. [6] c. engineering, “study on failures and maintenance of flexible pavement ( pyayaunglan – koepin portion ),” vol. 3, no. 14, pp. 2984–2990, 2014. [7] w. r. woods and j. w. a. jr, “a general characterization of pavement system failures , with emphasis on a method for selecting a repair process,” vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 58–62, 2002. [8] p. kumar and a. gupta, “case studies on failure of bituminous pavements,” 2010. [9] g. tchemou, “prediction of flexible pavement degradation : application to rutting in cameroonian highways,” pp. 1301–1319, 2011. biography shamil ahmed flamarz al-arkawazi received the b.sc. degree in building and construction engineering in 1999 and m.sc. degree in highway and airport engineering in 2003 from building and construction engineering departmentuniversity of technologybaghdad. he is assistant lecturer and his present occupation is head of building and construction engineering departmentuniversity of garmian. author’s google scholar page: https://scholar.google.com/schhp?hl=en&lr=lang_en&as _sdt=0,5 https://scholar.google.com/schhp?hl=en&lr=lang_en&as_sdt=0,5 https://scholar.google.com/schhp?hl=en&lr=lang_en&as_sdt=0,5  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.29 investigating and boosting walkability in sulaimani’s mixed-use streets: jamal irfan street as a case study mariwan jamal city planning engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, kurdistan region of iraq mariwanjk.tce27cityplanning@spu.edu.iq wanawsha khasraw city planning engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, kurdistan region of iraq wanawshakh.tce52cityplanning@spu.edu.iq shaey khabat city planning engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, kurdistan region of iraq shaeekq.tce42cityplanning@spu.edu.iq rozhen k. mohammed-amin city planning engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, kurdistan region of iraq rozhen.mohammed@spu.edu.iq abstract: walkable cities, neighborhoods, and streets promote good health. a growing number of research show compelling evidence about the positive impacts of walkable neighborhoods and streets on everything from real-estate values to health, mental well-being, crime rate, safety feeling, creativity, and even making cities more democratic. walkability has health, environmental, and economic benefits. for example, several studies found that people in walkable neighborhoods have a higher amount of physical activity and were substantially less likely to be overweight or obese than those living in low-walkable neighborhoods. walkable neighborhoods and streets incorporate features that promote regular walking, cycling and public transit use. while the city of sulaimani in general suffers from lack of walkable neighborhoods and streets, due to many factors including incomplete streets, some of the city’s neighborhoods and streets have potential for becoming effective walkable neighborhoods and streets. the recent mixed use developments and re-developments in some of the areas and streets in the city have attracted a large number of people and increased the necessity of making those areas and streets more pedestrianfriendly and walkable. this research aims at investigating walkability characters in sulaimani city’s recently developed mixed-use streets through closely examining a representing case study, jamal irfan street. the research then proposes strategies, guidelines, and urban design interventions that make those streets more pedestrian friendly according to urban design standards. keywords: walkability, pedestrian friendliness, physical activity, safety, neighborhood and public space quality, urban design and planning. 1. background walking is the first and simplest type of moving for most people that is performed for both transportation and leisure purposes. although it does not need special equipment or facilities, it does require a supportive environment [1]. walkability reflects “overall walking conditions in an area” [2]. walkability is “a multifaceted measure of how friendly an area is to walking”; it extends beyond “ability to walk” that requires good enough street crossings and sidewalk designs to take into consideration diversified physical, social, and psychological factors that affect people’s walking behaviors such as the quality of the built environment, pedestrian facilities, buildings’ spatial configuration and functions, enjoyment, and safety perception [3]. different urban levels impose their requirements on walkability. for example, at a neighborhood or street level, walkability is affected by the availability and quality of sidewalks and crosswalks, roadway conditions (such as road width and traffic speeds and volumes), while on the community level it is also affected by “land use accessibility, such as the relative location of common destinations and the quality of connections between them” [3]. for many centuries, walkability was at the center of urban designers and city planners’ attention who have been advocating for the creation of urban forms and activities that supports walking [1]. yet, modern cities with their automobile oriented designs and planning policies have negatively affected the quantity and quality of people’s walking, and therefore, daily physical activity. in modern cities, we can see neighborhoods without sidewalks, public spaces made redundant by parked vehicles, and urban highways that separate neighborhoods to serve sprawling suburbs [3]. in addition to health and well-being concerns, lack of walking-friendly neighborhoods and streets that offer car-centric lifestyles have significant negative environmental, economic, and social impacts on cities and urban areas. although urban design and planning pioneers like lewis mumford, jane jacobs, william h. whyte, and jan gehl started to question the effect of automobile dependency on the quality of urban forms and decline in humanfocused approach to urban planning and developments, realization about the positive role of walkability in urban environments is a recent phenomenon [3]. like many around the world, the city of sulaimani has become heavily dependent on cars and less walkable over time. the city is experiencing massive traffic congestion and road accidents in addition to the subsequent economic and environmental impacts from its car dominance planning policies. private cars dominate movements and spaces even in public spaces such as parks and mixed-used streets with good opportunities to walk. lack of walking supportive planning and traffic policies and guidelines are aggravating the condition and limiting safe and convenient walking opportunities for pedestrians. fatal file:///c:/users/rozhen/appdata/local/temp/mariwanjk.tce27cityplanning@spu.edu.iq file:///c:/users/rozhen/appdata/local/temp/wanawshakh.tce52cityplanning@spu.edu.iq file:///c:/users/rozhen/appdata/local/temp/shaeekq.tce42cityplanning@spu.edu.iq mailto:rozhen.mohammed@spu.edu.iq car accidents and premature deaths are on the rise within and outside the neighborhoods. with the continuous transformation of some of the neighborhood streets into mixed-use streets with various shops, cafés, and restaurants, which have brought night-life, pedestrians, and cars simultaneously, the urgency of making these streets safely walkable for pedestrians is becoming high. our study investigates a highly popular street with its recent transformation into a dense mixed-used street, jamal irfan in bakhtyary neighborhood. by analyzing the street’s physical components, spatial configuration, and usability, we aim at investigating its walkability characters and, accordingly, propose strategies and urban design solutions and guidelines to improve walkability in the street, which can lead to an increase in the residents and visitors’ physical activities and well-being. we believe that re-developing jamal irfan into a successful walkable street can serve as a good model for other streets to follow in the city and the region. 2. why walkability is important? walkability is an important asset for any environment (natural or built); it improves urban experience and along this it offers many benefits, including social, health, economic, environmental, and even political. 2.1 social benefits walkability has a number of direct and indirect social benefits. it enables experiencing urban environments at the human scale [3]. it also increases the movement and stay of people in public realms and, therefore, intensifies public space uses [3]. this lead to an increase in social interaction and activities among people [4], which is an essential feature in the built environment. walkability enhances community livability and sense of place [5]. it has become an indicator of community’s livability since it can play a key role in attracting workers, businesses, and tourism [6]. walkable communities have higher sense of community, which is fundamental to develop social network and support to the community members. findings from a study suggest that residents of walkable neighborhoods have over 80% higher levels of social capital than the residents of the car dependent neighborhoods [4]. research shows that walkable streets and communities attract higher number of people to live and visit, and improve safety perception [6] [7]. low perception of safety in a community can discourage people from walking. some cities and communities use walkability as a strategy to reduce crimes [8] [9]. furthermore, walkability promotes integration among community members from different genders, age groups, physical abilities, and background. it increases accessibility of public spaces and communities for people with different mobility levels and background [3]. in doing so, increases diversity and attractiveness of a street or community. walkability is also recognized as a driver for creativity. walkable streets and spaces support the development of art and culture and appeal to performers and artists who can enliven the streets and spaces for further attracting and engaging people [3]. 2.2 health benefits walkability has great physical and mental health benefits. walking promotes active living and physical activity, which can increase health risks resilience and reduce blood pressure, improve blood cholesterol levels, and lower body mass index [10]. active living is associated with longevity. older people, aging over 60, who exercise (such as walking) just 15 minutes a day reduce risk of early death by 22% [10]. physical inactivity, such as from car dependency combined with little exercises and walking, is considered a main cause of most chronic diseases. doctors started to prescribe 30 minutes of physical activity every day to enhance physical health and longevity [11]. walkable environments increase people’s motivation to walk for daily activities and enjoyment and, therefore, help them achieve their daily recommended amount of physical activity. investing in walkability not only helps improving people’s life style, but also saves costs spent on health care. the mental health and well-being benefits of walking is no less than those of physical health. a study concluded that people who walk over 8.6 minutes a day are more likely to report a better mental health [4]. walking improves cognitive performance [12]. it also positively affects people’s mood and mental health from decreasing the risk of stress, anxiety, and depression [3]. walking increases producing endorphins that counteract stress and lower cortisol levels, which can lead to improving sleep, reducing symptoms of mild depression, and increasing of self-confidence [3]. walking is linked to happiness and higher life satisfaction. a university of zurich study found that “a person with a one-hour commute to work has to earn 40% more money to be as satisfied as someone who walks” [13] [14]. 2.3 economic benefits the economic benefits of walking have been described as “the walking economy”. major cities like melbourne in australia observes a direct association between the “city’s economic prosperity and the safety and convenience of the pedestrian experience” [15]. in addition to improving health, walkable environments also increase wealth; it raises spending at local retails, enhances value of local goods and services, and creates job opportunities [3]. a recent study suggests that improving walkability can increase shopping and trading by up to 40% [3]. by comparing retail activity, using sales tax receipts, before and after redesigns of an underused parking area in a pedestrian plaza in brooklyn, the transportation department of the new york city found a significant increase of 172% in retail sales [3]. in addition to supporting local businesses, an increase in walking enhances long-term cognitive function, productivity, decision making, and creative thinking [16]. these can have positive economic consequents. between 2010 2015 many american companies have either relocated, opened new offices, or expanded in walkable downtowns as they realized that these walkable areas support creativity among their employees [17]. walkability makes neighborhoods and cities attractive not only for businesses but also people (including tourists). many tourists find walking the best way to experience a city because it improves the “image ability” of a place, which makes the city more memorable and recognizable [3]. walking has become an effective tool for promoting cities and attracting tourists. walkable environments have less vacancies and, therefore, more thriving public spaces. 2.4 environmental benefits walking is an inclusive sustainable mode of transport at no cost [18]. sustainable development encourages less car and more walking. walkable and pedestrian-oriented environments have more compact infrastructures than car-oriented environments. fewer materials and smaller constructions are used in pedestrian-friendly environments and cities. in this regard, walkable environments have lower environmental footprint. walkability can help mitigating the negative environmental impact from car dependency and caroriented developments such as greenhouse gas emission and air pollutions [3]. walkability can significantly reduce energy consumption. in his “the walkable city” ted talk jeff speck (2013) argues that changing all light bulbs to “energy-savers saves as much energy in a year as moving to a walkable city does in a week” [19]. christensen (2014) verified speck’s claim by calculating and comparing saving from average household lighting consumption (when energy-saving lightbulbs are used) to average household gasoline consumption (when private car use is reduced by 95%) [20]. 3. criteria and principles for walkable environments urban design pioneers like jan gehl believe that it takes more than just a good paving to create a good walkable environment [21]. it is the combination of physical environment with people and their senses and perceptions that make a street or space pedestrian friendly. criteria and principles for producing walkable environments, therefore, include both physical standards as well as criteria and principles that consider human senses [21]. ghel (2006) summarized these principles and criteria in three categories: protection, comfort, and enjoyment [22]. each of these main principles include a set of principles and criteria (see figure 1). figure 1. jan ghel’s criteria categorization to achieve walkability [21]. 3.1 protection a street or environment cannot become walkable if they do not have the primary human need, safety and protection. a street must provide conditions that protect pedestrians from traffics, accidents, crimes, unpleasant climate conditions such as wind and pollution, and any other condition that compromise their safety feeling. research suggest that safety considerations play an important role in people’s decisions about the type of transportation they use [23]. people are less likely to walk if they do not feel safe and protected [24]. protection focuses on minimizing safety and protection related risks. streets must, therefore, have basic pedestrian infrastructure such as sidewalks, safe street crossings, and other elements that provide protection and safety to the pedestrians. there is a significantly higher likelihood for pedestrian crashes in streets without sidewalks (more than twice) than those with sidewalks on both sides [25]. furthermore, 45% of pedestrian fatalities happen where no crosswalk is available [26]. availability of sidewalks not only increase walking, but also improve health as people get their recommended daily amount of physical activity and are in less risk for obesity [27]. walking become less welcoming and feel less safe (or even more dangerous) in public spaces that are dimly lit, secluded, and poorly maintained and have narrow sidewalks and unmarked streets [28]. people tend to feel safer when they walk in well illuminated environments visible from homes [29]. urban designers use buffers between pedestrian and vehicle traffic in pedestrianfriendly streets such as bicycle lanes, car parking areas, trees and other landscaping elements [23]. traffic calming and speed reducing through measures such as speed limit signs and speed humps are two other strategies for increasing safety and reducing rates of accidents, injuries, and even death [23]. faster moving vehicles cause a higher number and more fatal crashes with pedestrians (see figure 2). figure 2. a pedestrian’s chance to die from being hit by a car with different speed [30]. 3.2 comfort a pedestrian supporting street should be comfort and convenience. comfort refers to “the quality of walking and staying in a place”; it involves “walking, standing and sitting as well as the possibility for seeing, hearing and talking” and even playing, and unwinding [21]. in contrast to car riders, pedestrians’ physical and mental comforts highly rely on the environment and facilities around them. on a hot day, pedestrians supporting streets need to be shaded and offer places for sitting and resting. misleading signs and illegible environments frustrate pedestrians [23]. direct access to building entrances, short blocks, frequent street crossings, easy access to public transportation, convenient seating and benches, water fountains, shade trees all make a street or public space more comfort for walking [23]. a comfort walking environment facilitates basic human activities under good conditions and offers “opportunities to participate in a variety of activities and experience the surroundings” [21]. 3.3 enjoyment enjoyment covers the human scale, “enjoying the positive aspects of the climate and the sensory experience of the place, including design and the quality of materials used” [21]. making streets and public spaces enjoyable helps with not only making those places attractive for walking, but also for staying. in this regard, they make those places destinations and not just throughtraffic [22]. to create enjoyable walkable spaces, it is essential to utilize quality, attractions, and special opportunities around the spaces [21]. walkable environments should offer a variety of activities and destinations for pedestrians, and have “good quality space nearby for them to stop, relax and enjoy the life around them” [22]. encouraging mixed use developments along improving public transportation is one of the strategies used by urban designers for making a street or public space enjoyable for pedestrians. emphasizing human scale with fine details and good finishing and street furniture also make a space enjoyable for walking and remaining [21]. furthermore, environments that offer good experiences, nice views, and interesting sensory impressions make walking more enjoyable. 4. research methodology to achieve the research objectives, we took jamal irfan street as a case study for a major mixed-use street in sulaimani. by analyzing the street’s physical components, spatial configuration, and usability we aim at determining the street’s walkability characters and degree of pedestrian friendliness. for the analysis, we collected different data types and through different sources and methods such as satellite maps, interviews with experts, decision makers, and stakeholders, official field surveys and observations, and pedestrian questionnaire. by synthesizing the knowledge from the literature with the specific context of jamal irfan street, we then propose urban design and planning solutions and guidelines to improve walkability in the street. given the similarity in the context, this street can serve as an example to similar streets in the city of sulaimani and the region. therefore, some of the findings from the investigations and the recommendations for redeveloping the street to a pedestrian friendly mixed-used street can, to some extent, be generalized and transferred to other streets in the city and similar context in the region. 5. case study: jamal irfan street like many other streets in the city of sulaimani, jamal irfan street has recently evolved from a residential dominant street into a mixed-use street. the location and potentials of street, supported by the economic growth of the city until 2013, has accelerated its rapid transformation into a vibrant and popular mixed-use street. the street is located in bakhtairy neighborhood which is, for most, a middle class neighborhood. the street is now a hub for shopping, eating, and enjoyment, especially in evening and night times. it attracts both pedestrian and drivers from different age groups and backgrounds. the locals call jamal irfan an “show off street” due to its frequent use for cruising, driving as social and recreational activities, by young drivers, often with expensive cars (especially after sunset). this use often leads to traffic congestion in evening and nighttimes. figure 3. a view from jamal irfan street at sunset (photo credit: danyar bakr). despite its popularity, the street is far from being considered a walking friendly street by urban design criteria. the increasing number of commercial, social, and recreational activities on the street with the growing number of pedestrians, including families with children are increasing risks of pedestrian and car crash injuries and death. fatal accidents and crashes have occurred in this and other similar streets such as piramagrun (previously called shekh farid) street. as a result, the necessity of re-designing the street has become a necessity. 5.1 site analysis the strategic location of jamal irfan street connects it to three main streets of the city (media, salm, and malik mahmood streets). the street, therefore, has a good connection and direct access to the rest of the city (see figure 4 and 5). the street includes and is surrounded by a number of city-scale landmarks, including a mosque, popular mall, art and youth centers, and a 5-star hotel (see figure 6). figure 4. the location of jamal irfan street according to the city. figure 5. sun and wind directions in relation to jamal irfan street. this street is about 1.47 km long and a width of 30 m (according to the municipality master plan). however, the existing width on the ground differ due to violating municipality’s setback regulations and bylaws by some of the buildings on the street. as a result, the street width currently ranges between 18, 25, and 20 m. new bylaws for any re-development or new construction on the street enforce a setback of 5 m from the street through restricting building permissions. the land use of the bakhtairy neighborhood illustrates the evolution of the street from a residential to a mixed-used street (see figure 6). the new functions include a wide range of activities such as clothing and shoe shopping, café and restaurants, convenient stores, grocery and butchery shops, pharmacy, and printing and stationary shops. currently, only 28% of the buildings located on jamal irfan street are residential houses. the building heights on the street ranges between one to four floors. figure 5. land uses around jamal irfan street and in bakhtairy neighborhood. the street has a total of 21 t and two 2-lane street intersections, creating short blocks and crossing distances (see figure 6). there are eight u-turns on the street that negatively affects traffic on the street. figure 6. intersections on jamal irfan street. 5.2 physical challenges the street has a number of physical challenges that compromise protection, comfort, and enjoyment principles of pedestrian friendly streets. the followings are some of the main challenges. 5.2.1 uneven and inconsistent sidewalks the sidewalks of the street are uneven in terms of height (ranging from zero to 50 cm) and alignment with the street and inconsistent in relation to width (ranging from 1.5 to 8 m) and materials (see figure 7 and 8). in addition to negative effects on safety and comfort of walking, lack of continuity in the sidewalks are negatively affecting the pedestrian’s enjoyment experience. some of the businesses has monopolized the sidewalks as sitting areas due to weak bylaw enforcement. as a result, some pedestrians are forced to walk on the street in those areas. figure 7. an uneven sidewalk heights (top) and a large variation in sidewalk width (bottom). figure 8. a large variation in sidewalk materials and height. 5.2.2 low quality edges, corners, finishing, and maintenance the streets edges (including building facades), corners, and finishing are mostly in low quality. in addition to decreasing the visual quality of the street, these negatively affect the pedestrians’ perception and enjoyment of the street. the irregular buildings setbacks decrease the street’s continuity and enclosure, two good urban design principle. some of the corners are not welldefined and poorly developed, which make the corners illegible for pedestrians. the buildings and surface finishing are in low quality and are poorly maintained. an increasing body of literature associate poor maintenance with higher risk perception. good maintenance is essential in maintaining low risk perception about an area or street [31]. figure 9. irregular street edge and poor quality surface finishing and maintenance. figure 10. illegible corners. 5.2.3 poor elements design and configuration many of the buildings elements (such entrance and as stairs), sidewalks, and ramps on the street are poorly designed and configured. in addition to visual experience of the street from, sometimes these compromise the safety and comfort of when using the street and its facilities. lack of strict urban design guidelines and regulations as well as loose municipality bylaws enforcement are contributing to poor design and configuration of the street elements. there are no walking facilities for people with disabilities. figu re 11. poor building entrance design and building and landscape elements configurations. figure 12. poor sidewalk slope design and power poles configuration. 5.2.4 insufficient street and landscape furniture there is an inadequate number of street furniture such as lighting poles, benches, garbage bins, and traffic and directional signs. many sections of the street are dimly lit at night (see figure 13). there are no public resting places for pedestrians on the sidewalks, except for the private sitting areas of some of the cafe shops and restaurants. lack and location of the few garbage bin result in littering. lack of adequate traffic signs and marking, including speed sign, sometime lead to traffic congestion and an unsafe mix of vehicle and pedestrian movements, especially at the intersections and crossing areas. cars park on the street without any parking regulations. all these affect the pedestrian’s real and perceived safety while walking and staying. it is worth noting that, despite its popularity, the street lacks reliable public transportation, which is essential for an inclusive accessibility to the street and reducing the use of private cars. there is a vast variation among the business’ advertising board size and location, which compromise the look and feel of the street. there is limited number of greenery and landscape furniture and those that exist are in poor condition or are poorly distributed. there is a total of 11 randomly distributed trees on the street that can offer shade to the pedestrians during the city’s hot summer season. some newly developed sidewalks include dedicated spots for greenery and trees, however, nothing has been planted. figure 13. poor lighting condition of some parts of the street. figure 14. lack of adequate traffic and directional signs on the street. figure 15. cars parking randomly on the street and even sidewalks from lack of parking regulations and enforcement. figure 16. unorganized street and landscape furniture on the street. 5.3 usability challenges the street pedestrian ranges from different age groups, gender, and background. we observed a high number of children presence, possibly to due to the family-oriented nature of some of the activities and shopping on the street. we also noticed that the street serve as a gathering point for some informal workers. we observed that the physical challenges had negatively affected the usability of the street and some pedestrians’ safety and enjoyment perception. in a survey with 30 adult pedestrians and local people, we found that a high majority of 63% (19 participants) feel unsafe or very unsafe (see figure 17). despite these perceptions, interestingly, the majority of the respondents (57%) reported that they find walking in the street interesting or very interesting (see figure 18). while lack of safety awareness and low safety and comfort threshold play a role, these responses show that the street has great potentials and opportunities to become an inclusive, safe, comfort, and enjoyable street for walking. figure 17. participants response distribution to feeling safe when walking in jamal irfan street. 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 1 (very unsafe) 2 (unsafe) 3 (neutral) 4 (safe) 5 (very safe) n o . o f su rv e y r e sp o n d e n ts figure 18. participants response distribution to finding walking in jamal irfan street interesting. 5.4 recommendations for boosting walkability in jamal irfan street despite of the physical and usability challenges, jamal irfan has some characters of walking friendly streets such as a great diversity in terms of uses and activities, attraction of different people, good economic opportunities (the shops have high rents in comparison to others in the city due to the street popularity), and night-life. the street has become a destination in itself and not just a drive through route. accordingly, redeveloping jamal irfan as a pedestrian friendly street that has all the walkability criteria of protection, comfort, and enjoyment will attract more pedestrians and opportunities. the followings are some main recommendations for improving walkability in jamal irfan street. 5.4.1 regulating buildings setback and activating buildings frontage to achieve reinforce and define the street, it is essential to regulate the buildings setback in a way that the buildings follow a common line. this will help also with achieving continuity and enclosure, two key urban design principles. projections and setbacks from the common building line in the street, such as bays and entrances for the businesses also add valuable emphasis “without undermining the principle of continuity” [32]. activating the buildings frontage, especially in the ground floor level, is also important to enliven the street and intensify interaction between the pedestrians and the street elements. 5.4.2 regulating buildings heights, colors, and materials it is also necessary to regulate the buildings heights to reduce the, relatively, high variations between buildings with only one and four floors to achieve a good quality continuity and continuous edge for the street. this will also help with regulating the street’s skyline and street view. we recommend to have buildings with the same or close number of floors (three to four floors), in which the first floors are used for mixed-use activities. to create and emphasize the street identity and offer a good visual experience, we suggest regulating the building colors and materials. contrast or harmony can be used a strategy for regulating materials and colors of the buildings as long as they create a pleasant visual experience for the pedestrians. figur e 19. an examp le of a vibrant street with activated buildings ground floor and strong continuity from regulated buildings setback and skyline. 5.4.3 adapting complete streets principles and elements to increase walkability in the street, we recommend adapting complete streets principles and elements. a complete street is one that is “designed and operated to enable safe access to all users, including pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists and transit riders of all ages and abilities” [33]. it makes street crossing, walking to shop, and bicycle to work safe and easy by providing adequate facilities and by reducing travel speeds in a way that all users and modes can use the street safely [34]. they support reliable public transportation. in a review of safety research by the federal highway administration (fhwa) it was concluded that a variety of facilities and infrastructure commonly found in complete streets design (such as marked crosswalks, raised medians, pedestrian refuge islands, traffic control devices, careful bus stop placement, safe routes to school, traffic-calming measures, and continuous sidewalks and walkways) can serve as efficient countermeasures to pedestrian crashes [34]. a complete street may include: “sidewalks, bike lanes (or wide paved shoulders), special bus lanes, comfortable and accessible public transportation stops, frequent and safe crossing opportunities, median islands, accessible pedestrian signals, curb extensions, narrower travel lanes, roundabouts, and more” [33]. currently, jamal irfan is far from being a complete street. to make it a complete street, many policies and designs have to be adopted for different elements of the street. 5.4.3.1 sidewalks in complete streets, sidewalks, which are central for pedestrians’ movement, need to be re-designed according to international standards and anticipated pedestrian volumes. in general, the sidewalks need to include four main zones: frontage zone, pedestrian through zone, street furniture/curb zone, and enhancement/buffer zone. the frontage zone includes “the structure and façade of the buildings fronting the street and the space immediately adjacent to the buildings” [35]. the section works as an extension of the building since it can function as through entryways and doors and sidewalk cafes. the pedestrian through zone is the main, accessible pathway “that runs parallel to the street” [35]. this zone needs to provide pedestrian with safe and sufficient place to walk. in residential areas, its width should range from 1.5 to 3m while in city center and commercial areas it must be wider ranging between 2 to 4 [35]. the street furniture zone is the section of the sidewalk between the pedestrian through zone and the curb zone, where the street furniture and amenities such as utility poles, lighting, tree pits, and benches are placed [35]. the enhancement/buffer zone refers to the space immediately adjacent to the sidewalk; it consist of a range of different elements such as curb extensions, parklets, parking, curbside bike lanes, or cycle tracks [35]. figure 20. an illustration example of a sidewalk with the four zones. the height and materials of the sidewalks should be designed and executed in a way that enable walking by people with different mobility levels, including disabled. this will make the street more welcoming and inclusive for pedestrians. 5.4.3.2 bike lanes in addition to increasing access to the street with different modes of transportation and offering more choice, adding bike lanes to the street will serve as a safety (real and perceived) buffer between the pedestrians’ movement on the sidewalks and the vehicles on the street. 5.4.3.3 regulating traffics this can be done through providing adequate traffic and directional signs (including speed signs), marking crosswalks, and providing adequate car parking spaces (including street parking through curb extension in some areas), special bus lanes, comfortable and accessible public transportation stops, frequent and safe crossing opportunities, median islands, and accessible pedestrian signals. 5.4.3.4 providing reliable public transportation in addition to diversifying modes and choices of transportation, providing reliable public transportation in jamal irfan can increase access to the street. additionally, it can reduce the use of private cars to access the street and, therefore, mitigate negative environmental impacts from car dependency. 5.4.3.5 increasing street furniture, greenery, and landscaping this includes providing adequate street lighting, benches, garbage bins, and good looking landscaping furniture and greenery. we recommend replacing overhead power providing system through utility poles (see figure 16) with underground power providing system to remove the wires cluttering, which are negatively affecting the pedestrian’s visual experience and, sometime, safety. we also recommend planning tress with large enough canopy size. in addition to adding to the visual quality of the street and walking experience, the canopies provide much needed shade in the long hot summer season of the city for the protection and comfort of the pedestrians. 5.4.3.6 promoting diversity diversity is a key component for a walkable street. this can be done at different levels and scales. diversifying types of shopping and activities for different customers and users will attract people from different age, gender, and background. accommodating disabled people’s needs and facilities is another strategy to diversify the users of the street. 5.4.4 increasing social events given the street’s proximity to some popular landmarks, we recommend arranging and increasing the number of social events and activities (including family-oriented) in the youth center and park at the entrance to the street from malik mahmood street. in addition to enlivening the street life, such activities can further attract pedestrians to the street and increase social interaction and economic opportunities in the street. 6. conclusions walkability is an important asset for any street or space. it has numerous benefits and positive impacts. people in walkable environments live happier, healthier, and even wealthier. walkable streets and environments do not happen accidentally; they require planning and considerations to principles like protection, comfort, and enjoyment. despite the obvious benefits, cities like sulaimani barely pedestrian friendly streets that are safe, comfort, and enjoyable simultaneously. the growing increase in number of mixed-use streets throughout the city are making walkability a priority for the city. in addition to increasing social interaction and 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[accessed: 29aug2017]. biography mariwan jamal, wanawsha khasraw, and shaey khabat are graduating students from the city planning engineering department, technical college of engineering, sulaimani polytechnic university. dr. rozhen kamal mohammed-amin is an academic, architect, urban designer and planner, and a writer. she is a lecturer at the city planning engineering department and a research center coordinator at the sulaimani polytechnic university. she has an interdisciplinary background and experience. she earned her bsc. in architectural engineering from university of sulaimani and master's and phd degrees from the university of calgary in canada. she brings professional, academic, and international experiences to her practices, teachings, and scholarly works. as an architect, she has designed, co-designed, and supervised numerous architectural projects, including residential, commercial, office, and recreational buildings. as an urban designer and planner and designer, she has been involved in developing and supervising the development of several master plans in both then state organization of tourism (sot) and the directorate of urban planning and design at the ministry of municipality and tourism (momt). she is actively involved in researching and scholarly activities both nationally and internationally. dr. mohammed-amin publishes her research at national and international conferences and gets invited to speak and lecture in north america, uk, europe, asia, gulf counties, and iraq.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.24 received: 13 may 2018| accepted: 22 june 2018 role of interleukin-28b in clearance of hcv in acute and chronic hepatitis patients in kirkuk city muhannad abdullah alazzawy laboratory kirkuk health directorate kirkuk, iraq pphdalazzawy@yahoo.com 146 abstract: a cross sectional study was conducted in kirkuk city from june 2017 to march 2018. the number of hepatitis patient understudy were 62 hepatitis c (27 acute and 35 chronic) whose ages were between 20-75 years old. the purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of il28b in the clearance of hcv. these patients admitted to hepatology and gastroenterology centers of kirkuk. the control group who were matched to the patients studied, included 30 individuals who admitted to blood bank for blood donation, for molecular test of hcv real-time quantitative test and serum il-28b elisa. the study exhibited that 81.48 % of acute hcv patient who positive by elisa were positive by pcr and 82.86 % of chronic hcv patients were positive by pcr with highly significant relation between them. regarding the relation of il-28b with hcv infection, the study presented that the highest mean of il-28b was recorded among pcr –ve acute hcv patients (17.78 pg/ml) followed by pcr +ve acute hcv and the lowest means was found in the control group with highly significant differences among the groups. the study indicated that the highest mean of il-28b was recorded among pcr –ve chronic hcv patients (17.78 pg/ml) followed by pcr +ve chronic hcv and the lowest means was found in the control group with highly significant relation. the study showed that the highest mean of alt and ast were found in acute hcv patients (72.06 and 36.73 iu/ml) respectively followed by chronic hcv and the control group with highly significant relation among the groups. keywords: hcv, viral load, il-28b, kirkuk. . 1. literature review viral hepatitis is a general term describing liver infection caused by viruses actively replicating in the liver [1]. like hepatitis caused by other agents, such as alcohol and drug abuse or metabolic disorders, a typical feature of the disease is jaundice [2]. acute infection of the liver is a transient occurrence of inflammatory liver disease. during this phase of up to six months, the disease may be clinically unobvious, or accompanied by clinical features ranging from mild symptoms such as jaundice, nausea and malaise to severe symptoms such as liver failure or death [3]. the disease of hepatitis c is with a significant global impact, it infects more than 170 million people worldwide [3]. infections with hcv are pandemic, world health organization (who) estimates a worldwide prevalence of 3% [1]. chronic hepatitis, in which markers of the disease can be found for a period longer than six months, has the same range of clinical outcomes seen in acute hepatitis [4]. hepatitis c virus causes asymptomatic chronic hepatitis in up to 85% of those infected. although the effects of hcv on the liver are most visible, the virus can affect other organs [3]. extended periods of hcv infection “persistent hcv infection” may lead to cirrhosis and even hepatocellular carcinoma (hcc) [2, 3]. up to date, the treatment of chronic hcv infection included a 6 to 1.5 year, course of interferon-alpha in accompanied with ribavirin [5,6]. this treatment eradicates hcv infection in only 40%–50% of patients infected with genotypes 1 or 4 and 75%– 90% of those infected with genotypes 2 or 3 [1,2]. however, adverse effects due to this treatment regimen frequently lead to poor tolerance. among patients with chronic hepatitis, hcv infection, interferon (ifn)-α can clear the hcv virion based on treatment in some patients. the gene for interleukin-28b (il28b) is found along with il28aand il29 in a cytokine cluster at 19q13.13 and codes for ifnλ3. this gene is associated with the spontaneous clearance of hcv infection and with the response to standard therapy with ifn-α and ribavirin treatment in individuals with chronic hcv infection [5]. few studies try to investigate the factors influence the clearance of the virions from patients with acute and chronic hepatitis for more than 10 years. in the past year, studies based on genetics have recognized numerous single nucleotide polymorphisms (snps) in and near il28b (which encodes ifn) that are related to clearance of hcv. we try to study the role of this interleukin in hcv infection with related clinical effects. 2. methods and materials a cross sectional study was done in kirkuk city in iraq from june 2017 to march 2018. the number of hepatitis patient understudy were 62 hepatitis c (27 acute and 35 147 chronic) whose ages were between 20-75 years old. patients who newly diagnosed and who their infection before six months were considered acute infections and those who exceed six months were considered chronic infection [1]. these patients admitted to hepatology and gastroenterology centers of kirkuk. the control group who were matched to the patients studied, included 30 individuals who were apparently haven’t any diseases who visited blood bank of kirkuk for blood donation. five ml of blood was collected by vein puncture, the obtained plasma was aspirated and transferred to eppendorf tubes and stored in deep freeze at -20°c for late molecular test of hcv (viral load) using sacace™ biotechnology /hcv real-tm quant and serum il-28b elisa (mybiosource, usa). the hcv real-tm quant is a real-time test for the quantitative detection of hepatitis c virus in human plasma. hcv rna is extracted from plasma, amplified using rt-amplification and detected using fluorescent reporter dye probes specific for hcv or hcv ic. the hcv ic is an internal control and represents recombinant rna-containingstructure which carried through all steps of analysis from nucleic acid extraction to pcr amplification-detection. the total reaction volume was 25 μl, the volume of rna sample was 12.5 μl. 1. the reagents were thawed, and the tubes were vortexed and centrifuged briefly. 2. requested quantity of reaction tubes were prepared including 3 extraction controls, negative amplification control and 4 standards. 3. the entire contents of the tube with rt-pcr-mix-2frt was added to the tube with dtt, thoroughly vortexed. 4. tubes for samples, controls and standards were prepared. the results are interpreted by the presence (or absence) of the intercept between the fluorescence curve and the threshold line which determines the presence (or absence) of the ct values for the sample. based on the ct values and on the specified values of the calibrators, qs1 hcv and qs2 hcv, the calibration line will give the values for the number of hcv cdna copies (joe channel) and for the number of internal control cdna copies (fam channel) in a pcr sample. 2.1. statistical analysis: computerized statistically analysis was achieved using ibm spss v23.0.0 statistic program. comparison was carried out using; t-test, chi-square and f. ratio. 3. results table 1 showed that 81.48 % of acute hcv patient who positive by elisa were positive by pcr and 82.86 % of chronic hcv patients were positive by pcr with highly significant relation between them. table 1: comparison between elisa and pcr in testing of hcv patients. anti hcv elisa positive real-time pcr assay total samples positive negative no. % no. % no. % acute hcv (n: 27) 22 81.48 5 18.52 27 100 chronic hcv (n:35) 29 82.86 6 17.14 35 100 p. value = 0.00001 the rate of patients with acute and chronic hepatitis c were found more frequently in the age group 40-49 years (45.45% and 41.83% respectively) and the lowest rates rate of infection were found patients with acute and chronic hepatitis c who belonged to the age group 50-59 and 60-70 years. figure 2. figure 2: distribution of patients with acute and chronic hepatitis c regarding the relation of il-28b with hcv infection, the study indicated that the highest mean of il-28b was recorded among pcr –ve acute hcv patients (17.78 pg/ml) followed by pcr +ve acute hcv and the lowest means was found in the control group with highly significant differences among the groups.. table 2. table 2: mean of serum il-28b in pcr-negative, pcrpositive acute hcv patients and the control group il28b pg/ml pcr –ve acute hcv (n:7) pcr +ve acute hcv (n:22) control p. value mean 17.78 9.82 0.73 0.00001 sd. 3.11 3.90 0.17 the study showed that the highest mean of il-28b was recorded among pcr –ve chronic hcv patients (17.78 pg/ml) followed by pcr +ve chronic hcv and the lowest means was found in the control group with highly significant relation. table 3. table 3: mean of serum il-28b in pcr-negative, pcrpositive chronic hcv patients and the control group il28b pg/ml pcr –ve chronic hcv (n:6) pcr +ve chronic hcv (n:29) control p. value mean 17.06 6.3 0.73 0.00001 sd. 2.70 3.56 0.17 the study showed that the highest mean of alt and ast were found patients with acute hepatitis c (72.06 and 36.73 iu/ml) respectively followed by patients with chronic hepatitis c and the control group with highly significant relation among the groups. the highest mean of alp and tsb were found in chronic patients followed by acute and the control group with highly significant relation among the groups regarding them.. table 4.23. 148 table 4: liver function tests (alt, ast, alp and tsb) in patients with acute and chronic hepatitis c and the control group. level of acute hcv (n: 27) chronic hcv (n: 35) control p. value alt* mean 72.06 32.60 14.64 0.0001 sd 31.62 10.32 4.43 ast** mean 36.73 32.90 10.41 0.0001 sd 25.72 27.30 6.79 alp*** mean 194.58 206.01 58.12 0.0001 sd 49.94 44.92 25.13 tsb**** mean 1.39 3.95 0.6 0.0001 sd 0.74 2.23 0.17 * alt: alanine aminotransferase. ** ast: aspartate aminotransferase. *** alp: alkaline phosphatase. **** tsb: total serum bilirubin. 4. discussion interleukin-28b belongs to type iii ifns, also called ifn-𝜆𝜆s, which was discovered in 2002 by two independent groups [5]. the human il-28/29 cytokine family has three members: il-28a, il-28b, and il-29. structurally, they are distant cousins of type i interferons (α/β). previously they were called interferon lambda [6,7]. proteins are about 22 kda, or about 200 amino acids. the genes encoding il28a, il28b, and il29 are aligned in sequence in a locus on chromosome 19q13. they are induced by viral infections (in intestinal epithelium) [5]. they have antiviral activity similar to all interferons, and additional ones with immunomodulatory effects. for example, they can induce tolerogenic dcs (which can generate suppressive t cells (tregs). however, basically unlike type-1 ifns, the ifn𝜆𝜆s reveal a comparable mechanism as that of ifn-𝛼𝛼’s regarding their signaling and biological actions. though both groups of ifns play a major role in antiviral activities, ifn-𝜆𝜆s have recently produced much interest because of their relation to the natural resolve of hcv infection [4]. thomas et al [6] genotyped the rs12979860 snp in hcv patients, from six cohorts, with well-characterized spontaneous clearance of hcv or viral perseverance and demonstrated that the genotype was strongly related to the clearance hcv. the level of il-28b is a type of t-helper interleukins, a class ii cytokine receptor ligand, a 200 amino acid long protein, a member of type iii ifn-s, that indistinctly structurally relates to the members of il-10 superfamily of cytokines, but parts also partial sequence similarity and efficient features with the type i ifn-s (α, β) [5]. qahtani et al [7] found that there is a association between serum il28b levels and the different snp genotypes, a box-plot investigation was achieved for the diverse snps against average logarithmic values of il28b levels. other studies have reported near results as achieved by the current study. this seems hypothetically rational, as improved levels of il28b together with the combination therapy would enable clearance of the virus [8,9]. on the contrary, abe et al. reported that the expression levels of il28b in liver are lesser in pegifn-treated patients having rs8099917 tt genotype [10]. the present study is in agreement with the results of abe et al, as the serum il28b levels were found to decline with the adding of each t-allele in hcv-infected patients [10]. a possible clarification of increased expression of il28b levels in patients undergoing treatment might be for the unique capability of ifn-𝜆𝜆s to increase its expression when induced by ifn-𝛼𝛼, that is, for patients being treated with peg-ifn 𝛼𝛼/𝛽𝛽-ribavirin would most likely have increased levels of il28b levels as a result of its direct stimulation with ifn-𝛼𝛼 [11,12]. for several years, the standard of care has been a combination of ribavirin and peg-ifn-α, but this is changing with the approval of newer direct acting antivirals (daas). efficacy of therapy has varied and has been influenced by viral genotypes and host-encoded factors. for example, hcv genotype 1 is most resistant to treatment [12], and polymorphisms of the interleukin28 gene influence the response to therapy [13]. the objective of achieving ifn-free treatment regimens, which should be better tolerated than current therapies, is now feasible. further studies are needed to understand how the serum il28b levels differ according to the il28b. this is known to be associated with an elevated production of il-28b (ifnλ-3) [13]. the current study was supported by with ali, et al[14] who exhibited that serum alt levels were found to be raised in high rates of acute hcv paralleling with healthy control. mehta, et al [15] also reported raised levels of transaminases in hcv patients. visnegarwala, et al [16] revealed that the cases with human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) /hcv co infection had a higher alt level as associated to those with hiv alone. moreover lee, et al [17] found that 91.8% of hcv patients had an increased level of alt. furthermore, al-haidary, et al [18] showed that all liver function tests increased in hcv seropositive patients in higher rate than that in control group. martinot-peignoux, et al[19] and puoti, et al [20] noticed that up to one third of patients have a normal serum alt. mnuti, et al [21] in a study of hcv infection in hemodialysis units showed that the levels of ast and alt were higher in the positive hcv marker group. tanaka, et al [22] showed that 20 to 40% of hcv-rna patients had a typical alt levels. hussein [23] showed that alt, ast, total bilirubin and alkaline phosphatase, were increased in hcv infected patients. 5. conclusion il-28b level was increased in hcv patients who were negative tested by pcr and was a highly significant relation of il-28b with the clearance of hcv. reference [1] a. asld/idsa hcv guidance panel, r.t chung, g.l davis, dm jensen, et al, “hepatitis c guidance: aasld‐idsa recommendations for testing, managing, and treating adults infected with hepatitis c virus”, hepatology, 62(3), pp. 932-954, 2015. [2] p. barreiro, p. labarga, j. v. fernandez-montero, "rate and indicators of serum hcv-rna> 6 million iu/ml in patients with ceaseless hepatitis c," diary of clinical virology, 1,71, pp.63-66, 2015. [3] m. hickman, d. d. angelis, p. vickerman, s. hutchinson, n. martin, "hcv treatment as counteractive action in individuals who infuse drugs– testing the confirmation," current sentiment 149 in irresistible infections, 28(6), pp.576, 2015. [4] m. viganò, c.f perno, a. craxì, et al, "treatment of hepatitis c infection contamination in italy: an agreement report from a specialist board," digestive and liver disease, 49(7), pp.73141, 2017. [5] m. cheung, d. mutimer, k. agarwal, a brown, "long haul genuine line up of patients with unending hepatitis c infection and decompensated cirrhosis after direct acting antivirals– what is the clinical advantage of antiviral treatment?,". diary of hepatology, 68, pp.109-110, 2018. [6] d. l. thomas, c. l. thio, m. p. martin, "hereditary variety in il28b and unconstrained freedom of hepatitis c infection", nature, 461, pp.798– 801, 2009. [7] a. al-qahtani, m. al-anazi, a. a abdom f. sana, "connection between's hereditary varieties and serum level of interleukin 28b with infection genotypes and illness movement in incessant hepatitis c infection disease," journal of immunology look into, 2015. [8] y. tanaka, n. nishida, m. sugiyama et al, "expansive relationship of il28b with reaction to pegylated interferonalpha and ribavirin treatment for perpetual hepatitis c," nature genetics, 41,10, pp. 1105– 1109, 2009. [9] v. suppiah, m. moldovan, g. ahlenstiel, "il28b is related with reaction to endless hepatitis c interferon-𝛼𝛼 and ribavirin treatment," nature genetics, vol. 41, no. 10, pp. 1100– 1104, 2009. [10] h. abe, c. n. hayes, h. ochi et al, "il28 variety influences articulation of interferon animated qualities and peg-interferon and ribavirin treatment," journal of hepatology, vol. 54, no. 6, pp. 1094– 1101, 2011. [11] n. ank, h. west, c. bartholdy, k. eriksson, a. r. thomsen, and s. r. paludan, "lambda interferon (ifn-𝜆𝜆), a sort iii ifn, is prompted by infections and ifns and showcases powerful antiviral movement against select infection diseases in vivo," journal of virology, vol. 80, no. 9, pp. 4501– 4509, 2006. [12] j. alarm, j. pirhonen, i. julkunen, and s. matikainen, "ifn-' 𝛼𝛼 manages tlr-subordinate quality articulation of ifn-alpha, ifnbeta, il-28, and il-29," journal of immunology, vol. 174, no. 4, pp. 1932– 1937, 2005. [13] d. ge d, j. fellay, a. j. thompson, j. s. simon, k. v. shianna, "hereditary variety in il28b predicts hepatitis c treatmentincited viral leeway. nature," 461(7262), pp.399, 2009. [14] s. s. ali, i. s ali, a.h amir, z. jadoon, s. inayatullah, "recurrence of hepatitis c disease in diabetic patients," j ayub med coll abbottabad 19(1) pp. 46-49, 2009. [15] s. h. mehta, f. h. brancati, s. a strathdee, et al, "hepatitis c infection disease and episode write 2 diabetes," j hepatol, 38 (1), pp. 244-252, 2003. [16] f. visnegarwala, l chen, s. raghavan, e. tedaldi, "predominance of diabetes mellitus and dyslipidemia among antiretroviral guileless patients co-tainted with hepatitis c infection (hcv) and hiv-1 contrasted with patients without cocontamination", j contaminate, 50(4),331-337, 2005. [17] m. h. lee, h.i. yang, c. j. chen, "long haul wellbeing results of perpetual hepatitis c patients: a survey of discoveries from reveal-hcv partner examine," biomed,212(11), pp. 99107,2012. [18] b. a. al-haidary, s. abdul-kareem s, f.n. azziz, r.j. alakaishi, a.z. al-mousawy, "viral load among the sera of iraqi hepatitis c infection patients," fac med baghdad, 49(4), pp.461-466,2007. [19] m. martinot-peignoux, n. boyer, d. cazals-hatem, et al, "planned investigation on hostile to hepatitis c infection positive patients with diligently ordinary serum alanine transaminase with or without perceptible serum hepatitis c infection rna," j hepatol, 34, pp.1000-1005,2011. [20] c puoti, r. castellacci, f. montagnese, "histological and virological highlights and follow-up of hepatitis c infection bearers with typical aminotransferase levels: the italian imminent investigation of the asymptomatic c transporters (isacc)," j hepatol 2002;37:117-123. [21] j.k. mnuti, f.a al-abbudi, "hepatitis c infection contamination appraisal among unending hemodialysis patients in al-kadhmiya showing clinic," iraqi postgraduate med j, 10 (4) pp. 460-464, 2011. [22] n. tanaka, t. nagaya t, m. komatsu, "insulin obstruction and hepatitis c infection: a case-control investigation of non-fat, non-alcoholic and non-steatotic hepatitis infection transporters with determinedly ordinary serum aminotransferase," liver int, 28, pp.1104-1111, 2008. [23] r.h. hussein, "correlation in some biochemical and hematological tests between ceaseless hepatitis b and c," ibn al-haitham j pure appl sci, 24 (1), 155-162, 2011. 5. conclusion  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 3 | issue 2 | december 2018 | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.3.7 received: 09 september 2018 | accepted: 16 december 2018 comparison and economic feasibility study of the productivity of five varieties of barley (hordeum vulgare l.) mahmod karem ahmad department of agriculture extension bakrajo technical institute sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq mahmodkarem1954@gmail.com 38 abstract: in general, economic and agricultural policy of the successive iraqi governments was not toward agricultural development and achieve food security, whether for humans or animals, for dependence on exports of oil to import country's food needs in a difficult currency, which cost the state budget amounts. scientific and technological underdevelopment, lack of feasibility studies, economic performance,customs, social traditions, religious beliefs and neglect of the farmer caused a lack of interest in the cultivation of barley and its selection of high quality and quantity varieties of grains,straw,land, storage, and marketing operations.the study was conducted to assess the economic feasibility of the productivity of the five asian barley varieties (hordeum vulgare l.), (arivat, norma ,iba99 ,ns313 andbip999) for grain and straw yield in bakrajo area during the winter season of (2015 -2016). the results showed that grain and straw yield parameters were significantly varied according to varieties. significant increase in grain yield (2720kg/ha), hay yield (3643kg/ha), grain and hay cost (736.180)1000id/ha, hay revenue (582.880) 1000id/ha, grain revenue (1019.997)1000id/ha, profit (866.697)1000id/ha, seed product (27.200) kg and 1000id income (2.221) were recorded for ns313 and bip999 varieties, while the number of grains / spike (44.133) and plant length (89.433) cm was recorded for iba99 variety. keywords: economic, feasibility, barley, grain, straw, profit. 1. introduction barley (hordeum vulgare l.) is an important grain crop grown in wide areas in the world. it was ranked among grains in quantity produced (144 million tons) in the world behind rice and wheat in 2014 [1] .in 2015, barley was ranked among grains in quantity produced (thousand tons in iraq after rice and wheat). the cultivated area for 2015 was estimated (1003) thousand ton. yield average of one hectare was estimated (1315) kg of a total cultivated area for winter season 2015. straw production of the barley was estimated (515) thousand ton for 2015 [2]. it has played an important role in ancient kurdish cultures as a staple bread-making, as well as grain and straw an important food for animals. barley was also considered as a cheaper option for poor families as an important feed grain in many areas of the world [3]. barley is a key ingredient in beer and whisky production it improves cholesterol and glucose regulation [4]. it's one of the important cereal crops in the kurdistan region of iraq, during the dry winter season it grows successfully in a wide range of climate than any other cereals. it gives the highest yield of grain and straw for farmers filed in rain condition of the kurdistan region. in the kurdistan region in 2013 only (84170) hectares of land was under barley cultivation, where the production is only (135183) tons with the average yield of (1606kg/ha).the area, yield and production of barley in governorates of kurdistan region during the winter season 2012-2013, sulaimani recorded the highest cultivated area (36603)/ha. erbil ranks second (34285)/ha and duhok recorded lowest cultivated area (13282)/ha. erbil and duhok recorded the highest yield/ha (1729) kg/ha and (1581) kg/ha while sulaimani recorded the lowest yield (1500) kg/ha. in terms of the grain production in ton, erbil recorded the highest grain production (59279) ton. sulaimani ranks second grain production (54905) ton and duhok recorded the lowest grain production (20999) ton . sulaimani recorded the highest straw yield/ha (3302) kg/ha. duhok ranks second hay yield/ha (3129) kg/ha. the lowest governorate in the yield/ha was erbil (2798.4) kg/ha. regarding straw production, sulaimani recorded the highest hay production (120863) ton. erbil ranks second straw production (95943) ton. the lowest hay production (41562) ton was in duhok. in the same time, straw production in governorates of kurdistan region during the season (2012-2013) was (258368) tons of straw with an average yield (3069.6 kg/ha). in the same year 2013, in sulaimani governorate (36603) hectares of land was under barley cultivation where the production was only (54905) tons, with the average yield of (1500 kg/ha) and (120863) tons of straw with average yield of (3302 kg/ha) [5]. in kurdistan region, the crop is sown with the minimum care and management under residual moisture, proper land preparation, application of fertilizer, irrigation, optimum time of sowing, seed rate which are not usually practiced in ruining this crop. most of the kurdish farmer’s neglect using the right scientific ways in serving the land, plan for production, storage, and 39 marketing. the total economic value of the grain for human consumption and straws for animal feed this so called total crop value [6]. the economic and nutritional value of straw for feed is a function of both its quantity and quality [7]. indeed, farmers in some tropical and temperate cropping systems prefer to burn straw rather than to harvest it [8,9]. the global production of rain has increased dramatically over recent decades through higher yields per unit area and an expanded area under cultivation [10]. implicit in this process is that traditional grazing lands are being encroached on for crop production that fallow periods have shortened, and that the world production of crop by-products is increasing [11,12]. all these actors affect the feed supply for ruminants. in turn, these animals provide arange of essential functions for farmers in many farming systems, e.g., draught, dung, security, income. the use of straws and grazing for animal feed has received ample attention from the scientific community. a particularly wide range of chemical treatment and supplementation methods have been examined with varying degrees of success to overcome the nutritional limitations of these 'byproducts' and thus improve farmers livelihoods [13,14,15,16,17,18,19] and [20,21,22,23,24]. in addition, cereal crop breeders respond to farmers' demands by increasingly considering the economic value of straws in plant breeding objectives. therefore, it is necessary to increase our understanding of the economic rationale of feeding straws, or, in other words, to better assess the economic value of straw in relation to grain production. the aim of this study was to encourage the increase of barley production horizontally and vertically and interest in collecting straw instead of leaving it or burning it in the field. 2. methods and materials the experiment was conducted at the research farm of the bakrajo technical agricultural institute belongs to sulaimani polytechnic university, kurdistan region, iraq, which is located (11) km west of sulaimani center with an altitude of (847 m) above sea level, and lies between 35o32-36 north latitude and 45o21-09.6 east longitude. the soil in the experimental field was sandyclay-loam, under rain-fed condition during the winter growing season of (2015-2016). the experiment was laid out in randomized complete block design (rcbd) with a net plot area (2.5m2), 5 rows per plot, the density between rows 20 cm. the experiment comprised of five barley varieties treatments, arivat, norma, iba99, ns313 and bip999 was applied with three replications. barley cultivars were sown with a hand drill on 28th november 2015, using a rate of 100 kg/ha, (25 g/plot) (5g/row). standard cultural practices were done for the field of experiment. the field was kept weed-free throughout the dropping period and other standard cultural practices were followed to raise the crop. observations were recorded on 10 randomly selected plants for plant height (cm), number of fertile tillers, spike length (cm), average spike weight (g), number of grains/spikes, grain weight/spike (g), and 1000 grain weight (g). while grain and straw yield were calculated based on plots harvested in june from (1m2). costs were taken from kurdistan region statistics office report (2014). the price of buying and selling the grain and straw was taken from an old farmer in the local markets. the data was subjected to statistical analyses in (rcbd) using (xlstat) computer program and means were compared by duncan's multiple range test at p ≤ 0.05 prospects [25] . 3. results and discussion data represented in the table (1) shows the grain yield of the tested varieties were significantly different. ns313 recorded the highest grain yield (2720 kg/ha) significantly from other varieties except for bip999, while variety, arivat recorded significantly the lowest yield (1898 g/ha). regarding the weight of 1000 grains and grain weight per spike, there were no significant differences among the varieties. it is clear from table (2) that no significant differences appeared among the studied varieties concerning spike length and spike weight. in this study, the trait no. of grains/spike was only significantly affected by varieties. iba99 significantly surpassed other varieties (44.133) and norma was recorded the lowest number of grains/spike (35.800). table 1: means for grain yield, the weight of 1000 grains and grain weight/spike. varieties grain yield kg/ha weight of 1000 seed (g) grain weight spike (g) arivat 1898.0c 42.467a 2.207a norma 1583.0d 48.200a 1.997a iba99 2382.0b 50.967a 2.293a ns313 2720.0a 47.733a 2.330a bip999 2397.0a 48.100a 2.220a means followed by the same letter within a column are not significantly differenced according to duncan's multiple range test at p ≤ 0.05. table 2: means of spike length, average spike weights and number of grains/spike. varieties spike length (cm) spike weight (g) no. of grains/spike arivat 5. 267a 2.513a 36.700d norma 5.100a 2.267a 35.800d iba99 4.733a 2.740a 44.133a ns313 5.033a 2.693a 41.033c bip999 4.600a 2.563a 42.267b means followed by the same letter within a column are not significantly differenced according to duncan's multiple range test at p ≤ 0.05. it is indicated from the table (3) that plant length andhay yield traits with significant differences depending on the variety. iba99 recorded highest plant length (89.433 cm) significantly different from the rest varieties. norma was significantly with the shortest plants (62.45 cm). there were no significant differences among the tested varieties in the number of fertile tillers. regarding hay yield, ns313recorded significantly the highest hay yield 3643.000 kg/ha. variety norma, recorded the lowest hay yield kg/ha which was significantly different from variety ns313only. 40 table 3: the plant height, no. of fertile tiller and hay yield of the five studied varieties of barley. varieties plant height (cm) no. of fertile tillers hay yield kg/ha arivat 78.350c 2.133a 3202.000ab norma 62.450e 2.133a 2569.333b iba99 89.433a 2.033a 2861.333ab ns313 72.667d 1.900a 3643.000a bip999 86.067b 1.667a 2956.333ab means followed by the same letter within a column are not significantly differenced according to duncan's multiple range test at p ≤ 0.05. table (4) represents the results of straw and hay cost, grain and hay cost and hay revenue traits. the studied varieties were significantly different in straw and hay cost. varieties norma recorded the lowest straw and hay cost (231.480), whereas variety ns313 recorded the highest straw and hay cost (336.095) whereas the rest varieties were not significantly different. in terms of grain and hay cost, variety norma recorded the lowest grain and hay cost (631.180) which was not significantly different from varieties arivat, iba99 and bip999. variety ns313 recorded the highest grain and hay cost (736.180) and it was not significantly different from varieties 1, 3 and 5, regarding hay revenue. variety ns313 recorded the highest hay revenue (1000 id/ha), (582.880) which was significantly different from no. 1 only. variety norma recorded lowest hay revenue (421.547). table 4: the straw and hay cost, grain and hay cost and revenue of five varieties of barley. varieties straw and hay cost (1000 id/ton) grain and hay cost (1000 id/ha) hay revenue (1000 id/ha) arivat 288.180ab 688.180ab 512.320b norma 231.480b 631.180b 421.547ab iba99 258.187ab 657.520ab 457.813ab ns313 336.090ab 736.180a 582.880ab bip999 266.070ab 666.070ab 473.013a means followed by the same letter within a column are not significantly differenced according to duncan's multiple range test at p ≤ 0.05]. data represented in the table (5) showed that these varieties were significantly different in grain revenue and profit 1000 id/ha at 0.05 level of significance. in terms of grain revenue, variety ns313recorded the highest grain revenue (1019.997) for 1000 id/ha. regarding total hay and grain revenue, there was no significant difference between the five tested varieties. for the trait profit 1000 id/ha, variety ns313recorded the highest profit 1000 id/ha, (866.697), which was significantly different from variety norma only. variety ns313recorded the highest grain revenue, profit 1000 id/ha and total hay and grain revenue. table 5: grain revenue, total hay and grain revenue and profit 1000 id/ha. varieties grain revenue 1000 id/ha total hay and grain revenue 1000 id/ha profit 1000 id/ha arivat 711.750ab 1224.027a 469.223ab norma 593.620b 1015.167a 383.653b iba99 893.247ab 1351.060a 693.540ab ns313 1019.997a 1602.727a 866.69a bip999 898.875ab 1371.887a 691.367ab means followed by the same letter within a column are not significantly differenced according to duncan's multiple range test at p ≤ 0.05. there were significant differences among the studied varieties concerning id income and seed productivity kg/ha, table (6).variety ns313, significantly recorded the highest seed yield of (2720kg/ha) and id income (2.21) which was different from variety norma, while, in term of cost revenue no significant differences were found among the varieties. table 6: the seed product, id/income and cost/revenue of five varieties of barley. varieties seed productivity kg/ha id income cost/revenue arivat 1898ab 1.778ab 0.562a norma 1583b 1.588b 0.639a iba99 2382ab 2.098ab 0.501a ns313 2720a 2.210a 0.46a bip999 2397ab 2.056ab 0.495a means followed by the same letter within a column are not significantly differenced according to duncan's multiple range test at p ≤ 0,05]. 4. conclusion from the result of this study it can be concluded that varieties no.4 and no.5 were among the superior varieties in terms of grain weight per spike, spike length, spike weight, hay yield, number of fertile tillers, straw and hay cost, grain, and hay cost, hay revenue, grain revenue, profit 1000id/ha, seed product, id income and seed yield. on the light of the results of this study, we recommend growing varieties no.4 and no.5 for their superiority in the majority of the tested traits in this study or in most of the agronomy characters and in terms of economic aspect. the economic and technical feasibility study and economic performance of agricultural projects are very important in developing countries before and after starting the production process to ensure the success of the project and its profitability. the farmers in the kurdistan region of iraq did not take care of this study at all, do not count the costs, production, revenue and profit. they do not care about the selection of improved varieties, seed production, planting time, seeding rate, fertilizing, types of barley, time of barley seeding, date of cultivation, tillage, as well as crop service operation from irrigation, weeding. most of the farmers plant barley just for its grain and they leave the straw or burn it in the field instead of collecting and turning it into hay to use it for animal feed in winter or selling it to reduce the proportion of production costs to its imports and increase the profitreducing the loss if any. 41 references [1] faostat of the united nations food and agriculture organization, statistics division 1997, 2014. [2] central statistical organization, agricultural statistics directorate. cso , report on wheat and barley production in iraq for 2015 . october. page 13-16, 2015. [3] a. badr, k. müller, r. schäfer-pregl, h. e. rabey, s. effgen, , h. h.ibrahim, f. salamini,. "on the origin and domestication history of barley hordeumvulgare," molecular biology and evolution, 17, 499-510, 2000. [4] d.hales. “eat smart, feed good and look great digest,” new york vol. 8, no, 63, 1992. [5] krso: kurdistan region statistics office ministry of planning, p.18, 2014. [6] t. nordblom, h. halimeh, “lentil crop residues make a difference,” communication department, icarda, p.o. box 5466, aleppo, syria no, 9, pp. 9-10, 1982. [7] r. e. altona,”urea and biuretasprotein sipplementsforrange cattle sheep in africa outlook on agriculture,” vol.5:22-27, b., 1966. [8] a. r. staniforth, “straw for fuel, feed and fertiliser,” ipswich", uk: farming press,1982. [9] j. kelley, “upgrading of waste cereal straws outlook on agriculture," vol. 21:105–108, 1992. [10] n. alexandratos, “world agriculture towards 2010,” faorome and john wiley and sons: chichester, 1995. [11] v. l. kossila, “location and potential feed use in straw and other fibrous by-products as feed,” developments in animal and veterinary sciences, 14. elsevier, amsterdam, 431–453, 1984. [12] t. g. kelley, p. p. rao,” yield and quality characteristics of improved and traditional sorghum cultivars: farmer sperceptions and preferences,”. invariation in the quantity and quality of fibrous crop residues, 133–145, eds, 1994. [13] p. t. doyle, c. devendra, and g. r. pearce, “rice straw as a feed for ruminants”. international development program of australian universities and colleges (idp): canberra, 1986. 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[25] d.b duncan, “multiple range and multiple f.test.” biometrics, 11:1-42.,1955. worldcomp'12 typing instructions for preparation of final camera-ready papers kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 3 | issue 1 | june 2018 | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.1.7 received: april 12, 2018 | accepted: may 2, 2018 the impact of teaching materials on learning computer programming languages in kurdistan region universities and institutes rania azad m. san ahmed sardasht m-raouf mahmood rebwar mala nabi computer science institute statistics and computer dept deanery department sulaimani polytechnic university university of sulaimani kurdistan technical institute american university of iraq, sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sardasht.mahmood@univsul.edu.iq sulaimani, iraq rania.azad@spu.edu.iq rebwar.nabi@kti.edu.krd dana l. hussein computer science institute sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq dana.hussein@spu.edu.iq 27 abstract— it is evident that learning and teaching computer programming are considered as one of the striking challenges in academic environments. meanwhile, selecting the correct and appropriate materials can leave an enormous impact in learning computer programming languages. however, recently this argument has been put under scrutiny as to which types of materials motivate learners to learn computer programming languages as well as enhance learning outcomes. therefore, the main objective of this study is to investigate the current teaching and learning materials of computer programming languages in kurdistan region of iraq universities. additionally, another aim is to give a rigorous analysis of how materials help students to learn computer programming language. a further focus is to identify the difficulties of learning computer programming languages at undergraduate level which constitutes technical diploma and bachelor. the last but not the least, this paper examines new approaches to teaching programming languages as a cognitive model for programming education. keywords— computer programming, learning materials, programming education, teaching materials. 1. introduction teaching and learning of computer programming languages (cpl) are considered as one of the unresolved challenges in the academic environments. nevertheless, in the recent years, the interest of learning and teaching cpl has increased dramatically. computer programming is defined as “the process of writing, testing and debugging of computer programs using different programming languages” [1]. learning how to program is considered the complex subject. several studies show that often programming classes have the highest drop-out and failure rates due to the rigidity of learning programming and the needs of multiple abilities and knowledge [2]. it is essential for a programmer to have declarative and procedural knowledge. declarative refers to memorize programming language syntax and the ability to comprehend semantics. whereas, the procedural is the needs of abstraction and logical thinking skills to reach the solving and designing programs capabilities [1]. nowadays, the interest of learning computer programming has increased significantly for students as well as teachers, it is a useful skill that can be fulfilling a career [3]. novice students learn first the basics of a programming language and then build more advanced skills by study effective strategies and methods of programming. an educational research shows that to turn a novice into expert programmer require around 10 years of hard work. based on that data has been collected to identify the characteristics of novice programmers and classify them based on effective and ineffective learners [4]. the main focus of this study is to investigate the current teaching and learning materials of cpl in kurdistan region universities. in addition, another aim is to give a rigorous analysis of how materials help students to learn cpl. furthermore, this paper also focuses to identify the difficulties of learning cpl at the undergraduate level. to analyze the of student’s difficulties in programming, a study has been conducted by collecting data from a group of undergraduate students. finally, this study also examines new approaches to teaching cpl as a cognitive model for programming education. the rest of the paper is organized as follows: in section two, a literature will be provided about cpl and focus on novice learner by identifying their capabilities, typical problems and the distinction between effective and ineffective novices. then exploring the main difficulties for teachers is to design the effective syllabus and efficient teaching strategies. in section three, the methodological approaches to design and teaching the course by solving the explored issues for learners. additionally, the results mailto:rebwar.nabi@kti.edu.krd 28 and discussion will be explained in section four and five respectively. finally, the brief conclusion in section six will be explained. 2. literature review computer programming is defined as “the process of writing, testing and debugging of computer programs using different programming languages” [1]. meanwhile, it is a fundamental component of computer science and other it education curriculums [5]. according to several studies which have been conducted by [2], it takes about ten years to develop expertise in any of a wide variety of areas [6]. at the same time, other studies indicate that programming is not a simple task; it needs multiple skills and knowledge such as memorization, comprehension, ability to solving the problem and program design [1] [2]. it is widely accepted that the teaching and learning of cpl are considered as one of the striking challenges in studying the computing science and related fields. in order to learn computer programming, the main fundamental resources have been identified in figure 1. fig 1: teaching and learning resources in the classroom teaching, the teacher generally spends a significant time in teaching the program constructs of a specific language and devotes less time to expose the actual programming process and practice [1]. the problem with classroom teaching is that learner will benefit if already the learner has good skills of comprehensive and logical thinking, otherwise will suffer to fill the gap between language constructs and program construction. becoming an expert in programming at an undergraduate level can be impossible, only competent students can through endless practices. although lab sessions have an essential roles in learning programming languages. however, some teachers give big projects and assignments rather than beginning with simple and small assignments. additionally, some students may not obtain sufficient feedback regarding difficult issue rather low-level issues during the lab session. the third main resource is programming textbooks which contain statistic information and knowledge that are not helpful in program construction process [1]. numerous challenges and difficulties have an impact on the teaching and learning of cpl in almost all the institutions of higher education. these challenges include students’ difficulties, teaching difficulties and methodology issues which have been explored as the following: 2.1. student difficulties it is well-known that many newcomers have difficulties in cpl. programming is a very complex subject that requires hard effort and a special methodology learn it and teach it. to become a skillful programmer, a student must acquire a series of abilities that turn out well beyond knowing the syntax of some programming language[5]. there are also several issues in student difficulties such as: 1) lack of problem solving skills freshmen are unable to create algorithms or solve problems, mainly because they feel anxious to start writing a code or understand the problem correctly. furthermore, another reason is that students do not use prior knowledge to the new problems. alternatively, they group all the problems based on superficial characteristics instead of the same principle which turn to solve the problems with incorrect solutions [5]. 2) lack of mathematical skills and logical knowledge gomes et al. proved through their experiment on second semester students suffered from lack of converting a textual problem into a mathematical formula to solve certain problems. additionally, a limitation in logical reasoning and abstraction level were also identified. therefore, mathematical problem-solving competences are essentials for programming [5]. 3) lack of programming knowledge in common, new students have no knowledge about how programming structure works or even how to detect syntaxial and logical programming errors [5]. 4) students gender previous studies showed that programming learning differs in gender; a documented study shows that women are more likely less perform in the programming classes than their male peers. according to [7] the rates of women withdrawing or failing the programming classes are higher than male. 5) computer literacy and lack of access some students have been never use or operate computers previously in their high school or they only have basic knowledge at least. thus, it is difficult for them to understand programming, memorize syntax and semantics of the language in their first year programming class [6]. another issue arises that affects teaching and learning of cpl, several students are unable to afford to have their own laptops. using the laptop of the lab it is restricted only during the day upon the availability of the lab [6]. 2.2. teaching difficulties it is evident that likewise students, teachers also have several difficulties which are: 29 1) impersonalized teaching using a personalized supervision method in the class would be an excellent way to give instant feedback during teaching and solving problems to students, however, it is difficult during the programming courses for the teacher be always available and helpful because sometimes time and student numbers are limited [2]. 2) teaching learning styles vs. student’s level majority of students accept different learning style or prefer their own way to learn. several students prefer a solitary process while others may prefer a more dynamic learning environment. moreover, some courses request specific learning style. however, teachers use same pedagogical strategies with a different level of students which lead to abnormal outcomes. importantly, the teacher shall guarantee that the students choose the right approach for the right subject [2]. 3) traditional and passive learning method the traditional learning approach is based on deliverance of knowledge in the classroom by the teacher using powerpoint-based lectures accompanied by audiovisual and other multimedia teaching. students became passive recipients of knowledge from the teacher, they often perceive their programming classes as “dry, boring, and tedious” [8]. 4) syntaxial details vs. problem solving using programming the main focus of the teachers is to transfer syntaxial details to students before having enough good understanding of programming concepts and the ability for problem-solving. [5]. 2.3. the study methods 1) wrong methodology by students students are used to memorizing structures and formulas without full comprehension of the problem-solving. few learners believe that reading textbooks make them learning programming languages [5]. the methodology of programming is to enhance the practical side by having intensive and different problem solving to do than reading and memorizing [5]. 2) students laziness programming requires intensive hard working to acquire good skills, however, students are taught from high school to get solutions ready. moreover, they focus on reading textbooks to pass. 3) inappropriate curriculum design the syllabus is an important pile document to communicate between teacher and students that requires careful design. curriculum considered as a major role in motivating and engaging students as it is the first interaction between teacher and students [9]. research indicates that bad curriculum design has a negative influence on student motivation and course’s perceptions to engage with the teacher [10]. 3. methods this study was composed of two main phases which are conducting a questionnaire to undergraduate students as well as computer programming lecturers and interviewing of programming lecturers. 3.1. final questionnaire the objectives of this study are to investigate the current available teaching and learning materials. to achieve the objectives the study has been divided into two major sections. in section one, set of questions were sent to undergraduate students through a suitable questionnaire. meanwhile, a questionnaire was distributed to the lectures in kurdistan region universities the questionnaire was designed in three parts. firstly, three questions have been gathered about the gender of the participants, level of education and the universities names. secondly, the status of current available teaching and learning materials have been explored. thirdly, this section was based on teaching and learning material evaluation that consists of seven questions rated based on a scale of 1 to 6 as satisfaction level. finally and most importantly, participants have been provided several open questions about their suggestions and recommendations to improve teaching and learning computer programming languages education materials. 3.2. theoretical interview another phase of the study was to interview face-to-face expert programming lecturers to ask several questions to examine new approaches to teaching programming languages as a cognitive model for programming education. in this phase, 20 lecturers have been participating from seven universities as well as institutes holding bachelor, master and ph.d. degrees in the related field. 4. results the questionnaire structure addressed several questions in accordance with the aims and objectives the study. the questionnaire was designed into three parts: 15 questionnaires for teachers, 11 interview questions for teachers and 15 questions for students. the questionnaire was distributed to all krg universities and institutes. the questionnaire covered key questions regarding teaching computer programming materials in the point view of students as well as lecturers. the total participants for students were 272 and for lecturers were 172. meanwhile, face to face interview was conducted with 20 lecturers in several universities and institutions. students from 14 universities and six institutes participated. 4.1. student questionnaire results the majority of participants were male gender with %65 while only %35 was female. in regards to education level, a student from different undergraduate (bachelor and 30 diploma) participated. more importantly, graduated students also participated with %30. fig 2: cpl teaching and learning resources for students figure 2 illustrates resources and techniques of learning teaching materials in programming. lab session was identified as the most favorite resource among the participant to learn computer programming with %65. on the other hand, %18 of the students preferred using books in learning programming. an overwhelming majority of the respondent 60% were mentioning that learning materials are not appropriate for the intended groups of learners. moreover, only %5 of respondent believed that learning materials are appropriate in kurdistan region. it widely accepted that learning material in computer programming suffers from wide ranges of challenges. as it can be seen in figure 3, english language, teaching methodology and lack of programming resources in kurdish languages have been identified as major challenges for students with %57, %53 and %53 respectively. in one hand, issue of having professional’s lecturers and choosing the academic field during university admission have been considered as challenges by %46 of the students. fig 3: cpl learning challenges and issues for students in order to overcome the mentioned challenges, students were asked to demonstrate their opinions. as shown in figure 4, a higher number of students believed that adopting modern teaching techniques and methods might solve the issue. accordingly, %57 indicated that adding kurdish resources in learning computer programming and increase the number of programmer experts in the universities and institutions could decrease the impact issue. last but foremost, %51 of the respondent stated that choosing the study discipline during academic admission would eliminate the problem. finally, the overall cpl teaching and learning have be evaluated in table 1. fig 4: solving the issues and challenges of cpl learning for students table 1: overall cpl teaching and learning evaluation for students questions satisfied level (%) 1 2 3 computer programming advantages 20% 40% 40% importance of cpl materials 73% 20% 7% market needs 38% 37% 25% using different resources 75% 19% 6% increasing opportunity 39% 34% 27% relation between universities and companies 83% 14% 3% 4.2. teacher questionnaire results the common of participants were male gender with %74 whereas only %26 was female. in regards to education level, %96 were master holders and the rest were ph.d. lecturers. it is worth mentioning that there are only a few assistant professor and professor in the entire region. therefore, only %1 of professors were respondent the questionnaire. fig 5: cpl teaching and learning resources for teachers 31 figure 5 explains resources and techniques of learning teaching materials in programming. working in labs was selected as the most influential technique to learn computer programming with %74 of participated lecturers. in addition, watching video tutorials was also mentioned as second important resources. nevertheless, likewise, students, %41 of the lecturers preferred using books in learning programming. as importantly, lecturers have also recommended several other resources to learn computer programming such as using mobile apps for learning programming, conducting assignments, implementing small projects and special training. in regards to the impact of the current teaching-learning materials in the kurdistan region, the majority of the lecturers believed that learning materials are not appropriate for the intended groups of learners with %41. moreover, only %5 of respondent believed that learning materials are appropriate in kurdistan region. table 2: effectiveness and demand compatibility of learning materials how effective the current learning materials effective normal not effective student 49 %18 118 %43 105 %39 lecturer 40 %23 61 %35 71 %41 are the learning materials compatible with student demands compatible normal not compatible student 13 %5 162 %60 97 %36 lecturer 10 %6 48 %28 114 %66 table 2 demonstrates recent effectiveness and demand compatibility of learning materials. as it can be noticed only %18 students believed that current learning materials are effective. while %23 of the lecturers believed that current learning materials are effective. unexpectedly, the majority of the lectures with %66 stated that the current learning materials not compatible with student demands. however, only %36 of students indicated that are not compatible with current demand. other questions were asked to investigate the current challenges in learning and teaching computer programming in lecturer’s perspective. in figure 6 several challenges were identified such as english language, teaching methodology, obligatory student distribution by the ministry of higher education and scientific research and lack of programming resources in kurdish languages have been identified as major challenges with %59, %58, %55 and %52 respectively. fig 6: cpl learning challenges and issues for teachers to solve the current challenges, lecturers were requested to show their views. as presented in figure 7, a higher number of lecturers believed that adopting modern teaching techniques and methods might solve the issue. accordingly, %52 indicated that adding kurdish resources in learning computer programming. in addition to that, %72 of the participants believed that adopting modern teaching methodology techniques might be beneficial. considering everything, %52 of the respondent stated that choosing the study discipline during academic admission would eliminate the problem. finally, the overall cpl teaching and learning have be evaluated in table 3. fig 7: solving the issues and challenges of cpl learning table 3: overall cpl teaching and learning evaluation for teachers questions satisfied level (%) 1 2 3 computer programming advantages 35% 37% 28% importance of cpl materials 83% 12% 5% market needs 40% 28% 32% using different resources 80% 17% 3% increasing opportunity 54% 22% 24% relation between universities and companies 92% 5% 3% 4.3. teacher interviews results with the aim of involving lecturers in the study, 20 lecturers were interviewed face-to-face. the participants have been asked to answer several questions about teaching-learning material issues based on their experience. lectures were selected from different areas as well as universities. an overwhelming majority of %90 have 32 indicated that the teaching-learning material is not appropriate in cpl. moreover, %98 of respondent said that the english level of the students have a relatively negative impact on teaching and learning cpl. in addition to that, the issue of lack kurdish reference in cpl has been also noticed by %85 of the lectures. taking everything into account, lecturers have stated that the practical lesson shall be given more consideration since it has been found promising among the student performance. 5. discussion in this section, we deliberate our results and describe the interpretation and implication of result 5.1. result interpretation the results of qualitative and quantitative along with a theoretical interview of our study are very encouraging. according to the results, learning teaching materials in the kurdistan universities are not yet designed to overcome the challenges. %40 of the students stated that they have not benefited from the existing teaching-learning materials. at the same time, the majority of students with %73 mentioned that the teaching-learning material is the heart of learning computer programming. in regard to the challenges and its solutions, it was found that the lack of english languages was considered as the main issue since students have a little background when they join universities. several possible actions are essential to overcome this problem such as conducting foundation english course, changing the english curriculum in schools to prepare students with a good level of english. another issue was identified that students have no background in programming before university study. it is recommended that ministry of education should add logic programming and/or algorithms to the basic, intermediate and high school curriculum to enhance their problem-solving skills. furthermore, central admission from the ministry of higher education and scientific research (mohesr) has been also regarded as the major challenges for students in learning computer programming with %46. it noteworthy that recently the mohesr has implanted a new system of admission in which students can choose their study based on their desire for the majority subjects. as we have mentioned earlier that %39 of the students stated that the current teaching-learning material is not effective and %36 mentioned that not compatible with student’s demand. in the meantime, %38 of the students indicated that learning computer programming is essential to fulfilling the market need. moreover, %39 of the students assumed that knowing computer programming increase the opportunity for find jobs in the market. %84 of the students believed the relation and cooperation between universities and private companies are important to design curriculum based on market need and conduct entrepreneurship programs. 5.2. managerial implication the results from this study spectacle actions from the mohesr to solve the current problems by: 1. establish a higher managing committee (by mohesr) which involving group of top professor and lecturers and programmer experts to design upto-date curriculum 2. add programming logic and/or fundamental for the algorithm in the high schools by the ministry of education. 3. strengthen the relationship between the universities and private companies to re-design curriculum based on market need and conduct entrepreneurship programs. likewise, promote the funding concept to motivate students to involve and develop applications to fulfill market needs 4. conduct conferences, symposiums, workshops, and seminars by inviting all universities and institutes to study the challenges of teaching-learning materials and find appropriate solutions. 5. increase the practical session during the academic year and promote teamwork. 6. improve and add kurdish resources such as books, video tutorials and mobile and computer applications. 7. conduct professional training and certification for the lecturers, head of departments by bringing international experts in teaching computer programming to kurdistan universities staff. 6. conclusion the objective of this study was to investigate the current teaching and learning materials of computer programming languages in kurdistan region of iraq universities. additionally, another aim is to give a rigorous analysis of how materials help students to learn computer programming language. a further focus is to identify the difficulties of learning computer programming languages at undergraduate level which constitutes technical diploma and bachelor. and more importantly, this paper examines new approaches to teaching programming languages as a cognitive model for programming education. based on the results of the 272 students and 172 lecturers indicate that learning teaching materials in the kurdistan universities are not yet designed to overcome the challenges. moreover, the teaching and learning cpl in kurdistan universities suffer from wide range issue such: − lack of cpl expert lecturers − lack of kurdish resources in cpl − inappropriate level of english for undergraduate and graduate students − structure and study system − studying different programming languages in different stages it is also can be identified that the responsible body in the kurdistan region was not focusing on this issue for instant mohesr, university presidents and curriculum directors and head of scientific departments. finally and most importantly, this study recommends that instant actions shall be taken from different bodies to overcome these issues in the kurdistan universities for example, establishing high managing committee from mohesr. conduct several conferences, workshops, and symposium to identify and rectify the problems in the universities as 33 well as institutes. admittedly some limitations should be acknowledged. we were unable to interview the university and ministry chairs who are responsible for designing curriculum. references [1] v. renumol, s. jayaprakash, and d. janakiram, “classification of cognitive difficulties of students to learn computer programming,” in indian institute of technology, india, 2009, p. 12. [2] p. norvig, teach yourself programming in ten years. 2014. retrieved from: http://norvig.com/21-days.html. [accessed: 01-feb-2017]. [3]a. robins, j. rountree, and n. rountree, “learning and teaching programming: a review and discussion,” comput. sci. educ., vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 137–172, 2003. [4] k. m. ala-mutka, “problems in learning and teaching programming-a literature study for developing visualizations in the codewitz-minerva project,” codewitz needs anal., pp. 1–13, 2004. [5] a. gomes and a. j. n. mendes, “learning to program-difficulties and solutions,” int. conf. eng. educ., pp. 1–5, 2007. [6] b. isong, “a methodology for teaching computer programming: first year students’ perspective,” i.j. mod. educ. comput. sci. mod. educ. comput. sci., vol. 9, no. 9, pp. 15–21, 2014. [7] g. silva-maceda, p. david arjona-villicana, and f. edgar castillobarrera, “more time or better tools? a large-scale retrospective comparison of pedagogical approaches to teach programming,” ieee trans. educ., vol. 59, no. 4, pp. 274–281, 2016. [8] x. zhang, c. zhang, t. . stafford, and p. zhang, “teaching introductory programming to is students : the impact of teaching approaches on learning performance,” j. inf. syst. educ., vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 147–156, 2013. [9] r. j. harnish and k. r. bridges, “effect of syllabus tone: students’ perceptions of instructor and course,” soc. psychol. educ., vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 319–330, 2011. [10] m.-j. ludy, t. brackenbury, j. w. folkins, s. h. peet, s. j. langendorfer, and k. beining, “student impressions of syllabus design: engaging versus contractual syllabus,” int. j. scholarsh. teach. learn., vol. 10, no. 2, 2016. 1. introduction 2. literature review 2.1. student difficulties 1) lack of problem solving skills 2) lack of mathematical skills and logical knowledge 3) lack of programming knowledge 4) students gender 5) computer literacy and lack of access 2.2. teaching difficulties 1) impersonalized teaching 2) teaching learning styles vs. student’s level 3) traditional and passive learning method 4) syntaxial details vs. problem solving using programming 2.3. the study methods 1) wrong methodology by students 2) students laziness 3) inappropriate curriculum design 3. methods 3.1. final questionnaire 3.2. theoretical interview 4. results 5. discussion 5.1. result interpretation 5.2. managerial implication 6. conclusion references  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.7 received: 13 june 2018| accepted: 18 july 2018 epidemiology of non-melanoma skin cancer patients attending at hiwa hospital in sulaimani city, iraq bushra mohammed ali hiwa abas ahmed family and community medicine department bone marrow transplantation department college of medicine hiwa hospital university of sulaimani general directorate of health of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq bmakfb.2002@yahoo.com hiwaph@yahoo.com 44 abstract: objectives are to identify the frequency of non-melanoma skin cancer cases were registered at hiwa hospital and to find out the association between cases and controls with their sociodemographic status and risk factors. a case control approach was used, by retrospective chart review of all non-melanoma skin cancer cases presented between 1 st of january 2015 till 31 st of december 2016 at sulaimani hiwa hospital from which 70 cases conducted and 70 controls from baxshen hospital. data entered to microsoft excel, analysed by spss v 21. chi-square test was employed to assess the association between different variables, p value of 0.05 or less considered as statistical significant this study included 70 cases and 70 controls were age and gender matched, most of the cases were in between age 56-70 years old, illiterate 39(55.7%), jobless 26(37.1%), from urban area 45 (64.3%) , married 65 (92.9%). had sufficient income and barely sufficient. about (64%) of cases had squamous cell carcinoma and (36%) had basal cell carcinoma. most of the cases had family history of skin cancer (11.4%), and 44 (62.9%) of cases had a history of more than 4 hours exposure to sun in a day and 36 (51.4%) of cases were with normal bmi. most of the cases 32 (45.7%) with type (o) blood group, not smoking cigarette 51 (72.9%) and not drinking alcohol 69 (98.6%). this study showed a statistical significant association between non-melanoma skin cancer with level of education (p value =0.002), family history (p value = 0.02), time of exposure to sun light (p value of < 0.001) and bmi (p value = 0.001). skin cancer and cancer percentage were in increase pattern especially nonmelanoma skin cancer, most of non-melanoma skin cancer cases were squamous cell carcinoma, with a significant association with level of education, income status, time of exposure to sun light, family history and bmi keywords: non-melanoma skin cancer, hiwa hospital, sulaimani. 1. introduction skin cancer is the most frequent malignant neoplasm in white populations. over the last four decades, basal cell carcinoma (bcc) and squamous cell carcinoma (scc) are frequently described as no-melanoma skin cancers (nmscs) [1,2]. the incidence of nmsc has increased markedly over time, in part reflecting our ageing population as well as patterns of sun exposure [3-5]. however, the cause of nmsc is multifactorial and complex but the ultraviolet light exposure has been a principal pathogenic environmental factor and it acts by inducing dna mutations in epidermal cells and immunosuppression, leading to unrestrained growth and tumor formation [6,7]. studies have identified ultraviolet radiation (uvr) damage to adult skin as an important environmental risk factor for both scc and bcc [8]. together, scc and bcc are the most frequently reported malignancies in caucasian populations [9]. in addition, more than 1 million non-melanoma skin cancers (nmsc) are diagnosed in the united states of america (u.s.a.), for those americans who will live to age 65, approximately 40% to 50% will have at least one nmsc and those americans living in the southern parts of usa, the incidence is even higher [10]. despite this, few publications have focused on the epidemiology of merkel-cell carcinoma (mcc) or other rare malignant tumors of the skin, or on patient survival [11]. many cancer registries do not register nmsc or only record the first tumors [12-14]. therefore, the true disease burden of skin cancer remains unclear and is often underestimated. however, accurate data on nmsc incidence and mortality evolution are difficult to obtain but increasing incidence rates of bcc and scc have been reported in several european countries. a study from the scottish cancer registry over a period of 12 years revealed an annual increase of 1.4 – 3.5% [15]. the danish cancer registry also evaluated the incidence rates of bcc and scc and over a period of 30 years the incidence rates have raised between 3.1-4.6% per year [16]. finally, a german study including data from 11 cancer registries over a period of 13 years, reported an annual increase of 3.3-11.6% for bcc and scc [17]. the previous results from iraqi cancer board (2011) show that the number of male patients (397) with skin cancers is higher than female patients (333) [18], but no giving information in detail. this research study for the first time in kurdistan region north of iraq estimates the characteristics of nmsc reported at hiwa hospital. the aim of this research study was firstly, to identify the pattern of non-melanoma skin cancer among skin cancer at hiwa hospital. secondly, to identify the types of nonmelanoma skin cancer which is treating at hiwa hospital. thirdly, to find out the association between outdoor (equal and more than 4 hours sun exposer) and indoor 45 (less than 4 hours sun exposer) in non-melanoma skin cancer and control. finally, to find out the association between socio-demographic status of the participants in non-melanoma skin cancer and control. 2. methods and materials a case control approach was used for the implementation of the study. we conducted a retrospective chart review of all non-melanoma skin cancer cases (histo-pathologically confirmed) presenting between 2015 and 2016 at hiwa hospital for cancer patients. age-matched and gender-matched control group were selected by researchers from baxshen hospital. the patients’ inclusion criteria were: all patients with a histopathologic diagnosis of squamous cell carcinoma (scc) and basal cell carcinoma (bcc) between 2015 and 2016, confirmed by laboratory investigation from 1 st of january 2015 till 31 st of december 2016.patients with unverified diagnosis, and patients with insufficient chart documentation were excluded. the sample size was 70 cases and 70 controls. the researcher contacted some of participants through the interview (face to face) or phone for obtaining the data needed which was not in file of cases. after obtaining consent from the participant, sociodemographic data and history of various exposures was collected using a structured interview questionnaire for cases clinical data was retrieved from the patient’s hospital records under the supervision of the managing physician. no patient examination was conducted during this study. the questionnaire included: socio-demographic status, risk factors related to non-melanoma skin cancer and anthropometric measurements which include the; height, weight body mass index (bmi) formula bmi: weight (kg) / [height (m)] 2 normal weight ranges: body mass index (bmi). underweight: bmi is less than 18.5. normal weight: bmi is 18.5 to 24.9. overweight: bmi is 25 to 29.9. obese: bmi is 30 or more and smoking and alcohol habit. all data were coded and added to a microsoft excel spread sheet. data analysis was done by using the spss version 21.0. percentages were calculated to present group characteristics, chi-square test was employed to assess the association between different variables, p value of 0.05 or less considered as statistical significant. ethical considerations: the researcher obtained the approval of the ethics committee of college of medicine university of sulaimani for conduction of the study and this complied with the international ethical research guidelines. informed consent was obtained from the participants and strict patient confidentiality was preserved. oral consent was received from the participants before starting the interview. 3. results figure 1. show all cancer cases were recorded from 1 st january of 2015 to 31 st december of 2016 in sulaimani hiwa hospital were 4345 cases and with a comparison between non-melanoma cases were 100 (2.3%) cases, other cancer skin cases were 255 (5.9%) cases and all other cancer cases were 3990 (91.8%) cases. figure 1. registered cancer cases in the hiwa hospital during (2015-2016). figure 2 shows percentage skin cancer cases at hiwa hospital at 2016, were 197 skin cancer cases out of total cancer cases were 2338, which 8.4% was skin cancer cases of all cancer cases with comparing skin cancer cases in 2015 with 2016 show. figure 2: compare in a percentage of skin cancer and total cancer in 2015 and 2016 at hiwa hospital. in this study, 45 (64%)of cases had squamous cell carcinoma and 25 (36%) had basal cell carcinoma in figure 3. figure 3: types of non melanoma skin cancer. this figure 4 shows 44 (62.9%) of cases had a history of more than 4 hour exposure to sun in a day compared to 24 (34.3%) in control group, while the percentage of fewer than 4 hours exposure to the sun in case and control groups were subsequently 26 (37.1%) and 46 (65.7) with the p value of < 0.001. 46 figure 4: comparison of cases and control regarding the time of exposure to the sun. table 1 majority of the study participants were male 48 (68.6%) of cases and 47 (67.1%) of controls, there was no significant association regarding p value (0.86). most cases were between age 56-70 years old group 42.9% for cases and 40% for control, there was no significant association regarding p value (0.65). for the level of education, majority of cases were illiterate 39(55.7%) on the other hand, 31 (44.2%) had secondary or higher education level, there was a significant association regarding to p-value (0.002). regarding occupations, most of cases and controls were jobless [26(37.1%), 22(31.4%)] respectively with a significant association regarding p value=0.019. most of the participants in both case and control groups were married 65 (92.9%) and 68 (97.1%) subsequently, half of the cases group had sufficient and half had barely sufficient economic status in contrary to 6 (8.6%) of control group had sufficient economic status most of them were with barely sufficient 56 (80%) or insufficient at all 8 (11.4%) p value <0.001. table 1: association between sociodemographic in relation to cases and control. table 2 presents the distribution of participants, according to bmi in the study, as follows; 3 (4.3%) of cases and none of the controls were underweight; 36 (51.4%) of cases and 16 (22.9%) of controls were with normal weight; 20 (28.6%) of cases and 40 (57.1%) of controls were overweight; and finally, 11 (15.7%) of cases and 14 (20%) of controls were obese p value = 0.001. majority of cases and controls were type o blood groups (cases 45.7%, control 51.4%), non-smokers (cases 72.9%, controls 81.4%) and not consume alcohol (cases 98.6%, control 98.6%). however, there was no statistically significant relation between non-melanoma skin cancer and the participant’s blood group, alcohol consumption and their smoking status. the percentage of individuals who had the family history of skin cancer was significantly higher among case group (11.4%) compared with the control group (1.4%) p value = 0.02. table 2: distribution of non-melanoma skin cancer cases and their controls according to risk factors. 4. discussion skin cancer at 2015 in hiwa hospital were 158 cases out of total cancer 2007 cases but in 2016 were 197 cases out of total cancer cases were 2338 in sulaimani city these results goes with a study done in northern ireland cancer registry [19] a study done in germany from table 1 majority of the study participants were male 48 (68.6%) of cases and 47 (67.1%) of controls, there was no significant association regarding p value( 0.86). most cases were between age 56-70 years old group 42.9% for cases and 40% for control, there was no significant association regarding p value (0.65). for the level of education, majority of cases were illiterate 39(55.7%) on the other hand, 31 (44.2%) had secondary or higher education level, there was a significant association regarding p-value( 0.002). regarding occupations, most of cases and controls were jobless [26(37.1%), 22(31.4%)] respectively with a significant association regarding p value=0.019 . most of the participants in both case and control groups were married 65 (92.9%) and 68 (97.1%) subsequently, half of the cases group had sufficient and half had barely sufficient economic status in contrary to 6 (8.6%) of control group had sufficient economic status most of them were with barely sufficient 56 (80%) or insufficient at all 8 (11.4%) p value <0.001. table 1: association between sociodemographic in relation to cases and control. sociodemographic characteristics case control p value gender male 48 (68.6%) 47 (67.1%) 0.86 female 22 (31.4%) 23 (32.9%) age groups 26 40 years 8 (11.4%) 8 (11.4%) 0.65 41 55 years 14 (20.0%) 20 (28.6%) 56 70 years 30 (42.9%) 28 (40.0%) > 70 years 18 (25.7%) 14 (20.0%) mean ± sd 61.0 ± 15.2 58.9 ± 16.0 0.44 level of education illiterate 39 (55.7%) 22 (31.4%) 0.002 primary 19 (27.1%) 17 (24.3%) secondary 5 (7.1%) 18 (25.7%) institute 3 (4.3%) 1 (1.4%) college or higher 4 (5.7%) 12 (17.1%) marital status single 5 (7.1%) 1 (1.4%) 0.16 married 65 (92.9%) 68 (97.1%) widow 0 (0.0%) 1 (1.4%) socio economic status sufficient 35 (50.0%) 6 (8.6%) < 0.001 barely sufficient 35 (50.0%) 56 (80.0%) insufficient 0 (0.0%) 8 (11.4%) residency urban 45 (64.3%) 50 (71.4%) 0.34 semiurban 21 (30.0%) 19 (27.1%) rural 4 (5.7%) 1 (1.4%) occupation governmental 5 (7.1%) 14 (20.0%) 0.019 self employed 5 (7.1%) 0 (0.0%) retired 18 (25.7%) 12 (17.1%) jobless 26 (37.1%) 22 (31.4%) other 16 (22.9%) 22 (31.4%) table 2 presents the distribution of participants, according to bmi in the study, as follows; 3 (4.3%) of cases and none of the controls were underweight; 36 (51.4%) of cases and 16 (22.9%) of controls were with normal weight; 20 (28.6%) of cases and 40 (57.1%) of controls were overweight; and finally, 11 (15.7%) of cases and 14 (20%) of controls were obese p value = 0.001. majority of cases and controls were type o blood groups (cases 45.7%, control 51.4%), non-smokers (cases 72.9%,controls 81.4%) and not consume alcohol (cases 98.6%,control 98.6%). however, there was no statistically significant relation between non-melanoma skin cancer and the participant’s blood group, alcohol consumption and their smoking status. the percentage of individuals who had the family history of skin cancer was significantly higher among case group (11.4%) compared with the control group (1.4%) p value = 0.02. table 2: distribution of non-melanoma skin cancer cases and their controls according to risk factors. risk factors case control p value the family history of skin cancer yes 8 (11.4%) 1 (1.4%) 0.02 no 62 (88.6%) 69 (98.6%) blood group o ( + ve and ve) 32 (45.7%) 36 (51.4 %) 0.75 a ( + ve and ve) 21 (30.0%) 17 (24.3 %) b ( + ve and ve) 11 (15.7%) 13 (18.6%) ab ( + ve and ve) 6 (8.6%) 4 (5.7%) smoking yes 19 (27.1%) 13 (18.6%) 0.23 no 51 (72.9%) 57 (81.4%) body built underweight 3 (4.3%) 0 (200%) 0.001 normal 36 (51.4%) 16 (22.9%) overweight 20 (28.6%) 40 (57.1%) obese 11 (15.7%) 14 (20.0%) mean (bmi) ± sd 25.3 ± 4.8 26.9 ± 3.5 0.02 alcohol yes 1 (1.4%) 1 (1.4%) 1.00 no 69 (98.6%) 69 (98.6%) 4. discussion skin cancer at 2015 in hiwa hospital were 158 cases out of total cancer 2007 cases but in 2016 were 197 cases out of total cancer cases were 2338 in sulaimani city this results goes with a study done in northern ireland cancer registry (19) a study done in germany from 1970 and 2012 to predict incidence until 2030 showed there is a continuous long-term increase of nmsc incidence and the current nmsc increasing incidence rates in germany is expected to double, (20) this study demonstrate that most of cancer were at old age were at highest in 56-70 years old group and more were in male than female, same results were found in studied don in australian (21) and in iran (22). this is resulting from long and lifetime sun exposure in an increasingly aging population. in this study type of occupations had significant relation to skin non-melanoma cancer between case and control groups, 47 1970 and 2012 to predict incidence until 2030 showed there is a continuous long-term increase of nmsc incidence and the current nmsc increasing incidence rates in germany is expected to double [20]. this study demonstrates that most of cancer were at old age were at highest in 56-70 years old group and more were in male than female, same results were found in studied don in australian [21] and in iran [22]. this is resulting from long and lifetime sun exposure in an increasingly aging population. in this study type of occupations had significant relation to skin non-melanoma cancer between case and control groups, same result found in studies which show outdoor workers are at more risk than indoor workers. [23] it related to daily work in outdoor and sunny environment or contact with the carcinogen without using protections and expose to carcinogenic chemicals during working can be main factors cause to the high rate of the cancer in males and in some type of occupations [24]. but in this study, did not demonstrate a significant relation for age and gender. most of skin cancer cases in this study were squamous cell carcinoma (scc), it was found opposite results in other studies like (25) survey in uk and [26] a study in canada, we did not find significant relation between smoking and non-melanin carcinoma; it might be related to type of sampling for choosing cases and control groups or need more cases and control other factors to get that result. majority of skin cancer cases where in low-income occupations and there was a significant relation between occupations with cancer because most of low income occupations in this area were outdoor occupations like hand-workers, constructers, gardeners…etc. however, other study which was done in denmark demonstrated opposite; skin cancer more in high-income occupations [27]. it might be related to safety of occupation and workers law in this area. most of cases where in urban area than rural, it might be related to urban people were more expose to intermittent sun light and more doses than rural people. same results found in a study done in denmark [27] study however our relation was not significant. majority of cases where in low level of education and there was significant relation between education and skin cancer, other studies concluded that most of cases where in high education level like in finland [28] and in denmark [27]. this deference might be related to geographical area and other lifestyle factors like occupation, time of sun exposure, use of predictive equipment and sun blockers. most of cancer cases were not take or drink alcohol and relation were not significant, it related to religion effect on our community which prohibit drinking alcohol. however, in cohort study found that drinking alcohol might increase risk to bcc but not scc. [29] skin cancer in this study were more in normal bmi people than obese people with significant relation, the same result was found in a study [30] done in us caucasians concluded significant relation. obesity not only risk factor for non-melanoma skin cancer there are many other well known risk factors that play important role like genotypic, phenotypic, environment, family history of skin cancer, certain skin colours, susceptibility to burn and light hair colour [27]. because obese compared with normal weight individuals are less active outdoor this lead to decreased levels of cumulative sun exposure therefore lower risk of non-melanoma skin cancers as cumulative sun exposure is a major risk factor for the development of these cancers. family history of skin cancer had significant role to skin cancer cases in this study and we found same result in [3] study. certain genodermatoses increase the risk of both tumor types (xeroderma pigmentosum) and others of either scc (epidermodysplasia verruciformis) or bcc (nevoid bcc syndrome) [32]. in this study majority of the cases were among o blood group this goes in contrast with a study (33) it might be related to percentage of this type of blood in our region which is most common type of blood groups. with non-significant relation but [3] study, demonstrate significant relation between non-melanoma skin cancer and abo/rh factors. 5. conclusion skin cancer and cancer percentage where in increase pattern especially non-melanoma skin cancer. most of non-melanoma skin cancers were squamous cell carcinoma. sun exposure (outdoor) played significant role for nonmelanoma skin cancer. most of nonmelanoma skin cancer cases were male, o blood group, between ages 56 to 70 years old, jobless or retired and illiterate with significant relation for level of education. majority of cases had good income with significant relation to non-melanoma skin cancer. majority of nonmelanoma skin cancer cases were not drinking and not smoking cigarette. majority of non-melanoma skin cancer were normal bmi people with significant relation with bmi. reference [1] trakatelli m, ulrich c, del marmol v, euvrard s, stockfleth e, abeni d. epidemiology of nonmelanoma skin cancer (nmsc) in europe: accurate and comparable data are needed for effective public health monitoring and interventions. british journal of dermatology. 1;156(s3):1-7.2007. [2] leiter u, keim u, eigentler t, katalinic a, holleczek b, martus p, et al. incidence, mortality, and trends of nonmelanoma skin cancer in germany. journal of investigative dermatology. 1;137(9):1860-7. 2017. [3] staples mp, elwood m, burton rc, williams jl, marks r, giles gg. non-melanoma skin cancer in australia: the 2002 national survey and trends since 1985. med j aust. 2;184(1):6-10. 2006. [4] lomas a, leonardi‐bee j, bath‐hextall f. a systematic review of worldwide incidence of nonmelanoma skin cancer. british journal of dermatology. 1;166(5):1069-80. 2012 [5] national cancer control initiative. the 2002 national nonmelanoma skin cancer survey. a report by the ncci nonmelanoma skin cancer working groups. melbourne: ncci. 2003. [6] asgari mm, kiviat nb, critchlow cw, stern je, argenyi zb, raugi gj, berg d, odland pb, hawes se, de villiers em. detection of human papillomavirus dna in cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma among immunocompetent individuals. journal of investigative dermatology. 1;128(6):1409-17 2008. [7] fabbrocini g, triassi m, mauriello mc, torre g, annunziata mc, de vita v, pastore f, d’arco v, monfrecola g. epidemiology of skin cancer: role of some environmental factors. cancers. 24;2(4):1980-9. 2010 [8] woolley t, buettner pg, lowe j. predictors of sun protection in northern australian men with a history of nonmelanoma skin cancer. preventive medicine. 1;39(2):300-7 2004. [9] parkin dm, whelan sl, ferlay j, raymond l, young j. cancer incidence in five continents. lyon (france): world health organization, international agency for research on 48 cancer. 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[19] madan v, lear jt, szeimies rm. non-melanoma skin cancer. the lancet. 20;375(9715):673-85. 2010 [20] rudolph c, schnoor m, eisemann n, katalinic a. incidence trends of nonmelanoma skin cancer in germany from 1998 to 2010. jddg: journal der deutschen dermatologischen gesellschaft. 1;13(8):788-97. 2015 [21] richmond-sinclair nm, pandeya n, ware rs, neale re, williams gm, van der pols jc, et al. incidence of basal cell carcinoma multiplicity and detailed anatomic distribution: longitudinal study of an australian population. journal of investigative dermatology. 1;129(2):323-8. 2009 [22] razi s, enayatrad m, mohammadian-hafshejani a, salehiniya h. the epidemiology of skin cancer and its trend in iran. international journal of preventive medicine;6. . 2015 [23] surdu s. non-melanoma skin cancer: occupational risk from uv light and arsenic exposure. reviews on environmental health. 1;29(3):255-65. 2014 [24] mackie rm, quinn ag. non‐melanoma skin cancer and other epidermal skin tumours. rook's textbook of dermatology, seventh edition.:1801-50. 2004 [25] griffin ll, ali fr, lear jt. non-melanoma skin cancer. clinical medicine. 1;16(1):62-5. 2016 [26] demers aa, nugent z, mihalcioiu c, wiseman mc, kliewer ev. trends of nonmelanoma skin cancer from 1960 through 2000 in a canadian population. journal of the american academy of dermatology. 1;53(2):320-8. 2005 [27] steding-jessen m, birch-johansen f, jensen a, schüz j, kjær sk, dalton so. socioeconomic status and non-melanoma skin cancer: a nationwide cohort study of incidence and survival in denmark. cancer epidemiology. 1;34(6):689-95. 2010 [28] de kok im, van lenthe fj, avendano m, louwman m, coebergh jw, mackenbach jp. childhood social class and cancer incidence: results of the globe study. social science & medicine. 1;66(5):1131-9. 2008 [29] jensen a, birch-johansen f, olesen ab, christensen j, tjønneland a, kjær sk. intake of alcohol may modify the risk for non-melanoma skin cancer: results of a large danish prospective cohort study. journal of investigative dermatology. 1;132(12):2718-26. 2012 [30] pothiawala s, qureshi aa, li y, han j. obesity and the incidence of skin cancer in us caucasians. cancer causes & control. 1;23(5):717-26. 2012 [31] nikolaou v, stratigos aj, tsao h. hereditary nonmelanoma skin cancer. seminars in cutaneous medicine and surgery. frontline medical communications (vol. 31, no. 4, pp. 204210). 2012 [32] rass k, reichrath j. uv damage and dna repair in malignant melanoma and nonmelanoma skin cancer. insunlight, vitamin d and skin cancer (pp. 162-178). springer new york. 2008 [33] xie j, qureshi aa, li y, han j. abo blood group and incidence of skin cancer. plos one. 4;5(8):e11972. 2010 [34] cihan yb, baykan h, kavuncuoglu e, mutlu h, kucukoglu mb, ozyurt k, et al. relationships between skin cancers and blood groups-link between non-melanomas and abo/rh factors. asian pacific journal of cancer prevention.;14(7):4199-203. 2013.  serbest khalil ismail architecture engineering department college of engineering university of duhok , iraq serbest.ismael@uod.ac diler haji morad architecture engineering department college of engineering university of duhok , iraq diler.morad@uod.ac kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.11 a comparative study between the climate response strategies and thermal comfort of a traditional and contemporary houses in krg: erbil abstract: the hot and dry climate conditions in erbil city has a main effect on the energy consumption and thermal performance of the house. in the last decade, residential sector in kurdistan region government has consumed about 50% of total energy consumption. the contemporary dwelling did not consider climate consideration therefore; there was difficulty in achieving or obtaining thermal comfort conditions, without using electrical or mechanical devices like air conditioning. in contrast, traditional houses carefully and effectively designed with climate conditions. in the present study, in order to determine suitable architectural strategy that may be benefit in future housing designs, the climate response strategies and thermal comfort examined in both traditional and contemporary houses in erbil city and evaluated in terms of building form, orientation, occupancy migration, plan arrangement, window, ventilation, shading, vegetation, water bodies building materials and urban fabric. at the end of this study, a simplified evaluation and comparison between contemporary and traditional house are given. keywords: climate condition, thermal comfort, evaluation, comparison, traditional and contemporary houses 1. introduction climate has a main impact on the thermal performance and energy consumption of houses especially in countries with hot and dry climates such as kurdistan region government, where people facing different problems, which related to climate especially in contemporary housing. in the last decade, residential sector in kurdistan region government have consumed about 50% of total energy consumption (fig.1) [1] . erbil city offers a good case of a contrast between contemporary and traditional houses. although erbil is one of the oldest cities in kurdistan region, there houses remain and still occupied by citizens. this offers an opportunity to compare the traditional city with that contemporary city in the performance of architecture in order to achieve the best techniques and methods to maintain thermal comfort in hot and dry climates. therefore, for an understanding of the thermal performance of both contemporary and traditional houses, various aspects are necessary such as architectural design, occupancy patterns, planning and constructional methods and materials. the present study aimed at finding the main climate response strategies to achieve thermal comfort for future houses. figure 1 electricity demand by sector [1] 2. literature review according to hasan fathy the traditional building is related to the majority cultures of the society, and work as symbols of identity as well as reflect the environmental specification of that region [2]. in the 18th century, research about traditional architectures had started, the studies in that time had different feature some considered it as national architecture element. in the 20th century, architects began to bring traditional buildings to the field and theory of architecture [2]. the village of new gournah, designed by hasan fathy in 1946, is the first project attempt to implement traditional architecture in to architectural field. he uses traditional egyptian design strategy such as mud bricks in its construction, available materials in the region and traditional nubian techniques in the houses [2]. in 2005, nazife ozay published article about the comparative study between tradition and contemporary houses in northern cyprus regarding of climatically responsive in term of the form, materials, windows and orientation of the building, and she conclude that the tradition climate strategy response has been ignored in the new building [3]. another important research published by boqvist et al in 2012, about the comparison between passive house construction and traditional building construction in sweden in term of construction thermal performance, climatic response and building efficiency [4]. furthermore, there are many studies have been done in many countries about these issues. until now there is no studies and measurement data 54 13 12 12 9 domestic agriculture government commercial industrial 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 percentage % mailto:serbest.ismael@uod.ac mailto:diler.morad@uod.ac about the comparison between traditional and contemporary houses in kurdistan region. but there are many study about traditional building in kurdistan region. therefore, this paper will be the basic for development of studies about this subject. 3. erbil climate erbil city is located to the north of iraq at kurdistan government region between (36.19) latitude and (44.009) longitude. the erbil’s climate is classified as semi-arid continental and is characterized by large differences in temperature between summer and winter and between day and night with extreme conditions. summer season (jun, july, august and september) is very hot and dry and the hottest average temperature is about 43c and in the hottest day the temperature rises above 48c. while the winter season (november, december, january and february) is cold and wet, the lowest average temperature about 2 c and in the lowest day the temperature declines below -5cm, with the total average rainfall about 300-400 millimeters annually [5]. the humidity is high in winter by average 80% and low in summer by average 20%. the annual wide speed relatively slow about 3-5 (fig.2) [6]. figure 2 erbil monthly average temperature and precipitation (www.accuweather.com) 4. macro & micro climate responsive design strategies in traditional buildings. traditional buildings in erbil were designed to withstand the sever climate conditions that surrounding them. the outcome was successful dwelling that stood the test of time for thousands of years to prove that responsive design strategies are effective for the buildings to combat and successfully respond to the environment condition surrounding it. the following are the main design strategies that have been used in traditional buildings [7]: 4.1 urban fabric erbil traditional buildings got evolved within 7000 years ago. the erbil citadel has been influenced more with northern side of the neighboring cities in turkey and iran, on contrast to the form, where the design finds to be similar to the buildings in baghdad. this is mainly because they were under the same climate and culture influence [8]. the citadel is mainly occupied by traditional courtyard-houses reached through a maze of narrow alleyways. the pedestrian alleyways, which ranged in width from one to two and half-meters, entered throughout the citadel in tree like pattern are a logicalfunctional solution to the circulation. while allalleyways began naturally from the main-gate and spread in all directions. the gate allows only entry and exit for all residents of the city (fig.3a). they are narrow and deep (i.e. alleyways) to provide shading over the street and neighboring buildings that reduces the air temperature as well as it provides protection in the neighborhood from sand storms, as the high density of buildings will reduce the wind arrays [9]. building in citadel were grouped close together to shade each other from the sun of midday. the ratio between street width and building height created a protected area from the sun of hot summer months, and this making walking comfortable and allowing the populations to sit in the street (fig.3b) [10]. ecological site planning allows suitable levels of solar radiation and natural day-light in to each residence unit. each housing unit will need a relatively unhindered southern exposure during the winter season, and the design of house itself will require to ensure that sun can enter into the inside of the house while the highest angle of summer-sun is excluded to keep the house unit cool [9]. asite plan showing roads b-aerial picture of residential building figure 2 erbil citadel asite plan showing roads b-aerial picture of residential building (http://www.erbilcitadel.org) http://www.erbilcitadel.org/ 4.2 form and orientation external envelop of the building is the most important layer that affects and controls the desirable wind exposer and solar access to moderate the heat loss and heat gain through the building. typical houses design in erbil are constructed with the courtyards that are the center of the plans with restrictions given by the form of the land-parcel. usually the courtyards were planned to be geometric in form either rectangle or square with its long axis or perpendicular to the solar orientation. all the windows of the rooms in both stories are oriented towards the courtyard to allow for natural ventilation and breathing of the building (fig.4 a-b) [11]. most houses are designed as two floors; the lower floor usually at one to one and half-meters under courtyard level. this floor is also accessed directly from the courtyard by relatively four or five steps. semi-basements always have vaultedroofs resting on thick-brick piers. usually ceilings are build up with two and half to three meters high with several windows facing the courtyard(fig.4d). the second level or the upper floor has a high ceiling, and lower windows to allow for cross-ventilation and let more day light into the space [12]. these forms of the houses are known as introvert enclosure, shut-off from its surrounding by solid and high walls to provide its occupants with privacy and block street noise. hence, these spaces and rooms look indoors onto a secluded and private open space, the courtyard. through which they receive daylight, natural ventilation, sunlight and have visual and physical communication from inside to outside(fig.4c) [13]. while orientation is the logical response for climate, especially the orientation toward the south facing since it is the main source solar exposure and perhaps source for comfort or discomfort during respective season. since iraq is located in the northern hemisphere, the arrangement of space in the building is designed according to the sun path arches all over the south. consequently, in indigenous houses, all the summer spaces are located in the southern part of the courtyard as well as all the openings of this part face north. in contrast, rooms used in the winter generally exist on the north-side [7]. aground floor plan b-first floor plan celevation plan dsection plan figure 4 erbil citadel typical houses aground floor plan b-first floor plan celevation plan dsection plan (http://www.erbilcitadel.org) 4.3 occupancy migrationplan arrangement according to warren and al-azzawi the rooms are used according to the time of the day or season, from the cellar to attic. the behavior patterns changed, in summer two periods of sleep were the rule; in the cellar during the afternoon and on the roof in the cool of the early hours. at other times of the year the day was un-broken and the night was spent in a first floor room.” therefore, the colonnaded house are places of complex microclimates where each area is used to its best advantage and where the courtyard itself is a giant room, or acting as the hub of life in the building [14] [15]. horizontal migration inside the houses of erbil is a seasonal move between the rooms according to their orientations. in other words, in the wintertime, sun-shine is desirable and occupants prefer to have the rooms with large windows that are south facing with low ceilings high to gain sun heat. in contrast, summer season it is desirable to have the rooms north facing north, usually are open with high ceilings to allow for cross ventilation will serve the best in erbil [16]. the vertical migration is the greatest effective response to temperature-change. since the climate is at its peak, meaning the morning time is spent in the ground floor; the semi-basement is used for the afternoon-time when the heat is excessive. while at night, roof space is used for sleeping. this approach is based on cool sky-radiation at night according to the fact that warm-air rises whereas cool air is collected in low space [17]. 4.4 windows, ventilation and shading. ventilation is an essential factor of modifying the hot and dry climate. the courtyard response for the climate is highly effective, where the courtyard is collecting cool and dense air at night, and provides the surrounding rooms with cool air till well into the day. when the sun reaches the courtyard, the air is heated and convection currents rise and cross ventilation occurs, especially when the surrounding spaces have secondary ventilation sources from cool alleys and adjacent narrow [18]. in addition, the “bad-geer” or wind towers is a remarkable ventilation device. it is tall narrow intakes open to the roof terrace; capturing the prevailing wind from northwest in kurdistan to catch clear and cool air to the below rooms. through these rooms, the air-passes in to the courtyard, feeding the convection cycle. different levels receive independent wind scopes [19]. the difference of sun-angles between summer and winter solstice gets higher the further south or north from the equator. hence, november until march months, sun infiltrate deeper to ward south oriented rooms when warm is preferred, while from april until october months, shading devices are useful against direct sun. the outside shading elements on the facades has a minor role in the erbil dwelling, while the houses are adjacent and introvert from three sides. however, the shadings are placed interior the house around the courtyard. the arcade and colonnade around the courtyard provides shading for the room around the court [20]. 4.5 water body and vegetation. water has a moderating effect on the air temperature of the micro-climate through moisture thermal transfer relative to cooling a space, as dry, warm air passes past small droplets of water, the heat from the air transfers in to the water, making the air cooler. this facilitates evaporation of the water, which causes the water further cool. water possesses very high thermal storage capacity; therefore, majority erbil traditional building have fountains [21]. the design behind the idea is that water has the capability to moderate the air-temperature in the surroundings and takes-up heat from air through evaporation and causes significant drop of temperature [22]. vegetation is an effective way of changing the temperature for better conditions by evapotranspiration. transpiration is a cluster of plants that creates the cooling effect of evaporation as air moves through or across then plants. the air is cooled as the plants remove heat to affect the evaporation state change. furthermore, it provides shade to the house to decrease the intense solar exposure. erbil traditional building used to have trees in the courtyard since all the windows are opened toward the courtyard [23]. 4.6 building (construction) materials. building materials and construction techniques were developed, and adopted to protect the occupant from climatic factors and temperature range. the structure is baring wall system, the roof is constructed by wooden timber beam material with thickness about 20-25 cm and covered by mat with clay without finishing. the external and interior walls are built from mud and stone with thickness about 50-75cm. windows and doors made from wood and steel, mass construction of traditional houses in erbil use certain exterior materials whether it made of mud or stone that are well insulated to prolong and protect the house against the heat in the day-time and delay the heat transmission to its thermal-mass characteristic. sometimes even storing the heat to protect itself for the chilly mornings [24] [25]. 5. macro & micro climate responsive design strategies in contemporary buildings contemporary house (modern house concept) in erbil city is characterized and influenced by many different architectural styles and design like western architecture that are unfamiliar to the area, without considering social life, the distinctive climatic conditions and the advantages of traditional architecture. this is mainly because of shortage of building regulations and economic aspect as well as lack of knowledge about the thermal-performance of modern materials and constructional methods [26]. contemporary house has grown quickly because it is meet social and individual need for a social success symbol and traditional house is perceived to be undesirable and old. 5.1 urban fabric new urban expansions and building were designed in the erbil and applied without respect for characteristics of city, because urban planning codes adapted from iraqi and foreign countries that are unrelated to the social life and cultural of the region. therefore, the existent house did not have formal codes that led to the great diversity. mainly, the urban planning of neighborhood characterized by main streets that have a rectilinear grid layout system as well as secondary street, and the blocks of housing plots area are surround by streets which are generally organized back-to-back(fig.5a). the roads are used to provide passage for cars, so they are wide with large open spaces with less shade the building and passengers(fig.5b) [26]. the layout does not look have architectural concept of three-dimensional and does not appear to carry any consideration of social customs, climatic conditions, orientation, economics, urban design and planning [27]. however, some areas have a higher status than others that are located to the corners of blocks or the house nearer to the main road. asite plan showing grid roads b-aerial picture of residential building figure 5 erbil city typical houses, ganjan city iraq, erbil asite plan showing grid roads b-aerial picture of residential building (www.ganjancity.com) 5.2 form and orientation increasing of population and urban planning restrictions effected on building form and the plot area of residential buildings, which were classified into variable size, small between 10m*15or20m (150-200 m²) which is widely used and built as terrace houses, medium 15m*20or25m (300-400 m²) built as semidetached houses, large 20m*30or40m (600-800 m²) are built as detached or semi-detached houses. the abovementioned factors made different plan form with a garden in the front, one and two stories or multi-story (fig.6 a-b-d) [26]. the compactness of house apartment, terraced, semidetached, the houses do not protect and shade each other from rain in winter and sun radiation in summer (fig.6c), while the house orientation directed according to the distribution of urban planning without any attention to environmental consideration like wind exposer, solar access and heat loss and gain through the external envelop [28]. the house size in terms of the built area size, floor number and room number on each floor, which is related to the family and building plot size in addition to social and economic situation in the society [29]. aground floor plan b-first floor plan celevation plan dsection plan (amperes) figure 6 ganjan city typical houses aground floor plan b-first floor plan celevation plan dsection plan (www.ganjancity.com) 5.3 occupancy migrationplan arrangement as many contemporary houses are comprised of apartments, terraced and semidetached (three sides) house generally designed free plan with a specific function for each zone or space, the occupants were forced to carry out their actions in specific areas, irrespective of the seasonal and daily changes in climate conditions. those make the zone thermally uncomfortable by overheating in summer and cooling in winter, generally, the rooms look out-wards toward the garden or the street (the passage wayside) [30]. the plan arrangement has different types but generally ground floor include reception living room (hall), kitchen room in the front house near to entrance and one or two http://www.ganjancity.com/ bedrooms’ in the behand while first floor include the rest of the bedrooms, these spaces are used throughout the year. 5.4 windows, ventilation and shading the external windows which oriented toward the street and front garden of ground floor (living, kitchen and reception) are large and first floor (bedrooms) are medium to large according to window to wall ratio, while the inside windows oriented to the shaft for lighting “minwar”. this has no relationship with the seasonal specialization and environmental or geographical orientation. therefore, the house cannot get advantage from such windows to encourage desirable heat gain in winter and avoid undesirable heat gain in summer. it is hard to decide the size of window for the room used during all seasons. the large windows in hot and dry reign cause overheating in summer and may by cooling in the winter by heat loss, therefor to achieve thermal comfort need device (air-condition) [31]. the external windows partially shaded by projecting small or large balconies “tarma” of the first floor or by continuous horizontal straight overhangs, but these shading devices are there for rain protection and decorative purpose, without any relation to the orientation and sun angles in winter and summer. most contemporary house have sufficient lighting due to the large windows while the ventilation is not functioned well because it not oriented to the correct wind breeze for the reasons previously mentioned and building outward-looking [32]. 5.5 water body and vegetation in fact, the garden in contemporary house is formed due to urban planning regulation, which forced the house to get away from the street 4 meters and have no relationship with climatic consideration. the garden located in the front of house include many kind of vegetation, this cannot be cooling the inside temperature like courtyard because of its location and purpose which used the plants for decoration with neglecting the solar accesses and wind exposer. in the recent year, many houses removed his garden because they thought it useless [33]. water bodies are not used in contemporary house because there is not enough space in the garden, and if it exists, it is used only for aesthetic purposes. for this reason, the use of vegetation and water are ineffective to reducing temperature inside the house [33]. 5.6 building (construction) materials contemporary house in erbil used for the construction reinforced concrete, and concrete block for structure (baring wall system), the roof is constructed by reinforced concrete material with thickness about 15 cm, sometime covered by terrazzo and porcelain tile, mostly without finishing. the external and interior walls are built from concrete block with thickness about 20cm generally finished with cement plaster, paints and marble [34]. windows and doors made from aluminum, plastic, wood, glass and steel, while ceramic and porcelain tile for floor finishes. material previously mentioned incorporated in heavy weight constructions. generally, both exterior walls and roof does not have thermal insulation, and is not thick enough to provide in sufficient u-value (against heat loss) and time lag (against heat gain) to achieve thermal comfort in winter and summer [35]. 6analysis ana evaluation this section will be evaluating and analysis both traditional and contemporary houses in erbil city, in term of climate response strategies aspect and thermal comfort table 1. this comparison and evaluation can covered majority of houses in the city not all due to the different building size, form and materials …etc. table 1 evolution and comparison between traditional and contemporary houses traditional houses contemporary houses u rb a n f a b ri c u rb a n l a y o u t -houses in towns were grouped close together to shade each other -houses oriented according to sun access and prevailing wind [9] -houses in towns have large open spaces with less shade building each other and passengers. -houses oriented randomly according to urban planning code (regulation) [26] s tr e e t n e tw o rk -narrow and irregular streets [9] -wide and regular network streets [27] a rc h it e c tu ra l d e si g n s tr a te g ie s f o rm a n d o ri e n ta ti o n c o m p a ri so n -inward looking with courtyard -simple plan form square and rectangular with cubic courtyard, ground and 1st floor equal. [12] having one external elevation and three other sides surrounded by neighborhood houses [11] -out ward looking to garden or street different plan form, ground and 1st floor not equal. [29] most houses have two elevations or more [28] e v a lu a ti o n both courtyard and simple of plan form achieved thermal comfort through cooling the spaces in day and night time by minimizing the surface that exposure to the sun and climate factor in summer. (authors) garden cannot by alternative solution of courtyard for achieving thermal comfort for spaces, while the plan form and two elevations or more led the large area of surface that exposure to the sun and climate factors. (authors) o c c u p a n c y m ig ra ti o n , p la n a rr a n g e m e n t c o m p a ri so n -one or two floors with small basement. -plot area according to family size and economic states [17] -changed in residential buildings. [14] -compact planning with courtyard -floors height change one or two floors or multi-story blocks -plot area classified according to urban planning regulation (no consideration for family size and economic). [30] -unchanged in residential buildings -incompact planning. no courtyard . [30] -floors height is the same e v a lu a ti o n -using ground floor in summer day and 1 st floor in night and winter to achieve thermal comfort as well as benefit for small basement in the hot day in summer. (authors) -there is zone problem because of restrictions of modern houses therefore to achieve thermal comfort need electric devises such as (air condition unit). lost in spaces. (authors) w in d o w s, v e n ti la ti o n a n d s h a d in g c o m p a ri so n -clerestory windows -covered terraces -lighting and natural ventilation by courtyard. external windows are small while interior windows are large with small window on the up. windows oriented to the courtyard according to the climate response [18]. wall shaded by attaching with surrounding houses -vast glazed windows not standard balconies or no balconies -natural ventilation and lighting by external and interior windows -external and interior windows are large. windows oriented to the garden, street or back side. [31] e v a lu a ti o n covered terraces and windows designed to provide suitable shading in summer. the interior windows oriented in the 1st floor to the south and ground floor to the north and west, to provide suitable sun radiation and shading in winter and summer. [18] the external windows small windows in the outside give a privacy. (authors) balcony and windows not designed to provide suitable shading in summer. -the large windows size and orientation cause loos of energy and uncomfortable because of overheating and under heating in summer and winter as well as loss of privacy. on the other hand it is suitable for natural lighting and ventilation. (authors) w a te r b o d y a n d v e g e ta ti o n c o m p a ri so n -a body of water and vegetation in the courtyard. [21] -garage and garden in the front of house or back side. [33] e v a l u a ti o n -providing thermal comfort by cooling spaces. (authors) -for aesthetic purposes.(authors) b u il d in g m a te ri a ls c o m p a ri so n -local-materials (wood, mud and stone) found on the site of the houses or brought from a nearby area. [24] -load-bearing walls wall thick 50-80 cm. -materials are mostly imported or locally made with poor qualities (concrete block and reinforced concrete) poor or no insulation -load-bearing walls and frame structures. [35] wall thick 24 cm e v a lu a ti o n -thick wall made of mud bricks achieve thermal comfort, its work as thermal insulation in the day time and stored heat at night. [24] -poor quality and insulation cause loos of energy and uncomfortable by lost of heating and cooling in summer and winter. (authors) t h e rm a l p e rf o rm a n c e -satisfactory during both winter and summer and at all times. (authors) -unsatisfactory during the times of overheating and under heating. (authors) 7. conclusion according to the above evaluation, it can be understood that the houses with courtyard (traditional house) are the best solution for climate condition of erbil city due to the successful responds to the hot and dry climate. today, it can probably be observed any consistency in the climate design approach in erbil city. 2 1 a rc h it e c tu ra l d e si g n s tr a te g ie s the microclimatic factors such as sun access or orientation are ignored. the direction of wind breeze in many cases have not been taken in to consideration in building design, material selection and site planning, as well as the economic state (land prices, using chip marital) and increase population in the main towns this leading residential sector to be far away from the both urban and architectural quality. thermal comfort and climatic design have been ignored by engineer and designers that cause utilizing of mechanical devise such as (air-condition unit) to control the thermal comfort in the house, that main massive wastage of money and energy resources. based on the above evaluation, may be the available climate design considerations can be addressed: design of landscape. specially, to providing shade and cooling for spaces during the hotsummer times by the trees and vegetation. designing of semi-open and open spaces for example courtyards, balconies, terraces and verandas. block concrete should be replaced by local material like stone, brick and preferred used new material and system prevailing wind direction and sun access or orientation should by highly respected utilizing suitable building element and shading device that provide climate solutions for instance sun devices, blinds and overhangs. pvs shutters with louvers are appropriate and available for erbil climate. using suitable thick of thermal insulating of walls and roof with suitable high of ceilings. utilizing light color to reflect the heat (sun radiation) such as white with pure form. 8. reference [1] i. basil, "mega-project plans for developing the power and water sector in iraq and kurdistan region of iraq," uae, dubai, 2014. 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"modrenization theory and house garden transformation case study erbil city," aro-the scientific journal of koya university, no. 2307-549x, pp. 8-13, 2013,. [34] d. m. rostam, et al. "economical and structural feasibility of concrete cellular and solid blocks in kurdistan region," aro-the scientific journal of koya university, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 1-7, 2016. [35] a. utama and s. h. gheewala, "influence of material selection on energy demand in residential houses," the journal of material and design:elsevier, 2009.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq laboratory diagnosis of h. pylori among dyspeptic patients using culture and rapid urease test hogir mohammed shukri saadi ali yahya saeed directorate of akre education department of biology general directorate of duhok education college of science ministry of education university of duhok duhok_iraq duhok_iraq dna_proten@yahoo.com ali.saeed@uod.ac volume 4 – special issue: 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) doi: 10.24017/science.2019 .ichms.18 received: 19 june 2019 accepted: 10 july 2019 abstract globally helicobacter pylori has been defined is the prime reason of stomach ulcer and gastric cancer. medical laboratory analysis of h. pylori infection is done by two ways invasive and noninvasive methods. invasive techniques frequently disapproved by patients because it is inconvenient but still remain reliable methods. among invasive methods, culture is considered as gold standard method from which other methods are compered. a sum of eighty six persons with average of ages between 18-77 years old with mean 37.58 years ± (forty three males , forty three females) who visited to endoscopic center / azadi teaching hospital for endoscopic examination from june to oct. 2013.from everyone , two antral biopsies, one for urease test, the other for culture were collected. biographies from each case were taken in a questionnaire form after approval by research ethics committee of the college of medicine / duhok university. h. pylorus was found in 37.2% and 68% by culture and rapid urease test respectively. the biggest value percentage of h. pylori positive cases was detected by rapid urease test while the fewest value percentage was by culture. combination of both tests it did not approve as a diagnostic test for detection of this pathogenic bacteria. the study did not detect any statistical correlation on the impact of age factor on h. pylori infection by both methods. in this research appear males were less positive for h. pylori than females by urease test and no such statistical association was mailto:dna_proten@yahoo.com kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 175 noticed count on the sex and helicobacter pylori pathogenicity via culture. research never noticed any considerable correlation was found between smoking status and patient's residence with h. pylori positive cases by both methods. this study was performed to estimate the appropriate and better diagnostic tests for diagnosis of h. pylori among various types of samples. due to the increasing incidence of treatment failure (caused in part by antibiotic resistance), post-treatment testing is recommended to confirm h. pylori eradication. knowledge of the epidemic and the routes of transmission of this pathogen are important points to avoid from spreading and may be useful in identifying high-risk populations, especially in areas that have high rates of gastric lymphoma, gastric cancer, and gastric ulcer. the current study conclude (rut) was superlative than culture for the detection of helicobacter pylori. key words: rapid urease test , culture, helicobacter pylori 1. introduction helicobacter pylori is a gram negative, motility, spiral – curved and microaerophilic bacterium that is present in the human stomach of approximately 50% of the world´s population. in 1983, warren and marshall were the first to describe and isolate this bacterium microorganism and associate to gastritis, a fundamental change occurred toward the causes and remedy plans of peptic ulcer. prior this historical event nobody was believed among microbiologists that bacteria can survive and flourish under unfavorable stomach surrounding. over production of acid cause gastritis it has been believed by clinicians therefor their remedies were towards suppressing of acid only. now it becomes facts that this bacterium is main cause of peptic ulcer and has a strong relationship with gastric carcinoma. therefore, the treatment was changed from anti acid drugs to both antibacterial and anti-acid drugs [1 [.the main characteristics of this bacterium are negative for gram stain, curved rods with sheathed lophotrichous, slow growing requires 5-7 days and fastidious requires special media enriched with antibacterial drugs and microaerobic conditions [2]. the bacterium was first called campylobacter like organism but later moved to the new genus and renamed helicobacter pylori [3]. this bacterium is classified as rapid urea splitting bacteria which splits urea into ammonia gas creating an alkaline cloud to protect themselves from gastric acidity ]4[. this bacterium is cosmopolitan in distribution and a bout 70-90% of individuals in non-developed countries are occupied by this bacterium, while fifty percentages among individuals living in advanced countries [5]. routes of transfer of this bacteria from person to person has been shown to occur via in different ways , between seventeen to thirty seven peptic ulcer patients participated in acidity secretion study was possibly result from cross infection with h pylori via ph probes distinctly , nevertheless direct contact with infected person is not normal . three methods is available for passing this microorganism from a person infected by this bacteria to a person uninfected without intervention of an external source have been suggested: by faeces, saliva and vomitus [6]. various methods have been used for screening and determination of h.pylori some of them require endoscopy to take biopsy like cultivation on medium, smear histological examination and urease test, while other do not require biopsy and named noninvasive. although invasive methods are non-convenient for patients but still more reliable for diagnosis. therefore two of the popular invasive methods namely culture and (rut) were used to show the effect of these tests for identification of kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 176 helicobacter pylori among peptic ulcer cases [7]. the aim of the present research to study the effect of gender, age, residency and smoking on the prevalence of h.pylori of studied patients and to assess the efficacy of bacteriological method (culture ) and rapid urease test for screening h. pylori in dyspeptic patients who underwent endoscopy examination . 2. literature review in 1983 this microorganism was discovered since that time several methods have been used for diagnosing helicobacter pylori bacteria. which include both invasive methods and noninvasive methods [8 and 9].invasive methods require endoscopy to obtain gastric biopsies for analysis by histopathology, culture, or urease tests as well as by molecular technique [10]. non-invasive methods include urea breath test (ubt), serology and stool antigen test [11and 12]. [13] isolated h. pylori from 45% of gastric biopsies using (bhi) agar with seven percentage horse red blood cells plus (oxoid, basingstoke, england) antimicrobial combination and thioglycolate broth as a transport media. this bacterium was screened about 64% of cases using blood agar plus campylosel (bio merioux, france) by [14]. h. pylori was isolated from 120 (54.54%) of 220 patients with endoscopic ulcers in which 38 (31.66%) from patients with duodenitis and 13 (10.83%) from patients with gastritis using thioglycolate broth as a transport media and campylobacter selective media with antibiotics [15]. in another study by [16] who used columbia blood agar medium plus 7% lysed horse red blood cells supplemented with h. pylori selective (dent) antibiotics (oxoid, basingstoke, uk) and campy gen bags (oxoid, basingstoke, england) for isolation of h. pylori from antral biopsies. they isolated h. pylori from 163 (55%) antral biopsies and confirmed their diagnosis by gram stain morphology and enzymatic tests such as urease, oxidase, and catalase. [17] isolated h. pylori from 97 (48%) out 201 patients using stuart's medium as a transport media. they grinded biopsies in 250-300 μl of normal saline using sterile mortar and pestle and 100 μl were seeded onto a selective agar incubated in a microaerophilic condition for a period of seven days. h. pylori was isolated from 55.2% of gastric biopsies using columbia blood agar (oxoid) supplemented with polymyxine b, vancomycin, and trimethoprim as selective medium [18], while [19] isolated h. pylori from 38 (36.5%) out of 104 gastric biopsies using selective medium and incubated at 37°c for one week under microaerophilic. out of 82 patients, 53 (64.6%) were positive for h. pylori by culturing on medium using two biopsies, one from the antral and the other from fundus [20]. h. pylori was detected in 76 (82.60%) out of 92 gastric aspirations gathered from last part of the stomach using clo test [21]. [22] used rapid urease test under the name pronto dry kit and found that 70 (68.62%) from 102 gastric biopsies were positive. while the diagnostic test is read with 1 min and it was requires high colony of this microbes and the specificity of test was typical result, but reduces with the period of the incubation. [23] used gastric aspiration samples for the detection of h. pylori by rut, they found 94% from 300 samples were positive. 3. materials and methods 3.1. gastric biopsy two antral biopsies from different sites were obtained from the pyloric region of 86 dyspeptic patients using a gifxq 40 endoscope (olympus optical company, tokyo, japan). biopsy from everey patient was tested via (rut) where it is called helicotecut® plus (strong biotech corporation, taipei, taiwan) which was done immediately after collection at the same center while other biopsies were transported to the microbiological laboratory/ dept. biology/ college of science, univ. of duhok, using thioglycolate broth (himidia, india) as transport media under cool temperatures. 3.2. isoltion biopsies were processed in less than two hours from collection under aseptic condition. each biopsy was homogenized then inoculated into columbia blood agar (sr0147e, oxoid, uk) kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 177 enriched with 5% sheep blood and antimicrobial susceptibility (oxoid, uk). inoculated fresh and pour plates were incubated in microaerobic conditions using campy gas packs (bio merieux, france) at 37°c for one week. plates showed growth of small, transparent, grey and non-hemolytic colonies were suspected for h. pylori and processed for identification. diagnosis of h. pylori was made according to the bacterial and biochemical tests like catalase, oxidase and urease tests. 3.3.rapid urease test helicotecut® plus (strong biotech corporation, taipei, taiwan) was used as a rapid urease test. one antral biopsy from each studied patient was immediately tested and the test was considered positive when the color of the test paper changed from yellow/orange to pink/purple within 15 min at 25 °c but if it remained yellow in color after an hour, then the test was negative. 4. results this microaerophilic organism was identified in 68% and 37.2% by rapid-urease test and culture respectively as illustrated in table 1.efficacy of two diagnostic tests (culture and rapid urease test) against helicobacter pylori. table 1. efficacy of two diagnostic tests against helicobacter pylori methods with h.pylori number of patients / % without h.pylori number of patients / % rut 59 / 68 27 / 32 culture 32 / 37.2 54 / 62.8 (100%) of study population depending on age categories were positive and their ages were more than 60 years old patients by rapid-urease test, while culture and performance both of them showed variable results in other age groups as depict in figure. 1 and no association was detected between ages and rut, culture. fig.1. age distribution in cases with positive tests a high percentage (79.06%) of this bacterium was in female patients by rapid urease test compared to 55.81% in male patients. 41.86% of positive samples were recorded in males using culture method compared to 32.55% in females, while 32.55% of females were positive 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 ≤ 20 20-30 31-40 41-50 51-60 ≥ 60 p e rc e n ta g e % age groups rut culture rut& culture kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 178 using both rapid urease test and culture methods compared to 23.25% in male patients, as shown in figure 2. statistical analysis showed that the sex (female) affected significantly (p=0.0238) on the rapid urease test, while no significant association was recorded between sex and culture, sex and culture with rapid urease test. fig.2. screening and determination of h. pylori in sex groups by rut and culture among smokers, 60% gave positive compared to 52.17% in non-smoker patients by rapid urease test, while by culture, 30% of smokers and 52.17% non-smoker patients gave positive using culture. by both culture method and rapid urease test, h. pylori was indicated in 15% in smoker persons compared to 26.08% in non-smoker patients as illustrated in fig 3 no evidence of smoking status correlation was detected by these tests. fig.3. frequencies of helicobacter pylorus infection with (rut and cult.) in correlation to smoking this anaerobic microorganism was detected in 72%, 38% and 30% by rapid urease test, culture & both culture plus rapid urease test among the 50 patients who lived in the urban areas compared to low percentages of h. pylori among individual who lived in villages in which 63.88%, 36.11% and 25% of patients were positive for h. pylori by rapid urease test, culture and both culture with rapid urease test alternately, as depict in fig 4.evidence association was no detected based on residency impact and these tests. 0 20 40 60 80 100 female male p e rc e n ta g e % sex rut culture rut & culture 0 20 40 60 80 smoker non smoker p e rc e n ta g e % smoking rut culture rut&culture 0 20 40 60 80 urban rural p e rc e n ta g e % resident rut culture rut&culture fig.4.detection of helicobacter pylori based on residency factor by rut and culture. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 179 5. discussion helicobacter pylori is the commonest microbe it cause dyspepsia chronic infection around the world and the majority of patients suffered from this infection stay asymptomatic in a period of time. various methods used for laboratory confirmation of helicobacter pylori, which are divided into biopsy-based methods called invasive methods like culture, rut and histopathology. non-invasive methods include ubt and serological tests for detection of immune responses and stool antigen. the goal of the current research was to assess the efficacy of two commonly used invasive methods namely (rut) and culture for identification of helicobacter pylori from gastric biopsies. the study included 86 patients who were referred to endoscopically examination center. culture of the biopsy specimens inappropriate to be used routinely as it is time consuming and is very difficult to maintain the strict anaerobic measures. the maximum percentage (68.0%) of positive cases was registered by rut while the minimum percentage (32.7%) was by culture. the results of the culture method were agreeing to those recorded via [24] who diagnosed that 36% of cases were positive by culture method. the results of this study were in disagreement with those found by several researchers who recorded high percentages of h. pylori from gastric biopsies, such [25] isolated 60% .the results of the study were different from other researchers who recorded lower percentages of h. pylori from gastric biopsies such as [26] isolated 19.4%,.these discrepancies in the results of isolated h. pylori from gastric biopsies can be attributed to many causes such as low number of studied samples, pathogenicity and the antral biopsy may not to be containing this bacteria. therefore, the distribution of h.pylori is patchy or coccoid forms are difficult to detect and hence this microorganism cannot be diagnosed in such condition .requirements of multiple biopsy ( at least three ) from several sites of the stomach , should be taken so as to increase the diagnostic yield, taking of antibiotic , ethical considerations, genetic characteristics, preclude performing endoscopy on suffering patients from gastritis and methodology. the results of rapid urease test (rut) in this study were identical to those recorded by [27] 61.7%. on the other hand, the results were dissimilar to those found by [28] 51.4%. these differences in the findings of rut may be due to many factors such as the kind of test, small size of biopsy, patchy distributed h. pylori in the stomach, presences of contaminant urea splitting bacteria, such as proteus sp and klebsiella sp. receiving of antimicrobial drugs, the activity of urease enzyme and rubbing the biopsy specimen very well over a dry glass slide of rut. high percentages (68.60%) of h. pylori infections were detected by rapid urease test in all studied age categories and age groups did not show any significant effect on the rapid urease test for detecting h. pylori. our findings were dissimilar to those of most studies who found that h. pylori positivity was becomes more with the increasing of age. [29] detected that positive cases of this bacterium were increased by aging, revealed that the age has a significant influence on the prevalence of h. pylori and found a high percentage in the age group among the 25-34 years old, while a low percentage was recorded above 50 years old patients. the reasons of these differences may be due to several factors, such as the socio-economic level, the number of enrolled samples, seasonal diversity, distribution of immunoreactive bands according to ethnic origin, individual susceptibility to infection, epidemiology varies widely by geographical areas of the study, mode of transmission, educational & nutritional level and medical services. h. pylorus was detected in 37.2% patients by the culture method and no any significant correlation was noticed between ages and culture method. the outcomes of current study were in contrast to the results found by other researchers who found impact of age on the result of culture. [30] found effect of culture on variable range of age between >15-50 < years old and the prevalence of h. pylori infection was increased with the age when considered the culture report. these dissimilarities between the present results and other results can be due to the same interpretation highlighted previously, like the socio-economic level of studied population, size of sampling, type of patients, location of the study, methodology and, the irregular distribution of the h. pylori in the gastric mucosa could influence on the results obtained. a high percentage (79.06%) of positivity was recorded kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 180 among females compared to 55.81% in males by the rapid urease test and a considerable correlation was registered between females and positive cases. the results were comparable to those found by [31] while different with the results of other researchers like [32] concluded that males to be more infected (68.5%%) than females in current study no considerable linkage was detected between gender and h. pylori infection by the culture method. the results were agreed to those found by [33] detected females patients were more infected than males. the differences in the results can be attributed to the socio-economic status, place of living, hygiene, physiological and hormonal factors, number analyzed samples and methodology. any considerable correlation was not detected between smoking status and h. pylori positivity by rapid urease test and culture method. the findings were different from those reported by [34] who found a significant correlation between smoking and h. pylori positivity via the rapid urease test and culture method. the discrepancies of these results can be attributed to the small number of studied specimens as well as to individual variation. 6. conclusion 1. the most superior test it was rapid-urease test in comparison to culture for detection this microaerobic organism 2. the study concluded that smoking and residence were not found related to this pathogenic bacteria. 3. it was observed the statistical correlation between gender and helicobacter pylorus pathogenic bacteria by rapid urease test as it is females were more infected than males, but culture did not find such correlation 4. no obvious influence of age was registered on helicobacter pylorus infection by these of two tests. 5. the detection of h. pylori in endoscopic biopsies by performs of both of culture and rapid urease test was not necessary in medical diagnosis as it did not improve the diagnostic rate over a combination of culture and rapid urease test as it was time consuming and expensive. reference [1] m. arshad , m. akram , u. shahab, a. afzal, u. khan, h. abdul, and a. m. mohiuddin, "helicobacter pylori: an introduction," international journal of applied biology and pharmaceutical technology , vol.1, pp. 1337-1351, 2010. 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[34] b.c.malcolm," cigarette smoking and helicobacterpylori infection,"postgraduate medical journal, vol.69,pp.41-44,1993. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(issn)1365-2036  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 3 | issue 2 | december 2018 | doi:10.24017/science.2018.3.3 received: 13 october 2018 | accepted: 11 november 2018 the effect of planting distance and spraying with different concentrations of (micronate15) on vegetative growth and yield traits of pea plant (pisum sativum l.) ismael ahmad hassan department of protected agriculture , bakrajo technical institute sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq ismael.hassan@spu.edu.iq 13 abstract: the aim of this study was to find the effect of planting distances and spraying with different concentrations of leaf fertilizer with micronate15 on some vegetative growth traits and yield of pea variety green canada in non-heated greenhouses, by using three planting distance (factor a) which includes: a1:20, a2: 30, and a3:40 cm and four spray concentrations as foliar application (factor b) which includes: b0: zero, b1: 0.5, b2: 1.5 and b3: 2.5 liter of water). according to the results of this study the highest plant (124.82cm), number of branches (4.58), fresh weight,(95.94 g) and the total yield (142.41 g)were observed in the distance of planting (30 cm), while the highest value of the pod length was observed from the distance planting in 40 cm which is 8.39 cm. the concentration of 1.5 ml / liter of micronate15 gave the highest values of branches 4.53 branches, fresh weight 97.47 g, number of pods 36.73 pods, number of seeds 8.55 oats, length of the pod 8.83 cm and the total yield 150.78 g. the highest values of the number of branches 5.14 branch, fresh weight 105.72 g, the number of seeds 8.90 seed and the total yield 159.78 g were observed from the interaction between the planting distance of 30 cm and 1.5 ml / liter of nutrient micronate15. also, the interaction between 20 cm distance and foliar application with 2.5 ml l of micronate15 gave the highest value in the number of leaves which is 53.36. keywords: pea plant, planting distance, micronate15, vegetative traits and yield. 1. introduction pisum sativum l. is an annual plant species of pisum that belongs to the fabaceae family, native to central and southeast asia [1]. it is rich in nutrients, which makes 27.8% of protein, 42.65% of carbohydrate, vitamins, minerals, dietary fiber and antioxidant compounds [2]. the pea has multiple uses where its green pods and seeds are used as food for humans [3] which are cooked directly, or after they can be frozen [4]. in spite of the importance of this crop, its cultivation is limited to the central region of iraq, and some limited parts of the northern region, and the area planted with pea in 2015, more than 300 acres in all governorates of iraq and the average production was 2658.0 kg /acre about 900 tons [5]. it is considered one of the most important vegetable crops in the world and is widespread because of the importance of food processing. it gives good balance in a relatively cold and humid atmosphere while giving a small crop in the hot areas. pea is planted in spring and autumn seasons, although they bear low temperature of less than zero centigrade [6]. the nutritional elements have an important role in activates plants and increasing the production because it is rich in organic acids and amino acids and is very important to the role of substances in photosynthesis, organic carbohydrates and nutrients found in these paper fertilizers, and their effect in photosynthesis, respiration and protoplasmic synthesis, (rna and dna) necessary for cell division [7]. the addition of 1.5 mg fe / liter with 0.01 mg molybdenum / liter resulted in an increase in the dry weight of the total vegetation of the pea plant it was found by [6] an increase was found in the early yield and the total of the pea plant at fertilization with 40 kg of phosphate fertilizer p2o5 / dunum, [8, 9], and [10] was showed that foliar application increased the vegetative growth characteristics of some vegetable plants. the efficiency of vegetative nutrition in plant varieties are very fast because of the absorption of nutrient elements of the plant parts equally which also reduces the use of large quantities of fertilizer [11]. the soil of central and southern iraq, which is characterized by its high level of lime (caco3) and clay, which makes food elements low-readiness for absorption by the plant, and the dryclimate in summer, which affects the readiness of these elements, leads to lack of quantity and quality [12, 9] noticed significant increase in plant height, number of branches, leaves, fruits / plant, leaf area of plant and plant yield of the plastic house when using spray with a solution nourishing the rivers several times on pepper plant cordoba, [13]was found that spraying with leaf feeding micronate 25 with a concentration of 0.5 mg / liter gave 14 the highest number of leaves, fruit size, and the total yield of pepper's california wonder. as found [14] that the response of the plant pea plant to the fertilizer of phosphorus and humic acid led to a significant increase in each plant height, number of leaves, number of branches, number of horns, length of pod, number of seeds, total plant yield. as found [10] there was also a significant increase in plant length, number of leaves, number of branches, and plant yield of tubers in two varieties of potato plant which sprayed by 25 and 32 g /liter in agro leaf fertilizer. it was noticed [15] that the addition of potassium sulphate fertilizer 322 kg/ ha achieved a significant increase in plant height, the number of fruits/plant and total plant in cucumber variety toshka in the glass houses. concerning distances of planting, both [16] and [17] found that there was an increase in the percentage of small pods with a diameter less than 1 cm for narrow planting distances. it was found [17] that the number of the seeds /pods became less when the distance between plants was reduced. it was noticed [18] that when using (50, 75 and 100) cm between the lines of cowpea and (5, 10, 20) cm between the plants, the distance of 100 cm gave the lowest total crop yield /plant. regarding the effect of distances of planting on some quantitative traits and other plants of the legume family, by [19] that the number of pods in bean plants increased by increasing the planting distance between plants, as observed by [20, 21] (lima green) grown at a distance of 12 cm between plants and 75 cm between the lines of cultivation has given the highest yield in the unit area. due to the lack of studies in iraq on the effect of planting distance, and fertilization of leaf feeding on pea, economic importance and its nutritional value, especially its protein and carbohydrate content, we have conducted this research to determine the most suitable planting distances and levels of micronate15 to evaluate the growth and yield characters in pea plant. 2. methods and materials the research was carried out in the non-heated greenhouses of the department of protected planting at the technical institute of bakrajo, sulaymaniyah governorate, during the autumn season in 2016 to study the effect of three planting distances (20, 30 and 40 cm) and four levels of leaf feeding with micronate15 (0.0, 0.5, 1.5) and 2.5 ml/ liter water), table (1) and their interaction on some vegetative and productive traits of the plant variety green canada. this is a common cultured canadian variety, early with a high contract rate that entered kurdistan-iraq in 2010. the number of structural transactions is 12. in this experiment the design of the randomized complete block random sectors r.c.b.d, means comparisons between characters means was carried out according to duncan’s tests at a significant level of 0.05 [22]. table 1: chemical composition of micronate15 % 4.00 iron(fe) edta citric acid chelated % 4.00 zinc (zn) edta citric acid chelated % 3.00 manganese (mn) edta citric acid chelated % 2.00 magnesium (mg) edta citric acid chelated % 1.50 boron (b) % 0.50 copper (cu) edta citric acid chelated % 0.05 molybdenum (mo) and rich with organic acids , amino acid and vitamins production of planting caravans company /zarqa/ jordan. indicators of the measured outcome: at the end of the study the following data were recorded five randomly selected plants and calculated for each experimental unit: 1plant length: the selected plants were measured starting from the surface of the soil until the developing summit and taking the average length of one plant/cm. 2number of leaves: the average number of leaves / plant. 3number of branches: the average number of branches / plant. 4fresh weight: the average weight gm / plant was calculated. 5number of pods: the average number of horns was calculated from the beginning of the harvest to the last fairy by dividing the number of the number of plants measured. 6number of seeds: the average number of seeds / plants was calculated. 7length of pod: the average length cm per pod. 8yield of one plant: the average of the product of the plant was calculated / gm. the dimensions of the plastic house (50 m length, 9 m width and 3.5 m height). solar pasteurization of the soil was conducted. the samples of plastic house soil were randomly collected depth 0-30 cm and from several different locations inside the plastic house where the study was carried out. to the terrace's width 75 cm, and the distance between a floor and another 100 cm, leaving 50 cm distance from each. the physical and chemical properties of the soil used in the study is shown in table 2 which defined by [23, 24, 25]. the plastic house was divided into three replicates, each contains 12 combination treatments resulting from the interaction of 4 treatments of spray with the leaf micronate solution 15 (0.0, 0.5, 1.5 and 2.5) ml/ liter sprayed on the plants twice, once when the first flower appeared, and second spray after one month at the first 15 spray after adding the diffuser material (0.01%) to reduce the surface tension of the water molecules until the full wetness using a 5 liter hand spray in the early morning and three treatments of planting distances (20, 30 and 40 cm) each treatment on the terrace consisted of a length of 45 m and a width of 1 m. the drip irrigation system was laid along the length of the terrace, and 3-4 seeds were placed in each hole according to the planting distances of the study. the process of thinning was done after two weeks of planting for two plants in the same pit. the usual crop service operations were carried out, as is the case with the service of the crop grown in greenhouses [26]. table 2: physicochemical properties of soil. parameters sample value ph 7.5 electric conductivity (mmhos/cm) 2.12 calcium carbonate (%) 2.49 organic matter (%) 2.48 calcium (mgkg-1) 4322 magnesium (mgkg-1) 280.78 potassium (mgkg-1) 245 phosphorus (mgkg-1) 3.47 zinc (mgkg-1) 1.37 manganic (mgkg-1) 35 soil texture clay sand (%) 12.17 silt (%) 45.72 clay (%) 42.11 3. results and discussions 3.1 plant height (cm): the results obtained from (table 3) indicate that the best planting distance achieved the longest height of the plant is the cultivation of plants at a distance of 30 cm, which is (124.82 cm) followed by planting plants at a distance of 20 cm (113.73 cm). the best significant concentration of the feed spray solution is 2.5 ml / liter, 1.5 ml / liter, then 0.5 ml / liter of water and concentration zero (135.74, 127.16, 107.03 and 91.69 cm, respectively). this means that the higher concentration of the feeding spray solution, the higher plant height will increase accordingly. the reason for the increase of leaves is that increasing concentration of nutrients in the spray solution leads to increased vegetative growth, which leads to increase the height of plant and these results are agreed with [14]. relating the interaction between planting distances and concentration of the spray solution was explained that the best planting distance gave the longest height of the plant when cultivated at a the distance 30 cm, and the use of concentrated spray solution 2.5 and 1.5 ml / liter water (146.15and144.32cm respectively) followed by cultivation at distance 20 cm and concentration 2.5 ml / liter of water (138.73 cm). 3.2 number of leaves/plant: the results obtained from (table 4) show that there is (non-significant differences) between the planting distances. the best concentration of the spray solution is 2.5 ml / liter followed by the concentration of 1.5 ml / liter water and the concentration of 0.5 ml / liter water (49.35, 46.73, and 42.28 leaves / plant, respectively). the interaction between plant culture distances and concentration of nutritious spray solution between planting the plants at a distance of 20 cm and the use of concentration of leaf nutrient solution 2.5 ml / liter of water the high number of leaves / plant (53.36 leaves/plant), although only the real leaves were calculated without the modified leaves, and this result contradicts with the finding of [14] because the researchers calculated the real leaves and the modified leaves collected. 3.3 the number of branches / plant: from the data obtained from (table 5) we note that the best distance to cultivate the plants of pea is 30 cm between plant and another, followed by planting at a distance of 20 cm and planting at a distance of 40 cm (4.58, 4.07, 3.61 branch / plant, respectively). the best concentration of the nutrient spray solution is 1.5 ml / liter of water (4.53 branches / plant) which is superior significantly on the concentration0.5 ml / liter of water and control 4.05and 3.63 branch / plant),and non-significantly the concentration of 2.5 (4.05 branch / plant) these results are consistent with what is indicated by researcher [14] . it was found in the experiment that the best distance of cultivation was 30 cm to get the largest number of branches was 4.58 and the best paper nutrient concentration of micronate 15 was 1.5 ml / liter to get the largest number of branches was 4.53. the overlap between workers distance 30 cm and nourishing concentration 1.5 ml / liter for the largest number of branches was 5.14. found that the best distance of planting distance of 30 cm less the number of branches and also the concentration of nutritious concentration the greater or less the concentration of 15 micronate 1.5 ml / liter of the number of branches so you can get the number of branches when using transactions of agriculture 30 cm and concentration 1.5 ml / liter. regarding the results of interaction between the planting distances and concentrations of the nutrient spray solution it is obvious that the concentration of 1.5 ml / liter water significantly exceeds other treatments in the number of branches / plants followed by the concentration of 2.5 ml / liter of water (5.14 and 4.92 branch / plant, respectively) when growing the plants on a distance of 30 cm between a plant and another. 3.4 weight of the total vegetative (gm / plant): table (6) shows the effect of the distances of planting between plants, when the planting distance is 30 cm significantly higher in the fresh weight of the total vegetative (95.94 gm) followed by planting distance 40 cm (90.94 gm) the distance was relatively highest but no significant to planting by 20 cm between plants (86.23 gm). the most significant concentration of the leaf-spray feeder solution was the concentration of 1.5 ml / liter water, which achieved a wet plant weight of 97.47 g followed by the concentration of 2.5 ml / liter, which achieved (91.50 gm). this concentration significantly exceeded the concentration of zero (85.85 gm) relatively nonsignificant concentration of 0.5 ml / liter (88.85 gm) this is consistent with the results of [14]. 16 it was explained from the results of interaction between the planting distances and spray concentrations of leaf nutrient , that the planting distance of 30 cm between the plants fulfilled a significant advantage when spraying with a concentration of 1.5 ml / liter of water (105.75 g), followed by planting with the same planting distance and spraying with a concentration of 2.5 ml / liter water (98.33 g) and planting on a distance of 40 cm between the plants and spraying with a concentration of 1.5 ml / liter of water (94.34 g). 3.5 number of pods / plant: table (7) shows the effect of planting distances between plants on the average number of pods per plant. planting on a distance of 40 cm and 30 cm showed the highest number of developed pods (33.38 and 28.44 pod / plant respectively ) followed by a significant 20 cm (20.23 pod / plant). the most significant concentration which obtained the highest number of pods was 1.5 ml / liter (36.73 pods / plant) followed by 2.5 ml / liter (28.94 pods / plant) which had a relatively overwhelming non-significant over concentration of 0.5ml / liter (24.52 pods / plant), and these results are consistent with what the researchers [14,31,32] stated. interaction between planting distances and nutrient spraying concentrations was clarified that planting plants at a distance of 40 cm between plants and spraying with a concentration of 1.5 ml / liter of water gave the best average number of pods / plant (45.96 pod). it is clear from the experience that the greater the distance of cultivation, the greater number of pots and the best concentration to obtain the highest number of pots is the concentration of 1.5 ml / liter of micronate15. 3.6 number of seeds / pod: the results obtained from (table 8) showed that there were no significant differences between the planting distances treatments. this means that the distances did not affect the number explain it of seeds / pod, but there is a relative superiority not significant of the distance 40 cm followed by distance 30 cm. the best concentrations were 1.5 ml / liter and 2.5 ml / liter (8.55 and 8.13 seed / pod respectively) significantly superior on the concentration of0.5ml / liter of water (7.35 seeds / pod). this is consistent with the results of each [14, 27, 28]. the interaction between the planting distances and the foliar application is that plant cultivation at a distance of 30 cm between the plants and spraying with a concentration of 1.5 ml / liter has given significantly the highest number of seeds / pod (08.9 seeds) as a result of the efficiency of leaf manure in the formation and growth of inherited seeds. 3.7 length of pod (cm): the results obtained in (table 9) showed non-significant differences between the different planting distances, but there was a slight difference not significant in planting on 40 cm (8.39 cm). the highest significant concentration was the 1.5 ml / liter which obtained the higher length of pods (8.83 cm) compared to the concentration of 0.5 ml / liter (7.75 cm), while the concentration of 2.5 ml / liter (8.28 cm) was relatively non-significant compared to the 0.5 concentration ml / liter of water and this is consistent with the results of [14]. interaction between the different planting distances and different concentrations of leaf nutrient micronate15 explained that plant cultivation on a distance of 40 cm between the plants and spray with 1.5 ml / liter fulfilled as average the longest pods significantly which is (9.42 cm) followed by 30 cm and spraying with the same concentration of the previous 1.5 ml /liter water where obtained the significant average length of pod (8.93 cm). 3.8 total yield (gm/plant): from the observation of the results in (table 10) no significant differences were found in the total yield of the three planting distances, however cultivating the plants on a distance of 30 cm was higher (142.41 gm/plant) if compared to planting on the 40 and 20 cm between the plants. the best concentration of the nutrient spray solution significantly was 1.5 ml / liter, with a total yield of 150.78 gm / plant followed by a concentration of 2.5 ml/liter with a relatively high yield non significantly (142.43 gm/plant) of 0.5 ml/ litter(136.76 gm / plant), and this concentration is relatively higher than the zero concentration (130.52 gm / plant). these results are consistent with [14, 27, 28]. the interaction between the planting distance and the concentration of the spray solution indicated a significant increase of 30 cm of the planting distance and the spraying with ml / liter of leaf nutrient micronate15 of water (159.78 gm / plant) followed by planting with 20 cm and spraying with the same concentration (149.36 gm / plant). the reason for the concentration of leaf nutrient micronate15 (1.5 and 2.5) ml / liter in the most studied traits is due to it was more suitable for the activity and growth of the embryo of the seed, which gave strong and active plants and provided the plant necessary elements, which in turn activates the physiological events within the plant and enzymes that have a role in the processes of vitality within the plant, such as the process of cell division and prolongation and in turn caused the elongation of plants and plant height and an increase in the number of leaves, which lead to increase photosynthesis and eventually increase in production [26]. the increase in the studied traits in the research resulting from the use of spray with the nutritious solution of micronate 15 may be due to the role of nutrients in the nutrient solution, which led to an increase in the number of branches and leaves, which increased the rate of photosynthesis and the amount of carbohydrates manufactured in the leaves and transfer to branches may have encouraged the opening of a larger number of flower buds and thus increase the number of branches and seeds. increasing the amount of carbohydrates stimulated the conversion of buds and the formation of flowering principles. the increase in the amount of carbohydrates manufactured in the leaves and their transfer to the fruits increase the weight, either increase the amount of the plant in the back to the role of leave fertilizer in the increase in the number of horns and seeds [10]. the nutrient used in micronate15 contains good amounts of microelements such as iron, zinc and others, which 17 provide the plant with the nutrients it needs. iron has a role in the plant's vital activities and is considered as a catalyst in the formation of chlorophyll. the formation of cytochromates is important in the process of photosynthesis and respiration through its role in the reception and transmission of electrons, which helps increase the content of carbohydrates in leaves [27, 28] causing an increase in processed food, which is transmitted to flowers, which increases the proportion of contract for the pods [29]. table 3: the effect of planting distances and spraying concentrations of leaf nutrient micronate15 and their interaction on plant height (cm) of green pea plants cultivated in non-heated greenhouses. average factor a(cm) 3b 2.5 ml / liter 2b 1.5ml / liter 1b 0.5 ml / liter 0b zero b a 113.73 138.73 121.26 101.63 93.31 a1 20 124.82 146.15 144.32 119.39 89.41 a2 30 110.11 122.36 115.91 99.53 92.37 a3 40 135.74 127.16 107.03 91.69 the average factor b ml / liter of water l. s. d 0.05 for planting distances (a) = 8.11 l. s. d 0.05 for leaf nutrient concentrations (b) = 6.47 l. s. d 0.05 for interaction between them (a x b) = 4.27 table 4: the effect of planting distances and spraying concentrations of leaf nutrient micronate15 and their interactions on the number of leaves / plant of green pea plants cultivated in non-heated houses. average factor a(cm) 3b 2.5 ml / liter 2b 1.5 ml / liter 1b 0.5 ml / liter 0b zero b a 46.48 53.36 49.72 42.49 40.35 a1 20 43.52 47.15 43.72 41.93 41.27 a2 30 44.14 47.55 46.77 42.42 39.83 a3 40 49.35 46.73 42.28 40.48 the average factor b ml / liter of water l. s. d 0.05 for planting distances (a) = 3.68 l. s. d 0.05 for leaf nutrient concentrations (b) = 3.13 l. s. d 0.05 for interaction between them (a x b) = 2.93 the number interactions onrient micronate15 and their the effect of planting distances and spraying concentrations of leaf nut :5table heated greenhouses.-of green pea plants cultivated in non sof branches / plant average factor a(cm) 3b 2.5 ml / liter 2b 1.5 ml / liter 1b 0.5 ml / liter 0b zero b a 4.07 4.28 4.31 3.93 3.75 a1 20 4.58 4.92 5.14 4.33 3.93 a2 30 3.61 3.22 4.14 3.88 3.21 a3 40 4.14 4.53 4.05 3.63 the average factor b ml / liter of water l. s. d 0.05 for planting distances (a) = 0.44 l. s. d 0.05 for foliar application (b) = 0.31 l. s. d 0.05 for interaction between them (a x b) = 0.16 table 6: the effect of planting distances and spraying concentrations of leaf nutrient micronate15 and their interactions on the fresh weight of the vegetative total (gm) of the green pea plants cultivated in non-heated greenhouses. average factor a(cm) 3b 2.5 ml / liter 2b 1.5 ml / liter 1b 0.5 ml / liter 0b zero b a 86.23 88.74 92.33 82.47 81.36 a1 20 95.94 98.33 105.75 92.77 87.41 a2 30 90.47 87.42 94.34 91.32 88.79 a3 40 91.50 97.47 88.85 85.85 the average factor b ml / liter of water l. s. d 0.05 for planting distance (a) = 5.42 l. s. d 0.05 for foliar application(b) = 3.22 l. s. d 0.05 for interaction between them (a x b) = 2.93 18 on the number sthe effect of planting distances and spraying concentrations of leaf nutrient micronate15 and their interaction :table 7 heated greenhouses.-plants cultivated in non peaof green sof corneas / plant average factor a(cm) 3b 2.5 ml / liter 2b 1.5 ml / liter 1b 0.5 ml / liter 0b zero b a 20.23 19.73 24.49 19.30 17.45 a1 20 28.44 30.31 39.74 24.78 18.91 a2 30 33.38 36.78 45.96 29.50 21.27 a3 40 28.94 36.73 24.52 19.21 the average factor b ml / liter of water l. s. d 0.05 or planting distance (a) = 7.18 l. s. d 0.05 for foliar application (b) = 5.96 l. s. d 0.05 for interaction between them (a x b) = 4.03 table 8: the effect of planting distances and spraying concentrations of leaf nutrient micronate15 and their interactions on the number of seeds / pod of green pea plants cultivated in non-heated greenhouses. average factor a(cm) 3b 2.5 ml / liter 2b 1.5 ml / liter 1b 0.5 ml / liter 0b zero b a 7.33 8.08 8.27 6.62 6.35 a1 20 7.96 8.13 8.90 7.61 7.23 a2 30 8.11 8.18 8.47 7.82 7.96 a3 40 8.13 8.55 7.35 7.18 the average factor b ml / liter of water l. s. d 0.05 for planting distance (a) = 1.25 l. s. d 0.05 for foliar application (b) =0.78 l. s. d 0.05 for interaction between them (a x b ) =0.37 table 9: the effect of planting distances and spraying concentrations of leaf nutrient micronate15 and the interactions between them aon the length of pods (cm) of green pea plants cultivated in non-heated green houses. average factor a(cm) 3b 2.5 ml / liter 2b 1.5 ml / liter 1b 0.5 ml / liter 0b zero b a 7.55 7.88 8.13 7.26 6.92 a1 20 8.12 8.46 8.93 7.79 7.31 a2 30 8.39 8.50 9.42 8.21 7.45 a3 40 8.28 8.83 7.75 7.23 the average factor b ml / liter of water l. s. d 0.05 for planting distance (a) = 1.13 l. s. d 0.05 for foliar application (b) = 0.77 l. s. d 0.05 for interaction between them (a x b) =0.43 table 10: the effect of planting distances and spraying concentrations of leaf nutrient micronate15 and their interactions on the total yieldof plant (gm) of green pea planted in non-heated green houses. average factor a(cm) 3b 2.5 ml / liter 2b 1.5 ml / liter 1b 0.5 ml / liter 0b zero b a 138.94 142.18 149.36 134.73 129.50 a1 20 142.41 143.71 159.78 135.94 130.22 a2 30 138.99 141,39 143.21 139.63 131.76 a3 40 142.43 150.78 136.76 130.52 the average factor b ml / liter of water l. s. d 0.05 for planting distance (a) = 9.88 l. s. d 0.05 for foliar application (b) = 6.54 l. s. d 0.05 for interaction between them (a x b) = 4.21 the results obtained accord with the results of [32] which found that spraying the fermented iron alone or in combination with other fertilizers has given a significant increase in the weight, length, number of pods and total plant yield of the bean plants. zinc also plays an important role in the formation of pollen grains [8] and affects the formation of the amino acid (tryitophan), which is the basic material of the iaa synthesis, which plays a major role in the flower contract. the result is the increase in the number of corneas pods which is consistent with the researchers [29, 30] in increasing its yield and components (number of pods, number of seeds and biological yield). 19 4. conclusion the results of this investigation can be concluded that the most suitable distance for planting among plants significantly is30 cm for most of the studied traits. as far as the concentration of the nutrient micronate15 is concerned, the best concentration of the nutrient micronate15 is that the higher concentration of the nutrient micronate15 the higher values of most traits significantly to the limit 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[32] m. m .b. shokr, e.s, fathy, "some foliar applications for improving snap bean phaseolus vulgarisl. quality and yield at fall season," .j. agric. sci. mansoura unvi. 34 (5): 50895106, 2009. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 4 | issue 1 | june 2019 | doi: 10.24017/science.2019.1.2 received: 14 march 2019 | accepted: 21 april 2019 big data analysis using apache spark mllib and hadoop hdfs with scala and java hoger khayrolla omar alaa khalil jumaa technical college of informatics database technology sulaimani polytechnic university technical college of informatics kirkuk university sulaimani polytechnic university kirkuk, iraq sulaymanyah, iraq hoger.omar@spu.edu.iq alaa.alhadithy@spu.edu.iq 7 abstract: nowadays with the technology revolution the term of big data is a phenomenon of the decade moreover, it has a significant impact on our applied science trends. exploring well big data tool is a necessary demand presently. hadoop is a good big data analyzing technology, but it is slow because the job result among each phase must be stored before the following phase is started as well as to the replication delays. apache spark is another tool that developed and established to be the real model for analyzing big data with its innovative processing framework inside the memory and high-level programming libraries for machine learning, efficient data treating and etc. in this paper, some comparisons are presented about the time performance evaluation among scala and java in apache spark mllib. many tests have been done in supervised and unsupervised machine learning methods with utilizing big datasets. however, loading the datasets from hadoop hdfs as well as to the local disk to identify the pros and cons of each manner and discovering perfect reading or loading dataset situation to reach best execution style. the results showed that the performance of scala about 10% to 20% is better than java depending on the algorithm type. the aim of the study is to analyze big data with more suitable programming languages and as consequences gaining better performance. keywords: big data, data analysis, apache spark, hadoop hdfs, machine learning, spark mllib, resilient distributed datasets(rdd). 1. introduction at the present time with the huge improvement in the information technology field, and the facilitation over the internet for the billions of people through a huge database with the diversity of digital devices, the term of "big data" came out as a result. to put in a nutshell big data is the announcement of the enormous dataset size [1]. in the year2020, the number of linked devices will be roughly one hundred billion thus, guiding to supplementary data aggregation. consequently clarifying and understanding big data analytics techniques are being essential [2]. as well as to the needs of changing from the traditional database (relational db) that has many limitations with the big data into nosql database (non-relational db) which is overcome these limitations and suits the enterprise requirements [3]. big data mainly has three features which are recognized by 3vs (volume, variety and velocity). some additional establishments and big data experts have expanded this 3vs framework to 5vs framework by adding the terms of value and veracity into the big data explanation as shown in the figure1 and shortly reported as follows [4][5][6]: 1. volume: denotes to big quantities of data from diverse palaces, for example, mobile data, computers, servers and etc. the advantage of treating and studying these great sizes of data is earning valuable information on society and enterprises. 2. velocity: states the swiftness of transferring data. the contents of data are regularly varying through the data gatherings process and resulting in different forms which are from several sources. this viewpoint needs new procedures and techniques for sufficiently exploring the streaming data. 3. variety: mentions collecting different kinds of data through different devices such as videos, images, etc. furthermore, these kinds of data might be unstructured, semi-structured and structured. 4. value: denotes to the manner of pulling meaningful knowledge from enormous datasets. value is the greatest significant feature of any big data tools since it permits to producing beneficial information. 5. veracity: refers to the knowledge exactness or accuracy (informative and valuable). mailto:alaa.alhadithy@spu.edu.iq mailto:alaa.alhadithy@spu.edu.iq 8 figure 1: big data features [7]. the aims of this article are for acquiring some knowledge on analyzing big data through up to date tool which is apache spark and hiring a few programming languages that fully compatible with it. also, the target is transforming from traditional data stores (local disk) to big data requirements like hdfs. 2. apache hadoop and apache spark a. apache hadoop: hadoop is an open-source structure written in java programming language, it permits to analyse big data through the clients. hadoop can scale up an individual host to thousands of hosts with providing storage and calculation for each one. basically, the hadoop framework separated into three parts which are: map reduce, yarn and hadoop distributed file system (hdfs)[8] as shown in figure 2. figure 2: hadoop parts [8]. • map reduce map reduce part permits parallel processing of giant dataset. it changes a big portion of data into smaller ones to be treated individually on diverse data clients and automatically collects the outcomes through the several clients to bring back a sole result. structured, semi, structured and unstructured data it can be processed. the structure consists of arrangement jobs, monitoring jobs and re-running all the failed job [9]. • yarn yarn stands for yet another resource negotiator and it works as a hadoop cluster resource manager which means handling the hadoop cluster resources such as memory, cpu, etc. fortunately, version 2 and 3 of hadoop with yarn opens a new door for data treating environment [10]. • hdfs hadoop distributed file system (hdfs) generally divides the file systems into data and metadata. hdfs has two important benefits in comparing with the traditional distributed file system. the first one is the great mistake tolerance because it saves the duplicates (copy) of the data in several data clients, which permits for distinguished error to recover data from other data clients. the second benefits it allows to use of big data sizes because the hadoop clusters can residence data sets in petabytes [11]. b. apache spark: it is a model that performs a common data analysis on one node and distributed nodes which means it is similar to hadoop. one of the advantages that it gives in memory calculations technique for increasing data processing speed. as well as, it can access hadoop data storage (hdfs) because it runs on the top of the existing hadoop node. besides that, it can process the streaming data like twits on twitter in addition to the structured data in hive [12]. basically, spark divided into some parts and each part has its crucial task as shown in figure 3. figure 3: apache spark parts [12]. spark core is essential for the entire project. it offers distributed task, scheduling, and i/o jobs. spark uses a particular data structure known as rdd (resilient distributed datasets) that is a logical collection of data and separated over machines. rdd is spark's primary abstraction, which is a fault-tolerant collection of elements that can be operated in parallel. they are immutable once you create an rdd. they can be transformed but they cannot be changed. they help to rearrange the computations and optimizing the data processing [12]. besides to spark core, a few further subparts like sql, streaming, machine learning library and graph x are existing. all these parts have been established to complement the job of the core. the whole subparts constructed on the top of the core [13]. 9 • programming languages in spark spark consists of many language libraries that support performing various big data analysis. spark written in scala so, support it perfectly and even the startup of spark shell taking the users to scala prompt automatically as shown in figure 4. in addition to scala, three other programming languages exist in spark apis which are java, python and r. since the structure of spark constructed in scala, therefore writing a program using scala language in spark offers to get the newest characteristics that may not exist in the further mentioned languages[14]. the sizes of scala code are naturally smaller than the equivalent size of java code. a lot of establishments that rely on java in their works are changing to scala to enhance the scalability and reliability [15]. figure 4: spark startups with scala language. • spark read (load) the data from every place spark can read or access the data that stored on hadoop hdfs, mesos, mongo db, cassandra, h-base, amazon s3 and the data source from the cloud. which means it has diversity access to data sources as shown in figure 5 and this is one of the advantages of spark [16]. figure 5: spark diversity access to the data [16]. • spark machine learning library in general, machine learning algorithms according to the style of the training data categorized into supervised and unsupervised learning. the machine learning of spark permits the data analytics and this library generally, contains the famous algorithms as shown in figure 6. figure 6: machine learning categorization [17]. basically, the spark machine learning separated into two sets as shown in figure7. the first set is mllib and it was built on the top of resilient distributed datasets (rdd). it covers the common approaches that proposed so far. the next set is ml and it originates with the newest structures of mllib for building ml pipelines and this application program inter phase (api) is constructed on the data frames features [18].in this paper, the focus will be on the first set which is mllib. figure 7: spark machine learning bundles [12]. 3. related work a huge number of articles are printed on the subject of apache spark recently. this article is the extension of the previous research papers published in this field. a lot of the researcher execute different algorithms utilizing spark and provide much great work based on the model of spark. for instance, some of them applying the algorithms of spark mllib bundle and the others applying the algorithms of spark ml bundle in the analysis procedure. there have been several approaches for analyzing big data with spark this part of the paper focus on the latest movements and contributions in the first mentioned field. h. sayedand et al, 2018 [19] in their paper compared the hypothesis that the spark ml bundle has preference over the spark mllib bundle in the issues of performance and accurateness when dealing with big data. they discovered that the mllib is better in the training time operation and vice versa in the evaluation time operation. in addition, s. al-saqqa and et al, 2018 [20] discussed on the spark's mllib for hiring it in the classification of sentiment big data scale. they find out that support vector machine (svm) is better than the other classifiers in the matter of performance. 10 as well as, k. al-barznji and et al, 2018 [21] talked about sentiment analysis utilizing the algorithms of machine learning such as naïve bayes and svm for analyzing the text with benefits of the huge capabilities of apache spark. they found that the svm is more accurate in the condition of total average. however, m. assefi and et al, 2017 [22] explored some views for growing the form of the apache spark mllib 2.0 as an open source, accessible and achieve many machine learning tests that related to the real world to inspect the attribute characteristics. also presents a comparison among spark and weka with proving the advantages of spark over the weka in many sides like the performance and it is efficient dealing with a huge amount of data. on the other hand, weka is good for simple users with its gui and the diversity of algorithms which already exist in it. also, s. salloumand et al, 2016 [23] stated an assessment on the key structures of big data analytics using apache spark. furthermore, concentrates on the portions, concepts and topographies of apache spark and displays the advantages of it in the machine learning, analysis of the graph and stream treating in the enormous data fields. however, exposed the spark apis and its compatibility with various programming languages in addition to the characteristics of the spark (rdd and data frame). likewise, a. shoroand et al, 2015 [24] discovered some big data analysis thought and distinguished a few important evidence from various big data streaming sources like twits of twitter with applying spark tools on it. moreover, a. bansod 2015 [25] this researcher provides a newer rating work with storing a huge dataset in the hadoop distributed file system hdfs and then analyzing it by apache spark. also, present a comparison among spark and hadoop map-reduce with showing the preference of the first one in performance and scalability. besides that, s. n omkar and et al, 2015 [26] they applied a variety of classification methods on various datasets from the repository of machine learning (uci). as well the execution time and the accuracy of every classifier is discovered with some comparisons between them. similarly, s. gopalani and et al 2015 [27] compared the hadoop map reduce and the apache spark and then provide a brief analysis of their performance by applying the k-means algorithm. in this paper, the focus will be on the imaginative and valuable ways of spark mllib package that applied in big data study in the present time, by mentioning updating founded weakness and powerfulness with presenting the basic advantages and disadvantages and also showing the performance for the most famous machine learning algorithms with java and scala. 4. methodology in this paper, two types of programming language have been utilized, the first one is a java programming language and the second one is scala programming language. both types evaluated in 32-bits and 64-bits linux operating system environment because the windows operating system is not efficient for processing big datasets and also not support big data tools like hadoop. for both languages two different machine learning algorithms have been used, one of them is supervised machine learning which is decision tree regression algorithm and the other one is unsupervised machine learning which is clustering algorithm. each algorithm read the dataset two times which means from two different places, one time the algorithm read the dataset that stored previously in the local hard disk drive and the second time read the dataset that stored or uploaded previously to the hadoop hdfs storage. in summary 16 tests have been done, 8 tests for java and the same for scala. 4 java tests in 32-bits linux os and the other 4 java tests in 64-bits linux os. also, the same tests applied for scala as shown in figure8. figure 8: tests structure in this paper. • tested environments two vmware environment have been utilized to gain these experimental outcomes. the first one is installed on 32-bits o.s and the second one installed on 64-bits. the rest information about used environments shown in table 1. 11 table 1. tested environments. no. resource type details 1 host o.s windows 10, 64-bits 2 guest o.s debian 8 32 bits debian 9 64 bits 3 vmware version 15.0.2 build-10952284 4 cpu intel(r) core(tm) i5-4300u cpu @ 1.90 ghz 2.50 ghz 5 number of vmware processors four core 6 vmware ram 8 gb 7 ram in total 12 gb 8 hdd for vmware 40 gb 9 hdd in total 120 gb 10 type of hard drive ssd 11 number of nodes one node 12 heap size default 1 gb 13 hadoop version 2.7.1 14 spark version spark-2.4.0-bin-hadoop2.7 • datasets two different big datasets have been utilized in the apache spark mllib 2.0 for analyzation process. both of the data are from the machine learning repository (uci). the first one called year prediction msd and it is about the estimation of the publishing year of a song from audio characteristics. the second dataset holds five groups of text in the formula of bags of words and we took only docword.nytimes from it [28]. table 2 shown additional details on the datasets. table 2: characteristics of the dataset name of the dataset type of algorithm size characteristi cs attribute characte ristics yearpr edictio nmsd regression 566 mb multivariate real bag of words clustering 1.1 gb text changed to libsvm integer 5. analysis, evaluation, and final experimental results this section is concisely demonstrating all the sixteen tests in four experimental scenarios, hence each scenario exhibits four tests as shown in table 3 and described in following. table3: duration of processing time for all tests. os linux data size algor. type scala min:sec java min:sec proctime (disk) proctime (hadoop) proctime (disk) proctime (hadoop) 32bits 1.1 gb kmeans clustering 28.35 31.14 36.39 45.50 32bits 566 mb dtr 01.27 01.32 01.48 02.07 64bits 1.1 gb kmeans clustering 25.58 30.11 30.47 43.33 64 bits 566 mb dtr 0.41 0.59 1.05 1.46 in scenario one, clustering k-means algorithm was applied on 1.1 gb dataset in the linux 32-bits o.s environment. two tests with java have been done, one of them the data was loaded from local disk and the other the data was loaded from the hdfs. similarly, two tests for scala have been done, one test the data was loaded from the local disk and the other the data was loaded from hdfs. what concluded from scenario one as shown in figure9 that the scala programming language is faster than java when we use a spark mllib clustering algorithm. however, reading the data from the local disk is faster than reading from the hdfs. in the second scenario, the decision tree regression algorithm was applied on 566mb dataset from the type of libsvm in the linux 32-bits o.s environment. two tests with java have been done, one of them the data was loaded from the local disk and the other the data was loaded from the hadoop (hdfs). similarly, the same two tests were applied with the scala. what concluded from this scenario as shown in figure10 that the scala programming language is faster than java programming when we use a spark mllib regression algorithm. however, reading the data from the local disk is faster than reading from the hdfs in both programming languages. in the third scenario, the same processes of the scenario one with the same dataset and algorithm have been repeated the sole difference is the linux o.s environment changed to 64-bits. what concluded besides to what observed and stated from the scenario one that if we use much bigger dataset the os 32-bits environment may not deal with it due to the heap size space problem because the higher heap size for the mention os is close to 2 gb. more illustrations about the duration time of this scenario in figure 11. in the final scenario, the same processes of scenario two with the same dataset and algorithm have been repeated also the sole difference is the linux o.s environment changed to 64 bits. what concluded besides to what observed and stated in the (second and third scenarios) 12 that if the dataset contains a huge number of attributes or if we put a massive number of depth and bins in any supervised algorithms similarly, the heap size space problem or garbage collection problem will appear in the 32-bits os and it can't be solved due to the mentioned reason. figure 12 showed the time difference between every test in this scenario. figure 9: k-means algorithm applied at 1.1.gb dataset and linux 32-bits. figure10: decision tree regression algorithm applied on 566 mb dataset and linux 32-bits figure 11: k-means algorithm applied at 1.1.gb dataset and linux 64-bits. figure 12: decision tree regression algorithm applied on 566 mb dataset and linux 64-bits 6. discussion it is good to state some problems during the test processes with presenting the solutions too: • not enough space in the temp: because the operation of the processing totally being located in the temp folder of the linux 32-bits o.s normally the size of a temp folder is in mb and cannot stand big data size. the solution is increasing the size of temp into 1 gb from the terminal as root by below command for affording huge data calculation. mount –t tmpfs –o size=1073741824,mode=1777 overflow /tmp. 0.00 5.00 10.00 15.00 20.00 25.00 30.00 35.00 40.00 45.00 50.00 disc time hadoop time disc time hadoop time scala java linux 32 bits 1.1 gb clustering 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 disc time hadoop time disc time hadoop time scala java linux 32 bits 566 mb d.tree regression 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 disc time hadoop time disc time hadoop time scala java linux 64 bits 1.1 gb clustering 0.00 0.20 0.40 0.60 0.80 1.00 1.20 1.40 1.60 disc time hadoop time disc time hadoop time scala java linux 64 bits 566 mb d. tree regression 13 • java heap size space is not enough: at the beginning of using any ide (integrated development environments) like eclipse, netbeans or any others ide, the default heap size space for the project is between 64 to 256 mb and that space is not enough for computation large dataset. the solution is to increase it into 1gb to be like the spark default heap space. in bellow paths of the ide: click on application name – properties-run-vm optionthen set 1gb. • weka can’t read a huge data: in the beginning, our intent was to compare the time performance between what presents in this paper and the normal weka program but unfortunately, weka cannot afford a huge dataset file. especially it needs much more time than the spark just for reading without processing it. the solution is to change the weka environment and adding a new package like distributed weka hadoop or spark and that might be a good topic to further research. • windows o.s can’t deal with big data: windows can support apache spark but it has a problem when processing a huge dataset in addition, it does not support apache hadoop which means hadoop doesn't set up on windows environment. so the solution is utilizing the linux operating system. 7. conclusion in the era of big data that we live in it, many new analytic tools like apache spark have been established to treat the procedures of big data perfectly. spark offers a great performance and fault tolerant model with the scalability in analyzing big data framework. this paper works on the apache spark for big data analysis and then compares the scala of spark with the java in the spark mllib bundle. it is seen that the scala of spark raises the speed calculation of the algorithms and finishes them in less time as compared to java. this preference of scala noticed in supervised machine learning algorithms such as regression and unsupervised machine learning algorithm like clustering. in addition, this research compared loading a big dataset from local disk and from the hadoop hdfs storage. it appears that local disk is a little bit faster than hdfs but, it could be much faster if the hadoop being distributed not in a single node like this paper. because there are many elements that affect the time factor in the hadoop distribution environment such as the method of connection. on the other hand, the advantage of the hdfs over the local disk is holding or storing petabytes of data in case if it is being distributed which is the local disk absolutely cannot handle it. further researches may find the optimal big data analysis procedures and provide an efficient solution in this field. the future work of this paper could be applied with four additional modifications. the primary one is changing the environment from a single node cluster into a multi-node and definitely that lead to gain better performance with the capability of executing larger data sets. the next alteration is reading the dataset from variety of storage that supports big data atmosphere for instance, mongo db, hbase, cassandra, couch-base and etc. for comparing which storage is more compatible with the spark and as consequences that decrease the request time which means reducing the execution time in the end. the third modification is comparing the other programming language performance in the matter of machine learning which is already supported by spark such as, r and python. the final modification is using all the previous changes with the second bundle of spark machine learning library which is ml instead of spark mllib bundle. because ml bundle builds on the dataset and data frame, unlike the mllib bundle that builds on the rdd. then demonstrate the accuracy and the performance of each bundle with a comparison between them. 8. references [1] n. ibrahim, alaa hassan, 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[accessed 26 2 2019].  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.19 a proposed p2p kurdistan academic network backbone (kanb), based on random linear network coding rami s.youeel ise erbil polytechnic university erbil, iraq r.rami.samir@gmail.com raghad z.yousif applied physics. communication salahaddin university hawler, iraq raghad.yousif@su.edu.krd ferman i.kareem erbil administrative technical institute erbil polytechnic university erbil, iraq ferman.ibrahim@gmail.com abstract: the current rate of growth in computer network usage is a problematic issue motivates the inspiration to investigate less conventional solutions, similar to network coding (nc) which has attracted a lot of attention lately, to improve the bandwidth utilization and latency in computer networks. the objective of this paper is to show that the usage of network coding is possible on enhancing the execution of kurdistan academic network backbone (kanb) to associate the primary ten urban communities in kurdistan region that almost contains a greater part of academic institutions. the proposed model applies peer to peer (p2p) multicasting on kanb, which does not require any centralized knowledge about the topology of the network. the random linear network coding (rlnc) has been utilized for its superior properties to address the problems of delay, throughput and lake of security associated with store-and-forward based classical networks. simulation results point out the advantages of using network coding over the classical (store and forward) technique in term of improving the throughput gain and latency reduction. hawler city the capital and greatest city in kurdistan region have been chosen as a source node while slemani city has been elected as a sink, node. thus, network coding is applied at intermediate nodes. keywords: network coding, random liner network coding, galois field, p2p multicasting, network security, and throughput. 1. introduction network coding operation is performed by combining data words (packets) traveling through the network which combines two or more packets into one packet. end nodes, with knowledge of the data sent, can decode received packet. a network that applies nc can be interpreted as a network where the nodes in the network do operations on the received or generated packets rather than just store and forward them as in a traditional packet switched network [1]. in traditional routing technique, the intermediate nodes simply (store and forward) packets, means the node receives the packets from incoming edges, makes a copy for them, store and forward these packets by outgoing edges. in contrast, using network coding intermediate nodes who have received a number of these packets, can form recorded packets by combining two or more packets coming from incoming edges, the nodes can perform some mathematical operations on the incoming packets then generate one packet and send it to next node as one packet [2][3][4]. the network coding is performed in three different steps: encoding, recoding, and decoding. the server and all clients who have obtained the complete file constructs encode packets by creating linear combinations of partitions of the original data. the encoded packets are transmitted with the corresponding encoding vectors to interconnected nodes. when sufficient linear independent packets and encoding vectors have been received, the original data can be reconstructed by decoding the encoded packets [5]. rlnc is optimal since only channel packets are needed by the receiver to obtain the original source packets with a very high probability [6]. the aim of the proposed system is to design and build a package which simulates (p2p) multicasting (kanb) based on (rlnc). the proposed system fits the requirements of kanb for many reasons: it is decentralized topology. each peer can act as a peer or as the router. it is beneficial for sending videos streaming between educational institutions in kurdistan from the main server which is located in region capital hawler. 2. literature review numbers of the network coding scheme have been proposed in past for multicast networks some are explaining as follows: ahlswede et al, they point out the benefit of network coding with the famous butterfly network with one source by using finite field in increasing the throughput, they showed that the result of their paper can be equal to the max-flowmin cut approach with applying network coding which means instead of routing and forwarding to multicast information from source to destination, using network coding will increase the throughput in this network [7]. yeung et al. they interested in how fast each node can receive all incoming information, they showed that the randomized coding over a finite field will make the network more robust and, also the information would be compressed [8]. tracy. ho et al, in their paper were present a new approach for data compression and transmission in multicasting networks depending on a random linear network coding [9]. richard d. wesel et al. published paper, describing network coding with a single source and two sinks, the source has a number of messages and each terminal (sink) is interested in a set of these messages from the source node [10]. baochun li and di niu were demonstrating that the random network coding is a mailto:r.rami.samir@gmail.com mailto:email@univ.com mailto:ferman.ibrahim@gmail.com practical solution for real-world application in peer-topeer (p2p) networks [11]. m. hay et al. they proved that currently, with network coding, multiple sources can transmit packets over bottleneck edges at a same time that leads to achieving the max-flow-min-cut throughput and increasing network capacity [12]. t.manoranjitham et al. proposed a dynamic source routing based on network coding to reduce the number of transmissions also to increase the throughput in mobile ad hoc networks, they showed that the throughput with network coding is improved [13]. 3. methods and materials linear network coding extends simple network coding by adding some additional information to the packet payload. a node can multiply some coefficient over a finite field with a fixed size of data in the original message, and combine its data with these coefficients as shown in [15][16]. when performing a network coding, the intermediate nodes have to combine incoming blocks and produce one packet. it means, converting these packets to one packet and send it over outgoing links. with linear network coding, outgoing packets are linear combinations of the original packets, where addition and multiplication are performed over the finite field gf as showed in [7] [ 15][14], and also has been described by an example in [16] .in linear network coding, each unit of data is processed using finite fields , which q is a prime number or, assuming a galois field (gf), for some integer m, where gf(2 m ) refers to [0, 2 m -1]. it means the elements of coding are in this range. figure 1 illustrates an acyclic network with w = 2 imaginary channels appended at the source node s. for better understanding the linear network coding using butterfly network which is the best choice. t u w x r2r1        0 1 fos        1 0 'fos        rp qn ks  tsk t   vuku        x w kw  zykx         p n tsf ),(        r q usf ),(        ps ns wtf ),(        pt nt rtf )1,(        ru qu wuf ),(        rv qv ruf )2,(          ruxpsw quxnsw xwf ),(          ruxypswy quxynswy rxf )1,(          ruxzpswz quxznswz rxf )2,( m 1 m 2 s figure 1 lnc examples with local/global encoding vectors. the source node generates the messages; each message would be associated with an element of gf, and then sent over the network. the network coding is performed by three steps: encoding, recoding, and decoding. the source node and all receiving nodes who have obtained the complete file forms the encoded packets by making linear combinations of partitions of the original data. the encoded packets are transmitted with the corresponding encoding vectors to interconnected nodes. intermediate peers who have received a number of these packets, can form recoded packets by combining encoded data. when sufficient linear independent packets and encoding vectors received, the original data can be reconstructed by decoding the encoded packets. 3.1 local / global encoding vectors for every node n, let in (n) represent the set of incoming links to n and out (n) denotes the set of outgoing links from n. and assuming a pair of channels be called an adjacent pair, and there exists a node n with є in (n) and e є out (n). and also, the in(s) has w imaginary channels. the vector is called the global encoding vector for the channel . the scalar called the local encoding vector for the adjacent pair , which means the local encoding vectors at the node n. assuming the source generates a message in the form of a w-dimensional row vector. a node n receives the symbols , є in (n), from which it calculates the symbol for sending onto each channel є out (n) via the linear formula: )1().(. )( ,    d nind ede fxkfx 3.2 random linear network coding (rlnc) in rlnc, instead of carefully designing a linear network code in the linear information flow algorithm, the local encoding vector is simply chosen completely at random. the difference between (lnc) and (rlnc) is that the elements of f (2 m ) are selected randomly. the encoding process as demonstrated in figure 1, starts by splitting the data into a number of original packets at the source node. in linear network coding, each packet through the network is associated with a sequence of coefficients which belong to the field gf ( ), so there is one coefficient for each original packet [8]. the coding operation performed by each node is the same for every node. received packets are stored in the memory of the node, and packets are formed have to be sent with random linear combinations of its memory contents whenever a packet sending occurs on an outgoing link. the coefficients of the combination are selected uniformly from galois field. in (rlnc) the coefficients are selected randomly and independently. the coding coefficients are in the form of vector called (global encoding vector) which will be sent in the header of the packet containing a data called (information vector) y. ∑ the addition has been implemented over the finite field gf ( ). in each symbol position, the summation has to occur for every symbol position, i.e. ∑ where and are the symbol of and . with random linear network coding, the arithmetic operations like addition and multiplications performed over gf ( ), so the resulted packets have the same size with the original packets. figure 2 demonstrate the length of a packet. figure 2 nc packets length where l is a length of the packets and s for s bits of .the re-encoding process can be performed to these packets that were already encoded. assuming a node that has received a set ( ( of encoded packets. this node can generate a new packet depending on a set of coefficients , these elements belong to gf ( ). so, the new information vector is given as: ∑ and a new encoding vector is equal to ∑ the decoding process will be performed at the sink node (receiver) by using a gaussian elimination equation, in which the inverse of the coefficients matrix is to be calculated. sink node has to retrieve the messages which have been generated by the source node. the sink nodes can decode correctly if and only if the overall transfer matrix from the sources to each sink is invertible [18]. the encoded packets carry two types of data: the encoding vector (header) and the information vector . when the sink receives t numbers of s (t ≥ n), it means that the number of received packets needs to be at least as large as the number of original packets. it can decode them and get the original packets. to perform the decoding process this equation must be solved in order to retrieve the original packets. [ ] [ ] [ ] = [ ] (6) receiver node d can recover the source symbols as long as the matrix formed by the global encoding vectors. [ ] [ ] the decoding process can be performed by the inverse of coefficients matrix, for a successful decoding process, the determinant of coefficients matrix must not be zero, if it is equal zero, so the matrix has not inverse. decoding at any node can be achieved by collecting or more packets in a given generation. 4. proposed system the main interface window of proposed package is depicted in figure 3. using this interface window, the system features can be activated. thus by clicking on the button network the tables of nodes interconnection and connection of nodes are generated number of interconnected nodes and edges are also shown. the network information table consist of three columns, the first column lists the name of city, while the second column gives city corresponding node number it’s clear that erbil city has been decimated into two nodes hawler-data which is an imaginary node and hawlersource which is a source node, the third column indicates the status (function) of each node which is classified into imaginary node, source node, nc-router node (perform network coding) and final-node which is slemani node. figure 3 the network button clicking results the other table displayed is (connection of nodes) table. this table generates a matrix of nodes interconnection, each row in this table contains a combination of zeros and ones, and number one indicates connected incoming and outgoing nodes whereas number zero indicates no connection case. the biography for proposed (kanb) is depicted in figure 4. this graph is generated by clicking on network button in the first interface window. the network hierarchy starts from erbil city as a top and source node ends with halabja as an imaginary node. this hierarchy has been suggested based on the city size and by depending on the shortest distance between cities. figure 4. kanb biograph diagram. the system simulation is started when a source node generates packets by multiplying the incoming data with the coefficients that were chosen from a finite field. the destination node (slemani) regenerates the incoming packets depending on some arithmetic operations described before. the (rlnc) is performed at each one of the seven intermediate nodes (kirkuk, zakho, duhok, koya, ranya, chamchamal, and soran). the button (send image) in main interface window initiate another window named (network simulation window) as shown in figure 5. this window enables the user to send an image through (kanb) and also display all intermediate results generated when each packet is traveling from source to sink node or destination node. it gives an ability to select any image with any format and size by browsing it after clicking on (choose file) button. the sent file packets are delivered to all peers in proposed backbone, in another word it shared between all nodes. finally, the received image is displayed and transmitted the image in two separated fields' axes to show sent image and axes. the package at this level also gives the user the ability to select the number of transmitted blocks at each transmission period which is bounded by three numbers (1, 2 and 3) blocks. later the effect of a number of blocks on the proposed system throughput is to be studied. all intermediate coding results have been displayed by figure (5). figure 5 the main gui to send an image using (rlnc) 5. results when the simulation finished, the results are recorded to mark the effect of network coding on the network performance. the entire simulation is carried out using matlab r 2015. the table below describes proposed network characteristics table 1: proposed network characteristics network type network media type link capacity queuing type without nc wired 1 byte / observation time store and forward / fifo with nc wired 1 byte / observation time no queuing needed 5.1 throughput gain at each node the most important advantage of using network coding is to improve network throughput. the throughput at each node has been calculated as shown in figure 6. at the end of transmission period using the following formula: (8) the simulation results show that the throughput with network coding is improved. figure 4-2 reflects the this fact, the throughput is improved at all nodes where network coding is applied in (soran, zakho,….) nodes using one block per transmission duration .a comparable throughput values have been observed in other nodes (didn’t perform network coding) like in (duhok, koya) nodes. figure 6 throughput at each node with & without nc, figure (7) and figure (8) depict the effect of increasing number of blocks (two and three blocks respectively) transmitted per transmission period. figure 7 throughput at each node with nc, case of two blocks multicasting figure 8 throughput at each node with nc, case of three blocks multicasting. it’s clear that increasing the number transmitted blocks leads to improve the throughput. for example, at ranya node a throughput gain of approximately 3.2 kb/sec is observed. 5.2 instantaneous throughput with / without nc figure (9) illustrates the calculation of instantaneous throughput in sending a file of total size of 8 kb to zakho node using 1 block in each transmission duration. this node has two input links and one output link, so the (rlnc) is performed at this node, it's clear that the throughput is improved by using nc. network coding combines the packets that come from two or more input link(s) and send them to the outgoing link(s) as one packet. figure 9 throughput from node zakho with /without nc 1 block 5.3 instantaneous latency at nodes at ranya node, the instantaneous delay has been calculated as an example and indicated by figure (10) the delay is reduced to the half as compared to the case without network coding. in case of performing rlnc the delay time is reduced because this node combines two packets and sends the output as one packet. figure 10 instantaneous latency in ranya node 5.4 transmitted packets security data security is one of the expected advantages of network coding. the proposed system has investigated this advantage by multicasting a file of 100 bytes size at four different nodes two nodes where network coding is carried out at (kirkuk and zakho) nodes, while the third and fourth nodes(duhok,koya) point where selected because no network coding is implemented by theses nodes . the difference between original figure (11) (a)(b) and the corresponding encoded bytes transmitted (at outgoing link) are very large as compared to cases of no network coding has been implemented figure(11)(c)(d) by the randomly chosen elements; these elements are belonging to the galois field. figure .11 security imposed by network coding 6 discussion comprehensive package has been proposed to design, simulate and investigate the impact of rlnc on kanb. (a) (b) (c) (d) 7 conclusion in this research, a multicast (p2p) system based on (rlnc) is presented to replace the traditional (storeand-forward) packet switching technique in proposed design of (kanb) which contains ten nodes represent different cities in kurdistan. this research investigates the advantages of using network coding technology in improving backbone throughput, reducing coding and decoding latency with different transmitted data file size. the simulation results showed that by increasing the file size of transmitted data, the throughput and latency gain increased. also, the security imposed by network coding has been investigated by scattering graph which marks the amount of scattering (randomness) added by network coding technique. 8 reference [1] l. k. johansen, performance enhancements in wifi using network coding, norwegian university of science and technology press, trondheim, 2013. [2] medrad,network coding fundamentals and applications, elsevier inc press, 1 st ed,2013. [3] r. w. yeung, “information theory and network coding,” springer, new york, ny, usa, 1 st edition, 2008. [4] ho, t. and lun, d. s, network coding: an introduction, cambridge university press, cambridge, uk, 2008. [5] m.v. pedersen, j. heide, f.h.p.fitzek & t. larsen. “picture viewer a mobile application using network coding”.in proceeding of european wireless conference aalborg, denmark ,pp.267273, 2009. [6] s. v. solms, sune & helberg “the implementation of avalanche decoding in random network coding networks”. in the proceeding of (satnac) conference, at spier estate.south africa. sep. 2010.[online]available:http://www.satnac.org.za/pr oceedings/2010/papers/management/von%20solms %20fp%20379.pdf[accepted:sep2010] [7] r. ahlswede, n. cai, s.-y. r. li, r. w. yeung. “network information flow,” ieee trans. on information theory, vol. 46, pp. 1204-1216. 2000. [8] s. y. r. li, r. w. yeung, n. cai. “linear network coding”, ieee transactions on information theory, vol. 49, no. 2, pp. 371–381, 2003. [9] t. ho, m. médard, r. koetter et al., “a random linear network coding approach to multicast,” ieee transactions on information theory, vol. 52, no. 10, pp. 4413–4430, 2006. [10] a.ramamoorthy and r. d. wesel, “the single source two terminal network with network coding,”[online] arxiv e-prints, 2009, available: on http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.2847. [11] b.li, d. niu, “random network coding in peer-topeer networks: from theory to practice,” in proceedings of the ieee, vol. 99(3), pp. 513-523, march 2011. [12] m. hay, b. saeed, c. h. lung, t. kunz and a. srinivasan, "network coding and quality of service metrics for mobile ad-hoc networks," 2013 9 th international wireless communications and mobile computing conference (iwcmc), sardinia, , pp. 521-526, 2013. [13] t.manoranjitham,v.nagarajan,"performance enhancement using network coding in dynamic source routing", 3 rd international conference on recent trends in computing 2015 (icrtc-2015), vol. 57, pp. 896-906, 2015 [14] c. fragouli, e. soljanin. “network coding fundamentals,” foundations and trends in networking, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 1-133, 2007. [15] salah a. aly, ahmed e. kamal," encoding of network protection codes against link and node failures over finite field," journal arxiv preprint arxiv:0905.1778, may. 12 ,2009. [online].available:https://arxiv.org/pdf/0905.1778.p df. [16] s.-y. r. li, n. cai, and r. w. yeung, "on theory of linear network coding," proceeding of the 2005 ieee international symposium on information theory (isit.05), pp. 273-277, sep. 2005. [17] r. koetter and m. médard, “an algebraic approach to network coding,” ieee/acm transactions on networking, vol. 11, no. 5, pp. 782–795, 2003. [18] a.t. campo and a. grant. robustness of random network coding to interfering sources. in proc. 7 th australian communications theory workshop, pages (120-124), feb. 2006. biography asst. prof. dr. raghad was born in baghdad 1975.he received a b.s. in electronic and communication engineering from college of engineering baghdad university department of electronic and communication eng. in 1998, m.s. in electronic and communication engineering form department of electrical engineering al-mustansriyha university –baghdad in 2001 , then he received a ph.d. degree in communication engineering from baghdad university of technology department of electronics and electrical engineering in 2005 .he is currently an assistance professor in department of applied physics –communication at salahaddin university also he is the lecturer at department information technology at cue(catholic university in erbil). his fields of interest are network coding, medical imaging, swarms, wireless communication system, and optical communication system and data security. he is a supervisor of many msc thesis and ph.d. thesis he was also a member of examination committee of many msc and ph.d. theses. he was awarded the prize of third best arabic research in data security in the age of information technology in 2003 awarded by the association if arab universities. http://www.satnac.org.za/proceedings/2010/papers/management/von%20solms%20fp%20379.pdf http://www.satnac.org.za/proceedings/2010/papers/management/von%20solms%20fp%20379.pdf http://www.satnac.org.za/proceedings/2010/papers/management/von%20solms%20fp%20379.pdf http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.2847  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 1 | june 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.1.4 solar cell system simulation using matlab-simulink roshen tariq ahmad hamdi energy and renewable energy technology center university of technology, baghdad,iraq 11019@uotechnology.edu.iq abstract: representation and demonstrating of sun based cells is critical for the photovoltaic framework configuration keeping in mind the end goal to get best productivity from the sun and decrease the shore of sun based cell framework. the fundamental subject of this article concentrates on a software created in matlab/simulink of photovoltaic unite. this software depends on numerical equation and is depicted through a comparable the electric circuit is integrated into the photocurrent source, a diode, and a set of series and parallel resistors. the reenactment utilized as a part of this article to get the attributes (i-v), and afterward we will concentrate the impact of each parameter on the curve. the created demonstrate permits the expectation of photo-voltaic unite conduct beneth various physical and characteristic parameters. the unite can likewise be utilized to separate the physical parameters for a given sun based pv cell as an element of temperature and sunlight based irradiance. keywords: matlab-simulink, pv, solar cell model, solar array model 1. introduction the improvement of new vitality sources are ceaselessly upgraded due to the basic circumstance of the synthetic chemical powers. therefore, the inexhaustible vitality sources turned into a more critical patron to the aggregate vitality devoured on the planet. truth be told, the interest for sunlight based vitality has expanded by 20% to 25% in the course of recent years. with a specific end goal to get advantage from the utilization of pv systems, explore exercises are being led trying to increase promote change in their cost, productivity and unwavering quality, therefore numerical displaying of sun powered cells is fundamental for any operation yield improvement. an exact learning of sun based cell variables from exploratory information is of fundamental significance for the outline of sun-powered cells and for the evaluations of their execution. the electrical proportional circuit is a helpful and regular route in most reproduction studies. the five variables of enthusiasm for the proportionate circuit are the photocurrent (ipv), series resistance (rs), diode immersion current (i0), shunt resistance (rsh) and the idealism consider (a). the present relation voltage of a sun powered cell is depicted by a scientific condition both certain what's more, nonlinear. in this work, matlab script document program has been utilized to register the five variables of the a unite diode model of lit up sun powered cells. the outcomes acquired by reenactment demonstrate the consistency between the information and got the parameters given by the maker, to be specific: short circuit current (isc), open circuit voltage (voc) and most extreme power (pmax). for example, these variables can be utilized for quality control amid creation or to give bits of knowledge into the operation of the gadgets [1, 2, 3, 4 and 5]. 2. electric and mathematical modeling of solar cell a photovoltaic cell can be demonstrated as a present electrical current source pn associated in shunt with a diode. current source delivers a steady present. this current is corresponding to the power of the light hit the upon cell. photovoltaic frameworks influenced specifically with climate conditions and sun oriented radiation. the execution of a sun oriented cell is expected to comprehend the relationship amongst's current and voltage of the cell [6]. the ideal proportional circuit of a pv cell (duffie and beckman, 1980) is appeared in figure 1. it incorporates a current source, a diode, a series arrangement resistance (rs) and a shunt resistance (rsh), these two resistances added because there is no ideal solar cell in practice [7, 8]. figure 1 diode model of the pv cell with the identical circuit figure 1 and utilizing kirchhoff's law, we get the accompanying condition for the load current [9, 10]: shdph iiii  (1) where: i = o/p current (amp.) iph = photo produced current (amp.) id = diode current (amp.) ish = shunt resistance current (amp.) the current passes these components is administered by the voltage crosswise over them: sj irvv  (2) where v = voltage over the yield terminals (volt) vj = voltage across both diode and resistor rsh (volt) i = output current (ampere) rs = series resistance (ω) by the shockley diode condition, the current occupied through the diode is:                 1t j vn v od eii (3) where: io = is the diode reverse saturation current. vt = is the thermal voltage given by: q tk v t   (4) vt the thermal voltage at 25 o c vt  0.0259 volt n = diode ideality factor (unitless, usually between 1 and 2 for a single junction cell). q = electron charge (1.60210-19 c). k = boltizmann's constant (1.38110-23 j/k). t = operating temperature. using ohm's law, the current occupied in the shunt resistor is: sh s sh j sh r irv r v i   (5) where: rsh = shunt resistance (ω). replace these values into the first equation creates the trademark condition of a sun-oriented cell, which communicates sun powered cell variables to the yield volt and current [11, 12]: sh svn irv oph r irv eiii t s                      1 (6) photo current is administered by the following equation:           1000 298 g tkii ishph (7) where: isc = short circuit current (a). ki = solar cell short circuit current temperature coefficient = 0.0017 t = operating temperature (kelvin). g = irradiance (mw/m2) in this equation irradiance divide by 1000 to get (w/m2). there are two states for the solar cell, the first one is open circuit and the second one is short circuit. at the point if the cell is worked at open circuit, i = 0 and the voltage over the yield terminals is characterized as the open-circuit voltage voc. expecting the parallel resistance is sufficiently large to disregard the last term of the trademark condition, the open-circuit voltage voc is: at short circuit condition, all the current will go over the short out so iph is equivalent to isc. dph iii  where: id = as shown in equation 3 so                 1t j vn v osh eiii we can decide the invert immersion current i0 by setting i = zero (situation when no yield current) and that case called open circuit. at short circuit i = 0 and v = voc where: voc = output voltage at open circuit state. in addition, that cause the all current go through the diode since the shunt resistance is high as clarified already so.                1 tnkn vq oph seiio                 1 tnkn vq sh o se i i (8) what's more, the current in the shunt resistance acquired from the accompanying condition:                                                       nk tt eq ref osh ref g e t t ii 11 3 (9) where: tref = reference temperature (kelvin). eg = band gap for silicon. for a photovoltaic array or cluster containing ns cells in series, np cells in parallel and expecting all cells are indistinguishable and under uniform and equivalent irradiance and temperature (i.e., generate equal current and voltage). cellpule ini  mod and cellsule vnv  mod the last single diode condition for a module or exhibit gets to be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/volt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ohm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ohm%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ohm        sh stknn irvq shpphp r irv einini s s                      1 (10) 3. solar cell simulation conditions depicted in past segment are demonstrated to acquire iv and pv characteristics of a solitary diode sun powered cell module. the reproduction incorporates numerous subsystems: one that figures the pv cell working and reference temperature (t and tref), the second ascertain iph (photo cell current), the third one compute io (diode turn around immersion current), the fourth one ascertain ish (current in shunt resistance) while the last one figure the aggregate yield current and aggregate yield voltage (i, v) [13, 14]. all the blocks obtained by using matlab-simulink to represent all the equations explained in previous section by using source, sinks and math's relation. some parameters used in this research have been assumed in order to accomplish the work and they are shown in table 1 below. table 1: photovoltaic model parameters parameters value rs 0.002 () rsh 100000 () k 0.0017 isc 3.8 (a) ns 36 np 1 v 21.2 (v) eg 1.1 n 1.1 ki 1.38110-23 (j/k) q 1.60210-19 (c) isc 3.8 (a) t 25 – 30 – 35 (co for many test) g 300 – 500 – 700 (mw/m2 for many test) 3.1 temperature module (t, tref) one of the simulation blocks is the temperature (in kelvin) as shown in figure 2. the subsystem contain four blocks, the input is the operating temperature in degree centigrade and the two outputs is the temperature (t) in kelvin and the reference temperature (tref) in kelvin's too. the subsystem job is to convert the temperature units, the reference temperature assumed to be 25 co which is room temperature, figure 3 shows details of the temperature subsystem. figure 2 temperature block figure 3 details of the temperature subsystem 3.2 photo cell current module (iph) this block represents the photocell current according to equation 7 as shown in figure 4. the inputs are irradiance (mw/m2), short circuit current (a), reference temperature (kelvin) and operating temperature (kelvin) while the output is the photocell current in (a), the details of this block shown in figure 5, which is the subsystem of the block. figure 4 photocell current module in the system figure 5 photocell current subsystem module 3.3 diode reverse saturation current module (io) this block represents the diode reverse saturation current according to equation 8 as shown in figure 6. the inputs are short circuit current (a) and operating temperature (kelvin) and the output is the diode reverse saturation current (a), the parameters used in this block is electron charge, voltage across the output terminal, number of series cells, boltzman'n constant and diode ideality factor. the details of this block shown in figure 7, which is the subsystem of the block. figure 6 diode reverse saturation current module in the system figure 7 diode reverse saturation subsystem module 3.4 shunt resistance current module (ish) this block as shown in figure 8 represents shunt resistance current according to equation 9. the inputs are diode reverse saturation current (a), the temperature (t) in kelvin and the reference temperature (tref) in kelvin's too. the parameters used in this block are electron charge, boltzman'n constant, band gap for silicon and diode ideality factor. the details of this block shown in figure 9, which is the subsystem of the block. figure 8 shunt resistance current module in the system figure 9 shunt resistance current subsystem module 3.5 photovoltaic output current module (ipv) this block represents photovoltaic output current according to equation 10. the inputs are temperature (t) in kelvin, short circuit current (a), photocell current (a) and voltage across the output terminals (volt) while the outputs are photovoltaic current and voltage. the parameters used in this block are electron charge, boltzman'n constant, diode ideality factor, number of series and parallel cells and value of series and shunt resistance. the details of this block shown in figure 10, which is the subsystem of the block. figure 10 photovoltaic current subsystem module finally, figure 11 shows the overall system module that simulates the solar cell system. figure 11 solar cell system modeling simulation 4. results in this simulation, solar cell specification curves i-v and p-v have been obtained for various irradiance and different operating temperature. in addition, in this simulation, changing the parameters of table 1 can be done very easily by changing the constants block. these results obtained by using output scope block and to workspace block in matlab-simulink. figure 12 and 13 shows the i-v curves for different irradiance and different temperature respectively. figure 12 i-v assorted curves for various irradiance and constant temperature figure 13 i-v assorted curves for various temperature and constant irradiance the effect of increasing irradiance while temperature was fixed (30o) is increasing the output and short circuit current, the output voltage almost not affected very much. in the second test, the output voltage decrease when the operating temperature increase whiles the irradiance was constant (500mw/m2). the third and fourth tests show the p-v curves for different irradiance and operating temperature as shown in figure 14 and 15, increasing the irradiance cause increasing the max power and max peak current, on the other hand increasing temperature cause to reduce the max power and max peak voltage [15]. figure 14 p-v assorted curves for various radiation and constant temperature figure 15 p-v assorted curves for various temperature and constant irradiance 5. conclusion in this research, matlab-simulink used to get the i-v and p-v characteristic curves of a solar cell system. these curves used to calculate the specifications of a solar cell system such as short circuit current, open circuit voltage, power and maximum power. from the experimental results, one can know the parameters that affect the solar cell efficiency and quality such as irradiance and temperature. this solar cell simulation is a general design so one can change the electrical segments such as resisters, diode and number of parallel and series cells very easily in order to get other solar cell system design. 6. reference [1] j. selvaraj, n. a. rahim, “multilevel inverter for grid-connected pv system employing digital pi controller”, ieee transactions on industrial electronics,vol. 56, no. 1, pp. 149-158 , 2009. [2] advanced energy: an international journal (aeij), vol. 1, no. 2, april 2014, “study of the equivalent circuit of a dyesensitized solar cells”, m. belarbi , a. benyoucef, b. benyoucef research unit materials and renewable energy, department of physics university of abou bekr belkaid-tlemcen, bp: 119 tlemcen 13000, algeria. [3] b.ba and m.kane, “determination of polysilicon solar cell parameters using electrical short-circuit current decay method”, solid-state electronics,vol.42,n0.4,pp.541-545, 1998. [4] a. h. al-hamdani, s. i. ibrahim, and s. k. abud alrda, "effects of luminous solar concentrator parameters (dyes mixture, host type and lsc thickness) on the si solar cell performance efficiency" , international journal of current engineering and technology, vol.5, no.4, pp(24392443), aug. 2015. [5] k. ishaque, z. salam, s. mkhilef, a. shamsudin, “parameter extraction of solar photovoltaic modules using penalty-based differential evolution” applied energy 99 (2012),297-308. [6] m. ö. yatak, “ fotovoltaik beslemeli aralıklı tip – 2 bulanık mantık denetleyicili i̇ki kademeli dönüştürücünün gerçekleştirilmesi”, elektronik ve bilgisayar eğitimi gazi üniversitesi bilişim enstitüsü doktora tezi, 2012, ankara. [7] h. tsai, c. tu, yi-jie su, “development of generalized photovoltaic model using matlab/simulink”, proceedings of the world congress on engineering and computer science wcecs, san francisco, usa, 2008. [8] m. francisco, g. longatt, “model of photovoltaic module in matlab™”, 2do congresoı beroamerı cano de estudıantes de ıngenıeríaeléctrı ca, electrónıcaly computacıón pp.1-5, 2005. [9] ş. yılmaz, m. aksu, z. özer, h. r. özçalık, “ matlab i̇le gerçekleştirilen fotovoltaik (pv) güneş pili modeli i̇le güneş enerjisi üretimindeki önemli etkenlerin tespit edilmesi”, eleco 2012,bursa. [10] s. rustemli, f. dincer, “modeling of photovoltaic panel and examining effects of temperature in matlab/simulink”, electronics and electrical engineering, issn 1392-1215, no. 3(109), pp. 35-40, 2011. [11] o. gergaud, b. multon, h. ben ahmed « analysis and experimental validation of various photovoltaic system models »7th international electrimacs congress, montréal, août 2002. [12] cubas, j.; pindado, s.; victoria, m. “on the analytical approach for modeling photovoltaic systems behavior”. journal of power sources 2014, 467–474. [13] savita nema, r.k. nema, gayatri agnihotri,“matlab/simulink based study of photovoltaic cells / modules / array and their experimental verification”, international journal of energy and environment, vol.1,no.3, pp.487-500, 2010. [14] o. shekoofa, m. taherbaneh, “modelling of silicon solar panel by matlab/simulink and evaluating the importance of its parameters in a space application” 3rd international conference on recent advances in space technologies, 2007. rast '07 by ieee. [15] r. t. ahmed, “obtaining and analyzing the characteristics curves of a solar cell”, international journal of computation and applied sciences ijocaas, vol. 2, issue 2, issn:2399-4509, pp: 9498, april 2017. biography assistance lecturer roshen tariq ahmed is working now as a researcher in energy and renewable energies technology center in university of technology, his bsc. and msc. is in control engineering from university of technology,baghdad/iraq,(https://scholar.google.com/c itations?hl=en&user=lx4u6nqaaaaj) is google scholar page, and (http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0042https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=lx4u6nqaaaaj https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=lx4u6nqaaaaj http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0042-9558 9558) is the orcid link, and his research gate link is (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/roshen_tariq_ah med_hamdi?ev=hdr_xprf&_sg=uqofbhellungquudm fi1qx6tdstpdoxtbpxljt8blnceijhtn9xjmilsb8vqwm) http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0042-9558 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/roshen_tariq_ahmed_hamdi?ev=hdr_xprf&_sg=uqofbhellungquudmfi1qx6tds-tpdoxtbpxljt8blnceijhtn9xjmilsb8vqwm https://www.researchgate.net/profile/roshen_tariq_ahmed_hamdi?ev=hdr_xprf&_sg=uqofbhellungquudmfi1qx6tds-tpdoxtbpxljt8blnceijhtn9xjmilsb8vqwm https://www.researchgate.net/profile/roshen_tariq_ahmed_hamdi?ev=hdr_xprf&_sg=uqofbhellungquudmfi1qx6tds-tpdoxtbpxljt8blnceijhtn9xjmilsb8vqwm https://www.researchgate.net/profile/roshen_tariq_ahmed_hamdi?ev=hdr_xprf&_sg=uqofbhellungquudmfi1qx6tds-tpdoxtbpxljt8blnceijhtn9xjmilsb8vqwm kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 3 | issue 2 | june 2018 | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.3.2 received: 02 septembe 2018 | accepted: 15 october 2018 determination the site of antibiotic resistance genes in escherichia coli isolated from urinary tract infection karzan abdulmuhsin mohammad zirak f. ahmed bayar h. mohammed medical analysis department biology department biology department science faculty | ishik university college of education college of education college of education | salahaddin university salahaddin university salahaddin university erbil, iraq erbil, iraq erbil, iraq karzan.mohammad@ishik.edu.iq zirak.ahmad@su.edu.krd bayar.mohammed@su.edu.krd rasti h. saeed biology department college of education salahaddin university erbil, iraq rastee.saeed@su.edu.krd 6 abstract: this study includes isolation of 25 isolates of escherichia coli (e. coli ) strain from urinary tract samples in a pregnant woman. microbiological and biochemical tests were used to identify the resistant bacteria of this genus. screening methods were used to determine bacterial isolates for their resistance to 10 antibiotics include: amikacin (ak), amoxicillin (ax), ampicillin (ap), chloramphenicol (cm), ciprofloxacin (cip), erythromycin (er), nalidixic acid (nal), penicillin (pen), tetracycline (tet) and trimethoprim (tm). the isolates e4, e9, e16, and e17 were resistant to all antibiotics used in the current study using the disk diffusion method. in contrast, the resistance percentage for all antibiotics ranged between 28-96%. sites of resistance genes and hemolysin production genes were characterized by tranformation techniques in the e4 and e16. the results showed that the antibiotic resistance genes of amikacin, erythromycin, tetracyclin, and trimethoprim were located on a plasmid, whereas amoxicillin, ampicillin, chloramphenicol, ciprofloxacin, nalidixic acid and penicillin were located on chromosomal dna. the results also demonstrated an inability to produce alpha or beta-hemolysin indicating that the genes which are responsible for hemolysin production were also located on chromosomal dna. keywords: e. coli , antibiotics, resistant genes, plasmid 1. introduction urinary tract infections (utis) are defined as the presence of bacteria in urine along with symptoms of infection. the infection is important clinically because of many organelles of the urinary tract may involve such as urethra, bladder, uterus, and kidney. all age groups are susceptible to this type of infection, but the frequency in women is higher than men [1] add reference??. the reason may be attributed to many factors including short urethra, the absence of prostates secretion, pregnancy and easy contamination of the urinary tract with fecal flora. additionally, during pregnancy, the physiological increase in plasma volume decreases the concentration of urine up to 70%. as a result, pregnant women develop glucosuria, which encourages bacterial growth in the urine [2]. antibiotic resistance microorganisms are a health threat in the world which encourages the medicine manufactures to produce new generations of yearly antibiotics to solve this problem, especially there are some bacteria considered a multiple antibiotic resistance such as escherichia coli, klebsiella spp., staphylococcus spp., pseudomonas spp., proteus spp. and others [3]. one of the major problems that associated with the risk of e. coli is their ability to resist a wide variety of antibiotics that introduced as therapeutic agents. these mainly due to the presence of extrachromosomal elements that harbor a resistant gene or r-factor which can be passed among bacteria of the same species or to other strains of e. coli through different mechanisms include transformation, conjugation and transduction processes. therefore, controlling and elimination of the resistance that conferred by r-plasmid by using biological mutagens, physical and chemical or other curing agents will be quite useful to put out such resistance eliments [4]. finally, the epidemiology of drug resistant e. coli and other gram-negative enteric bacteria is undergoing a remarkable change in the feature with the widespread occurrence or resistance transfer factors (rtf), which may have transferred to drug-sensitive strain by conjugation and transduction [5]. so the present work comprises: isolation and identification of e. coli that cause urinary tract infection in pregnant women, study the resistance of e. coli toward different antibiotics understudy, isolation and purification of plasmid dna content from e. coli, and determination the site of antibiotic resistance genes by genetic transformation. 7 2. methods and materials 2.1 specimens collection urine sample: mid-stream of 75 urine samples were collected in sterile cups from pregnant women suffering from urinary tract infections attending health center (nazdar bamerni), during the period 15th july 2017 to 7th september 2017. 2.2 processing of samples: 2.2.1 general urine examination: for microscopic examination, 5ml of urine was centrifuged, the supernatant was discarded, the deposit then re-suspended, and 0.1ml applied on a clean microscopic slide. the precipitated material was examined for the presence of leukocytes (pus cells), erythrocytes (rbc), mucus, bacteria, and parasites, along with crysals and casts[6]. 2.2.2 urine culture (isolation of e. coli ) a loop full of undiluted urine samples was spread on culture media (blood and macconkey agar) plates. the plates were incubated at overnight at 37°c. well isolated single colonies were sub-cultured on the same media to check for the purity of the isolated bacteria. purified isolates were identified using microscopic, morphological, biochemical and api 20e system as a more accurate method for identification 2.3 hemolysis on blood agar on blood agar, e. coli and most of the other enteric bacteria form circular, convex, and smooth colonies with b-hemolysis produced by some strains of e. coli [4]. 2.4 antimicrobial susceptibility test this test was performed according to write the name of the author with no year then [6]. antibiotic-impregnated discs with required concentration were dispensed on the surface of mueller-hinton agar medium that has been spread with a pure bacterial suspension of 105 cfu/ml. after incubation, inhibition zones were measured and translated into predetermined categories as susceptible, intermediate, or resistant (table-3). 2.5 isolation of plasmid dna content from bacterial isolates understudy in order to isolate the plasmid dna, a method described by [7] was employed with some modification and includes the following steps: 50 ml of sterilized nutrient broth media containing appropriate antibiotic was inoculated with single colony of tested bacterial isolate, and incubated in a shaking incubator (100 rpm) at 37°c overnight. then, centrifugation was carried out for 10 minutes at 8000 rpm. the pellet re-suspended in 2 ml solution i (glucose 20%, edta 20mm and sodium dodecyl sulfate 10%), then 100µl of 50µg /ml lysozyme (bhd, england) was added to the suspension, left at room temperature for 10 minutes, after that 4ml of solution ii added, vortexed and left on ice for 10 minutes. then 2 ml of cold 5m potassium acetate was added and left on ice for 10 minutes, after that centrifugation at 8000 rpm to precipitate cell debris and high molecular weight dna were performed. in order to remove protein, the supernatant transferred to clean tube and an equal volume of chloroform: isoamyl alcohol (24:1) was added, centrifuged for 10 minutes at 8000 rpm, this step repeated several times. the aqueous layer was transferred to clean tube and its volume estimated, then 1/10 of this volume solution iii added with two volume of absolute ethanol to precipitate the nucleic acids, the mixture was left for 30 minutes at -20°c, then centrifuged for 10 minutes at 8000 rpm. the pellet washed with 5 ml of 70% ethanol, centrifuged for 10 minutes at 8000 rpm, after that the pellet dried, re-suspended with 0.5 ml tris-edta buffer and stored at -20°c. 2.6 spectrophotometric quantification of plasmid dna a method utilized by sambrook and russel [ 8] was followed: a 100 microliter of prepared plasmid dna was diluted by te buffer to 1ml and the optical density (o.d.)was measured at 260 nm. the concentration of plasmid dna calculated according to the equation: optical density of dna x dilution factor x 50µg/ml=no.µg/ml 2.7 site determination of the genes resistance to the antibiotic the procedure carried out by isolation and purification of dna plasmid from the bacterial isolates. the dna was transformed into standard strains of e. coli which used as bacterial hosts for dna uptake. the transformation process of the isolated dna plasmids was performed as follow: 2.7.1 preparation of the competent cells competent cells were prepared using 5 ml of lactose broth which was inoculated with a single colony of e. coli dh5α free of plasmids. the samples were incubated in a shaker incubator (100 rpm) for 24 hours at 37ºc and then one ml of bacterial culture was added to 50 ml of lb broth and the samples were incubated with shaking at 37°c for 3-4 hrs. the optical density of the bacterial cultures growth (od650) was taken using a spectrophotometer to measure the logarithmic-phase of e. coli which typically ha an (od650 of 0.5–0.7). the cells were harvested by centrifugation at 5,000 rpm for 10 min and the supernatant was discarded, then the pellet was resuspended one ml of ice-cold 0.1m cacl2. the same solutions and concentrations were used for all the samples. the resuspended cells samples were left on ice for 30 min followed by centrifugation for 10 minutes with the same above conditions. finally, the supernatant discarded, and the pellet of bacterial cells was resuspended in 2.5 ml of ice-cold cacl2 [8]. 2.7.2 dna uptake transformation of dna plasmid to competent cells of e. coli dh5 α: extracted dna plasmids from isolate strains of e. coli were plated (ten µl) on lb agar and incubated at 37oc for 24 hours to ensure that the dna plasmids are free from bacterial cells. five μl of dna plasmid was added to a 8 sterile eppendorf tube contained 200 μl competent cells of e. coli dh5α. negative controls which consisted of competent cells without dna for each transformation samples were plated on lb agar supplemented with certain antibiotics. the mixtures were placed on ice for 30 min and then incubated in a 42°c water bath for 90 seconds. the transformation samples were cooled on ice for 5 min and transferred to 1.5 ml lb broth in tubes and incubated with shaking at 37ºc for 1 hour in a shaker incubator. the samples were transferred to 1.5 ml tubes for centrifugation at 14,000 r.p.m for 1 min. finally, the supernatant was discarded from each sample and the pellets were spread on selective lb agar plates and incubated at 37oc for 24 hours [9, 10]. 2.7.3 plasmid profile the tris-borate ethelyne diamine tetra acidic acid (tbe) was used to prepare agarose gel (0.7%). this is in order to identify the bands of dna through the gel electrophoresis as per their sizes. melting 0.7 g of agarose gel powder in 100 ml of 1x tbe as a buffer by heating in a microwave for 2 minutes of boiling temperature. then after, it has been cooled down in room temperature to 55oc prior to pour into the gel electrophoresis tray containing the combs for dna well and left for to be solidified. the gel and the tray filled with buffer of tbe 1x to sink the gel for 2-3 min, the combs removed carefully. as for molecular dna marker, a ladder of 1 kb dna (fermentas) has been used. the wells were filled precisely with 10μl plasmid dna extract previously mixed with 3μl of loading buffer. voltage of 45 for 15 minutes was current to the system for 15 minutes, then after the voltage was set for a higher voltage (75 volts) and let to run for 90 minutes. the dye will be then noticed at the other pole of the gel. soaking the gel in ethidium bromide (0.5 µg/ml of d.w.) was necessary for half an hour in order to visualize the gel by uv-trans illuminator, figure (8). 3. results and discussion 3.1 isolation of bacterial samples: table (1) recognizes the percentage occurrence of the bacterial isolates retrieved from 75 urine specimens. this came as in following order: e. coli (44.60 %), klebsiella pneumoniae (17.80 %), staphylococcus spp. (12.50%), proteus mirabilis (12.50%), pseudomonas aeroginosa (7.10 %), and enterobacter spp .(5.30%) respectively. there is strong similarity between agents of microbes who cause ut infection whether the patient is pregnant or not. the organisms that cause utis during pregnancy are the same as those found in non-pregnant patients. the vast majority of infections (80%-90%) revealed e. coli. 3.2 identification of e. coli isolates the laboratory identification of e. coli isolates was carried out as per microscopical, cultural, morphological, and biochemical tests. microscopic slide smear revealed short rods, motile, negatively stained with gram stain. they were motile and formed no spores. this led to a clear conclusion of the diagnostic feature of escherichia coli, in accordance to other resources [14]. table 1: percentage occurrence of the bacterial isolates bacterial isolates no. percentages % e. coli 25 44.60 klebsiella pneumonia 10 17.80 staphylococcus spp. 7 12.50 proteus mirabilis 7 12.50 pseudomonas aerugenosa 4 7.10 enterobacter spp. 3 5.30 e.coli 25 44.60 klebsiella pneumonia 10 17.80 staphylococcus spp. 7 12.50 proteus mirabilis 7 12.50 according to their pink colony appearance on macconkey agar as lactose fermenters, and grayish white moderately opaque with or without zone of hemolysis on blood agar, all e. coli isolates characterized by producing small, smooth, entire and convex colonies on blood agar. there was red pink lactose fermenting on macconkey agar and producing bright metallic green sheen colonies on eosine methylene blue (emb) agar. as well as the results of biochemical tests which shown in table (2) demonstrate that all bacterial isolates understudy was positive for indole, methyle red, catalase tests, but it was negative for vogas-proskaur, citrate utilization, oxidase, no h2s production. nevertheless, for all e. coli isolates, lactose and glucose fermentation were indicated by a yellow slant and a yellow butt a/a reaction on kligler iron agar (kia) medium [15]. table 2: some biochemical tests for identification of e. coli imvc test kia hemolysin others in d m r v p c it g a s h 2 s r e a c ti o n œ β δ o x id a se c a ta la se + + – – + – a/a 10 2 13 – + the production of hemolysins alpha and beta by the uropathogenic e. coli can cause lysis of urinary tract cells. the results revealed that out of 25 e. coli isolates, 10 isolates were œhemolytic, 2 isolates were ß-hemolytic, and 13 isolates were gamma hemolytic representing 40%, 8%, and 52% respectively. our results agree with those reported elsewhere [16, 17] where they found a large proportion of human extraintestinal e. coli isolates produce hemolysin representing (35-50%) and (35-60%) respectively, relative to normal fecal isolates (10%). also they mentioned that epidemiological evidence indicates a role for alpha-hemolysin in extraintestinal human infections. in general, and according to analytic profile index, the synonyms number of the retrieved specimens reveals that all isolates were e. coli, as shown in figure (1). 9 figure 1: api 20e strip revealed e.coli (7144572) 3.3 antibiotic resistance pattern for the bacterial isolates the twenty-five e. coli isolated from urine samples and laboratory strain e. coli dh5œ were screened. this in order to indicate their level of resistance to ten widely used antibiotics depending on the final concentration of antibiotics (table 3). the patterns of the antibiotic resistance for the isolated bacteria are shown in (table 4). the percentages of resistant were quarantined and the isolates of the present study showed remarkable diversity in their resistance to used antibiotics used. the resistance rate of e. coli isolates ranged from 100%, for e4, e9, e16 and e17, to 50% for e15, e18 and e22, while the percentages of resistance for other isolates ranged between 60% and 90%. table (5) revealed that the percentage of resistant bacterial isolates to different antibiotics. table 3: the standard inhibition zone for different antibiotics a n ti m ic r o b ia l a g e n t c o n c e n tr a ti o n (µ g /m l) r e si st a n t m m o r l e ss in te r m e d ia te m m s e n si ti v e m m o r m o r e amikacin (ak) 30 14 15-16 17 ampicillin (amp) 10 13 13-15 17 amoxicllin 30 13 14-17 18 erythromycin 25 10 11-15 16 nalidixic acid (na) 30 13 14-18 19 tetracycline 300 14 15-16 17 ciprofloxacin (cip) 5 15 16-20 21 penicillin 30 13 14-19 20 chloramphenicol (c) 30 12 13-17 18 trimethoprim 30 14 15-22 23 table 4: antibiotic resistance pattern for e.coli isolates understudy is o la te n o . n. agar plates with final antibiotic concentratonis in µg/ml a k a x a p c m c ip e r n a l t e t m p e n r e s. e1 s r r r s r r r s s 60% e2 s r r r s s r r r s 60% e3 s r r r r r s s s r 60% e4 r r r r r r r r r r 100% e5 s r r r s r r r s r 70% e6 s r s r r r r r s r 70% e7 r r r r r r r s r s 80% e8 s r r r r r r r r r 90% e9 r r r r r r r r r r 100% e10 s r s r s r r r s r 60% e11 r s r r s r s r s r 60% e12 s r r s s r r r r s 60% e13 s r s r s r r r r s 60% e14 s r r r r r r r r r 90% e15 s r s s s r r r s r 50% e16 r r r r r r r r r r 100% e17 r r r r r r r r r r 100% e18 r r r r s r s s s s 50% e19 s r r r s r r r s r 70% e20 r r r r r r r r s r 90% e21 s r r r s r r r s r 70% e22 s r s s s r r r r s 50% e23 s r r r s s r r r s 60% e24 s r r r s r r r r r 80% e25 s r r r s r r r s s 60% r: resistance s: sensitive table (5) elucidated that the highest percentage of resistance was 96% to ap, while the lowest percentage was 32% for ak. the results also clarified that e. coli isolates showed different resistance to ery, tet, cm, nal, ax, pen, tm and cip and the resistant rate were 92%, 88%, 88%. 88%, 80%, 64%, 52%, and 40% respectively. multiple resistances to two or more antibiotics was common. the results revealed that resistance to ampicilin and erythromycin was 96% and 92% respectively, similar results were reported [18, 19, and 20] they found that resistance of isolates of e. coli retrieved from urinary tract infections to ampicilin were 90%, 95% and 92% respectively. studies elsewhere [21, 22] stated that no e. coli isolates from utis were sensitive to ampicillin. 10 table (5): percentages of resistant bacterial isolates to different antibiotics a n ti b io ti c i n µ g /m l a k * a x a p c m c ip e r n a l p e n t e t m n o . o f re si st a n t is o la te s 8 20 24 22 10 23 22 16 22 13 % r e si st a n c e 32 80 96 88 40 92 88 64 88 52 in the present study high resistance percentages (88%) was reported to chloramphenicol, tetracycline, naldixic acid. however, [23] found the resistant percentages of e. coli to naldixic acid were (86%), while [22] stated that a resistance percentage of e. coli to nalidixic acid was (20%). the resistance to quinolones as naldixic acid in gramnegative bacteria such as e. coli is mainly recalled to a mutation in their chromosome which modifies the targeted enzyme of the bacterium (dna gyrase) and topoisomerase iv, or enhnce the efflux pump system that drain the drugs out of the cytoplasm. this study showed that the resistant to tetracycline was (88%), similar results reported by [24], he also stated that resistant to tetracycline was (88%), resistant with a percentage of (79%) obtained in other study [22]. these results correlated with the study done by [25], who revealed that (73.3%) of e. coli isolated from utis were resistant to tetracycline. chloramphenicol resistant percentages that recorded in this study was (88%), while others reported (70%) of e. coli susceptible to chloramphenicol [24]. moreover research showed that e. coli isolated from utis were resistant to chloramphenicol at a percentage of (60%) [18], others reported that (39%) of e. coli isolates were resistant to chloramphenicol [26]. this diversity and multiple antibiotic resistance of e. coli are linked to genes located on their conjugant plasmid. nevertheless, processes of conjugation, transformation or transduction can aid the transfer of these genes to recipient e. coli. the resistance genes can also occur on the circular chromosome of the bacterium and can dive to the plasmid by a process of transposition. transposon may bear genes of multidrug resistance and both grampositive and gram negative bacteria can perform such a process of transposition of genes [27]. 3.4 determination of the genetic site determination of antibiotic resistance in e. coli the isolates of the present study were gone through a transformation experiment in order to uncover the locus of the antibiotic resistant gene in the e. coli isolates. transformation was obtained by using dh5œ e. coli strain, as a recipient cell. it has the capability to resolve clean and purified e. coli plasmid dna content from bacterial isolates. four isolates were chosen from the bacterial isolates that show resistance to most antibiotics understudy. the antibiotic resistance pattern of those isolates and the laboratory dh5œ strains are shown in (table 6). table 6: antibiotic resistance patterns of chosen acterial isolates used for transformation process n o .o f is o la te s n-agar with final antibiotic concentration in µg/ml a k * a x a p c m c ip e r n a l p e n t e t t m e4 s r r r r r r r r r e16 r r r r r r r r r r dh5œ s s s r s s r r s s the l.b medium was used to subculture 10 colonies of dh5-α transformants. this process is crucial as it guarantees the phenotypic stability of resistance in the transformed colonies. in addition, it ensures proper and regular segregation of plasmids after purification. finally, the colonies were tested for antibiotic resistance through kirby-bauer method. results were as in table (7). table 7: antibiotic resistance pattern after transformation of e.coli dh5-α with purified plasmid from e.coli isolates n o .o f is o la te s n-agar with a final antibiotic concentration in µg/ml a k * a x a p c m c ip e r n a l p e n t e t t m e4 s r r r r r r r r r dh5œ+ plasmid s s s r s r r r r r e16 r r r r r r r r r r dh5œ+ plasmid r s s r s r r r r r from the table, it’s obvious that the transformation process performed successfully for each of e4 and e16. this is indicated by resistance to er, tm, and te, for e4 transformant and to ak, er, and tm for e16. the profile of the plasmids in transformed e. coli dh5α strain with purified plasmid from e4, and e16 isolates (figure 2) revealed that successful transformation is retrieved only in a single band (>10000 bp) that can show resistance of dh5-α to above antibiotics. this may be related to the fact that the responsible genes of a known resistance could be located on a large plasmid or the chromosomal dna. this results in difficulty of uptake by the dh5œ receiver, or has a transposon property. thus, we can conclude that all genes responsible for conferring resistance to antibiotics used (ak, er, te, and tm) are located on plasmid dna. 11 figure 2: plasmid profile of transformant colonies lane 1 10 000 bp dna ladder lane 2 e. coli dh5α laboratory strain lane 3 plasmid content of e4 lane 4 e4 transformant colonies lane 5 plasmid content of e16 lane 6 e16 transformant colonies the size of the plasmids of bacterial isolates of which transformation test with dh5-α transformant performed can be the reason behind the diversity of antibiotics resistance. the size also determines the fluency and easiness off the entrance to the cells during transformation [28]. a study suggested that transferring f the genes horizontally may be a factor behind capability of clinical isolates to resist antibiotics [29]. suggesting that consuming an antibiotic is not the only reason of the increased frequency of resistance to a particular antibiotic as previously stated by relevant works [30]. research of others mentioned that after transformation with plasmid dna in uropathogenic e. coli isolated from pregnant women, transformant colonies become resistance for gentamycin, trimethoprime, amikacin and tetracycline [31]. on the other hand, the ability of purified dh5œ transformant colonies to produce hemolysin were tested on blood agar using streaked plate method and the results demonstrate the inability of the transformant colonies to produce alpha or beta hemolysins [32]. 4. conclusion from these results it is clear that the genes responsible for encoding hemolysin enzymes were located on chromosome and thus not transferred to the host competent cells during transformation.alpha-hemolysin is a virulence-associated factor that has been found to be chromosomally encoded in most human urinary tract isolates and it has also been assumed that this determinant can be related to the pathogenesis of extraintestinal e. coli human infections. reference [1] c. w. tan and m. p. chlebicki, "urinary tract infections in adults,"singapore med j, vol. 57, pp. 485-90, sep 2016. 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[13] j. e. blanco, m. blanco, a. mora, and j. blanco, "prevalence of bacterial resistance to quinolones and other antimicrobials among avian escherichia coli strains isolated from septicemic and healthy chickens in spain," j clin microbiol, vol. 35, pp. 2184-5, aug 1997. [14] s. sharma, g. k. bhat, and s. shenoy, "virulence factors and drug resistance in escherichia coli isolated from extraintestinal infections," indian j med microbiol, vol. 25, pp. 369-73, oct 2007. [15] g. wistreich, a. kleemm and m. d. lechtman, laboratory exercises in microbiology, 4th ed., glencoe publishing co. inc, new york, 1980. [16] a. e. barber, b. a. fleming, and m. a. mulvey, "similarly lethal strains of extraintestinal pathogenic escherichia coli trigger markedly diverse host responses in a zebrafish model of sepsis," msphere, vol. 1, mar-apr 2016. [17] m. d. engstrom and h. l. mobley, "regulation of expression of uropathogenic escherichia coli nonfimbrial adhesin tosa by papb homolog tosr in conjunction with h-ns and lrp," infect immun, vol. 84, pp. 811-21, jan 11 2016. [18] m. abd-alsattar, partial purification of type-1pili extracted from e. coli and its role in infection, .ph.d.thesis, college of science, university of baghdad, 2004. [19] u. asad and s. zaman, ʺmultiple drug resistance pattern in urinary tract infection patients in aligarh,ʺ biochemical research, vol. 17, pp.179-181, 2006. [20] m. h. shirazi, n. sadeghhifard, r. ranjbar, e. daneshyar and a. ghasemi, ʺincidence of asymptomatic bacteriuria during pregnancy, ʺ pak. j. biol. sci. , vol. 9, pp. 151-154, 2006. [21] a. m. g. al-fahdawi, influence of blood groups on the availability of receptors of uroepithelial cells for attachment of uropathogenic bacteria causing urinary tract infections, m.sc. thesis, college of medicine, university of baghdad, baghdad, iraq, 2001 [22] a. n. h. al-alosi, molecular study on some virulence factors produced by gram-negative bacteria, m.sc. thesis, genetic enginnering and biotechnology institute for post graduate studies, university of baghdad, baghdad, iraq, 2004. [23] a. n. ghosh, d. r. bhatta, m. t. ansari, h. k. tiwari, j. p. mathuria, a. gaur, et al., "application of whonet in the antimicrobial resistance surveillance of uropathogens: a first user experience from nepal," j clin diagn res, vol. 7, pp. 8458, may 2013. [24] m. m. al-shaikhli, virulence factors of e.coli in women with asymptomatic bacteriuria, m.sc thesis, college of medicine, baghdad university, baghdad. iraq, 2004. [25] a. sharma and p. grover, ʺapplication of whonet for the surveiallance of antimicrobial resistance, ʺ indian. j. med. microbiol., vol. 22, pp.115-118, 2004. [26] s. babypadmini and b. appalaraju, "extended spectrum lactamases in urinary isolates of escherichia coli and klebsiella pneumoniae prevalence and susceptibility pattern in a tertiary 12 care hospital," indian j med microbiol, vol. 22, pp. 172-4, julsep 2004. [27] a. moghadas and g. irajian, "asymptomatic urinary tract infection in women," iranian journal of pathology, vol. 4, pp.105108, jul 2009. [28] n. woodford and a. johnson, molecular bacteriology, protocols and clinical applications, humana press inc, 1998. [29] j. r. brown, d. gentry, j. a. becker, k. ingraham, d. j. holmes, and m. j. stanhope, "horizontal transfer of drug-resistant aminoacyl-transfer-rna synthetases of anthrax and grampositive pathogens," embo rep, vol. 4, pp. 692-8, jul 2003. [30] p. nwanze, l. nwaru, s. oranusi, u. dimkpa, m. okwu, b. babatunde, t. anake, w. jatto and c. asagwara, ʺurinary tract infection in okada village: prevalence and antimicrobial susceptibility pattern,ʺ scientific research and essay, vol. 2, pp. 112-116 . 2007 [31] z. a. nanakaly, characterization of plasmid dna content and antimicrobial effect of bile salt on e.coli isolated from urinary tract infection of pregnant women, thesis of higher diploma, college of education, salahaddin university, erbil, iraq, 2010. [32] p. siskova, l. cernohorska, m. mahelova, k. turkova, and v. woznicova, "phenotypes of escherichia coli isolated from urine: differences between extended-spectrum beta-lactamase producers and sensitive strains," j microbiol immunol infect, vol. 48, pp. 329-34, jun 2015. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq awareness of medical students about standard isolation precautions in sulaimani city bushra m. ali saman a. mohammed family & community medicine dep. family & community medicine dep. college of medicine college of medicine sulaimani university sulaimani university sulaimani / iraq sulaimani / iraq bmakfb.2002@yahoo.come dr.saman_am@yahoo.com balen tayb abdullah osama muhammad college of medicine college of medicine sulaimani university sulaimani university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq balentayb@gmail.com osama.mohammed99999@gmail.com mutasam fabian muhammad rauf college of medicine college of medicine sulaimani university sulaimani university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq mu.f.h.1997@gmail.com star.sky1353@gmail.com volume 4 – special issue: 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) doi: 10.24017/science.2019 .ichms.21 received: 14 june 2019 accepted: 7 july 2019 abstract the objectives of this study are to assess knowledge, attitude and practice of medical students about standard isolation precautions and different college students and to identify those who vaccinated with hbv vaccine. a cross-sectional study was conducted from 27th of february 2019 till 1st of march 2019 in sulaimani university among medical students .a convenient sample of 401 students were participated. data was collected via online, entered by excel program and analyzed by spss program version 21. chi-square test used to get the association, p value which is equal or less than 0.05 was regarded statistically significant. majority of medical students had accepted knowledge (67 %), their attitude was positive (70 %), and had low practice (35 %). most of the students answered wrongly regarding gloves should be worn if they attached to mucous membrane or non-intact skin and the highest percentage was among nursing college (85.3%), there was a significant association regarding p value (0.035).most of the students believed that all health providers are at risk of occupational infections (75.6%), and the highest percentage was among nursing college mailto:bmakfb.2002@yahoo.come mailto:star.sky1353@gmail.com kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 200 (94.1%) and there was a significant association regarding p value (0.006). the percentage of the students that have taken a vaccine for hepatitis b is (56.4%). most of students had good knowledge regarding all aspects of isolation precaution, they had appropriate attitude toward it, high rate of medical students were lacking practice regarding the subject, in average college of nursing had highest rate of all correct answers, about half of medical students have taken a vaccine for hepatitis b. keywords: standard isolation precautions, medical students, sulaimani 1. introduction minimizing pathogens transmission risk from recognized and unrecognized sources is known as standard precautions, they are the basic level of infection control precautions which are to be used, as a minimum, in the care of all patients1. medical staff and medical students are at risk of getting infection through occupational exposure. the infection can also transmitted from health workers to the patients and other office workers2. the risk of transmission of hiv to the health care worker when accidentally exposed to the needle stick or other sharps injury is %5 3. general precautions comprise of (hand hygiene, the use of ppe, respiratory hygiene/cough etiquette, environmental cleaning, prevention of needle stick injuries and safe waste management)4. through adherence to standard precautions, risk reduction must be undertaken for all blood borne pathogens by appropriate use of safety devices, using personal protective equipment, and providing a needle disposal system in work place5. a percentage of these risks can be prevented through a strict adherence by health staff to standard precaution6. medical students before their initial training period at hospital should have adequate knowledge which is a pre-requisite for compliance. in addition to that a health care student must be trained a specialized training before undertakes any patient procedure involving sharp devices7 a few studies have reported on medical student knowledge of standard precaution and isolation noted that lack of adequate of information in standard isolation and precaution8. the observance of hygiene recommendations by students is reported as being weak, medical students rarely wash their hands after examining patients9. all the staff with potential exposure to blood and blood products must be educated regarding transmission mechanisms and preventive measures of the infectious diseases10. knowledge, attitude, and practice of medical students towards standard isolation precautions were not appropriate these were found in several studies on the efficacy of this concept have been published. in iran there are limited studies in relation to iranian medical students towards standard isolation precautions. objectives: 1to identify the awareness of the medical students about standard isolation precautions. 2to find out the associations between different medical colleges students regarding knowledge, attitude and practice about standard isolation precautions. 3to identify difference between collages regarding receiving hepatitis b vaccine. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 201 2. methodology study design: cross-sectional study. study duration: for five days, study began in 27th february 2019 and ended in 1st march 2019. study setting: the study was conducted in sulaimani university, faculty of medical science (colleges of medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and nursing). sampling method and sample size: a convenient sampling type was conducted. according to responses from online google forms, 401 medical students from all colleges that were included have filled the form and retuned back online. a selfadministrative questionnaire was used to collect the information which was composed of four sections: socio-demographic information: it included (age, gender, marital states, residency, economic state, college) of the participants. evaluation of students’ knowledge: it includes 10 questions to determine their knowledge about isolation precautions. evaluation of students’ attitude: it includes 10 questions to estimate thoughts and attitude of students regarding the topic. evaluation of students’ practice: it includes 9 questions to evaluate practical activities of students in the practice sections. data was collected via online questionnaire then entered to google form screen sheet, transmitted into microsoft excel version 2016, after that into spss version 21. and two approaches had been made: i. descriptive approach, to calculate frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, and diagrams. ii. analytical approach, to find association between variables using chi-square (with p-value less than or equal to0.05 as statistically significant). ethical consideration: a permission was taken from department of family and community medicine/college of medicine /sulaimani university. it was protected legally by informed consent, and participants were informed that they are free to fill the form. 3. results mean age/ year of participants was (21.33±1.89sd) table (1) shows the highest frequency of participation was among females which was (50.4%) which is too close to male participation (49.6%), and among college of medicine which was (60.8%), regarding to residency participation among once live inside city was higher which was (53.9%), (89.3%) of participants were single ,while (78.3%) had a moderate economic state. table 1: distribution of medical students according to their socio-demographic states socio-demographic frequency percentage (%) gender female 202 50.4 male 199 49.6 marital states divorced 9 2.2 married 34 8.5 kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 202 single 358 89.3 residency inside city 216 53.9 outside city 185 46.1 economic state high 42 10.5 low 45 11.2 moderate 314 78.3 college dentistry 79 19.7 medicine 244 60.8 nursery 34 8.5 pharmacy 44 11.0 total 401 100.0 table (2) shows the associations between deferent colleges regarding their knowledge about prevention of standard precautions, by asking about after any contact with secretions, contaminated item, blood and bloody fluid hands should be washed, 80.5% said yes with a high proportion among medicine which 82.4% of them answered yes with statistically not significant p value (0.687), and regarding touching mucous membranes or non-intact skin, wearing of gloves should be done 79.3% said yes with a high proportion in college of nursing that 85.3% of them said yes and with a significant p value (0.035), about 68.1% said they should wear protective eyeglasses to protect mucous membranes of the eyes and among them 85.3% from nursing with non-significant p value (0.263) , regarding the surgical mask 79.6% said yes to protect the mouth and nose from invasive procedures and activities surgical mask should be worn, which among them highest percentage was in collage of nursing 85.3% with statistically not significant p value (0.725), by asking cleaning and disinfect-ting should be applied for any common equipment between patients who are on contact precautions 76.3 of participants said yes which among them highest percentage was in college of pharmacy 86.4% with statistically not significant p value (0.389), regarding wearing gown is necessary when entering patient's room on contact precautions if you anticipate contact with patient or environment. table 2: associations between deferent colleges regarding their knowledge about prevention of standard precautions knowledge about prevention college total p. value medicine nursery dentistry pharmacy number (%) number (%) number (%) number (%) number (%) 1. should hands be washed after accidental contact with blood bloody fluid, secretions i don't know 8(3.3) 1(2.9) 6(7.6) 3(6.8) 18(4.5) 0.687 no 35(14.3) 6(17.6) 13(16.5) 6(13.6) 60(15.0) yes 201(82.4) 27(79.4) 60(75.9) 35(79.5) 323(80.5) kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 203 contaminated item? total 244(100) 34(100) 79(100) 44(100) 401(100) 2. should gloves be worn when touching mucous membranes or non-intact skin? i don't know 19(7.8) 2(5.9) 5(6.3) 6(13.6) 32(8.0) 0.035 no 25(10.2) 3(8.8) 19(24.1) 4(9.1) 51(12.7) yes 200(82.0) 29(85.3) 55(69.6) 34(77.3) 318(79.3) total 244(100) 34(100) 79(100) 44(100) 401(100) 3. goggles (protective eyeglasses) should be worn to protect mucous membranes of the eyes i don't know 34(13.9) 3(8.8) 13(16.5) 10(22.7) 60(15.0) 0.263 no 44(18.0) 2(5.9) 14(17.7) 8(18.2) 68(17.0) yes 166(68.0) 29(85.3) 52(65.8) 26(59.1) 273(68.1) total 244(100) 34(100) 79(100) 44(100) 401(100) 4. a surgical mask should be worn to protect the nose and mouth from invasive procedures and activities i don't know 19(7.8) 3(8.8) 5(6.3) 4(9.1) 31(7.7) 0.725 no 29(11.9) 2(5.9) 14(17.7) 6(13.6) 51(12.7) yes 196(80.3) 29(85.3) 60(75.9) 34(77.3) 319(79.6) total 244(100) 34(100) 79(100) 44(100) 401(100) 5. cleaning and disinfect-ting should be applied for any common equipment between patients who are on contact precautions i don't know 25(10.2) 6(17.6) 9(11.4) 3(6.8) 43(10.7) 0.389 no 30(12.3) 6(17.6) 13(16.5) 3(6.8) 52(13.0) yes 189(77.5) 22(64.7) 57(72.2) 38(86.4) 306(76.3) total 244(100) 34(100) 79(100) 44(100) 401(100) table (3) shows the associations between deferent colleges regarding their knowledge about general information of standard precautions, about health providers include radiologists 57.1% said yes they are with highest risk of exposure to tuberculosis and the highest percentage was in college of pharmacy 65.9% with not-significant p. value (0.387),regarding needles should be bent before disposal 48.1% of them said yes with highest percentage in college of medicine which 51.6% with not-significant p value (0.152). only 29.7% of participants said no regarding routine immunization for healthcare providers include rabies, hiv and rubella in which the highest percentage was in collage of dentistry 31.6 % with not-significant p value (0.951). 6. wearing gown is necessary when entering patient's room on contact precautions if you anticipate contact with patient or environment. i don't 44(18.0) 4(11.8) 10(12.7) 9(20.5) 67(16.7) 0.844 know no 39(16.0) 7(20.6) 13(16.5) 6(13.6) 65(16.2) yes 161(66.0) 23(67.6) 56(70.9) 29(65.9) 269(67.1) total 244(100) 34(100) 79(100) 44(100) 401(100) kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 204 table 3: associations between deferent colleges regarding their knowledge about general information of standard precautions knowledge about general information college total p. value medicine nursery dentistry pharmacy number (%) number (%) number (%) number (%) number (%) 1. health providers with highest risk of exposure to tuberculosis include radiologists. i don't know 69(28.3) 6(17.6) 14(17.7) 9(20.5) 98(24.4) 0.387 no 44(18.0) 7(20.6) 17(21.5) 6(13.6) 74(18.5) yes 131(53.7) 21(61.8) 48(60.8) 29(65.9) 229(57.1) total 244(100) 34(100) 79(100) 44(100) 401(100) 2. needle should be bent before disposal i don't know 58(23.8) 14(41.2) 18(22.8) 9(20.5) 99(24.7) 0.152 no 60(24.6) 7(20.6) 27(34.2) 15(34.1) 109(27.2) yes 126(51.6) 13(38.2) 34(43.0) 20(45.5) 193(48.1) total 244(100) 34(100) 79(100) 44(100) 401(100) 3. routine immunizations for healthcare providers include hiv, rubella and rabies i don't know 49(20.1) 9(26.5) 14(17.7) 9(20.3) 81(20.2) 0.951 no 74(30.3) 8(23.5) 25(31.6) 12(27.3) 119(29.7) yes 121(49.6) 17(50.0) 40(50.6) 23(52.3) 201(50.1) total 244(100) 34(100) 79(100) 44(100) 401(100) fig (1) about 56.9% of participants said all patients can be regarded as sources of infection whatever are their diagnosis and 33.2% said no only 10.0% said i don’t know and the highest proportion was in college of nursing which 76.5% of students said yes and lowest in college of medicine which 51.2% of them said yes with not-significant p value (0.113). kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 205 figure 1: showing the difference between students in different collages regarding answering that all patients are sources of infection regardless their diagnosis. table (4) shows the associations between deferent colleges regarding their attitude of standard precautions, 75.6% believe that all healthcare workers are at risk of infections during their work and among them highest percentage was in collage of nursing 94.1% with statistically high significant p value (0.006), by asking do they think hand washing can be replaced by using of gloves 52.4% said yes while among them highest percentage was in college of pharmacy 72.7% of them said yes with significant p value (0.023), by asking do they believe healthcare providers should be tested annually by tuberculin skin test 72.3% said yes and among them highest percentage was in college of pharmacy 79.5% of them said yes with nonsignificant p value (0.223), when we ask did they think health-care providers should receive annual influenza vaccine 75.3% said yes which among them highest percentage was in collage of medicine 77.5% of them said yes with non-significant p value (0.539), and by asking do they think masks which composed of cotton are most protective 67.3% said yes and among them highest percentage was in collage of nursing 79.4% and statistically non-significant p value (0.261), by asking do they think on the same patient between different procedures gloves should be changed 75.1% said yes which among them the highest percentage was in collage of medicine 79.5% with a statistically non-significant p value (0.19),by asking, do they think gloves and masks after proper cleaning can be re-used 51.4% said no and among them the highest percentage was in college of dentistry 57.0% and statistically non-significant p value (0.53), when we asked do they think only sweat not regarded as source of infection 75.6% of participants said yes and among them highest percentage was in collage of nursing 82.4% with non-significant p value (0.742),and by asking do they think patients with a disease that needs contact precautions must be kept in a private room 77.8% of participants said yes which among them highest percentage was in collage of nursing 91.2% and statistically nonsignificant p value (0.165). i don't know no (5.9) (17 6) 13 27 26 28 23 50 91 12 5 kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 206 table 4: associations between deferent colleges regarding their attitude of standard precautions attitude college total p. value medicine nursery dentistry pharmacy number (%) number (%) number (%) number (%) number (%) 1. do you believe all health providers are at risk of occupational infections? no 55(22.5) 2(5.9) 28(35.4) 13(29.5) 98(24.4) 0.006 yes 189(77.5) 32(94.1) 51(64.6) 31(70.5) 303(75.6) total 244(100.0) 34(100) 79(100.0) 44(100.0) 401(100.0) 2. do you think use of gloves replaces the need for hand washing? no 126(51.6) 14(41.2) 39(49.4) 12(27.3) 191(47.6) 0.023 yes 118(48.4) 20(58.8) 40(50.6) 32(72.7) 210(52.4) total 244(100.0) 34(100) 79(100.0) 44(100.0) 401(100.0) 3.do you believe tuberculin skin test should be done annually for healthcare providers ? no 67(27.5) 7(20.6) 28(35.4) 9(20.5) 111(27.7) 0.223 yes 177(72.5) 27(79.4) 51(64.6) 35(79.5) 290(72.3) total 244(100.0) 34(100) 79(100.0) 44(100.0) 401(100.0) 4. do you think influenza vaccine should be received annually by health-care providers? no 55(22.5) 8(23.5) 24(30.4) 12(27.3) 99(24.7) 0.539 yes 189(77.5) 26(76.5) 55(69.6) 32(72.7) 302(75.3) total 244(100.0) 34(100) 79(100.0) 44(100.0) 401(100.0) 5. do you think masks are more protective if it is composed of cotton or gauze? no 80(32.8) 7(20.6) 31(39.2) 13(29.5) 131(32.7) 0.261 yes 164(67.2) 27(79.4) 48(60.8) 31(70.5) 270(67.3) total 244(100.0) 34(100) 79(100.0) 44(100.0) 401(100.0) 6. do you think between different procedures on the same patient gloves should be changed no 50(20.5) 8(23.5) 30(38.0) 12(27.3) 100(24.9) 0.19 yes 194(79.5) 26(76.5) 49(62.0) 32(72.7) 301(75.1) total 244(100.0) 34(100) 79(100.0) 44(100.0) 401(100.0) 7. do you think after proper cleaning of yes 116(47.5) 24(70.6) 34(43.0) 21(47.7) 195(48.6) 0.053 no 128(52.5) 10(29.4) 45(57.0) 23(52.3) 206(51.4) kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 207 masks and gloves we can reuse them total 244(100.0) 34(100) 79(100.0) 44(100.0) 401(100.0) 8. do you think that only sweat shouldn’t be regarded as sources of infection? no 59(24.2) 6(17.6) 21(26.6) 12(27.3) 98(24.4) 0.742 yes 185(75.8) 28(82.4) 58(73.4) 32(72.7) 303(75.6) total 244(100.0) 34(100) 79(100.0) 44(100.0) 401(100.0) fig. (2) by asking did they think hand washing reduces the incidence of healthcarerelated infections 81.2% of them said yes, which among them highest percentage was in collage of medicine which’s 86.5% and statistically highly significant p value (0.008). figure 2: the difference between students in different collages regarding thinking about of healthcare related infections can be decreased by hands washing no 24 33 35 27 55 211 kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 208 table (5) shows the associations between deferent colleges regarding their practice of standard precautions, by asking do they wash their hands before and after each patient care 53.1% of participants said always and among colleges the highest percentage was in college of nursing 58.8% of them wash their hands every time they care a patient with statistically not significant p-value (0.433), and about 47.6% of participants on the same patient between tasks and procedures sometimes wash their hand and the highest percentage was in college of dentistry 51.9% and statistically non-significant p value (0.607),by asking do they wash their hands before and after using gloves 47.6% said sometimes which among them the highest percentage was in college of medicine 50.4% of them said sometimes and statistically non-significant p value (0.43), regarding dealing with the same patient they re-use the masks and gloves 41.9% said sometimes ,among them the highest percentage was in college of nursing 50.0% with statistically not significant p value (0.376), when we asked do they recap the sharp needle before final disposal 44.6% said always which among them the highest percentage was in college of nursing 61.8% of them said always and statistically significant p value (0.046),by asking do they use antibiotic after exposure to a patient with flu 39.7% of participants said sometimes and among them the highest percentage was in college of nursing 47.1% said sometimes with statistically significant p value (0.008), by asking do they eat food directly after finishing their practice 46.9% said sometimes and among them the highest percentage was in college of nursing 50.0% of them said sometimes and statistically non-significant p value (0.655). table 5: associations between deferent colleges regarding their practice of standard precautions practice college total p. value medicine nursery dentistry pharmacy number (%) number (%) number (%) number (%) number (%) 1. do you wash your hands before and after each patient care? always 137(56.1) 20(58.8) 36(45.6) 20(45.5) 213(53.1) 0.433 never 7(2.9) 2(5.9) 4(5.1) 3(6.8) 16(4.0) sometimes 100(41.0) 12(35.3) 39(49.4) 21(47.7) 172(42.9) total 244(100) 34(100) 79(100) 44(100) 401(100) 2. do you wash your hand between tasks and procedures on the same patient? always 94(38.5) 14(41.2) 26(32.9) 13(29.5) 147(36.7) 0.607 never 35(14.3) 5(14.7) 12(15.2) 11(25.0) 63(15.7) sometimes 115(47.1) 15(44.1) 41(51.9) 20(45.5) 191(47.6) total 244(100) 34(100) 79(100) 44(100) 401(100) kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 209 3. do you wash your hands before and after using gloves? always 92(37.7) 18(52.9) 29(36.7) 16(36.4) 155(38.7) 0.43 never 29(11.9) 4(11.8) 12(15.2) 9(20.5) 54(13.5) sometimes 123(50.4) 12(35.3) 38(48.1) 19(43.2) 192(47.9) total 244(100) 34(100) 79(100) 44(100) 401(100) 4. do you reuse the masks and gloves while dealing with the same patient? always 71(29.1) 10(29.4) 17(21.5) 13(29.5) 111(27.7) 0.376 never 74(30.3) 7(20.6) 31(39.2) 10(22.7) 122(30.4) sometimes 99(40.6) 17(50.0) 31(39.2) 21(47.7) 168(41.9) total 244(100) 34(100) 79(100) 44(100) 401(100) 5. do you recap the sharp needle before final disposal? always 99(40.6) 21(61.8) 44(55.7) 15(34.1) 179(44.6) 0.046 never 51(20.9) 5(14.7) 9(11.4) 11(25.0) 76(19.0) sometimes 94(38.5) 8(23.5) 26(32.9) 18(40.9) 146(36.4) total 244(100) 34(100) 79(100) 44(100) 401(100) kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 210 6. do you use antibiotic after exposure to a patient with flu? always 66(27.0) 14(41.2) 35(44.3) 15(34.1) 130(32.4) 0.008 never 84(34.4) 4(11.8) 14(17.7) 10(22.7) 112(27.9) sometimes 94(38.5) 16(47.1) 30(38.0) 19(43.2) 159(39.7) total 244(100) 34(100) 79(100) 44(100) 401(100) 7. do you eat food directly after finishing your practice? always 69(28.3) 12(35.3) 24(30.4) 16(36.4) 121(30.2) 0.655 never 59(24.2) 5(14.7) 16(20.3) 12(27.3) 92(22.9) sometimes 116(47.5) 17(50.0) 39(49.4) 16(36.4) 188(46.9) total 244(100) 34(100) 79(100) 44(100) 401(100) fig(3) by asking do they use gloves while doing physical examination 17.2% said never and 38.9% of them said always which among them the highest percentage was in college of dentistry 54.4% of them said always and in college of nursing 47.1% said always and statistically significant p value (0.016). figure 3: the difference between students in different collages regarding using gloves while doing physical examination always never 27 17 16 16 43 50 80 11 4 kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 211 fig. (4) by asking have they ever taken any vaccine for hepatitis (b) 43.6% said no and 56.4% of participants said yes which among them the highest percentage was in college of medicine 58.8% of them said yes and statistically non-significant p value (0.343). figure 4: the difference between students in different collages regarding taking vaccine for hepatitis b 4. discussion in this study the number of the participant was 401 and the mean age was (21.33 ±1.898), in a comparison with a study done among medical students in shiraz, iran11. the main age of the participants in this study was lesser than their which’s (24.92±2.88) it may be due to the difference for acceptance in university of sulaimani and shirzad, regarding the gender 50.4%of of the participants was female this goes with a study done in shiraz-iran in which 38.1% of their participants was female12, this difference could be due to that females in this study were more cooperative. regarding knowledge of the participants 80.4% of students thought after any contact with blood hands should be washed and this goes with a research in medical student in iran11 in which 100% thought so this is may be due to in here first and second stages have more time to fill the forms and they don’t know about precaution yet , in this study 79.3% of the students said in touching mucous membrane gloves should be worn and 90.5% 0f medical students in iran11 research said so, in this study 68.1% 0f students 21 23 18 16 41 38 98 14 6 kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 212 thought to protect eyes, protective glasses should be worn but 91.2% of students in iran11 research said protective glasses should be worn may be because students in this study look at their senior doctors and they don’t wear it so they think that it is not important. in this study 67,1% students said grown is necessary when entering room patient and this goes with iranian research11 which71.6% students said same , 48.1% of students thought needles must be bent before disposal and 62.4% in iran11 research said same this difference due to students don’t read the form carefully but they fill it without reading the questions. in this study 75.6% said all health providers are at risk for infection and this goes with a study in saudi13 in which 75.3% of the students thought so, regarding students believes 75.6% of students believed all body fluids except sweat are sources of infection but in a saudi research13 in which 31.9% said the same, about 24.7 % of the students in this study believed health care provider should receive influenza while in saudi research 42.2% believed the same , regarding tuberculin test 27.3% of participants believed health providers should be tested by tuberculin test and this goes with saudi research in which 31.5% believed the same and the same results which were found in tow studies in india14, 15 ,in this study 36.7% of students said hands should be washed after procedures on the same patient and in saudi research 47.4% said so13. for the immunization 20.2% of participants thought routine immunization for hiv and rubella is necessary to all health provider and 24.7% of participants of saudi16 research thought so , and about 56.4% in this study thought whatever the diagnosis is all patients can be sources of infection this goes with a saudi research16 in which 41.8% thought the same. in this research 53.1% of students before and after each patient examination they always wash their hands and this goes with a research in saudi arabia16 in which 68.6% always wash their hands this is may be due to that these students were more educated, in this study 37.7% always wash their hand before and after wearing gloves and 44.6% always recap needles before final disposal this goes in contrast with a study in saudi16 in which 17.4% of students always recap needles and goes with a study in uk17. about 32.4% always receive antibiotic after exposure to a patient with flu and in a study of saudi arabia 20.4% only receive antibiotic16. regarding change their gloves between different tasks on the same patient about 47.6% of the participants answered yes this goes with a saudi research16 in which 47.4% of their students change their gloves, about the hepatitis b vaccine 56.4% of the participants were vaccinated with hepatitis b vaccine and this goes with a study done in saudi arabia that 52.2% of participants were vaccinated18 , this compares with the zero to 22.4% observed in other studies in nigeria among health workers, but contrasts sharply with the over 95% seen in australian medical and dental students, 86% in german medical students, 42.2% medical students in pakistan19-25. this may be due to lack of information about hbv vaccination advantage among the students in this study. 5. conclusions most of students knew that after any contact with secretions, contaminated item, blood and bloody fluid hands should be washed, and when touching mucous membranes or non-intact skin gloves should be worn with highest percentage from college of nursing. nearly half of the students aware about bending of needle before disposal. majority thought that all patients can transmit infections whatever their diagnosis are, believed that all healthcare workers are at risk of infections during their work and healthcare-related infection can be decreased by hand washing. most of the students believed that no need for hand washing if they use gloves, only sweat shouldn’t be regarded as sources of infection, before and after each patient care always wash their hands and have taken a vaccine for hepatitis b. during tasks and procedures on the same patient less than half of students wash their hands, and before final disposal of the sharp needles they always recap them, always use gloves while doing physical examination. less than quarter of students never eat food directly after finishing 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[25] k nasir, ka khan, wm kadiri, “hepatits b vaccination among health care workers and students of a medical college” , j pak med assoc, 50, pp239-243, 2000. table 1: distribution of medical students according to their socio-demographic states table 2: associations between deferent colleges regarding their knowledge about prevention of standard precautions table 3: associations between deferent colleges regarding their knowledge about general information of standard precautions figure 1: showing the difference between students in different collages regarding answering that all patients are sources of infection regardless their diagnosis. table 4: associations between deferent colleges regarding their attitude of standard precautions figure 2: the difference between students in different collages regarding thinking about of healthcare related infections can be decreased by hands washing table 5: associations between deferent colleges regarding their practice of standard precautions figure 3: the difference between students in different collages regarding using gloves while doing physical examination figure 4: the difference between students in different collages regarding taking vaccine for hepatitis b  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.41 modified wifi-rss fingerprint technique to locate indoors-smartphones: feng building at koya university as a case study halgurd s. maghdid department of software engineering ,koya university koya ,sulaimani, iraq halgurd.maghdid@koyauniversity.org ladeh sardar abdulrahman department of software engineering , ,koya university. koya ,sulaimani, iraq ladeh.sardar@koyauniversity.org mohammed h. ahmed department of computer science university of raparin ranyah ,sulaimani, iraq mohammedhussein@raparinuni .org azhin tahir sabir department of software engineering , ,koya university koya ,sulaimani, iraq azhin.sabir@koyauniversity.org abstract: positioning system used for different purposes and different services, many researches are going on to find a more accurate position with low error within high performance. there are many localization solutions with different architectures, configurations, accuracies and reliabilities for both outdoors and indoors. for example, global navigation satellite system (gnss) technology has been used for outdoors. global positioning system (gps) is one of the most common outdoors tracking solutions in the world, for outdoors, however, when indoors; it could not be accurately tracked users by using a gps system. this is because, when users enters into indoors the gps signals will no longer available due to blocked by the roof of buildings and it is no longer considered as a viable option. wifi positioning system (wps) can be used as an alternative solution to define users’ position, especially when gps signal is not available. further, wps is a low cost solution, because there is no need to deploying wifi access points (waps) in the vicinity, as they are installed to access the internet. in this paper, specifically, wifi-rss fingerprinting technique is used to locate smartphones using waps signals with a modified calculation. the new modified calculation is to dynamic weighting of the waps rss values based on the real-live indoors structure. the achieved positioning accuracy, based on several trial experiments, is up to 6 meters via the implemented algorithm in the maltab. keywords: mobile computing; wifi; rssfingerprinting; k-nn; indoor positioning; android smartphones. 1. introduction existing of positioning applications on smartphones and tablets has been widened more and more during last five years. billing via position, friend finder using social networks, gaming, patient monitoring in hospitals and discover nearest shop/petrol station/restaurant or other point of interest (poi) are the recent applicable locationbased applications [1]. for positioning, many techniques have been used including proximity, received signal strength (rss)-based, angle-of-arrival (aoa), time based, map matching (mm), dead reckoning (dr). these techniques were utilized based on compatibilities with different environments. in this paper, rss based technique is used to locate android-based smartphones. beside this, smartphones and tablet companies are setting powerful processing capability including octalcore processor and several wireless chipsets and sensors to run for such positioning applications. however, positioning applications that uses only gnss receivers will be failed to provide continuous positioning due to the blocked or weaken gnss signals reception in high-dense urban areas and indoors [2]. therefore, most of the current positioning services or applications use cellular, wifi, bt, nfc and inertial-sensors on smartphones with other pre-installed infrastructure sensors or a hybrid these technologies as an alternative solution. this paper focuses on offering indoor positioning solution using wifi technology and capitalizing on the use of existing wifi infrastructure and onboard smartphone wifi chipsets. wifi-rss technique for indoors localization has been implemented using two different methods. the first method is pseudorangesbased measurement which depends on distance between base station waps and smartphone [3], as shown in figure 1. inaccuracy of measuring rss value using pseudoranges method is depended on: a) hardware (hw) implementation, b) mathematical method to calculate the rss value, c) interference issue in the same band, d) and movable/static objects in the buildings. pseudoranges based method is also known as trilateration which uses three rss values from three waps in a specific location each of them have special power of signal with this signal. then, it can determine the distance with simple mathematical equation, which is as follow equation (1): ( ) mailto:halgurd.maghdid@koyauniversity.org mailto:ladeh.sardar@koyauniversity.org mailto:mohammedhussein@raparinuni.org mailto:mohammedhussein@raparinuni.org figure 1 rss pseudoranges-based technique. where is the distance between smartphone and waps, is the appraiser calibrated pseudorange at zero distance, is measured value of rss for , rssi is the current measured value of rss for the received wap/bss signals. then using these measured pseudoranges in trilateration equations, the location of the smartphone can be defined. the second method is rss-fingerprinting which is based on searching for presorted rss values of waps in a database [4]. the inaccuracy of fingerprinting method is based on the quality of measuring rss values. the main drawbacks of this method are: 1) it is used for specific building, 2) takes a long time due to connecting to the internet and searching in the location database server, then sending back the result of location calculation for the users, 3) it also generate a high cost to make a radio map because it uses dedicated hw and recalibration of the bs and/or waps, since the environment may be changed over time. in this paper, fingerprinting rss-based method is implemented using a specific map-matching algorithm such as k-nearest-neighbor (k-nn). initially, the third floor of faculty of engineering (feng) building has been selected to test the developed solution. rss-fingerprinting technique consists of two stages: offline stage and online stage, as shown in figure 2. in offline stage, the values of rss of the received beacon signals from waps and location information (fingerprints) of taken measurements are stored in a database (radio map). figure 2 fingerprinting rss-based technique in online stage the matching algorithm is implemented by using k-nn, neural network and markov localization (ml) technique [5]. this work uses k-nn technique which compares the current values of rss with previous value of rss in the offline stage which are stored in the database to determine the position of the smartphone. the structure of this paper is divided into the following sections: section (2) investigates the state of the art of positioning solutions. this is followed by the section (3) which explains the details of the proposed algorithm. section (4) illustrates the validity of the proposed algorithm by several trail experiments. finally section (5) concludes the main achievements and state the future works. 2. related work the wifi transceivers integrated on smartphones are not only for data communication, but they are also used for estimate smartphone positing. mainly the location based services (lbs) use this technology to define smartphone positions in buildings, where wifi signals prevail. however, these wifi signals will be affected by the complexities of indoors structure which include moving objects (such as walls and stairs), multi floor and dynamically changing structure of indoor components. therefore, the dynamic structure of the indoors are bs/wap_1 bs/wap_2 bs/wap_3 p0, rss30, ᵑ3 p0, rss20, ᵑ2 p0 ,rss10, ᵑ1 offline or calibration phase fingerprint database rssim1.rssim2…rssi online or position estimation phase (x1,y1) rssi11.rssi12…..rssi1n rssi1.rssi2…….rssi3 (x,y) (x2,y2) positioning algorithm rssi21.rssi22…rssi2n (x3,y3) rssi31.rssi32…rssi3n (xm,ym) rssim1.rssim2…rssimn posing more challenges to implement the indoor positioning within obtaining high accuracy, unless those solutions install special hardware which incurs huge cost [6]. in another vain, the demand on tracking indoors people has been increased due to growing the number of services via smartphone rapidly. for this reason, in this paper a wifi-rss-based positioning algorithm using fingerprinting technique has been developed. to compare and investigate state of the art as well as to illustrate the recent trends of indoors positioning solutions using wifi technology, in this section, some of these solutions are explained. in a recent solution based on waps signal measurements has been proposed by [7]. in the solution, a modified fingerprinting algorithm has been implemented which selects the height/strong waps-rss values in the vicinity, called important access points (iap). in the online stage current rss value is compared with the iap value of the offline stage using fingerprint matching algorithm. in addition, the proposal uses nearest neighbor (nn) matching method. the obtained accuracy via iap algorithm based on testing difference parameter is 85%. however, the proposed iap will not be applicable due to bad distribution of waps in the buildings. this is because of originally waps are not deployed for the positioning purposed. therefore, such proposal might be work, with a reasonable accuracy, when there is large number of waps and installed within a good strategy. the other main problem of rss-based fingerprint localization is how to effectively find the matched or approximated rss strengths in the offline fingerprint maps and estimate the position of the current rss value with high precision. to overcome this problem sparse representation model, namely the spatio-temporal sparse representation model (st-sr) is used in [8]. this model integrates the spatio-temporal correlation in rss fingerprint maps and the rss measurements in the localization procedure. the results demonstrate that the proposed model achieves higher localization accuracy with good stability and robustness compared with state of the art indoor localization methods. however, the proposed st-sr model makes implementation of work too complicate, because positioning done by smartphone, which detect the position of the person in a huge computation. thus, such complex computation will drain the smartphone battery power quickly and this is violating the demand of the users. indoor positioning using wi-fi becoming more and more ubiquitous, since it used as an alternate solution instead of gps also which is no longer used today because of the effect of high buildings that penetrate passing the signal freely in outside. for this reason wifi localization is proposed in [9] with two different methods; triangulation and fingerprinting. triangulation involves by using the angle and distance for determining the specific location, while wifi fingerprinting creates a radio map of the rss data and match this value with the live rss. further, for matching process, the proposal used two methods which are the k-nn and the (ml). the results based on some testes, wifi fingerprinting algorithm is better in terms of positioning accuracy. this is because, in triangulation, with increment in distance from the waps; the rss and noise value will be collected together which produces inaccurate data. and nn method is used instead of markov because markov use probability distribution for fingerprint data approximated gaussian when in reality some of rss distribution was not gaussian. however, the proposed rss technique and nn matching method cannot be always suitable for specific positioning, so there are many techniques and matching methods can be used according to the related work. our proposed work is similar to [7], but it is different in a way of selecting the waps rss values based on dynamic weighting of the fingerprints. that’s mean, the dynamic weighting value will differs the waps signals in a real live measurements when the indoors structure will be changed. this will happen when objects are moved, such as people in the vicinity, during the smartphone position calculation. moreover our proposal will still work with fewer waps signals in the area in comparison of the current solutions. 3. the proposed algorithm most of the existing systems that offer indoor localization services were used different wireless technologies like bt, wi-fi, signals of cellular towers and inertial sensors [10]. in this work, wifi technology is used which is more preferable because wifi networks are prevalent in most public buildings and it doesn’t require additional infrastructure and it allows determination of the location of each mobile device. also, a modified rss-fingerprint technique is used as a positioning technique. for determining the position of the smartphone, in the first step, the proposed algorithm starts by gathering rss values of the waps as well as the location coordinates of taken measurement points. the gathering data is done by the android smartphones and stored the data in a database (offline phase). android-based smartphones has been used to test the algorithm; this is because android os is free, powerful and completed. figure 3 shows the flowchart of proposed algorithm. then, in online phase, the current values of the rss of the waps is compared with the stored rss values of the database using k-nn technique which implemented by matlab (online phase). in k-nn, the distance between current values of rss with all stored values of rss is calculated using euclidean distance, as express in equation (2). √ where, is the measured euclidean distance between the online rss value and the offline rss values, is the offline rss values and is the online rss values? then, these distances are arranged in an ascending mode. then the first k distances are selected, since the real live rss values are near to these selected pre-stored rss records. the k-value is depending on the survey of the fingerprints of the area or points in the vicinity. finally, the corresponding coordinates of the k-selected distances are used for calculating (x, y) coordinates of smartphone. figure 3. flow chart of the k-nn algorithm. further, the (x, y) coordinates of smartphone is calculated based on dynamic weighting of the (x, y) coordinates of the pre-stored records, as expressed on equation (3). this dynamic weighting of the location coordinates will improve the positioning accuracy, due to having measured actual rss-multipath and noisesources. ∑ ∑ where, are the estimated xy coordinates of the smartphone, is the weighting values of the rss values and are the xy coordinates of the fingerprints. also, the value of 15 is the value of k in the k-nn technique. the idea of changing value of the weights has given the uniqueness of the work in comparison with current solutions, since it can improve the algorithm performance in difference circumstances. the value of the weight is changed based on the waps rss values. when, the value of the strength of the signals of a wap is high, is not always means is the nearest wap to the smartphone. therefore, this dynamic weight value will avoid the issue of the fluctuation of the rss values which have been affected by the indoors material including steels, doors and type of walls in the area. 4. experiments setup and results in this study, for the offline stage, we created a database which will store the rss values during the survey of the area. the second floor of feng building has been chosen as a survey area. to do the survey the area has been divided into several points (fingerprints). the distance between any two points in x-axis is (0.64 meter) and (2 meter) in y-axis. the total number of points that we have taken for the offline stage are (264) points and (64) points randomly for the online stage, i.e. for testing the positioning algorithm. a matlab-simulated graph based on real survey of the building is shown in figure 4. figure 4. simulated survey area of feng-second floor. waps rss values in the vicinity have been collected by running an android-application on the smartphone. a snapshot of the application is shown in figure 5. then, the collected/gathered waps rss values are stored in an excel file. consequently, the matlab is used for reading values from the excel file and apply the proposed positioning algorithm to compare stored values with the values of waps rss values of online stage. figure 5 shows the collected waps rss values in the offline stage which are used in this implementation. as it can be seen, there are rss values for eight waps in the floor. in this work, the meaningful rss values is started from (-60 dbm) and above because the values above of (-60 dbm) have less error which is around (1 to 7) meters while the values less than (-60 dbm) is around have error rate in (10-15) meters or more, as they have been calibrated by a set of experiments. therefore, for this reason we have chosen rss value when they are above (-60 dbm). figure 5. offline wifi rssi reading via sp during traveling in the floor. figure 6 shows the received rss values of waps in the online stage. in the testing (online) stage also we have chosen rss values which are above than (-60 dbm). as it can be noted, the number of the available waps rss values is around seven (7), at the tested points. this means, it is not a always that the number of the available waps rss values is the same as of offline stage, this is due to dynamic indoors structure. figure 6. online wifi rssi readings via sp at random points. from now, the results of applying the proposed algorithm are illustrated. figure 7 shows the fingerprints (survey area point) at offline stage in black circle, online points in red circle which are the points have taken randomly in the survey area to compare them with offline points to estimate the position of smartphone. the figure also presents the positions of waps in blue circle with filled-red color and the start point of our implementation is with red square with filled-green color. once the measured waps rss values with fingerprint information are available, the proposed algorithm is implemented to show the validity of the algorithm performance. the algorithm uses k-nn technique to do the process of matching between offline waps rss values and online waps rss values. the position of the smartphone is estimated based on equation 3, as mentioned in section 3. the estimated positions of the smartphone are displayed in blue circle in figure 7. figure 7. testbed for the implementation with the estimated smartphone position. finally, root mean square error (rmse) is used to calculate the positioning accuracy our implementation, as expressed equation (4). √ (( ) ( ) ) figure 8 shows the cumulative distribute functions (cdf) of the obtained positioning accuracy (positioning error). as shown that the maximum positioning error (18 meters) and the minimum positioning error (0.5 meter) and %50 of measured positions we have approximately (5 meters) positioning error. the average error of the positioning accuracy is up to 6.4 meters, which is quite enough for tracking indoors peoples. figure 8. illustrate the average of error rate when locating the phone position. it will better, however achieving this accuracy needs more research and need a hybrid position technique such fingerprinting with onboard smartphone sensors or building map information. 5. conclusion a modified wifi-rss fingerprinting technique has been proposed and tested at feng-building at koya university. the obtained positioning accuracy within 6.4 meters is based on the k-nn technique. further, in this study, different values of k are compared and the best value is 15 which has been selected based on several experiments to improve the positioning accuracy. the new modification of the wifi-fingerprinting is to using dynamic weighting values of the selecting rss values, when k-nn technique is implemented. in the next step, we have planned to do the following as a future work: 1) implementing matching algorithm using smartphone instead of using matlab, 2) combining other technique with rss-based fingerprinting to increase accuracy of defined smartphone such as dead-reckoning technique, and 3) reducing the error rate using buildingmap information of the conducted survey area. reference [1] l. vladimir, m. nikola, t. milan, and others, location-based applications for smartphones., 2015. [2] j. ryoo, h. kim, and s.r. das, "geo-fencing: geographical-fencing based energy-aware proactive framework for mobile devices," in quality of service (iwqos), 2012 ieee 20th international workshop on, june 2012, pp. 1-9. [3] d. park and j. goo park, "an enhanced ranging scheme using wifi rssi measurements for ubiquitous location," in computers, networks, systems and industrial engineering (cnsi), 2011 first acis/jnu international conference on.: ieee, 2011. [4] d. lymberopoulos et al., "a realistic evaluation and comparison of indoor location technologies: experiences and lessons learned," in proceedings of the 14th international conference on information processing in sensor networks.: acm, 2015. [5] y. zhao, k. liu, yongtao ma, and zhuo li, an improved k-nn algorithm for localization in multipath environments.: springer, 2014, vol. 2014. [6] r. mautz, "the challenges of indoor environments and specification on some alternative positioning systems," in positioning, navigation and communication, 2009. wpnc 2009. 6th workshop on.: ieee, 2009, pp. 29--36. [7] p. jiang, y. zhang, wenyan fu, huiyu liu, and xiaolin su, indoor mobile localization based on wi-fi fingerprint's important access point., 2015. [8] x. piao et al., "rss fingerprint based indoor localization using sparse representation with spatio-temporal constraint," sensors, vol. 16, p. 1845, 2016. [9] m. quan, e. navarro, and benjamin peuker, "wi-fi localization using rssi fingerprinting," 2010. [10] r. mautz, indoor positioning technologies.: eth zurich, department of civil, environmental and geomatic engineering, institute of geodesy and photogrammetry zurich, 2012.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 85 application of principal component analysis for steel material components kawa muhammad jamal rasheed miran othman tofiq statistics department statistics department college of administration and economics college of administration and economics university of sulaimani university of sulaimani sulamaniyah, iraq sulamaniyah, iraq kawa.rashid@univsul.edu.iq miran.toffiq@univsul.edu.iq article info abstract volume 7 issue 2 december 2022 doi: 10.24017/science.2022.2.7 article history: received: 22/09/2022 accepted: 01/12/2022 in this research, we made use of a technique known as principal component analysis (pca). pca is an approach to statistics that takes into account several variables that converts a fixed number of correlated variables into a fixed number of orthogonal, uncorrelated axes known as principal components by making use of orthogonal transformation. in other words, pca transforms correlated variables into uncorrelated axes. the principal component analysis (pca) method, to put it another way, transforms correlated variables into uncorrelated axes. we used (pca) technique in order to bring the dimensionality of a data collection down to a more tolerable level that had a wide variety of interconnected variables while yet preserving as much of the natural variation that existed within the data set. because of this, we were able to examine eleven different steel components. to do this each independent variable is combined with others to generate a third independent variable. known as principal components, which are not associated with one another (pc). the order of the principle components is chosen in such a manner that they maintain the vast majority of the variety that exists in each and every one of the several variables. this is accomplished by using a variogram. this is accomplished by reworking the individual variables into a brand new group of variables called principle components, which are not associated with one another (pc). because this percentage reflects the principal aspect that is best among all 11 principal components, we are able to reach the conclusion that the five principal components that collectively account for approximately sixty-seven percent of the total variance in all of the data are the best principal components. this allows us to come to the conclusion that the best principal components are the five principal components that collectively account for approximately sixty-seven percent of the variance in all of the data. keywords: principal component analysis (pca) , multivariate, transformation , uncorrelated , eigenvalues. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 86 1. introduction the rapidly developing discipline of machine learning depends heavily on the use of statistics, which is a branch of mathematics. it requires the examination, interpretation, and presentation of numerical information pertaining to the past, the present, and the future [1]. statistics is a collection of methods that can be used for the purpose of creating evaluations about a process or population based on an examination of the facts obtained from a sample taken from that population. statistics is the discipline of science that is concerned with the delineation of effects and the construction of perspectives based on data that is subject to variation. this is the purpose of statistics. the identification of statistical trends is an essential step toward achieving first-rate management and improvement. they provide the main method that is used in order to try, test, and estimate a product, and the facts that are contained in the statistics are employed in order to modify and enhance the product. in a similar vein, statistics are the language that development masterminds, production, procurement, operation, and other functional components of the company utilize to communicate with one another on quality [2]. when performing research in statistics, it is standard practice to revise an explanation of a phenomenon after completing an analysis of data acquired through experiments or observations. this is done in order to account for new information that has been uncovered. during this iterative process of learning, it is possible that new variables may be added, or that previously used variables will be removed. this is necessary in order to draw valid conclusions about the phenomenon under investigation. this body of methodology is known as multivariate analysis and it gets its name from the fact that the data comprises measurements on a number of different variables all at the same time[3]. principal component analysis (pca), which is one of the methods that are used in multivariate analysis, and it is statistics approach that takes into account several variables that is the process of changing a group of correlated variables into a group of orthogonal, uncorrelated axes often referred to principal components [4]. pca is one of the techniques that are used in multivariate analysis and one of the methods that is used in multivariate analysis. moreover, principal component analysis is a statistical approach that aims to decrease the number of interrelated variables that are present in a data set while retaining as much of the set's intrinsic variability as is practically possible. changing to a new group of uncorrelated variables, which are known as principle components, is one way to achieve this goal principal component (pc), which can then be ordered in such a way that the principal components hold the majority of the variant that is determined in all of the unique variables. this can be done by switching to a new set of uncorrelated variables known as principal components (pc). utilizing a principal component analysis to accomplish this goal is one option [5] 2. principal component analysis principal component analysis (pca) is one of the methods that are used in multivariate analysis, pca is a statistical approach that takes into account several variables, pca is the process of changing a group of correlated variables into a group of orthogonal that are needed to analyze a set of variables [4]. this method is known as the "principal component" analysis. the key compounds, often referred to as axes, are the variables that are formed as a result of this transformation process. the main objective of principal component analysis (pca) is to reduce the size of a dataset that contains a high number of different variables that are correlated to one another while still maintaining as much variety as is practically possible. this is accomplished through the use of an iterative process known as principal component extraction (pcee). this is accomplished by converting the data into a new set of variables, each of which has no correlation with the others in the set [5] one of the first and best-known methods for multivariate analysis is principal component analysis. it resolves the issue of how well a low-dimensional interpolation subspace is likely to fit to a collection of data points that are located in a high-dimensional space. [7]. additionally, it is one of the multivariate analysis approaches that is used by the greatest number of people. as shown in figure (1) and figure(2) [2] the directions of maximum variability are represented by the axes of a new kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 87 coordinate system that was generated by rotating the axes of the first system. this new system was produced by combining the two previous systems to fit a low-dimensional interpolation subspace to a set of data points in a high-dimensional space [6]. it is also one of the most widely used multivariate analysis methods. as demonstrated in figure (1) and figure(2) [2] the directions of highest variability are represented by the axes of a new coordinate system that was produced by rotating the axes of the first system. figure 1: principal components for p =2 process variables. the majority of the differences between the two primary variables are explained by the first principal component, as seen in figure 1. figure 2: principal components for p =3 process variables in figure (2), we can see an illustration of the three initial process variables. due to the fact that the majority of the "motion" or variability in these two variables is contained inside a line, just two main components have been utilized to characterize them. the scree plot is yet another method that may be used in order to ascertain the suitable quantity of components. the eigen values are plotted against the component number first in the resulting graph. the scree plot illustrates the significantly reduced rate at which variance is explained by additional principal components, and this scree plot is shown in figure (3) [6]. eigen values are constrained to minimize in a monotonically decreasing fashion from the first principal component to the last principal component. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 88 figure 3: shows scree plot for the eigen values of components we can explain the principal component analysis by the following equations [8]: 1 1 2 2 ....i i ip pa x a x a xz i     1, 2,....,i p (1) the above equation can be express it by matrices approach 1 11 12 1 1 2 21 22 2 2 1 2 p p p p p pp p a a a xz a a a xz a a a xz                                 (2) the principal component variables is the value of vector z andthe random variables 1 2, , px x x is the value of vector x and the eigenvalues be 1 2 0p     . then the constants are simply the elements of the th i eigenvector associated with the eigenvalue i [9]. then we calculate the correlation matrix or the covariance matrix for the explanatory variables as it shows in the eq(3) [8]: 12 1 21 2 1 2 1 1 1 p p p p r r r r r r r             (3) is simple correlation between two variables, when i=1,2,3,…., j= 1,2,3,…., kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 89 then we can find the value of the characteristic roots( ) by solving the characteristic equation of the correlation matrix, whichis : 12 1 21 2 1 2 1 1 0 1 p p i p p r r r r r r r           (4) where: 1 2 3 p       the first characteristic vector corresponding to the first characteristic value of the following equation [10]:  1 1 0r a  (5) the values of the elements of this characteristic vector are chosen as long as the following condition is satisfied [8] =1 thus, the first principal component is in the following form: 1 11 1 12 2 1 p pa x a x a xz     (6) then we can find the second characteristic vector corresponding to the second characteristic value from the following equation[10]:  2 2 0r a  (7) thus, the second principal component is in the following form [9] : 2 21 1 22 2 2 p pa x a x a xz     (8) the values of the elements of this characteristic vector are chosen as long as the following condition is satisfied [8] 2 2 1a a  , 1 2 0a a  it is a condition that the components ( ) are orthogonal. for the third component is in the following form [2] : 3 31 1 32 2 3 p pa x a x a xz     (9) the values of the elements of this characteristic vector are chosen as long as the following condition is satisfied [9] 3 3 1a a  , 1 3 0a a  , 2 3 0a a  kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 90 it is a condition that the third component ( ) is orthogonal withthe other two component ( ) . we will continue like this until we complete all the main components one after the other, provided that each new one is orthogonal to all the previous ones. and the variance and covariance of is explained as followed ( )= 1, 2,....,i p ( ) = 1, 2,....,i p cov( ) = 0 the ratio, which is described as follows, will provide us the percentage of the original data's variability that can be explained by the ith principal component. this may be found by using the following formula: [2] : ( ) ( ) (10) therefore, one can easily see how much variability is explained by retaining just a few of the principal components simply by computing the sum of the eigen values for those components and comparing that total to the sum of alleigen values. 3. description of the data the data was collected in sulaimani steel company, and it consisted of 400 observations and 11 variables include the following materials as it is shown in table(1) and table(2), and it produces a high quality steel rebar in many sizes10mm, 12mm, 16mm, 20mm, 25mmwhich 10mm is equal to 0.62 kg per meter, 12mm is equal to 0.89 kg per meter,16mm is equal to 1.58 kg per meter,20mm is equal to 2.47 kg per meter,25mm is equal to 3.86 kg per meter, sulaimani steel company was established in 2012 to create and manufacture various types of construction steel in accordance with standards established in the united states and the united kingdom. to minimize the dimensionality of a data collection that consists of a high number of variables that are correlated to one another, while preserving as much of the variance that is already there in the data set as is feasible, we use a method of principal component analysis (pca), and we use this method to reduce the dimensionality of a data set that was constructed by sulaimani steel company and began production in 2015 by using r-programming to analyze the data. this method is used to reduce the dimensionality of a data set by using eq(10) and data from table(2) as is shown in table(3). table 1: steel materials components component full name unit summary of steel components component values limit c carbon gram carbon, which is one of the most important chemical elements in steel. an increase in carbon content yields a material with lower ductility and higher strength 0.27-0.35 si silicon gram silicon, is one of the principal deoxidizers for structural steel 0.2-0.7 mn manganese gram manganese, is probably the second most important alloying element after carbon on steel 1.1-1.3 p phosphorus gram phosphorus, is generally considered to be an undesirable impurity in steels, phosphorus is often added with sulphur to improve 0.01-0.05 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 91 machinability s sulphur gram sulphur, is present in raw materials used in iron making 0.04-0.08 cr chromium gram chromium, are the most commonly found residuals in steel, chromium is present in small amounts and is used in combination with copper and nickel to increase the material’s resistance 0.1-0.4 ni nickel gram nickel, is added to steels to increase hardenability, it is frequently used to improve toughness at low temperature 0.06-0.3 cu copper gram copper, it helps paint bond the steel. it also has a small impact on hardenability 0.23-0.8 al aluminum gram aluminum, is used primarily as a deoxidizing agent in steelmaking, combining with oxygen in the steel to form aluminum oxides which can float out in the slag 0.002-0.007 mo molybdenum gram molybdenum, is used to increase the strength of boiler and pressure vessel steels at typical boiler operating temperatures of 400°c 0.01-0.03 v vanadium gram vanadium, are strengthening elements that are added to steel singly or in combination. in very small quantities they can have a very significant effect 0.001-0.009 table 2: data table date c si mn p v 2/1/2022 0.356 0.321 1.21 0.0335 0.005 2/1/2022 0.285 0.388 1.18 0.0272 0.0036 2/1/2022 0.298 0.385 1.21 0.0287 0.0042 2/1/2022 0.281 0.324 1.03 0.0313 0.0043 3/1/2022 0.301 0.267 1.17 0.0347 0.0039 3/1/2022 0.295 0.357 1.21 0.039 0.0034 ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ 30/3/2022 0.281 0.316 1.09 0.0385 0.0035 table 3: principal component table component number standard deviation proportion of variance cumulative proportion 1 1.5566 0.2203 0.2203 2 1.2418 0.1402 0.3605 3 1.1299 0.1161 0.4765 4 1.0697 0.1040 0.5805 5 1.01730 0.09408 0.67462 6 0.96378 0.08444 0.75907 7 0.88644 0.07143 0.83050 8 0.72805 0.04819 0.87869 9 0.68779 0.04301 0.92169 10 0.66420 0.04011 0.96180 11 0.6482 0.0382 1.0000 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 92 in table(3) it is shown that each principal component has proportion of variance, andwe can say that 5 principal component from 11 principal component is good to use because 5 principal component together is represent about 67 percent of variance to all the data which is best principal component of all the eleven principal component , so we can it is shown that these 5 principal component is the best principal component figure 4: scree plot in figure (4), a scree plot of the eigenvalue and a decreasing order of the percentage of variance explained by each component is shown. in table (4) it shows the value of eigenvalue of each component in the principal component , and from table(4) we can find which component is more significance and better than the other component by using the eq(6),eq(8),eq(9) and data from table(1), and that by compare the value of eigenvalue of the different component in the same principal component or compare component in different principal component, and like that we can find the best and more significance component. table 4: eigenvectors table component1 component2 component3 component4 component5 c% 0.408883 -0.0993626 -0.437013 -0.0202483 0.286033 si% -0.168723 0.346819 -0.250404 0.55044 0.0498693 mn% -0.201626 0.366136 0.438713 0.345959 0.150446 p% 0.147707 -0.185755 0.563905 -0.0686612 0.485272 s% 0.206358 -0.421512 0.135044 0.170354 0.0741282 cr% 0.489184 0.141954 -0.204965 0.165749 -0.108225 ni% 0.400782 0.0852444 0.20896 0.248565 -0.450941 cu% 0.163317 -0.454088 0.175425 0.264759 -0.285164 al% 0.0851444 0.227719 0.0350968 -0.595938 -0.135863 mo% 0.327956 0.413618 0.315889 -0.157669 -0.249362 v% 0.397372 0.258962 -0.0125293 0.061426 0.524458 it was found that the first and second axes of the main component explained 22 and 14 percent of the total variance, respectively, when the variables were projected onto the factor axis. this was revealed when the variables were projected onto the factor axis. after doing so, we came to this realization after projecting the variables onto the factor axis. the finding of this was made possible as a direct consequence of projecting the variables onto the factor axis. the projection led to this discovery. figure 5 displays the pearson correlation coefficients in addition to some basic visuals that are associated with the correlations the relationships that already exist between the principal components and the ambient aspects. these relationships kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 93 are there because the primary factors are responsible for them. and the environmental elements are interrelated. there is a relationship between the basic components and the ambient aspects, which explains why these connections may be found. these graphical representations have some kind of relationship to the data that was presented in the figures that came before them. they are shown on a circle that, for the sake of this particular graphical depiction, has been dubbed "the correlation circle." [circle] the axis of the circle is composed of the two axes that are used in the construction of the factor that is used in the construction of the factor. if the strength of the the relationship that can be shown to exist between a variable and the factor that has an effect on it is high, then the strength of the it is expected that there would be a high level of correlation between the related variable and the factor axis. this is due to the fact that what decides whether or not the strength of the degree to which the strength of the correlation that already exists between the variable and the factor is strong is the degree to which the correlation that already exists between the variable and the factor is already existent. as a result of this, it is feasible to determine the variables that are connected to a certain factor; doing so provides information on the variables that are capable of explaining the aforementioned factor. as a consequence of this, additionally, it is feasible to determine the variables that are connected to a certain factor. each and every one of the values for nickel(ni), molybdenum (mo), vanadium (v), chromium (cr), and aluminum (al) go up whenever the value of the value of the first significant component goes down. this continues to be the case even if the values of these components are reduced. in addition, the value of these components grows as a direct consequence of an increase in the value of the first principal component. it is possible that the existence of the first principal component might most credibly explain the wide variation in the concentrations of manganese (mn) and silicon (si). these values go up in a way that is exactly proportional to the degree to which the first main component is lessened. the degree to which it is diminished determines the magnitude of the increase. the values of copper (cu), sulphur (s), phosphorus (p), and carbon (c) rise in parallel with the expansion of the second principal component. the second principle component may be the best candidate for describing the variability of the elements copper (cu), sulphur (s), and phosphorus (p); the values of these elements rise in parallel with the expansion of the second principal component. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 94 figure 5: the correlation circle of first and second principal component . 4. conclusion we chose to apply principal component analysis (pca), which is a multivariate approach, in order to carry out an investigation of the steel components that were put to use at sulai. in addition to this, we made it a top priority to maintain the natural variation that was already a part of the data set to the greatest extent possible by utilizing the technique of principal component analysis, which enabled us to do so. we did this in order to ensure that the data set was as accurate as possible. because the five principal components collectively account for approximately sixty-seven percent of the variance in all of the data, we came to the conclusion that five of the eleven principal components are superior to the other six principal components. this led us to the conclusion that five of the eleven principal components are superior to the other six principal components. as a result of this, we came to the realization that five of the eleven principal components had advantages over the others. this conclusion may be reached as a result of the fact that the five principal components are responsible for approximately sixty-seven percent of the variation that is present in all of the data. consequently, this conclusion led to the result that the variation is present in all of the data. because of this, we got to the insight that five of the eleven main components are superior than the other six major components. the other two principal components, on the other hand, are inferior. therefore, we demonstrated that these five principal components are the more effect than others principal components, and we arrived at the conclusion from the primary and the second principal components that the first component has the highest variation value include the following materials chromium (cr), nickel (ni), carbon(c) and vanadium (v), the second component has the second highest variation value include the following materials molybdenum (mo) ,manganese (mn) and silicon (si), as a result of the information that has been supplied to us. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 95 references [1] t.t. allen, 2010,”introduction to engineering statistics “ and lean sigma statistical quality control and design of experiments and systems second edition. [2] d.c. montgomery ’introduction to statistical quality control” , seven editions , arizona state university printed in the united states of america. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ,2013 [3] t. cleff,applied statistics and multivariate data analysis for business and economics,springer, 2019. [4] p. sanguansat, principal component analysis multidisciplinary applications, rijeka: intech, 2012. [5] i. t. jolliffe, principal component analysis,springer, 2002. [6] r. vidal, y. ma, and s. sastry, generalized principal component analysis,new york, ny: springer, 2016. [7] p. sanguansat, principal component analysis, intech, 2012. [8] b. f. j. manly and j. a. n. alberto, multivariate statistical methods,chapman & hall/crc, 2017. [9] r. johnson and d. wichern, applied multivariate statistical analysis,new jersey: pearson, 2014. [10] a. c. rencher, methods of multivariate analysis,john wiley & sons, incorporated, 2002. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 3 | issue 2 | december 2018 | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.3.5 received: 5 november 2018 | accepted: 28 november 2018 the effect of different irrigation interval on tuber yield and quality of potato (solanum tuberosum l.) farhan ahmad abdulrahman salah abdulla salih yonis abdulla mahmood horticulture and landscape design natural resources and environmental science halabja agriculture high school technical college of applied sciences technical college of applied sciences directorate of education halabja sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university halabja, iraq halabja, iraq halabja, iraq yonis_a982@yahoo.com farhan173a84@gmail.com salah.salh@spu.edu.iq 27 abstract: gaining high yield of potato is very crucial for farmer and quality also has a great impact on their production. beside the quality and yield using the amount of irrigation also important to reduce water lose. the tuber yield and quality of potato (solanum tuberosum l.) is impacted by irrigated water. this study was carried out in two respectively season (2017 and 2018) in halabja province of kurdistan regional of iraq to evaluate the impact of irrigation interval on quality and tuber yield in potato cultivars. in this study there are four irrigation intervals (3,5,7 and 9 days) used by furrow irrigation method which subjected in complete randomized design (crd) with three replications. the potato tuber production in 3 day interval showed highest percentage also protein and starch content was recorded highest in both year of cultivation, but the abscisic acid was affected by more irrigation which in 3 day interval irrigation the rate was less than other. also in 5 day interval irrigation the rate was acceptable because there is no significant difference in terms of tuber yield, protein and starch content if compare with 3 day interval irrigation in particular for those area faced restricted in using water irrigation. keywords: irrigation interval, potato, water efficiency, abscisic acid, starch. 1. introduction potato (solanum tuberosum l.) is belonging to solanaceae family is considered the most important vegetable crops in the world that came to the fourth grade after rice, wheat and corn. it is the main sources of carbohydrate and amino acids [1]. also it is contains protein, fiber, vitamin b6 and vitamin c [2]. according to [3] that potato production potential of approximately 327 million tons was taken from 18.6 million hectares of planted land which is considered very vital among the agriculture of the world. there are many factors influenced on potato production, including planting date, varieties, weather conditions, nutrients and irrigation [4]. also potato plant is sensitive to the altering in the soil moisture content and the decrease of water stress that leading to a significant decrease in tubers quantity and quality. current research study indicated that water have the role in limiting potato production also be able to increase the rate of production by taking the best scheduled irrigation programs in the growing seasons of potato [5]. the requirement for water irrigation of potato plants are diverse in different plant growth stages; tubers initiation and tubers bulking are the more sensitive stages in the plant growth life. in addition, more than 40% of world land is under arid or semi-arid climatic conditions [6]. the climate change has made the situation very difficult by dropping the rate of rainfall and therefore affected on the amount of water available for agriculture cultivation to get higher yield [7]. decreasing sources of water available for irrigation in the worldwide in particular in kurdistan region of iraq due to changing climate (less precipitation, raising temperature) as well as the reducing amount of water entering iraq through rivers from neighbor countries due to dam construction by the neighboring countries on river is a vital limiting factor in agriculture production. therefore, the irrigation intervals are considered one of the strategies used to support irrigation water use efficiency. generally, reduced yields are very often reported due to drought occurrences [8]. as a result of the limiting of water resources the full irrigation and using more water is not a strategic option in areas where water is the most limiting factor, more increasing in water productivity may be economically more affected for the farmer than obtaining high yields [9]. the potato plants are required water irrigation depending on growth stage, which is tuber starting to produce and tuber bulking; both stages are sensitive in the growth of plant life [10]. there are study confirm that decreasing in the rate of water irrigation leads to a significant reduction in leaf area and plant height [11]. in addition, the percentage of dry mater in potato tuber and specific gravity were significantly increased with a reduction in water irrigation amount [12]. another aspect affected by water irrigation amount on the content of potato is abscisic acid (aba) in tuber. the impact of water irrigation amount on potato aba that mild soil water stress reduces nutrient uptake and increases the xylem sap ph. this allows higher amounts of aba in the leaf to be translocations to stomata through the transpiration stream [13, 14]. additionally, the starch content also is changing with applying the irrigation amount especially in the beginning of producing tuber it becomes strong then collapse and develops http://www.scialert.net/asci/result.php?searchin=keywords&cat=&ascicat=all&submit=search&keyword=semi-arid 28 quickly due to huge influx of sucrose then convert to starch rapidly [15]. the tuber continued to storage more energy in the form of starch [16]. in addition, the irrigation also has the impact of the growing stage of forming tuber such [17] cited the water irrigation during the growing period may reduce the quality of tuber by increasing the amount of starch and decreeing the rate of sugar. also [18,19] state that water irrigation by sprinkling of potato cultivar in the growing period may cause the amount of starch with dry matter is reduced. moreover, the protein content also is impacted by the irrigation interval which conducted in this research paper as [20] cites that the rate of protein is changed depending on verities, location and fertilizer. also some of the other factor affected on the tuber quality harvesting, cultivation methods, such as irrigation [21] and the methods of cultivation as well [22]. the aim of this study is to determine the impact of different irrigation interval under furrow irrigation methods on potato tuber yield and tuber contents which are the total of starch and protein contents. 2. methods and materials this research was conducted at the fields of halabja, locating on 35°02'n latitude, 45°58'e longitude and the altitude of 670 m above sea level. the experimental design was used complete randomized design (crd) with four treatments and 3 replicates. the experimental plots were planted by potato during 15 april (2017and 2018) consecutive year by using four treatments (irrigation intervals) ;t1= 3 days, t2= 5 days,t3= 7 days and t4= 9 days). experimental plot sizes are (5m x 10m) with a distance of 0.75 m and 0.30 m between rows and plants respectively. hence, there were a total of 7 rows with in a plot and 30 potato tubers within a single row. the spacing between treatments and replications were kept at 0.75 m and 1.5 m respectively in order to minimize edge effect of irrigation. the three-water irrigation was applied in 2017 and 2018 early potato growing seasons. some physical and chemical properties of the soil at a depth of (30-50cm) of this location which were taken according to [23] are presented in (table 1) below. experimental plots were fertilized with di-ammonium phosphate (dap) and potassium sulfate. all experimental plots were irrigated with a uniform amount of water until 15 day after planting. after that irrigation treatment was started from 1/5 until physiological plant maturity. the crop was harvested at full maturity after 100 days of planting. depth of irrigation water was calculated by [23] equation after modifying according to treatments as follow: 𝑑𝑑 = (𝜃𝜃𝜃𝜃𝜃𝜃. 𝑐𝑐 − 𝜃𝜃𝜃𝜃𝜃𝜃. 𝑝𝑝)𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅 (1) where d: depth of water applied (mm) θvf.c : volumetric water content at field capacity (m³ mˉ³) θvw.p: volumetric water content wilting point (m³ mˉ³) rz : root zone depth (mm) at the end of physiological maturity, central 4 rows of each plot, (3 m by 6 m) was harvested manually and weighed to determine total tuber yield. the amount of the total starch, protein in potato tuber yield and abscisic acid in leaves was done by [24]. the average nitrogen-toprotein conversion factor was 6.25 for potato [25, 26] respectively. the weighed samples of tubers from each plot of the four treatments were converted into kilogram per hectare and irrigation water use efficiency (iwue) was calculated as follow [27, 28]. 𝐼𝐼𝐼𝐼𝐼𝐼𝐼𝐼 = 𝑌𝑌𝑌𝑌𝑌𝑌𝑌𝑌𝑌𝑌 𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑌𝑌 𝑤𝑤𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑌𝑌𝑤𝑤 𝑇𝑇𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑌𝑌𝑌𝑌𝑌𝑌𝑌𝑌 (2) where, iwue: is irrigation water use efficiency in (kg.ha-1.mm-1 ) y: potato tuber yield in (kg.ha-1) aw: total water applied (mm). the variance analysis (anova) was studied to evaluate the influenced of the treatments on the potato tuber yield, total starch, protein, abscisic acid and water use efficiency. least significant differences method (lsd) is used to differentiate means at the 0.05 level (sas, 2002). table 1: soil physical and chemical properties analyzed by agricultural research centre in halabja. soil test sand silt clay bulk density field capacity, ( 33 kpa) wilting point, (1500 kpa) ph of soil ec of soil ph of water ec of water total nitrogen phosphors potassium (soluble) soil sample 133.6 244.3 622.1 1200 320 188 7.57 1.4 7.7 1.05 27 21 12 unit g kgˉ¹ g kgˉ¹ g kgˉ¹ kg mˉ³ g kgˉ¹ g kgˉ¹ ds mˉ¹ ds mˉ¹ mg kgˉ¹ mg kgˉ¹ meq kgˉ¹ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0570178312000243#b0085 29 3. results and discussion 3.1. percentage of water saving: the result of analysis as appeared in (table 2) the maximum percent of water is saved between t1: 3 days interval with t4:9 days interval was (110%) and the minimum percent of water saved between t3 and t4 which was (19%). it is showed that reducing irrigation interval leads to decrease water saving, but in other hands the yield of tuber in (table 3) under t4 was recorded (31.70 t.ha-1) less than other treatments in particular significant differences if compared with t1 in year 2017 also for year 2018 was the same result because of the exposure of plants to the water stress negatively affected the growth of stolons, which decrease tubers number of the plant. however, the rate of abscisic acid in t4 was (13.16 mg.l-1) higher than other especially compared with t1 was (5.8 mg.l-1) in 2017. there are a big change between these amounts this may affected by water use irrigation, but for protein and starch content in both year (2017 and 2018) under the t4 recorded less than other amount that (9.71%, 8.03%) and (58.81 %, 60.4%) respectively in (table 4). table 2: irrigation characters and percentage of water saving comparison between treatments for 2017 and 2018. treatments total no of irrigation average irrigation depth (mm) seasonal irrigation water (mm) percentage save of water compared between treatments t1 t2 t3 t4 t1 ( 3 days interval) 24 27.5 660 0.00 t2 (5 days interval) 17 28.8 490 35% 0.00 t3 (7 days interval) 13 28.7 374 76% 31% 0.00 t4 (9 days interval) 11 28.7 316 110% 56% 19% 0.00 3.2.yield and its components tuber yield: the analysis result of variance indicated that irrigation interval treatments significantly impacted the tuber production of potato as showed in (table 3). generally, tuber yield significantly increased with increasing the rate of irrigation water. the amount of irrigation has strongly impacted on potato production [29, 30].the application of 660 mm of irrigation water in t1 brought the highest tuber yield which recorded 38.4 and 40.73 t.ha-1 of potato for consecutive 2 years of 2017 and 2018. as [31] reported that the total tuber production of potato has been increased with raising amount of irrigation water. however, the lowest tuber yield was recorded from the application of 316 mm of irrigation water in t4 which was 31.70t.ha-1 and 31.2 respectively in year 2017 and 2018. the reason for the yield reduction is refer to the stolon will not formation more tubers in the soil. also there were not substantial difference between 3 day interval (38.4 t.ha-1) and 5 day interval irrigation (37.16 t.ha-1) irrigation increased the yield significantly, but the difference between the yield in 3day interval with 6 days interval was on the edge of significance. the highest yield followed after the most intense irrigation and was statistically significantly higher than the yield of the delay water irrigation. the fresh tuber of potato production was higher under high frequency of water irrigation than low frequency irrigation. with delayed irrigation the yield reduced significantly due to reduction in the availability of water. the stage of stolon produce and tuber formation is sensitive step to low water irrigation [32]. water use efficiency: the variance analysis also indicated that water use efficiencies of potato were significantly influenced by irrigation interval at all treatments as illustrated in (table 3). the result generally showed highest value in the t4 (100.3 kg.ha-1.mm-1 , 98.94 kg.ha-1.mm-1) because of lowest water irrigated during plant seasons growth for both years despite of that the yield is decreased to (31.70, 31.2 t.ha-1) due to exposed plant to water stress, and lower value of water use efficiency in the t1(58.24 kg.ha-1.mm-1, 61.71 kg.ha1.mm-1 ) due to using high water irrigated for both years in spite of that the yield is increased to (38.4 ,40.73 t.ha-1) as [31] cited the lower utilizing rate of irrigation water received the higher the water efficiency use similar results were also confirmed by many researchers that conducted previously such [29, 33, 31] cited in their research paper. however, there were statistically significant water use efficiency differences among all treatments. the increasing irrigation water amounts that resulted in relatively decrease water utilize efficiency. this might be refer to accumulation of excess moisture in the root zone and consequently resulted in decreasing the yield of potato [34]. 30 table 3: mean value for effect irrigation interval on potato tuber yield and water efficiency of potato in 2017 and 2018. treatments year 2017 year 2018 potato tuber yield (t.ha-1) water use efficiency (kg.ha-1.mm-1) potato tuber yield (t.ha-1) water use efficiency (kg.h-1.mm-1) t1 38.4 a 58.24 d 40.73 a 61.71 d t2 37.16 b 75.84 c 38.5 b 78.6 c t3 33.68 c 90 b 34.1 c 91.17 b t4 31.70 d 100.3 a 31.2 d 98.94 a lsd 1.11 2.89 1.74 3.47 different letters indicate significant differences at α = 0.05 by the lsd test (least significant differences abscisic acid, starch and protein: the (table 4) showed the concentration of abscisic acid (aba) during the growth stage for all treatments in potato leaves, it can be noticed that t1 (3 day irrigation interval) showed the lowest value of aba which was (5.8 mg.l-1 ) in year 2016 and in 2017 was (5.3 mg.l-1 ). the less concentration of aba in t1 refers to less exposed plant to water stress and less exudates of this acid from plant roots. this is consistent with [35, 36]. while the t4 showed the highest values of aba (13.16 and 11.9 mg.l-1) for consecutive 2 year. the starch content was (66.46 % ) under t1 and (58.81 %) under t4. the starch content was recorded the highest in both under t1 (66.46 %) and t2 (64.93 %). the water supply is favorable in a respect of the starch content of potato. the highest starch percentage was measures in 2018 in t1 was ( 68.5 %). this means the irrigation increase the starch content which proves that the even water supply during the formation and development of tuber is very important and necessary. the starch which recorded lower rate in t4 for both year which is 58.81% and 60.4% respectively this affected by drought as [37] conducted the starch in the beginning of producing tuber it become a stronger then collapse and develops quickly due to huge influx of sucrose then convert to starch rapidly. the protein content also impacted by irrigation which in t1 was recorded highest (12.2 %) in 2017 also in 2018 was showed highest percentage in t1 was (11 %). but the lowest rate of protein was (9.71 %) under t1 in the year 2017 as well in 2018 the rate less than other treatments which were (8.03 %) this means there are significant differences between t1 and t2, but there are no significant differences between t1 and t3 as well as between t2 and t3 according to statistically analysis showed in (table 4). there were positive relations between protein and starch content. similarly to the starch content the protein content was high in both years during experiment. generally protein and starch content in tuber yield was affected by exposed plant to water stress as confirmed by [38] statically decreased percent of protein and starch content in potatoes tuber yield when increasing the stress on plant during growth. table 4: mean value for effect irrigation interval on components of potato in 2017 and 2018. treatments year 2017 year 2018 abscisic acid (mg.l-1) protein (%) starch (%) abscisic acid (mg.l-1) protein (%) starch (%) t1 5.8 d 12.2 a 66.46 a 5.3 d 11 a 68.5 a t2 7.03 c 11.6 ab 64.93 b 6.36 c 10.3 ab 67.1 b t3 9.5 b 10 bc 61.99 c 8.9 b 8.46 bc 63.3 c t4 13.16 a 9.71 c 58.81 d 11.9 a 8.03 c 60.4 d lsd 0.93 1.13 0.46 0.86 1.98 0.57 different letters indicate significant differences at α = 0.05 by the lsd test (least significant differences) 4. conclusion finding the appropriate irrigation intervals for potato has a huge impact on the areas with poor irrigation water 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[38] s. mohammad, m. ali, “effect of every-other furrow irrigation on water use efficiency, starch and protein contents of potato,” vol. 1,no2. 2009. 1. introduction 2. methods and materials 3. results and discussion 3.2.yield and its components 4. conclusion kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq serum amylase level measurement in acute abdominal pain taher abdullah hawramy dara ahmed mohammed department of general surgery department of anatomy and histology, college of medicine college of medicine university of sulaimani university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq hawramytahir@yahoo.com darabarzinji@gmail.com botan h. tahir surgery kbms candidate sulaimani, iraq botan.barznji@gmail.com volume 4 – special issue: 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) doi: 10.24017/science.2019 .ichms.16 received: 8 june 2019 accepted: 4 july 2019 abstract acute abdominal pain is a frequent symptom to the emergency department, can be caused by various pathologic processes. the aim of this study was to appraise the role of serum amylase level in diagnostic workup of non-traumatic adult patients presented with acute abdominal pain to surgical emergency department (ed). our study is based on data collected retrospectively from patients’ medical records admitted to shar emergency surgical unit, sulaimani, iraq from 10th january 2019 to 20th may 2019. all non-traumatic adult patients with acute abdominal pain within twenty-four hours before admission were included and serum amylase levels were measured on admission using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (elisa) available at (ed). overall, 68 patients were included, with mean age of 45.9 years over the aforementioned time period, 44 females (64.7%) and 24 males (35.3%), of which 37 patients had normal serum amylase level (14 male and 23 female patients), defined as levels between (35 iu/l115 iu/l) by the laboratory (elisa) device used for all the tests, while the other 31 patients (10 males and 21 females) had high serum amylase levels due to different disease processes, the most common two with equal frequencies were acute calculous cholecystitis (41.9%) and acute pancreatitis (41.9%). elevated serum amylase levels can be observed with several medical and surgical problems in patients with mailto:hawramytahir@yahoo.com mailto:darabarzinji@gmail.com mailto:botan.barznji@gmail.com kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 158 acute abdominal pain, but high values are usually associated with acute inflammatory pancreatic and gallbladder conditions, with very high levels in the former, making it one of the important diagnostic tools that can be used by health-care providers when evaluating patients suspected to have acute pancreatitis or acute calculous cholecystitis. keywords: acute abdominal pain, serum amylase, diagnosis, acute pancreatitis, acute calculous cholecystitis, sensitivity, specificity. 1. introduction there is no standard global definition that can be used for all patients present with acute abdominal pain to the emergency department, but it can include any pain in the abdomen presenting acutely to health-care facilities (usually less than 5 days until presentation to consultation) requiring urgent management in the form of admission, giving parenteral fluid, analgesics prescription, ordering investigations and/or performing surgical interventions. in the united kingdom (uk), it accounts nearly for 7-10% of all emergency department (ed) visits annually. several abdominal and extra-abdominal conditions contribute to its pathophysiology. these conditions can be inflammatory, infective, obstructive, or ischemic in origin [1]. diagnostic approach begins with thorough history taking and clinical examination that may give a clue of the provisional diagnosis in up to 50% of cases, adding laboratory investigations may raise the diagnostic yield, to reach 60% approximately. several laboratory studies can be utilized for this purpose depending on the site, duration, and the pain character, and associated symptoms, taking into account patients past medical, surgical, social and gynecologic history. routine testing, in spite of the cost-effectiveness issue, with complete blood count (cbc) and urinalysis may direct the next orders by the physician in form of hematological, serological, biochemical, and often hormonal studies, mostly due to normal test results ordered at the first time. addition of radiological tests (x-ray, ultrasound u/s, computed tomography ct, and/or magnetic resonance imaging mri) may then follow. yet, the diagnosis may not be clear in up to 30-40%, and 31% acute abdomen patients in the ed are considered to be non-specific abdominal pain, and it is more frequent in women. non-specific abdominal pain is a diagnosis of exclusion and should be made only after thorough assessment by the surgeon on call in the ed in order not to miss any acute surgical or medical problems that can be source of threat to patient’s life, either instantly or on the long term [1, 2]. serum amylase is one of the biochemical investigations used most frequently by physicians when acute pancreatitis is suspected because of its availability, rapidity, and being inexpensive, although it may be elevated in several extra-pancreatic pathologies but at different magnitude. pancreatic digestive enzymes, especially amylase and lipase, are leaking into the circulation in small quantities under normal circumstances but in acute pancreatitis there will be major leakage and high serum amylase and lipase can be of diagnostic value [3]. amylase or alpha-amylase, what is found in human body, is a calcium-dependent endoglycosidase that hydrolyses complex carbohydrates (amylose and amylopectin) into oligo disaccharides, and optimally functions at ph of 6.9-7 with a half-life of about ten to twelve hours. liver is the main site of amylase removal, and only 3% of plasma amylase is filtered via kidneys, of which 25% is excreted, and majority reabsorbed in the proximal tubules. it has a molecular weight of 50k daltons. serum amylase exists in two isoenzyme sub-types: kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 159 1. pancreatic amylase (p-amylase); synthesized by pancreatic acinar cells and secreted via pancreatic duct to the lumen of duodenum in its active form. represents 35-50% of normal serum amylase. 2. salivary amylase (s-amylase); produced by the salivary glands, which initiates its action in the oral cavity and terminates by acid in stomach, and found in smaller amounts in ovaries, fallopian tubes, lungs, and adipose tissue. s-type amylase increases after birth to reach its adult value by two years of age, while pamylase is not detected in most children before 6 months of age and starts to rise to reach adult values at 5 years of life, reflecting developing exocrine pancreas. low values can be seen in pancreatic exocrine insufficiency as in chronic pancreatitis. when testing the serum sample for amylase, it can be stored at room temperature for up to 4 days with relatively stable amylase activity[4-6]. urinary amylase level is also available in laboratory and can be used when the patient presents with acute abdominal pain but it has lower specificity, the only advantage was its availability at the bedside and being a rapid test to perform which also applies to serum amylase, subsequently its use was largely abandoned in practice [6]. there is variation in amylase level between different races, and age groups. individuals of african and asian descent have higher values due to unexplained increase in s-amylase. serum amylase was noted to be greater in males and females over 60 years old that might be related to a decreased renal clearance in this age group [5]. our study aims to evaluate the role of serum amylase measurement in adult patients presented with non-traumatic acute abdominal pain to the emergency department within the first twentyfour hour of consultation and admission, correlate our findings with time to consult, patients age and gender, try to look for those conditions cause high serum values more frequent than the others, and what makes a statistically significant rise of its level. high values may be found in the first 24 hour but this does not exclusively reflect pancreatic pathology, because other extra-pancreatic conditions also cause elevation in serum amylase but at lower amplitude compared to that of acute pancreatitis, as mentioned in literature. 2. methods our study conducted depending on data collected from patient’s medical records in the emergency department of shar teaching hospital including all adult patients, above sixteen years of age, admitted to surgical emergency department (ed) with complaint of nontraumatic abdominal pain, over a period of four months and twenty days, between 10th january 2019 and 20th may 2019, started within 24-hour of presentation to ed, only 68 patients were included whose diagnosis was clear on discharge from hospital, serum amylase level test was obtained within 1-2 hours of admission using elisa technique at the laboratory division of ed and documented. normal serum amylase level was set at 35-115iu/l. patients included in this research were divided into 3 groups according to duration of symptoms before admission, as follows; first are those before 6 hours, second is between 6 to 12 hours, and the last are admitted after 12 hours but before 24 hours. totally, eight diagnostic categories were identified in the patients (table2). for the purpose of being more accurate, the serum amylase level is further split to two groups, levels between 35-115 iu/l, the normal range and the second are those above 115iu/l. additional tests were used to reach a definitive diagnosis including serum lipase level, radiologic studies like chest and abdominal x-ray, abdominal ultrasound (u/s) and ct of abdomen, and upper oesophago-gastro-duodenoscopy (ogd). correlation between serum amylase levels, patient’s time to presentation, age, gender, and definitive diagnosis was made. study limitations include a small sample size because of short time period, inclusion of only those patients in whom a definite diagnosis was made, and lack of facility to measure p-amylase or s-amylase separately when required, so total serum amylase is used for all. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 160 3. results for the purpose of simplicity, our study results have been put into the following tables. the patients were divided by the duration of their symptoms before admission into three groups as shown in (table 1). patients presented after twenty-four hour were not included. table 1 duration frequency percent 0-6 hours 27 39.7 6-12 hours 35 51.5 12-24 hours 6 8.8 total 68 100.0 the frequency and percentage of patients ages are included in (table 2) table 2 age groups frequency percent less than 60 years 55 80.9 more than 60 years 13 19.1 total 68 100 these patients were diagnosed with various surgical diseases, eight diagnostic categories overall, at a different frequency, presented in (table 3) table 3 diagnosis frequency percent acute pancreatitis 13 19.1 acute calculous cholecystitis 14 20.6 perforated peptic ulcer 3 4.4 acute appendicitis 1 1.5 intestinal obstruction 5 7.4 symptomatic gallstone 14 20.6 gastro-duodenitis 14 20.6 peptic ulcer disease (pud) 4 5.9 total 68 100 diagnosis of acute pancreatitis was made depending on the presence of two out of three of the following; patient symptoms and signs, including upper or diffuse abdominal pain that might kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 161 be radiating to the back, and be associated with vomiting, with other symptoms reported by the patient suggestive of acute pancreatitis, rise in serum amylase level three times the upper limit, supported by rise in serum lipase level, and radiologic features seen on ultrasound u/s of abdomen and contrast-enhanced ct abdomen, but not necessarily in all patients, performed in the following three to four days of admission, or when diagnosis was in doubt. acute calculous cholecystitis and symptomatic gallstone were diagnosed by clinical features and findings on abdominal u/s. perforated peptic ulcer was diagnosis based on sudden acute abdominal pain, hemodynamic changes, rigid abdomen on palpation, air under the diaphragm on erect chest x-ray, and intra-operative finding of the perforation. in cases of intestinal obstruction, patient’s clinical findings and dilated loops of bowel on imaging guided the physician toward the pathology, and ct of abdomen and pelvis was utilized in some cases. while for the patient with suspected acute appendicitis the conclusion reached by interpreting modified alvarado score together with gross intra-operative appearance of the appendix, confirmed by the histopathological report by the examining pathologist. ogd was used to prove pud or gastro-duodenitis in clinically suspected cases. the relation between patients gender and serum amylase level is demonstrated in (table 4) table 4 serum amyalse level p value 35 115 more than 115 gender male count 14 10 0.7 percent 37.8% 32.3% female count 23 21 percent 62.2% 67.7% total count 37 31 percent 100.0% 100.0% table 5 correlates the duration of acute abdominal pain with elevation in serum amylase level. table 5 serum amylase level p value 35 115 more than 115 duratio n 0-6 hours count 10 17 0.03 27.0% 54.8% 6-12 hours count 22 13 59.5% 41.9% 12-24 hours count 5 1 13.5% 3.2% total count 37 31 100.0% 100.0% kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 162 table 6 reveals the relation between measured serum amylase and different age groups. table 6 serum amylase p valu e 35 115 more than 115 reco de age less than 60 years count 30 25 0.9 % 81% 80.6% more than 60 years count 7 6 37 18.9 % 19.4% total count 100. 0% 31 the scope of serum amylase elevation is categorized into two groups, the first are those who were normal (35-115 iu/l), and the second whose serum amylase is above 115 iu/l. it is put into (table 7) table 7 amyalse range frequency percent 35 – 115 iu/l 37 54.4 more than 115 iu/l 31 45.6 total 68 100.0 the next table (table 8) demonstrates how each relevant surgical diagnosis in this study affects the serum amylase level. table 8 amyalse p valu e 35 115 more than 115 diag nosis acute pancreatitis count 0 13 <0.0 01 % 0.0 % 41.9% acute calculous cholecystitis count 1 13 % 2.7 % 41.9% perforated peptic ulcer count 1 2 % 2.7 6.5% kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 163 % acute appendicitis count 1 0 % 2.7 % 0.0% intestinal obstruction count 3 2 % 8.1 % 6.5% symptomatic gallstone count 14 0 % 37.8 % 0.0% gastroduodenitis count 14 0 % 37.8 % 0.0% pud count 3 1 % 8.1 % 3.2% total count 37 31 % 100. 0% 100.0 % 4. discussion overall, 68 patients included with mean (sd) age of 45.97±16.15 years, minimum and maximum ages were 20 and 86 respectively, forty-four female (64.7%) and twenty-four male (35.3) patients. fifty-five of them were under 60 years of age and the reminders thirteen were above that age. normal serum amylase values was observed in thirty seven patients (14 males and 23 females), while ten men and twenty-one women had high amylase titers, totaling thirty one cases, and resultant p-value of 0.7 indicating that gender does not have an important impact when serum amylase test is undertaken. regarding patients age, twenty-five out of fifty-five patients had raised serum amylase were younger than 60 years, meanwhile those of 60 years or older were 13 cases with only 6 having elevated amylase, also pointing to that age of patients is insignificant (p-value 0.9). an important influence on the frequency of amylase increment is time of presentation of the patients to hospital, as amylase rises quick, within (3-6 hours) of symptomatic commencement, and stays elevated for 3 to 7 days. in our study serum amylase level was high during the first six hours of symptoms in seventeen, in the next six hours in thirteen, and the following 12 hours in just a patient, which determines a great effect of time with elevation of serum amylase level (p-value 0.03), such finding is consistent with a study done by basnayake et al., [7]which also supports a rapid increase within the first 3-6 hours of symptoms, but can return to normal after twenty-four hours due to the fact of a relative short half-life (10-12 hours). this finding is consistent with another study by ghimire and colleagues [8] in katmandu medical college, in which highest values of serum amylase was noted in the first twenty-four hours. different diagnosis (table 7) contributed to increased serum amylase levels, thirty-one out of the sixty-eight patients in the study found to have hyperamylasemia, including all the thirteen acute pancreatitis cases, but except for acute pancreatitis no pathologic condition could raise it kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 164 more than three times its normal value, the amylase range for acute pancreatitis was 356-2627 iu/l. at such threshold (three times the normal) the sensitivity and specificity of the test to diagnose acute pancreatitis is 75.2-100% and 93.5-100% respectively. its positive predictive value and negative predictive value are both 100%, with diagnostic accuracy of 100%, closely similar to the results of a research by ghimirie et al.,[8] sensitivity was 95.8% when amylase is more than 400 iu/l but drops to 85.2% when cut-off value is 1000 iu/l, but the specificity differs as it was 98.7% and 86.3% for the same amylase values, another difference was serum amylase values topped above 1000 iu/l in 1.1% of cases, that might be explained by a larger sample size compared to ours, 270 versus 68. our findings are somewhat close to the results of basnayake et al., with sensitivity 81-95%. [7, 8]( chamara basnayake, roshan ghimirie) a comparative study by barbieri and colleagues between serum amylase and lipase for the diagnosis of acute pancreatitis showed superiority of lipase for the above mentioned purpose, since sensitivity of amylase was 78.7% and specificity to be 92.6% compared to lipase with sensitivity and specificity of 90.3% and 93%, respectively(5). sutton et al. identified sensitivity (50%) and specificity (99%) for detecting acute pancreatitis at threshold of three times the normal range. [9] although serum amylase might result back normal in certain etiologies of pancreatitis like hypertriglyceridemia which interferes with laboratory testing itself and exocrine failure that can be seen in some patients with alcoholic pancreatitis or acute severe necrotizing pancreatitis. [10] as recommended by the american college of gastroenterology, presence of two out of the following three confirms diagnosis of acute pancreatitis; first is the acute abdominal pain consistent with the pain found in acute pancreatitis, elevation in serum amylase or lipase three times the upper limit, and characteristic radiologic findings on imaging (ct or mri), contrastenhanced ct is more favorable, but not performed for all patients, can be considered a significant tool when diagnosis is in doubt [4] probably the use of serum amylase in all of the sixty-eight patients with elevated values in 37 patients and three times rise in just 13 patients was to exclude acute pancreatitis and not to miss such grave diagnosis, that may result in considerable morbidity and mortality. fourteen patients suffering from acute calculous cholecystitis included in the study, thirteen of which found to have hyperamylasemia, equal in frequency to acute pancreatitis, mean value of 154 and the highest measure was 220 iu/l among them. making its sensitivity to determine acute calculous cholecystitis 92.8% but with 66.67% specificity, the availability and sensitivity of abdominal u/s makes routine use of serum amylase in this group of patients unlikely of benefit, unless associated pancreatitis is suspected. dynamic small intestinal obstruction was the definitive diagnosis in 3 (8.1%), of which 2 had hyperamylasemia and perforated peptic ulcer diseases resulted in high amylase levels in 2 (13%) of patients, but the usual investigation in these patients are ct abdomen and serum lactate in the former group and an erect chest x-ray invaluable in the latter. gastro-duodenitis was found in 14 cases (37.8%), for which ogd is the most useful investigation rather than serum amylase, based on the study results. symptomatic gallstone was the diagnosis in fourteen patients, all had normal amylase level on testing. only one patient admitted and diagnosed with acute appendicitis included in our study, whose amylase was within a normal range also, making the use of amylase clearly unreasonable. three patients were diagnosed with pud combining symptoms concordant with the disease process and use of ogd to confirm it later, one of them had elevated amylase value, so its use is of limited value. a study conducted by sutton et al. [11]was somewhat close to ours as it investigates the role of routine amylase and lipase measurement in acute abdominal pain including trauma patients, a total of 1520 patients were included with mean age of 49.6 years, 45.5% of which diagnosed with non-gastrointestinal diseases and considered inappropriate order of the tests, of the reminder 54.5% with gastrointestinal conditions, forty-four patients with acute pancreatitis were diagnosed and only 28 had high serum amylase and lipase, ultrasound and ct scan was kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 165 used to make a diagnosis of acute pancreatitis in the other 16 patients. upper gastrointestinal diseases contributed to the forty-one false positive tests in the study, mostly caused by perforated peptic ulcer disease. 5. conclusion acute abdominal pain is relatively a common presentation in the ed, apart from history and physical examination which both are crucial in diagnosis of any surgical or medical condition, other laboratory and radiological tests can be recruited to find the pathology. serum amylase testing is frequently used, readily available, relatively cheap, and can be ordered if clinically justified, and it is widely acceptable if the patient presents within 5 days of symptoms. although it lacks the specificity expected in order to differentiate intra-abdominal diseases but in comparison to other inflammatory markers such as cbc and c-reactive protein (crp), amylase is a valuable tool when acute pancreatitis is suspected, once the level is three times the normal workup toward acute pancreatitis can be pursued. extra-pancreatic causes of acute abdominal pain may be implicated in raising serum amylase but the level would rarely be in the range of acute pancreatitis. finally we recommend reasonable use of serum amylase combined with the patient history and findings in physical examination, combined with other laboratory results, if the diagnosis is still unclear, additional radiological studies can be ordered if not already done by the surgical team. references [1] g. cervellin, r. mora, a. ticinesi, t. meschi, i. comelli, f. catena, et al., "epidemiology and outcomes of acute abdominal pain in a large urban emergency department: retrospective analysis of 5,340 cases," annals of translational medicine, vol. 4, 2016. [2] e. mayyas and a. s. sbaihat, "threatening signals in acute abdomen," rawal medical journal, vol. 35, pp. 160-164, 2010. [3] k. barrett, s. barman, s. boitano, and h. brooks, "the adrenal medulla and adrenal cortex," ganong’s review of medical physiology 23rd edition. edited by barrett ke, barman sm, boitano s, brooks h. new york: mc-graw hill companies, pp. 337-362, 2010. [4] s. tenner, j. baillie, j. dewitt, and s. s. vege, "american college of gastroenterology guideline: management of acute pancreatitis," the american journal of gastroenterology, vol. 108, p. 1400, 2013. [5] m. ueda, t. araki, t. shiota, and k. taketa, "age and sex-dependent alterations of serum amylase and isoamylase levels in normal human adults," journal of gastroenterology, vol. 29, pp. 189-191, 1994. [6] d. yadav, n. agarwal, and c. pitchumoni, "a critical evaluation of laboratory tests in acute pancreatitis," the american journal of gastroenterology, vol. 97, p. 1309, 2002. [7] c. basnayake and d. ratnam, "blood tests for acute pancreatitis," aust prescr, vol. 38, pp. 128-30, aug 2015. [8] r. ghimire, a. s. thapa, d. karki, and d. k. shrestha, "routine measurement of serum amylase in acute abdomen," jnma j nepal med assoc, vol. 52, pp. 982-5, oct-dec 2014. [9] j. s. barbieri, j. m. riggio, and r. jaffe, "amylase testing for abdominal pain and suspected acute pancreatitis," journal of hospital medicine, vol. 11, p. 366, 2016. [10] d. yadav, n. agarwal, and c. s. pitchumoni, "a critical evaluation of laboratory tests in acute pancreatitis," am j gastroenterol, vol. 97, pp. 1309-18, jun 2002. [11] p. a. sutton, d. j. humes, g. purcell, j. k. smith, f. whiting, t. wright, et al., "the role of routine assays of serum amylase and lipase for the diagnosis of acute abdominal pain," ann r coll surg engl, vol. 91, pp. 381-4, jul 2009. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.1 abstract: five sites were selected in kalar city on different topographic position. the mean annual rainfall of the study area about 280 mm with about 24.5 c° mean annual temperature. the study area used for rain feed crop production. morphological properties of the studied pedons indicated that all pedons were developed with ochric epipedons and cambic and argillic endopedons . the results of particle size distribution show a wide differences between sand and clay in surface horizons except pedon (2) because of low elevation compared with other pedons. moreover, the results of exchangeable sodium and potassium indicate that pedons (4) and (5) had the lowest value of soil leaching factor which is an indication of the high activity of weathering and leaching processes. in another hand, the results of total element analysis has observed that the silicate ratio were high to indicate the high leaching processes which is the proof of the existence of fine materials movement particularly clay colloids, this is not merely due to the rare rainy weather conditions that are prevalent recently but is a result of wet paleoclimatic conditions, and this movement eventually occurred due to in situ factors. all soils are belonged to aridisols order with suborders argids and cambidsas these soils are in aridic moisture regime include ochric diagnostic surface horizon with argillic and cambic diagnostic subsurface horizons. keywords: soil leaching factor, aridisols, epipedon, endopedon. 1. introduction kalar city is located in garmian area and distinguished by low rainfall and high temperature in comparison with other parts of kurdistan-iraq. therefore the vegetation covers naturally poor and the land appears more barren. on the other side, the region is rich in fresh ground water with seasonal and permanent surface water resources particularly in the study areas such as serwan river which is located beside kalar city. the lands of the study region are used for economic cultivation especially planting field crops such as wheat and barley, which solely depend on rainfall for irrigation [1]. studying soil science is very crucial in general and particularly in the current circumstances, as the huge majority of the people are encountering food problems. precisely, people in kurdistan region of iraq are going through difficult economic situations, because the region is solely depending on the oil as an economic source. despite the existence of multitudinous sources of economy, especially in the field of agriculture where the water supply and the fertile soil are quite suitable for cultivation in most area of the region. it is, thus strongly required to intensify scientific efforts to raise agricultural level, therefore, i have suggested in this research to study the soil leaching factor and its impacts on the soil development, soil maturity and soil classification, and then realizing its degree of fertility through the soil studied families. there are very few studies carried out about garmian area soils particularly in the last years except some whole studies [2] in spite of the fact that such area are passed through moist climate, we can observe the impact of those conditions. leaching factor is very important because it is the index for activity of weathering and leaching processes, however, decreasing the value of leaching factor increases the activity of weathering and leaching processes. the study precisely focuses on the following aims: 1studying the effects of in situ factors on leaching factor. 2-determining the most pedogenic processes in the studied soils. 3classifying the studied soils on the bases of family level. effects of some local conditions on leaching factor of aridisols in kalar/garmian, kurdistaniraq salim neimat azeez sulaimani polytechnic university, darbandikhan technical institute darbandikhan, sulaimani, kurdistan region, iraq salim.azeez@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.1 2. materials and methods: the study area is located in garmian district, kurdistan iraq. it lies between latitude 34º 34′ 41.0″ to 34º 37′ 24.0″ n and longitude 45º 19′ 10.0″ to 45º 21′ 29.2″ e with average elevation of 230 m above sea level. the topographic nature of the study area was obtained from the topographic map of iraqi kurdistan region prepared by [3] and from the soil map units of iraqi soils by [4] and [5] as well. the data of latitudes, longitudes and elevations of soil pedon locations were collected using a (gps) receiver model garmin 72. the area lies within foot hill physiographic unit [2], in a tectonic side and is located in folds zone [6].the study area climate is within continental semiarid by pe (potential evaportranspiration) which described by [7]. according to the [8] the species of native vegetations cynodon dactylon, ammi majus, triflolium resupinatum,, euphorbia peplus, lagonychium farctum, alhagi graeccorum, lolium rigidum, hordeum glaucum, phalaris minor, centaurea iberica, brassica tournefortii, silybum marianum, carthamus oxyacanthus and avena fatua were present in this area. soils were classified to the family level using (keys to soil taxonomy) by [9]. five study sites were selected represent differential topography and natural land use for cultivation in kalar district in garmian area to study the leaching factor of these soils and the effect of some soil properties on it. profiles are dig and described morphologically according to national survey handbook [10]. soil samples were taken from each soil horizon , air dried and mixed to be homogenous, grinded using wood mortar, then passed through (2 mm) sieve and kept in plastic containers for further analyses. the soil samples were taken from each horizon, to determine some soil properties, including physical properties such as particle size distribution using (international pipette method) described by [11]. the silt and clay were separated from sand by washing the dispersed samples through 50 μ sieve, as described by [12]. the diverse silt and clay particles were thus obtained using pipette method as cited in [13]. particle density was measured by pycnometer method described by [14], bulk density was determined by clods method covering with paraffin wax described by [14] and porosity which obtained from the following equation explained by [15], which indicated in [14]. ⁄ chemical properties including organic matter, were estimated oxidation method using chromic acid according to (walkleyblack), depending on [16]. total calcium carbonate (total lime) was estimated by equilibrium with (1n) of hydrochloric acid, as described by [17] and [16]. to determine exchangeable sodium and potassium, the soil had been saturated with ammonium acetate (1n), as described by [18], then exchangeable sodium and potassium determined by flame photometer device, model – corning – 400. the (sio2) was determined directly from the soil powder using x – ray – fluorescence analyzer, model – ridaku – japan, as a percentage. while (na2o, k2o) was determined by fusion – alkali method described by [16] which put (1gm) of fusion powder (1.5 gm of na2co3 + 1.5 gm of k2co3) in the crucible and added (1gm) of powdered soil then covered with (2gm) of fusion powder after that put in the oven at (400 c°) for (40 minutes), then put in the oven at (800 c°), and filtrated with hot distillated water, completed to (200 ml) with distillated water, diluted (100 time) by distillated water and reading the amount of (k and na) by flame photometer device, model – corning – 400. after preparing the standard solution, finally converted to (na2o and k2o) using of molecular weight. the value of leaching factor was obtained by using the below equation by [19]. soils were classified to the family level using (keys to soil taxonomy) indicated by [9]. 3. results and discussions the studied pedons exhibited differences in their degree of developments depending as reflected by the differences of the horizons nature wherefrom theirs type, thickness and sequential which are reflected on the nature of surface diagnostic horizon (epipedon) and subsurface horizon (endopedon) [20]. it is obvious from the table (1) that the studied soils appear differences whether in the leaching factor of the same pedon or among the pedons. these differences going with some physical properties of the pedons which represented by soil particles distribution and bulk density ( table 2). the results refer to the low value of leaching factor for surface horizons compared with subsurface horizon (b) except pedon (2) because of high accumulation of clay in surface horizon (212.8gm/kgm) than other pedons when compared with the amount of sand. in addition to the high accumulation of silt in surface horizon of this pedon (539.7 gm/kgm), as the lowest location of this pedon caused the fine particles to be accumulated and as a result decrease each of the movement of these particles and the leaching of the high content of calcium carbonate in (ap) than in (bt1) as a reverse with other pedons and as a result to prevent the movement of soil particles ,table (3); so the leaching factor was high in pedon (2) compared with other pedons. table (1): total element analysis and leaching factor for the studied pedons in kalar area. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.1 pedons horizon depth (cm) na2o % k2o % sio2 % leaching factor 1 ap 0-25 0.80 0.34 40.68 1.05 b1 25-85 0.74 0.89 40.33 1.52 bk2 85-115 0.90 0.61 39.75 1.43 c 115-185 0.99 0.13 42.12 1.00 2 ap 0-25 1.23 0.64 40.24 1.64 bt1 25-80 1.20 0.36 39.77 1.38 bt2 80-130 1.23 0.61 40.10 1.62 c 130-175 0.68 0.44 39.46 1.00 3 ap 0-25 0.90 0.51 41.48 0.89 btk1 25-100 0.93 0.64 39.24 1.05 btk2 100-135 1.35 0.36 40.99 1.10 c 135-155 1.05 0.49 40.40 1.00 4 ap 0-25 0.87 0.59 41.18 0.87 bt 25-85 1.45 0.23 41.46 0.99 c 85-145 1.20 0.61 44.27 1.00 5 ap 0-30 1.02 0.51 40.37 0.89 btk 30-100 0.74 0.79 40.08 0.90 c1 100-130 1.29 0.29 38.65 0.96 c2 130-170 0.80 0.91 38.66 1.04 average of c 1.05 0.60 38.66 table (2): some physical properties for the studied pedons in kalar area. pedons horizon depth (cm) total content (g/kg) density (mg/m3) porosity ( % ) sand silt clay bulk particle 1 ap 0-25 324.3 465.2 210.5 1.31 2.53 48.22 b1 25-85 310.4 453.2 236.4 1.36 2.66 48.87 bk2 85-115 326.0 439.9 234.1 1.42 2.63 46.01 c 115-185 770.8 124.5 104.7 1.45 2.56 43.36 2 ap 0-25 247.5 539.7 212.8 1.40 2.54 44.88 bt1 25-80 144.4 478.0 377.6 1.43 2.61 45.21 bt2 80-130 173.7 495.4 330.9 1.52 2.55 40.39 c 130-175 260.3 421.2 318.5 1.54 2.68 42.54 3 ap 0-25 298.4 479.3 222.3 1.36 2.53 46.25 btk1 25-100 174.2 502.0 323.8 1.44 2.54 43.31 btk2 100-135 288.0 435.4 276.6 1.47 2.56 42.58 c 135-155 470.1 334.1 195.8 1.51 2.65 43.02 4 ap 0-25 336.8 452.9 210.3 1.33 2.63 49.43 bt 25-85 420.5 327.4 252.1 1.43 2.52 43.25 c 85-145 768.1 98.0 133.9 1.41 2.61 45.98 5 ap 0-30 288.4 503.7 207.9 1.42 2.47 42.51 btk 30-100 258.1 465.8 276.1 1.45 2.57 43.58 c1 100-130 327.2 449.6 223.2 1.48 2.81 47.33 c2 130-170 366.9 405.0 228.1 1.51 2.72 44.49 table (3): some chemical properties for the studied pedons in kalar area kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.1 pedons horizon depth (cm) total lime (g/kg) organic matter (g/kg) exchangeable cations (cmolc/kg soil) na+ k+ 1 ap 0-25 254 15.0 1.20 0.17 b1 25-85 295 8.0 1.14 0.09 bk2 85-115 295 5.1 1.01 0.08 c 115-185 240 2.0 0.70 0.04 2 ap 0-25 295 12.9 1.14 0.19 bt1 25-80 285 10.0 1.01 0.09 bt2 80-130 280 7.0 0.89 0.06 c 130-175 280 1.0 0.95 0.09 3 ap 0-25 235 13.7 1.15 0.09 btk1 25-100 310 9.0 1.03 0.05 btk2 100-135 300 1.0 0.89 0.07 c 135-155 250 0.5 0.95 0.04 4 ap 0-25 265 13.6 1.33 0.23 bt 25-85 175 8.3 1.01 0.11 c 85-145 170 1.5 0.76 0.10 5 ap 0-30 300 13.0 1.26 0.21 btk 30-100 310 5.4 1.14 0.09 c1 100-130 240 0.7 1.33 0.08 c2 130-170 280 0.5 1.26 0.08 these results show the partial improvement of the hydrous properties for the surface horizons of all pedons except pedon (2) represented by increasing porosity, low content of clay ,and high content of silt and sand in addition to the improvement of soil structure in these horizons especially granular type as a result of biological activity which partially increases the content of organic matter, these all factors belonged to low value of leaching factor for surface horizons, which ranges from (0.87) in (ap) horizon of pedon (4) to (1.64) in (ap) horizon of pedon (2). moreover, the results indicate an increase in the leaching factor value in subsurface horizon (b) due to the effect of high content of fine materials assists in increasing the bulk density, which affected negatively to the movement of soil contents. therefore the leaching factor value was about (0.90) in (btk) in pedon (5) with clay content (276.1gm/kgm), and (1.62) in (bt2) of pedon (2) with clay content (330.9gm/kg). these results do not refer to the present dry condition, but it refer to paleoclimatic condition [21]. generally, pedon (4) and (5) have the lowest values of leaching factor compared with other pedons. the differences in leaching factor value for individual pedon or among the studied pedons mainly reflect the differences in the activity of weathering processes which releases the easy releasable elements especially sodium and potassium (table 3), in addition to the difference in activity of leaching processes which partially removes the released elements from weathering processes. however increasing weathering and leaching activity processes decrease the leaching factor value as a result of partial increasing of difficult release and movement elements especially silicate. therefore, surface horizons generally show the lowest leaching factor value which accepted with increasing activity of weathering and leaching in these horizons because they are in contact with external environmental factors especially climate, vegetation and land use nature. while the partial increase of leaching factor value in subsurface horizons was due to the translocation and accumulation of easy releasing and movement elements from surface horizon to these horizons compared with weak effect of difficult releasing and elements movement represent by silicate. the differences in leaching factor value among the studied pedon may be due to the effect of land use pattern and local conditions of each pedon which have great effect on the intensity of weathering and leaching processes among pedons. as well as the differences in some soil properties especially texture and structure, have a great role in limitation of leaching factor value. table (4): classification of the studied pedons in kalar area. pedon soil family 1 loamy, mixed, hyperthermic, superactive, calcareousetypichaplocambids kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.1 2 fine loamy, mixed, hyperthermic, superactive, calcareousetypichaploargids 3 fine loamy, mixed, hyperthermic, superactive, calcareousetypiccalciargids 4 loamy, mixed, hyperthermic, superactive, calcareousetypichaploargids 5 fine loamy, mixed, hyperthermic, superactive, calcareousetypiccalciargids all the studied soils were classified to aridisols order depending on (keys to soil taxonomy) by [9]. the entity of argilic and cambic subsurface horizons (endopedons) and presents of calcareouse through the pedogenic processes which are eluviations, illuviation, calcification and decalcification at the studied soils ,table (4); which indicate the occurrence of translocation of clay materials from surface horizon and hence accumulating in subsurface horizon does not reflect the effect of immediate dry climatic conditions nature which aridisols is existed, were the soil temperature regime of studied area is hyperthermic [22], while such horizons which were formed under paleoclimatic conditions assisted during the ancient centuries in formation of these horizons or the accumulation of clay in these horizons may be due to in situ formation. this type of clay distribution could be due to the paleoeffect of pedogenic processes responsible for the formation of these soils [21]. it may invariably be the pedogenic processes including calcification, decalcification, eluviation and illuviation which are responsible for formation and development of the soil in dry areas is similar to those in wet areas, but the average of soil formation in dry areas is low due to the low water content, thus because of low water content in such areas, parent materials are mostly affected rather than other soil formation components, where the effect of water on leaching the soluble salts and translocation of colloidal materials from surface horizons to subsurface horizon are very limited 4. conclusions the results indicate the presence of some differences in values of leaching factor with the same pedon and among the studied pedons . in general , the value of the leaching factor increase with depth in b horizon then decrease in the lower part of the all pedons. this may reflects the down movement of fine soil particles particularly clay . the clay movement cannot be related to the dominant dry climatic condition , but may related to more wet paleoclimatic conditions, and this movement eventually occurred because of local conditions. references [1] s. n. azeez. identification of soil map units and vegetation indices using geoinformatics techniques for garmyan, kurdistan region, iraq, ph.d. dissertation. university of sulaimani, kurdistan region, iraq, 2013. [2] p. buringh. soil and soil condition in iraq, ministry of agriculture. baghdad, iraq, 1960. [3] s. m. ahmad. natural map of iraqi kurdistan region, accepted by the ministry of higher education and scientific research/ kurdistan region copywriters 7/16/2917 on 22th june 2005. [4] f. h. al-taie. the soils of iraq, ph.d. dissertation. state university of ghant, belgium, 1968. [5] a. s. muhaimeed; a. j. saloom; k. a. saleim and k. a. alaane. classification and distribution of iraqi soils, ijair. vol. 2, no. 6, pp. 997-1002. 2014. [6] h.v. dunnington. generation, migration, accumulation and dissipation of oil in northern of iraq, in. l.g. weeks (ed.). habitat of oil, amer. assoc. petroleum geologist. pp. 1194-1251. 1958. [7] n. s. kharrufa. simplified equation for evaportranspiration in arid regions, beitragezure hydrology, no. 5. pp. 39-47. 1985. [8] fao (food and agriculture organization) of u.n. agricultural pest and their control principles, offset press, erbil-iraq, 2000. [9] soil survey staff. keys to soil taxonomy, hand book. 10th ed. natural resources conservation service. washington d.c. 2006. [10] soil survey staff. national soil survey handbook. title, 430, vol. washington, d.c. usda natural resources conservation service. 1993. [11] v.j. kilmer and l.t. alexander. methods of making mechanical analysis of soils, soil science journal, vol. 68, pp. 15-24, 1949. [12] m. l. jackson. soil chemical analysis, advanced course, university department of wisconsin, collage of agriculture madison, 1956. [13] m. l. jackson. soil chemical advanced course. 2nd ed. publ. by the author, madison, w.i. u.s.a. 1979. [14] c. a. black. methods of soil analysis, am. soc. of agronomy, no. 9, part 1 and 2. 1965. [15] j. a. vomocil. porosity. in: c. a. black (ed.). methods of soil analysis,. am. soc. of agronomy, madison wisconsin, no.9: part 1, pp. 315-318, 1965. [16] p. r. hesse. a text book of soil chemical analysis, chemical publ. co. inc. new york, u.s.a. 1972. [17] c. s. piper. soil and plant analysis, interscience publishers, inc., new york, 1950. [18] w.p. kelley. cation exchange in soil, reinhold publishing crop. new york, u.s.a. 1948. [19] p. w. birkeland. pedology, weathering, and geomorphological research, new york, oxford. university press, london, england. 1974. [20] s. n. aziz. survey and classification of some soils from kurdistan region, m. sc. thesis. college of kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.1 agriculture. sulaimani university, kurdistan region, iraq, 2006. [21] s. n. aziz.; a. s. muhaimeed and i. m. amin, climatic conditions effects on formation and development status of some soils in northern part of iraq/kurdistan region, journal of kirkuk university, scientific studies, vol. 4, no.1, 2009. [22] j. k. kassim; k. z. al-janabi and m. i. karim. soil temperature regimes in iraq: ii-relationships between soil temperature and latitude, longitude and elevation, journal of agriculture and water resources research vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 111-121, 1989. .  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.5 received: 03 may 2018 | accepted: 20 june 2018 the relationship between serum 25 hydroxy vitamin d deficiency and dietary pattern in baxshin hospital, sulaimani city mohammed i m gubari jeza muhamad abdul aziz fadhil ahmed mohialdeen clinical nutrition department baxshin research center community health department school of nutrition and dietetic baxshin hospital health technical college. tehran university of medical science ministry of health sulaimani polytechnic university. tehran, iran sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq mohammed.jubari@gmail.com jezamuhamad@gmail.com fadhilahmed@hotmail.com khalid anwar hama-ghareeb bakhtyar kamal muhamed hemn abdalla omer research department department of anesthesia baxshin laboratory general directorate of health/sulaimani college of technical health baxshin hospital ministry of health sulaimani polytechnic university ministry of health sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq khalidanwar82@gmail.com bakhtyar.talabany@spu.edu.iq hemin852005@gmail.com 31 abstract: vitamin d is one of the fat-soluble vitamins that have a great role in phosphate and calcium balance and bone structure. to our knowledge, there are limited data on the relation between dietary pattern and serum vitamin d concentration. therefore, the aim of the current study is find out whether, there are any associations between serum vitamin d and with any specific dietary pattern. a cross sectional study was implemented in baxshen hospital in order to find the prevalence of vitamin d deficiency and its relation with dietary pattern among healthy participants. 1131 participants were enrolled in the current study male and female with age 18 – 65 years old, living in sulaimani city and its districts have not used any supplement in the past 6 months before enrolling the study. two questionnaires were used for collecting of data, the first one was included demographical data of the participants. including their age, gender, marital status, educational level, address, and etc. the second one was data on dietary pattern; particularly we focused on some vitamin d dietary sources. a threeday dietary records estimate was taken from the patients and this data were coded and put in dietary software (windiet) and then analyzed. the age of the sample ranged from 18 to 65 years old with the mean of 34.34 years old with a standard deviation of 12.6. one hundred sixty-two (14.3%) of the 1131 participants were female, nine hundred sixty-nine (85.7%) of the participants were male. 65.5 % of them exposure to sun less than 30, 34.5% exposure to sun more than half hour. about 84.6% of participants had severe deficiency of vitamin d and 6.9% of participants had adequate vitamin d. fish, eggs and yogurt conception was common among those participants whom their serum vitamin d was adequate, in contrary, there were less consumed among those who had vitamin d deficiency. the percentage of obese (99.8%) was significantly higher than normal weight and overweight among severe deficiency vitamin d. furthermore, a highly percentage of adequate was (93.6%) in the normal weight. the mean of vitamin d intake was 761 ± 195.65 iu, in normal weight group, and the mean of vitamin d intake was 125.98 ± 53.15 iu, in obese group. this study has concluded that the reach dietary sources of vitamin d is not enough to provide the body adequate amount of vitamin d, in addition, obese and overweight individuals tend to have less serum vitamin d status compared to normal weight individuals and finally recommended daily amount of vitamin d intake should be established for kurdistan people. keywords: 25-hydroxy vitamin d, dietary intake, dietary pattern, vitamin d deficiency 1. introduction vitamin d deficiency has been shown to occur globally [1]. with all the medical advances of the century, vitamin d deficiency is as yet plagued. over a billion people worldwide are vitamin d deficient or insufficient [2]. in middle east countries, high variation in serum 25(oh)d levels was revealed. the lowest level of 3.6 ng/ml (9 nmol/l) was seen in a study conducted on older persons in saudi arabia [2]. vitamin d is a prohormone that has a key role in calcium and phosphate balance and bone structure [3, 4]. normal bone growth and mineralization depend on the availability of adequate calcium and phosphate. deficient mineralization can result in rickets and/or osteomalacia. in addition, vitamin d deficiency is related to osteomalacia and rickets in children[5] and with osteoporosis among elderly in institutions[6]. the best biomarker quantified to assess vitamin d status is the serum concentration of 25-hydroxyvitamin d (s 32 25(oh)d) [7, 8]. vitamin d, also described as “the sun vitamin” is a steroid with hormone-like activity. while daylight exposure is that the major source of circulating serum 25(oh) d. it regulates the functions of over two hundred genes and is crucial for growth and development. there are two kind of vitamin d. vitamin d2 (ergocalciferol) and vitamin d3 (cholecalciferol) [9]. vitamin d status depends on the assembly of vitamin d3 within the skin below the influence of ultraviolet light from sun and d intake through diet or vitamin d supplements. usually, 50 to 90% of vitamin d is created by sunshine exposure of skin and also the remainder comes from the diet [1] people advised on the danger of sun exposure, and are exposed to the increased use of sunscreen lotion and time spends indoor which has likely contributed to less vitamin d. the contribution of dietary sources to vitamin d status is not clearly known. some studies have shown that dietary intake of certain vitamin d reach foods had a significant positive influence on serum 25oh d concentrations. natural diet, most humans consume, contain little vitamin d. traditionally the human vitamin d system begins within the skin, not in the mouth. however, the important sources of vitamin d are egg yolk, fatty fish, red meat fortified dairy products and beef liver [10]. vitamin d3 deficiency can result in obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, depression, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, osteoporosis and neuro-degenerative diseases including alzheimer’s disease. vitamin d deficiency has been associated with an increased risk of several medical conditions like cancers, especially breast, prostate, and colon cancers. current research indicates that vitamin d deficiency plays a role within causing seventeen varieties of different cancers as well as heart disease, stroke, autoimmune diseases, birth defects, and periodontal disease [11]. to our knowledge, there are limited data on the relation between dietary pattern and serum vitamin d concentration. therefore, the aim of the current study is to find out whether there are any associations between serum vitamin d and with any specific dietary pattern. 2. methods and materials a cross-sectional study was implemented in baxshin hospital in order to find the prevalence of vitamin d deficiency and its relation to the dietary pattern among healthy participants. an announcement was distributed through baxshin hospital main page and baxshin hospital social media. 2500 participant were agreed to participate in this study. 1131 participants were enrolled, and the rest were excluded because they were not met our inclusion criteria. the target groups were healthy male and female with age 18–65 years old, living in sulaimani city and its districts, have not used any supplement in the past 6 months before enrolling in the study. data collection: data were collected during 6 months from 21-12-2017 till 21-6-2018. two questionnaires were used for collecting of data, the first one was included demographical data of the participants which including age, gender, marital status, educational level, address, and etc. the second one was data on the dietary pattern; particularly we focused on some vitamin d dietary sources. a three-day dietary records estimate was taken from the patients and this data were coded and put in dietary software (windiet) and then analyzed. blood samples and laboratory analysis: fasting blood samples were collected from the antecubital vein of all enrolled participant. samples were sent to the clinical laboratory at baxshin hospital in sulaimani city, for serum 25(oh)d concentrations assay. the tests were performed using the roche cobas e411 immunoassay analyzer using the roche elecsys vitamin d3 assay (roche diagnostics, mannheim, germany). vitamin d status was categorized as adequate 25(oh)d >75 nmol/l (>30ng/ml), insufficient (25(oh)d = 50–74 nmol/l or 20-29.6ng/ml), and deficient (25(oh)d < 50 nmol/l or < 20ng/ml). serum 25(oh)d concentration < 25 nmol/l (< 10ng/ml) was considered severe vitamin d deficiency [12] data analysis: data for this study were analyzed using statistical software spss version 22. descriptive statistics were applied to find percentage and frequency of the variables as well as a mean standard deviation for continuous variables. analytical statistics were implemented including chi-square to find the relation between vitamin d status and the categorical variables. significant of the relationship was the test at the p-value less than 0.05. 3. results the age of the sample ranged from 18 to 65 years old with the mean of 34.34 years old with a standard deviation of 12.6. one hundred sixty-two (14.3%) of the 1131 participants were female, nine hundred sixty-nine (85.7%) of the participants were male. eight hundred fifty-one (75.2%) were married, 280 (24.8%) were single. the majority were postgraduate (n=363, 32.1%). in addition, 75 identified themselves had a bachelor’s degree (6.6%), and 162 participants were illustrated (14.3%). majority of participants were from outside (76.1%), only 23.9 were from inside. 65.5 % of the exposure to the sun less than half hour, 34.5% exposure to the sun more than half hour. these results are presented in table 1. the (figure 1) shows that 84.62% of participants had to severe deficiency of vitamin d and about 7% of participants had adequate vitamin d. among those participants who had less than half hour of sun exposure severe vitamin d deficiency was (80.9%). however, about 7% had adequate vitamin d among those participants who had more than 30 minutes of sun exposure (figure 2). fish consumption 4 times a month was higher 70.97% among adequate vitamin d group and for severe deficiency of vitamin d those participants not eaten fish was 90.66% (figure 3). yogurt consumption among participants illustrated in (figure 4), for adequate group (100%) had daily yogurt consumption. and not eaten yogurt was (91.04%) in severe deficiency group. regarding egg consumption, daily and four times, a week were (100%, 100%) 33 consequently in the adequate group. in addition, not eaten (91.04%) and two times a week (95.11%) were mostly in severe deficiency group (figure 5). more than two time for meat and chicken consumption was (100%) in adequate group of vitamin d, so (91.04%) in severe deficiency group had not eaten meat, with (90.4%) had two time a week as shown in (figure 6). dietary fat intake among all healthy participants, according to the result showed in (figure 8) among adequate group (100%) had high fat diet, only (2.77%) had taken not the fat diet. in severe deficiency group, the majority of participants had not fat diet intake (88.37%). table (2) describes the association between the vitamin d status and the body mass index. there is a significant relationship between vitamin d deficiency and bmi (p<0.001). by increasing body weight the severity of vitamin d deficiency will increase. the percentage of obese (99.8%) was significantly higher than normal weight and overweight among severe deficiency vitamin d. furthermore, a highly percentage of adequate was (93.6%) in the normal weight. according to table (4) the majority of those participants live inside the city (84.3%) had severe vitamin d deficiency. also, among those participants live outside cities the majority (85.6%) had severe deficiency of vitamin d. with significant association between address and vitamin d status (p=0.003). table (5) shows that there was a highly significant difference between the vitamin d and bmi regarding their dietary intake. more than 86.73 percent of the participant was obese and 7.17% were normal weight. the obese higher risk to have vitamin d deficiency compared to normal weight and the mean of vitamin d intake was 761.85 ± 195.65 iu, in normal weight group, and the mean of vitamin d intake was 125.98 ± 53.15 iu, in the obese group. table 2: the relationship between serum vitamin d status and bmi bmi vitamin d p value severe deficiency (%) deficiency (%) adequate (%) 18.5 25 0 (0.0) 8 (8.3%) 73 (93.6) <0.001 25 30 2 (0.2) 67 (69.8) 0 (0.0) more than 30 955 (99.8) 21 (21.9) 5 (6.4) table 1: distribution of demographical data of the participants. table 3: daily amount of vitamin d intake. vitamin d status number mean std. deviation p value severe deficiency 957 121.29 15.720 <0.001 deficiency 96 173.88 14.309 adequate 78 826.15 15.239 total 1131 table 4: relationship between vitamin d status and address. vitamin d status address p value inside city outside city sever deficiency 726 (84.3) 231 (85.6) 0.003 deficiency 84 (9.8) 12 (4.4) adequate 51 (5.9) 27 (10.0) table 5: relationship between bmi and dietary intake of vitamin d. variable frequency % gender male 162 14.3 female 969 85.7 education illiterate 162 14.3 primary 231 20.4 secondary 123 10.9 preparatory 177 15.6 university 75 6.6 postgraduate 363 32.1 marital state marred 851 75.2 single 280 24.8 address inside 861 76.1 outside 270 23.9 sun exposure less than 30 minute. 741 65.5 more than 30 minute 390 34.5 age (mean ± sd) 34.34 ± 2.6 bmi number (%) mean std. deviation p value 18.5 25 81 (7.17) 761.85 195.656 <0.001 25 30 69 (6.1) 172.62 17.688 more than 30mnt 981 (86.73) 125.98 53.155 34 figure 1: prevalence of vitamin d deficiency among studied group. figure 2: vitamin d deficiency and its relations to sun exposure. figure 3: fish consumption of the studied group figure 4: yogurt consumption of the studied group. figure 5: egg consumption of the studied group. figure 6: meat consumption of the studied group 35 figure 7: chicken consumption of the studied group figure 8: dietary fat consumption of the studied group 4. discussion this is the first study aimed to find the prevalence of vitamin d deficiency and its association with the dietary pattern in kurdistan. vitamin d status is the best established by measuring serum 25(oh)d concentrations since this value is reflective of both oral intake and subcutaneous vitamin d production. the current recommendation regarding vitamin d intake [dietary reference intakes (dri)] within the united state is 400 iu (international unit)/ day; however, it has been recommended that this recommendation does not result in adequate vitamin d concentrations within the body. a recent meta-analysis demonstrated a significant positive association comparable to an increase of 1-2 nmol/l in serum 25 ohd level for every 100 additional units of vitamins d. serum 25-hydroxyvitamin d [25(oh) d] concentrations that are between 25-37.5 nmol/l (10-15ng/ml) are considered to be inadequate and come along with the risk of rickets (deformation of bones because of inadequate development) in children and of osteomalacia (brittle bones) in adults, whereas concentrations that are ≥75 nmol/l(30ng/ml) are within the normal range and are optimal for bone health as well as for nonskeletal health benefits of vitamin d, and serum concentrations that are ≥ 500 nmol/l(200ng/ml) are considered to be toxic [13-15]. vitamin d deficiency in arab countries had been established in several research studies [16, 17]. this study found that vitamin d deficiency was not significantly different between female and male (p =0.1). but in the other part of arab world including qatar and saudi arabia, several studies showed females had 3-fold higher prevalence of vitamin d deficiency or relative insufficiency than males, their explanation for this finding is related to the traditional dressstyle society which cover their body completely due to cultural and religious reasons so that the sun hit the skin is minimal [16, 18, 19]. although, sulaimani province is a sunny climate at summer season and due to high daytime temperature, therefore direct exposure to the sunlight is limited. the research study recorded higher percentage (80.9%) of participant have less than 30mint sunlight exposure per day in summer and winter then shown a severe deficiency, so that sunlight exposure was insufficient to induce cutaneous vitamin d3 synthesis during the summer and winter months [19, 20]. this may be related to inhibition d activation process every 15 minutes to prevent its accumulation in the blood, therefore, the best exposure period to sunlight was found to be 15 or about 40-45 minutes [21]. seasons of year and geographical location affect vitamin d production. people have less sun exposure in winter and the sun is at an angle that limits the amount of ultraviolet burn (uv-b) radiation that hits the earth as a result more uv-b photons are able to penetrate the ozone layer in the spring and summer because the sun is directly overhead. in winter, vitamin producing uv-b photons pass through the ozone layer at an oblique angle and absorbed by the ozone in greater percent [22, 23]. sensible sun exposure can provide an adequate amount of vitamin d3 that is hold in the body fat and released during the winter, when vitamin d3 cannot be made. exposure of arms, face and legs for 5 to 30 minutes is often adequate [24]. duration exposure to sunlight, in the early morning (sunrise to 11:00 a.m.) or late afternoon (3:00 p.m.) is believed to be reasonably safe [25]. data reported in the present study, the participant in the outside city they had an adequate percentage of vitamin d than the inside city (10.0 and 5.9) respectively. this is related to the activity population in the inside city which has limited outdoor activity during daytime than outside city activity then sunlight might not even hit their faces. however, air pollution in the inside city which affect the amount of uvb radiation reaching the earth's surface [24]. similar results among young adults in the innercity of america had shown deficient vitamin d [26]. also, the current lifestyle with most activities taking place in the indoors lead to prevents sufficient sun expose. in addition, season and latitude may diminish the intensity of the sun, and also clothing, sunscreen, and skin pigmentation interfere with vitamin d synthesis. in this case, dietary intake becomes 36 increasingly important. however, only a few foodstuffs, mainly of animal origin (e.g., fish, meat, offal, egg, dairy product), are the valuable sources of naturally occurring vitamin d-3 [27]. the study result revealed that participants had daily yogurt consumption shows (100%) in the adequate group. while, not eaten yogurt was (91.04%) in severe deficiency group. vitamin d content in dairy products yielded the following values: whole milk, 0.3–1.0 μg/kg cream, 3.7–10.8 μg/kg; butter, 5.9–14.1 μg/kg; yogurt, 0.4–6.0 μg/kg; curd cheese, 2.0–7.05 μg/kg; soft cheese, 2.8–5.8 μg/kg; semi hard and hard cheese, 2.0–18.1 μg/kg. goat’s milk, 0.6–2.8 μg/kg; ewe’s milk, 1.8 μg/kg [27]. however, the detected values partly vary considerably among the different studies. typical vitamin d fortified foods include milk, buttermilk, and soft milk products such as yoghurt and in case of dry milky according to the us code of federal regulations the level of vitamin d should be 400 iu per litter [14]. fortunately, vitamin d fortified dairy product is available in sulaimani market to include milk, buttermilk, and yogurt. regarding egg, this is one of the kurdish breakfast meal consumption. study was found daily and four times a week were (100%, 100%) consequently in the adequate group. in addition, not eaten (91.04%) and two times a week (95.11%) were mostly in severe deficiency group. egg contains approximately 20 iu of vitamin d/egg. also, fatty fish provides 200–350 iu of vitamin d/100 grams [13]. low content of vitamin d in the meal may lead to decreasing serum vitamin d levels in kurdish people. in the present study found increasing body mass index (bmi)of participant reported the severity of vitamin d deficiency. the (bmi) more than 30 showed higher percent severe vitamin d deficient (99.8%) and lower dietary intake, 125.98 iu than the normal weight and overweight (p<0.001). this is consistent with similar studies reported that a strong relationship found between obesity and vitamin d deficiency [18, 28]. obese individuals reported lower level concentrations of circulating 25(oh) vitamin d. since vitamin d is stored deep in the adipose tissue and not available for secretion into the blood [13]. mechanism of this association is related to elevated concentrations of 1,25-dihydroxy vitamin d stimulate lipogenesis and inhibit lipolysis in cultured human adipocytes, leading to accumulation of fat [29]. moreover, 1,25-dihydroxy vitamin d inhibits the expression of adipocyte uncoupling protein 2 (ucp2), which would cause a reduction in the adipocyte’s metabolic efficiency [30]. the study found that the participants have a dietary vitamin d intake showed more significant different (p<0.001). (121.29±15.720 iu/day) reported in the severe deficiency level while (821.15±15.239 iu/day) found in the adequate. with sufficient uvb exposure, dietary intake of vitamin d is not necessary but, due to environmental influences synthesis of vitamin d is not always adequate; therefore, dietary intake is advisable. they require amount of vitamin d for females and males between 9 and 70 years of age in the united states is set at 15 µg/d (600 iu/d) and also the endocrine society suggests this amount for adults aged 19–50 years but indicates that to increase the blood level of 25(oh)-d-3 consistently above 30 µg/l, at least 37.5– 50.0 µg/d (1500–2000 iu/d) of vitamin d may be required. the german-speaking nutrition societies (da-ch recommendations) recently increased their recommendation for children and adults from 5 µg/d (200 iu/d) to 20 µg/d (800 iu/d), whereas the european require amount of vitamin d for adults remains at a daily intake is 5 mg/d (200 iu/d), but the upper limit from 50 mg/d (2000 iu/d) was increased to 100 mg/d (4000 iu/d) [27]. there are some limitations to the current study should be addressed for the future work. firstly, since the dietary assessment was estimated. therefore, the risk of over and under estimate was possible to occur. secondly, we have used windiet for the analysis of the dietary intake and of course, this software has been developed for western diet, therefore it was very difficult for the researchers, to estimate the local food, we calculate all the recipes alone and inter it into the software. finally, some participants forgot to take portions size pictures with them outside the home; therefore, they estimate their dietary intake. however, to our knowledge this is the first study, which implemented to find out the dietary intake of vitamin d, we recommend to perform a national survey of not just for vitamin d but for the all other micronutrients since we don’t have this guideline. 5. conclusion in conclusion, the reach dietary sources of vitamin d are not enough to provide the body adequate amount of vitamin d. in addition, obese and overweight individuals tend to have a less serum vitamin d status compared to the normal weight individuals and finally, recommended daily amount of vitamin d intake should be established for kurdistan people. reference [1] z. naeem, "vitamin d deficiencyan ignored epidemic," (in eng), no. 1658-3639 (print). [2] h. al-horani et al., "nationality, gender, age, and body mass index influences on vitamin d concentration among elderly patients and young iraqi and jordanian in jordan," biochemistry research international, vol. 2016. [3] c. aranow, "vitamin d and the immune system," (in eng), no. 1708-8267 (electronic). [4] k. l. how, j. a. hazewinkel ha fau mol, and j. a. mol, "dietary vitamin d dependence of cat and dog due to inadequate cutaneous synthesis of vitamin d," (in eng), no. 0016-6480 (print). [5] m. sahay and r. sahay, "rickets-vitamin d deficiency and dependency," (in eng), no. 2230-9500 (electronic). [6] m. f. holick et al., "prevalence of vitamin d inadequacy among postmenopausal north american women receiving osteoporosis therapy," (in eng), no. 0021-972x (print). 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[13] w. azhar, e. m. u. s. o. health, and sciences, a determination of vitamin d status and intake of pregnant and non-pregnant saudi arabian women in mecca, saudi arabia. 2009. [14] m. sadat-ali, a. al elq, m. al-farhan, and n. a. sadat, "fortification with vitamin d: comparative study in the saudi arabian and us markets," journal of family & community medicine, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 49-52, jan-apr 2013. [15] t. cranney a fau horsley et al., "effectiveness and safety of vitamin d in relation to bone health," (in eng), no. 1530-4396 (print). [16] a. o. alsuwadia et al., "prevalence of vitamin d deficiency in saudi adults," saudi med j, vol. 34, no. 8, pp. 814-8, aug 2013. [17] b. racinais s fau hamilton, c. k. hamilton b fau li, j. li ck fau grantham, and j. grantham, "vitamin d and physical fitness in qatari girls," (in eng), no. 1468-2044 (electronic). [18] m. tuffaha et al., "deficiencies under plenty of sun: vitamin d status among adults in the kingdom of saudi arabia, 2013," (in eng), no. 2250-1541 (print). [19] r. m. kanan, y. m. al saleh, h. m. fakhoury, m. adham, s. aljaser, and w. tamimi, "year-round vitamin d deficiency among saudi female out-patients," public health nutr, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 544-8, mar 2013. [20] m. f. holick, "high prevalence of vitamin d inadequacy and implications for health," mayo clin proc, vol. 81, no. 3, pp. 353-73, mar 2006. [21] a.-s. ala qatatsheh reema. tayyem islam, murad a. alholy, abdallah s. al-rethaia ""vitamin d deficiency among jordanian university students and employees," nutrition & food science, vol. 45 iss 1 pp. 68 82, vol. 45, pp. 68-82, 2015. [22] h. l. makin, d. a. seamark, and d. j. trafford, "vitamin d and its metabolites in human breast milk," archives of disease in childhood, vol. 58, no. 9, pp. 750-753, 1983. [23] a. m. i. s. a. ibraheem, "alterations of vitamin "d" level in sera of iraqi population," jornal of kerbala university, vol. 5, no. 5, pp. 58-64, 2007. [24] m. f. holick, "vitamin d deficiency," n engl j med, vol. 357, no. 3, pp. 266-81, jul 19 2007. [25] n. e. cooke and j. g. haddad, "vitamin d binding protein (gc-globulin)," (in eng), no. 0163-769x (print). [26] m. s. calvo and s. j. whiting, "public health strategies to overcome barriers to optimal vitamin d status in populations with special needs," (in eng), no. 0022-3166 (print). [27] a. schmid and b. walther, "natural vitamin d content in animal products," advances in nutrition, vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 453-462, 07/08 2013. [28] a. h. al-elq, h. a. sadat-ali m fau al-turki, f. a. alturki ha fau al-mulhim, a. k. al-mulhim fa fau al-ali, and a. k. al-ali, "is there a relationship between body mass index and serum vitamin d levels?," (in eng), no. 0379-5284 (print). [29] n. a. al-faris, "high prevalence of vitamin d deficiency among pregnant saudi women," nutrients, vol. 8, no. 2, p. 77, [30] h. shi, w. h. norman aw fau okamura, a. okamura wh fau sen, m. b. sen a fau zemel, and m. b. zemel, "1alpha,25-dihydroxyvitamin d3 modulates human adipocyte metabolism via nongenomic action," (in eng), no. 1530-6860 (electronic).  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 4 | issue 1 | june 2019 | doi: 10.24017/science.2019.1.5 received: 7 april 2019 | accepted: 30 june 2019 evaluating the risk of bacterial infections associated with the most handled iraqi notes in kalar mohammed hassan fatah ahmed mohammed tofiq hassan mohammad tawfeeq medical lab. technology department biology department nursing department kalar technical institute college of education kalar technical institute sulaimani polytechnic university garmian university sulaimani polytechnic university kalar, iraq kalar, iraq kalar, iraq mohammed.fatah@spu.edu.iq ahmed.mohammed@garmian.edu.krd hassan.tawfeeq@spu.edu.iq 26 abstract: everyday new sources of microbial and especially bacterial infections are reported, which are not taken into account, the fact that these sources have been implicated in the outbreaks of these infections. the goals of the current research focused on the exploration of the scope of microbial pollution of the widely traded paper currency notes of the iraqi currencies (250, 1000 and 5000 iraqi dinars) in kalar city. 300 banknotes (100 samples for each of the denominations under investigation) in circulation were gathered from different categories of kalar population and one fresh sample for each of the three currencies (control negative). each bill was rinsed in 5 ml d.w then cultured on nutrient agar, mannitol salt agar and macconkey agar, respectively, then incubated at 37 ºc for up to 48 hours. results revealed the rate of microbial contamination, specifically bacterial ones as 94%, 68%, and 60%, respectively on the denominations of 250, 1000, and 5000 of iraqi dinars. in a descending order, and with regard to the prevalence rate, bacterial species contaminated 250, 1000 and 5000 iraqi denominations respectively were as follows: 55.31%, 32.35% and 36.66% for bacillus sp.; 14.89%, 38.23% and 20% for coagulase negative staphylococcus; 8.51%, 8.82% and 20% for e. coli; 2.12%, 11.76 and 20% for pseudomonas sp.; 2.12% for each of klebsiella sp., and salmonella sp.; 10.63% and 4.25% for enterobacter sp. and staphylococcus aureus, respectively, and only on 250 denomination; 2.94% and 5.88% for each of corynebacterium sp. and serratia sp. only on 1000 currency note; lastly, 3.33% for proteus sp. on 5000 iqd only. these outcomes suggest that bacterial contamination of iraqi dinars, specifically the 250 denomination is risky and could be regarded as the real source of infectious diseases with the most dangerous pathogenic bacteria. keywords: iraqi paper currencies, bacterial contamination, risky pathogenic bacteria, kalar city 1. introduction since the settlement of humans on the planet, they used currency for the exchange of all the forms of commodities. this means that money has been implemented in various aspects of human’s daily life in addition to saving. numerous microorganisms, including pathogenic can be transmitted by contaminated money when they are passing to other people [1]. one of the sources of the sudden onset of bacterial infections is paper currency with immense surface area, since pathogens can exploit it as a breeding ground [2]. high level of microbial contamination of paper currencies have been reported in another studies carried out in disparate countries of the world [3]. during counting, currency notes can get contaminated with diverse microbes from respiratory and digestive tract [1]. numerous human’s daily activities are the sources of notes contamination. for example, it could be through coughing and sneezing droplets, using saliva when counting the notes, soil, dust, water, dirty wounds, handlers skin and hands micro-flora, contacting with preceding polluted hands or extra stuffs and emplacement on grubby work surfaces. moreover, few manners of managing money including, maintaining denominations within brassiere, pockets, socks, beneath the mattresses and pressing in the hands, consistently initiate microorganisms to the currency notes [4]. however, it should be known that paper note is not providing favorable environment for the growth and maintenance of microorganisms, excluding those that are able to withstand external harsh environmental parameters and spores [5, 6]. the disparity in the social and health levels of society is also one of the important factors that will increase the chance of the contamination of money by different types of bacteria, especially the pathogenic ones. for example, money with those who work in processing of fresh, wetting foods from agricultural fields till it reach consumers are more susceptible to contamination because of the moisture of the handlers traded compared to the circulation of money with the hands of other classes. in india, paper currency is usually contaminated with bacteria of medically important, this in turn have a great impact on the transposal of diverse infectious diseases. citizens and related governmental institutions are fully aware of the dispersal of pathogenic microorganisms via food, water, air and have already taken the necessary measures to overcome this problem. however, it seems like that they are not concerned about some of the habits like putting saliva on some fingers while enumerating paper currencies which are extensively swapped between hands, depicts a general intermediate for the microbial 27 transmission in the environment and amongst humans as well, which increase the probability of acquiring infection [1]. socioeconomic, climatic and various microbiological elements obviously known to be worldwide interlinked are shown to be closely interconnected with the advent of infectious diseases. population growth, urbanizations, unhygienic, poverty and even bioterrorism are the driven forces for the incidence of such diseases. it has been clarified by a considerable review that contaminated fomites and currency notes play a critical role in the dissemination of microbial infections with antibiotic resistance [7]. staphylococcus, e. coli and pseudomonas were among the most prospective pathogens that have been isolated from currency notes [8]. extendedspectrum beta lactamases (esbl) producing escherichia coli and klebsiella sp. that are evolved as antimicrobial resistance species, are widely known as multi-drug resistant microorganisms that are shown to contaminate banknotes and coins that contribute in their transmission to the community [9]. this indicates more complicated medical cases, and turns out to face difficulties in the management. the outcome of cross-sectional studies carried out for the microbial screening of polluted paper currencies may differ, owing to the procedure applied, climate, and a kind of currency or local microbial community of the normal flora, and principally, the most prevalent bacteria were gram positive ones [10]. as long as the problem of the spread of pathogenic bacteria through currency and coins is universal, therefore, it is really essential to do such screening in kalar city, which is one of the big cities in kurdistan region. moreover, and to the best of our knowledge, there isn’t any published data in this concern. there is no doubt that in places where credit cards are less used by people for their daily needs, they will be more vulnerable to infections through contaminated currency and coins, and that is the condition where we are in. therefore, this study has been conducted to make the first ever data about bacterial profile of iraqi paper currency gathered from different communities of the fore-mentioned city. 2. methods and materials 2.1. study area and design the iraqi currency notes were gathered from kalar, the biggest city which belongs to sulaimani province and as one of the ancient colonial cities in kurdistan regioniraq. in this city all sort of iraqi paper currency denominations were randomly gathered from everyday use from march 2018 to august 2018 and processing of the collected samples were carried out at medical laboratory technology department, kalar technical institute. the protocol of the current study was approved by the local institutional scientific and ethics committee. 2.2. sample collection a total of 303 samples of iraqi denominations (100 pieces of each denomination) were gathered for the required analyses. 300 specimens of the iraqi notes (250, 1000 and 5000) were collected in a randomised manner by exchanging paper currencies from different people (drivers, teachers, traders, bus conductors, store keepers and other individuals) while 3 samples were gathered from central bank of iraq (cbi), kalar branch which utilised as the control. for the purpose of paper currency collection, the individuals were asked to drop currency notes directly into a well prepared sterile disposable plastic bag and labelled properly; paper currencies were not picked up by the investigator using bare hands at any time and any step. packets were sealed and promptly transferred to the microbiology laboratory for microbiological analysis. 2.3. media preparation and microbial analyses culture media utilized for isolation and primary identification of microorganisms included nutrient agar, macconkey agar and mannitol salt agar. various media that used in isolation and identification were prepared following manufacturer’s instructions. 2.4. microbiological analyses of the samples each of the samples was gathered and soaked in 5 ml aliquots of sterile distilled water, then the tubes vigorously shaken for up to 2 minutes to dislodge microbial cells into the intended suspension at ambient temperature. denominations removed and the resulting suspension of distilled water solution served as the test samples. 0.2 ml of the suspension was aseptically transferred to microbiological plates of nutrient agar, mannitol salt agar and macconkey agar and was spread over the media by the use of a sterile bent l-shaped glass rod. this technique was carried out for each tube by spread plate technique and incubated aerobically overnight in an incubator at 37 ºc for 24-48 hrs. after the incubation period, plates were subjected to examination for microbial growth and the colonies were counted. for the purpose of further analysis pure cultures were obtained through sub-culturing distinct and well characterised colonies. control samples subjected to the same processes. 2.5. identification of isolates from collected samples in order to be certain about the isolates, pure isolated microbial colonies were identified by the use of their morphological characteristics, gram staining reaction as well and other biochemical tests which include; coagulase, catalase, indole methyl red voges proskauer citrate (imvic), motility, oxidase, urease, triple sugar iron agar (carbohydrate fermentation and the possible gas production) as described by bergey’s manual of determinative bacteriology [11]. in addition to various tests carried out and approved culture media the scientific and practical experiences have had an effective role in the identification of the isolates. 3. results evaluation of total of 300 iraqi paper currency notes were performed, and the average microbial contamination was estimated as 94%, 68%, and 60%, respectively on the denominations of 250, 1000, and 5000 iraqi dinars (100 samples for each type of the currency notes) illustrated in fig.1. 28 figure 1: the overall percent frequency of microbes isolated from iraqi notes bacillus sp. was the most prevalent on both of 250 and 5000 currency notes which was 55.31% and 36.66%, respectively, while scored 32.35% on 1000 iraqi dinars (iqd). however, coagulase negative staphylococcus has shown the frequency distribution 38.23% for 1000 dinar paper currency, whereas 20% and 14.89% which is comparable for both denominations 5000 and 250 iqd. the frequency occurrence of escherichia coli was 20%, 8.82%, and 8.51% on 5000, 1000, and 250 paper currency notes under this survey. results also revealed the frequency (%) distribution of pseudomonas sp. as 20%, 11.76%, and 2.12%, respectively on 5000, 1000, and 250 sequentially. klebsiella sp. and salmonella sp. were similarly found only on 250 currency notes as a ratio of 2.12%. on 250 iqd, each of enterobacter sp. and staphylococcus aureus were distributed in a ratio of 10.63% and 4.25%, respectively. moreover, 2.94% and 5.88% were recorded as the frequent distribution of corynebacterium sp. and serratia sp. on paper denomination 1000 dinar alone. proteus sp. occurred on 5000 dinars with a prevalence ratio of 3.33%. figure 2: bacterial isolates with highest incidence in comparison to the lowest other microbes from different denominations the outcomes of frequency occurrence of different microbial species are visible in table.1 and fig.2 which indicate the isolations of bacillus sp. 52, 22 and 22 and percentage frequency were found to be 52%, 22% and 22% respectively. coagulase-negative staphylococcus count was 14, 26 and 12 with a corresponding frequency of 14%, 26% and 12%. e. coli organisms included were 08, 06 and 12 with a frequency of 08%, 06% and 12% respectively. pseudomonas sp. organism calculated was 02, 08 and 12 with a frequency of 02%, 08% and 12%. others included microorganisms with minorities shown to be 18, 06 and 02 with a corresponding frequency of 18%, 06% and 02% for 250, 1000 and 5000 denominations sequentially. table 1: distributions of bacterial isolates over iraqi dinars microorganisms (bacterial isolates) iraqi dinars denominations 250 1000 5000 frequency of the isolates frequency of the isolates frequency of the isolates bacillus sp. 52 52% 22 22% 22 22% coagulase negative staphylococcus 14 14% 26 26% 12 12% enterobacter sp. 10 10% 0 0 0 0 escherichia coli 8 8% 6 6% 12 12% staphylococcus aureus 4 4% 0 0 0 0 klebsiella sp. 2 2% 0 0 0 0 salmonella sp. 2 2% 0 0 0 0 pseudomonas sp. 2 2% 8 8% 12 12% corynebacterium sp. 0 0 2 2% 0 0 serratia sp. 0 0 4 4% 0 0 proteus sp. 0 0 0 0 2 2% total 94 94% 68 68% 60 60% however, fig.3 gives detailed information about isolated microbial species with lowest frequency of occurrence which given the name of others. in which, it can be observed that each of enterobacter, s. aureus, klebsiella sp. and salmonella sp. were only isolated from 250 denomination with frequency of 10%, 04% and 02% for each of the last two microorganisms. both of serratia sp. and corynebacterium sp. were recorded on paper currency of 1000 iqd only and with frequency of 04% and 02%, respectively. proteus sp. with a frequency of 02% was the sole bacterial isolate from denomination of 5000 dinars. figure 3: the overall frequency of the microbes isolated from iraqi paper denominations 0 20 40 60 80 100 250 1000 5000 pe rc en t f re qu en cy o f m ic ro or ga ni sm s denominations of iraqi notes 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 pe rc en t f re qu en cy various bacterial isolates 250 1000 5000 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 fr eq ue nc y of o cc ur re nc e on d iff er en t no te s total bacterial isolates 250 1000 5000 29 2. discussion data collected for this research study approved that iraqi paper currency (dinars) is somewhat a hidden and neglected source of infections in kalar city. numerous bacterial species were isolated from the lower currencies (250 and 1000 iqd) in comparison to the higher ones (5000 iqd). this might be due to the fact that lower denominations seems like they have been exchanged and handled more frequently in nonessential and daily cash deals [12]. however, control (unused) samples did not support the growth of any group of microorganisms. similar results were obtained by [12], who also stated that it could be due to impregnation of currency with disinfectant to retard the growth of microorganisms. the rate of contamination of paper currencies selected for this study is in quite close association with other studies performed locally [13, 14, 15] or from other parts of the world [16, 17, 18], and that the microbial contaminants are usually those that are the causative agents of a widescale of infectious diseases [19]. thus, our data demonstrates that the level of contamination within iraqi denominations in kalar city is in a risky situation for the people to high extent. in addition to that, it is well known that paper currency notes consists of 75% cotton and 25% linen, which makes them vulnerable to the growth, multiplication and as a home for microorganisms [20]. iraqi denominations are made from the worst types of paper. in fact this might play a significant role in making them more liable for growth and subsequent spread of microorganisms including the pathogenic species as well. extensive growth of bacterial species could be as a consequence of currency notes with larger surface area on both sides [20]. moisture makes this notes dirty from this onset, therefore, it supports and provides favorable states to acquire microbes from human body as a result of frequent handling in addition to dust from the surrounding environment [21]. as long as currency notes are exposed to contamination through various sources that include all sorts of contaminants, like contaminated hands or containers, they are made to play as the prospective carrier for the transmission and dissemination of microbes responsible for microbial diseases [22]. bacterial species isolated from iraqi notes in descending order were bacillus sp., coagulase negative staplylococci, escherichia coli, pseudomonas sp., enterobacter sp., staphylococcus aureus, serratia sp., klebsiella sp., salmonella sp., corynebacterium sp. and proteus sp. iraqi notes could have been contaminated by these microorganisms through food, soil, clothing or hands of individuals. majority of these microorganisms are considered potential pathogens acting as causative agents of infectious diseases [12]. this order is quite similar to those observed by [8, 22, 12], but with a lesser association with that of [1]. this discrepancy could be due to differences in the ratio of local flora or the environmental factors that somehow could have critical impact on the overall bacterial species. the most prevalent bacterial species on paper currencies in this investigation was bacillus sp. which is a tremendous kind of tough spore forming species that is normally present in the dust and in case if it is found in the surrounding environment; it is possibly transferred on to the iraqi notes as a consequence of its placement on unhygienic places or trading with soiled hand. it is obvious that in most of the developing countries this case most commonly could be seen among those who are dealing with fresh and moist animals dairy products in addition to meats. food poisoning with diarrhea and vomiting were the most clinical cases investigated in people which was caused by bacillus sp. [23]. although coagulase-negative staphylococci (cns) are implicated in various medical conditions such as endocarditis, urinary tract infections, and responsible for around 30% of overall nosocomial blood stream infections, they are widely known as normal microbiota of human skin and mucous membrane [24]. however, s. aureus is always associated with various superficial and deeper infections which penetrate human’s body via any sorts of cuts, breaks and scrapes in the skin [25], in addition to foodborne diseases [26]. simply, presence of staphylococcus species on studied iraqi denominations probably due to rubbing between hands or accidently contacting either nose or mouth, which are various sorts of unusual habits of some individuals when they engaged in cash transactions. undoubtedly, these are the strongest sources for the spread of pathogenic bacteria via currency notes which we should be concerned about. furthermore, presence of escherichia coli, the cause of urinary tract infections [27], and various other infections like diarrhea, an enteric pathogen on iraqi dinars, indicates habitat with poor hygienic conditions as well as poor individual hygienic implementation noticed by the majority of the professional groups [1]. pseudomonas species observed to some extent on iqd. this bacterial group, especially the species aeruginosa is considered as one of opportunistic bacilli that is able to contaminate diseases on the skin or open wounds, burns or may also cause typical cutaneous lesions [28]. corynebacterium species with a lesser frequency has been linked to different medical cases, for example, upper respiratory and skin infections, enteritis, meningitis and other conditions [29]. bacterial species isolated with minorities on iraqi denominations were klebsiella and proteus species, which are stood behind various infectious diseases including nosocomial infections, urinary tract infections and septicemia, in case if they have a chance of contact with sensitive people [30]. it is expected that either the water which was utilized to moisten the fingers of traders while counting currency denominations was contaminated with the last two bacterial species or cross contamination from sewage [12]. 3. conclusion it can be concluded that the percentage of bacterial contamination on the three selected iraqi currencies is really interesting and risky, especially those on the category of 250 iqd. additionally, the problem is that pathogenic bacteria represent the majority of those bacterial isolates, particularly bacillus sp. which are most often able to produce resistant spores which enables them to resist difficult or unfavorable conditions for their growth and reproduction. these conditions involved environmental factors, for example, extreme temperature, depletion of nutrients, dryness, and changes 30 in the ph of the surrounding environment. therefore, those bacterial species as well as their risk can remain viable on the paper currencies for longer period of time. e. coli is also among those problematic bacteria that can cause various diseases including diarrhea, indicates that paper denominations were contaminated with offal’s. overall, it reflects poor sanitation and poor hygienic awareness among individuals of the population. therefore, and as a precautionary measure citizens should be warned of the risk of infections with these pathogenic bacterial species, which exploit monetary currency as a hidden sources for the transfer to new hosts and developing infectious diseases. reference [1] g. sucilathangam, a. m. reventh, g. velvizhi, c. revathy, “assessment of microbial contamination of paper currency notes in circulation,” nt.j.curr.microbiol.app.sci, 5(2), pp. 735-741, 2016. [2] r. m. podhajny, “how dirty is your money? paper, film and foil converter,” 78(1), pp, 21, 2004. saudia. [3] h. w. charnok, “a preliminary bacterial study of egyptian paper money,” international journal of environmental health research, vol. 15, pp. 235-246, 2005. [4] h. haque, a. itoda, “bacterial load of nigeria currency naira and kobo,” b.sc thesis, department of microbiology, university of jos, nigeria, 2003. [5] b. a. freeman, “burrows textbook of microbiology,” 22nd edition, philadelphia: wb saunders co, 1985. [6] e. jawetz, j. l. melnick, e. a. adelberg, “review of microbiology,” california: lange pub; 1987. [7] r. a. weinstein, b. hota, “contamination, disinfection, and cross colonization: are hospital surfaces reservoirs for nosocomial infection?” clinical infectious diseases, 39(8), pp. 1182-1189. 2004. [8] s. n. jafer, h. h. mohammed, z. e. saleh, “bacterial contaminations of iraqi currencies collected from duhok city, iraq,” int j res med sci, 3(7), pp. 1712-1716, 2015. [9] h. gedik, m. yahyaoğlu, g. yörük, m. fincancı, “extendedspectrum beta-lactamase production rates of klebsiella spp. and escherichia coli strains isolated from infections and faecal samples of healthy people,” infectious diseases in clinical practice, 18, pp. 104-106, 2010. [10] n. oo. khin, w. p. phyu, m. h. aung, t. aye, “contamination of currency notes with enteric bacterial pathogens,” journal of diarrhoeal diseases research, 7(3/4), pp. 92-94, 1989. [11] d. h. bergey, j. g. holt, “bergey’s manual of determinative bacteriology,” philadelphia, lippincott williams & wilkins, 2000. [12] o. ndubuisi, i. iheukwumere, e. uzochukwu, e. a. otutu, a. k. victor, “evaluation of micro-pathogens associated with nigerian currency (naira notes),” world scientific research, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 16-22, 2016. (journal style) [13] h. s. abid, “bacterial contamination of iraqi paper currency notes in circulation & resistance of pathogenic bacteria to antibiotics,” iraqi journal of sciences, 53, pp. 81-7, 2012. [14] s. m. abdulla, “isolation and identification of causative agents from some iraqi banknote currency,” ibn al-haitham journal for pure & appl sci, 26(1), pp. 75-81, 2013. [15] i. j. al-abbasi, “investigation of bacterial contamination in iraqi paper currency,” journal of kerbala university, scientific, 8(3), pp. 74-82, 2010. [16] b. o. emikpe, o. g. oyero, “preliminary investigation on the microbial contamination of nigerian currency,” int j trop med, 2, pp. 29-32, 2007. [17] p. felgo, m. nkansah, “ bacterial load on ghanaian currency notes,” afr j microbiology research, 4(22), pp. 2375-80, 2010. [18] p. j. guerin, c. brasher, e. baron, d. mic, f. grimont, m. ryan, p. aavitsland, d. legros, “shigella dysenteriae serotype 1in west africa: intervention strategy for an outbreak in sierra leone,” lancet, 362, pp. 705-6, 2003. [19] o. basavaraja, t. w. pope, p. t. ende, w. k. woelk, m. a. koroil, and t. m. korosol, “bacterial contamination of paper currency,” southern med. j., vol. 45, pp. 1406-1410, 2005. [20] e. angelakis, e. i. azhar, f. bibi, m. yasir, a. k. al-ghamdi, et al, “paper money and coins as potential vectors of transmissible disease,” future microbiology., 9(2), pp. 249261, 2014. [21] o. j. haqu, w. o. dawin, and e. j. cone, “cocaine contamination of united states, paper currency,” journal of analytical toxicology, vol. 20, pp. 213-216, 2003. [22] m. m. ahmed, f. fatima, m. j. ansari, r. al-shdefat, m. k. anwer, s. jamil, m. ahmed, y. saeed, m. noor, p. katakam, aleemuddin. m, a. farheen, “bacterial contamination of saudi arabian paper currency: a report from al-kharj,” advancements in life sciences, volume 4, issue 2, february 2017. [23] f. silma, "manual of food quality control food and nutrition paper, united nations, rome, italy," microbiological analysis, vol. 14, pp. 1-20, 2001. [24] a.piette, g.verschraegen, “role of coagulase-negative staphylococci in human disease,” volume 134, issues 1–2, pp. 45-54, 2009. [25] m. j. j. pelczar, e. c. s. chan, n. r. ang, and m. f. pelezar, microbiology, 5th ed. delhi: tata mcgraw hill publishing company limited, 1993. [26] p. r. w. mass, s. w. tenths, and l. simorisen, “trends in infectious diseases mortality in the united states,” j. am. med. ass., vol. 275, pp. 189-193, 2015. [27] d. s. lee, s-ju. lee, h-s. choe, “community-acquired urinary tract infection by escherichia coli in the era of antibiotic resistance,” hindawi, biomed research international, 14 pages, 2018. [28] e. rallisa, v. paparizosb, a. flemetakisb, a. katsambasb, “pseudomonas fingernail infection successfully treated with topical nadifloxacin in hiv-positive patients: report of two cases,” aids, vol 24 no 7, pp. 1077-1090, 2010. [29] s. t. cowan, “cowan and steal’s manual for the identification of medical bacterial,” 2nd ed, united kindom, cambridge university press, 2001. [30] f. j. galvani, r. e. silverton, “introduction to medical laboratory technology,” 6th ed, uk: buthterworth, and co publishers limited, 2004. figure 3: the overall frequency of the microbes isolated from iraqi paper denominations 3. conclusion the ability of implementing cloud computing in higher education krg kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 1 | june 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.1.10 the ability of implementing cloud computing in higher education krg abstract: cloud computing is a new technology. cc is an online service can store and retrieve information, without the requirement for physical access to the files on hard drives. the information is available on a system, server where it can be accessed by clients when it’s needed. lack of the ict infrastructure of universities of the kurdistan regional government (krg) can use this new technology, because of economical advantages, enhanced data managements, better maintenance, high performance, improve availability and accessibility therefore achieving an easy maintenance of organizational institutes. the aim of this research is to find the ability and possibility to implement the cloud computing in higher education of the krg. this research will help the universities to start establishing a cloud computing in their services. a survey has been conducted to evaluate the cc services that have been applied to krg universities have by using cloud computing services. the results showed that the most of krg universities are using saas. mhe-krg universities and institutions are confronting many challenges and concerns in term of security, user privacy, lack of integration with current systems, and data and documents ownership. keywords: cloud computing, challenges, higher education, e-learning as a service, google cloud computing 1. introduction the higher educations in each society have big responsibilities for developing the country. the cooperation between universities, government and market, specialists and students has demonstrated their commitment to the change of society and the whole world economy [1]. cloud computing set of hardware and software to human beings via internet. it offers stable, quick, sample, suitable and simultaneous accessibility of belongings at decreased cost via internet to the consumers. users can request resources according to their requirements, for instance data storage space, communication, processing and calculation cycles required for their applications [2]. that cc in higher education might provide on instructors also understudies make it an alluring choice in university situations. the capacity will collaboratively share, edit, process, what more store tremendous sums from claims information have clear provisions inside the examine furthermore instructive communities [7]. 2. literature review generally the cloud services consisted of these types:. •infrastructure as a service (iaas): products offered by methods for this mode incorporate the remote transport (through the internet) of a full pc framework (e.g., virtual pcs, servers, storage devices, etc.); •platform as a service (paas): should see this cloud computing layer one needs on keeping in mind the accepted computing model where each application mainly hardware, an operating system, a database, middleware, web servers, furthermore other programming •software as a service (saas): under this layer, applications are delivered through the medium of the world wide web as a service[24]. figure1. cloud computing service models[27] •e-learning as a service (elaas) is a stage that gives an extensive scope of learning and instructing administrations to staff and customers/relates remotely over the web (e-learning). the showing materials are sent to customers/partners by means of the web, an intranet inside the organization or an extranet [28]. latest "cloud" framework,for instance,"microsoft" and "google" are without offering organizations to understudies and staff at enlightening establishments which consolidate email, contact records, timetables, reportedly stockpiling, creating and sharing documents and the ability to make websites [25]. zanyar ali ahmed information technology department, technical college of informatics, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, iraq zanyar.ahmed@spu.edu.iq mazen ismaeel ghareb computer science department. college of science and technology, university of human development sulaimani,iraq mazen.ismaeel@uhd.edu.iq ako abubakar jaafar computer science departmen, college of science and technology, university of human development sulaimani,iraq ako.abubakr@uhd.edu.iq mailto:zanyar.ahmed@spu.edu.iq mailto:mazen.ismaeel@uhd.edu.iq mailto:ako.abubakr@uhd.edu.iq the cc in instruction use saas service to public and private universities in the krg, like "google app". at that point came google docs in 2006 which truly conveyed distributed computing to the cutting edge of open awareness. while 2009 and 2014 saw the greatest number of organizations entering this space [13]. 3. adoption of cloud computing in higher education cloud computing gives a great advantages of users everywhere throughout the fields. it enables clients to get into programming, foundation and stages at whatever time and any place everywhere throughout the world wide web. there are a many research papers that investigate the usage of cloud computing in education systems. the effect of distributed computing in instruction has picked up attention to numerous analysts and country [3]. according [4] recorded five software products utilizing software as a service model. by utilizing saas, huge vendors like microsoft, ibm, oracle and amazon offers different instructive programming and applications in less cost. the software that can be utilized by academician and students are microsoft 365, amazon, google bigquery, and rackspace email. while [5] listed out google apps and zoho office. moreover [6] recorded six applications in light of the huge organizations and its application, that offers saas service models. investigation of the regular use of cc in higher education system such as, zmanda, microsoft, ibm, google, hp and amanda and amazon is the organizations. the institutions of higher education's must adapt these new technologies of cc and keep offering their students updated software, good service and high technology in order keep the quality of education in high standard.. [8] discussed on these six key characteristics as advantage of using cloud computing, which are asset usage, multi occupancy, flexibility, on request prepared cost model, self proving of resources, and online access. [4] listed 7 points of advantages of utilizing saas in cc. these key features are the access of cc are unlimited, cheaper than other services,no need for installation, usability, no installation spending time, flexible on the quantity of cloud users, easy to learn and use among organization, at last, [11] included five principal points of interest of cc which are, wide network, asset pooling, on demand self request fast adaptability and measure services .in higher education cloud the main users are faculty / staff department, students, administrative staff, assessment staff and admission staff as appeared in figure 1. figure2. cloud computing in higher education systems [12] the cc technology had been developed in the education system in a few nations, for example, united kingdom (uk), usa ,australia , lithuania , pakistan ,kenya,kingdom of saudi arabia, india and china. uk had utilized technology of scantron sheets which allows the students to answer exams or test or quizzes as form of multiple choice questions ,which can be access to by both the lectures and students through the cc technology, which are accurate, quick and can be gotten to any place and at whatever time using the web [12]. uk additionally had it initially cloud school on systems some of high schools [13]. through the usage, the lab situated in the school it will teach the students via provided services of cc. in the usa some of online high school uses the cloud applications. these applications have effectively reduced the cost and effort of the administration of the school from pressing, ship, and inventory software installation. a significantly more propelled case of the utilization of distributed computing is the virtual science laboratory keep running by several universities in usa. the venture is a helpful exertion keep running by the two advanced education organizations to share their top of the line logical softwares with instructors of secondary school over the internet to bolster virtual science labs.the manger of their lab extends, contends that virtual laboratory are similarly as great, if not superior to anything real or physical laboratories, in planning students for current lab examine [15]. adding more some other educational institutes , for instance, is working with ibm to give cc applications, figuring force, and storage room to each government school in the usa [16]. towards the finish of 2009 ibm announced the arrival of its cloud academy which it portrays as, a online service for instructors, analysts and it workforce at advance instructive organizations to seek after distributing computing activities, create abilities and offer accepted procedures for lessening working expenses while enhancing quality and access to training [16]. the ministirs of educations have begun distributing educational contain on itunes , which is deliver several apple store, enabling instructors to share materials in october 2009.. while the ministry of educational substance is composed primarily for the expert improvement of educators, the cenet's commitments are chiefly classroom-situated. despite the fact that itunes u was initially intended for colleges and other tertiary organizations it now actively caters for secondary schools [19].the cc delivers computing and storage assets to its students. it acts as a service on request approach. distributed computing is another plan of action wrapped around new technology like virtualization, saas and broadband web. late interests offered new applications software and mobile adaptability with higher computing parameters in higher education [20]. in lithuania has been executing cloud technology in their education process in a few universities. focal piece of the cc infrastructure has been established.. the framework comprises of many parts like university email framework, managements of academics system, library data frameworks, e-learning frameworks (like moodle), and so forth. the latest administrations it branch gives microsoft live@edu cloud benefit. students and lectures can utilize university email benefit (running on microsoft exchange). this will support educators and students to learn and cooperate [21]. both instructors and students can likewise utilize different administrations accessible in live@edu, for example, 25gb free storage, information synchronization, texting and all microsoft office applications online in cc. in pakistan, lack of halls, lecture, laboratory, interactive media, skilled and expert instructors and technological based belonging are aggravating the dissemination of valuable training. selection of cc in education condition can solve these challenges by using cc in education system. by and by gmail, google sites, yahoo and hotmail are playing an imperative part in education system [22]. in kenya proposed the huge open online cloud classes for e-learning in several schools. the cloud offers the instructive web platform framework for educations. the proposed solution resolves various issues; for example availability of lecturer lectures, students' exam results ,exams, evaluation and administration of elearning [23]. in india a cloud based solution has been used, it utilized as a part of the education sector. their cloud empowers the institutions for all students' related records and portfolio details to be stored in central database [6]. cc has been giving upgraded adequacy, usefulness, efficiency, reliability and cost productive advantages in the elearning training arrangement of kingdom of saudi arabia [24]. in addition, in chinese google universities has started to set up academic cloud by giving scholarly association dares to huge scale information preparing sessions, for example, community oriented activity, which gets the cloud administrations from google and deals with these assets by giving laboratory facility [26]. 4. state of cloud computing in higher education-krg the higher education in krg is organized based on krg regulation and rules under the ministry of higher education and scientific research in krg (mhekrg). in the last decades the number of enrolled students with a number of public and private university dramatically increased in krg [9]. according to [10] currently there are 18 public and 24 private universities and institutes in the krg. however the mhe-krg is trying to reform the process of higher education in the krg. the reform strongly starts with establishing the quality assurance unit (qa). qa is responsible for monitoring and evaluating students’ learning process and teachers’ performance. in addition national university ranking (nur) has been introduced by mhe-krg to evaluate national universities in krg based on various criteria. mhe_krg is tending to boost the process of higher education to meet sustainable development requirements in krg [14]. 5. methodology krg universities and higher education institutions are willing to use up to date technologies in the education process and teaching methodologies. although using modern information and communication technologies (ict) are the cornerstone of modern education system, but mhe_krg suffers from lack of ict infrastructure in krg [17,18]. also, establishing ict infrastructure for universities needs extensive time and efforts. using the unstructured educational system and technologies is another problem in mhe-krg. in order to tackle these problems in the higher education institution and universities in the krg are trying to increase their awareness toward using cloud computing to get advantages in providing better educational environment. therefore, we conducted a survey in krg universities to determine the scale of using cloud computing in mhe-krg. in the survey 222 academic staffs and students from 14 universities participated in the survey. we have designed the questions regarding the needs to apply cc in higher education in the krg. find where it has been used . what are the drawback of applying cc .table 1 below shows the survey questions: no. questions 1 do you have any knowledge about cloud computing? 2 is your university use any cloud computing services? 3 which cloud solutions have been adopted in your university? 4 do satisfy with current cloud solution in your university? 5 is your university, train you about using cloud computing services? 6 in your opinion, what are the advantages of using cloud in your university? 7 what are the risks that may confront your university when they use the cloud? 8 what were or are the greatest barriers for adoption of cloud computing in your organization? table 1 survey main question 6. results the main questions of the survey have analyzed regarding the implementing cc in krg with standard rules and regulation, adding to that to show the drawbacks of immolating it and shows best way possible to make it easy to implement. as shown in figure 2, 52.3% of universities use cloud services and most of these clouds are available, public clouds from companies like google, microsoft, dropbox and etc. figure 3:using cloud computing rate in mhe-krg the advantages of using cloud such as availability, cost saving, and outsourcing because of poor home development are the main reasons to implement cloud computing. figure 3 shows that 57.2% of users use cloud computing because of availability. cost saving is the second highest reason to use cloud computing in krg universities. in addition, 28.8% of users believe that other advantages of using cloud in mhe-krg is outsource development and maintenance. figure 4: benefits of cc in mhe-krg various implementations of cloud services in mhekrg has been considered for different purposes. as the survey depicted the saas is the most used cloud services in mhe-krg university. however, some universities implement a google cloud platform to perform their activities, such as google site which part of (paas). according to the survey public cloud has been used for various purposes. the sectors that use cloud computing are instituted management, class management, research, teaching, human resource, communication, and document management. google cloud has the broad usage in mhe-krg sectors. figure 4 and figure 5 shows the implemented cloud service with their purposes as well as the using rate of different cloud services by academic staffs and students. figure 5: the implemented cloud in mhe-krg and their purposes figure 6: implementation rate of cloud computing 7. discussion despite the importance role of cloud computing in higher education, implementation of cloud computing in mhe_krg confronts many concerns and challenges. the survey depicted security and privacy has the highest concerns in a cloud computing. the security concern comes from sharing properties which lead them to be uncertain about pushing critical information. the information ownership and inability to control the data and document is another concern by organizations and users. in contrast to home developed system the current cloud solution in mhe-krg does not provide a well customization and personalization. although the implemented cloud solution in mhe-krg provides the useful infrastructure, tools, and platform, but the lack of integration with the home developed system is one of the drawbacks of it. this drawback leads to increased data redundancy and poor data management. in addition performance and service availability is another concern of users in mhe-krg university. since, they believe that there isn’t any guarantees from outside vendors to provide continuous availability and high performance. the concern rate of users in mhe-krg showed in figure 6. furthermore, one of the challenges that face universities is rising the education level of users since the survey shows that many academic staff or students use at least one cloud services daily while they don’t have any knowledge about cloud computing and how they have to deal with it. figure 7: cloud computing challenges and concerns in higher education krg 8. conclusion cloud computing is a new method for developing a significant option in today's education process. mhekrg university and institution have the chance to rapidly and economically get to different application platforms. the aim of this research was to investigate the usage of cloud computing in higher education in the krg. the paper gave an introduction of the service that have been used in higher education, such as infrastructure as a service iaa, platform as a service paas, and software as a service saas. the state of cloud computing and their service in higher education has been clarified. in addition, the state of cloud computing in several countries such as usa, uk, australia, china, kenya has been examined. furthermore a survey has been conducted to show cloud computing implementation status and applicability in mhe-krg. the results showed that the most of krg university is using saas. furthermore, the researchers showed that the main reasons to use cloud 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[accessed: 23-apr-2017]. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq relation of left ventricular diastolic dysfunction to serum ferritin in thalassemia major aso faeq salih adnan m. hamawandi pediatric department pediatric department college of medicine college of medicine university of sulaimani university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq aso.salih@univsul.edu.iq adnan.hasan@univsul.edu.iq volume 4 – special issue: 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) doi: 10.24017/science.2019 .ichms.24 received: 12 june 2019 accepted: 6 july 2019 abstract a prospective study was conducted on 60 thalassemia major patients (33 males and 27 females ) in whom the lv function and its parameters where assessed by echocardiography in relation to serum ferritin during the period from 2nd october 2007 to 2nd february 2008 ,in sulaimani paediatric teaching hospital . patient and method: the age ranges of patients were ranged between 3 – 18 years old. diastolic function of lv was assessed by (m-mode, d-mode and pulse dopplar study of mitral and pulmonary vein) done. among 60 patients seen, 25% shows normal lv diastolic function, the rest are 13% relaxation dysfunction, 27% shows psuedonormal diastolic dysfunction and 35% shows restrictive pattern of lv diastolic dysfunction. mean serum ferritin in normal and abnormal diastolic lv dysfunction was not so different. in addition nearly all lv parameters as ( lvedd , lvesd , la diameter , aortic root diameter , ivc , e ,a ,e/a ratio , a-e time , dt time , s,d,r waves ) where non significantly related to serum ferritin level , this means that p value is less than 0.05 . this means that the level of serum ferritin has no relation with the above parameters in which 75% of those parameters were already abnormal in comparison to the age of the child. another finding shows that 25% of normal diastolic function is seen in serum levels above 1500 ng/l , in addition 50% of diastolic dysfunction will associate serum ferritn of less than 500ng/l . p value is more than 0,05 this means that its non-significant. in conclusion there is a non-significant correlation between serum ferritin and lv diastolic function, so serum ferritin is not dependant indicator for myocardial iron deposition. keywords: ventricle, thalassemia , diastolic, systolic, sulaimani mailto:aso.salih@univsul.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 225 1. introduction beta-thalassemia major is an inherited hemoglobin disorder resulting in chronic hemolytic anemia an important complication of β-thalassemia major is iron deposition in the cardiac tissue resulting in cardiomyopathy and dysfunction[1].however , many studies reported that b thalassemia major lead to lv systolic function, while few studies, with conflicting results, that alteration lv diastolic function happen in this disease [2, 3]. many signs and symptoms of cardiac failure, previously attributed to impaired systolic performance, may be due to partly to altered diastolic properties of the ventricular chambers. moreover, as many as 30-40% of all patients with typical symptoms of heart failure, have a normal systolic function [4]. however, in these patients, diastolic dysfunction is implicated as a major contributor. transfusional iron may accumulate in liver and heart, causing damage to these organs. the resultant hemochromatosis prompts cardiac dysfunction, which remains the leading cause of death in βthalassemia, despite advances in treatment [5]. the usefulness of echo-doppler in thalassemia is based mainly in detecting established cardiac dysfunction [6]. for the evaluate iron condition the best parameter which is commonly used is serum ferritin, as a positive correlation exists between serum ferritin concentration and iron stores [7]. this is reliable at low and normal levels, but loses accuracy as the iron load raises and the predictive value of serum ferritin on iron load may be poor [8]. in spite of these controversial data, cardiac disease remains the most frequent cause of death in thalassaemic patients, usually occurring in the third decade of life [9]. echocardiography (echo) is the examination of choice for routine heart evaluation. the simultaneous imaging of cardiac structure and function in real time helps in the acquisition of reliable diagnostic results. it is safe, economical, very easy to perform, and its use is widespread [6].the aim of the study is to confirm that is there is correlation of left ventricular diastolic function to serum ferritin in thalassemia major 2. patients and method this study was conducted during a period of 4 months started from 2nd october 2007 to 2 nd february 2008, during which time 60 patients whom already diagnosed and registered as a case of thalassemia major in onco-haematological centre regardless they have cardiac problem or not taken and examined in paediatric cardiac unit in slemani paediatric teaching hospital. for each patient history and examination done, date of diagnosis, frequency of transfusion, date of splenectomy and type of splenectomy, chelating agent and its frequent using. as well as body weight and height and bsa (body surface area) calculated. then each patient was sending to do serum ferritin. an echocardiography done for each patient done by same operator and same machine (cypress siemens), with 2 available probes 3mh and 7mh frequency probes. for each patient study the following measures taken on m mode long axis parasternal view (lvedd, lvesd, ivss, ivsd, lad, and ad) also by the same mode ejection fraction taken. (fig.1). statistical analysis was done by the stat version 12. thechi-square was carried out to determine the relative importance of various variables. in some instances, anova table test done to compare between mean variables. p-value less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant, and value of less than 0.01 was considered to be highly significant. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/beta-thalassemia kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 226 figure 1: shows m mode parasternal view to obtain lv parameters and ef% on apical view pulse doppler study done for mitral valve and measures taken on (e, a wave's peak velocity, aortic closure time and dt time). figure 2: shows pulse dopplar study of mitral valve flow pattern and its calculation. on same apical view pulse doppler study on right upper pulmonary vein and following measures taken as a peak velocity (s, d, and r) waves. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 227 figure 3: shows pulse dopplar study of pulmonary vein flow and its calculation[10] then on basis of those measures the type of lv diastolic dysfunction decided as follows (fig.4): a. when dt time increased, a wave more prominent and d wave increased so it’s called impaired relaxation. b. when e normal and ea ratio also normal but s wave increased and there is r wave so it called psuedonormal relaxation defect c. when e wave peak and increased ea ratio, plus increase d wave and prominent r wave so it called restrictive diastolic dysfunction [11]. the values of each parameter corrected for age, weight and height. how to stage diastolic dysfunctions: stage i diastolic dysfunction: impaired relaxation in the earliest stages of diastolic dysfunction, the rate of ventricular relaxation is impaired. delayed lv relaxation results in a slower decline in left ventricular pressure. this in turn results in a diminished gradient between the left atrium and left ventricle in early diastole, in turn resulting in a diminished mitral e-wave velocity. this also results in a lengthening of the isovolumic relaxation time and a lengthening of the e-wave deceleration time. as a result of these events in early diastole, there is a compensatory increase in late filling during atrial systole, producing an augmented mitral a wave. these changes occur in the setting where ventricular compliance and left atrial and left ventricular end-diastolic pressures are at near normal levels [11,12]. in the pulmonary veins, delayed relaxation results in a decrement in flow during early diastole, resulting in an augmented systolic s wave and a diminished d wave. this results in an increased s-/d-wave velocity ratio. as atrial pressures are near normal at this stage of dysfunction, atrial systolic flow reversal remains absent or minimal. doppler tissue imaging of the lateral mitral annular velocities will demonstrate a decrease in the peak ea velocity, corresponding to decrease in early diastolic ventricular relaxation. the ea/aa velocity ratio will therefore be <1 in this setting [2,13]. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 228 stage ii: pseudonormal diastolic dysfunction as diastolic dysfunction advances, ventricular compliance progressively diminishes along with continued abnormality in ventricular relaxation. this results in a compensatory increase in left atrial pressure. the increase in left atrial pressure has several effects: an increase in the left atrium to left ventricular pressure gradient in early diastole produces an increase in the mitral e-wave velocity and a shortening of the isovolumic relaxation time by producing early mitral valve opening. progressive decreases in ventricular compliance result in shortening of the ewave deceleration time[11]. the pulmonary venous flow profile features a decrement in the magnitude of the s wave and an increase in the d wave, resulting in a diminished s-/d-wave velocity ratio. the pulmonary venous a-wave velocity and duration will increase as ventricular compliance worsens. in adult studies, pulmonary venous a-wave velocities of >35 cm/s or pulmonary venous a-wave durations that exceed the mitral a-wave duration by at least 20 ms have been reported to distinguish normal mitral inflow profiles from pseudonormal mitral inflow profiles [13]. in the pediatric population, the difference between pulmonary venous a-wave duration and mitral awave duration can identify children with elevated left ventricular filling pressures. however, these methods are adequately predictive only when the lv end-diastolic pressures are >18 mm hg, which may be more applicable in the setting of restrictive physiology[11,12,13,14]. the pattern of mitral annular velocities remains largely unchanged in the setting of pseudonormal dysfunction. abnormal relaxation will again result in a diminished ea velocity and an ea/aa velocity ratio of <1. thus, doppler tissue imaging is an important tool in distinguishing normal from pseudonormal mitral valve inflow profiles [15,16]. this is particularly true when obtaining technically adequate pulmonary venous a-wave profiles on transthoracic echocardiography proves difficult, or when pseudonormal dysfunction exists in the setting of modestly elevated left atrial pressure. an additional index of diastolic function that has been correlated to elevations in ventricular filling pressures is the ratio of transmitral e wave to lateral mitral annular velocity, or the e/ea ratio. this ratio has a close positive correlation with pulmonary capillary wedge pressures[14, 17]. stage iii diastolic dysfunction: restrictive physiology as diastolic dysfunction worsens, a restrictive pattern emerges. left atrial pressure and left ventricular stiffness are very high. the increase in left atrial pressure results in rapid inflow of blood into the left ventricular during early diastole, producing a large e wave. low left ventricular compliance prohibits further filling in later diastole, resulting in a small a wave and further shortening of the e wave deceleration. transmitral doppler findings therefore feature an increased e-/a-wave ratio, with a mitral e-/a-wave velocity ratio typically >2, and further shortening of the e-wave deceleration time, which is typically less than the 150 ms in adult studies [13]. of note, severe restrictive physiology results in a rapid rise in intraventricular pressures during diastolic filling, which will occasionally produce diastolic mitral regurgitation; these findings can be appreciated on color flow doppler imaging [11, 18]. in the pulmonary veins, there is further worsening of the trend seen in pseudonormal dysfunction, with further decreases in the fraction of systolic pulmonary venous flow and further increases in the diastolic fraction, resulting in further decreases in the s-/d-wave velocity ratio. the magnitude of the atrial systolic reversal frequently becomes quite pronounced. doppler tissue imaging of the lateral mitral annulus in restrictive physiology will reveal a decrease in ea velocities[11,19,16]. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 229 figure 4: shows the different types of diastolic dysfunction of lv and characteristics of each dysfunction. 3. results the study included 60 thalassemia major patients in whom 33 patient comprises 55% of total were male and 27 (45%) of patients were female. sex distribution according to different lv diastolic functions is shown in table 1 table 1: sex distribution in different kinds of diastolic function sex total lv diastolic dysfunction male female normal 8 7 15 impaired relaxation 6 2 8 pseudonormal 5 11 16 restrictive 14 7 21 33 27 60 non significant sex difference between groups of diastolic function p value is 0.1063 figure5: age distributed by years table 2: shows age distribution of study sample, there was statistically differences in the age with lv diastolic function which shows more in older age groups (p value < 0.05) table 2: chi-square tests of age with lv diastolic dysfunction value df asymp. sig. (2-sided) pearson chi-square 72,697 54 ,046 kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 230 table 3: shows the mean serum ferritin of different kinds of left ventricular diastolic function in which it shows no obvious difference between mean serum ferritin value in normal and abnormal diastolic lv function and in relation to total mean serum ferritin value . lv diastolic dysfunction mean n percent std. deviation lv diastolic dysfunction normal 918,67 15 25,0 563,81 normal impaired relaxation 955,25 8 13,3 482,15 impaired relaxation pseudonormal 838,44 16 26,7 546,42 pseudonormal restrictive 1236,38 21 35,0 507,00 restrictive total 1013,35 60 100,0 542,95 table 4: comparison of lv parameters in different ranges of serum ferritin and their each p value significance kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 231 table 5: relation of serum ferritin levels to normal and three kind of diastolic dysfunction serum ferritin normal diastole impair relaxation pseudonormal restrictive 0-500 6 1 4 2 13 500-1500 4 6 10 8 28 more than 1500 5 2 2 10 19 total 15 9 16 20 60 p-value 0.1348 0.1207 0.1122 chi square done including all the result is 0.746 , its non significant. also done for each kind of diastolic dysfunction in relation to normal function of left ventricle and results as follow: 1. in impair relaxation diastolic dysfunction in relation to normal function p value is 0.1348 2. in psuedonormal diastolic dysfunction p value is 0.1207 3. in restrictive diastolic dysfunction the p value is 0.1122 4. discussion in 1960s, before the introduction of intensified transfusions and iron chelation therapy, poorly transfused patients with thalassemia major deceased most commonly in the second decade of life because of heart failure [20]. in 2000, in contrast, at least 50% of patients in a united kingdom cohort were alive at 35 yr, while a 83% survival rate beyond 40 yr was very recently reported [13]. similarly, the incidence of heart failure in thalassemia major varies widely, following the highly variable age distribution and treatment in different cohorts. in 1964, a 63% incidence was observed at 16 yrs. of age [20, 21]. three decades later, in two different patient groups, congestive heart failure was observed in 33% and 37% of patients at a mean age of 20 and 23 yrs., respectively [22,23]. diastolic dysfunction is a common condition in heart disease, contributing to the signs and symptoms of heart failure. doppler echocardiography has been widely used for the non-invasive assessment of diastolic filling of the left ventricle [4]. analysis of the mitral inflow pattern has provided useful information with respect to the level of filling pressure and the prognosis of selective group of patients. however, mitral flow dependence on several factors, such as age and loading conditions, limits its usefulness[24] . data shows distribution of sex of cases that taken in which 55% were male and 45% were male among 60 patients, a study done in university of athens medical school, “laiko” hospital, in athens, in which it showed nearly the same percentage of lv dysfunction of both sexes [4]. there was no significant sex differences between different kinds of diastolic function were it mean that sex is not an affecting factor for lv diastolic dysfunction and also type of diastolic dysfunction, in which a study done in university of athens medical school, “laiko” hospital, in athens, which shows there is no significant difference in heart affection between both sex in thalassemia [4]. another study done in east carolina university, greenville, nc, usa, shows that there is non significant relationship between sex in normal and diastolic dysfunctional cases in thalassemia major [25]. our results shows that with increasing age the lv diastolic dysfunction will increase and it’s because of more frequent blood transfusion and iron deposition in the heart, and the relation between age and lv dysfunction is significant mean that age has significant influence on lv diastolic dysfunction. it’s because that with progress aging the process of accumulation of iron within the myocardium become more exaggerated because of more frequent blood transfusion. in comparison to a study done in the cardiology departments of athens general hospital, hippokration hospital, university of athens (greece) medical school, in which it shows the mean age that restrictive diastolic dysfunction (which is an last stage of diastolic kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 232 dysfunction) occur after 10 years ages [26]. among our patients 25% of patients shows echocardiographically normal lv function and 13% were shows isovolumetric relaxation defect, 27% shows psuedonormal diastolic dysfunction and 35% shows restrictive lv diastolic dysfunction. these results show that the restrictive pattern is more prevalent in iron overload cardiomyopathy, in a study done in italy, shows that 50% of diastolic dysfunction cases are restrictive in nature [2]. it’s because that restrictive diastolic dysfunction is the end result of the effect of iron deposition on myocardium. our results did not show so much change in normal versus different kinds of lv diastolic dysfunction, in which a study done in department of internal medicine, university of athens medical school, laiko hospital, athens, in which it shows that there is no significant relationship between mean serum ferritin and both lv systolic and diastolic dysfunction[27]. it means that serum ferritin is not an indicator for cardiac affection, so we may have low serum ferritin with restrictive last stage lv diastolic dysfunction and vice versa. and this is explained that in low serum explain we may have high range of deposition of iron within myocardium and deteriorated lv diastolic function it may be due to previous high level of serum ferritin or most probably due to the fact that there may difference in myocardial uptake of iron from one person to another [27]. in other finding there was different echocardiography parameters related to lv dimension and function, in which the significance of each parameter in different kinds of lv diastolic function is calculated. in which it shows that all parameters taken on lv in relation to serum ferritin are statistically non significant, in which it mean that no parameters is dependants on serum ferritin as a screening value for the state of heart function and abnormalities, in which in comparison to another study done in the cardiology departments of athens general hospital, hippokration hospital, university of athens, greece, which shows in table 4 that that there are no relation between high or low level of serum ferritin level group in values of ( a,e waves e/a ratio, s,d, and also other parameters , which mean all results are non significant [27, 28]. other results shows that there are statistically non significant relationships between serum ferritin values to different kinds of lv diastolic dysfunction. in which the iron deposited in the heart muscle has irrelevant relation to serum ferritin. 5. conclusion we conclude that sex is not affecting factor in dysfunctional lv diastole, but with advancing age lv diastolic dysfunction be more obvious. serum ferritin is not a dependable parameter or test to evaluate deposited iron in the myocardium and echocardiography will give us the real functional stat of the heart consequently it will reflect the iron deposit state of the myocardium. deterioration of diastolic function of left ventricle will happen in staged manner in which it starts by impaired relaxation defect, then progress to pseudo-normal lv diastolic dysfunction and the to 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[28] d. t. kremastinos, e. rentoukas, s. mavrogeni, z. s. kyriakides, c. politis, and p. toutouzas, "left ventricular filling pattern in beta-thalassaemia major--a doppler echocardiographic study," eur heart j, vol. 14, pp. 351-7, mar 1993. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 4 | issue 1 | june 2019 | doi: 10.24017/science.2019.1.7 received: 19 march 2019 | accepted: 26 june 2019 the impact of care upon alzheimer patient’s family caregiver in sulaimani city farida a. kadir midwifery department sulaimani technical institute sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq farida.tahir@spu.edu.iq 41 abstract: family care giving for relatives with alzheimer, often includes assisting them with one or more activities of daily living, as alzheimer is one of the progressive impairment disease in patient’s physical and cognitive ability . the aim of this study is to assess the effect of being a family caregiver of alzheimer patients in sulaimani city. a cross sectional quantitative study carried out among family members who care for older patients with alzheimer’s disease. the instrument was designed and constructed by the researcher through an intensive review of literature and also through a series of meeting survey with caregivers in order to measure the variables underlying the present study. the data were obtained by the researcher, who interviewed families, structured questionnaire forms filled out with a total of 100 families. these were taken using a random sample of those families have alzheimer’s problem in sulaimani city. the majority of participants were women with mean age 53.75 years old, married, housewives and with university education. more than half of the caregiver was suffered from moderate to severe burdens. rotated component matrix was used to get the level of effectiveness by a series of components according to important effects of the variables on alzheimer disease. the researcher found that financial burden has taken the first order, followed by psychological and then social burden. the finding of the study shows a significant relationship between some demographic characteristics and the three dimensions of the burden. it appears that financial factor is in the first rank by a total variance (85.151), then psychological factors by a total variance (81.532) then the social factor by total variance (65.851). financial factor was the strongest factor that impacted their family income. some psychosocial oriented services are recommended for the caregivers in order to decrease the stress and help them to adapt to the situation. some educational programs are also required to facilitate providing enhanced physical and psychological care. this study also recommends allocating salary for every patient to ease the financial burden on the caregivers. keywords: caregiver, alzheimer’s disease, critical condition, social, psychological, financial, burden. 1. introduction alzheimer disease (ad) is an age-related neurodegeneration disease, which affects about five million americans each year. it is a progressive impairment in the patient’s physical and cognitive ability. it also affects the development of behavioral disturbances. [1] all these may cause physical, emotional and financial burdens on the family caregiver [2]. recently here are 47million dementia patients all over the world. this number might pick-up to 75 million by 2030 and almost triple by 2050 [3]. dementia becomes a widespread condition with grow up of the elderly population [4].ad represents 60-70% of dementia cases, making it a major problem in neurology and public health. a world health organization (who) report study in march12, 2012 recommends that every country should have its own strategy that focus on early diagnosis of dementia and improving the knowledge of caregivers and health professionals. in a study conducted in the uk with about 206 caregivers, it was found that when the caregivers supplied with places and people from whom they can get support, caring of demented patients, especially dependent patients, can cause a significant impact on the caregiver [5]. physical and developmental burdens are more evident than emotional and social burdens [6]. almost all over the world, ad patient’s caregivers play a major role in dealing with their patients. however, stress may affect their ability to support and cause mental and physical problems [7]. therefore, the family may face obstacles, for instance, the patient’s behavioral problems. the caregiver’s social supports by the family members predict the caregiver’s distress. in 2010 dementia care giving costs, worldwide, were us $ 604 billion, 70% of which paid in europe and north america [8]. in these countries’ direct costs of social care and the informal care costs represented similar percentages, while the costs of medical care were much less. in countries with lower incomes the informal care represented the great majority, while direct social care costs were negligible [9] the behavior of caregiver toward the dementia patients ranges from amiable devotion to abusive and aggressive behavior, which may turn to neglecting and mistreating of the patient [10]. to minimize the burden on caregivers and considering how difficult is the adaptation of an ad patient to the environmental changes and the great role of caregivers, it is very important to educate them the proper ways of care giving and to teach them how to take the necessary measures regarding the protection of their own social life and psychological health [11]. economically, dementia can cost on the family caregiver, and this strategy can differ from country to another, due to the narrowing gap between the diagnosis and treatment. it is expected that these costs increase considerably in the few coming years in most developing countries [12]. the aim of this study is to assess the effect of being a family caregiver of alzheimer patients in sulaimani city. this aim will address the following objectives 42 1. assess the social burden of care upon family caregiver of alzheimer patients 2. assess the psychological burden of care upon family caregiver of alzheimer patients 3. assess the financial burden of care upon family caregiver of alzheimer patients 4. assess the relationship between some of the caregiver demographic data such as (age, gender, educational level and level of relationship) and the social, psychological and financial burden. 2. methods and materials this study is a quantitative descriptive study. the study participants were family members who care the older patients with alzheimer disease. the data were obtained by the researcher, who interviewed families in the clinic and home, structured questionnaire forms, which were filled out with 100 families. we choose a random sample from 100 families. these families have alzheimer problem in sulaimani city and its sufficient sample from statistical test kmo &bartlett’s test. the forms consisted of four dimensions such as (family demographic data, social, psychological and financial burden). the first part of the data was a caregiver demographic character, which includes (age, ≤30->60). the second dimension, consisted of 10 items about the social burden .the third dimension, consisted of 10 questions addressing the psychological status that affected the family, like (insomnia, helplessness, worries, and feeling stress and pain). the instrument was designed and constructed by the researcher through an intensive review of literature and also through a series of meeting survey with caregivers in order to measure the variables that underlying the present study. this paper attempts to study and analyze some factors that may be affecting on alzheimer disease by using a questionnaire technique to gather the sample data (the sample size equal 100 persons), then using suitable statistical methods to analyses these data. the questionnaire was classified into four classes: demographic, social, psychological and financial coordinators. each class has some variables 10,10,10 and 6 variables respectively in the following: socio demographic data variables age: classified into 5 categories less than 30, 31-40, 4150, 51-60 and more than 60. gender: classified into male and female. education level: classified into illiterate, literate, primary, secondary, undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate. residency: classified into urban and suburban. marital status: classified into single and married. works type: classified into employed and retired. health status: classified into healthy and unhealthy. monthly income: classified into: sufficient, barely sufficient and insufficient. house types: classified into: house and apartment. relationship: classified into: spouse, son and daughter. social data variables 1. do you find it is difficult to deal with some of your patient habit which may result in conflicts between you and the patient? 2. do your actions become more materialistic? 3. do you have family members who do not want to keep in contact with the patient? 4. do you have family members who refuse to believe that the condition was as far progressed as it was? 5. do you feel that you are lonely or isolated socially as a result of your responsibility toward your patient? 6. can you find different ways to cope with stress? 7. are you exhausted and suffer from poor physical health due to your care giving act? 8. have you restricted your personal time? 9. do you feel embarrassed because of your patient’s behavior? 10. do you avoid inviting friends and acquaintances home because of your relative's problems? psychology data variables 1. do you feel hopeless? 2. do you suffer from insomnia as a result of thinking? 3. do you suffer from aggressive behavior of your patient? 4. has your patient repetitive behavior which may cause frustration to you? 5. do you sometimes cry because of your distress? 6. do you sometime neglect your health due to high responsibility toward your patient? 7. how frequent you become upset and angry from your patient? 8. do you feel embarrassed by your relative's behavior? 9. do you know how you cope with your own feelings? 10. do you feel stressed between caring for your relative and trying to meet other responsibilities for your family or work? financial data variables 1. does your income cover your expenses of your care giving act? 2. does the case of your patient cost a lot of money? 3. do you think that you don't have enough money to take care of your patient? 4. does your income enable you to hire someone to take care of your patient? 5. have your income changed because of the disease of your patient? 6. do you borrow money to cover the treatment of your parent? in this study, the researcher describes variables in data by central tendency measurements (mean) and variation measurement (standard deviations) insides min, max, and sample size for each variable. principal component analysis (pca)as a statistical technique that uses an orthogonal transformation to convert a set of observations of possible correlated variables and for each factor separately. further, rotated component matrix was used to identify the level of effectiveness of the disease on the caregivers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/orthogonal_transformation 43 3. results 3.1 socio demographic data variables table1: frequencies, percentage for demographic variables demographic data frequency % age ≤30 6 6 30-40 14 14 40-50 14 14 50-60 27 27 more 60 39 39 gender male 3 3 female 97 97 educational level primary and secondary 2 2 undergraduate (institute) 26 26 undergraduate (bachelor’s degree) 69 69 postgraduate 3 3 marital status married 88 88 single 12 12 types of work employee 50 50 retire 50 50 chronic disease yes 41 41 no 59 59 monthly income sufficient 10 10 barely sufficient 85 85 insufficient 5 5 house type house 94 94 apartment 6 6 relationship spouse 19 19 son 3 3 daughter 78 78 table (1): distribution of the study sample, (100) caregivers in sulaimani city by their socio-demographic characteristics (age, gender, level of education, marital status, occupation monthly income, house type, health status and relationship). caregivers were mostly women, married, housewives and with university education. caregiver burden in over half of the cases was moderate to severe table 2: the relationship between socio demographic data and social, psychological and financial factors spearman's rho correlation social avg psycho _avg finance_ avg age correlation coefficient .271 .391 -.136 sig. (2-tailed) .006 .000 .179 gender correlation coefficient .177 -.078-.196 sig. (2-tailed) .078 .440 .050 education level correlation coefficient .423 -.032-.528 sig. (2-tailed) .000 .753 .000 marital status correlation coefficient -.405** -.307.350 ** sig. (2-tailed) .000 .002 .000 works type correlation coefficient .503 ** .118 -.461-** sig. (2-tailed) .000 .244 .000 health status correlation coefficient .420 ** .180* -.360 sig. (2-tailed) .000 .073 .000 monthly income correlation coefficient .019 -.194** .121 sig. (2-tailed) .849 .053 .232 relationship correlation coefficient .256 * -.213-.469-** sig. (2-tailed) .010 .034 .000 table 2 shows the relationship between demographic data (age, gender, etc.) with the dimensions social, psychological and financial), this study has used spearman’s rho as a non-parametric test to study the relationship between these variables, and the table below explains that: 3.2 analyses of the effects of alzheimer disease on social, psychology and financial factors) we analyzed our data (socials factor, psychological factor and financial factor) to assess the effects on alzheimer disease by using principal component analysis (pca) as a statistical technique that uses an orthogonal transformation to convert a set of observations of possibly correlated variables and for each factor partly(by three parts) as follow: a. social factor in social factors we had 10 variables (questions) and we wanted to study and analyze, which one has more significance in correlation with alzheimer disease. table 3: cumulative variance of social factor co mp. initial eigenvalues extraction sums of squared loadings total % of varianc e cumulat ive % total % of varianc e 1 4.174 41.739 41.739 4.174 41.739 2 1.746 17.463 59.202 1.746 17.463 3 1.229 12.287 71.489 1.229 12.287 4 1.004 10.043 81.532 1.004 10.043 5 .583 5.829 87.361 6 .530 5.297 92.658 7 .372 3.719 96.377 8 .281 2.808 99.186 9 .081 .814 100.000 10 1.000 e-013 1.001e013 100.000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/orthogonal_transformation 44 table 3.1: rotated component matrix social components component 1 2 3 do you find it is difficult to deal with some of your patient habit with may result in conflicts between you and the patient? .654 .230 .294 do your actions become more maternalistic? .172 .824 .066 do you have family members who do not want to keep in contact with the patient? .135 .092 .867 do you have family members who refuse to believe that the condition was as far progressed as it was? .057 .182 .885 do you feel that you are lonely or isolated socially as a result of your responsibility toward your patient? .737 .079 .053 can you find different ways to cope with stress? .023 .830 .185 are you exhausted and suffer from poor physical health due to your caregiving act? .111 .784 .186 have you restricted your personal time? .635 .044 .200 do you feel embarrassed because of your patient behavior? .846 .017 .080 do you avoid inviting friends and acquaintances home because of your relative's problems? .768 .048 .089 first factor, get variance equal to (30.643) from overall variance and it includes the following five variables (questions): ‘do you feel that you are lonely or isolated socially as a result of your responsibility toward your patient’ by loading value (0.737), ‘have you restricted your personal time’ by loading value (0.635), ‘do you feel embarrassed because of your patient behavior’ by loading value (0.846) and finally ‘do you avoid inviting friends and acquaintances home because of your relative's problems’ by loading (0.768) second factor: the second component gets variance equal to (21.182) from overall variance and it includes the following three variables (questions): ‘do your actions become more materialistic’ by loading(0.824), ‘can you find different ways to cope with stress’ by loading(0.830) and ‘are you exhausted and suffer from poor physical health due to your care’ giving act by loading value (0.784). third factor: the third component gets variance equal to (14.026) from overall variance and it includes the following two variables (questions):‘do you have family members who do not want to keep in contact with the patient’ by loading value (0.867) and ‘do you have family members who refuse to believe that the condition was as far progressed’ as it was by loading (0.885). b. psychological factors in psychological factor we have 10 variables and we want to study and analyze which one has more significance correlated with alzheimer disease. table 4 in below represent kaiser-meyer-olkin measure and bartlett's test of sphericity to study the sample sufficiency; it’s clear the sample information has a significant sufficiency because sig value less than 0.0 table 4: cumulative variance of psychological factors com initial eigen values extraction sums of squared loadings total % of variance cumulativ e % total % of variance 1 4.174 41.739 41.739 4.174 41.739 2 1.746 17.463 59.202 1.746 17.463 3 1.229 12.287 71.489 1.229 12.287 4 1.004 10.043 81.532 1.004 10.043 5 .583 5.829 87.361 6 .530 5.297 92.658 7 .372 3.719 96.377 8 .281 2.808 99.186 9 .081 .814 100.000 10 1.000e013 1.001e013 100.000 from the table (4) above show, 4 components only by extraction sums of squared loadings (cumulative variance) equal to (81.532). table 4.1: rotated component matrix of psychological factor psychological factor component 1 2 3 4 do you feel hopeless? .712 .639 .095 -.025 do you suffer from insomnia as a result of thinking? -.007 .051 .106 .892 do you suffer from aggressive behavior of your patient? .712 .639 .095 -.025 has your patient repetitive behavior which may cause frustration to you? .794 .502 .088 .029 do you sometime cry because of your distress? -.117 .878 .134 .085 do you sometime neglect your health due to high responsibility to your patient? .242 .596 .385 .477 how frequent you become upset and angry from your patient? -.677 .037 .325 .327 do you feel embarrassed by your relative's behavior? .048 .314 .762 -.189 do you know how to cope with your own feelings? -.161.100 .876 .035 do you feel stressed between caring for your relative and trying to meet other responsibilities for your family or work? .795 .026 .230 .349 from table 4.1 rotated component matrix has done, the result gets four components according to importance psychology significance variables on alzheimer disease. first factor: the first component gets variance equal to (41.739) from overall variance and it's including the following five variables (questions): ‘do you feel hopeless’ by loading value (0.712), ‘do you suffer from aggressive behavior of your patient’ by loading value (0.712), ‘has your patient repetitive behavior which may cause frustration to you’ by loading 45 value (0.794), ‘how frequent you become upset and angry from your patient’ by loading value (-0.677) and finally ‘do you feel stressed between caring for your relative and trying to meet other responsibilities for your family or work’ by loading (0.795). second factor: the second component gets variance equal to (17.463) from overall variance and it's including the following two variables (questions): do you sometime cry because of your distress’ by loading (-0.878), ‘can you find different ways to cope with stress’ by loading (0.830) and ‘do you sometimes neglect your health due to high responsibility to your patient by loading a value (0.596). third factor: the third component gets variance equal to (12.287) from overall variance and it's including the following two variables (questions): ‘do you feel embarrassed by your relative's behavior ‘by loading value (0.762) and ‘do you know how you cope with your own feelings’ by loading value (0.876). fourth facto: the fourth component gets variance equal to (10.043) from overall variance and it's included only one variable (question): ‘do you suffer from insomnia as a result of thinking’ by loading value (0.892). c. financial factor in financial factor we have only 6 variables (questions) and we want to study and analyze which one has more significant correlation with alzheimer disease. table 5: total variance of financial factors co mp initial eigen values extraction sums of squared loadings tot al % of variance cumulativ e % total % of variance 1 2.3 83 39.710 39.710 2.383 39.710 2 1.5 22 25.374 65.084 1.522 25.374 3 1.2 04 20.067 85.151 1.204 20.067 4 .56 9 9.478 94.630 5 .23 8 3.959 98.589 6 .08 5 1.411 100.000 from the table (5) above, this study found the 3 components only by extraction sums of squared loadings (cumulative variance) equal to (85.151). table 5.1: rotated component matrix financial factors component 1 2 3 does your income cover your expenses of your care giving act? .948 .184 .01 1 does the case of your patient cost a lot of money? .528 .357 .68 6 do you think that you don't have enough money to take care of your patient? .129 .159 .94 5 does your income enable you to hire someone to take care of your patient? .260 .766 .11 5 have your income changed because of the disease of your patient? .074 .885 .14 0 do you borrow money to cover the treatment of your patient? .919 .212 .01 9 from the table (5.1) rotated component matrix has done and the study found three components according to importance correlated of the financial variables with alzheimer disease. first factor: the first component gets variance equal to (39.710) from overall variance and it's including the following two variables (questions): ‘is your income covering your expenses of your care giving act’ by loading value (0.948) and do you borrow money to cover the treatment of your patient by loading a value (-0.919). second factor: the second component gets variance equal to (25.374) from overall variance and it's including the following two variables (questions): ‘does your income enable you to hire someone to take care of your patient’ by loading (-0.766) and ‘does your income had changed because of the disease of your patient’ by loading (0.885). third factor: the third component gets variance equal to (20.067) from overall variance and it's included only the following two variables (questions): does the case of your patient cost allot of money by loading value (0.686) and do you think that you don't have enough money to take care of your patient with loading (0.945) finally, if we want to compare between these three factors (social, psychology and finance) which one has more effect on alzheimer disease than other by caregivers answers and depend upon total variance in principal components analysis, it's appearing that financial factor is in the first order by a total variance equals (85.151), then psychological factor by a total variance equals to (81.532) and in the third order is social factor by a total variance equal to (65.851). 4. discussion caregiving includes performing one or more activities of living such as bathing, dressing, giving treatments and other daily needs of the person like, shopping, using transportation and paying bills. these activities may include providing emotional support to these persons [13]. in sulaimani most of the patients with alzheimer live with a family caregiver due to the lack of community resources and rehabilitation programs, which can afford the services on the scientific bases, while family caregivers could not be able to do it scientifically. thus, a great extent of the burden will be imposed on the caregivers. these results recommended a close supervision of the mental, psychological and social status of the caregivers. regarding the caregiver’s socio-demographic data, this study found that about half of the primary caregivers, are retired and care for their parents and this explain why the financial burden is higher than the other two components burden. this finding is consistent with [14], which stated that health care expenditures among persons with 46 dementia were substantially larger than those of other diseases. these places a large financial burden on families, that are least prepared for financial risk. women were more likely deal with their patients as the first caregiver in the family to cover their patient’s requirement. this finding is consistent with [15] which stated that the majority of alzheimer’s caregivers are wives and daughters. hence, female caregivers were spending more time rather than male [16]. this is also supported by the survey of alzheimer’s association women and alzheimer’s poll, which interviewed both men and women caregivers in 2014 and found that 67 percent of those who provide care giving for 21 to more than 60 hours per week were women[17]. as a consequence, women caregivers may be impacted more than men. there are evidences suggesting that these differences arise because the caregiver burden is proportional to the number of hours of care giving and cognitive function .familial and social support together with care giving experience could alleviate care giving burden and improve the relation between the caregiver and the patient .this may be achieved through focusing on patient factors and promoting care giving act [18]. significant impacts on the health of the caregiver and reduced quality of life are strongly associated with the burden on the caregiver [19]. the current study indicated that 69% of caregivers were with a university degree. these are inconsistent with the result of the study [20] which stated that approximately 40% of the caregivers were educated and have a bachelor degree. in terms of relationship, the majority of the caregivers (78%) were patient’s daughters followed by 15% patients’ spouses and 3% their sons. this finding is inconsistent with the [21], which reported that over one third of dementia caregivers are daughters. through using rotated component matrix, each study domain was classified into many components depending on the level of effectiveness of the disease on the caregiver’s life. more dementia caregivers were classified as having a high level of burden than caregivers of people without dementia (46 percent versus 38 percent) [22], in regards to the social impact of alzheimer disease, feeling of loneliness and isolation have taken the first component factors, followed by their suffering from restricted personal time. their communications were also affected; as they said they could not be able to invite a friends or relatives. in terms of the second component in social burden, the participant of the study stated that they attempted to find ways to stress out. care giving burden is associated with reduced quality of life and limited relationship and also has a direct impact on friendship [23]therefore, cooperation in the family and trying to help each other has been reported by the caregivers as a positive feeling that reduced the level of stress [24]. according to the importance of psychological variables on alzheimer disease, the highest impact of this factor on the caregivers is their feeling: such as hopelessness, practicing aggressive behavior, upset, and passiveness in meeting other responsibilities for their family. the second component factor is to stress out by crying. they also suffer from being neglected and they are not able to deal with their health status. the third component factor is almost less effective on their quality of life as they are embarrassed because of their patient’s behavior .they suffer from insomnia as a result of thinking ; a matter has the lowest effect. in a comparative study, which conducted among two groups of populations: one of them caregiver of the dementia and the other not, it was found that approximately 30-40% of the caregivers were suffered from depression compared with 5-17% of noncaregivers [25]. regarding the importance of correlation between the financial variables and alzheimer disease, the first component factors adjusted by the participants is the effect of treatment of the disease on their income, as it was reported as the strongest factor that impacted their financial status, followed by less likely factors that they don’t have money. most of the caregivers in this study were in the barely sufficient level of economy. the severity of the alzheimer's disease might play a vital role in impacting the family financially [26)].the expenditure of dementia care are costing more than the other disease the study stated that many of the expenses were ‘uninsured’, which may cause a larger financial burden on the family [27]. 5. conclusions this study confirmed that financial factor was the strongest factor that impacted their family income. therefore, it's appearing that 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[13] r. bateman, c. xiong, tl.benzinger, am. fagan, a.goate, nc.fox, et al. “clinical and biomarker changes in dominantly inherited alzheimer‟s disease”. the new england journal of medicine., 367(9), pp795-804. 2012 [14] k. amy, r.gorges.“the burden of health care costs for patients with dementia in the last 5 years of life”, annals of internal medicine journal. 163(10),. pp 729–736. 2015. [15] e.m.friedman, r.a.hih,k.m.langa. “prevalencand predictors of informal caregiving for dementia”. health aff; 34(10):1637-41.16. 2015 [16] b. akpınar, o. küçükgüçlü, g. yener. “effects of gender on burden among caregivers of alzheimer's patients”. journal of nursing scholarship.43(3). pp.248-54. 2011. [17] alzheimer‟s association “alzheimer‟s association report 2019 alzheimer‟s disease facts and figures” alzheimer‟s& dementia 15; pp 321-387. 2019. [18] l. fernandes and c. paúl “aging & mental health” front aging neuroscince. 9; pp 1-3. 2017. [19] r. schulz, sh. belle, sj.czaja, ka. mcginnis a. stevens, s. zhang “long-term care placement of dementia patients and caregiver health and well-being”. journal american medical association., 292(8). pp 961-967. 2004. [20] national alliance for caregiving in partnership with the alzheimer‟s association dementia.the american journal of geriatric psychiatry. 23(4,), pp 391-402. 2015. [21] em. friedman, ra. shih, km.langa, md.hurd. “prevalence and predictors of informal caregiving for dementia”. health affairs;34(10), pp1637-1641. 2015. [22] m. miyashita., a. yamaguchi, m. kayama, y. narita, n. kawada, m. akiyama et al,. “validation of the burden index of caregivers (bic), a multidimensional short care burden scale from japan” health qual life outcomes. 4:(52.). pp 1-9. 2006. [23] g. fadden ,p.bebbington,l. kuipers “the burden of care: the impact of functional psychiatric illness on the patient‟s family. british journal of psychiatry.;150:. pp285--292. 2018. [24] j. lloyd, t patterson, j. muers “the positive aspects of caregiving in dementia: a critical review of the qualitative literature”. dementia. 15(6). pp1534-61. 2016. [25] s.atteih, l. mellon, p. hall, l brewer, f. horgan d. williams et al. “implications of stroke for caregiver outcomes: findings from the aspire-s study”. international journal of stroke. 10. pp 918 923. 2015. [26] r.preidt, “the high cost of alzheimer’s”, health day reporter about sharp increase in alzheimer’s disease cases. deaths and costs are stressing the us health care system and caregivers. 2018. [27] s. amy. r. gorges, s. jonathan. “the burden of health care costs for patients with dementia in the last 5 years of life” annals of internal medicine;163 (10). pp 729-736. 2015. 1. introduction 2. methods and materials 3.1 socio demographic data variables 3.2 analyses of the effects of alzheimer disease on social, psychology and financial factors) 4. discussion the current study indicated that 69% of caregivers were with a university degree. these are inconsistent with the result of the study [20] which stated that approximately 40% of the caregivers were educated and have a bachelor degree. in terms of rel... through using rotated component matrix, each study domain was classified into many components depending on the level of effectiveness of the disease on the caregiver’s life. more dementia caregivers were classified as having a high level of burden th... according to the importance of psychological variables on alzheimer disease, the highest impact of this factor on the caregivers is their feeling: such as hopelessness, practicing aggressive behavior, upset, and passiveness in meeting other responsibi... 5. conclusions references kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 26 the impact of non-constant inertia and nonlinear damping on the torsional vibration characteristics of internal combustion engine including external forces hameed d. lafta mechanical engineering department technical college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq hameed.lafta@spu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 7 issue 2 december 2022 doi: 10.24017/science.2022.2.3 article history: received: 27/08/2022 accepted: 07/10/2022 a nonlinear torsional vibration is an essential problem arises in internal combustion engine due to cyclic variation in inertia and gas pressure forces. a linear or lumped model of engine effective inertia reveals obvious simulation errors. an accurate and sophisticated nonlinear dynamic detailed model overcomes the obvious simulation errors of the linearized models. the present work studies the effect of the non-conservative forces and nonlinear damping on the torsional vibration of single-cylinder internal combustion engines. comprehensive dynamic modeling based on a developed expression for the instantaneous kinetic energy of the reciprocating parts and a general model of the overall kinetic energy of the system in terms of the inertia parameters were derived. the nonlinear dynamic equations are derived using the lagrange’s equation considering the nonlinear parameters of the variable inertia of reciprocating parts and the nonlinear internal damping factors of the crank assembly. the damped-forced response of a slider-crank assembly of the engine considering the non constant inertia is investigated using the numerical integration technique. the results of the nonlinear torsional vibration analysis show that the cyclic variation in engine effective inertia and natural frequency arise due inertia effect activate the phenomenon of secondary rolling excitation torque. as well as, the amplitude of the external excitation torque is strengthened by the secondary excitation inertia torque and introduces multi resonance amplitudes phenomenon and widening the critical range of engine speed which results in producing of dangerous vibrational stress amplitudes. also, the damped forced results indicate that the presents of damping lead keywords: internal combustion engines, nonlinear torsional vibration, variable inertia, nonlinear damping, excitation torques. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 27 to a vital reduction in the amplitude of torsional displacement and excitation torques. the present work attempts to enhance the knowledge of the nonlinear linear torsional vibration analysis for the reciprocating engine crankshaft assembly. 1. introduction nonlinear characteristics of torsional vibration in internal combustion engines (ice)are important phenomena that occurs due to excitation forces, cyclic variations resulting from the pressure of the ignited gases, and changes in inertia loads produced by engine reciprocating parts through the conversion of rotary motion into the linear one [1]. by assuming that the dynamical parameters are to be constant, represent the main source of the errors in theoretical dynamic modeling of the crankshaft assembly and more sophisticated models are often required [2].due to the torsional vibrations in ice there is a danger for this engine in that the cyclic variation in the speed of the reciprocating parts and their associated inertia give a rise for appearing of a range of resonance frequencies in the normal range of operating rotational speed of the engine which produces amplitudes of torsional vibrations of crankshaft may exceed acceptable values [3]. also, material nonlinearity, nonlinear friction, and nonlinear viscous friction result in nonlinear stiffness and damping [4].normally, linearization of nonlinear dynamic parameters in practical modeling can definitely leads to induce an inaccurate modeling; thus, finding of non-linear dynamical parameters with accurate expressions is vital and important in developing more adequate equations describing the nonlinear torsional vibration of the internal combustion engines [5, 6]. the literatures in the subsequent sections summarize the effect of variable inertiareciprocating masses, the nonlinear damping, and the gas force variation on the nonlinear torsional vibration analysis of ice. for instance, ying et al. [7] developed variable inertia model to study the nonlinear dynamic characteristics of a crankshaft assembly in an internal combustion engine. their study is carried on equivalence method of the instantaneous kinetic energy. the dynamic equations are derived by using the lagrange rule taking into account the nonlinear parameters. the eigenvector method is used to determine the system natural frequencies and mode shapes, and the forced vibration response is investigated by using the numerical integration technique. based on the system matrix method, the simulation results are compared with the detailed and lumped mass models. the results explain that the secondary excitation torque generated by the variable inertia excites the 2 nd order rolling vibration. also the additional damping torque due to the variation in inertia represents the main nonlinear factor, and the increase in the torsional displacement of the system caused by the high-order secondary excitation torque. n. k. joshi and v. k. pravin [8] analyzed the effect of constant and non constant inertia on the torsional vibration of the engine of marine. their analysis involves modal, order, harmonic, and stress analyses correspondent to the engine critical speeds. they concluded that when the variable inertia factor is considered, the range of the critical speed was widened and the system may undergo severe vibration stress amplitudes. in analyzing the torsional vibrations of reciprocating machines, identification, modeling, and a better understanding of the damping characteristics are of particular importance and complexity, and, this complexity has led to the analysis of machines either without damping or simple damping with approximations of actual state [4, 9].y. wang and t. c. lim [4] developed a comprehensive expression for the damping of reciprocating engines experimentally. their study decomposed the internal damping in reciprocating engines into viscous friction, material, and non-friction (including impactive) types. the experimental results indicate that the non-friction damping contribution is very significant and most of them come from the revolute joints at both ends of the connecting rod. this study also shows that the measured damping levels in the reciprocating engine are sensitive to clearance in the joints of the connecting rod, and are insensitive to the types of lubricating oil and material used. m. s. pasricha [10] presented the equation of motion based on a lumped model of reciprocating https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s2215098621000379#b0065 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 28 masses with considering the variation in the inertia of the system with key non dimensional parameters to include both damping and external excitations to predict the complete response of an equivalent single-cylinder engine system. the results show a secondary resonance effect arising from the variable inertia characteristics of the system, and under certain circumstances, it can have a serious impact on torsional vibration. nenad vulić et al. [11] studied the engine excitation and damping on the torsional vibration of ship propulsion system including moments of inertia of effective masses, shaft stiffness, the actual damping of the shaft components and the propulsion engine excitation moments and forces. they systematically compared different models of damping in order to enable designers to correctly selected damping model. an important outcome of their analyses showed that the continuous operation of the engine drive-propulsion at the range of speed of rotating shaft of approximately 60 rpm should be evaded (barred-shape speed zone) to minimize the conceivable damage of the system caused by the excitation at resonance conditions.tao li et al. [12] studied the impact of frictional damping between the engine cylinder and the slider piston on the nonlinear torsional vibration of a reciprocating compressor considering the variation in the inertia of the slider-crank mechanism under undamped and damped conditions. the results indicate that when considering the friction between sliding-rotating parts, the shafting system second order natural frequency show a "maximum-minimum-maximum" cyclictrend; also, with the increase in the friction coefficient, the shafting system amplitude and the maximum vibration speed show an upward trend. while with increases in engine speeds, the shaft system vibration altered from a non-periodic to the suggested periodic situation, however, the amplitude of vibration tend to be decreased in magnitude dramatically. based on the literature above the nonlinear dynamic parameters have a great effect on the nonlinear torsional vibration characteristics of slider-crank assembly and to develop a satisfied functional relationship between the variable inertia and the crank shaft angle is an improved and effective method. thus, the present work aims to derive a dynamical relationship establishes the interaction between the secondary resonance effects and the harmonic excitations considering the variation in the inertia of the reciprocating parts under the effect of nonlinear damping and gas forces. a detailed model of the instantaneous kinetic energy of reciprocating parts is derived taking into account the variation in the inertia of the crank shaft assembly. a more general form of nonlinear torsional vibration equations set is derived in terms of inertia and damping parameters using the lagrange’s equation for free-damped and forced-damped models. the influence of nonconstant inertia and nonlinear damping on the torsional vibration characteristics of the crankshaft-slider mechanism are investigated by applying the numerical integration technique. the simulation results are analyzed and discussed for free-damped and forced-damped models over a range of crank angle and frequency ratios to establish the influence of the nonlinear dynamic parameters. 2. mathematical modelling 2.1. derivation of instantaneous inertia expression the kinematical representation of a single-cylinder internal combustion engine is shown in fig (1) below. figure 1: kinematical representation of slider-crank reciprocating engine. l 2 l 1 r co r c  co  m r g o kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 29 the developed expression of the connecting rod instantaneous kinetic energy is based on the definition of the instantaneous fiction radial distance that connect the center of mass of the connecting rod (g) to the center of rotation of the crankshaft (o), as shown in figure (1). consequently, from the kinematical relationship of slider-crank mechanism, the expression of the radial distance (rco) and its associated angular displacement (co) are given by: √ √ (1) (2) where l1: distance from (g) center of mass to the big end of the connecting rod. l2: distance from (g) center of mass to the small end of the connecting rod. mr: reciprocating mass. r: crank radius. : ratio of crank shaft radius to connecting rod length. : crank shaft angular displacement. the connecting rod instantaneous angular displacement and radial distance, given in equations above are periodic functions in terms of the angular displacement(of the crankshaft. thus in the subsequent analysis, their time derivations producedifficult relationscannotbe manipulated mathematically to acquire the system torsional vibration equations. to obtain differentiable mathematical forms for these expressions, fourier analysis can be applied [13]. the following system parameters are adopted in order to apply the fourier analysis, as given in table (1) below. table 1: crankshaft-reciprocating parts parameters [4]. parameters symbol value radius of crankshaft r 75 mm mass moment of inertia of crankshaft i 0.03843 kg.m 2 connecting rod length (from crank end) l1 111 mm connecting rod length l 327 mm connecting rod mass mco 6.81 kg connecting rod mass moment of inertia icog 0.032144 kg.m 2 reciprocating mass m 5.6 kg by using the fast fourier transform (fft) to rco, the following equations are obtained: ∑ ∫ √ , (3) ∫ ∫ by carrying out the numerical integration of the coefficients r0co, an, and bn, the expression of rco can be derived. in the present work, one of the main objectives is to introduce a more rigorous general form for the kinetic energy equation of the system, thus the expression of the radial distance can be expressed in a more general form as: kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 30 (4) in the same manner, by applying the fourier transformation the angular displacement of the connecting rod co may be given by: (5) where a, b, d, and f are constants that can be evaluated depending on the system parameters. as a result, in the subsequent analysis, all the necessary equations are derived in terms of these constants. thus, the substitution results in obtaining system equations in a more general form which subsequently used to analyze the nonlinear torsional vibration of the reciprocating machines by inserting the corresponding system parameters. consequently, by using the system parameters adopted in the present study (see table (1)), the value of constants a, b, d, and f are (0.25, 1.4907, 0.07508, and 2) respectively. 2.2. torsional vibration governing equations the system of a single cylinder internal combustion engine with flywheel is shown in figure (2). figure 2: slider-crank mechanism with flywheel of single cylinder ice [5]. m: reciprocating piston and cross-head shoe; fw: flywheel; co: connecting rod; c: crank shaft. by assuming the simple harmonic motion for the reciprocating mass, the system total kinetic energy of a single cylinder slider-crank mechanism may be given by: ̇ ̇ ̇ (6) the connecting rod instantaneous kinetic energy may be expressed inan explicit form by: ̇ (7) where icogrepresents the connecting rod mass moment of inertia of about the centroid and mcorepresents mass of the connecting rod. substituting for expressions of rco, and co given in equations (4) and (5), yields the following system kinetic energy in terms of the crankshaft angular displacement : ̇ ̇ ̇ ( )( ) ̇ (8) co m fw c kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 31 also, the system potential energy may be given by: (9) where kt represents the crankshaft torsional stiffness constant. the system torsional vibration equation of motion can be derived by applying the lagrange’s rule as a function of the corresponding coordinate such that: ( ̇ ) (10) by inserting equations (8) and (9), in equation (10) yields: [ ( ( ) (( ) ( ) )) ( ) ( ( ( ) ) ( ( ) ( ) ) ( ( ) ) ( ( )) ( ( )) ) ] ̈ [ ( ) ( ( ( ( ) ) ) ( ( ) ( )) (( ) ) ( ) ( ( )) ( ( )) ( ) ) ] ̇ (11) the equation above represents the general form of the nonlinear torsional vibration of a single cylinder engine tokening into account the variable inertiaeffect of the reciprocating masses and non-conservative forces. at current work, the non-conservative forces represented by the internal damping and gas forces. thus in the subsequent sections, their effects incorporated with the non-constant inertia effect are explored in detail. 2.3. nonlinear torsional vibration modelling:free vibration the effect of nonconstant inertia the reciprocating masses in single cylinder can be detected by using equation (11) with assuming the term qnoncon to be equal zero. a non-dimensional conversion can be achieved for equation (11) by introducing the following expressions: kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 32 ( ( ) ) (( ) ( ) ) (12) where: fr: frequency ratio. ieq: system equivalent mass moment of inertia. : torsional vibration displacement. crank shaft angular speed. n: natural frequency of the system. : dimensionless time. 1, 2, 3: inertia ratios of reciprocating masses, mass moment of inertia of connecting rod and mass of connecting rod respectively. by inserting equation (12) in equation (11) and disregarding the product terms, derivative terms, and higher order terms, so that equation (11) yields: ( ( ) ( ) ) ( ( ) ( ) ) ( ( ) ( ) ) ( ) ( ) (13) where the constants a1 to a8 are given by: , ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 33 ( ) equation (13) given above represents the general form of free nonlinear torsional vibration model including all the non-constant inertia terms arises due to the motion of reciprocating parts. 2.4. nonlinear torsional vibration modelling: damped-forced vibration the interaction between the variable inertia effect, nonlinear damping, and gas forces on nonlinear torsional vibration modeling can be investigated by inserting the mathematical models of nonlinear damping and gas forces in equation (11). a comprehensive model for the internal damping of a single cylinder ice including all the types of damping due to viscous friction, material hysteresis, and non-friction was presented by [4], and it is adopted in the current analysis. the model of nonlinear damping is given by: (14) where c to c5 are damping constants given by: ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) and , , for the external excitation torque, many researchers have shown that the excitation torque due to gas forces can be given as a function of crankshaft angular displacement ()[14-15]: ( √ ) (15) where: db: cylinder bore dimeter. p(): combustion gas pressure as a function of crank angle (). for simplicity of analysis, the gas pressure is assumed to be of averaged value (pavg) to compare its effects on excitation torque. thus, by substituting equations (14) and (15) in equation (11) with using expressions given in equation (12), and disregarding the product terms, derivative terms, and higher order terms, so that equation (11) yields: kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 34 ( ( ) ( ) ) ( ( ) ( ) ) ( ( ) ( √ ) ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (16) where the damping ratios  to 5 are given by: , , , also, the constant kg and kr is given by: equation (16) represents the forced–damped torsional vibration equation of motion of single cylinder ice taking into consideration the mutual effect of the excitation gas cylinder torque, the effect of internal nonlinear damping and variable inertia of reciprocating parts in a general comprehensive form in terms of the system inertia parameters, damping parameters, and gas force parameters. 3. simulation results the parametric study can be achieved to examine effects of different system parameters on the dynamic characteristics of the nonlinear torsional vibration of single cylinder internal combustion engine for the three cases of free vibration, damped-free vibration, and dampedforced vibration. 3.1. free-damped vibration results a numerical solution for the dynamic model presented by equation (13) has been developed by using matlab/simulink. the simulation results show the variations in the effective inertia of the engine sliding and connecting rod parts and the variation in the first mode natural frequency in figures (3) and (4) respectively. the cyclic fluctuations of the engine’s effective kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 35 mass moment of inertia in each crankshaftangular motion give rise to a periodical variation of frequencies and their corresponding amplitudes, which in turn results in widening the critical speeds range of the engine and induces the phenomenon of secondary excitation rolling torque. figure 3: variation in the effective inertia of the system versus crank angle at fr = 0.32. figure 4: variation in the natural frequency of the system versus crank angle at fr = 0.32. also, the results indicated that the consideration of the non-constant inertia in the dynamical analysis leads to improving modeling predictions accuracies for torsional vibration of both single cylinder and multi cylinder engines and can enhance the theory of nonlinear dynamics of reciprocating machines [10]. the variation in the response of the nonlinear torsional vibration displacements at different frequency ratios are shown in figures (5), (6), and (7) respectively. the results displayed that the cyclic variation in the natural frequency of the system produces an unsteady torsional amplitude response with obviously dominant beating oscillations, and the response changed to crank angle (deg.) n a tu r a l fr e q u e n c y ( h z ) crank angle (deg.) e ff e c ti v e i n e r ti a ( k g .m 2 ) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 36 sustained oscillations of different amplitude and harmonic frequency with increases in the engine speeds. also, a strong coupling between the torsional angular displacement response and the engine speed is revealed, which show that the critical range of the engine speed is increased and widened in their zones. figure 5: angular displacement amplitude versus ()at fr = 0.33. figure 6: angular displacement amplitude versus () at fr = 0.99. step iteration () a n g u la r d is p la c e m e n t (d e g .) a n g u la r d is p la c e m e n t ( d e g .) step iteration () kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 37 figure 7: angular displacement amplitude versus () at fr = 1.32. the variation in the secondary harmonic excitation torque is shown in figure (8), which is indicated that the non-constant inertia consideration leads to arise of the self-excitation secondary excitation torque which in turn results in enhancement of the effective excitation external torque load and produces a range of critical speeds. figure 8: secondary excitation torque versus crank angle at fr = 0.33. in the same sense the excitation inertia torque amplitude increases dramatically with increasing in the frequency ratio (speed of engine), as depicted in figure (9) and this attributed to the fact that the inertia torque proportional directly with squareof the speed of the engine. consequently, the additional increase in the inertia torque caused by the non-constant inertia terms enforces the influence of the inertial torque, which produces irregular variation of the angular torsional vibration displacement. crank angle (deg.) s e c o n d a r y e x c it a ti o n to r q u e ( n .m ) step iteration () a n g u la r d is p la c e m e n t (d e g .) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 38 figure 9: inertia excitation torque amplitude versusfrequency ratio (fr). the effect of frequency ratio (engine speed) on the free undamped torsional vibration amplitude over a range of harmonic motion (crank angles) is shown in figure (10). the figure depicted that increasesof the speed of the engine produces an increase in the amplitude of vibration and phenomena accompanying them especially with the absence of the damping effect; produces relatively large amplitude induces dangerous vibration stresses leads to a vital failure of the crank assembly. figure 10: maximum angular displacement amplitude versus crank angle at different frequency ratios. the results of free-damped vibration can be presented by inserting the damping parameters of the present model in equation (15) and equating the external excitation torque (gas torque) to zero. table (2) shows the damping parameters adopted in the present study to evaluate their effects on the nonlinear vibration analysis of the internal combustion engine considering the variable inertia of the reciprocating parts. crank angle (deg.) frequency ratio (fr) a n g u la r d is p la c e m e n t a m p li tu d e ( d e g .) frequency ratio e x c it a ti o n t o r q u e a m p li tu d e ( n .m ) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 39 table 2: crank, connecting rod, and slider damping parameters [4]. parameters symbol value( ) crankshaft total damping 0.5828 slider head damping 0.09 cross-head damping 0.0549 connecting rod upper joint damping 0.2864 connecting rod lower joint damping 0.3024 one of the critical concerns in the torsional vibration of ice is the inherent torsional resonances and corresponding amplitudes ranges of the crankshaft assembly, and the ability to quantify these natural modes more precisely requires a better understanding of the damping characteristics [4, 11]. the variation of the effective damping of the crankshaft assembly over a crankshaft angular displacement is presented in figure (11). it can be seen that the cyclic variation of the damping shows clearly the nonlinear inherent characteristics of the engine damping, which in turn leads to modified system frequencies and amplitudes variation over crank cycles, as shown in figure (12). figure 11: variation of the damping ratio versus crank angle. crank angle (deg.) d a m p in g r a ti o kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 40 figure 12: damped frequency of the system versus crank angle. alternatively, the damping inherently leads to a change in both the amplitude of frequencies and the harmonic response of the torsional vibration angular displacement and in general causes a decrease in the angular displacement amplitudes of the system, as shown in figures (13), (14), and (15), at different frequency ratios of 0.33, 0.99, and 1.32 respectively. also, the effect of introducing the nonlinear damping is clearly to be seen for the irregular response of the torsional vibration displacement occurred due to the widening and changing the range of the critical speed of the engine especially at frequencies near the resonance one (fr =0.33 and 1.32) which appear as a results after taking into account the effect of variation in the inertia of the reciprocating parts in the dynamical analysis. figure 13:damped angular displacement response versus () at fr = 0.33. a n g u la r d is p la c e m e n t (d e g .) iteration step () n a tu r a l fr e q u e n c y ( h z ) crank angle (deg.) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 41 figure 14:damped angular displacement response versus () at fr = 0.99. figure 15:damped angular displacement response versus () at fr = 1.32. from point of view of the effect of the nonlinear damping on the excitation torque, the damping torque components with the damping torque arise due to variation in the inertia of the system contributes to an effective reduction in the amplitude of the secondary excitation inertia torque, as shown in figure (16). consequently, this reduction in the torque amplitude leads to an acceptable reduction in the amplitude of the torsional vibrationdisplacement of the system, as shown in figure (17). iteration step () a n g u la r d is p la c e m e n t (d e g .) iteration step () a n g u la r d is p la c e m e n t (d e g .) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 42 figure 16:secondary harmonic excitation torque versus crankangle at fr = 0.49. figure 17:free angular displacement amplitude versus frequency ratio (fr) and secondary excitation torque. also with taking into account the variation in the effective inertia of the engine reciprocating masses, shows an increase in the range of the speed over which the system experiences resonance effects which in turn produces resonance amplitudes of relatively large magnitude. thus, at frequency ratios around the resonance frequency, the amplitude depicted peak values over arrange of frequency ratios. for example, at frequency ratios of 0.67 and 1.59, the amplitude increased around 155.75% and 167.4% compared with that resonance one for the undamped case. while for the damped one, these amplitudes show 141.8 % and 157.7 % increases in their magnitudes at the aforementioned frequencies. consequently, this shows a reduction of 13.95 % at low frequency ratio and 9.7 % at moderate frequency ratio in the torsional vibration amplitude. these results emphasis on the fact that the variation in the inertia of the crank assembly leads to critical change in the characteristics vibration of the internal combustion engine especially for resonance frequencies and amplitudes. thus, the validation of theoretical analysis supposed that the major parameter to be verified is the damping [4, 15]. frequency ratio (fr) s e c o n d a r y e x c it a ti o n to r q u e ( n .m ) a n g u la r d is p la c e m e n t a m p li tu d e ( d e g .) crank angle (deg.) e x c it a ti o n t o r q u e ( n .m ) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 43 3.2. forced-damped vibration results the forced vibration analysis can be carried out by imposing an expression for the external excitation torque gas, as given in equation (15). in the present study, for simulation results purposes, the gas torque is expressed in terms of the kr factor to explore its mutual effect with secondary inertia excitation torque on the analysis of the torsional vibration of non-constant inertia of a single-cylinder ice. in general, when the gas torque acts simultaneously with secondary excitation torque, their amplitudes are strengthened over a crank cycles, as shown in figure (18). figure 18:forced excitation torque versus crank angle at fr = 0.49 and kr = 0.1. the results also show that the damping effectively reduces the amplitude of the excitation torque compared with the undamped one. in the same sense, the torsional displacement response is greatly affected by the increase in the amplitude of the excitation torques (gas torque and inertia torque), and due to this, the torsional displacement amplitudes and harmonics are depicted large values compared with their values for the free vibration (no damping) case under the same secondary excitation torque, as shown in figure (19). e x c it a ti o n t o r q u e ( n .m ) crank angle (deg.) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 44 figure19:forced-damped angular displacement response versus () at fr = 0.49 and kr = 0.1. consequently, these variations in the response of the torsional displacement of the crank assembly lead to producing hazardous vibration stress, which in turn may cause the vital failure of the engine assembly. as a result, it is essential to provide the system with effective damping properties to enhance the operational reliability and durability of the internal combustion engine through the full range of engine speeds [1]. 4. conclusion 1) the present modeling based on the developed expression of the instantaneous kinetic energy of the reciprocating parts provided more enhancements for the knowledge of the effect of the secondary inertia phenomenon when the non-constant inertia terms included in comparison with equivalent or lumped mass models. 2)-including of non-constant inertia in dynamic modeling produces the inertia excitation torque, damping torque, and additional stiffness. 3)-the inertia excitation torque activates the secondary rolling vibration phenomenon, which results in widening the critical range of the engine speed and altering the resonance amplitudes of the crank assembly of the internal combustion engine. 4) introducing of nonlinear damping model provides more details for the response of the torsional vibration displacement amplitude and harmonic frequencies, and variation in natural frequency of the crank – reciprocating assembly. 5) the nonlinear damping introduces a reduction in the amplitude of the torsional vibration displacement of 3.95 % at low-frequency ratio(engine speed) and 9.7 % at moderate frequency ratio (engine speed). 6) the damped free vibration results show that the amplitude of the damped inertia excitation torque is less than that of the undamped inertia excitation torque. 7) the forced vibration results show that the external excitation torque amplitudes are strengthened by the inertia excitation torque and can produce hazardous vibration amplitudes and stress, and in the spite of this, the damping work well to decrease the amplitude of the torsional vibration displacement. a n g u la r d is p la c e m e n t ( d e g .) iteration step () kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 45 reference [1] w. homik, a. mazurkow, and p. woś, “application of a thermo-hydrodynamic model of a viscous.” multidisciplinary digital publishing institute (mdpi). [online]. available: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc8469732/ [accessed: feb. 14, 2022]. [2] a. l. guzzomi, d. c. hesterman, and b. j. stone, “variable inertia effects of an engine including piston friction and a crank or gudgeon pin offset.” journal of automobile engineering, vol. 222, no. 3, pp. 397-414, 2008. [3] j. pankiewicz and m. zawisza, “research of torsional vibration of the internal combustion engine's crankshaft with various dampers (tvd).” vibroengineering procedia. vol. 3, pp. 229-232 2014. [4] y. wang and t. lim, “effects of viscous friction and nonfriction damping mechanism inareciprocating engine.” journal of sound and vibration, vol. 257, no. 1, pp. 177-188, 2002. [5] b. hector, e. carlos, ugalde-loo, and a. muditha, “dynamic modelling and control of a reciprocating engine,” 9 the international conference on applied energy, pp.1282–1287, 2017. [6] a. enrico, c. francesco, e. luca, g. venanzio and c. roberto, “multibody simulation for the vibration analysis of a turbocharged diesel engine,” appl. sci. 8, 1192. 2018. [online]. available: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326554249. [accessed: nov. 29, 2021]. [7] n. k. joshi and v. k. pravin, “analysis of the impact of variable and non-variable inertia on torsional vibration characteristics of marine propulsion plant driven by diesel engine,” international journal of mechanical and production engineering research and development, vol. 4, issue 1, pp.113-124, feb 2014. [8] n. k. joshi and v. k. pravin, “analysis of the impact of variable and non-variable inertia on torsional vibration characteristics of marine propulsion plant driven by diesel engine,” international journal of mechanical and production engineering research and development, vol. 4, issue 1, pp.113-124, feb 2014. [9] f. jabbar, g. hassan, a. karim, akilabadi, k. hadi, “ the effect of damping coefficient on the torsional vibration of the damped multi-branch gears system,” journal of applied mathematics and computational mechanics, 16 (4), pp.5-16, 2017. [10] m. pasricha, “effect of damping on parametrically excited torsional vibrations of reciprocating engines including gas forces,” journal of ship research, vol. 50, no. 2, june, pp. 147-157, 2006. [11] v. nenad, đ. dobrota, and i. komar, “damping and excitation in the torsional vibrations calculation of ship propulsion systems,” international scientific and professional conference contemporary issues in economy and technology (ciet), pp. s-165-s-174, 2018. [12] t. li, z. huang, c. zhen, z. kehai, w. jie, “analysis of the influence of piston-cylinder friction on the torsional vibration characteristics of compressor crankshaft system, ” pre print on research square, march 2022. [online]. available: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1464003/latest.pdf (accessed: aug. 27, 2022). [13] s.s. rao, mechanical vibrations, 5th edition, pearson education, inc. 2011. [14] c. long, s. wenku, and c. zhiyong, “research on damping performance of dual mass flywheel based on vehicle transmission system modeling and multi-condition simulation,” ieee access. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8998315. [accessed: july 13, 2022]. [15] s. hasmet, t. mustafa, “optimization of torsional vibration damper of cranktrain system using a hybrid damping approach,” engineering science and technology, an international journal, 24, pp. 959–973, 2021. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326554249  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq effects of school closure on transmission of covid-19. a rapid systematic review zana faris muhammed nursing department technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq zana.muhammed@spu.edu.iq article info abstract special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) doi: 10.24017/covid.12 article history: received: 29 may 2020 accepted: 31 may 2020 globally school closure is one of the social distancing strategies used to mitigate transmission of pandemic novel corona virus (covid-19) among school populations. however, there are uncertainties around when, how and for how long schools need to be closed. there is limited evidence for the impact of school closure on the number of cases and spread of covid-19 to inform management of future outbreaks. several databases were searched using an adapted search strategy to obtain studies that met the inclusion and exclusion criteria. a large number of studies were found and they were quality appraised. eight good quality studies were identified and these were reviewed. the studies that contained the desired outcomes were three epidemiological studies, and five modelling studies using actual data that making assumptions about changes in transmission dynamics after school closure is applied. the results show that schools were closed for different timings related to the peak epidemics. school closure almost reduced the transmission of the covid-19. delay in closing schools and combinations with other control and management measures may affect the likelihood of drawing consistent conclusions about the effectiveness of school closure on covid-19. keywords: school closure, covid-19, transmission copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the pandemic novel coronavirus disease (covid-19) which is caused by (sars-cov-2), emerged from wuhan city, china in december 2019. later spread worldwide to about 213 countries and report 5,488,825 cases and 349,095 deaths as in 27 may 2020[1]. since then kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 107 national and international measures have been taken as response to the disease. during the pandemic although many countries had antiviral stockpiles to be used as treatment or chemoprophylaxis and several attempts to produce vaccines, non-pharmaceutical interventions were considered as significant control measures to mitigate the impact of the illness for most populations. closing schools is one of the social distancing strategies which several epidemiological and modelling studies have been used to estimate the impact of the action in decreasing the transmission of the pandemics mainly among school populations in primary, secondary and high schools, and then in communities outside these settings. school closure is either proactively (when schools close almost locally just or before the outbreak occurred) or they closed reactively (when schools closed after confirming one or more cases in the setting). generally the main rationale for applying school closure during the pandemic outbreaks is to delay the overall effects of the disease, permit the antivirals to be managed and proper vaccines to be developed. in addition, there are some other factors that may justify this intervention as a significant control measure. firstly, school-age children are considered to be more vulnerable to pandemics possibly because of their low immunity to the virus. secondly, there is frequent contact reported rated among this age group[2]. pandemic covid-19 as public health issue pandemic covid-19 is an airborne communicable disease which spreads very quickly and easily and transmits to other countries through traveler-infected cases. the disease outbreak is unpredictable because if the (sars-cov-2), mutates, then a new pandemic would emerge, not just in winter, but at any time and can kill large number of people (as occurred in the earlier pandemics). for this reason, preparedness measures for the outbreak are necessary. reviewing and synthesizing evidence about the subject may be helpful to policy makers and public health professionals so that they are prepared for future pandemics. in addition, in the early stages of the diseases, vaccines and antiviral drugs are probably not available. therefore, who recommends the use of non-pharmaceutical interventions to reduce the size of the outbreak and minimize the risk of the disease at least in the early stages. obviously, the difficulties in the control of the disease are at the beginning of an outbreak when mortality and morbidity rates are significantly high. this is because of the short incubation period, and a short interval between becoming infected and the transmission of the disease from symptomatic and asymptomatic infectious individuals[3]. the rationale for doing systematic review about school closure this project attempts to fill a gap in the knowledge, because still there are some uncertainties about using the school closure strategy to mitigate future pandemics. for this reason, more evidence may be required to justify school closure initiation and, how, when and for how long schools should remain closed. for many years school closures have been used as a social distancing measure to control the transmission of infectious viruses among children [4]. conducting experimental controlled studies almost impossible and decision makers require evidence to develop school closure strategies. it is clear that, when an outbreak of pandemic influenza occurs, public health and school officials face various management challenges and decisions regarding when and for how long schools need to be closed and the number of schools to be closed (individual or entire schools in the area) depending on the number cases in schools and in the community around them. additionally, combining school closure with other interventions, for example, the use of antivirals is another challenge [5]. hence, decision about the best choice depends on the potential effectiveness of the intervention strategy. for this purpose, first computerized modelling studies provide useful estimation to be used for future pandemics, especially if a model estimates several possible outcomes under different scenarios rather than focusing on a particular policy decisions [4]. second, outbreak reports and surveys about the pandemic kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 108 features are another type of study which collect and analyse epidemiological data. reviewing two types of studies (epidemiological and modelling) about school closure is significant work and may reduce any uncertainties for applying this containment measure during future pandemics. modelling studies are used to assess the benefits of several recommended interventions applied during the outbreak of infectious diseases. the timing, duration of school closure and its combinations with other containment measures have been examined through modelling studies (based on actual epidemiological data or based on computerised simulations only). transmission dynamics of the covid-19 in school settings are estimated through modelling studies. the transmissibility and spread of pandemic covid-19, just like other communicable diseases, is determined by the effective reproductive number (r); which is an average number of secondary cases produced initially by a single primary case in the actual population. the aim of this systematic review is to review all epidemiological and modelling studies related to the control of covid-19 through closing primary, secondary and high schools, in order to evaluate if this intervention has an impact on mitigating the outbreak in the world. make a decision to close schools requires the evaluation of the effectiveness of the potential benefits and estimation several undesired economic, social and educational consequences which can be occurred subsequently. 2. methods and materials effectiveness of school closure during pandemic covid-19 outbreak is assessed through this review. systematic review is a method of summarizing of all good quality available evidence that answers the research question or it is identifying, critically appraising and combining relevant studies to answer the predefined question [6]. systematic review is considered as a reliable type of study to be used for evidence based practice. epidemiological and modelling studies are included for this review. several data bases were scanned which are recommended to be used for the purpose of this review, from 2019 to may 2020 such as pubmed, who global research database on covid-19, medline, bmj, cochrane, and social care online. in order to identify relevant papers in this study, i devoted search in the different databases. development of a search strategy is time consuming process, which is attempted to use different search histories several times and refine the searches and changing the keywords to obtain more relevant and valid results. for this purpose broad spectrum search was conducted by using the name of the disease or the virus such as (covid-19, sars-cov-2, and pandemic covid). after that the search was tightened by using the intervention keywords. for example, school closure, institution closures. here some techniques was used like putting “star mark” at the end of some keywords to obtain as much as results on the topic, in addition to combine the name of the disease or the virus with the intervention keywords by using and, or. then some other keywords were added to the search such as epidemiological reports, mathematical modelling and some others in order the search be more specific relating to the type of studies. to make sure that i obtained all the studies available on this topic, i expanded the search to explore all control or containment measures which have been used for the pandemic covid-19 control, by including the search terms like control, mitigate, and spread control. the process was continued till sensed saturated and the search had become both sensitive and specific to the review, that is, broad enough to obtain as many relevant articles as possible on the topic, and narrow enough to exclude irrelevant articles; in order to minimize the selection bias and increase the precision of the study as well. language restriction is applied during the search strategy. i have searched for articles in english language only. 3. results and discussion for this review eight studies were included; three outbreak reports and five modeling studies. in all outbreak reports data collected through surveys which conducted for school populations after pandemic covid-19 outbreak or after schools were reopened. they were conducted in kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 109 different countries and cities, namely; wuhan [7], usa[8], south korea [9], china [10] and singapore [11]. one of the three epidemiological studies was conducted based on data from an outbreak at schools in italy which is analysis of outbreak data [12]. another study conducted on school closures in france [13].the third study is conducted in the uk [14] selection of studies a total of 2135 studies describe school closure, during pandemic covid-19 between december 2019 and may 2020, were retrieved. of these, 1975 records from pubmed, 40 from bmj, 19 from social care online, and 101 from who website. i removed 1022 records from 2135 records as they identified as duplicated, and remaining 1113 studies. after that i excluded 1050 studies on the basis of title and. in this stage 63 studies remained which the full text read fully. in this stage i excluded 55 studies as they are not appropriate to be included in this review. for example, i removed [15], because focused on pandemic influenza beside to the covid-19. as well as, i excluded [16]because it is about work place closure beside school closure. the same situation for other excluded studies. at this stage 8 studies remained which met the inclusion criteria. decision made to include all these studies in this review. however some of them not directly and specifically aimed to assess the effect of school closure on the transmission dynamic or incidence of cases, but still can answer the research question of this review. this review was designed to obtain information from outbreak reports and modelling studies, on the effect of school closure intervention for primary, secondary and high schools during outbreak of pandemic covid-19. however, several implications of school closure not studied here such as economic, legal and ethical aspects which are important to be considered in policy making. the aspects which considered are changes in transmission dynamics of the infectious disease, among school age children, when school closure was used as a containment measure. the identified epidemiological and modelling studies of this review provide evidence that school closures may reduce incidence and transmission dynamics of pandemic influenza covid-19, among school aged children. however, the effects may depend on timely implementing in relation to the epidemic peak and duration of the school closure. findings of this study might be useful to improve a current and future preparedness plan of controlling the disease. during the outbreak of covid-19 schools closed for different periods throughout different countries. many studies examined the impacts of extending school closure on control of the disease. the results of identified studies of this review reported the school closure for various durations and all of them stated that more or less school closure reduced the number of cases. a group of researchers from wuhan, china conducted a modelling study to assess the effect of nonpharmaceutical interventions on mitigation of outbreak of covid-19, they found that extended school closure will postponed the peak of the disease and decrease the cumulative infection. however, the outcome of these control measures vary according to the age groups [7][10]. furthermore, the finding showed that the measure effects differ according to infectiousness of the cases and timing of the school closure. similarly a study from france reported that age 6 years had more contacts per day if compared with age group 10-11 years by using a radio frequency identification devices (rfid) technology[13]. in addition [9] [11]concluded that school closure and other control measures mitigate the spread of covid19 especially if extended for another 2 weeks. but it is difficult to compare one study to other to find out an optimum period for closing schools. firstly, contact patterns vary among school children in schools and within community. secondly, each pandemic waves or outbreaks are caused by different virus subgroups. for this reason the preferred period of school closure probably cannot be applied for the future pandemics. furthermore, other consequences of school closure for longer periods should be considered such as economic, social, ethical and educational consequences. on the other hand studies from italy and china stated that school closure had no significant impact on the control of the disease because the novel coronavirus mostly affects the adults kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 110 and elder ages more than children. moreover, school closure alone has not vital impact on the mitigation of the disease without closing the other work places. [12] [10]. in addition, school closure may increase the disease among elder people as they take care of their siblings when the parents at work. similarly a modelling study from usa concluded that many health care staff obligated to stay home to look after their children during school closure. this leads to the shortage in health services in health settings[8]. strengths and weaknesses of the identified studies epidemiological studies the identified epidemiological studies almost reported the school closure as an effective intervention, in containment phase of controlling covid-19. most of the outbreak report outcome measures relied on laboratory tests to confirm the cases affected by the disease. however, these studies have several limitations. firstly, the school closures were not studied as a single intervention, but with combination to others. therefore, it is not clear if the change in transmission dynamics were because of the school closures or the other interventions. secondly, timing of the closures was mostly after epidemic peak of the disease. therefore, it is difficult to separate the effects of the intervention from the natural transmission dynamics of the disease. thirdly, comparison between several factors of school closures can be difficult, such as duration of the closures, reactive school closure and scheduled holidays and timing of the school closures. the reason for that is the heterogeneity in these factors in the identified studies, hence reaching a conclusion about standardized guideline for school closure to be applied during the outbreak is challenging. modelling studies computerized simulation models are considered as a trustworthy tool to assess the effectiveness of interventions when applied to an epidemic disease. the results of the modelling studies can be used in formulating policy of control the infectious disease, especially at the beginning of the outbreak. to assess the influence of the school closure, various modelling studies identified in this review which is estimated from modelling studies based on epidemiological data and based on mathematical calculations. despite the advantages of the models, their results are considered as suggestive rather than absolute prediction. furthermore, the future pandemics might have completely different characteristics and possibly fixed quantitative predictions which are not compatible to it. 4. conclusion this review has evaluated the impact of school closure on mitigating the spread of pandemic covid-19. five modelling and three epidemiological studies reviewed in which impact of school closure were estimated for the intervention. the result of this systematic review indicated that school closure can be effective in reducing the transmission dynamics of the disease, among school populations. hence it is estimated that the outbreak most probably slowed down by applying school closure. duration of the school closures vary from a study to other but it seems to be the closure for longer times more reduce the effects of the disease. however, the effectiveness somewhat is not clear, because school closure applied in combination with other control measures not as a single intervention. moreover, in most situations school closed after the peak epidemic, therefore, it is difficult to conclude that this control measure mitigated the outbreak because the epidemic curve normally fall down within a period of time. in addition, consequences of school closure for longer periods should be considered such as economic, social, ethical and educational consequences. despite these limitations these types of studies may be useful to provide basic knowledge for control of the future pandemics. obviously, pharmaceutical interventions may be not available appropriately at the beginning of pandemic outbreaks, because of not enough stockpiles (antiviral treatments) and delay in productions (vaccines). therefore school closure and several non-pharmaceutical interventions are necessary to control the disease especially in the kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 111 beginning of outbreaks. the main rational for school closure are high incidence of covid-19 among school age children, frequent contacts with each other, low immunity against the disease and high compliance for the intervention. reference [1] who, “coronavirus disease covid-2019,” situation report, 2020. https://www.who.int/docs/defaultsource/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200527-covid-19-sitrep-128.pdf?sfvrsn=11720c0a_2. [2] n. halder, j. k. kelso, and g. j. milne, “developing guidelines for school closure interventions to be used during a future influenza pandemic,” bmc infect. dis., vol. 10, 2010. [3] h. harapan et al., “coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19): a literature review,” j. infect. public health, vol. 13, no. 5, pp. 667–673, 2020. [4] m. a. potter et al., “school closure as an influenza mitigation strategy: how variations in legal authority and plan criteria can alter the impact,” bmc public health, vol. 12, no. 1, p. 1, 2012. [5] b. y. lee et al., “simulating school closure strategies to titigate an influenza epidemic,” j. public heal. manag. pract., vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 252–261, 2010. ide. nurse education in practice. 9. 10.1016/j.nepr.2008.09.002. . [7] k. prem et al., “the effect of control strategies to reduce social mixing on outcomes of the covid -19 epidemic in wuhan, china: a modelling study,” lancet public heal., vol. 5, no. 5, pp. e261–e270, 2020. [8] j. bayham and e. p. fenichel, “impact of school closures for covid-19 on the us health-care workforce and net mortality: a modelling study,” lancet public heal., vol. 5, no. 5, pp. e271–e278, 2020. [9] s. kim, y. j. kim, k. r. peck, and e. jung, “school opening delay effect on transmission dynamics of coronavirus disease 2019 in korea: based on mathematical modeling and simulation study,” j. korean med. sci., vol. 35, no. 13, pp. 1–9, 2020. [10] j. zhang et al., “changes in contact patterns shape the dynamics of the covid-19 outbreak in china,” science (80-. )., vol. 8001, p. eabb8001, 2020. [11] t. chang, j. wu, and l. chang, “since january 2020 elsevier has created a covid -19 resource centre with free information in english and mandarin on the novel coronavirus covidresearch that is available on the covid-19 resource centre including this sciencedirect clinical characteris,” j. formos. med. assoc., no. january, 2020. [12] m. susannaesposito and m. nicola principi, “school closure during the coronavirus disease 2019 (covid 19) pandemic an effective intervention at the global level?,” jamapediatrics, vol. 2020, pp. 2019–2020, 2020. [13] p. vanhems, “sars-cov2 infection and primary school closure,” eurosurveillance, vol. 25, no. 15, pp. 5–6, 2020, doi: 10.2807/1560-7917.es.2020.25.15.2000617. [14] e. mahase, “covid-19: schools set to close across uk except for children of health and social care workers,” bmj, vol. 368, no. march, p. m1140, 2020. [15] b. j. cowling et al., “impact assessment of non-pharmaceutical interventions against coronavirus disease 2019 and influenza in hong kong: an observational study,” lancet public heal., vol. 5, no. 5, pp. e279–e288, 2020. [16] n. m. ferguson et al., “impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (npis) to reduce covid-19 mortality and healthcare demand,” imperial.ac.uk, no. march, pp. 3–20, 2020. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq improving the performance of big data databases nzar abdulqadir ali dashne raouf arif computer science department sulaimani technical institute cihan university sulaimani sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq nzar@mail.com dashne.raouf@spu.edu.iq volume 4 – issue 2 december 2019 doi: 10.24017/science.2019 .2.20 received: 04 november 2019 accepted: 22 december 2019 abstract real-time monitoring systems utilize two types of database, they are: relational databases such as mysql and non-relational databases such as mongodb. a relational database management system (rdbms) stores data in a structured format using rows and columns. it is relational because the values of the tables are connected. a non-relational database is a database that does not adopt the relational structure given by traditional. in recent years, this class of databases has also been referred to as not only sql (nosql). this paper, discusses many comparisons that have been conducted on the execution time performance of types of database (sql and nosql). in sql (structured query language) databases different algorithms are used for inserting and updating data, such as indexing, bulk insert and multiple updating. however, in nosql different algorithms are used for inserting and updating operations such as default-indexing, batch insert, multiple updating and pipeline aggregation. as a result, firstly compared with related papers, this paper shows that the performance of both sql and nosql can improved. secondly, performance can be dramatically improved for inserting and updating operations in the nosql database compared to the sql database. to demonstrate the performance of the different algorithms for entering and updating data in sql and nosql, this paper focuses on a different number of data sets and different performance results. the sql part of the paper is conducted on 50,000 records to 3,000,000 records, while the nosql part of the paper is conducted on 50,000 to 16,000,000 documents (2gb) for nosql. in sql, three million records are inserted within 606.53 seconds, while in nosql this number of documents is inserted within 67.87 seconds. for updating data, in sql 300,000 records are updated within 271.17 seconds, while for nosql this number of documents is updated within just 46.02 seconds. keywords: big data, real-time, sql, and nosql mailto:dashne.raouf@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 207 1. introduction big data is a term used to explain sets of data that are of several forms or structures, achieve extremely high speeds and cannot be processed successfully by traditional database management systems [1] [2]. zhou et al [3], argued that by the end of 2015 the overall data volume is going to surpass 7.9 zettabytes(zb) reaching 35zb by 2020. big data has five features [4] [5] that are known as the “5vs”: volume, velocity, variety, veracity and value as shown in figure (1) [6]. figure 1: big data 5 v [6]. 1.volume: indicates large amounts of data used for various functions, for example, data for mobile devices. 2.velocity: indicates the speed or frequency at which data is created, updated, processed, and accessed. 3.variety: data collection through different device types such as videos, images, etc. 4.value: indicates the way in which massive data sets are used to draw useful knowledge. value is the most important feature of any large data tool as it allows useful information to be generated 5.veracity: relates to the high accuracy of knowledge or informatics and value. two types of databases are used to store big data: relational databases such as mysql and no n-relational databases such as mongodb are available. the problem in this paper is a big data management while storage have become a global challenge in recent years. in the past, relational databases were used to store and manage data; increasing the amount of data generated a new type of database as nosql. on the other hand, the sql database does not stop exactly for sensitive data such as banking services. for this reason, some researchers measured the test performance of each type of database and have compared response time measurements. the aim of this paper is to improve performance in the real-time monitoring system regarding inserting and updating big data using different types of algorithms in both sql and nosql databases. 1.1. relational model (sql) the traditional database is the most well-known type of database and by far the most commonly used. it was originally developed for the long-term storage of information [6]. the entire data load is contained in tables of rows and columns in a relational database. tables can be seen as unified relational data bodies. rows have unique data sets and are grouped by column [7]. a unique index is required for each row or column in a table; through matching data fields various tables are linked together. one of the most popular databases used for sql is mysql[8] [9]. 1.2. nonrelational databases (nosql) generally, the term “nosql” refers to database systems that do not comply with a strict relational data model. higher availability and scalability can be achieved using nosql databases, which are important criteria for big data processing. nosql databases do not need to be finalized at an early stage of database design with a fixed scheme of predefined data kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 208 structures and limitations [10] [11]. a non-relational database is a database that does not contain the rows and columns used in most conventional database systems. instead, nonrelational databases use a storage model that is optimized for the specific requirements of the type of data being stored. for example, data may be stored as simple key/value pairs, as json documents, or as a graph consisting of edges and vertices [12] [13]. there are four different categories of nosql that are classified by storage of information [14] [15]. 1. key-value: each item in the database is stored as a name (key) attribute along with a name (value) attribute. the most common for this type are riak and voldemort. 2. wide-column stores: store data together as columns instead of rows. cassandra and hbase are the most common. 3. document a document database is a kind of non-relational database designed to store and search for information in json-like files. document databases make it easier for developers to store and request information in a database that is used in their application software. mongodb is the top database of this type. 4. graph databases: used to store network data such as social connections such as neo4j. one of the top databases used for nosql is mongodb [16], mongodb is a nosql system and is a document-based database. the data is saved in bson form, which is a binary sequence encoding json documents. in mongodb, a collection is comparable to a table and a document is equal to a record in a relational record. mongodb currently provides official driver support for all popular programming languages like c, c++, c#, java, node, perl, php, python [18] [17]. mongodb uses some kinds of aggregation; for instance, the aggregation pipeline is a data aggregation system based on the concept of data processing pipelines. documents enter a multi-stage pipeline that transforms the documents into aggregated results [19] [20]. 2. literature works h. ansari 2018 [9]. this paper conducted a comparison between mysql and mongodb on two factors, performance and space allocation, with different data sizes. the results showed that mongodb was faster than mysql at for every process in almost every test case, but mysql allocated less storage when it held large volumes of data. for instance, when inserting 106 records in each database, the size of mongodb was 270.42 megabytes (mb) while the size of mysql was 175.28mb. d. merriman 2018 [24]. the paper was focused on pipeline aggregation. this framework can be designed to optimize aggregate operations that include; data access, data retrieval, data writes, indexing, aggregate multiple operations and/or commands. this aggregation operation can be defined as a pipeline that provides the results of the first process to be forwarded to the next process input. computations can also be performed at each stage of the process, where the calculation results of each stage aggregate until the final result is reached. e. andersson and z. berggren 2017 [8]. illustrated comparison between mysql and mongodb concerning different operations such as single and multi-insert. the paper explained that mongodb was faster in every operation; 106 records were inserted in mysql within 1020 seconds while the equivalent value for mongodb was 105 seconds concerning a single operation. for multi-operation, the same number of records were inserted in mysql within 50 seconds and were inserted in mongodb within 28 seconds. update query was another comparison conducted in their paper using different data sizes; for example, updating one element for 106 records took 2.5 seconds in mysql and about 0.5 seconds in mongodb. d. sink 2017 [21]. this paper compared sequence and random inserting and updating for different popular types of databases such as mysql, mongodb and rethink db. the results showed that mongodb was faster than each type of nosql for sequence or random insert but for an update operation, if random update was used then mysql was faster than mongodb and mongodb were faster than rethink db. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 209 v. abramova et al 2014 [22]. their paper compared between the distinguished popular types of nosql: cassandra, hbase, mongodb, orient db and redis. reading and updating on specific mechanisms and applications. the results of the comparison showed that cassandra and hbase were faster to update than mongodb but slower to read. in every operation, the orient db was the lowest performance and slower than mongodb. z. parker. et al 2013 [23]. this paper also conducted a comparison between sql and nosql and indicated that nosql was faster for inserts and updates in a simple query; nevertheless, sql had more speed when updating with complex querying or non-key attributes. 3. methods and materials the main focus of this paper is on testing performance on big data in real-time monitoring system. this reminder of this paper develops in two main sections. the first section to sql attempts to increase performance by using multi-insert (bulk insert) instead of single insert. when a bulk insert is inserted, multiple records in one operation are separated by commas. it also tries to accelerate performance by finding and updating data using a multi-update operation and indexing. the second section is related to nosql, the aim is to increase performance using two stages: the first stage inserts data by using batch insert to insert multi documents at a time; by default, mongodb batch inserts 101 documents. the second stage finds and updates documents using multi-update operation and pipeline aggregation. 3.1. the proposed database architecture in this section, a design is formulated consisting all the steps needed to create the best database system for big data in a monitoring system, shown in figure (2). figure 2: system design of monitoring system in sql and nosql. 3.2. structured query language (sql) structured query language is the typical way in which information is stored in a table. this section discusses how to enhance the performance of the database to create, add and update information. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 210 3.2.1. database schema to implement our algorithms for sql we created a database for a real-time temperature monitoring system, as shown in figure (3). the first table is called initial-table and the second table is called join-table. figure 3: database table in this system. to create and update the dataset in sql, algorithms have to be created; from those algorithms the following definition are made: “nr as number of records”, “lon_r1 as minimum-value longitude”, “lon_r2 as maximum-value longitude”, “lat_r1 as minimum-value latitude” , “lat_r2 as maximum-value latitude”, “temp_r1 as minimum-value temperature”, “temp_r2 maximum-value temperature”, “hum_1 as minimum-value humidity”, and “hum_2 as maximumvalue humidity”. 3.2.2 inserting data the “insert into” statement adds a new record to a table using the simulation method. data simulation means generating a random function between the range values. the value range for all fields is by default between 0 and 1, but the random function can return an unexpected value within the specified range. the value of each field is entered in to the table through bulk insert or multi-run because a single data insertion process takes more time and reduces performance. figure (4) illustrates the algorithm for entering data into sql using the simulation method. figure 4: algorithm to multi-insert data in sql using the simulation algorithm. 3.2.3 sql updating data this section shows how performance was tested for changing the temperature to equal or greater than 40 degrees in sql using an updating query. figure (5) illustrates the algorithm for randomly updating data into sql. the database for sql includes initial-table and joinkurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 211 table; the initial-table aims to store all the data, but the second table was created to store only updating data and to insert data from the initial-table to second table randomly. for example, if we want to update 103 records from 106 in the first table, we select 103records in the initialtable (first table) in random order, inserting them in to the second table (join-table) and creating a join between them depending on their id field. the goal of the second table is increase performance. in this case, less data scanned for updating. figure 5: algorithm to update data in sql using the random function. 3.3. not only sql language (nosql) nosql is a new generation of database management systems that differ primarily from relational database management systems. these databases do not require column tables, avoid joins and usually support horizontal scaling. mongodb is used as a higher nosql database in this paper. this section explains how to improve the performance of the database 3.3.1. database collections a collection in nosql is like a table in sql; this section describes two collections. the name of the first collection is initial-collection and the second is called join-collection, as shown in figure (6). figure 6: database collection in this paper. to create and update the dataset in nosql, algorithms have to be created; from those algorithms the following definition are made: “nr as number of documents”, “lon_r1 as minimum-value longitude”, “lon_r2 as maximum-value longitude”, “lat_r1 as minimumvalue latitude” , “lat_r2 as maximum-value latitude”, “temp_r1 as minimum-value kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 212 temperature”, “temp_r2 maximum-value temperature”, “hum_1 as minimum-value humidity”, and “hum_2 as maximumvalue humidity”. 3.3.2 inserting data in nosql mongodb stores documents in collections. inserting data in to mongodb takes place via single insert or multi-insert (batch insert) operations. in this paper, batch insert is used to restrict data insertion. batch input is used to insert multiple documents in one iteration, by default 101 documents. but as shown in this section, this number can be increased to 10,000 documents instead of 101 documents as shown in figure (7), in this case we can increase the performance of the inserting operation. figure 7: algorithm code for multi-insert operation in nosql. 3.3.3. updating data in nosql regarding testing the performance of changing the temperature in nosql using an updating query, there is a different way to update documents in a collection. when updating and finding documents, mongodb provides some aggregation operations. in this paper we use pipeline aggregation with a join between collections. documents are entered as inputs to a multi-stage pipeline that converts documents into a combined result; this section, shows that a pipeline can also be successfully created using a join between two collections without embedding and duplicating the data; the stages of this operation are shown in figure (8). kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 213 figure 8: pipeline aggregation stages in nosql with a join between two collections. the database for nosql includes initial-collection and joincollection; the initialcollection aims to store all the data, but the second collection was created to store only updating data and to insert data from the initial-collection to the second collection randomly. for example, if we want to update 103 documents from 106 in the first collection, we select 103 documents in the initialcollection (first collection) in random order, inserting them in to the second collection (joincollection) and creating a join between them depending on their key field. one of the disadvantages of nosql is that it is not possible to join the data of two collections; instead, it is only possible to data. however, in this paper, we solved this problem by creating a join between data for their collections (initialcollection and join-collection). the goal of the second table is to increase performance; in this case less data is scanned for updating. 4. results and discussion the results of the implementation algorithms described in section 3 will be presented and discussed in this section. this section will test the performance and present a comparison of different sql and nosql operations. identifying the test environment includes the hardware and software configuration that will be used during the test: • cpu: intel core i5-4300u cpu @1.90ghz 2.10 ghz on a personal laptop. • ram: 8gb • hdd: 256gb ssd • os: windows 10 professional 64bit • software: two difference software programs are used, my-sql and mongodb. • test performance: performance is tested by calculating the response time within the process (start query and end query). kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 214 4.1. sql performance the results of the performance test are presented in this section with regard to inserting and modifying data in sql. 4.1.1. inserting performance to test the inserting data performance, multiple (bulk) insert for different data sets are used and calculated in seconds. the first dataset starts with 50,000 records and the last one has 3000000 records as shown in table (1). table 1: performance test for multi (bulk) insert operation in sql. no. data set (records) response time to insert (seconds) 1 50000 4.77 2 100000 8.72 3 150000 17.25 4 250000 25.54 5 500000 59.80 6 1000000 84.86 7 1500000 85.02 8 2000000 390.83 9 2500000 460.38 10 3000000 606.53 4.1.2. updating performance to test the updating data performance, index and multiple update are used. the first update 5,000 records from 50,000 records and the last one update 300,000 records from 3,000,000 records as shown in table (2) table 2: performance test for update query in sql. no. data set (records) records to updating response time to update (seconds) 1 50,000 5,000 0.32 2 100,000 10,000 0.7 3 150,000 15,000 1.64 4 250,000 25,000 3.85 5 500,000 50,000 6.53 6 1,000,000 100,000 40.55 7 1,500,000 150,000 169.47 8 2,000,000 200,000 145.49 9 2,500,000 250,000 172.24 10 3,000,000 300,000 271.17 4.2. nosql performance this section presents the test and comparison results for entering and updating nosql documents using different algorithms. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 215 4.2.1. inserting performance to test the inserting data performance, multiple (batch) insert for different data sets are utilized. the first dataset starts with 50,000 documents and the last one has 16,000,000 documents as shown in table (3). table 3: test performance to multi insert data in nosql no. data set (documents) response time to insert documents (seconds) 1 50000 1.61 2 100000 2.34 3 150000 4.10 4 250000 5.83 5 500000 11.46 6 1000000 23.26 7 1500000 34.50 8 2000000 46.02 9 2500000 57.14 10 3000000 67.87 11 16,000,000 357 4.2.2. updating performance to test the updating data performance, pipeline aggregation and join between collections are used for different data sets. the first update 5,000 documents from 50,000 documents and the last one update updated 300,000 documents from 3,000,000 documents as shown in table (4). table 4: updating query by pipeline aggregation operation. no. data set (documents) documents to updating update documents (seconds) 1 50000 5,000 0.21 2 100000 10,000 0.42 3 150000 15,000 0.65 4 250000 25,000 1.09 5 500000 50,000 2.32 6 1000000 100,000 4.67 7 1500000 150,000 6.994 8 2000000 200,000 9.55 9 2500000 250,000 11.524 10 3000000 300,000 14.22 4.3. comparison between sql and nosql taking into considering all the results, we can determine the best way to increase performance for entering and updating records (documents) for a large amount of data in both sql and nosql. in this section a comparison is made between sql and nosql for 10 different data sets from 50000 to 16,000,000 records. as shown in table (5), nosql is more suitable for inserting bigdata. for example, inserting 2*106 records in sql took 390.83 seconds but 16*106 documents (2.2 gb) can be inserted in the same number of seconds in nosql. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 216 the other comparison between sql and nosql concerns the updating of data; for instance, in sql 3*105 records can be updated from 3*106 records within 271.17 seconds, but for nosql the equivalent time is only 14.22 seconds. table 5: comparison of test results between sql and nosql. data set insert records sql(sec) insert documents nosql (sec) records to update update records sql (sec) update documents nosql (sec) 50000 4.77 1.61 5000 0.21 0.21 100000 8.72 2.34 10000 0.7 0.42 150000 17.25 4.10 15000 1.64 0.65 250000 25.54 5.83 25000 3.85 1.09 500000 59.80 11.46 50000 6.53 2.32 1000000 84.86 23.26 100000 40.55 4.67 1500000 85.02 34.50 150000 169.47 6.994 2000000 390.83 46.02 200000 145.49 9.55 2500000 460.38 57.14 250000 172.24 11.524 3000000 606.53 67.87 300000 271.17 14.22 4000,000 73.87 400,000 19.21 10,000,000 242 450,000 23.3 16,000,000 357 500,000 28.3 the results of each comparison show that nosql is best used to improve performance when dealing with big data, as shown in figure (9). figure 9: comparison of execution time results between sql and nosql for inserting and updating data. 4.4. comparison between this paper and previous studies. studies have been conducted on the performance of relational (sql) and non-relational databases (nosql), each with different results. in this section, a comparison is presented between the response times from this paper and one of the last studies conducted in 2017 which used the same dataset for their comparison as shown in figure (10). kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 217 figure 10: dataset used by the devin study for sql and nosql comparison [21] 1. sql comparison between devin sink in 2017[21] and this paper for inserting and updating data. table (6), figure (11) and figure (12) present the results of the sql comparison. table 6: comaprsion of sql response times between the devin study and this paper for inserting data n. record devin study insert data this paper insert data devin study update data this paer update data 300,000 100 41 50 3 500,000 220 57 100 7 1000,000 500 120 250 19 figure 11: comaprsion of sql response times between the devin study and this paper for inserting. figure 12: comaprsion of sql response times between the devin study and this paper for updating. 2. nosql comparison between devin sink in 2017[21] and this paper for inserting and updating data. table (7), figure (13) and figure (14) present the results of nosql comparison. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 218 table 7: comaprsion of sql response times between the devin study and this paper for inserting n. record devin study insert data this paper insert data devin study update data this paper update data 300,000 100 4 100 1 500,000 300 8 250 1.7 1000,000 500 17 1100 4 figure 13: comaprsion of nosql response times between the devin study and this paper for inserting. figure 14: comaprsion of nosql response times between the devin study and this paper for updating all of the above charts show that the various methods and algorithms used in this paper can improve performance compared to one of the most recent studies conducted with the same data set. 5. conclusion big data is a term which is used to describe a massive volume of both structured and unstructured data. a real-time temperature monitoring system is one of the applications of big data; it enables the processing and measurement of massive volumes of temperature data. in this paper, some different algorithms have been proposed to increase sql and nosql database performance and the results have been compared with the most recent study in this filed. the algorithms related to sql database contains indexing such as a primary index for improving bulk insertion and multiple update operations at the same time. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 219 the algorithms related to nosql databases, also contain indexing, batch insert (multiple insert), pipeline aggregation. batch insert is used to insert multiple documents (by default 101 documents in one iteration), but in this paper this number can be increased to 10000 documents in one iteration, and pipeline aggregation can be used between two collections and a join can be created for matching between them without the duplication of data. after improving performance in sql and nosql, a comparison between these two databases was conducted for inserting and updating operations in all the datasets from 50,000 records to 3,000,000 records for sql, and from 50,000 documents to 16,000,000 documents (2gb) in nosql. the results showed that nosql is much faster than sql. 6. suggestions for future works there are various possible suggestions for how far this paper can be extended, and the work can be scheduled as follows: 1.using geospatial indexes for latitude and longitude coordinate instead of one-dimensional indexing. 3.using sensor systems for collecting big data instead of simulation method. 4.creating an online monitoring system. online monitoring consists of more than just vibration sensors. online monitoring systems can be wired, or wireless. with recent advances in battery and wireless transmission technology wireless online monitoring of machines and condition has become easier, less costly, and technologically advanced as compared to traditional solutions 5. increasing horizontal and vertical scaling. horizontal scaling involves adding more machines whereas vertical scaling involves adding more power (cpu, ram) to an existing machine. reference [1] y. arora and d. goyal, "big data: a review of analytics methods & techniques," in 2016 2nd international conference on contemporary computing and informatics (ic3i), 2016, pp. 225-230. 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[24] d. merriman, e. horowitz, and c. t. westin, "aggregation framework system architecture and method," ed: google patents, 2018.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 1 | june 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.1.12 an online content based email attachments retrieval system noor ghazi m. jameel technical college of informatics, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, iraq noor.ghazi@spu.edu.iq esraa zeki mohammed kirkuk dept, state company for internet services, kirkuk, iraq isramohammed2@gmail.com loay edwar george computer science dept, university of baghdad, baghdad, iraq loayedwar57@scbaghdad.edu.iq abstract: e-mail is one of the most popular programs used by most people today. as a result of the continuous daily use, thousands of messages are accumulated in the electronic box of most individuals, which make it difficult for them after a period of time to retrieve the attachments of these messages. most email providers constantly improved their search technology, but till now there is something could not be done; i.e., searching inside attachments. some email providers like gmail has added searching words inside attachments for some file types (.pdf files, .doc documents, .ppt presentations) but for image files this feature not supported till now. however, e-mail providers and even modern researches have not focused on retrieving the image attachments in the e mail box. the paper was aimed to introduce a novel idea of using content based image retrieval (cbir) in e-mail application to retrieve images from email attachments based on entire contents. the work main phases are: feature extraction based on color features and connect to email server to read emails, the second phase is retrieving similar image attachments. the tests carried on mail inbox contain 100 messages with 500 image attachments and gave good precision and recall rates when the threshold value is less than or equal to 0.4. keywords: cbir, color features, email attachments, email retrieval system, image retrieval, similarity measure. 1. introduction he methodology for searching images efficiently is an important research topic and retrieving images that match user’s needs is not a simple task [1]. these days, images are used in numerous applications; hence, finding successful techniques for retrieving images have gotten extensive interest. to overcome the problems of the traditional approaches for retrieving images based on keywords, cbir was introduced [2]. the most recognized feature for image retrieval is color. it considered as primitive feature for classy image retrieval systems. one of the methodologies used for color feature extraction is color histogram (ch). ch shows the distribution of color contents in an image. it is very fast and efficient technique. many commercial and academic systems used ch for image retrieval such as qbic, netra, retin, kiwi, and image minor [3]. email still fill in as imperative application to store data and information for their day by day activities [4]. some of this information is attachments attached to email messages. attachments include images, audio, video, pdf, word documents, and so on. in this paper an online images retrieval system is introduced to retrieve images from email attachments based on the content of the image. 2. literature review recently, there was noticeable increase for utilizing the developed cbir methods in different applications, for example: loay and mohammed [5], improved the retrieval performance based on texture features. they use 600 samples from variety human tissues and the results reflected very high retrieving rates. alsmadi and alhami [6], evaluated several approaches to cluster emails based on their contents. for classification purpose algorithms were developed for large collection of text. yuvaraj and hariharan [7], presented similar objects matching depending on three features using computer vision. the experiments were conducted using matlab software; the results indicated that region based and color histogram based methods are effective methods. dubey et al. [8] introduced two multi-channel decoded local binary patterns; the experiments applied on 10 db with variety natural scene and textures. pyykkö and glowacka [9] used deep neural network for interactive content based image retrieval by using few training samples to learn automatically from users’ interaction and feedback to reduce the training time. image features were extracted using convolutional neural networks (cnn). parthiban and srinivasa [10] used adaboost algorithm to classify images based on bag of features to minimized the storage cost and for efficient retrieval. 3. concepts and methods 3.1 email system the electronic mail is one of the most common internet services, it remains one of its important applications over the years. email has enormous features, including sending messages with hyperlinks, attachments, html t mailto:isramohammed2@gmail.com mailto:loayedwar57@scbaghdad.edu.iq text, and embedded photos [11]. 3.1.1 email system architecture the email system architecture is illustrated in figure (1). it contains two sub systems: (i) the user agents are used to read, send, compose, replies to messages, display incoming messages, and arrange messages by filing, searching, and deleting them. examples to most common user agents are google gmail, microsoft outlook, mozilla and apple mail. (ii) the message transfer agents, are used to send messages from the source to the destination with the help of simple mail transfer protocol (smtp). they are also known as mail servers. [12][13]. figure 1 architecture of email system [13] 3.1.2 email message format the email has an envelope and a message. the sender and the receiver addresses are contained in the envelope part of the email. the message part contains the header and the body. messages must be formatted in a standard way to be handled by message transfer agents. rfc 822 is a standard format which defines messages to have a header and a body and they are represented in ascii text. primarily, the body was supposed to be simple text. rfc 822 was updated quite a few times to allow email messages to support and transfer many different types of data: audio, video, images, pdf documents, and so on [13]. the header specifies the sender, the receiver, the subject of the message, and some other information (e.g. content type, encoding type, etc.). the body contains the actual information to be read by the receiver. the general layout of email file is illustrated in figure (2) [14]. figure 2 electronic email [14] 3.1.3 search mechanism in email agents email clients have gotten a lot smarter agents over the last 10 years, especially their search features. many web based email services and email clients offer search mechanisms for the full text of the message, many companies offer desktop applications that can support indexing, searching the file systems, emails and the browser caches and there are also many research prototypes which perform the search operation [4]. user agents recently offer wide capabilities to search the mailbox. search capabilities let users find messages quickly, for example message that someone sent in the last month about specific topic [13]. gmail, yahoo, and many other email clients provide search capabilities; like search messages (from) or (to) fields for specific email addresses or people, search for keyword or word in the header or the body of the message, messages sent or received before or after specific date or in specific period of time, messages with file size, search for messages that have files attached to them, messages that are starred, unread, read or chat message, and search for file names of attachments or files with extensions .jpg, .pdf, .doc, .ppt, .xls and return emails with the specific file with that extension. but till now there is no search methodology to retrieve the image files from emails depending on the content of the image. 3.2 cbir in 1992, kato [15] introduced the concept of cbir to describe images retrieving from a database automatically by using the color and shape features [16]. the main tasks for cbir systems are the similarity comparison that depend on finding the difference between query image feature with the corresponding features of other image stored in a database [17]. 3.3 image histogram in this work a conventional color histogram (cch) used to indicate occurrence of every color in an image for representing the statistical behavior of each color in image. pr(𝑖) = ℎ𝑖 𝑚 × 𝑛 (1) where, hi represents the number of pixels in color ci [18]. 4. the proposed system the proposed email attachments retrieval system is client based which is shown in figure (3), it uses queryby-example (qbe) paradigm. an image sample based on what a user needs to search or find in email attachments loaded to the system and the similar images to a given sample are retrieved from email attachments. first, a user starts by uploading the image sample from the main system interface and enters his email id, password, server name and email delivery protocol then connects to the mail server. for test purposes the system connected to a real mail server (hotmail server). then, the mail server will check the entered information, if it is correct, then the system will read each email from the user’s mailbox. the mailbox contains email messages with and without attachments. the system will check every email if it contains attachment or no. if the email contains image attachment(s), then the color image histogram features are computed for them to use later for comparison with query image feature vector. then set of attachment images that have high similarity to the query image are retrieved, displayed and saved in the list containing the file name (email number with the attachment file name) to avoid duplicates. the system was developed using visual basic.net programming language. figure 3 the interface of the email attachments retrieval system the block diagram of the email attachments system is shown in figure (4) and explains the steps of the proposed system in general. the implementation of automated identification of attachment images illustrated in the flowchart in figure (5) and implies the following steps: 4.1 loading image, read, parse, and check email attachments this step loads the data of input image. also, through the application, the user will enter his email id, password, server name and email delivery protocol, then connect to the mail server. port 110 is the default pop3 server port to receive emails. port 995 is the common pop3 secure socket layer (ssl) port used to receive email over implicit ssl connection. port 143 is the default imap4 server port, port 993 is the common port for imap4 ssl. now ssl is commonly used, many email servers require ssl connection such as gmail, outlook, office 365 and yahoo. in this system a connection to hotmail server was done using imap4 through ssl and imap hotmail server name (imapmail.outlook.com). if the connection was successful, each email will be read from the mail server and parsed into header and message body. the body will be checked if it contains attachments or no. if it contains attachments, the files will be read and checked if they are images with the extensions (jpg, bmp, or gif). the color image histogram will be computed for image attachments. 4.2 compute color image histogram a color histogram is computed for every image used in the proposed system, the x-axis represents the number of colors in an image. the y-axis represents the number of pixels there are in each color [18]. 4.3 distance measure the similarity measure between qj (query image) and tk (attachment image) having feature vectors {qji|i=0…n-1} and {tki| i=0 to n-1} is computed using euclidean distance metric [19]: 𝑑(𝑄𝑗 , 𝑇𝑘 ) = ∑|𝑄𝑗𝑖 − 𝑇𝑘𝑖 | , (2) 𝑁−1 𝑖=0 if the similarity is less or equal to the threshold, the attachment images will be retrieved and stored on the computer to be displayed later after the retrieval process completed and all emails were checked. figure 4 the system block diagram figure 5 system flowchart 5. results and discussion the conducted tests results are presented in this section to show the performance of the established system whose structure is introduced above. as well as, the tests are arranged to explore the effects using different threshold values on the overall system retrieval performance. for retrieval purpose two metrics were used; they are [20]: precision = retrieved related images total retrieved images × 100%(3) recall = retrieved related images total related images × 100%, (4) the data sets used in this study are sets of email attachment images with different extensions (e.g., .bmp, .jpeg, .gif) which contain different subjects (e.g., apples, cars, chairs, babies face, flowers, grass, mobiles, sea, scanned documents) of varying sizes. about 500 images were used in this test taken from 100 email messages, as well as other set of images were used for test purpose. table (1) presents examples of the used ten image data sets which have been used. table1: examples of images data set classes of image example of images no. of images apple 50 chair 35 baby face 15 formal paper 50 flowers 100 grass 25 mobile 50 red cars 85 sea 50 white cars 40 one of the main concerns in the conducted tests is to find the suitable value of threshold parameter; which leads to more accurate retrieval. if the value of threshold is too small, then the number of retrieved images will greatly have decreased and only the very similar images will be retrieved. but, if the value is too large, then, images from another set may retrieved. there is no analytical method for finding the optimal threshold value; it is usually assessed using trial mechanism (i.e., trying different values tuning the system performance) as shown in table (2). table2: the effect of distance measure threshold value threshold value apple chair baby face precision re call precision recall precision recall <= 0.3 73% 26% 77% 21% 84% 25% <= 0.4 53% 31% 59% 28% 76% 29% <= 0.5 46% 45% 46% 57% 57% 40% <= 0.6 32% 56% 36% 58% 48% 53% <= 0.7 28% 68% 29% 65% 32% 69% threshold value formal paper flower grass precision re call precision recall precision recall <= 0.3 76% 19% 76% 30% 84% 34% <= 0.4 66% 29% 65% 46% 76% 47% <= 0.5 50% 32% 53% 56% 63% 55% <= 0.6 42% 46% 43% 68% 51% 69% <= 0.7 31% 59% 33% 79% 42% 75% threshold value mobile red cars sea precision re call precision recall precision recall <= 0.3 95% 21% 81% 30% 85% 21% <= 0.4 83% 34% 60% 45% 74% 32% <= 0.5 75% 48% 49% 56% 55% 36% <= 0.6 63% 59% 33% 64% 49% 53% <= 0.7 51% 71% 30% 73% 38% 70% threshold value white cars prec ision recall <= 0.3 88% 15% <= 0.4 78% 22% <= 0.5 59% 34% <= 0.6 48% 51% <= 0.7 35% 71% figure (6) illustrates the effect of different values for threshold parameter on the precision for each image category. figure (7) shows the effect of different threshold parameter values on the recall for each image category. figure 6 the effect of threshold on precision figure 7 the effect of threshold on recall 6. conclusion the proposed retrieval system facilitates access to email attachments images in mailbox based on interaction user interface that allow user to quickly obtain an overview of similar images in email account. the color histogram can be used to describe the color content of images. testing the different threshold values helps for best retrieval results. the system gave better rates, when the threshold value is less than or equal (0.4). 7. reference 1. x. qian, x. tan, y. zhang, r. hong, and m. wang, “enhancing sketch-based image retrieval by re-ranking and relevance feedback”, ieee trans. image processing, vol. 25, pp. 195-208, 2015. 2. m. azodinia, and a. hajdu, “a novel combinational relevance feedback based method for content-based image retrieval”, actapolytechnicahungarica, vol. 13, no. 5, pp. 121-134, 2016. 3. a. saini and r. bharti “a review on content based image retrieval by different techniques”, international journal of neural systems engineering, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1-6, 2017 4. s. b. pitla, “organizational search in email systems”, m.s. thesis, dept. mathematics and computer science, western kentucky univ., 2012. 5. l. e. george, and e. z. mohammed, "tissues image retrieval system based on co-occurrence, run length and roughness features", ieee conference publications, international conference on computer medical applications (iccma), doi: 10.1109/iccma.2013.6506186, pp. 1-6, 2013. 6. i. alsmadi, and i. alhami, “clustering and classification of email contents”, journal of king saud university – computer and information sciences, production and hosting by elsevier b.v. on behalf of king saud university, vol. 27, pp. 46–57, 2015. 7. d. yuvaraj, and s. hariharan, “content-based image retrieval based on integrating region segmentation and colour histogram”, international arab journal of information technology, vol. 13, pp. 203-207, 2016. 8. s. r. dubey, s. k. singh, and r. k. singh, “multichannel decoded local binary patterns for http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/mostrecentissue.jsp?punumber=6493539 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/mostrecentissue.jsp?punumber=6493539 https://doi.org/10.1109/iccma.2013.6506186 content based image retrieval", ieee trans. image processing, vol. 25, pp. 4018-4032, 2016. 9. j. pyykkö and d. glowacka, “interactive contentbased image retrieval with deep neural networks”, symbiotic 2016, lncs 9961, pp. 77–88, 2017 10. parthiban s. and srinivasa raghavan s., “content based image classification and retrieval using visual bag of features and adaboost algorithm”, arpn journal of engineering and applied sciences, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 588-590, 2017. 11. j. f. kurose, and k. w. ross, “application layer in computer networking a top-down approach”, 6th ed., usa: pearson education, inc., pp. 118-130, 2013. 12. a. s. tanenbaum, and d. j. wetherall, “the application layer in computer networks”, 5th ed., usa: pearson education, inc., pp. 623-646, 2011. 13. l. l. peterson and b. s. davie, “application in computer networks a systems approach”, 5th ed., usa: elsevier, inc., pp. 700-708, 2012. 14. b. a. forouzan, “remote logging, electronic mail, and file transfer” in “data communications and networking”, 4th ed., usa: mcgraw-hill, pp. 824840, 2007. 15. t. kato, "database architecture for content-based image retrieval", proceedings of image storage and retrieval systems (spie), pp. 112-123, 1992. 16. j. eakins, and m.graham, "content-based image retrieval", university of northumbria at newcastle, report no. 39, 1999. 17. e. aulia, "hierarch indexing for region based image retrieval", m.sc. thesis, department of industrial and manufacturing systems engineering, louisiana state university, 2001. 18. j. huang, "color-spatial image indexing and applications", ph.d. thesis, cornell university, 1998. 19. c., li wei, c., and r.wilson, "a general framework for content-based medical image retrieval with its application to mammograms", proceedings of the spie, vol. 5748, pp. 134-143, 2005. 20. g.brunner, "structure features for content-based image retrieval and classification problems", ph.d. thesis, university of freiburg, germany, 2006. http://www.cs.cornell.edu/info/people/huang/thesis.pdf http://www.cs.cornell.edu/info/people/huang/thesis.pdf  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq peri cholecystectomy bile analysis for fasciola hepatica eggs in sulaimani teaching hospital seerwan hama shareef taher abdullah hawramy department of general surgery department of general surgery college of medicine kurdistan board for medical specialization (kbms) university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq hawramytahir@yahoo.com quaradaghi@gmail.com osman jamal nasrulla karwn hama amin department of clinic and medicine department of general surgery college of veterinary sulaimani teaching hospital university of sulaimani general directorate health of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq osman.nasrulla@univsul.edu.iq karwan2003@gmail.com dara ahmed mohammed raz seerwan hama department of anatomy department of gynecology college of medicine sulaimani maternity hospital university of sulaimani general directorate health of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq dara.marif@univsul.edu.iq razseerwan1991@gmail.com volume 4 – special issue: 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) doi: 10.24017/science.2019 .ichms.22 received: 8 june 2019 accepted: 4 july 2019 abstract fascioliasis is one of the oldest zoonotic infestations, which returned back to 3000 years b.c., it is caused by fasciola hepatica or gigantica. it is a widespread disease throughout the world; nearly (2.4 – 17) millions of people is infected. human is an accidental final host by ingestion of contaminated plants and water by metacircaria. most of patients suffer from right upper abdominal pain with eosinophilia. diagnosis is made on clinical background with imaging studies or laboratory (like stool and examinations biliary aspirate, intradermal test or elisa to detect antibody). it must be taken into consideration as newly emerging infestation in our country. the aim of this study is to highlight on the magnitude of peri cholecystectomy bile analysis for fasciola hepatica in sulaimani province, kurdistan region and even in iraq as a whole. a prospective study was performed at sulaimani teaching hospital. bile samples were collected from who had cholecystectomy. microscopical analysis was archived for finding egg of the parasite. in 129 samples, there were 7 (5.4%) positive cases of fasciola hepatica 2 were adult worms, all were swimming in the gall bladder. 5 (3.9%) out of 7 (5.4%) samples were females and only 2 (1.5%) of cases were males. 4 (3.1%) out of 7 were from sharazur terrain, and 3 (2.3%) of them from the center of mailto:dara.marif@univsul.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 200 sulaimani city. fascioliasis is a zoonotic problem. it must be put in differential diagnosis of any vague upper abdominal pain. it is a public health issue, so health worker must give awareness to the society about this disease, which is more easily preventable. keywords: fasciola hepatica, bile analysis in fascioliasis, liver fluke, diagnosis of liver flukes 1. introduction fascioliasis is one of the oldest parasitic infestations of human being that discovered arround 3000 years b.c [1]. the eggs of the fasciola hepatica found in soil samples from the pelvis of human skeletons in germany in 2003 [1,2,3]. it is a zoonotic disease caused by a parasite named fasciola hepatica or fasciola gigantica, in the phylum of plathelminthes, class of trematoda, genus of fasciola and species of f. hepatica or f. gigantica [4,5]. human fascioliasis is recognized by who as one of the “neglected tropical diseases” [6]. in sulaimani first case reported in 1992 by accidental finding of the adult worm in the biliary duct after exploration of common bile duct (cbd) by hawrami et al [7]. the first successful endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatogram (ercp) management of this disease by ezzat et al in 2010 [8]. after that a case report of adult fasciola hepatica that was swimming inside the gall bladder after cholecystectomy was found in 2010 [9]. also fascioliasis is reported as an endemic disease in our neighbor countries like iran in 2015 [10] and turkey [11]. epidemiology: in the past fascioliasis was limited to a specific geographical area, but nowadays it is a widespread disease throughout the world [12]. reported cases of infected humans account nearly for (2.4 – 17) millions [13], more in egypt and peru [14]. the lacks of familiarity by clinicians in non-endemic areas have led to delay in diagnosis and increase rate of complications [15]. currently the fascioliasis is emerging in iraq and it is often a neglected disease [16]. so it is not uncommon to see cases of fascioliasis in non-endemic areas. the cause is importation of contaminated vegetable to higher consuming markets of non-endemic large cities [12]. this may be pivotal explanation of the wide geographical distribution of disease [17]. morphology: the features of the trematoda class are the same. they have a digestive system, protonephridial excretory system, orthogonal nervous system and a mixed reproductive system (hermaphrodite) [4]. the adult of f. hepatica measure about (25-30 mm) by (10-15mm), while f. gigantica is measured up to (75 mm). they are large, flat, brown colored (greenish when they are in bile) and leaf like shape; their anterior part is broad and covered with scale-like spines for catching the infected part of the host [12]. the eggs are oval in shape, yellowish brown in color and the size is about (130-150 µm) by (60-90 µm) [4,12]. life cycle: it starts when the eggs of the parasite are deposited in tape water (22-26˚c) from the stool of infected human being or animals like (cattle, sheep, pigs, buffaloes and donkeys) [12,16]. the miracidia appear, develop, and hatch in (9-14) days [18]. then they invade lymnaea specie of freshwater snails (intermediate host), in which they multiply as sporozoites and redia for (4-7) weeks [19]. they leave as free-swimming cercaria that subsequently attach to watercress, lettuce, alfalfa, mint, parsley and khat([12,16,18,19]. they remain suspended in water and encyst over a few hours. human being (occasional final host) is infected after consuming the contaminated vegetable, washing plates or drinking contaminated water [12,20]. inside the duodenum the larvae exist in the first week of ingestion and migrate through the bowel wall and peritoneal cavity (after 4 weeks). the juvenile larvae penetrate the liver through glisson capsule after 48 hours (this is acute larval, hepatic or invasive stage of human infection), and enter the liver. then migrate throughout hepatic parenchyma till reach the biliary system, where they become adult worms within (3-4) months from initial infection kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 201 till laying eggs [4,12,16,20]. mature flukes consume hepatocytes, duct epithelium and reside for years in the hepatic and biliary tree and sometime in the gall bladder (this is the chronic or biliary stage of disease) [12]. the adult worm can produce eggs in 4 months after infestation (range 3-18 months). later on they go to the intestine through sphincter of oddi and coming out with feces to continue the cycle again [4,12]. clinical manifestation: it is in two phases, acute or chronic [6,10]. signs and symptoms depend on the worm burden, duration and phase of infection [21]. in the acute phase, the immature parasite migrates through the liver parenchyma and digest hepatic tissue, which lasts 3-5 months [12,21)]. acute fascioliasis is simulates clinically to that of acute cholecystitis including right upper abdominal pain, fever, nausea and vomiting with a significant eosinophilia [22]. also the patient may have hepatomegaly, ascites, subcapsular hematomas, hepatic necrosis, liver cyst or abscess, diarrhea and hemobilia with severe anemia [22,23,24]. occasionally the patient may present with cough due to pulmonary infiltration [22]. can be seen as extra hepatobiliary in other anatomical locations as subcutaneous tissue, pancreas, eye, brain and stomach wall [25]. the chronic phase; begins nearly 3-6 months after consumption of metacercariae, when the parasite enters the biliary tree [12]. it may stay asymptomatic for longer than 10 years [26]. symptoms usually reflect biliary obstruction with colicky pain in right upper quadrant and epigastric region [25,27,28]. it may also cause inflammation, epithelial hyperplasia and fibrosis, which leads to biliary obstruction, cholangitis and pancreatitis [25,29], liver mass or abscess, anemia and weight loss [30]. in addition, hepatic cirrhosis have been reported in infected children [31] and adult, especially those with high-density infections [32,33]. it is also a cause of intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma [34)]. sometimes, acute and chronic phases can overlap; which commonly has seen in endemic areas [35]. diagnosis: when fascioliasis is suspected clinically, it can be confirmed through laboratory or imaging techniques. several laboratory techniques are available. they include direct parasitological examination of the stool and biliary aspiration for presence of eggs or rarely the parasite [11,36]. intradermal test and stool antigen detection are also used as a diagnostic test in all stages of the disease. they also evaluate the process of the treatment [36]. enzyme-linked immunoabsorbent assay (elisa) detects antibodies against cathepsin l1. it is highly sensitive and specific in the acute phase of the disease, also called fas2-elisa [37,38]. imaging techniques include: abdominal ultrasound (us): in acute phase, focal areas of increased echogenicity, multiple nodular or irregular lesions of variable echogenicity or a single, complex mass in the liver looking like malignancy can be detected [35,39]. in the chronic phase us is less specific, may show adult parasites in gall bladder or biliary tree [11,40,41]. computed tomography (ct) scan: in acute phase; multiple hypodense lesion seen mimic hepatic metastasis with subcapsular location (the shape and positions are changed with time) [42]. other findings are subcapsular hematomas, and cystic calcification [19,42,43]. after the first month of infestation, multiple hypodense nodules, tortuous, tunnel-like branching lesions are visualized in the subcapsular region [42]. in the chronic phase necrotic granules are seen as single non-contrast enhanced irregular hypodense masses in the liver parenchyma and they are more centrally location [44,45]. magnetic resonance imaging (mri): in a t1-weighted 3d image shows homogenous contrast enhancement, in t2-weighted display homogenous hyperintense areas [24,46,47]. endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatogram (ercp): is increasingly used as a diagnostic and therapeutic tool for human fascioliasis especially in chronic phase [23]. the aim of the study is to detect the incidence of fascioliasis in sulaimani governorate and detect undiagnosed cases that presented as other causes of biliary problems. it is crucial to undertake thorough measures as any delay in diagnosis may lead to potentially morbid conseqeunces. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 202 2. methods and materials a prospective study done in sulaimani teaching hospital from march 2012 to march 2013. to conduct this study, ethical permission was approved by the ethical committee school of medicine, faculty of medical sciences/university of sulaimani, kurdistan region of iraq. after consent been taken from patients, a collection of bile samples (not less than 1cc) after cholecystectomy either laparoscopic or open, elective or emergency. each sample labeled and recorded according to questionnaire sheets. the samples kept in syringes, saved in refrigerator in 4˚c. the samples later transferred to college of veterinary /sulaimani university to be examined under (olympus double lens)microscope, searching for eggs of the liver flukes. for any positive sample containing fasciola eggs, the patient has been informed and brought back to hospital for complete clinical evaluation. the patient asked about remaining signs and symptoms postoperatively and similar clinical findings among other family members. stool samples sent for parasitology lab for eggs of fasciola. complete blood picture for white blood count and eosinophilia, liver function tests [total serum bilirubin (t.s.b), serum alanine transaminase (alt), serum aspartate transaminase (ast) and serum. alkaline phosphatase (alp)] and imagine studies. histopathological report has been reviewed for any gall bladder fibrosis and metaplasia. finally all the infected patients were treated with triclabendazole or benzimidazole. data analysis: ibm statistical package for the social science (spss) version 20.0.0 used. 3. results after collection and analysis of 129 bile samples under microscope, seven (5.4%) were positive for eggs of liver flukes. from those two of the positive samples were also containing the adult worm; the latter is large enough to be seen by naked eye as shown in the table (1). table 1: shows values of positive samples for eggs of fasciola in the bile sample. egg found in bile note positive 7 5.4% negative 122 94.6% total no. 129 figure no. (1) shows the adult worm which is fasciola hepatica and it is (27 mm) in length. figure no. (2) shows scale-like spines of the adult worm. in the figure no. (3) it is worthwhile to mention that the parasite which was actually yellowish-brown has been transformed to a greenish appearance due to coloration with bile. in figure no. (4) the eggs oval in shape nonembryonated with operculum seen under microscope. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 203 figure 1: shows adult worm with its length. figure 2: shows the scale-like spines of fasciola hepatica. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 204 figure 3: shows adult worm over the gall bladder. figure 4: shows the egg of parasite found in bile under microscope. in this study 109 female patients underwent cholecystectomy, 5 (3.8%) of them were positive for liver flukes and only one case has shown adult worm (0.7%). twenty of them were males with 2 (1.5%) positive result and only one adult worm, as shown in table no. (2). kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 205 table 2: shows gender relation with fascioliasis. female male note positive 5 3.8% 2 1.5% negative 104 18 total 109 20 figure 5: shows relation between male and female with the disease. one of the identifying point of this research is that fascioliasis is more common in sharazur terrain (said sadiq, halabja shahid and halabja taza) it is 4 out of 7 positive cases (57%), and 3 is from center of sulaimani (43%), as shown in table no. (3). table 3: shows geographical distribution of fascioliasis in sulaimani governorate. terrain positive negative total center of sulaimani 3 88 91 sharazur 4 17 21 garmyan 0 14 14 pishdar 0 3 3 total 7 122 129 kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 206 figure 6: shows geographical distribution of the disease. 4. discussion the present study explains that the liver fluke become a health problem in sulaimani province and this should be considered as suspected biological hazard, as our region is gradually becoming endemic to the parasite resembling some of our neighbor countries like iran and turkey [10,11,16]. it is believed that the dissemination of the infection to the new areas on non-endemic regions is due to the highly adaptable capacity of both the parasite and the lymnaeid snail hosts to challenging meteorologic condition [48]. so it must be take it in consideration in our country as a prevailing infestation. fascioliasis should be considered in the differential diagnosis of patients presenting with vague abdominal pain when not reaching the diagnosis. as shown in this study out of 129 bile samples 7 (5.4%) was positive, the positive results mean an egg has been found inside the bile samples. it is not worthy to mention that adult worms have been elicited inside the gall bladder of 2 patients during sampling. after establishing kurdistan centre for gastroenterology and hepatology in sulaimani province and performing ercp procedure, hawrami et al were able to detect this parasite in 18 patients, which were present in different hepatobiliary procedures [16]. later on they started searching for the source of this problem in our region. it has been discovered that the culprit is a snail (lymnaea sp.) which is found in the sharazur and penjwen by hawrami et al [49], which is needed for completing the life cycle of the parasite. sharazur (included said sadiq, saraisubhanaga, halabja, halabjay taza and khurmal) was behind the most positive samples. four (3.1%) out of 7 were actually detected single handedly in this region. the possible explanation for this is believed to be due to 2 factors; firstly this area is well known for its aquatic plants called (water cress and mint). secondly this large terrain contains a high number of snails and metacercaria as shown by hawrami et al it was more in sharazur (49). the other 3 positive samples (2.3%) are belong to central of sulaimani (the major city and the districts around it including chwarta, bazyan, piramagrun and arbat), this is may be due to the vegetables been transported from outside mostly from sharazur. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 207 there is a significant difference between female and male infection rate that includes 5 (3.8%) positive females from total 7 samples. there may be 2 possible factors; first most cholecystectomized patients were females in our study and it is accepted by nakeeb et al research which states that around 88% of operative cases of gall bladder removal were female [50]. second factor is the lack of proper sanitary education among housewives in regard to vegetable clean up like for instance wearing gloves and using specialized vegetable bleaches, this lead to transmission of the metacercaria attached to the hands of the lady unaware about them. this is synchronous with hawrami et al that had more female cases which were 5:1 for females [16]. both fasciola hepatica and fasciola gigantica can cause human infestation, but fasciola gigantica is rare, it’s reported to cause fascioliasis as shown by le thanh hoa et al [51]. in our study the causative organism is fasciola hepatica as shown in figure (1). the characteristic feature of it, which is the length is (27 mm) and the width is (12 mm), the anterior aspect is the broader part. also the scale-like spines are shown in the figure (2) which is magnified under microscope. the scale is used by the parasite for catch itself on the host, which is use by the parasite to function as a ventral sucker and they are connecting with parasite’s digestive system. this parasite is swimming inside gall bladder and can be seen during cholecystectomy. it is visible by naked eye over the surface of the organ after being incised, as shown in figure no. [3], which is again in line with that of hawrami tahir, in which as a matter of fact as he found a living parasite inside the gall bladder [9]. after the bile samples taken from the patients and underwent analysis under microscope, the eggs of fasciola found in the 7 samples, as shown figure (4). the eggs have had characteristic feature of fasciola, as it is oval in shape, bile color and it has an operculum, and the latter is specific for of the eggs of fasciola species [4]. another characteristic feature is nonemberyonated egg, which is found only in trematodes [52]. the analysis of the bile is crucial to detect this disease in undiagnosed cases, where they undergone cholecystectomy for biliary symptom which might be fasciola rather than the gall stone. this is in agreement with the 3 case reports that done by adnan kabaaliogulu et al [11]. he found that 3 cases presented with right upper quadrant pain, without gall stone and no biliary symptoms. mr. kabaaliogulu methodically did the process of bile aspiration under ultrasound guidance, later on he sent the aspirate for parasitological examination and they found the egg of fasciola in sample. whereas some persons remain undiagnosed, they are asymptomatic, at time it may progress to complication as serious as cirrhosis and carcinoma [34,53]. delay of diagnosis is related to several resons: (i) the clinician is either not well aware about this disease because it is a rare condition even in endemic areas; (ii) the sign and symptoms similar to that of other hepatic and biliary disease; (iii) scarcity of serological tests in many countries specially in developing counties; (iv) the eggs of parasite seldom found in stool and more frequently detected in the bile [11]. so technically sending bile for parasitological investigation will be more eventful in elucidating the eggs, which is informative and less costly, this enhance the chance for early diagnosis and treatment. when the fasciola adult worm isolated during operation, the patient treated instantly with antihelminthic medications. but for the remaining five samples where only eggs have been picked up, we maintained our contacts with such group in order to call them back and giving them proper treatment. the usual course of anti-helminthic medications is as follow which is either triclabendazole or benzimidazole. triclobendazole was given as a single dose orally (10 mg/kg). but benzimidazole is well-tolerated and highly effective against immature flukes [52, 54]. it’s common to see eosinophilia after parasitic infestations [12], and among the seven cases five of them were actual cases of eosinophilia, and this result coincides with hawrami et al [12,16]. in the rest of the cases eosinophil counts were normal, and this is in agreement with gil fg et al as they reported cases without eosinophilia [55]. stool examination had shown negative fluke eggs for all of the cases, as positions positive results need frequent sampling kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 208 [11], most of positive samples were from outside of sulaimani and not easy to repeat the sampling for them. liver function tests (ast, alt, tsb, and alp) done and nothing significant found, possibly due to the fact that the cases were early cases of fascioliasis and also due to the lack of significant hepatobilliary obstruction. histopathology results of the gallbladder of each patient have only shown features of chronic inflammation without cellular dysplasia or metaplasia. 5. conclusions and recommendations it is appearing that fascioliasis is a zoonotic problem in our region, so it must be put in differential diagnosis in hepatobiliary problems especially gall stone diseases. the clinicians must aware about it, because any delay in diagnosis will lead to more complications. fascioliasis is more common in sharazur and spread to other areas through contaminated vegetables and drinking water. it is a public health issue, so people working there must give awareness to society about this disease which is more easily preventable than to diagnose and treating it. in addition there are who recommendations for prevention of transmission of the disease and better to follow it. in the view of what has been mentioned so far in this study, it would be a medical bonus to send bile samples from any suspicious patients undergo any hepatobiliary surgery, as this will improve the chance for detecting any fasciola eggs and thus early meticulous diagnostic tool. reference [1] k dittmar, wr teegen, “the presence of fasciola hepatica (liver-fluke) in humans and cattle from a 4,500 year old archaeological site in the saale-unstrut valley, germany,” memórias do instituto oswaldo cruz, 98, pp. 141-3, 2003. 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[55] fg gil, mc jiménez, rt perea, jj ruiz-capillas, “fasciolasis hepatobiliar sin eosinophilia,” revista clinica espanola, 206 (9), pp. 464, 2006. 1. introduction 5. conclusions and recommendations  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq twitter sentiment analysis on worldwide covid-19 outbreaks kamaran h. manguri rebaz n. ramadhan department of computer science software engineering department college of basic education faculty of engineering university of raparin koya university rania, iraq koya, iraq kamaran@uor.edu.krd rebaz.najeeb@koyauniversity.org pshko r. mohammed amin department of computer science college of basic education university of raparin rania, iraq pshko.amin@uor.edu.krd article info abstract special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) doi: 10.24017/covid.8 article history: received: 22 april 2020 accepted: 15 may 2020 in the past two decades, the growth of social data on the web has rapidly increased. this leads to researchers to access the data and information for many academic research and commercial uses. social data on the web contains many real life events that occurred in daily life, today the global covid-19 disease is spread worldwide. many individuals including media organizations and government agencies are presenting the latest news and opinions regarding the coronavirus. in this study, the twitter data has been pulled out from twitter social media, through python programming language, using tweepy library, then by using textblob library in python the sentiment analysis operation has been done. after the measuring sentiment analysis, the graphical representation has been provided on the data. the data we have collected on twitter are based on two specified hashtag keywords, which are (“covid-19, coronavirus”). the date of searching data is seven days from 0904-2020 to 15-04-2020. in the end a visualized presentation regarding the results and further explanation are provided. keywords: sentiment analysis, covid19, coronavirus, social media, twitter, python, text blob. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction sentiment analysis nowadays can be considered as one of the most popular research topics in the field of natural language processing. the uses of sentiment analysis are covered by some interesting scientific and commercial areas, such as opinion mining, recommender systems, kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 55 and event detection[1]. nowadays the social media platforms such as twitter, facebook and youtube, are a great source of information known as social data [2]. the events occurring in normal daily life are discussed on social media and any individuals are free to discuss and express their opinion about these events. coronavirus known as covid-19 which began to appear at the end of last year in wuhan, china has been one of the most discussed and one of the most spreading diseases worldwide. according to world health organization (who) until we are writing this study, more than 20000000 individuals have contracted the disease and more than 157000 individuals have died worldwide (who | world health organization, 2020/4/20). from this data, we can see that this is one of the most biological virus outbreaks in the last two decades in the century. from many researchers and health professionals analyzing and getting new insights from these data on the social media platforms could help health staff and government organizations to get benefit from those data, and understand from people’s reaction and express their feelings [3]. in this study, tweets have been taken from tweeter’s social data, known as tweets according two specified search keyword which are #coronavirus and #covid-19 to extract tweets and perform sentiment analysis on the datasets and python programming language has been chosen. python provides many easy to use libraries to access twitter social media platforms. python can access these tweets from twitter’s search api and tweepy library. in summary the sentiment analysis approach has been applied to these data we have collected, and a detailed explanation has been conducted. 2. related work many researchers are working on sentiment analysis on twitter social media in literature, some key contributions which are providing support for finding user behaviors and situations in the different cases while happening around the world, for this some of the essential papers are included in this section. kaur and sharma[4] analyze the sentiments regarding coronavirus disease (covid19), so analyze the sentiments of different people’s opinion for this disease. for this purpose, twitter api used for collecting related tweets to the coronavirus, then positive, negative and neutral emotion analyzed by using machine learning approaches and tools. in addition, for pre-processing of fetched tweets nltk library is used and textblob dataset for analyzing tweets is used, after that show the interesting results in positive, negative, neutral sentiments through different visualizations. prabhakar kaila et al.[5], informs that the collected data raw was suitable and worthy to be applied to the experiments, regarding to the novel covid-2019 out breaks. the latent dirichlet allocation (lda) has been applied to the collected data in the document term matrix from the datasets. the lda techniques discovered during the operation that the huge related information about the covid-19 infection paramedic were negative opinions like fear and positive sentiments such as trust. medford et al.[6], constructed a list of hashtags related to covid-19 to search for relevant tweets during a two-week interval from january 14th to 28th, 2020. tweets are extracted by api and stored as plain text. the frequency associated keywords are identified and analyzed such as infection prevention practices, vaccination, and racial prejudice. after that sentiment analysis is performed to identify each tweet’s emotional valence (positive, negative, or neutral) and predominant emotion (anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, or surprise). finally, tweets are identified and analyzed related topics over time by using an unsupervised machine learning method. alhajji et al.[7], are performing sentiment analysis runs on arabic tweets by using naïve bayes machine learning model through the natural language toolkit (nltk) library in python. tweets containing hashtags pertaining to seven public health measures imposed by the government were collected and analyzed. total tweets kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 56 were analyzed in this study are 53,127. the results show more positive tweets than negative based on measures, except one. cherish kay pastor [8] reveal the sentiment of the filipinos in the effect of extreme community quarantine caused by covid-19 pandemic particularly luzon. the researcher also analyzes the effect of extreme community quarantine and other effects of the pandemic to personal lifestyle based on the tweets of the users. natural language processing methodology is use to determine the sentiment of users from extracted tweets. opinions are treated as data for analyzation. a qualitative approach was also used in determining the effects of the extreme community quarantine in the luzon area. rajput, n. k and et al. [9] in their work, not only collected data related to the tweets published during january 2020 but also investigated the tweets corresponding to two main aspects: first comprehending the word occurrence pattern and accordingly the second sentiment recognition. in addition, he stated that the number of ids tweeting regarding coronavirus subject has continuously spiked especially during february as well as march. there were so many repeated words such as covid-19, coronavirus, wuhan city. on the top of that n-grams model like unigram, bigram and trigram repetition were made for the top thousand frequencies. rajput concluded that almost everybody followed some fluctuation rule which is quite natural distribution. the figures and outcomes were found quite satisfactory. the exponential parameters were influenced for the identical by -1.273 for unigram, 1.375 for bigram and -0.5266 for trigram. the plots for the identical are illustrated. sse, r2 and rmse decided on goodness of suited the model. ra, m. and et al. [10], are analyzed and visualized the influence of coronavirus (covid-19) within the earth by executing such algorithms and methods of machine learning in sentiment analysis on the tweet dataset to understand very positive and really negative opinions of the ultimate public round the world. this reveals that naive bayes 'machine learning approach has been produced better execution, and it's been thought to be the concept for basic learning. this also brings out another ensemble technique that uses sentiment score because the input function for the classifiers in machine learning, svm, max entropy, decision tree, boosting, and random forest. as a result, the logitboost, a blended approach, performed better with accuracy of 74%. ad dubey, a. d. [11], collected and analyzed tweets from twelve states in this study. the tweets are collected between 11th march to 31st march 2020, moreover, all tweets are belonging to the novel covid-19 disease. the aim of this analysis is to know how individuals in those countries reacting to the outbreaks of the disease. there is no doubt that, there some necessary steps required while we are collected and performing the operation, such as pre-processing and removing irrelevant information from the tweets. the outcomes from these experiments shows that most of the people from these societies are thinking positive and they are feeling good that the situation will goes to be better, also it is worthy that there are also signs of fear and sadness. however, four states especially from the europe continent thinking that, they cannot trust the situation because of the outbreaks and pandemic over large scale of populations. 3. data and methodology in this section, the process of data collection by tweepy python library has been described. we have also shown the evaluation procedure of sentiment analysis. finally, a data analysing approach by textblob python library explained in detail. 3.1. dataset kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 57 in this paper, tweepy python library has been utilized for data extraction from twitter api (application programming interface). moreover, tweepy allows appropriate data retrieval by searching via keywords, hashtags, timelines, trends, or geo-location [12]. however, this research has not targeted a particular continent, country, or city for data collection, because coronavirus is an almost ubiquitous health problem. in spite of having numerous restrictions from twitter api, we have applied successive attempts to access as many posts as possible. all around the world, approximately 500,000 tweets have been fetched regarding covid-19 and coronavirus keywords from 09-04-2020 to 15-04-2020 from tweeter. in order to avoid redundancy, a specific timeframe (last 24 hours) has been considered to pull out the tweets during a week. the gathered data has been stored in csv format, and fed to the sentiment analysis library, namely, textblob. the following tables show the retrieved data from twitter api. table1: twitter data about coronavirus during one week date no. of tweets for coronavirus keyword no. of tweets for covid-19 keyword subtotal tweets thu 09-042020 44357 49183 93540 fri 10-04-2020 71053 80781 151834 sat 11-04-2020 16399 26231 42630 sun 12-04-2020 28391 26761 55152 mon 13-04-2020 31775 26747 58522 tue 14-04-2020 22389 35987 58376 wed 15-04-2020 34229 35949 70178 total tweets per week 530232 3.2 data collection implementation and procedure in this section the whole data collection and sentiment analysis procedure has been explained in advance. as it mentioned the social media platform that has been chosen to collect data sets was twitter. to explain the entire work step by step we have to describe and express each stage as follow. firstly, the essential step is to establish the connection between python and twitter microblog. twitter provides public api’s throughout urls to access their data. python has tweepy library to access twitter’s data regarding twitter’s api. the first thing in implementation is to calling required libraries, such as tweepy, and text blob. textblob is one of the python’s library to perform sentiment analysis. the data we have collected from twitter were the tweets which were mostly alphabetic character, but nowadays users also include emotional signs such as laughing and sad, and even any emoji’s to express their feelings. the data collection was performed during one week, and each day’s data has been kept into different csv files. the information that has been targeted was content and also the timestamps of the tweets. the main operation is when the tweets were retrieved from twitter, the tweets were sent to a method, which perform the sentiment analysis, by using python’s textblob library. moreover, along with each tweet their sentiment state has been recorded. with every single request to the api call, massive number of tweets are being collected. there is also worthy to say that, the searches were based on two keywords which are (#covid-19, and #coronavirus). this definitely leaded to gaining a larger number of tweets. eventually, a suitable recording format has been chosen to the data. finally, after collecting the tweets and conducting the sentiment analysis action, the information’s were sent to the next step which were the results and explanation by doing different experiments. kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 58 3.3. sentiment analysis procedure and algorithm since sentiment analysis (sa) is a hot topic in the natural language processing (nlp) field, there are several models to determine the state of sentiment (positive or negative emotion) within text, paragraph or the whole document [13]. sentiment analysis has a certain procedure that begins with grabbing the collected data, then identifying the data. later on, the required features will be extracted to the next step which is sentiment classification. finally, decision will be conducted in the phase of sentiment polarity as well as subjectivity. figure 1: sentiment analysis procedure in general, sentiment analysis uses machine learning and lexicon-based approaches for investigating emotion inside a piece of text [14]. according to textblob documentation [15], textblob takes advantage of naïve bayes (nb) model for classification (look at figure 2). nb classifier has been trained on nltk (natural language toolkit) to detect valence of aggregated tweets [ibid]. figure 2: naïve bayes hierarchy nb is a probabilistic algorithm that uses bayes theorem to compute sentiment distribution over the data. however, nb dissects any text to a bag of words which means the positions of the words are completely disregarded [14]. the bayes equation to predict the sentiment probability is: 𝑃(𝑙𝑎𝑏𝑒𝑙|𝑓𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒𝑠) = 𝑃(𝑙𝑎𝑏𝑒𝑙) ∗ 𝑃(𝑓𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒𝑠 |𝑙𝑎𝑏𝑒𝑙) 𝑃(𝑓𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒𝑠) where p(label) is the prior probability of a label, p(features|label) is the prior probability that a given feature set is being classified as a label , and p(features) is the prior probability that a given feature set is occurring [14, 16]. 4. results and discussion in this section, positive versus negative versus neutral for sentiment polarity and objective versus subjective versus neutral for subjectivity results are shown and discussed. sentiment analysis machine learning algorithms supervised learning probabilistic classifiers naive bayes unsupervised learning lexicon-based algorithms text data (tweet) sentiment identification feature selection sentiment classification sentiment polarity & subjectivity kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 59 4.1. sentiment polarity in this study, the bar chart demonstrates sentiment polarity over twitter for 7 consecutive days starting in 9th april 2020. the data has been shown by two keywords, namely, coronavirus and covid-19. units are measured in percentage. it is clear the total number of tweets are 530k. overall, more than 36% of people published optimistic views, while only around 14% of the tweets were negative. however, the neutral toll regarding both coronavirus and covid19 keywords was significantly high (50%). figure 3: sentiment polarity in 9th april, 52% of #coronavirus and 45% of #covid-19 tweets were neutral. moreover, 11% of #coronavirus and 16% of #covid-19 had low emotion. on the other hand, 36% of #coronavirus and 38% of #covid-19 were positive towards a coronavirus outbreak. last day figures (15th april) shows 53% and 43% were neutral for both #coronavirus and #covid-19 respectively. there was slight drop in positivity which were 33% for #coronavirus and 36% of #covid-19. the figures of different days are relatively similar. therefore, there is no significant sharp fluctuation in the tolls. finally, including a large quantity of neutral tweets indicates that most of the corpus were facts rather than opinion. in this regard, the next section will focus on subjectivity of the data in detail. 4.2. subjectivity in terms of the perspective of tweeters, there are subjective and objective viewpoints. there are seven pie charts for each of #coronavirus as well as #covid-19. it can be observed that their pie chart portions are very similar, as a result of subtle variance in #coronavirus and #covid-19 data. overall, for both keywords, the large portion of the records were objective which was approximately 64%. meanwhile it seems that about 22% were being subjective of which expressed their feelings and opinions. lastly, 14% of the tweets have no clear characteristic to be neither subjective nor objective. kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 60 figure 4: subjectivity of coronavirus keyword figure 5: subjectivity of covid-19 keyword 4.3. discussion of sentiments the aim of this analysis is to identify the emotional state of people about coronavirus. as it can be interpreted in the chart, the majority of the reactions, nearly 60%, toward this health problem were smooth and relaxed as shown in figure 6. in addition, approximately 13% and 7% of the tweeters involved the feeling of content and hopeful respectively. on the contrary, 7% of the contributors experienced relieved mood. additionally, minority of the collected data expressed their feeling as confident, happy, worried or frightened. this minority only comprised 2% of the cluster. it is worth to mention almost no records showed discouraged and difficulty point of view. in last, this study exposed the fact that members of tweeters were more optimistic when they use covid-19 than coronavirus word in their tweets. kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 61 figure 6: average of sentiment analysis for one week in order to have a clear perception of the above figures, the following table shows emotion analyzing technique in this research. the bellow table (table 2) has been applied as the "emotional guidance scale” for polarity evaluation [17]. the higher emotion on the scale which is happy and joy and its value is 1 denotes better-feeling, while the lower on the scale which is and its value, is -1 depressed and fear denotes more negative emotional states, in addition to the middle emotional state with 0 value represents neutral and relaxed state. also, the rest of the feelings cab be distributed evenly as spectrum between these three mentioned scales. table2: emotional guidance scale scale emotion 1 happy and joy 0.8 confident 0.6 optimistic 0.4 hopeful 0.2 calm and content 0 neutral and relaxed -0.2 relieved -0.4 pessimistic and impatient -0.6 worry and boredom -0.8 discouraged and difficulty -1 depressed and fear 5. conclusion 5.1. conclusion the present study applied sentiment analysis on twitter data related to worldwide covid-19 outbreaks. the data has been collected during one of the most spread weeks of coronavirus 0,00% 10,00% 20,00% 30,00% 40,00% 50,00% 60,00% 70,00% depressed and fear worry and boredom relieved calm and content optimistic happy and joy average of sentiment analysis for one week covid-19 % coronavirus % kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 62 which is 09-4-2020 to 15-04-2020 (according to https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html website) by using twitter api and tweepy library of python. two keywords are selected for searching tweets which are #coronavirus and #covid-19 for determining polarity and subjectivity. textblob library of python sentiment analysis techniques applied for collected tweets which are 530232 tweets. the results shown the neutral toll regarding both coronavirus and covid-19 keywords for polarity was significantly high which is more than 50 percent and the large portion of the records were objective which was approximately 64 percent. from this study we can say that people's reactions vary day to day from posting their feelings on social media specifically twitter. these data regarding the outbreak of coronavirus known as covid-19 shows us how people, government organizations and media agencies broadcast the situations. 5.2. future work due to lack of time, and computational process, many aspects has been left for the future works. it would be interesting to take the following research area into consideration: 1. since there are so many professional and official people on twitter, you may find more reliable source of information on twitter than other social medias such as facebook, wechat , instagram. however, it is very essential to explore other social media with regard to sentiment analysis. 2. in our contribution, we chose textblob which is using naïve bayes model. but there are other models that may provide interesting results such as lexicon-based algorithms. 3. this research application is not only convenient for coronavirus health issue but it can also be adopted as model to discover sentiment emotion for the future similar cases. reference [1] k. sailunaz and r. j. j. o. c. s. alhajj, "emotion and sentiment analysis from twitter text," vol. 36, p. 101003, 2019. [2] p. tyagi and r. j. a. a. s. tripathi, "a review towards the sentiment analysis techniques for the analysis of twitter data," 2019. [3] a. alsaeedi and m. z. j. i. khan, "a study on sentiment analysis techniques of twitter data," vol. 10, no. 2, 2019. [4] c. kaur and a. sharma, "twitter sentiment analysis on coronavirus using textblob," easychair2516-2314, 2020. [5] d. prabhakar kaila, d. a. j. i. j. o. a. r. i. e. prasad, and technology, "informational flow on twitter–corona virus outbreak–topic modelling approach," vol. 11, no. 3, 2020. [6] r. j. medford, s. n. saleh, a. sumarsono, t. m. perl, and c. u. j. m. lehmann, "an" infodemic": leveraging high-volume twitter data to understand public sentiment for the covid-19 outbreak," 2020. [7] m. alhajji, a. al khalifah, m. aljubran, and m. alkhalifah, "sentiment analysis of tweets in saudi arabia regarding governmental preventive measures to contain covid-19," 2020. [8] c. k. j. a. a. s. pastor, "sentiment analysis of filipinos and effects of extreme community quarantine due to coronavirus (covid-19) pandemic," 2020. [9] n. k. rajput, b. a. grover, and v. k. j. a. p. a. rathi, "word frequency and sentiment analysis of twitter messages during coronavirus pandemic," 2020. [10] m. ra, b. ab, and s. kc, "covid-19 outbreak: tweet based analysis and visualization towards the influence of coronavirus in the world." [11] a. d. j. a. a. s. dubey, "twitter sentiment analysis during covid19 outbreak," 2020. kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 63 [12] (2020). tweepy documentation. available: http://docs.tweepy.org/en/latest/index.html [13] v. bilyk, "what is sentiment analysis: definition, key types and algorithms." [14] w. medhat, a. hassan, and h. j. a. s. e. j. korashy, "sentiment analysis algorithms and applications: a survey," vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 1093-1113, 2014. [15] textblob: simplified text processing. available: https://textblob.readthedocs.io/en/dev/index.html [16] a. stuart, s. arnold, j. k. ord, a. o'hagan, and j. forster, kendall's advanced theory of statistics. wiley, 1994. [17] b. blackwell, "emotions (part 1): what they are, and how to use them." http://docs.tweepy.org/en/latest/index.html https://textblob.readthedocs.io/en/dev/index.html  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 2 | july 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.2.10 biochemical profile and assessment of risk factors for patients diagnosed with myocardial infarction in alramadi city, iraq. marwan mahmood saleh department of biophysics, college of applied sciences, university of anbar, ramadi, iraq ah.marwan_bio@uoanbar.edu.iq, bio_marwan@yahoo.com abstract: myocardial infarction (mi) continues to be a major cause of mortality and also death at early ages all over the world. this study is undertaken to evaluate the effect of mi on the levels of lipid profile, two enzymatic markers, fasting blood sugar (fbs), urea, creatinine and total serum bilirubin (tsb), rather than to assess the risk factors which lead to mi and its relation to these variables. the sample of the study consisted of (50) patients admitted to the cardiac care unit in al-ramadi general hospital. mi patients had significantly (p≤0.05) higher levels of triglyceride (tg) (201.4 mg/dl) as compared with the controls (142.8 mg/dl), while high density lipoprotein (hdl) significantly (p≤0.05) decreased in patients (42.24 mg/dl) compared with control group (58.7mg/dl). total cholesterol (tc) (183.6 mg/dl) and low density lipoprotein (ldl) (109.3mg/dl) were not affected significantly (p≤0.05) in mi group when compared with control group with the average of (172.2 mg/dl), (116 mg/dl) respectively. aspartate aminotransferase (ast) increased significantly (p≤0.05) in patients (61.38 iu/l) compared to the control group (23.5 iu/l) , while there was no significant (p≤0.05) difference in alkaline phosphatase (alp) between mi and control group. levels of fasting blood sugar (fbs) in the serum of mi group (206 mg/dl) increased significantly (p≤0.05) comparing with the control group (122.1 mg/dl). this study showed increase in urea (55.6 mg/dl) and creatinine (1.26 mg/dl) levels in the mi group contrast with the control group which its mean was (29.8 mg/dl), ( 0.85 mg/dl) respectively. there was no difference in the level of tsb. findings of this study, stating differences in levels of some biochemical parameters can use as a biomarker of myocardial infarction. there is an increase in the incidence of myocardial infarction and some differences in the level of parameters in the presence of one or more major risk factors. keywords: biochemical profile, myocardial infarction, risk factors, al-ramadi 1. introduction mi is the condition when there is evidence in a clinical setting of myocardial necrosis consistent with myocardial ischemia. by pathology, mi is myocardial cell death caused by prolonged ischemia[1]. acute mi is an event of myocardial necrosis caused by an unstable ischemic syndrome [2]. in practice, the disorder is diagnosed and assessed on the basis of the electrocardiogram (ecg), clinical evaluation, biochemical testing, invasive and noninvasive imaging, and pathological evaluation [3]. necrosis of the myocardium caused by an obstruction of the blood supply to the heart (coronary circulation) [4]. the most common cause of mi is rupture of an atherosclerotic plaque with the formation of a thrombus leading to occlusion of a coronary artery [5]. the rupture of a plaque results in exposure of collagen, lipids, smooth muscle cells, and tissue factor to the blood, leading to activation of platelets and the coagulation system [6,7]. there are some risk factors that increase the chance of developing mi. they are classify as major and contributing risk factor. risk factors may also classified into two groups, 1) non-modifiable factors (male gender, increase age, heredity) and 2) modifiable factors (tobacco smoke, diabetes mellitus, high blood cholesterol, high blood pressure, physical inactivity, obesity and overweight). on the other hand, alcohol drinking, stress and an unhealthy diet and nutrition are considered as contributing risk for mi [8]. there are four elements of lipid including total cholesterol (tc), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (ldl-c), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (hdl-c), and triglyceride (tg) that are considered as primary influencing factors for developing heart disease. [8] provided the desirable level of cholesterol. tc level should be less than 200 mg/dl, the ldl-c less than 100 mg/dl, the hdl-c not less than 40 mg/dl for men and 50 mg/dl for women and ideally 60 mg/dl or higher, the triglyceride less than 150 mg/dl. [9] explained that diagnosis of mi is based on clinical symptoms, electrocardiographic (ecg) changes and characteristic pattern of changes in some serum enzymes such as ast. the main aim of the present study was to examine the changes in biochemical profile in mi patients. to analyze the association of age, sex, smoking in addition to past history of angina pectoris, diabetes mellitus (dm) and hypertension. 2. methods and materials fifty patients with mi were studied admitted to the cardiac care unit (ccu) and ten people (five male with five female) as control in al-ramadi general hospital. they were screened for the presence of one or more major risk factors (angina pectoris, hypertension, dm, and smoking). blood was drawn for determination of tg, tc, ldl, hdl, ast, alp, fbs, urea, creatinine and tsb. blood samples from patients and healthy control were transported to the main laboratory in hospital on the same day and transmitted into centrifuge tubes without ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid (edta), kept at room temperature for (20-30) minute, centrifuge for (15) minute at (3000) rpm for 15 minutes [10]. samples were analyzed immediately by cobas c 311roche diagnostics. 2.1. statistical analysis results are shown as numbers and percentages (%). the statistical analysis was done with microsoft excel 2010. the results were evaluated by using f test to determine the significance of biochemical parameters among two groups. statistical significance was considered at p ≤ 0.05. 3. results tg, ast, fbs, urea and creatinine were increased in patients as compared with the controls. hdl decreased in patients as compared with the controls. the study showed no significant differences in levels of tc, ldl, alp and tsb in patients and controls (figure 1-5). the study showed that 64% of patients were male and 36% of patients were female, levels of parameters showed no significant (p≤0.05) differences according to sex in the studied group (table 1). there was no statistical difference with parameters between all ages groups (table 2). in current study 54% of the patients were smokers and there was an increase in lipid profile but was not significant (p≤0.05) (table 3). the past history of angina pectoris have increased all parameters studied statistically significant (p≤0.05) (table 4). the past history of dm and hypertension were, more common in the cases, increased fbs statistically significant (p≤0.05) (table 5). 4. discussion mi is a life threatening disease and mi occurs when a complete cutoff of the blood supplies result in the death of heart cells. eighty to ninety percent of all acute mi can develop a secondary thrombus [11]. when a thrombus, perfusion to the myocardial distal to the occlusion is halted, resulting in necrosis [11]. once mi develops, without prompt treatment, it can damage the affected part of the heart. according to the present study, result was in agreement findings of [12], [13], [14] studies that showed that serum triglyceride, total cholesterol, ldl-c increased and decreased hdl-c in mi patients as compared with the controls. there is a different mechanism about an elevation of triglycerides after mi. it is reported that elevated triglyceride levels may depend on the genetic basis [15] and nutritional habits [16]. several studies have supported that the ratios of ldl-c/hdl-c and total cholesterol/hdl-c show the atherosclerotic injury of the wall of the vessels [17], [18]. our results were in agreement with [19] who showed there was a significant increase in ast activity in mi group. in mi patients myocardium death and necrosis therefore enzymes release in great concentration to blood and increasing its activity [20]. in current study, 54% of patients were smoking. smoking is significant risk factor for mi and death. the incidence of smoking caused 71% of mi and 37% of death [21]. the risk is higher by three to four times than that of the non-smoker. the adverse effect of cigarette smoke includes increased catecholamine, increased myocardial oxygen demand, increased blood pressure and heart rate, impaired oxygen exchange, and increased carboxyhemoglobin that can produce or exacerbate myocardial ischemia [22]. the current study showed variations in parameters in patients with mi past history of angina pectoris. several mechanisms accounting for these changes include the acute phase response [23], [24] associated with upregulation of (ldl) receptor activity [25] and reduction in several pivotal (hdl) regulatory proteins [26]. in addition, stress-induced myocardial injury and necrosis facilitates adrenergic mediated adipocyte lipolysis leading to free fatty acid mobilization, enhanced hepatic very-low-density lipoprotein (vldl) secretion, tg elevation, and alteration in ldl and hdl particle composition [27]. in this study, 66% of patients have diabetes and hypertension (18% dm, 18% hypertension and 30% dm with hypertension). higher incidence of diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, family history, smoking, obesity and inactivity have been proposed as possible contributing factors [28]. [29] found that diabetes is common in patients with mi as pair disease prevalence. in patients with mi it is the largest cause of excess mortality among diabetic patients. diabetes acts as an associated disease with an increased risk of myocardial infarction. mi is two to three times more common among diabetic people and carries a worse prognosis than in the general population [30]. hyperglycemia of diabetes fosters dyslipidemia, increase platelet, and alters red blood cell function which can lead to thrombus formation [31]. 4.1. figures and tables figure 1 lipid profile in mi patients and control groups. figure 2 enzymes activity in mi patients and control groups. figure 3 urea concentration in mi patients and control. figure 4 fbs concentration in mi patients and control. figure 5 creatinine and tsb concentration in mi patients and control. 4.2. tables table 1: the prevalence of mi according to sex and relation with parameters. no significant (p≤0.05) changes observed in all parameters in both sexes as compared to mi general mean. table 2: the prevalence of mi according to age groups and relationship with biochemical parameters. no significant (p≤0.05) changes observed in all parameters in age groups as compared to mi general mean. gender male female mi general mean control mean no.(%) 32 (64) 18 (36) 50 10 tg 225.9 158 201.4 142.8 tc 184.6 181.7 183.6 172.2 ldl 109.41 109.13 109.31 116 hdl 40.84 44.72 42.24 58.7 ast 60.97 62.11 61.38 23.5 alp 85.81 92.56 88.86 75.37 fbs 188.9 236.7 206.1 122.1 urea 57.81 64.89 55.64 29.8 creatinine 1.679 1.583 1.265 0.85 tsb 0.777 0.751 0.764 0.86 age (year) 38-48 49-59 60-70 >70 mi general mean control mean no.(%) 13 (26) 12 (24) 12 (24) 13 (26) 50 10 tg 201.1 196.3 196.2 202.7 201.4 142.8 tc 183.3 176.9 181 184.7 183.6 172.2 ldl 105.33 93.73 104.02 107.4 109.31 116 hdl 41.73 43.91 37.75 42.03 42.24 58.7 ast 63.98 60.75 74 62.85 61.38 23.5 alp 91.38 91.33 85.75 90 88.86 75.37 fbs 203.3 194.8 176.8 209.2 206.1 122.1 urea 61.02 51.08 74.58 60.41 55.64 29.8 creatinine 1.539 1.228 2.604 1.413 1.265 0.85 tsb 0.785 0.925 0.692 0.778 0.764 0.86 table 3: the relationship between the smoking and levels of parameters in mi patients. no significant (p≤0.05) changes observed in all parameters in two groups as compared to mi general mean. table 4: the relationship between past history of angina pectoris and levels of parameters in mi patients. *significant (p≤0.05) changes observed in all parameters in mi with angina pectoris as compared to mi general mean. table 5: the relationship between past history of dm and hypertension and levels of parameters in mi patients. *significant (p≤0.05) increase observed in fbs in mi with dm as compared to mi general mean. 5. conclusion findings of this study concludes that:. 1tg, ast, fbs, urea and creatinine were increased in patients as compared with the controls. hdl decreased in patients as compared with the controls. no significant differences in levels of tc, ldl, alp and tsb in patients and controls. 2differences in levels of tg, hdl and ast can use as a biomarker of myocardial infarction. 3there is an increase in the incidence of mi in male, smoking cigarette and patients with dm and hypertension. 4significant changes observed in all parameters studied in mi with angina pectoris as compared to mi general mean. 6. reference [1] k. thygesen, js. alpert, hd. white, as. & as. jaffe, “universal definition of myocardial infarction, ” circulation, 116, pp. 2634-2653, 2007. [2] k. thygesen, js. alpert, as. jaffe, et al., “third universal definition of myocardial infarction, ” j am coll cardiol, 60, pp. 1581-98, 2012. [3] l. jeffrey, md. anderson, a. david & md. morrow, “acute myocardial infarction, the new england journal of medicine,” 376(21), pp. 20532064, 2017. [4] u.s. national library of medicine and the national intstitutes of health, medical subject headings. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/mbrowser.html. 2013. [5] dp. zipes, p. libby, ro. bonow, & e. braunwald, braunwald’s heart disease: a textbook of cardiovascular medicine, w.b. saunders company, philadelphia, 7th edition, 2004. [6] mj. davies, “the composition of coronary-artery plaques, ” n engl j med, 336(18), pp. 1312-4, 1997. [7] si. rapaport & lv. rao, “the tissue factor pathway: how it has become a "prima ballerina". thromb haemost, 74(1), pp. 7–17, 1995. [8] american heart association, understand your risk of heart attack, 2014. [9] js. alpert, k. thygesen, e. antman, & jp. bassand, “myocardial infarction redefined, consensus of the joint european society of cardiology american college of cardiology committee for the redefinition of myocardial infarction, jam coll cardiol, 36, pp. 959-969, 2000. factor (mi)cigarett e smokers (mi) non smoker mi general mean control mean no.(%) 27(54) 23(46) 50 10 tg 177.8 229.2 201.4 142.8 tc 184.9 182.1 183.6 172.2 ldl 118.06 99.035 109.31 116 hdl 44.185 39.957 42.24 58.7 ast 63.48 58.91 61.38 23.5 alp 86.44 91.7 88.86 75.37 fbs 208.4 203.3 206.1 122.1 urea 56.78 54.3 55.64 29.8 creatinine 1.145 1.407 1.265 0.85 tsb 0.778 0.748 0.764 0.86 health state mi with dm mi with hypertens ion mi with dm and hyperte nsion mi only mi gener al mean control mean no.(%) 9(18) 9(18) 15(30) 17(34) 50 10 tg 277.6 249.6 179.5 155 201.4 142.8 tc 191.3 193.3 169.8 186.5 183.6 172.2 ldl 101.16 121.87 104.33 111.36 109.3 1 116 hdl 42.222 40.444 41.133 44.176 42.24 58.7 ast 67.22 66.11 48.47 67.18 61.38 23.5 alp 75.33 91.33 102.9 80.53 88.86 75.37 fbs 302* 144.3 235.5* 162.1 206.1 122.1 urea 43.56 73.67 77.67 46.94 55.64 29.8 creatini ne 1.17 3.003 1.347 1.439 1.265 0.85 tsb 0.544 1.27 0.633 1.242 0.764 0.86 health state (mi) with angina pectoris mi only mi genera l mean control mean no.(%) 20(40) 30(60) 50 10 tg 202.2* 201 201.4 142.8 tc 180.6* 185.4 183.6 172.2 ldl 103.69* 112.75 109.31 116 hdl 41.52* 42.677 42.24 58.7 ast 37.79* 75.84 61.38 23.5 alp 100.5* 81.71 88.86 75.37 fbs 234* 189 206.1 122.1 urea 77.53* 42.23 55.64 29.8 creatinine 1.652* 1.028 1.265 0.85 tsb 0.647* 0.835 0.764 0.86 [10] rk. archer, lb. jeffcott, & h. lehmann, “comparative clinical haematology. blackwell scientific publications, 1977. [11] lg. martinez, and l. bucher, “nursing management. coronary artery disease and acute syndrome. assessment and management of clinical problems,” 7th ed, 784-820, 2007. [12] f. chang, s. baloch, ms. pirzado, mm. sahito, s. baloch, et al., “hematological and biochemical variations in myocardial infarction,” j clin case rep, 5(11), pp. 648-649, 2015. [13] s. ahmad, m. abdoljalal, & z. farhad, “serum lipid profiles in acute myocardial infarction patients in gorgan,” biomedical research, 23(1), pp. 119-124, 2012. [14] s. jayakrishnan, & b. jayanthi, “biochemical markers and myocardial infarction,” indian journal of research, 4(8), pp. 151-153, 2015. [15] gf. watts, p. jackson, & s. mandalia, “nutrient intake and progression of coronary artery disease,” am j cardiol, 73, pp. 328-332, 1994. [16] ds. fredrickson, “the role of lipids in acute myocardial infarction,” circulation, 39, suppl. iv-99-iv-iii, 1969. [17] zampogna a, luria mh, mancibens sj, luria ma. “relationship between lipids and occlusive coronary disease,” arch. intern med, 140, pp. 1067-1069, 1980. [18] fc. ballantyne, da. melville, jp. mc kenna, ba. morrison, & d. ballantyne, “response of plasma lipoproteins and acute phase proteins to myocardial infarction,” clin. chim acta, 99, pp. 85-92, 1979. [19] mq. al-ani, am. sameen, & as. farhan, “study of some physiological and biochemical aspects in the serum of myocardial infarction patients, journal of kirkuk university – scientific studies, ” 6 (2), pp. 63-72, 2011. [20] m. crawfored, jp. dimarco, & wj. paulus, cardiology, 2nd ed., mosby. limited. spain, 2004. [21] g. engstrom, p. tyden, g. berglund, o. hansen, b. hedblad, & l. janzon, “ incidence of myocardial infarction in women: a cohort study of risk factors and modifiers of effect,” journal of epidemiology and community health, 54, pp. 104-107, 2000. [22] ds. prasad, z. kabir, ak. dash, & bc. das, “smoking and cardiovascular health: a review of the epidemiology, pathogenesis, prevention and control of tobacco,” indian journal of medical science, 63, pp. 520-533, 2009. [23] m. boaz, z. matas, a. biro et al., serum malondialdehyde and prevalent cardiovascular disease in hemodialysis,” kidney int, 56, pp. 1078–1083, 1999. [24] d. londero, & p. lo greco, “automated highperformance liquid chromatographic separation with spectrofluorometric detection of a malondialdehyde-thiobarbituric acid adduct in plasma,” j chromatography, 729, pp. 207–210, 1996. [25] r. avieles, a. askari, b. lindahl et al., “troponin t levels in patients acute coronary syndromes with or without renal dysfunction,” n engl j med, 346, pp. 2047–2052, 2002. [26] p. holvoet, d. collen, & f. van de werf, “malodialdehyde-modified ldl as a marker of acute coronary syndromes, ” j am med assoc, 281, pp. 1718–1721, 1999. [27] j. thambyrajah, m. landray, f. mcglynn, h. jones, d. wheeler, j. townend, “abnormalities of endothelial function in patients with predialysis renal failure,” heart, 83, pp. 205–209, 2000. [28] j. alpert, k. thygeson, & e. antman, “myocardial infarction redefined – a consensus document of the joint european society of cardiology/american college of cardiology committee for redefinition of myocardial infarction,” j am. coll. cardiol. 36, pp. 959-69, 2000. [29] ph. baal, m. peter & k. engelfriet, “co-occurrence of diabetes, myocardial infarction,, hendriek c boshuizen1, jan van de stroke, and cancer: quantifying age patterns in the dutch population using health survey data,” population health metrics, 9:51, 2011. [30] j. boras, pavlic-renar, n.car, & z. metelko, “diabetes and coronary heart disease, diabetologia croatica,” 31, pp. 199-208, 2002. [31] sc. smeltzer, & bg. bare, bruners & suddarhs textbook of medical surgical marsing, 10th ed, philadelphia, pa:lippincott williams &wilkins, 2004. 7. acknowledgments many thanks to the staff of laboratory in al-ramadi general hospital. special thanks and gratitude are due to dr. mudhir sabir shekha, assistant professor of animal physiology at college of sciences, salahaddin university for his help and support. 8. biography marwan mahmood saleh is working now as a assistance lecturer in department of biophysics, college of applied sciences in university of anbar, his bsc. (2013) and msc. (2016) is in biology from college of sciences, university of anbar, ramadi/iraq,(https://scholar.google.com/citations?user =iidx0k0aaaaj&hl=ar) is google scholar page, and (http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2034-0128) is the orcid link, and his research gate link is (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/marwan_mahmoo d_saleh) https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=iidx0k0aaaaj&hl=ar https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=iidx0k0aaaaj&hl=ar http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2034-0128 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/marwan_mahmood_saleh https://www.researchgate.net/profile/marwan_mahmood_saleh  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 2 | july 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.2.2 biochemical markers and fertility rate of hydatid cyst isolated from human and animal in sulaimani province abdullah ahmed hama medical laboratory dept. sulaimani polytechnic university mls dept. college of science health, komar university of science and technology kurdistan-iraq abdullah.hama@spu.edu.iq fatimah mohammed ali nursing dept. slaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq fatema1972@yahoo.com kalil hassan general health diarectirate of halabja halabja, iraq khalik.hasan@yahoo.com wijdan m s. mero biology dept. college of science zhako university zhako, iraq wijdan2000@yahoo.com abstract: hydatid disease is a helminthic infection, caused by the metacestode stage of cestode belonging to the echinococcus grnulosus (dog tapeworm). the species and strain identification of echinococcus are of medical importance for strategic control measuring. the present study achieved to determine and compare fertility and biochemical profiles of hydatid cyst fluid isolated from human, cattle, sheep and goat. the human originated cyst has been found to be more fertile (88%), followed by sheep-originated cyst (85%). the high rate of fertility was found in the liver followed by lungs in all intermediate hosts. however, the statistically significant differences of a biochemical test of cyst fluid among intermediate host were observed just in the uric acid, while the result of biochemical tests hydatid cyst fluid isolated from liver significantly was higher than that of the lung for the most biochemical tests. the fertility and biochemical parameters value differences directly have related to the location of cyst and strains of e. granulosus. this finding concluded the sheep strain is a predominant strain and responsible for human and animal echinococcosis and sheep is the main intermediate host responsible for the perpetuation of the life cycle of e. granulosus in sulaimani. keywords: hydatid cyst, echinococcus, biochemical, fertility, strain, cyst fluid. 1. introduction echinococcus granulosus belong to class cestoda cause unilocular hydatid disease. there are four recognized species of echinococcus, e. granulosus, e. multilocularis, e. oligarthrus and e. vogeli [1], [2]. the species of echinococcus has a complex life cycle and they require two hosts to complete their life-cycle. the metacestode (hydatid cyst) develops in the various organ of the intermediate host while the most common infected organ found to be liver and lung [3],[4]. hydatid disease is also known as a silent zoonotic helminthic infection caused by the larval stages of echinococcus granulosus, with global distribution [5]. cystic echinococcus poses a significant economic and public health concern in iraq and kurdistan [6]. humans become infected by ingesting food or water contaminated with fecal material containing e. granulosus eggs passed from infected carnivores, or when they handle pet or infected dogs [1], [7], [8]. the larval stage (metacestode) can grow in various body organs, although the commonest sites of infection are the liver and lungs [9], whereas, the disease cannot be transmitted to humans or from human to dogs [10]. the new molecular tools is a most accurate method to determine genetic variation of e.granulosus to date ten distinct genotypes were identified (g1-g10) based on the dna market [11], also morphological and biochemical criteria were studied by researchers [12],[13]. the strains of e.granulosus were found in the domestic animals known as intermediate hosts: sheep, pigs, cattle, horses, camels, goats and cervid [14], the researchers confirmed that seven of these strains were found to be infective to human [15]. the biochemical marker is reliable criteria for recognizing of e.granulosus strains variation [16]. the determining of the strains which are responsible for human infection is a significant point for long term strategically control plan of the hydatid disease. morphological and biochemical characterization of metacystode can be used for identification of strain variation in the endemic area [17]. echinococcosis is constituted a major endemic disease in iraq and kurdistan region with no long-term control plan, and its seriousness in humans and animals have been recognized by many epidemiological and biological studies [18], [19], [20]. although there are no adequate studies of e. granulosis, this will open a new clue in strain identification and will be of great help in building effective control measures and predictive epidemiology, [21]. 2. materials and methods the animal originated cyst was 19 hydatid cyst (sheep=10, cattle=6 and goat=3) were collected from sulaimani new abattoir and the human cysts (human=5) were collected from scientific hospital of sulaimani after surgical operation, the protoscoleces and fluid were separated by centrifugation at 15000 rpm at 4 ºc for 10 minutes and the fluid was transferred to medical laboratory directly for biochemical test and the protoscolex were stored in 10% formalin (v/v) until microscopic examination for fertility [13]. the precipitate was examined by direct microscopy under (40x) for the presence of protoscoleces. the cysts which contain protoscoleces were considered as fertile [22]. biochemical analysis: glucose, urea, uric acid, triglycerides, cholesterol, g.p.t and g.o.t, were determined by the enzymatic method, creatinine by jaffe’s method, and calcium by the o-kersolphthaleinekomplexon method. serum total protein was estimated by biuret method [23], albumin was estimated by bromo cresol green binding (bcg) method [24]. the biochemical test was estimated by a commercially available diagnostic kit from (bio-labo, france), the globulin concentration was calculated as the difference between the serum concentrations of total protein and albumin [25]. the data were analyzed by a statistical software program (spss version:17.0) and the mean was compared by one way anova. 3. result the analysis of biochemical tests of hydatid cyst isolated from different intermediate host represented in the table (1). the mean of all biochemical test except uric acid among intermediate hosts has no statistically differences, while uric acid concentration in the cyst fluid isolated from cattle is significantly higher (p<0.05) than the other cyst fluid isolated from sheep, goat and human. the table (2) shows a comparison of biochemical tests of cyst isolated from liver and lung of sheep to estimate the effect of cyst location on the metabolism of protoscoleces, the result shows the alkaline phosphatase and triglyceride were significantly higher in the liver cyst than those of lung cyst. the metabolism rate of the hydatid cyst depending on the location (liver and lung) were evaluated in the cattle(table 3), the calcium, uric acid, bilirubin. protein, alkaline phosphatase and triglyceride were significantly higher in the liver cyst than those of lung cyst. figure (1) show the fertility rate of hydatid cyst among sheep, goat, cattle and human. the high fertility rate was found in human and sheep (88% and 85%) respectively, the fertility rate among goat and cattle were 60% for both host, while the sterile rate of the cyst was found to be very low in the sheep originated cyst. table 1. biochemical test of hydatid cyst fluid isolated from intermediate host. intermediate host unit biochemical test human mean+se sheep mean+se goat mean+se cattle mean+se 82 ± 6 49 ± 9 80 ± 0.1 50 ± 6 mg/dl glucose 0.6 ± 0.05 1 ± 0.1 1± 0.05 1.1 ± 0.2 mg/dl creatinine 39 ± 0.5 53 ± 4 56 ± 0.1 48 ± 5 mg/dl urea 1.9 ± 0.6 0.7 ± 0.1 1 ± 0.1 2.1 ± 0.4* mg/dl uric acid 11 ± 4 13 ± 2 3 ± 0.1 7 ± 0.1 mg/dl calcium 0.30 ± 08 0.3 ± 0.08 0.3 ± 0.05 0. 1 ± 0.001 mg/dl bilirubin 13.3 ± 0.8 32 ± 7.5 50 ± 0.5 10 ± 0.01 u/l alkaline phosphatase 0.5 ± 0.01 0.4 ± 0.1 0.5 ± 0.01 0.3 ± 0.1 g/dl globulin 12 ± 6 6 ± 2 8 ± 0.1 3 ± 1 mg/dl cholesterol 39 ± 2 37 ± 9 40 ± 20 18 ± 0.1 mg/dl triglyceride 1± 0.2 1 ± 0.2 2 ± 0.9 0.6 ± 0.1 g/dl total protein 0.2 ± 0.01 0.4 ± 0.1 0.2 ± 0.01 0.2 ± 0.01 g/dl total albumin 5 ± 0.01 8 ± 1 7 ± 3 2 ± 0.1 u/l s.g.o.t 8 ± 5 6 ± 1 11 ± 1 7 ± 0.1 u/l s.g.p.t *indicate significant differences (p<0.05) table 2. biochemical test of hydatid cyst fluid isolated from liver and lung of sheep biochemical test unit intermediate host sheep liver lung mean ±se mean ±se glucose mg/dl 50.2 ± 3.4 50.3± 5.5 urea mg/dl 53.1 ± 9 52.5 ± 5.3 creatinine mg/dl 1.7 ± 0.3 1 ± 0.2 uric acid mg/dl 2.2 ± 0.7 0.8 ± 0.4 cholesterol mg/dl 6 ± 2.9 6.3 ± 4.6 triglycerides mg/dl 60 ± 7* 14 ± 2.2 calcium mg/ dl 13.1 ± 3 13.3 ± 1 alk phosphatase u/l 45.2 ± 15* 16.8 ± 1 t. protein g/dl 1.4 ± 0.4 0.6 ± 0.2 albumin g/dl 0.55 ± 0.2 0.25 ± 0.1 globulin g/dl 0.54 ± 0.2 0.26 ± 0.1 t. bilirobin mg/dl 0.33 ± 0.1 0. 27 ± 0.06 s.g.p.t u/l 6.8 ± 1.2 5.2 ± 0.2 s.g.o.t. u/l 12.3 ± 6.2 4.2 ± 0.4 *indicate significant differences (p<0.05) table 3. biochemical tests of the hydatid cyst isolated from liver and lung of cattle. biochemical test unit intermediate host cattle liver lung mean ±se mean ±se glucose mg/dl 54.6 ±6 45.4 ± 0.3 urea mg/dl 47.2 ± 3.1* 49 ± 0.1 creatinine mg/dl 1.5 ± 0.4 1.4 ± 0.8 uric acid mg/dl 1.9 ± 2 2.4 ± 0.6 cholesterol mg/dl 3.7 ± 7* 0.45 ± 0.3 triglyceride mg/dl 7.1 ±10* 3.65 ± 4.9 calcium mg/dl 4.3 ±0.01* 9.7 ± 0.1 alk. phosphatase u/l 10.7 ± 15* 9.3 ± 1 t.protein g/dl 0.9 ± 0.1* 0. 3 ± 0.01 albumin g/dl 0.1 ± 0.03 0.4 ± 0.1 globulin g/dl 0.35 ± 0.1 0.25 ± 0.08 t.bilirobin mg/dl 0.01 ± 0.1* 0. 65 ± 0.05 g.p.t u/l 8.2 ± 1.2 5.8 ± 0.2 g.o.t. u/l 1.3 ± 6.2 2.7 ± 0.4 *indicate significant differences (p<0.05) figure 1. fertility rate of hydatid cyst isolated from sheep, goat, cattle and human. 4. discussion the metabolism rate of hydatid cyst can be determined by a biochemical test which plays an essential role in growth rate and control of the cystic echinococcosis [26]. the biochemical tests can be used as biochemical markers for determining the species and strain of echinococcus. the variation in the metabolism rate and biochemical tests of hydatid cyst may reflect strain variation in different intermediate hosts [2], [27]. in the present study, the author used biochemical tests of hydatid cyst fluids isolated from sheep, goats, cattle and humans as a biochemical marker to determine the strain variation of echinococcus granulosus, also the fertility of the hydatid cyst determined which has directly related to the host and infected organ [5]. the concentration of uric acid was found to be significantly higher in human and cattle cyst fluid compared with other cyst fluids, in the similar studies in iran radfar and iranyar [28] and shaafie et al. [26]support our finding, they record higher concentration of uric acid in human originated cyst and they state this high concentration of uric acid may due to normally high concentration of uric acid in the human and cattle. the level of glucose and cholesterol were found to be higher in the cyst fluids of goat and human, compared with sheep and cattle, indicating that the concentration of these parameters are not affected by the hosts, and the other this finding agrees with radfar and iranyar [ 28] and shaafie et al. [29] they demonstrated no marked quantitative differences in protein, total lipid, phospholipids, cholesterol and glycerides in hydatid cyst fluids collected from cysts obtained from intermediate host. in the present study, the biochemical similarities of hydatid cyst fluids from sheep, goats, and humans, and variation in the biochemical tests of hydatid cyst fluids of cattle from other intermediate hosts, suggest the existence of different strain of echinococcus granulosus in kurdistan-iraq this result agree with [4], [6] and [30] they record sheep and cattle strain using molecular markers in kurdistan iraq. . the molecular dna marker and morphological marker were studies of e. granulosus in kurdistan-iraq and report the existence of two distinct strains of e. granulosus in kurdistan-iraq, with the sheep strain occurring in sheep, cattle and humans and the cattle strain occurring in cattle [17], [30]. the sheep strain is the common strain which is responsible for human infection [5], [2]. the good strategical control plan need entire information about intermediate host and strain of echinococcus in the endemic area, the most common intermediate host in the middle east are sheep, camel, cattle, goats and horse [31], [5] and [30], many studies indicated the protoscoleces content (viability) has directly related to the biochemical test value [31]. the location of cyst also influence on the biochemical profile of the cyst fluid, our finding shows the liver concentration of the most biochemical parameters are higher than the cyst fluid isolated from the lung in both sheep and cattle, this result supported by refik et al. 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[31] m. kouidri, f. b. khoudja, a. boulkaboul and s. a. selles "comparative study on fertility, viability and biochemical profiles of hydatid cyst fluid from the lungs and liver of sheep in algeria", world applied sciences journal 31 vol.10, pp. 1699-1703, 2014. [32] m. refik, n. mehmet, b. durmaz, and m. eǧri, " determination of some biochemical parameters in hydatid cyst fluids", erciyes tip derg., vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 10–13, 2002. conflict of interest: the authors declare that there is no conflict of interests. acknowledgments the authors wish to thank the health directorate of halabja and sulaimani scientific hospital for his kind support and facility.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq modified alexnet convolution neural network for covid-19 detection using chest x-ray images shadman q. salih hawre kh. abdulla database technology department database technology department technical college of informatics technical college of informatics sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq shadman.salih@spu.edu.iq hawre.abdulla@spu.edu.iq zanear sh. ahmed nigar m. shafiq surameery information technology department building and construction engineering department erbil technical institute college of engineering erbil polytechnic university university of garmian erbil, iraq kalar, sulaimani, iraq zanear.ahmad@epu.edu.iq nigar.mahmoud@garmian.edu.krd rasber dh. rashid software engineering department faculty of engineering koya university koya, erbil, iraq rasber.rashid@koyauniversity.org article info abstract special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) doi: 10.24017/covid.14 article history: received: 29 may 2020 accepted 03 june 2020 first outbreak of covid-19 was in the city of wuhan in china in dec.2019 and then it becomes a pandemic disease all around the world. world health organization (who) confirmed more than 5.5 million cases and 341,155 deaths from the disease till the time of writing this paper. this new worldwide disease forced researchers to make more precise way to diagnose covid-19. in the last decade, medical imaging techniques show its efficiency in helping radiologists to detect and diagnose the diseases. deep learning and transfer learning algorithms are good techniques to detect disease from different image source types such as x-ray and ct scan images. in this work we used a deep learning technique based on convolution neural network (cnn) to detect and diagnose covid-19 disease using chest x-ray images. moreover, the modified alexnet architecture is proposed in different scenarios were differing from each other in terms of the type of the pooling layers and/or the number of the neurons that have used in the second fully connected layer. the used chest xray images are gathered from two covid-19 x-ray image datasets and one dataset includes large number of normal and pneumonia x-ray images. with the proposed models we obtained keywords: covid-19, chest x-ray images, cnn, alexnet, deep learning. kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 120 the same or even better result than the original alexnet with having a smaller number of neurons in the second fully connected layer. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction at the end of 2019 an emerged novel corona virus has declared in wuhan, hubei province, china after investigating the unidentified pneumonia cases which caused by a disease officially is called covid-19 [1, 2]. the virus is rapidly spread in other countries all over the world and millions of people have infected by the disease. consequently, world health organization announced covid-19 as a global health emergency [3]. in addition, a report categorizes the cases of covid-19 into two parts which are active and closed, under the active cases 98 percent infected patients in mild condition [3]. the prodrome of the virus includes high temperature, cough, dyspnea also it causes middle east respiratory syndrome (mers-cov) and sever acute respiratory syndrome (sars) that is known as (sars-cov) [4, 5]. as the virus is transmitted human-to-human, accordingly, it is strongly recommended to halt direct contact with others and put social distancing to prevent the distribution the disease from one person to another [6]. hence, identifying those who are infected by the virus in early stage is very important to save their lives. the diagnoses of the disease become an issue for the hospitals due to the shortage of the test kits, limited finding rate and it takes time as well as using reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rt-pcr) to determine the infected patient is not accurate as per the rate is from 30 to 60 percent, which means a large number of covid-19 patients have not detected and will not take proper treatment and isolation. moreover, inaccurate test helps the disease to speared faster as it transmits person to person [7]. furthermore, the x-ray and (ct) scan of chest are also used to establish the merscov and sars-cov in early stage of the disease. in this technology era, enhancing the ct and x-ray based on artificial intelligence (ai) tools may help clinicians to detect and monitor the virus faster and more efficiently [7]. additionally, there are a bunch of researches [1, 7, 8, 9] used deep learning-based techniques to detect the infected patients which help to reduce the load on doctors and hospitals to identify the disease and make the process faster in compare with rt-pcr. accordingly, we have studied available convolution neural network (cnn) in the literature named alexnet. based on this cnn architecture, we proposed a modified version of alexnet to train and test the available x-ray images for the study. the aim is to determine and identify the covid-19 cases from other two class cases named normal and abnormal cases. 2. related work nowadays, due to rapidly spreading the covid-19 disease, more attention goes to the field of detecting the disease by the researchers. in [10] the researchers proposed two different techniques to evaluate lung pneumonia and cancer namely modified alexnet (man), moreover, in the study, the principle component analysis (pca) used by combination with man. in the first proposed technique, the classification result improved by using five blocks from 1-5 with two fully connected layers, so, each initial block consists of convolution, max pooling, relu and normalization. at the end, the softmax layer has been replaced by support kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 121 vector machin (svm). the proposed technique was tested on two different chest image types x-ray and lung ct scans with including only two types of classes normal and abnormal for each of them. the accuracy obtained was 96% and 97.27% for x-ray and ct scans respectively. according to [11] the new cnn proposed including 16 layers only, the method designed to distinguish the normal and covid-19 classes only. the algorithm tested on both x-ray and ct scan images. it is worth to mention that the proposed technique was obtained good accuracy performance with declaring that they used a very small number of cases. in [12]  three different scenarios have been tested with using three different available cnn architecture that are: alexnet, googlenet, and resnet18. the idea of transferring learning (tl) is used for all of the three scenarios. the scenarios are different from each other in the number of classes that have used. in the first one, four different classes (normal, covid-19, viral, and bacteria) have been used with googlenet that resulting in having the accuracy rate of 80.6 %. in the second scenario, three different classes have been used (normal, covid -19, and pneumonia) and obtaining the accuracy rate about 85.2 with using alexnet cnn architecture, while in the third scenario, only two classes have been used (normal and covid-19) and the algorithm guaranteed 100% of accuracy with using googlenet architecture. jianping zhang et al. [13] presents a new deep learning model for detecting covid-19 that contain three components, they used 100 x-ray images as a covid-19 from 70 patients and 1431 x-ray images as non covid-19. the result shows 96% for detecting covid-19 and 70.65% for detecting non-covid-19. wang et al. [14] proposed a new cnn architecture named as covid-net. they generate the covidx dataset by combining and modifying two different datasets, “covid-19 image data collection” and “rsna pneumonia   detection challenge” dataset, and it contain 16,756 chest radiography across 13,645 patient cases from the two different dataset that have been mentioned above. the accuracy of testing covidx is 92.4%. from the proposed works available in the literature, it is clear that a good accuracy performance can be obtained when they tested and applied over only two classes (normal and covid-19). the challenge is to have more than two classes, therefore in this work, we aimed to design and test a new cnn architecture to be suitable for more than two classes. moreover, we aim to design an architecture to distinguish three different classes (normal, covid-19, and pneumonia (bacteria and other (non covid-19) viral). 3. alexnet architecture analysis the history of deep cnn starts with the lenet which originally designed for the purpose of handwritten digit recognition. the lenet not performed well due to its limitation to the handwritten digit recognition tasks [15]. thus, the alexnet is supposed to be the first deep cnn architecture because of its’ outstanding results for the classifications and recognition tasks performed on images [16]. in early 2000, the learning capacity of the deep cnn architectures was restricted to small size because of the hardware limitations. thus, in order to overcome the limitations of the hardware and getting the whole capacity of deep cnn, alexnet was trained on two “nvidia gtx 580” gpus in parallel. in order to make the cnn applicable for different types of images, in alexnet, the cnn depth was extended from only (5) layers in the letnet cnn to (8) layers. the layers are: five convolutional layers, two fully connected hidden layers, and one fully connected output layer, as it shown in fig1. kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 122 figure 1: alexnet architecture design although increasing the depth of the architecture will improve the generalization for different image resolutions, on the other hand, it results in the overfitting issue. to fix this issue, the dropout algorithm has been used, in which the algorithm randomly removes some transformational units during the training process to motivate the model to learn more better features [17, 18]. in addition, the local response normalization and overlapping subsampling have been applied to reduce the overfitting in order to improve the generalization. moreover, in alexnet, the sigmoid activation function has been replaced by the relu function in order to improve the convergence rate by reducing the problem of vanishing gradient [19, 20]. as it is clear in fig1, in alexnet, the input image must be augmented to a fix size of 227x227x3, in the first layer the 96 convolution filter with window shape of size 11 × 11 applied, whereas in the second layer 256 convolution filter with window shape size of 5×5 applied, followed by 384, 384, and 256 convolution filter with window size of 3×3 for the rest of the other three layers applied. moreover, after the first, second, and the last convolutional layers, the network contains 3 × 3 maximum pooling layers with stride of 2. in addition to this five convolution layers, there are two fully-connected layers with 4096 neuron outputs after the fifth convolutional layer. this is followed by one fully connected output layer placed at the end of the network which is originally having 1000 output classes. finally, dropout, relu and preprocessing represent the important key steps in achieving excellent performance in computer vision tasks. in this paper we used the original alexnet as a transfer learning mode by modifying the last output layer to be suitable to the number of the x-ray classes that have been used in these experiments. we replaced the 1000 classes that the original alexnet have, with only 3 classes because we tested only three classes (covid-19, normal, and pneumonia ) in this study. 4. proposed models (modified alexnet) in this research, we proposed a new cnn model by modifying the architecture layers of the alexnet convolution neural network to see how the classification result will be affected and improved. in fact, we selected the alexnet architecture because the structure of the alexnet is the simplest among other cnn systems and need suitable time and efficiency for learning phase especially we are using the normal personal computer with normal cpu based systems. the proposed model(s) kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 123 has been developed using software package in matlab program. another reason of using this architecture is high performance and fast training with very few epochs. we propose four different modified models based on the original alexnet architecture. in all of the four models, the structure of the original alexnet remain with having modifications on some layers. the four modified models can be described as follows: model 1: all of the 3x3 max pooling layers that are available in the original alexnet have been replaced with corresponding 3x3 average pooling layers with remaining the stride value as its which is 2. see figure 2. figure 2: model 1 of modified alexnet architecture model 2: the 3x3 max pooling layers that are available after the first and second convolution layers are replaced with corresponding 3x3 average pooling layers with remaining the max pooling after the fifth convolution without any changes (i.e max pooling), again the stride value remain as it is which is 2 in all of the three pooling layers. see figure 3. figure 3: model 2 of modified alexnet architecture model 3: as shown in figure 4, the number of the neurons in the second fully connected layer has been reduced form 4096 neurons to 2096 neurons. all other available layers are remained as the original alexnet. this model designed to see how reducing the number of neurons affects the results besides increasing the efficiency. kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 124 figure 4: model 3 of modified alexnet architecture model 4: in this model, we combined the two previously proposed models’ number 2 and 3 as shown in figure 5. this means that we replaced the max pooling layers after the first and second convolution layers with average pooling layers and the max pooling after the fifth convolution remain as it is, in addition, we reduced the number of the neurons in the second fully connected layer form 4096 neurons to 2096 neurons. figure 5: model 4 of modified alexnet architecture 5. experimental data and setup recently, covid-19 virus has affected a global population. the virus continues to have a huge influence on the welfare and health of the people around the world. the essential step in confrontation this risky virus is radiology examination. this could help the doctors to diagnose the disease and gave the rapid treatment to the patient in a precise way [21]. these radiographs are then stored as x-ray or ct-scan images in various public available sources such as covidx dataset by cohen [22], a set of 6290 chest x-ray images of non-covid-19 viral cases, bacterial infections and confirmed normal images by kermany et al authors [23]. another source of dataset is a collection of 79 covid-19 chest x-ray confirmed radiographs that was recently made public by some websites such as radiopedia, “sirm (italian society of medical and interventional radiology)” and “rsna (radiological society of north america)” [24]. the main reason of these huge-data collection and made them publicly available sources is to provide a free access mechanism for the researchers to be able to use them in their research papers as well as helping them to contribute and share their de-identified covid-19 chest x-ray data to the project. hence, in this section, we will explain the details of the datasets that have been used for the train and test kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 125 process in this paper for purpose of covid-19 and other cases detections such as normal, bacterial and viral. 5.1 first dataset (covidx) the covidx dataset recently made available at [22] by the authors of covid-net, which is one of the first open source network. it is a deep cnn, which is made publicly available to detect corona virus from ct-scan or x-ray images. the dataset is consists of 13,975 x-ray and ct scans images taken from 13,870 patient cases. in the recent version of the covidx dataset, there was a total of 111 covid-19 x-ray images from approved corona virus patients. in this paper work, we used all 111 chest x-ray positive covid-19 images. 5.2 second dataset this dataset was collected and made publicly available by kermany and et. al. it contains 6290 chest x-ray images from numerous patients with normal infections, bacterial and other viral (non-covid-19) cases [23]. in this huge data set images, only 1108 chest radiography images has been chosen to train, validation and test. more especially, we used 554 images from normal cases, 277 images from bacterial cases and 277 images from viral (non-covid-19) cases. 5.3 third dataset third dataset contains only 79 positive chest x-ray images. it was recently composed from radiological society of north america (rsna), radiopedia, and italian society of medical and interventional radiology (sirm) websites. this collection of confirmed positive images are publicly available in [24]. in this dataset only 43 chest x-ray positive covid-19 images are nominated to train, validation and test sets. figure 6 shows random samples of the images for all classes. figure 6: chest x-ray samples as a result, from the three above mentioned databases, we used in total 154 (100 for train and 54 for test) x-ray images of confirmed covid-19 cases, 554 (500 for train and 54 for test) x-ray images of normal cases, and 554 (500 for train and 54 for test) x-ray images of abnormal (pneumonia) cases. the 554 cases of abnormal (pneumonia) cases originally taken from 277 cases of bacteria and 277 cases of viral (non-covid-19) cases. it is valuable to be mentioned that the number of covid-19 x-ray images is considerably lower than other classes that lead to imbalance classification issue. however, to reduce the impact of imbalance classification we tried to not use all available cases of normal and pneumonia and only the above mentioned number of cases have been used. to investigate and test the mentioned proposed models in the previous section as well as the original alexnet architecture, we used the above-classified dataset. the same train and test sets have been used with the original alexnet architecture as well as the proposed modified models. see the next section for the experimental results obtained. kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 126 6. experimental results the process of utilizing learning weights or using obtained data from determining and solving one issue to another correlated issue is known as transfer learning (tl). weights enhanced from the alexnet architecture on x-ray image dataset used in tl model. in this paper, tl approach has been adopted to investigate the performance discussion of original alexnet cnn architecture and then compared with modified alexnet architectures. accordingly, in all of the layers, the weights are re-trained on our chest x-ray images. the resizing process to the appropriate dimensions of the original alexnet and modified alexnet architectures has been done on the entire set of the images from the training and the testing sets. according to the former researches in literature review, no preprocessing applied to input images, hence the same norm has been followed. for all cnn architectures, the training parameters in tl are as follows: mini batch size =15, number of epochs =10, initial learn rate = 3e-4. the software package matab is used for conducting all experimental results. two metrics were recorded in order to measure the performance of cnn classification, which are specificity and sensitivity. for calculating the mentioned metrics, we recorded the following classifications test measurements: tp – true positive: represents the number of the correctly recognized positive cases. tn – true negative: represents the number of the correctly recognized negative cases. fp – false positive: represents the number of the incorrectly identified negative cases. fn – false negative: represents the number of the incorrect classification of disease. the amount of the unhealthy cases appropriately identified by cnn models is known as sensitivity while the specificity measures the amount of negative cases properly detected as healthy by cnns. for the purpose of comparisons as well as testing the performance, we calculate the sensitivity and specificity of the original and all of the four modified proposed models. table 1 shows the obtained results from all experiments conducted. moreover, the table shows the sensitivity and specificity of all of the three individual classes covid-19, normal, and abnormal (pneumonia). to see individual classified cases for every single experiment, we calculated the confusion matrix among the classes, figure 7 shows the confusion matrix of the original alexnet while figure 8 shows the confusion matrix of obtained results from all of the four proposed models. kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 127 table 1: testing result for original and modified alexnet architecture figure 7: confusion matrix of original alexnet cnn architecture class sensitivity specificity original alexnet covid-19 98.14 99.04 normal 72.22 87.60 abnormal 90.74 94.89 proposed (model 1) covid-19 79.62 90.67 normal 83.33 91.42 abnormal 94.44 97.02 proposed (model 2) covid-19 90.74 95.57 normal 81.48 90.90 abnormal 94.44 97.02 proposed (model 3) covid-19 90.74 95.32 normal 83.33 91.74 abnormal 90.74 95.37 proposed (model 4) covid-19 94.44 97.27 normal 81.48 90.99 abnormal 90.74 95.14 kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 128 (a) model 1 (b) model 2 (c) model 3 (d) model 4 figure 8: confusion matrix of proposed models from table1 and figure7, we can notice that the obtained results from the original alexnet for recognising covid-19 cases is promising but there is a problem with the results of detecting the normal case. there are 15 cases out of 54 cases are misclassified. although our aim is to detect the covid-19 cases accurately, there is a problem when the normal cases are classified as affected cases especially in the medical side. therefore, the proposed models are designed to decrease incorrectly classified cases. for example, when we compare the obtained results from model1 with the original alexnet results, we can see that the sensitivity and the specificity of both of the normal and abnormal classes are increased with decreasing the sensitivity and the specificity of the covid-19 class. in model2, after we mixed the average and max pooling, we obtained higher detection degree for covid19 classes compared to model1. again having better detection degree for both of the normal and abnormal classes comparing to the original alexnet. although reducing the number of neurons of the original alexnet such as in model3 increased the efficiency of executing the training phase, the same conclusion as model2 can be obtained when the results are compared with the original alexnet. finally when we combine both of the ideas in model2 and model3, we can guaranteed the efficiency as well as the better detection rate of covid-19 classes if compared with all other three proposed models and losing a small degree of detection if compared with the original alexnet, taken in account that model4 have better detection for both other classes normal and abnormal when compared with the original alexnet. kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 129 if we take overall, the detection rate and counting the corrected number of cases for all of the three classes in each architecture, we can say that out of 162 cases the original alexnet classified 141 cases correctly while the correctly classified cases are 139, 144, 143, and 144 for our four proposed model1, model2, model 3, and model 4 respectively. 7. conclusion and future work many researchers have exhibited that the already existing convolutional neural network architectures have a significant ability of detecting covid-19 from x-ray or ct-scan images in an accurate manner and provide excellent results [11, 25, 26]. however, their results can be improved by modifying their structure in one or more of their layers or their other features. in this paper we used original alexnet architecture for covid-19 detection, pneumonia, and normal cases. this architecture consists of eight layers: five convolutional layers and three fully-connected layers with some of the features that are new approaches to convolutional neural networks and have made the alexnet special [27]. the aim of this paper was to introduce four effectives modified alexnet cnn models that can outperform pre-trained alexnet for the purpose of helping radiologists to recognize and detect correctly the classes from chest x-ray images. these models were differing from each other in terms of the type of the pooling layers and/or the number of the neurons that have used in the second fully connected layer. moreover, the images that have been used in this study are collected from three different sources. so, we collectively make the use of these xray images to be publicly available for the researchers. from the obtained results, it became obvious that in case of a small dataset and unbalanced number of the x-ray images, we can conclude that with replacing all of the max pooling layers with average pooling layers, the result has been enhanced even though we have a noticeable reduction in the sensitivity of the covid-19 detection result. this issue was reduced by replacing just the first two max pooling layers with average pooling layers, which results in the improvement of the covid-19 case sensitivity from 79.6 to 81.46. on the other hand, with reducing the number of the neurons by 2000, we have got the same or even better result than the original alexnet with a little bit reduction in the covid-19 case sensitivity. finally, one open door for any experiments further is to apply the same models with a large-scale dataset where its images can be collected from different countries. in addition, more than three classes can be tested with keeping in mind the balancing issue. moreover, trying to apply the same modifications on deeper transfer networks such as densenet, and inceptionresnet can be another future research direction. reference [1] y. song, s. zheng, x. zhang, x. zhang, z. huang,j. et al., "deep learning enables accurate diagnosis of novel coronavirus (covid-19) with ct images," p. 10, 25 february 2020. 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[accessed 13 may 2020]. [7] s. khobahi, ch. agarwal and m. soltanalian, "coronet: a deep network architecture for semi-supervised task-based identification of covid-19 from chest x-ray images," medrxiv , 2020. [8] a. narin, c. kaya and z. pamuk, "automatic detection of coronavirus disease (covid-19) using x-ray images and deep convolutional neural networks," eprint arxiv:2003.10849, p. 17, march 2020. [9] x. xu, x. jiang, et al., "deep learning system to screen coronavirus disease 2019 pneu monia," arxiv, vol. 2002.09334, p. 29, 2020. 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[14] k. hammoudi, h. benhabiles, et al., "deep learning on chest x-ray images to detect and evaluate pneumonia cases at the era of covid-19," arxiv, vol. 2004.03399, p. 6, 2020. [15] y. lecun, l. d. jackel, et al, "learning algorithms for classification: a comparison on handwritten digit recognition," neural networks: the statistical mechanics perspective, vol. 261, p. 16, 1995. [16] a. krizhevsky, i. sutskever, et al., "imagenet classification with deep convolutional neural networks," in advances in neural information processing systems 25 (nips 2012), 2012. [17] n. srivastava, g. hinton, et al., "dropout: a simple way to prevent neural networks from overfitting," journal of machine learning research 15, vols. 1929-1958, p. 30, 2014. [18] g. e. dahl, t. n. sainath, g. e. hinton, "improving deep neural networks for lvcsr using rectified linear units and dropout," in 2013 ieee international conference on acoustics, speech and signal processing, 2013. 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[28] l. liao, y. zhao, et al., "finding the secret of cnn parameter layout under strict size constraint," in proceedings of the 25th acm international conference on multimedia, 2017.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq an overview on the pandemic coronavirus disease 2019 (covid19) outbreak mariwan abdulla hama salih medical laboratory department technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimaniiraq mariwan.abdulla@spu.edu.iq article info abstract special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) doi: 10.24017/covid.4 article history: received : 01 may 2020 accepted : 03 may 2020 the current review covered most of the researches have been done since the new coronavirus found in wuhan city of china at the end of december 2019 up to date by considering the most beneficial ones for our society. the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 or sars-cov-2 is a virus that potentially acts on the human respiratory system. it is first found in animal then transmitted into human. the virus can be transmitted between human to human via close contact or from the tiny droplet while coughing or sneezing. who characterized the situation by pandemic global concern because the virus spread over 200 territories and more than millions peoples were infected and over two hundred thousand people deceased as a result of covid-19. at the moment nothing can stop the virus from spreading, neither vaccine nor medicines were found to stop the virus and secure life of people of the planet. the aim of the present review was to show the main feature of the sarscov-2 and to find the common statements between the previously published studies on the output of their works. the other objective of this review was to encourage publics to treat the virus in safe way based on the discovery by researchers toward secure life of million peoples that could be infected by the 2019 new coronavirus. this review were summarized several researches about the sars-cov-2 since its appearance to present time may 2020. several reports from who, cdc and fda were included about spreading or the way of transmission, causes, prevention, diagnosis and risk factors of the covid-19. the current review find the common statements about different aspects of the 2019 new coronavirus that could be help the new research to benefit from these statement for further investigations. this review showed that urgent steps for the current time to secure life of millions peoples is to quarantines people at home and governmental authorities have to take the responsibilities of this steps and to encourage people to stay at home and teach them the self-prevention is a better treatment for all humanities. keywords: covid-19, sars-cov-2, coronavirus diseases 2019, 2019-ncov, coronavirus, spu. mailto:mariwan.abdulla@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 32 copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction novel human coronavirus sars-cov-2 is an odd strand and positive sense rna related to sars and mers. it was first found in wuhan city of china in the late of december 2019. this 2019-ncov can causes human severe respiratory tract infections and produce further consequences such as lungs impairment, etc. similar to sars-cov and mers-cov which are zoonotic in origin i.e. they transmitted from bat and camel respectively, the 2019-ncov is believed that was first transmitted from animal to human especially from a certain types of bat that present in china and other territories like middle east and europe. there have been concerns about the origin of the animal because other study believed that it can be originated from scaly pangolin which is also common in china.[1, 2] the new infectious diseases was named by who with “covid-19” coronavirus diseases 2019.[3] a novel coronavirus sars-cov-2 was announced by world health organization as pandemic (controllable pandemic) which means that the 2019 ncov is a global emergency concern, this is after the virus was spread in above a hundred territories.[4] there are several types of human coronavirus found since the first identified at 1960s. according to cdc four of them are known the most commons such as (alpha cov 229e and nl63 and beta cov oc43 and hku1). the other two types of coronavirus were known, they are epidemic sars first identified in china in 2003 and epidemic mers in saudia arabia in 2012.[5] the last one is the pandemic 2019 ncov. the symptom of infection by 2019-ncov have several common features with other types coronavirus, such as fever, weakness, coughing and sneezing. the difference between 2019-ncov and other coronaviruses are the severity of infection and the rate of transmission. the 2019-ncov produces very severe lung infections which lead to impairment of other human organs, and the transmission rate was proved as very fast. in comorbid patients with 2019-ncov made the situation worsen in comparison with other coronaviruses. chines researchers claimed that both clinical condition comorbidity and elderly were the risk factors 2019 new coronavirus patients that cause to raise the rate of mortality.[6] the sars-cov-2 can be transmitted via close contact with sick people, this statement evidenced by a report in china in january 2020.[7] the objectives of the current review was to collect most of the recent researches and the hypothesis about the virus itself and the way of transmission, in addition to the recent idea to find a vaccination or new medicines to treat the viral infection due to the new coronavirus sars-cov-2. the review also aimed to help researchers to use this review as an easily access document of the previous researches that recently have been performed about coronavirus for further involvement in their researches. the other objective of this review was to encourage publics to treat the virus in safe way based on the discovery by researchers toward secure life of millions peoples that could be affected by this virus. 2. methods and materials to write this review, more than a hundred reports about the sars-cov-2 were collected from numbers of publishers were releasing up to date studies. several researches about the sarscov-2 since its appearance to present time may 2020 were summarized. several other publishers were considered such as web science, bmj, and science direct as they provide temporary free access for researchers for further investigation to help reducing the risks the kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 33 virus outbreak. some of the reports from who (world health organisation), cdc (center for disease control and prevention), fda (u.s. food and drug administration) were included about spreading or the way of transmission, causes, prevention, diagnosis and risk factors of the covid-19. this review also benefited from the news released from trusted web pages of different agencies, such as c&en (chemical and engineering news), and medicine net.[8] 3. results 3.1 transmission of sars-cov-2 the virus can transmitted through direct contact from human to human[9] or with presymptomatic cases[7] , these are reported firstly in china in january 2020, when a family of two members were infected with covid19 while contacted with presymptomatic traveler during traveling.[7] other cases were reported again in china, the study were included 425 patients were majority 55% of them were linked human to human transmission.[9] indirect contact can also result in transportation of the virus, research was conducted in china found that the virus was transmitted in certain mall in china were the infected woman visit the mall and several cases were reported in this place.[10] the aggregation in community also can be an easy way to transmit the virus in very fast way, such as happened in erbil/ krg of iraq, the infected woman was visit traditional condolences event and she was transmitted the virus into more than 100 other peoples most of them women.[11] in china study was performed to analyze the risk of the virus transmission through transportation from infected area to uncontaminated area based on assumption theory based on 19 cases reported outside china, researchers were believed that the virus could transport in to 369 other cities in china if the city of wuhan was not quarantined.[12] surfaces are considered other main sources for virus transmission. the persistent of coronavirus out of human body is people concern, research for this purpose ongoing and some study found that the virus can live on the surfaces for about nine days depending on the types of the surfaces and temperature (types of the surface not specified).[13] another study showed that the virus can live on the contaminated surface made of plastic and stainless steel for up to three days, the study also determined the half-life of the virus by thirteen to sixteen hours on steel and polypropylene respectively.[14] however no research published yet on air transmitted of the virus,[15] but in aerosol droplet the 2019 ncov can live for about three hours.[13] 3.2 covid-19 sign and symptom most of the reports that were published restated that the infected patients with sars-cov-2 had symptoms ranging from mild to severe. they could appear since infected with the virus in 2-14 days. acute fever, cough, head ache, weakness and flu, chills, breath difficulties, loss of taste and smell.[16] otherwise, some patient that infected by the virus covid-19 were lack of symptoms[7]. for children and elderly the symptoms might be similar to some extent but could be mild and severe respectively.[16] 3.3 diagnosis of covid-19 the process of diagnosis of the covid-19 patients is very important steps for following prognosis or monitoring and help to make the treatment process easily achievable. there have been two types tests reported to covid-19, viral testing and antibody tests (serology test)[17]. viral testing is simple and the result will be available in an hour by taking sample of nasopharyngeal swap from the patients. the last one based on the present of antibody in the blood of previous infection of the patient that has to be fighting the virus. the antibody test cannot be used alone for confirming the case.[18] another method for the patient who carries the 2019 new coronavirus can be used is reverse transcription real time rt-pcr which is specifically used for critical cases because of low sensitivity especially for those patient that has low level of virus at later steps of recovery.[17] the fastest test (igm/igg antibody test) for 2019-ncov is currently available for use, this is after recommendation from usfda on 16 kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 34 march 2020.[19] chest ct for about thousand covid-19 patients used, the researcher from published their research by concluding that ctt can be used as a primary screening tool as a complementary for diagnosis of covid-19.[20] 3.4 covid-19 risk factors a number of clinical conditions were investigated to produce critical condition for those people when infected with sars-cov-2. the mater of age and clinical condition were have been evidenced to increase the mortality rate when human infected with sars-cov-2. this is proved by several researches.[6] the retrospective case study was performed on 113 dead patients. the patients who had advanced age with the complication in blood pressure (comorbid patients) were deceased, (68 year median age deceased against 51 years median age recovered) and (68 comorbid patient deceased against 45 recovered).[6] researcher from the university of california reported that smoking could double the probability of worsen covid19, this is evidenced by 12 paper that showed proved worsen progresses of the covid-19. [21] another covid-19 risk factor was reported by american research groups, they showed that obese patients whose age less than 60 years old could be admitted to hospital due to their critical conditions.[22] another research study indicated that cancer patients with covid-19 were at higher risk of the covid-19 than patient without cancer.[23] 3.5 vaccines and drugs treatment for covid-19 majority of the people who infected with the new coronavirus 2019 not needed treatments, they directly recovered after a while.[24] currently there is no drug treatment approved by fda for the situation. antiviral drugs remdesivir have been tested by scientist from nih (national institute of health), they found that it can prevent the situation from progression in monkey.[25] chloroquine and hydroxyl chloroquine in combination with azithromycin have been tested on thirty six covid-19 patients, the result showed hydroxyl chloroquine were significantly stop or reduce the virus load in covid-19 patients.[26] the recommendation guideline were produced based on the strength and quality rating of the treatment which related to scientific evidence and expert recommendation table 1.[27] a total of 83 potential covid-19 vaccines were available up to date (29 april), despite of who restated that vaccination cannot be reliable to save humanity, but researches ongoing to find a promising vaccine for this new coronavirus.[28] the first trial of using convalescent plasma from recovered covid-19 patients to ten patients with covid-19 showed promising results, as the viral load disappeared in 7 days with further progressing parameters in the patients.[29] table 1: recommendation rating[27] strength of recommendation quality of evidence for recommendation a: strong recommendation for the statement i: one or more randomized trials with clinical outcomes and/or validated end points b: moderate recommendation for the statement ii: one or more well-designed , nonrandomized trials or observational cohort studies c: optional recommendation for the statement iii: expert opinion 3.6 recurred covid-19 despite covid-19 patients recovery in about 28 day from first confirmed, that because of antibodies present in infected patient blood to fight the virus, but this does not help to protect the recovered patient not to recur the virus again.[30] kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 35 4. discussion everyone are at risk to get infected by coronavirus, because the way of transmission and the virus itself have neither eyes nor foot to tell who you are, people from different ages, societies, cultures, ethnics, territories and colors have been reported that they infected by the virus. the sign and symptoms were clearly specified and researchers were agreed on the sign and symptoms of the new coronavirus 2019. the ways of transmission at the begging of the situation was researchers concern, but with fast spreading of the virus, researchers start to explore the ways of transmission. it is worth mentioning that most of the researchers were agreed on the keeping the social distance and avoiding close contact with sick patients, using hand sensitizer and regular hand washing with face mask and wearing gloves, as well as indirect contact also should be considered, the contaminated surfaces should be disinfected because researcher also agreed that it can be another source of the 2019-ncov transmission.[15] researchers were reportedly stated that elderly people and comorbid people had to be more concerns than others in order to be safe from getting infected by the new coronavirus 2019. however most people have concern about recovered covid-19 patient can infected again by the 2019-ncov, but researchers pointed to the rna from sars-cov-2 could be the source of infection and recur the covid-19. the considerable efforts by researcher and racing the related drugs companies and governmental authorities to tackle the situation by finding the miracle drug for covid-19, but still all the efforts not made changes a word in the statement “currently no drug available for covid-19 and neither vaccine”. the urgent steps need to stop the deadly 2019-ncov, because it is spread very fast, nih recommendation rating currently recommended to use up to date. usfda also recommend convalescent plasma from recovered patients to use for covid-19 patients. 5. conclusion the review of several researches about the sars-cov-2 since its appearance to present time may 2020, and several reports from who, cdc and fda about spreading or the way of transmission, causes, prevention, diagnosis of the novel coronavirus were analyzed. finally close surveillance or follow up should be considered for recovered patients in order to reducing the risk of recurrence the covid-19 and pacer patients should be protected further to help in reduction the chance of infection with 2019-ncov. as the so called novel coronavirus spread very fast and the source of transmission remains unclear. by considering the current review, it can be recommend the governmental health authorities in the territories have to take responsibilities announce some advices to encourage people to follow health authorities regulations and self-protection with protect social distancing to reduce further transmission of the virus, such as reducing close contact with infected people with the virus, regular and frequent hand washing by using liquid soap especially after contact with sick people and contaminated surfaces. quarantines people with the symptom of coughs and sneezes as well as frequent use of tissues while coughing and sneezing. it is also recommended to not rash to ending the protection regulations and quarantines because the risk of the virus still realistic. clearly advertising information about the virus itself and well clarification of the covid-19 could be the priority for the governmental authorities to reduce the risk of the nightmare 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[29] k. duan, b. liu, c. li, h. zhang, t. yu, j. qu, m. zhou, l. chen, s. meng, y. hu, c. peng, m. yuan, j. huang, z. wang, j. yu, x. gao, d. yu, j. hou, z. shi, s. chen, z. chen, x.-x. zhang, and x. yang, "the feasibility of convalescent plasma therapy in severe covid-19 patients: a pilot study," medrxiv, p. 2020.03.16.20036145, 2020. [30] d. chen, w. xu, z. lei, z. huang, j. liu, z. gao, and l. peng, "recurrence of positive sars-cov-2 rna in covid-19: a case report," international journal of infectious diseases, vol. 93, pp. 297-299, 2020/04/01/ 2020. http://www.medicinenet.com/wuhan_coronavirus_2019-ncov/article.htm http://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/symptoms-testing/symptoms.html17-april http://www.biomedomics.com/products/infectious-disease/covid-19-rt/ http://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-coronaviruses29 http://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-coronaviruses29  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq is it scaly anteater or bat a real origin of the 2019-novel cov: a probable hypothesis? salar ali taib hama-soor nursing department medical laboratory department technical college of health technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq salar.ali@spu.edu.iq taib.hama-soor@spu.edu.iq muhammed babakir-mina salvatore dimonte medical laboratory department bio molecular laboratory technical college of health barletta (bt) 76121, sulaimani polytechnic university italy sulaimani, iraq salvatore.dimonte@gmail.com babakir-mina@spu.edu.iq francesco greco department of intensive care medicine and neonatology pediatric clinic university children's hospital of zurich zurich, switzerland grecofn@hotmail.it article info abstract special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) doi: 10.24017/covid.1 article history: received: 16 april 2020 accepted: 18 april 2020 today, the emerging of the new coronavirus 2019ncov possesses a global health problem and little is known about its origin. in the current investigation, an evolutionary and molecular epidemiological analysis have provided of this new emerged virus. the phylogenetic trees for animal coronaviruses with the novel coronavirus-2019 have been created using a number of available complete protein sequences of envelope (e), membrane (m), nucleocapsid (n) and spike (s) proteins. the phylogenetic trees analysis illustrated that 2019ncov in all four proteins are very closely related with coronaviruses isolated from pangolin (scaly anteater) and bat-sars-like-coronavirses because all of them are clustered in the same clade. whereas, the 2019ncov is less closely related to coronavirses isolated from rousettus bat (fruit bat) and mers coronaviruses isolated from camel because they are gathered in the same clade only in two of the four studied proteins, nucleocapsid (n) and spike (s). in the conclusion, the new 2019ncov is more likely to be originated from bat-sarslike-coronaviruses or/and coronavirus isolated from pangolin after adaptation and evolution in the human hosts. because of the keywords: sulaimani city, covid-19, sars-cov-2, bat-likecoronavirus, pangolin. mailto:salar.ali@spu.edu.iq https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=dimonte+s&cauthor_id=27328810 mailto:salvatore.dimonte@gmail.com kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 2 number of infected cases to date indicates a very quick human-tohuman transmission. thus, necessitates a very rapid active surveillance using accurate method to find the original host where the 2019ncov emerged. this will help in further understanding and creating a better approach to control the spread of sars-cov-2 outbreak. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction in the end of december 2019, a respiratory disease (covid-19) cases caused by a newly emerging coronavirus occurred in wuhan, china. at the beginning, this coronavirus was named by world health organization (who) as the 2019novel coronavirus (2019-ncov) on 12 january 2020. who officially identified the disease as coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) and the international committee proposed the name to the virus as sars-cov-2, both issued on 11 february 2020. coronaviridae family is a large group of viruses containing single, positive stranded rna which is present in a number of host species. previously, it was known as a causative agent for common cold and sometimes diarrhoea in humans [1,2]. a new severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus [sars cov] has been discovered and it was known as a cause of the sars outbreak [1,2]. recently, a number of severe respiratory infection in humans has been identified in wuhan city of china, this was due to the emerge a novel coronavirus (2019-ncov) as a causative agent for severe pneumonia in humans. from december 2019, many infected cases of pneumonia of unknown origin associated with permanence at the wuhan market in china have been revealed [3,4]. 2019‐ncov belongs to the orthocoronavirinae subfamily and it is different from mers‐cov and sars‐cov. [5]. till now, a total of 1773,084 people is recorded to be infected with pneumonia globally with 111,652 mortality [6,7]. animal to human transmission of the 2019‐ncov is contributed the epidemic outbreak, in china. a large number of patients found that they have had visited local fresh fish and wild animal markets at wuhan in november. recently after that, evident information has been collected for the zoonotic and human to human transmission of the virus [7,8]. it is shown previously that sars virus transmission was really related with air droplet of infected patients among intensive care staff [9]. in case of covid-19 in china, the increased mortality risk is probably due to the failure in the health care system, which indicates the public health interventions enhancement, involving social distance and restrictions of movement [10]. it has been shown that covid-19 infects all age groups in various geographical areas [11] and the transmission can be occurred through direct and indirect way [12]. the patients have a different response to the infection, which starts from asymptomatic to severe pneumonia and similar condition was seen in mers outbreaks in the middle east [13]. according to the recent study through a phylogenetic network analysis of 160 complete genome sequence of the 2019‐ncov which is done by england and german researchers, there are three central variants of the 2019‐ncov are identified until today. the phylogenetic tree was relied on amino acid sequences of the virus and different mutations and changes of amino acids have been discovered. according to these mutations, the variants are named as a, b, and c. in which, the researchers believed that variants b and c are originated from variant a. these variants are noticed to be found in different countries. in europe, east asia and america, variants a and c are significantly spread. while, type b causes more outbreaks in east asia [14]. therefore, it is important to build a phylogenetic tree of the 2019ncov in all regions to indicate the types of the variants. as the early stage of infection control, the proper diagnosis technique and isolation of the infected people are considered as the hallmarks for the control and management of the disease. the current research aims to identify the phylogenetic estimation of the 2019ncov and its evolutionary rate to more understand the real origin of the virus. also, phylogenetic analysis is an important outcome to understand the progression of infection, antiviral discovery, and kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 3 development of vaccine. therefore, in this investigation, the phylogenetic trees for animal coronaviruses with the novel coronavirus-2019 have been created using a number of available complete protein sequences of envelope (e), membrane (m), nucleocapsid (n) and spike (s) proteins. 2. methods and materials the number of available complete protein sequences of coronaviruses, envelope (e) (56 amino acid sequences, membrane (m) (55 amino acid sequences), and 54 protein sequences for each nucleocapsid (n) and spike (s) proteins of the novel coronavirus and animal coronaviruses isolated from different animal hosts were studied. all the sequences have been downloaded from and genbank (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/). a basic local alignment search tool has been used for similarity percentage identification (https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi); the datasets were excluded from eventual duplicated and very similar amino acid sequences. bioedit program v7.0.5. has been used for editing the dataset of the above complete protein sequences [15]. maximum likelihood (ml) methods were employed for the analyses because they allow for testing different phylogenetic hypotheses by calculating the probability of a given model of evolution generating the observed data and by comparing the probabilities of nested models by the likelihood ratio test. generalized time reversible plus gamma distribution and invariant sites (+g+i) were used for ml trees reconstruction using megax [16,17]. all the accession numbers of isolates are presented in the figures. for further confirmation and obtaining the final trees the protein domain sequences were aligned with muscle, the phylogenetic tree was created with phyml and treedyn (www.phylogeny.fr). also, the branch support values were considered. 3. results to understand the origin of the 2019ncov, the 56 available complete protein sequences of animals and human coronaviruses were analysed through ml phylogenetic tree. as its shown in (figures 1-4), coronaviruses isolated from animals and all the 2019-ncov are located in three different clusters a, b and c. spike protein all animal and human coronaviruses used in this study are placed into three different group of clusters (a, b and c). in group a, all coronaviruses belong to different species of bats are seen clustered together. group b has a larger group of different animals and bats. in this group, coronavirus; avian infectious bronchitis viruses (ibv), infecting poultry are located together into one clade. porcine coronaviruses isolated in different countries are gathered into one clade next to the feline coronaviruses. both porcine and feline coronaviruses are neighbored by coronaviruses isolated from different species of bat (figure 1). in addition, all feline and porcine coronaviruses clade is located next to the clade of sea mammals, including whale and bottlenose dolphin. interestingly, most of coronaviruses isolated from bat such as bat_sars_like_coronaviruses (mg772934.1_bat_sars-like_coronavirus_isolate_bat-sl-covzxc21/chn, dq022305.2 bat_sars_coronavirus_hku3-1/hk/chn/2005 and ky417146.1 bat_sars-like coronavirus-isolate-rs4231/chn/2016) and pangolin coronaviruses (mt040333.1 pangolin/china/2020) are located in cluster c (figure 1). in the same cluster, coronavirus of rousettus bat (nc_030886.1 rousettus bat/beijing/chn/2018, ku762337.1 rousettus_bat//chn/2016 and mg762674.1 rousettus_bat/_hku9/jinghong/chn/2009) and mers isolated from camel (kj713299.1 mers-camel/ saudi arabia/ 2014) can be observed which is located in subclades of the same cluster. while all avian infectious bronchitis viruses (ibv) (mk644086.1, mf508703.1, jf732903.1, kx272465.1, mg233398.1, mh779856.1, gu393337.1, kr902510.1, aj311317.1, nc_001451.1, fj888351.1 and kt203557.1) and coronaviruses isolated from pigs http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/) http://www.phylogeny.fr/ kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 4 (lc063846.1, lc063847.1, kx580958.1, kr078300.1, mk409659.1, kt021232.1 and kf761675.1) are located in cluster b in two different clades which is located far from the 2019ncov in the phylogenetic tree (figure 1). figure 1: spike protein phylogenetic tree analysis of the 2019‐ncov with common animal coronaviruses. the maximum likelihood method was used for making phylogenetic tree. protein domain sequences were aligned with muscle, the phylogenetic tree was created with phyml and treedyn (www.phylogeny.fr). branch support values are presented in red. nucleocapsid protein all coronaviruses isolated from different hosts are classified into three different group of clusters (a, b and c). in group a, a large group of different coronaviruses isolated from different bat species and human hosts including the 2019‐ncov are grouped together in this cluster. coronaviruses isolated from poultry and sea mammal are in group b. in this group, seamammal coronaviruses are allocated together into one clade. furthermore, the clade containing sea mammals, including whale and bottlenose dolphin is placed next to the clade of avian infectious bronchitis viruses (ibv). in group c, all porcine coronaviruses are gathered together http://www.phylogeny.fr/ kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 5 in a single clade, which are accompanied by two different clades collecting coronaviruses isolated from bats and feline hosts (figure 2). as it is observed in the (figure 2), all the 2019ncov (mt019531.1, nc_045512.2, mt019533.1, mt020880.1 and mt020781.1) are allocated in clusters a, which are divided on some clades. most of the 2019ncov in cluster a are allocated next to bat-sars-like coronaviruses(mg772934.1_bat_sars-like_coronavirus_isolate_bat-sl-covzxc21/chn, dq022305.2 bat_sars_coronavirus_hku3-1/hk/chn/2005 and ky417146.1 bat_sarslike coronavirus-isolate-rs4231/chn/2016) and pangolin coronaviruses (mt040333.1 pangolin/china/2020); whereas, mers coronavirus isolated from camel (kj713299.1 merscamel/ saudi_arabia/ 2014) is located into another clade next to the clade where the 2019ncov is allocated. furthermore, all coronaviruses isolated from fruit bats (rousettus bat) (nc_030886.1, ku762337., nc_009021.1, mg762674.1 and hm211101.1) are allocated in the near subclades. figure 2: phylogenetic tree analysis of nucleocapsid proteins of the 2019‐ncov with common animal coronaviruses. the maximum likelihood method was used for making phylogenetic tree. protein domain sequences were aligned with muscle, the phylogenetic tree was created with phyml and treedyn (www.phylogeny.fr). branch support values are presented in red. http://www.phylogeny.fr/ kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 6 envelope protein all amino acid sequences of coronaviruses envelope protein downloaded from ncbi which are isolated from different hosts (human, animals, bats and sea mammals) in different countries are divided into three different group of clusters (a, b and c). in group a, all coronaviruses isolated from feline are observed clustered together. group b contains a large group of different coronaviruses isolated from porcine, bats and human hosts including the 2019‐ncov. porcine coronaviruses are neighbored by coronaviruses isolated from different species of bat (figure 3). furthermore, the 2019‐ncov are in the same group which are far from porcine coronaviruses in different clades. group c has a large group of different poultry and sea mammal coronaviruses. in this group, coronavirus; avian infectious bronchitis viruses (ibv), infecting poultry are located together into one clade. in addition, all avian infectious bronchitis viruses (ibv) clade is placed next to the clade of sea animals, including whale and bottlenose dolphin. as it is shown in the (figure 3), the phylogenetic tree placed the all 2019ncov isolated from human host (mt019531.1, nc_045512.2, mt019533.1, mt020880.1 and mt020781.1) are in cluster b. most of the 2019ncov in cluster b are allocated next to bat-sars-like-coronavirus (mg772934.1_bat_sars-like_coronavirus_isolate_bat-sl-covzxc21/chn, dq022305.2 bat_sars_coronavirus_hku3-1/hk/chn/2005 and ky417146.1 bat_sars-like coronavirus-isolate-rs4231/chn/2016) and pangolin coronaviruses (mt040333.1 pangolin/china/2020); while, mers coronavirus isolated from camel (kj713299.1 merscamel/ saudi_arabia/ 2014) is located into another clade next to the clade where the 2019ncov is allocated. in addition, all coronaviruses isolated from fruit bats (rousettus bat) are also observed in the subclade of the same cluster. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 7 figure 3: phylogenetic tree analysis of envelope proteins of the 2019‐ncov with common animal coronaviruses. the maximum likelihood method was used for making phylogenetic tree. protein domain sequences were aligned with muscle, the phylogenetic tree was created with phyml and treedyn (www.phylogeny.fr). branch support values are presented in red. membrane protein three groups (a, b and c) of coronaviruses of different hosts are built by phylogenetic tree. phylogenetic analysis allocated all human coronaviruses including the 2019‐ncov and batsars-like-coronavirus together in a certain clade of the cluster a. in this protein analysis, the http://www.phylogeny.fr/ kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 8 clades of different species of bat and camel coronaviruses are collected together in group b. in this cluster, sea animal coronaviruses, avian infectious bronchitis viruses (ibv) are observed into one clade. while, all porcine and bat coronaviruses are in group c (figure 4). as it is observed in the (figure 4), all the 2019ncov (mt019531.1, nc_045512.2, mt019533.1, mt020880.1 and mt020781.1) are allocated in clusters a, which are divided on some clades. all of the 2019ncov in cluster a are closely related to bat-sars-likecoronavirus (mg772934.1_bat_sars-like_coronavirus_isolate_bat-sl-covzxc21/chn, dq022305.2 bat_sars_coronavirus_hku3-1/hk/chn/2005 and ky417146.1 bat_sars-like coronavirus-isolate-rs4231/chn/2016) and pangolin coronaviruses (mt040333.1 pangolin/china/2020) because all of them are gathered next to each other. in contrast to envelope (e), nucleocapsid (n) and spike (s) proteins; membrane protein of coronaviruses isolated from avian infectious bronchitis viruses (ibv) (mk644086.1, mf508703.1, jf732903.1, kx272465.1, mg233398.1, mh779856.1, gu393337.1, kr902510.1, aj311317.1, nc_001451.1, fj888351.1 and kt203557.1), sea animals including dolphin (mn690611.1/bottlenose_dolphin_coronavirus/usa) and whale (eu111742.1 whale/usa/ 2008) are allocated in the clade next to the clade where the 2019ncov is allocated (figure 4 group a). in addition, all coronaviruses isolated from fruit bats (rousettus bat) and african (mk564475.1_mers/camel/ethiopia/2019) and arabic (kj713299.1_merscamel/saudi_arabia/2014) camels are allocated in the certain clades of the cluster b. also, the pig, feline, and some bat coronaviruses are clustered together the cluster group c of the figure 4. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 9 figure 4: phylogenetic tree analysis of membrane proteins of the 2019‐ncov with common animal coronaviruses. the maximum likelihood method was used for making phylogenetic tree. protein domain sequences were aligned with muscle, the phylogenetic tree was created with phyml and treedyn (www.phylogeny.fr). branch support values are presented in red. 4. discussion due to the recent pandemic outbreak of deadly covid-19, it is necessary to understand the epidemiology of the 2019ncov. so, this study investigated the possible origin of this virus through the phylogenetic analysis that exists in both humans (2019ncov) and animals. to discover the link between human and animal coronaviruses, the complete protein sequences of envelope (e), membrane (m), nucleocapsid (n) and spike (s) proteins coronaviruses in different animals was analysed and compared to the 2019ncov through phylogenetic analysis (figures 1,2,3, and 4). http://www.phylogeny.fr/ kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 10 the phylogenetic tree of the spike protein (figures 1) reveals that most of 2019-ncov are allocated in cluster b with very closely related animal coronaviruses, bat-sars-likecoronaviruses (mg772934.1_bat_sars-like_coronavirus_isolate_bat-sl-covzxc21/chn, dq022305.2 bat_sars_coronavirus_hku3-1/hk/chn/2005 and ky417146.1 bat_sarslike coronavirus-isolate-rs4231/chn/2016) [18,19,20,21] and pangolin coronaviruses (mt040333.1 pangolin/china/2020) [22]. this means that the viruses of this cluster are genetically identical and it is closely related to that coronavirus isolated from in different areas such as china especially during the year 2020. this may conclude that 2019ncov was mutated from passing through different animal hosts until reached and adapted itself in human host. periodically in around every five years, the virus evolved from sars to the new generation of coronavirus in human. data analysis of envelope protein (figure 3); all coronaviruses are generally classified into two major groups; a and b. all the 2019ncov are clustered in group a in a similar manner of spike protein phylogenetic tree, which supports the hypothesis that spike and envelope proteins are originated from bat-sars-like-coronaviruses and pangolin coronaviruses. in addition, coronaviruses isolated from pigs are allocated in the same group, but in a very far clade. this concludes that is less possible to be an origin of 2019‐ncov. according to nucleocapsid protein phylogenetic tree (figure 2), all coronaviruses are clustered in two different groups. group a and b clustered all viruses that cause diseases in pig, poultry, sea mammals, bat and human. interestingly, all the 2019ncov coronaviruses are allocated in group a with bat-sars-like-coronaviruses (mg772934.1_bat_sarslike_coronavirus_isolate_bat-sl-covzxc21/chn, dq022305.2 bat_sars_coronavirus_ hku3-1/hk/chn/2005 and ky417146.1 bat_sars-like coronavirus-isolaters4231/chn/2016) [18,19,20,21] and pangolin coronaviruses (mt040333.1 pangolin/china/2020) [22]. in which, all 2019ncov are clustered in subclades with coronavirus isolated in rousettus bat (fruit bat) in 2016 in china (ku762337.1 rousettus bat//chn/2016) [23], which are less closely related. this may give a strong evidence that 2019ncov is originated from bat_sars-like coronavirus especially bat_sars-coronavirus-ratg13 (mn996532.1/chn/2020) [24]. in addition, coronaviruses isolated from avian and sea animals are clustered in the same group, but in in differed clades. the 2019ncov isolated human hosts is not closely related to coronavirus in bottlenose dolphin in the usa (mn690611.1 bottlenose_dolphin_coronavirus/usa) [25]. this is for the first time is revealed that there is a genetic homology between the 2019ncov and marine coronaviruses, but it cannot be a strong evidence to be an origin of the 2019ncov. interestingly, a similar result was obtained with membrane protein (figure 4), which strengths the postulation that the 2019‐ncov is more possible to come from coronavirus of bat_sars-like and pangolin coronaviruses rather than avian infectious bronchitis viruses (ibv) of poultry. our findings are comparable to many international studies outcomes [18,21,23,24]. 5. conclusion the result of our study along with analysis of other international researches, enforcing bat_sars-like coronavirus especially bat_sars-coronavirus-ratg13 and/or pangolin 2020 isolates are the probable origin of infection and this may give a clarification of the 2019-ncov transmission dynamics. however, the postulate of originating 2019ncov from rousettus bat is weaker because of its less closely related to the 2019‐ncov. this outcome will aid to understanding of the possible origin of the virus and infection control policy. therefore, to find out the close relationship between the 2019‐ncov and other coronaviruses, amino acids sequence alignment for all structural proteins of the virus and phylogenetic tree of complete genome obtained in every country is required. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 11 acknowledgement we acknowledge the presidency of sulaimani polytechnic university and especially assistant professor dr. alan faraydoon ali for his great help and academic support to performing this research. also, we would like to appreciate mam humanitarian foundation for their financial and logistic support. reference [1] c. drosten, s. günther, w. preiser, et al. identification of a novel coronavirus associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome. n engl j med.; 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[24] k. andersen, a. rambaut, w. lipkin, e. holmes, r. garry, the proximal origin of sars-cov-2. artic network, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-0820-9 [25] p. woo, s. lau, c. lam, a. tsang, s. hui, r. fan, p. martelli, k. yuen. discovery of a novel bottlenose dolphin coronavirus reveals a distinct species of marine mammal coronavirus in gammacoronavirus. j virol 88:1318 –1331, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/jvi.02351-13. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1005883  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdish language learning tool in serious game gulala ali hama amin karzan hussein sharif database technology department computer science department technical college of informatics college of science and technology sulaimani polytechnic university university of human development sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq gulala.amin@spu.edu.iq karzan.hussein@uhd.edu.iq article info abstract volume 5 issue 2 december 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.2.2 article history: received : 13 august 2020 accepted : 11 october 2020 in this era, technology has a great impact on the educational system as they have on the other different areas of today’s life, for instance, smartphone devices are the best examples. software technology vendors moving toward developing tremendous applications in the education field. however, the lack of applications that satisfy the ambition of those wishing to learn the kurdish language is still an obstacle in this field, specifically the field of smartphone devices technology and gaming industry. hence smartphone devices become userfriendly and necessary tools in every individuals’ life, as it is a multi-function device. in this paper we designed and implemented a smartphone application to learn the kurdish language and improve vocabulary via a serious game. the application designed for android devices, enables users to learn and improve the kurdish language. the application is also suitable for foreign people who desire to learn the kurdish language. the system proposed in this paper introduces a smartphone application with an acceptable user interface for an exciting, interesting and challenging puzzle game at a time. the main goal is to learn kurdish vocabulary using crossword puzzle, solving hidden words, find and circle the crossword in the puzzle solution in the context of a serious game. keywords: serious game, smartphone applications, android application, kurdish language, puzzle games. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction languages are tools used to express feelings and thoughts to explore the world; it was the main feature for building a different civilization on the earth in the past. words or language characters are fundamental elements of every languages discovered by a human being all over the history of civilization. since language has significant importance in learning and educational systems, improving vocabulary knowledge is an educational priority in every mailto:karzan.hussein@uhd.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 14 process of learning a language including the basic language skills such as listening, speaking, reading, and writing [1]. the general concept that normally used with the word game is entertainment, this includes a variant of temperaments during gameplay, including happiness, enthusiasm, and feeling of satisfaction. however, if we look at the history of the development of smartphone applications, we discover that some of the application developers are addressed towards designing games for the purpose of education, not only just for entertainment. these types of games are called serious games. there are numbers of different methods to describe serious games. some manufacturing brands consider serious games required to contain a veritable portion of gameplay paired with an applied characteristic. whilst others use this concept with applications created with the use of software development from the videogame production, which signifies that a major part of simulators would be considered serious games. further groups believe that serious games are basically videogames and that the classification is nothing more than a marketing technique. for the purposes of this study, the following definition has been utilized: serious games are applications that combine aspects of tutoring, teaching, and training, with an entertainment mode. with these features, the application’s goal will be conveniently reflected as an application that contains serious and entertaining content at the same time [2]. from the previous definition, it can be said that serious games are formed and used to function for a reason or a target, rather than pure entertainment. for instance, provide skills, increase the level of knowledge and learning outcome for which they have been created [1]. previously some evidences had been found on several games proved that have advantageous in academic achievement purposes, furthermore, games can essentially be integrated within a classroom to improve student learning and contribution [3]. serious games are considered the best choice for various fields of life, for instance, teaching and training, information and communication, health, advertising, etc. [2]. using a serious game to learn children with special disorders, for instance, children with autism confirmed that learning of vocabulary items among children with autism enhanced significantly when they experience this category of the game [4],[5]. moreover, physical activities using a serious game for children with a chronic disease may have some positive impact on the children to promote physical activity levels among these children [2]. the rest of this paper consist of a literature review, contribution, serious games, methodology, results, and the last part is a conclusion and future works. 2. literature review there are many studies focused on the serious game in the educational systems. in [6], the authors in their research work developed a serious game named kockica which is a 3dimension serious game has been developed in the bosnian native language to help children with disabilities; neuro-typical children as a special case, in order to improve their verbal skillfulness and learn the alphabet in an entertaining and fascinating way. however the benefit of this game depends on the level of contribution of parents and teachers who should help the children with disabilities to achieve the serious games’ goals. while authors in [7], additionally targeted different learning goals with the bosnian language, they motivated the same category of children to engage with a serious game application developed to learn counting and color matching, however, the application limited to learn children only one area or scope (airport) in the serious game content. darwesh et al selected kurdish sorani dialect and arami alphabet of kurdish language to create a serious game for the range of children between ages 4-12 years old, they proposed hypotheses for a serious game and designed a prototype to test the hypothesis focusing on writing approach, hence they just conducted a survey and interviewed pupils and teachers to collect information about what features they need to add in their hypothesis to ensure that they target the main goals behind the proposed system [8]. https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/another-word-for/which_signifies.html kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 15 another example of a smartphone application related to learning a specific language is for the japanese language, the study in [9] used a technic named shadowing. this technic is famous in japan supports learner to learn japanese language by hearing a recorded speech and the learner try to pronounce a word or sentence correctly, and repeat the process as much as possible to reach a perfect level. shadowing technique is assists to learn new vocabularies as well as improving speaking skill which is mostly not included in japanese language curriculum school, since the japanese language proficiency test (jlpt) exam materials lack of this skill test. moreover, pronunciation in the japanese language is considered to be one of the reasons that make students face difficulties to speak japanese in a fluent way. practicing the traditional shadowing technic without assistance is boring, excepting less motivation, and lack of feedback from instructor whether the pronunciation is correct or incorrect. thus, using this gamification, "shadowingu app" is confirmed to be efficient learning tool. since the study implemented gamification elements that can be applied such as progression, rewards, leaderboard, etc., all these elements provide a learning environment that engage student to achieve better result. however, this study has not yet examined whether the effects of this gamification application similar over long-term period or only due to its novelty. it needs further research take into consideration learning materials like kanji, grammar for japanese language, and writing skills to students stay active. the english language is in demand and popular to a large degree, also considered a global one among the spoken languages in recent decades, therefore, studies [10], [11], [12] related to this language. in china, authors in [10], stated that, undergraduate students lack adequate learning plan when they intended to learn and practice new vocabularies in english. for this reason they proposed in their study a game application named “hujiang happy word games” application to examine whether their technic of joyful learning services in this context. they observed that this joyful and pleasurable learning can improve students' curiosity and selfconfidence of learning, however, no significant effects on vocabulary learning has been observed, since it cannot boost the learning effects of english vocabulary process of learning as compared to the traditional ways. indeed, still some limitations in this research are exist, for instance, the scope of learning tools’ selection is pretty limited, the participants are consist of only 24 students from a university in beijing city, another limitation is the time for the participants to learn is quite short which may affect the result of the research work [10]. hanandeh et al, in their paper work examined the effects of serious game performance and learning tasks based on a model using technology in pedagogical content knowledge frame on students’ motivation to english reading. a pre-experimental study was conducted amongst 50 undergraduate students at yarmouk university, jordan for semester ii, 2016-2017. furthermore, pre and post motivation questionnaires had been used as a measurement to the students’ motivation for english reading skill. as a result they indicated that there is a significant improvement observed in the level of motivation towards learning english reading skill. moreover, the learning tasks had a great effect on students’ interest, pleasure, confidence and satisfaction scale. a serious game activity and learning tasks based on arcs model within the technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack) framework were utilized to increase motivation of students in reading english. the results showed advantages of the work. however, it has been noticed that there is a lack of the experimental studies that investigate sgs effectiveness in learning, specifically in english language learning. thus, more researches should be conducted to explore serious games influence in english language skills such as reading skill [11]. the study in [12], is a preliminary experimental study, provides a taxonomy of the outstanding opportunities and challenges as a result of using serious games to learn the english language. the delphi method had been used to collect students’ opinions in computer science department and resulting from a swot analysis to use these two different gamebased methods of learning english. this study produced a well-organized list of important adoption and entry issues to consider when using the english language learning knowledge. additional factors were identified through discussion of these issues. based on this, the importance and implications of opportunities and challenges associated with serious games kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 16 has been highlighted. furthermore, the study listed many important advantages and prospects that promising to use serious games in classrooms. however, it acknowledged many drawbacks that should be take into account to be controlled. 3. contribution the evolution of the educational serious game leaves plenty to be wanted especially during the current time as the whole world suffers from an outbreak of the epidemic due to the corona virus (covid-19) where learners and teachers are away from physical facilities and cannot attend actual classes especially in kurdistan where education establishments stopped during corona epidemic. so, we designed, developed, and implemented a smartphone application to learn the kurdish language and improve vocabulary via a serious game application designed for android devices, enables the user to learn and improve the kurdish language. the application is also suitable for foreign people who want to learn the kurdish language. it is worth mentioning that, our proposed system is unique and original since there is no evidence on existing a similar serious game focusing on improving the kurdish language through learning vocabulary, with a user-friendly interface and challenging levels. 4. serious games in recent decades, smartphone technological industries left their mark in developing applications for emerging learners in a real context. mobile technologies in a specific serious games subsection called learning games support more appealing learning involvements. from this context, serious games are underlined as games used for pedagogical purposes rather than mere entertainment. this might be a reason that the next generation will integrate more involved and shared games scenarios that will increase the learners’ inspiration [13]. some studies show that languages can be learned via serious games, others introduced specific topics in computer science; for instance, programing language in the field of computer science is a suitable module to be learned by a serious game, similarly learning languages is one of the best examples [8], [14], [15]. the concept of “serious games” used for the first time by clark c. abt, in a book in 1970, holding the same title. a serious game is a form of a game whose main objective is not entertaining the user nevertheless learning. they are organizing intellectual competition with specific game rules that use common sense entertainment in a serious position to meet educational goals, regardless of pedagogical context [16]. the serious game branch adopts an improved framework and provides behavioral simulation, users learning, and eventually becomes an effective feedback route and then substantially changes the learning experiences [16], [17]. the main purpose of a serious game is to provide the background for user participation in specific learning activities and to create a motivating atmosphere. in other quarters, a particular serious game designer believes that the user should be involved in the flow of learning processes and, eventually, in highly permitted activities. serious games have been applied extensively to increase the swiftness of participation in learning and raise the amount of motivation to support the improvement of related intellectual skills. in the serious game, the user will explore contextual concepts and links in a specific educational context and asked to explain them and finally understand them [16], [18]. serious game application as a method is based on trial and error, users can improve collaboration, social leadership skills and cooperation by making mistakes in a controlled environment. the most important principle related to the serious game is the use of the internal drive to improve the learning process; in this sense, the conceptual structure of the game as a mental and physical motivation can eventually compel users to make decisions, choose, rank, provide solutions, etc. ultimately, users can improve social and practical skills to create the game. the serious game environment will provide stimulation support through self-learning skills for players “players often pursue knowledge to control game flow” and involve their natural senses; it allows the user to extract the value by learning from existing kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 17 facts or even under predetermined simulation conditions. it can be said that serious game is a strategic step on the way to affirmative interaction by the user. the advantage of a serious game learning methodology as a strategy lies in its ability to provide content relevant to specific educational goals, rather than absorbing fun games or leisure games that already exist within common educational practices [16], [17]. 5. methodology for the proposed system methodologies is the best choice to come up with proper process for designing, implementing and testing the serious game to avoid the gap which has been determined in the literature review, resulting in creating a smartphone game application with the different target specified for the kurdish language. our methodology for developing of the game application followed 5 stages, namely: concept, design, assembly, development and making evaluation and testing. the methodologies procedure in this research adaptation is explained in details as follow: 5.1 game concept the concept of the proposed game is designing and implementing a smartphone application to learn the kurdish language and improve vocabulary via a serious game application designed for android devices, enables the user to learn and improve the kurdish language. additionally, the application is suitable for foreign people who have a passion to learn the kurdish language. it is essential to develop learning education tools particularly, multimedia in an attractive and convenient environment that is appropriate to the characteristics of students or users and modified according to their needs, packaged in the form of android-based game applications that are more functional and effective. 5.2 game design process before the development of any game, there are a number of mechanisms in the design process that should be done. the most important of our game design process is the game design elements and flowchart of the game. 5.2.1 game architecture diagram the game architecture diagram clearly shows the architecture of the game. the user interface used for interaction with the logic of the application. the word search game gets the data from the database which is sqlite in the application. this interacts and gives the data to the application logic and the information is processed and displayed back on the user interface. figure 1: general game architecture kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 18 5.2.2 game design elements the game framework consists of words, learning through this set of words and searching, for instance, a word puzzle game. on average the gameplay test practice rely on how completely the system design components are taken into account to improve user participation. for the game to function appropriately, some elements such as words and finding results are required. regardless, the needs of the player/user to control and verify the environment and outlines, and most significantly, interacts throughout a convenient interface. if we map the design elements to the gaming condition and environment, finding a word and output the word one by one are the game technique that leads the game pattern to a remarkable approach and makes users reach a level of satisfaction. the procedure that occurs in the internal system is not required for the user to experience the gameplay. these game dynamics are occurring in the background and generally unnoticed. these invisible elements constitute the game dynamics that are firmly required for the proper operation of the game. game developers should continuously be aware of the ambition and interest of the user and how elements are designed in the game. furthermore, the game inventor capable of utilizing game technics that tolerate and excess motivation of the user. the game quality is a significant portion that surprises the user in getting them fascinated with and lunch into the game. the following subsections explain features about our game elements that make the user keep playing without boring and making the gamer/user passionate about the game: 5.2.2.1 rules the game rules require to be distinct and compulsory for players\users in order to trust the game and comprehend that they are playing a variety of fair game. moreover, they need to be informed precisely what leads them to win in order to keep involved and to carry on with the game. 5.2.2.2 levels levels indicate the accomplishment of the partition targets of the game. each level presents the users progress throughout the game. our game application has a set of levels that each player in-game has a collection of unorganized words in each level to play representing the level of the game. 5.2.2.3 time pressure time refers to how the period of time specified for each level is controlled. the game designer can choose to use time in a variety of ways. in our game, the timer starts when the user lunches the game level as should be, along with setting an alarm regarding the amount of time remaining or spend to finishing this level creates a sort of challenging and inspiring atmosphere for the user during the gameplay. 5.2.2.4 points the game needs a process of giving scores to the player. thus points are a crucial and essential element in the game to determine and track users' progress. with points, users are permitted to claim rewards or even use them to unlock a higher level as a result of achievement steps. 5.2.2.5 leaderboard the leaderboard is the game element that illustrates the accomplishment and individual performance of a user. moreover, this element reflects users’ hard work and self-affirmation. 5.2.2.6 achievements this element shows the player’s development and achievement during the game. 5.2.3 game design flowcharts in order to clarify some of the most complicated sections of the game, we need to explain not just the mechanics, but also how the game’s objects interact with each other, what your game is about, and how it looks and works. this can be achieved by using flowchart, which is graphical representation of algorithm, workflow or process. 5.2.3.1 general flowchart of the proposed app when the application starts, it reads the user input which can be select one pf these options: level to play, settings and information about how to play and about the application. if user kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 19 select “select level to play” then for each level, the user will have three options to choose i.e. easy, medium and hard. if user selects “settings” then user can change some setting of the application. if user select “information about how to play an about the application” then user can find information about the application and how the application works by play video. the general flowchart of the proposed application is presented in the figure 2 figure 2: general flowchart of the proposed app 5.2.3.2 general flowcharts of the game the process of scrambling words is done by filling the matrix with the words you are looking for according to the rules, after the search found then storing the coordinates of that word will be saved. for more details, following are some flowcharts that clarify most complicated sections of the game in figures (3, 4 and 5). figure 3: general flowcharts of word search game kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 20 figure 4: flowchart of the word shuffling figure 5: flowchart of word search kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 21 5.3 assembly assembly is the stage of making all objects or media game materials, based on flowcharts, and navigation structures that come from the design stage leads to creating applications. 5.4 game development it is worth mentioning that our game application is developed for android devices, in other words is an android-based application that has been created using android studio ide and java programming language, adobe illustrator used for making all of design include; background, buttons and all other design in our application. from the levels (easy, medium, and hard), the player can decide on which level to start the game. and there is a help button that can instruct the player step-by-step procedure and the application content rules (how to play), leaderboard, timer, points, and other elements that are explained in the previous section. the game has the correct environment made for the (kurdish language learning tool), it has all the specifications that should be present in an actual serious game. 5.5 game test after the assembly phase and development phase completed, the testing phase is done by running the application/program to check and observe errors then find solutions to ensure that the product completed is as desired. our game application was tested with all android versions including android 10.0 q and below. also, it successfully tested with all devices that run android smartphones and tablets with different screen sizes of the devices that work with the android platform. android studio is designed to make testing simple. our game application was tested by using instrumented tests. android studio provides source code directories (source sets), for our test. in this type of testing the application runs on a hardware device or emulator. we used both of them emulator and real device by connecting to the android studio ide. 6. results in this section we show some of the features in the game application, which is consist of a user interface, once the user clicks on the game icon of the application a splash screen will be displayed, as shown in figure (6): figure 6: splash screen of the application the screen splash shows a quick idea about the game after that the application directs you to the home-screen as shown in figure (7) below, the figure illustrates that the screen is consists of several buttons; (new game), (history), ( how to play ), (about) and (settings): kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 22 figure 7: home screen of the application when you start a new game, you have to decide the level of the game, the game has three levels (easy, medium, hard), click on the (new game) button a drop-down menu displayed, you have to click on the level you want and start, figure (8) below shows that: figure 8: starting a new game the levels of the game indicate that the more your background about the kurdish language is strong the more you can make progress in improving your kurdish language level, in figure (9) the levels of difficulty of the game are displayed. (a) easy (b) medium (c) hard figure 9: levels of difficulties of the game 7. conclusion and future works this research paper presents a novel game application for smartphone devices; the application is a serious game in order to help users to learn the kurdish language through an application designed for android devices. it is obvious that game programming taking a great deal recently in the field of mobile programming, since the later has become an effective tool that kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 23 could be used in various purposes, educational purposes are one of these purposes. in this work, once the users install the application on the device; can be played at home, in the classroom, during a trip, etc. when the users use this application to learn the kurdish language, their aspiration increases as they have to challenge their selves to pass all the threelevels of the game. future versions of this game might cover a specific kurdish language module in high schools or primary schools in kurdistan region in iraq, to help students to cover the topics of the module and assists the instructors as well. also future step involves in creating a story plot pattern to be used as a tool for facilitating users delve deeper in the more complex level of the kurdish language. the latter can encourage foreigners and be a good incentive for those who have strong aspirations to learn this language without the help of a facilitator, install the application on their smartphones and enjoy learning kurdish reference [1] a. sukstrienwong and p. vongsumedh, “software development of word search game on smart phones in english vocabulary learning. in the proceedings of the international conference on education and modern educational technologies, vol. 39, pp. 37-42, 2013. 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[14] k. nakajima and t. nakajima, “a vocabulary learning game using a serious-game approach,” lecture notes in electrical engineering advanced technologies, embedded and multimedia for human-centric computing, pp. 13–22, 2013. [15] a. yassine, d. chenouni, m. berrada, and a. tahiri, “a serious game for learning c programming language concepts using solo taxonomy,” international journal of emerging technologies in learning (ijet), vol. 12, no. 03, p. 110, 2017. [16] b. h. yousefi and h. mirkhezri, “toward a game-based learning platform: a comparative conceptual framework for serious games,” 2019 international serious games symposium (isgs), 2019. [17] a. d. gloria, f. bellotti, and r. berta, “serious games for education and training,” international journal of serious games, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014. [18] m. a. camilleri and a. c. camilleri, “student-centred learning through serious games,” inted2019 proceedings, 2019. 1. introduction  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq assessment of medication use by publics in sulaimani province kamal aziz enayat mariwan abdulla hama salih community health medical laboratory technical college of health technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq kamal.aziz@gmail.com mariwan.abdulla@spu.edu.iq muhammed babakir-mina medical laboratory technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq m.babakir@spu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.1.5 article history: received 25 march 2020 accepted 14 may 2020 drug uses is a multi-step process starting from consulting doctor, prescribing, ordering and using via individual either public or healthcare staff for therapeutic reasons. this process can be problematic for several reasons, especially in developing countries due to easily access to medications, self-diagnosis and people recommendation for certain cases. the aims of the present study were to assess the practice and attitude of medication uses and the knowledge about medication advantage and their risks by publics in sulaymaniyah province. then to build correlations between demographic characteristics and medication uses, in order to show the main impact of widely used medication on public health status. finally, to provide community with statistical data about the level of knowledge, attitude and practice kap in this region. the overall six hundred participant from the average of ten locations between governmental and privates hospitals and pharmacies as well as clinics were selected from central city and towns for data collection. the majority of participants were public from different background. the present study concluded that the 60 percentage of the participant were lack of adequate knowledge about the ability for differentiation between analgesic and antibiotic medications. the results of the current study showed inappropriate practices and attitudes that contribute to increasing health risks. it is also found that 72 percentage of participant who use prescription only drugs such as antibiotics can be possibly stopped after situation disappeared. this study also investigated several reasons for inappropriate practice, such as wrong believes with irregular consumption of medications, illiteracy, poor health services in terms of pharmacies and healthcare staff as well as easy access to most of the types of medications. therefore, effort by governmental authorities is keywords: medication uses, medication knowledge, medication attitude, medication practice, sulaymaniyah province. kurdistan medication uses. mailto:kamal.aziz@gmail.com mailto:mariwan.abdulla@spu.edu.iq mailto:m.babakir@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 67 urgent toward reducing the risk of the situation, and negative consequences regarding inappropriate practice toward patient care in the region. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the process of regular usage of medications by patients is important to avoid any health consequences. the world health organization who reported that about 700000 people die each year globally, because of drug-resistant diseases. medication use process can be directed by several factors, patient behavior, healthcare professionals. the appropriate use of medications help in effectiveness and safety of the medication use process [1]. the selfdiagnosis and self-discontinuation of medications could be among the factors of inappropriate use of medications[2]. in the past, researches about misuses of medication have been reported, the health consequence of antibiotic resistant bacteria were resulted from misused of antibiotic medications [3]. outpatients are considered to be active receivers of drug therapy[4]. patients’ medication knowledge plays a crucial role in the disease management, as it was shown to be positively correlated with a higher quality of life, adherence to treatment, and attainment of favorable clinical outcomes [5]. medication use is an action that involves a change in behavior, and appropriate use of medications by patients involves a desired change in behavior which is consistent with the prescription issued by physicians and/or recommendations by pharmacists. the attitude of medication uses by patient can be influenced by some factors, culture and religious believes are predominant factors especially in developing countries [6, 7]. several reports all over the world studied the attitude of general public [8], student [2, 9], adolescence [10], elderly [11, 12] and healthcare providers [11], but sulaymaniyah public attitude were not studied yet. herein, this study was conducted on sulaymaniyah public to study or assess the knowledge, attitude and practice kap of medication use and safety. also the aim is to evaluate the causes of the obtained level of the attitude and knowledge and practice of medication uses and the consequent risks. finally, this study aimed to differentiate the kap between the general public inside and outside the sulaymaniyah province. 2. methods and materials study design and population a cross-sectional study was carried out to assess the evaluation of knowledge, practice and attitude of medication among the general public in the sulaymaniyah–iraq during the period of study from 27 may to 27 august 2019. a number of hospitals in sulaymaniyah city were included in this study and these hospitals work under the supervision of ministry of health/ kurdistan regional government. the included hospitals shar general hospital, internal teaching hospital, surgery teaching hospital, bakhshin general private hospital and also included same doctors private clinic and special pharmacies. other hospitals outside sulaymaniyah also included; ranya general hospital, shaid sarkawt hospital in seidsadiq, shirwana health center in kalar and shahid abdalrahim health center in xalakan with many private doctors clinics at rural area. inclusion and exclusion criteria the current study included all patients and people with the patient in the mentioned hospitals in sulaymaniyah city and physician private clinic and special pharmacy were 600 cases. uncompleted form and unintentional completed forms were excluded. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 68 sample calculations and questionnaire form details the numbers of cases were determined by sample size calculation by daniel’s method. the questionnaire form was sourced from; studies about evaluation of knowledge, practice and attitude of medication among the general public. furthermore, the questionnaire form was reviewed by academic experts in the sulaymaniyah hospitals, sulaimani polytechnic university and sulaimani university for validity of the questionnaire form. the questionnaire form was included questions on demographical information and general questions such as (age, gender, marital status, location, smoking, alcohol drink, occupation, family income, medical history, certificate degree and kap questions). assessment questions were the other section of the questionnaire form, were consists of three parts; the first part contains some questions about basic knowledge of the people about medications. the second part, consist of 10 questions on people’s attitudes on medication and last part included questions about people’s practices on medication use. furthermore, assess questions were designed to avoid time-consuming and to get full attention of the respondent. data collection and data analysis data collection was performed by using questionnaire form and filled in by face to face method and responders have an opportunity to ask an explanation on the questions if they needed. scores calculated based on each kap parameters. statistical analysis was done using spss program version 22, two approaches were used: descriptive approach for finding frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviation and constructing tables and figures; while analytical approach used for finding associations between variables and finding p values; a p-value of ≤0.05 was considered statistically significant. chi square test was used for finding these associations. ethical consideration this study was approved by the ethical committee at sulaimani polytechnic university/ technical college of health and permission of general sulaymaniyah directorate of health and the in administrations of the hospitals that were included in this study. 3. results the study consists of 600 participants from different areas with in sulaymaniyah governorate. study participants had gender distribution that female was 58.2% and male was 41.8%. their mean age was 42.28 ±13.48 sd and 77% of them were married. the participants had different employment statuses. the results of distribution frequencies of all socio-demographic characteristics were shown in the table 1. table 1: study variables and frequencies of socio-demographic characteristic distribution variables frequencies % gender male female 349 251 58.2 41.8 marital status single married divorced widow 129 462 5 4 21.5 77.0 0.8 0.7 occupation governmental employee self-employee un-employed retired 162 166 211 32 27.0 27.7 35.2 5.3 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 69 in this study about 45% of participants had chronic diseases, meanwhile 54% were found without chronic deseases as shown in figure 1. results of the participants’ responses for questions related to knowledge represented the followings: 16.5% recognise their medicnes by color. 29.2% of participant discontinue on anti-hypertensive drugs with improved symptoms. attitude was evaluated by some questions. out of 600 respondents, 226 (37.7%) agreed that pharmacist provided enough information on drug use, reversly 288 (48%) of participant claimed that pharmacists did not provide enough information on their medications. the attitude about using multivitamins without doctor prescriptions and with doctors prescriptions were 90.8% and 9.2% respectively. in question about drinking tea interfering with medications, majority of them 98.8% think drinking tea has no interfere with taking medications. another important results about factors affect people and push them to use more medications are disease, low price, private hospital and numbers of pharmacies (84.7%, 12%, 1.8%, 1.5% respectively). the practice finding includes extensive use of antibiotics without prescriptions. out of 600 participants 307(51.2%), 152 (25.3%) and 63(10.5%) used antibiotic without prescription for common cold, gastro-enteritis and urinary tract infections respectively. analgesic use during pain without prescription was 489(81.5%). majority of them used analgesic for headache 402(67.1) and back pain 120(20%). the associations between knowledge, attitude, and practice of medication uses and gender, level of education, risedency, and types of diseases were showed in table 2 , table3, and table 4. student 29 4.8 residency sulaymaniyah city outside sulaymaniyah city 360 240 60.0 40.0 family income ˂500.000 iqd 500.000 – 1000.000 iqd ˃100.000 iqd 307 187 106 51.2 37.2 17.6 smoking yes no passive smoker 133 401 66 22.2 66.8 11.0 alcohol yes no on occasion 27 549 24 4.5 91.5 4.0 education level read & write high school & diploma graduate & postgraduate (from college and institutions ) 258 236 108 42.7 39.3 18.0 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 70 figure 1: participant’s chronic diseases table 2: association between knowledge questions and residency knowledge and practice-related questions answer residency total no. & % p value sulaymaniyah no. & % (n=360) outside sulaymaniyah (n=240) do you agree with all the speeches that the doctor said about your disease? yes no 172 (47.8) 188 (52.2) 147 (61.3) 93 (38.8) 319(53.2) 281(46.8) 0.001 what is the difference between analgesic and antibiotic? analgesia for pain & antibiotic for infection i don’t know 232 (64.4) 128 (35.6) 128 (53.3) 112 (46.7) 360 (60.0) 240 (40.0) 0.006 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 71 what is your main source of information? doctor pharmacist internet t.v public 75 (20.8) 11 (3.1) 51 (14.2) 57 (15.8) 166 (46.1) 47 (19.6) 4 (1.7) 6 (2.5) 55 (22.9) 128 (53.3) 122 (20.3) 15 (2.5) 57 (9.5) 112 (18.7) 294 (49.0) ˂0.001 do you think that the overuse of paracetamol will cause? liver toxicity kidney damage high blood pressure not of all 49 (13.6) 154 (42.8) 77 (21.4) 80 (22.2) 18 (7.5) 117 (48.8) 42 (17.5) 63 (26.3) 67 (11.2) 271 (45.2) 119(19.8) 143 (23.8) 0.04 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 72 table 3: association between gender and attitude and knowledge-related questions knowledge and attitude questions gender total male female p-value anti-hypertensive drugs could be discontinued when blood pressure returned to normal? yes 111 64 175 0.094 31.8% 25.5% 29.2% no 238 187 425 68.2% 74.5% 70.8% can you differentiate between the drugs by its colors? yes 62 37 99 0.325 17.8% 14.7% 16.5% no 287 214 501 82.2% 85.3% 83.5% you can discontinue the use of antibiotics by yourself when the symptoms relieved? yes 259 173 432 0.155 74.2% 68.9% 72.0% no 90 78 168 25.8% 31.1% 28.0% vitamins are considered essential nutrients, so will not cause negative effect agree 51 40 91 0.656 14.6% 15.9% 15.2% disagree 298 211 509 85.4% 84.1% 84.8% do you ever taken less than the prescribed dose of your medication? yes 188 93 281 0.0001 53.9% 37.1% 46.8% no 161 158 319 46.1% 62.9% 53.2% do you ever taken more than the prescribed dose of your medication? yes 29 10 39 0.034 8.3% 4.0% 6.5% no 320 241 561 91.7% 96.0% 93.5% do you ever used the medication without information? yes 25 23 48 0.02 23.6% 41.1% 29.6% no 81 33 114 76.4% 58.9% 70.4% do you ever taken medicines according to others recommendation? yes 135 119 254 0.03 38.7% 47.4% 42.3% no 214 132 346 61.3% 52.6% 57.7% do you ever taken the doctor’s prescribed medicine when you had similar symptoms? yes 116 105 221 0.03 33.2% 41.8% 36.8% no 233 146 379 66.8% 58.2% 63.2% kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 73 table 4: associations between knowledge, attitude, and practice-related question with types of diseases questions answer type of the disease (n=91) total p-value ht n=72 dm n=19 can you differentiate the drug by its color? yes no 29 (40.3) 43 (59.7) 2 (10.5) 17 (89.5) 31 (34.1) 60 (65.9) 0.01 antihypertensive drugs could be discontinuing when bp returns to normal? yes no 11 (15.3) 61 (84.7) 2 (10.5) 17 (89.5) 13 (114.3) 78 (85.7) 0.45 can you discontinue the use of antibiotics by yourself when the symptoms relieved? yes no 53 (73.6) 19 (26.4) 18 (94.7) 1 (5.3) 71 (78%) 20 (22%) 0.03 vitamins are considered essential nutrients, but overusing will cause negative effect agree disagree 20 (27.8) 52 (72.2) 8 (42.1) 11 (57.9) 28 (30.8) 63 (69.2) 0.17 have you ever taken medicine according to others suggestion? yes no 49 (68.1) 23 (31.9) 7 (36.8) 12 (63.2) 56 (61.5) 35 (38.5) 0.01 do you ever taken medicines according to others recommendation? yes no 49 (68.1) 23 (31.9) 7 (36.8) 12 (63.2) 56 (61.5) 35 (38.5) 0.013 4. discussion this study found that the observed gaps in knowledge that is statistically significant in terms of both medications use and safety. the lacks of enough knowledge that belong to the use of some medications without prescription were identified. this study demonstrated that participants believed that the medications that are known as prescription-only drugs such as anti-hypertensive drugs, antibiotics and analgesics can be possibility stopped when symptoms disappeared. similar study were supported the result of this study [1-4]. the toxicity aspect of medication were explored in this study, significantly (p<0.01) the majority of participant were found without concern to the toxicity of the most used analgesic paracetamol concerning to liver toxicity, compared to other study related to paracetamol toxicity, low knowledge in sulaymaniyah should be considered [5-6]. the participant responses from this study toward the fact of overuse of over the counter medicine like paracetamol cause negative consequenies, remain higher than the repoted results from different studies about the effect of paracetamol and consequences of overuse [7-8]. according to this study, the sources are kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 74 public itself, doctors, t.v, internet and pharmacist respectively. this is inverse when compared to sources of drug information in other studies that were conducted in nearby countries and others [9-11]. an explanation for this result is accessibility of public to pharmacists and physicians in all country area, low levels of public education in reading drug leaflet that contain all relevant details about the drug. the absence of drug information center sulaymaniyah might be contributed factor for inaccurate sources in medication information. positive attitude was observed among population of sulaymaniyah city. it was established that knowledge and attitude influence people behaviors and performance. as indicated by the hypothesis of contemplated activity, patients plan to lead conduct, for example, counsel with pharmacist about medication, just when they assess their attitude positively [12]. meanwhile, 52.4% of the respondents strongly agree that doctor’s discussion on their medications is not including enough information and clarification. as well as a gap is surely available in pharmacist’s clarifications on their medication’s use too by way that 62.3% of participants said not enough explanation on drug give to them in pharmacy niether by physician as well. some researchers were studied the physician atttitude or behaviour toward medication use, it was believed that several factors direct physician to show poor attitude including poor facility available at their clinics, in adiquate salary and busy clinic during working hours [13-14]. another attitude that confirmed in our work is that the participants think usage of multivitamins is simple issue and no need prescription. several studies showed negative attitude and practice about use of multivitamins. researchers in india [15] found that the use of multivitamins was highly prevalent among the public and most of them were unaware with their possible harm or interactions. in accordance with the latter finding, a considerable number of participants in both recent surveys had the belief that these drugs like food and unaware with the health hazards which may result as a consequence of their over consumptions. best explanation for this attitude and practice are the advertisements and availability of these drugs as over-the-counter medicines are the major contributory factors that lead to these misconceptions. the average extensive use of medication such as antibiotics and there are several problems in practicing medication uses, for example extensive use of antibiotics without prescriptions and analgesics, incomplete use of pharmaceutical courses and doses, shared medicines with others, and use of medications based on other people suggestions are all considered to be serious practicing in sulaymaniyah as shown in (table 4). these results of this study also confirmed and found by other studies, for example high prevalence rates of antibiotic prescribing were identified. the results of the current study were similar to previous research from italy, syria and jordan, [16-18] but different at some point when compared to malaysia and european countries [19-20]. for example, the high rate of prescribing could relatively be demonstrated by the participant’s agreement that doctors often prescribe an antibiotic because the patient expects and disagreement that doctors often take time to consider carefully whether antibiotics are needed or not. the over prescribing antibiotics by physician as a result of patient aggrements could be the main factor that contributing or developing antibiotic resistance [21]. this underscores the need for policies of auditing antibiotic prescriptions in the health care facilities of sulaimani, and investigating the consultation behavior and other behavioral components engaged in patients’ expectations for antibiotics. self-medication can be a problem in many countries. the current study showed that over usage of medications by participant themselves without compelling indications, only based on other people and relatives’ suggestions or someone used a drug that had good benefit from it and recommended to other to use it. also, re-use of house stored medications and prescription drugs are common. this is the case in other countries, for example in saudi arabia about 43.5% of the home used medications were purchsed by the friends or relatives recommendations. over 80% of thailand population were taken medcations without prescriptions for themselfes and the family members and even their relatives [22]. in a pilot study with small sample size interviewed at a local health center, 65% of the respondents used non-prescription drugs, while a community study in thailand described the overuse of analgesics in rural communities [23-24]. study in sudan showed that 81.8% of khartoum population provide medication without medical prescription, such as herbal remedies [25]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 75 another survey, conducted in gezira state, found that all respondents had at least one pharmaceutical product stored at home, with around a half of all households reporting selfmedication, re-use of stored medicines and exchange of drugs between family members [26]. repetition of the same drugs for the same symptoms or previous disease turned into identified as any other crucial misconception amongst the study participants. the effect of this practice is that, using the previously used drug might also mask the symptoms of the current illness and endanger the health of the patient. the availability of medicines free charge from governmental health facilities at all levels in the country may be a factor that leads to this malpractice. people should be educated on the way to properly deal with the leftover drugs of their houses. in a study performed in malaysia 40 % of the respondents suggested that they'll recommend to take their unused drug treatments to people who apparently experience similar symptoms [27]. the study showed that participant characteristics such as age and highest education level were correlated with the medication knowledge score and statistically significant (p-value <0.05). residency of participant have a great effect related to knowledge about differences between antibiotics and analgesics, paracetamol overdose and sources of drug information in which urban population have better knowledge compared to rural areas (p-value < 0.05). more studies needed for further investigation about the results. the literature reports variable findings as well [28]. 5. conclusion the current study showed that there are lack of knowledge about adverse drug reactions among sulaymaniyah public considering medication uses, and inappropriate practices and wrong attitudes which developing high risk on public health and consumption of large funds on medication uses. it is also investigated that several reasons for inappropriate practice, such as wrong believes with irregular consumption of medications, due to illiteracy, poor health services in terms of pharmacies and health staffs as well as easily access to obtain most of the types of medications. these results should be considered by governmental authorities to take steps toward reducing the risk of inappropriate of medication uses. reference [1] a. s. eldalo, et al., "saudi school students' knowledge, attitude and practice toward medicines," saudi pharmaceutical journal : spj : the official publication of the saudi pharmaceutical society, vol. 22, pp. 213-218, 2014. [2] e. ramia, et al., "assessment of patients' knowledge and practices regarding their medication use and risks in lebanon," int j clin pharm, vol. 39, pp. 1084-1094, oct 2017. [3] a. elbur, et al., "knowledge, attitudes and practices on medication use and safety among saudi people: a public –based versus an internet –based survey in taif; kingdom of saudi arabia," s audi j . med. pharm. sci, vol. 2, pp. 134-140, 06/01 2016. [4] a. mansouri, et al., "a review of medication errors in iran: sources, underreporting reasons and preventive measures," iranian journal of pharmaceutical research : ijpr, vol. 13, pp. 3-17, winter 2014. [5] l. hornsby, et al., "survey of patient knowledge related to acetaminophen recognition, dosing, and toxicity," journal of the american pharmacists association : japha, vol. 50, pp. 485-9, 07/01 2010. [6] n. karami, et al., "knowledge and attitude of analgesics use among saudi population: a cross-sectional study," international journal of medical science and public health, p. 1, 01/01 2018. [7] c. t. chambers, et al., "self-administration of over-the-counter medication for pain among adolescents," archives of pediatrics & adolescent medicine, vol. 151, pp. 449455, 1997. [8] r. j. gilbertson, et al., "paracetamol use, availability, and knowledge of toxicity among british and american adolescents," arch dis child, vol. 75, pp. 194-8, sep 1996. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 76 [9] u. narhi, "sources of medicine information and their reliability evaluated by medicine users," pharm world sci, vol. 29, pp. 688-94, dec 2007. [10] s. a. alamri, et al., "assessment of drug information service in public and private sector tertiary care hospitals in the eastern province of saudi arabia," pharmacy (basel, switzerland), vol. 5, p. 37, 2017. [11] a. cafege, "the pharmacist as a source of drug information," vol. 9, pp. 291-295, 1989. [12] i. ajzen and m. j. p. b. fishbein, "attitude-behavior relations: a theoretical analysis and review of empirical research," vol. 84, p. 888, 1977. [13] i. o. ajayi, et al., "patient satisfaction with the services provided at a general outpatients' clinic, ibadan, oyo state, nigeria," afr j med med sci, vol. 34, pp. 133-40, jun 2005. [14] l. chen, et al., "human resources for health: overcoming the crisis," lancet, vol. 364, pp. 1984-90, nov 27-dec 3 2004. [15] k. sekhri and k. kaur, "public knowledge, use and attitude toward multivitamin supplementation: a cross-sectional study among general public," int j appl basic med res, vol. 4, pp. 77-80, jul 2014. [16] f. napolitano, et al., "public knowledge, attitudes, and experience regarding the use of antibiotics in italy," plos one, vol. 8, p. e84177, 2013. [17] f. barah and v. goncalves, "antibiotic use and knowledge in the community in kalamoon, syrian arab republic: a cross-sectional study," east mediterr health j, vol. 16, pp. 516-21, may 2010. [18] m. shehadeh, et al., "knowledge, attitudes and behavior regarding antibiotics use and misuse among adults in the community of jordan. a pilot study," saudi pharm j, vol. 20, pp. 125-33, apr 2012. [19] e. commission, "antimicrobial resistance," special eurobarometer 407, 2013. [20] a. ling oh, et al., "public knowledge and attitudes towards antibiotic usage: a crosssectional study among the general public in the state of penang, malaysia," j infect dev ctries, vol. 5, pp. 338-47, may 28 2011. [21] b. e. franco, et al., "the determinants of the antibiotic resistance process," infection and drug resistance, vol. 2, pp. 1-11, 2009. 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[28] l. leemans, et al., "consumer study on the use of patient information leaflets," pp. 109116, 2011.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 2 | july 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.2.12 clinical, endoscopic and urea breath test among dyspeptic patients referred to kurdistan center for gastroenterology and hepatology in sulaimani mohammed omer mohammed college of medicine, university of sulaimani, iraq mohammed.raheem@univsul.edu.iq hemn hussein bayz general teaching hospital, general directorate of health of sulaimani hemn_hb@ yahoo.com fenk bakir maarouf college of medicine, dept of biochemistry, university of sulaimani, sulaimani, iraq fenk.maarouf@univsul.edu.iq abstract: objective is to assess patients with dyspepsia clinically and to find the relationship between endoscopic findings and urea breathe test. this is a cross-sectional descriptive study, was conducted during the period of october 2016 till april 2017 in kurdistan center for gastroenterology and hepatology in sulaimani city. eighty six patients were included, fifty eight of them underwent both ogd and urea breath test, and twenty eight of them underwent urea breath test only. patients who underwent ogd were prepared by overnight fasting, pre-procedure viral screening (hepatitis b surface antigen, hepatitis c virus antibody and human immunodeficiency virus antibody), conscious sedation performed by midazolam at the time of procedure. patients underwent urea breath test were prepared by overnight fasting and they were advised not to use antibiotics 4 weeks and proton pump inhibitors, or bismuth compounds 2 weeks before the test. results: the mean age of participants was 35.89 ±11.55.fifty five cases 64% were female and 31 cases 36%were male. the mean body mass index of studied patients was 24.83 kg/ m 2 ± 4.2, overweight patients were 31.4% and 8.1% were obese. the main presenting symptom was epigastric discomfort 31%. urea breath test for helicobacter pylori was positive in51.2% with significant correlation with ogd findings. helicobacter pylori infection is common among dyspeptic patients; the infection is more common in the age group of 20-40 years. urea breath test is a noninvasive test to detect helicobacter pylori. key words: dyspepsia, helicobacter pylori, urea breath test, sulaimani 1. introduction dyspepsia: refers to a collection of upper gastrointestinal symptoms that is believed to be common world-wide that occur commonly in adults. it is a nonspecific term to denote upper abdominal discomfort. it may encompass a variety of specific symptoms including chronic or recurrent epigastric pain or discomfort, bloating, anorexia, nausea, regurgitation, heart burn, or early satiety [1]. according to the rome iv criteria, dyspepsia is defined as one or more of the following symptoms [2] .  postprandial fullness (classified as postprandial distress syndrome).  early satiation (inability to finish a normal sized meal, also classified as postprandial distress syndrome).  epigastric pain or burning (classified as epigastric pain syndrome). the prevalence of dyspepsia varies considerably between different populations. although these may represent genuine epidemiological differences, it is also apparent that the varying definitions used in different population studies may have contributed to this discrepancy, in some studies using “upper abdominal pain” as the definition, while in other studies a broader definition of “upper gastrointestinal symptoms” is used to define dyspepsia[3] (figure 1). helicobacter pylori: is a gram negative spiral bacteria that colonize the stomach, it is responsible for the most frequent and persistent bacterial infection world-wide [4, 5] although h. pylori infections are asymptomatic in most infected individuals, they are intimately related to malignant gastric conditions such as gastric cancer and gastric mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (malt) lymphoma and to benign diseases such as gastritis and duodenal and gastric peptic ulcers [6]. members of the genus helicobacter are all microaerophilic organisms and in most cases are catalase and oxidase positive, and many but not all species are also urease positive. [7]. unlike most bacterial pathogens, h. pylori typically colonize the host for life unless specific treatment is given. strain types that predominate within certain regions of the world correlate with human migration patterns [8]. most infected individuals do not develop overt disease, leading to the hypothesis that some h. pylori strains are harmless or even beneficial; however, the list of diseases potentially caused or worsened by h. pylori has been growing in recent years, making it premature to conclude that any strain is commensal [9]. helicobacter pylori infection affects nearly half of world-wide population. there is marked disparity between developed and developing countries. in developing countries like sub-saharan africa, latin america and the middle east the prevalence is high as 90%, whereas in developed countries such as australia, switzerland, north america and western europe, excluding japan, the prevalence is below 40% [10]. gastritis is universally present in h. pylori infected patients and it is either acute or chronic. gastritis may be antral-predominant, corpus-predominant, or diffuse. the risk of developing adenocarcinoma or malt lymphoma varies depending on the type of pathology present [5]. acute gastritis affects the entire stomach and is accompanied by loss of acid secretion [9]. neutrophils are recruited to the lamina propria and epithelium and damage results from reactive oxygen species and other neutrophil products. the acute phase gives way to chronic gastritis as lymphocytes replace neutrophils [10]. can be antrum-predominant, corpus-predominant, or diffuse (pangastritis or multifocal gastritis). in antrumpredominant gastritis, acid secretion usually remains intact and h. pylori colonization is limited to the antrum [11]. antral gastritis favors development of duodenal ulcers, while corpus-predominant gastritis favors gastric ulcer formation, sometimes progressing to metaplasia and adenocarcinoma [12, 13]. patients with diffuse gastritis typically have severely impaired acid secretion, which allows h. pylori to colonize the corpus. chronic acid suppression mediated by proton pump inhibitors can lead to a switch from antral predominant to pangastritis, interestingly antrumpredominant gastritis and duodenal ulcers do not increase the risk of cancer development [14]. helicobacter pylori is an accepted cause of gastric adenocarcinoma and malt lymphoma. gastric adenocarcinoma is divided into two subtypes [15]. investigation there are many methods to investigate dyspeptic patients, some of these tests are invasive and need biopsy to perform gram's stain, culture, rapid urease test, histological and cytological examination. some noninvasive tests including ubt and elisa [16]. serological tests involve detection of antibodies against h. pylori and they are very accurate. these antibodies may remain positive for years after successful eradication of h. pylori and therefore they are not used for checking the success of treatment because the antibody levels in the blood decreases slowly [17]. urea breath test there are two ubts available and gained food and drug administration approval: 13 c and 14 c tests. both tests are affordable and can provide real-time results. the 13 c test as it is non-radioactive compared to 14 c which uses a radioactive isotope, especially in young children and pregnant women. ubt is indicated to confirm h. pylori colonization and to monitor its eradication. positive ubt indicates an active h. pylori infection which requires treatment or further confirmation with invasive procedures [18]. serological tests have suboptimal sensitivity and specificity in practice [19, 20].the value of noninvasive h. pylori tests (stool antigen test and ubt), are depend on the positive and negative predictive value, which in turn is related to the background prevalence of h. pylori infection. when h. pylori infection is very uncommon, a positive test is more likely to be a false positive, but if it is highly prevalent, a negative result is more likely to be a false negative [21]. aim of the study: to assess: (1) patients with dyspepsia clinically. (2) the relationship between endoscopic findings and ubt. 2. patients and methods this thesis is approved by scientific and ethical committee of iraqi board for medical specializations. written consent taken from all patients. in a crosssectional descriptive study was conducted during the period of oct, 2016-april, 2017. eighty six patients with dyspepsia were referred to kurdistan center for gastroenterology and hepatology (kcgh) in sulaimani city were included, 58 of them underwent both ogd and ubt and 28 of them underwent ubt only. a form designed to collect demographic data; name, age, gender, residency, bmi, dyspeptic elements, smoking and alcohol intake. investigations were asked including (abdominal ultrasound, ogd and ubt). patients who underwent ogd were prepared by overnight fasting, pre-procedure viral screen (hbsag, hcvab, hiv ab), and conscious sedation performed by midazolam at the time of procedure, using olympus eislucera (cv-260) video scope. ubt was done by swallowing a capsule containing urea labeled with an isotope radioactive carbon-14 in 10 minutes. samples of exhaled breath are collected, and the isotopic carbon in the exhaled carbon dioxide is measured. the dose of radiation is mini-dose (1 microci) 14c-urea breath test equals (37 kbq), which has high diagnostic accuracy. it was done by a machine (heliprobe ® system, manufacture: kibion ab, sweden). patients were prepared by overnight fasting and they were advised not to use antibiotics 4 weeks and ppis, or bismuth compounds 2 weeks before the test. figure 1. heliprobe ® system consists of three components: heliprobe ® analyzer, helicap™ – 14 c-urea capsules and breathcard™ if h. pylori is present in the stomach, the urea is broken up and turned into carbon dioxide. the carbon dioxide is absorbed across the lining of the stomach and into the blood. it then travels in the blood to the lungs, the detection of isotope labeled carbon dioxide in exhaled breath indicates the urea was split, this indicates urase present in stomach and hence h. pylori bacteria are present [22]. the inclusion criteria: all patients 18 years and older referred to kcgh with dyspeptic elements. exclusion criteria: (1) patients below18 years of age (2) pregnants (3) those who had received antibiotics before 4 weeks and ppis or bismuth compounds in the last2 weeks [23]. (4) patients who presented for reasons other than dyspeptic symptoms. statistical analysis: all patients' data were analyzed by using the spss-22 (statistical package for social sciences). descriptive statistics presented as (mean ± sd) and frequencies as percentages. multiple contingency tables conducted and appropriate statistical tests performed, chi-square used for categorical variables. independence t-test was used to compare between means. in all statistical analysis, level of significance (p value) set ≤ 0.05 and the results presented as tables. 3. results in this study 86 patients with dyspepsia who were referred to kcgh were enrolled. fifty five cases 64% were female and 31cases 36% were male. as shown in (table 1). table 1. characteristics of studied patients frequency (%) gender 55 (64) female male total 31 (36) 86 (100) age (yrs.) 5 (5.8) < 20 20-39 40-59 60 ≥ total 61 (70.9) 19 (22.1) 1 (1.2) 86 (100) bmi 3 (3.5) below normal normal overweight obese total 49 (57) 27 (31.4) 7 (8.1) 86 (100) smoking smokers non-smokers x-smokers total 11 (12.8) 70 (81.4) 5 (5.8) 86 (100) alcohol 4 (4.7) yes no total 82 (95.3) 86 (100) the most common presenting symptom was epigastric discomfort 36%, and alarm features were found in 21% of cases, (table 2). ubt for h. pylori infection was positive in 51.2% of participants, table 3. the mean age of participants was 35.89 ± 11.55 standard deviation (sd) with a 95% confidence interval (ci) of 33.47-38.46. the age ranged between 18 and 74 years respectively. the mean bmi of studied patients was 24.83 kg/ m 2 ± 4.21 sd and a 95% ci of 23.9425.73. bmi ranged between 17 and 36 respectively, table 4. a significant correlation was observed between abnormal ogd findings and ubt positive for h. pylori infection, as shown in table 5. fifty eight patients 68% underwent upper endoscopy, results of ogd findings shown in table 6. patients with negative past medical history were 28, 82.6%, and those with negative past surgical history were 90.7%, as shown in table 7. table 2. dyspeptic elements and frequency of alarm features among patients frequency (%) dyspeptic elements 31 (36) epigastric discomfort 31 (36) combinations of features 12 (14) epigastric burning 9 (10.5) postprandial fullness 3 (3.5) early satiety 86 (100) total alarm features 68 (79) 68 (79) no 18 (21) 6 (7.0) melena yes 2 (2.3) anorexia 2 (2.3) vomiting 2 (2.3) anemia 2 (2.3) dysphagia 1 (1.2) family history of gastric cancer 1 (1.2) personal history of gastric ca. 1 (1.2) weight loss 1 (1.2) combinations 86(100) 86(100) total table 3: results of urea breath test among studied patients table 4. difference in age and bmi between ubt negative and ubt positive individuals table 5. outcomes of ubt among studied cases p-value total -ve ubt (%) +ve ubt (%) gender 0.657 31 14 (16.2) 17 (19.7) male female total 55 28 (32.5) 27 (31) 86 42 44 residency 0.567 72 34 (40) 38 (44) urban rural total 14 8 (9) 6 (7) 86 42 44 smoking smokers non-smokers x-smokers total 0.338 11 7 (8) 4 (4.8) 70 32 (37.2) 38 (44) 5 3 (3.4) 2 (2.3) 86 42 44 alcohol yes no total 0.962 4 2 (2.3) 2 (2.3) 82 40 (46.5) 42 (49) 86 42 44 previous eradication 0.478 8 5 (5.8) 3 (3.5) yes no total 78 37 (43) 41 (47.6) 86 42 44 alarm features yes no total 0.114 18 12 (14) 6 (7%) 68 30 (35) 38 (44) 86 42 44 ogd normal abnormal* total 0.015 21 16 (27) 5 (8.5) 38 16 (27) 22 (37.2) 59 32 27 *abnormal ogd findings in this group include (peptic ulcer disease, antral gastropathy, erosive esophagitis and hiatus hernia). table 6. ogd and abdominal ultrasound in patients with dyspepsia frequency (%) ogd 21 (36) normal 11 (19) gastropathy 11 (19) du 7 (12) gu 6 (10) erosive gerd 2 (3.4) hiatus hernia 58 (100) total abdominal ultrasound 78 (90.6) normal 4 (4.7) fatty liver 4(4.7) gallstone 86 (100) total ubt frequency (%) positive 44 51.2 negative 42 48.8 total 86 100 age mean std. deviation ubt negative 42 ubt positive 44 p-value 37.28 year 34.56 year 0.277 (unpaired t-test) 12.78 10.20 bmi mean std. deviation ubt negative 42 25.13 kg/m 2 p-value 24.52 kg/m 2 3.99 0.5047 (unpaired t-test) 4.45 25.13 kg/m 2 table7. past history of studied patients frequency (%) past medical history 71 (82.6) 71 (82.6) no 15 (17.4) 8 (9.3) hypertension 1 (1.2) gastric cancer 1 (1.2) hypothyroidism 1 (1.2) inflammatory bowel disease 2 (2.3) other malignancies 1 (1.2) ischemic heart disease 1 (1.2) diabetes mellitus 86 (100) 86 (100) total past surgical history 78 (90.7) 78 (90.7) no 8 (9.3) 3 (3.5) thyroidectomy 3 (3.5) cholecystectomy 1 (1.2) gastric surgery 1 (1.2) other ca. surgeries 86 (100) 86 (100) total 4. discussion dyspepsia is a common complaint among individuals seeks medical care as well as in general population, it is diagnosed in the presence of symptoms thought to be originate from gastro-duodenal region ( early satiety, postprandial fullness, epigastric pain or burning) [1]. helicobacter pylori infection is the most common chronic bacterial infection in the world, this bacterium colonizes human gastric mucosa and can elicit lifelong inflammatory and immune responses, with release of various bacterial and host dependent cytotoxic substances, it causes chronic and active gastritis, peptic ulcer disease and associated with increased risk of developing gastric cancer[24]. in the present study, dyspepsia was predominant in young and middle age group, which is consistent to the result of. shaikhani et al [25], probably because upper gastrointestinal tract diseases are prevalent in this population groups [26, 27]. female gender was predominant in both the present of dyspepsia and h.pylori positivity. this is consistent to the result of mohie khalifa, et al [28] in iran, and salih ba [29]. a vast variety of results have been reported regarding the predominance of females; this may be explained by that females seeking health advice more than males at least in our region, but it is generally concluded that there is no significant association between the infection rate of h. pylori and sex. although there is no relation between symptoms of dyspepsia and body mass index in the study of solhpour a. et al [30]. but in the study of labiba mohamed et al [31] a total of 489 patients were included (25.56%) were overweight (13.49%) were obese which can be comparable with our study (31.4%) were overweight and (8.1%) were obese. in the present study, we explored the interaction between smoking status and h. pylori positivity in dyspeptic patients. we found that there was no statistically significant difference between smoking and the positivity rate of h. pylori by ubt, and this agree with the study of mohie khalifa et al. which was done in saudi arabia [28] and shrma et al [32]. but findings were contrary to the findings of rajashekhar et al [33] (80%) smokers and (43%) nonsmokers were positive for h. pylori infection (p < 0.001)) who had found an association of smoking with h. pylori positivity in ud patients. several cross-sectional studies have investigated the relationship between alcohol consumption and h. pylori infection. some studies reported a significantly inverse association with h. pylori infection such as in the study of kuepper-nybelen et al [34]. although others found no significant association, but alcohol consumption appears to be associated with h.pylori infection. while in present study, there was no significant association between alcohol consumption and positive ubt. three mechanisms may explain the negative relationship. firstly, alcohol may exert a bactericidal effect against new infection. secondly, alcohol may be bactericidal against existing h. pylori infection, and finally, some alcoholic beverages are known to stimulate gastric acid secretion, which may eradicate h. pylori by lowering the ph in the stomach. in the other hand heavy alcohol consumption favored colonization of the gastric mucosa by h. pylori [35]. the most presenting feature among dyspeptic patients was epigastric discomfort (31%) followed by epigastric burning (12%) and postprandial fullness (9%), this can be comparable with the result of sheikhani, et al [25]. there are different reports about the prevalence rate of this infection between countries, but interestingly, the results of this study (51.2%) which is compatible to the local study done in hawler, kurdistan by bashdar m. hussein et al [36] which is (55.8%) and showed the same prevalence of h. pylori in comparison with other reports from asia and middle east, such as the result of alazmi et al [37]. research in kuwait and goh [38] in malaysia, (49.7% and 49.0% respectively). the present result nearly less than that of sheikhani, et al [25] in sulaimani, kurdistan (62.7%), this may be due to different methodology as they used measurement of serum h. pylori immunoglobulin (igg) antibody with elisa for diagnosis of h.pylori. in another report from india, poddar u, et al [39] demonstrated that almost 80% of the populations in india were infected with h. pylori. but in usa by r. p. jackman, et al. [40] was only (10.4%). the reason for the difference in the prevalence of h. pylori positivity is probably due to varying sample size; age groups, geographical locations, socioeconomical factors and time periods the studies were carried out. (52) http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0422763814000697 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0422763814000697 according to the present study, the most common endoscopic abnormality in dyspeptic patients was ulcerative lesion which was compatible with the result of ramin nikman et al. 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[40] r. niknam, m. seddigh, m. reza ,a. dehghanian and l. mahmoudi, “prevalence of helicobacter pylori in patients with dyspepsia,” jundishapur j microbiol, vol. 7, pp. e12676, 2014. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0422763814000697 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0422763814000697 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0422763814000697 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=solhpour%20a%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=22066328 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=safaee%20a%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=22066328 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=pourhoseingholi%20ma%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=22066328 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=moghimi-dehkordi%20b%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=22066328 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=habibi%20m%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=22066328 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=qafarnejad%20f%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=22066328 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22066328 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=vaiphei%20k%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=10881628 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=vaiphei%20k%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=10881628 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=sharma%20bc%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=10881628 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=singh%20k%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=10881628 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=kuepper-nybelen%20j%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=15644046 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=thefeld%20w%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=15644046 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=rothenbacher%20d%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=15644046 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=rothenbacher%20d%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=15644046 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=brenner%20h%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=15644046 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15644046 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=zhang%20l%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=19808941 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=eslick%20gd%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=19808941 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=xia%20hh%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=19808941 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=wu%20c%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=19808941 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=phung%20n%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=19808941 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=talley%20nj%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=19808941 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc2576507/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=niknam%20r%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=25632327 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=seddigh%20m%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=25632327 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=fattahi%20mr%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=25632327 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=dehghanian%20a%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=25632327 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=mahmoudi%20l%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=25632327 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc4295317/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc4295317/  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 2 | july 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.2.7 prevalence and severity of anemia among pregnant women in primary health centers/erbil city rushna ghazi abdulwahid surgical specialty hospital/cardiac center erbil doh erbil iraq rushnamahamad@yahoo.com hamdia mirkhan ahmed head of midwifery department college of nursing hawler medical university hamdia.mirkhan@nur.hmu.edu.krd abstract: anemia in pregnancy is a major public health problem, especially in developing countries. nutritional anemia is the most common type of anemia worldwide and mainly includes iron, folic acid, vitamin b12 and vitamin c deficiencies. iron deficiency contributes to half of the burden of anemia globally. the objectives of this study were to find out the prevalence and severity of anemia among pregnant women. a descriptive study was conducted on 600 pregnant women, during the period october 2015 to november 2016 at four primary health care centers in erbil city. data gathered through interview with study sample and filling questionnaire format and reviewing their antenatal records. blood hemoglobin level was measured to assess the severity of anemia. chi-square test and regression were used to analyze the data. prevalence of anemia was 46.2%, and 67.1% of the anemic women had mild anemia. there was a significant association of severity of anemia with wife education and occupation, smoking, the number of abortions and cesarean section, ante partum hemorrhage, taking tablets of iron and folic acid per month. the study concluded that prevalence of anemia considered high in erbil city, the highest percentage had mild anemia. keywords: prevalence, anemia, pregnancy introduction anemia in pregnancy is a major public health problem, especially in developing countries. it affects 41.8% of pregnant women globally [1]. anemia in pregnancy is defined by the world health organization (who) as a hemoglobin concentration below 11 g/dl [2,3]. according to who definition, the prevalence of anemia in pregnancy varies between 15% and 67% worldwide, with one of the highest (30-65%) in sub-saharan countries, and the lowest (1525%) in developed countries. this rates seem too high even in high resource countries where under nutrition is almost absent [4]. anemia during pregnancy is considered severe when hemoglobin concentration is less than 7.0 g/dl, moderate when hemoglobin falls between 7.0–9.9 g/dl and mild from 10.0-11 g/dl [5]. the cause of anemia in pregnancy is multi-factorial. iron, folate, vitamin b12 and vitamin a deficiencies as well as intestinal parasitic infections, malaria, chronic illness have all been shown to be the main causes of anemia among pregnant women [1]. nutritional anemia is the most common type of anemia worldwide and mainly includes iron, folic acid, vitamin b12 and vitamin c deficiencies. iron deficiency contributes for half of the burden of anemia globally. iron deficiency affects 1.3 to 2.2 billion persons out of those 50% are women of reproductive age. in ethiopia nearly 17% of women with age 15–49 are anemic of these 22% are pregnant women [6]. anemia in pregnant women has severe consequences on health, social, and economic development. anemic pregnant women will be at risk of low physical activity, increased maternal morbidity and mortality, especially those with severe anemia. in addition, both pregnant women and their neonates encounter negative consequence including fetal anemia, low birth weight (lbw), preterm delivery, intrauterine growth restriction and perinatal mortality [1]. anemia in pregnancy is associated with adverse consequences both for the mother and the fetus. studies have shown that the adverse consequences of maternal anemia may affect not only the neonate and infant but also increase the risk of non-communicable diseases when the child grows into an adult and the risk of low birth weight in the next generation [7]. low maternal hemoglobin levels are associated with increased risk of preterm delivery, low birth weight babies, apgar score <5 at 1 min and intrauterine fetal demise [8]. the study aimed to find out the prevalence and severity of anemia among pregnant women and its relationship with some demographic and obstetric variables. methods and materials a crosssectional study was conducted among pregnant women who attended antenatal care in primary health care centers (phccs) / erbil city, during the period october/ 1 st / 2015 to november/ 13 / 2016. four primary health care centers from totally 19, were randomly selected according to geographic area brayati from north, kurdistan from south, malafande from east, and mahamad bajalan from west. a purposive sampling of 600 pregnant women was included in the study. sample size was estimated using the general formula for targeted population size, allowed error 5%, prevalence (ratio of the studied phenomenon in the population in similar study) and using the 95% confidence interval. the sample size of each primary health care center was according to their ratio in the targeted population. mothers who had the following criteria were included: pregnant woman who were in 1 st, 2 nd ,3 rd trimester of pregnancy and those who accept to participate in the study. woman’s with history of chronic hypertension, diabetes, thyroid, cardiac diseases and systematic lupus erythematosis, hemoglobinopathies such as thalassemia and those who hah early & late vaginal bleeding or ante partum hemorrhage (abruptio placenta and placenta previa) and hemorrhoid were excluded. prior to data collection the official permission was obtained from college of nursing, erbil general directorate of health, and primary health care centers for carrying out the study in erbil city. face to face interview method and reviewing antenatal card was used for data collection and filling a designed questionnaire after taking permission & explanation the objectives of the study to the mother’s. blood hemoglobin level was measured to assess severity of anemia. severity of anemia is determined according to alene & dohe as the following: mild (hemoglobin level between 10.011 gm/dl), moderate (hemoglobin level between 7.09.9 gm/dl), sever (hemoglobin level less than 7 gm/dl)[5]. approval of the ethical committee from the college of nursing, in addition to approval of general directorate of primary health care center was secured, mothers consent verbally was taking to participate in the study. data were entered into a computer using the statistical package for science services (spss version 23). frequency, percentage and chi-square test was used for interpretation of data. results the highest percentage 57.3% of the study sample aged between 25-36 years old, while the lowest percentage 8% aged between 37-48 years old. regarding residency, all participants of the study sample were living in urban area. in the present study the prevalence of anemia during pregnancy was 46.2%, regarding severity of anemia the highest percentage 67.1% of the study sample had mild anemia, while the lowest percentage 32.9% of the study sample had moderate anemia, and there was no cases for severe anemia (table1). the results also indicated that there was a highly statistically significant association between severity of anemia with wife education & smoking (p < 0.001), and significant association with husband education and wife occupation, while there was no significant association with other variables (table 2). a significant association between severities of anemia with number of sc was found in the present study, while there was no significant association between severity of anemia with other variables (table 3). table 4 shows that there was a significant association between severity of anemia with number of taking tabs/month of iron & folic acid, while there was no significant association between other obstetrical characteristics during current pregnancy. logistic regression analysis revealed that, lower professional job, taking <30 tabs of iron & folic acid per month, public clinic attending for antenatal care were indicated as risks for anemia. on the other hand, high professional job and birth spacing <2 years were indicated no risks for anemia (p> 0.05 or= 3.062, 1.433, 1.039, respectively)(table 5). table 1prevalence and severity of anemia among study sample prevalence f % anemic 277 46.2 non-anemic 323 53.8 total 600 100 severity of anemia moderate 91 32.9 mild 186 67.1 total 277 100 discussion who global database on anemia estimated the classification of anemia as a significance problem of public health if the prevalence of anemia be ≥40.0 [9]. the result of the present study shows the prevalence of anemia among pregnant women 46.2%. so according who classification it indicates as severe public problem. this results are similar to the results of other studies done in bali, indonesia in 2002 which was 46.2%, in northern tanzania was 47.4% in 2011, and 48.2% in south-east asia and 44.2% in eastern mediterranean by who 2005, in south eastern nigeria in 2007 was 40.4%, in kakamega county, kenya was 40% in 2014[3]. prevalence of anemia during pregancy in the present study was higher than the results of other studies done in wolayita sodo town, southern ethiopia in 2015 was 39.94%, in makkah, saudi arabia was 39% in 2012, in southeast ethiopia was 27.9% in 2014, in europe was 25.1% and in americas 24.1% by who , in nablus, palestine was 21.7% in 2007, in mekelle town was 19.7% in 2014, in the lower north of thailand was 17.5% in 2012, in kerman, iran was 4.7% in 2010. while the prevalence of anemia in the present study was lower than the results of other studies done in korangi industrial area was 54.3% in 2010, inbaghdad was 55.4% in 2012, in an urban area of eastern ethiopia was 56.8% in 2014, in africa was 57.1% by who , in eastern sudan was 62.6% in 2005,in ruralpopulation of kolar district of india was 64% in 2015, in a malariaendemic area in benin was 68.3% in 2012, in an urban area of pakistan was 90.5% in 2008 [3]. regarding severity of anemia 67.1% had mild anemia and 32.9% had moderate anemia and there was no detecting for severe anemia in the present study. kefiyalew et at, found that 55%, 32.5%, 12.5 of study sample had mild, moderate and severe anemia respectively, which was consistent to the results of the present study [10]. dim & onah reported 90.7% had mild anemia, 9.3% had moderate anemia and no cases of severe anemia was detected on their studies which was consistent to the results of the present study [2]. gedefaw et al, found in their study that 30.34% of the study sample had mild anemia, 60% had moderate anemia and 9.66% had severe anemia which was in contrast to results of the present study [1]. naz & begum found these rates regarding severity of anemia in their study: 23.18% mild anemia, 37.7% moderate anemia, 27.27% severe anemia and 11.8% very severe anemia which were in contrast to the results of the present study [11]. table 3association of severity of anemia with obstetrical history of the study sample (n= 277) variables moderate mild p-value chi-square test f % f % gravidity primigravida multigravida 37 54 36.3 30.9 65 121 63.7 69.1 0.559 parity nulliparous primiparous multiparous grand multipara 44 21 13 13 31.9 34.4 29.5 38.2 94 40 31 21 68.1 65.6 70.5 61.8 0.890 number of cs none 1-3 4-6 70 19 2 30.3 43.2 100 161 25 0 69.7 56.9 0 0.032 birth spacing / years n=185 < 2 => 2 30 37 30.9 42.0 67 51 69.1 58.0 0.066 table 2association of severity of anemia with socio-demographic characteristics (n= 277) variables moderate mild p-value chi-square test f % f % age group/years 13-24 25-36 37-48 35 46 10 36.5 29.3 41.7 61 111 14 63.5 70.7 58.3 0.315 wife education illiterate read and write only primary school intermediate school secondary school institute, college, and above 20 0 8 15 18 30 54.1 0.0 16.7 39.5 46.2 30.3 17 16 40 23 21 69 45.9 100.0 83.3 60.5 53.8 69.7 < 0.001 husband education illiterate read and write only primary school intermediate school secondary school institute, college, and above 12 2 10 15 12 40 46.2 66.7 17.2 26.3 33.3 41.2 14 1 48 42 24 57 53.8 33.3 82.8 73.7 66.7 58.8 0.014 wife occupation high professional job lower professional job unskilled workers 0 12 79 0.0 26.1 35.7 10 34 142 100.0 73.9 64.3 0.035 husband occupation high professional job lower professional job unskilled workers 2 38 51 14.3 31.1 36.2 12 84 90 85.7 68.9 63.8 0.217 economic status level low economic status < 90 middle economic status 90-120 high economic status 121-150 42 29 20 30.9 36.7 32.3 94 50 42 69.1 63.3 67.7 0.676 smoking passive none 19 72 20.2 39.3 75 111 79.8 60.7 0.001 table 4association of severity of anemia with current obstetrical characteristics of the study sample (n= 277) variables moderate mild p-value chi-square test f % f % trimester first trimester second trimester third trimester 5 51 35 50.0 32.3 32.1 5 107 74 50.0 67.7 67.9 0.501 iron, folic acid, fero folic supplementation yes no 91 0 32.4 37.5 0 186 67.6 62.5 0.612 number of iron and folic acid tablet taking/month < 30 ≥ 30 none 82 9 67 29.5 57.7 37.5 171 15 160 70.5 42.3 62.5 0.013 first visiting and registering in anc units first trimester second trimester third trimester 15 9 11 32.4 33.2 25.0 11 15 23 67.6 66.8 75.0 0.887 anemia before pregnancy yes no 78 2 55.6 32.1 157 6 44.4 67.9 0.140 hb level checking before pregnancy yes no 5 86 29.4 35.4 4 182 70.6 64.6 0.290 iron and folic acid supplementation before pregnancy yes no 35 56 37.5 32.4 84 102 62.5 67.6 0.612 frequency of anc 1-3 4-6 9 82 34.9 22.9 15 171 65.1 77.1 0.107 places of attending anc public clinic private & public clinic 21 70 29.2 34.1 51 135 70.8 65.9 0.439 table 5logistic regression analysis of the factors associated with anemia variables pvalue odd’s ratio 95% ci of or wife occupation high professional job lower professional job unskilled workers (reference category) 0.270 0.041 3.062 0.543 0.419 22.377 0.302 –0.976 birth spacing / years < 2 ≥ 2 (reference category) 0.118 1.433 0.913 – 2.249 number of iron and folic acid tablet taking/month < 30 ≥ 30 (reference category) < 0.001 0.147 0.054 – 0.400 places of attending anc public clinic private & public clinic (reference category) 0.037 0.611 0.385 – 0.970 the results of the present study showed that there was a highly significant association of severity of anemia with wife education and smoking, these results agreed with results of mirzaie et al, who found that there was a highly significant association of prevalence of anemia with maternal education and smoking [12]. aikawa et al, mentioned that there was a highly significant association of hb levels with maternal education which was consistent to the results of present study [13]. khapre et al, results agreed with results of the present study regarding education which indicated that there was a significant relation of severity of anemia with maternal education [14]. there was no significant association of age group with severity of anemia in the present study, which was consistent to the results of siteti et al, & mirzaie et al, who found that there was no significant association of severity of anemia with maternal age [12,15]. a study done by morsy & alhady, who conducted descriptive study among 400 pregnant women to determine the prevalence of anemia and the influence of some factors associated with anemia during pregnancy in egypt, they mentioned that maternal age has strongly associated with anemia level, which is disagreed with the results of present study [16]. rajamouli et al, conducted a cross-sectional study on pregnant women, attending the maternity clinic of rural health training centre and teaching hospital of chalmeda anand rao institute of medical sciences karimnagar telangana, india,to study the prevalence of anemia in rural pregnant women and the factors associated with anemia, they found that there was a significant association of severity of anemia with wife occupation which was consistent to the results of present study [17]. studies of khapre et al, also agreed with the present study regarding wife occupation who found that there was a significant association of severity of anemia with maternal occupation [14]. soh et al, conducted a cross-sectional study in urban areas in malaysia to determinethe hb levels of antenatal mothers and their association with various socioeconomic characteristics, they found that there was a high significant association between hb level with economic status, which was in contrast to the results of present study, while it was agreed with that in which wife occupation have significant association with hb levels and maternal occupation [18]. the present study show that there was no significant association of severity of anemia with iron, folic acid, fero folic supplementation in current pregnancy, which was in contrast to results of a study done by mirzaie et al, and aikawa et al, who mentioned that there was a significant association of hb levels with iron supplementation [12,13]. while results of lelissa et al, agreed with the results of present study regarding iron & folic acid supplementation, who mentioned that there was no significant association of severity of anemia with iron and folic acid supplementation [19]. viveki et al, and lelissa et al, mentioned on their results that there was no significant association of severity of anemia with trimester of pregnancy, which was consistent to the results of present study [20]. regarding birth spacing <2 years in the present study there was no indicated for risks of anemia, which was in contrast to results of abdelhafez and el-soadaa who mentioned that women with short inter pregnancy periods were at more risk of developing anemia during pregnancy [21], while it was consistent to results of abu-hasira who found that decreased birth spacing didn’t show such association [22]. bekele et al, conducted a cross-sectional study to assess the prevalence and factors associated with anemia among pregnant women attending antenatal care in health institutions of arba minch town, gamo gofa zone, southern ethiopia, who mentioned that birth spacing was independent predictors of anemia in pregnancy, which was consistent to the results of present study [23]. conclusion the prevalence of anemia during pregnancy considered high in erbil city, the majority had mild anemia. wife occupation, number of iron tablet taking per month 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[22] a. abu-hasira, iron deficiency anemia among pregnant women in nablus district; prevalence, knowledge, attitude and practices. a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of master of public health science, faculty of graduate studies, at an najah national university, nablus, palestine 2007. [23] a. bekele, m. tilahun and a. mekuria, “prevalence of anemia and its associated factors among pregnant women attending antenatal care in health institutions of arba minch town, gamo gofa zone, ethiopia: a cross-sectional study,” volume article id 1073192, 9 pages, available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2016/1073192, 2016. http://www.biomedcentral.com/1756-0500/7/771 http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/j/sjph http://www.scirp.org/journal/jbm http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/journal/index?journalid=151 http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/journal/index?journalid=151 http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2016/1073192  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq efficient authentication mechanism for defending against reflection-based attacks on domain name system dana hasan rebeen r. hama amin computer science department network department college of science computer science institute university of garmian sulaimani polytechnique university kalar, sulaimania, iraq sulaimania, iraq dana.hasan@garmian.edu.krd rebeen.rebwar@spu.edu.iq masnida hussin department of communication technology and network faculty of computer science and information technology universiti putra malaysia serdang, selangor, malaysia masnida@upm.edu.my article info abstract volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.1.12 article history: received: 08 april 2020 accepted: 07 june 2020 domain name system (dns) is one of few services on the internet which is allowed through every security barrier. it mostly depends on the user datagram protocol (udp) as the transport protocol, which is a connectionless protocol with no built-in authentication mechanism. on top of that, dns responses are substantially larger than their corresponding requests. these two key features made dns a fabulous attacking tool for cybercriminals to reflect and amplify a huge volume of requests to consume their victim's resources. recent incidents revealed how harsh dns could be when it is abused with great complexity by attackers. moreover, these events had proven that any defense mechanism with single point deployment couldn’t accurately and efficiently overcome an attack volume with high dynamicity. in this paper, we proposed the efficient distributed-based defense scheme (edds) to overcome the shortcomings of a centralizedbased defense mechanism. by using an authentication message exchange, which is a challenge-handshake authentication protocol (chap)-based authentication mechanism. it is deployed on multiple nodes to determine the legitimacy of the dns request. moreover, it significantly reduces the impact of the amplification factor for the fake dns requests without having any side effects on legitimate ones. then, a stateful packet inspection (spi)based packet filtering is proposed to distinguish legitimate requests from fake ones by considering the results of the keywords: dns, reflection, amplification attacks, amplification factor, chap, source authentication. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 165 authentication procedure. both authentication-message exchange and spi-based filtering are introduced to provide detection accuracy without reducing the quality of service for legitimate users. as the simulation results show, the proposed mechanism can efficiently and accurately detect, isolate, and discard the bogus traffic with minimal overhead on the system. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction domain name system (dns) is a distributed, hierarchical naming system that forms the most vital part of the internet’s structure which translates internet protocol (ip) addresses into names and vice versa. dns relies mostly on the user data protocol (udp) as the transport protocol. it transmits a name resolution request using port 53 in a single udp packet [1][2][3][4]. dns existence goes back to the time when the internet was first introduced. it was commended when protocols were modeled with no security concerns. dns is based on internet protocol (ip) does not provide any authentication mechanism. furthermore, the transport protocol that has been used by dns is mostly udp. lack of authentication and connection-less transportation in dns transactions makes dns an easy task for the attacker. besides, dns response packets are significantly larger than their corresponding requests and the ratio is called amplification factor. the higher the amplification factor, the easier the attacker can disrupt the victim’s network, and consume its resources. high amplification factor and absence of source authentication makes dns an elegant attack tool to perform massive reflection/amplification attack and take down important network infrastructure of their victim [5][6][7]. the main issue with current defense mechanisms is that they cannot distinguish legitimate traffic from malicious traffic accurately. the most recent studies confirm that these types of attacks are mostly performed against primary internet components using dns servers as the main tool of the attack. for example, as reported in [8] and [9], in march 2013, an amplification attack was launched against spamhaus (non-profit anti-spam organization). the attack has been identified as a dns-based attack with approximately 300 gbps of traffic volume at its peak. it was the most severe flooding attack recorded using dns as an attacking resource. knowing that the majority of the defense mechanisms are helpless against an attack with such magnitude. to have a successful defense mechanism there are three essential requirements, first, accurately detect attack’s traffic. second, stop the incoming traffic flood by quickly responding to the attack traffic. finally, it is equitably necessary to differentiate the legitimate traffic that shares the attack signature and delivers without reducing the quality of service. unlikely, there is no single defense mechanism that can meet all three requirements because they depend on single-point deployment. detecting the attack traffic is most accurate near the victim. meanwhile, the response is most successful near to the attack source. by taking these factors into account, it becomes clear that countering distributed denial of service (ddos) attacks requires distributed cooperative solutions [5][10]. in a standard dns reflection/amplification attack, the attacker forges dns query packets and sends them to a dns server. in the process, the attacker spoofs the packet's address with the targeted victim's ip address, rather than the actual sender of the packet. upon receiving the query and processing it, the dns server obediently sends back the response to the source address which is indicated by the request query (which is the victim's address). when the response packet arrives at its target, the victim processes the packet finds out it is an unrequested packet, and discards it. at this point, the attack’s goal is accomplished, since the response consumed some of the victim's bandwidth and computational resources. to kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 166 maximize the response size, the attacker looks for resource records (rr) with the highest response size (i.e. txt, any). also using dns security extension (dnssec) can increase the size of the responses more because of the signature that imported in dns responses. this results in a high amplification factor leading to the victim’s resources suffer exhaustion quickly [4][11][12][13]. the vulnerability mentioned in dns shows the need for a defense mechanism to be capable of detecting spoofed requests queries and reduce the impact of the amplification factor when the attack occurred. in this work, we present efficient distributedbased defense scheme (edds) that keeps the quality of service (qos) intact and expeditiously detects the attack occurred before the network resources suffer exhaustion. by implementing modified chap-based authentication, we grant authentication to all legitimate dns queries. then, our classification packet filtering distinguishes all legitimate request queries and discards the fake ones. the paper is organized as follows. section 2 surveys previous works for mitigating dns reflection/amplification attacks. section 3 the proposed defense mechanism is described in detail with illustrations of the experiment design. section 4 demonstrates the simulation of our work and results. section 5 concluded the paper. 2. related work amplification attacks demonstrate a significant danger to network security because of their clear advantages of amplification without exposing the attacker's anonymity. amplification attacks detections are pulling more and more attention [14]. many researchers worked on finding and giving solutions to solve the weaknesses in dns protocol and how it operates along with counter measurements and some known defense mechanisms to face reflection/amplification attacks. when the attack occurs, the target should be disconnected from the network then solve the problem manually, which is a resource-consuming process. therefore, every defense mechanism aims to detect the attack as quickly as possible and counter it as the nearest possible to the source of the attack [5] [10]. centralized are mono-point deployments mechanisms, which are subdivided into source, destination, and intermediate based defense mechanisms. on the other hand, distributed mechanisms depend on more than a deployment node. these nodes are scattered through a network or multiple networks and cooperating to counter the attack volume. [15] suggested a source-based mechanism to reduce the amplification factor by increasing the size of the request queries and deactivating the any resource record. the advantage is that it can reduce the amplification factor by a certain level. however, it also increases undesirable traffic on the networks. also, by disabling some rr, all services related to that record will stop functioning. on top of lowering the amplification factor, the amplifiers (i.e. dns authoritative servers) may need to send a limited response back to each ip address within a pre-defined time frame. this technique is called response rate limiting (rrl), it is an intermediate-based defense mechanism. the drawback is that it can only use for authoritative name servers. also, it is not much help when attack complexity is increased [15][16][17]. another defense mechanism is proposed in [12]. they proposed a destination-based mechanism intends to distinguish between legitimate and spoofed dns responses. the advantage is that it can separate attack traffic with good accuracy. however, during an attack, the path to the victim is flooded with bogus traffic and the upstream network suffers heavy congestion. to protect systems from dns flooding attacks, it is necessary to design a distributed defense mechanism to mitigate the attack torrent. also, it should be able to prevent reflecting and amplifying dns responses before it reaches the victim. in [14] the authors proposed their work which applies a sketch technique to uncover amplification attacks and mitigate it. their work uses an algorithm to directly collect kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 167 and monitor network traffic in search of any disruption in the network traffic. their method is simple and efficient because it does not require to collect and examine the traffic feature and check the characteristics of amplification attacks. their experiment is conducted using simulations and real-world testbed. their results can accurately detect and mitigate amplification attacks on occurrence. however, this method cannot prevent amplification attacks from taking place, to begin with. also, a large number of slow-rated amplifiers can overwhelm this mechanism easily. the authors in [18] proposed a system that tends to monitor any change in the amplification factor and time to live (ttl) header to establish mitigation and enable the victim to further endure the traffic volume during dns reflection/amplification attacks. their system secures the safety of legitimate packets in the process. using centralized properties of sdn-based networks, they can generate alarms followed by the mitigation process by immediately writing metrics into a time-series database. as the experiments showed, their work can also be used for other forms of udp-based attacks. however, the proposed system can only work with an sdn-based network and any legacy network outside the sdn-network is unprotected. 3. methods and materials in this section, we are going to discuss the proposed mechanism in detail. since spoofing is the main requirement for an attacker to launch dns reflection/amplification attack. therefore, we studied how spoofed packets behave during the attack. while it is under attack, the local dns server in the internet service provider (isp) sends out dns requests multiple ports. however, it receives responses from ports which it didn't send out requests from that create an anomaly. based on this fertile fact, we can build a distributed mechanism to counter dns reflection/amplification attack with good accuracy and acceptable efficiency. to design such a mechanism, we constructed a network as in figure 1. two dns servers used to provide answers to the name resolution queries sent by users. the first server is the authoritative name server (ans), which provides name resolution according to its configuration. the other is local recursive server (lrs) which forward name resolution requests to ans if the name is not previously stored in its cache. two types of end-users are installed on the system model, the user device asks for resolving a name from lrs. however, the attacker machines used to send bogus traffic to ans using the fabricated ip address of lrs as their source address. then ans reflects and amplifies the responses and sends it back to the victim (i.e. lrs). figure 1: proposed test-bed scheme in this scheme, we suggested a defense mechanism using modified chap-based authentication. chap is an authentication method introduced to prevent identity spoofing in dns [19]. it is used to provide authentication to all legitimate dns requests and mark the false ones as spoofed packets as shown in figure 2. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 168 figure 2: challenge-handshake authentication protocol (chap) for dns we intend to use this technique to determine the authenticity of dns transactions. this authentication procedure establishes new dns query arrangements by introducing two additional small-sized packets beside both dns request and corresponding response, to conclude the request rightfulness. the two packets are named as authentication request and authentication response. the architecture of edds is illustrated in figure 3. then, our stateful packet inspection (spi)-based filtration mechanism discards all bogus traffic and allows only legitimate ones to have a dns response. figure 3: edds architecture to implement this scheme, we used several tools. the user-machine is running on microsoft windows 7 home premium x86. attacker machines operate on kali linux 1.1c, both servers using microsoft windows server 2008 x86. the attacking tool which is used is dns flooder 1.1, which is a very powerful tool written in c language. it can generate highly organized, dynamic, and spoofed packets using any records to provide a high amplification factor. the database tool we used in both systems is microsoft sql server 2008 x86. the components of kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 169 the system model are running in a virtual machine environment using vmware workstation 12.0 pro. the system model is operating on a lenovo thinkpad t420 laptop with core i5 2.5ghz cpu, 10 gb ram, 256 gb ssd, and the operating system is microsoft windows 10 x64. the dns servers (i.e. ans and lrs) specifications are core i5 2.5 ghz cpu, 3 gb ram, 50 gb virtual storage. the user-machine features are core i5 2.5 ghz cpu, 1 gb ram, 30 gb virtual storage. finally, the attacker’s machines hardware specifications are core i5 2.5 ghz cpu, 512 mb ram, 15 gb virtual storage. the information about packets is stored in tables using packet capture 1.0 which is a tool we developed for that purpose. every operation in our mechanism, on both servers (authentication transactions, mapping process, classification filtering, and discarding the spoofed packets) is done using java programming language. the experiment is performed in five different replications with five different duration. we organized the experiments on every simulated mechanism in a way in which the legitimate requests would be the only %1 of the total traffic, and the rest of requests are spoofed traffic generated by the attacker. lrs table stores information about every request packet which is sent out to ans. while ans stores information about every incoming dns packet (from lrs and the attacker). after receiving and storing the dns request, the authentication procedure is initiated by ans through sending an authentication request to the source of the requests (lrs in this case) which are stored in its table. the authentication request is a small packet (maximum 20 bytes). it contains the destination ip address and the source port of the incoming dns request which is stored in the ans table. lrs receives this authentication request packet, compares the packet content with its table, returns the authentication response to ans. the authentication response is a tiny packet (only 1 byte) indicate the dns request’s legitimacy. if the mapping is successful, then the authentication packet contains a confirmation message that informs ans about the packet legitimacy followed by removing the mapped record from lrs. removing the record is to protect lrs records from being abused by cybercriminals to trick the system even if they know the outgoing port of dns requests which significantly improves detection accuracy. however, in case of unsuccessful mapping, lrs sends an authentication response which warns ans about the spoofed request. then the spi-based filtering at the ans side removes every similar incoming packet (i.e. packet with the same port and ip) from its table without performing further authentication for similar packets. the performance metrics which are used to calculate the effectiveness and efficiency of edds include defense strength, efficiency, and amplification factor. the defense strength is measured in terms of four different outcomes which are true positive (tp), which is the total number of malicious traffic that the system detects as malicious. false-positive (fp) is the total number of legitimate traffic that the system detects as malicious. false-negative (fn) is the total number of malicious traffic that the system detects as legitimate. true negative (tn) is the total number of legitimate traffic that the system detects as legitimate. based on the defense strength outcomes, we can calculate three other criteria that every defense mechanism should have which are accuracy, sensitivity, and false-negative rate. accuracy is the ratio of true outcomes to total outcome in the system which can be calculated according to equation 1. sensitivity is the ratio of true positive to the total of positive outcomes. it is calculated using equation 2. 𝑆𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑡𝑦 = 𝑇𝑃 𝐹𝑁+𝑇𝑃 ……..(2) [5] 𝐴𝑐𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑦 = 𝑇𝑁+𝑇𝑃 𝑇𝑁+𝑇𝑃+𝐹𝑁+𝐹𝑃 ……..(1) [5] kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 170 the false-negative rate is the ratio of false-negative outcomes to the total of negative outcomes. the calculation is done using equation 3. to measure efficiency, the number of processed transactions (i.e. legitimate and spoofed) per replication are recorded by each simulation. we measured efficiency to show the number of name-resolution transactions that each defense mechanism can handle within a pre-defined time interval. we also can determine the amplification factor af by measuring the ratio of response size ress to corresponding request size reqs [3][5][12] as shown in equation 4. ………. (4) the results of the proposed mechanism are compared with two previously suggested solution by previous researches which are detecting dns amplification attack (ddaa) which is proposed by [12] and response rate limiting (rrl) which is proposed by [16][17] and currently implemented in bind 9. 4. results and discussions the results of our experiments are calculated and analyzed thoroughly to extract the outcome of this work. base on the given equations in the methodology of this article, we demonstrate the impact of using a distributed-base defense scheme to protect dns from reflection/amplification attacks. one of the criteria we showed is defense strength, which is one of the most important criteria used to measure the strength of any defense mechanism. in this work, three simulations are tested in five different tests with different parameters (i.e. the period of testing, and traffic). testing simulations for different periods and different traffic types is important to know how the defense mechanism is working under different attack volumes and durations. the period of tests starts with 1 hour and it is increased by 1 hour for each replication (i.e. first replication is for one hour, second replication is for 2 hours, and so on). four outcomes are shown which are true negative (tn), false negative (fn), false positive (fp), and true positive (tp). these outcomes are illustrated in figure 4 for each defense mechanism (the outcomes with similar results are combined). 𝐹𝑎𝑙𝑠𝑒 𝑛𝑒𝑔𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 = 𝐹𝑁 𝑇𝑁+𝐹𝑁 ……(3) [5] 𝐴𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑜𝑟 = 𝑅𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑒 𝑠𝑖𝑧𝑒 𝑅𝑒𝑞𝑢𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑠𝑖𝑧𝑒 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 171 figure 4: shows the outcome of each defense mechanism based on the tn, fn, tp, fp outcomes one of the main criteria to measure the strength of any defense mechanism is accuracy. figure 5 shows that regardless of how sophisticated the attack is going to be, edds still detects the attack traffic with extreme accuracy. figure 5: accuracy it also provides a significant detection rate which practically reached %100 (lost packets are ignored). on the other hand, ddaa has difficulties detecting all incoming spoofed responses compared to edds, because ddaa can be manipulated by the attacker by generating traffic similar to the victim’s traffic. therefore, the detection accuracy of ddaa is downgrading. also, rrl lacks any detection mechanism due to the rrl design that concentrates on reducing dns traffic instead of detecting malicious traffic and distinguish them. response rate limiting can restrict misuse against a single amplifier and cannot hold against multiple amplifiers at a low request rate. sensitivity is the measurement ratio of true positives over total desired positive outcomes. figure 6 shows the sensitivity of each defense mechanism. edds was highly sensitive in detecting malicious traffic. because edds relies on inspecting and authenticating every incoming dns request. however, it can be observed from the figure that ddaa is less sensitive. knowing that this contraction in sensitivity occurs when the legitimate and attack 1 hour 2 hours 3 hours 4 hours 5 hours tn (all) 1% 1% 1% 1% 1% fn (edds) 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% fn (ddaa) 13,72% 12,69% 12,14% 13,14% 13,51% fn (rrl) 27,73% 27,86% 27,42% 48,20% 67,40% fp (all) 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% tp (edds) 99% 99% 99% 99% 99% tp (ddaa) 85,30% 86,35% 86,96% 85,90% 85,79% tp (rrl) 71,27% 71,14% 71,58% 50,80% 31,60% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 120% d e fe n se o u tc o m e s 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 1 hour 2 hours 3 hours 4 hours 5 hours edds 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% ddaa 86,28% 87,32% 87,88% 86,87% 86,53% rrl 72,27% 72,14% 72,58% 51,80% 32,60% a cc u ra cy kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 172 traffics share the same features. as the attack traffic gets more sophisticated the rrl sensitivity degrades. figure 6: sensitivity the false-negative rate can be obtained from the ratio of the defense mechanism over the total negative outcome. figure 6 shows the false-negative rate of each mechanism, due to its significant accuracy, edds has no false-negative ratio. however, as it appears from the results that both ddaa and rrl have a false-negative ratio. while ddaa can maintain a certain level, rrl continues to decrease as the traffic increases. figure 7: false-negative rate even though the attack traffic is highly complex and sophisticated, edds was able to detect the attack traffic and protect the network from such attacks. hence, by applying spi-based packet filtering, we have successfully calculated the amount of time required for testing, filtering, and responding, or discarding each request query in a replication which increases the efficiency of edds. figure 7 shows the efficiency of defense mechanisms. 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 1 hour 2 hours 3 hours 4 hours 5 hours edds 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% ddaa 86,14% 87,19% 87,75% 86,74% 86,39% rrl 71,99% 71,86% 72,31% 51,31% 31,91% s e n si ti v it y 0,00% 10,00% 20,00% 30,00% 40,00% 50,00% 60,00% 70,00% 80,00% 90,00% 100,00% 1 hour 2 hours 3 hours 4 hours 5 hours edds 0,00% 0,00% 0,00% 0,00% 0,00% ddaa 93,21% 92,70% 92,39% 92,93% 93,11% rrl 96,52% 96,53% 96,48% 97,97% 98,54% f a ls e -n e g a ti v e r a te kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 173 figure 8: efficiency the amplification factor is one of the major issues in dns that can determine the significance of the malicious traffic generated for the attack. dns requests size set to 70 bytes and dns responses has 501 bytes for the experiment. equation 4 has been applied and figure 8 shows the calculation of the amplification factor. figure 9: amplification factor edds drops any spoofed packets from getting responses. therefore, the response size during an attack is equal to 0, as can be observed in figure 8. thus, the amplification factor during attacks is considered to be 0. however, other defense mechanisms cannot distinguish and drop spoofed requests from getting responses which produce amplification factor for attack traffic. 5. conclusion domain name service is an indispensable service on the internet. it is because of it that everybody in the civilized world can tap into this global network and utilize its services. through the use of a modified chap-based authentication method, we provided an authentication procedure for dns request queries. then our classification-based filtering distinguishes all requests that passed the authentication procedure and provided them with a dns response query. it also discards all the spoofed addresses and prevents them from getting t= 0 hour t= 1 hour t= 2 hour t= 3 hour t= 4 hour t= 5 hour edds 0 632689 1276686 1901297 2651519 3705137 ddaa 0 55497 126363 216073 261951 326878 rrl 0 166529 379279 648436 785955 980612 0 500000 1000000 1500000 2000000 2500000 3000000 3500000 4000000 p ro ce ss e d p a ck e ts / h o u r (s ) amplification factor edds (spoofed) 0,00 edds (normal) 7,16 ddaa 7,16 rrl 7,16 0,00 7,16 7,16 7,16 0,00 1,00 2,00 3,00 4,00 5,00 6,00 7,00 8,00 a m p li fi c a ti o n f a c to r kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 174 a dns response. our experimental results and analysis show how our mechanism can mitigate the amplification factor during an attack. it also effectively detects and discards all attack traffic on dns servers with very good efficiency and less cpu usage per node. in the future, we 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[19] m. inamura, “expansions of chap modificationless on its structures ofpacket and data exchange,” in international conference on information systems security and privacy, pp. 1–8,.2015.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq effect of impact load on concrete containing recycled tire rubber aggregate with and without fire exposure muhammad arf muhammad wrya abdulfaraj abdullah faraj civil engineering department civil engineering department college of engineering college of engineering university of sulaimani university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq muhammad.rashid@univsul.edu.iq wrya.faraj@univsul.edu.iq mohamed raouf abdul-kadir civil engineering department college of engineering university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq mohamed.abdulkadir@univsul.edu.iq article info abstract volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.1.4 article history: received 08 february 2020 accepted 29 march 2020 over one billion tires are disposed into environment each year and this has become a major environmental issue in the globe. recycling of these waste tire rubbers in concrete has gained attention from researchers all around the world. in this study, the impact resistance of rubberized concrete exposed to fire is investigated experimentally in the laboratory. for that purpose, sixty specimens were made with five different mixes replacing their sand content partially with different percentages of tire rubber by weight ratios of 0% control, 6%, 12%, 18% and 24%. the water/cement ratio was kept constant at 0.393 in all the mixes. in each mix, fifteen concrete specimens with the size of (150 x 150 x 73) mm were prepared to expose to fire. every three specimens were gradually exposed to fire for four various durations of (0, 15, 30, and 45) minute. each specimen was then tested in a drop-weight impact machine by dropping 2240-gr and 4500-gr hammers from heights of 280 mm and 450 mm. the average impact energy of three identical specimens required for the occurrence of final fracture was calculated. the investigational results are compared with results of control samples. it is found that the impact energy considerably increased with an increase of the rubber replacement. it is, also, noted that any increase in the burning period of specimens results in a reduction of the impact energy and more early crushing of the rubberized concrete. keywords: recycled tire rubber aggregate, rubberized concrete, replacement, impact energy, fire exposure, impact load, drop weight impact test. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 50 1. introduction there are numerous examples of possible impact loadings in which structures or structural elements may be subjected to such loads and they shall be considered in design [1]. the most common construction material is concrete as it is generally used in almost all engineering projects such as aircraft industry, bridge decks, and pavements. therefore, understanding the behavior of concrete subjected to impact is vital. one of the important concrete properties needed when exposed to impact loading is its energy absorption [2-3]. despite of this fact, it is proven that the concrete response under impact loads is very problematic and several failure modes may be detected [4]. therefore, more research is needed to be carried out on impact resistance of concrete in general and rubberized concrete in particular even though it is revealed that the addition of some percentage of rubber in concrete leads to a considerable increase of its impact resistance [2]. many studies have examined the effect of impact loading on the rubberized concrete [5]. some techniques such as, a modified charpy impact test, split hopkinson pressure bar test, fired projectile, and drop-weight apparatus, have been used to study the behavior of concrete under the dynamic loads. taha et al. [6] studied concrete beams of (100 x 100 x 500) mm made with the rubber aggregates replacement ratios of (0, 25, 50, 75, and 100)% by volume of both coarse and fine aggregates. the impact test was performed by falling a 10-kg hammer onto the midspan of the beam from height of 60 mm. their results revealed that the impact resistance of rubberized concrete increases with an increase in rubber ratio up to 50% replacement of sand. however, any further rubber ratio than 50% causes a drop in the impact resistance of the specimens. al-tayeb et al [7] replaced fine aggregate by fine rubber with ratios of (5, 10 and 20) % replacements by volume to investigate the effect of the impact loads on performance of the concrete. they made three beams of sizes of (400 x 100 x 50) mm of the concrete mix with and without rubber. the beam specimens were repeatedly subjected to 20 n weight from 300 mm height in drop-weight impact machine. their results show that the amount of fracture energies for 5, 10 and 20 % replacements increased approximately by (72, 109, and 198)% respectively. however, vadivel et al [8] conducted impact tests on the disc specimens (150mm diameter x 64 mm thickness) made with concrete containing 6% replacement of both fine and coarse aggregate by waste tire rubber aggregates. a steel ball from drop weigh equipment was created and manually operated by dropping 3.5-kg compaction hammer from height of 1.22 m. the test results show that 6% replacement of both fine and coarse aggregate with rubber aggregates significantly improved the impact resistance by 83%. sadrmomtazi and zanoosh [9] studied the performance of concrete containing waste tire rubber under the impact loads at high velocities. they prepared cubic specimens with (0, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50)% replacement of fine aggregate with rubber. impact tests were carried out with gas gun device using the small projectile of 29-gr ball of 19 mm in diameter. the concrete specimens were subjected to the projectile at impact velocity of 150 m/s. both penetration depth and average crater area were measured. the results show that the concrete contained rubber particles is softer than normal concrete and the depth of the penetration is reduced in rubberized concretes. specimens containing 30% of rubber had lower penetration depth than that of other specimens. malagavelli et al [10] examined the effect of impact loads on rubberized concrete made with different ratios of (0, 10, 20)% replacement of coarse aggregate with rubber aggregates. at the age of 28 days, concrete cubes of (100x100x100) mm were repeatedly tested against 1.811-kg ball of 55 mm diameter. the ball was freely dropped from the height of 1.95 m. the number of blows were recorded at both first crack and fracture of concrete cubes. their results show that the impact resistance of the concrete at the replacements of 10% and 20 % are improved by 60% and 120 % at first visual crack, and 33% and 78 % at fracture respectively. one of the notable points about rubberized concrete is that it undergoes the reduction of some mechanical properties where it is exposed to fire [11-13]. despite of this fact, and to the knowledge of the authors, no work can be found in the literature reporting the impact kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 51 resistance of rubberized concrete exposed to fire. the main aim of the current work is to investigate the post-fire impact resistance of normal concrete incorporating tire rubber as a partial replacement of fine aggregate. four different tire rubber replacement ratios of (6, 12, 18, and 24)% by weight are used as a partial replacement of the fine aggregate. 2. experimental program 2.1 materials all materials used in the concrete mixes are locally available in sulaymaniyah city, iraq (35° 34' 0.7104'' n and 45° 24' 57.9852'' e). ordinary portland cement (cem i /42.5 r) produced according to en 197-1:2011 is used in all the mixes [14]. fine aggregates are natural sand having maximum particle size of 4.75 mm and saturated specific gravity of 2.59. the basalt based coarse aggregates are also natural having round shape with maximum particle size of 10 mm and saturated specific gravity of 2.64. in this study rubbers, namely crumb rubber, were used as partial replacement of fine aggregates. these rubber aggregates were commercially available, spread on sports yard for safety requirements. in the factory they are produced from mechanical grinding of waste tires. the rubber aggregates used here were in dry condition, dispersed particles, and had maximum size of 4.75 mm with compacted dry density of 677 kg/m³. further, no admixtures or additive materials are used in this study. the summary of some physical properties of aggregates are shown in table 1. moreover, particle size distribution of recycled tire rubber aggregates, coarse and fine aggregates is shown in figure 1. figure 1: particle size distribution table 1: properties of aggregate used to make specimens properties gravel sand rubber fineness modulus, unitless 2.03 2.01 max. particle size, mm 10 4.75 4.75 compact dry density, kg/m³ 1679 1552 677 uncompact dry density, kg/m³ 1565 1322 576 water absorption, % 0.96 bulk specific gravity, dry 2.62 2.46 bulk specific gravity, ssd 2.64 2.59 apparent specific gravity 2.68 2.84 particle surface round round, dry source river river recycled tire 0 20 40 60 80 100 0,1 1 10 100 p a ss in g sieve sizes, mm fine aggregate recycled tire rubber coarse aggregate kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 52 2.2 mix proportion concrete with mean compressive strength of 40 mpa is designed as the controlled mix in accordance with aci 211.1 [15]. the actual physical properties of aggregates used in mix proportion is to predict workability of 100-140 mm slump. the mix proportion used to make the control specimens for cement, sand, gravel (1:1.179:1.34) respectively. the water/cement ratio for the mix was 0.393 for all the mixes. five mixes were prepared for this study. one of them was normal concrete without tire rubber, called control mix (0%). the rest of the mixes were rubberized by partially replacing fine aggregates with recycled tire rubber of different ratios of (6, 12, 18 and 24)% by weight. the original concrete mix used for testing the impact resistance of tire rubber particles are presented in table 2. table 2: batch mix proportions mix no replacement, % cement, kg sand, kg gravel, kg water, kg rubber, kg mix 1 0 84 99 113 33 0 mix 2 6 84 93.06 113 33 5.94 mix 3 12 84 87.12 113 33 11.88 mix 4 18 84 81.18 113 33 17.82 mix 5 24 84 75.24 113 33 23.76 2.3 specimens preparation both fine and coarse aggregates were first dry-mixed manually for 2–3 minute on a clean dry steel container of (4 x 2 x 0.2) m. the tire rubber aggregates were then spread in the container and mixed with both fine and coarse aggregate to ensure the uniform distribution of rubber particles. the cement was added to the dry mix of the aggregates and well mixed together. the desired amount of water was added to the mix and all together was mixed until a uniform concrete mix was obtained. the slump of the concrete mixes were between 140 mm and 110 mm. molds of cubic specimens (150 x 150 x 150) mm were already oiled and placed on a large table shaker. the concrete mix was poured into molds in two separate layers each vibrated about 5 seconds. the specimen’s surface was levelled and kept in the molds for 24 hours. the specimens were then demolded and stored in water for 28 days. all specimens were prepared and treated under the same environmental conditions. three cubic specimens (150 x 150 x 150) mm from the mixes were tested at the age of 28 days to find the average compressive strengths as given in table 3. also, six identical cubes for each mix from the same batch were taken. after 28 days, the cubic specimens were saw cut in to two equal pieces with sizes of (150 x 150 x 73) mm using circular cutting machine with 4 mm thickness. in total, sixty specimens were prepared for impact testing. they were divided into four categories of firing periods of (0 “without fire”, 15, 30, and 45) minutes with respect to the percentage of the rubber (0%, 6%, 12%, 18% and 24%). kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 53 table 3: average compressive strength of different mixes mix no replacement, % specimen id ultimate load, kn compressive strength, mpa average compressive strength, mpa mix 1 0 fh001 1283 57.022 57 fh002 1267.3 56.324 fh003 1274.7 56.653 mix 2 6 fh101 1057.5 47.000 47 fh102 1074.4 47.751 fh103 1011.6 44.960 mix 3 12 fh201 885.6 39.360 39 fh202 912 40.533 fh203 846.5 37.622 mix 4 18 fh301 770.9 34.262 33 fh302 782.8 34.791 fh303 691.3 30.724 mix 5 24 fh401 642.5 28.556 29 fh402 647.5 28.778 fh403 679.1 30.182 2.4 specimens burning procedure according to duration of fire exposure, specimens prepared from five different mixes for impact test were distributed into four groups: no fire, 15, 30, and 45 minute, as shown in table 4. three specimens from each mix , 15 specimens in total, were used as references for comparison purpose so they were not burnt at all. on the other hand, three specimens from each mix were exposed to elevated fire for specific durations of (15, 30 and 45) minutes, respectively, using a gas furnace. the furnace was manually built in the laboratory with the dimensions of (1000 mm long, 800 mm wide and 500 mm high) as shown in figure 2. the furnace walls were made with the high thermal bricks of size (80 x 120 x 240) mm. two steel plate lids used to cover the top of the furnace. they were filled with 5cm of fine aggregate to cover the furnace top during burning the specimens. two liquified petroleum gas burners were fixed inside the furnace, and each one was continuously connected to cylinder gas bottle with a capacity of 12.5-liter. to precisely record the temperature of the specimens during burning process, two thermocouples were attached to record temperature every 5 minute. one of the thermocouples was placed at the bottom of the specimens with the direct contact to fire, and the other was attached to top surface of the specimens. additionally, the laser thermometer was used to observe the temperature at different places of the sample sides. table 4: specimens distribution mix no % replacement no fire 15 minute 30 minute 45 minute mix 1 0 3 3 3 3 mix 2 6 3 3 3 3 mix 3 12 3 3 3 3 mix 4 18 3 3 3 3 mix 5 24 3 3 3 3 total 15 15 15 15 after the fire exposure for the desired periods, they were removed from the furnace, and were left on sand stockpile in the laboratory condition for normal cooling in air. the mass of specimens were measured using an electronic scale of 0.5g accuracy, before and after the fire exposure. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 54 figure 2: furnace figures 3a-c show the temperature-time curves for the burning periods of 15, 30, and 45 minute. in each diagram, three observation trend curves are drawn representing three various locations inside the furnace during the fire. the laser trend represents the average of two values on both side surfaces of the specimens. top and bottom represent two different values of temperature of the specimens which are beneath and directly above them. the temperature of fire monitored by thermocouples and increased from air temperature 20 °c reached to maximum temperatures of 873, 955, 963 for the firing periods of 15, 30, and 45 minute, respectively. additionally, iso 834 curve [16] is shown as the standard reference of timetemperature history which characterize the fire exposure by using equation (1). tt = 20 + 345 log10(8 × t − 1) … … … … … . (1) where t is temperature in (°c) and t is time in minutes. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 55 (a) time period = 15 minute (b) time period = 30 minute (c) time period = 45 minute figure 3: time temperature curves of specimens subjected to fire for: (a) 15 minute (b) 30 minute, (c) 45 minute 0 200 400 600 800 1000 0 5 10 15 t e m p e ra tu re , ° c time, minute top bottom laser iso 834 0 200 400 600 800 1000 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 t e m p e ra tu re , ° c time, minute top bottom laser iso 834 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 t e m p e ra tu re , ° c time, minute top bottom laser iso 834 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 56 2.5 impact loading instrument special impact instrument was designed and fabricated by the authors in the laboratory to implement impact tests according to the technique of drop weight from height, as shown in figure 4. the specimens were placed on a base plate within the positioning basket with the flat surface facing up. the steel ball is positioned on top at the center of the specimen. the ball was used to transfer the impact loads from the drop hammer onto the specimen surface. a cantilever lever arm held by vertical steel column having a heavy steel base used to carry the hammer straight up and drop it during the test. the drop hammers were placed with its base upon the steel ball and detained there on the middle of the specimen surface. two kinds of drop hammers were used each for a specific case. the impact tests on the reference specimens were performed manually using 4.5 kg hammer dropped from height of 450mm. the specimens exposed to fire were expected to show early crushing of their faces before observing their fracture cracks. therefore, a lighter hammer of 2.24-kg with the drop height of 280 mm was used on the samples exposed to fire. the hammer was dropped repeatedly, and the number of blows required to cause cracking and ultimate failure was recorded. ultimate failures were clearly recognized as the opening of cracks and splitting in to pieces on the base plate. the impact energy absorbed by the specimen up to failure was calculated using the equation (2), as used by taha et. al. [6]. 𝐼𝐸 = ∑ 𝑤𝑖 𝑁 𝑖=1 ℎ𝑖 … … … … … … … . (2) where, 𝑤𝑖 is equal to drop hammer weight in newton, ℎ𝑖 is the drop height in meter, 𝑁 represents the total number of blows up to failure, and 𝐼𝐸 represents the impact energy in n.m. figure 4: fabricated impact instrument used for testing: (a) hammer weight=2.24 kg, (b) hammer weight=4.5 kg 3. results and discussions 3.1 mass loss the use of recycled tire rubber particles as a replacement of fine aggregates in concrete resulted in a decrease in the density of both fresh and hardened concrete as presented in table 5. compared to the normal concrete, the densities of fresh mixes with replacement ratios of 6, kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 57 12, 18, 24% decreased by 2.07, 4.41, 6.66, and 7.72% respectively. the reduction in densities of rubberized concrete and mortar reported by pervious researchers [5,17-18]. the reduction in density of fresh concrete containing tire rubber fine aggregate can be attributed to two reasons. firstly, tire rubber particles are capable of entrapping air in the concrete due to their rough surface texture. secondly, tire rubber particles have low density compared to the natural aggregates. moreover, an increase in tire rubber particles content resulted in a further decrease in the concrete density. table 5: fresh concrete density and slump mix id replacement, % density, kg/m³ slump, mm mix 1 0 2267 140 mix 2 6 2220 135 mix 3 12 2167 135 mix 4 18 2116 130 mix 5 24 2092 110 table 6 gives the details of masses of specimens before and after fire exposures and their percent loss of masses. the specimens were weighed to record their masses (m 1) before burning, and they were weighed again after normal cooling in the air to record their masses (m 2) after burning. these two data were used to determine the percent mass losses of each specimens due to the fire. those specimens without fire exposure were also weighed to record their masses (m) before testing as given in table 6. figure 5 represent the average masses of three specimens in all cases before fires exposure with respect to their rubber content. it is evident that rubber content reduced the mass of concrete. looking at the average mases for trend of “no fire”, masses decreased from 3640 g to 3425 g at 0% and 24% replacement, respectively. the variation in specimen masses of the same mix is related to nonhomogeneous behavior of concrete which is not taken into account in this study. figure 6 shows the average percent mass loss of three different mixes exposed to fire for three various burning periods namely15, 30 and 45 minutes. it is observed that there is more mass loss of the concrete with increasing burning periods in all cases. at 0% replacement, percent mass loss is 5.37% at burning period of 15 minutes, and the mass loss considerably increases to 9.14% at fire periods of 30 minutes. furthermore, at 24% replacement, percent mass loss is 6.62% at burning period of 15 minute, and the mass loss noticeably increased to 9.79% at fire periods of 30 minutes. the percent mass losses, also, increase with increasing the rubber content. for instance, at burning period of 45 minutes, it can be noticed that the percent mass loss is only 10.28 % for 0% replacement, and jumps to 11.94% at 24% rubber content despite of a little fluctuation in the whole pattern. so, considering all the time periods, the percent mass loss increases with an increase in rubber content. this observation is reliable compared with those of the previous studies [11-12, 20]. further reasons for this mass loss can be interpreted as at lower temperatures up to 80˚c the surface water absorbed starts to evaporate. also, the decomposition of tire rubber particles rapidly begins at higher temperatures of 300 ˚c and above. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 58 table 6: specimen masses and their percent mass losses mi x id no fire 15 minute 30 minute 45 minute m, g m 1, g m 2, g % loss average % loss m 1, g m 2, g % loss average %loss m 1, g m 2, g % loss average % loss 1 3619 3595 3416 4.98 3687 3351 9.11 3749 3360 10.38 3613 3686 3492 5.26 5.37 3627 3291 9.26 9.14 3700 3323 10.19 10.28 3689 3687 3471 5.86 3706 3371 9.04 3737 3353 10.28 2 3596 3469 3270 5.74 3605 3267 9.38 3706 3331 10.12 3593 3653 3445 5.69 5.72 3592 3255 9.38 9.37 3585 3232 9.85 9.94 3622 3571 3366 5.74 3472 3147 9.36 3574 3222 9.85 3 3555 3619 3405 5.91 3495 3165 9.44 3565 3202 10.18 3480 3490 3300 5.44 5.85 3544 3213 9.34 9.39 3514 3125 11.07 10.63 3629 3422 3210 6.20 3440 3117 9.39 3549 3152 11.19 4 3548 3391 3192 5.87 3415 3092 9.46 3430 3026 11.78 3517 3587 3370 6.05 6.13 3498 3156 9.78 9.68 3467 3085 11.02 11.53 3520 3490 3264 6.48 3464 3124 9.82 3428 3024 11.79 5 3529 3595 3367 6.34 3437 3148 8.41 3404 3000 11.87 3374 3370 3140 6.82 6.62 3410 3039 10.88 9.79 3488 3065 12.13 11.94 3371 3467 3235 6.69 3465 3116 10.07 3297 2907 11.83 figure 5: average specimen masses corresponding to rubber content before fire 3300 3400 3500 3600 3700 3800 3900 4000 0 6 12 18 24 a v e ra g e m a ss , g replacement, % no fire 15 minute 30 minute 45 minute kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 59 figure 6: percent mass loss after burning 3.2 impact energy table 7 shows the number of blows required to observe failure in the specimens. the data are the average of three mixes under impact loads. for specimens without burning them, the increase in the number of blows was 11, 16, 19, and 25 with the presence of 6, 12, 18, and 24% tire rubber aggregate, respectively, compared to the reference specimen at the air temperature. it is evident that number of blows rise with increasing replacement levels of tire rubber in concrete. this increase proportionally leads to an increase in the impact energy absorbed by the specimens. table 7 also shows the number of blows leading to ultimate failure regarding to both replacement levels and burning periods of burnt specimens. in each case, the result is an average of three specimens. failing the specimens needs more blows with increasing the rubber contents. however, number of blows significantly decrease compared to those of the identical specimens without burning. for the trend of “15 minutes” in table 6, the number of hammer drops is 14 at 0% replacement. that number has increased to reach 109 blows with increasing rubber content to 24%. the number of blows for various burning periods is slightly reduced with an increase of burning durations. for instance, at 12% rubber content, the repetitions of impact loads are 23, 13 and 10 for the time periods of 15, 30 and 45 minutes respectively. table 7: average number of impact loads vs fire exposure 0,00 1,00 2,00 3,00 4,00 5,00 6,00 7,00 8,00 9,00 10,00 11,00 12,00 13,00 0 6 12 18 24 m a ss l o ss % replacement, % 15 minute 30 minute 45 minute mix no. replacement, % average number of blows at failure control specimens without fire fire exposure periods 15 minute 30 minute 45 minute mix 1 0 144 14 10 8 mix 2 6 155 16 12 9 mix 3 12 160 23 13 10 mix 4 18 163 52 52 43 mix 5 24 169 109 102 46 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 60 table 8: average impact energy in (n.m) corresponding to rubber content and fire exposure periods rubber content fire duration, minute 0% 6% 12% 18% 24% 0 2851 3069 3169 3238 3351 15 84 96 139 320 669 30 59 72 80 320 628 45 47 57 62 265 285 impact energy mainly depends on the number of blows because both drop height and hammer weight were constant in each trial. the reduction in number of blows results in a decrease in their corresponding impact energy. average impact energy of three specimens corresponding to percent replacement and the duration exposed to fire are summarised in table 8. it is evident that increase in rubber content leads to an increase in impact energy. from table 8, the amount of impact energy with the inclusion of rubber replacement without fire increased with the level of rubber content. impact energy is 2851 n.m at 0% replacement, and it linearly increases till reaching 3351 n.m at 24% replacement. different ratios of increase in impact energy of rubberized concrete were previously reported by some researchers in the literature [3, 10, 21-22]. a possible reason might be due to the ability of the tire rubber particles to allow for large deformations. the rubber particles delay the widening of cracks and stopping early full disintegration of the concrete specimens. figure 7 shows the impact energy considering percent replacements of tire rubber for the time periods of 15, 30, and 45 minutes. for example, at 6% replacement, impact energies are 96, 57, and 62 for the periods of 15, 30, and 45 minutes respectively. the longer the specimens exposed to fire, the more the loss of their impact energies will be. in comparison with impact energies obtained from the specimens without burning from figure 7, the results of burnt specimens experience a vast reduction in their impact energies. at 24% rubber content, for example, the impact energy reduced from 3351 n.m to (669, 628, and 285) n.m for burning time periods of 15, 30, and 45 minutes respectively due to the fire exposure. this decrease in impact resistance is due to the cavities made when the water and the rubber inside the samples evaporated caused disintegration between particles. the results roughly remain unaffected for rubber replacements above 18% for 45 minutes. a possible reason is the weak bond between rubber particles and concrete paste. early crushing of concrete samples was observed during the test. figure 8 represents the relation of impact energy in vertical axis and duration of fire exposures (0, 15, 30 and 45) minute in horizontal axis. it is evident that the impact energy reduced sharply at the duration of 15 minute and then slightly decreased again towards duration of 45 minute. this means the larger amount of rubber evaporated during the first 15 minute of fire exposure. in summary, while an advantageous use of aggregate rubbers in concrete is resistance to impact loads, they leads to worth condition for concrete during fire in terms of impact loading. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 61 figure 7: impact energy vs percent replacement for different fire durations figure 8: impact energy vs fire duration for different mixes y = 19,479x + 2901,7 r² = 0,9525 y = 23,21x 16,818 r² = 0,7988 y = 23,073x 45,121 r² = 0,7895 y = 11,383x + 6,563 r² = 0,8027 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000 2200 2400 2600 2800 3000 3200 3400 3600 3800 4000 0 6 12 18 24 im p a ct e n e rg y , n .m %replacement no fire 15 minute 30 minute 45 minute linear (no fire) linear (15 minute) linear (30 minute) linear (45 minute) 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000 2200 2400 2600 2800 3000 3200 3400 3600 3800 4000 0 15 30 45 im p a ct e n e rg y , n .m fire duration, minute 0% 6% 12% 18% 24% kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 62 linear regression analysis have been made to propose a mathematical model equations based on the experimental work as the summary of equations given in table 9. impact energy (y) in (n.m) can be estimated according to percent rubber content (x) by weight corresponding to exposure periods. table 9 : linear equations of impact energy for various fire exposure fire exposure, minute r² equation 0 0.9525 y = 19.479x + 2901.7 15 0.7988 y = 23.21x 16.818 30 0.7895 y = 23.073x 45.121 45 0.8027 y = 11.383x + 6.563 3.3 visual observations and failure modes when the specimens were in the furnace, it was noted that the specimens ignited on the fire and their colors changed to red. even after the turning off the gas burner, the ignition continued for a while, nearly 15 minutes, in the specimens with higher percent replacements of tire rubber 18 and 24%. moreover, smoke and gas released outside of the furnace. these gas emissions were mainly related to the evaporation of water and tire rubber in concrete. sometimes explosive sound was heard when the specimens were on fire. the reason beyond these noises might be the evaporating of tire rubber particles and releasing of entrained air in concrete. after removing the specimens from the furnace, no signs of explosive spalling were seen on their surfaces as it can be seen in figure 9. on the other hand, after fire exposure, all specimens experienced cracks and small holes on their surface. the dimension and size of these cracks and holes were different and increased with increasing of both burning periods and the amount of rubber content. the color of the of the specimens also experienced significant variations, becoming brownish and black colors as in figure 9. this change in surface colors of specimens is attributed to the dispersion of carbon which is one of the components of the tire rubber particles. similar visual observation have also being noticed in the literature[11, 23]. figure 9: specimen surface of 24% rubber content sample and 45 minutes of burning period figures 10a-d show the failure modes of specimens in all cases of rubber replacement ratios exposed to (0 “without fire”, 15, 30 and 45) minutes respectively, after the performance of impact tests. they have been split into two or three main pieces extending from the center into the edges of the specimens. the specimens containing higher percent replacements underwent spalling during the test. for the specimens exposed to fire for 45 minutes with 24% of rubber content, high rate of early crushing was observed as shown in figure 11. the crushing is a kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 63 negative response from specimens as reaction to burning which results in a decrease in the impact energy. figure 10: failure modes: (a) control specimens without fire exposure (b) specimens exposed to 15 minute fire exposure, (c) specimens exposed to 30 minute fire exposure (d) specimens exposed to 45 minute fire exposure figure 11: crushing at early impact loads of a specimen containing 24% rubber exposed to 45 minute fire exposure 4. conclusion the objective of this study was to investigate the effect of fire exposure of different time periods on the rubberized concrete under impact loads. the study was undertaken for five sand replacement ratios (0, 6, 12, 18, and 24)% with waste tire rubber with 0.339 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 64 water/cement ratio. all specimens were exposed to three different exposure durations of (15, 30 and 45) minutes. the influences of both rubber content and fire exposure duration on the impact resistance properties of concrete are significant. the following findings can be concluded: 1. the concrete mass has reduced as the level of rubber content increases. for specimens tested at fire exposure of 45 minute, average of masses decreased from 3729g at 0% replacement to 3396g at 24% replacement. these reductions in masses have occurred to the other cases. 2. the mass of rubberized decreased with the increase of rubber content. additionally, the percent mass loss of the rubberized concrete also increased with the increasing of fire exposure durations. for instance, at 18% replacement, the percent mass loss was 6.13% for the duration of 15 minutes while it is considerably increased to 11.53% for the duration of 45 minute. this is due to water loss and decomposition of rubber particles in the concrete. 3. the energy absorption capacity of rubberized concrete was higher than that of a normal concrete. it was observed that impact energy increased from 2851n.m at 0% replacement to 3351 n.m at 24% replacement. this increase in impact energy is due to the presence of rubber particles which absorb more energy and work as elastic springs in the concrete sample. 4. regarding the specimens of normal concrete (without rubber) after fire exposure, the impact energy massively reduced from 3351 n.m in air condition to 84 and 47 n.m for the burning durations of 15 and 45 minutes. this reduction in impact energy may be happened owing to the weak bond between cement paste and aggregates. 5. as for the rubberized concrete specimens after fire exposure, the impact energy of the rubberized concrete decreased with an increase in fire exposure time periods. for example, at replacement level of 12% of rubber, the impact energy reduced from 139 n.m for the fire duration of 15 minutes to 62 n.m for the fire duration of 45 minutes. so, the more specimens burnt the more impact energy loss will be in all cases. 6. the specimens containing higher levels of rubber content exposed to fire, they experienced ignition during fire exposure and even after they were removed from the furnace. moreover, spalling of the concrete increased with increasing of rubber content. any replacement of sand above 18% and any burning time periods above 30 minute results in spalling of the specimens under impact loads. 7. some linear equations have been proposed to calculate impact energy with respect to rubber content, considering the duration of fire exposure. reference [1] w. struck, and w. voggenreiter, “examples of impact and impulsive loading in the field of civil engineering,” matériaux et constructions, 8(2), 81–87, 1975. 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[7] m. m. al-tayeb, b. h. abu bakar, h. ismail, and h. md akil, “effect of partial replacement of sand by fine crumb rubber on impact load behavior of concrete beam: experiment and nonlinear dynamic analysis,” materials and structures, 46(8), 1299–1307, 2012. [8] t.s. vadivel, r. thenmozhi, and m. doddurani, “experimental behaviour of waste tyre rubber aggregate concrete under impact loading,” iranian journal of science and technology. transactions of civil engineering, 38(c1+), p.251, 2014. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 65 [9] a. sadrmomtazi, and r. z. zanoosh, “concrete containing waste rubber particles under impact loading,” bulletin de la société royale des sciences de liège, 85, pp.1328-1336, 2016. [10] v. malagavelli, r. s. parmar, and p. n. rao, “thermal conductivity and impact resistance of concrete using partial replacement of coarse aggregate with rubber,” jordan journal of civil engineering, 159(3317), pp.118, 2016. [11] a. m. marques, j. r. correia, j. brito de, “post-fire residual mechanical properties of concrete made with recycled rubber aggregate,” fire safety journal 58, 2013. [12] t. gupta, s. siddique, r. k. sharma, and s. chaudhary, “effect of elevated temperature and cooling regimes on mechanical and durability properties of concrete containing waste rubber fiber,” construction and building materials, 137, 35–45, 2017. [13] m. a. muhammad, w. a. abdull-faraj, m. r. abdul-kadir “post-fire mechanical properties of concrete made with recycled tire rubber as fine aggregate replacement,” sulaimani journal for engineering sciences (sjes) , sjes volume 4 no 5, 2017. [14] cen european committee for standardization “methods of testing of cement: part 1. determination of strength,” the european standard en 196-1, cen, 2011. [15] aci 211.1 "standard practice for selecting proportions for normal, heavyweight, and mass concr ete,” 1991. [16] iso 834 standard "fire resistance tests, elements of building construction,” international standards organization, 1975. [17] c. albano, n. camacho, j. reyes, j. l. feliu, m. herna´ndez, "influence of scrap rubber to portland i concrete composites: destructive and non-destructive testing,” compos. struct. 71, 439–446, 2005. [18] d. pedro, j. de brito, and r. veiga, "mortars made with fine granulate from shredded tires,” journal of materials in civil engineering, 25(4), 519–529, 2013. [19] m. gesoğlu, , e. güneyisi, , g. khoshnaw, and s. i̇pek, "investigating properties of pervious concretes containing waste tire rubbers,” constr. build. mater. 63, 206–213, 2014. [20] l. guelmine, h. hadjab, and a. benazzouk, "effect of elevated temperatures on physical and mechanical properties of recycled rubber mortar,” construction and building materials, 126, 77–85, 2016. 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[23] j. r. correia, , a. m. marques, , c. m. c. pereira, and j. de brito, "fire reaction properties of concrete made with recycled rubber aggregate,” fire and materials, 36(2), 139–152, 2011. https://link.springer.com/journal/11527 https://link.springer.com/journal/11527  preventing dns misuse for reflection/amplification attacks with minimal computational overhead on the internet rebeen r. hama amin dana hasan network department computer science department computer science institute college of science sulaimani polytechnique university university of garmian sulaymaniyah, iraq kalar, sulaymaniyah, iraq rebeen.rebwar@spu.edu.iq dana.hasan@garmian.edu.krd masnida hussin department of communication technology and network faculty of computer science and information technology universiti putra malaysia serdang, selangor, malaysia masnida@upm.edu.my article info abstract volume 5 issue 2 december 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.2.6 article history: received: 01 november 2020 accepted:03 december 2020 dns reflection/amplification attacks are types of distributed denial of service (ddos) attacks that take advantage of vulnerabilities in the domain name system (dns) and use it as an attacking tool. this type of attack can quickly deplete the resources (i.e. computational and bandwidth) of the targeted system. many defense mechanisms are proposed to mitigate the impact of this type of attack. however, these defense mechanisms are centralized-based and cannot deal with a distributed-based attack. also, these defense mechanisms have a single point of deployment which leads to a lack of computational resources to handle an attack with a large magnitude. in this work, we presented a new distributed-based defense mechanism (ddm) to counter reflection/ amplification attacks. while operating, we calculated the cpu counters of the machines that we deployed our defense mechanism with which showed 19.9% computational improvement. on top of that, our defense mechanism showed that it can protect the attack path from exhaustion during reflection/amplification attacks without putting any significant traffic load on the network by eliminating every spoofed request from getting responses. keywords: dns, ddm, reflection/amplification, ddos, amplification factor. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 61 reflection/amplification attacks are from the distributed denial of service (ddos) attacks category that utilizes domain name servers (dns) as the attacking tool. in this genre of attacks, an attacker fabricates spoofed dns requests packets with the internet protocol (ip) address of their victims. since dns utilizes user datagram protocol (udp) which is a connectionless protocol with no handshaking mechanisms or techniques as transport layer protocol. therefore, the dns server responds to the victim instead of the source of the packet. on top of that, the attacker seeks response types that are many folds larger than the corresponding request which results in an amplified response. the ratio between response size to request size is called amplification factor (af). furthermore, introducing dns security extension (dnssec) made the matter worse. it increases the size of dns responses from 512 bytes to 4096 bytes which significantly increases the amplification factor. though dnssec is important for protecting dns servers from attacks such as cache poisoning. however, it makes an attacker’s job easier when it utilizes it to generate larger traffic volume with minimal effort [1][2][3][4][5]. when the response arrives at the victim’s machines it will be dropped without any use of it. thus, a portion of the victim’s resources (i.e. computational and bandwidth) of the victim is wasted. however, an attacker usually uses many machines to perform such attacks to magnify the effectiveness of these types of attacks; therefore, the victim machine would be bottlenecked and completely paralyzed [6][7]. figure 1 shows how reflection/amplification attacks occur. solving the problem with dns reflection/amplification attack is not an easy task. first, dns packets are allowed to pass through every security barrier. second, dns utilizes udp without any built-in authentication mechanism. third, previous defense mechanisms are centralizedbased and they have a single point of deployment (i.e. source, intermediate-network, destination). to be able to confront a distributed based attack, we need to have a distributedbased defense mechanism that can be deployed at multiple nodes on the internet. also, distributed defense mechanisms can provide more resources while tackling distributed-based attacks which can lower the bottleneck on the defense mechanism [8][9]. figure1: reflection/amplification attack in this work, we present a distributed-based defense mechanism to tackle the dns reflection/amplification attack with minimal consumption of computational resources at a single node. it is a hybrid of intermediate-network-based and destination-based defense mechanism. our strategy is to provide a defense mechanism lower computational overhead during reflection/amplification attacks. the rest of the paper is organized as follows. section2 is about types of defense mechanisms that discuss different types of different mechanisms based on their launching point on the network. section 3, is about previous works proposed to protect dns from the reflection/amplification attack. section 4, is about our proposed mechanism and metrics. section 5, discusses the results of our works. section 6, concludes the outcome of this study, providing recommendations and future work of the study. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 62 2. related works the primary goal of defense mechanisms is detecting the attack’s traffic as soon as possible and prevent them from causing any damages as close as possible to their sources. there are two main types of defense mechanisms used to detect and prevent any ddos-based attacks, centralized, and distributed. this categorization had set based on the defense mechanism’s deployment point on the network. in centralized-based mechanisms, detecting and responding are mostly done in a very centralized manner either by one of the two model approaches which are the deployment points (e.g., source-based, destination-based) or by the responsible points model approach which is within the group of deployment points (e.g., network-based). however, these deployment points have no cooperation between them to tackle an attack volume. source-based defense mechanisms are deployed closest to the sources of the attack to prevent network users from generating any sort of flooding attacks on dns. the advantages of these mechanisms are first to detect and respond (i.e., filter) to the offensive or malicious traffic at the source and before wasting any more computing resources. however, the disadvantages are mostly related to the form that sources are distributed among different domains. hence, accurately detecting and filtering attack flows is a very difficult task for each of the sources [8]. detection and response in the destination-based defense mechanisms are mostly performed at the destination site of the attack (i.e., victim). the advantage of this kind of defense mechanism is that it is smooth and cost-effective compared to other attack detection techniques because of its ability to access the aggregate traffic adjacent to the destination nodes. the disadvantage is that it is not possible to detect and respond accurately to the attack in advance and when the attack reaches the victims it will waste computing resources on the paths toward the victim. intermediate network-based mechanisms deployed internally inside networks and mainly on the routers of the autonomous systems (as). the advantage is that it is possible to detect and respond to the attack traffic flow at the intermediate networks and also can be placed closest to the source. on the other hand, the disadvantage is that it causes high storage, processing, and computational overhead on the routers [8]. in contrast to centralized defense mechanisms, distributed defense mechanisms can be deployed and placed at multiple locations including source, destination, and intermediate networks with cooperation among the deployment points. the advantage of the distributed approach is that these mechanisms can robustly stand against flood attacks. also, this will provide more computational resources at different levels (e.g., destination, source, and network) to prevent and tackle the attacks. the disadvantages of this type are the computational overhead and complexity due to the cooperation and communication among distributed components shared all over the internet. also, the lack of incentives for the service provider to collaborate and cooperate, which requires trustworthy communication among various distributed components to perform such actions [8]. in [10], the authors proposed moving to an alternative internet architecture such as contentcentric networking (ccn) that could prevent and eliminate numerous numbers of existing denial of service (dos) attacks. specifically, ccn will eliminate the probability of dns-based amplification attacks because there will be no need for dns services anymore. in ccn, isps will be able to cache data based on system services and user requests by deploying content routers. however, ccn uses the request and response approach in the form of “interest” and “data” packets, and it is not yet confirmed to what level of resiliency this new network model belongs to be able to prevent amplification attacks or new approaches of dos attacks proposed designs. [11] proposed an approach that would reduce the efficiency of amplification attacks on the current internet to modify and increase the size of requests specifically in vulnerable protocols. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 63 this will reduce the amplification factor, but the growing amount of traffic across the internet will not be as expected. furthermore, suggesting that making all protocols amplification free is not logical. for instance, it is entirely sensible to expect that request sizes is smaller or less than the response, especially in large file cases. moreover, dns providers already started to minimize the use of the dns "any" records to mitigate the amplification attacks' growing danger. cloudflare, which is a dns provider, recently started to resolve and responds with rcode 4 "not implemented". however, the issues of time-consuming and latency still exist while identifying and disabling services with high request and response rates. therefore, this can lead to the loss of functionality which is one main factor that applications attacks rely on. [12] proposed a method to configure dns servers to respond to a specific set of requests from each ip address within a pre-configured time interval. when using newer versions of bind, response rate limiting (rrl) support can be easily applied. however, rrl protects against the abuse of a single amplifier. an attacker can easily search for a significant number of different amplifiers at a low request rate to attack his/her victim in a very short period. reflection and amplification attacks are mostly sending requests using a spoofed ip address of the targeted node. one of the most effective methods to stand and countermeasure against amplification and other dos attacks is filtering spoofed packets [13][14]. however, recent studies stated that approximately 25% of authoritative name servers (ans) are not filtering spoofed ip packets which will give the ability to launch amplification attacks by the attackers, and this indicates that the issue still exists. moreover, several studies have stated that spoofed ip packets still traverse and cross from almost 20% of the entire internet. in [15] the authors implemented a detection and mitigation sketch technique to impact and prevent amplification attacks. the sketching technique enables a method to detect and work with large-volume traffic during amplification attacks. they used chinese reminder theorembased reversible sketch to gather and collect the network traffic directly and track any disruption in one-to-one mapping between network transactions (i.e. requests and responses) to recognize amplification attack traffic. since the detection mechanism does not require every complicated traffic features of amplification attacks, it can be considered an efficient technique. the authors in [16] used a strategy in software defined networks (sdn)-based networks to mitigate the effects of amplification attacks in dns. they used the central management feature of sdn networks to take action in reducing the impact of amplification attacks without disturbing any legitimate packets. their strategy is to monitor both the time-to-live (ttl) header and amplification factor and put them into time-series databases. when an anomaly appears, an alarm is initiated which starts the mitigation process. their experiments showed that their strategy can be used reactively with sdn-based networks. their results also showed that this method can be used to prevent other udp-based reflection/amplification attacks as well. however, this method can only be used with sdn networks, and using it in legacy networks is not practical, unlike ddm which proposes a practical distributed solution for this sort of attack, because in the existent of distributed attacks it logical to have a distributed defense system instead of centralized defense mechanisms. 3. proposed mechanism the distributed-based defense mechanism (ddm) in this work is proposed to prevent the dns reflection/amplification attack by applying the dns authentication mechanism with classification filtering. the authentication mechanism confirms the legitimacy of incoming dns responses. then, classification filtering removes every packet which cannot be confirmed by the authentication mechanism. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 64 figure 2: experimental setup as figure 2 shows, recursive name server (rns) is connected to the user’s machine, authoritative name server (ans), and it provides name resolution for the user. ans contains a website and the server itself is an authoritative server that can provide name resolution for rns based on its pre-defined configuration. the user’s machine asks for name resolution from rns. attackers’ machines try to attack rns sends spoofed packets to ans with the ip address of rns. the experiment is done using a lenovo ideapad y50-70 with a 2.2 ghz core i7 processor, 16 gb ram, 512 gb samsung 2.5 sata ssd, and microsoft windows 10 as the hosting operating system and virtual windows server 2016 as the dns servers residing on vmware workstation 15. we used java programming language to develop ddm. furthermore, we used c language to develop dns flooder to formulate our attack, microsoft sql server 2008 as our database software. we also developed packet capture tool to capture the network traffic and put it inside our databases. to collect the data from cpu counters, we utilized microsoft performance monitor which is a built-in tool inside microsoft windows. 3.1. distributed-based defense mechanism (ddm) a distributed-based defense mechanism should be deployed at multiple locations on the network. these nodes should cooperate to prevent reflection/amplification attacks from causing harm to any part of the system. our strategy is to fortify dns with security layers by redesigning the querying structure of dns. rns contains a table that is designed to store information about every outgoing dns request. ans also contains a table that contains information about every incoming dns packet. the information which is necessary for both tables to have is the packets’ source ip, destination ip, source port, and destination port. when rns receives a dns request from a user, it stores the source ip, destination ip, source port, and destination port of the packet into its table. then, it sends the packet to ans. when the packet arrives at the ans server, it stores the packet’s information in its table as well. before, sending the response back to rns, it needs to check for the legitimacy of the packet. for that reason, with help of a custom-made java program, ans fabricates a udp packet with no more than 21 bytes of payload to authenticate the incoming dns request. it sends the packet to the source ip of the incoming request (which is rns). rns receives the packet and compares it with the content of the table. we call this operation dns checkpoint. if the packet exists, then that particular record is deleted from its table. like ans, rns also uses a java custom-made program to send a message back to ans with a 1-byte payload confirming the legitimacy of the packet. when ans receives the packet, it will send back the dns response to rns. upon the arrival of the dns response, rns saves it into its cache for later use, then sends the response back to the user. however, when a spoofed packet arrives at ans, it sends an authentication kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 65 packet to rns. when rns receives the packet, it compares the ans authentication request to its table. since no request corresponds to the authentication request sent by ans, rns replies a message that falsifies the dns request that ans received, figure 3 shows the sequence diagram of how ddm works. figure 3: ddm sequence diagram 3.2. performance metrics the metric that we considered in this work is cpu counters. the cpu counter which we are interested in is context/switching. it occurs when a cpu core switches from executing code on one thread to executing code on a different thread or going to idle. context/switching time is overhead; the system does no useful work while switching (15). to collect the data from the cpus, we utilized performance monitor which is a built-in tool inside the microsoft windows operating system. then the data is analyzed and benchmarked with a previous centralized-based defense mechanism to show the difference in their resource consumption during an attack. we also measured the amount of traffic during each experiment to calculate the volume of traffic during an attack. we benchmarked our results with results from detecting dns amplification attacks (ddaa) which is a destination-based defense mechanism and response rate limiting (rrl) which is an intermediate-network-based defense mechanism implemented since the release of bind 9.10. 3.3. attack formulation dns flooder is used to launch a high volume of traffic with great dynamicity. it is a very powerful tool built using c language with a very complex traffic signature. it can unleash a massive number of spoofed requests using “any” records which results in a large response size. the tool is operating at attacker machines and sends spoofed packets with the address of rns to ans. then, ans reflects and amplifies the response back to rns. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 66 4. experiments and results 4.1. experiments after operating every machine, testing the links between them, and checking whether the databases are working properly, we start the simulation. the user sends dns requests to rns to perform name resolution and rns stores them in its database, then sends them to ans. also, attackers send spoofed requests to the ans machine to be reflected in the rns machine. upon receiving dns requests, ans start sending authentication messages to rns, and rns replies to them. the arrival of authentication responses triggers the classification filtering directly. ans drops any dns request with a falsified authentication response based on the authentication response from rns. also, ans sends back dns responses to rns for every successfully authenticated request, figure 4 shows a sample of dns requests stored in the database. figure 4: dns requests stored in databases 4.2. context-switching the results of our simulation are collected using the performance monitor tool in microsoft windows. since most of the actions take place on the ans machine; therefore, we collected the cpu counter data from the ans machine, specifically cpu context/switching. the data are extracted and analyzed using microsoft excel 2016. the analyzed results are benchmarked with a centralized-based defense mechanism. figure 4, shows the results of cpu context/switching. figure 5: context switching per second 0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000 14000 16000 18000 00 :0 0. 0 00 :4 5. 0 01 :3 0. 0 02 :1 5. 0 03 :0 0. 0 03 :4 5. 0 04 :3 0. 0 05 :1 5. 0 06 :0 0. 0 06 :4 5. 0 07 :3 0. 0 08 :1 5. 0 09 :0 0. 0 09 :4 5. 0 10 :3 0. 0 11 :1 5. 0 12 :0 0. 0 12 :4 5. 0 13 :3 0. 0 14 :1 5. 0 15 :0 0. 0 15 :4 5. 0 16 :3 0. 0 17 :1 5. 0 18 :0 0. 0 18 :4 5. 0 context switches/sec distributed centralized kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 67 as figure 5 shows, the distributed mechanism shows lower context/switching per second. this means that the operating system switches between different threads of the same process less frequently. when context/switching occurs, the state of the running process is saved in a portion of memory called process control block (pcb). then the system starts loading the pcb for another process. during the storing and loading of the process’s pcbs, the computer is doing nothing. this indicates that context switching generates overhead for the system [17]. this is a demonstration that the proposed defense mechanism can operate with less context/switching per second which is an indication of less overhead on the system. 4.3. link utilization link usage or link utilization is the amount of successful message transmission through a communication. the analysis of the outcomes of simulations shows different results about link usage of name resolving transactions. 4.3.1. normal dns transactions the purpose of proposing ddm is to allow legitimate users to get responses and discard all attack traffics when the system undergoes a massive flooding attack. due to the authentication procedure by dns checkpoint, each dns transaction (i.e. request and response) consumes a slight portion of the bandwidth which is not more than 21 bytes. the devised experiment showed that the size of dns requests is 70 bytes, while the size of the response is 501 bytes. ddm adds another 21 bytes for the transaction which is the authentication request and response packets. as shown in figure 6. figure 6: bandwidth usage per dns transactions (normal traffic) however, both ddaa and rrl are single-point defense mechanisms and they do not have any cooperation between different entities of the network. ddaa is a destination-based defense mechanism that is deployed at the destination of attack. therefore, it doesn’t require any message exchanging with any other entities to protect the network on which it is deployed in it. on the other hand, rrl is deployed at the reflector’s side (ans) and its purpose is to limit the amount of traffic towards the victim. therefore, they send back only the dns response which makes their transaction consumes around 21 bytes less bandwidth compared to ddm. 4.3.2. spoofed dns transactions when the victim’s machine is subjected to the heavy load of attack traffic due to dns amplification, the downlink bandwidth towards the victim suffers serious starvation. single592 571 571 560 565 570 575 580 585 590 595 b an dw id th u sa ge p er tr an sa ct io n (b yt es ) normal traffic bandwidth usage dds ddaa rrl kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 68 point defense mechanisms are not capable of protecting the network link, especially when the attack traffic is highly dynamic. figure 7 shows the bandwidth consumed for each spoofed dns transaction. as shown in figure 7, with ddm, the spoofed addresses receive no responses at all, which leads to an immediate effect on the amount of traffic that passes through the network channel. therefore, while during the attack each transaction significantly reduces the link bandwidth, ddm countermeasures such effect. the ddm generates only two tiny packets for the authentication purpose. unlike legitimate traffic, when ddm encounters spoofed packets, it ends up generating only the small authentication message per traffic, which prevents unauthenticated requests from being redirected toward the targeted victim at all. however, other centralized defense mechanisms allow the victim to receive dns responses without any mechanism to protect the downlink from those bogus packets. the bandwidth consumption per transaction is equal to the size of spoofed dns response which is generated by the dns reflector which is 501 bytes for both ddaa and rrl. since ddaa is lunched at the destination of attack, therefore the upstream networks on the attack path suffer starvation due to the bandwidth usage. as an intermediate-based defense mechanism, rrl does not reduce the size of the traffic, it just limits the number of responses that are targeting the victim. figure 7: bandwidth usage per transaction (attack traffic) 4.3.3. traffic volume ddm adds two new packets with tiny size to dns name resolution transactions, which slightly increases the link usage per transaction. however, it significantly reduces the massive impact of spoofed responses along with the downlink and the entire network channels. the fact is that preventing spoofed requests from getting responses has a direct effect on total bandwidth. figure 5 demonstrates the impact of eliminating the amplification factor on the bandwidth as per each replication. as shown in the figure, ddm significantly minimizes the bandwidth exhaustion along the victim’s path while the system is under an attack. this reduction happens due to the usage of dns disinfector. even though ddm querying size is increased by 21 bytes for one packet in each attack flow, it is ability to reduce the traffic volume to a minimum value. this is because 21 501 501 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 ba nd w id th u sa ge p er t ra ns ac tio n (b yt es ) dds ddaa rrl kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 69 ddm grants dns response to legitimate dns requests only, and the spoofed ones are discarded. moreover, ddm performs a detection mechanism on traffic flow, not individual packets. therefore, the total amount of traffic that passes through the system significantly decreased. 5. conclusion reflection/amplification attack is one of the worst types of attacks deployed by cyber attackers on the internet, which utilizes dns for its deployment. the main reason that makes dns a target for these types of attacks is that dns uses udp as a transport protocol. udp is an unreliable protocol with source authentication issues. therefore, an attacker can simply forward bulk request traffic toward dns servers and fabricating the source ip address of their victim to be reflected to their target. nevertheless, dns response queries are larger than the corresponding request query. it causes the reflected traffic toward the target to be greater than the request traffic. we have proposed ddm, which is a distributed mechanism to detect and prevent dns reflection/amplification attacks with lower overhead on network computational resources compared to centralized base defense mechanisms. ddm introduces the authentication mechanism for dns queries which puts a security layer on dns service. also, ddm implements a classification filtering strategy that can be triggered only when spoofed traffic is detected. our analysis showed that implementing ddm can provide a defense mechanism with lower computational overhead by reducing the context switching between different processes while it is working. furthermore, it protects upstream networks from exhaustion during attacks with a slight network overhead on the attack path. 6. recommendation and future work we implemented this work in a controlled experimental environment. also, we neglected any lost dns packets during our experiments. therefore, we recommend that this work should be implemented in a realistic testbed to measure the actual potential of ddm in mitigating dns reflection/amplification attacks in a real-world attacking scenario. in the future, we intend to implement ddm for recursive servers along with authoritative name servers. also, implementing ddm in such a way that it can be operated only during reflection/amplification attacks occurrence. reference [1] r. van rijswijk-deij, a. sperotto, and a. pras, “dnssec and its potential for ddos attacks,” in proceedings of the 2014 conference on internet measurement conference imc ’14, 2014, pp. 449–460, doi: 10.1145/2663716.2663731. [2] j.-y. bisiaux, “dns threats and mitigation strategies,” netw. secur., vol. 2014, no. 7, pp. 5–9, jul. 2014, doi: 10.1016/s1353-4858(14)70068-6. [3] m. anagnostopoulos, g. kambourakis, p. kopanos, g. louloudakis, and s. gritzalis, “dns amplification attack revisited,” comput. secur., vol. 39, pp. 475–485, nov. 2013, doi: 10.1016/j.cose.2013.10.001. [4] y. koç, a. jamakovic, and b. gijsen, “a global reference model of the domain name system,” int. j. crit. infrastruct. prot., vol. 5, no. 3–4, pp. 108–117, dec. 2012, doi: 10.1016/j.ijcip.2012.08.001. [5] s. abbasi, “investigation of open resolvers in dns reflection ddos attacks,” université laval, 2014. [6] c. marrison, “dns as an attack vector – and how businesses can keep it secure,” netw. secur., vol. 2014, no. 6, pp. 17–20, jun. 2014, doi: 10.1016/s1353-4858(14)70061-3. [7] x. ye and y. ye, “a practical mechanism to counteract dns amplification ddos attacks,” j. comput. inf. syst., vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 265–272, 2013. [8] s. t. zargar, j. joshi, and d. tipper, “a survey of defense mechanisms against distributed denial of service (ddos) flooding attacks,” ieee commun. surv. tutorials, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 2046–2069, 2013, doi: 10.1109/surv.2013.031413.00127. [9] b. liu et al., “sf-drdos: the store-and-flood distributed reflective denial of service attack,” comput. commun., vol. 69, pp. 107–115, sep. 2015, doi: 10.1016/j.comcom.2015.06.008. [10] v. jacobson, d. k. smetters, j. d. thornton, m. f. plass, n. h. briggs, and r. l. braynard, “networking named kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 70 content,” in proceedings of the 5th international conference on emerging networking experiments and technologies conext ’09, 2009, p. 1, doi: 10.1145/1658939.1658941. [11] c. rossow, “amplification hell: revisiting network protocols for ddos abuse,” in proceedings 2014 network and distributed system security symposium, 2014, doi: 10.14722/ndss.2014.23233. [12] p. vixie and v. schryver, “response policy zones,” internet engenieering task force, p. 10, 2017. [13] m. kührer, t. hupperich, c. rossow, and t. holz, “exit from hell? reducing the impact of amplification ddos attacks,” proc. 23rd usenix secur. symp., pp. 111–125, 2014. [14] s. di paola and d. lombardo, “protecting against dns reflection attacks with bloom filters,” 2011, pp. 1–16. [15] x. jing, j. zhao, q. zheng, z. yan, and w. pedrycz, “a reversible sketch-based method for detecting and mitigating amplification attacks,” j. netw. comput. appl., vol. 142, pp. 15–24, sep. 2019, doi: 10.1016/j.jnca.2019.06.007. [16] k. ozdincer and h. a. mantar, “sdn-based detection and mitigation system for dns amplification attacks,” in 2019 3rd international symposium on multidisciplinary studies and innovative technologies (ismsit), oct. 2019, pp. 1–7, doi: 10.1109/ismsit.2019.8932809. [17] a. silberschatz, p. b. galvin, and g. gagne, operating system concepts essentials. john wiley & sons, inc., 2013. 1. introduction  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 2 | july 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.2.8 bacteriological profile and antibacterial sensitivity patterns of isolates among burn patients in sulaimani city kamal jalal rashid anesthesiology department, technical college of health, sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq kamalashty73@yahoo.com muhammed babakir-mina medical lab. department, technical college of health, sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq m.babakir@yahoo.com dana abdilmajid abdilkarim community health department, technical college of health, sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq dana_dr77@yahoo.com bestun ibrahim hama rahim community health department, sulaimani, technical institute, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, iraq bestunarambestun@gmail.com sarko masood mohammed community health department, technical college of health, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, iraq sarko_baban@yahoo.com abstract: nosocomial infections have increasingly been implicated in transferring fatal septic complications in burn patients. also multidrug resistant profiles of microorganisms are being increasingly found in burn wounds which are very much alarming due to the limited number effective antibacterial drugs. retrospective data were collected from burn patients at sulaimani burn and plastic surgery hospital between january 2013 and december 2015. culture& sensitivity tests were performed using wound surface swabs and tissue culture over the three year period. their results were collected in a predesigned digital form. statistical analysis was done and results plotted. out of 500 burn positive swabs samples were previously taken from hospitalized patients, the commonest bacterial isolate were grampositive bacterial infection; methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (mrsa) 215(43%) followed by gram-negative bacterial infection; acinetobacter baumannii and pseudomonas aeruginosa 95(19%) and 85 (17%). vancomycin has no any resistant rate for all gram-positive bacteria followed, but teicoplanin is the second best drug especially, for mrsa 8.4%. imipenem and meropenem are antibiotics with no or less resistant rates for most of gram negative bacteria. resistance to antibiotics is rapidly increasing in our community and burn wounds are frequently infected by these multidrug resistant organisms. careful antibiotic selection and effective control of these strains can be translated into lower morbidity and mortality for these patients. keywords: burn patients; mrsa; antibacterial drug; multidrug resistant, and burn patients 1. introduction infection in burn wound is still considered as the most important cause of disability and mortality in all ages and in both developed and developing countries.1,2 despite considerable advances in the overall management of burn injuries, infection and the resultant sepsis continues to be a formidable foe for burn care providers. approximately 50-75% of mortality amongst burn patients after the initial resuscitation phase, is attributable to various infectious complications. [1] burn injury patients are at high risk of infections for a variety of reasons. for instance, the readily available exposed body surface, immunocompromizing effects of burns, invasive diagnostic and therapeutic procedures and prolonged hospital stay. patient factors such as age, extent of injury, and depth of burns coupled with microbial factors such as the type and number, enzyme/toxin production and motility of organisms are the determinants of invasive infection. superficial bacterial contamination of the wound can easily advance to invasive infection in these patients. the degree of bacterial wound contamination has a direct correlation with the risk of sepsis [2]. factors that are associated with improved outcome of burn injury patients and prevention of infections among them predominantly include early excisions and grafting of deep burns together with aggressive infection-control measures. these changes potentially lead to the emergence of antibiotics resistant isolates and treatment failures [3]. some reports suggest that burn wound infection is the most common type of infection, whereas other reports show predominance of pneumonia and primary blood stream infection [4]. burn wound infections can be caused by bacteria, fungi, or viruses. historically, group a beta-hemolytic streptococcus was the most frequent cause of life-threatening burn wound and systemic infections. the use of penicillin altered the spectrum of gram-positive pathogens, leading to the emergence of staphylococcus aureus (s. aureus) as the most common gram-positive early colonizer of the burn wound. in burns, s. aureus has been a major cause of morbidity and death. the disruption of the normal skin barrier and the immunocompromised state makes burns an easy target for colonization. additionally, prolonged hospitalization and antibiotic therapy are risk factors for the development of methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (mrsa) colonization and infection. [5] some strains of pseudomonas aeruginosa (p. aeruginosa) and acinetobacter now encountered in burn units are resistant to all the aforementioned antibiotic classes. over the last 20 years, an increase in resistance of p. aeruginosa to reserve antibiotics such as ceftazidime, and a dramatic decrease in susceptibility of acinetobacter spp. to ceftazidime and ciprofloxacin, has developed. meropenem has been identified as an important reserve antibiotic to which most p. aeruginosa and acinetobacter are susceptible, but resistance to the carbapenems has developed. a study at eight centers in the united states found that 15% of p. aeruginosa isolates recovered from burn icus were resistant to ceftazidime and 20% were resistant to imipenem. pseudomonas isolates with resistance to ciprofloxacin also have been reported. outbreaks of p. aeruginosa resistant to most available beta-lactams, aminoglycosides, and fluoroquinolones have been reported in burn units, neurosurgical icus, and cancer centers and among patients with cystic fibrosis [5]. due to unavailability of an appropriate alternative antibiotic for hospitalized patients, it may be lifethreatening in some patients. so the present study was conducted to determine the microbial profile of burn patients, the antimicrobial susceptibility patterns of the cultured microbes and the frequency of infections with respect to the duration of burn, among our burn injury patients. 2. literature review antibacterial susceptibility patterns for microorganisms isolated from the hospitalized patients with infectious diseases are continuously evolving. determining the sensitivity of isolated bacteria to antibiotics helps clinician to use appropriate antibiotics [1]. also strict infection control practices and appropriate empirical antimicrobial therapy are essential to help reduce the incidence of infections due to these antibiotic resistant organisms [2]. although burn wound surfaces are sterile immediately following thermal injury, these wounds eventually become colonized with microorganisms. microorganisms transmitted from the hospital environment become more resistant to those antimicrobial agents than generated from the patient’s normal flora [2, 3]. resistance to antimicrobial agents is an increasing clinical problem and is a recognized public health threating. antibiotic-resistant organisms such as mrsa, vancomycin-resistant enterococci, and multiple-resistant gram-negative rods, including p. aeruginosa, acinetobacter species, and various members of the family enterobacteriaceae, have been associated with infections of the burn wound and other anatomic sites in patients with major thermal injury, occasionally in the form of nosocomial infection (ni) [4]. multi-drug resistance (mdr) in the gram-negative isolates was defined as resistance to three or more first line classes (beta lactams, aminoglycoside, and fluroquinolone) of antimicrobials and are usually resistance to ≥3 drugs (third/fourth generation cephalosporins, piperacillin/tazobactam, imipenem, meropenem, fluoroquinolones, aminoglycosides). although, mdr in the gram-positive isolates is resistance to three or more first line classes (beta lactams, aminoglycoside, and fluroquinolone) of antimicrobials and are usually resistance to ≥3 drugs (third/fourth generation penicillin, ampicillin, ampicillin-sulbactam, oxacillin, ticarcillin/clavulanic acid, cephalothin, cefazolin, cefotetan, cefuroxime, cefotaxime, ceftazidime, chloramphenicol, erythromycin, ciprofloxacin, nitrofurantoin, gentamicin, amikacin, clindamycin, and vancomycin [5]. a study conducted in north iran showed that pseudomonas species have less resistant to antimicrobials like amikacin (50%), gentamicin (42.85%), ciprofloxacin (94.4%), carbenicillin (42.85%), tobramycin (87.52%) and ceftazidime (33.3%), while s. aureus were highly resistant to ampicillin (100%), erythromycin (100%), and ciprofloxacin (100%), but acenetobacter species are highly resistant to all antibiotics with 100 %, while for klebsella species more drug resistant are ceftriaxone, cefixime, ciprofloxacin, and co-trimoxazole in percent 100% . the same study showed that enterobacter spp. resistant to most antibiotics such as ciprofloxacin, gentamicin, co-trimoxazol, and tetracycline in percent 100%, while e. coli it has similarity to more resistant to antibiotic for the most drugs 100% [6]. another study conducted in iraq indicated that pseudomonas species is the most mdr for amoxicillin, augmentin, cefadroxil, and cefotaxime 100%, followed by klebsella species about 100% mdr for amoxicillin, augmentin, cefadroxil, cefotaxime, and cotrimoxazole. in addition s. arueus was less resistant to previous antibiotic ranged (39.761.9%) [7]. a romanian study showed that p. aeruginosa, e. coli and klepsella species were highly sensitive to colistin about 100%, [8]. in addition, recent published article by babakir-mina, m. and his co-workers in sulaimani, iraq indicated that acenetobacter baumannii has no resistant rate to colistin, followed by ampicillin/sulbactam (sam) 2.4% and imipenem 5.3% [9]. 3. methods and materials 3.1. data management and statistical analysis: retrospective analytic study was conducted in the sulaimani plastic and burn hospital. the analysis is based on data collected from clinical laboratory examination records of 500 positive cultures from january 2014 to december 2016. the clinical samples were taken for microbiological tests from various body sources (blood, urine, burn wounds) at different time intervals during the patients’ stay in hospital. culture and sensitivity tests were undertaken at the center’s microbiology laboratory inside the hospital. the data were analyzed through spss software (statistical package for social sciences, version 22). various descriptive statistics were used to calculate frequencies, percentages, means and confidence interval. 3.2. microbiological investigation and antibiotic sensitivity test: the swabs were dipped in stuarts transport medium, and then inoculated on selective and differential medium, enrich medium (blood agar). the isolates were identified using conventional identification techniques after incubation for 18-48 hours at 37°c [10]. positive cultures were sub cultured on blood agar and macconkey agar, as per routine bacteriological guidelines. api (analytical profile index) 20e system was used to identify the isolated gram-negative bacteria. while gram stains, catalase test, hemolysis on blood agar, coagulase and other tests were used to identify gram-positive bacteria submitted to identification tests. als latex agglutination test were used as a confirmation stages of investiation. (biomerieux sa,lyon, france). [11]. small filter paper disks (6 mm) impregnated with a standard amount of antimicrobials were placed onto an agar plate to which bacteria have been swabbed by a bacterial suspension using distilled water comparable to 0.5 mcfarland turbidity standard. after 15 minutes of inoculation, the antimicrobial containing discs are applied to the agar with sterile forceps pressed firmly to ensure contact with the agar and then the plates of muller hinton agar were incubated overnight, and the zone of inhibition of bacterial growth was measured for gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. then the result will be calculated as describe elsewhere [12]. the most common antibiotic discs according of the (fluka company) used for gram-positive isolates were: amoxicillin/clavulanic acid (amc) 20/10mcg, cotrimoxazole (cot) 1.25/23.75 mcg, gentamicin (gen) 10 mcg, vancomycin (va) 30 mcg, amikacin (ak) 30 mcg, teicoplanin (ten) 30mcg, nitrofurantoin (net) 300mcg, and doxycycline (do) 30mcg. the antibiotic discs used for gram-negative isolates were: ceftazidime (caz) 30 mcg, cefipime (cpm) 30 mcg, imipenem (imp) 10 mcg, co-trimoxazole (cot) 1.25/23.75 mcg, amikacin (ak) 30 mcg, gentamicin (gen) 10 mcg, ciprofloxacin (cip) 5 mcg, ticarcillin/clavulanic acid (tcc) 75/10mcg, and meropenem (mrp) 10mcg [12]. 4. results 4.1. microbiological finding: from the total of 500 positive samples, the most common bacteria found was gram-positive bacteria; mrsa 215 (43%), followed by gram-negative; p. aeruginosa and acinetobacter baumannii (a. baumannii) 95 (19%), 85 (17%) respectively. other organism included non mrsa s. aureus, kliebsella pneumoniae (k. pneumonia), enterobacter cloacae (e. cloacae), escherichia coli (e. coli), and staphylococcus epidermidis( s. epidermidis), 50 (10%), 25 (5%), 39 (5.2%), 17 (2.3%), 11 (2.2%), 8(1.1%), 7 (1.4%) and 12 (2%) respectively. (table1) table1. distribution types of bacteria types of bacteria number % gram-positive mrsa 215 43 s. aureus 50 10 s. epidermidis 12 2 total 277 55.4 gram-negative a. baumannii 95 19 p. aeruginosa 85 17 k. pneumoniae 25 5 e. cloacae 11 2.2 e. coli 7 1.4 total 223 44.6 4.2. antibiotic sensitivity: 4.2.1. gram-positive bacteria: for mrsa, the highest resistances were seen against co-trimoxazole, amikacin, gentamicin, and amoxicillin/clavulanic acid accounted; 97.1%, 95.6%, 91.3%, and 82.3% respectively (figure 1). but most antibiotics were active against non mrsa (s. aureus) and the resistant rates ranged from 0-17.6% (figure 2). in addition, s. epidermidis was full resistant to amoxicillin/clavulanic acid 100%, while the resistant rates were decreased for the other drugs (figure 3). also all gram-positive bacteria were highly sensitive for vancomycin followed by teicoplanin. (figure1,2,3). figure1. antibiotic resistance for methicillinresistant staphylococcus aureus. figure2. antibiotic resistance for staphylococcus aureus. figure3. antibiotic resistance for staphylococcus epidermidis. 4.1.1. gram-negative bacteria: the resistant rate of a. baumannii was more than 80% for ticarcillin/clavulanic acid, ceftazidime, cefipime, amikacin and gentamicin, but the resistant rates only for imipenem was less than 30% (figure 4). in addition, the antibacterial drugs with drug resistant rate to p. aeruginosa more than 80% include only cotrimoxazole, also resistant rate for imipenem was lower than 30% and accounted 16.1% (figure 5). about k. pneumoniae drugs with drug resistant rate higher than 80% includes; gentamicin, ticarcillin/clavulanic acid, ceftazidime and gentamicin ranged from 80% to 93%, while those with lowest drug resistant rate includes; meropenem and imipenem 7% and 1.1% (figure 6). the highest antibacterial resist rates for e. cloacae were ticarcillin/clavulanic acid 80.1% and both ceftazidime, co-trimoxazole 92.2%; however there are lowest resistant rates for meropenem and imipenem 2.9% and 0.0% (figure 7). also for e. coli meropenem and imipenem were the active drugs with no resistant rates (figure 8). figure4. antibiotic resistance for acinetobacter baumannii. figure5. antibiotic resistance for pseudomonas aeruginosa. figure6. antibiotic resistance for klebsiella pneumoniae. figure7. antibiotic resistance for enterobacter cloacae. figure8. antibiotic resistance for escherichia coli. 5. discussion 5.1. bacteriological infections: a total of 500 positive samples, we found that the highest proportion of positive samples were grampositive bacteria 55.4% followed by gram-negative bacteria 44.6% (table 1). our result in accordance with the previous study in china showed that the commonest pathogens were the gram-positive cocci [13]. but study conducted by mayhall, c.g. in usa [14], and a study done by balaban, i., et al in turkey shows that the commonest pathogens were gram-negative bacteria [15]. this finding has several interpretations; first, grampositive organisms are major determinant of morbidity [16]. second, endogenous gram-positive bacteria come from the patient’s surface flora and rapidly colonize the burn wound surface after injury. on the other hand, delaying burn wound excision increases bacterial load, especially gram-positive and supports the rationale of early burn wound excision. surgical excision decreases an average of 102 organisms per gram of tissue in both the early and delayed excision groups for gram-negative infection this is mentioned by barret, j.p. and d.n. herndon [17]. burn wound surfaces are sterile after thermal injury; these wounds at the end become colonized with microorganisms. the nature and extent of the thermal injury along with the types and amounts of microbes colonize, and then gram-positive bacteria that survive the thermal insult, especially staphylococci located deep within sweat glands and hair follicles, so the wound become colonized within the first 48 hours [18, 19]. in our study a total of 748 positive samples, among gram-positive infections; the first common isolated bacteria were mrsa 34.2% (table 1). more recently, a 20years review of the changes in bacterial isolates from burn wounds and their antibiograms in europe showed that mrsa remain the most frequent gram-positive pathogen [20]. but this finding is disagree with the study conducted by habibullah, s. which showed that the most common pathogens were non mrsa (s. aureus) [16]. the prevalence of mrsa is various in clinical samples of burn patients as the result of distribution of pantonvalentine leukocidin (pvl) gene of the bacteria, staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (sccmec) types and antibiotic resistant genes of the mrsa isolates. the disruption of the normal skin barrier and the immune compromised status make burn an easy target for mrsa colonization [21]. additionally, using various types of penicillin too much without changing and self uses of antibiotic randomly are risks for development of mrsa colonization in which supported by branski, l.k., et al [22]. on the other hand, grampositive bacterial infection, especially mrsa comes from the patient’s endogenous skin flora or the external environment predominantly colonizes the burn wounds [22]. we obtained that; a. baumannii is the second common causes of infection that accounted 19% (table 1). a study by behzadnia, s., et al is agree with this result [6]. but a study by wang, l.f., and his coauthors found that a. baumannii is the most common bacterial cause infection in burn patients [23]. the factor which may be lead to the presence of much acinetobacter on a normal skin commensal and upper respiratory airway and it spreads easily [24]. 5.2. antibacterial sensitivity isolates: all over the world, the resistant pattern for antibiotics in burn patients has been showing dramatic changes. therefore, very important to identify the common pathogens which infected burns and their sensitivity to antibiotic for effective treatment of pediatric burn patients. according to gram-positives pathogens, mrsa resistant rate is high for most of the antibiotics. the resistant rate was over 80% to co-trimoxazole, amikacin, gentamicin, and amoxicillin/clavulanic acid. a study from iran showed the same result for amoxicillin and oxacillin, but it is differ for gentamicin accounted 44.44% [25]. another study has shown that mrsa antibiotic resistant rate for amoxicillin and oxacillin was 43.0%, 46.8% respectively [26]. the irrational use of these antibiotics may causes high resistant. in our study, we found that all gram-positive bacteria have no resistance rate to vancomycin followed by teicoplanin 7.8% (figyre1,2,3). this finding is consistent with many other studies in burn wards [6, 16, 25, 27]. regarding to the gram-negative resistant isolates, the bacterial drug resistant rate to a. baumannii is high for ticarcillin/clavulanic acid, ceftazidime, cefipime, amikacin and gentamicin more than 80% (figure 4). similar result was found by rezai, m.s. and s. shahmohammadi [28]. also our study revealed that the less resistant antibiotic for a. baumannii was imipenem only 26.8%. this is similar to 37 centers in 11 european countries [29]. but a study by bayram, y., et al reported that a. baumannii resistant rate to imipenem is high accounted 86% [30]. a previous study by wang, l.f., and his coauthors demonstrated that the drug resistant to a. baumannii due to easily produce drug resistance by combining plasmid. a variety of resistant plasmids coexist, such as plasmid-mediated tem-1 and tem-2, tem-2 β-lactamase, and chromosome-mediated βlactamase; the change in penicillin-binding proteins and the permeability decrease of outer membrane proteins and also result drug resistance [23]. p. aeruginosa isolated from clinical samples in our study have shown differences, but it is still at high level of resistant to co-trimixasole only 100%, but imipenem was effective drug against p. aeruginosa with lees resistant rates (figure 5). this finding is nearly in accordance to the previous study which is done by souli, m., i. et al in europe [29]. a study by jafar, e., m.r. shakibaie, and l. poormasoomi mentioned that p. aeruginosa has different resistant rates because of the future plasmid different genes encoded, high stability, and low curing efficiency and easy transferred through conjugation to the other nosocomial pathogens [31]. for k. pneumoniae, the resistant rate was higher than 80% for gentamicin, ticarcillin/clavulanic acid, ceftazidime and gentamicin. but the most effective drugs were meropenem and imipenem with the resistant rates 7% and 1.1% (figure 6). this finding is in consistent to results from south east asian and with european region [32]. meropenem and imipenem in our study were two active drugs without resistant rates for e. coli (figure 8). this result is nearly in accordance to the previous studies [16, 27, 33]. but a study by behzadnia, s., et al showed that imipenem was the highest drug resistant rate for e. coli [6]. repeated using of above antibiotics could be factors lead to raises of resistant rates for most of them and cause incapability drugs activation. because of the above finding and interpretations our sulaimani health directorate must try to take high precaution about them and provide good antibiotics for their eradication. conclusion overall, gram-positive bacteria were the commonest pathogens followed by gram-negative. mrsa was the commonest frequent gram-positive bacteria detected and it is the major cause for infection. vancomycin is an active drug against gram-positive bacteria and has no resistant rate to staphylococcus species to the date of preparation of this study. the commonly isolated gramnegative bacteria showed increase resistant to the most of antibiotics except imipenem is the less resistant. regular microbial surveillance of burn patient should be done, also the pattern of isolation and drug resistant may help physician to implement adequate empirical antibiotic therapy and reducing emerging bacterial infection and their drug resistant. acknowledgments we gratefully thank the management of the burns centre shaxawan saeb beg and his staff (kamaran amin faraj, chia kamil noori, atta huseen ahmed, and mokhtar hussein abdullah) for their excellent technical assistance in data collection. reference [1] m. saaiq, s. ahmad, and m. s. zaib, "burn wound infections and antibiotic susceptibility patterns at pakistan institute of medical sciences, islamabad, pakistan," world j plast surg, vol. 4, pp. 9-15, jan 2015. [2] d. church, s. elsayed, o. reid, b. winston, and r. lindsay, "burn wound infections," clin microbiol rev, vol. 19, pp. 403-34, apr 2006. [3] g. persson and j. lindén, "paediatric burns and its related infections: a qualitative study emphasizing the preventive work conducted by nurses in dar es salaam.," 2015. [4] e. e. dimuzio, d. p. healy, p. durkee, a. n. neely, and r. j. kagan, "trends in bacterial wound isolates and antimicrobial susceptibility in a pediatric burn hospital," j burn care res, vol. 35, pp. e304-11, sep-oct 2014. [5] l. a. barajas-nava, j. lopez-alcalde, m. roque i figuls, i. sola, and x. bonfill cosp, "antibiotic prophylaxis for preventing burn wound infection," cochrane database syst rev, p. cd008738, 2013. [6] s. behzadnia, a. davoudi, m. s. rezai, and f. ahangarkani, "nosocomial infections in pediatric population and antibiotic resistance of the causative organisms in north of iran," iran red crescent med j, vol. 16, p. e14562, feb 2014. [7] g. m. abdulrazzaq, "pattern of antibiotic sensitivity and resistance pf uropathogenes among pediatric patients with urinary tract infection," iraq j pharm, vol. 1, p. 13, 2012. [8] a. zbuchea, o. racasan, v. falca, c. mitache, and c. vladescu, "epidemiologic and bacteriologic study of the burned patients from the plastic surgery department of the county emergency hospital of ploiesti, over a 4 years period (2010-2013)," chirurgia (bucur), vol. 110, pp. 362-7, jul-aug 2015. [9] m. babakir-mina, k. j. rashid, s. s. beg, c. k. noori, m. i. m. gubari, f. a. mohialdeen, et al., "epidemiological characteristics and antibiotic resistance of acinetobacter baumannii isolated from burn patients," kjar, vol. 1, 2016. [10] e. salehifar, g. khorasani, and s. ala, "timerelated concordance between swab and biopsy samples in the microbiological assessment of burn wounds," wounds, vol. 21, pp. 84-8, mar 2009. [11] a. pechorsky, y. nitzan, and t. lazarovitch, "identification of pathogenic bacteria in blood cultures: comparison between conventional and pcr methods," j microbiol methods, vol. 78, pp. 325-30, sep 2009. [12] v. j., v. j., e. k., r. p., p. p., and h. c., "basic laboratory procedures in clinical bacteriology, 2nd edition," who geneva, pp. 91-93, 2003. [13] d. kun-qi, y. li-juan, and c. qun-ying, "investigation of bacterial species distribution and drug resistance of children with wound infection," chinese journal of disinfection, vol. 5, p. 446, 2012. [14] c. g. mayhall, "the epidemiology of burn wound infections: then and now," clin infect dis, vol. 37, pp. 543-50, aug 15 2003. [15] i. balaban, g. tanir, o. metin timur, f. n. oz, t. aydin teke, g. i. bayhan, et al., "nosocomial infections in the general pediatric wards of a hospital in turkey," jpn j infect dis, vol. 65, pp. 318-21, jul 2012. [16] s. h, "bacterial profile of paediatric burn wounds and their antibacterial sensitivity patterns," journal of surgery: open access ( issn 2470-0991 ), vol. 2, 2016. [17] j. p. barret and d. n. herndon, "effects of burn wound excision on bacterial colonization and invasion," plast reconstr surg, vol. 111, pp. 744-50; discussion 751-2, feb 2003. [18] u. altoparlak, s. erol, m. n. akcay, f. celebi, and a. kadanali, "the time-related changes of antimicrobial resistance patterns and predominant bacterial profiles of burn wounds and body flora of burned patients," burns, vol. 30, pp. 660-4, nov 2004. [19] s. erol, u. altoparlak, m. n. akcay, f. celebi, and m. parlak, "changes of microbial flora and wound colonization in burned patients," burns, vol. 30, pp. 357-61, jun 2004. [20] m. guggenheim, r. zbinden, a. e. handschin, a. gohritz, m. a. altintas, and p. giovanoli, "changes in bacterial isolates from burn wounds and their antibiograms: a 20-year study (1986-2005)," burns, vol. 35, pp. 553-60, jun 2009. [21] o. ergun, a. celik, g. ergun, and g. ozok, "prophylactic antibiotic use in pediatric burn units," eur j pediatr surg, vol. 14, pp. 422-6, dec 2004. [22] l. k. branski, a. al-mousawi, h. rivero, m. g. jeschke, a. p. sanford, and d. n. herndon, "emerging infections in burns," surg infect (larchmt), vol. 10, pp. 389-97, oct 2009. [23] l. f. wang, j. l. li, w. h. ma, and j. y. li, "drug resistance analysis of bacterial strains isolated from burn patients," genet mol res, vol. 13, pp. 9727-34, 2014. [24] g. a. tayh, "risk factors and antimicrobial resistance of pathogens isolated from burn units at local hospitals in gaza strip, palestine," islamic university-gaza, islamic university-gaza, 2011. [25] b. dormanesh, s. siroosbakhat, e. khodaverdi darian, and l. afsharkhas, "methicillinresistant staphylococcus aureus isolated from various types of hospital infections in pediatrics: panton-valentine leukocidin, staphylococcal chromosomal cassette mec sccmec phenotypes and antibiotic resistance properties," jundishapur j microbiol, vol. 8, p. e11341, nov 2015. [26] l. k. elamenya, "antimicrobial susceptibility of bacteria that cause wound sepsis in the paediatric surgical patients at kenyatta national hospital," university of nairobi, 2015. [27] m. imran, m. faheem, v. aslam, a. hakeem, and a. shah, "wound infections and culture sensitivity pattern in pediatric burn patients," journal of postgraduate medical institute (peshawar-pakistan), vol. 23, 2011. [28] m. s. rezai and s. shahmohammadi, "nosocomial infections in iranian pediatric patients with burn injuries: a review," journal of pediatrics review, vol. 3, p. e680, 2015. [29] m. souli, i. galani, and h. giamarellou, "emergence of extensively drug-resistant and pandrug-resistant gram-negative bacilli in europe," euro surveill, vol. 13, nov 20 2008. [30] y. bayram, m. parlak, c. aypak, and i. bayram, "three-year review of bacteriological profile and antibiogram of burn wound isolates in van, turkey," int j med sci, vol. 10, pp. 1923, 2013. [31] e. jafar, m. r. shakibaie, and l. poormasoomi, "isolation of a novel antibiotic resistance plasmid dna from hospital isolates of pseudomonas aeruginosa," journal of clinical & experimental pathology, vol. 2013, 2013. [32] who, "antimicrobial resistance: global report on surveillance 2014," webcast of q&a session on global report on surveillance, p. 257, 2014. [33] b. diler, n. dalgic, c. a. karadag, and a. i. dokucu, "epidemiology and infections in a pediatric burn unit: experience of three years," çocuk enfeksiyon dergisi/journal of pediatric infection, vol. 6, pp. 40-45, 2012.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq determination of ketotifen fumarate in syrup dosage form by high performance liquid chromatography mohammed ali salih dlivan fattah aziz chemistry department college of pharmacy college of science university of sulaimani university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq dlivan.aziz@univsul.edu.iq mohammed.ali@spu.edu.iq salar ibrahim ali nursing department technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq salar.ali@spu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 5 – special issue: 4th international conference on the health and medical science : medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) doi: 10.24017/science.2020.ichms2020.7 article history: received: 03 october 2020 accepted: 10 october 2020 the goal of the current study was to establish and authenticate an isocratic reverse-stage highperformance liquid chromatography (hplc) method for quantifying ketotifen fumarate (kf) in pharmaceutical liquid dosage compositions. easy, quick, accurate, exact, and accurate reverse-stage high-performance liquid chromatography was advanced for the simultaneous assessment of ketotifen fumarate in the liquid syrup dosage type. the hplc system using isocratic elution method with reverse-phase inertsil ods-(250 mm × 4.6 mm, 3 μm) column was detected by ultraviolet absorbance at 297 nm with no interference from widely using excipients, the mobile phase (a) is a mixture of triethylamine and water (175 μl in 500 ml of water), and the mobile phase (b) is a mixture of triethylamine and methanol (175 μl in 500 ml of methanol) at a flow rate of 1.5 ml/min (mobile phase a 40 %:mobile phase b 60%) at column temperature using 40 ° c, the retention time for ketotifen fumarate was 6.4±0.5 min. the concentration curves were linear in the range of 10.0 to 35.0 μg / ml (r2 = 0.9999). the developed method was tested for the specificity, precision, linearity, precision, reliability, robustness, and consistency of the solution. the regeneration of ketotifen fumarate in formulations was found to be 99.75 %, 99.91 %, and 100.05 % keywords: rp-hplc, ketotifen fumarate, syrup, validation and chromatography. mailto:dlivan.aziz@univsul.edu.iq mailto:mohammed.ali@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 64 respectively. the percent rsd for percent recovery was found to be 0.21 and 0.17 and 0.10 for ketotifen fumarate. in the conclusion, the suggested technique was successfully used for the quantitative determination of ketotifen fumarate in formulations. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction ketotifen is described as a non-competitive, moderately selective histamine (h1-receptor) antagonist and a mast cell stabilizer. mediators produced from mast cells and included in hypersensitivity reactions are blocked by the medication. ketotifen has also indicated a decline in eosinophilic activation and chemotaxis. its properties, including inhibition of the development of airway hyperreactivity related to stimulation of platelets by paf (platelet activating factor), inhibition of paf-induced aggregation of eosinophils and platelets in the airways, inhibition of priming of eosinophils via recombinant human cytokines, and bronchoconstriction antagonism due to leukotrienes, may lead to its output. ketotifen is often used in clinical practice to treat asthma, rhinitis, allergic reactions, and anaphylaxis[1]. kétotifene can be used for non-medical use and is toxicologically important in overdoses[2], regardless of adverse events (hypnotic potential, sedatives, other anti-allergy, and alcohol). because ketotifen medicines have a relatively high demand in the pharmaceutical market, good quality control of these medicines is undoubtedly desirable. the development of precise, express, and functional procedures of quantitative determination of the medicine ingredient in drug dosage types of ketotifen is therefore very significant in new medical and toxicological research according to literature evidence, some techniques of ketotifen research are being developed. one research reported the use of a pvc membrane electrode to detect ketotifen fumarate, while ketotifen tetraphenylborate has been utilized as an ion exchanger. these are utilized for the determination of ketotifen by potentiometric titration in real specimens and their medicinal preparations [3]. the way of chemiluminescence has been identified. the reaction of potassium hexacyanoferrate (iii) with a combination of calcination and ketotifen is formed. a flow injection developed for the analysis of ketotifen in tablets [4] has also been advanced. for the simple determination of ketotifen fumarate, additional research methods utilizing chemiluminescence detection have been established. the method relies on the catalytic activity of ketotifen fumarate in the chemiluminescence reactions of tris (1, 10 phenanthrols) ruthenium (ii), ru (phen) 3 2 + and ce (iv) in the sulphuric acid medium [5]. liquid chromatography with uv detection is most often utilized in traditional laboratories due to its wide accessibility and appropriateness. nevertheless, most of the methods mentioned with uv detection included complex chromatographic conditions including gradient elution or common for large periods, rendering them unsuitable for routine analysis. several analysis techniques for gc and gc / ms have also been identified [6-11]. the goal of this thesis was to progress and evaluate a new, clear, quick, and stable hplc kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 65 technique for the determination of ketotifen in syrup and medicinal formulations, including syrup. stabilization-indicating hplc tests are used in the protection and stability study of medicinal compounds and drug products. 2. methods and materials determination of ketotifen fumarate by high performance liquid chromatography uplc analysis was performed utilizing ultimate tm 3000 variable pump, iso (isocratic pump), lpg (low-pressure gradient quaternary pump), dgp (dual gradient pump), and hpg (high-pressure gradient binary pump) with uv-viss detectors and large detection flexibility. for ketotifen fumarate analysis, mobile phase a consisted of mixed 175 μl trimethylamine r and 500 ml water (v/v)also mobile phase b consisted of 175 μl trimethylamine and 500 ml methanol r (v/v) before analysis, that both the mobile phase and the specimen solutions were thoroughly rinsed using a sonicator and processed through a 0.45μm filter mobile stage with a concentration of 1.5 ml/min using a different ratio (mobile phase a 40 percent: mobile phase b 60 percent) as a result, the run time was 6.4±0.5 min. the stationary step was the water symmetry column c18 (4.6 * 150 mm, particle size 5μm). degassing was attained by filtration with a 0.45 μm millipore filter membrane and then by sonication. the volume of the injection was 20 μl and the finding wavelength was chosen at 297 nm and the temperature of the column at 40 ° c. tests were performed in an air-conditioned atmosphere at a temperature of 25 ± 2 ° c. ketotifen fumarate standard was a pioneer company gift and all chemicals and reagents utilized were hplc grade. trimethylamine was obtained from merk germany. methanol, (chromasolve®, sigma -aldrich chemise gmbh, germany) are as described, and -a milli-q reagent grade water system was utilized to deionize and purify the water. preparation ketotifen fumarate standard and sample solution was done using in a diluent in a mixture of water, methanol (1:1) (v / v %) to obtain a concentration of 0.2 mg/ml for both standard and sample solution. thereafter a calibration curve was got by diluting the stock concentration with the described diluent to achieve concentrations of 0.01, 0.015, 0.02, 0.025, and 0.03 mg/ml ketotifen fumarate using the same method as mentioned above. applied method and investigation of syrup measurement forms the material content of two (asmafort syrup1mg/5ml b.n 0077 syrup) was combined and a correspondingly calculated quantity of 5 ml of ketotifen fumarate of approximately 30 ml of diluent was applied to the 50 ml volumetric flask dissolve and the flask was stored in an ultrasonic bath for 10 minutes and formerly made up to volume with the diluent to prepare the specimen stock solution. passed to 0.45 mille-q filter paper used until processing. the suitability of the system was evaluated via six replicate analyzes of ketofen syrup1mg/5ml at a concentration of 0.02mg / ml. the acceptance criterion for the percentage relative standard deviation (percent rsd) used for maximum absorption and ds retention time was ±2 percent. the precision of the hplc process was tested in order to make sure there was no contamination of the active ingredients found in the compounds. linearity is the capacity to achieve findings that are directly proportional to the concentration of the analyte. three injections of 6 different ketotifen concentrations (50, 75, 100, 125, and 150 μg / ml) were calculated. the highest peak areas have been measured against concentrations. linearity was assessed using the calibration curve to measure the coefficient of association, slope, and interception. in general, the value of the correlation coefficient ( r2) > 0.9999 is known to be proof of fitness for the regression line results. the precision of the analytical method is the proximity of the predicted value to the calculated value. this is done by measuring the recovery percentage (r percent) of the analyte recovered. in this case, a followup study (n=3) of three different concentrations (75 mg/ml, 100 mg/ml, and 125 mg/ml) of standard ketotifen solution was performed to determine the accuracy of the current procedure, and a follow-up analysis (n=3) of (3) different concentrations (75 mg/ml, 100 mg/ml, and 125 mg/ml) of standard ketotifen solution was performed and the protocol was used. the data from kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 66 the experiment were analyzed statistically using the formula [percent recovery = (recovered conc./injected conc.) ×100] to evaluate the recovery and validity of the technique proposed. the agreed average recovery would be between 98-102 percent. the accuracy of an observable procedure is the level of agreement between proctored exams if the technique is continuously used to evaluate several replicates on three separate occasions. intraday accuracy was calculated by measuring the calibration curves of six replicates of the different doses of ketotifen on the same day. interday accuracy was determined via observing six replicates of different concentrations of ketotifen on three different days. the overall system accuracy was defined as the relative standard deviation (rsd percentage). precision was measured in the present development and validation protocol system via (6) replicate analyzes at a concentration of 0.02 mg/ml of standard ketotifen solution that uses proposed technique, and a percentage of rsd ≤ 2% was approved. 3. results linearity of ketotifen by ultra -performance liquid chromatography the linearity of the procedure was evaluated from 0.01 to 0.03 mg / ml of ketotifen at five separate concentration levels (50 %, 75 %, 100 %, 125 % and 150 %), respectively. and then the average area was calculated by average of (3) repeat dimensions. the slope was 397.812373, intercept 0.007519258, correlation (r) 0.999967577 and coefficient of correlation (r2) 0.9999 [table 1]. the maximum peak areas are plots toward their amounts through the value of the correlation coefficient (r2) 0.9999 and are viewed as proof of the appropriate fitness of the regression line results (figure 2). table 1: linearity of ketotifen and level of concentration level concentration mg/ml area average area 50% 0.0101330 4.0661 4.06544 slope 0.397812373 4.0555 intercept 0.007519258 4.0713 r 0.999967577 4.0664 r2 0.9999 4.0679 75% 0.0151995 6.025 6.0285 6.0251 6.0254 6.0403 6.0267 100% 0.0202660 8.0593 8.06608 8.0629 8.0586 8.0753 8.0743 125% 0.0253325 10.0742 10.06128 10.0538 10.062 10.0605 10.0559 150% 0.0303990 12.096 12.12664 kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 67 12.1177 12.1337 12.1524 12.1334 figure 2: representative linearity plot of ketotifen determination and recovery of ketotifen the accuracy of the analytical technique reflects the friendship of the contract between a set of dimensions got from multiple sampling of the same homogeneous sample underneath the prescribed time .i was prepared placebo for accuracy according to asmafort syrup without ketotifen fumarate the excipients contain (lycasin ,sorbitol ,citric acid ,sodium citrate ,glycerol, methyl paraben ,propyl paraben ,propylene glycol ,povidone ,banana flavor and purified water). the result displays that in repeatability, the % rsd of peak area of ketotifen standard concentration of 75 percentages, 100 percentages, and 125 percentages was found to be 0.21%, 0.17%, and 0.10%, correspondingly (table 2). the process was found to be highly reliable and reproducible. validation of an analytical procedure is a method for proving that an analytical procedure is appropriate for its intended intent. the obtained results from the validation method analysis could be used to determine the efficiency, reliability, and accuracy of the analytical results. a new uplc approach has been advanced and validated for ketotifen. table 2: determination of ketotifen fumarate recovery conc. mg/ml area average area sd rsd% 20.2660 8.0399 8.0550 0.01 0.1% 8.0648 8.0558 8.0615 8.0530 accuracy recovery of ketotifen level amount spiked μg/ml area amount recovered μg/ml % recovery average recovery %rsd https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc5855379/table/t1/ kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 68 analytical technique validation is a procedure to ensure that an analytical technique is acceptable for its original purpose. the data from the validation method analysis could be used to determine the accuracy, reliability, and consistency of the experimental data. a mixture of triethylamine and water (175 μl in 500 ml of water) has been tested and the column has been successfully separated using mobile stage (a) and the mobile stage (b) is a mixture of triethylamine and methanol (175 μl in 500 ml of methanol) has been found to provide the best quantitative separation. optimized blank chromatography the retention time of the ketotifen peak norm was found to be 6.4 min, as shown in (figure 3). the chromatogram of the sample asmafort syrup 1mg/5ml is shown in (figure 4), the blank chromatogram is shown in (figure 5) and the placebo chromatogram of asmafort is shown in (figure 6). figure 3: chromatogram for standard ketotifen 20 μg / ml at 297 nm. 75% 15.1995 6.0367 15.19 99.92% 99.75% 0.21% 6.0299 15.17 99.81% 6.0124 15.13 99.52% 100% 20.2660 8.0632 20.29 100.10% 99.91% 0.17% 8.0405 20.23 99.82% 8.0392 20.23 99.80% 125% 25.3325 10.0634 25.32 99.95% 100.05% 0.10% 10.0743 25.35 100.05% 10.0826 25.37 100.14% average 99.90% kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 69 figure 4: chromatogram for sample asmafort syrup 20 μg / ml at 297 nm. figure 5: chromatogram for blank. figure 6: placebo chromatogram, at 297 nm. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 70 precision and accuray over-day (in-day) exactness and accurateness of the technique were analysed at (3) concentration levels for ketotifen compounds using (3) replication determinations for each concentration for (1) day. likewise, between-day (inter-day accuracy and precision were tested via an analysis of the same (3) concentrations of ketotifen compounds using (3) duplicate determinations replicated over three days. the recovery was calculated utilizing the corresponding regression equations and was satisfactory. the percentage of the relative standard deviation (rsd percent) and the percentage of the relative error (er percent) shall not increase by 2.0 percent, as shown by the high repeatability and precision of the proposed technique for estimating the analyte in its solid materials (table 3). table 3: intraday and inter day precision. compound type of analysis level nominal value (mg/ml) found (mg/ml) rsd% ketotifen within-day 75% 0.015199 0.01519 0.23 100 % 0.02027 0.02029 0.17 125% 0.02533 0.02532 0.10 between-day 75% 0.0152 0.01513 0.25 100 % 0.02027 0.02023 0.20 125% 0.02533 0.02537 0.13 4. discussion as described earlier, few high-performance liquid chromatography approaches have previously been reported for the determination of ketotifen hydrogen fumarate in medicinal dosage forms. a ketotifen fumarate chromatogram is seen. with a retention time of 6.4 min, the substance is well resolved using a mobile phase (a) mixture of triethylamine and water (175 μl in 500 ml of water) and a mobile stage (b) mixture of triethylamine and methanol (175 μl in 500 ml of methanol) as a mobile stage. the flow rate was 1.5 ml per minute. the wavelength of the uv detector was set at 297 nm and the particle size of the column was 5 μm and 4.6 mm × 150 mm. ketotifen hydrogen fumarate was regularly eluted at 6.4 minutes. drug substances were tested in hplc-grade water directly injected with 20 μl hplc analysis and resolution (peak areas). solutions of each drug in hplc-grade water were injected directly for hplc analysis and reactions (peak areas) were reported. there was no disturbance from the mobile phase or baseline disruption, and all the analytes were well absorbed in 297 nm. the approach has been statistically checked for its predictability, consistency, robustness, and precision, as discussed. system validation the method was tested according to ich criteria for linearity, accuracy, precision, repeatability, selectivity, and specificity. validation tests were conducted by replicating sample treatments and normal solutions to the chromatograph. linearity was measured by plotting the peak area against the normal concentration of ketotifen. the calibration graphs obtained were linear for the following concentrations: 0.01-0.03mg / ml. the linear correlation coefficients describing the calibration plots for ketotifen were: y = 397.82x + 0.0075(n = 5, (r2) = 0.9999). the accuracy of the model was calculated in compliance with the ich guidelines by observing recovery at three different concentrations: 75%, 100%, and 125 percentages. the re-analyzed sample solution was substituted for each concentration and the quantity of the product substance was calculated. details of the accuracy analysis are given in [table 2]. all findings have been within reasonable limits, i.e. cv and s.d. < 2.0 percent. < 1.0. 1.0. it was also clear that the device allowed a very accurate quantitative assessment of ketotifen in the form of a syrup dose. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 71 the standard deviation ( sd) of the intercepts (response) was designed from the linearity curve equation. the drug detection limit (lod) was determined using the following equation as indicated by the international conference on harmonization (ich) recommendation: lod=3.3 * s / s where, where, 5-007 = the standard deviation of the answer s = slope of the curve of calibration the limit of quantitation (loq) of the drug was determined using the following equation as set out in the international conference on harmonization (ich) recommendation: loq = 10 * 5-007 / s where, 5-007 = the standard deviation of the answer s = slope of the curve of calibration. in comparison with chemiluminescence (cl) detection method the recoveries were 96.3-99.8%, accuracies for the medications in plasma were not less than 98.0% and this method not accept for determination of ketotifen in syrup just only successfully for tablet [4] that means the proposed method has a good recovery and precision. pvc membrane electrode method the recoveries were 97.3-102.0% all the outcomes were within the not acceptable limits according to ich guidelines [3] comparison with methods to the cheap and accurate method precisions for the drugs in plasma were that means the proposed method has a good recovery and precision. the repeatability of the method was evaluated from 12 replicate injections of the sample solution asmafort syrup at an analytical concentration of 0.02 mg/ml. the rsd for the active concept was found to be 1.19 percent and the r.s.d percent was found to be 089 percent. 5. conclusion in the conclusion, the suggested method in the current study has simple, fast, and sensitive analytical characteristics for ketotifen fumarate analysis and it has been advanced and validated with a short chromatographic runtime. statistical analysis shows that the technique is suitable for the analysis of ketotifen in the drug formulations without any interference by the active ingredients. the established validated process was discovered to be quick, sensitive, reliable, time-saving and less costly for quantification of several samples in syrup formulations and suggest that the proposed approach will be very useful as a mechanism for quality control of chemical drugs. reference [1] v. kovalenko, a. viktorova, “compendium 2012-drugs,” morion, kiev, pp. 1-1408, 2014. [2] s. thomas, “antihistamine poisoning,” medicine, 40(3), pp. 109-110, 2012. [3] m. khater, y. issa, s. mohammed, “flow injection determination of ketotifen fumarate using pvc membrane selective electrodes,” bioelectrochemistry, 77(1), pp. 53-59, 2009. [4] n. fei, l. jiuru, “determination of ketotifen by using calcein as chemiluminescence reagent,” analytica chimica acta, 592(2), pp. 168-172, 2007. [5] mokhtari, m. ghazaeian, m. maghsoudi, m. keyvanfard, i., “emamisimple chemiluminescence determination of ketotifen using tris (1, 10 phenanthroline) ruthenium (ii)-ce (iv) system,” luminescence, 30(7), pp. 1094-1100. 2015. [6] s. tzvetanov, m. vatsova, a. drenska, j. gorantcheva, n. tyutyulkova, “gas chromatographic–mass spectrometric method for quantitative determination of ketotifen in human plasma after enzyme hydrolysis of conjugated ketotifen,” journal kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 72 of chromatography b: biomedical sciences and applications, 732(1), pp. 251-256, 1999. [7] c. julien-larose, m. guerret, d. lavene, j. kiechel, “quantification of ketotifen and its metabolites in human plasma by gas chromatography mass spectrometry,” biomedical mass spectrometry, 10(3), pp. 136-142, 1983. [8] h. leis, e. malle, “deuterium-labeling and quantitative measurement of ketotifen in human plasma by gas chromatography/negative ion chemical ionization mass spectrometry,” biological mass spectrometry, 20(8), pp. 467-470, 1991. [9] h. maurer, k. pfleger, “identification and differentiation of alkylamine antihistamines and their metabolites in urine by computerized gas chromatography-mass spectrometry,” journal of chromatography b: biomedical sciences and applications, 430, pp. 31-41, 1988. [10] grahnén, a. lönnebo, o. beck, s. eckernäs, b. dahlström, b. lindström, “pharmacokinetics of ketotiffn after oral administration to healthy male subjects,” biopharmaceutics & drug disposition, 13(4), pp. 255-262, 1992. [11] e. sieradzki, m. grundkowska, h. letmanska, “ketotifen determination in serum by gas chromatography,” farm pol, 45, pp. 160-162, 1989. 1. introduction linearity of ketotifen by ultra -performance liquid chromatography the process was found to be highly reliable and reproducible. validation of an analytical procedure is a method for proving that an analytical procedure is appropriate for its intended intent. the obtained results from the validation method analysis c... 5. conclusion  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq outcome of excision with primary midline closure for sacrococcygeal pilonidal sinus disease bahzad waso hamad directorate of research center university of raparin rania,sulaimani,iraq bahzad.hamad@uor.edu.krd article info abstract volume 5 – special issue: 4th international conference on the health and medical science : medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) doi: 10.24017/science.2020.ichms2020.3 article history: received: 22 september 2020 accepted: 27 september 2020 sacrococcygeal pilonidal sinus disease is common chronic inflammatory disease affecting chiefly young adult male. it cause much discomfort and morbidity and affect negatively the quality of life of patients. there are various techniques of surgical treatment for the chronic sinuses but still there is no gold standard one. the aim of this study to report our experience with excision and midline closure technique of chronic sacrococcygeal pilonidal sinus disease and to identify the outcome of the procedure for postoperative wound complications and recurrence rate. this is a retrospective study with telephone contact and review of 36 patients operated for sacrococcygeal pilonidal sinus disease from january 2011 through january 2016 under care of one consultant surgeon (the author) in public and private hospitals in rania, sulaimani, iraq. inclusion criteria was all patients with chronic midline located sinuses without evidence of acute inflammation. exclusion criteria was all infected off midline located sinuses and recurrent sinuses. elliptical excision of the sinuses with primary midline closure over a vacuum drainage performed. end point of this study was rate of wound complications and recurrence of sinus. thirty six patients with median age 22 years (range 14-40) with 24/12 male /female ratio. median follow up was 24 months (12 66 months), the recurrence occurred in 3/36 ( 8.3%) patients at a median of 12 months (range 5 48), failure of treatment in 5/36 (13.9%) patients, and postoperative wound complications was seen in 5/36 ( 13.9%) patients. in the conclusion, excision and keywords: sacrococcygeal pilonidal sinus, primary closure, midline suture mailto:bahzad.hamad@uor.edu.krd kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 20 primary midline closure is simple, effective and preferable procedure for management of uncomplicated sacrococcygeal pilonidal sinus disease associated with early wound healing and low rate of postoperative wound complications and recurrence rate. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction sacrococcygeal pilonidal sinus disease (spnd) is a chronic common surgical condition usually affecting mostly young adult , but not uncommon in children [1] . it is usually a blind tract, that extends from the skin of intergluteal cleft down to the fat over the sacrum [2] .the incidence is recorded at 26 per 100,000 population [3-5]. women affected less frequently than men in a ratio of 1:3 [6], but recent literature confirms the contribution of ladies suffering from spnd is substantial [7]. there are many risk factors for spnd which include hirsutism , sedentary life style, deep natal cleft, male gender, obesity, previous family history and poor personal hygiene [6, 8].there is controversy about its pathogenesis but much evidences are supporting its acquired origin rather than congenital [9]. sacrococcygeal pilonidal sinus disease had been seen also in some women with little hair and this could be interpreted the theory of congenital natal cleft dimple ,although different theories relating a congenital origin to pilonidal sinuses has been criticized and are believed lacking proof [10]. there are two different hypothesis related to the pathogenesis of spnd as acquired disease . karydakis believes spnd is acquired disease and there are many factors playing role in the pathogenesis which include: brocken hair invasion, force for hair insertion and the vulnerability of the skin to the insertion of hair at the depth of the natal cleft [7]. another hypothesis by bascom also supporting acquired origin of spnd is hyperkeratosis which lead to follicular obstruction and subsequently dilatation and rupture of the follicle then followed by secondary infection and formation of abscess and sinus, later on the hair come to lie in the preformed openings[11] . gross appearance of the chronic spnd seen as one or multiple openings in the natal cleft passing downward to the subcutaneous tissue and fat over the sacrum ,this will end in a cavity which contain hairs that not attached within the sinus and usually has tapered end like shedding hairs[6]. sometimes there are secondary sinuses which arises from the original cavity and opens by an orifice on the skin off midline .microscopically the lining of the deep cavity composed of granulation tissue while the nearer points of the sinus to the skin surface covered with squamous epithelium [10]. clinical presentation of spnd may be acute as abscess or chronic sinus with intermittent discharging in which both conditions causing much discomfort and morbidity for patient and need intervention. in case of abscess ,its commonly located in the midline of natal cleft or protruding to one side of the cleft. patients with chronic conditions have variable presentation ranging from simple cyst to single or multiple pits in the midline of natal cleft or laterally located [12]. there is no consensus about the classification of types of spnd yet and wellrecognized and pragmatic classification system to guide clinical practice is needed [13]. diagnosis of spnd is easy clinically that is why investigations are rarely needed except in seldom conditions where imaging study, endosonography and magnetic resonance imaging, might be indicated to exclude associated anorectal fistula or underlying sacral osteomyelitis[6]. the treatment of abscess is straight forward by incision and drainage but to date there has been little agreement on what is the best method of treating chronic spnd . there are kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 21 different surgical interventions for treating the chronic spnd ranging from limited versus wide excision ,secondary versus primary closure, different flap closure, and minimally invasive techniques which includes pit-picking, sinusectomy, phenol instillation, laser ablation of the subcutaneous tract and lastly the most recent one is video-assisted endoscopic ablation procedures [11]. although the treatment nearly always is surgical, and the goal of intervention is rapid healing with minimum morbidity and least recurrence ,but there is no consensus on the ideal surgical approach for management of the chronic spnd [6]. the reason is high incidence of morbidity and postoperative wound complication and recurrence in most of the surgical procedures. the option of a special surgical procedure is depending on how much the surgeon is skillful and acquainted with the surgical technique and the detected outcomes in term of a low recurrence rate of the sinus and of fast healing of the operative wound [14]. the commonest current choices for operative procedures are excision with primary midline closure or off midline closure or using different types of flaps or leaving the wound open to heal with secondary intention [15]. the aim of this study is to describe the short and long term outcome after excision and primary midline closure with drainage of chronic sacrococcygeal pilonidal sinus disease in terms of postoperative complications and recurrence rate. 2. methods and patients this is retrospective descriptive study run out in public and private hospitals in rania, sulaimani, iraq from january 2011 to january 2017. the population was 55 patients with sacrococcygeal pilonidal sinus disease operated on by single surgeon (the author), but only 36 patients was accessed by telephone survey to assess recurrence of the condition due to changing their phone number .inclusion criteria was non infected midline located natal cleft sinuses with minimal discharge. exclusion criteria were all infected , off midline located and recurrent sinuses. all patients were assessed preoperatively by anesthetist for fitness for anesthesia few days before the operation, and all of them asked to shave the natal cleft and surrounding gluteal region the day before the operation. on the day of operation , informed consent has been taken with administering ampliclox 1gram intravenously before induction of anesthesia. the patients put in jackknife position with double adhesive plaster exploring the intergluteal region (figure 1 a). the operative field draped and prepared with povidone iodine , a symmetrical narrow elliptical excision of all sinuses done down to sacral fascia after probing all the sinus opening (figure 1 b & c). gluteal fascia sutured by interrupted polyglycolic acid no. 1 (vicryl® ) sutures with 1cm apart , after good hemostasis by electrocoagulation, suction drain gauge 10 left at the base of the wound through separate stab incision (figure 1 c). skin approximated by polypropylene 2.0 (prolen®) interrupted mattress stiches (figure 1 d). all patients left the hospital after 6 hours and removal of drain was after 48 hours. postoperative oral ciprofloxacin 500mg with metronidazole 500mg for 2 weeks continued with oral mefanemic acid as on need analgesia. the first visit was performed 48 hours after operation for removing the drain and patient instructed to do every other day changing of dressing with using povidone iodine disinfectant. on the second visit the stiches removed on 12th postoperative day. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 22 figure 1: a. preoperative sacrococcygeal pilonidal sinus disease. b. elliptical excised sinus. c. subcutaneous sutures passed over tube redi vac drain. d. skin closure at midline with redi vac drain in place. the follow up of patients was by reviewing in the outpatient department and the private clinics after 1 month of removing the sutures. instructions were given for all patients which include bathing every day in summer and not less than 2 times in winter, with shaving natal cleft once every 2 weeks and avoid long journey by car, heavy weight bearing ,excessive physical strain and sport for few months postoperatively. all patients informed to come back whenever wound infection or recurrence happened. wound infection defined as purulent discharge from the wound and recurrence was defined as reappearance of symptoms and sinus after a period of complete wound healing (figure 2). data was analyzed using spss version 20. fisher’s exact test of statistical significance has been used. p value less than 0.05 was regarded significant. 3. results medical records of only 36 patients whose operated from january 2011 to january 2016 reviewed with a telephone survey has been arranged in february 2017 asking them about the recurrence of sinus. the other 19 patients could not be accessed due to the changing their mobile number and absence of postal address. there were 24 male and 12 female with a median age 22 years (range 14 40). during the second visit of postoperative period 86.1% (no.= 31) experienced no complications while 5.6% (no.= 2) patients had wound infection and 2.8% (no. = 1) patient suffered wound disruption after removing the stiches and further 5.6% (no.= 2) patients continue with persistent sinus without a complete wound healing. there were 8.3% (no.= 3) patients with recurrence of sinus after median 12 months (range 5 48). table 1: characteristics of the patients and the outcome of operation variable patients number 36 (%) age median 22 years ( range 14 40) gender male/female 24 / 12 postoperative wound no complication 31 (86.1%) complications wound infection 2 (5.6%) wound dehiscence 2 (5.6%) persistent sinus 1 ( 2.8%) period of follow up median 24 months (range 12 66) kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 23 outcome of operation no recurrence 28 (77.8%) failure of treatment 5 (13.9%) recurrence 3 (8.3%) there was no a significant difference of postoperative wound complication and recurrence in relation to age and gender, as p value were greater than 0.05. figure 2: the completely healed wound at 3 months 4. discussion this study set out with the aim of assessing the outcome of excision with primary midline closure as a procedure in treating chronic spnd in both aspects of wound complication and recurrence rate. there are various types of surgical interventions for chronic pilonidal sinus ranging from simple excision with closure to complex rotational flap or leaving the wound open to heal by secondary intention [4, 5]. this indicate that there is no agreement on determining the ideal surgical technique [16] and there is no a gold standard surgical procedure for the treatment of chronic pilonidal sinus [17]. the main requisites of a perfect treatment are high rate of healing ,low rate of postoperative complications ,low incidence of recurrence and performing the operation as a day case surgery as well as avoiding of general and spinal anesthesia and minimal discomfort and pain with early return to work [18]. in this study only two parameters had been taken in the consideration, which are the rate of wound complication and the rate of recurrence. furthermore, postoperative wound complications and recurrence rates are the important parameters in measuring the effectiveness of the surgical procedure that is performed for pilonidal sinus [19]. the current study has found that the incidence of postoperative wound infection was 5.6% (no.= 2) which is much less than the other studies done by gilani et al., marco et al. , kareem and popeskou et al. in which the incidence of wound infection were 9.7%, 13%, 30% and 31% respectively [14, 15, 17, 20]. the high infection rate in these studies may be related to the inadequate prescription of antibiotics as only a prophylactic single dose had been given by popeskou et al. and spnd operation is regarded as contaminated surgery and it needs at least 5 days of postoperative antibiotics. in relation to our study, although all patients had already taken prophylactic antibiotics but a possible explanation of this result is noncompliance of patients to surgeon's instruction and the lack of adequate personal hygiene. this result is much lower than that the reported by dudink et al. in which they found the postoperative wound infection after midline closure operation which is reaching to 73.7% [3]. another important finding was that in which 2.8% (one patient) continues with persistent sinus after removing of the stiches, and a possible explanation for this finding might be that, during the excision and after the removing of one of the laterally extended sinuses, it leads to form a dead space with subsequent pocket of seroma and persistence of sinus, although there was a drain but it is leaving it for 48 hours and does not prevent the collection of serum and keeping it more than this time was heralding the kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 24 infection. the effect of leaving closed suction drain after spnd surgery is controversial and the explicit decision cannot be withdrawn from the current literature review [14], but in our view even extremely thorough hemostasis does not prevent the aggregation of some blood and serum which will be a good media for the pathogenic microorganisms and causing wound infection, that is why leaving the closed suction drain is necessary and useful. moreover, the results of this study show that 5.6% (no. = 2) of the patients present with disruption of wound after removing the sutures which is much less than what has been done by other researches; for instance, dudink et al. in which 79% of intervention result in wound dehiscence [3]. a possible explanation for the wound dehiscence in current study for one of the patients might be due to the closeness of the sinuses and the operative field and incision to anal verge and maceration of skin due to sweating and wetness which might be the cause of contamination and non-healing of the wound, and the possible explanation for the second patient is that excessive using of coagulation for hemostasis causing much dead tissue as well as pulling force from the subcutaneous fascia might be the cause of wound dehiscence. gluteal traction forces on the wound and macerated skin in a deep raphe prevent appropriate wound healing [3]. the results of this study did not show any significant change in the recurrence rate in comparison with previous studies .in current study recurrence was observed in 3 patients 8.3% after median 24 months (range 12-66) follow up, which is nearly comparable with other studies done by gilani et al., marco et al. and kareem in which the recurrence after primary midline closure with drain were 9% , 9.4% and 10% respectively [14, 15, 17]. the recurrence rates following cutting out the sinuses and primary closure in a study done by iesalnieks et al. was 42% [21]. primary closure of the wound unavoidably cause substantial tensity and this has been in charge of the high rate of recurrent disease and wound disruption after primary suturing [22]. the high rate of recurrence is lower in tension free primary closure as well as other wound complications [23]. another factor might have role in the recurrence is noncompliance of patients with good hygiene and removal of hair as there is evidence that there is big difference in incidence of recurrence between those have regular style of removing hair of natal cleft from those who neglect personal hygienic measures [24], although randomized controlled trials is required to have evidence based decision about choosing the optimal way and methods of removing hair. there was no substantial difference between age and gender neither with the rate of postoperative wound complications nor with recurrence as p value is greater than 0.05, this result was in the agreement with another study done by akin et al. [25], but in another study done by almajid et al. young age was the most predominant factor associated with recurrence of pilonidal sinus [26]. the aim of the ongoing study was to determine the rate of wound complications and recurrence after elliptical excision and primary midline closure with suction drainage of spnd. this study has disclosed a low rate of postoperative wound complications and recurrence after this procedure. these data suggest that a good outcome can be achieved through applying excision and primary midline closure procedure selectively in non-infected, midline located sinuses with proper attention to using prophylactic disinfection measures which is including using of antibiotics and avoiding leaving dead space and excessive using of coagulation. although, the current study based on a small sample size of the participants, the finding will serve as a base for the future further wider prospective studies about the current method of managing chronic spnd. 5. conclusion we conclude that long term results propose that primary cutting out of sinuses with midline closure with suction drain for uncomplicated sacrococcygeal pilonidal sinus disease is an effective and simple procedure. a limitation of this study is that we could not access all the patients whom had been operated during that period and nearly one third of them missed from kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 25 follow up. it is recommended that further research to be undertaken on larger samples, as randomized controlled trial to compare different surgical procedures of treatment for chronic sacrococcygeal pilonidal sinus disease. reference [1] s. braungart, m. powis, j. r. sutcliffe, and i. d. sugarman, "improving outcomes in pilonidal sinus disease," journal of pediatric surgery, 2015. [2] t. a. dass, m. zaz, a. rather, and s. bari, "elliptical excision with midline primary closure versus rhomboid excision with limberg flap reconstruction in sacrococcygeal pilonidal disease: a prospective, randomized study," indian j surg, vol. 74, no. 4, pp. 305-8, aug 2012. [3] j. v. r. dudink, s. nienhuijs, j. heemskerk, "secondary healing versus midline closure and modified bascom natal cleft lift for pilonidal sinus disease," scandinavian journal of surgery, no. 2, pp. 110-113, 2011. [4] r. l. harries, a. alqallaf, j. torkington, and k. g. harding, "management of sacrococcygeal pilonidal sinus disease," international wound journal, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 370-378, 2018. [5] a. isik, o. idiz, and d. firat, "novel approaches in pilonidal sinus treatment," prague medical report, vol. 117, no. 4, pp. 145-152, 2016. [6] v. de parades, d. bouchard, m. janier, and a. berger, "pilonidal sinus disease," j visc surg, vol. 150, no. 4, pp. 237-47, sep 2013. [7] m. m. luedi, p. schober, v. k. stauffer, m. diekmann, and d. doll, "global gender differences in pilonidal sinus disease: a random-effects meta-analysis," world journal of surgery, 2020. [8] m. milone, n. velotti, m. manigrasso, p. anoldo, f. milone, and g. d. de palma, "long-term follow-up for pilonidal sinus surgery: a review of literature with metanalysis," the surgeon, vol. 16, no. 5, pp. 315320, 2018. [9] s. arslan, e. karadeniz, g. ozturk, b. aydinli, m. c. bayraktutan, and s. s. atamanalp, "modified primary closure method for the treatment of pilonidal sinus," eurasian j med, vol. 48, no. 2, pp. 84-9, jun 2016. [10] r. brearley, "pilonidal sinus a new theory of origin," the british journal of surgery, pp. 62-68, 1955. [11] i. iesalnieks and a. ommer, "the management of pilonidal sinus," deutsches aerzteblatt online, 2019. [12] l. j. a. s. j*, "pilonidal sinus disease a literature review," world journal of surgery and surgical research, vol. 2, 2019. [13] e. m. beal, m. j. lee, d. hind, a. p. wysocki, f. yang, and s. r. brown, "a systematic review of classification systems for pilonidal sinus," techniques in coloproctology, vol. 23, no. 5, pp. 435-443, 2019. [14] m. marco, m. mario, s. giuseppe, l. maddalena, and m. francesco, "effectiveness of a drain in surgical treatment of sacrococcygeal pilonidal disease. results of a randomized and controlled clinical trial on 803 consecutive patients," international journal of colorectal disease, vol. 26, no. 12, pp. 1601-1607, 2011. [15] s. n. gilani, h. furlong, k. reichardt, a. o. nasr, g. theophilou, and t. n. walsh, "excision and primary closure of pilonidal sinus disease: worthwhile option with an acceptable recurrence rate," ir j med sci, vol. 180, no. 1, pp. 173-6, mar 2011. [16] s. m. al-salamah, m. i. hussain, and s. m. mirza, "original article excision with or without primary closure for pilonidal sinus disease," j pak med assoc, vol. 57, no. 8, pp. 388-391, 2007. [17] t. s. kareem, "surgical treatment of chronic sacrococcygeal pilonidal sinus," saudi medical journal, vol. 964, no. march, pp. 1534-1537, 2006. [18] m. milone et al., "intradermal absorbable sutures to close pilonidal sinus wounds: a safe closure method?," surg today, vol. 44, no. 9, pp. 1638-42, sep 2014. [19] a. s. karaca, r. ali, m. capar, and s. karaca, "comparison of limberg flap and excision and primary closure of pilonidal sinus disease, in terms of quality of life and complications," j korean surg soc, vol. 85, no. 5, pp. 236-9, nov 2013. [20] s. popeskou, d. christoforidis, c. ruffieux, and n. demartines, "wound infection after excision and primary midline closure for pilonidal disease: risk factor analysis to improve patient selection," world j surg, vol. 35, no. 1, pp. 206-11, jan 2011. [21] i. iesalnieks, a. fürst, m. rentsch, and k. jauch, "primary midline closure after excision of a pilonidal sinus is associated with a high recurrence rate," der chirurg; zeitschrift fur alle gebiete der operativen medizen, vol. 74, no. 5, pp. 461-468, 2003. [22] j. horwood, d. hanratty, p. chandran, and p. billings, "primary closure or rhomboid excision and limberg flap for the management of primary sacrococcygeal pilonidal disease? a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials," colorectal disease : the official journal of the association of coloproctology of great britain and ireland, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 143-51, 2012. [23] a. okuş, b. sevinç, o. karahan, and m. a. eryilmaz, "comparison of limberg flap and tension-free primary closure during pilonidal sinus surgery," world journal of surgery, vol. 36, no. 2, pp. 431-5, 2012. [24] a. a. pronk, l. eppink, n. smakman, and e. j. b. furnee, "the effect of hair removal after surgery for sacrococcygeal pilonidal sinus disease: a systematic review of the literature," techniques in coloproctology, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 7-14, 2017. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 26 [25] s. g. akin onder1, murat kapan1, mehmet toker2, zulfu arikanoglu1, yilmaz palanci3, bilsel bac, "pilonidal sinus disease: risk factors for postoperative complications and recurrence," international surgery, vol. 97, pp. 224-229, 2012. [26] f. almajid, a. alabdrabalnabi, and k. almulhim, "the risk of recurrence of pilonidal disease after surgical management," saudi medical journal, vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 70-74, 2017.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq climate analysis to predict potential spread and seasonality for global (covid-19) in iraqi kurdistan region hemin nasraldin m. amin hero nasraldin m. amin geography department geography department college of education college of education university of garmian university of garmian kalar, sulaimani, iraq kalar, sulaimani, iraq hemin.nasraldin@garmian.edu.krd hero.nasraldin@garmian.edu.krd article info abstract special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) doi: 10.24017/covid.9 article history: received: 09 may 2020 accepted: 20 may 2020 the present study is about the relationship of the climate to the possibility of turning (covid-19) into a seasonal epidemic in iraqi kurdistan region. the study area is located in the northern iraq, within subtropical zone in northern hemisphere, it lies between two latitudes (32° 38' – 37° 22') n and longitudes (41° 18' – 46° 21') e. it surrounded by turkey from north, the islamic republic of iran from east, syria from northwest and with other parts of iraq from south and west. to achieve the aim of this study, these topics were analyzed (climatic analysis to spatial variation of (covid-19) outbreak through the world, climatic characteristics of the study area, and seasonal and spatial danger degree analysis to (covid19) in the study area). the evidences indicated that cold and dry conditions may facilitate the spread of the virus. according to the study area the lower the temperature is the greater relative humidity will be and vice versa. therefore, the study assumed that seasonal differences of temperature and humidity in different regions of the study area might contribute to the balanced risk of infection with the virus. keywords: climate, covid-19, kurdistan region, pandemic, seasonality copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction climate as a major component of the natural environment can affect all aspects of life, as well as human health. so, the transmission of viruses can be affected by a number of factors, such as climate conditions (especially temperature and humidity), population density and medical care quality. therefore, through understanding the relationship between climate and the transmission of (covid-19) can predict the intensity and ending time of this disease. however, heretofore, it is still unknown whether such a relationship exists or not [1]. there mailto:hemin.nasraldin@garmian.edu.krd mailto:hero.nasraldin@garmian.edu.krd kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 73 are lots of conventional wisdom out there that common colds and influenza are seasonal issues and tend to subside during the warm season so this will too. also, some studies found that the disease first distributed along the (30 50)o north at consistently similar weather patterns including of temperature and humidity [2]. therefore, it is assumed that different temperature degree and humidity ratio in seasons might also contributed to the unbalanced of infections. in early december 2019, coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19), caused by (sars-cov-2), broke out in wuhan, china. this kind of coronavirus had been confirmed to have human-tohuman transmissibility that spread across the world as well as iraqi kurdistan region. the question is: if the disease will turn into a seasonal disease such as flu and colds, how it will be in the study area. here came the idea of this research, which came as these questions: (to what extent the seasonal and spatial variations of climate condition are in the study area? if (covid-19) becomes a seasonal respiratory, can its spread be expected according to different seasons and places in the study area?) as a preliminary answer, it can be assumed that obvious variations are in the values of climatic elements in the four seasons and different areas in the study area. and if (covid-19) has become seasonal epidemic, then there may be seasonal and spatial variations of its outbreak in the study area. the research came to study the seasonal and spatial variation of the climate condition of the study area, in case the virus become a seasonal epidemic, in order to take the necessary measures for the safety of citizens during the dangerous period. 2. methods and materials 2.1 method in order to carry out the present study, the required data were collected from (10) climatic stations widely distributed over iraqi kurdistan region (figure 1). analysis and interpretative have been done to indicate the climate condition. the geographic and climatic maps output of the study area were generated by (arc map gis 10.5) software. these maps evaluated for studying the spatial and seasonal variations of climate condition. figure 1: geographic map of the study area with locations of (10) meteorological stations (arc map gis 10.5). kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 74 2.2 study area the study area is located in the northern iraq, within subtropical zone in northern hemisphere, it lies between two latitudes (32° 38' – 37° 22') n and longitudes (41° 18' – 46° 21') e (figure 2). it surrounded by turkey from north, the islamic republic of iran from east, syria from northwest and with other parts of iraq from south and west. figure 2: astronomical and geographical location of the study area (arc map gis 10.5) 2.3 climatic analysis to spatial variation of (covid-19) outbreak through the world in the early dates of the outbreak, countries with relatively lower temperature and lower humidity (such as korea, japan and iran) see severe outbreaks than warmer and more humid countries (such as singapore, malaysia and thailand) [1]. generally, a specific type of climate zone will be found at similar latitudes in both northern and southern hemispheres. except the continental climates, that are not found at higher latitudes in the southern hemisphere, in which the land masses are not wide enough to produce this climate pattern [3]. so, countries and areas with significant community transmission of (covid-19) had distribution along the latitudes (30-50)o in northern hemisphere which is in winter season with average temperatures of (5-11)oc, low specific (3-6 g/kg) and absolute humidity (4-7 g/m3) [2,4] (figure 3). kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 75 figure 3: world (covid-19) data according to (who) (09th may 2020) a number of studies found that the mortality of patients could significantly reduce with the rise of temperature. regarding the transmissibility of the disease, an in vitro study of transmissible mouse hepatitis virus and gastroenteritis virus discovered that at higher temperature, these kinds coronaviruses survived for a shorter time on the stainless steel surfaces [5]. a cross-sectional study found that the cumulative number of cases will decrease by (0.86) for every (1℃) increase in the minimum temperature [6]. also, a modeling study suggested a transitory reduction in incidence in some areas may occur cautioning, the onset of spring and summer could, for example, give the impression that (covid-19) were successfully contained, only for infections to increase again in (2020-2021) winter season. some other studies come to the fact that the current spread prefers cool and dry conditions. those studies also thought that the (2002-2003 sars-cov) linked to same conditions of climate. based on that, in case the (covid-19) pandemic follows (sars cov-2) trends; thus, worst case scenario of pandemic will be appeared. results of two other studies reported that temperature correlate positively with the spread of infection rates; whereas, negatively correlate with humidity factor. further studies investigated that temperature and humidity affect the transmission of (sars-cov-2), they claimed that increasing for every (1°c) temperature and (1%) in relative humidity led to decrease the infection rate by (0.0383) and (0.0224), respectively [7]. such recent studies reveal that the growth rate of (covid-19) should gradually decrease with warmer weather in countries that located in northern hemisphere to increase in southern hemisphere with colder weather [8, 9, 10, 11]. another study predicted the decrease of (covid-19) transmission by (43%) on average for northern hemisphere countries with changing temperature between march to july 2020 and to increase by (71%) for southern hemisphere [12]. a number of scientists claimed that the viral infections of this type unlikely to be spreaded rapidly in india, in contrast to other countries with colder climate. that is because the high temperature and high humidity decrease the activity of viruses to survive and remain potent. although india is close to the epicenter and its dense population as well as poor hygiene in the urban centers; however, fewer number of confirmed cases of (covid-19) has been reported [13]. the factors of temperature and humidity contribute a maximum of (18%) of all the transmission factors [14, 15, 7, 10]. the virus's first emerged in china in middle of december and then has spread quickly. the global number of confirmed cases has rising most sharply in europe and the us, and reached more than (100) thousands. later, the (who) announced (covid-19) to be a pandemic [16]. however, the virus reached the study area in late february with (391) confirm cases (5 deaths kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 76 and 361 recovered) according to data of the ministry of health in kurdistan region which was published in (09th may 2020) [17]. now the number of infections around the world is (3822382) the confirmed cases including (263658) deaths reported to (who) as of (09th may 2020), consist. 3. results and discussion 3.1 climate characteristics of the study area climate varies from region to another based on some general factors. the climate of the study area is influenced by a host of interacting factors, that are divided into two groups; (stable and dynamic factors), as stable factors such as geographical location (latitude and nearby water) and topography. the study area is located within subtropical zone in northern hemisphere which lies between two latitudes (32° 38' – 37° 22') north. this location is based on the duration and the concentration of sunlight and the area that is affected by, with arrival of different pressure systems and air masses. concerning to the nearby water, the area is regarded as one of the interior continental regions; however, five water bodies are adjacent to the study area such as (mediterranean sea, black sea, red sea, caspian sea and arabian gulf). therefore, the study area is highly affected by the depressions of mediterranean sea and to a small extent the arabian gulf, this, in turn, led to the domination of the continentally [18]. as the distance from the sea increases, the weather conditions become extreme. so, over the study area, there are often huge differences in the temperature between summer and winter, and also between day and night. in terms of topography, the study area can greatly affect the climate; the higher the place is above sea level the colder and wetter it will be. mountain ranges often act as natural barriers that prevent wind and moisture that affecting the climate of the areas around it. the study area can be divided into two regions, mountainous and sub mountainous areas. the height above sea level increases with progress in south and southwest towards north and northeast, so that the elevation starts from less than (200 m) to more than (3600 m) above sea level, which means that the area has a complex topography [19]. the temperature usually decreases by (1°c) for every (100) meters with receive more rainfall in altitude; thus, this leads to a clear spatial variation of climate in the study area. according to the dynamic factors such as (pressure systems, air masses and jet streams) which their quality and frequency vary according to seasons and from years, the study area is affected by some climatic depressions such as (mediterranean low, sudanese low, convergence low, indian low and icelandic low), especially the first three climatic depressions that cause the occurrence of heavy rain and rainstorm in humid seasons (figure 4). anticyclones such as (siberian high, european high, azure high and arabian high) causing changeable weather. for instance, anticyclones bring hot, sunny weather in summer; however, they cause cold weather including fog and frost during winter. some air masses may control the climate condition during the period of their impacts such as continental polar (cp), maritime polar (mp), continental tropical (ct), maritime tropical (mt) and to a small extent arctic air mass (a) [20]. moreover, two different jet streams (polar and subtropical) can push depressions and air masses around and affect weather patterns of the study area. kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 77 figure 4: depressions associated with rain in humid seasons in the study area depending on (www.accuweather.com) despite the small area of the region, which constitutes approximately (1/5) of iraqi area, seasonal and spatial variations are clear in the values of climatic elements. this is due to the factors that were mentioned before which contributed to shaping the prevailing climate of the study area. the most important characteristic of the climate of the study area is the emergence of the four seasons clearly. the details of data used in this study are shown in (table 1) and (figure 5 & 6) which including the comparisons of the observed values over (10) stations for annual and seasonal rates. the data show high contrast in the values between the south and north regions in winter and summer seasons. these differences clearly distinguish the continental climate of iraqi kurdistan region. the minimum value of temperature for the study area was recorded in january, as in khanaqeen station (the south of the kurdistan region) was (9.50°c). on the other hand, penjwen station which is located in the eastern of kurdistan region (mountainous area) recorded (-0.69°c) in the same month. however, the maximum value of temperature was recorded in july (36.10°c) and (28.42°c) for both stations respectively. the temperature decreases significantly from south and southwest toward north and northeast, so that there are a number of temperature isotherms values for the winter and summer seasons in different regions of the kurdistan region (figures 7). the seasonal and spatial variations of rainfall and humidity are much more compared to temperature factor, the average rainfall increases from south and southwest toward north and northeast. the amount of rainfall ranges between (>200-1000mm) in south and southwest, to north and northeast respectively; also, the humidity ranges between less than (35%) in the south to more than (50%) in the north as shown in (figures 8). as for snowfall, its frequency in the mountainous areas is more than (12) times a year, especially in the far northeast of the region and rarely in the sub mountainous areas. generally, there is a large spatial and seasonal variation of the values of rainfall and relative humidity, especially rain, which fluctuates greatly in annual rates due to topography on the one hand and annual variations of the arrival and frequency of depressions on the other hand, especially the mediterranean depressions, which greatly affect the northern regions of the country. this is clear evidence that the temperature and humidity ratio are in huge gradient between winter and summer through north and south regions in iraqi kurdistan region. http://www.accuweather.com/ kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 78 table 1: the values of temperature (°c) and humidity (%) at the (10) meteorological station in iraqi kurdistan region c )temperature ( season winter spring summer autumn avg. station dec. jan. feb. mar. apr. may jun. jul. aug. sep. oct. nov. zakho 5.70 3.60 4.70 8.90 14.80 21.10 27.40 31.20 30.70 26.50 19.60 11.40 17.13 seasonal avg. 4.67 14.93 29.77 19.17 duhok 9.42 7.78 11.22 13.76 19.24 25.21 30.28 32.55 32.16 27.48 21.40 14.10 20.38 seasonal avg. 9.47 19.40 31.66 20.99 shngal 9.60 7.20 8.80 12.70 18.70 25.50 31.30 35 34.60 30 23.20 14.60 20.93 seasonal avg. 8.53 18.97 33.63 22.60 erbil 10.43 9.38 11.29 15.22 22.18 26.85 32.43 35.24 34.99 30.03 24.29 16.09 22.37 seasonal avg. 10.37 21.42 34.22 23.47 soran 6.68 4.63 6.86 11.49 16.31 21.80 28.23 31.70 31.76 27 20.35 12.12 18.24 seasonal avg. 6.06 16.53 30.56 19.82 kirkuk 10.80 9.10 10.90 15 20.80 27.60 33.30 36.10 35.30 31.40 24.90 16.40 22.63 seasonal avg. 10.27 21.13 34.90 24.23 sulaimani 8.76 6.89 8.78 12.78 17.76 23.86 30.11 33.62 33.27 28.81 22.29 13.94 20.07 seasonal avg. 8.14 18.13 32.33 21.68 penjwen 2.04 -0.69 0.94 7.46 12.35 17.72 24.91 28.42 28.37 22.71 15.81 7.07 13.93 seasonal avg. 0.76 12.51 27.23 15.20 darbandikhan 10.48 8.46 9.57 13.69 18.53 24.56 30.87 34.97 34.60 30.25 23.69 15.53 21.26 seasonal avg. 9.50 18.93 33.48 23.16 khanaqeen 11.80 9.50 11.50 15.50 21.40 28.50 33 36.10 35.10 31 24.90 16.90 22.93 seasonal avg. 10.93 21.80 34.73 24.27 relative humidity (%) season winter spring summer autumn avg. station dec. jan. feb. mar. apr. may jun. jul. aug. sep. oct. nov. zakho 71.90 72.50 70.50 62.80 55.60 44.70 30.50 27.90 26.50 31.80 45.20 60.50 50.03 seasonal avg. 71.63 54.37 28.30 45.83 duhok 73.88 71.56 69.56 63.69 56.50 45.61 31.25 28.08 27.98 32.53 45.99 62.15 50.73 seasonal avg. 71.67 55.27 29.10 46.89 shngal 64 69.10 61.30 54.10 46.20 33 23.10 21 21.50 25.40 36.20 49.10 42 seasonal avg. 64.80 44.43 21.87 36.90 erbil 72.54 71.66 66.95 63.26 54.91 42.20 32.29 28.91 30.15 34.01 47.71 62.96 50.63 seasonal avg. 70.38 53.46 30.45 48.23 soran 73.42 76.09 74.06 68.56 67.88 62.43 52.46 50.12 50.41 51.92 63.71 70.30 63.45 seasonal avg. 74.52 66.29 51 61.98 kirkuk 69.31 71.08 65.47 57.51 49.71 33.52 23.11 21.68 23.04 25.91 37.24 56.75 44.53 seasonal avg. 68.62 46.91 22.61 39.97 sulaimani 71.84 71.45 66.06 62.19 55.64 42.00 27.63 24.76 23.65 30.36 46.71 63.35 48.80 seasonal avg. 69.78 53.28 25.35 46.81 penjwen 59.11 61.34 57.33 54.76 50.49 46.36 36.40 32.57 32.46 35.39 45.93 54.11 47.19 seasonal avg. 59.26 50.53 33.81 45.14 darbandikhan 65.10 70.60 65.30 62.40 54.70 43.50 26.20 23.80 22.30 29 36.10 48.50 45.62 seasonal avg. 67 53.53 24.10 37.87 khanqeen 64.27 68.53 63.91 59.07 50.82 35.14 26.65 24.38 23.18 28.34 36.22 54.46 44.58 seasonal avg. 65.57 48.34 24.74 39.67 kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 79 -10 0 10 20 30 40 dec. jan. feb. mar apr. may. jun. jul. aug. sep. oct. nov. temperature (c) zakho duhok shngal erbil soran kirkuk sulaimani penjwen darbandikhan khanaqeen 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 dec. jan. feb. mar apr. may. jun. jul. aug. sep. oct. nov. relative humidity (%) zakho duhok shngal erbil soran kirkuk sulaimani penjwen darbandikhan khanaqeen figure 5: the values of temperature (°c) at each of the (10) meteorological stations in iraqi kurdistan region figure 6: the values of humidity (%) at each of the (10) meteorological stations in iraqi kurdistan region kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 80 figure 7: thermal isotherm (°c) of summer and winter in iraqi kurdistan region (arc map gis 10.5) figure 8: annual isoheyt (mm) and isohume (%) in iraqi kurdistan region (arc map gis 10.5) through the analysis of the climate control factors, elements and spatial variations that were mentioned above, a number of climatic regions can be distinguished in the study area, from north and northeast to south and southwest according to the köppen (1936) [21*]. including the mediterranean climate region (csb) which is described as very cold winter and mild summer, mediterranean climate region (csa) cold winter and moderate to hot summer, semiarid climate region (steppe) (bs) a little cold winter and hot and dry summer and arid climate region (desert) (bw) mild winter and very hot and dry summer (figure 9). kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 81 figure 9: climatic regions of iraqi kurdistan region depending on (koppen 1936) (arc map gis 10.5). 3.2 seasonal and spatial danger degree analysis to (covid-19) in the study area understanding the relationship between climate and (covid-19) virus transmission is the key to predicting the intensity and the time of this epidemic. studies showed that the rate of spread of the virus in chinese cities with high temperatures and humid environments was slower compared to other areas of dry and cold nature. scientists still out of right expectation, they claim that this virus will follow the other typical coronavirus cases, and can be expected a retreat in the summer. whereas, this does not mean that the world will get rid of the crisis. the virus that causes (covid-19) is new and there is no any firm data on how cases can be changed with the seasons. but there are some clues from other coronaviruses such as (sarscov) and (mers-cov) that infect humans based on weather; so, (covid-19) might eventually become seasonal. the outbreak of the new disease around the world seems to have a preference for cool and dry conditions. the study area is located in northern hemisphere within similar latitudes of the first spread of (covid-19), and has four seasons, the average temperature of winter is (7.78°c) with severe differences among regions. for example, thermal range between khanaqeen and penjwen is approximately (10.17°c) in winter and (7.5°c) in summer. on the other hand, the variation of relative humidity between shngal and soran stations is (%29.13), despite the variation of other elements such as annual average of rainfall which is more than (1000mm). the (bs) and (bw) climate regions have moderate winter, the average temperature in january is below (11°c), but in (csb) region except winter months (december, january and february) the average temperature in march in the spring and november in the autumn is below (11°c). however, in (csa) region, the temperature in three months of winter is below this degree. in terms of humidity, it is clear from the provided data that the lower the temperature is the greater relative humidity will be and vice versa. generally, through this extensive climatological investigation, it has been determined that weather modeling could potentially explain the spread of the disease, making it possible to predict the areas that are most likely to be at higher risk of spread in the future. therefore, it has been assumed that different temperature degree and humidity ratio in different regions of the study area might contribute to the balanced risk of infection with the virus. also, it should be taken into account that the virus spreads from person to others. the more population at any given place and the more they get into contact with each other, the more kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 82 infections there will be. as well as, their behavior is key to understanding the propagation of the virus. preventive measures such as placing travel restrictions, social separation, quarantine, and differences in government measures such as conducting early checks and the capacity hospitals may have a significant impact on the variance in the number of infected. so, noteworthy that the climate alone does not have a total impact on the spread of the disease as well as in the study area. 4. conclusion the study found that a great seasonal and spatial differences are in the climate of the study area that cause to emergence of four different climate regions such as mediterranean climate region (csb), mediterranean climate region (csa), semi-arid climate region (steppe) (bs) and arid climate region (desert) (bw). emerging data reveals to suggest that cold and dry conditions may facilitate the spread of the disease. according to the study area the lower the temperature is the greater relative humidity will be and vice versa. therefore, we assume that seasonal differences of temperature and humidity in different regions of the study area might contribute to the balanced risk of infection with the virus. also it is possible to have a mutation in the virus in future, which will change the factors affecting it as well as weather pattern. as the temperature gets higher, subsequent studies are necessary to further validate our results and determine how (covid-19) will behave in the upcoming months, and which areas and climate regions are most at risk. it seems that the rise of temperature and humidity alone would not completely control this epidemic. there is much more to learn about the transmissibility, severity, and other features associated with (covid-19) and investigations have to going. because preventive measures such as placing travel restrictions, individual health factors, social separation and quarantine may have had a significant impact on the variance in the number of injuries in countries of the world. as any research, this study provides some limitations. as the climatic data collected were from different governmental available datasets, and data of some stations were not available to determine spatial variations. also it was difficult to determine whether the new coronavirus will take specific course and behavior to spread only after passing enough time (mostly seasons) in order to appear the difference well. and preventive measures like population mobility, social separation, cultural aspects and quarantine may have had an obvious reflection on the result of all climatic studies concern to (covid-19). acknowledgments the authors appreciate abdulmuttalib rafaat sarhat for reviewing the article, thanks to hassan rostam al-bewani for obtaining some of references and special thanks to the presidency of sulaimani polytechnic university and (kjar) journal for their encouragement. references [1] j. wang, k. tang, k. feng, and w. lv, "high temperature and high humidity reduce the transmission of covid-19." available at ssrn 3551767 (2020). [2] m. m. sajadi, p. habibzadeh, a. vintzileos, s. shokouhi, f. miralles-wilhelm and a. amoroso, "temperature, humidity and latitude analysis to predict potential spread and seasonality for covid 19." rochester, ny: social science research network; 2020. [3] a. balasubramanian, "world climate zones & groups." center for advanced studies in earth science, university of mysore, 2013, https;//www.researchgate.net/publication/314211373 [4] g. francesco ficetola, and d. rubolini, "climate affects global patterns of covid-19 early outbreak dynamics." medrxiv (2020). [5] y. cai, t. huang, x. liu, and g. xu. "the effects of" fangcang, huoshenshan, and leishenshan." makeshift hospitals and temperature on the mortality of covid -19 (2020). [6] m. wang, , a. jiang, l. gong, l. luo, w. guo, c. li, j. zheng, y. chen, k. zhing, h. li, "temperature kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 83 significant change covid-19 transmission in 429 cities." medrxiv (2020). [7] j. brassey, c.heneghan, k.r.mahtani, j. k.aronson, “do weather conditions influence the transmission of the coronavirus (sars-cov-2),” cemb, www.cemb.net/oxford-covid-19, (2020). [8] a. notari, "temperature dependence of covid-19 transmission." arxiv preprint arxiv:2003.12417 (2020). [9] r. tosepu, , j. gunawan, d. savitri effendy, l. ali imran ahmad, h. lestari, h. bahar, and p. asfian. "correlation between weather and covid-19 pandemic in jakarta, indonesia." science of the total environment (2020): 138436 [10] b. oliveiros, l. caramelo, n. c. ferreira, and f. caramelo. "role of temperature and humidity in the modulation of the doubling time of covid-19 cases." medrxiv (2020). [11] m. ahmadi, a. sharifi, s. dorosti, s. jafarzadeh ghoushchi, and n. ghanbari. "investigation of effective climatology parameters on covid-19 outbreak in iran." science of the total environment (2020): 138705. [12] t. carleton, and k. c. meng. "causal empirical estimates suggest covid-19 transmission rates are highly seasonal." medrxiv (2020). [13] d. nevil pinto, “is india's hot weather keeping coronavirus at bay? experts conflicted,” twc india, the weather channel, the times of india, march,03,2020. available; https://weather.com/enin/india/science/news [14] k. chiyomaru and k. takemoto. "global covid-19 transmission rate is influenced by precipitation seasonality and the speed of climate temperature warming." medrxiv (2020). [15] j. liu, j. zhou, j. yao, x. zhang, l.li, x. xu, x. he et al. "impact of meteorological factors on the covid-19 transmission: a multi-city study in china." science of the total environment (2020): 138513. [16] j. liebig, r. jurdak, a. el shoghri, and d. paini. "the current state of covid-19 in australia: importation and spread." available at ssrn 3559568 (2020). [17] kurdistan regional government, ministry of health, https://gov.krd/english/government/entities/moh/. [18] d. c. p. thalen, ecology and utilization of desert shrub rangelands in iraq. springer science & business media, 2012. [19] m. malcolm walker, climate of iraq, a full year study. afccc/ccd-05/002, 2005. [20] j. e. oliver, ed. encyclopedia of world climatology. springer science & business media, 2008. [21] * (koppen 1936) climate classification: r ≤ 2t r: rain fall (mm) t: temperature (c). (m. belda, , e. holtanová, t. halenka, and j. kalvová. "climate classification revisited: from köppen to trewartha." climate research 59, no. 1 (2014): 1-13.) http://www.cemb.net/oxford-covid-19 file:///d:/en-in/india/bios/news/2019-01-28-deekshith-nevil-pinto https://weather.com/en-in/india/science/news/2020-03-04-weather-the-real-hero-saving-india-coronavirus-experts-conflicted https://weather.com/en-in/india/science/news/2020-03-04-weather-the-real-hero-saving-india-coronavirus-experts-conflicted https://gov.krd/english/government/entities/moh/  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq outcomes of type i tympanoplasty using a cartilage shield graft murad ghazi ahmed said m. said aljaff mbchb, kbms/otolaryngology trainee mbchb, ficms (ent), facs (orl-head and neck surgery), professor sulaimani teaching hospital-otolaryngology/head and neck surgery center rizgary teaching hospital/ent head and neck surgery center sulaimani, iraq erbil, iraq +964(0)7705351313 said.mustafa@med.hmu.edu.krd murad_ghazi@hotmail.com hiwa asaad abdulkareem mbchb, ficms (ent), cabs (orl-head and neck surgery), assistant professor sulaimani teaching hospital/ ent, head and neck surgery center sulaimani, iraq hiwa_ent@yahoo.com article info abstract volume 5 – special issue: 4th international conference on the health and medical science : medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) doi: 10.24017/science.2020.ichms2020.11 article history: received: 22 september 2020 accepted: 28 september 2020 background: type i tympanoplasty surgery is an effective routine technic that had been used for tympanic reconstruction to improve hearing. objectives: the aim was to measure the effect of type i tympanoplasty surgery using the cartilage shield graft (csg) in term of graft uptake (anatomical outcome) and hearing gains (functional outcomes) of patients with poor prognostic factors. method and materials: in this study, 20 patients with perforation exceeded 50%, but limited to the tympanic membrane were recruited for type i tympanoplasty surgery. the study was conducted in the otolaryngology/head and neck surgery training center in sulaimani teaching hospital in sulaimani city for one year period. bellucci classification was used to evaluate otorrhea risks. results: the majority of patients were female (90%), with a mean ± sd (standard deviation) of ages of 37.15 ± 14.01 years. most of the patients (40%) were presented with a mild hearing loss of 26-40 decibels (db). type i tympanoplasty surgery using the cartilage shield graft (csg) had significantly decreased the hearing loss and air-bone gap (p-value = 0.046 and 0.006, respectively). the mean differences in hearing loss and air-bone gap were 5.05 db and 6.75 db, respectively. conclusions: csg in type i tympanoplasty surgery is an effective solution in anatomical outcome (graft uptake) and keywords: air-bone gap, bellucci classification, cartilage shield graft (csg), hearing loss (db), tympanic membrane perforation, type i tympanoplasty surgery. mailto:said.mustafa@med.hmu.edu.krd mailto:murad_ghazi@hotmail.com mailto:hiwa_ent@yahoo.com kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 101 functional outcomes (hearing gains) which had been reflected in reducing hearing loss and airbone gap (average hearing gain of 5db) in patients presented with tympanic membrane perforations. no improvement in the functional outcomes was observed in patients presented with severe hearing loss pre-operatively. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction tympanic membrane perforation occurs in many ear diseases, such as chronic otitis media, and in every age [1-3]. patients with tympanic membrane perforation are presented with different clinical symptoms such as hearing loss, otorrhea and wet ear; these perforations are the main cause of middle ear relapsing infections [4-5]. usually hearing loss is proportional to the size of perforation and pneumatization of the middle ear and mastoid [6-7]. type i tympanoplasty surgery is an effective routine technic that had been used for tympanic membrane reconstruction and clearing any residual ear diseases, this surgery is expected to lead to hearing gain [8-9]. almost more than 85% of patients regain hearing after surgery [5]. after type i tympanoplasty surgery, other complains like otorrhea and wetness of ear can also be resolved [10]. various forms of type i tympanoplasties, e.g., cartilage grafts and temporalis fascia grafts, had different outcomes in terms of hearing and success rates [11-12]. however, more studies that had been done recently are preferring cartilage graft in terms of success rate and hearing gain [3, 13-14]. cartilage graft can significantly improve the outcomes in ear atelectasis and damaged tympanic membranes [3, 13-14]. attempts had been performed to explore the relationship of hearing gain with different forms of tympanoplasty surgeries. a meta-analysis study performed by tan et al. [13] reported that hearing gain could not be obtained in all forms of type i tympanoplasty surgeries; however, retaining 10% of decibels (db) of hearing loss have been considered as a good clinical outcome. this study aimed to measure the effect of type i tympanoplasty surgery by using cartilage shield graft (csg) on anatomical (graft uptake) and functional (hearing gain-pure tone audiometry) of patients with poor prognostic factors. 2. patients and methods this experimental study was conducted in the otolaryngology/head and neck surgery training center in sulaimani teaching hospital in sulaimani city. twenty patients from both sexes and different age groups who presented with tympanic membrane perforation that exceeded 50% of the total tympanic membrane surface area were selected for the study. also, all patients had been briefed and signed a consent form for this study. pre-operatively, all patients were subjected to detailed history taking and clinical examinations. besides, their hearing was evaluated subjectively and objectively; pure-tone average (pta) hearing loss, pta air-bone gap, and bellucci classification were measured pre and post-operatively for the patients. also, follow up for all patients was done in the same training center. the inclusion criteria was tympanic membrane perforations exceeding 50% but limited to the tympanic membrane. the exclusion criteria were the preoperative diagnosis of other than the inclusion criteria mentioned above beside patients who were followed up for less than three months, and any patient who refused to participate. cartilage graft was harvested from the tragus (endaural approach) in the beginning of each surgery. data were analyzed statistically by using the ibm spss statistics version 25. test of kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 102 normality has proceeded, and since data was not normally distributed, the nonparametric test was used for the inferential statistic. wilcoxon signed-rank test has been used to know the differences in the mean of pta-hearing loss and pta-air-bone gap in pre and postoperation. also, a p-value of ≤0.05 was considered a statistically significant association. 3. results the mean ± sd (standard deviation) of the age of the patients was 37.15 ± 14.01 years (ranged 11 to 72 years). also, the majority of patients (90%) were female (male: female ratio = 0.11:1), from middle age group 26-47 years (65%), and more than half of the patients (55%) presented with left sided hearing loss (table 1). table 1: demographic features of the patients demographic features frequency percent gender male 2 10 female 18 90 side right 9 45 left 11 55 age (year) ≤25 4 20 26-36 6 30 37-47 7 35 48-58 1 5 ≥58 2 10 total 20 100 most of the patients (40%) suffered from a mild hearing loss (26-40 db); however, moderate to moderately severe hearing loss (41-70 db), and severe hearing loss (71-90 db) affected only 30% and 10% of the patients, respectively. percentage of patients with normal hearing (0-25 db) had been increased post-operatively by 15% (pre-operatively 20% vs. postoperatively 35%). however, the percentage of patients with severe hearing loss (71-90 db) remained unchanged post-operatively. in regard to ear dryness and according to bellucci classification, all patients’ condition had been shifted from occasionally wet ear (level 1) to dry ear (level 0) post-operatively (table 2). table 2: the degree of hearing loss in pre and postoperative among the patients level of hearing loss in preand post-operative frequency percent pre-operative degree of hearing loss normal hearing (0-25 db) 4 20 mild hearing loss (26-40 db) 8 40 moderate hearing loss (41-55 db) 3 15 moderate to severe hearing loss (56-70 db) 3 15 severe hearing loss (71-90 db) 2 10 post-operative degree of hearing loss normal hearing (0-25 db) 7 35 mild hearing loss (26-40 db) 7 35 moderate hearing loss (41-55 db) 2 10 moderate to severe hearing loss (56-70 db) 2 10 severe hearing loss (71-90 db) 2 10 pre-operative bellucci classification level 1 20 100 post-operative bellucci classification level 0 20 100 total 20 100 kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 103 furthermore, the means ± sd of hearing loss, and air-bone gap had been significantly decreased after the surgery (p-values of 0.046, and 0.006, respectively), (table 3). table 3: hearing loss and air-bone gap in the pre and postoperatively variables n mean ± sd range p-values hearing loss preoperative hearing loss 20 43.05 ± 21.93 15 90 0.046 postoperative hearing loss 20 38.00 ± 23.42 5 90 air-bone gap preoperative air-bone gap 20 27.85 ± 14.14 10 50 0.006 postoperative air-bone gap 20 21.10 ± 12.01 5 50 n = number; sd = standard deviation 4. discussion in this study, the majority of patients were females (90%), with a mean age of 37.15 ± 14.01. nearly more than half of them (55%) presented with left sided hearing loss, and these findings are controversial when we compared them with a similar study of t. sajid et al. [9]. most of the patients (40%) suffered from a mild hearing loss (26-40 db); however, moderate to moderately severe hearing loss (41-70 db) and severe hearing loss (71-90 db) were 30%, and 10%, respectively. the percentage of mild hearing loss (40%) in this study was much less compared to the 75% of the mild hearing loss in the study of n. v. deosthale et al. [10]. it had been shown that the perforation of the tympanic membrane is mostly associated with 20 db of pta [15]. in our study, cartilage graft in type i tympanoplasty surgery was effective in reducing patients’ hearing loss. however, no clinical benefit was observed in hearing gains for the 10% of the patients who were presented with severe hearing loss. the study of b. bhardwaj et al. [16] had also showed that 15% of their patients did not have any hearing gains after cartilage graft type i tympanoplasty surgery. besides, the study of g. batni et al. [17] showed results near to our findings; they found that 6% of their patients did not improve after type i tympanoplasty. further, the success rate after type i tympanoplasty was ranged from 80-95% in the literature due to the severity of hearing loss pre-operatively [18-19]. the results of the current study showed about the same successful rate (i.e., 90%). therefore, it is wise to select the patients for tympanoplasty according to the severity of their hearing loss at presentation. the percentage of patients with normal hearing (0-25 db) pre-operatively had increased from 20% to 35% post-operatively. in comparison, the percentage of patients with severe hearing loss (71-90 db) was remained unchanged preand post-operatively (10%). the studies of t. sajid et al. [9] and n. v. deosthale et al. [10] had also shown the similar outcomes in term of hearing gains; large perforation pre-operatively had poor post-operative clinical outcomes since hearing gains was noticed to be correlated directly to the size of the perforations. hearing loss and air-bone gap have significantly been reduced after the surgery (p-value ≤ 0.04); the mean differences in hearing loss and air-bone gap were 5.05 db and 6.75 db, respectively. the results of this study is comparable to other similar studies regarding cartilage graft in type i tympanoplasty [20-21]. however, the average hearing gain in this study was less by 10 db compared to the study performed by b. bhardwaj et al. [16] for cartilage graft in type i tympanoplasty surgery. the current study also showed that csg was successful in resolving patients’ complain of wet ear; all the patients were presented with a certain level of ear wetness pre-operatively yet the operated ears in all the patients became dry post-operatively. post-operative ear wetness can hurdle hearing gain after surgery. nevertheless, this finding has remained statistically, unproven [10]. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 104 5. conclusion cartilage shield graft (csg) in type i tympanoplasty surgery is an effective solution for anatomical (graft uptake) and functional (hearing gains) outcomes which had been reflected in reducing hearing loss and air-bone gap (average hearing gain of 5 db) in patients presented with tympanic membrane perforations. no improvement in the functional outcomes was observed pre-operatively in patients presented with severe hearing loss. 6. conflicts of interest the authors had nothing to declare reference [1] j. dornhoffer, “cartilage tympanoplasty: indications, techniques, and outcomes in a 1,000-patient series,” laryngoscope, 113 (11), pp. 1844-1856, 2003. [2] r. mane, b. patil, a. mohite, v. v. varute, “bilateral type 1 tympanoplasty in chronic otitis media,” indian j otolaryngol head neck surg, 65 (4), pp. 293-297, 2013. [3] d. baklaci, i. guler, i. kuzucu, r. o. kum, m. ozcan, “type 1 tympanoplasty in pediatric patients: a review of 102 cases,” bmc pediatr, 18 (1), pp. 345, 2018. [4] s. vaidya, j. k. sharma, g. singh, “study of outcome of tympanoplasties in relation to size and site of tympanic membrane perforation,” indian j otolaryngol head neck surg, 66 (3), pp. 341-346, 2014. [5] s. gupta, p. kalsotra, “hearing gain in different types of tympanoplasties,” indian j. otol, 19 (4), pp. 186–193, 2013. [6] h. park, s. n. hong, h. s. kim, j. j. han, j. chung, m. w. suh, et al., “determinants of conductive hearing loss in tympanic membrane perforation,” clin exp otorhinolaryngol, 8 (2), pp. 92-96, 2015. erratum in: clin exp otorhinolaryngol, 8 (4), pp. 430, 2015, seo, myung-whan [corrected to suh, myung-whan]. [7] m. aslıer, h. özay, s. gürkan, g. kırkım, e. a. güneri, “the effect of tympanic membrane perforation site, size and middle ear volume on hearing loss,” turk arch otorhinolaryngol, 57 (2), pp. 86-90, 2019. [8] s. shetty, “pre-operative and post-operative assessment of hearing following tympanoplasty,” indian j otolaryngol head neck surg, 64 (4), pp. 377-381, 2012. [9] t. sajid, m. i. shah, r. ghani, m. asif, “type-i tympanoplasty by underlay technique factors affecting outcome,” j ayub med coll abbottabad, 29 (2), pp. 258-261, 2017. [10] n. v. deosthale, s. p. khadakkar, p. d. kumar, v. v. harkare, p. dhoke, k. dhote, et al., “effectiveness of type i tympanoplasty in wet and dry ear in safe chronic suppurative otitis media,” indian j otolaryngol head neck surg, 70 (3), pp. 325-330, 2018. [11] t. yang, x. wu, x. peng, y. zhang, s. xie, h. sun, “comparison of cartilage graft and fascia in type 1 tympanoplasty: systematic review and meta-analysis,” acta otolaryngol, 136 (11), pp. 1085-1090, 2016. [12] s. a. lyons, t. su, l. e. vissers, j. p. peters, a. l. smit, w. grolman, “fascia compared to onepiece composite cartilage-perichondrium grafting for tympanoplasty,” laryngoscope, 126 (7), pp. 1662-1670, 2016. [13] h. e. tan, p. l. santa maria, r. h. eikelboom, k. s. anandacoomaraswamy, m. d. atlas, “type i tympanoplasty meta-analysis: a single variable analysis,” otol neurotol, 37 (7), pp. 838-846, 2016. [14] m. salviz, o. bayram, a. a. bayram, h. h. balikci, t. chatzi, c. paltura, et al., “prognostic factors in type i tympanoplasty,” auris nasus larynx, 42 (1), pp. 20-23, 2015. [15] p. caye-thomasen, t. r. nielsen, m. tos, “bilateral myringoplasty in chronic otitis media,” laryngoscope, 117 (5), pp. 903-906, 2007. [16] b. bhardwaj, j. singh, “comparative study of hearing improvement of type 1 tympanoplasty using temporalis fascia and conchal cartilage as graft material,” indian j otolaryngol head neck surg, 71 (suppl 2), pp. 1174-1178, 2019. [17] g. batni, r. goyal, “hearing outcome after type i tympanoplasty: a retrospective study,” indian j otolaryngol head neck surg, 67 (1), pp. 39-42, 2015. [18] n. aslam, j. iqbal, k. mehmood, “type i tympanoplasty underlay technique and results,” proc shaikh zayed postgrad med inst, 15 (2), pp. 77–80, 2001. [19] f. a. fadl, “outcome of type-1 tympanoplasty,” saudi med j, 24 (1), pp. 58–61, 2003. [20] j. l. dornhoffer, “hearing results with cartilage tympanoplasty,” laryngoscope, 107 (8), pp. 10941099, 1997. [21] r. hayati, t. haryuna, d. zahara, “hearing threshold differences between pre and post tympanoplasty in patients with chronic suppurative otitis media,” bali medical journal, 7 (1), pp. 4750, 2018. 1. introduction 5. conclusion [1] j. dornhoffer, “cartilage tympanoplasty: indications, techniques, and outcomes in a 1,000-patient series,” laryngoscope, 113 (11), pp. 1844-1856, 2003. [2] r. mane, b. patil, a. mohite, v. v. varute, “bilateral type 1 tympanoplasty in chronic otitis media,” indian j otolaryngol head neck surg, 65 (4), pp. 293-297, 2013. [3] d. baklaci, i. guler, i. kuzucu, r. o. kum, m. ozcan, “type 1 tympanoplasty in pediatric patients: a review of 102 cases,” bmc pediatr, 18 (1), pp. 345, 2018. [4] s. vaidya, j. k. sharma, g. singh, “study of outcome of tympanoplasties in relation to size and site of tympanic membrane perforation,” indian j otolaryngol head neck surg, 66 (3), pp. 341-346, 2014. [5] s. gupta, p. kalsotra, “hearing gain in different types of tympanoplasties,” indian j. otol, 19 (4), pp. 186–193, 2013. [6] h. park, s. n. hong, h. s. kim, j. j. han, j. chung, m. w. suh, et al., “determinants of conductive hearing loss in tympanic membrane perforation,” clin exp otorhinolaryngol, 8 (2), pp. 92-96, 2015. erratum in: clin exp otorhinolaryngol, 8 (4), pp... [7] m. aslıer, h. özay, s. gürkan, g. kırkım, e. a. güneri, “the effect of tympanic membrane perforation site, size and middle ear volume on hearing loss,” turk arch otorhinolaryngol, 57 (2), pp. 86-90, 2019. [8] s. shetty, “pre-operative and post-operative assessment of hearing following tympanoplasty,” indian j otolaryngol head neck surg, 64 (4), pp. 377-381, 2012. [9] t. sajid, m. i. shah, r. ghani, m. asif, “type-i tympanoplasty by underlay technique factors affecting outcome,” j ayub med coll abbottabad, 29 (2), pp. 258-261, 2017. [10] n. v. deosthale, s. p. khadakkar, p. d. kumar, v. v. harkare, p. dhoke, k. dhote, et al., “effectiveness of type i tympanoplasty in wet and dry ear in safe chronic suppurative otitis media,” indian j otolaryngol head neck surg, 70 (3), pp. 325-3... [11] t. yang, x. wu, x. peng, y. zhang, s. xie, h. sun, “comparison of cartilage graft and fascia in type 1 tympanoplasty: systematic review and meta-analysis,” acta otolaryngol, 136 (11), pp. 1085-1090, 2016. [12] s. a. lyons, t. su, l. e. vissers, j. p. peters, a. l. smit, w. grolman, “fascia compared to one-piece composite cartilage-perichondrium grafting for tympanoplasty,” laryngoscope, 126 (7), pp. 1662-1670, 2016. [13] h. e. tan, p. l. santa maria, r. h. eikelboom, k. s. anandacoomaraswamy, m. d. atlas, “type i tympanoplasty meta-analysis: a single variable analysis,” otol neurotol, 37 (7), pp. 838-846, 2016. [14] m. salviz, o. bayram, a. a. bayram, h. h. balikci, t. chatzi, c. paltura, et al., “prognostic factors in type i tympanoplasty,” auris nasus larynx, 42 (1), pp. 20-23, 2015. [15] p. caye-thomasen, t. r. nielsen, m. tos, “bilateral myringoplasty in chronic otitis media,” laryngoscope, 117 (5), pp. 903-906, 2007. [16] b. bhardwaj, j. singh, “comparative study of hearing improvement of type 1 tympanoplasty using temporalis fascia and conchal cartilage as graft material,” indian j otolaryngol head neck surg, 71 (suppl 2), pp. 1174-1178, 2019. [17] g. batni, r. goyal, “hearing outcome after type i tympanoplasty: a retrospective study,” indian j otolaryngol head neck surg, 67 (1), pp. 39-42, 2015. [18] n. aslam, j. iqbal, k. mehmood, “type i tympanoplasty underlay technique and results,” proc shaikh zayed postgrad med inst, 15 (2), pp. 77–80, 2001. [19] f. a. fadl, “outcome of type-1 tympanoplasty,” saudi med j, 24 (1), pp. 58–61, 2003. [20] j. l. dornhoffer, “hearing results with cartilage tympanoplasty,” laryngoscope, 107 (8), pp. 1094-1099, 1997. [21] r. hayati, t. haryuna, d. zahara, “hearing threshold differences between pre and post tympanoplasty in patients with chronic suppurative otitis media,” bali medical journal, 7 (1), pp. 47-50, 2018.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq| email: kjar@spu.edu.iq design of adaptive planar microstrip patch array operating at 28 ghz for 5g smart mobile system zhwan mohammed rashid asaad m. jassim al-hindawi department of communication engineering department of communication engineering technical college of engineering technical college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq zhwan.rashid@spu.edu.iq asaad.jasim@spu.edu.iq volume 4 issue 2 | december 2019 doi: 10.24017/science.2019.2.16 received: 26 september 2019 accepted: 15 december 2019 abstract smart antenna system has been studied extensively for the fifth generation of wireless communication systems, because it has made a system better performance of higher capacity and coverage as well as of power-saving. the present paper introduces a design of planar microstrip patch antenna array for a smart mobile system operating at 28 ghz. the present smart antenna has an adaptive radiation pattern that adjusts its main beam automatically to the desired direction by following the signal environment. this is based on the processing of an algorithm called the least mean square (lms) resulting in a change in the magnitude and phase of the feeding current for each element in the antenna array. from the obtained results, the main beam can be steered 180 degrees in the phi (azimuth) plane at a constant theta (elevation) angle. the planar antenna array was designed and simulated using cst microwave studio and matlab software that is used to find the required exciting current for each element. it is found that the antenna bandwidth is greater than 1 ghz while its gain is about 21 db. keywords: smart antenna, planar array, lms beamforming, adaptive radiation pattern, microstrip patch. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 159 1. introduction nowadays, the term communication is going to grow in the world, different applications and features have been presented day by day. since the mobile communication request is always rising, the requirement for high data rates, better coverage, high capacity, and high quality of services are relied upon to keep on increasing quickly, thus a more efficient use of a radio spectrum. the newest technology of mobile communications 5g, has advantages of improving capacity, coverage, connectivity, energy-efficient, and has the lowest cost as contrasted to the 4g [1]. to confront those requirements of 5g communications in various application situations, it is certainly, the use of smart antenna technology is needed. at present, to improve the performance of wireless communication systems, smart antennas are the most attractive choice; proposing their applications to mobile systems. as the requirements for a large number of users are increasing, the smart antennas have been solving the problem of limited bandwidth channels [2]. nonetheless, the traditional antenna system that uses a single antenna transmits and receives data in equal directions. the feature of this antenna is a multi-directional pattern that distributes energy in all directions, this energy is regarded as the source of lost power for interference between different users or different base stations in different cells [3]. the block diagram of smart antenna systems was illustrates in figure 1 which consisting of an antenna array unit, with a signal processing unite which is the process of estimating the direction of arrival (doa) and beamforming algorithm to automatically adjust the main beam direction in the response to signal environment, so that the antenna system essentially increases the required signal strength and prevents the interference signals by beamforming the required signal according to the direction of arrival (doa) and nullifying strength against the unrequired signals [4]. smart antenna systems are two classifications: beam switch system and adaptive antenna arrays [5]. a switched-beam antenna is a type of smart antenna in its simplest form, where it consists of several static beams in prearranged a direction that is used to serve the users. on the other hand, the smart antenna technology, that is the most advance type, is known as adaptive beamforming, which is consist of antenna arrays with smart signal processing capability to automatically adjust the beam pattern according to the changing signal environment. in addition to direct maximum radiation according to the direction of the desired mobile user, it makes nulls at interfering directions at the same time. figure 1: smart antenna system [6]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 160 adaptive array antennas are regarded as one of the most common types of smart antenna arrays which are also known as digital antenna arrays and most newly, mimo antenna arrays. with the algorithms of digital signal processing utilized to determine the signal direction of arrival (doa), and for every component of the array, use them to compute the amplitude and phase of the feeding current which are important to guide the main beam of the antenna to the mobile goal [7]. the adaptive antenna system finds the signal direction of arrival based on various methods like: multiple signal classification (music) and speculation of signal parameters via an algorithm called rotational invariance techniques (esprit) [8],[9]. they include determining the array spatial spectrum, and from the peaks of that spectrum computing the doa. the radiation pattern of the array is creating by beamforming techniques, by changing the amplitude and phase of the exciting signal to every array components to guide the main beam to the required target and nulling the pattern of the undesired goals. this can be achieved using a simple finite impulse response (fir) tapped delay line filter. to get the optimum beamformer the fir filter could be changing the weights adaptively and reduced the mean square error (mse) between the required and existing signals [10]. the common algorithm that is used in the present work is the least mean square (lms) method. the first development of this algorithm was in 1960 by widrow and hoff [11],[12]. using the set of wiener hopf equations with the stochastic gradient method, this developed procedure was later known as the least-mean-square (lms) method. in kong et al (2011) [13] the lms algorithm is used to design the uniform linear array and rectangular planner array and then to prefer the method of designing heterotypic antenna. in this way, the size of the antenna is much smaller and the performance of the antenna is good in terms of system gaining and signal to interference ratio (sir). the experimental result proved that the 4x4 antenna array was further suitable for the environment that has a high interference. in fadl et al (2013) [14] the c-band (4-8)ghz circular microstrip patch antenna array is studied with the designing beamforming algorithm which is used in the smart antenna system. the doa of desired and interference signal was precisely assessed by matrix pencil (mp) method, and by applying the lms method the main beam is directed to the desired signal while the nulls is directed to the interference signal. nadu (2015) [15] presented two parts, the first demonstration was designing various rectangular microstrip patch components which were appropriate for beamforming techniques at the operating frequency of (1.8-2.4) ghz. the designed module was consist of eight linear arrays which can achieve a 15db gain and directivity of greater than 58% as constructed to the conventional patches. in the second part of the beamforming procedure, the author suggested an nlvff-rls algorithm for concentration of the user power direction and negation of the interferer power direction. mercy (2017) [16] presented the design of a smart antenna for cellular networks using a microstrip single patch antenna and a linear microstrip patch antenna array of (1x3) to meet triple ism frequency band of 2.45ghz, 4.5ghz, and 7.1ghz. thus due to these multiband frequencies, the smart antenna designed can be used for multiple applications supratha & robinson (2018) [17] analyzed the design of four elements of the microstrip patch array antenna to use it in mobile phone applications at the frequency of 28ghz. the implementation of the designed antenna was using economical fr-4 substrate material which has a good performance with the gain and efficiency. furthermore, the result of this study demonstrated that in the frequency range of 22-34ghz the s11 has a response bellow -10db. the present paper aims to introduce a design of a planar array consisting of 64 microstrip patches operating at frequency of 28.7 ghz. this array antenna has an adaptive radiation pattern based on the lms beamforming algorithm. the proposed antenna can be used on the top of the bts tower for the 5g system. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 161 2. antenna design 2.1 single element design in this section, a rectangular microstrip patch element as a basic element of the proposed array is designed and analyzed for operating frequency of 28.7 ghz. the antenna element is designed on a rogers clte-mw substrate material. for design purposes, 10 mils substrate of a dielectric constant (𝜖𝜖𝑟𝑟 = 3.1) and 0.0015 of a delta tangential are selected. this selection is more adequate for 5g applications [18]. for preliminary design, the following calculations for the single element dimensions are considered [19].the resonance length can be determined by: 𝐿𝐿𝑝𝑝 = 1 2𝑓𝑓𝑓𝑓�𝜀𝜀𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟 �𝜇𝜇𝑜𝑜𝜀𝜀𝑜𝑜 − 2∆𝐿𝐿 (1) where fr is the resonant frequency, c is the free-space velocity of light (3x108 m/s) and 𝜀𝜀𝑟𝑟 is the dielectric constant of substrate while: δ𝐿𝐿 = 0.412ℎ (𝜀𝜀𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟 + 0.3)( 𝑊𝑊𝑝𝑝 ℎ + 0.264) (𝜀𝜀𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟 − 0.258)( 𝑊𝑊𝑝𝑝 ℎ + 0.8) (2) where h is the substrate thickness and 𝜀𝜀𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟 = 𝜀𝜀𝑟𝑟 + 1 2 + 𝜀𝜀𝑟𝑟 − 1 2�1 + 12ℎ 𝑊𝑊𝑝𝑝 (3) now, to determine the patch width (wp), the following equation can be used: 𝑊𝑊𝑝𝑝 = 1 2𝑓𝑓𝑟𝑟�𝜇𝜇𝑜𝑜𝜀𝜀𝑜𝑜 � 2 𝜀𝜀𝑟𝑟 + 1 = 𝑐𝑐 2𝑓𝑓𝑟𝑟 � 2 𝜀𝜀𝑟𝑟 + 1 (4) at a certain resonance frequency fr, the priliminary values of length lp and width wp can be found and these valuse are considerd to analyise the input and output characteristics of this antenna using cst microwave studio prgramm. referred to figure 2, optimization of antenna characteristics is performed to find the optimum dimensions of the single element. these dimensions are illustrated in table 1 for single element. these dimensions are then used for the array design with optimum inter-element spacing. figure 2: the structure of the patch element. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 162 table 1: final dimensions of the patch element parameters value(mm) patch width (wp) 3.3 patch length (lp) 2.8 substrate width (wsub) 5.5116 substrate length (lsub) 5.0116 feeding width (wf) 0.13 feeding length (lf) 2 insertion feeding (yo) 0.832 patch thickness (t) 0.035 2.2 array design in a planar array, m × n elements are placed in a planar or rectangular grid where m represents no. of rows in the x-direction while n is no. of columns in the y-direction as shown in figure 3 [19]. figure 3: geometry of the uniform planar array[19]. the principle of multiplication pattern is used to determine the field pattern of the entire array. the array factor of planar array is given by [19]: 𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴(𝜃𝜃, 𝜑𝜑)𝑀𝑀×𝑁𝑁 = 𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝑥𝑥 𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝑦𝑦 𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴(𝜃𝜃, 𝜑𝜑)𝑀𝑀×𝑁𝑁 = � � 𝑤𝑤𝑚𝑚𝑚𝑚 𝑒𝑒𝑗𝑗� (𝑚𝑚−1)(𝜓𝜓𝑥𝑥+𝛽𝛽𝑥𝑥)+(𝑚𝑚−1)�𝜓𝜓𝑦𝑦+𝛽𝛽𝑦𝑦�� 𝑀𝑀 𝑚𝑚=1 𝑁𝑁 𝑚𝑚=1 (5) where: 𝜓𝜓𝑥𝑥 = 𝑘𝑘𝑑𝑑𝑥𝑥 sin 𝜃𝜃 cos 𝜑𝜑 and 𝜓𝜓𝑦𝑦 = 𝑘𝑘𝑑𝑑𝑦𝑦 sin 𝜃𝜃 sin 𝜑𝜑. 𝛽𝛽𝑥𝑥 = −𝑘𝑘𝑑𝑑𝑥𝑥 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝜃𝜃𝑑𝑑 𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑠𝑠𝜑𝜑𝑑𝑑 and 𝛽𝛽𝑦𝑦 = −𝑘𝑘𝑑𝑑𝑦𝑦 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝜃𝜃𝑑𝑑 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝜑𝜑𝑑𝑑 are phase delays which are used to steer the main beam to desired angle (𝜃𝜃𝑑𝑑, 𝜑𝜑𝑑𝑑), 𝑑𝑑𝑥𝑥, 𝑑𝑑𝑦𝑦 are the distances between elements in x & y directions, respectively. 𝑘𝑘 = 2𝜋𝜋 𝜆𝜆� is the propagation constant in free space, and 𝑤𝑤𝑚𝑚𝑚𝑚 is the complex weights of excitation current for the individual element. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 163 the total electric field for the actual planar microstrip patch antenna array can be obtained by multiplying the electric field of single patch element by the array factor as follow [20]: 𝐸𝐸𝑡𝑡𝑜𝑜𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡(𝜃𝜃, 𝜑𝜑) = 𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴(𝜃𝜃, 𝜑𝜑) ∗ 𝐸𝐸(𝜃𝜃, 𝜑𝜑) (6) where 𝐸𝐸(𝜃𝜃, 𝜑𝜑) = 𝐸𝐸𝜃𝜃(𝜃𝜃, 𝜑𝜑) + 𝐸𝐸𝜑𝜑(𝜃𝜃, 𝜑𝜑) (7) and � 𝐸𝐸𝜃𝜃 𝐸𝐸𝜑𝜑 � = � 𝑒𝑒𝜃𝜃𝑅𝑅 sin𝜓𝜓𝑎𝑎 𝜓𝜓𝑎𝑎 cos 𝜓𝜓𝑏𝑏 cos(kt cos 𝜃𝜃) sin 𝜑𝜑 𝑒𝑒𝜑𝜑𝑅𝑅 sin𝜓𝜓𝑎𝑎 𝜓𝜓𝑎𝑎 cos 𝜓𝜓𝑏𝑏 cos(kt cos 𝜃𝜃) cos 𝜑𝜑 cos 𝜃𝜃 � (8) � 𝜓𝜓𝑡𝑡 𝜓𝜓𝑏𝑏 � = � 𝑘𝑘𝑜𝑜 𝐿𝐿𝑝𝑝 2 𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑠𝑠𝜑𝜑𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝜃𝜃 𝑘𝑘𝑜𝑜 𝑊𝑊𝑝𝑝 2 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝜑𝜑𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝜃𝜃 � (9) 𝑅𝑅 = 𝑗𝑗� 𝐸𝐸𝑧𝑧 𝜋𝜋𝜋𝜋 �� 𝑒𝑒−𝑗𝑗𝑘𝑘𝑜𝑜𝑟𝑟 𝑓𝑓 � (10) the designed array was analyzed and simulated using cst microwave studio, and it consists of 8x8 patch elements (m=8, n=8) placed in a rectangular grid. figure 4 shows the studied array antenna with an inter-element distance of 0.5λ in both x & y directions. figure 4: geometry of 8x8 microstrip patch antenna array. 3. adaptive beamforming algorithm 3.1 beamforming assumption let the proposed array be composed of 𝑀𝑀 × 𝑁𝑁 elements, and let it receives d narrowband source signals sd(t) from desired users arriving at directions ((θ1, φ1), (θ2, φ2),…..,(θd, φd)) as shown in figure 1. the array also receives i narrowband source signals si(t) from undesired (or interference) users arriving at directions ((θ1,φ1),(θ2,φ2),.…, (θi,φi)). the desired users signal vector xd(t) can be represented as [21]: kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 164 𝑋𝑋𝐷𝐷(𝜋𝜋) = � 𝑎𝑎(𝜃𝜃𝑑𝑑, 𝜑𝜑𝑑𝑑) 𝐷𝐷 𝑑𝑑=1 𝑠𝑠𝑑𝑑(𝜋𝜋) (11) where 𝑎𝑎(𝜃𝜃𝑑𝑑, 𝜑𝜑𝑑𝑑) is the m × n array steering vector which represents the array response at direction (𝜃𝜃𝑑𝑑, 𝜑𝜑𝑑𝑑) which is given by: 𝑎𝑎(𝜃𝜃𝑑𝑑, 𝜑𝜑𝑑𝑑) = �𝑒𝑒−𝑗𝑗( (𝑚𝑚−1)𝛽𝛽𝑥𝑥+(𝑚𝑚−1)𝛽𝛽𝑦𝑦)� 1 ≤ 𝑚𝑚 ≤ 𝑀𝑀, 1 ≤ 𝑠𝑠 ≤ 𝑁𝑁 (12) where 𝛽𝛽𝑥𝑥 and 𝛽𝛽𝑦𝑦 were indicated in equation (5) .the desired users signal vector xd(t) of equation (10) can be rewritten as: 𝑋𝑋𝐷𝐷(𝜋𝜋) = 𝐴𝐴𝐷𝐷 𝑆𝑆(𝜋𝜋) (13) where ad is three dimensional matrixes (m × n × d) of the desired users signal direction vectors and is given by: 𝐴𝐴𝐷𝐷 = [𝑎𝑎(𝜃𝜃1, 𝜑𝜑1), 𝑎𝑎(𝜃𝜃2, 𝜑𝜑2), … … , 𝑎𝑎(𝜃𝜃𝐷𝐷, 𝜑𝜑𝐷𝐷)] (14) and 𝑆𝑆(𝜋𝜋) is the d × 1 matrix of desired users source waveform vector defined as: 𝑆𝑆(𝜋𝜋) = [𝑠𝑠1(𝜋𝜋) 𝑠𝑠2(𝜋𝜋) … 𝑠𝑠𝐷𝐷(𝜋𝜋)]𝑇𝑇 (15) we also let to define the undesired (or interference) users signal vector 𝑋𝑋𝐼𝐼(𝜋𝜋) as: 𝑋𝑋𝐼𝐼(𝜋𝜋) = 𝐴𝐴𝐼𝐼 𝐼𝐼(𝜋𝜋) (16) where 𝐴𝐴𝐼𝐼 is the three dimensional matrixes (m × n × i) of the undesired users signal direction vectors and is given by: 𝐴𝐴𝐼𝐼 = [𝑎𝑎(𝜃𝜃1, 𝜑𝜑1), 𝑎𝑎(𝜃𝜃2, 𝜑𝜑2), … … , 𝑎𝑎(𝜃𝜃𝐼𝐼, 𝜑𝜑𝐼𝐼)] (17) and 𝐼𝐼(𝜋𝜋)is the i × 1 matrix of undesired (or interference) user’s source waveform vector defined as: 𝐼𝐼(𝜋𝜋) = [𝑠𝑠1(𝜋𝜋) 𝑠𝑠2(𝜋𝜋) … 𝑠𝑠𝐼𝐼(𝜋𝜋)]𝑇𝑇 (18) the overall received signal vector x(t) is given by the superposition of the desired users signal vector xd(t), undesired (or interference) users signal vector xi(t), and an m×n vector n(t) which represents the white gaussian noise for each element of the designed array. hence, 𝑋𝑋(𝜋𝜋) can be written as: 𝑋𝑋(𝜋𝜋) = 𝑋𝑋𝐷𝐷(𝜋𝜋) + 𝑋𝑋𝐼𝐼(𝜋𝜋) + 𝑠𝑠(𝜋𝜋) (19) where 𝑠𝑠(𝜋𝜋) can be represented by matrix vector as: 𝑠𝑠(𝜋𝜋) = ⎣ ⎢ ⎢ ⎢ ⎡ 𝑠𝑠11 𝑠𝑠12 … 𝑠𝑠1𝑁𝑁 𝑠𝑠21 𝑠𝑠22 ⋯ 𝑠𝑠2𝑁𝑁 𝑠𝑠31 𝑠𝑠32 ⋯ 𝑠𝑠3𝑁𝑁 ⋮ ⋮ ⋯ ⋮ 𝑠𝑠𝑀𝑀1 𝑠𝑠𝑀𝑀2 ⋯ 𝑠𝑠𝑀𝑀𝑁𝑁⎦ ⎥ ⎥ ⎥ ⎤ 𝑇𝑇 (20) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 165 in the case that we consider all sources at the same time, the signal at the mnth element will be [5]: 𝑥𝑥𝑚𝑚𝑚𝑚(𝜋𝜋) = � 𝑎𝑎(𝜃𝜃𝑑𝑑, 𝜑𝜑𝑑𝑑) 𝐷𝐷 𝑑𝑑=1 𝑠𝑠𝑑𝑑(𝜋𝜋) + �𝑎𝑎(𝜃𝜃𝑖𝑖, 𝜑𝜑𝑖𝑖) 𝐼𝐼 𝑖𝑖=1 𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑖(𝜋𝜋) + 𝑠𝑠𝑚𝑚𝑚𝑚(𝜋𝜋) (21) then the total array output will be: 𝑦𝑦(𝜋𝜋) = � � 𝑤𝑤𝑚𝑚𝑚𝑚 𝑀𝑀 𝑚𝑚=1 𝑥𝑥𝑚𝑚𝑚𝑚(𝜋𝜋) 𝑁𝑁 𝑚𝑚=1 (22) 3.2 lms algorithm the lms algorithm is a method of adaptive weighted beamforming of radiant weights. the weight vector for the array is started with such that it is updated frequently for optimal weight. the signals received by these array elements are multiplied with the weight vector as demonstrated in figure 1. these weighted signals are added to obtain the beamformer output [22]. for the beamformer, the comparison between the output from the array antenna y(n) and the desired signal sd(n) that must be in similar to the reference signal, is strongly taken into consideration for the error minimization between the desired signal and the reference signal. at time n, where n (bold letter) is the overall number of snapshots occupied, the output y(n), is determined by a summation of the signals at the m × n antenna which is presented as [23]: 𝑌𝑌(𝐧𝐧) = 𝑊𝑊𝐻𝐻𝑋𝑋(𝐧𝐧) (23) where w represents the complex weights vector while 𝑋𝑋(𝐧𝐧) represents the received signal vector given in (19). therefore the error signal is expressed as: 𝑒𝑒(𝐧𝐧) = 𝑆𝑆𝑑𝑑(𝐧𝐧) − 𝑊𝑊𝐻𝐻𝑋𝑋(𝐧𝐧) (24) the beamformer normally uses the error signal 𝑒𝑒(𝐧𝐧) to adjust the complex weights vector w in an adaptive way to reduce the mean squared error (mse). using the steepest descent method the lms algorithm calculates and updates recursively the weights vector w. successive corrections to the weights vector w are achieved resulting in minimum mean square error. the weights vector w may be started arbitrarily and updated based on the given lms equation: 𝑊𝑊(𝐧𝐧 + 1) = 𝑊𝑊(𝐧𝐧) + 𝜇𝜇𝑋𝑋(𝐧𝐧) 𝑒𝑒∗(𝐧𝐧) (25) where 𝑊𝑊(𝐧𝐧 + 1) defined as the weights vector to be calculated at iteration n+1 while μ represents the size of the lms step that relates to the convergence rate, where describes how quickly the lms reaches a steady state. the size of an adaptive step must be within the range defined as [23]: 0 < 𝜇𝜇 < � 1 𝜆𝜆𝑚𝑚𝑡𝑡𝑥𝑥 � (26) where 𝜆𝜆𝑚𝑚𝑡𝑡𝑥𝑥 represents the maximum eigenvalues of the correlation matrix rxx which is given by following equation [23]: kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 166 𝑅𝑅𝑥𝑥𝑥𝑥 = 𝐸𝐸{𝑋𝑋(𝑠𝑠) 𝑋𝑋𝐻𝐻(𝑠𝑠)} (27) where e{.} is defined as ensemble average and (.)h represents the hermitian transposition operator. 4. results and discussion 4.1. simulation of single element and array the proposed antenna of dimensions given in table 1 has been constructed in cst microwave studio. the simulated results for the reflection coefficient are shown in figure 5. it can be seen that the antenna element can achieve the bandwidth from 28.209 ghz to 29.237 ghz for |s11|<-10db, for the resonant frequency of 28.7ghz. for the whole array of 8x8 elements, the same input characteristics (s11) are obtained. figure 4: the reflection coefficient of the single patch element. the radiation pattern of an antenna is important for determining the output characteristics which include beamdwidth, beam shape, directivity and radiated power. so in figure 6, 3d radiation pattern of single patch antenna element is plotted. figure 7, shows the radiation pattern for 8x8 array elements with a uniform amplitude and phase. the main lobe is more directive than single element pattern. figure 6: far-field radiation pattern for single element. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 167 figure 7: far-field radiation pattern for the uniform array. 4.2. simulation of adaptive beamforming to evaluate the performance of adaptive beamforming that is using the lms algorithms to form the pattern when the smart antenna system uses a planar antenna array in its input, we consider a planar antenna array with 8×8 elements and half-wavelength element spacing in x and y directions (dx=dy=λ/2). the impinging desired signal on the array is supposed from the one direction 𝜃𝜃𝑑𝑑1 = 45 𝑜𝑜, 𝜑𝜑𝑑𝑑1 = 30 𝑜𝑜. two interferers’ signals are supposed to impinge the array from the directions 𝜃𝜃𝑖𝑖1 = 10 𝑜𝑜, 𝜑𝜑𝑖𝑖1 = 20 𝑜𝑜, and 𝜃𝜃𝑖𝑖2 = 30 𝑜𝑜, 𝜑𝜑𝑖𝑖2 = 10 𝑜𝑜, in the white gaussian noise channel. the iteration number has been set to 500 iterations and the step size of the lms algorithm is chosen as 𝜇𝜇 = 0.001. the simulation based on matlab program showed the possibility of forming the radiation pattern in the angle of the desired direction and suppressing the angles of undesired directions as follows. figure 8 represents the beamforming pattern at the phi-plane for a constant thetaangle (𝜃𝜃𝑑𝑑1 = 45 𝑜𝑜). the x-axis shows the phi-plane angle (in degrees), while, the y-axis shows the total normalized radiation pattern electric field. the figure also shows that the main lobe of radiation is shaped towards the desired angle 𝜑𝜑𝑑𝑑1 = 30 𝑜𝑜, while the lower side lobes appear in other directions. from the result, the hpbw (φaz) is approximately equal to 20o. figure 8: radiation pattern for 8x8 antenna array in phi (azimuth)-plane. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 168 figure 9 shows the radiation pattern at the theta-plane for a constant phi-angle (𝜑𝜑𝑑𝑑1 = 30 𝑜𝑜), where the main lobe of radiation is at the desired theta-angle (𝜃𝜃𝑑𝑑1 = 45 𝑜𝑜). the x-axis shows the theta-plane angle (in degrees), while the y-axis shows the total normalized electric field. the hpbw (θel) is approximately equal to 18o, and the array directivity (d) is approximately equal to 21.7db. figure 10 illustrates the progression of amplitudes and phases of the feeding currents that are used to excite the planar array elements. figure 9: radiation pattern for 8x8 antenna array in theta (elevation) plane. figure 10: (a) the distribution of the amplitude. (b) the distribution of the phase of the excitation currents for planar array elements. using the weights of exciting current to each array element, that obtained by the lms algorithm, the antenna is capable to direct narrow beams towards the desired user. the complex weights consist of amplitude and phase which are manually fed to the cst simulator. the array is therefore capable of steering narrow beams towards desired users at the exact resonant frequency as shown in figure 11. it is found that the antenna gain is 20.9 db. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 169 figure 11: 3d radiation pattern of the 8x8 antenna array of different weights with steered main beam at angles. figure 12 shows the mean square error (mse) related to the iteration number, it is observed that the value of the mse decreases while the amount of iterations increases. it is noted that the lms algorithm needs 20 iterations to reach a minimum error value between the reference and actual outputs, and then the algorithm stabilizes. furthermore, figure 13 shows the obtained array output and the desired signal tracks after 20 iterations. figure 12: mean square error vs no. of iteration. figure 13: comparison of desired signal and actual array output kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 170 finally, to obtain the steering radiation pattern, figure 14 shown that the total field radiation pattern capable of steering in the phi (azimuth)-plane from 0o to 180o at the constant thetaangle (θd=40º). therefore, it could be needed two sectors at the base station to cover 360o. figure 15 also shows the total field radiation pattern coverage at the theta (elevation)-plane for a constant phi-angle (φd=40o). it is observed that there is a covering angle of 60o in the elevation plan without beam interference. figure 14: radiation pattern for phi (azimuth)-plan. figure 15: radiation pattern for theta (elevation)-plan. . kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 171 5. conclusion the present paper has discussed the possibility of designing a planar microstrip patch antenna array based on adaptive beamforming of lms algorithm and it can be used for the smart antenna system. an array of 8×8 microstrip antenna elements has been designed to operate at 28.7ghz for the 5g networks with an inter-element spacing of 0.5λ. a considerable bandwidth of this antenna was over 1.2 ghz and a gain of about 21 db. the main beam of the studied antenna can be steered towards the required user in the desired direction of (θd, φd) using the beamforming of lms algorithm. the program of cst microwave studio has been utilized to optimizing the design of antenna while matlab software program has been used to obtain array patterns and weights factors of amplitude and phases for the exciting currents for each array element. the designed antenna array can scan an angle from 0o to 180o in phiplane at constant theta-angle which is suitable for one sector base station; therefore, two sectors of this array at the base station could satisfy the smart mobile system. references [1] t. varum, a. ramos, and j. n. matos, “planar microstrip series-fed array for 5g applications with beamforming capabilities,” 2018 ieee mtt-s int. microw. work. ser. 5g hardw. syst. technol. imws-5g 2018. [2] m. jain and r. p. agarwal, “capacity & coverage enhancement of wireless communication using smart antenna system,” proceeding ieee 2nd int. conf. adv. electr. electron. information, commun. bioinformatics, ieee aeeicb 2016, usa, pp. 310–313, 2016. [3] c. a. balanis and p. i. ioannides, introduction to smart antennas, a publication in the morgan &claypool publishers’ series, vol. 2, no. 1. 2007. [4] i. a. haji et al., “design and optimization of linear array antenna based on the analysis of direction of arrival (doa) estimation and beamforming algorithms,” in international conference on computer and communication engineering, iccce’10, kuala lumpur, malaysia, no. may, pp. 11–13, 2010. [5] f. alwafie, a. bousafe, and a. aboubaker, “smart antenna system simulation for an 4g wireless applications,” in international conference on electrical and electronics engineering (iceee’15) july, harare (zimbabwe), pp. 36–39, 2015. [6] m. alssarn, m. younes, and c. moussa, “adaptive beamforming for smart antenna system using planar antenna array”,int. comp. science. trends. technol (ijcst), vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 40–44, 2019. [7] a. dalli, l. zenkouar, e. f. adiba, m. habibi, and s. bri, “circular array with central element for smart antenna,” electr. electron. eng., vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 86–95, 2013. [8] s. w. varade and k. d. kulat, “robust algorithms for doa estimation and adaptive beamforming for smart antenna application,” in 2009 2nd international conference on emerging trends in engineering and technology, icetet 2009, nagpur, pp. 1195–1200, 2009. [9] t. b. lavate, “performance analysis of music and esprit doa estimation algorithms for adaptive array smart antenna in mobile communication signals induced on various antenna elements in such way that the main beam directing towards the desired signal and forming the nul,” int. j., no. 3, pp. 152–158, 2010. [10] s. r. prasad and s. a. patil, “implementation of lms algorithm for system identification,” 2016 int. conf. signal inf. process. iconsip 2016, 2017. [11] l. c. godara, “smart antennas,” smart antennas, by crc press llc ,pp. 1–449, 2004. [12] b. widrow, p. e. mantey, l. j. griffiths, and b. b. goode, “adaptive antenna systems,” adapt. antennas wirel. commun., vol. 55, no. 12, pp. 3–19, 2009. [13] x. kong, j. jin, and l. zhao, “design and analysis of the new rectangular planar smart antenna,” in 7th international conference on wireless communications, networking and mobile computing, wicom 2011, 2011, pp. 8–11, 2011. [14] e. fadl adiba, a. dalli, and s. bri, “circular patch array for smart antenna in c-band,” j. wirel. netw. commun., vol. 2, no. 6, pp. 175–183, 2013. [15] a. p. k. k.meena alias jeyanthi, “modeling and simulation of microstrip patch array for smart antennas,” int. j. eng. ije, vol. 3, no. 6, pp. 662–670, 2015. [16] a. m. f. mercy, “design and simulation of single patch and linear array ( 1x3 ) for smart antenna applications,” int. j. electron. commun. eng., no. march, pp. 208–212, 2017. [17] c. supratha and s. robinson, “design and analysis of microstrip patch antenna for wlan application,” proc. 2018 int. conf. curr. trends towar. converging technol. icctct 2018, coimbatore, india,vol. 17, 2018. [18] l. aluigi, g. orecchini, and l. larcher, “a 28 ghz scalable beamforming system for 5g automotive connectivity: an integrated patch antenna and power amplifier solution,” 2018 ieee mtt-s int. microw. work. ser. 5g hardw. syst. technol. imws-5g 2018, vol. 1, no. c, pp. 1–3, 2018. [19] j. w. & sons, “balanis c.a. antenna theory: analysis and desing.” 3rd ed. new york: wiley, 2005. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 172 [20] a. m. jassim and h. d. hristov, “cavity feed technique for slot-coupled microstrip patch array antenna,” iee proc.-microw. antennas propag., vol. 142, no. 6, pp. 452-456, 1995. [21] r. m. shubair, m. a. al-qutayri, and j. m. samhan, “a setup for the evaluation of music and lms algorithms for a smart antenna system,” j. commun., vol. 2, no. spl.iss. 4, pp. 71–77, 2007. [22] d. m. m. rahaman, m. hossain, and m. rana, “least mean square ( lms ) for smart antenna,” univers. j. commun. netw., vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 16–21, 2013. [23] r. evangilin beulah and na. m. vigneshwari, “design and simulation of smart antenna array using adaptive beam forming method,” certif. int. j. eng. sci. innov. technol., vol. 9001, no. 6, pp. 2319–5967, 2008. 1. introduction 2. antenna design 2.1 single element design 2.2 array design 3. adaptive beamforming algorithm 3.1 beamforming assumption 3.2 lms algorithm 4. results and discussion 4.1. simulation of single element and array 4.2. simulation of adaptive beamforming  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 5 – special issue: 4th international conference on the health and medical science : medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) doi: 10.24017/science.2020.ichms2020.19 article history: covid-19 is the deadly respiratory disease of the century caused by new type unknown origin coronavirus. the recent effort of the word researchers is toward finding the origin of the virus. the current study investigated the extent of molecular similarity and divergence between sarscov2 and other related coronavirus. an attempt has been made to investigate the epidemiological study of this new contagious virus using molecular is the sars-cov2 evolved in human being: a prospective genetic analysis salvatore dimonte paywast jamal jalal biomolecular lab biology department barletta (bt) 76121 college of science italy university of sulaimani salvatore.dimonte@gmail.com sulaimani, iraq paywast.jalal@univsul.edu.iq hiwa abdulrahman ahmad safa bakr karim health research center anesthesia department faculty of sciences technical college of health university of koya sulaimani polytechnic university koya, iraq sulaimani, iraq hiwa.abdulrahman@koyauniversity.org kamal.rashid@spu.edu.iq taib ahmed hama soor kamal jalal rashid medical laboratory department anesthesia department technical college of health technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq taib.hama-soor@spu.edu.iq kamal.rashid@spu.edu.iq salar ibrahim ali muhammad babakir-mina nursing department medical laboratory department technical college of health technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq salar.ali@spu.edu.iq muhammed.babakir-mina@spu.edu.iq francesco greco department of intensive care medicine and neonatology university children's hospital zurich, switzerland grecofnc@hotmail.it mailto:salvatore.dimonte@gmail.com mailto:paywast.jalal@univsul.edu.iq mailto:muhammed.babakir-mina@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 169 received: 21 september 2020 accepted: 26 september 2020 biology techniques. the phylogenetic trees for all human coronaviruses with the novel coronavirus have been built using a several complete amino acid sequences of the four known structural proteins, s (spike), e (envelope), m (membrane), and n (nucleocapsid). the result of the study revealed that the sars-cov2 is related to human sars-cov isolated from different countries very cloely, especially those strains recovered from china in recent times, 2020. the evolutionary changes observed in the inserted 23 amino acids in the rna binding domain (rbd) of the coronvirus spike glycoprotein which cannot be detected in any other human coronavirus. moreover, the 2019-ncov is not closely related to other alpha, beta and gamma human coronavirus, including mers-cov. the current study concluded that 2019-ncov is more likely believed to originated from sars-cov. the probability is more vital to be originated from the strain isolated in china in 2020, which is coincident with the spraed of covid-19 in the same country. the phyloepidemiologic analyses suggested that the coronaviruses are circulating in human hosts evolving gradually by times in response to the different environment stimuli facing the virus inside the host in different geographical areas. furthermore, the analysis showed the flow of transmission, and evolutionary changes of sarscov2 which may be directed from the transmission of sars-cov from human to bat and pangolin then jumped to human again in the crowded market wuhan city in china. keywords: sars-cov2, sars-cov, mers-cov, covid-19 and 2019-ncov copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the enveloped betacoronavirus possesses a single-stranded rna with a positive polarity, and they are hosted in the mammals [1]. before the covid-19 outbreaks, only four strains of betacoronavirus, including sars-cov, mers-cov, oc43 and hku1 had been reported to infect human and cause severe pneumonia [1]. since december 2019, another strain of betacoronavirus named sars-cov2 detected to cause severe human pneumonia named as coronavirus infectious disease-2019 (covid-19) [2, 3]. the new coronavirus has been reported in a wet market in wuhan city which is located in hubei province, central china [4]. since its appearance, it causes a lockdown with the infection of over 4800000 people in all over the world and recording mortality of more than 300000 people till april 2020 and unfortunately this record increase on the daily bases. according to the genomic analysis of some published paper, it is suggested that bat is the origin of sars-cov2, and pangolin is an intermediate mammal's host [5-7]. according to the medical information, the initially infected cases were related to the seafood market in one of china city,wuhan c [8, 9] transmitted from animals to human [10]. later, the human to human transmission was reported even in peoples whom no previous contact with animals or even the market was documented [11-13]. however, other researcher argued that the wet market in china was not the only source of sars-cov2 transmission to humans [14, 15]. because the market closed in the very beginning of raising the covid-19, so this makes the identification kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 170 of the intermediate host difficult. due to this reason, sars-cov2 origin and transmission are still debatable. four structural proteins encoded by the genome of sars-cov2 which participating in different viral processes, for instance, formation of the particle. the immunogenicity rate to tlymphocyte cell is higher in the structural proteins than non-structural proteins [16]. all the coronaviruses have these structural proteins, s (spike), e (envelope), m (membrane), and n (nucleocapsid). [17, 18]. the spike glycoprotein composed of two domains s1 and s2, which both enhance the efficient binding to the ace2 (angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 receptor) in the host cell membrane [19-21]. after the internalization of sars-cov2 in the endosome, a sequence of conformational change in the spike domains lead to activation of the membrane fusion within the endosome [21-24]. the small and integral envelop (e) protein believed to have an essential role in the viral life cycle of the virus from assembly to envelope generation, and pathogenesis. the e protein act as an ion-channel viroporin and can interact with the host cell proteins and other coronavirus proteins [25]. the membrane (m) protein composed of three transmembrane domain that shapes of the virion, enhances membrane curvature, and reachjes to the nucleocapsid for binding [26]. during virion assembly, the positive-strand rna of the virus packaged by the nucleoprotein (orf9a) into a helical ribonucleocapsid (rnp) by binding of the viral genome to the membrane protein [27]. moreover, the nucleoprotein enhance viral replication and transcription. in the current study, complete structural proteins of the sars-cov2 were retrieved from ncbi data base for a reason for the analysis of the evolution and transmission of this novel coronavirus since it is appearance. we aimed to explore the genetic variation in the structural proteins, infer the evolutionary flow in comparison to the previous and different isolates of the sars-cov2 in different countries, and lastly, indicate the history of transmission to estimate to find the hypothesis or real origin of the virus. 2. methods and materials the multiple sequence alignment was performed based on the amino acid using multalin software [28]to show the variation in the structural proteins of sars-cov2 in comparison to sars-cov. the start codon of each sequence of the structural protein was gained from ncbi graphics of the following selected sequence, sars-cov2 [nc045512.2 (wuhan-hu1chn/2019/first isolate), mt152824.1 (usa/2020), lc528233.1 (japan/2020), mt240479.1 (pakistan/2020) and mn996531.1 (china/2020)]; sars-cov [kf514397.1 (usa/2009), ab257344.1 (germany/2006), mk062184.1 (usa/2018), mk062180.1 (usa/2018), ay463060.1 (china/2004), nc004718.3 (canada/2018) and kf514422.1 (usa/2014). different strains of human coronavirus were downloaded from the ncbi database (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) to characterize the evolution of each structural protein. the accession numbers of the sequences were shown in figure 1, 2, 3 and 4 respectively for the spike protein (68 sequences), nucleocapsid protein (61 sequences), membrane protein (61 sequences) and envelop protein (62 protein). a typical local alignment search engine was used to check the percentage of similarity (https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi). the duplication sequences were excluded to avoid the mistake of calculating the rate of similar amino acid sequences variations. maximum likelihood (ml) methods were used to create a phylogenetic tree. generalized time-reversible plus gamma distribution and invariant sites (+g+i) has been utilized for ml trees rebuilding using megax for all protein sequences that their accession numbers available in the figures. the muscle software was used to further confirm and building the last trees of the protein sequences were aligned with, the phylogenetic tree was designed using treedyn and phyml (www.phylogeny.fr). 3. results 1) most sars-cov2 variation located in the spike region the multiple sequence analysis [supplementary data] of the selected sequences showed that http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi) kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 171 most variations in the sars-cov2 located in the receptor-binding site in the spike region, followed by the nucleocapsid proteins when compared to the sars-cov strains [table-1]. out of 1277 amino acids in the spike region, there were 225 amino acids substituted and interestingly 23 amino acid which is approximately 1.8% of the total amino acids in the spike inserted in the receptor-binding site. the sars-cov2 envelop consist of 76 amino acid which only three amino acids substituted and one deleted in comparison to sars-cov. the membrane (m) protein is followed by the spike protein in the high percentage of substituted proteins with 7.2% substitution and insertion of one amino acid. the nucleocapsid of sarscov2 composed of 422 amino acid which 25 amino acid substituted and three amino acid is deleted. the lowest number of amino acid deletion and substitution observed in envelop of the sars-cov2. table 1: the percentage of the substituted, inserted and deleted amino acids in the structural proteins of sars-cov2 in comparison to sars-cov. structural protein no. of amino acid deletion (%) substitution (%) insertion (%) spike 1277 4 (0.3%) 225 (17.6%) 23 (1.8%) envelop 76 1 (1.3%) 3 (3.9%) none membrane 222 none 16 (7.2%) 1 (0.45%) nucleocapsid 422 3 (0.7%) 25 (5.9%) none 2) sars-cov2 is in close relation to sars-cov based on their structural proteins the phyloepidemiologic analysis showed that most strains found in the ncbi database when compared to different isolates of human coronavirus are in a high percentage of similarity to human sars-cov. the four structural proteins of human coronavirus were compared separately. in each tree, all the isolates divided into three cluster a, b and c. the phylogenetic tree of the spike protein was analyzed 1277 amino acids of 36 different isolate of sars-cov2 with 8 isolates of sars-cov, 9 isolates of mers-cov, 9 isolates of oc43, 4 isolates of nl63, 1 isolate of each hku1 and 229e. all the strains are isolated in different countries and years. as it is apparent from the tree [figure 1], the strains divided into three clusters a, b and c. the alpha coronaviruses (nl63 and 229e) are grouped in cluster a. group b is a relatively more extensive group of different beta-human coronaviruses and mers-cov. the group b is divided into two branches; one is including the mers-cov and the other one gathering oc43 and hku1. group c consists the largest group of the tree, including the novel sars-cov2 and previously isolated sars-cov. the human coronavirus in group c has a high similarity in their sequence of the spike region. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 172 figure 1: phylogenetic tree of the sars-cov2 (spike protein) with other human coronaviruses. the phylogenetic tree was buit using the maximum likelihood method . the sequences of the spike were aligned with muscle, and phyml and treedyn were used to design the phylogenetic tree (www.phylogeny.fr). the values of different support branches are indicated in red color. the nucleocapsid tree analyses 422 amino acids in different selected human coronavirus. as showed in figure 2, the tree divided into two main clades. one including group a with both hku1 and oca43 human coronaviruses with the similarity of 66%. the other clade also divided into two branches, including both group b and c. group b gathering some strains of oca43 with nl63 and 229e human coronavirus. interestingly, the close similarity between the sars-cov2, sars-cov and mers-cov could be observed in group c with the similarity of 96%. the novel coronaviruses are less closly related to mers-cov than sarscov based on the analysis of the nucleocapsid amino acids. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 173 figure 2: phylogenetic tree analysis of the sars-cov2 (nucleocapsid proteins) with other human coronaviruses. the phylogenetic tree was buit using the maximum likelihood method . the sequences of the spike were aligned with muscle, and phyml and treedyn were used to design the phylogenetic tree (www.phylogeny.fr). the values of different support branches are indicated in red color. the comparison of the 222 amino acid of the membrane (m) showed the two major clades among different strains of the human coronaviruses. one of the clades including group a of both 229e and nl63 human coronaviruses. the other clade, including both group b and group c. group b including the oca43 human coronaviruses strains. all the human beta coronaviruses are gathered in group c including the novel coronavirus sars-cov2, sarscov and mers-cov. as the comparison of spike and nucleocapsid, the amino acid of the membrane of the sars-cov2 strains is with a close similarity to sars-cov. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 174 figure 3: phylogenetic tree of the sars-cov2 (membrane protein) with other human coronaviruses. the phylogenetic tree was buit using the maximum likelihood method . the sequences of the spike were aligned with muscle, and phyml and treedyn were used to design the phylogenetic tree (www.phylogeny.fr). the values of different support branches are indicated in red color. the envelop consists of 76 amino acids and the comparison between sars-cov2 with the other sars-cov showed the lowest variation among the novel coronaviruses. however, the phylogenetic analysis revealed that sars-cov2 strains are located in one of the major clades and belonging to group a. this group consist of both sars-cov2 and sars-cov with a high degree of similarity (93%) in the envelope region. moreover, this clade includes group b too, which gathering mers-cov, hku1 and oca43 with a similarity of 77%. the other clade includes group c, which both nl63 and 229e human coronavirus. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 175 figure 4: phylogenetic tree of the sars-cov2 (envelop protein) with other human coronaviruses. the phylogenetic tree was buit using the maximum likelihood method . the sequences of the spike were aligned with muscle, and phyml and treedyn were used to design the phylogenetic tree (www.phylogeny.fr). the values of different support branches are indicated in red color. 4. discussion covid-19 is the pandemic severe acute respiratory disease, and it causes high morbidity and mortality rates. the origin of this novel coronavirus is still unrecognized, so it is vital to understand the epidemiology of the 2019-ncov. the bioinformatics tools have been used successfully as a powerful tool to analyze the infectious disease outbreak, transmission and understanding the pathogen [15]. in this report, we aimed to use this tool to understand the novel coronavirus real origin and to show the most frequent variation in the structural proteins. many strains of human coronavirus used for the reason of the phyloepidemiological analysis based on the full amino acids of the structural proteins; s (spike), e (envelope), m (membrane), and n (nucleocapsid). of human coronaviruses in various countries and times. our analysis showed that most variations located in the spike region of the sars-cov2 when kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 176 compared to sars-cov. moreover, the phylogenetic tree revealed that all the selected strains of the novel coronavirus are gathered together in one clade, and they are in close relation to the sars-cov. according to the bioinformatics analysis, the origin of the sars-cov2 is human sars-cov. as it is evident that sars-cov2 is an rna virus which makes its replication machinery inside the host cell [26] and it originates from bat and pangolin [7, 29]. the previous human sars-cov (2003) and mers-cov (2012) were also originated from the bat [30-32]. the spillover of these viruses from bat to human is believed to be related to the high mutation rate in the rna viruses which make an error in the new progeny of the viruses due to the rna dependent rna polymerase that does not have the proofreading activity [26, 33]. the high similarity between sars-cov2 and sras-cov in their structural regions give support to our hypothesis that this novel coronavirus is originated from the sars-cov. we believed that the scenario of the transmission of the sars-cov2 is that a sequential of antigenic shift and drift occurred in the sars-cov rna in the bat then transmitted to pangolin to give some other antigenic capability for binding to the host receptors. then indirect transmission occurred to human due to viral contamination of subject or asymptomatic infected person [12]. our analysis sequence data revealed that the high mutation rate occurred in the spike region of sars-cov2 in comparison to sars-cov. any evolution and mutation happen in this protein may change the ability of the virus to attack different hosts and even with different strengths. the virus uses the spike region for binding to the specific receptor in the host cell [34]. therefore, the high mutation rate in this region is to enhance the entry and escaping from the immunity of the host [35]. 5. conclusion the genetic evolution of the collected data demonstrated that sars-cov2 most likely originated from sars-cov infected bat through sequential antigenic shift and drift in the rna genome. this may give a clue that human coronaviruses can evolve to new strains of the virus, such as the 2019-ncov by passing through different hosts and bypassing times. however, the postulate of originating 2019-ncov from other human coronaviruses (alpha, beta and gamma coronavirus) is weaker because they are less closely related to the 2019ncov. this fining will help to find the possible origin of the virus, which is essential for infection control policy. reference [1] j. cui, f. li, and z. l. shi, "origin and evolution of pathogenic coronaviruses," nat rev microbiol, vol. 17, pp. 181-192, mar 2019. 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[34] w. tai, l. he, x. zhang, j. pu, d. voronin, s. jiang, et al., "characterization of the receptor-binding domain (rbd) of 2019 novel coronavirus: implication for development of rbd protein as a viral attachment inhibitor and vaccine," cell mol immunol, mar 19 2020. [35] x. ou, y. liu, x. lei, p. li, d. mi, l. ren, et al., "characterization of spike glycoprotein of sars-cov-2 on virus entry and its immune cross-reactivity with sars-cov," nat commun, vol. 11, pp. 1620. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-15562-9, mar 27 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(20)30154-9 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(20)30183-5 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2020.02.058 http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmii.2020.3.022 https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.22.914952 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-15562-9 1. introduction 1) most sars-cov2 variation located in the spike region 2) sars-cov2 is in close relation to sars-cov based on their structural proteins 5. conclusion envelop membrane nucleocapsid  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq the molecular diagnosis protocols of new coronavirus (covid-19); specificity and sensitivity an overview abdullah ahmed hama othman abdulrahman mohammed medical laboratory department medical laboratory science technical college of health research center technical college of applied science in halabja research center sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq abdullah.hama@spu.edu.iq othman.mohammed@spu.edu.iq fatima mahmud ali osama hamid shareef nursing department medical laboratory science sulaimani technical institute research center technical college of applied science in halabja research center sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq fatimah.ali@spu.edu.iq osama.shareef@spu.edu.iq sardar muhammad wli sabiha sharif nursing department medical laboratory department technical college of health research center technical college of health research center sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq sardar.weli@spu.edu.iq sabiha_sh@yahoo.com syamand ahmed qadir medical laboratory science technical college of applied science in halabja research center sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, kurdistan-iraq syamand.qadir@spu.edu.iq article info abstract special issue on coronavirus ( covid19) doi: 10.24017/covid.2 article history: received 19 april 2020 accepted 22 april 2020 acute respiratory tract infection is a common public health concern worldwide a new emerging contagious virus (covid2019) or sarsc2 causing a pandemic pneumonia outbreak, the main transmission route of this virus is through droplets from respiratory made during sneezing or coughing of infected people like the recent viral infection of severe acute respiratory syndrome (sars-cov1) and the middle east respiratory syndrome (mers). many epidemiological factors have a crucial role in promoting the mailto:abdullah.hama@spu.edu.iq mailto:fatimah.ali@spu.edu.iq mailto:osama.shareef@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 14 keywords: covid-19, new coronavirus, diagnostic methods, dna marker, respiratory viral infection. transmission of the covid-2019 that makes the disease as an emerging and global alarming against this new coronavirus. early diagnosis of the etiological agents is critical for appropriate management, controlling plan, protection, and treatment. the new outbreak of covid-19 can be detected by different molecular protocols. quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qpcr) is the recommended technique used with varied sensitivity due to primers variation and specimen type. the reliable, high specific and sensitive diagnosis protocols are necessary for an emerging control plan. this study will review and explore the most available methods of molecular identification and primers for the diagnosis of the new coronavirus (covid-19). this review will also open the new clues to develop and select appropriate diagnosis panel and specific primers for new coronavirus. in conclusion of this review, the rna dependent rna polymerase (rdrp) and rdrp/hel protocols will be valuable to distinguish the covid-19 from the sars-cov and the other respiratory viral pathogens. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction seafood wholesale market in wuhan, china, caused an alarming contagious primary atypical viral of pneumonia among people that broke out in december 2019. the outbreak then spread over china and other countries quickly. the new coronavirus (covid-19) was firstly detected and confirmed by chinese health authorities in january 2020. the virus was identified as an animal origin disease (zoonotic virus), similar to the mers and sars coronaviruses [1]. coronaviruses are belonging to the family coronaviridae, order nidovirales and subgenus sarbecovirus, the researchers described seven types of coronavirus (covid19) is the new one of this cluster. [2]. the viral genome of the virus can encode four structural proteins, spike (s) protein is the one of the important protein which is restricted to a special receptor called angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ace2) and arbitrates in viral attachments to the host cell and viral infection[3]. recent epidemiological data indicate that the covid-19 may a genetically modified virus of bat coronavirus. nevertheless, this concept needs to be approved, and the potential reservoir or intermede host(s) are still unknown [4],[5]. over the last two decades, the two beta-coronaviruses; sars-cov-1 [6,7,] and mers-cov, [8,9] have infected more than 10 000 cumulative cases with relatively high mortality rates of 10%, and 37% respectively, while, fortunately, the most human cases of the coronavirus are mild. the novel virus (covid-19) has been designated in february 2020, by the world health organization, and this virus is pointed out as sars-cov-2, initially was known as 2019n-cov [10]. due to the genetic identity of the sars-cov1, the virus was named as sars-cov2, while it has differences in the disease spectrum and route of transmission [11]. it is not known well how the virus can spread among people in a short period, but it is recognized that the virus can transmit in chains involving several links. the droplets of the respiratory produced during sneezing or coughing from an infected person are the main route of transmission similar to sars and mers [12]. the viral genome (rna) was isolated from respiratory tract specimens of asymptomatic individuals [13, 14], and the transmission of the virus during the incubation period among asymptomatic individuals have also been described [15, 16]. also, the genetic matter (rna) has been isolated from respiratory droplets, saliva, kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 15 and other body fluids, such as blood and fecal specimens that may contain the infectious virus. it is still not proved that the virus can transmit through the placenta to the fetus during pregnancy or through breastfeeding, and there is also no enough information about the transmission of the coronavirus through, seminal and vaginal discharges during delivery [17,18]. the severity of the covid-19 infection ranging from mild to severe pneumonia leading to dry cough and breath shorten. the who indicated the mild infections recover in around two weeks, while it takes three to six weeks for severe infections [6]. the molecular diagnostic protocols (qpcr) are the most specific and sensitive, the genome of the covid-19 is a single strand rna, so the rt-pcr is applied for identification of the virus in suspected patients [19]. serological testing for the covid-19 diagnosis is yet in development [20]. the number of covid-19 is still increasing worldwide. travelers from china had an essential role in virus spreading through the word. the epidemiological data indicate the morbidity and mortality rate of the new coronavirus has dramatically increased [21]. the most cases of the covid-19 were recorded among age groups of 30 to 79 years old which is countered about 87% of cases, 1% of cases were from children younger than 9 years, aged, 10 to 19 years old were only counted 1%, but higher percentage (3%) were aged more than 79 years, the male to female ratio was approximately equal. the infection rate among males was 51%, but49% for females, and 4% of the human cases were recorded among health care workers. compering to the adults, children were infected much less, and the cases reported among children were in family clusters or those children have frequent contact with a suspected person[22],[ 23]. 2. methods and materials to access the diagnosis techniques of covid-19 around the world, and compare the results of each protocol we reached systematically the scientific medical software such as science direct, pubmed, the web of science, google scholar and scopus. the review included the most articles reporting diagnostic methods of 2019-ncov, including physical examination, serology, ct-scan, serology, molecular diagnosis, and real-time pcr. the systematic search was achieved using the specific key terms: (covid-19 diagnosis, molecular diagnosis of the virus, sars-cov diagnosis method, mers-cov diagnosis techniques, and specific primer for coronavirus detection). the most related published articles with new coronavirus diagnosis from december 2019 to april 2020 were included. 3. results 3.1 clinical manifestation the infected cases of the covid-19 have some important symptoms including, fatigue, fever, dyspnea, muscle ache, dry cough, and nasal congestion, or runny nose [4] [24]. despite these common symptoms, the researchers claimed that fever by covid-19 is one of the basic symptoms of viral infection [25]. 3.2 physical observation the coronavirus disease has some phases regarding presenting the symptoms that include: mild, moderate, severe, and critical phases. the patients that have mild and moderate symptoms may not show clinical signs, whereas, patients with critical and severe situations may have respiratory symptoms such as restlessness, dyspnea (shortness of breath) [25]. 3.3 imaging examination ct scan was strongly suggested by the researchers and physicians because of the imaging way findings the exact area of the infection in the chest and follows the patients while commended treatment course is taken. the imaging results will differ with the patient's immunity, scanning time, age, disease stage. the imaging appearance of lesions appears (dominant) distribution of kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 16 lesions in the vascular bundles of the lungs, (quantity) for example number of lesions, (shape) nodular or grid-like, or (density) interlobular septal the bronchial wall thickening [25]. when the illness proceeded to develop, the subsegmental areas of consolidation and bilateral multiple lobular might appear on a chest ct scan. importantly, the chest ct check showed up before the positive for the rt-pcr test in a few cases. lungs of old infected persons are more likely diffuse and broad imaging than those of the more youthful persons [26], [27]. the lungs of mature patients appeared more diffuse and broad imaging than those of the more youthful patients. also, huang and colleagues explained that all patients (41 patients) had chest ct images they have abnormalities in the lung on admission. later on, the ct images of their chest appeared bilateral ground-glass opacity, while the consolidation had been resolved [24]. among 1014 patients, 888 (88%) showed positive by ct scan, while 601 (59%) of them detected by rtpcr, this finding suggests that ct-scan may be used as a fast and more sensitive diagnosis technique of the covid-19 [28]. 3.4 some routine laboratory findings some laboratory tests are also present for the identification of the covid-19 infection includes c-reactive protein (crp), kidney and liver function, myoglobin, myocardial enzyme, esr, procalcitonin (pct), d-dimer, blood gas analysis, lactate, general urine parameters, tuberculosis subgroups, inflammatory factors (il-6, il-10, tnf, coagulation image, anti-acid staining, complement [26]. at the beginning of the illness, wbc is decreased or stays at normal range, when both lymphocyte and/or cd8 t and cd4 cells are decreased. in these cases, it is generally recommended that further blood analysis after 3 days. [25]. 3.5 serological test n protein of the sarsr-cov rp3 which has %90 similarity with covid-19 protein was developed as an antigen for sarsr-cov for igm and igg (elisa) assay [29]. the serological test yet in development to be highly specific and sensitive for covid-19 detection. serological diagnosis is essential for the epidemiological study and in cases where rna isolation is difficult due to less amount of specimens or degradation of the virus genome. 3.6 molecular diagnosis and pcr the chinese researchers were capable to identify a viral nucleic acid (rna) from a patient within a time on jan 2020 and they shared a sequence of the viral genome with national institutes of health (genbank) database[30]. upon genome sharing of the new coronavirus, the cdc developed a diagnosis protocol using rt-pcr analysis for the lower and upper respiratory specimens. the genome of the 2019-ncov was at least has 70% identity to the genetic of sars-cov [31]. the rtpcr was successfully used to amplify the virus genome sinisterly and some genes were selected to be amplified specifically for this virus such as egene (envelope gene) [32]. this diagnosis panel has been applied by about 35 clinical laboratories. the confirmatory rna-dependent rna polymerase-gene (rdrp) and n-gene of nucleoprotein were also used by 33 and 21 clinical laboratories, respectively [26]. 3.7 real-time polymerase chain reaction due to the close similarity of the sars-cov-1 and mers virus, the rt-pcr technique was successfully used. a quantitative rtpcr specific to the 1b section of the sars-cov which was used by poon and his colleagues. the supplier of the diagnosis kit was applied biosystems and the two specific primer sequences [33]. hung et al. used the commercial rt-pcr kits from qiagen and applied biosystems for sars-cov1 detection in clinical samples.the primers were: forward 5´cagaacgctgtagcttcaaaaatct-3´ and reverse 5´tcagaaccctgtgatgaatcaacag-3´ [34]. the complex pcr technique has been used for identifying (mers-cov) by poon and his colleagues [33], they screened the clinical kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 17 samples using roche magna pure lc kits, with amplification targeting the upstream e region (upe) and the orf1a for confirmation. when both assays were positive, the results can be regarded as positive, when both assays (first and second) were differing from each other, or if the result of the rt-pcr was not clear, a new sample will be taken for more analysis as a confirmation test. since the appearance of 2019-ncov, the rt-pcr technique remains a valuable and sensitive diagnostic method. the sample types and period of sample collection have great effects on the diagnosis of 2019-ncov [34]. the cdc diagnostic panel for covid-19 is an rt-pcr technique for the suspected individual as a quantitative ideal method. the specific region of the virus nucleic acid (rna) from the different clinical specimens of the respiratory tract including respiratory tract swab, sputum, noso-phyrengial, aspiration from the lower respiratory tract, nasal aspirate, nosophyrengial wash/aspirate and nosal discharges is taken [35]. it was found that the respiratory specimens are better than serum samples for rt-pcr test, and a large amount of the virus can be detected at the beginning of the disease despite the mild symptoms [36]. in the united state, holshue and his colleagues isolated the genome of the covid-19 successfully from respiratory aspiration and stool specimens and the rt-pcr process was positive, while serum analysis was negative [30]. the specific rt-pcr protocols were published to confirm the covid-19 cases, with different pcr kits suppliers, there are various primers for the covid-19[29]. specific primers (two sets) were used for covid-19 diagnosis open reading frame 1a or 1b, the protein of the nucleocapsid this can be applied as a laboratory-confirmed test. moreover, they concluded that a number of the cycle threshold value (ct-value) is important to determine the case as a positive or negative [20]. in the united states of america, the initial case was recorded by holshue and his colleagues developed rrt-pcr protocol from the sequences of the viral genome, clinical samples were verified, similar to earlier analytical assess for the other severe respiratory diseases such as sars-cov and mers-cov, the n gene was targeted, this the most common covid-19 primers were presented in table (1). france's first case was recorded by bernard stoecklin and his teammate [37], the test has relied on the rt-pcr procedure supplied by charité [32] as well as the use of rt-pcr particularly the rdrp (four targets) designed at institute pasteur (rdrp-ip) with a hghi specificity. the qiagen, hilden, germany, and invitrogen, darmstadt, germany designed a set of primers for rdrp gene, the oligonucleotides were produced by tib-molbiol (berlin, germany) [32]. recently chan and his colleagues have developed a new rdrp/hel protocol, this protocol is more specific and sensitive than the other previous diagnosis tools [38]. in another study, the rt-pcr was successfully used for identifying the new coronavirus cases by purchasing the kits from different sources (qiagen, hilden, germany, applied biosystems, usa, powercheck™ sars-cov-2 and kogenebiotech, seoul, korea) [39]. furthermore, chu and his team have developed 1-step quantitative real-time reversetranscription rt-pcr assays to allow the recognition of patients quickly and to identify both specific parts of orf1 and n of the viral rna [40]. the sets consist of primer and probe. which were produced to identify the covid-19 and other viruses (sars), two respiratory samples were also tested by this technique from two positive cases of the covid-19, these protocols allow to use of genetic materials of sars-cov1 as positive controls [41]. table 1: the recent diagnosis protocols for the covid-19. assay primer name primer sequence primer size refer ences e gene (e_sarbeco_f) 5´acaggtacgttaatagttaatagcgt -3´ 26 [32] (e_sarbeco_r) 5´atattgcagcagtacgcacaca -3´ 22 rdrp gene (rdrp_sarsr-f) 5´gtgaratggtcatgtgtggcgg -3´ 22 [32] (rdrp_sarsr-r) 5´caratgttaaasacactattagcata-3´ 26 n gene (n_sarbeco_f) 5´cacattggcacccgcaatc-3´ 19 [32] kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 18 (n_sarbeco_r) 5´gaggaacgagaagaggcttg -3´ 20 s gene (rbd-qf1) 5′caatggtttaacaggcacagg -3′ 21 [29] (rbd-qr1) 5′ctcaagtgtctgtggatcacg -3′ 21 n gene forward primer 5′-ctc agt cca aga tgg tat ttc t-3′ 22 [41] reverse primer 5′-agc acc ata ggg aag tcc-3′ 18 probe 5′-fam-acc tag gaa ctg gcc cag aag ctbhq1-3′ 23 orf1ab forward primer 5′-tca ttg tta atg cct ata tta acc-3′ 24 [41] reverse primer 5′-cac tta atg taa ggc ttt gtt aag-3′ 24 probe 5′-famaac tgc aga gtc aca tgt tga cabhq1-3′ 23 orf1ab (orf1ab-rpaforward_v1) 5’gaaattaatacgactcactatagggcgaagttgt aggagacattat acttaaacc-3’ 55 [42] (orf1ab-rpareverse_v1) 5’-tagtaagactagaattgtctacataagcagc-3’ 30 s gene (s-rpaforward_v1) 5’gaaattaatacgactcactatagggaggtttcaa actttacttgctt tacataga-3’ 55 [42] (s-rpareverse_v1) 5’-tcctaggttgaagataacccacataataag-3’ 30 orf1 ab forward primer 5’-agaagattggttagatgatgatagt-3’ 25 [43] reverse primer 5’-ttccatctctaattgaggttgaacc-3’ 25 probe 5’-fam-tcctcactgccgtcttgttgaccabhq13’ 24 covid-19 rdrp/hel rdrp/hel forward 5’-cgcatacagtcttrcaggct-3’ [38] rdrp/hel reverse 5’-gtgtgatgttgawatgacatggtc-3’ probe fam ttaagatgtggtgcttgcatacgtagac labkfq 28 covid -19 s spike/ forward 5’-cctactaaattaaatgatctctgctttact-3’ 30 [38] spike/ reverse 5’-caagctataacgcagcctgta-3’ 21 probe hex -cgctccagggcaaactggaaag -iabkfq 22 covid -19 n nucleocapsid/ forward gcgttcttcggaatgtcg 18 [38] nucleocapsid/ reverse ttggatctttgtcatccaatttg 23 probe fam -aacgtggttgacctacacagst -labkfq 22 4. discussion identification of the infectious viral pathogens is crucial to find and make a proper strategical control plan, the right treatment, and breaking the outbreak cycle. quick diagnostics of infectious agents have essential functions in early controlling of the outbreaks in all countries. due to the rapid transmission of viral infection, especially respiratory infection, viruses, and airborne viruses, proper and accurate diagnosis techniques are the valuable steps to prevent the transmission and overcome of infectious diseases [32]. there are many laboratory methods for the diagnosis of the viruses, including identifying specific antibodies, identifying genetic information of the virus, serological technique, and culturing the virus. culturing the virus is a time and labor-consuming technique as compared to other techniques. however, this assay is more beneficial in the first stage of an epidemic and pandemic cases before the other detection assays. viral cultures are also able to apply in both trials of antiviral and vaccine kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 19 evaluations[44],[45]. current laboratory techniques for the identification and amplification of genetic material of both of sars-cov and mers-cov are rt-pcr, reverse transcription pcr and, reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (rt-lamp) [33]; the amplification of nucleic acid is usually the standards for the diagnosis cases of mers-cov because this method has the highest sensitivity at the onset of the acute phase of the disease [46]. regarding the current infectious pandemic covid-19 virus, chinese health authorities have released the rna sequence of the virus in portals of genbank and gisaid (https://www. gisaid.org) to help the scientists for the identification of the new cases covid-19 and finding a suitable treatment [32]. also, there are some of the important assays which are used to identify the new coronavirus in wuhan of china, as enforced by the guidance of who on the suspected cases including nucleic acid amplification tests (naat), serological testing, viral genome amplification and sequencing [47]. in germany, there was initially designed a diagnostic assay for the covid-19, in the normal workflow, it was suggested to use e gene test, this test can act as the first stage of the screening tool and following by the rdrp gene protocol which acts as confirmatory testing. in this application, two-color technologies can be used to distinguish covid-19 from sarscov rna (both probes positive), when the second one is used as a positive control. instead of this option, clinical centers can run the rdrp assay with a specific probe for the covid-19 only. all assays were much sensitive and the reasonable result was gained for both rdrp and e gene. these tests were also not interfering with other types of coronavirus [32]. in a comparison study, chan et at [38] compared three new rt-pcr protocols targeting rdrp/helicase (hel), spike (s), and nucleocapsid (n) genes of covid-19 with rdrp-p2 assay which is adapted in european laboratories (>30). they reported that therdrp/hel assay had a high level of sensitivity and specificity and the lowest limit of identification of the viral genome. hong kong university has also designed a protocol to define covid-19 in human clinical sources. this assay was reactive with coronaviruses which belong to subgenus sarbecovirus(sars-cov, sars, and covid-19).the genetic material of the covid-19 in humans and animals is more diverse and it is not fully determined. therefore, in this suggested protocol, sars-cov is used as a positive control. it is also suggested to use the n gene rt-pcr and orf b test as confirmatory tests. in positive pcr results, analyses of the viral sequence will further help to enforce the positive result and to distinguish the positive control sars-cov from covid-19. although this approach is more sensitive, it has only been used when a positive control sars-cov rna is present [48]. the us centers for control disease and prevention follows an assay on the rt-pcr for the identification of the covid-19 using special primers and probes which were initially designed for sars-like coronavirus and then for the identification of the covid-19. however, this protocol has some limitations, users who work with this protocol should have sufficient experience and knowledge about the protocol and analyzing data. false-negative results may occur because of using not enough genetic material of the virus in the sample. the false-negative result may also appear due to improper specimen collection or the peak of the covid-19 during infection has not been determined. also, genetic variability might be happening in rna viruses, this behavior can result in a mismatch of sequences between the viral genetic information with primer and probes results in a decrease in the performance of the test and obtaining false-negative results [35]. as suggested, the initial sample volume in rna extraction needs to be increased for the identification of sars-cov. this point might also be considered during establishing the assay with the covid-19 [33]. apart from the detection of the genetic material of viruses, the serological assay can also be used with lower the sensitivity of antibody detection assay than the molecular techniques. serological assay such as elisa and iift assays which are successful in the diagnosis of infections. however, the lag period of the antibodies specifically targeting the virus might belong which usually appears from 14 to 28 days after the appearance of the illness [46],[49],[50]. moreover, as it is found in mers-cov cases, a low level of antibody kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 20 production after two weeks might be related to the mortality rate of this infection. for this reason, it is suggested that follow serological diagnoses assay when nucleic acid amplification are not present [51],[49] x-rays or thorax ct imaging can also use for imaging patients, unilateral or bilateral involvement, compatible with viral pneumonia [24]. a correlation between chest ct scan and rt-pcr assays in the covid-19 is made. this has shown that the chest ct scan has a high level of sensitivity for the identification of the covid-19. ai, and his colleagues (2019) indicated the chest ct scan might be used as one of the alternative primary devices for the current covid-19detection [28]. some other studies have suggested using ct-scan as an alternative diagnostic method for the covid-19. [52], [28]. 5. conclusion the results of this systematic review concluded the following points  the rdrp/hel is a new and reliable protocol for the covid-19 diagnosis with high sensitivity and specificity.  the rna dependent rna polymerase (rdrp) and rdrp/hel protocols can be used to distinguish the covid-19 from the sars-cov and the other respiratory viral pathogens.  positive results of the rt-pcr are meet active infection with the covid-19 but it cannot rule out co-infection with other viruses and bacterial infection. the detected agents from suspected patients may not be the definitive cause of disease.  the respiratory specimens and stool samples for viral genome isolation are more efficient than the serum which can be used in severe cases.  the sampling technique, specimen type and period of sample collection have a real impact on the quantity of viral genomic information and it reflects negatively on the diagnosis protocol.  the chest ct scan will be helpful for covid-19 diagnosis in the case of insufficient nucleic acid for rt-pcr and in emergency cases. acknowledgment the authors would like to thank the presidency of sulaimani polytechnic university and research center of spu for there cooperation and encouragement. reference [1] m.shen, z. peng, y. xiao, l. zhang, "modelling the epidemic trend of the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak in china", biorxiv.,.916726. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.23.916726 [2] d.d. richman, r.j. whitley, f.g. hayden, "clinical virology", 4th edn. washington, dc: asm press,2016. 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[51] world health organization(who), " laboratory testing for middle east respiratory syndrome coronavirus", who, september 2013, 1–9, 2014. doi: 0.1016/j.lwt.2018.09.079 [52] h.x. bai, b. hsieh, z. xiog, k. halsey, j.w. choi, t.m.l.tran, et al. “performance of radiologists in differentiating covid-19 from viral pneumonia on chest ct,” radiology, p. 200823, 2020. doi: 10.1148/radiol.2020200823. https://www.fda.gov/media/134922/download https://dx.doi.org/10.3346%2fjkms.2020.35.e79 https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/technical-guidance/laboratory-guidance https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/peiris-protocol-16-1-20.pdf?sfvrsn=af1aac73_4 https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/peiris-protocol-16-1-20.pdf?sfvrsn=af1aac73_4 https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3a%2f%2fdx.doi.org%2f10.1016%2fj.jiph.2016.04.005?_sg%5b0%5d=v9s-j-2p46wzwnxdj8mmap0g8nazzyhmik2_dwk-xmhzoheyvoywxo-4mxch58lqjubiqaajqxzytko1jcjhwd9kqq.cvcfcpx10uw-dricur_vv581q9_cntrzop031ysoz4bqnxrq9vx4fdz-q8bz9hizqahkjixcy-y_r9sgo9lhta https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lwt.2018.09.079 sebuah kajian pustaka: kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq a novel approach for stock price prediction using gradient boosting machine with feature engineering (gbm-wfe) rebwar m. nabi soran ab. m. saeed habibollah harron technical college of informatics vp for scientific affairs university of technology malaysia sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university johor, malaysia sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq rebwar.nabi@spu.edu.ia soran.saeed@spu.edu.iq habib@utm.my article info abstract volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.1.3 article history: received: 27 january 2020 accepted: 10 march 2020 the prediction of stock prices has become an exciting area for researchers as well as academicians due to its economic impact and potential business profits. this study proposes a novel multiclass classification ensemble learning approach for predicting stock prices based on historical data using feature engineering. the proposed approach comprises four main steps, which are pre-processing, feature selection, feature engineering, and ensemble methods. we use 11 datasets from nasdaq and s&p 500 to ensure the accuracy of the proposed approach. furthermore, eight feature selection algorithms are studied and implemented. more importantly, a feature engineering concept is applied to construct two new features, which are appears to be very auspicious in terms of improving classification accuracy, and this is considered the first study to use feature engineering for multiclass classification using ensemble methods. finally, seven ensemble machine learning (ml) algorithms are used and compared to discover the ultimate collaboration prediction model. besides, the best feature selection algorithm is proposed. this study proposes a novel multiclass classification approach called gradient boosting machine with feature engineering (gbm-wfe) and principal component analysis (pca) as the feature selection. we find that gbm-wfe outperforms the previous studies and the overall prediction results are auspicious, as mape of 0.0406% is achieved, which is considered the best result compared to the available studies in the literature. keywords: stock market prediction, feature engineering feature selection machine learning predictive analysis predictable movement multiclass classification copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction 1.1. background the stock market prediction has fascinated enormous considerations from scholars as well as the commercial industry. however, the question still leftover in terms of whether the historical price of the stock can be used to predict future prices. [1]. efficient market hypothesis (emh) and the random walk theory(rwt) are considered as the oldest study on stock market prediction [1], [2]. both emh and rwt stated that it is challenging to predict the stock prices because they are mostly affected by the news instead of historical data. consequently, the classification accuracy had reached to 50% only[3]. contrariwise, numerous researches [4–14] stated the opposing claim provided by emh and rwt. these researches propose that the stock price can be forecasted. stock prices prediction(spp) is crucial in the financial biosphere [7], [8], [12] as a practically precise forecast can produce unique business paybacks and verge in contradiction of bazaar risks. though, it remainders hard to predict the stock price since the financial market is a multifaceted, evolutionary, and nonlinear lively system, which interrelates with political measures, economic circumstances, and traders’ opportunities [12]. nevertheless, understanding accurate prediction of stock prices in the quick term (one day, five days forward), intermediate term (ten days, 15 days forward), (20 days, 30 days forward), and extended term (three-monthly) is regarded as one of the furthermost striking and evocative research topics in the investment ground and its submissions. the paybacks involved in imprecise forecasts have been inspiring encouraged investigators to advance novel and forward-thinking apparatuses and approaches. on the whole, there are two communal approaches to forecast the spp such as, fundamental analysis (fa) and technical analysis (ta). the fa uses economic features to approximate the inherent values of securities, while the ta is based on historical prices of the stock. so far, several researches have been applied to forecast the spp. regarding the techniques used to examine the stock, several of the are founded on statistical approaches although the majority are built by artificial intelligence (ai) and machine learning (ml) algorithms [8]. frequently, the financial data is disordered, deafening, and nonlinear, which is hardly follow immovable pattern. consequently, statistical methods, for example “moving average”, “weighted moving average filtering potential smoothing”, “regression analysis”, “autoregressive moving average”, “autoregressive integrated moving average”, and “autoregressive moving average” do not achieve acceptable ca [5]. on the other hand, ai algorithms are capable to cater the arbitrary, disordered, and nonlinear data of the stock and have been extensively applied [5]. the artificial neural network (ann), bayesian analysis, k-nearest, and decision tree are few examples of ai algorithms [15]. therefore, this study aims to propose a novel multiclass classification approach to forecast the spp using feature engineering. to the best of our knowledge, our study can be considered a pioneer in studying and implementing feature engineering for stock prediction utilizing ensemble methods. to support and prove this, we have searched and investigated international databases such as science direct1, elsevier2, scopus3, ieee digital library4, springer5, and acm6. furthermore, several other platforms and databases were investigated, for example, google scholar, ebsco information services, and doaj. we will study and compare the current feature selection(fs) algorithms to discover the topperforming algorithm. finally, we will compare available ensemble methods and other ml algorithms to find the best classifier. the rest of the study is structured in this manner. in sector two, the background and related work are outlined. in section three, the project methodology is explained in detail. the results and discussion can be found in section four. the conclusion of the paper is explained in section five. 2. related work based on the literature, numerous studies have been published. jie sun et al. [16] proposed the adaboost support vector machine combined with concept drift on weighting time (adasvm 1 https://www.sciencedirect.com 2 https://www.elsevier.com/en-xm 3 https://www.scopus.com/home.uri 4 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/recentissue.jsp?punumber=2188 5 https://www.springer.com/gp 6 https://www.acm.org/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/ https://www.elsevier.com/en-xm https://www.scopus.com/home.uri https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/recentissue.jsp?punumber=2188 https://www.springer.com/gp https://www.acm.org/ kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 30 tw) to predict the financial distress. the results were promising, as they found that the proposed adasvm-tw was outperforming the single svm algorithm. the authors in [17] proposed using random forest as an ensemble method to predict the stock return value. the algorithm was used to minimize the prediction error by dealing with the problem as the classification model. technical indicators such as relative strength index (rsi) and stochastic oscillator (so) were used to train the model as the input for multiple decision trees. dong [18] discovered the dynabe, which is the dynamic advisor-based ensemble for predicting the stock price by discovering the precise parts based on the companies of curiosity and differentiating the set of features into various advisors in the way that each advisor tackles a different area and follows the proposed ensemble procedure. dong’s approach achieved a misclassification error of 31.12%. the ealasso was proposed by [19] as the feature selection approach for multiclass and multiclass learning problems by keeping the oracle belongings of recognizing the truthful subdivision prototypical and partaking the ideal approximation accurateness. researchers in [20] recommended the mixture of an expert system consisted of a knowledge base(kb) and ai. the kb was applied to collect historical prices, numerous eminent technical pointers, counts and sentimentality notches of available news of the stock, movements in google for the assumed stock ticker, and the number of exclusive visitors for wikipedia pages. in the ai, numerous ensemble algorithms were implemented such as nn regression, sv regression, boosted rt, and rf regression. the mape ≤ 1.50% is achieved. feature engineering is a massive subject and numerous approaches have been proposed, predominantly in the extent of involuntary feature learning. it is commonly known that data of the stock market covering daily prices, statements of earnings by distinct companies, and view articles from experts. when constructing new features [21], it is advantageous when the result is interpretable. explainable features and approaches are extra reachable, which this produce better forecasting results. in addition, it is a virtuous concept to add complexity to advance the ca. the main aim of feature engineering is to reach to optimal features for the task. the stock market data is ready to be investigated by mathematical theories and applications. a mathematical model defines the relations, which forecast stock prices could be a method that maps a company’s receiving history, historical prices, and trade to the forecasted stock price. researchers in [22] implemented a nn method for stock forecast and the ca improved surprisingly. furthermore, several studies have been conducted that implemented feature engineering; however, none are related to stock prediction. researchers in [23] used feature engineering fault diagnosis of induction motors. a semantic feature model in concurrent engineering was conducted by researchers in [24]. another study used feature engineering for energy theft detection using gradient boosting and found useful combinations from the origin features [25]. the authors of [26] suggested a feature engineering approach for short period earthquake forecast using aeta dataset. feature engineering for search advertising recognition was investigated by researchers in [27]. researchers in [28] proposed feature engineering for stock prediction but only considered the binary classification. they found significant improvement in prediction performance. conversely, majority of the data related to the stock market and financial stress are the data imbalance and multiclass classification [9], [15]. imbalanced data belongs to a dataset, that one or some of the values have a considerable bigger number of samples compared to others. typical algorithms such as “logistic regression”, “svm”, and dt are appropriate for stable datasets; however, when fronting imbalanced situations, these algorithms frequently deliver suboptimal ca results. the imbalance problem and multiclass classification attract many researchers to tackle these two issues. however, to date, the published approaches are not providing good accuracy in prediction. ensemble learning techniques have been studied only recently [29], [30]. therefore, this can be considered as a significant room in the area, as ensemble methods have been confirmed to be outweighed compared to other algorithms [8], [15], [29], [31]. however, the main issue in providing a good voting algorithm to fuse the weight of different classifiers and provide a correct aggregated decision is not optimal as it faces the local optima problem that is tackled by heuristic techniques, making the approach very limited and not algorithmic for the general class of problems. therefore, based on the above literature, it can be identified that there is significant room for improvement because of inaccuracy. 3. experiment methodology 3.1. research framework in this study research framework, several phases are literature review and problem definition, dataset collection, data pre-processing, feature engineering, applying feature selection, finding the best ensemble classifier, proposing a novel multiclass classification approach gbm-wfe for stock prediction and evaluation analysis. figure 2 illustrates the overall research framework in this study. figure 1: a research framework. as we can see in figure 2, in the first phase, a thorough investigation and study in stock prediction is conducted to observe recent work, identify issues or problems arise and formulate a potential solution in solving the problem. in phase two, the datasets are downloaded from the international website such as the nasdaq and s&p 500 index to evaluate our models and approaches. in this stage, the downloaded dataset is pre-processed to assign the classes for multiclass classes every month. next, the feature engineering step is fitted in phase four, in which two new features are engineered to be added into the original dataset. furthermore, feature selection is considered as phase five to apply different types of feature selection kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 32 algorithms that are available in weka. in phase six, discovering the best ensemble method and proposing the gbm-wfe is studies. the evaluation process is conducted in phase seven and compares our contributions to the existing model. finally, the contribution of this study can be found in phase eight which is the last stage of the research methodology. 3.2. prediction system for this project, the complete prediction system was developed in java using the waikato environment for knowledge analysis (weka)’s java library for ml. weka has a collection of ml algorithms for pre-processing, feature selection, and classification algorithms [32], [33]. we wrote and coded the system from the zero to run the experiments and evaluate the proposed approach, including feature engineering. the overall look of the prediction system is shown in the following figure. figure 2: overall look of the prediction system netbeans was used as an integrated development environment tool to develop the project. the external library was used as weka did not support a few algorithms. 3.3. dataset collection the datasets were collected and obtained from the nasdaq and s&p 500 index. in general, 25 years of historical data were downloaded for the cmcsa, csco, aapl, sbux, lrcx, mchp, msft, ntap, qcom, swsk and in s&p 500 the gspc was chosen, which is the historical data of top 500 companies for the last 25 years. the duration of the data is jan 1995 to jan 2020. in total, we have extracted 3270 months records as the monthly based prediction. in general, 65% of the dataset is used for training and 35% is used for testing purposes. the original downloaded data is daily bases and generally, each dataset has around 6294 records of the historical data. here the explanation of stock market data based on duration such as daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly:  daily data is single day data.  weekly data as 5 days per week – i.e. every day except saturdays and sundays.  monthly data with index – i.e. every month, with an index in december.  quarterly (combined months) – i.e. 4 issues per annum.  yearly data means i.e. 2020. in total, each dataset has six attributes: 1. date: the current date of the stock movement. 2. a close price: the closing price of the stock. 3. volume: the number of shares has been exchanged in a day. 4. open price: open price of a stock. 5. high price: the highest price during a given day. 6. low price: the lowest price during a given day. a sample of the downloaded data is shown in the below table. table 1: sample of downloaded data 3.4. pre-processing it is widely known that pre-processing is regarded as a vital step in ml and data mining. therefore, in our study, we suggest a new method to pre-process the data collected from nasdaq. the stock movement to compare the predicted and real percentage change every month assigns the class to monthly data. to find the monthly movement here, stock movement is the difference between the monthly close and open price: difference = close price (last date of the month) – open price (first date of the month) the stock price movement in terms of percentage (%) is calculated as follows: percentage_difference = difference / open price (first date of the month) for assigning the classification class in a multiclass classification case: if percentage_difference >1, then the class is positive; if percentage_difference <-1, then the class is negative; otherwise, the class is neutral. the output dataset attributes are described below: 1. month (based on that date) 2. close (month-end date close price) 3. volume (whole month daily volume addition) 4. volume (whole month daily volume addition) 5. high (the highest price of the month) 6. low (lowest price of the month) 7. generated classes (multiclass). multiclass dataset for monthly based for every ten companies generated so in the output total of 20 datasets. multiclass “msft3.csv”. dataset of msft (multiclass), as shown in table two. table 2: generating the multiclass classification for the msft dataset. m. close v open high low result 12 101.57 9.38e+08 113 113.42 93.96 negative 11 110.89 7.17e+08 107.05 112.24 99.3528 positive 10 106.81 9.2e+08 114.75 116.18 100.11 negative 9 114.37 4.7e+08 110.85 115.29 107.23 positive 8 112.33 4.54e+08 106.03 112.777 104.84 positive 7 106.08 5.6e+08 98.1 111.15 98 positive 6 98.61 5.96e+08 99.28 102.69 97.26 neutral 5 98.84 5.06e+08 93.21 99.99 92.45 positive 4 93.52 6.64e+08 90.47 97.9 87.51 positive 3 91.27 7.45e+08 93.99 97.24 87.08 negative 2 93.77 7.21e+08 94.79 96.07 83.83 negative 1 95.01 5.68e+08 86.125 95.45 85.5 positive date close volume open high low 2/25/2019 50.73 19,857,750 51.09 51.27 50.62 2/22/2019 51.17 28,022,740 50.73 51.17 50.64 2/21/2019 50.72 35,613,260 50.63 50.86 50.34 2/27/2009 4.91 27772220 4.88 5.08 4.88 2/26/2009 5.10 25730550 5.57 5.57 5.03 2/25/2009 5.35 20824750 5.38 5.51 5.14 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 34 to sum up, the total data after pre-processing is 3270 rows from 25 years as months, of which %65 are used for training and the other %35 are used for testing purposes. 3.5. feature engineering implementation as mentioned earlier, the study aimed to investigate and add new features to improve the classification accuracy. two new features were added to the dataset to study the impact on improving accuracy. the first new feature is named high_low_difference (hl_diff), which is defined as the difference of month’s high and low price. the mean value of close open difference as daily bases was also constructed. the following mathematical equations were used to produce new features: hldiff = 𝐻𝑖𝑔ℎmax − 𝐿𝑜𝑤𝑀𝑖𝑛 eq (1) where: 𝐻𝑖𝑔ℎmax = maximum high price of month 𝐿𝑜𝑤min = minimum low price of month 𝑀𝑒𝑎𝑛 = ∑𝑓 (𝑐𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑒 −𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑛) 𝑡𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑑𝑎𝑦𝑠 eq (2) where: ∑ 𝑓 = 𝑆𝑢𝑚 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 difference of close and open price and: 𝑡𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑑𝑎𝑦𝑠 = 𝑛𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑑𝑎𝑦𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 as can be seen in equation one, hl_diff is calculated by the difference between the high and low month in total. it displays the entire month’s supreme movement in the price. the mean is calculated based on the mean values of all differences between close and open prices. that shows the average movement in price. the system automatically generates a new csv file under the name “msft _3f.csv.” we programmed the system to create multiple files with feature engineering and without feature engineering to compare results later. table three demonstrates the newly constructed features after feature engineering. table 3: features added dataset of msft for multiclass month close open high low hl_diff mean res 12 101.57 113 113.42 93.96 19.46 -0.58211 negative 11 110.89 107.05 112.24 99.3528 12.8872 0.098095 positive 10 106.81 114.75 116.18 100.11 16.07 -0.62174 negative 9 114.37 110.85 115.29 107.23 8.06 0.115263 positive 8 112.33 106.03 112.777 104.84 7.937 0.219783 positive 7 106.08 98.1 111.15 98 13.15 -0.03738 positive 6 98.61 99.28 102.69 97.26 5.43 -0.19271 neutral 5 98.84 93.21 99.99 92.45 7.54 0.2677 positive 4 93.52 90.47 97.9 87.51 10.39 -0.22314 positive 3 91.27 93.99 97.24 87.08 10.16 -0.2769 negative 2 93.77 94.79 96.07 83.83 12.24 0.003684 negative 1 95.01 86.125 95.45 85.5 9.95 0.117619 positive 3.6. implementation of feature selection algorithm in this study, to achieve one of the aims, multiple feature selection algorithms were used to find the best feature selection algorithm for a multiclass classification approach. it is worth mentioning that the weka’s default configuration was implemented for all algorithms, which means no parameter configuration was considered since it was not within the scope of this study. generally, the following algorithm was considered: .1. “sequential feature selection (best first) search and cfs subset evaluation” (seq) .2. “genetic search and cfs subset” (gen) .3. “ranker search and chi-squared” (chi) .4. “ranker search and recursive feature elimination“(ref) .5. “ranker search and correlation coefficient”(cc) .6. “ranker search and info gain evaluation” (ig) .7. “ranker search and relieff and it is variant evaluation” (rv) .8. “ranker search and principle components analysis evaluation” (pca) to discover the best feature selection, we proposed an approach of which the flowchart is shown in figure three. the developed prediction system runs intensive experiments for all feature selection algorithms and produces the best-performing one to be considered in the overall approach which is proposed in the study. 3.7. implementation of ensemble classifier techniques as the classifier, we implemented seven ensemble learning algorithms, all of which are used as a default configuration in the weka application programming interface library, which technically means we did not play with the parameters, base learners, and other parameters. the following algorithms were chosen for this study: 1. bagging classifier (bag) bagging bags algorithm to decrease variance. forecasts are produced by be an average of probability approximations, not by voting. one of the parameters is called the size of the bags as a proportion of the training dataset. furthermore, another parameter is whether to compute the out-of-bag error, which tells the average error of the ensemble members [33], [34]. 2. stacking classifier (sc) in the sc the classifiers will be combined by using stacking for classification and regression problems. the base classifiers will be specified, the meta-learner, and the number of crossvalidation folds. 3. voting ensemble classifier (ve) the baseline approach is provided by ve for combining classifiers. the default outline is to average their probability approximations or numeric forecasts for classification. moreover, the other grouping outlines are obtainable, for example, using common voting for classification. 4. adaboost classifier (ada) in the ada the classic boosting is applied. it can be enhanced by specifying a threshold for weight pruning. ada resamples if the base classifier cannot lever weighted occurrences (you can also force resampling) [33]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 36 figure 3: finding the best feature selection algorithm flowchart 5. gradient boosting machine (gbm) gradient boosting machine [35] (also referred to as slope boosted designs) sequentially fits brand-new versions to supply an extra exact price quote of a response variable in supervised knowing jobs such as regression and classification. gbm is a set of either regression or classification tree versions. both are forward-learning set approaches that acquire anticipating outcomes using slowly boosted estimations. logitboost in weka provides similar results for gbm. 6. multi-boosting classifier (mb) multi-boosting is an ensemble strategy employed for improving the results of single classifiers, which is an extension of adaboost [36]. the input vectors are weighted and some of them have a higher chance to contribute to the new sets. two types of weights are defined in the boosting strategy: the first for adjusting the contribution of data points (bi), and the second for the integration of the single classifiers. 7. random forest (random subspace) (rf) rf is a homogeneous ensemble prediction approach created by incorporating multiple decision trees as base learners. it is a bagging-based ensemble created using multiple decision trees and passing a subset of data to each of these base learners for training. the combiner provides the final results. random forest provides consistency to the model and thus provides a robust classifier. it tends to solve the over-fitting issue contained in decision trees [37]. 8. finding the best classifier (finding the best from the eight above) another goal of the study was to discover the top-performing ensemble. the developed system runs an exhaustive comparison among the implemented algorithms to propose and select the outperforming algorithm. the following flowchart demonstrates the proposed approach to achieve this aim. figure 4: find the ensemble classifier flowchart 3.8. predicted class (csv file) the developed system creates a file called “classpredict.csv”, which contains the actual classes and predicted classes, so it has easily compared the file as input dataset class and output dataset class. the testing dataset has 29 months’ records, so it contains 29 actual and predicted records. here, for example, the testing dataset includes cmcsa company 29 months record’s predicted classes as output is shown in the below table. table 4: input file dataset and predicted class file original data cmcsa prediction data open high open high open high 36.71 38.73 36.71 38.73 36.71 38.73 33.49 37.42 33.49 37.42 33.49 37.42 39.09 39.29 39.09 39.29 39.09 39.29 3.9. evaluation method for a comparative study of the supervised learning algorithms for stock market prediction, we followed and used the weka library default evaluation methods [33]. to evaluate our works, we have used several evaluation metrics such as ca, precision(pr), recall(re), f-score(f1s), mean absolute percentage error (mape), kappa statistics(kappa) and root mean squared error (rmse) and other available methods in weka accordingly to benchmark our proposed approach. for reliable testing and results, we have divided our data into training and testing. approximately, 65% used for training purposes, and 35% are used for testing. it is widely kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 38 known that weka provides various methods to evaluate classifiers such as training time (tt), ca, correctly classified instances (cci), incorrectly classified instances (ici), kappa, mae, rmse, relative absolute error (rae), and root relative squared error (rrsr), pr, re, f1s and provides the confusion matrix (cm). since we are using the default weka evaluation, we are not going to provide the equations and mathematical details behind them as it would lead to repetition. details of all the evaluation methods can be found in [33], [38]. 4. results and discussion 4.1. results we conducted various experiments on all datasets of 11 companies. besides, all the classification methods and fs algorithms on each dataset and a separate graph were generated for each experiment. to compare and evaluate feature engineering as adding new features to the dataset, each graph displays two dataset results. the first is a dataset with added features represented by a solid line and the second is a dataset without added features represented by a dotted line. an example of the generated graph is shown in the following figure. figure 5: performance comparison graph the example of a performance comparison graph shown in figure three contains the following:  the x-axis signifies the algorithm sign – all seven classifiers  y-axis represents prediction accuracy in percentage  various lines, the solid line is with fe (9f) and the dotted line is without fe (7f)  nine colors of the line with a dissimilar color for each fs method  pca (6f) (six features chosen and f for with feature). figure six illustrates the overall classification prediction on the lrcx company dataset. as can be seen in the majority of cases, the pca outperforms all the other feature selection algorithms, in which, with few classifiers, the accuracy of 96.55% is achieved. furthermore, various classifiers work better than the other classifiers when pca is considered, for example, classifiers such as ada and rf. conversely, classifiers such as vot and sta perform poorly, and in some cases, the accuracy of less than 65% is achieved. when comparing the difference in feature engineering, it can be seen that in several experiments the accuracy is improved while sometimes it decreases. for instance, when gen feature selection is considered, the feature engineering has improved the classification accuracy significantly, in which for the bag algorithm, the accuracy of approximately 50% is achieved, whereas, without feature engineering, less than 50% is achieved. figure 6: classification result for lrcx company dataset furthermore, the overall ca result for the swks company dataset is shown in figure seven similar to the lrcx company, the pca algorithm with majority classifiers outclasses others, where for classifiers such as bag, ada, gbm, and rf, the accuracy of 100% is achieved. conversely, few algorithms have low accuracies such as sta and vot. moreover, feature engineering has contributed significantly to improving the classification accuracy. for instance, the rf with gen achieves approximately 67% accuracy when tested with feature engineering, whereas around 50% accuracy is achieved without feature engineering. to sum up, on the swsk company dataset, pca is also considered as the best feature selection algorithm, and the genetic algorithm comes second. finally, feature engineering contributed significantly to improving the overall classification accuracy. figure 7: classification result for swsk dataset kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 40 the overall result prediction for the mchp, msft, and ntap datasets can be seen in figures eight, nine, and ten, respectively. figure 8: classification result for mchp dataset figure 9: classification result for msft dataset , figure 10: classification result for ntap dataset. 4.1.1. gbm-wfe prediction results table 4.6 describes the overall ca results of the projected approach (gbm-wfe) based on various evaluation metrics available in weka. as it can be noticed that our proposed approach performance is outstanding, whereabouts the average ca is 99.28% on all datasets. to be more precise, our approach achieved 100% ca on aapl, sbux, mhcp, lrcx, msft, ntap, qcom, and gspc. furthermore, on cmcsa and csco the ca of 99.03% and 94.05% is achieved respectively. however, the lowest ca percentage is noticed when the csco dataset is considered this could be because of the fewer number of records compared to other datasets. furthermore, we have also calculated the f-measures, precision, mape, rmse, kappa statistics, and recall metrics so that we can use them during the benchmark and comparison with previous studies. our approach has achieved the mape of 0.19% and f-measures of 0.99 out of one, which these results prove that the model enjoys significant success compare to the existing studies. in the next section, we will benchmark the gbm-wfe with literature. table 5:gbm-wfe prediction result. algorithm stock gbm-wfe nasdaq cmcsa 99.03 0.53 0.06 0.98 0.98 0.98 0.99 aapl 100.00 0.00 0.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 csco 94.05 0.48 0.20 0.89 0.90 0.94 0.94 sbux 100.00 0.00 0.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 lrcx 100.00 0.07 0.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 mhcp 100.00 0.34 0.04 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 msft 100.00 0.01 0.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 ntap 100.00 0.07 0.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 qcom 100.00 0.00 0.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 swks 99.03 0.56 0.07 0.98 0.99 0.99 0.98 s&p gspc 100.00 0.00 0.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 average 99.28 0.19 0.03 0.99 0.99 0.99 0.99 4.2. discussion 4.2.1. best feature selection to find the best feature selection algorithm, we have run intensive experiments on the cmca data using gbm for all eight feature selections algorithm we have considered in this study. table 6 demonstrates the performance evaluation of all feature selection algorithm using ca evaluation metric. table 6:find best feature selection using gbm. n feature selection alg. ca% 1 seq 70.19 2 gen 70.19 3 chi 31.73 4 ref 31.73 5 cc 54.80 6 ig 31.73 7 rv 54.80 8 pca 99.03 as it can be observed in table five, the pca is outperforming all the feature selection algorithms by achieving 99.03% of ca. whereas, the rest of the feature selection algorithms have almost kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 42 reached the same ca, which is relatively lower than pca accuracy. based on the achieved results, the pca is going to be used to find the best classifier and the rest experiments. 4.2.2. the best ensemble classifier as mentioned earlier, another aim of this research was to discover the top-performing classifier. therefore, to achieve this goal, we conducted intensive experiments on the 11 companies’ datasets with fe and used pca as the best fs algorithm with the seven ensemble classifiers considered in this study. table seven shows the multiclass classification results with feature engineering. table 7: multiclass classification with feature engineering using pca alg\ds nasdaq s&p 500 bag 99.03 92.05 100 100 100 99.03 100 97.02 100 100 100 98.83 sta 49.03 54.45 45.19 47.11 52.88 52.88 58.65 60.39 55.76 49.03 52.88 52.57 vot 49.03 54.45 45.19 47.11 52.88 52.88 58.65 60.39 55.76 49.03 52.88 52.57 ada 99.03 93.06 100 96.15 100 99.03 100 97.02 100 99.03 100 98.48 gbm 99.03 94.05 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 99.03 100 99.28 mb 90.38 93.06 95.19 98.07 100 90.38 98.07 100 100 99.03 100 96.74 rf 100 93.06 100 100 100 99.03 100 98.01 100 100 100 99.10 as can be seen in seven, the overall prediction approach is tested on all datasets using the implemented ensemble classifiers, which have been considered in this study. gbm found to be outperforming all other ensemble classifiers by achieving the ca 99.28% on average on all datasets. moreover, rf, bag, and ada were found to be very efficient as well, which on average, the accuracy of 99.10%, 98.83%, and 98.48% achieved respectively on all datasets. conversely, sta and vot were identified as the worst-performing ensembles by reaching the ca of 52.57% on average. last but not least, the rest of the ensembles were ranked as the middle performance by achieving the ca of 98% and above on average approximately. therefore, based on these results gbm will be chosen to develop the stock prediction approach along with feature engineering and pca as feature selection. 4.2.3. feature engineering benchmarking with weka to explore the contribution and the significance of the proposed feature engineering approach, we conducted intensive experiments on several datasets. the ca result on all datasets with all feature selection algorithms is outstandingly improved. the average ca for seq and gen is impressively boosted with feature engineering by achieving 69.23% whereas the average ca is only 44.55% without feature engineering. correspondingly, the average ca is increased by 25.64% when the chi, rfe, cc, ig, and rv considered. besides, the average ca is also enhanced with pca with feature engineering by 1.93%. last but not least, on average, the ca with feature engineering is 55.12% while it is increased to 74.67% with feature engineering. 4.2.4. gbm-wfe approach benchmarking the prediction performances of the gbm-wfe approach and benchmark will be demonstrated in this section. tables eight, nine, ten, and 11 show the comparison result of mape, kappa statistics, and rmse evaluation criteria. the proposed gbm-wfe was found to be outperforming the available benchmark for stock prediction using ensemble methods. researchers in [40] proposed adaboost-lstm (long short-term memory) and adaboost with a few other algorithms such as mlp, support vector regression (svr), and elm for financial time series forecasting using the stock index. in table eight, we compare our proposed model with their results. table 8: benchmark comparison using mape with [40] apparoch or model mape their model adaboost-mlp 1.023 adaboost-svr 0.841 adaboost-elm 0.782 daboost-lstm 0.413 our model gbm-wfe 0.19 as can be seen in table nine, our proposed ensemble method gbm-wfe is outperforming all the other proposed ensemble methods. gbm-wfe achieved a mape of 0.19% while their best model, which was adaboost-lstm, achieved a mape of 0.413%. in another benchmarking comparison with previous studies, table nine shows the result of the comparison of the proposed gbm-wfe model with the results of this study [41]. researchers used an ensemble of recurrent neural network (rnn) with lstm on historical data. table 9: benchmark comparison using rmse with [41] benchmark ensemble model dataset rmse% their model rnn-lstm powergrid 0.410 subex 0.413 indbank 0.201 greenply 0.011 our model gbm-wfe sbux 0.0 cmcsa 0.06 csco 0.04 msft 0 as can be observed from the above table, our proposed gbm-wfe ensemble is outperforming the rnn-lstm ensemble method. the gbm-wfe ensemble achieved an rmse of 0.0% on the sbux dataset, whereas in their best result, they achieved an rmse of 0.011%. accordingly, all the other results show our approach is performing better in all the datasets. furthermore, another study proposed an ensemble approach for stock price prediction using historical data [42], which is technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (topsis). the topsis uses crow search based weighted voting classifier ensemble. the benchmarking and the result comparison are shown in table 10 using the s&p and nifty dataset. it is worth mentioning that researchers used and tested various classifiers as the base learner for their ensemble; however, we will choose their best accuracy result to compare it to our model. table 10: result comparison with topsis ensemble model benchmark ensemble model stock ca% their models topsis-mv s&p 82 topsis-wv 82.5 topsis-pso-wv 84.5 topsis-de-wv nifty 81 topsis-cs-wv 84 our model gbm-wfe s&p 500 100 nasdaq 99.21 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 44 average 99.28 our proposed ensemble is superior to the proposed topsis ensemble with a different ensemble classifier. we can see in the table ten that the best ca achieved with topsis-de-wv is 81% on nifty and 82% on s&p 500 stock, whereas the gbm-wfe achieved 100% on s&p 500 stock and 99.21% on nasdaq. accordingly, gbm-wfe on average have achieved the ca of 99.28% but their average ca is not calculated. however, based on the table 4.13 it can be calculated, which is around 82.8%. so, we can conclude that our approach is superior to topsis approach by 16.48%. finally, in the table 11, we also cite a few other studies to benchmark with the proposed gbmwfe. we indicate and cite the research paper and its results. the following table demonstrate the superiority of our proposed gbm-wfe over the approaches used in studies available in the literature. table 11: result comparison using ensemble models in the literature benchmark ensemble model stock rmse kappa% literature model adaboost [43] nse 0.4263 stacking [43] 0.5516 ffnn [44] yf 0.0201 not provided our model gbm-wfe s&p 500 0.00 1 nasdaq 0.04 0.99 table 11 elaborates the contribution and novelty of the proposed gbm-wfe ensemble model compared with the previous studies. researchers in [43]proposed adaboost and the stacking ensemble method to predict the stock price movement and achieved a kappa of 0.5516% as the best result; however, our model achieved a kappa of (0.99) with the nasdaq and kappa of (1) with the s&p 500. furthermore, our proposed model surpasses the proposed ensemble model in [44], in which an rmse of 0.00 and 0.04 achieved for s&p 500 and nasdaq respectively, whereas they had an rmse of 0.02 in the best situation. 4.2.5. summary based on the benchmarking and the comparison results in table’s seven to 11, it can be concluded that this study has contributed significantly to the stock market prediction by proposing the novel multiclass classification using gbm-wfe. this study proposed and proved that using feature engineering can significantly improve the accuracy of any ensemble model and can even improve the overall prediction model. it is worth mentioning that our study can be viewed as the first to consider feature engineering for multiclass classification when stock markets are used. moreover, this study proposed the gbm-wfe, which has been proven to outperform the ensemble methods used in studies in the literature, as the best mape, rmse, ca, and kappa statistics were achieved with better results. 5. conclusion the study aimed to propose a novel feature engineering approach for multiclass classification for stock prediction. it explored the best feature selection algorithms which are currently available on the weka library. it also aimed to find the best ensemble learning algorithm. finally, it aimed to find the ultimate collaboration between feature engineering, feature selection, and ensemble classifiers. this study collected nasdaq and s&p 500 index listed stocks for the last 25 years as the dataset. the dataset included data of various companies, such as cmcsa, csco, aapl, sbux, lrcx, mchp, msft, ntap, qcom, and swks. monthly stock movement is predicted for each month. we have implemented feature engineering to add two features to the dataset as 1. mean value of open and close price difference and 2. the high low difference, which is part of feature engineering that improved the performance, shows in the results as increasing accuracy. the technology uses the interface of java and weka to judge varied styles of feature selection and classifier over the given dataset. for the feature selection part, various algorithms were applied, which are cfs subset, chi-squared, recursive feature elimination, correlation coefficient, info gain, relieff and its variant, pca, sequential feature selection (best first), genetic search, and ranker search, for ml techniques applied different classifiers on datasets, such as stacking, adaboost, gbm, multi-boosting, and random forest. we tested all the techniques using multiclass classification on stock market movement as positive, negative, and neutral. in this project work, new features were added to the dataset and it was found that the accuracy of the prediction improved. the study proposed gbm-wfe which is found to be improved on average on all datasets and outperform the available studies in the literature as well. furthermore, we recommended the best feature selection technique as pca and the best ensemble classifier as gbm. numerous future works can be suggested. first, feature engineering can be extended by considering external factors such as growth domestic products (gdp) and calculating and engineering more features to be added to the feature set. second, the daily price movement can be used instead of monthly movements. third, the proposed approach can be tested and implemented on a large number of datasets, which can include 50 years instead of 25 years of data. finally, some algorithms for feature engineering can be designed and proposed to be added to the weka library. acknowledgments i would like to show my massive appreciation to my supervisor prof. dr. soran for his continuous support. furthermore, i would like to thank my both second supervisor, prof. hamido fujita, without his support and contributions. i would not reach this level. moreover, appreciation must also go to prof. habib bin harron for his friendly and fantastic support. i would also like to thanks sulaimani polytechnic university for giving this fabulous opportunity to study ph.d. lastly. i should forget my lovely wife for 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[44] k. s. gan, k. o. chin, p. anthony, and s. v. chang, “homogeneous ensemble feedforward neural network in cimb stock price forecasting,” in proceedings 2018 ieee international conference on artificial intelligence in engineering and technology, iicaiet 2018, 2019, pp. 111–116.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq upper blepharoplasty: a comparative study between wound closure strips and subcuticular closure hemin othman sheriff ari raheem qader surgery department surgery department college of medicine college of medicine sulaimani university sulaimani university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq hemin.sheriff@univsul.edu.iq ari.qader@univsul.edu.iq avan hassan m. ameen sulaimani burns and plastic surgery hospital sulaimani, iraq dr.avanplastic@gmail.com volume 4 – special issue: 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) doi: 10.24017/science.2019 .ichms.27 received: 27 may 2019 accepted: 25 june 2019 abstract the objective is to compare the results of patients having their upper blepharoplasty incision closed by subcuticular suturing versus the usage of wound closure strips (omnistrips®). also evaluating the time required for incision closure, any complication, and the aesthetic outcome of each technique. in this study a total of 54 upper blepharoplasty had been performed on 27 patients. retrospective study done on 16 patients, whom incision closure done by continuous subcuticular nonabsorbable suture using 6-0 polypropylene (prolene), and another 11 patients prospectively studied for using omnistrips for their blepharoplasty incision closure. the intraoperative time which was required to finish the closure was one of the most important parameter of the study. the other parameters were the incidence of milia occurrence, presence of pain postoperatively at time of stitch and omnistrips removal, infection rate and suture acceptance. the result of this study indicated that mean time of closure was 12.36 minutes with usage of steristrips and (16.88) minutes with subcuticular suturing (p<0.01). the incidence of milia was significantly reduced by using the omnistrips (p 0.004), and there was no pain encountered at time of omnistrips removal in all patients, while all other patients whom mailto:hemin.sheriff@univsul.edu.iq 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 250 subcuticular suturing done for them complained of pain at the time of stitch removal. the study showed no infection associated with closure of the incision in either groups. in conclusion the closure of the incision in upper lid blepharoplasty using omnistrips is a safe, effective, faster, painless and with less complication rate than that using subcuticular suturing technique. keywords: blepharoplasty, scar, omnistrips, and subcuticular. 1. introduction and literature review the procedure of the blepharoplasty has witnessed rapid development during the last few years that involved simple excision of certain tissues like skin, muscle, or even fat to an advance technique which can be optimized according to each patient condition [1]. however, risks are still considered and may involve infection, inflammation of the operated area, scarring and nonsymmetrical shaping due to unnecessary or inadequate removal of fat, skin or even muscular tissues. in addition, the procedure could have further complications like, keratopathy, lagophthalmos, xerophthalmia, chemosis, ptosis as well as ectropion. collectively, the commonest complications following blepharoplasty could involve scarring, lagophthalmos and ptosis of the eyelid [2]. although scaring is one of the frequent issues encountered following operation, literature data lacks details about the materials and methods applied during the suturing of the incision and this step is essentially depends on the general techniques applied by the surgeon setting and practice [3, 4]. the healing pace of the skin in the eyelid is faster than any other part of the body though, it does require precise closure of the wound to prevent such complications as scaring and asymmetries and the scar area could appear raised and pigmented especially in those patients who are keloid formers [5]. the procedure blepharoplasty in the upper eyelid involve removal of the flabbiness found in skin, fat or muscles of the skinfold [6] and the incision area is usually sealed via finest suture for a week [7]. other methods for stitching the incision have been also considered over the last few decades like cyanoacrylates an adhesive made of polymers applied to the incised skin, yet records have shown cytotoxicity of the subcutaneous tissues when the product is applied [8, 9]. another method of closing the blepharoplasty wound involve the application of wound adhesive strips. they consist of fine wound adhesive strips that aid in attaching the margins of the incised skin and has the advantage over staples and sutures of no traces of suture will appears on the healing area and can be applied according to patient preference and in such instances where no staples or sutures are available. also, this method is relatively easy to use and has less scaring formation as well as it helps reducing the inflammation process following blepharoplasty procedure [10-12]. the aim of this study is to compare the results of patients having their upper blepharoplasty incision closed by subcuticular suturing versus the usage of wound closure strips (omnistrips®), and evaluating closure time, any complication, and also the aesthetic outcome. 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 251 2. methods and materials in this study a total of 54 upper blepharoplasty had been performed on 27 patients. of those, 16 cases retrospectively followed up, their incisions closed with the continuous subcuticular suturing and another prospective study on 11 patients using omnistrips for skin closure. the procedure of upper blepharoplasty done in a period from january 2017 till october 2018 in sulaimanyiraq. we included female patients aged from 35-65 years of age (average age is 48 years) , exclusion criteria involved: any revision blepharoplasties, patients with connective tissue disease, diabetes, history of using anticoagulants, or those who didn't attend the respective postoperative follow-ups. assessments were done by appraising: appearance of the wound scar , discomfort from removing the sutures or the omnistrips, time needed for each technique of closure, the cost of utilized materials, erythema of the incision site, suture marks, wound infection, milia, standing cone deformity (scd) and wound dehiscence. follow up was done in a period between (6 months – 22 months). after obtaining an informed consent from the patients for the operation, the excess upper lid skin marked with a waterproof skin marker pen in a curvilinear shape (fig.1 a). then lidocaine with epinephrine(1:100000) mixed with bupivacaine with adrenaline (1:40000) used as local anesthesia and injected by 27g needle. after waiting 7-10 minutes in order for the local anesthesia and adrenaline to work, a fine tip radiofrequency electrocautery used for excising the excess skin and orbicularis muscle on bloc. removing fat from the compartments was decided by the senior author after evaluating the lid by inspection and by slight orbital pressure to see if any bulging of fat occurs (fig.1 b). dermal layer closure done by interrupted stiches (7-8 stitches) using 6.0 fast absorbable polygalacin (vicryl rapide®) 11 mm reverse cutting suture in both groups of the study ( fig.1 c ), and the skin closed by 6-0 prolene suture in continuous subcuticular fashion in the first group (fig.2 b). the suture was removed after 7 days from surgery and follow-up done in a period between (6months-28 months). fig.2 a preoperative photo, fig.2 c postoperative photo after 1 year. in the second group, the suturing of the dermal layer was in such a way that stretching the margins of the incision in a vertical direction will not separate it from each other, and the edges are everted ( fig.1 c). after finishing the dermal layer closure, the wound is prepped with benzoin tincture which has stickiness propriety and make omnistrips adherence to the wound even better and stronger. three layer of omnistrips were applied to the wound along its length horizontally ( fig.1 d ) and patient sent home and advised coming back in the third postoperative day for changing the steristrips( fig.1 e ). another three layers of omnistrips was applied and the patient was instructed to remove the steristrips after another 2 days and take a shower. photographs taken for this group in 3 months and 6 months for follow up ( fig.1 f, g ). rating of the scar appearance was performed by 6 plastic surgeons blinded to the method of closure who analyzed standardized patient photographs taken in a period ranged(3months -12 months) postoperatively and answered a hollander scale questionnaire for wound cosmetic appearance ( table 1 ). 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 252 fig. 1 (continued) 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 253 fig .1 a 48 years old lady underwent upper blepharoplasty (wound closure strips technique) a) preoperative marking. b) excision of fat from the orbital compartments. c) dermal layer closure by 6.0 vicryl rapide . d) application of 3 layers of omnistrips horizontally .e) 3rd postoperative day photo. f) postoperative photo after 3 months. g) postoperative photo after 6 months. 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 254 fig.2 a 60 years old lady underwent upper blepharoplasty (subcuticular technique). a) preoperative photo. b) subcuticular suturing by 6-0 prolene. c) postoperative photo after one year. 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 255 table.1 hollander scale for cosmetic appearance clinical appearance yes no step off margins ( edges not in the same plane) 0 1 contour irregularities ( wrinkled skin near the wound) 0 1 margin separation ( gap between the sides) 0 1 edge inversion ( wound not properly everted) 0 1 excessive distortion (from swelling, edema, or infection) 0 1 overall appearance poor good 0 1 total cosmetic score ( 0 to 6 ) 3. results 3.1. comparison between subcuticular suturing and of usage of omnistrips regarding the time for skin closure. table 2 shows that lowest mean of time (minutes) was demanded for cloure of blepharoplasty incision by using of omnistrips (new method) (12.36±1.12 min) as compared with subcuticular suturing (old method) (16.88±1.67 min) with highly significant difference between the two method (p<0.01). table 2: comparison between subcuticular suturing and of usage of omnistrips regarding the time of surgery. *p. value <0.01: highly significant 3.2. difference between subcuticular suturing and of usage of omnistrips regarding the formation of milia after surgery. the present study found that formation of milia after blepharoplasty incision was significantly reduced (p < 0.01) when applying incision by using of omnistrips with rate of 27.27% as compared with 50% in subcuticular suturing method, (table 3). the time of surgery (min/eye) subcuticular suturing usage of omnistrips t. test p. value no. 16 11 7.81 0.0001* mean 16.88 12.36 sd. 1.67 1.12 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 256 table 3: difference between subcuticular suturing and of usage of omnistrips regarding the formation of milia after surgery formation of milia subcuticular suturing usage of omnistrips no. % no. % present 8 50 3 27.27 absent 8 50 8 72.73 total 16 100 11 100 *x2: 10.89 p: 0.004 highly significant 3.3. difference between subcuticular suturing and of usage of omnistrips concerning the formation of standing cone deformity (scd) after surgery. the present study found that formation of scd after blepharoplasty incision was reduced when closing the incision by using of subcuticular method with rate of 18.75% as compared with 27.27% in omnistrips method. although the result was non-significant, (table 4). table 4: difference between subcuticular suturing and of usage of omnistrips concerning the formation of standing cone deformity (scd) after surgery formation of scd subcuticular suturing usage of omnistrips no. % no. % present 3 18.75 3 27.27 absent 13 81.25 8 72.73 total 16 100 11 100 x2: 2.04 *p: 0.15 non-significant *p. value >0.05: non-significant 3.4. difference between subcuticular suturing and of usage of omnistrips concerning the presence of pain at time of stitch or omnistrips removal. the present study found that all patients of blepharoplasty did not suffer from pain at time of omnistrips removal while all patients with the subcuticular suturing method suffered from pain with the stich removal (table 5). table 5: difference between subcuticular suturing and of usage of omnistrips concerning the presence of pain at stich or omnistrips removal pain subcuticular suturing usage of omnistrips no. % no. % present 16 100 0 0 absent 0 0 11 100 total 16 100 11 100 x2: 27.8 *p: 0.00001 highly significant 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 257 3.5. presence and absence of dehiscence, suture marks, erythema and infections after surgery between the two methods. table 6, shows that both of the methods of blepharoplasty incision closure technique were characterized with no occurrence of dehiscence, suture marks, infections and erythema. table 6: presence or absence of dehiscence, suture marks, erythema and infections after surgery between the two methods. subcuticular suturing (n:16) usage of omnistrips (n:11) no. % no. % dehiscence present 0 0 0 0 absent 16 100 11 100 suture marks present 0 0 0 0 absent 16 100 11 100 infections present 0 0 0 0 absent 16 100 11 100 erythema present 0 0 0 0 absent 16 100 11 100 3.6. satisfaction of the consultant doctors about the surgical science. the difference between the two methods in terms of the satisfaction of the consultant doctors about the surgical science after a period of the incision was non-significant, (table 7). table 7: satisfaction of the consultant doctors about the surgical science the time of surgery (min/eye) subcuticular suturing usage of omnistrips p. value no. 16 11 0.46 mean 5.36 5.12 sd. 0.26 0.21 percentage of acceptance 86.9% 82.89% 1.66 4. discussion as there are many methods for blepharoplasty incision closure and many different suture materials [2], in our study we are trying a new method of wound closure strips with deep dermal absorbable sutures and discuss about its advantages and disadvantages. one similar study done earlier showed that that the wound closure strips (steri-strip™) brand of co-aptive method (film) was an appropriate option to sutures without rate of wound contamination, dehiscence or skin irritation [13]. kerrigan and homa found that steri-strip allows quicker closure of wounds than suture [14], and lazar et al announced that steri-strip diminishes erythema [13]. 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 258 there are numerous written works which are likewise discussing suture less closure of blepharoplasty utilizing cyanoacrylate versus to regular suturing in upper blepharoplasty [8, 15, 16]. m.m. suriano et al who published their article in 2011[16], luis fernando perin et al who published in 2009[8], and ahn hb et al who also published in 2011[17], all of these had researches on closing upper blepharoplasty incision in human and rabbits by using cyanoacrylate adhesives. but surprisingly there is paucity of literatures dealing with incisional closure in blepharoplasty using wound closure strips. however, we found one article from farhangi monika b.s et al which reported the use of steri-strip for upper blepharoplasty incision after suturing by conventional method and it’s benefit as cost effective and better wound healing properties [18]. in our study, we observed a significant decrease in the time required for closure by using the omnistrips (mean time 12.36 +/1.12 min), as compared with the time needed for closure using subcuticular method (mean time 16.88 +/1.67 min) with nearly the same aesthetic outcomes. this finding matches the majority of studies review prior to our study involving the use of cyanoacrylates[8, 15-17], also van de gevel df et al found that steri-strips was a fast method for closing sternotomy wounds in patients having coronary bypass surgery compared to intracuticular sutures [19],as well as by the study of by im anuar ramdhan et al study showed to be a faster way for wound closure than sutures [20]. regarding the pain, all omnistrips technique group (n=11) noticed to be a pain free when removing the tape (because it eliminated postoperative stich removal) ,while all patients with subcuticular sutures( n=16) suffered from pain at time of stich removal. same results found in the articles comparing cyanoacrylates with suturing techniques [8, 16]. statistical analysis showed a significant decrease in milia formation in omnistrips method (27.27% only present) because no needle was introduced through the epidermis compared to subcuticular suturing method (present 50%), while there was a non-significant increase in the rate of standing cone deformity in omnistrips method patients. we didn’t find similar comparison in the articles we use as a reference to this study. there was no any distinction between the two methods regarding the presence of infection, dehiscence, or suture marks. results simulate the other articles that are comparing between suturing and cyanoacrylates [8, 17]. there were cases of minor wound dehiscence in a study done by luis fernando perin et al due to poor wound approximation and eversion because of using only forceps or traction sutures to approximate the wound edges[8].other study by im anuar ramdhan et al learn about comparison between wound closure strips and suture for closing incisions after long bone fractures stabilization demonstrated that inconvenience rate was not measurably noteworthy. besides, the scar delivered by steristrip was not wider than that created by sutures as of the twelfth week follow-up visit [20]. an examination done by arjun s. joshi et al in 2007[2] looking at the utilization of various suture materials and methods for upper blepharoplasty conclusion, they found that utilizing absorbable plain gut sutures was related with persevering erythema because of deferred and variable breakdown of the plain gut suture. to conquer this issue we utilized vicryl rapide for the dermal stiches and luckily no erythema experienced in either gatherings. another advantage in our study is that we can conquer the cutting of the suture while removing it so that a piece of it may remain inside the scar and that patient may sometimes complain from it sooner or later as a somewhat blue or other shading (as per the shade of the prolene suture) line at the site of the scar. the distinction in the expense between the two strategies for closure is of debate, in spite of the fact that omnistrips might be similarly or even in some cases more exorbitant than prolene sutures(according to the expense of suture material industries). but wound closure strips technique would diminish the cost on the grounds that specific instruments and help would not be required because of the simplicity and instantaneousness of use. and also by reducing the surgery time with the utilization of omnistrips, the medical procedure room expenses are indirectly decreased [20]. same outcome noticed with the cyanoacrylate strategy for closure by suriano et al [16 ]. 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 259 with respect to the observers’s fulfillment according to hollander scale, there was no significant increment in satisfaction for the subcuticular strategy bunch over the wound closure strips gatherings. this is maybe because of the long follow-up time for the results of subcuticular closures in contrast to those of omnistrips. we found an investigation by quinn j, wells g et al which demonstrate no distinction is observed in the asthetic appearance of skin wounds created by trauma treated with cyanoacrylate in contrast to sutures following one year from wound fix [21]. impediment of our examination can be expected due to the follow-up time discrepancy between the two gatherings, prompting diverse course of events for each scar to watch accordingly. the other constraint of the study was because of the diverse dermatological attributes for every patient, it would have been more properly if both techniques were administered for the exact same patient (one strategy for each eye), so as to make examinations under the equivalent dermatological conditions for the two strategies. so in regards to the confinements referenced above, later on we can do a planned report for contrasting both of the techniques for a similar patient (one method for each eye) and increment the sample number with greater pledge to the follow up time for every patient. 5. conclusion wound strip closure of upper blepharoplasty incision is a safe, easy, cost-effective method with nearly same aesthetic results compared to subcuticular closure technique with less time and pain, and reduced rate of milia formation postoperatively. reference [1] s. r. thaller, "grabb and smith’s plastic surgery, seventh edition," plastic and reconstructive surgery, vol. 133, pp. 1311-1312, 2014. [2] a. s. joshi, et al., "does suture material and technique really matter? lessons learned from 800 consecutive blepharoplasties," laryngoscope, vol. 117, pp. 981-4, jun 2007. [3] s. fagien, "advanced rejuvenative upper blepharoplasty: enhancing aesthetics of the upper periorbita," plast reconstr surg, vol. 110, pp. 278-91, 2002. [4] r. j. rohrich, et al., "current concepts in aesthetic upper blepharoplasty," plast reconstr surg, vol. 113, pp. 32e-42e, 2004. [5] j. oestreicher and s. mehta, "complications of blepharoplasty: prevention and management," plastic surgery international, vol. 2012, pp. 252368-252368, 2012. [6] j. b. hellman, et al., "safety and efficacy of resident-performed functional upper eyelid blepharoplasty," ophthalmic plast reconstr surg, vol. 24, p. 0000000000001395, 2019. [7] s. m. pool, et al., "improved upper blepharoplasty outcome using an internal intradermal suture technique: a prospective randomized study," dermatol surg, vol. 41, pp. 246-9, feb 2015. [8] l. f. perin, et al., "sutureless closure of the upper eyelids in blepharoplasty: use of octyl-2-cyanoacrylate," aesthet surg j, vol. 29, pp. 87-92, mar-apr 2009. [9] d. m. toriumi, et al., "histotoxicity of cyanoacrylate tissue adhesives. a comparative study," arch otolaryngol head neck surg, vol. 116, pp. 546-50, 1990. [10] p. j murray, closure of skin wounds with adhesive tape. preliminary report based on use of tape in 100 surgical cases vol. 2, 1963. [11] r. babu k, et al., popularizing poor man’s steri-strip wash proof band-aid vol. 3, 2014. [12] h. p. hirshman, et al., "penetration of staphylococcus aureus into sutured wounds," j orthop res, vol. 2, pp. 269-71, 1984. [13] h. l. lazar, et al., "adhesive strips versus subcuticular suture for mediansternotomy wound closure," j card surg, vol. 26, pp. 344-7, 2011. [14] c. l. kerrigan and k. homa, "evaluation of a new wound closure device for linear surgical incisions: 3m steri-strip s surgical skin closure versus subcuticular closure," plast reconstr surg, vol. 125, pp. 186-94, 2010. [15] d. greene, et al., "efficacy of octyl-2-cyanoacrylate tissue glue in blepharoplasty. a prospective controlled study of wound-healing characteristics," arch facial plast surg, vol. 1, pp. 292-6, oct-dec 1999. [16] m. m. suriano, et al., "blepharoplasty: to suture or to use cyanoacrylate?," archivos de la sociedad española de oftalmología (english edition), vol. 86, pp. 81-84, 2011/01/01/ 2011. 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 260 [17] h. b. ahn, et al., "a comparison of 2-octyl cyanoacrylate adhesives versus conventional suture materials for eyelid wound closure in rabbits," korean j ophthalmol, vol. 25, pp. 121-7, apr 2011. [18] m. b. s. a. farhangi, usiwoma e. m.d.; cockerham, kimberly p. m.d., f.a.c.s. ( 2017, issue 4). novel approach to skin closure following upper eyelid blepharoplasty. [19] d. f. van de gevel, et al., "is the use of steri-striptm s for wound closure after coronary artery bypass grafting better than intracuticular suture?," interact cardiovasc thorac surg, vol. 10, pp. 561-4, 2010. [20] i. anuar ramdhan, et al., "comparative study between coaptive film versus suture for wound closure after long bone fracture fixation," malaysian orthopaedic journal, vol. 7, pp. 52-55, 2013. [21] j. quinn, et al., "tissue adhesive versus suture wound repair at 1 year: randomized clinical trial correlating early, 3-month, and 1-year cosmetic outcome," ann emerg med, vol. 32, pp. 645-9, 1998.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq lidocaine versus ketamine pretreatment on propofol injection pain amir murad khudadad boujan nashmeel fazeel kareem surgical department anesthesia department college of medicine sulaimani teaching hospital university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq nashmeelfazeel@yahoo.com amir.boujan@univsul.edu.iq amanj a. marouf saman abdullah ahmed fahmi surgical department anesthesia department college of medicine maternity teaching hospital university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq saman.fahmi@gmail.com marouf.amanj@gmail.com salah qadir mahmood radiation department sulaimani technical institute sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq salahdeanoffice@hotmail.com volume 4 – special issue: 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) doi: 10.24017/science.2019. ichms.25 received: 03 june 2019 accepted: 2 july 2019 abstract propofol is commonly used intravenous anesthesia induction drug but it causes ache upon use, many method with different results, have been suggested to prevent this pain, the current research was concluded in order to investigate the impact of lidocaine, ketamine in reducing the ache on giving intravenous propofol. this study is randomized controlled clinical trial lasting from june 2015 to november 2015 during which 107 consenting (asa1 and asa2) patients were prepared for elective operation with general anesthesia. they randomly split to three subgroups, a cannula (size20) used in the dorsum hand veins, standard monitor was established patients received either 2ml (40 mg) of lidocaine or 2ml (20mg) of ketamine and 2 ml of saline 1 min before injection 2.5 milligram per kilogram propofol. ache severity observed by using four number pain scale, zero = none, one= mild pain, two = moderate pain, and three = intense pain. atracurium used for indotracheal intubation, isoflurane and fentanyl for anesthesia maintenance. there were no variations between the study groups regarding asa status, sex, age. the incidence of ache when injecting propofol were observed in the normal saline group was 86.5% and it was more than ketamine group 0% and lidocaine group 20% kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 235 (p=0.0002). in the normal saline pretreatment group 8.1% of the patient experienced severe pain, compared with 0% in the lidocaine and ketamine. it can be concluded that intravenous ketamine and lidocaine were equally effective in preventing ache during propofol injection. keywords: propofol, pain, lidocaine, ketamine. 1. introduction propofol is the most frequently used intravenous anesthetic agent for anesthesia induction and maintenance, providing a smoother induction and quicker recovery compared to all other drugs such as thiopental [1]. propofol consist of a phenol ring substituted with two isopropyl. it is not soluble in water,groups. includes 1% propofol, 5% soybean oil, and 0.6% egg lecithin. propofol is nearly isotonic, non-hyperosmolar and has a ph of 6 to 8.5. so, pain on propofol injection is due to contact of propofol to the endothelial wall of vein and may cause irritation of adventitia and mediators release such as kininogen from kinin cascade. propofol induction of general anesthesia may involve facilitation of inhibitory neurotransmission mediated by gamma aminobutyric acid (gabaa) receptor binding. this receptor is coupled to a chloride channel, and activation of the receptor lead to hyperpolarization of the nerve membrane [2]. propofol on injection often causes mild to serious pain or discomfort [1], the occurrence of pain differs with regards to ages, which may be due to lower veins in children, more in children and teenagers. but in term of gender, the occurrence of propofol injection pain does not differ [3]. propofol induce pain because contain phenol that can irritate the skin, mucous membrane. another cause of pain due to, osmolality differences, and ph and the activation pain mediators [1]. pain is believed to be caused by direct stimulation of venous nociceptive receptors after injection of propofol, the nerve impulse being transferred by myelinated a delta fibers [4]. the quality of pain has been defined as highly sharp, painful, or burning. propofol injection pain after 10–20 s is immediately delayed. the instant pain is caused by irritation of the vein endothelium, while the delayed pain is caused by the release of mediators from the kinine cascade [1]. the propofol lipid solvent activates the kallikrein kinin plasma system that generates bradykinin that changes the local vein injected. this peripheral vein alteration can improve the contact between the aqueous phase propofol and the free nerve endings of the vessel, leading to propofol aggravation, caused pain [5]. there appear to be many variables affecting the incidence of pain on propofol injection. these include the site of injection, vein size, velocity of injection, aqueous propofol concentration and the buffering impact of blood and concomitant use drug such as local anesthetics [6]. propofol pain can be decreased or avoided by injection into a big vein, changing the speed of injection, propofol solution mixed with 5% dextrose, normal saline injection before propofol or intravenous injection of lidocaine with or without tourniquet, ketamine, pethidine, metoclopramide and dexamethasone [1, 5, 6]. lidocaine is a short acting local anesthetic and antiarrhythmic agent widely used by injection and for surface application, the duration of action increase by adding vasoconstrictor [7]. for every form of local anesthetic operation, lidocaine has been used safely and efficiently, it has no uncommon function and is also a normal antiarrhythmic. lidocaine used for percutaneo us infiltration in concentrations of 0.5-1.0 percent but for peripheral nerve blocks of 1.5 percent. lidocaine 5% was used for anesthesia with subarachnoids, although the degree of spread is un predictable and has a brief length of action. with a concentration of 1-2%, lidocaine generates kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 236 short-term epidural anesthesia. lidocaine is also accessible as a 4% -10% spray, 5% cream, 5% medicated plaster for topical use [8]. intravenous lidocaine pretreatment has been used to reduce propofol injection pain; lidocaine has analgesic impact due to a local anesthetic effect, and inhibits the enzyme cascade leading to kininine release. lidocaine has relaxed the vascular smooth muscle [9]. different concentrations of lidocaine were used as a pretreatment of 2 ml of 2% (40 mg), 4 ml of 1% (40 mg) or 1 ml of either 1% (10 mg) or 2% (20 mg) of lidocaine mixed with 19 ml of p er ropofol.jketamine is a phencyclidine derivative that results in analgesic modulation at the neu raxial stage via nmda and μ-opiate receptors [8]. ketamine has powerful analgesic and anesthetic characteristics at the local level. the decrease in propofol injection pain seems likely to have been the consequence of a periph eral action that attenuated the afferent pathways of pain. these receptors may be activated by ketamine as an nmda receptor antagonist either in the vascular endothelium or in the central nervous system [8]. ketamine's most significant pharmacological characteristics are its noncompetitive n-methyl-d-aspartate (nmda) receptor antagonist and its analgesic action at subanaesthetic dose isthought to be mainly due to antagonism in the brain and spinal cord with th e nmda receptor. [7]. ketamine may be given by multiple rote of administration including intravenous, oral, subcutaneous, intranasal, transdermal [10]. table1: font and format setting title measurements article title 24pt, bold author name 9pt, bold author affiliation 8pt abstract 10pt, italic, bold keywords 10pt, heading 1 10pt, capital letters, center, bold heading 2 10pt, bold, left, italic paragraph 10pt figure captions 9pt, center, after the picture table captions 9pt, center, before the table table / cell margin 0.03 2. methods and materials this is a normal saline–controlled randomized study that conducted at the anesthesia department in sulaimani teaching hospital on patients undergoing general anesthesia for elective general surgery, between may 2015 and november 2015 after gaining local ethical committee acceptance. 107 consented patients with age range from twenty to sixty years old and asa classification 1 and 2, patients randomly divided into three groups;  n: 37 patients took 2ml 0.9% sodium chloride  l: 35 patients took 2ml (40mg) of lidocaine  k: 35 patients took 2ml (20mg) ketamine kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 237 exclusion criteria were patient with severe respiratory, cardiovascular, cardiac conduction defect, neurological or renal disease (asa iii, iv), patient with difficulty in communication, hemodynamically unstable patient, mallampati class (iii, iv), patient had allergy to the study medications, analgesic drug or any sedative consumption in the preoperative period and patient with difficult cannulation. all patients were managed with an intravenous cannula (size 20) inserted on the dorsum of the patient hand, standard monitoring like electrocardiogram, temperature, blood pressure (noninvasive), and pulse oximeter was established. research drug was given 1minute from giving propofol (2.5mg/kilogram), the propofol injected over15 seconds, the ache level was evaluated and recorded, using four number rate scale, a score zero to three represents none (0), mild pain (1), moderate pain (2) and sever pain (3). patients were questioned about the pain presence on injecting propofol their answers, facial responses, tears, hand withdrawal and all that recorded.  if it was negative answer to the questions equal to none.  if patient answered yes to pain on question and there were no other signs (behavioral) this equal to mild.  if patient report pain spontaneously without asking or had behavioral signs this equal to moderate.  if patient had strong vocal answer or his answer associated with grimacing of the face, tears or arm withdrawing this equal to sever tracheal intubation was facilitated with injection of atracurium (nondepolarizing neuromuscular blocking agent); fentanyl and isoflurane were used for maintenance. anesthesia was maintained as per surgical requirement. statistical package for the social sciences version 22.0 where used to analyze the data, also, analysis of variance test, t students test was used on the demographic data. statistical significance set at p <0.05. 3. results 107 patients involve in this research, in comparing patients age, sex and asa physical status we found no significant differences between study groups (table 1). table1: comparison between ages, gender and asa physical status in study groups. variable ketamine (n=35) lidocaine (n=35) normal saline (n=37) p value age(year) mean ±sd 35.46 ± 11.92 40.03 ± 10.84 39.97 ± 9.66 0.1 gender (m:f) 4/31 8/27 7/30 0.4 asa (i:ii) 31/4 21/14 24/13 0.084 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 238 while comparing the lidocaine group to the normal saline group, we found that there was significant difference between the two groups and the overall patients number having pain (mild, moderate, sever) was significantly less in lidocaine group. (table 2, figure 1) table2: comparison of pain score, regarding of lidocaine and normal saline pain score lidocaine n (%) normal saline n (%) p-value no pain 28 (80%) 5 (13.5%) 0.003 mild 6 (17.1%) 19 (51.4%) 0.013 moderate 1 (2.9%) 10 (27.0%) 0.009 sever 0 (0 %) 3(8.1%) 0.092 no pain: pain 28/7 5 /32 0.0002 figure1: shows differences in pain score between study groups. in comparing the ketamine group to the normal saline group, we found that there were differences between those groups and it was statically significant and the overall patients number having pain (mild, moderate, sever) was significantly less in ketamine group. (table 3, figure 1) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 7 figure1: shows differences in pain score between study groups. 4. discussion this use of propofol as intravenous anaesthetic due to the high quality of anesthesia and fast recovery agent has risen quickly [9]. the injection pain caused by propofol is linked to the quantity of free propofol in the aqueous stage. the free propofol contact with free nerve ending of vessels activates the plasma kinin-kallikrein system, which release pain mediators locally. pain caused by propofol injection can be immediate or delayed; instant pain is probable due to direct irritant impact whereas delayed pain is probable due to indirect impact through the kinine cascade [11]. it is extremely desirable to avoid pain with propofol injection; many techniques have been use d to decrease the incidence of pain with variable outcomes on propofol injection [1]. our randomized, focused on showing the efficacy of different medicines. lidocaine and ketam ine pretreatments were contrasted with placebo organizations to reduce the incidence and seve rity of propofol pain. propofol injection without any medicine (placebo group) suffered pain in most of patients, some of them complaining of strong pain. but the impact of pain via pretreatment with lidocaine and ketamine decreases and no patient is having severe pain with ketamine and lidocaine. thus, both ketamine and lidocaine pretreatment decreased incidence of pain on propofol injection and this was statistically significant. but incidence of pain significantly less in ketamine group. this agree with the following studies saadawi ertok et al, after they conducted a study on 125 patients for evaluation of efficacy ketamine, lidocaine, meperidine, thiopental compared to placebo to minimize propofol injection pain. they reported that the incidence of pain in all treatment groups was considerably smaller than in placebo. however, pretreatment with ketamine was found to be the most efficient in attenuating propofol-related pain [12]. this agrees with zahedi h et al, studied 500 patients compared ketamine, lidocaine to placebo groups in the preventing propofol pain injection they recorded considerably reduced kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 239 table3: comparison of pain score, regarding of ketamine and normal saline. pain score ketamine n (%) normal saline n (%) p-value no pain 35(100%) 5(13.5%) 0.009 mild 0 (0 %) 19 (51.4%) 0.002 moderate 0 (0 %) 10 (27.0%) 0.002 sever 0 (0 %) 3(8.1%) 0.092 no pain: pain 35/0 5/32 0.0002 when comparing the ketamine group to the lidocaine group, we found that there were differences between the groups and those differences were significant in mild ache but in overall number of patients having pain to no pain was significantly less in ketamine group. (table 4, figure 1) table4: comparison of pain score, regarding of ketamine and lidocaine. pain score ketamine n (%) lidocaine n (%) p-value no pain 35(100%) 28 (80% ) 0.4 mild 0 (0 %) 6 (17.1%) 0.01 moderate 0 (0 %) 1 (2.9%) 0.31 sever 0 (0 %) 0 (0 %) none no pain: pain 35/0 28/ 7 0.006 4. discussion this use of propofol as intravenous anaesthetic due to the high quality of anesthesia and fast recovery agent has risen quickly [9]. the injection pain caused by propofol is linked to the quantity of free propofol in the aqueous stage. the free propofol contact with free nerve ending kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 240 of vessels activates the plasma kinin-kallikrein system, which release pain mediators locally. pain caused by propofol injection can be immediate or delayed; instant pain is probable due to direct irritant impact whereas delayed pain is probable due to indirect impact through the kinine cascade [11]. it is extremely desirable to avoid pain with propofol injection; many techniques have been use d to decrease the incidence of pain with variable outcomes on propofol injection [1]. our randomized, focused on showing the efficacy of different medicines. lidocaine and ketam ine pretreatments were contrasted with placebo organizations to reduce the incidence and seve rity of propofol pain. propofol injection without any medicine (placebo group) suffered pain in most of patients, some of them complaining of strong pain. but the impact of pain via pretreatment with lidocaine and ketamine decreases and no patient is having severe pain with ketamine and lidocaine. thus, both ketamine and lidocaine pretreatment decreased incidence of pain on propofol injection and this was statistically significant. but incidence of pain significantly less in ketamine group. this agree with the following studies saadawi ertok et al, after they conducted a study on 125 patients for evaluation of efficacy ketamine, lidocaine, meperidine, thiopental compared to placebo to minimize propofol injection pain. they reported that the incidence of pain in all treatment groups was considerably smaller than in placebo. however, pretreatment with ketamine was found to be the most efficient in attenuating propofol-related pain [12]. this agrees with zahedi h et al, studied 500 patients compared ketamine, lidocaine to placebo groups in the preventing propofol pain injection they recorded considerably reduced pain incidence and intensity in all study groups than the treatment group. and ketamine 100 microgram/kg group had the incidence of pain is considerably smaller relative to lidocaine group injection pain [10]. seung –wookoo, sun jun cho et al, studied 240 patients and compared lidocaine, ketamine 3 different dose to placebo group, the results showed that a dose of ketamine 100mcg/kg the incidence of propofol induced pain relative to lidocaine and placebo can be reduced [13]. bano f, zafar s et al, studied 100 patients. they received 0.5mg/kg ketamine in volume 2ml and 2ml of lidocaine, the incidence of propofol pain in the ketamine group was smaller but remained statistically small and this differs from our study because they injected 25% of the calculated propofol dose with in 15 second and performed measurement while we injected the whole dose then performed measurement [14]. while polat r, aktay m, et al, studied 250 patients receiving remifentanil, lidocaine, ketamine, metoclopramide compared to placebo lidocaine or metoclopramide pretreatment decreased the incidence and severity of propofol caused pain fairly and substantially compared to pretreatment with ketamine and remifentanil. although they agree with our study that lidocaine significantly reduces pain compared to placebo but disagree with our study in that ketamine is better than lidocaine probably because we used a higher dose of ketamine than this study [11]. vida ayatollahin et al, studied 140 patients receiving ephedrine, ketamine, lidocaine compared to placebo, they found that ketamine has the best results between the drugs but it was not statistically significant this because they used a lower dose than the dose we used [15]. leena jalota, vicki kalira, et al analyzed from 177 randomized controlled trials totaling 25260 adults. the general risk of propofol injection pain alone was approximately 60%. statistically, they calculated that the two most effective procedures to decrease pain in the injection of propofol were the use of the antecubital vein or pretreatment with lidocaine in combination with venous occlusion when the hand vein was selected on the premise of autonomous efficacy [16]. in our study dose of lidocaine was (40mg) and most of the patients had no propofol injection pain that was statistically important in comparison with placebo organizations. because lidocaine has a local anesthetic impact or an inhibitory impact on the enzyme cascade that result in kinin release [4]. the result of the following studies supported the findings of our study. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 241 shreyasi ray et al, studied 63 patients, compared efficacies of lidocaine 40 mg with fentanyl pretreatment to reduce propofol injection pain, the result shown that lidocaine and fentanyl effectively reduce propofol injection pain compared to ordinary placebo saline [5]. nathanson, michael h et al, compared alfentanil 1mg, lidocaine 40mg to placebo group to reduce pain during propofol injection; the result showed that both lidocaine and alfentanil the incidence of pain was considerably smaller than the placebo group [17]. pang ww, wang py et al, researched 105 patients randomly assigned to receive tramadol, lid ocaine 60 mg or normal saline as a pretreatment for pain reduction with propofol injection. the results showed that both tramadol and lidocaine considerably decreased the incidence and intensity of propofol injection pain relative to normal saline [18]. although this study results agree with our study but still they used a much higher dose of lidocaine than our dose. king sharon y et al, they studied 368 females, were allocated to one of four groups to received propofol mixed with different dose of lidocaine (5mg,10 mg ,20mg) compared to placebo, the result was shown that lidocaine 20 mg reduces the incidence and severity of pain in propofol injection considerably. they got significant decrease in pain with 20mg lidocaine on propofol injection is much less than the lidocaine dose that we used, and this discrepancy may be because they mixed propofol with lidocaine and their research done only on female gender [19]. ali pour m et al, studied 336 patients compared many drugs and lidocaine to placebo on reducing the pain of propofol injection, the result showed that lidocaine is more significantly reduces pain on propofol injection than the other groups [ 20]. mgupto, s mishro et al, studied a 100 female patients for evaluation lidocaine, pethidine, dexamethasone compared to placebo group results to decrease the incidence of propofol pain showed that all pretreatment groups the incidence of propofol injection pain reduces considerably more than placebo [9]. although this study result agrees with our study but still it was used a much lower dose of lidocaine than our dose, this difference may be related to gender (only female) and the patient received diazepam 5mg on night before surgery. similarly, ketamine (20 mg) pretreatment decreased the incidence of propofol injection pain and no anyone of patient felt pain, the distinction between ketamine and placebo group was statistically important. ketamine acts on a variety of receptors in the central nervous system and vascular endothelium, it is a non-competitive n-methyld aspartic acid receptor antagonist and opioid ì receptor agonist [11]. the following studies supports our results such as n kad, p malik et al, studied 100 patients compared ketamine to placebo group reducing the incidence of pain in propofol injection with intravenous ketamine is an easy and secure way to decrease the incidence of pain in propofol injection [21]. suzuki s et al, studied 43 patients, compared ketamine to placebo group for prevention of pain injection with propofol. ketamine pretreatment the incidence and severity of pain associated with propofol injection decreased considerably before propofol administration [22]. c .h. tan, m. k. onsiong et al, studied 100 female patients and compared intravenous ketamine (10 mg) 1 ml to normal saline 1ml pretreatment for propofol injection pain showed thatj84% of the saline control patient had mild or severe discomfort compared to 26% of those who had pretreatment with ketamine. this difference from our study may be due to the higher dose of ketamine we used so that 0% had pain on propofol injection [23]. hong sw, et al, studied on 225 patients, the patient received 2ml of normal saline, 2ml of ketamine 20 mg, 2ml of remifentanil at different dose the results showed that groups of ketamine experienced much less frequent and intense pain than normal saline groups [24]. 4. conclusion pretreatment with either ketamine or lidocaine is an effective method for propofol pain prevention and ketamine is superior on lidocaine. further study on other drugs that may prevent pain during propofol injection. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 242 reference [1] d. singh, s. jagannath, s.priye "prevention of propofol injection pain: comparison between lidocaine and ramosetron" journal of anaesthesiology and clinical pharmacol, 30 (2) pp. 213–216, 2014. [2] j. butterworth. david mackey. john wasnick. morgan and mikhails clinical anesthesiology, mcgraw-hill education, 2013. [3] c. h. tan and m. k. onsiong. "pain on injection of propofol" journal of anaesthesia, 53(5) pp.468-476, 1998. [4] e. liljeroth, pain induced by propofol, lund university medical faculty, doctoral dissertation series, 2007. [5] s ray, r pal, s pal, j kirtania, d sarbapalli, "preclusion of pain on injection with propofol: evaluating the effects of lignocaine or fentanyl pretreatment" anesth essays res 5 pp.33-38, 2011. [6] m nakane , h iwama. "potential mechanism of propofol-induced pain on injection based on studies using nafamostat mesilate" british journal of anesthesia, 38(3) pp. 397-404, 1999. [7] t.n. calvey and n.e. williams, principles and practice of pharmacology for anesthetists, wiley on line library, 2008. [8] a. r. aitkenhead, g. david, j. rowbotham, text book of anesthesia, churchill livingstone, elsevier, 2007. [9] m gupta, s mishra, d gupta, m gujjar, "prevention of pain on propofol injection: a comparative, randomized, double blind study between lignocaine, pethidine, dexamethasone and placebo" the internet journal of anesthesiology, 11 (2) 2006. [10] h. zahedi, m. nikooseresht. "prevention of propofol injection pain with small dose ketamine" m.e.j.anesth, 20 (3) pp.401-404, 2009. [11] r. polat, m. aktay, o. özlü. "the effects of remifentanil, lidocaine, metoclopramide, or ketamine pretreatment on propofol injection pain" m.e.j. anesth, 21 (5) pp. 673-677, 2012. [12] i saadawy, e ertok, a boker. "painless injection of propofol: pretreatment with ketamine vs thiopental, meperidine, and lidocaine" middle east j anesthesiol, 19 (3) pp.631-44, 2007. [13] s. koo, s. cho, y. kim, "small-dose ketamine reduces the pain of propofol injection"anesth analg, 103, pp.1444-1447, 2006. [14] f bano , s zafar , s sabbar , s aftab , s. haider. ".intravenous ketamine attenuates injection pain and arterial pressure changes during the induction of anesthesia with propofol: a comparison with lidocaine" journal of the college of physicians and surgeons--pakistan , 17(7) pp.390-393, 2007. [15] v. ayatollahi, s. behdad , s. kargar , "comparison of effects of ephedrine, lidocaine and ketamine with placebo on injection pain, hypotension and bradycardia due to propofol injection: a randomized placebo controlled clinical trial " acta medica iranica, 50(9) pp.609-614, 2012 [16] l. jalota, v. kalira, e. george. "prevention of pain on injection of propofol: systematic review and meta-analysis" bmj, pp.342, 2011. [17] mh nathanson, nm gajraj, ja russell. "prevention of pain on injection of propofol: a comparison of lidocaine with alfentanil" anesth analg, 82 pp.469-71, 1996. [18] ww pang, py huang, dp chang, mh huang. "the peripheral analgesic effect of tramadol in reducing propofol injection pain: a comparison with lidocaine" reg anesth pain med, 24 (3) pp.246-9, 1999. [19] sy king, fm davis, je wells, dj murchinson, pj pryor. "lidocaine for the prevention of pain due to injection of propofol" anesthesia and analgesia, 74(2) pp. 246-249, 1992. [20] m. alipour, masoomeh tabari, and masoomeh alipour "paracetamol, ondasteron, granisetron, magnesium sulfate and lidocaine and reduced propofol injection pain" iran red crescent med, 16(3) 2014. [21] n kad, p malik, j dureja, a thakur. "ketamine pretreatment to alleviate the pain of propofol injection" the internet journal of anesthesiology, 20 (2) pp.1-5, 2008. [22] s suzuki, t masamune, a nonaka. " pretreatment with ketamine reduces incidence and severity of pain on propofol injection" masui, 51(2) pp.140-143, 2002. [23] ch tan, mk onsiong, sw kua. "the effect of ketamine pretreatment on propofol injection pain in 100 women" anesthesia, 53(3) pp.302-305, 1998. [24] sw hong, kh kwak. "the effects of different doses of remifentanil on propofol injection pain: a placebo controlled comparison of ketamine" korean j anesthesiol, 51(3) pp.302-307, 2006. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=singh%20d%5bauth%5d http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=jagannath%20s%5bauth%5d http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=priye%20s%5bauth%5d http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=nakane%20m%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=10655909 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=iwama%20h%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=10655909 http://europepmc.org/search?page=1&query=auth:%22bano+f%22 http://europepmc.org/search?page=1&query=auth:%22zafar+s%22 http://europepmc.org/search?page=1&query=auth:%22sabbar+s%22 http://europepmc.org/search?page=1&query=auth:%22aftab+s%22 http://europepmc.org/search?page=1&query=auth:%22haider+s%22 http://europepmc.org/search?page=1&query=journal:%22j+coll+physicians+surg+pak%22 http://europepmc.org/search?page=1&query=journal:%22j+coll+physicians+surg+pak%22 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=alipour%20m%5bauth%5d http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=tabari%20m%5bauth%5d http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=alipour%20m%5bauth%5d http://www.koreamed.org/searchbasic.php?qy=%22korean+j+anesthesiol%22+%5bjti%5d&displaysearchresult=1  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq assessing soil tolerance limit for two soil orders surrounding sulaimani city marwa abubakr ahmed kamal sharif qadir natural resources department natural resources department college of agricultural engineering sciences college of agricultural engineering sciences university of sulaimani university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq marwa.ahmed@univsul.edu.iq kamal.qadir@univsul.edu.iq volume 4 – issue 2 december 2019 doi: 10.24017/science.2019 .2.18 received: 03 november 2019 accepted: 27 december 2019 abstract this research was conducted to determined soil loss tolerance limit (sltl) which used for soil and water conservation projects and assessing the potential risk of soil erosion. in this study, two different sites were selected including bakrajo and qallachwalan were located 9.4 and 23.7 km far from sulaimani city respectively. the soil orders in the two studied sites were determined through describing the soil profile properties which were known as vertisols and mollisols respectively. each site was divided into 16 sub-sites using the grid point system. the dimension of each site was (2.5*2.5 km). the estimated soil tolerance limit for whole grid points except one grid point at bakrajo site was equal to 12.5 (mg/ ha/ yr), while at qallachwalan in a wide range as 2.5-10 (mg/ ha/ yr). the mentioned results of soil tolerance limit explained that the bakrajo site is more resist to the risk of water erosion compared to qallachwalan site which was known as a rugged area. besides the most soil depth of the grid points at qallachwalan was shallow did not exceed 50 cm. so the qallachwalan site needs several processes conservation planning than the bakrajo site which known as more deep and flatty soil. keywords: soil loss tolerance limit, biophysical model, land degradation, soil erosion, soil erodibility factor, saturation hydraulic conductivity. mailto:marwa.ahmed@univsul.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 185 1. introduction degradation can cause unacceptable land use for pasture, agricultural, industrial or urban purposes by reducing the yield potential and the soil quality[1]. in fact, a degradative process such as biological, chemical and physical leads to decrease soil productivity and quality. the food security and consequently the world population now and in the future depend on sustainability[2]. sustainable land management practices are needed to avoid land degradation which typically occurs because of human development or land management practices that is not sustainable over a period[3]. in the many parts of the world, land degradation is rising in intensity and extent, as for grasslands, cultivated areas and forests, the rate of (10, 20 and 30)% has been reported subjected to degradation[4]. erosion is one of the most recognized and dominant types of soil degradation causes remove the most nutrient rich and organic matter dense layer of the soil profile [5]. in various parts of the world, soil erosion is accelerated such as the area under study due to population density, deforestation, overgrazing, intensive land cultivation and higher demand for firewood as an energy source [6, 7]. in the developing counties especially in the tropics and subtropics areas subjected to soil degradation is a permanent issue and going to stay the same during the twentyone century, whilst, soil degradation occurs by accelerated erosion [8]. gabriels and conelis [9] demonstrated that land degradation covers the soil, vegetation and water resources degradation and water erosion is the most important type of soil degradation occupying fifty six percent of the worldwide area. conacher, [10] showed that salinization and waterlogging of irrigated areas are two closely related and perhaps the earliest forms of reported land degradation. soil erosion is a slow dynamic natural process which involves detachment, transportation and accumulation of productive surface soil across the earth’s surface through water or wind action[11]. pimentel [12] demonstrated that soil low organic matter content, medium to fine texture and weak structural development is very easy to erosion. also, soils which have low water infiltration rate are subject to high rates of erosion by water and the soil particles are easily displaced by wind power. gupta et al., [13] showed many other issues created by soil erosion such as deposition of unfertile materials on cultivated lands, harmful effects on water supply, sedimentation of canals and rivers and most important the destruction of the agricultural fertile lands. in addition, crop productivity decreases by soil erosion, due to either physical degradation or nutrient depletion[14]. some index cause soil erosion such as soil surface crusts increasing, opened roots, the reduced topsoil thickness, apparent gullies or rills, opened subsoil at the soil surface and poor plant growth [15]. determination of soil erosion can be helpful for improving the information about the extent of the areas influenced and consequently for developing measurement due to reduce the intensity of the issue by recognition of areas that are severely affected. as reported by [16, 17] appropriate land management along with technologies such as soil conservation methods cause increasing in land productivity, reducing soil erosion and sustain soil quality. duan et al., [18] discovered the determination of the soil loss tolerance limit (sltl or t value) is one of the most important aspects of water and soil conservation projects leads to a criterion for controlling erosion rates. mandal and sharda [19] defined soil loss tolerance as the maximum rate of erosion at which the quality of a soil as a medium for plant growth can be maintained. on the other definition, slt defined as the maximum amount of annual soil erosion that will permit a high level of crop productivity to be obtained economically over an extended period of time [20]. these authors suggested various criteria should be considered in the evaluating of slt, including influence on water quality, grade or (class) of weathering and modify in soil quality. method conserving the nonlinearities of soil growth or (progression) process and weathering of the rock should be displaced of a direct association between evolution of the soil profile and soil erosion by [21]. therefore, lal [22] suggested that the tsl concept should be extended involve the environmental influence of air quality and water on ecosystems and the greenhouse effect economic effects of onsite and offsite, the amount of soil erosion and the amount of new soil formation. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 186 mostly depends on the proficiency of the individuals included for determining soil loss tolerance limit (sltl), despite the consequence of stl for soil conservation. for estimating slt duan et al.,[18] reported three major quantitative methods based on soil formation rate, soil thickness and soil productivity. the slt is based on favorable rooting depth as reported by [23]. lenka et al., [24] recommended that sltl estimation can be calculated based on soil functions. this is affects soil erosion process. in addition, the best approximation of slt can be estimated by the root zone rather than the depth of the root [24]. however, sltl of (13 ton/ha/yr) has been proposed for deep medium textured soils under moderate humid conditions at the time amount of soil loss is believed to take pace with the comparable amount of weathering [25]. the united state department of agriculture in 1956 reported ten factors which have an impact on sltl. this is for special soil involving soil depth, likelihood of appear gully and rill, the formation of the soil from parent material, erosion cause to loss plant nutrients, reduction of crop yield by erosion, converts favorable soil properties for plant growth which caused by erosion, the rate topsoil formation from subsoil, delivery of sediment from the erosion site, over and above maintainable soil conservation practices on the availability of economic, practicable, artistic and socially tolerable [18]. quantifying the acceptable soil loss without influencing is a major challenge for planner, researchers and conservationists [19]. mandal et al., [26] elucidated that on shallow soils sltl land productivity declines quickly when sltl is 5 mg/ha/yr. conversely, crop productivity not affected in deep soils when soil loss tolerance limit (12.5 mg/ha/yr). with a few exceptions, the sltl for 12 sub-watersheds within chamchamal main catchment was estimated at 10 mg/ha/yr [7]. on the other hand, hussein, [27] noticed that about 43% out of 49 sites within bastora catchment had sltl of 12.5 mg/ha/yr on account of the sufficient soil depth and high soil resistivity to erosion. the most important factor for determined soil loss tolerance limit refers to considered soil formation rate[28]. therefore, standard sltl value based on soil formation rates in most farmlands, but it’s not reasonable to utilize[19]. thus, the objective of the research was to find and compare permissible soil loss limit for two orders study sites in sulaimani city. 2. methods and materials two different sites were selected according to their different in soil orders in june-september 2018. the selected sites were bakrajo (vertisols) is located between n 35º 29' 45" and n 35º 31' 31" latitude and e 45º 21' 20" and e 45º 22' 05" longitude and qallachwalan (mollisols) located between n 35º 37' 51" and n 35º 38' 43" latitude and e 45º 34' 32" and e 45º 34' 58" longitude (fig. 1). a biophysical model described by mandal and sharda[19] was employed to stl for different grid points of a grid system (2.5* 2.5 km). for these reason five indicators, each representing a soil function related to soil erosion was selected including saturated hydraulic conductivity, soil erodibility, soil organic matter content, soil bulk density and soil ph. the calculated value of each index was converted to a unitless score ranged between zeros to one. based on the relative importance of the indicator, weights were applied to the indexes. the weights to the five indicators that mentioned before were 0.35, 0.25, 0.10, 0.15 and 0.15 respectively[19]. then the transformed values of the indicators scaled “0 to 1” scale were multiplied by (the weight) assigned to them. a quantitative value (q) indicating the aggregate score was obtained for the each grid point by collecting the values of the weighted parameters as described below: 𝑄 = ∑ 𝑞𝑖 𝑤𝑖𝑛𝑖=1 ……………….. (1) 𝑄 = 𝑞rir 𝑤𝑤𝑖𝑟 + 𝑞𝑟𝑘 𝑤𝑤𝑘 + 𝑞𝑟𝑏𝑑 𝑤𝑤𝑏𝑑 + 𝑞𝑟𝑜𝑐 𝑤𝑤𝑜𝑐 + 𝑞𝑟𝑝𝐻 𝑤𝑤𝑝𝐻 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 187 where: q defines (the state or condition) of the soil in terms of (structural and functional) integrity, 𝑞𝑟𝑖𝑟 index for infiltration rate, 𝑞𝑟𝑘 the rating for( soil erodibility), 𝑞𝑟𝑏𝑑 used for the bulk density, 𝑞roc used for the organic carbon and 𝑞rph the rating for potential of hydrogen (ph) of soils and (w) indicates the weight factor for each function. according to the q value, there are three groups of soil: 1 (q<0.33), 2 ( 𝑄 = 0.33 + 0.66), and 3 (q>0.66). the stl was computed for each grid point on the basis of soil group multiply depth matrix [29]. the soil erodibility at each grid points was estimated using the following equation [30]. 𝐾 = 0.277 10−5 𝑀1.14 (12 − om) + 0.043 (sc − 2) + 0.033 (pc − 3)……… (2) where: k = soil erodibility in metric unit (hr m-1 cm-1) m = (100clay %) (silt % + very fine sand %) om = organic matter %; sc = structure class code, showed in (table 1). pc = permeability class code, showed in (table 2). also representative soil samples were obtained from the top (0.20 m) at each grid points. they were air-dried (at 48 hr. to take laboratory condition), grounded by plastic hummer and sieved with no, ≤ 2 mm due determine particle size distribution by using sieving method according to[31]. the structure was described visually after dropping representative clods from a height of about 1 m in the field. constant head permeameter method used to determine soil hydraulic conductivity for undisturbed cores diameter was (10 cm) and the length was (10 cm), following the procedure reported by[31]. the soil bulk density was measured by clod method covering with paraffin wax as described by[32]. wet oxidation method was applied for measuring soil organic carbon content as described by [33]. the ph of the soil saturation extract (soil to water ratio 1:1) was measured with ph-meter (hanna ph 211, model) according to[34]. figure 1: location map showing study site kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 188 table 1: structure code (sc) for structure types type of structure sc very fine granular structure 1 fine granular structure 2 medium or coarse granular structure 3 blocky, platy or columnar structure 4 table 2: permeability code (pc) for permeability classes permeability (cm hr-1) permeability class pc <0.1 very slow 6 0.1-0.5 slow 5 0.5-2 slow to moderate 4 2-6 moderate 3 6-12 moderate to rapid 2 >12 rapid 1 3. results and discussion 3.1 soil erodibility estimation factor (k) value of the k-factor were computed for different grid points for bakrajo and qallachwalan sites according to the method which prepared by[35]. table 3 shows the results. the k-values ranged from 0.249 to 0.483 for grid points 1 and 13 in bakrajo respectively, for qallachwalan ranged from 0.181 to 0.493 metric units at grid points 4 and 11 respectively. results show that, even there was little variation in k-value at the study sites, but still at qallachwalan was greater compared to bakrajo site, due to topography of qallachwalan had slope and rugged, while the other site was approximately flat. however, clay content ranged 32.33% and 46.99% for bakrajo, and 15.08% and 61.08% for qallachwalan and soil organic matter content which ranged between 1.35% and 3.11% at bakrajo but 0.22% to 4.17% at qallachwalan. it was also found that clay content and organic matter was linearly and negatively correlated with kvalue, indicating that as clay content increases, the k-value decreases, and the greater the amount of organic matter, the lower will be the k-value. these results are closed were conducted in chamchamal, erbil and sulaimani by [7, 27, 36] respectively. table 3: soil erodibility factor for bakrajo and qallachwalan sites s it e g r id p o in t particle size distribution (%) o r g a n ic m a tt e r c o n te n t (% ) v e r y f in e s a n d ( % ) s tr u c tu r e c la ss c o d e p e r m e a b il it y c la ss c o d e s o il e r o d ib il it y , k (m e tr ic u n it ) s a n d s il t c la y b a k r a jo 1 8.00 45.01 46.99 2.21 1.54 4 2 0.249 2 2.68 55.01 42.31 2.21 1.44 4 2 0.327 3 7.74 55.94 36.32 1.69 2.15 4 4 0.482 4 5.40 61.43 33.17 1.88 1.94 4 3 0.471 5 8.41 55.74 35.85 3.11 3.15 4 3 0.379 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 189 6 4.50 58.61 36.89 2.02 1.51 4 3 0.415 7 7.04 55.89 37.07 1.49 2.78 4 2 0.389 8 3.76 62.49 33.75 1.97 1.91 4 3 0.467 9 3.76 50.25 45.99 1.99 1.61 4 3 0.326 10 2.78 54.39 42.83 1.65 1.35 4 2 0.333 11 5.22 56.81 37.97 1.75 2.11 4 2 0.381 12 5.16 56.70 38.14 1.35 1.78 4 4 0.459 13 4.36 63.31 32.33 1.82 1.99 4 3 0.483 14 6.44 51.10 42.46 2.77 2.27 4 1 0.259 15 4.69 60.84 34.47 1.67 2.01 4 3 0.468 16 3.82 54.09 42.09 2.17 1.65 4 3 0.361 q a ll a c h w a la n 1 17.59 36.62 45.79 2.32 1.87 4 4 0.284 2 11.37 37.14 51.49 1.69 3.02 4 4 0.284 3 10.11 37.52 52.37 3.22 1.89 4 2 0.185 4 31.59 28.78 39.63 3.99 4.09 4 2 0.181 5 4.77 34.15 61.08 1.95 1.23 4 4 0.229 6 14.57 37.32 48.11 3.82 3.87 4 3 0.225 7 25.47 44.12 30.41 3.63 4.73 2 2 0.209 8 10.99 45.36 43.65 4.07 2.06 4 2 0.228 9 21.82 54.44 23.74 2.11 5.59 4 2 0.459 10 9.91 53.14 36.95 2.05 2.11 4 3 0.382 11 7.32 59.41 33.27 0.99 2.22 4 3 0.493 12 42.17 40.07 17.76 0.22 13.59 3 2 0.469 13 11.80 41.99 46.21 1.61 2.06 4 3 0.283 14 8.25 57.11 34.64 0.48 1.94 2 4 0.425 15 43.19 35.21 21.60 4.17 6.45 3 2 0.229 16 61.38 23.54 15.08 1.33 9.38 4 1 0.276 3.2 soil indicators used for assessing soil loss tolerance limit table (4) displays the measured values for four soil indicators at the grid points of the system which was established. these indicators were selected based on sensitivity analysis. each indicator represents a soil function related to soil erosion. according to the table 4 the saturated hydraulic conductivity varies from a minimum of 0.72 cm hr-1 at grid point 12 to a maximum of 14.40 cm hr-1 at the grid 14 at bakrajo site, but in qallachwalan site those values ranged from 0.90 and 18.36 cm hr-1 at grid points 5 and 16 respectively. the variation of saturated hydraulic conductivity may cause by variation in soil bulk density and soil texture. these results are in concord with the results obtained by [27] in erbil. it can also be noticed that the soil bulk density ranged from 1.41 mg m-3 at grid point 1 and 1.69 mg m-3 at grid point 12 within bakrajo site, but at qallachwalan site were 1.38 and 1.70 mg m-3 at grid points 5 and 16 respectively. a considerable difference in soil organic carbon content values can be observed across the entire both sites, which varied from 0.78% at grid point 12 to 1.80% at grid point 5 for bakrajo site and in qallachwalan ranged from 0.13% at grid point 12 to 2.42 at grid point 15. overall the soils of the study areas are described by low soil organic matter. the soil of the kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 190 majority sites fell in the high soil organic matter content class om > 12.9 g kg-1propsed by [37]. the results of the study sites also indicated that soil ph was ranged between 7.27 at grid point 1 to 8.08 at grid point 11 for bakrajo site, but in qallachwalan was ranged from 7.05 at grid point 4 to 7.85 in grid point 14. the ph of majority of the soil fell in neutral class (7.4-7.8), while the ph of the remaining soils fell in the moderately alkaline class (6.6-7.3) by [38]. table 4: soil indicators used for describing the resistance of soil to water erosion at the two study sites site grid point saturated hydraulic conductivity (cm hr-1) bulk density (mg m-3) soil organic carbon (%) soil ph b a k r a jo 1 10.08 1.41 1.28 7.27 2 8.28 1.52 1.28 7.92 3 1.08 1.60 0.98 7.81 4 3.60 1.54 1.09 7.80 5 3.96 1.47 1.80 7.54 6 3.24 1.51 1.17 7.92 7 7.20 1.54 0.87 7.91 8 2.16 1.64 1.14 7.87 9 3.60 1.44 1.15 7.82 10 6.12 1.47 0.96 7.83 11 7.20 1.48 1.02 8.08 12 0.72 1.69 0.78 7.89 13 5.76 1.56 1.06 7.96 14 14.40 1.42 1.60 7.88 15 2.52 1.50 0.97 7.89 16 3.60 1.49 1.26 7.86 q a ll a c h w a la n 1 1.80 1.50 1.35 7.46 2 1.44 1.43 0.98 7.65 3 8.64 1.47 1.87 7.48 4 7.20 1.50 2.32 7.05 5 0.90 1.38 1.13 7.51 6 2.57 1.48 2.22 7.34 7 8.64 1.49 2.11 7.27 8 11.16 1.55 2.36 7.24 9 8.28 1.54 1.23 7.40 10 5.40 1.53 1.19 7.77 11 4.32 1.58 0.57 7.78 12 7.20 1.60 0.13 7.76 13 5.76 1.48 0.93 7.57 14 1.44 1.64 0.28 7.85 15 10.8 1.56 2.42 7.16 16 18.36 1.70 0.77 7.80 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 191 3.3 soil tolerance limit table (5) shows the calculate of aggregate score from the attributed scores and the corresponding weights. it is obvious that the aggregate score is distributed in a wide range, and varied from 0.410 at grid point 12 and 0.900 at grid points 1 and 14 within bakrajo site. with some exception the aggregate score of most grid points (1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, and 16) were exceed 0.66 q6 demonstrating soil good state as a result all of the these soils were placed in group 3 (q > 0.66). but aggregate scores at grid points (3, 6, 8, 12, and 15) were ranged between 0.33 and 0.66 and placed in group 2 showing soils are in moderate state. the aggregate scores for qallachwalan site were ranged between 0.400 to 0.930 at grid points 14 and 3 respectively. with some exception, the aggregate scores of most grid points of (3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 15 and 16) also were exceed 0.66 and were placed in group 3, but the remain aggregate scores at grid points of 1, 2, 5, 11, 12, and 14 were falling between 0.33 and 0.66 and placed in group 2. finally the stl for the two study sites was calculated based on soil group multiply by depth matrix. the stl for bakrajo site at the all investigated grid points was estimated of 12.5 mg ha-1 yr-1, except grid point 1 which was 7.5 mg ha-1 yr-1 (table 6). soil loss tolerance limit at grid point 1 can be related to the soil depth which was about 25-50 cm, while the soil depth for remained grid points was above 150 cm. these results reflect that the existing soils over the study site are characterized by relatively low heterogeneity with respect to ( infiltration rate, soil bulk density, soil organic carbon, soil ph, soil erodibility and soil depth ). the estimated stl in qallachwalan site was distributed a wide range and varied between 2.5 mg ha-1 yr-1 at grid points 12 and 14, to 10 mg ha-1 yr-1 at grid point 1, 3 and 4. the main reason for existing a wide range of stl in qallachwalan is that the study site had the different soil depth ranged between <25 cm to 150 cm. so qallachwalan site needs special conservation practices than bakrajo site such as afforestation, pasture management and preventing the trees and grasses from burning cutting, pasture management, preventing the trees and grasses from burning cutting. similar results were reported by [27] in erbil and [39] for three states of northern india. table 5: calculation of aggregate score from the individual rate for different attribute site grid points individual rate for saturated hydraulic conductivity (q1) bulk density (q2) soil erodibility (q3) organic carbon (q4) soil ph (q5) aggregate score (q6) b a k r a jo 1 1 0.8 0.8 0.8 1 0.900 2 1 0.5 0.5 0.8 0.8 0.765 3 0.3 0.3 0.5 0.5 0.8 0.455 4 0.8 0.5 0.5 0.8 0.8 0.695 5 0.8 0.8 0.5 1 0.8 0.755 6 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.8 0.8 0.590 7 1 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.8 0.720 8 0.5 0.2 0.5 0.8 0.8 0.560 9 0.8 0.8 0.5 0.8 0.8 0.725 10 1 0.8 0.5 0.5 0.8 0.750 11 1 0.5 0.5 0.8 0.5 0.720 12 0.2 0.2 0.5 0.5 0.8 0.410 13 1 0.3 0.5 0.8 0.8 0.745 14 1 0.8 0.8 1 0.8 0.900 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 192 15 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.8 0.545 16 0.8 0.5 0.5 0.8 0.8 0.695 q a ll a c h w a la n 1 0.3 0.5 0.8 0.8 1 0.625 2 0.3 0.8 0.8 0.5 0.8 0.580 3 1 0.8 0.8 1 1 0.930 4 1 0.5 0.8 1 1 0.900 5 0.2 1 0.8 0.8 0.8 0.610 6 0.5 0.5 0.8 1 1 0.725 7 1 0.5 0.8 1 1 0.900 8 1 0.5 0.8 1 1 0.900 9 1 0.5 0.5 0.8 1 0.795 10 1 0.5 0.5 0.8 0.8 0.765 11 0.8 0.3 0.5 0.3 0.8 0.600 12 1 0.3 0.5 0.2 0.8 0.655 13 1 0.5 0.8 0.5 0.8 0.795 14 0.3 0.2 0.5 0.2 0.8 0.400 15 1 0.3 0.8 1 1 0.880 16 1 0.2 0.8 0.5 0.8 0.765 table 6: maximum permissible soil loss rate for the study soils based on soil depth and aggregate score site grid point soil depth (cm) aggregate score (q) soil group maximum soil loss rate (mg ha-1 yr-1) b a k r a jo 1 25-50 0.900 3 7.5 2 > 150 0.765 3 12.5 3 >150 0.455 2 12.5 4 >150 0.695 3 12.5 5 >150 0.755 3 12.5 6 >150 0.590 2 12.5 7 >150 0.720 3 12.5 8 >150 0.560 2 12.5 9 >150 0.725 3 12.5 10 >150 0.750 3 12.5 11 >150 0.720 3 12.5 12 >150 0.410 2 12.5 13 >150 0.745 3 12.5 14 >150 0.900 3 12.5 15 >150 0.545 2 12.5 16 >150 0.695 3 12.5 q a ll a c h w a la n 1 100-150 0.625 2 10 2 25-50 0.580 2 5 3 50-100 0.930 3 10 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 193 4 50-100 0.900 3 10 5 25-50 0.610 2 5 6 25-50 0.725 3 7.5 7 25-50 0.900 3 7.5 8 25-50 0.900 3 7.5 9 25-50 0.795 3 7.5 10 25-50 0.765 3 7.5 11 25-50 0.600 2 5 12 <25 0.655 2 2.5 13 25-50 0.795 3 7.5 14 <25 0.400 2 2.5 15 <25 0.880 3 7.5 16 <25 0.765 3 7.5 4. conclusion generally most of the estimated soil tolerance limit for bakrajo site was greater than qallachwalan site. most of bakrajo soils depth in exceeds 150 cm. so, it didn’t need any conservation planning except continuous monitoring of the soil condition. in qallachwalan site there was a large variety of the soils depth ranged from less than 25 cm to 150 cm. this is means that need for numerous different conservation planning to control the soil erosion. the estimated soil erodibility for the two studied sites was ranged between low to moderate due to high content of clay particles and organic matter. the most aggregate score in bakrajo was excess 0.66 which described soils under group 3, but in qallachwalan site it was ranged between 0.33 and 0.66 and the soil was described under as group 2. in general the soil of bakrajo site is in a best condition respect to water erosion risks than qallachwalan soil site. reference [1] r. lal, "degradation and resilience of soils," philosophical transactions of the royal society of london. series b: biological sciences, vol. 352, pp. 997-1010, 1997. 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[13] n. gupta, zahn. m.m. coppens, k.a. joiner and d.r. voelker, and j., "biochem. 2005," p. 163, apr 22; 280(16) 2005. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 194 [14] d. mandal and k. tripathi, "soil erosion limits for lakshadweep archipelago," current science (00113891), vol. 96, 2009. [15] a. t. o'geen and l. j. schwankl, "understanding soil erosion in irrigated agriculture," 2006. [16] a. novara, l. gristina, f. guaitoli, a. santoro, and a. cerdà, "managing soil nitrate with cover crops and buffer strips in sicilian vineyards," solid earth, vol. 4, pp. 255-262, 2013. [17] g. zhao, x. mu, z. wen, f. wang, and p. gao, "soil erosion, conservation, and eco‐environment changes in the loess plateau of china," land degradation & development, vol. 24, pp. 499-510, 2013. [18] x. duan, x. shi, y. li, r. li, and d. fen, "a new method to calculate soil loss tolerance for sustainable soil productivity in farmland. agron," sustain. dev, vol. 37, 2017. [19] d. mandal and v. sharda, "assessment of permissible soil loss in india employing a quantitative biophysical model," current science(bangalore), vol. 100, pp. 383-390, 2011. [20] d. mccormack, k. young, and l. kimberlin, "current criteria for determining soil loss tolerance," determinants of soil loss tolerance, pp. 95-111, 1982. [21] j. botschek, p. sauerborn, a. skowronek, and r. wolff, "tolerierbarer bodenabtrag und bodenbildung— konzepte und perspektiven," mitt. dtsch. bodenkdl. ges, vol. 83, pp. 87-90, 1997. [22] r. lal, "agronomic consequences of soil erosion," soil erosion at multiple scales, 1998. [23] s. usda, "national soils handbook," soil conservation service, washington, dc, usa, 1973. [24] n. k. lenka, d. mandal, and s. sudhishri, "permissible soil loss limits for different physiographic regions of west bengal," current science, pp. 665-670, 2014. [25] j. poesen and h. lavee, "rock fragments in top soils: significance and processes," catena, vol. 23, pp. 128, 1994. [26] d. mandal, k. dadhwal, o. khola, and b. dhyani, "adjusted t values for conservation planning in northwest himalayas of india," journal of soil and water conservation, vol. 61, pp. 391-397, 2006. [27] k. s. hussein, "conservation planning for bastura catchment based on detection of erosion risk prone areas " m.sc, soil and water sciences, university of salahaddin college of agricultural scienes, 2016. [28] l. c. johnson, "soil loss tolerance: fact or myth?," journal of soil and water conservation, vol. 42, pp. 155-160, 1987. [29] nrcs, "the soil tolerance limit was computed for each site on the basis of soil group versus depth matrix," ed, 1999. [30] j. kessler and r. oosterbaan, "determining hydraulic conductivity of soils," drainage principles and applications, vol. 3, pp. 252-296, 1974. [31] a. klute, water retention: laboratory methods, klute ( ed.) ed. maddison wi, 1986. [32] g. r. a. a. h. blake., k.h, bulk density in method of soil analysis, part physical and mineralogical methods. 2nd 1986. [33] l. allison, "organic carbon 1," methods of soil analysis. part 2. chemical and microbiological properties, pp. 1367-1378, 1965. [34] m. jackson, "soil chemical analysis prentice hall," inc., englewood cliffs, nj, vol. 498, 1958. [35] w. h. wischmeier and d. d. smith, predicting rainfall erosion losses: a guide to conservation planning: science and education administration, us department of agriculture, 1978. [36] k. s. qadir, "study of erodibility of soils in iraqi kurdistan region," as a partial fulfillment of the requerments for the degree of master of science, a thesis submitted to the council of college of agriculture university of sulaimani, 2001. [37] t. c. a. b. baruah, h.p. , a textbook of soil analysis. vishal printers, delhi110032., 1999. [38] s. s. staff, "soil survey mnual," bureau of plant industry, 1969. [39] p. bhattacharyya, d. mandal, v. bhatt, and r. yadav, "a quantitative methodology for estimating soil loss tolerance limits for three states of northern india," journal of sustainable agriculture, vol. 35, pp. 276292, 2011.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 2 | july 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.2.9 assessment of knowledge, attitude and practices of personal and oral hygiene among undergraduate university students in sulaimani city akam mustafa hasan community health department. technical college of health, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, iraq akam.hasan@spu.edu.iq mardin othman abdulqadir* community health department. technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq mardinothman@yahoo.com abstract: poor hygiene performance and insufficient sanitary conditions assume real parts in the expanded weight of communicable diseases inside developing nations. lack of resources such as hand washing materials, water and sanitation facilities may be essential factors why students do not wash their hands, also struggling of affordable toothpaste and absence of awareness regarding oral hygiene may be affected by improper cleaning teeth and tongue. this study was carried out to assess the knowledge, attitude and practices (kap) of personal and oral hygiene among undergraduate university students in sulaimani city /iraq and evaluated the degree to which appropriate information of hygiene was related with individual hygiene character. this cross-sectional study was carried out among 1055 undergraduate students who were met via trained staff. data comprised of cleanliness and hand washing practices, learning about sanitation, individual cleanliness qualities, nearness of gastrointestinal parasitic disease, oral and dental diseases including dental decay and bad breathes. university students with satisfactory information of legitimate personal and oral hygiene probably had clean clothes 68.8% (p value < 0.05), clean hair 72% (0.0001 p value), fingernail trimmed 139% (p value> 0.05), clean teeth 59.4% (p value <0.05), good mouth breath 57% (p value <0.05). approximately 57.2% of students were delegated having sufficient information of legitimate cleanliness (p value <0.05). most students preferred hand washing after defecation (96.5%) (p value <0.05), while 93.8% revealed utilizing shampoo. on the other hand 62.7% of contributors reported brushing their teeth before going to sleep (p value <0.05) and 74% of participants revealed cleaning their tongue sometimes (p value< 0.01). this study discovered underscore the requirement for more cleanliness training in universities; and give target confirm that may direct the improvement of far reaching personal, oral hygiene and health mediation programs in sulaimani universities. furthermore the effective usage of this study is probably going to significantly weaken the transmissible diseases. keywords: knowledge, attitude, practices, personal hygiene, oral hygiene, university students. 1. introduction a broad division of the world's illness and destruction is inferable from transferable disorders [1]. 62% and 31% africa and southeast asia died because of transferrable diseases [2]. this pattern is particularly outstanding in developing countries where intense respiratory and intestinal infections are the vital causes of morbidity and mortality among youthful kids [1]. insufficient sanitary conditions and poor hygiene practices assume significant role in increasing transferable infections inside these developing nations. earlier hygiene articles have shown that adolescents with appropriate hand washing practices are less likely to report gastrointestinal and respiratory manifestations [4, 5]. hand washing with cleanser has been accounted for diminishing diarrheal diseases by 44% and respiratory infections by 23% [2, 6]. whereas, globally, the rates of hands are washed with cleanser ranged from 0-34% of the time [7]. a review carried out by the public–private partnership for hand washing worldwide (ppphw) which incorporated a few subsaharan african nations (i.e. kenya, senegal, tanzania, and uganda) showed that 17% of members washed their hands with soap after defecation using the latrines, while 45% of them water to wash their hands [2]. absence of hygiene resources particularly cleanser and water, also inappropriate sanitation facilities might be two of the fundamental reasons why teenagers don't wash their hands (8,9). generally in developing countries such as ethiopia, only 8% of people have can approach adequate sanitation facilities [10]. in rural area of amhara in ethiopia, just 21% of restrooms had hand washing resources, furthermore, less than 4% of houses had available sanitation facilities [9]. moreover, having suitable resources and facilities, personal hygiene practices are intensely impacted by students’ knowledge and behavior towards cleanliness. in a review carried out in senegal, stated the reasons for not washing hands included stubbornness (not having any desire to take advices of adults), laziness, the hurry to go to breaks and playing time, and the smells come from the toilets [10]. regardless of these negative behaviour towards hand washing, many youthds improved hand washing practices and behavior [11]. according to the ppphw study that carried out in subsaharan africa, proper hand washing motivation factors involved avoidance of disgust (i.e. avoidance from dirt and smell of defecation), encourage (i.e. teaching youngsters to wash hands so they remain healthy), status (i.e. clean individuals are more recognized), association (i.e. cleanliness is related with better economic status), captivation (i.e. cleaner individuals are more likeable), solace (i.e. feeling and smelling fresh from hands), and fear (i.e. avoidance the chance of getting diseases) [12]. moreover, students did not have any desire to miss school caused by diseases because they would be able spend more time with their friends in the schools and universities [11]. in addition, if the youngsters had clean hands, they would have clean books and get good grades [11]. a study was led by the united nations children's fund (unicef) and the ethiopian ministry of health found that contributors in african countries had poor knowledge, attitude and practices towards personal hygiene [13]. also the same study indicated that 60% of children did not know that human waste causes the transmission of illnesses [13]. main personal hygiene criteria such as washing hands with cleanser was poorly shown particularly in rural regions [13]. another review was conducted by the research-roused policy and practice learning in ethiopia (ripple), the program designated to survey the household in asian and african rural areas, discovered that hand washing practices were reported likely poor [14]. in addition to knowledge and awareness regarding appropriate hygiene new hand washing services, have prompted several changes in attitude and information, yet the frequency of hand washing stays low in this region [14]. earlier studies about individual hygiene determine that awareness impacts one's hand washing faith and practices. past reviews carried out in the middle east deliver restricted facts about kap of hygiene. moreover, several researches have analyzed cleanliness knowledge, attitude and practices particularly among school children. aim of the study: this study was aimed to contribute the information about the level of knowledge, assess the attitude and the practices of undergraduate students in sulaimani universities towards personal and oral hygiene. 2. methods and materials setting this study design was cross-section was in sulaimani city/iraq was started from 15 th november 2015 to 15 th june 2016. all the samples were taken from sulaimani universities, the first place was sulaimani polytechnic university, which includes health, administration, engineering and informatics technical colleges, sulaimani technical institute and computer science institute, the second place was university of sulaimani, the third place was jihan university and final place was komar university of science and technology. study population the study population was sulaimani undergraduate students in level 1 to 4. the last example size was 1055 university students (512 females and 543 males) ethical consideration it was essential to gain ethical consideration when conducting this study involves primary data collection and there was direct (questionnaire and interview) dealing with human. ethical consideration paper work was submitted from the department to the colleges and institution to collect data, in addition to keep students’ data confidentiality. the approval from the head of the universities was additionally allowed preceding the initiation of this study. procedure and research instruments consider staff comprised of one supervisor, five undergraduate students and one research assistant. every student was talked with utilizing an organized survey in a room particularly committed for this study in each university. the survey was at first drafted in english, translated to kurdish language, and afterward pre-tested in sulaimani polytechnic university/ health technical college to evaluate the reasonableness to duration, dialect propriety, content legitimacy, and question clarity variable specification the questionnaire comprised of sexual orientation, frequencies of showering, washing hair, brushing teeth, and washing clothes (each 1-7 days, 7-14 days, >14 day), cleaning teeth by dentist (necessity times, three months, six months and never cleaned their tooth). undergraduate students were questioned about the kind of materials utilized for showering and washing hair (shampoo, soap and water), brushing teeth materials (toothpaste, dental floss, mouth wash and tooth pick), ways for choosing types of toothpaste (dentist’s prescription, they choose it by themselves and according to price), knowledge to scientific using of dental floss (yes, no and don’t know). different inquiries regarding hand washing and oral hygiene included: if hands were washed (yes, no) (after defecation, before and after meals); materials utilized for hand washing (hand shampoo, soap and water), time for brushing their teeth (before bed, after breakfast, after meals and sometimes), bushing their tongue (yes, no and sometimes) and brushing tongue materials (toothbrush and tongue brush). each interview objectively watched personal and oral hygiene during the interview, personal hygiene was also evaluated by interviewers to assess the cleanliness of university students. a list was used included for the following queries: clean dresses (yes, no), clean faces (yes, no), fingernail trimmed (yes, no), clean teeth (yes, no) and bad mouth breath (yes, no). the general presence including condition of clothes, fingernails, face, hair and general appearance of teeth were also watched by the interviewers. data analysis the collected data was scored by giving the code number according to the answer in the questionnaire, and then these codes were transferred to microsoft excel database and the results were analysed by using spss statistical software (version 17.0) to present the tables, charts and graphs and p value (p<0.05) was considered statistically significant. frequency distribution, number and percentage were calculated to measure the hygiene and oral practice. the descriptive statistics and statistical significance of any difference between the two genders were determined using the chi-square test. 3. results table 1, according to sexual orientation and personal hygiene of 1055 undergraduate students demonstrate 49% (n=512) of them were female and 51% (n=543) of them were male with mean age 22.1 years old. around, 97% (n=1024) of the understudies revealed showering for less than 7 days (i.e. good cleanliness practices) (0.0001 p value). additionally, around 97% (n=1024) and 73.5% (775) of the students reported washing their hair and brushing their teeth several times in a week (0.05 and 0.00001 p values). about 71.8% (n=757) of undergraduates showed had dental cleaning when plaque is build-up on their teeth (0.00001 p value). also 73.5% (n=775) washing their clothes for no less than 7 days (0.00001 p value). table 2, showed 84.4% (n=888) of students used soap and water to wash their hands (0.00001 p value). furthermore, 93.4% (n= 985) of undergraduate students revealed using shampoo to wash their hair (0.07 p value). moreover, %77.5 (n=877) of students reported utilizing toothpaste to wash their teeth (0.001 p value). 38% (mean= 400) of understudies showed choosing the type of toothpaste according to the price of the item, and around 40% (n= 442) of participants reported they do not know scientifically using dental floss (0.00001 p value). table 3, demonstrated that 72.8% (n=738) of participants reported washing their hands before and after meals (0.00001 p value), 94.5% (n=997) of students revealed washing hands after defecation (0.00001 p value) and 74.3% (n=784) of understudies generally used shampoo to wash their hands. on the other hand, 62.9% (n=580) of students reported brushing their teeth before going to sleep (0.00001 p value), 74.1% (n=686) of participants washed their tongue irregularly and 98.1% (n=1034) of undergraduates used their toothbrush to wash their tongue (0.00001 p value). the results of observing personal and oral hygiene by the interviews were statistically significant (p<0.05). more than 57.2% of the students were named having sufficient information of legitimate cleanliness table 4, showed that 42.8% of the undergraduates did not have proper knowledge of personal hygiene. majority of the students 68.8% (n=693) dressed clean clothes (0.00001 p value), 72% (n= 759) of the students hair observed as clean (0.9 p value), 86.1% (n=854) of the participants’ fingernails were not trimmed (0.00001 p value), 58.2% (n=662) of the undergraduates face appeared clean (0.05 p value), 59.4% (n=570) of the students teeth were seen clean (0.00001 p value), 57% (n=570) of the students mouth reported did not have bad breath (0.05). 4. discussion in this study of university students from level 1 to 4, we assessed the knowledge, attitudes and practices for both personal and oral hygiene of the students surveyed, 57.2% were classified as having proper knowledge of hygiene. this information is important for the act of proper hygiene practice of students in the universities. we additionally assessed the personal hygiene characteristics. overall our discoveries are predictable with previous reviews that have recorded learning and practices of cleanliness among school youngsters in developing nations [17]. this study indicates 62.9% of university students brushed their teeth before going to sleep, in contrast studies carried out in nigeria and developing countries revealed 71.9% and 62.7% of undergraduates brushed their teeth twice a day [21, 22]. almost 27.8% of students reported brushing teeth after breakfast, this finding is anticipated with past researches that have shown 28% of adults used to brush their teeth at breakfast time so they could feel fresh at the beginning of the day [23]. in, addition, majority of students (98.1%) used toothbrush to brush their tongue, which is similar to past studies reporting (81.8%) of the students brushed their tongues by using tooth brush in the developing countries [22]. overall, majority of the undergraduates announced washing hands before meals. the rates of those students were about 70%. remarkably, the self-reported incidence of hand washing before meals among undergraduates in our research is generously higher than frequencies announced from surveys of youths in comparison to the other countries. for example, students from bangladesh showed that 75.9% and 46.9% of students revealed washing hands before suppers [17]. washing hands after defecation is one of the most effective ways to prevent gastrointestinal parasitic infections [2, 6]. this behaviour may be negatively influenced by factors such as laziness, the rush to play with friends, or even the lack of hand washing facilities in the university toilets [11]. in contrast, studies conducted in colombia and india reported that 82.5% and 86.4% of students showed washing their hands after defecation [16, 20]. in a previous study showed that brushing tooth before going to sleep could be the most effective method to reduce dental caries [24]. whereas in this study most of the undergraduate students believed that brushing their teeth before going to bed is very important to eliminate dental caries, gingival diseases and also oral halitosis, but this attitude can be negatively affected by some other factors for example laziness and lack of awareness. in this study majority of the understudies washed their hands with hand shampoo after visiting the toilet (90%). this shows having good resources and facilities of hand washing in the universities. however past studies in the developing countries demonstrated 7% of the students reported having water and soap to wash their hands in the school in the developing countries [24]. while those that had hand washing materials were more likely to wash their hands after defecation. also tongue cleaning is one of the important factor to maintain good oral hygiene, a few microscopic organisms can colonize on the tongue, they are diminished by tongue cleaning [25, 26]. in this study, majority of the students (74%) reported brushing tongue not regularly, it means that students do not have proper knowledge and attitudes towards oral hygiene. a few restrictions must be considered when translating our outcomes. firstly, understudies' self-reported practices may have brought about over-reporting of appropriate cleanliness practices. this bias was mitigated by involving students’ personal hygiene characters objective measures. secondly, our review was restricted to understudies from level 1 to 4 and the individuals who were available in school. adolescents absent because of disease or having sessions were excluded, in this way results may not be summed up to all students. thirdly, the cross-sectional review configuration makes deciding causality impossible. finally, there was no relationship between reported personal hygiene and adequate knowledge of hygiene, which might be qualified to small sample size and probable over revealing of hygiene practices. significantly, ministry of education of iraq and unicef have been making progresses towards improving access to hygiene materials and to expand the ability concerning sanitation and personal and dental hygiene [18]. in 2013, unicef delivered the water, sanitation, and hygiene (wash) program to promote hand washing and sanitation practice in low income countries including iraqi kurdistan region [19]. these activities, combined to all school-based wellbeing and hygiene educational program that encouraged individual cleanliness at home and at school should add up to better wellbeing and personal hygiene practice and knowledge conditions among students. this review targets two key issues that must be tended to while making wellbeing and hygiene advancement programs. firstly, just 57.2% of understudies were delegated having legitimate personal and oral hygiene information. to increase this rate, public health organizations can be formed to explain students about infection causation and transmission, show appropriate hand washing, cleanliness practices, techniques and materials for cleaning teeth, and give motivations to great hygiene procedures. secondly, hygiene practices depend on accessibility of adequate hygiene resources. table 1. sexual orientation, personal and oral hygiene among university students characteristics stage 1 n= 190 (%) stage 2 n=209 (%) stage 3 n=252 (%) stage 4 n=404 (%) x2 p value gender male 90 (47.4) 111(53.1) 125 (49.6) 217 (53.7) 2.7 0.5 female 100 (52.6) 98 (46.9) 127 (50.4) 187 (46.3) hygiene practices taking shower 1-7 days 185 (97.3) 199 (95.3) 237 (94.1) 403 (99.7) 20.9 0.00001 8-14 days 5 (2.7) 10 (4.7) 15 (5.9) 1 (0.3) washing hair 1-7 days 184 (96.8) 199(95.2) 241(95.6) 399 (98.8) 8.5 0.05 8-14 days 6 (3.2) 10 (4.8) 11 (4.4) 5 (1.2) brushing teeth 0.05 1-7 days 105 (55.3) 150 (71.8) 170 (67.5) 350 (86.6) 73.2 0.00001 8-14 days 85 (44.7) 59 (28.2) 82 (32.5) 54 (13.4) cleaning teeth by the dentist (scaling and polishing) 0.00001 presence of plaque 154 (81.1) 155 (74.2) 114 (57.4) 334 (82.7) 297.6 0.00001 3 months 7 (3.7) 9 (4.3) 7 (2.7) 9 (2.2) 6 months 9 (4.7) 0 (0) 96 (38.1) 1 (0.2) never 20 (10.5) 45 (21.5) 60 (23.8) 60 (14.9) washing clothes 1-7 days 105 (55.3) 150 (71.8) 170 (67.5) 350 (86.6) 73.2 0.00001 8-14 days 85 (44.7) 59 (28.2) 82 (32.5) 54 (13.4) *x2= chi-square test 0.00001 table 2. knowledge, attitude and personal hygiene toward sanitation of university students characteristics stage 1 n= 190 (%) stage 2 n=209 (%) stage 3 n=252 (%) stage 4 n=404 (%) x2 p value materials used for bathing soap 110 (57.9) 188 (90) 221 (87.7) 369 (91.3) 136.9 0.0001 shampoo 80 (42.1) 20 (9.6) 31 (12.3) 30 (7.4) water only 0 (0) 1 (0.4) 0 (0) 5 (1.2) materials used for hair washing shampoo 185 (97.4) 199 (95.2) 229 (90.9) 372 (92.1) 11.5 0.07 soap 5 (2.6) 9 (4.3) 20 (7.9) 25 (6.2) water only 0 (0) 1 (0.5) 3 (1.2) 7 (1.7) materials used for teeth brushing toothpaste 148 (77.9) 167 (79.9) 199 (79) 363 (89.6) 27.9 0.001 dental floss 16 (8.4) 10 (4.8) 11 (4.4) 11 (2.7) mouth wash 23 (12.1) 30 (14.3) 38 (15) 29 (7.2) tooth pick 3 (1.6) 2 (1) 4 (1.6) 1 (0.2) choosing toothpaste dentist 9 (4.7) 101 (48.3) 50 (19.8) 62 (15.3) 252 0.0001 themselves 121 (63.9) 59 (28.2) 147 (58.4) 106 (26.2) price 60 (31.6) 49 (23.5) 55 (21.8) 236 (58.4) knowledge to scientific using of dental floss yes 89 (46.8) 70 (33.5) 132 (52.4) 131 (32.4) 94.4 0.0001 no 49 (25.8) 71 (33.9) 76 (30.1) 68 (16.8) don’t know 52 (27.4) 68 (32.5) 44 (17.5) 205 (50.7) table 3. hand washing and oral hygiene practices among university students characteristics stage 1 n= 190 (%) stage 2 n=209 (%) stage 3 n=252 (%) stage 4 n=404 (%) x2 p value washing hands before and after meals yes 125 (65.8) 120 (57.4) 199 (79) 294 (72.8) 77.04 0.001 no 30 (15.8) 20 (9.6) 24 (9.5) 5 (1.2) sometimes 35 (18.4) 69 (33) 29 (11.5) 105 (26) washing hands after defecation yes 179 (94.2) 190 (91) 238 (94.4) 390 (96.5) 20.86 0.001 no 10 (5.2) 15 (7.1) 5 (2) 7 (1.7) sometimes 1 (1.1) 4 (1.9) 9(3.6) 7 (1.7) hand washing materials hand shampoo 134 (70.5) 103 (49.3) 168 (66.7) 379 (93.8) 168.5 0.0001 soap and water 51 (26.8) 92 (44) 70 (27.8) 12 (3) water 5 (2.6) 14 (6.7) 14 (5.6) 13 (3.2) duration for tooth brushing before bed 110 (57.9) 78 (37.3) 138 (54.8) 254 (62.) after breakfast 43 (22.6) 75 (35.9) 87 (34.5) 112 (27.7) 99 0.0001 after meals 34 (17.9) 51 (24.4) 16 (6.3) 15 (3.7) sometimes 3 (1.6) 5 (2.4) 11 (4.4) 23 (5.7) tongue brushing yes 49 (25.8) 23 (11) 37 (14.7) 49 (12.1) 109.9 0.0001 no 54 (28.4) 79 (37.8) 22 (8.7) 56 (13.7) sometimes 87 (45.8) 107 (51.2) 193 (77.6) 299 (74.1) tongue brushing material tongue brush 3 (1.6) 1 (0.5) 17 (6.7) 0 (0) 40 0.0001 toothbrush 187 (98.4) 208 (99.5) 235 (93.3) 404(100) table 4. objectively watched individual personal and oral hygiene among university students characteristics stage 1 n= 190 (%) stage 2 n=209 (%) stage 3 n=252 (%) stage 4 n=404 (%) x2 p value clean clothes yes 112 (58.9) 155 (74.2) 149 (59.1) 227 (68.6) 40 0.00001 no 78 (41.1) 54 (25.8) 103 (40.9) 127 (31.4) clean hair yes 137 (72.1) 150 (71.8) 181 (71.8) 291 (72) 0.009 0.9 no 53 (27.9) 59 (28.2) 71 (28.2) 113 (28) fingernail trimmed yes 26 (13.7) 52 (24.9) 67 (26.6) 56 (13.9) 24.5 0.00001 no 164 (86.3) 157 (75.1) 185 (73.4) 348 (86.1) clean face yes 126 (66.3) 144 (68.9) 157 (62.3) 235 (58.1) 8.1 0.05 no 64 (33.7) 65 (31.1) 95 (37.7) 169 (41.9) clean tooth yes 145 (76.3) 124 (59.3) 137 (54.3) 164 (39.6) 69.8 0.00001 no 45 (23.7) 85 (40.7) 115 (45.7) 240 (59.4) bad mouth breathe yes 98 (51.6) 113 (54.1) 125 (49.6) 174 (43.1) 8.2 0.05 no 92 (48.4) 96 (45.9) 127 (50.4) 230 (56.9) 5. conclusions in conclusion, school-based hygiene education is vital in order to decrease the rates of transmissible diseases. our study indicates high knowledge and attitude toward personal and oral hygiene among undergraduates in comparison to earlier studies in the developing countries. students can be educated about scientific personal and oral hygiene through sessions and training particularly in the schools, thus knowledge and attitude of the students would be improved. accessibility of water and sanitation facilities at universities, reasons behind hand washing and brushing teeth, low cost and effective programmes are very significant to have adequate knowledge and 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[26] t. outhouse, r. al-alawi, z. fedorowicz and j. keenan, "tongue scraping for treating halitosis", primary dental care, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 11-11, 2007. acknowledgment the authors wish to thank all students of sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, jihan and komar university for allowing us to collect the data that designed the basis of this research. http://www.who.int/entity/whosis/whostat/2009  the effect of using cement kiln dust as a partial replacement of cement on the mechanical properties of concrete: review and modelling nawdar sabir faraj dr. mahdi osman hassun department of civil engineering department of civil engineering college of engineering college of engineering university of sulaimani university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq eng.nawdar@gmail.com mahdi.hassun@univsul.edu.iq article info abstract volume 5 issue 2 december 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.2.9 article history: received :1 december 2020 accepted : 22 december 2020 there have been many efforts in reusing cement kiln dust (ckd), a by-product of cement manufacturing, in various areas of civil works. these efforts have been made due to the necessity of the material for proper disposal, because of its very fine texture and the fact that if not handled properly, it will be harmful to human health and the environment. numerous studies have been conducted to investigate the effects of incorporating ckd in concrete as an approach of reusing it. in the current study, the effect of using cement kiln dust on the mechanical properties of concrete as a partial replacement of cement was reviewed. the investigated mechanical properties were compressive strength for the curing ages of 7 and 28 days and tensile and flexural strengths, modulus of elasticity, and water absorption for the curing age of 28 days. it was concluded that replacing cement with ckd leads to detrimental effects on all mechanical properties of concrete. there were sufficient amount of data to establish correlations between the amount of cement replacement with ckd, and its effect on all mechanical properties of concrete except for water absorption. regression analyses were performed and model equations with acceptably high r2s were prepared. the optimal ckd content regarding all mechanical properties was concluded to be 10% by the cement weight, at which 7 and 28 days compressive strengths, 28 days tensile and flexural strengths, and elastic modulus decreased by amounts of 11%, 12%, 8%, 9%, and 8% respectively. keywords: cement kiln dust (ckd), mechanical properties, concrete, cement, replacement. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 99 1. introduction in the production line of portland cement, a large quantity of dust is produced, known as cement kiln dust (ckd). ckd is considered an industrial waste, being a by-product of cement production [1]. in cement production, a mixture of limestone, clay, sand, and shale are mixed in controlled quantities and milled together as water slurry in wet process or a dry blend in dry process kilns. after entering the upper part of the rotary kiln, the ground mixture travels down the kiln headed for the burner zone. when the kiln charge reaches the temperature of fusion, clinker in the shape of small-size balls, semi-finish dust, and fine solid particles are formed. ckd is generated during the operation, which is unstable and fine enough that the hot gases will carry it out of the kiln [2]. filters at the end of the dust chambers capture 98–100% of the generated dust. in both wet and dry processes, there are two approaches to handle ckd, either by returning part of it to the kiln from the cyclone (the system of dust collection) or collecting it from the filters for disposal or recycling purposes [3]. 1.1. physical properties: ckd is a fine powder with relatively uniform size, comprised of a blend of partially calcined, raw feed cement clinker and condensed volatile salts. ckd has more amount of fine particles than cement [4, 5]. some common physical properties of ckd are summarized in table (1). table 1: common physical properties of ckd [5]. property value gradation (75% passing) 0.030 mm (no. 450 sieve) maximum particle size 0.300 mm (no. 50 sieve) specific surface (cm2/g) 4,600 – 14,000 specific gravity 2.6-2.8 1.2. chemical properties: the chemical formation of ckd resembles that of conventional portland cement. it is mainly comprised of compounds of silica, lime, alumina, and iron. the chemical formation of ckd is dependent upon the raw materials used in clinker production and on the carbon-based fuel’s source and type, which is used in heating the materials in the kiln [6]. high concentrations of free lime are present in ckd in the collected coarse particles that are nearest to the kiln. finer particles contain higher sulfates and alkali concentrations. the dust will contain more free lime if the coarser particles are not filtered and directed back to the kiln. ckd from wet process kilns contains less calcium content than those collected from dry-process kilns. after x-ray diffraction analysis the kiln dust is observed to contain limestone as the main constituent, a small amount of quartz together with caso4, nacl, k2so4, spurite [2(c2s)·caco3] and sulphospurite [2(c2s)·caso4] [3, 5]. the typical chemical formation for ckd in comparison with typical opc is summarized in table 2. generally, the ckd water mixtures have a gas ph of around 12. it is considered caustic due to its significant alkalis content. in concentrations less than 0.05% by weight, trace metals such as lead, cadmium, radionuclides, and selenium are generally found in ckd [3]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 100 table 2: typical chemical composition of ckd and portland cement [7]. constituent ckd (%) opc (%) sio2 11–16 22 al2o3 3–6 5 fe2o3 1–4 3 cao 38–50 64 mgo 0–2 1 so3 4–18 3 k2o 3–13 <1 na2o 0–2 <1 cl 0–5 <0.1 loss on ignition 5–25 1 free cao 1–10 2 1.3. environmental and health aspects: the energy lost in ckd is estimated by the uk cement industry to be an annual co2 emission of 80 kilotons, which is a figure that increases with the increase in consumption of cement [4]. due to its high fineness and chemical formation, ckd is considered a harmful material for human health, which can be inhaled after being carried around by the wind if not handled properly. for people who are in exposure to it, ckd can cause numerous health problems, namely, lung function impairment, restrictive lung disease, chronic obstructive lung disease, pneumoconiosis, and cancer of the lungs, colon, and stomach. other studies show that cement dust can enter the systemic circulation of the body and reach all body organs affecting different tissues including bone, liver, heart, spleen, muscles, and hair and at the end, affecting physiological performance by affecting their microstructure [8]. disposal of ckd on dry landfills can cause the dispersion of the dust and being carried by the wind, which is why it is usually disposed of by pouring it into pre-prepared swamps or hydrating it before disposal. the former can adversely influence the quality of underground waters if not done with care [8]. 1.4. recycling ckd: the annual amount of cement production in 2017 worldwide, was 4.99 billion tons [9, 10]. meanwhile, the rate of ckd production was in a range between 54 to 200 kg per ton of produced cement clinker. this means that the worldwide annual production rate of ckd was between 269 million to 1.1 billion tons [11]. cement kiln dust can be reused in various ways, most commonly by returning it to the cement production cycle. it is also used in soil stabilization, as cement replacement in cement products, waste treatment, and asphalt pavement [12]. the most efficient recycling way of ckd is reusing it in the cement manufacturing process. however, this is not always applicable in some plants. in addition, the amount of ckd returned to the kiln is limited by restrictions on the alkalinity of the cement, which is constrained to 0.6% by most of the international specifications. from the alkali aspect, if the alkali level of cement is allowed to be raised by around 0.1%, it is estimated that most of the ckd could be used in the process of clinker production. although in addition to that, the restrictions on the required chloride concentration on cement performance in reinforced concrete requires to be raised [3, 4]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 101 another way of reusing ckd is by using it as cement replacement in cement products as in mortar and concrete. numerous studies have been conducted in the past years to investigate the influences of using cement kiln dust as a partial substitution of cement in concrete. however, none of the former studies has established correlations between the amounts of ckd with its effect on the mechanical properties of concrete. the current study was conducted to review and collect all available related literature data, find correlations between ckd replacement ratios versus the changes in the mechanical properties of ckd concrete, and prepare model equations accordingly after regression analysis. 2. literature review the collected literature data in the current study were regarding compressive strength in 7 and 28 days of curing age, tensile strength, flexural strength, modulus of elasticity, and water absorption in 28 days of curing for concretes with no pozzolanic additives (no tertiary blends), in which the cement is replaced with ckd in different ratios. ravindrarajah [6] investigated compressive, flexural, and tensile strengths of concrete in which opc cement was replaced with ckd by ratios of 15%, 25%, 35%, and 45% at curing ages of 3, 7, 14, 28, 56 and 90 days. two groups of concrete batches were prepared with different mix proportions of 1:2:4, with 310 kg of opc cement and water to binder ratio (w/b) of 0.65, and 1:1.5:3, with 390kg of opc cement and w/b of 0.5. results indicated that all mechanical properties of the samples decreased with the replacement of ckd. at the highest ckd replacement of 45%, the 28 days compressive, tensile, and flexural strengths decreased by 45%, 60%, and 56% in 1:2:4 mixes and by 37%, 34%, and 29% in the 1:1.5:3 mixes respectively. the optimal amount of cement replacement with ckd for all batches was at 15% by the weight of cement. however, trends of strength loss were different for the batches. the amount of 7and 28 days compressive and 28 days tensile strength losses in the 1:2:4 batches were 8%, 6%, and 2% respectively, which were better than the 1:1.5:3 batch with strengths losses of 12%, 22%, and 7% correspondingly. nonetheless, the flexural strength decreases had an opposite trend. the decrease in flexural strength of the 1:2:4 batch was 21% while that of the 1:1.5:3 batch was only a 6% decrease at 15% cement replacement with ckd [6]. shoaib, et al. [2] used ckd in three groups of concrete replacing three different types of ordinary portland cement (opc), blast furnace slag cement (bfsc), and sulfate resistant cement (src) at ratios of 10%, 20%, 30%, and 40%. the amount of cement used for the control samples of each group was 350kg, with a fixed w/b of 0.5. compressive and tensile strengths of all the batches were investigated at 28 days of curing. results indicated that the compressive strength of the samples decreased with the replacement of ckd. at the highest ckd replacement of 40%, the 28 days compressive strength decreased by 54%, 56%, and 57% in opc, bfsc, and src groups respectively. the optimal amount of ckd in terms of compressive strength was the lowest ratio of 10%, at which the compressive strength of opc, bfsc, and src groups decreased by amounts of 15%, 16%, and 17% respectively. therefore, it can be concluded that the group with opc cement exhibited the lowest impact in compressive strength when replaced with ckd and src group the highest. however, in tensile strength results, the trend was vice versa. the src group exhibited the lowest impact in tensile strength with a 9% strength decrease. meanwhile, the drop in tensile strength of opc was 15%, which was the highest drop among the three groups. the bfsc replaced group exhibited a 12% drop in tensile strength. udoeyo and hyee [13] studied compressive, tensile, and flexural strength of concrete containing 270kg of opc cement replaced with ckd, in ratios of 20%, 40%, 60%, and 80% of the cement weight. the curing ages at which the tests were performed were one, 3, 7, and 28 days. the w/b was fixed at 0.65 for all the batches. at the maximum ckd replacement of 80%, the 28 days compressive, tensile, and flexural strengths of the samples decreased by 85%, 88%, and 90%. at the lowest ckd replacement of 20%, the 7 and 28 days compressive strengths of concrete samples decreased by 22% and 8% respectively. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 102 28days tensile and flexural strengths also dropped by 22% and 26% correspondingly compared to the control group at 20% ckd content [13]. al-harthy, et al. [14] investigated the influence of ckd on the compressive and flexural strengths of concrete samples at the ages of (3, 7, and 28) days. three groups of concrete batches with water-to-binder ratios of 0.50, 0.60, and 0.70 were prepared by substituting portland cement with ckd in ratios of 0% (control), 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, and 30% by the weight of cement. results indicated that there were decreases in compressive strength as well as flexural strength with increases in ckd replacement for all batches in general. for all blends, the control mixture exhibited the highest compressive and flexural strength. the important observation was that there was less decrease in compressive strengths in mixes with lower water-to-binder ratios (0.50) than in those mixes with high water to binder ratios (0.6 and 0.7). at the highest ckd replacement of 30%, the 28 days compressive strength of the samples with w/b s of 0.5, 0.6, and 0.7 decreased by 22%, 29%, and 32% respectively. the optimal ckd content was 5% for the groups with w/b of 0.7 and 0.6, at which there were reductions of 11% and 15% in 7days of curing and 9% and 13% in 28 days of curing respectively. meanwhile, for the batch with water to binder ratios of 0.5, the optimal amount was observed to be 15% at which the reduction rates in strength were only 8% and 6% for 7 and 28 days of curing respectively. the latter indicates that in concretes with low w/b ratios, the negative effect of ckd might be less, in comparison with concretes with higher water content. the flexural strength results demonstrated the same trend as with compressive strength results, showing an even higher impact of water content on the effect of ckd in concrete. the optimal ckd content for batches with water to binder ratios of 0.5, 0.6, and 0.7, were 25%, 10%, and 5% respectively at which the flexural strength reductions were 7%, 4%, and 24% correspondingly [14]. maslehuddin, et al. [1] used ckd in two groups of concrete, replacing different cement types of type i and type v in each group in ratios of 0%, 5%, 10%, and 15% in each. compressive strengths of the batches at 7 and 28 days were observed along with the difference in the effect of ckd on each group replacing each type of cement. it was concluded that the optimal amount for replacing type i cement with ckd in terms of compressive strength at ages of 7 and 28 was 5%, at which no decrease in strength was observed. as for type v cement, the optimum amount of cement replacement was 15%, at which there was only a 1% drop in compressive strength [1]. hilal and mohammad [15] studied compressive, tensile, and flexural strengths and elastic modulus of concrete at ages of 7 and 28 days after replacing opc cement with ckd at ratios of (0, 10, 30, and 50)%. 390kg of cement was used for the control group and the water to cement ratio of all batches was fixed at 0.45. it was observed that at the highest ckd content of 50% the 28 days compressive, tensile, and flexural strengths and elastic modulus decreased by amounts of 40%, 4%, 54%, and 54% respectively compared to the strengths of their control groups. the optimal amount was 10% for 7 and 28 days compressive strengths and 28 days flexural strength, at which decreases of 12%, 20%, and 30% were observed respectively. the data of tensile strength, on the other hand, demonstrated very non-significant changes even in the highest replacement ratio of 50%, at which the tensile strength decreased by only 4%. regarding elastic modulus property of the batches, the optimal ckd content was 30%, at which only a 9% decrease was observed compared to the control group. h hassan, et al. [16] investigated the effect of ckd on compressive and tensile strengths of concrete after replacing opc cement with (5, 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30) percent by weight. an amount of 390kg of cement was used for the control group and the w/b was fixed at 0.40 for all batches. at the highest ckd replacement of 30%, the 28 days compressive and tensile strengths of the samples decreased by 35% and 25% respectively. the optimal ckd content was observed to be 10% at which there were decreases of 3%, 9%, and 4% for 7days compressive, 28 days compressive, and 28 days tensile strengths respectively [16]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 103 abdulabbas [17] used two types of cement, opc and src in two groups, and studied the compressive strength, tensile strength, and water absorption of both groups by replacing the cement with ckd at 10% and 20% in each. 405kg of cement was used in this study with a fixed w/b of 0.47. at the highest ckd content of 20%, there were 64% and 72% decreases in compressive and tensile strength respectively in the src group and a decrease of 65% in both compressive and tensile strength in the opc group. compressive strength at ages of 7 and 28 days and tensile strength at age of 28 days decreased substantially by amounts of 46%, 37%, and 33% respectively after replacing only 10% of cement with ckd in the opc group. the water absorption also increased by 17% at 10% cement replacement with ckd. the results of the src group showed a worse trend compared to opc, in which 7 and 28 days compressive strengths and 28 days tensile strength decreased by 47%, 41%, and 31% respectively at 10% ckd, while the water the absorption increased by 21% [17]. siddique and rajor [18] studied the effect of non-treated and bacterial treated cement kiln dust on compressive strength and water absorption of concrete at ages of 7, 28 days after alkalinity reduction. opc cement was replaced with treated and normal and ckds at ratios of 0%, 5%, 10%, and 15%. the w/b was fixed at 0.5. 396kg cement was used in the control group. it was concluded that the compressive strength increased by 5% and 4% at 7 and 28 days respectively after replacing 10% amount of cement with normal ckd and was equal to the control at 15% replacement, which is contrary to the literature data. the water absorption decreased with increasing ckd content up to the optimal amount of 10%, at which the water absorption decreased by 55% compared to the control group, which is also contrary to the results of abdulabbas [17] and expectations [18]. najim, et al. [19] produced high-performance self-compact concrete, incorporating ckd as a partial replacement for cement with ratios of 10%, 20%, and 30%. an amount of 450 kg of opc cement was used for the control group with fixed water to cement ratio of 0.32 for all batches. 11kg of superplasticizer was used in all batches for enhancing workability. compressive and tensile strengths along with elastic modulus at 28 days of curing were observed. at the highest ckd replacement of 30%, the compressive and tensile strengths and the elastic modulus decreased by 29%, 24%, and 24% respectively. the optimal amount of cement replacement for ckd was 10% at which the 28 days compressive strength, tensile strength, and modulus of elasticity exhibited 6%, 20%, and 9% decreases correspondingly compared to the control group [19]. gamil, et al. [20] investigated the compressive and flexural strength properties of concrete at 7 and 28 days, in which opc cement was replaced with ckd in ratios of 0% to 100%, with fixing w/b at 0.45. they used two ckd types of normal and treated with heat. it was concluded that replacing cement with both types of normal and treated ckd had detrimental effects on compressive and strengths in both ages of 7 & 28 days. the 28 days compressive strength decreased by 63% and 82% at ckd replacements of 50% and 100% respectively. the 28 days flexural strength decreased by 56% and 83% at 50% and 100% ckd replacements. the optimal amount of cement replacement with normal ckd was 10% in all cases, at which, 23% and 9% decreases were observed in compressive and flexural strengths respectively with normal ckd [20]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 104 3. methods different results were achieved in the literature on the effects of replacing cement with ckd on the mechanical properties of concrete. after collecting data from all the results of the discussed literature, regression analyses were performed and graph models were prepared, which are presented in this section. 3.1. data collection there was a sufficient amount of data on 7 and 28 days compressive strengths, 28 days tensile and flexural strengths, and elastic modulus to establish correlations between the amounts of ckd replacement and the changes in the mentioned mechanical properties compared to their control groups. however, the data on water absorption were limited to only two studies (abdulabbas [17] and siddique and rajor [18]), whose data had opposite trends. therefore, in the current study, only a scatterplot of the data is presented and none is relied upon for conclusions. figures 1 to 6 depict the scatterplot for the relation of ckd replacement, with the ratio of the mechanical properties of the ckd concrete samples over the mechanical properties of their corresponding control groups. figure 1: scatterplot of the literature data, showing relations between ckd replacement in (%), and the ratio of 7 days compressive strength of the literature to their corresponding control groups in (%). 20 40 60 80 100 120 20 40 60 80 100 120 c om pr es si ve s tr en gt h (c .s )/ c .s o f c on tr ol ( % ) ckd replacement (%) c.s./c.s. of control (%) curing age = 7 days. no. of data = 77 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 105 figure 2: scatterplot of the literature data, showing relations between ckd replacement in (%), and the ratio of 28 days compressive strength of the literature to their corresponding control groups in (%). figure 3: scatterplot of the literature data, showing relations between ckd replacement in (%), and the ratio of 28 days tensile strength of the literature to their corresponding control groups in (%). 20 40 60 80 100 120 20 40 60 80 100 120 c om pr es si ve s tr en gt h (c .s )/ c .s o f c on tr ol ( % ) ckd replacement (%) c.s./c.s. of control (%) curing age = 28 days. no. of data = 95 20 40 60 80 100 120 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 t en si le s tr en gt h (t .s ) / t .s o f c on tr ol ( % ) ckd replacement (%) t.s./t.s. of control (%) curing age = 28 days. no. of data = 40 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 106 figure 4: scatterplot of the literature data, showing relations between ckd replacement in (%), and the ratio of 28 days flexural strength of the literature to their corresponding control groups in (%). figure 5: scatterplot of the literature data, showing relations between ckd replacement in (%), and the ratio of 28 days elastic modulus of the literature to their corresponding control groups in (%). 20 40 60 80 100 120 20 40 60 80 100 120 f le xu ra l s tr en gt h (f .s ) / f .s o f c on tr ol ( % ) ckd replacement (%) f.s./f.s. of control (%) curing age = 28 days. no. of data = 54 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 10 20 30 40 50 60 e la st ic m od ul us ( e ) / e c on tr ol ( % ) ckd replacement (%) e / e (control) (%) curing age = 28 days. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 107 figure 6: scatterplot of the literature data, showing relations between ckd replacement in (%), and the ratio of 28 days water absorption of the literature to their corresponding control groups in (%). 3.2. regression analysis: after performing regression analyses for the collected data using minitab and microsoft excel programs, models were prepared to predict the correlations between the amounts of cement replacement with ckd, versus the ratio of the mechanical properties of the ckd concrete samples over the properties of their corresponding control groups. the best trend equation for all models was the 2nd-degree polynomial, in which the coefficients of determination (r2) were at the highest for all the properties. the prepared polynomial equation is shown in equation (1). 2y ax bx 100= + + (1) where: y = mechanical properties of ckd concrete samples/mechanical properties of the corresponding control group in percentage. x = amount of cement replaced with ckd in percentage. a & b = model parameters. 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 5 10 15 20 25 w at er a bs or pt io n / w at er a bs or pt io n of c on tr ol ( % ) ckd replacement (%) w.abs./control (%) abdulabbas [14] w.abs./control (%)-siddique, et al. [15] curing age = 28 days. no. of data = 10. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 108 in order to determine the accuracy of the predicted model, coefficient of determination (r2) and root mean square error (rmse) were used as defined in equations (2) and (3). ( ) ( ) 2 2 21 i i i y x r y y  ∑ −  = −  ∑ −  (2) ( )2 1 n i ii y x rmse n = − = ∑ (3) 𝑁𝑁 = number of data points. 𝑦𝑦 � = mean of the collected data. �̅�𝑥 = mean of the calculated values. 𝑦𝑦𝑖𝑖 = collected data from the literature. 𝑥𝑥𝑖𝑖 = calculated value from the model. table 3 summarizes the regression analysis results for all the mechanical properties in the literature. table 3: statistical & regression analysis data for the mechanical properties. dependent variable (y-axis) independent parameter (x-axis) equation a b rmse r2 no. of data fig no. 7d c.s/ c.scontrol (%) ckd (%) ye = ax2+bx+100 0.0024 -1.1253 7.73 0.91 77 (7) 28d c.s/ c.scontrol (%) ckd (%) ye = ax2+bx+100 0.0038 -1.2519 6.05 0.94 95 (8) 28d t.s/ t.scontrol (%) ckd (%) ye = ax2+bx+100 -0.0046 -0.7359 6.95 0.88 40 (9) 28d f.s/ f.scontrol (%) ckd (%) ye = ax2+bx+100 0.0012 -0.9452 6.99 0.92 54 (10) 28d e/ econtrol (%) ckd (%) ye = ax2+bx+100 0.007 -0.8484 4.1 0.9 24 (11) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 109 4. results and discussion 4.1. compressive strength 4.1.1. 7 days compressive strength according to the literature data, the 7 days compressive strength of ckd samples compared to the control group, decreased in percentage almost at the same rate as increasing the amount of ckd replacement in general. figure 7 shows the trend line derived from the prepared model equation after regression of the data, which had an (r2) of 0.91, which exhibits acceptable accuracy. it was observed that the optimal amount of ckd replacement for 7 days compressive strength is 10% at which the loss in strength is 11%, as summarized in table 4. figure 7: trend line of the prepared model equation for ckd replacement in (%), versus the ratio of 7 days c.s. of ckd concrete samples in literature, to their corresponding control groups in (%). table 4: 7 days compressive strength reduction in ckd concretes up to 50% ckd replacement amount, according to the prepared model equation. ckd replacement 7 days compressive strength reduction in ckd samples according to the prepared model equation 5% 6% 10% 11% 15% 16% 20% 22% 25% 27% 30% 32% 35% 36% 40% 41% 45% 46% 50% 50% y = 0.0024x2 1.1253x + 100 r² = 0.9136 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 c om pr es si ve s tr en gt h (c .s )/ c .s o f c on tr ol ( % ) ckd replacement (%) c.s./c.s. of control (%) poly. (c.s./c.s. of control (%)) curing age = 7 days. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 110 4.1.2. 28 days compressive strength the prepared model for the 28 compressive strength data had an r2 of 0.94, which means that the model trend line is of good accuracy. the 28 days compressive strength losses in ckd samples were slightly more than 7 days as depicted in figure 8. the optimal amount of ckd replacement also can be considered as 10%, at which the strength loss is at 12%, which is 1% more than that of 7 days compressive strength at this amount of ckd replacement. table 5 summarizes the amounts of strength losses up to 50% of ckd replacement. figure 8: trend line of the prepared model equation for ckd replacement in (%), versus the ratio of 28 days c.s. of ckd concrete samples in literature, to their corresponding control groups in (%). table 5: 28 days compressive strength loss in ckd concrete up to 50% ckd replacement amount according to the prepared model equation. ckd replacement 28 days compressive strength loss in ckd samples according to the prepared model equation 5% 6% 10% 12% 15% 18% 20% 24% 25% 29% 30% 34% 35% 39% 40% 44% 45% 49% 50% 53% y = 0.0038x2 1.2519x + 100 r² = 0.9386 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 c om pr es si ve s tr en gt h (c .s )/ c .s o f c on tr ol ( % ) ckd replacement (%) c.s./c.s. of control (%) poly. (c.s./c.s. of control (%)) curing age = 28 days. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 111 4.2. 28 days tensile strength the prepared model for the 28 days tensile strength data had an r2 of 0.88, which means that the accuracy of the model trend is lower than that of compressive strength models. this is because all the tests in the literature were indirect tensile strength test (astm d6931 – 17), which in its own nature has a lower accuracy than compressive or even flexural strength test results. the losses in 28 days tensile strength in ckd samples were less than that of compressive strength property and had an inverse trend line in comparison as depicted in figure 9. the optimal amount of ckd replacement can be considered as 10% at which the strength loss was at 8%. the amounts of strength losses up to 50% of ckd replacement are summarized in table 6. figure 9: trend line of the prepared model equation for ckd replacement in (%), versus the ratio of 287 days t.s. of ckd concrete samples in the literature to their corresponding control groups in (%) table 6: 28 days tensile strength loss in ckd concrete up to 50% ckd replacement amount, according to the prepared model equation. ckd replacement 28 days tensile strength loss in ckd samples according to the prepared model equation 5% 4% 10% 8% 15% 12% 20% 17% 25% 21% 30% 26% 35% 31% 40% 37% 45% 42% 50% 48% y = -0.0046x2 0.7359x + 100 r² = 0.876 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 t en si le s tr en gt h (t .s ) / t .s o f c on tr ol ( % ) ckd replacement (%) t.s./t.s. of control (%) poly. (t.s./t.s. of control (%)) curing age = 28 days. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 112 4.3. 28 days flexural strength the model prepared for the 28 days flexural strength data had an r2 of 0.92, which means that the accuracy of the model trend is acceptable. the losses in 28 days flexural strength in ckd samples were less than that of compressive strength property as depicted in figure 10. the optimal ckd replacement was 10%, at which there was only 9% strength loss. the amount of strength losses up to 50% of ckd replacement is summarized in table 7. figure 10: trend line of the prepared model equation for ckd replacement in (%), versus the ratio of 28 days f.s. of ckd concrete samples in the literature to their corresponding control groups in (%) table 7: 28 days flexural strength loss in ckd concrete up to 50% ckd replacement amount, according to the prepared model equation. ckd replacement 28 days flexural strength loss in ckd samples according to the prepared model equation 5% 5% 10% 9% 15% 14% 20% 18% 25% 23% 30% 27% 35% 32% 40% 36% 45% 40% 50% 44% y = 0.0012x2 0.9452x + 100 r² = 0.9212 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 f le xu ra l s tr en gt h (f .s ) / f .s o f c on tr ol ( % ) ckd replacement (%) f.s./f.s. of control (%) poly. (f.s./f.s. of control (%)) curing age = 28 days. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 113 4.4. 28 days elastic modulus the r2 of the prepared model for the 28 days elastic modulus data was at 0.9, which means that the accuracy of the model trend is acceptable. the decreases in 28days elastic modulus in ckd samples were less than that of compressive strength property. the trend line was almost linear as depicted in figure 11. the optimal amount of ckd replacement also can be considered as 10%, at which the strength loss is at 8%. the amount of strength losses up to 50% of ckd replacement is summarized in table 8. figure 11: trend line of the prepared model equation for ckd replacement in (%), versus the ratio of 28 days e.m. of ckd concrete samples in the literature to their corresponding control groups in (%) table 8: 28 days elastic modulus decrease in ckd concrete up to 50% ckd replacement amount, according to the prepared model equation. ckd replacement 28 days elastic modulus loss in ckd samples according to the prepared model equation 5% 4% 10% 8% 15% 13% 20% 17% 25% 21% 30% 25% 35% 29% 40% 33% 45% 37% 50% 41% in general, it can be said that the optimal amount of ckd content for normal concrete is at 10%, at which the loss in mechanical properties of concrete is insignificant. the trend lines of all properties are of close form and patterns, as depicted in figure 12. y = 0.0007x2 0.8484x + 100 r² = 0.895 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 10 20 30 40 50 60 e la st ic m od ul us ( e ) / e c on tr ol ( % ) ckd replacement (%) e / e (control) (%) poly. (e / e (control) (%)) curing age = 28 days. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 114 figure 12: comparison between model trend lines of ckd replacement, versus the ratio of mechanical properties of ckd concrete to those of corresponding control groups. the first reason for the decrease in all properties of concrete against increases in ckd replacement can be related to the fact that ckd is not as a cementitious material as opc or any other types of cement due to its different chemical composition. table 9 summarizes the mechanical properties of all types of ckd used in the literature. the literature studies also related the loss in the mechanical properties of ckd concrete samples to poor formation of cs-h due to alkalis, and weakening of the paste-aggregate bonds. some researchers reported that there were less amount of decreases in the mechanical properties of ckd concrete at lower w/b ratios. the latter phenomenon was related to minimizing the occurrence probability of alkali silica reaction that happens in the presence of water [3, 21, 22]. another reason for strength loss was reported to be the increase in chloride content, which is present in ckd. the latter crystallizes the products of hydration, resulting in opening a system of pores in the hardened samples. in addition, the chloride ions in ckd can participate in chemical reactions similar to those that involve sulfate ions and produce chloroaluminate hydrate (3cao.al2o3.cacl2.12h2o), that is equivalent to 3cao.al2o3.caso4.12h2o [23]. however, the action of chloroaluminate is different from sulphoaluminate as it causes softening [24]. moreover, in the presence of alkalis (high amounts of so3 and k2o), the microstructure of csh phases becomes heterogeneous, therefore compressive strength decreases [18, 25]. 20 40 60 80 100 120 20 40 60 80 100 120 m ec ha ni ca l p ro pe rt ie s of c k d c on cr et e / c on tr ol ( % ) ckd replacement (%) poly. (7d c.s /c.s control (%)) poly. (28d c.s./c.s control (%)) poly. (28d t.s / t.s control (%)) poly. (28d f.s./ f.s. control (%)) poly. (28d e / e control (%)) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 115 table 9: comparing the chemical properties of opc cement with all ckd types used in literature. the decreases in tensile & flexural strength were mainly contributed to the ckd particles that do not offer strong bonds between aggregate and free opc hydration phases that resemble cement mortar, leading to weaker bonds between the particles of aggregate and causing losses in tensile strength [2]. 5. conclusion 1. replacing cement with ckd has detrimental effects on all mechanical properties of concrete, although no significant decreases occur in mechanical properties of concrete at 5% ckd replacement. 2. seven and 28 days compressive strengths of concrete decrease by increasing the amount of cement replacement with ckd, depicting second-degree polynomial trends with r2 of 0.91 and 0.94 respectively. 3. the optimal amount of cement replacement from the compressive strength aspect is 10%, at which there is 11% and 12% loss in 7days and 28 days of curing age respectively. 4. tensile and flexural strengths of concrete decrease with increasing ckd content, having second-degree polynomial trends with r2s of 0.88 and 0.92 respectively. 5. elastic modulus of concrete decrease by increasing the amount of cement replacement with ckd, having a second-degree polynomial trend with an r2 of 0.9. 6. the optimal amount of ckd from tensile, flexural, and modulus of elasticity aspects is 10% by cement weight, at which there are 8%, 9%, and 8% decreases respectively. chemical composition mass (%) t ypical o p c c em ent [20] r avindrarajah [6] shoaib, et al. [2] u doeyo and h yee [13] a l-h arthy, et al. [14] m aslehuddin, et al. [1] h ilal and m oham m ad [15] h h assan, et al. [16] a bdulabbas [17] siddique and r ajor [18] n ajim , et al. [19] g am il, et al. [20] sio2 21.6 12.2 11.95 2.16 15.8 17.1 14.82 15.53 15.46 13.17 18.9 17.3 al2o3 6.2 5.8 1.12 1.09 3.6 4.24 5.52 3.83 3.41 2.38 4.19 3.81 fe2o3 3.13 2.3 2.45 0.54 2.8 2.89 1.98 3.05 3.05 2.62 3.25 2.99 cao 62.7 42.7 49.75 52.72 63.8 49.3 49.65 49.96 43.4 55.78 58.67 44.05 mgo 1.48 13 1.86 0.68 1.9 1.14 3.35 1.69 2.98 0.69 1.87 2 k2o 1.01 4.3 2.66 0.11 3 2.18 2.44 1.12 1.37 2.18 na2o 0.2 0.8 0.3 3.84 1.42 1.1 so3 2.73 6.5 6.35 1.7 3.56 6.33 7.18 1.13 4.32 3.02 p2o2 0.21 0.12 1.22 tio2 0.1 0.34 0.25 chloride 0 6.9 0.92 0.39 free lime 1 6.1 19 ignition loss 2.5 22.1 17.92 42.39 15.8 12.96 28.86 16.5 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 116 references [1] m. maslehuddin, o. al-amoudi, m. rahman, m. ali, and m. barry, "properties of cement kiln dust concrete," construction and building materials, vol. 23, no. 6, pp. 2357-2361, 2009. [2] m. shoaib, m. balaha, and a. abdel-rahman, "influence of cement kiln dust substitution on the mechanical properties of concrete," cement & concrete research, vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 371-377, 2000. [3] r. siddique, "utilization of cement kiln dust (ckd) in cement mortar and concrete—an overview," resources, conservation and recycling, vol. 48, no. 4, pp. 315-338, 2006. [4] m. maslehuddin, o. al-amoudi, m. shameem, m. rehman, and m. ibrahim, "usage of cement kiln dust in cement products–research review and preliminary investigations," construction and building materials, vol. 22, no. 12, pp. 2369-2375, 2008. [5] r. j. collins and j. emery, "kiln dust-fly ash systems for highway bases and subbases," united states. federal highway administration1983. [6] r. s. ravindrarajah, "usage of cement kiln dust in concrete," international journal of cement composites and lightweight concrete, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 95-102, 1982. [7] c. aidan and c. trevor, "cement kiln dust," concrete (london), vol. 29, pp. 40-42, 1995. [8] s. a. meo, "health hazards of cement dust," saudi med j, vol. 25, no. 9, pp. 1153-1159, 2004. [9] l. coppola, d. coffetti, and e. crotti, "plain and ultrafine fly ashes mortars for environmentally friendly construction materials," sustainability, vol. 10, no. 3, p. 874, 2018. [10] p. edwards. (2017, 4 december 2017) global cement top 100 report 2017–2018. global cement magazine. 12–20. [11] f. schorcht, i. kourti, b. m. scalet, s. roudier, and l. d. sancho, "best available techniques (bat) reference document for the production of cement, lime and magnesium oxide," european commission joint research centre institute for prospective technological studies, luxembourg2013. [12] u. s. e. p. agency, "report to congress on cement kiln dust," u.s.1993, vol. 5. [13] f. f. udoeyo and a. hyee, "strengths of cement kiln dust concrete," journal of materials in civil engineering, vol. 14, no. 6, pp. 524-526, 2002. [14] a. s. al-harthy, r. taha, and f. al-maamary, "effect of cement kiln dust (ckd) on mortar and concrete mixtures," construction and building materials, vol. 17, no. 5, pp. 353-360, 2003. [15] n. n. hilal and a. m. mohammad, "re-using the by-product of cement industry (cement kiln dust) to produce the concrete," anbar journal of engineering sciences, vol. 3, no. 2, 2010. [16] i. h hassan, o. m abdul-kareem, and a. yasin shihab, "utilization of cement kiln dust (ckd) as a partial replacement of cement in mortar and concrete," al-rafdain engineering journal, vol. 21, no. 6, pp. 7287, 2013. [17] z. h. abdulabbas, "utilization of cement kiln dust in concrete manufacturing," jordan journal of civil engineering, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 2012-2014, 2013. [18] r. siddique and a. rajor, "influence of bacterial treated cement kiln dust on the properties of concrete," construction and building materials, vol. 52, pp. 42-51, 2014. [19] k. b. najim, i. al-jumaily, and a. m. atea, "characterization of sustainable high performance/selfcompacting concrete produced using ckd as a cement replacement material," construction and building materials, vol. 103, pp. 123-129, 2016. [20] y. gamil, i. bakar, and l. y. loon, "utilization of normal and treated cement kiln dust as cement replacement materials in concrete," pertanika journal of science and technology, vol. 27, no. 1, 2019. [21] d. hobbs, j. bensted, and p. barnes, "alkali-silica reaction in concrete," structure and performance of cements, pp. 265-281, 2002. [22] r. n. swamy, the alkali-silica reaction in concrete. crc press, 1991. [23] j. bensted, "hydration of portland cement," advances in cement technology, pp. 307-347, 1983. [24] i. biczok and n. blasovszky, concrete corrosion and concrete protection. united states: chemical publishing co., 1964, p. 543. [25] i. jawed and j. skalny, "alkalies in cement: a review: ii. effects of alkalies on hydration and performance of portland cement," cement and concrete research, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 37-51, 1978. 1. introduction 1.1. physical properties: 1.2. chemical properties: 1.3. environmental and health aspects: 1.4. recycling ckd: 2. literature review 3. methods 3.1. data collection 3.2. regression analysis: 4. results and discussion 4.1. compressive strength 4.1.1. 7 days compressive strength 4.1.2. 28 days compressive strength 4.2. 28 days tensile strength 4.3. 28 days flexural strength 4.4. 28 days elastic modulus 5. conclusion references  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq assessment of chickpea (cicer arietinum l.) growth and yield component by application of local granular organic fertilizer, peat and inorganic fertilizer: comparative study shara salih ali tara salih ali industrial food and quality control bakrajo technical institute kurdistan institution for strategic studies and scientific research sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimania, iraq tara.sali@kissr.edu.krd shara.ali@spu.edu.iq volume 4 – issue 2 december 2019 doi: 10.24017/science.2019 .2.19 received: 10 november 2019 accepted: 23 december 2019 abstract this study was conducted to increase the productivity of a local variety of chickpea in kurdistan region by amending and improving bakrajo soil with locally made granular organic fertilizer (gof) and peat and also optimizing the rate of inorganic nitrogen fertilizer (inr). the experimental design used in this study was randomized complete block design with three replications. in this study, bakrajo soil was treated with two types of organic fertilizer with different rates which were granular organic fertilizer (gof) and peat. the treatment combinations were soil amendment (sa) with three different rates which were (soil + 0, 4 and 8 % granular organic fertilizer (gof)(w/w)) and (soil + 0, 4 and 8 % peat (w/w)).the inorganic n fertilizer used in this study was applied in three different rates (0, 30 and 60 ppm inr) in form of urea in water) each rate of inr was measured according to the weight of the soil in the pot. growth characteristic and yield component were determined in this research. the growth characteristics included the height of plant, number of branches, days to 50% flowering (days), days to physiological maturity (days) and yield components were: pods number /plant, seed number/plant, seeds weight/plant (g), hundred seed weight (g) and grain yield (kg/ha. the result showed that the main effect of sa gave maximum plant height, number of branches, number of pods/plant, number of seeds/plant, weight of seeds/plant, hundred seeds weight and grain yield was observed when the plant grown under sa of (soil + 8% gof) treatment and application of 60 ppm inr also gave highest value of each of growth characteristic and yield components. while, the combination of sa (soil+8% gof) with kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 196 30 ppm inr illustrated maximum value of growth characteristic and yield component. the result of this study illustrates that amending soil with 8% of gof optimize the rate of inorganic n fertilizer. keywords: chickpea, granular organic fertilizer, peat, growth and yield. 1. introduction chickpea (cicer areitinum l.) is one of the essential legumes in kurdistan region of iraq as a source of food and also as a product which has the potential of sustainable agricultural production in the region. chickpea also have a considerable role in the improvement of soil productivity by enriching the soil with nitrogen as an essential nutrient for plants. . in terms of microorganisms the bacteria living in nodules on the plant's roots have an ability to transform the environmental nitrogen to the organic form that plants use it during their growth. in addition, chickpea is one of the valuable crops that provide food of the world expanding population with its nutritious value and its role will become raising essential with the changes that happens in the climates. chickpea has the third level of production after beans by which its annual production means is over 10 million tons [1]. in india an increases were shown in the field area provided for the chickpea production recently is 13.5 million hectares [2]. in developing countries chickpea plays an important role as a source of protein for these areas that are not able to provide animal source of protein. due to the importance of chickpea as a source of food, the quality of the chickpea is also important and the quality of a grain enhanced by cultivating the crop under organic agricultural system which is a systems that shown to be able to produce food with high quality standards. the production of crop under the organic system of production will be increased by optimizing the nutrient demand of crop at completing crops different stages. organic systems of production depend on how the organic content of the system is managed to enhance the soil fertility [3]. the attributes of the soil as a plant growth media, is one of the essential factors that influence the plants growing performance because plant requires sufficient nutrients and moisture from the soil in which they are grown. another form of organic production of crop is amending the soil with organic fertilizer to improve the physical and chemical characteristic of the soil [4]. in addition, the function of organic fertilizer is to provide support to the plant physically with good root aeration, gas exchange to and from the roots and sufficient water availability for the root towards the other part of the plant [5]. as well as the physical function of soil amendment is to increase the soil aeration which leads the growth of the root, improves the flow of oxygen and nutrients through the soil [6]. amending soil with organic fertilizer cause mineralization which is a process of decomposition of the chemical compounds in organic matter, by which the nutrients in those compounds are released in soluble forms that may be available to plants [7]. by determination of the chemical characteristic of the soil the required amount of nutrient for the soil can be recognized. one of the soil amendments that internationally used is peat. peat is known to work as a common soil amendment that will retain more water after its application. peat is an acid based when it comes to chemical characteristic and can contributes in the production of plants that require a low ph soils. the origin of sphagnum peat goes back to the canadian and usa bogs that are harvested. the application of organic fertilizer such as granular organic fertilizer (gof) which is a combination of some important nutrients such as bentonite, humic acid, organic matter and organic phosphorus will have potential to fulfil the plants nutrient needs. the granulated organic fertilizer contains 12% moisture content with bulk density of 0.75 gram per cubic centimeter. the n content of the organic compounds is organic because it contains amino acids cause production of proteins, or the nucleotides that produce the major part of rna and dna. the production of local variety of chickpea in kurdistan region is limited due to its low yield amount as investigated by many researchers in the region. according to study which was kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 197 done by [8] the second lowest yield of chickpea was observed in the plot that the local variety seeds were used as compared to the other variety such us ghab1, filip1 and filip 2. in a study which was done by sulaimany chamber of commerce and industry it has revealed that one of the largest cereal importer company imports 70% of their cereal products from other countries while, only 30% is locally cultivated and chickpea is one of the crops that imported from other countries [9]. therefore, this study was conducted with the aims of increasing the productivity of local variety of chickpea in kurdistan region by amending the soil with locally made granular organic fertilizer and peat treatment and also optimizing the rate of inorganic nitrogen fertilizer with final objective of reducing the amount of cereal crops that imported to the region from other countries and increasing region’s food security. 2. methods and materials the experiment was conducted in the experimental farm of bakrajo technical institute in sulaimani (located at 35°32'52.8"n and 45°21'16.6"e) belongs to kurdistan region of iraq. the seed was local spring genotype of chickpea (cicer areitinum l.) and were sown on 21st february 2019 followed by rain fall directly after sowing with the humidity of 80%. on 13 march 2019 the germination rate of the seeds were 100%. the plant was harvested on 5th july 2019 (135 days after sowing) to investigate growth, yield and yield component of the spring genotype local variety (local) of chickpea (cicer areitinum l.). in this study, bakrajo soil was used andthe total numbers of pots were 81 pots and the size of each pot used was 5 liter with a diameter of 260 mm and height of 340 mm. in this study, bakrajo soil was treated with two types of organic fertilizer with different rates which were granular organic fertilizer (gof) and peat and the use of only soil in the pots was the control. the treatment combinations were soil amendment (sa) with three different rates which were (soil + 0, 4 and 8 % granular organic fertilizer (gof)(w/w)) and (soil + 0, 4 and 8 % peat (w/w)).the inorganic n fertilizer (inr) used in this study was applied in three different rates (0, 30 and 60 ppm inr) in form of urea in water) each rate of inr was measured according to the weight of the soil in the pot. the arrangement of the experiment followed randomized complete block design (two way anova-rcbd) with 3 replications. for comparison of the treatments mean, fisher’s least significant differences (lsd) was used when f values were significant at (p ≤ 0.05). the inr were used in 2 equal doses fifty percentages (50%) was used at sowing and the remaining 50% at vegetative growth period. all of the traits (growth characteristic and yield components) were recorded on 162 plants of chickpea. during the growth period rainfall was sufficient to cover the water needs of the crop and the average rainfall during this period was 5mm per 24 hours in bakrajo area. the texture of bakrajo soil is varying from clay soil to silty loam and the chemical characteristic of the soil is showed in table (1) [10]. the physical and chemical properties of peat have been determined by several researchers and in each gave various results because the properties of this substrate depend on the intensity degree of decomposition. the chemical characteristic of peat is shown in table (2). the gof was made locally in saktan, erbil, and kurdistan. the chemical and some physical characteristic of the gof is observed and shown in table (3). the statistical analysis and analysis of variance was determined by statistical analysis system (sas) (release 9.4, sas institute inc., cary, nc, usa. table 1: chemical characteristic of bakrajo soil parameter amount ph 7.4 electrical conductivity(ec) mmhos/cm) 1.7 n (%) 0.24 p (mgkg⁻1) 3.1 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 198 potassium (k) (mgkg⁻1) 234.1 calcium(ca) (mgkg⁻1) 4775.8 mg (mgkg⁻1) 219.0 na (mgkg⁻1) 45.9 fe (mgkg⁻1) 8.2 zn (mgkg⁻1) 1.0 cu (mgkg⁻1) 1.5 mn (mgkg⁻1) 32.3 o.m (%) 1.8 table 2: chemical characteristic of peat parameter amount acidity (ph) 6 total n (mg.l₋1) 110 p (mg.l₋1 ) 125 k (mg.l₋1) 160 source: shamal organic compost (company) table 3: chemical characteristic of granular organic fertilizer parameter amount ph 6.9 n (%) 5.44 p (%) 4.8 k (%) 5.2 ca (%) 1.43 mg(%) 0.47 na (%) 0.58 fe (ppm) 3365.5 zn (ppm) 291.5 mn (ppm) 453.15 o.m (%) 69.98 b (ppm) 57.98 s (%) 0.75 humic acid+ volic acid (%) 15 source: shamal organic compost (company) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 199 2.1 determination of growth characteristic and yield component traits the height of the plant and branch number was measured at maturity time. the plant height was measured by a standard ruler and measured as the average of three representative plants from the amended surface of the soil up to the last leaf or pod on the main stem. the number of branches produced by each plant was also counted numerically. in addition, time to flowering from the day of planting to 50% flower appearance was also recorded. the period for the plant to reach its physiological maturity was counted by numerating days from sowing to reach the date that the pod is completely yellow. the pods number per plant was numerated at the maturity stage as; from each treatment three randomly tagged plants and seeds number per pod were numerated. the weight of 100 seeds per plants was recorded and the grain yield per plant was recorded as the seeds weight (average) which was harvested from 3 plants. for calculation of seeds per each pod an average of three pods were taken which was chosen randomly. 3. results 3.1 growth characteristic the results of analysis of variance (anova) of soil amendment with different organic fertilizer, inorganic n rates and their interaction effects on some growth characteristic of local variety of chickpea (cicer areitinum l.) are shown in (table 4). the main effect of soil amendment (sa) was highly significant for plant height and number of branches and days to physiological maturity and the main effect of (sa) were significant for the growth characteristic of days to 50% flowering. the main effect of inorganic nitrogen rates (inr) was highly significant for the plant height and number of branches while the same effect was not significant for the days to 50% flowering and days to physiological maturity. the interaction effects of soil amendment (sa) and inorganic nitrogen rate (inr) was significant for plant height and non-significant for other growth characteristics (number of branches, days to 50% flowering and days to physiological maturity). as it is shown in (table 5) the maximum plant height, number of branches, days to 50% flowering and days to physiological maturity was observed in sa of (soil+ 8% gof) which were (37.78 cm, 9.89, 89.85 days and135.85 days) respectively, compared to control (soil+ 0% (gof)) which were (28.11 cm, 8.56, 74.08 days and 117.74 days) respectively. according to the result of the effect of different inr (table 6) the maximum plant height, number of branches, days to 50% flowering and days to physiological maturity was recorded under 60 ppm of inr which were (34.23 cm, 9.1, 77.61 days and 122.61 days) respectively in comparison to the control (0 ppm inr) which were (24.5cm, 6.89, 71.88 days and 117.37 days) respectively. the interaction between (sa) and (inr) is illustrated in (table 7). the highest plant was observed under sa of (soil + 8% gof) and application of 30 ppm inr which was (28 cm).the shortest plant was observed in control (soil + 0% peat) with 0ppm inr which was (21.3 cm). as it’s shown in (table 7) the interaction effect of (soil + 8% gof) and application of 30 ppm inr gave maximum number of branches which was (11 branch/plant) nr while, the lowest branch number was observed in control (soil + 0% peat) with 0ppm inr which was (5.7 branch/plant). the earliest initiation of 50% flowering was observed under sa of (soil + 4% peat) with 0ppm inr which was (63.2 days).the plant that 50% of its flowering initiation took longest period of (95.6 days) was grown under sa of (soil + 8% gof) with 30ppm inr. the plant that needed longer period of time to reach its physiological maturity was also grown under sa of (soil + 8% gof) with 30ppm inr. the plants that reached its physiological maturity in a shortest period of time (106.2 days) grown under treatment of (soil + 4% peat) with 0ppm inr. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 200 table 4: analysis of variance (anova) growth characteristic of chickpea (cicer areitinum l.) as influenced by soil amendment (sa) and inorganic n rates (inr) and their interaction (sa*inr) *, ** and ns represent significant at p ≤ 0.05, p ≤ 0.01 and non-significant, respectively. s.o.v.: source of variance, df: degree of freedom and ms: mean square table 5: growth characteristics of chickpea (cicer areitinum l.) as influenced by soil amendment (sa) table 6: growth characteristics of chickpea (cicer areitinum l.) as influenced by inorganic n rate (inr) inorganic n rates (inr) (ppm) plant height (cm) no. of branches/plant days to 50% flowering days to physiological maturity 0 (ppm) 24.50 6.89 71.88 117.37 30 (ppm) 32.72 8.67 75.19 120.58 60 (ppm) 34.23 9.17 77.61 122.61 l.s.d. 5% 1.99 0.94 7.46 6.71 s.o.v. ms df plant height no. of branches/plant days to 50% flowering days to physiological maturity block 2 19.08ns 9.24* 364.41ns 155.04ns sa 5 210.32** 13.88** 810.69* 1046.33** nr 2 493.87** 25.79** 148.53ns 125.56ns sa*nr 10 31.75* 0.75ns 71.49ns 127.40ns error 34 8.59 1.91 120.98 98.03 soil amendment (sa) plant height (cm) no. of branches/plant days to 50% flowering days to physiological maturity soil + 0% gof(control) 28.11 8.56 74.08 117.74 soil + 4% gof 33.56 9.22 82.26 130.97 soil + 8% gof 37.78 9.89 89.85 135.85 soil + 0% peat(control) 24.67 6.56 65.70 108.96 soil + 4% peat 26.91 7.22 66.36 112.13 soil + 8% peat 31.89 8.00 71.11 115.45 l.s.d. 5% 2.81 1.32 10.55 9.49 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 201 table 7: growth characteristics of chickpea (cicer areitinum l.) as influenced by combination of soil amendment (sa) and inorganic n rates (nr) (sa*inr) 3.2 yield components the results of analysis of variance (anova) of soil amendment (sa) with different organic fertilizer, inorganic n rates (inr) and their interaction effects on the yield components of local variety of chickpea (cicer areitinum l.) are shown in (table 8). the main effect of soil amendment (sa) was significant for pod no./plant, seed no./pod , seed weight/plant (g), hundred seed weight (g) and grain yield (kg/ha) . the main effect of inorganic nitrogen rates (inr) was only significant for the seed no./pod while it was not significant for the rest of yield components. the interaction effects of soil amendment (sa) and inorganic nitrogen rate (inr) was significant for seed no. /pod and non-significant for other yield components (pod no./plant, seed weight/plant (g), hundred seed weight (g) and grain yield (kg/ha)). as it is shown in (table 9) the maximum pod no./plant, seed no./pod , seed weight/plant (g), hundred seed weight (g) and grain yield (kg/ha) was observed in sa of (soil+ 8% gof) which were (29.78, 1.14, 37.82(g), 39.57(g) and 699.21(kg/ha)) respectively, compared to control (soil+ 0% (gof)) which were (25.78, 1.00, 31.46(g), 33.20(g) and 588.68(kg/ha)) respectively. according to the result of the effect of different inr (table 10) the maximum pod no./plant, seed no./pod , seed weight/plant (g), hundred seed weight (g) and grain yield (kg/ha) was recorded under 60 ppm of inr which were (26.50, 1.09, 32.60 (g), 35.14(g)and 617.50(kg/ha) ) respectively in comparison to the control (0 ppm inr) which were (22.89, 1.00, 27.83(g), 30.72(g) and 539 (kg/ha))s) respectively. the interaction between (sa) and (inr) is illustrated in (table 11). as it’s shown in table (11) the maximum pod number per plant was observed under sa of (soil + 8% gof) and application of 30 ppm inr which was (33). the minimum number of pods per plant was observed in control (soil + 0% peat) with 0ppm inr which was (19.7). the maximum seed number per pod was observed sa of (soil + 8% gof) and application of 30 ppm inr which was (1.3) compared to the control which was (1). the maximum seed weight per plant (43.8 g), hundred seed weight (45.5 g) and grain yield (803.5 kg/ha) were determined from plants that grow under sa of (soil + 8% gof) and application of 30 ppm inr. the minimum seed weight per plant (24.2 g), hundred seed weight (28.3 g) and grain yield (480.3 kg/ha) were determined from plants that grown under control (soil + 0% peat) with 0ppm inr. soil amendment (sa) plant height (cm) no. of branches/plant days to 50% flowering days to physiological maturity inorganic n rates (inr) (ppm) 0 30 60 0 30 60 0 30 60 0 30 60 soil + 0% gof(control) 24.7 29 30.7 7.7 8.7 9.3 68.3 73.3 80.6 111.3 116.3 125.6 soil + 4% gof 27 34 39.7 8 9.7 10 78.5 82.8 85.4 132.7 128.8 131.4 soil + 8% gof 28 45 40.3 8 11 10.7 88.6 95.6 85.4 134.6 141.6 131.4 soil + 0% peat(control) 21.3 26 26.7 5.7 6.7 7.3 68.6 63.5 64.9 112.4 106.5 107.9 soil + 4% peat 23.7 28 29.1 6 7.7 8 63.2 67.5 68.4 106.2 118.8 111.4 soil + 8% peat 22.3 34 39 6 8.3 9.7 64.1 68.4 80.9 107.1 111.4 127.9 l.s.d. 5% 4.86 2.29 18.27 16.44 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 202 table 8: analysis of variance (anova) yield component of chickpea (cicer areitinum l.) as influenced by soil amendment (sa) and inorganic n rates (inr) and their interaction (sa*inr) s.o.v. ms df pod no./plant seed no./pod seed weight/plant (g) hundred seed weight (g) grain yield (kg/ha) block 2 85.13* 0.005ns 183.64* 183.44* 55308.60* sa 5 62.34* 0.031* 207.78* 134.38* 47113.65* nr 2 34.29ns 0.041* 116.71ns 104.23ns 32505.46ns sa*nr 10 11.98ns 0.014* 18.03ns 17.77ns 5327.64ns error 34 21.32 0.0048 46.06 46.04 13860.54 *, ** and ns represent significant at p ≤ 0.05, p ≤ 0.01 and non-significant, respectively. s.o.v.: source of variance, df: degree of freedom and ms: mean square table 9: yield components of chickpea (cicer areitinum l.) as influenced by soil amendment (sa) table 10: yield components of chickpea (cicer areitinum l.) as influenced by inorganic n rate (inr) soil amendment (sa) pod no./plant seed no./pod seed weight/plant (g) hundred seed weight (g) grain yield (kg/ha) soil + 0% gof(control) 25.78 1.00 31.46 33.20 588.68 soil + 4% gof 26.67 1.03 34.21 35.95 636.44 soil + 8% gof 29.78 1.14 37.82 39.57 699.21 soil + 0% peat(control) 20.22 1.00 24.56 28.60 495.83 soil + 4% peat 22.44 1.02 27.40 30.75 536.43 soil + 8% peat 24.56 1.10 28.85 32.90 570.37 l.s.d. 5% 4.56 0.07 6.50 6.50 112.79 inorganic n rates (inr) (ppm) pod no./plant seed no./pod seed weight/plant (g) hundred seed weight (g) grain yield (kg/ha) 0 (ppm) 22.89 1.00 27.83 30.72 539.15 30 (ppm) 25.33 1.06 31.73 34.62 606.84 60 (ppm) 26.50 1.09 32.60 35.14 617.50 l.s.d. 5% 3.32 0.05 4.59 4.60 79.75 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 203 table 11: growth characteristics of chickpea (cicer areitinum l.) as influenced by combination of soil amendment (sa) and inorganic n rates (nr) (sa*inr) 4. discussion the results of this research indicate that amending soil with organic fertilizer enhances the morphological characteristic of chickpea. the highest plant was observed when the soil amended with 8% of gof as a main factor. the same result illustrated from a study which was done by [11] in which the plant height of tomato increased with application of organic fertilizer. while, as a main factor of inr with increasing the rate of inorganic n fertilizer to 60 ppm highest plant was recorded similar determination was recorded by [12] in which by increasing n rate the height of sunflower increased. this result indicates that application of n inorganic fertilizer was easily absorbed by the plants which could consequently cause rapid growth in the plant. as its shown in the result of this study it’s clear that combined application of sa and inr rates reduce or optimize the inr to 30 ppm and gave highest plant compared to control. this result is in line with the result of a study revealed that application of organic fertilizer reduces the amount of n fertilizer when applied to maize crop [13]. the combined application of gof and inr gave maximum number of branches when applied in percentage of 8%gof and 30 ppm inr. similar result reported by a study in which showed that foliar application of n fertilizer in form of urea had a significant impact on plant height, number of branches [14]. the earliest initiation of 50% flowering was observed under treatment of amending soil with 4% peat and 0ppm of inr and the plant that 50% of its flowering initiation took long period of (95.6 days) was grown under soil amendment of 8% gof with 30ppm nr. under this treatment the flowering initiation delayed as in a result of a study which was done by [15] in which with application of n fertilizer the flowering of rice delayed . the flowering period can directly affect the grain yield. in a research study [16] reported that number of days taken to flowering directly as well as significantly related with the grain yield. early flowering chickpea produced in higher yields at different location and stresses [17]. it is important to note that the delay in the flowering might be due to the leaf initiation slower rate (i.e. nodes/day) rather than by a change in the flowering mechanism itself [18]. the plant that needed long period to reach its physiological maturity was also grown under treatment which was sa with of 8% gof with 30ppm inr. the plants that reached its physiological maturity in a short period of time (days) grown under sa of 4% peat and 0ppm of nr. it’s clear that with application of inorganic n fertilizer the maturity of the soil amendment (sa) pod no./plant seed no./pod seed weight/plant (g) hundred seed weight (g) grain yield (kg/ha) inorganic n rates (inr) (ppm) 0 30 60 0 30 60 0 30 60 0 30 60 0 30 60 soil + 0% gof(control) 23 23.7 24.7 1 1 1 28 32.4 34 29.7 34.1 36 528 605.1 633.1 soil + 4% gof 23.3 25 25.7 1 1 1.1 31.9 34.6 36 33.6 36.3 38 596 642.4 671.1 soil + 8% gof 24.3 33 26 1 1.3 1.2 33.5 43.8 36 35.2 45.5 38 624 803.5 670.3 soil + 0% peat(control) 19.7 20 21 1 1 1 23.7 24.2 26 27.7 28.3 30 480 489.6 517.6 soil + 4% peat 20.3 22 22.3 1 1 1.1 24.7 27.4 30 28.8 31.5 32 499 545.5 564.8 soil + 8% peat 20.7 22.3 25.7 1 1.1 1.2 25.3 28 33 29.3 32 37 508 554.8 648 l.s.d. 5% 7.89 0.12 11.25 11.25 195.35 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 204 plant delayed and it may be because of that inorganic nitrogen was promptly accessible which eventually improved the vegetative development which resulted in the maturity delay. this result is in line with a result of a study done by [19] which illustrated that the maturity delayed with expanding the rate of inorganic n. as it is shown in the results of this study amending soil granular organic fertilizer optimizing the n rate to 30ppm and gave highest yield component which were number of pod/plant, number of seed per pod, seed weight/plant, hundred seed weight and grain yield. these may be because of the effect of organic and mineral fertilizer to meet the nutrition requirements of chickpea crop. these results are in line with the result of a study done by [20] which studied effect of organic matter and bio fertilizers on chickpea quality, the results showed that the application of compost at 75 kg ha-1 and chemical fertilizer increases grain yield [21] and [22] they recorded that the growth and yield of chickpea significantly raised with application of combination of organic manures and mineral fertilizers. the increase in morphological characteristic and grain yield could be because of the enhancement of the yield components (plant height, number of pods per plant, seed weight per plant and 100 seed weight) consequently [23]. application of organic fertilizer as a soil amendment reduces the application amount of inorganic fertilizer that causes hazards pollution to the environment. this result prove that organic and bio fertilization can mitigate the pollution of the environment [24] and [25]. it is clear that in this study the highest yield was under application of 30ppm n and this is due to the potential of chickpea to obtain an appropriate amount of (4–85%) of its nitrogen requirement through symbiotic n2 fixation when the plant is grown under organic fertilized soil [26]. one of the obvious result of this study was that the organic fertilizer has a significant effect on the growth and production of chickpea. however, chickpea is a legume that derives greater nitrogen requirement by its biological n2 fixation, through rhizobium inoculants that increase the nitrogen concentration of the fields and thus fertility of the soil [27]. the edaphic environment under organic production system will be more congenial for good crop growth and application of organics regularly maintains it at optimum level. in earlier research work it has been shown that legume yield can be increased under system of organic production [28]. 5. conclusion the growth characteristic and yield component of local variety of chickpea can be enhanced by amending the soil with granular organic fertilizer in a rate of 8% and optimizing the rate of inorganic fertilizer n in a rate of 30ppm. from the results of this study it is clear that amending soil with organic fertilizer could contribute in reducing the used amount of n fertilizer in which the optimum n rate for the highest morphological characteristic and yield component was 30 ppm n rate. it can be concluded that the grain yield of the local variety of chickpea (cicer areitinum l.) can be enhanced by production of the plant under organic amendment of the soil. reference [1] b. merga and j. haji, "economic importance of chickpea: production, value, and world trade," cogent food & agriculture, vol. 5, p. 1615718, 2019. [2] f. j. muehlbauer and a. sarker, "economic importance of chickpea: production, value, and world trade," in the chickpea genome, ed: springer, pp. 5-12, 2017, [3] v. naik, p. patel, and b. patel, "study on effect of different organics on yield and quality of organically grown onion," the bioscan, vol. 9, pp. 1499-1503, 2014. [4] m. khan, w. al-busaidi, r. janke, and i. al-kindi, "use of soil amendments in sustainable organic farming systems," bioscience research, vol. 15, pp. 4128-4135, 2018. [5] m. uchimiya, i. m. lima, k. t. klasson, and l. h. wartelle, "contaminant immobilization and nutrient release by biochar soil amendment: roles of natural organic matter," chemosphere, vol. 80, pp. 935-940, 2010. [6] s. loper, a. l. shober, c. wiese, g. c. denny, c. d. stanley, and e. f. gilman, "organic soil amendment and tillage affect soil quality and plant performance in simulated residential landscapes," hortscience, vol. 45, pp. 1522-1528, 2010. 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[10] a. j. mjeed and m. a. ali, "effect of gyttja and nitrogen applications on growth and flowering of snapdragons (antirrhinum majus l.) plant in the two soils depth," kurdistan journal of applied research, vol. 2, pp. 1-7, 2017. [11] m. islam, s. islam, a. akter, m. rahman, and d. nandwani, "effect of organic and inorganic fertilizers on soil properties and the growth, yield and quality of tomato in mymensingh, bangladesh," agriculture, vol. 7, p. 18, 2017. [12] e. oyinlola, "response of sunflower (helianthus annuus l.) to nitrogen application in a savanna alfisol/respuesta del girasol (helianthus annuus l.) a la aplicaciã n nitrogenada en un alfisol de la sabana/rã ponse du tournesol (helianthus annuus l.) ã l'application d'azote dans un alfisol de savane," 2015. [13] f. oad, u. buriro, and s. agha, "effect of organic and inorganic fertilizer application on maize fodder production," asian j. plant sci, vol. 3, pp. 375-377, 2004. [14] a. a. bahr, "effect of plant density and urea foliar application on yield and yield components of chickpea (cicer arietinum l.)," res. j. agri. and biological sci, vol. 3, pp. 220-223, 2007. [15] t. ye, y. li, j. zhang, w. hou, w. zhou, j. lu, y. xing, and x. li, "nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium fertilization affects the flowering time of rice (oryza sativa l.)," global ecology and conservation, vol. 20, p. e00753, 2019. [16] m. yusuf ali, c. johansen, l. krishnamurthy, and a. hamid, "genotypic variation in root systems of chickpea (cicer arietinum l.) across environments," journal of agronomy and crop science, vol. 191, pp. 464-472, 2005. [17] n. c. turner, s. abbo, j. d. berger, s. chaturvedi, r. j. french, c. ludwig, d. mannur, s. singh, and h. yadava, "osmotic adjustment in chickpea (cicer arietinum l.) results in no yield benefit under terminal drought," journal of experimental botany, vol. 58, pp. 187-194, 2006. [18] h. salehi, c. b. ransom, h. f. oraby, z. seddighi, and m. b. sticklen, "delay in flowering and increase in biomass of transgenic tobacco expressing the arabidopsis floral repressor gene flowering locus c," journal of plant physiology, vol. 162, pp. 711-717, 2005. [19] a. saleem, a. haqqani, h. javed, z. ali, and j. fateh, "economical level of np-fertilizer for growing maize crop in pakistan," int. j. agric. bio, vol. 8, pp. 567-568, 2006. [20] k. mohammadi, a. ghalavand, and m. aghaalikhani, "effect of organic matter and biofertilizers on chickpea quality and biological nitrogen fixation," world academy of science, engineering and technology, vol. 44, pp. 1154-1159, 2010. [21] m. shukla, r. patel, r. verma, p. deewan, and m. dotaniya, "effect of bio-organics and chemical fertilizers on growth and yield of chickpea (cicer arietinum l.) under middle gujarat conditions," vegetos, vol. 26, pp. 183-187, 2013. [22] i. sohu, a. w. gandahi, g. r. bhutto, m. s. sarki, and r. gandahi, "growth and yield maximization of chickpea (cicer arietinum) through integrated nutrient management applied to rice-chickpea cropping system," sarhad journal of agriculture, vol. 31, 2015. [23] r. ebaid and i. el-refaee, "utilization of rice husk as an organic fertilizer to improve productivity and water use efficiency in rice fields," in 8th african crop science society conference, el-minia, egypt, 2731 october 2007, 2007, pp. 1923-1928. [24] g. n. chemining'wa and j. k. vessey, "the abundance and efficacy of rhizobium leguminosarum bv. viciae in cultivated soils of the eastern canadian prairie," soil biology and biochemistry, vol. 38, pp. 294302, 2006. [25] m. erman, s. demir, e. ocak, ş. tüfenkçi, f. oğuz, and a. akköprü, "effects of rhizobium, arbuscular mycorrhiza and whey applications on some properties in chickpea (cicer arietinum l.) under irrigated and rainfed conditions 1—yield, yield components, nodulation and amf colonization," field crops research, vol. 122, pp. 14-24, 2011. [26] n. togay, y. togay, k. m. cimrin, and m. turan, "effects of rhizobium inoculation, sulfur and phosphorus applications on yield, yield components and nutrient uptakes in chickpea (cicer arietinum l.)," african journal of biotechnology, vol. 7, 2008. [27] r. hayat, s. ali, m. t. siddique, and t. h. chatha, "biological nitrogen fixation of summer legumes and their residual effects on subsequent rainfed wheat yield," pak j bot, vol. 40, pp. 711-722, 2008. [28] s. karmakar, c. laguë, j. agnew, and h. landry, "integrated decision support system (dss) for manure management: a review and perspective," computers and electronics in agriculture, vol. 57, pp. 190-201, 2007. 1. introduction 2.1 determination of growth characteristic and yield component traits 5. conclusion kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq response of some wheat cultivars to plot orientation and foliar boron levels lana d. m. marofi sami mohammad amin field crops department field crops department college of agricultural engineering sciences college of agricultural engineering sciences salahaddin university salahaddin university erbil, iraq erbil, iraq lana.mohammed@su.edu.krd sami.maaroof@su.edu.krd volume 4 issue 2 december 2019 doi: 10.24017/science.2019.2.1 received: 14 july 2019 accepted: 19 august 2019 abstract this investigation was conducted to understand the response of three newly introduced bread wheat cultivars to erbil area (v1: florkwa, v2: baj and v3: frankolin) to three boron levels sprayed at elongation stage 0, 1 and 1.5 ppm concentration and oriented (south-north and east-west) row directions to study the vegetative and reproductive growth characters of wheat. the results showed that leaf area, lai, weight of leaf, light extinction coefficient, flag leaf length, fertility, number of spike and harvest index significantly increased in ew (east-west) compared to sn (south-north) row direction. while, the spike weight, spike length, number of kernels, grain yield and biological yield significantly increased in sn compare to ew row direction. there were not significant differences observed among different level of boron alone and different cultivars in all studied traits except plant height and 1000 kernels weight of v2 increased compared to other cultivars. interactions of ew direction with both cultivars and levels of boron factors were improved the vegetable characteristics compared to ns direction. grain yield of interaction between 1.5 ppm × sn, all cultivars × sn and 1.5 ppm boron × v1 × sn row direction were significantly (p<0.05) increased compared to other interactions. while the harvest index increased in interaction between 0 and 1.5 ppm × ew, v2×ew and 1.5 ppm × v1 × ew compared to other interactions. keywords: wheat cultivar, row direction, boron, kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 2 1. introduction one of the most serious crops in the world are wheat crop (triticum aestivum l.) that is essential grain crops for the human and animal consumption. the ultimate yield of the wheat crop is controlled by a number of external factors and genetics [1]. wheat is one of the cheapest exporters of food that supplies 72% calories and protein with other important ingredients in the normal life of humans. in any case of the convenient role of the row direction in influencing the yield of crops, they also have a direct role in preserving soil water from evaporation. the results also by [2], showed that the influence of row directions, and the spacing of grade in the agricultural process is very important in increasing crop production and controlling weed-related with wheat crops. the impact of row direction on crop yields is different, depending on the farming system, is likely to vary from crop cultivars [3]. also, several published papers on this point confirm that set the row direction of crops with row spacing is very serious to increase the yield of crops [4], [5], [6], [7]. the rows direction that has impact on the adequacy of photosynthesis and the temperature of the canopy influenced by the challenge of solar radiance and the canopy of crops [8]. deficiency of boron in cereal is more common than the reduction of any other microelement in the world [9]. adequate boron is crucial for high production and high quality of plants [10]. deficiency of boron reasons many physiological, biochemical, and anatomical modifications in plants [11]. boron has abundant physiological assignment in crops such as synthesis of cell wall, sugar transport, pollen tube growth, pollen germination, reproduction, carbohydrate metabolism, lignification, rna metabolism, respiration, indole acetic acid metabolism (iaa), phenol metabolism, membrane integrity, ascorbate metabolism and oxygen activation [11], [12]. the objective of this research was to find out the reaction of some wheat cultivars to plot orientation and different level of boron sprayed on the plants for growth and wheat production. 2. materials and methods 2.1 experimental design this experiment was carried out in grdarasha experimental station, college of agricultural engineering sciences, salahaddin university, kurdistan region, erbil, during the winter season 2018-2019. three newly introduced bread wheat cultivars (v1: florkwa, v2: baj and v3: frankolin) were used in this research. the wheat (v1, v2 and v3) certified from erbil agricultural experimental station were distributed in ordinance on plots of area 1m × 2m (area of each plot about 2 m-2), line spacing 17 cm , each cultivar sprayed at elongation stage with either 0, 1 and 1.5 ppm concentration of boron. each of the three replicates contained 9 experimental units (3 cultivars by 3 boron level) so that each oriented (south-north and east-west) band occupied 27 square meters and both orientations 54 net square meters in addition to boundaries and path ways. boundaries (buffers) were about one-meter strip and the walkways about 0.5 meters, to form a total area of 300 m2. physical and chemical properties were analyzed at a depth (0-30 cm) of experiment soil (table 1). kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 3 table 1: physical and chemical properties of experiment soil at a depth (0-30 cm). soil properties 0-30 cm particle distribution sand % 36.23 silt % 31.73 clay % 30.83 soil texture clay loam organic matter om % 0.8 n total (%) 0.06 p available (ppm) 4.64 k available (ppm) 177.33 ec ds.m-1 0.23 ph 7.7 2.2 characteristics studied 2.2.1 vegetative growth characters plant height (cm) was recorded at maturity, ten representative plants were collected at in random from each treatment, the height of plants was estimated excluding awns from the flat area of the ground to the growing point of the spikes and then the average plant height was obtained. a number of tillers calculated from 50 cm length randomly from the central rows of plots at the harvesting stage [13]. flag leaf length (the distance between the collar and the tip of fully expanded flag leaf) were measured at the flowering stage and calculated as the mean of ten leaves at the main stem for each plot. light intensity was measured as light conflicts coefficient with photometer luxomet 300 model (m/s research instrumentation, new delhi, india) at lower and upper of crop canopy. leaf area was measured of the plant growth and calculated by image j software. 2.2.2 reproductive growth characters at the end of the experiment, reproductive growth characters were calculated from the random 50 cm length per plot from central rows; includes number of spikes plant -1, spike length (cm) and weight (g), number of kernels spike -1, 1000-kernel weight (g), grain yield (g plant -1), biological yield (g plant -1) and harvest index (hi). 2.3 statistical analysis results were obtained in the experiments were statistically analyzed using general linear model (glm) according to the analysis of variance (anova) using spss program (statistical package for social science) (spss 22, 2005) for factorial rcb design. descriptive statistics were used for the analysis of the data result as follow, means and standard error. duncan test was utilized to calculate significant differences at 5% levels among the various parameters [14]. 3. results and discussions 3.1 vegetable growth characters table 2a shows that not significant differences (p>0.05) were observed among treatments for the number of tillers plant-1 in row directions, cultivars, different level of boron and boron levels × row directions at 122 days after sowing. while, the number of tillers plant-1 were increased in the interactions between 1.5 ppm of boron × v1 and v2 × sn row direction compared with other interactions. also, the interactions among three factors (1.5 ppm boron × v1 × sn, 1 ppm boron × v2 × sn and 0 ppm boron × v1 × ew) were higher compared with the other interactions. the number of spikes was increased due to the higher fertile tillers at the end of the crop cycle. the results by [14] found that boron administration increased 15% the number of tillers per plant of kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 4 wheat. also, the research by [16] found that the effect of application of different level of boron under natural drought conditions of hawler area during growing season of 2002-2003, have been studied on leaf area, lai and leaf area duration, boron affect significantly the leaf area at both seasons. no significant effect observed in number of tiller and plant height using different level of boron. the data presented in table 2a showed that leaf area, leaf area index and weight of leaf at 122 days after sowing were significantly (p<0.05) increased in ew compared to sn row direction. while, there were no significant differences among different level of boron, three cultivars and interaction between boron × cultivars in all parameters. this study not consistent with some other researchers that found plant height and flag leaf insertion height significantly increased with administration of boron [17], [18]. the results indicated that the interaction between various level of boron and row directions also had significant (p<0.05) differences among treatments, the best result of leaf area, lai and weight of leaf were recorded for 1 ppm of boron × ew compared with other interactions. also, the results showed that the interaction between cultivars and row directions had significant (p<0.05) differences among treatments, the best result of leaf area and lai was recorded for v2 × ew and the best result of weight of leaf were recorded for v1 × ew and v2 × ew compared with other interactions. while, the interaction among three factors; cultivars, different level of boron and row directions showed the significant (p<0.05) differences among treatments, the best result of leaf area and lai were recorded for v2 × 1.5 ppm of boron × ew, v3 × 1 ppm of boron × ew and v2 × 0 ppm of boron × ew compared with other interactions. the lowest leaf area, lai and weight of leaf was recorded for v1 × 1 ppm of boron × sn compared with other interactions. while, the best result of leaf weight was recorded for v1 × 1 ppm of boron × ew compared with other interactions. table 2a showed the light extinction coefficient at 122 days after sowing that significantly (p<0.05) improved in ew compared with sn row direction. while, not significant differences among three cultivars, different level of boron, interactions between boron × cultivars and interactions among all three factors in light extinction coefficient parameter. interactions between different level of boron with row direction significantly (p<0.05) improved light extinction coefficient, the best records were observed 0 ppm of boron × ew and 1.5 ppm of boron × ew compared with other interactions. also, there were significant (p<0.05) differences among treatments of interaction between cultivars and row direction, the best records was observed v2 × ew compared with the other interactions. 3.2 reproductive growth characters table 2b showed that not significant differences were observed among treatments in plant height, flag leaf length, flowering day, physiological maturity and fertility between row directions, different level of boron, cultivars, interactions between boron levels with cultivars and boron levels with row directions, except plant height in cultivars and interactions between boron levels with cultivars, also flag leaf length and fertility in row direction and interaction between boron levels with row directions. also table 2b showed that significant (p<0.05) differences were observed for all parameters between cultivars × row directions and all three factors boron levels × cultivars × row directions, the best records for fertility were observed between (v1, v2 and v3 × ew directions) and (0 ppm boron × v3 × ew) compared with other interactions, respectively. the results by [4] pointed that the ew row direction of the wheat crops is the best compared to the ns row direction, this result does not exactly mean that it is a standard case in all researches assumed in this gaps. at the same time, some researchers have published that the ew row direction of crops is the best in suppressing weed growth in wheat and increasing the yield of crops [19]. other researchers have stated that the ns of row direction is also better in suppressing weed growing with wheat and increasing the yield crops [20]. both have the same view that both row directions kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 5 work by increasing shading between the row directions, which affects present weeds in the field area and subsequently increase the yield of crops. increased yield of crops and ingredient are a natural reflection of what has been observed in the growth of plants. raising strong healthy plants during the overall vegetable growth phase leads to a significant increase in harvest and final crop yields. table 3 showed that not significant differences were observed among treatments in a number of spikes plant-1, spike weight (g), spike length (cm), number of kernels spike-1, grain yield (g plant-1) between different level of boron, cultivars and interactions between boron levels with cultivars. while, the number of spikes plant-1 and harvest index (%) was increased in ew row direction compared to sn row direction. while, all other parameters except 1000 kernels weight were increased in sn row direction compared to ew row direction. in the current study, the data showed in table 3, indicates that sn direction significantly increased grain yield compare to ew direction. this positive enhancements in grain yield have also been reported by previous research [21]. also, significant differences were observed in the number of spikes in interactions between of boron levels × row direction, cultivars × row directions and all three factors, the best records were observed (0 ppm of boron × ew), (v3 × ew and v1 × sn) and (0 ppm boron × v3 × ew) compared to other interactions, respectively. the row direction can supply a concept to produce a good condition of light-saturated for a crop that cover for the aims of effective harvesting of solar power for the production of agriculture. the research was supported with the previous study at the miniba agricultural center [22], which showed that seeding in the ew row direction increased the crop yield compared to the sn row direction during the experimental period. table 3 also shows not significant differences were observed among treatments in 1000 kernels weight in boron level and interaction between boron × row direction, biological yield (g plant-1) in boron level and harvest index in boron level and different cultivars. spike weight (g), number of kernels spike-1, grain yield (g plant-1) and biological yield of v1 × sn row direction was significantly (p<0.05) increased compared to other interactions. while, 1000 kernels weight and harvest index of v2 × ew were significantly (p<0.05) increased compared to other interactions. also the interaction among three factors, spike weight (g), number of kernels spike-1, grain yield (g plant-1) and biological yield of 1.5 ppm boron × v1 × sn row direction was significantly (p<0.05) increased compared to other interactions. the influence of the row direction on the crops is different from the latitude and the seasonal slope of the earth relative to the sun. near the equator, the ns row direction (unlike east-west) gives the higher level of crop productions so that the light absorbs most of the year. in the upper latitudes (up to 55°), the absorption is higher in the ns row direction crop yields in the summer and the ew crops for the remaining of the year. from 65°, the ew row direction gives the greatest amount of light absorption throughout the year (although the difference between the directions is minimal [23]. australia's western wheat girdle (wide grain growing area) ranges from 28° c to 33 ° c. the planting appear during the winter-spring season, suggesting that crops between ew should receive the higher amount of light absorption compared to the sn row direction [24]. the angle of the sun (for the horizon) can be as low as 35° during the winter planting crop season, although it ranges from 39-61° in the spring, when the plants reach to maturity [25]. the results showed that by [8] grain yield and quality of different cultivars of wheat averaged in all characteristics, were significantly (ρ <0.001) higher for planting crops in the ew row direction, compared to the ns row direction (793 and 656 kg ha; 1; lsd = 69.3). therefore, the interaction between the row directions and crop cultivars of the crop elucidate that which difference was often due to the various yield of wheat. wheat yield (mean in all experiments) was 24% higher in the ew direction, not ns row directions. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 6 the research by [23] conducted an experiment with 21 wheat cultivars in the taray region of india to estimate the influence of administration of b on grain yield and other vegetable and reproductive characteristics. most cultivars displayed a significant (p<0.05) response to b related to grain yield 30, the number of grains per spike and length of the spike. cereal yield was increased mainly by increasing the number of grains per spikes. while, cultivars such as bau 2076, hi 968, br 350 and bw 121 displayed a very small response to b additive for most the experiments. similar data were presented by [23], [26] and [27] that showed a significant increases in the number of grain per spike of wheat by the addition of boron. the results by [27] showed that the addition of a different level of boron significantly affected the plant height. the data of the highest plant (80.02 cm) were recorded when the plant field was treated with boron level (1.0 kg b ha-1), and also there were no statistically differences with other levels of boron (0.5 kg b ha-1) and (1.5 kg b ha-1). while, the shortest plant height (76.85 cm) was recorded whit no addition of boron to the wheat. also, the research showed that plant height of wheat was significantly increased by administration of 1 kg of boron ha-1 [28]. also, the research by [13] found that the effect of application of different level of boron significantly increased the grain yield at season 2003. while, the study by [29] used different level of boron (0, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2 and 2.5 ppm) in sulaymaniyah area and the result showed that increased level of boron equal and more than 2 ppm that deceased the dry weight of crops. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 7 table 2a: response of some wheat cultivars to plot orientation, boron levels and interactions on vegetable traits. treatment no. of tillers plant-1 leaf area (cm2) lai weight of leaf (g) k direction1 sn 1.60 a 273.46 b 3.21 b 1.92 b 1.14 a ew 1.64 a 315.95 a 3.71 a 2. 13 a 0.78 b boron level 0 ppm 1.59 a 299.53 a 3.52 a 2.29 a 0.83 a 1 ppm 1.60 a 296.71 a 3.49 a 2.32 a 1.02 a 1.5 ppm 1.67 a 287.88 a 3.38 a 2.01 a 1.02 a cultivar2 v1 1.67 a 279.97 a 3.29 a 2.22 a 1.00 a v2 1.68 a 309.85 a 3.64 a 2.28 a 0.91 a v3 1.51 a 294.30 a 3.46 a 2.13 a 0.96 a interaction boron level × cultivar 0 ppm × v1 1.75 ab 296.97 a 3.49 a 2.46 a 0.96 a 0 ppm × v2 1.59 ab 311.60 a 3.66 a 2.42 a 0.67 a 0 ppm × v3 1.41 b 290.01 a 3.41 a 2.00 a 0.87 a 1 ppm × v1 1.45 ab 259.54 a 3.05 a 2.23 a 0.99 a 1 ppm × v2 1.75 ab 296.11 a 3.48 a 2.23 a 1.15 a 1 ppm × v3 1.61 ab 334.49 a 3.93 a 2.50 a 0.93 a 1.5 ppm × v1 1.80 a 283.38 a 3.33 a 1.96 a 1.06 a 1.5 ppm × v2 1.69 ab 321.84 a 3.78 a 2.18 a 0.91 a 1.5 ppm × v3 1.52 ab 258.40 a 3.04 a 1.89 a 1.08 a boron level × direction 0 ppm × sn 1.56 ns 282.91 ab 3.32 ab 2.09 ab 0.93 ab 1 ppm × sn 1.52 ns 255.41 b 3.00 b 1.92 ab 1.20 ab 1.5 ppm × sn 1.73 ns 282.05 ab 3.31 ab 1.74 c 1.27 a 0 ppm × ew 1.62 ns 316.14 ab 3.71 ab 2.49 bc 0.74 b 1 ppm × ew 1.68 ns 339.02 a 3.97 a 2.72 a 0.85 ab 1.5 ppm × ew 1.61 ns 293.70 ab 3.45 ab 2.28 abc 0.76 b kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 8 table 2a: continued. treatment no. of tillers plant-1 leaf area (cm2) lai weight of leaf k cultivar × direction v1×sn 1.68 ab 257.47 b 3.02 b 1.79 b 1.18 a v2×sn 1.73 a 274.69 ab 3.23 ab 1.92 b 1.14 ab v3×sn 1.40 b 288.21 ab 3.39 ab 2.05 ab 1.08 ab v1×ew 1.65 ab 302.46 ab 3.55 ab 2.65 a 0.82 ab v2×ew 1.63 ab 345.01 a 4.05 a 2.63 a 0.69 b v3×ew 1.63 ab 300.39 ab 3.53 ab 2.21 ab 0.84 ab boron level × cultivar × direction 0 ppm × v1 × sn 1.74 ab 289.24 ab 3.40 ab 2.21 abc 1.08 0 ppm × v1 × ew 1.77 a 304.71 ab 3.58 ab 2.71 bc 0.84 0 ppm × v2 × sn 1.71 ab 280.66 ab 3.30 ab 2.21 abc 0.71 0 ppm × v2 × ew 1.48 ab 342.54 a 4.03 a 2.62 abc 0.63 0 ppm × v3 × sn 1.23 b 278.83 ab 3.28 ab 1.86 abc 0.99 0 ppm × v3 × ew 1.60 ab 301.18 ab 3.54 ab 2.14 abc 0.75 1 ppm × v1 × sn 1.41 ab 196.99 b 2.31 b 1.52 c 1.33 1 ppm × v1 × ew 1.49 ab 322.09 ab 3.79 ab 2.95 a 0.65 1 ppm × v2 × sn 1.66 ab 265.60ab 3.12 ab 1.85 abc 1.40 1 ppm × v2 × ew 1.85 a 326.62 ab 3.84 ab 2.62 abc 0.91 1 ppm × v3 × sn 1.50 ab 303 62 ab 3.57 ab 2.39 abc 0.88 1 ppm × v3 × ew 1.72 ab 365.36 a 4.30 a 2.60 abc 0.98 1.5 ppm × v1 × sn 1.90 a 286.17 ab 3.36 ab 1.64 bc 1.15 1.5 ppm × v1 × ew 1.69 ab 280.60 ab 3.30 ab 2.28 abc 0.97 1.5 ppm × v2 × sn 1.82 ab 277.81 ab 3.26 ab 1.71 bc 1.31 1.5 ppm × v2 × ew 1.57 ab 365.88 a 4.30 a 2.65 abc 0.52 1.5 ppm × v3 × sn 1.47 ab 282.18 ab 3.32 ab 1.88 abc 1.36 1.5 ppm × v3 × ew 1.58 ab 234.62 ab 2.79 ab 1.90 abc 0.80 means within each column had the different subscript were differ significantly (p<0.05). k= light extinction coefficient. 1 sn: south-north and ew: east-west; 2 v1: florkwa, v2: baj and v3: frankolin. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 9 table 2b: response of some wheat cultivars to plot orientation, boron levels and interactions on vegetable traits. treatment plant height (cm) flag leaf length (cm) flowering day (day) physiological maturity (day) fertility % direction sn 84.05 a 21.22 b 131.77 a 178.92 a 65.34 b ew 84.12 a 23.20 a 132.33 a 179.66 a 85.68 a boron level 0 ppm 84.40 a 22.28 a 130.66 a 179.88 a 77.43 a 1 ppm 83.12 a 22.48 a 131.22 a 178.44 a 74.48 a 1.5 ppm 84.74 a 21.88 a 132.33 a 179.55 a 74.62 a cultivar v1 79.25 b 22.65 a 130.66 a 177.88 a 72.65 a v2 90.65 a 20.96 a 132.33 a 179.33 a 75.75 a v3 82.36 b 23.03 a 133.16 a 180.66 a 78.14 a interaction boron level ×cultivar 0 ppm × v1 79.95 b 22.62 a 132.33 a 179.66 a 72.69 a 0 ppm × v2 90.05 a 21.50 a 132.33 a 179.33 a 75.46 a 0 ppm × v3 83.20 b 22.71 a 133.16 a 180.33 a 84.13 a 1 ppm × v1 78.40 b 22.04 a 129.83 a 177.00 a 73.97 a 1 ppm × v2 90.93 a 21.06 a 130.66 a 177.66 a 72.72 a 1 ppm × v3 80.03 b 24.35 a 133.16 a 180.66 a 76.76 a 1.5 ppm × v1 79.41 b 23.29 a 129.83 a 177.00 a 71.29 a 1.5 ppm × v2 90.96 a 20.32 a 134.00 a 181.00 a 79.06 a 1.5 ppm × v3 83.85 b 22.03 a 133.16 a 180.66 a 73.52 a boron level × direction 0 ppm × sn 83.74 a 20.89 ab 131.77 a 179.00 a 64.68 b 1 ppm × sn 83.34 a 22.45 ab 131.22 a 178.33 a 66.49 b 1.5 ppm × sn 85.07 a 20.33 b 132.33 a 179.44 a 64.85 b 0 ppm × ew 85.05 a 23.67 a 133.44 a 180.77 a 90.18 a 1 ppm × ew 82.90 a 22.51 ab 131.22 a 178.55 a 82.48 a 1.5 ppm × ew 84.41 a 23.45 ab 132.33 a 179.66 a 84.39 a kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 10 table 2b: continued treatment plant height (cm) flag leaf length (cm) flowering day (day) physiological maturity (day) fertility % cultivar × direction v1×sn 71.47 b 19.23 c 136.22 ab 183.66 a 64.08 b v2×sn 90.66 a 19.63 c 131.77 c 178.77 b 64.46 b v3×sn 90.02 a 24.80 ab 127.33 d 174.33 c 67.48 b v1×ew 87.03 a 26.06 a 125.11 d 172.11 c 81.22 a v2×ew 90.63 a 22.29 bc 132.88 bc 179.88 b 87.03 a v3×ew 74.70 b 21.26 c 139.00 a 187.00 a 88.80 a boron level × cultivar × direction 0 ppm × v1 × sn 69.86 c 19.05 ef 137.33 ab 185.00 ab 66.52 bcd 0 ppm × v1 × ew 90.03 a 26.20 abc 127.33 cd 174.33 cd 78.87 abcd 0 ppm × v2 × sn 91.33 19.76 def 130.66 bcd 177.66 bcd 59.27 d 0 ppm × v2 × ew 88.60 a 23.25 abcdef 134.00 abc 181.00 abc 91.66 ab 0 ppm × v3 × sn 89.86 a 23.86 abcde 127.33 cd 174.33 cd 68.26 bcd 0 ppm × v3 × ew 76.53 bc 21.56 bcdef 139.00 a 187.00 a 100 a 1 ppm × v1 × sn 72.46 c 18.45 ef 135.66 ab 183.00 ab 63.85 cd 1 ppm × v1 × ew 84.33 ab 25.63 abcd 124.00 d 171.00 d 84.10 abcd 1 ppm × v2 × sn 91.50 a 21.43 bcdef 130.66 bcd 177.66 bcd 63.19 cd 1 ppm × v2 × ew 91.33 a 20.69 bcdef 130.66 bcd 177.66 bcd 82.25 abcd 1 ppm × v3 × sn 87.03 a 27.48 a 127.33 cd 174.33 cd 72.42 bcd 1 ppm × v3 × ew 73.03 c 21.23 bcdef 139.00 a 187.00 a 81.11 abcd 1.5 ppm × v1 × sn 72.10 c 20.21 cdef 135.66 ab 183.00 ab 61.86 cd 1.5 ppm × v1 × ew 86.73 a 26.36 ab 124.00 d 171.00 d 80.71 abcd 1.5 ppm × v2 × sn 89.96 a 17.71 f 134.00 abc 181.00 abc 70.93 bcd 1.5 ppm × v2 × ew 91.66 a 22.93 abcdef 134.00 abc 181.00 abc 87.19 abc 1.5 ppm × v3 × sn 93.16 a 23.06 abcdef 127.33 cd 174.33 cd 61.76 cd 1.5 ppm × v3 × ew 74.53 c 21.00 bcdef 139.00 a 187.00 a 85.29 abcd means within each column had the different subscript were differ significantly (p<0.05). gdd= growing degree day 1 sn: south-north and ew: east-west; 2 v1: florkwa, v2: baj and v3: frankolin. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 11 table 3: response of some wheat cultivars to plot orientation, boron levels and interactions on reproductive traits in field experiment. treatment no. of spikes plant-1 spikes weight (g plant-1) spikes length (cm) no. of kernels spikes-1 1000 kernels weight (g) grain yield (g plant-1) biological yield (g plant1) harvest index % direction sn 1.04 b 2.90 a 8.67 a 41.45 a 50.46 a 1.90 a 5.03 a 39.00 b ew 1.40 a 1.95 b 6.91 b 31.45 b 49.38 a 1.57 b 3.40 b 46.68 a boron level 0 ppm 1.22 a 2.40 a 7.97 a 35.81 a 50.36 a 1.72 a 4.25 a 41.97 a 1 ppm 1.18 a 2.36 a 7.77 a 36.52 a 49.27 a 1.72 a 4.10 a 43.52 a 1.5 ppm 1.25 a 2.53 a 7.65 a 37.02 a 50.13 a 1.77 a 4.30 a 43.02 a cultivar v1 1.21 a 2.57 a 7.83 a 39.23 a 47.02 b 1.76 a 4.61 a 40.40 a v2 1.25 a 2.48 a 8.10 a 35.95 a 53.55 a 1.81 a 4.26 ab 43.98 a v3 1.20 a 2.23 a 7.46 a 34.16 a 49.19 b 1.64 a 3.76 b 44.13 a interaction boron level ×cultivar 0 ppm × v1 1.27 a 2.60 a 7.98 a 39.55 a 47.66 bc 1.77 a 4.68 ab 39.53 ab 0 ppm × v2 1.18 a 2.25 a 8.23 a 34.01 a 52.25 abc 1.68 a 3.91 ab 43.78 ab 0 ppm × v3 1.23 a 2.35 a 7.70 a 33.88 a 51.16 abc 1.70 a 4.15 ab 42.60 ab 1 ppm × v1 1.07 a 2.53 a 7.73 a 37.28 a 45.50 c 1.63 a 4.73 a 35.54 b 1 ppm × v2 1.25 a 2.46 a 8.25 a 37.88 a 54.83 a 1.94 a 4.16 ab 48.23 a 1 ppm × v3 1.24 a 2.10 a 7.34 a 34.40 a 47.50 bc 1.60 a 3.40 b 46.80 a 1.5 ppm × v1 1.28 a 2.58 a 7.78 a 40.88 a 47.91 abc 1.89 a 4.43 ab 46.12 a 1.5 ppm × v2 1.33 a 2.75 a 7.82 a 35.96 a 53.58 ab 1.81 a 4.71 ab 39.93 ab 1.5 ppm × v3 1.13 a 2.26 a 7.35 a 34.21 a 48.91 abc 1.62 a 3.75 ab 43.02 ab boron level×direction 0 ppm × sn 1.00 c 2.81 a 8.81 a 39.58 ab 50.22 a 1.81 ab 4.93 a 37.31 c 1 ppm × sn 0.99 c 2.71 a 8.56 a 41.17 a 49.66 a 1.89 ab 4.80 a 41.33 abc 1.5 ppm × sn 1.13 bc 3.20 a 8.65 a 43.58 a 51.50 a 2.02 a 5.35 a 38.35 bc 0 ppm × ew 1.45 a 1.98 b 7.13 b 32.04 bc 50.50 a 1.62 ab 3.56 b 46.63 a 1 ppm × ew 1.38 ab 2.02 b 6.97 b 31.87 bc 48.88 a 1.56 b 3.40 b 45.71 ab 1.5 ppm × ew 1.36 ab 1.86 b 6.64 b 30.45 c 48.77 a 1.53 b 3.24 b 47.69 a kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 12 table 3: continued treatment no. of spikes plant-1 spikes weight (g plant-1) spikes length (cm) no. of kernels spikes-1 1000 kernels weight (g) grain yield (g plant-1) biological yield (g plant-1) harvest index % cultivar × direction v1×sn 1.08 bc 3.13 a 8.70 a 48.12 a 47.11 b 1.97 a 5.82 a 33.98 c v2×sn 1.11 bc 2.84 a 8.60 a 38.76 b 52.83 a 1.86 a 4.86 b 38.94 bc v3×sn 0.94 c 2.71 b 8.72 a 37.46 b 51.44 ab 1.88 a 4.40 bc 44.07 ab v1×ew 1.33 ab 1.97 c 6.97 bc 30.35 b 46.94 b 1.55 ab 3.41 d 46.82 ab v2×ew 1.38 a 2.13 bc 7.59 ab 33.14 b 54.27 a 1.75 ab 3.66 cd 49.01 a v3×ew 1.46 a 1.76 c 6.20 c 30.87 b 46.94 b 1.40 b 3.13 d 44.20 ab boron level × cultivar × direction 0 ppm × v1 × sn 1.16 abcd 3.13 ab 8.80 ab 49.83 ab 46.00 b 1.92 ab 5.63 ab 33.94 de 0 ppm × v1 × ew 1.38 abc 2.06 bc 7.16 abc 29.26 c 49.33 ab 1.62 ab 3.73 cd 45.13 abcde 0 ppm × v2 × sn 1.00 bcd 2.36 abc 8.40 abc 33.16 bc 51.66 ab 1.65 ab 4.10 bcd 40.15 bcde 0 ppm × v2 × ew 1.36 abcd 2.13 bc 8.06 abc 34.86 abc 52.83 ab 1.70 ab 3.73 cd 47.41 abcd 0 ppm × v3 × sn 0.84 d 2.93 abc 9.23 a 35.76 abc 53.00 ab 1.86 ab 5.06 abc 37.85 cde 0 ppm × v3 × ew 1.60 a 1,76 c 6.16 c 32.00 c 49.33 ab 1.55 ab 3.23 cd 47.34 abcd 1 ppm × v1 × sn 0.88 cd 2.93 abc 8.50 abc 41.90 abc 45.83 b 1.81 ab 5.83 ab 31.55 e 1 ppm × v1 × ew 1.25 abcd 2.13 bc 6.96 abc 31.13 c 45.16 b 1.45 ab 3.63 cd 39.53 bcde 1 ppm × v2 × sn 1.03 bcd 2.73 abc 8.75 ab 43.43 abc 53.16 ab 1.99 ab 4.76 abcd 41.91 abcde 1 ppm × v2 × ew 1.47 ab 2.20 abc 7.73 abc 33.86 bc 56.50 a 1.89 ab 3.56 cd 54.56 ab 1 ppm × v3 × sn 1.07 bcd 2.46 abc 8.45 abc 38.18 abc 50.00 ab 1.87 ab 3.80 cd 50.55 abc 1 ppm × v3 × ew 1.41 abc 1.73 c 6.23 c 30.63 c 45.00 b 1.33 b 3.00 d 43.06 abcde 1.5 ppm × v1 × sn 1.20 abcd 3.43 a 8.82 ab 51.10 a 49.50 ab 2.19 a 6.00 a 36.44 cde 1.5 ppm × v1 × ew 1.37 abc 1.73 c 6.73 bc 30.66 c 46.33 ab 1.60 ab 2.86 d 55.80 a 1.5 ppm × v2 × sn 1.30 abcd 3.43 a 8.66 ab 41.23 abc 53.66 ab 1.96 ab 5.73 ab 34.78 de 1.5 ppm × v2 × ew 1.36 abcd 2.06 bc 6.98 abc 30 70 c 53.50 ab 1.67 ab 3.70 cd 45.07 abcde 1.5 ppm × v3 × sn 0.90 cd 2.73 abc 8.48 abc 38.43 abc 51.33 ab 1.90 ab 4.33 abcd 43.82 abcde 1.5 ppm × v3 × ew 1.36 abcd 1.80 c 6.22 c 30.00 c 46.50 ab 1.33 b 3.16 cd 42.21 abcde means within each column had the different subscript were differ significantly (p<0.05). 1 sn: south-north and ew: east-west; 2 v1: florkwa, v2: baj and v3: frankolin. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 13 4. conclusion the present study confirms that response of some wheat cultivars to plot orientation (row direction) and boron levels; the results showed that leaf area, lai, weight of leaf, light extinction coefficient, flag leaf length, fertility, number of spike and harvest index significantly increased in ew compared to sn row direction. while, the spike weight, spike length, number of kernels, grain yield and biological yield significantly increased in sn compare to ew row direction. there were not significant differences were observed among different level of boron alone and different cultivars in all vegetable and reproductive traits in this study except plant height and 1000 kernels weight of v2 increased compared to other cultivars. interactions of ew direction with both cultivars and levels of boron factors were improved the vegetable characteristics compared to ns directions. grain yield of interaction between 1.5 ppm × sn, all cultivars × sn and 1.5 ppm boron × v1 × sn row direction were significantly (p<0.05) increased compared to other interactions. while the harvest index increased in interaction between 0 and 1.5 ppm × ew, v2×ew and 1.5 ppm × v1 × ew compared to other interactions. references [1] fao. food and agriculture organization, “food outlook biannual 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[19] c.p.d. borger, a. hasem and s. pathan, “manipulating crop row orientation to suppress weeds and increase crop yield”. weed sci., 58: 174-178, 2010. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 14 [20] d.j. lyon, a.r. martin and r.n. klein, “cultural practices to improve weed control in winter wheat”. published by university of nebraska–lincoln extension, institute of agriculture and natural resources. online at: http://www.ianrpubs.unl.edu/epublic/live/g1389/build/g1389.pdf. accessed jan., 2011. verified sept., 2011, 2006. [21] b. p. pandey, b. b. komal, r. b. madan, shrawan k. s., resham b.t., tanka p. k. “effect of row spacing and direction of sowing on yield and yield attributing characters of wheat cultivated in western chitwan, nepal”, agricultural sciences , 4(7) 309-316, 2013. [22] a. cook, w. shepperd and j. hancock, “row direction and stubble cover”. epfs summary, p114-115, (2009). [23] h.j.w. mutsaers, “the effect of row orientation, date and latitude on light absorption by row crops”. j. agric. sei. 95:381-386, 1980. [24] geoscience australia. “compute sun and moon azimuth and elevation”. http://www.ga.gov.au/geodesy/astro/smpos.jsp. accessed: september 17, 2009. [25] a.b. mandal, “effect of boron on different varieties of bread wheat (triticum aestivum l.)”. crop res. 6: 330-334, 1993. [26] s. rahman, “influence of different nutrients on grain formation in wheat”. thesis m.sc. (ag).in soil sci. bangladesh argil. univ. mymensingh. pp. 33-34, 1989. [27] d. r. sarkar, “effect of micronutrients on the growth and yield of wheat”. m.sc. thesis, soil science, sher-ebangla agricultural university, dhaka, 2014. [28] bina, (bangladesh institute of nuclear agriculture). “effect of different levels of boron application on the growth and yield of wheat”. ann. rep. (1991-92). bangladesh inst. nuclear agric., mymensingh. p. 159, 1993. [29] mohammad, d. a. “the effect of boron on some soil and water characters in sulaymaniyah area”. m.sc. thesis, college of agriculture, salahaddin university, erbil,1987. lana d. m. marofi sami mohammad amin field crops department field crops department college of agricultural engineering sciences college of agricultural engineering sciences salahaddin university salahaddin university erbil, iraq erbil, iraq lana.mohammed@su.edu.krd sami.maaroof@su.edu.krd 1. introduction 2. materials and methods 2.1 experimental design this experiment was carried out in grdarasha experimental station, college of agricultural engineering sciences, salahaddin university, kurdistan region, erbil, during the winter season 2018-2019. three newly introduced bread wheat cultivars (v1: flor... 2.2 characteristics studied 2.2.1 vegetative growth characters plant height (cm) was recorded at maturity, ten representative plants were collected at in random from each treatment, the height of plants was estimated excluding awns from the flat area of the ground to the growing point of the spikes and then the a... 2.2.2 reproductive growth characters at the end of the experiment, reproductive growth characters were calculated from the random 50 cm length per plot from central rows; includes number of spikes plant -1, spike length (cm) and weight (g), number of kernels spike -1, 1000-kernel weight ... 2.3 statistical analysis results were obtained in the experiments were statistically analyzed using general linear model (glm) according to the analysis of variance (anova) using spss program (statistical package for social science) (spss 22, 2005) for factorial rcb design.... 3. results and discussions 3.1 vegetable growth characters 3.2 reproductive growth characters references  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 2 | july 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.2.3 mother’s characteristics, knowledge and practices about children burn injury in sulaimani city abdulrahman m. ibrahem piramagrun hospital general directorate of health in sulaimani sulaimani,iraq abdlrahman.ibrahem@gmail.com kamal j. rashed anesthesiology dept. sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani,iraq kamalashty73@yahoo.com muhammed babakirmina med .lab. dept. sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani,iraq m.babakir@yahoo.com bakhtyar k. muhamed anesthesiology dept. sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani,iraq bakhtyar.talabany@spu.edu.iq abstract: burn is described as one of the leading causes of injury throughout the world, and is one of the most frequent causes of hospitalization. the aim of this study was to determine mother’s characteristics, knowledge and practices for burn injuries and burn infection prevention. a cross sectional descriptive study was undertaken in sulaimani city, iraq, from october 2015 to july 2016. participants were evaluated using a structured questionnaire by face-to-face interview. data were computerized and analyzed using statistical package for social sciences version 22.0 software. a total of 126 mothers who had burn injury in their children and admitted to burning hospital during the study period, the mean score knowledge of mothers was (3.63), the mean score practice of mothers accounted (4.63), the respondent practice score ranged from (1-8). they had poor, intermediate, and good score knowledge about burns injury and burn infection 79.37%, 18.25%, and 2.38% respectively. in regard to mother’s related practice, there were 66.67% within poor practice level, 30.95% of an intermediate level, and 2.38% had a good practice level. the study shows that mother knowledge and practice in sulaimani city in relation to burn injury and infection among their children was at a low level and the local health authority should incorporate health education for parents, especially mothers in the prevention of pediatric burn at home involving hot liquid and flames also other domestic hazardous as well as the important activities after burn or pre-hospital admission. keywords: burn, children, knowledge, practice, prevention, infection 1. introduction burn is described as one of the leading causes of injury throughout the world, and is one of the most frequent causes of hospitalization. burn is a major cause of morbidity and mortality, and it is the fourth most common type of trauma worldwide [1, 2]. burn is a major issue on public health in terms of infection control and cost of treatment in both developing and developed countries, and burn in pediatric range from minor to severe injuries [3]. injuries in pediatrics are predictable, avoidable and preventable. burn prevention is unavoidable parts of every child care program and an important responsibility of both parents and caregivers. parents with burn injury experiences can help children to avoid being burned [4, 5]. high incidence of childhood burns among low-income population is because of poor parent’s educational level [6]. but in high-income countries the variation rate of burn injury are nearly the same level in all educational families such as in denmark the rate per 1000 childhood injuries is 1.8 % in high education level, secondary school 2.0% and primary school 2.8 % [7]. parents’ knowledge about burn injuries and burn preventions especially in children will decrease the burden and ongoing the burn [5]. first aid is a basic rule by cooling the burned area, prevent ongoing burning and prevent contamination. cooling burn is one of the oldest methods for treating [6]. first aid is an important practice and it should be done after each burn injury by the families, cooling the burn surface for 5 minutes is a good example practice [8]. according to the who hand washing improvement strategy and hand hygiene is a certain rule to protect patients from pathogen which transports by health care worker and parents hands [9]. a previous study showed england parents have more tends to wash their hands rather than the taiwan parents before and after touching patients, and taiwan patients have more visitors than england patients [10]. also a previous study demonstrated that personal hygiene among the mothers was a good way of preventing infections, most mothers submitted the hygienic practices, by washing their hands, especially before and after eating, before holding the child [11]. the aim of this study was to determine mother’s characteristics and assess their knowledge and practices for burn injuries and burn infection prevention. 2. patients and methods a cross sectional descriptive study conducted from october 2015 to july 2016 at sulaimani burn and plastic surgery hospital, sulaimani, iraq. which is the main hospital for treatment of severe burns for many years and that has been giving routine health services for sulaimani city and other referral cases from different regional states of iraq. sample collection a questionnaire was used to collect data from the mother’s patient, self-administered questionnaire by face to face interview. pre-test was used in 5% of the sample size before the study is started. the questionnaire contains three major sections: mothers sociodemographic characteristics, mothers’ knowledge about burn injury and infections and practices to prevent burn injury and infections. first section consists of 7 questions regarding background information of participants. the following data were obtained from mothers whom with burn injury in their children and admitted to the burn units; registration data: age, occupation, family size, educational level, socio-economic status, number of children and parental observation status were include. second section concerns knowledge questions about burn injury and infection as well as preventable thinks; this section consists of 11 questions. the participants could choose one from two predetermined options which were (yes) and (no) answer. each correct answer received one point for (yes) answers and zero for (no) answers. the knowledge scoring range was from zero (minimum score) to 11 (maximum score). the scale classified knowledge levels as: poor knowledge, intermediate knowledge and good knowledge level. third section concerns practices questions about preventable practices for burn injury and infection. this section consists of 2 parts. first part focused on practices before hospitalization, which contain 6 questions. the participants had two predetermined options to choose between which was (yes) and (no) answer to determine practice level. each correct answer received one points while zero point was given for incorrect answers. second part focused on practice after hospitalizations which consist of 5 questions. mothers had two choices to answer (yes) and (no), who answered (yes) received one point and (no) received zero point. statistical analysis data were computerized and analyzed using statistical package for social sciences (spss software, version 22.0). mean and confidence interval are used to summarize continuous variables whereas categorical variables to be summarized in form of proportions and frequency tables. chi-square (χ2) test was used to test for significance of associations between the predictor and outcome variables in the categorical variables to find an outcome related to health issues. analysis of variance (anova) was used to compare mean scores of variables to find association with p-value of ≤0.05. ethical issues official letter of permission from technical college of health, community health department was submitted to burn and plastic surgery hospital. the study was carried out after the approval by the college committee. collected data was kept confidential and no one except the members of the research team had access to the collected information. an oral informed consent was also obtained from mothers who participated in the study. 3. results mother’s characteristics a total of 126 mothers participated in the study, of these 70 (55.6%) of them were illiterate, followed by primary education level, secondary and higher education level 34(27.0%) and 22(17.5%) respectively. also mother’s occupation status classified on to three groups, housewives were 116 (92.1%), governmental employee were 7 (5.6%), and teachers 3(2.3%). 89 (70.6%) cases were from rural area and 37 (29.6%) were from urban area. mothers who had more than 3 children accounted majority of cases 76 (60.3%). the majority of mother ages were less than twenty five years 51 (40.5%), followed by more than thirty years of age 48 (38.1%) and then 25-30 years 27 (21.4%). regarding mother socio-economic status the majority of cases was with low economic status 93 (73.8%). according to the observation by their parents, highest of cases were with single parents observation 89 (70.6%) (table 1). mother’s knowledge and practice score level a total of 126 mothers who had burn injury in their children and admitted to burn hospital during study period, the mean score knowledge of mothers was 3.63 (95%ci 3.29-3.99) (table 2), the respondent knowledge score ranged from (0-9). the mean score practice of mothers accounted 4.63 (95% ci 4.33-4.9) (table 2), the respondent practice score ranged from (1-8). they had poor, intermediate, and good score knowledge about burn injury and burn infection 79.37%, 18.25%, and 2.38% respectively. in regard to mother’s related practice, there were 66.67% within poor practice level, 30.95% within intermediate level, and 2.38% had a good practice level (figure 1). mother’s knowledge the first four part of knowledge section of questioner focused on mothers knowledge about burn injury and factors leading to burn injury. majority of mother have no information about burn injury and factors leading to burn injury, 63.5% mothers had not information about mechanism of burn injury, while 77.0% of them did not have knowledge about factor leading children to burns, and 77.8% of mothers did not have knowledge for ways to prevent burn injury. also 56.3% of mothers had no information about presence of burn hospital in sulaimani city (table 2). also majority of mothers 77.8% did not have information about prevention of burn infection. about transmission of microbial in burn patients; 54.0% were accounted. for question about immediate transport patient to hospital, the highest proportion of mother’s respondent answered (no) accounted 52.4%. regarding mother’s knowledge about personal hygiene is one way to prevent burn infection; those answered (yes) and (no) were equal to 50% (table 2). figure 1 knowledge and practice level of mothers mother’s practice to prevent burn injury and burn infection the practice sections of questioner consist of two parts, first part; focused on practices done by mothers before admitted to hospital (before occurrence and after burn injury). the study showed that 98 (77.8%) cases were not separated cooking parts from other part inside the home and statistically not significant to infection p=0.1, the same percent showed with mothers no avoiding their children away from cooking place during cooking times. 97 (77.0%) of mothers do not covered the wound after injury for their children. also majority of mothers 69 (54.8%) did not performed first aid or cooling the burn after injury and statistically not significant to infection p=0.5. the highest proportion of positive mothers practices were immediately transport patient to hospitals, and done health care for their children after burn injury in another health center 97 (77.0%), and 70 (55.6%) respectively (table 3). second part of questioner; focused of parent practice after admitting to hospitals. out of 126 mothers 117(92.9%) were received health education by health care workers. regarding practice about washing hands table 1: socio-demographic characteristics of mothers. (no.=126) characteristics no. (%) mothers education level illiterate 70 (55.6) primary 34 (27.0) secondary & higher 22 (17.5) residency urban 37 (29.4) rural 89 (70.6) mothers occupation housewives 116 (92.1) governmental staff 7 (5.6) teacher 3 (2.3) mothers age group <25 51 (40.5) 25-30 27 (21.4) >30 48 (38.1) no. of children <3 50 (39.7) ≥3 76 (60.3) mothers socio-economic status low 93 (73.8) mild & good 33 (26.2) present of both mother & father during time of burn no 89 (70.6) yes 37 (29.4) table 2: knowledge of mothers on burn injury and burn infection. (no.=126) knowledge no. (%) mechanism of burn injury no 80 (63.5) yes 46 (36.5) type of burn infection no 117 (92.9) yes 9 (7.1) factors leading children to burn injury no 97 (77.0) yes 29 (23.0) prevention of children from burn injury no 98 (77.8) yes 28 (22.2) burn hospital no 71 (56.3) yes 55 (43.7) crowding & visiting to burn patient are risks for infection no 100 (79.4) yes 26 (20.6) first aid is good after burn injury no 76 (60.3) yes 50 (39.7) immediate transport burn patient to hospital no 66 (52.4) yes 60 (47.6) personal hygiene one way to prevent burn infection no 63 (50.0) yes 63 (50.0) prevention of burn infection no 98 (77.8) yes 28 (22.2) transmission of microbial in burn injury no 68 (54.0) yes 58 (46.0) after eating, 62(49.2%) of mothers were with no hand washing and statistically significant to infection p=0.02. also majority of mothers were not used mask during health care 107(84.9%), which is not significantly related to infection p=0.9. in addition mothers who respondent to practices were 89(70.6%) at high proportion in washing their hand before dealing and contacted with their children, but 37(29.4%) of mothers were with no hand washing before dealing with the patient that is statistically highly significant to infection (p<0.001). regarding family members visiting to hospital, less of patients 34(27.0%) had visitor, and it is highly statistical significant to infection p<0.001 (table 3). mean score levels the mean score of mothers regarding knowledge about burn injury and infection was 3.63 (95%ci 3.29-3.99) (table 4). the mean score of mothers with both secondary and higher educational level was 4.59 (95%ci3.56-5.62), while the mean score for mothers with no education level was 3.33 (95%ci 2.88-3.77), these differences were statistically significant (pvalue=0.03). in addition, the mean score of mothers occupation for the housewives was 3.33 (95%ci 3.113.84), but mean score for the teacher was 7.00 (95%ci 2.7-11.3), this difference was statistically significant p=0.003. mothers >30 years of ages had greater mean score knowledge 3.98 (95%ci 3.39-4.57), also mothers from mild to good socio-economic families had greater mean knowledge score 3.94 (95%ci 3.21-4.67) (table 4). regarding the mean score of the practices, the mean score was 4.63 (4.33-4.90), and there was not any significant correlation for all the socio-demographic characteristics (table 4). 4. discussion it is known that effective surveillance and early detection of infections in burn patients help in better management of patients and reduce emerging infection, mortality rate, length of hospitalization and associated cost [12]. few studies were conducted about pediatric burn injury in kurdistan region [13-15]. a total of 126 mothers participated in the study, those who were younger than 25 years old their children were at the risk to burn injury 40.5%. the result is in agreement with a study done by laursen, b. and j.w. nielsen in denmark which reported that the risk of injury was higher for children in families whose mothers’ age less than 25 years old [7]. this is explained that older ages of mother have more experiences related to enhance the development of safety habits, leading to burn injury reduction. the current study result showed that burn injuries were more frequent in families whose mother at low education (illiterate) levels. this finding is in agreement with siaw, n.a. study which is obtained that low parental education level is a major risk for burn injury among their children [16], but the result is not consistent with laursen, b. and j.w. nielsen which reported that mothers with primary education level are more relevant to cause burn in their children [7]. in addition, a study by tse, t., et al revealed that the majority of parents who have children with burn injuries completed secondary educational level [17]. result of the current study, revealed that burn injury are more frequent in families who have more than three children 60.3%. a previous study by laursen, b. and j.w. nielsen from denmark showed the same finding for a child who burned at home [7]. but marissa bane revealed that 61.10% of burn injury occurred when 1-2 children present at home [18]. socioeconomic level also is an important factor considered in burn injury. in our study, most of mothers are from families with the lowest income level 73.8%. this is similar to the who global burden of disease project makes it clear that burns are important contributor to overall disease among children in low and mild income families [6]. a high income increases the capability to live in safe dwelling and able to buy safety equipment, thus reducing the risk exposure. in the present study 63.5% of 126 mothers did not have knowledge about the mechanism of burn injury and 92.9% of them had no information about burn infection. as well as 77.0% of them did not have information about factors leading children to burn injury and 77.8% of mothers had no information about the ways that prevent children from burn injury. our finding is agree with the results of previous study which obtained by chikwanha, t.m., t. chinhengo, and a. chadambuka [19]. also most of mothers did not have knowledge about burn hospital and should immediately transport burn patients to burn hospital. this finding disagree with the study done by rimmer, r.b., and his coauthors which reported that parents of children with visible burn have more concern about early transporting burn patient to hospital [4]. in the current study most of mothers did not take precautions about separating the cooking place from the other parts at home and did not take their children away from the cooking place during cooking time. these findings are consistent with a study done by chikwanha, t.m., t. chinhengo, and a. chadambuka [19]. this is probably due to lack of burn prevention precaution within the home, especially during meal preparation which is required to prevent burn injury. pre hospital care in our study is not applied adequately and it could be due to lack of implementing educational program for parents and they not have desire to follow up and look up for health subjects. overall mothers had poor, intermediate and good scores knowledge on the burn injury, burn prevention and burn infection in percentage of 79.37%, 18.25% and 2.38% respectively. therefore, the score ranging for practice section is like the above about mothers practice on prevention burn injury and burn infection in percentage 66.67%, 30.95% and 2.38% respectively. these differences may be due to the participant’s information on burn injury and burn prevention. also depriving the communities to health and prevention education have a role in this outcome. table 3: practice of mothers on burn injury and infection. (no.=126) practices no. (%) not infected no. (%) infected no. (%) p-value practices before admitted to hospital place of cooking separated from other part in home no 98(77.8) 63 (64.3) 35 (35.7) 0.1 a yes 28(22.2) 22 (78.6) 6 (21.4) your children away from cook place during cooking times no 98(77.8) 63 (64.3) 35 (35.7) 0.1 a yes 28(22.2) 22 (78.6) 6 (21.4) covering wound after burn no 97(77.0) 64 (66.0) 33 (34.0) 0.5 a yes 29(23.0) 21 (72.4) 8 (27.6) immediately transported to burn hospital no 29(23.0) 20 (69.0) 9 (31.0) 0.8 a yes 97(77.0) 65 (67.0) 32 (33.0) `before admitted to hospital given any health care for your child in another health center no 56(44.4) 35 (62.5) 21 (37.5) 0.2 a yes 70(55.6) 50 (71.4) 20 (28.6) doing first aid after burn injury no 69(54.8) 45 (65.2) 24 (34.8) 0.5 a yes 57(45.2) 40 (70.2) 17 (29.8) practices after admitted to hospital received health education after admission by health care worker about hygiene no 9(7.1) 5 (55.6) 4 (44.4) 0.4 a yes 117(92.9) 80 (68.4) 37 (31.6) after eating cleaned your hand no 62(49.2) 36 (58.1) 26 (41.9) 0.02 a yes 64(50.8) 49 (76.6) 15 (23.4) used mask when remain with your child no 107(84.9) 72 (67.3) 35 (32.7) 0.9 a yes 19(15.1) 13 (68.4) 6 (31.6) other family member visited the patient no 92(73.0) 77 (83.7) 15 (16.3) <0.001 a yes 34(27.0) 8 (23.5) 26 (76.5) before touch your child cleaned your hand no 37(29.4) 15 (40.5) 22 (59.5) <0.001 a yes 89(70.6) 70 (78.7) 19 (21.3) a chi-square test was used. table 4: association of socio-demographic variables with the knowledge and practices mean score of the respondents. (no.=126) variables no. knowledge score mean (95% ci) p-value practice score mean (95% ci) p-value mothers education level illiterate 70 3.33 (2.88-3.77) 0.03 a 4.61 (4.24-4.99) 0.9 a primary 34 3.65 (2.94-4.35) 4.62 (3.97-5.26) secondary &higher 22 4.59 (3.56-5.62) 4.68 (4.01-5.36) mothers age group <25 51 3.07 (2.29-3.86) 0.1 a 4.65 (4.19-5.11) 0.8 a 25-30 27 3.58 (3.02-4.15) 4.74 (4.14-5.34) >30 48 3.98 (3.39-4.57) 4.54 (4.04-5.04) mothers socio-economic status low 93 3.53 (3.11-3.94) 0.6 a 4.57 (4.23-4.91) 0.4 a mild & good 33 3.94 (3.21-4.67) 4.79 (4.25-5.33) mothers occupation housewives 116 3.33 (3.11-3.84) 0.003 a 4.59 (4.29-4.90) 0.6 a staff 7 4.84 (3.40-6.31) 4.86 (3.73-5.98) teacher 3 7.00 (2.7-11.3) 5.33 (3.90-6.77) residency urban 37 4.35 (3.60-5.11) 0.01 a 4.30 (3.74-4.86) 0.1 a rural 89 3.34 (2.95-3.73) 4.76 (4.43-5.10) overall 126 3.63 (3.29-3.99) 4.63 (4.33-4.90) a one-way anova t-test with tukey’s comparison was used in regards the association of demographic characteristics with knowledge and practice toward mothers for burn injury and infection, in the present study we found that some factors such as: education levels, residency and occupational status of participants affected significantly the knowledge level of burn injury and infection. the present study showed that there were statistical significant differences between education level and knowledge of the mothers in which the higher education level has a greater mean score knowledge, p=0.03. while in terms of practice score there were no statistical significant differences between educational level and practices, but mothers with higher education level have little bit greater mean practice score. this means; when the educational level raised the knowledge and practices for burn prevention will probably increase. in this study, mothers in urban residence had a greater mean score knowledge rather than rural residence and this difference statistically significant p=0.01. regarding mothers knowledge about burn injury and infection, mothers living in rural areas tend to have less access to educational opportunity and health services. on the other hand, mothers’ practices in rural residents have greater mean practice score than urban resident. conclusion mother knowledge and practice in sulaimani city in relation to burn injury and infection among their children was not sufficient. age, educational level, occupational status, family size, residency and poverty of parents, especially mothers was related to burn injury in pediatric population. mother’s knowledge and practice regarding first aid in the study was in a low level. hand washing for mothers indicated serious problem to emerging burn infection on their children. the health education program is suggested to increase mother knowledge and practices about burn injury in children. reference [1] s. elkafssaoui, k. tourabi, e. bouaiti, k. ababou, a. moussaoui, m. a. ennouhi, et al., "epidemiological analysis of burn patients in the military hospital, rabat, morocco," ann burns fire disasters, vol. 24, pp. 115-9, sep 30 2011. [2] s. dissanaike m. rahimi, "epidemiology of burn injuries: highlighting cultural and sociodemographic aspects," int rev psychiatry, vol. 21, pp. 505-11, dec 2009. [3] s. al-zacko, h. zubeer, a. mohammad, "pediatric burns in mosul: an epidemiological study," ann burns fire disasters, vol. 27, pp. 70-5, jun 30 2014. [4] r. b. rimmer, r. c. bay, n. b. alam, i. j. sadler, k. j. richey, k. n. foster, et al., "measuring the burden of pediatric burn injury for parents and caregivers: informed burn center staff can help to lighten the load," j burn care res vol. 36, pp. 421-7, may-jun 2015 [5] b. a. morrongiello s. kiriakou, "mothers' home-safety practices for preventing six types of childhood injuries: what do they do, and why?," j pediatr psychol, vol. 29, pp. 285-97, jun 2004. [6] who and unicef, " world report on child injury prevention,geneva," world health organization, 2008. [7] b. laursen j. nielsen, "influence of sociodemographic factors on the risk of unintentional childhood home injuries," eur j public health, vol. 18, pp. 366-70, aug 2008. [8] helath children. org, "first aid for burns: parent faqs," american academy of pediatrics, 2015. [9] who, guidelines on hand hygiene in health care: first global patient safety challenge clean care is safer care. geneva: world health organization., 2009. [10] s. wichaikull, "a comparison of the factors which influence infection control in paediatric wards in england and thailand, e-thesis submission," de montfort university’s research repository, de montfort university’s research repository, 2011. [11] g. persson j. lindén, "paediatric burns and its related infections: a qualitative study emphasizing the preventive work conducted by nurses in dar es salaam.," 2015. [12] d. church, s. elsayed, o. reid, b. winston, r. lindsay, "burn wound infections," clin microbiol rev, vol. 19, pp. 403-34, apr 2006. [13] a. kadir, "paediatric burns in sulaimani, iraq," ann burns fire disasters, vol. 20, pp. 121-5, sep 30 2007. [14] n. othman, d. kendrick, a. al-windi, "childhood burns in sulaimaniyah province, iraqi kurdistan: a prospective study of admissions and outpatients," burns, vol. 41, pp. 394-400, mar 2015. [15] n. othman, "epidemiology of burn injuries in sulaymaniyah province of iraq.," (thesis), university of nottingham, university of nottingham, 2010. [16] a. s. nicholas, "risk factors to childhood burns in the new juaben municipality of ghana " the international institute for science, technology and education vol. 4, p. 22, 2014. [17] t. tse, c. h. poon, k. h. tse, t. k. tsui, t. ayyappan, a. burd, "paediatric burn prevention: an epidemiological approach," burns, vol. 32, pp. 229-34, mar 2006. [18] m. bane, r. kaima, s. mapala, b. cairns, a. charles, "qualitative evaluation of paediatric burn injury in malawi: assessing opportunities for injury prevention," trop doct, vol. 46, pp. 165-7, jul 2016. [19] m. theodora, t. chinhengo, a. chadambuka, "factors associated with accidental burn injuries in children twelve years and below admitted at chitungwiza and harare central hospitals in zimbabwe," int j child health hum dev vol. 6, pp. 297-303, 2013. [20] r. rayner j. prentice, "paediatric burns: a brief global review," wound practice & research: journal of the australian wound management association, vol. 19, p. 39, 2011. [21] a. t. ghassan, "risk factors and antimicrobial resistance of pathogens isolated from burn units at local hospitals in gaza strip, palestine," islamic university-gaza, islamic university-gaza, 2011. conflict of interest the researcher declares that they have no conflict of interests.  acknowledgments the researchers acknowledge the valuable contribution of general directorate of health in sulaimani and all medical staffs of sulaimani burn and plastic surgery hospital for their helpful and friendly support.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 4 | issue 1 | june 2019 | doi: 10.24017/science.2019.1.6 received:27 march 2019 | accepted: 30 june 2019 potentialities in creating the pedestrian malls in the historical city centers : a study case of mawlawi street, sulaimani, iraqi kurdistan karzan saleem ismael najmaldin hussien mohammed hoshyar qadir rasul dept. of city planning engineering technical college of engineering municipality of kalar kalar, sulaimani, iraq dept. of city planning engineering technical college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq hussein.najmaldin@yahoo.com sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq karzan.saleem@spu.edu.iq hoshyar.rasul@spu.edu.iq 31 abstract: the characteristics of public open spaces in the city center play an important role in attracting people to walk when they attend their daily needs, entertainment and interact with other physical and even nonphysical feature of the built environment. the notion of car-free streets or pedestrian malls, especially in the downtown or the historical city centers has been emerged as a critical challenge faced to whose are responsible for urban managing, besides of urban planner and architects as well. many factors (outside and inside) contribute to take the decision in transforming these streets into the pedestrian malls. sulaimani as the other historic cities, although has the most compacted and traditional structure, especially in original and commercial part of the city, has suffered from the congested city center which day by day increases, the related urban problems and became more un-friendly. the study will identify the considerations that promote the decision makers in order to transform the most significant street in the historical city center into pedestrian mall. this aim requires to investigate factors which have become more common in most studies conducted previously, but some factors which were considered as effective and invisible at the same time, will act potentially and has been more impressive in enhancing these types of decisions. mixed methods have been used for analysing the case study. the results displayed that the mawlawi street has the potentiality in transforming to pedestrian mall. in the conclusion the decisions and some possible solutions have been introduced for awareness of cityʼs authorities in order to take place in their near future development programs. keywords: public open space, pedestrian mall, walkability, mawlawi street. 1. introduction what makes a city to be more human friendly safte and vital?. many planners may say “fabric” or the structure of the city or a group of streets, building and blocks. in the great streets a. jacobs compared the layout of more than 40 cities in the world and found that good streets tended to have narrow corridors (making them safe from moving cars), small blocks (making them comfortable) and architecturally-rich buildings (making them interesting) [1]. however streets can accommodate all human needs of citizens like walking, shopping, gathering, meeting, and can be considered as significant living environment [2]. j. jacobs about street and sidewalks states: “streets and their sidewalks, the main public places of a city, are its most vital organs.” [3]. in many developing cities all over the world, streets as the most usual public open spaces loose their users, attractiveness and popularity. as a result, streets come to be a convergence place with various pollutants besides of loosing their functions as a public space with social interaction. streets may be made to attract and suit pedestrians by considering several factors. for instance, when paths are designed in a manner that improves their aesthetic qualities, people become more attracted to the street and hence use it more. another factor in making the street more attractive is the consideration of night time activities as well as allowing the street to cater for diverse functions. furthermore, successful public pedestrian public open spaces are made accessible, they are well-designed, and comfortable [4]. this study will focus on the mawlawi street as one of the main commercial street in sulaimani downtown, which has been gradually becoming unfriendly, inappropriate of functions as well as lack of safety. the main objective of this study is to explore the abilities to transform mawlawi street to successful pedestrian mall, thus tries to answer the main basic question: what are the factors (visible and invisible) affected in order to be more successful public space and consequently towards the pedestrian mall? the methodology basically is qualitative, analytical, and will depend upon mixed methods as observations, mapping, questionnaire survey and evaluation of various physical, social, economic and environmental condition that based upon the factors of successful pedestrian malls. analysing of achieving results, will highlight the potential of the mawlawi street in order to act as the successful model for pedestrian malls in sulaimani city. finally, this research concludes with specific recommendations for urban designer and policy makers in order to turn mawlawi street to be successful pedestrian public open spaces. mailto:hussein.najmaldin@yahoo.com mailto:karzan.saleem@spu.edu.iq mailto:hoshyar.rasul@spu.edu.iq 32 2. literature review often times, pedestrianized streets or malls allow very little to no vehicular circulation within them, these streets are kept primarily for use by pedestrians. the exception are the service providing vehicles such as emergency, waste removal and delivery automotives [5]. however, there are some pedestrian malls where vehicles are allowed to pass through at certain stipulated times. in bigger cities, especially in europe and the usa, some pedestrian malls permit mass transit vehicles like buses or trams, and these streets are referred to as transit malls. according to d. pojani and stead, europeans created these streets for several factors. these include the advancement of mobility within city centres, controlling traffic and pollution, the preservation of historic architecture; improvement of the aesthetic qualities of city centres; creation of social public spaces; attracting more pedestrians from other places; decreasing the relocation of business from downtown to suburban areas and competing cities [6]. the primary types of pedestrian malls are as follows: full-time pedestrian malls: this kind of street design is focused on increasing the livability and social activity of public urban spaces in a part of the city, thereby restricting all vehicular movement inside the streets. the streets would therefore only be used by pedestrians and emergency service vehicles. part-time pedestrian malls: with this kind of street, vehicles are permitted to use the street at specific times only. however, no parking spaces are provided along the street for these vehicles. traffic-calming streets: these streets are designed to help in decreasing the speed of vehicular traffic and the dominance of vehicles over pedestrians without fully restricting their use of such streets. however, footpaths are made wider and very little parking space is provided along such streets. different techniques are used to slow down vehicles, including the use of different colours and textures on the road in order to make the drivers aware that they are using traffic-calming streets [7]. the pedestrian mall type of primary focus in this study is full time pedestrian malls. 2.1. pedestrian malls as a public space y. chen et al assert that a public open space is an important part of the urban sphere which fulfils day to day urban life [8]. generally the term “public space” is considered as a place which is public and readily accessible to be used. it is a part of the city to which inhabitants have access and are able to use freely uninhibited [9]. there are three main indicators which can be used to determine the effective use of public open spaces, and these are; the quality of the physical characteristics, the needs of the users and the spatial structure of the space [10]. according to m. francis, any well designed public space is anchored by a clear understanding of the user needs; to attract them, facilitate their activities as well as be comfortable enough for them to spend more time using the space [11]. public spaces are some of the most important elements of a city in that they provide a setting for citizens to socialize and enjoy recreational activities. similarly, streets offer these qualities as well as providing the public with space for transportation and offering socioeconomic and cultural activities [12]. h. m. rubenstein asserts that nowadays the term “mall” is used as a denotation of a new kind of street or plaza in central business districts of the city, focused on pedestrians and public transportation [13]. b. ergen also asserts that the term “mall” has traditionally meant a public promenade or walkway covered with shadeproviding trees [14] (fig. 1). pedestrian malls are therefore important manifestations of the pedestrianization movement. when articulated successfully, these malls have been seen to increase sales; they have an impact on the revitalization of the city centre; they inhibit the deterioration of the urban fabric; and they improve human interest and interaction within such spaces [15]. the municipality and other stakeholders such as business owners help in the management of pedestrian malls [16]. figure 1: cross section of pedestrian mall [17] 2.2. principles of successful public spaces recently, many researchers have risen up the question of increased walkability and walking space. m. alfonzo, established the pyramid of walking needs, as a theoretical model of the decision method in the design of walkable space (fig. 2). it has been used as a frame in many recent studies. this model can: serve as a framework through which to understand the relative importance of the abundance of variables identified in the current research. assistance in guiding practice and research in future [18]. figure 2: the concept of hierarchy of walking needs [18] 33 environment have a great relationship with public space activities. when designing pedestrianized streets or malls, it is important to consider carefully the relationship between humans and their environment. s. abley asserts that walkable public open spaces offer “the range to with the built environment is friendly to the presence of people who live, shop, visit, enjoy, or spent time in an area”. in other instances, the term “walkable public open spaces” is widely used in association with sustainable city, provision of economic and social benefits, and they offer the public access to outdoor health activities, especially in densely populated areas. additionally, there is a growing body of written work which shows several characteristics of walkable public open spaces (streets); some of which include the fact that they bring life to city centres and contribute as livable spaces which provide safer urban environments [19]. f. kent and a. schwartz are among some of the classic and contemporary urban theorists who defined accessibility, activities, comfort and sociability as the four main essential features of successful streets [20]. all these are designed in a manner that retains and promotes the vibrancy of pedestrian malls, as well as people’s attraction to such spaces. f. kent also asserts that “if you plan cities for cars and traffic, you get cars and traffic. if you plan for people and places, you get people and places”. furthermore, other urban design researchers and scholars consider the four factors of thriving public spaces as accessibility, use, design and comfort [4]. there are four factors of successful pedestrian malls: • accessibility according to k. bates, a successful public space is one with good accessibility, where the public can walk, use public transit, cycle, and where car parking is provided nearby. an increased number of entry points for pedestrians and public transport users may be articulated by using shorter blocks and more intersections to allow for easier access to different parts of the space. pleasurable and safe pathways are also important in making these spaces attractive [1, 21 & 22]. j. speck articulates that the number of pedestrians is increased by more transit in the city and he also puts emphasis on the notion that good transit is aided by compact, diverse and walkable neighbourhood structures [22]. j. gehl and j. h. crawford adds that successful public spaces should provide ample parking within close proximity so that users of the space may be able to park and walk through the spaces [23&24]. accessibility depends on three things: the capacity of people to travel or communicate, the location of opportunities and activities, and the availability of connections using transport or electronic communications as shown in figure 3 [25]. figure 3: dimensions of accessibility [25] • uses and activities an active street life is created when public spaces offer opportunities for sitting, walking and allow for participation in activities, thereby increasing social contact and recreation [21, 26 & 27]. according to j. gehl, people are attracted to outdoor spaces when there is a variety of activities and a. jacobs asserts that public spaces which have residential quarters close to them are often successful [1 &21]. additionally, a key component of successful public spaces is the mixed use of buildings, especially those around public spaces and along main-street corridors. these various uses help in creating physical and economic diversity which makes the street more active [22 & 13]. w. h. whyte emphasizes the importance of food establishments such as food carts as a means of encouraging people to stay in the space and interact socially [29]. it is imperative to also consider placing various attractions not too far apart from each other while maintaining the main attractions at the ends of the public space for people to have easier access while moving along the space [26]. • design it is important to consider the form of a public space in determining how successful it will be in terms of keeping people interested in it. form has three main factors which include location, enclosure and visual interest. with specific regard to pedestrian streets, c. alexander and w. h whyte asserts that public spaces function better when located in the heart of the city, downtown [26 & 28]. furthermore, in order to define the public space and orient users towards it, buildings should be built close to each other and along the public space ad facing it [1, 21 & 23]. creating enclosure is one key factor in designing public spaces. they should also be created at small scales so that users are able to indulge all their senses when experiencing the space, and it is particularly important that they have visual connection and they are comfortable to interact in such spaces [21]. an enclosure that is, to human scale may be achieved by determining a proportional balance between the width of the public space or street and the height of the buildings 34 directly adjacent to it. many urban theorists assert that the height of buildings around public spaces should remain low at about 4 to 10 stories high [1, 21, 23 & 26]. furthermore, c. alexander asserts that the difference in height between two neighbouring buildings should remain at one storey. people may also be encouraged to use public spaces through the aspect of visual interest, which a. jacobs defines as the mystery and the magic of urban design and further asserts that this visual interest is created through the physical layout of the public space, how building facades are treated as well as through landmarks and views which attract people to downtown. while articulating the form of public spaces, amenities and services to the public should be thought out as well. these amenities should include space for sitting, landscape and water features, benches, lights and sculptures [1]. • comfort pedestrian zones, just like any other public space, should be comfortable for the users. this comfort encompasses protecting people from harsh weather conditions and maintaining the space to keep it clean and livable. nevertheless, comfort is derived from how people feel when using the space. with physical comfort, having access to the sunlight, shade and protection from the wind are prerequisites for a successful public space [21 & 28]. according to j. speck, when a public space offers physical comfort, people are able to use it through most weather conditions. additionally, elements such as trash containers should also be designed in such a way that people will want to use them [22]. it is crucial that all amenities found in public spaces, including streets, are well maintained and kept hygienic [27]. last but not least, there should be pavements provided to provide comfort when walking [21]. so, and as mentioned previously the study try to tabulate all these main or secondary dependent or independent variables which are contributed in transforming the most open public spaces (streets) in historical cities into pedestrian malls in table (1), as following: table (1): the layout of all variables affected in transforming the public open spaces (streets) into pedestrian malls in historical city centers (by authors) main issue main objective (dependent variable) main factors independent variables indicators physical characters accessibility -easy accessed -public transit sufficient parking nearby activities -variety of activities -mixed uses -main attraction at the end of public space (sculptures or land marks) -social contact recreation man to public urban space relation ship walkable public urban space (pedestrian mall) activities design -easy accessed -public transit -sufficient parking nearby -variety of activities -mixed uses -main attraction at the end of public space (sculptures or land marks) -social contact -recreational activities -enclosure -human scale (proportional relative scale between width and height of buildings) -visual interest (building facades colors textures landscaping signage. -building along the street (building close to each other) -design of amenities (sittable space – benches– lighting …. comfort -protected from weather -well maintained -trash container -paving nonphysical characters historical background -time factor -historic events spatial structure -its location in the transport system -connect to district. -land uses people's loyalty -its concerns to local inhabitants -how is attractive to visitors -to which extent it contributed to citizens mental map 35 3. case study: mawlawi street mawlawi street is selected as a case study for this study because its significance as one of the busiest and famous historical and commercial streets located within the core of the central business district (cbd) of sulaimani. as an influential axis, it links the public park and salm street to the city center and historical area and also it is the entrance to the city center and historical district in sulaimani city, with the width of 15m and 750 meters long (figure 4). this street as a case study, which hosts a variety of activities on both its sides, including hotels, restaurants, retail stores, green groceries, bookshops as well as vendors and hawkers as part of the informal trade in the street. however, because there is no efficient public transport, people rely mostly on privately owned cars, which causes congestion on the street and makes it uncomfortable for pedestrians when walking there. furthermore, there is a lack of a residential function and the built environment has unattractive qualities and for such a historical street, it has become inactive and unsafe especially at night [29]. however, it is important to promote the potentialities in transforming such a commercial street in historic downtown to the successful pedestrian mall, see the following figure 5. moreover, for the purpose of assessing of mawlawi street, s. alobaidy has suggested the night activities for mawlawi street. in order to activate some places and shops along the street due to the functional variation related to the street [31]. figure (4): location of mawlawi street (by authors) figure (5): perspective view (day and night time) of mawlawi street as the busiest commercial area [29] 3.1. methodology to achieve the research objectives, and in order to explore the potentialities of walkability in public open spaces (streets). this research conducted the mixedmethod approach which is quantitative and qualitative data. in this regard, j. w. creswell et al, motivate researchers to use mixed methods in doing their research, because the combination of both forms of data provides the most complete analysis of research problems [30]. the qualitative survey included observation and interview. the direct observation method is used to collect data which is concentrated on the physical aspects and social behaviours of the street. the interview was conducted by 5 professionals (like architects, urban planners and designers and municipality leaders) and 50 local people who work in mawlawi street to validate the previous the theoretical findings. quantitative data were collected via questionnaire and conducted with 50 visitors and users to mawlawi street. for data analysis to find out the contributory factors due to stimulate the traditional street transfer to pedestrian mall. based on participant data, the main variables have been analysed, the analysis process includes different statistical functions, for instance, x2 (chi-square) test, ttest and a one way analysis of variance (anova) to find mean of the variables in order to obtain the essential information. finally, the summarised results will be presented in tables in the following sections. all tests were performed in ibm spss statistics 24.0 software. further methodological issues should be taken seriously such as (swot) analysis in order to ensure a valid analysis leading to reliable results and findings so as to understand their perspective about the potentialities in transforming mawlami street to the successful pedestrian mall for four basic characters were found: accessibility, uses and activities, design, and comfort. 3.2. observation more attention could be paid to activate public spaces and focusing the concern for quality on the physical elements that cater for walkability. furthermore, a deeper understanding and evaluation of the street as a dominant public space in an urban setting, based on extensive research and literature review; is important in identifying physical features which act as the main characteristics of a walkable street [32]. direct observation is a method which will be used to collect data which will be focused on the physical, functional and social imperatives of the street; for instance, uses and activities, comfort, design and accessibility. photographic images will also be taken as a tool in documenting this data on the characteristics of mawlawi street. mawlawi street is the most popular commercial and shopping mall street in the city of sulaimani and most of its buildings on both its sides are single story structures (and the street is 15m wide, creating a weakened sense of enclosure) which host different activities such as cafes, shops, restaurants, retail businesses, hotels, offices, a farmer’s market in the middle of the street and a small public plaza at the end of the street in order to existing these variety of activities on both its sides in mawlawi street it helped to transform and suitable to be a full-time pedestrian malls, as shown in figure 6. 36 figure 6: the plan image of mawlawi street showing the different types of activities (by authors) mawlawi street, there is a high volume of vehicular traffic on and insufficient parking space, this leads to parking on the edge of the street, thereby disrupting pedestrian access and circulation, as well as causing a conflict between vehicles and pedestrians. additionally the street is also uncomfortable for pedestrians as the sidewalks are very narrow and inaccessible to physically disabled people. by virtue, but mawlawi street experiences a high concentration of activity during the daytime, but when most of the businesses and shops close and this makes the street unsafe to use at night, this illustrated in figures 7. figure 7: heavy traffic at day and inactivity at night on mawlawi street (by authors) as revealed in the following figures, this street has no visual appeal in terms of the architectural features of the buildings, this makes it uncomfortable to the users. there are a few short trees along the streets as well as awnings on some buildings, however, these do not offer adequate shade or protection from the sunlight and wind which makes it an uncomfortable space to walk in. the street sidewalk is also unclean and the buildings are not well-maintained which adds to the discomfort of people using the space. figure 8: non-visual appealing and uncomfortable in mawlawi street (by authors) in addition to that, in february 2019 the traffic authority in sulaimani made some changing regarding to traffic directions in mawlawi street the traffic jam in mawlawi street gradually has reduced (figure 9). however, traffic flows have increased and pedestrian safety also reduced because of increase speed of vehicles along the street. figure 9: changing direction and unsafe pedestrian crossing in mawlawi street (by authors) 3.3. results and discussion factors (physical and non-physical), which have the basic roles in pedestrian mall production, have been investigated; and discussed consequently as following: 3.3.1. the relationship between street comfort measurable and opinion about design of street as j. gehl has stated that a public space should have paving which is comfortable to walk on and it related to good design [21&24]. as well as, it has revealed that some feel that detailed design at the small scale is crucial to creating a strong design foundation and that this makes it possible for other activities to develop relaxed people [21 & 28]. anova test has been taken to make sure that there is a good relationship between design and comfortability. as illustrated in the following table 2, the analysis of the relationship between design and comfortability measurable, as increase the mean of design due to rise in the mean of comfortability. though, there is no significant relationship between them, which is the chi square estimated values bigger than the confidence levels 0.088 > 0.05 from the chi-squar test. table 2: anova test to find out the mean of design and comfortablility measurable (by authors) street comfortability opinion about design of street mean number negative 4.41 22 neutral 5.35 17 positive 5.45 11 total 4.96 50 3.3.2. the relationship between accessibility and comfortability as well as, the anova test has been considered as shown in the table 3 to find out the question, which is what type of transport mode people prefer to use for mawlawi street? from the answer of the question displayed that more people are going to use walking at the same time people more comfortable, but some of the people use private car, which is less comfortable. based on this fact, it will improve accessibility of transport and walking space, then due to increase of comfortablity. 37 table 3: the relationship between accessibility and comfortablility (by authors) street comfortability type of transportation mode mean number private car 4.56 16 public transport 4.86 14 walking 5.35 20 total 4.96 50 3.3.3. the relationship between activity and comfortability using t-test for analysis of the data as illustrated in the (table 4) that the majority of people are not visiting the mawlawi street at night because of darkness and not shopping meanwhile, they are comfortable. it can be seen that there is a good relationship between activities of the people and comfortability particulary at night, because if mawlawi street open at night and having different activities such as; cafe, restaurants, people are more likely to visit there, people might take rest after work.. however, there is a same issue in terms of restaurants and fast food. this result is also supported by questionnary survey. many participants stated that the street does not need new shops and products, but it needs availability of good quality of clothes, fruits, vegetables, and fast food for example at night. table 4: the relationship between activity and comfortability visiting at night mean number street comfortability yes 4.30 10 no 5.13 40 3.3.4. non-physical characters: as mentioned in the literature review the main variables that constitutes this factor are historical background, spatial structure, and peopleʼs loyalty. all these factors have some secondary indications which draw the way how to measure them. as shown in the following sections: • historical background: time factors and historic events are some indications which determine the outline for this variable and the verbal or drawing descriptions are clarified as in the table below (table 5): table 5 : historical background variable, its indications and descriptions (by authors) historical background time factor the history of mawlawi street is returned to the history of sulaimani construction that meams that the city and the street have over than 200 years old. the history of the city is evident that the street could not be separated with all main and important historical events of the city, moreover it contributes historic events in writing the history of the city. • spatial structure: spatial structure for any urban area is concerned with its location among some spatial system networks as mass transportation and spaces, ratio or its compactness, and its connectivity to the around neighbourhoods or land uses, as clear in the following table (6): table 6 :spatial structure variable, its indications and descriptions (by authors) spatial structure its location in the transport system -in the heart of the transport system of the city. -form the main axes elongated from the center of the city toward the western boundary of the city -figureground image of the city shows that the street characterize d by the compactness which the built-up area is in high level, besides of the streets, alleys and some demolished buildings helped in increasing the open spaces ratio in the study area to about the 52%. space ratio or its compact -the street connect the 38 connect to important neighbor hood land uses northern part of the historical city center. -connect the historical residential neighbourho od (kaneskan) to the main traditional commercial center of the city. • peopleʼs loyalty this item includes some indications related to how the street contributes to drawing the mental map of inhabitants, how it attracts the visitors, what are the visual impacts on the street users, as explained in the table below (table 7): table 7: peopleʼs loyalty variable, its indications and descriptions (by authors) people's loyalty its concerns to local inhabitant in the questioner survey showed that %70 people are concerned to local inhabitants and around 80% of people think about the street as daily activities and their needed. how is attractive to visitors because of mawlawi street is a street such as land mark in the city. as well as, it is a place in city center with different activities which close to each other. -visual impacts as noticed in the questionnaire results that people's royalty returned to visual impacts (streets proportion, some points in the street, some buildings, and some landmarks) to which extent it contributed to citizens the availabilit of some important mental map landmarks and the mawlawiʼs connection to those landmarks helped inhabitants to draw their mental maps easily and clearly. 3.4. (swot) analysis based on interviewer and professional perspectives: based on literature review, accessibility, uses and activities, design, and comfort characteristics of the mawlawi street have been discussed and made the open-ended questions, users were asked questions about the strength, weakness, opportunity, and threats in order to understand their perspective about potentialities in transforming mawlawi street to the successful pedestrian mall for those basic characteristics which analysed and evaluated variables as mentioned above. the summary of the interviews and variables showed in the table (8). as a finding of a swot matrix analysis of the street which revealed those negative points keep mawlawi street from being an unsuccessful pedestrian mall. however, existing more significantly positive points, including strengths and opportunities that could be combated these problems and be essentially important to create a great design strategy which could support in making mawlawi street the more vibrant walkable street. table 8: swot analysis (by authors) strength weaknesses • existence of permeability. • existence of public transit nearby • mixed use area. • variety of functions. • proper of street width. • continuity building along the street. • historical background. • linked between two strong nodes (bakhi gshty and sara square). • compacted area. • insufficient parking in the street. • poor condition and narrow sidewalk. • lack of activities at night. • imbalance of different sexes. • lack of visual interest. • lack of street elements such as sittable space, way finding and public toilets. • street vendors make barriers for both pedestrians and cars. inaccessible for disable people. opportunities threats • existence of municipality vision, strategy to close and redesign the street to be a pedestrianization street. • availability improper activities can be replaced for new development activities for 24 hours. this transformation will be the first step to change the other similar streets to pedestrian malls in the future. • the idea may be rejected by those whose their interesting exposed to be in dangers • losing identity of architectural features and culture. the economic crises of krg and local authorities may not support these projects in the current time. w o t 39 on the other hand, the administration of sulaimani had earlier attempted to use mawlawi street by pedestrians, but soon found the experiment brought more disadvantages than advantages. this research has shown those important attributes of successful pedestrian malls can be able to bring more advantages to mawlawi street, besides of their future probabilities related to weaknesses and threatens which have temporarily and might be overtaken gradually. 4. conclusions in this study, pedestrian mall was examined by using quantitative and qualitative methods survey. the characteristics of public open spaces in the city center play a vital role in attracting people to walk when they attend their daily needs, entertainment and interact with other physical and even non physical feature of built environment. the study has investigated factors which have become more common in most studies conducted previously, but some factors which were considered as effective and invisible at the same time, will act potentially and has been more impressive in enhancing these types of decisions. the following essential conclusions were drawn from the study: 1. from the analysis of the relationship between design and comfortability measurable using anova test, by changing the attitude of people from negative to positive for design due to increase in the mean of comfortability, which was linear relationship. however, from the chi-square tests illustrated that there is no significant relationship between design and comfort of the street, which is the difference between chi square estimated and critical is positive and the significant (p) value is greater than 0.05 level of confidence. 2. it can be seen from analysis data that when people using walking mode cause to increase comfortability then using public buses, which is less comfortable. therefore, people are more preferring to use pedestrian on this street rather than other transport mode such as private cars. 3. obviously can be seen that there is a good relationship between activities of the people and comfortability particularly at night, because from data analysis showed that people are not visiting the street, but if mawlawi street open at night and having different activities such as; cafe, restaurant, people are more likely to visit there, people might take rest after work and chatting with friends. 4. it can be seen from swot analysis, which shown more positive points that could be combated these problems and be essentially important to create a great design strategy which could support in making mawlawi street more vibrant walkable street. 5. research on pedestrian mall is helpful to engineer traffic and planners also policy makers for better understanding of the pedestrian conditions and provide pedestrian mall. hence, all the obtained results, concluded decisions, and recommendations will introduce and take under the awareness of cityʼs authorities in order to take place in their near future development programs. 6. this research confound the strong, scientific and more reliable document that supports the decision makers to draw their strategies in transforming the mawlawi street in current time or near future as well as in transforming the other streets with similar characteristics especially in city centres to pedestrian malls in far future. references [1] a. jacobs, “greet streets,” mit press, london, 1993. [2] s. fouladkhani, “success and sustainability criteria for streets: the case of ismet inonu boulevard (salamis road), famagusta” emu-doğu akdeniz üniversitesi (daü), pp., 11-25, july., 2014. [3] j. jacobs, “the death and life of great american cities,” newyork, ny: vintage, pp., 39 1961. [4] k. bates, “making pedestrian malls work: key elements of successful pedestrian malls in the us and europe” university of oregon, pp., 17-19, jun., 2013. [5] c. v. zegeer, “planning and designing local pedestrian facilities,” sacramento, ca: local government commission center for livable communities, july, 1997. [6] d. pojani, d. stead, “sustainable urban transport in the developing world: beyond megacities,” sustainability, vol., 7 (6), pp., 7784-7805, jun., 2015. [7] n. hussein, “the pedestrianisation and its relation with enhancing walkability in urban spaces,” contemporary urban affairs, vol. 2 (1), no. 5, pp., 102-112, jan, 2018. [8] y. chen, t. liu, w. liu, “increasing the use of large scale public open spaces. a case study of the north central axis square in shenzen,” china habitat international, pp., 66-67, 2016. [9] k. pradinie, “whoʼs own the public space?,” social and behavioral sciences, vol., 227, pp., 693 – 698, nov., 2016. [10] a. abbasi, “open space quality in deprived urban areas: user perspective and use pattern,” social and behaveral science, no. 6, pp. 194-205, october, 2016. [11] m. francis, “urban open space – designing for user needs,” island press nw washington dc, 2003. [12] h. s. turel, e. m. yigit, i. altug, “evaluation of elderly people's requirements in public open spaces: a case study in bornova district (izmir, turkey),” building and environment, vol., 42(5), pp., 2035-2045, 2007. [13] h. m. rubenstein, “pedestrian malls, streetscapes, and urban space,” john wiley & sons, 1992. [14] b. ergen, “investigation of streets and pedestrian malls as public spaces,” i̇stanbul ticaret üniversitesi fen bilimleri dergisi, vol., 12 (23), pp., 1-12, jun., 2013. [15] j. fruin, “pedestrian planning and design,” metropolitan association of urban designers and environmental planners / north western university, 1987. [16] c. teller, “shopping streets versus shopping malls determinants of agglomeration format attractiveness from the consumers' point of view”, the international review of retail, distribution and consumer research, vol. 18(4), pp., 381-403, 2007. [17] d. prinz, “städtebau: städtebauliches gestalten, germany, verlag w. kohlhammer,” 1984. [18] m. alfonzo, “to walk or not to walk? the hierarchy of of walking needs,” environment and behavior, vol 37, pp., 808836, nov, 2005. [19] s. abley, s. turner, “predicting walkability,” nz transport agency research report, vol. 452, pp., 114, mar., 2011. [20] f. kent, a. schwartz, 2010, online, https://www.pps.org/article/grplacefeat [21] j. gehl, “life between buildings: using public space,” island press, 2011. [22] j. speck, “walkable city: how downtown can save america, one step at a time,” documents d'anàlisi geogràfica, vol., 61(2), pp., 436-437, nov., 2012. [23] j. h. crawford, “carfree cities,” utrecht, netherlands: international books, nov., 2002. [24] j. gehl, “cities for people,” island press, 2013. [25] d. halden, “10 years of accessibility planning in the ukwhat has been achieved?,” in european transport conference, /association for european transport, 2009. [26] c. alexander, “a pattern language: towns, buildings, construction,” oxford university press, 1977. https://www.pps.org/article/grplacefeat 40 [27] r. j. gibbs, “principles of urban retail planning and development,” john wiley & sons, 2012. [28] w. h. whyte, “city: rediscovering the center,” university of pennsylvania press, 2012. [29] h. m. khder, s. m. mousavi, t. h. khan, “impact of street’s physical elements on walkability: a case of mawlawi street in sulaymaniyah, iraq,” international journal of built environment and sustainability, vol., 3(1), pp., 5-7, mar., 2016. [30] j. w. creswell, a. c. klassen, v. l. plano clark, k. c. smith, “best practices for mixed methods research in the health sciences. bethesda (maryland),” national institutes of health, pp., 541-545, 2013. [31] s. alobeidy, “ examining principles of sustainability in streets sulaimani city center towards achieving sustainable urban city,” sulaimani journals for engineering science, vol. 6 no. 3, may, 2019. [32] k. clifton, a. smith, d. rodriguez, “the development and testing of an audit for the pedestrian environment,” landscape and urban planning 80, vol., 1-2, pp., 95-110, 2007. 1. introduction kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq the effect of architectural forms on aesthetic response : study case lawand kamal othman alan faraydoon ali college of engineering presidency university of duhok sulaimani polytechnic university duhok, iraq sulaimani, iraq lawand.kamal@uod.ac alan.ali@spu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 5 issue 2 december 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.2.11 article history: received: 02 dec 2020 accepted: 25 dec 2020 this research seeks to identify building exterior characteristics that are best liked, most pleasing, rated beautiful and exciting by architects. a methodology based on mixed research methods was developed. the study sought architect’s preferences for twelve different public buildings. analysis of 68 responses to the survey questionnaire identified several building’s exteriors characteristics that were consistently most preferred aesthetically. four formal attributes. complexity, order, ambiguity, and potency, each of which was measured by three variables, and one variable added to the ambiguity, so a total of 13 formal (cognitive / perceptual) variables were included in the study. the effects of these attributes on affective responses, i.e., arousal and evaluation, each of which was measured by three variables, were examined. the analysis of the scatter chart identifies the level of association between two dependent variables, aesthetic response and formal features. a medium to a strong relationship has been recognized between aesthetic response with moderate complexity and moderate to high levels of order and organization also with near high levels of novelty and mystery. though, a weak correlation between the remaining of the dependent variables indicates a thin relationship. the higher the level of ambiguity in the exterior, the more excited the receiver. the higher the classification of mystery and novelty, the higher the degrees of excitement by the respondent. there is also a strong correlation between higher levels of polysemy and ratings of arousal, exciting and stimulation. the aesthetic evaluation (beauty) of the building depends and is influenced mainly by the preference of pleasure and admiration, and these three variables are affected by other variables such as ambiguity, complexity, and order. the aesthetic response is a complex process where each variable is affected by another variable, which ultimately leads to a comprehensive aesthetic evaluation. keywords: aesthetic response, environmental aesthetics, aesthetic preference, perception, cognition. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 137 1. introduction beauty has been the ideal of aesthetics, just as good has always been the ideal of ethics and reality, the ideal of rationality. beauty is difficult to describe since the definition of beauty seems to have evolved significantly over the years. the esthetic appeal of a building is an important concern in architecture and a subjective trait. however, several buildings around the world are appreciated, others are criticized. there are possibilities that some constructed form features exist, which attract the mass of constructions. difference between what is the idea of beauty now and what is still thought to as beautiful across the ages is actually what shows the factors effecting aesthetic judgement. to evaluate the aesthetic appeal of certain selected public buildings (traditional archeological sites), to measure how those values and the desired functionality of the building are met. the collected data through the experiment indicates that some certain designed formalities are favored by the population and that the esthetic appeal of buildings and their ideological context have a clear positive connection. there were commonly believed to be "receipts" of beauty and much of the architecture had followed the recipes. it was based on renaissance and corbusier ideals, beginning with vitruvius and the old orders. what strikes us is that this recipe does not make the building especially beautiful, despite the instinctual belief. that's why we call the parthenon, the alhambra palace, and the falling water house beautiful, even though their recipes vary completely. it is also a reality that cultures around the world create certain standards of beauty and attempt often moral, sometimes even science, to explain them, but it is the diversity of cultures that lead us to believe that there is no single (or easy) response to the issue of what beauty should be or that we should try to think as inevitable. the research field is limited in investigating the process of aesthetic response towards architectural forms of exteriors of selective public buildings in krg region. this study will explore architect’s perceptions and preferences of public architecture. this research asks the following questions: how does architectural form effect the aesthetic impressions of built form? what are the form attributes that stimulate perceivers and effect aesthetic response? what are the main factors that affect the aesthetic assessment of architectural form and experience? 2. cognition process the method of perceiving the world is called perception and it is the most important element in the understanding of cognition method. people perceive and assess environments by means of senses, and all of the data is generated by environmental perception. "perception" is a method of understanding something in oxford english dictionary [1]. perception is the mechanism by which we organize and perceive stimulus patterns in the world," according to atkinson, "the way the world looks (sounds, feelings, tastes and smells too) is perception." [2]. zigler believes that the perception of sensory information is often seen as a creative and positive mechanism leading to concrete meaning [3]. perception can also define how the sensory input is perceived, interpreted and structured to understand the physical environment [4]. the sensory mechanism consists of nervous system impulses that shift from physical stimuli to the sensory organs. the interpretation of these signals is not the passive transmission, but it forms knowledge, focus, learning and memory. 2.1. perception of the built-environment we experience the world through the five principal senses of our body, which contribute to the cognition through the transfer of perceived information to the brain. as far as perceptions of the built-up environment are concerned, rapoport claimed that "the elements need to be interpreted before they can be organized into schemas and evaluated [5]. thus, awareness is the key mechanism for the relation between people and climate. the designer can understand kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 138 how important details are perceived and will encode the world for other types of comportment through an overview of perception processes in the built environment. thought that "the visual sensory experience can only be obtained by the act of perception." [5]. thus, the significance of perception in the philosophy of urban design could be understood. the definition of "experience" proposed by tuan is very similar in this regard. in the experience of tuan, the feeling, perception and conception of space produces a person who refers to the cycle of awareness by humanity [6]. the physical world has a value for observers for rapoport and influences the human understanding of the quality of life. the first thing that people obtain, collect and control environmental information, and then eventually analyze the collected data according to your preferences. there are three main phases in rapoport's environmental perception process: a. perception, b. cognition, and c.) assessment [7]. however, the impact on the arrangement of observable components is taken into account in the context of perception, desires or cultural differences. architectural form is seen as an important part of the cycle of cognition in this study (figure 1). figure 1: process of perception cognition of a built form. (golledge & stimsom 1996) 2.2 cognition, schemata, and culture: the perception and memory of the events of the people is influenced by their assumptions generated by a variety of experiments. the most widely used framework for the hierarchical organization of information is the schema. therefore, a "schema" is a standardized concept cluster; it typically consists of abstract information and can represent events, sequences of events, precepts, circumstances, relationships and even artifacts. jencks believes that the way people perceive the world depends on their definitions (schemas) [8]. such schemes do not base themselves on intrinsic knowledge but are the product of a step by step method of information gathering, experience gaining and cultural symbols. perception is described in the schemes. people are not passive receivers of external stimuli, they interpret things according to former perceptions that have mostly been established over time, but the initial need to understand them first, before a person gets interested in the environment created. the key tool for everyone is schematic environmental knowledge. schematic knowledge itself is a product of long-term experimental inter-relationships between the individual and the environment and includes information on perceptions, beliefs, norms, etc. eysenck suggested that schemes as inherent mechanisms for organizing our understanding of the world should be considered a reference to kant's philosophy [9]. rapoport claims that: if something has to be transmitted and learnt in human terms it should have cognitive and schematic basis [7]. there is ample evidence that culture is the primary tool for human schemes. that is why in a cultural context the entire behavioral structure consisting of hundreds of thousands of specifics is transferred from one generation to the next explains the fairly smooth existence of acts and reactions within a group of people who belong to the same community. likewise, the external environments are "culturized" in different ways already, as they include and manifest cultural verbal and nonverbal symbols. as children learn, through words and symbols they begin to understand and identify their own world. children inevitably deal with kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 139 an environment that is culturally influenced: thus, their conceptual constructs, i.e., schemes, are highly influenced by local culture and its atmosphere as children grow. 2.3. perception of the architectural aesthetics: scruton cites in his book "... to describe architectural experience is related to the description of the basic processes of perception. beyond the possibility that an architectural experience does not occur in the first place without perception, there is a compelling claim" he also believed that the peculiarity of architecture stems from the enjoyment of it rather than from the practice of perception [10]. the conception of his object (function and form) however regulates architectural aesthetics and pleasure. architecture is not just a mass of objects or building blocks, but a mix of different itemsshapes, colors, texture, materials, technology, details-all of them organized as spaces, volumes and masses with symbols, meanings and functions [10]. as seen in figure 2, deconstructivism believed that a character's belief became predetermined by using their thoughts, understanding, and cultural historical past. the contemporary or orthodox view, taken by way of philosophers and psychologists inside the beyond many years, is that belief and language are not the same thing, and notion or conceptualization does now not occur immediately. rather, humans first perceive, then we suppose, and thirdly we conceptualize or express thoughts. the distinction between these strategies of perceiving area is essential. the architectural postmodernists used symbolism to give which means to their architectural standards [11]. figure 2: postmodern and constructivism belief of architectural perception. (according to woods, 2015) 2.4. people and built environment according to parsons and shils, people attitudinally concentrate their views on objects in three fundamentally different ways (including built forms) [12]. at the cognitive stage, people are separated in the interpretation and definition of objects and in functional relationships. at the cathetic stage, people spontaneously respond to objects with their excitement, enjoyment, and meaning. at the evaluative level, people set down criteria to ascribe their own behaviors to the objects. for example, a building should offer esthetic enjoyment even though it is dangerous to live in a perceiver. the catechistic mode of attitude affects those who perceive such a building intuitively. [13] [12]. therefore, all environments are evaluated. the positive or negative reactions to building forms are subject to various beliefs and attitudes of people. for example, many observers who can discover their affordable will have a particular building or atmosphere, what they look for depends on their motives and feelings [14]. 2.5. a theory of communication act in attitude formation it is difficult to have relations without contact [15]. an individual with certain attitudes towards a specific building, for example, must communicate them to demonstrate them. according to newcomb, contact is the required condition for an individual because behaviors kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 140 do not take place in a social vacuum. the theory of newcomb primarily derives from heider's theory of balance's earlier cognitive suitability, which implies there is a central human propensity and the need to speak to others about one's attitudes (to fulfill association needs) and the built environment. such interactions are the foundation of relationships between people that are articulated in constructed ways (amongst everything else). the "abx method" model of newcomb (figure 3), as mentioned previously, focuses in context and in the specific time on the relationships between various entities. figure 3 displays the minimal components of the a-b-x system. under the newcomb model, one person (a) transmits knowledge to the referent (b, one other person) about objects, constructions or symbols (x) and communicates his understanding of the environmental affordances. four (this is the minimum number of relationships in which there are three bodies) must be considered, according to newcomb: a-b, ax, b-a, and b-x (while there was no b-a answer due to his clear cognitive approach in heider's theory). this can be positive or negative (loving or disgusting) or moderate. the system is primarily based on the balance of its internal relationships, which means that changes in one aspect led to change in others to balance the system. the minimum components of the a-b-x system are: 1. an attitude of a towards x that involves both the approach to x as an entity to which cognitive and attributes like meaning or belief are valued and hated. 2. the attitude of a to b in the same way as that of number 1, but of a human. 3. the actions of b towards x. 4. b's approach to a. a. the model may display similar (+ + /-) or different (+ /+) attitudes of the mutual attraction between a and b and a, but the orientation between a and b and x is presumed to be congruent. a and b are both meant to be members of separate classes, but both may be those with the same cultural context. in that cultural context it determines all attitudes towards other members. when an architect, for example, has a very positive outlook towards traditional religious forms or their spiritual possibilities it is very prone to modernist attitudes and their abstract and formalist ideas and constructions. modernists may have the same mindset and style towards traditionalists. the object or atmosphere has an important effect on the linking between individuals and their attitudes. persons a and b are mutually dependent because of the correlation of an attitude of an individual with the object. b may also reflect concepts, beliefs, tastes and norms of people in the model. while we shape our cultural schema, we reply negatively to variations of it. then we characteristic emotion to specific objects that effect the institutions we make in the course of belief. all of this effect is hormones and receptivity. on the identical time, habituation works to bore us of our environments, so we've internal conflicts among conservatism and choice for brand spanking new studies. those cognitive methods form how we deal with every other, and objects are fundamental in formation of these perceptions [15]. figure 3: schematic illustration of the a-b-x system of communicative acts (source; newcomb, 1953) (b) referent (x) symbol (building) person (a) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 141 3. the definitions of aesthetics aesthetics is a science that tests beauty, its characteristics and its perception by human experiences [16]. the word "aesthetics" was described by webster's dictionary as a study of beauty theory and its psychological answers. the theorists of the art school, seeking to justify fashion and beauty first articulated the idea of "aesthetic." moving ahead, esthetics has also been used in other areas such as sociology, anthropology, marketing and psychological sciences [17]. here, the distinction between "aesthetics" and "beauty" must be explained. the field of "esthetics" deals with beauty philosophy and art theory. "beauty" is, on the other hand, the attribute of an object a person or position who gives a sense of pleasure and purpose. the study of beauty and its appreciation is called aesthetics. figure 4 indicates the relations between beauty and esthetics figure 4: differences and interrelation between aesthetics and beauty. (developed by author. adapted from baumgarten, 1750; balling & falk, 1982; postrel, 2003; rees, 2003). the concept "aesthetics" derives from the greek terms "aistheta" [18], which means perceptible objects, "aisthanesthai," meaning "to perceive." the word definition of esthetics is defined as the senses 'awareness [19]. in "aesthetica” esthetics as a term for an independent discipline was first introduced. aesthetics means "science concerned with sense cognition" in the concept of baumgarten [20]. subsequently the study of aesthetics instigated as a field of western philosophy and philosopher continues to dispute the meaning, nature and attractiveness assessments of aesthetics [21] [22]. the essence of the esthetic experience can now be seen as a part of the sociology dimensions, psychology, marketing and anthropology. aesthetics was, for schopenhauer, a subjective experience that could lead to beauty, instead of some other property in the esthetic object [21]. an analysis of the literature reveals that the word "esthetics" has numerous connotations in numerous majors [23]. 3.1. different approaches in aesthetics assessments the research on "aesthetic" literature shows that aesthetic evaluation of the built environment is addressed in various ways. thesis approaches can be divided into three major categories: subjectivity versus objectivity and logical against romanticism; and the most important approaches to these approaches will be expert versus perceptual (see table 1). expert versus perception approaches. knowing these methods will help speed up the assessment process by concentrating on the particular assessment method. table 1: different methods in aesthetic evaluations a objective aesthetic (physical aesthetic) subjective aesthetic (psychological aesthetic) b rationalistic view romanticist view c expert aesthetic public preferences aesthetic beauty aesthetics is the study of beauty & its appreciation characteristics of an object, a person or place aesthetic is defined as the knowledge which characteristics of an object, a person or place beauty is in the eye (or at least, in the mind) of the beholder provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning & satisfaction kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 142 the kant theory of aesthetic provides a framework in order to distinguish subjective characters from objective attributes in an esthetic judgment[24]. subjectivity vs objectivity approach in urban esthetic evaluations. a decision on esthetics is defined as the sole evaluation of an object's sense of pleasure. therefore, the esthetic decision may be adequate to be assessed using "i feel in this case." one result of this is that the emotional state determines just how a person thinks, but not any part of the physical entity. 3.2. aesthetic preference research aesthetic preference research approaches originally developed by the natural resource management field have evolved to support urban planning-design agencies. methodology of involving public participation and guiding forward-looking planning strategies and design decisions have been successfully implemented by urban planning departments [25]. 3.3. preference theories researchers have established and substituted a rather standardized criterion known today as' preference,' with some of the primary adjectives that were originally used in difficult semantic techniques. similar theory has been developed and tested by testing one's preference for different landscapes and built environments and related variables of the scene as in (aoki, 1999; daniel, 2001; nassar, 1988; porteous, 1996; zube, 1984). general hypotheses of inquiries, the analysis of content and interpretation of findings and the explanation of findings may be based on following theories. 3.4. collative variables of built form and preference in this section we will explore the relationship of collative variable of built form with the affective appraisal variables 3.5. enclosure, mystery and ambiguity and preference the "enclosure" is a spatially related variable frequently used in terms of human comfort for spaces created between buildings as a place or a court, or spaces built for human use in buildings such as an entrance or an opening [26] [27]. "the enclosure research and linked variables propose that people prefer limited space to broad open spaces or tightly closed spaces .the measure of human curiosity named' mystery' can be closely connected to the enclosure [27]. in the discovery or shape of a specific environment, mystical aspects may be correlated with the human interest on the basis of clues suggesting that more can be expected [26]. a partially obscured view rather than a blocked or entirely exposed view as well as a subtly curving path rather than a straight path will establish an optimal degree of mystery (figure 5). mystery was especially successful in the creation of highly favorite scenes [26]. only small amounts of uncertainty or ambiguity “..can make a substantial difference in how comfortable people feel in a place [26]. 3.6. complexity and preference a reliable measure of aesthetic preference may be moderate complexity such as the enclosure. a dynamic scenery”. the visual elements are difficult to look at. the complexity of the picture creates anticipation and confusion for human beings and the people are most interested in discovering an environment of moderate complexity. figure 5: straight path and curved path. ching, 2015 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 143 if too complex, the landscape can appear to be overwhelming and distracting, but the landscape can appear transparent and boring if not complex enough. complexity may be the most effective predictor of urban study preference. since it may be used to measure the “surface and shape of buildings”.[26] [28] [27] [25]. see figure 6. figure 6: coherence complexity, mystery and simplicity (porteous, 1966) 3.7. familiarity, novelty and preference herzog founded that in the analysis of city center houses, familiarity was related to greater preference. because familiarity offers the source of human comfort by instilling a sense of location, this also provides an important predictor in predicting preference [26]. this also constitutes a predictive predictor of a sense of place. literature reveals repeated sensitivity to a stimulus enhances the attitude of the individual towards it”.[29] 3.8. connection among emotional/affective appraisal and perceptual / cognitive procedure perception / cognition and affect /emotion are linked with different parts of the brain. the limbic system plays a dominant role in affect and emotion. the limbic system is a fairly old part of the brain and one that humans share with other vertebrates. the limbic system is responsible for most of the basic drives, affects and emotions. on the other hand, perception/cognition takes place in the neocortex. the neocortex is a relatively new part of the brain and only higher-level vertebrates including humans have it. the neocortex is responsible for perception, cognition, and voluntary behaviors. cognition and affect are, therefore, separate systems [30] [31]. esthetic researchers have suggested that emotional/affective assessments are closely linked to cognitive/perceptual assessments, and empirical studies support that concept. nasar, for example, found two components of likable places in two us cities, [32]. appleyard has found that most visible buildings in a city have generated strongest assessments. [33]. if these two systems are related, the nature of the linkage takes on theoretical importance. lazarus argues that feeling (affect / aesthetic judgment} is evoked only after a cognitive process is done [34]. in contrast, zajonc claims that affective reaction needs not depend on cognition [35]. he sees the first stage of response to stimuli as consisting of global, generalized affect related to preference and approach-avoidance behavior. affect can arise with little info because of certain stimulus characteristics called "preferenda" by zajonc. the pattern-forming preferenda evoke positive feelings before its attributes are recognized. however, kaplan criticized zajonc's idea. he suggested that cognition is wider than conscious thought. information processing such as categorization, assumption, and inference, frequently happens without awareness [36]. he suggested that affect occurs rapidly without conscious thought, but this inference (cognition) is also very rapid. thus, kaplan argued that the conclusion that preference (affect) is independent of cognition is misleading and that cognition plays a role in preference. there is another approach which argues that emotion is generated by matching between an instance and the default values ln the existing kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 144 knowledge. default values are called template or schema. a schema is the most typical example of the group to which an instance belongs [37]. in this theory, preferences and other affecting experiences result from a combination of autonomic arousal nervous system due to a schematic difference and subsequent assessment of cognitive processing [38]. in theory, a difference that can be resolved through change toward an existing schema will result in preference and interest while the inability to achieve such a relationship will result in negative responses. the result of the cognitive process governs the type of affective responses. kaplan suggests one idea that helps to understand these different models [36]. according to him, there are two types of relationships between cognition and affect. sometimes, the contents of cognition are associated with affect, and at other times, cognitive processes themselves carry affective implications. certain contents evoke affective reactions. lazarus's and zajonc' s models are this case. the processes of cognition also result in affective implications. a failure of recognition can result in confused and painful feelings. conversely, recognition of difficulty and uncertainty can be a source of pleasure. mandler's model is this case. as in psychology, environmental psychologists have also considered the relationship between perception / cognition and emotion/affect. environmental psychological studies have also considered both perceptual/cognitive contents and processes. meanwhile, visual properties are processed as the main inputs by perception and cognition for environments; many environmental investigations have treated visual properties as perceptive/cognitive content and have examined their effect on affective/emotional responses. visual properties theories and models may be subdivided into five categories: collative-arousal, ecological, schematic, symbolic and lighting models. the cognitive process focuses differently on each model. 4. study case 4.1. project selection criteria in this research we will study 12 buildings exteriors, located in the three main cities of krg (erbil, sulaimani, duhok). the functions of the buildings are mainly public buildings and that as it is more vulnerable to the recipient on a regular basis and also being available and not restricted for public use. the functions of the buildings are 6 government buildings (ministry, municipality, court, provincial council, general directorate of agriculture, general directorate of tourism), a commercial center building, a public library, a restaurant, a hotel, and a university. medium rise buildings were chosen to control variations of building sizes which might affect the responses. 2. the extreme expressive character of buildings, such as a church with a cross on the roof or a mosque with a minaret and a dome, were avoided as much as possible to stabilize the symbolic variable. 3. different types of building designs, built during the twentieth and twenty first century were chosen to cover a wide range of architectural styles and to some degree control historical factors which might influence the responses. 4. the buildings were selected to have a wide range of the properties (from least to most) of the interested building attributes, i.e., simple-complex, ordered-disordered, novelcommon, mysterious-clear, etc. 5. other elements, such as building perspective, contrast between building and its background, amount of vegetation, and cloud patterns which might affect the responses, were kept as consistent as possible. figure 7 shows the case studies. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 145 figure 7: case studies of the research 4.2. study design four building attributes. complexity, order, ambiguity, and potency, each of which was measured by three variables, and one variable added to the ambiguity, so a total of 13 formal (cognitive / perceptual) variables were included in the study. the effects of these attributes on affective responses, i.e. arousal and evaluation, each of which was measured by three variables, were examined. twelve different slides of building exteriors were assigned to view by architects from different scientific degrees and different locations responding to thirteen perceptual/cognitive variables and six affective variables. sixty-eight architect spotted in all major cities of kurdistan region to serve as subjects in the experiment. one set of twelve color slides was prepared for the scenes. participants were asked to rate the scenes on all thirteen visual properties and six affective appraisal scales. the thirteen visual property scales were seven-point scales where 1 and 7 stood for 'very' for each side, 2,3 and 5,6 for 'fairly', and 3 for 'neutral'. the six affective appraisal scales were seven-point bipolar scale, 1 and 7 stood for 'very' for each side, 2,3 and 5,6 for 'fairly', and 4 for 'neutral'. 4.3. stimuli’s of the experiment 12 twelve colored slides of building exteriors were used as stimuli. these were selectively photographed from various architectural sources. 4.4. variables of the study: a. visual property variables: • complexity: a degree of complicatedness or diversity of physical elements in a visual stimulus (building). the number of elements on the scene, how many items are there to look at, how rich does the scene contain many elements of different kinds? • order: a system of composing a visual stimulus or a building. • potency: the strength or power of a visual stimuli • coherence: how good does the scene hold together? is it easy is it to organize and structure the items of the scene? • mystery: how much does the environment potential more to be seen if you can walk deeper in it? to what degree does the environment hide positive or negative encounters that might lie ahead? • familiarity / novelty: how well do you know the environment oj how much actual experience do you have in the area in the scene? a degree of familiarity of a visual stimulus. to what extent does the scene seem to be a typical sample of its category? how well an example is the scene of the category it fits to? kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 146 b. affective appraisal scales: six affective / appraisal scales were used (arousing – boring / stimulating – unstimulating / exciting calming / beautiful ugly / pleasant – unpleasant / like – dislike) 4.5. participants: due to the spread of the covid-19 epidemic in the period parallel to the preparation of this research, the questionnaire was distributed electronically through google forms, and the architects were targeted by the team sending the questionnaire link to the personal e-mails of the teaching staff members at universities (salah al-din, sulaymaniyah, dohuk, cihan, nowruz and the american university in duhok and the american university in sulaymaniyah) and it was sent to the architects employed in the government departments in erbil, sulaymaniyah and dohuk, and the questionnaire was published on the architectural groups that are affectionate on the social media pages to reach the architects in all parts of the kurdistan region. a total of 71 architects participated and 68 valid responses were received. 5. analysis of the results 5.1. discussion of the cases: a-1: ministry of endowments and religious affairs: the analysis of sample a1 we find that responders rated the exterior with slightly over the medium rates regarding order, coherent, organized, complex, mysterious, massive and rugged variables. while the affective appraisal variables such as stimulating, arousing, exciting, beautiful and pleasantness had more neutral ratings as the building felt more confusing and misleading and that led to a negative rating for the likeness variable. a-2: erbil court when analyzing the results of a2 sample, we find high degrees of evaluation of the order variable, organization, and coherence, and at the same time, a moderate degree of complexity variable is evaluated, which is commensurate with the high aesthetic evaluation (beauty). at the same time, high degrees of order and organization are proportional to medium and semi high ratings for the variable exciting, stimulating, and the arousing. a-3: zaytoon library when reviewing the results of the evaluation related to the condition a-3, we find that the responders evaluated the building with moderate degrees in terms of order and organization, and also in terms of novelty and mystery. therefore, we find a moderate aesthetic evaluation and a low evaluation of the variables of pleasure, liking and excitement, the building appears rigid and unimpressive. a-4: taj restaurant the analysis of the questionnaire results in relation to the case a-4 shows a high response in terms of pleasure, stimulating and excitement towards the building in proportion to the high themes of the variable of mystery, novelty and multiple meanings with an average evaluation of the complexity variable, with a fairly high evaluation of the beauty variable. b-1: sulaimani municipality the analysis of the questionnaire results in relation to the case b-1 shows a high evaluation of the order and organization variable, and also a high degree of complexity, which is consistent with the low aesthetic evaluation (beauty). in addition to an above average evaluation of the variables of excitement, pleasure, liking and stimulating. that due to the high degree of evaluation of the multiple meanings variable and also to external influences such as the cultural code and reminders of heritage buildings. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 147 b-2: sulaimani provincial council upon analyzing the results of the evaluation related to the condition b-2, we find that the responders evaluated the building with moderate degrees in terms of order and organization, and also in terms of novelty and mystery. therefore, we find a moderate aesthetic evaluation and a low evaluation of the variables of pleasure, liking and excitement, the building appears rigid and unstimulating. b-3: titanic hotel the results of the questionnaire regarding case b-3 show an average evaluation of all the variables in terms of arrangement, organization, complexity, weirdness, ambiguity, and higher than average evaluations regarding the variable of pleasure, liking and beauty. and we see a high rating of the excitation variable, where the huge size of the building and the large glass surfaces play a role in the sensory excitement of the recipient. b-4: family mall the above average evaluation of the variables of ambiguity and novelty appears consistent with above average and high results for the variables of stimulating, excitement, liking and pleasure. despite this, we find an average evaluation of the building's beauty values due to the high ambiguity and novelty attached to a high evaluation of the massiveness variable. c-1: duhok court case c-1 received high ratings in terms of arrangement, organization and coherence, and medium and higher than average ratings in terms of strangeness and ambiguity in proportion to the high aesthetic evaluation and high ratings in terms of stimulation, pleasure and exciting. which means that the building is more impressive, more pleasant and more enjoyable for the responder. c-2: directorate of agriculture case c-2 received high ratings in terms of order, organization and coherence, and a below average rating tends to be simple in terms of the complexity variable. and at the same time, less ratings regarding the variable of novelty and ambiguity, where the evaluations indicate that the building is clear and familiar, and evaluations tend to consider the building massive, solid and rugged in proportion to medium and less than average evaluations of the aesthetic and pleasure variables, where the building is considered less exciting and less liked and less pleasant for the responder. c-3: general directorate of tourism case c-3 showed a high rating in terms of organization and order, and a low ranking in terms of the variable of complexity, leading more to simplicity in proportion to the low aesthetic evaluation, as well as low ratings in terms of excitement, liking, pleasure and stimulation. a low evaluation of the variables of pleasure, liking, and beauty may be associated with informal influences related to local culture and shared perceptions in society. c-4: american university in duhok case c-4 received high ratings in terms of arrangement, organization and coherence, and medium and higher than average ratings in terms of strangeness and ambiguity in proportion to the high aesthetic evaluation and high ratings in terms of stimulation, pleasure and exciting. which means that the building is more impressive, more pleasant and more enjoyable for the responder. 5.2. relationship between variables: research questions that were debated to explicate the relation between architectural physical characteristics and aesthetic response. the study described 13 physical features or independent kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 148 variables that could affect dependent variables (aesthetic response). details of the difference between the mean value of different variables are given in this section 5.3. complexity / pleasure relationship: the relationship between pleasure and complexity has been studied by many previous researches, and some theories predict an inverted u shape relationship. while, the highest degrees of evaluation of the variable of pleasure correspond to medium degrees of complexity and the lowest degrees of aesthetic evaluation correspond to very high levels or very few levels of complexity. when analyzing the questionnaire, we find a similar relationship with the theory with some slight changes due to the influence of other variables over the complexity variable. as we see in figure 8, that case and case has received highest levels of pleasure rating while receiving moderate levels of complexity ratings, also case has received low beauty ratings and high complexity ratings. figure 8: relationship of complexity and preference. 5.4. aesthetic response and affective appraisal variables the findings suggest that the variants of various physical characteristics of the building’s exteriors are correlated with variations with regard to the six factors relating to aesthetic response. figure 9 shows the ‘mean plot’ across the twelve cases exteriors to recognize the relationship between the six variables of aesthetic response. in this plot, the average score for different cases is essentially comparable. 0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 v ar ia bl e ra tin gs a1 a2 a3 a4 b1 b2 b3 b4 c1 c2 c3 c4 pleasure / complexity complex pleasant 0.00 2.00 4.00 6.00 v ar ia bl es ra tin gs a1 a2 a3 a4 b1 b2 b3 b4 c1 c2 c3 c4 the relationship between the six variables of aesthetic response. exciting arousing stimulating beautiful pleasant like figure 9 relationship of complexity and preference. figure 9: relationship between the six variables of aesthetic response. by researcher. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 149 5.5. ambiguity / excitement relationship the relationship between ambiguity and excitement shows varying degrees of evaluation as the greater the level of ambiguity in the interface, the greater the excitement of the recipient. as we see that the higher the rating of mystery and novelty are associated with higher ratings of excitement by the responder (figure 10). this does not mean a positive aesthetic evaluation, but rather revolves around assessing the level of the facade artifacts for the attention and senses of the responder. also, we find a strong relationship between higher levels of multi-meaning ratings and ratings of excitement, arousing and stimulating, but in the case of a1, we find that the ratings of excitement, stimulating and arousing decrease, due to the influence of other variables such as high complexity and much diversity (figure 11). 5.6. order and beauty relationship: many theories state that there is a straight association between the order variable and the change of aesthetic evaluation (beauty), and we find this situation present in the evaluation of study cases with some exceptions. also, we find low aesthetic rating of the states a3 and c3, and this is due to the influence of other variables such as superficiality and the light cohesion between the elements of the interface. there was also the influence of the cultural code, which clearly affected the decrease in the aesthetic evaluation of c3 (figure 12). 0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 v ar ia bl es ra tin gs a1 a2 a3 a4 b1 b2 b3 b4 c1 c2 c3 c4 ambiguity , excitement and stimulating mysterious stimulating exciting 0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 v ar ia bl es ra tin gs a1 a2 a3 a4 b1 b2 b3 b4 c1 c2 c3 c4 multi meaning and arousal variables multi meaning stimulating arousing exciting figure 11: multi meaning and arousal variables. figure 10: ambiguity, excitement and stimulating variables ratings. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 150 figure 12: relationship between ratings of order variable and beautiful variable. 5.7. likeness, pleasure and beauty: aesthetic evaluation, preference, and liking are three closely related states. as the cases that received a high aesthetic evaluation at the same time, the index of evaluation of pleasure and liking was also high. we can say that the aesthetic evaluation (beauty) of the building depends and is affected mainly by the evaluation of pleasure and the evaluation of liking, which are influenced by other variables such as ambiguity, complexity and order (figure 13). figure 13: the relationship between beautiful, pleasure and liking variables. 6. conclusions the study of the scatter chart was used to define the interaction levels between two dependent variables, the aesthetic response and the formal properties. a medium to strong relationship has been recognized between aesthetic response with moderate complexity and moderate to high levels of order and organization also with near high levels of novelty and mystery. though, a weak relationship suggests a faint relationship between the remaining dependent variables. changes in different physical characteristics of architectural exteriors appear to be associated with variations in aesthetic response. for the responses like: pleasant-unpleasant, like-dislike, beautiful-ugly, the cases a-2 (erbil court) and c-1 (duhok court) and c-4 (american university in duhok) are significantly different to cases a-3 (zaytoon library) and c-3 (general directorate of tourism in duhok). for stimulatingunstimulating, exciting – calming and arousing – boring, the a-4 case (taj restaurant) and b-4 (family mall in sulaimani) differ from case c-2 (general directorate of agriculture in duhok) the higher the level of ambiguity in the exterior, the more excited the receiver. the higher the classification of mystery and novelty, the higher the degrees of excitement by the respondent. there is also a strong correlation between higher levels of polysemy and ratings of arousal, exciting and stimulation. 0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 v ar ia bl es ra tin gs a1 a2 a3 a4 b1 b2 b3 b4 c1 c2 c3 c4 order / beauty relationship order beautiful 0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 v ar ia bl es ra tin gs a1 a2 a3 a4 b1 b2 b3 b4 c1 c2 c3 c4 beauty , pleasure and liking beautiful pleasant like kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 151 the aesthetic evaluation (beauty) of the building depends and is influenced mainly by the preference of pleasure and admiration, and these three variables are affected by other variables such as ambiguity, complexity, and order. the aesthetic response is a complex process where each variable is affected by another variable, which ultimately leads to a comprehensive aesthetic evaluation and it is a mistake to reduce the extent of aesthetic evaluation only in the variable of beauty and ugliness alone. reference [1] o. e. dictionary, “oxford: oxford up,” 2011. 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[38] g. mandler, mind and body: psychology of emotion and stress. ww norton & company incorporated, 1984. 1. introduction 2. cognition process 2.1. perception of the built-environment 2.2 cognition, schemata, and culture: 2.3. perception of the architectural aesthetics: 2.4. people and built environment 2.5. a theory of communication act in attitude formation 3. the definitions of aesthetics 3.1. different approaches in aesthetics assessments 3.2. aesthetic preference research 3.3. preference theories 3.4. collative variables of built form and preference 3.5. enclosure, mystery and ambiguity and preference 3.6. complexity and preference 3.7. familiarity, novelty and preference 3.8. connection among emotional/affective appraisal and perceptual / cognitive procedure 4. study case 4.1. project selection criteria 4.2. study design 4.3. stimuli’s of the experiment 4.4. variables of the study: a. visual property variables: 4.5. participants: 5. analysis of the results 5.1. discussion of the cases: a-1: ministry of endowments and religious affairs: a-2: erbil court a-3: zaytoon library a-4: taj restaurant b-1: sulaimani municipality b-2: sulaimani provincial council b-3: titanic hotel b-4: family mall c-1: duhok court c-2: directorate of agriculture c-3: general directorate of tourism c-4: american university in duhok 5.2. relationship between variables: 5.3. complexity / pleasure relationship: 5.4. aesthetic response and affective appraisal variables 5.5. ambiguity / excitement relationship 5.6. order and beauty relationship: 5.7. likeness, pleasure and beauty: 6. conclusions kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq epidemiological study of hepatitis b, c and hiv cases among the foreigners visiting sulaimani city from 2013 through 2016 mohammed omer mohammed asan baram hasan dep.of medicine directorate of health college of medicine ministry of health university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq asanbaram@yahoo.com mohammed.raheem@univsul.edu.iq fenk bakir maarouf college of medicine university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq fenk.maaarouf@univsul.edu.iq volume 4 – special issue: 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) doi: 10.24017/science.2019 .ichms.23 received: 19 june 2019 accepted: 10 july 2019 abstract hepatitis b, c and hiv infections present a great public health problem worldwide. more than 350 million of world's populations have chronic hbv infection and near 1 million people are dying due to this infection each year. about 150-200 million of world's population have chronic hcv infection that leads to nearly 350 000 deaths annually. on the other hand hiv remains as a major global public health issue. in 2015, about 36.7 million people were living with hiv and 1.1 million people died of hiv related illnesses. to find the prevalence of hb, hcv and hiv infection among the foreigners who visited sulaimani city in 2013 through 2016 and evaluate the common risk factors in those who had a positive results in 2016. this study was conducted between 1 st of january 2016 and 31 st december 2016. a total number of 275,979 foreigners who were referred formally to the central laboratoryresidency department in sulaimani city for screening for (hbsag, hcv ab and hiv ab) from 2013 through 2016 were analyzed and all the foreigners who visited sulaimani city in 2016 were included with mailto:asanbaram@yahoo.com mailto:mohammed.raheem@univsul.edu.iq mailto:fenk.maaarouf@univsul.edu.iq 212 kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical | assessment of demographic data and risk factors among the positive cases. among 275,979 foreigners who visited sulaimani city from 2013 through 2016, theoverall prevalence of hbv infection was0.47%(1318 cases), hcv 0.01 %( 267 cases) and hiv 0.01 %( 30 cases). in 2016 the highest prevalence of hbv infection was among syrians which was 2.5% while highest hcv prevalence was among europeans 0.82%. ages of the patients ranged between (18-65) years, 85.4% were males, 65.2% of males and 45.7% of females were married. dental procedures, surgery, blood transfusion and family history were common risk factors. hbv infection was highest among syrian foreigners. while the highest hcv prevalence was among europeans. an immediate action plan is needed to screen all syrian refugees in our region for hbv, hcv and hiv to determine active infection and treat accordingly and also impose preventive measures to halt the spread of the infections. keywords: hepatitis b, hepatitis c, hiv, prevalence, foreigners,sulaimani 1. introduction hepatitis b is a potentially life-threatening liver infection. it is a global health problem. it can cause acute and chronic infection and puts people at high risk of death from cirrhosis and liver cancer. it is 50-100 folds more infectious than human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) and 10 folds more infectious than hepatitis c virus (hcv) [1]. an exposure to an infected source has a risk of acute infection up to 30%. worldwide about two billion people have been infected with hbv and more than 350 million have chronic liver infection. about 500 000-1.2 million people pass away annually because of the acute or chronic hepatitis b [2]. hbv is a hepadna virus, the virion consisting of a 42-nm spherical, double-shelled particle that invades the hepatocytes [3], [4]. the prevalence of chronic hbv infection varies greatly in different parts of the world. the world are divided into three regions where the prevalence of chronic hbv infection is high (≥8 %), intermediate (2-7 %), and low (<2%) [5]. according to the previous studies done in sulaimani city the prevalence of hbv infection was 0.67% among the premarital couples in 2012 [6], 0.7% among 17182 patients who had screening with hbsag preoperatively [7], and 0.78 % among 7900 blood donors in duhok city [8] puts our region in a low endemicity area. transmission results from exposure to infectious blood or body fluids containing hbv [9]. the virus may be detected within 4-8 weeks after infection and can persist and leads to chronic hepatitis b. the incubation period of the hbv vary from 30 to 180 days [10]. the hepatitis b surface antigen (hbsag) is most frequently used to screen for the presence of infection. it is the first detectable viral antigen to appear during infection [11]. vaccines for the prevention of hbv are routinely recommended for infants since 1991 in the united states [12]. a protective response to the vaccine is defined as hbs antibody concentration of at least 10 miu/ml in the recipient's serum [13]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/hbsag 213 kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical | hepatitis c virus causes both acute and chronic infection. acute hcv infection is usually asymptomatic. about 15–45% of infected persons spontaneously clear the virus within 6 months without any treatment. the remaining 55–85% of persons develops chronic hcv infection. in patients with chronic hcv infection, the risk of liver cirrhosis is between 15– 30% within 20 years. about 3–4 million people are infected annually, and more than 350,000 people die annually from hepatitis c related diseases [14]. it is estimated that 150–200 million people are living with chronic hepatitis c [14], [15]. the infection rates have increased substantially in the 20th century due to intravenous drug abuse and reused but poorly sterilized medical instruments [16]. countries with high rates of infection include egypt (22%), pakistan (4.8%) and china (3.2%) [14], the high prevalence in egypt is due to a now-discontinued mass-treatment campaign for schistosomiasis using improperly sterilized glass syringes [16]. several studies have been done in kurdistan regarding the prevalence of hcv infection ,in sulaimani city among 17182 patients who had screening with hcv ab preoperatively the prevalence was 0.4 % [7] and in duhok city among 7900 blood donors the prevalence was 0.2% [8] putting our region in a low endemicity area. the human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes hiv infection and over time acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (aids) [17], [18]. aids is characterized by progressive failure of the immune system that causes life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers, average survival time after infection with hiv without therapy is estimated to be 9 to 11 years, depending on the subtype of hiv [19]. around 40% of people living with hiv do not know that they have the virus. since 2010, the incidence of new infections among adults (15+) has remained static at 1.9 million [20]. most of children live in sub-saharan africa were infected via their hiv-positive mothers during pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding [21]. the specimens that are repeatedly reactive by elisa and positive by ifa or reactive by western blot are considered hiv-positive and indicate hiv infection [22]. aim of the study: to find out the prevalence of hbv, hcv and hiv infection among the foreigners visiting sulaimani city formally since 2013 through 2016, and to assess the risk factors in those who visited sulaimani city in 2016. 2. subjects and methods this study was performed between 1st of january 2016 and 31st of december 2016, all foreigners (visitors) who were referred formally to the central laboratory-residency department in sulaimani city for screening with (hbsag , hcv ab and hiv ab) were included . a questionnaire designed to collect demographic data in terms of age, sex, residency and risk factors for getting (hbv, hcv and hiv) infections like history of surgical and dental procedures and blood transfusion. study design:composed of two parts: a. retrospective study in which all the foreigners who were referred formally to the central laboratory-residency department in 2013, 2014 and 2015 were included. b. prospective study in which all the foreigners who were referred formally to the central laboratory-residency department in 2016 were included with assessment of their demographic data and risk factors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/schistosomiasis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/lentivirus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/hiv/aids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/aids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/immune_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/opportunistic_infection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cancer 214 kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical | ethical consideration: after the proposal of the study was approved by scientific committee of kurdistan board of medical specialties, permissions were obtained from directory of health and administrative authorities of residency institute. the aim and content of the study were explained for all positive subjects in 2016 and an informed consent was obtained from each of them. participation was absolutely voluntary, personal autonomy was respected and all obtained information were coded anonymous and kept confidential. all positive cases were given information regarding their type of infection, mode of transmission, nature of the disease and possible complications. an educational printed handout (prepared by the researcher) prepared in three languages (kurdish, arabic and english) were given to the positive cases accordingly. the questionnaire was filled by either a direct interview of the participants by researcher in the residency institute in a private room to keep the patients privacy or by telephone contact of those who couldn’t attend the interview for any reason. all subjects who were sent formally to the central lab-residency department for screening with (hbsag, hcv ab and hiv ab) who had positive results were included. the questionnaire form include detailed history about their age, gender, residency, history of immunization for hbv, surgery, dental procedures, blood transfusion, parenteral drug misuse, tattooing, other medical conditions, and family history of hbv, hcv, hiv infection five ml of venous blood was obtained from each participant using disposable syringes. three ml of the serum was taken into two labeled sterile ependorf tubes, the first tube was used for detection of hbsag, hcv ab and hiv ab and the other tube stored and used for confirmation of the hbv, hcv and hiv positive cases. all infected utensils were properly disposed. there were four types of automated instrument used in detecting hbsag, hcv ab and hiv ab which were cobas , semen's, vida's and liaison. whenever a suspicious case detected further study was done for confirmation, using other automated instruments. for hcv ab and hiv ab positive cases a further confirmatory test was done with western blot test. statistical analysis; using statistical package for the social science-23 was applied to identify descriptive analysis (the range, mean and standard deviation, frequency and percentages). chi square and unpaired t test were used to find association between age and other variables. pvalue ≤ 0.05 regarded as a significant level. 3. results a total number of 275 979 foreigners who had visited sulaimani governorate and screened for hbv, hcv and hiv infection from (2013 through 2016) were retrospectively analyzed , and overall prevalence was (4.7/1000) for hbv, ( 0.97/1000) for hcv and (0.1/ 1000) for hiv infection, table 1. table 1: the average prevalence of hbv, hcv and hiv in (2013 through 2016). hbv+ve hcv+ve hiv+ve number prev. number prev. number prev. 1318 4.7/1000 267 0.97/1000 30 0.1/1000 the rate of hbv, hcv and hiv infection for each separate year and trends in number of visitors and prevalence of different infections in each year , table -2 and fig. -1. 215 kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical | table 2: number of visitors and rate of infection in each yearbetween (2013-2016). year total visitors hbv+ve hcv+ve hiv+ve n prevalence (per 1000) n prevalence (per 1000) n prevalence (per 1000) 2013 98937 480 4.9 79 0.8 12 0.12 2014 116838 364 3.1 89 0.76 12 0.1 2015 40308 321 8 74 1.8 3 0.75 2016 19896 153 7.7 25 1.25 3 1.5 figure 1: trends in numbers of visitors and rate of infection from (2013) through (2016). of181 cases that had positive test results in 2016, the distribution of viral type was as follow: hbv 84.5%, hcv 13.8% and hiv contributed to 1.7% of cases,table 3. table 3: distribution of viral type for a sample of 181 positive tests in 2016. virus frequency percent hbv 153 84.5 hcv 25 13.8 hiv 3 1.7 total 181 100 the number of visitors and prevalence of hbv and hcv positive results among different countries in 2016, table 4. 216 kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical | table 4: prevalence of hbv and hcv among different countries in 2016. country visitors (total) hbv(=n) hbv %. hcv(=n) hcv %. turkey 6100 29 0.48 1 0.016 iran 3625 8 0.2 6 0.16 indian subcontinent 3439 16 0.46 3 0.088 syria 2770 70 2.5 3 0.1 far east 1745 16 0.9 2 0.11 egypt 858 2 0.23 2 0.23 europe 850 6 0.7 7 0.82 usa 317 2 0.6 non non others 165 4 2.4 1 0.6 -far east countries are: china, korea,japan,indonesia, malaysia and philippines. indian subcontinentincludes:india,pakistan, bangladesh and nepal. -others: cambodia, myanmar, australia, palestine, sudan, afghanistan. the contribution of different countries for hbv and hcv cases in 2016 are shown, table -5. table 5: contribution of different countries for hbv and hcv infection in 2016. country hbvhcv no percent no percent syria 70 45.8 3 12 turkey 29 18.9 1 4 indian subcontinent 16 10.4 3 12 far east 16 10.4 2 8 iran 8 5.4 6 24 europe 6 3.9 7 28 egypt 2 1.3 2 8 usa 2 1.3 0 0 others 4 2.6 1 4 total 153 100 25 100 in 2016, the majority of the visitors were from turkey, iran, and india, table -6. table 6: number and percentage of the visitors according to their countries. country no of visitor percentage turkey 6100 30.6 iran 3652 18.4 indian subcontinent 3439 17.4 syria 2770 13.9 217 kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical | far east 1745 8.8 egypt 858 4.3 europe 850 4.2 usa 317 1.6 others 165 0.8 total 19896 100 among 19896 visitors in 2016, 16990 were males (85.4 %) who comprised 74.8% of positive cases and 2906 were females (14.6 %) who comprised 25.2% of positive cases, table 7. table 7: gender distribution among visitors in 2016 gender visitors number (%) positive cases number (%) male 16990 (85.4) 137 (74.8) female 2906 (14.6) 46 (25.2) total 19896 (100) 183 (100) among a total number of (19,896) individuals who were screened in 2016, one hundred fifty three (153) visitors werepositive forhbv, with females having higher prevalence (12.7/1 000) compared to males (6.8/ 1 000), table-8. table 8: gender difference in rates of hbv in 2016. gender hbv +ve hbv –ve total prevalence p-value males 116 16874 16990 6.8/1000 0.0011 (chi square test) females 37 2869 2906 12.8/1000 total 153 19743 19896 among total number of (19896) individuals who were screened in 2016, 25 visitors had positive test for hcv, of these 19 cases were males and 6 cases were females. although females had higher rates of hcv than males (2/1000 vs 1.1/1000), these values were not statistically significant, table 9. table 9: gender difference in rates of hcv in 2016. gender hcv+ve hcv-ve total prevalence p-value male 19 16971 16990 1.1/1000 0.294 (chi squared test) female 6 2900 2906 2/1000 total 25 19871 19896 in the current study the minimum age was 18 years and maximum was 65 years. the mean age of individuals was 35.8±10 years and 95% confidence interval (ci) of (33.92 – 37.70). there was no significant age difference among hbv and hcv positiveindividuals,table-10. table -10: mean age difference among hbv, hcv and mean age of studied sample. number mean age/year sd p-value 218 kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical | hbv 153 35.88 9.95 0.521 (unpaired t-test) hcv 25 37.26 10.05 the most common risk factors among the positive cases of hbv and hcv were dental procedures followed by surgery and family history; tables -11, 12. table -11: risk factors among individuals who had positive tests for hbv infection. risk factors frequency percentage dental procedure 60 39.2 surgery 18 11.8 positive family history 16 10.5 tattooing 12 7.8 blood products transfusion 8 5.2 multiple sexual partners 7 4.5 i.v drug user 2 1.3 hemodialysis 1 0.7 more than one 17 11.2 no identifiable risk factor 12 7.8 total 153 100 table -12: risk factors among individuals who had positive tests for hcv. risk factors frequency percentage dental procedure 5 20 tattooing 3 12 surgery 2 8 positive family history 2 8 multiple sexual partners 1 4 blood transfusion 1 4 more than one 6 24 no identifiable risk factor 5 20 total 25 100 eighty nine point five percent of cases of hbv and 92% of hcv cases had no family history while 10.5% of patients with hbv and 8% of hcv cases had a positive family history, males had higher maritalrate (65.2%) than females (45.7%). regarding awareness of their diagnosis, 70.5% of hbv and 76% of hcv positive cases had no prior diagnosis while 29.5% of hbv and 24% of hcv positive cases knew about their diagnosis regarding the previous vaccination against hbv, 47.7% of positive cases had no vaccination, 17% were vaccinated and 35.3 % were unsure whether they are vaccinated or not, among those who were vaccinated against hbv, 53.8% had a complete vaccination history, 19.3% had incomplete vaccination, and 26.9% were uncertain about the doses they received. regarding the occupation of the visitors, majority were laborers, housemaid and office workers, table-13. table-13: occupation among the visitors in 2016. occupation number percent laborer 82 45.4 housemaid 35 19.3 office worker 19 10.5 teacher 12 6.7 free job 10 5.5 219 kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical | engineer 6 3.3 health worker 3 1.6 massage center 3 1.6 others 11 6.1 total 181 100 4. discussions hepatitis b, c and hiv infections comprise a significant public health problem worldwide. they share the same route of transmissions, commonly sexually, blood transfusion, major and minor operations, needles contaminated with the blood of the infected patient, tattooing and vertical from mother to the child. [15], [16], [17], [18]. in our study, a total number of 275,979 foreigners who had visited sulaimani governorate and screened for hbv, hcv and hiv infections were analyzed. the prevalence of hbv, hcv and hiv infections were different according to the different countries, and some of our prevalence were different from their own country that may be due to the difference between our sample size and sample type. in this study, the overall prevalence of hbv infection was 0.47% ( in 2013 through 2016) which is lower in comparison to the aparna et al study (1965-2003), in which 17,029 records screened, 1800 report on the prevalence of hbsag covering 161 countries all over the world were included, hbsag seroprevalence was 3.61% [23], this may be resulted from increase in the health education, screening , improvement of vaccination against hbv all over the world and advances in the treatments . in 2015 and 2016 the prevalence of hbv infection was relatively higher than 2013 and 2014. the increase in the prevalence may be related to the increase in the syrian visitors and refugees to our city who they had the highest prevalence of hbv infection in our study. in 2016, the highest prevalence was among syrian visitors which was 2.5% and this result is near to the result of hussein et al study (2016) done in duhok city on a total number of 880 syrian refugees, 34 cases (3.86%) had positive hbsag [24]. in muselmani et al study done in al assad university hospital on the blood donors (2013), they found the prevalence of hbv to be 1.3 % [25], which is lower than in our study, probably this is because of the war that happened in that country since 2013 with near complete collapse of the health system. beside this since beginning of the war in syria hundreds of mass casualties had happened in the country with a large numbers of injuries, operations and blood transfusions. the prevalence of hbv in far east countries ( china , korea , japan , indonesia , malaysia and philippines) was 0.9% in the current study ,while it was nearly 8% in liang et al study done in china in 2006 [26] and 16.7 % in stephen et al study (2003) done in philippines, [27] both study were on their citizens, this may be related to the difference in the sample type and the improvement in hepatitis b vaccination. among turkish visitors, the prevalence of hbv was 0.48% in our study while it was 4.24% in furuncuoğlu et al study (1995-2015), done in istanbul on their 26001 citizens from 1995 through 2015 [28]. the prevalence of hbv among the iranian visitors was 0.2 % while it was 2.2% in mostafa et al study (1990-2016), [29] in which they depended on multiple large studies on the prevalence of hbv infections from 1990 through 2016 done on their citizens. this may be due to the acknowledgement of screening program in kurdistan by the turkish and iranian visitors, with those who had a previous diagnosis with hbv do not visit and ask https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=wong%20sn%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=23671726 220 kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical | for residency in kurdistan region, because they do not achieve residency agreement by the kurdistan authorities. in the current study, the prevalence of hbv among europeans visitors was 0.7 % which is near to the result of rantala et al study (2008) which showed the prevalence to be between 0.5-1.5 percent in some europeans countries [30].among americanvisitors hbv was 0.6% which is near to the result of wasley et al study in usa (1999-2006) which was 0.27% [31].this low prevalence may be related to the good and proper health care including screening and vaccination program in european countries and american states. in our study the overall prevalence of hcv infection was 0.097% from 2013 through 2016, while the overall world's prevalence was 1% in sarah et al study [32]. this may be related to the size and the type of our sample as mentioned above. the highest prevalence of hcv infection was among the european visitors which was 0.82% that is near to the sarah et al study that showed the prevalence of hcv infection in european countries to be, 0.5% in hungary, 0.3 % in germany, 1.1% in greece, 0.6% in ireland, 1.1% in italy, 0.4% in sweden and 0.3% in uk. [32]. this may be due to the high rate of homosexuality, multiple sexual partners, increasing injecting drug abusers, increase alcohol consumption and lack of a specific vaccine. in this study, the overall prevalence was 0.01 % (30 cases) in 2013 through 2016. in 2016 there were only 3 cases of hiv infection, all of them were females. the sample size was too small to represent the prevalence of a specific country. in our study we did not have any confection of hbv, hcv and hiv. the highest number of visitors were in 2013 and 2014 because the kurdistan region economically were growing rapidly till 2015 when the economic crises had happened and our region attacked by islamic state in iraq and sham (isis), the number of visitors sharply declined to its lowest level in 2016. majority of our visitors in 2016 were from turkey 30.6% and iran 18.4%, that is related to being neighborhood to these countries, a strong economical relationship and presence of many companies representative of these countries in our region for which they employee their own citizens. followed by visitors from indian subcontinent 17.4%, a group of developing countries where individual annual income is too low forcing them to work outside their countries and our region is one of those places to work in, on the other hand syrian visitors and refugees comprise about 13.9% of total visitors and that is related to the state of war in the country that endangers their life making them flee for safety and livelihoods. among 19896 visitors in 2016, 16990 subjects were males (85.4%) and 2906 subjects were females (14.6 %) of visitors. this may be due to that the majority of the visitors were laborers. among these, 153 cases had positive test for hbv, of these 116 cases were males and 37 cases were females, with females having higher prevalence of hbv infection (1.28%) compared to males (0.68%), this may be due to low sample size of females compared to males in our study. twenty five cases had positive test for hcv, of these 19 cases were males and6 cases were females. although females had higher rates of hcv infection than males (2/1000 vs. 1.1/1000) but these values were not statistically significant. among 181 positive cases the distribution of viral type was as follow, 84.5% hbv, 13.8% hcv and 1.7% hiv. this is near to the result of hussein et al study on syrian refugees in duhok city in which the majority of positive cases were hbv [21], this is related to the high infectivity of hbv in comparison to hcv and hiv. age of the patients ranged between (18-65) years with mean age of individuals being (35.81 ± 9.9), majority were in 4th decade of life, this is because of most of those who ask for residency are coming for working. this goes with arab et al [33], attarchi et al [34],farhat et al [35] and vahid et al study [36] which showed the mean age of their participants to be above 30 years. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=wasley%20a%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=20533878 221 kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical | in the current study, there was no significant age difference among hbv +ve and hcv +ve individuals. unsafe medical practices including dental procedures could facilitate the transmission of the hbv infection. in our study about 39.2% of hbv cases and 20% of hcv cases had history of dental procedures .surgical operations, family history, tattooing and blood transfusion were other major risk factors after dental procedures, which make a sense of importance of safe medical precautions in transmitting the disease. this goes with the study done by reingold et al (2003), who found a high rate of hbv infection among those who had dental procedures. [37]. also in janahi et al study done in bahrain, they screened more than 800,000 of foreigners and their citizens and found that most common risk factors were dental procedures 37.2% followed by surgery , family history and tattooing[38] .the family history is another important risk factor for hbv and hcv acquisition especially when the mother is the carrier , and this is the most common route of infection in the highly endemic regions [39], in mohammad et al study it was shown that about 30% of hbv cases were having a family history[6]. in our study 10.5% of hbv positive cases and 8% of hcv positive cases had positive family history; this may be related to unawareness of a previous diagnosis by majority of the visitors. about the marital status of the patients, 65.2% of males and 45.7% of females were married, and the marriage is considered to be an important risk factor for getting infection with both hbv and hcv infections and this was found in mohammad et al study [6]. regarding the previous vaccination against hbv, 47.7% of positive cases had no vaccination history this may be related to the age of the patients and the vaccination program in their countries, 17% were vaccinated and 35.3 % were unsure whether they are vaccinated or not. among those who were vaccinated against hbv, 53.8% had a complete vaccination history, 19.3% had incomplete vaccination, and 26.9% were uncertain about the doses they received. immunization reduced the prevalence of hbv infection among the populations worldwide .ray kim et al. (2009) showed that an encouraging trend is that the incidence of acute hepatitis b in the united states had declined as much as 80% between 1987 and 2004, explained by effective vaccination programs and universal precautions in needle use and in healthcare in general [40]. regarding the occupation of the positive cases, 45.4% were laborers, this may be related to low health education and high rate of work related accidents among this group, 19.3% were working as a housemaid, 10.5% were company officer and 6.7% were teachers. we had a group who did not have a specific occupation; these were the syrian refugees coming to kurdistan region to settle. in a search to find out the fate of the positive cases we found that all positive visitors were sent back to their countries except the syrian visitors who were sent to kurdistan center for gastroenterology/health department in sulaimani city to be treated accordingly. 5. conclusions the overall prevalence of hbv infection was much higher than hcv and hiv infections, and it was highest among the syrian visitors. the prevalence of hcv infection was highest among europeans. the number of the visitors was largely declined in 2015 and 2016 as compared to 2013 and 2014 because of the economic crises and isis attack on our region. the highest number of visitors was from turkey, iran and syria. majority of the visitors were males, married and in the 4th decade of life. 222 kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical | hbv positive cases had low rate and incomplete vaccination history. history of dental procedures, surgery, tattooing, and blood transfusion was high among hbv and hcv positive cases. the authors disclose that they have no conflict of interest. reference [1] d. samuel, r muller, g alexander: educational research, national hepatitis b virus programme. infect dis. 2004; 234:221–332 [2] s. de meyer, z.j. gong, w. suwandhi. organ and species specifity of hbv infection, journal of viral hepatitis.1997; 4,145-153. 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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=simard%20ep%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=20533878 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=finelli%20l%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=20533878 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=mcquillan%20g%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=20533878 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=bell%20b%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=20533878 http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/issue/vol5no9/piis1473-3099(05)x7014-1 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=gentile%20i%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=24966696 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=borgia%20g%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=24966696 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc4062549/  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq the implementation of residential projects on sulaimani master plan maryam adnan mohammed ghareeb alan faraydoon ali department city planning presidency sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq maryam.adnan@spu.edu.iq alan.ali@spu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.1.18 article history: received: 04 march 2020 accepted: 15 june 2020 urban planning is a science that is reflected in the methods of land uses especially housing use, which is one of the most important sector in the city. it is considered the most important human requirement after food and wearer. the master plan is considered as one of the most important urban frame. it contains all the structural plans to control the urban expansion of all service sectors for the land uses in the city. it is planned for present and future status for the cites. the city master plan guarantees the equal distribution of urban land expansion from all sides. it secures the provision and implementation of housing projects to all residents in the city, because of the economic growth that the city of sulaimani witnessed after 2003. the city was suffering from a lack of attention to the issue of preparing a master plan. it did not have a master plan except for old studies that were carried out by the federal government. the master plan studies began from 2006 to 2009, then in 2009 it was recognized. therefore, this subject is very substantial and the problem is that the implementation and site projection of housing was done in unappropriate manner with the stages of the master plan and the absence of evidence to invest in a housing sector. the purpose of this study is to identify a clear vision of housing investment projects, and shed the light on the necessary policies to be considered.geography information system has been used to indicate the locations of housing projects in the city of sulaimani. there is conformity with allocated lands for housing in the master plan. then questions were addressed to specialists and agencies who had worked in housing projects such as the directorate of housing, directorate of investment, and the municipality. the questionnaire was proven after seeking the assistance of 9 experts to know the extent of the credibility of the questions that were laid down. the research found there are non-planning factors that affect the implementation of housing projects. absence of laws and administrative errors in the implementation of housing projects playing the main role of having no clear housing implementation vision. keywords: master plan, housing project, sulaimani municipality, housing and roads directorate, investment directorate, sulaimani. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 259 1. introduction urban master plan is a comprehensive and long-term planning document that guides a city’s future growth and physical development [1]. it includes analysis, recommendations and proposals for a site’s population, economy, housing, transportation, community facilities, and land use [1]. it shows the direction of urban growth in short and long-term phases and connection and spatial distribution of different land uses. master plan plays a critical role in the environmental management of urban landscapes [2]. it includes information about population density and plans for accommodating expected population increase [3]. in doing so, it aims at avoiding random physical development. as a large part of city growth and development, residential areas have significant impact on the master plan and implementation. residential projects and housing strategies get a significant amount of attention when it comes to the master plan development and implementation. detailed studies and reports in the population housing strategy (as part of the overall strategic plan) from the city of riyadh is an example for such attention. housing master plan’s considerations need to appear in many cases such as the update of the al-haidariyah – najaf’s master plan to achieve housing efficiency [4]. despite of their availability and importance, many cities in developing countries do not adequately implement these physical plans. as a result, a mismatch between the actual master plans and land-use outcomes occurs [5]. it is the result of normal variation in the planning and development process, or be indicative of problems in the planning process [6]. given the high rate population growth in the developing countries in asia and africa, where urban planning regulations, policies, and enforcement are in poor condition [7]. illegal or mismatched residential development of urban lands is increasing at an alarming rate [8].for example, the high population growth of india has resulted in the neglect of the urban areas and development of slums in many of its cities [9], [10]. the city of sulaimani has suffered from rapid economic development, due to the rapid economic development during the last decade in the city of sulaimani, the city faces the same issue. absence of a well-designed master plan leads to a strong need of preparing a clear strategy for creating a functional and successful master plan, especially in the housing sector. the continuous urbanization and rapid expansion of the city from east, west, and south are mostly residential projects. housing projects were implemented from three sides that are formally authorized between housing and construction. the investment authority and municipality, despite some mismatch between them. a continuation in the status accelerates the unsustainable development of the city and urban sprawl which led to an urgent need to prepare a well-designed master plan. this research addresses this need by comparing the residential land uses in sulaimani master plan to the actual implementation and housing needs. the research also undertakes an in-depth examination of the root causes behind the mismatch and nonconformance in order to decrease the city’s rapid sprawl and unsustainable residential developments. 2. literature review the evaluation study of mutare city in africa, focused on the matching between the conformity of the sector responsible for building housing projects and the master plan designed for the city requirements. from this study, it was confirmed that many violations occurred and the surpassing of the areas allocated for entertainment also happened. this study utilized the geographical information data known as geomedia [2]. a study by fathallah 2000 anlyzes the main usage of the land within the master layout in order to determine the direction of the urban growth of the city of sulaimani. it helped a lot to analyze the classes of the population and their age groups in the city. it also helped to determine which age groups are most dominant and the type of housing units that are required and the grouping of these units within the city. it also analyzes the overall usage of the land in general to choose the most appropriate direction for the urban growth. the study concluded that the western direction in the route sulaimani – kirkuk is the best available and appropriate for the residential use [11]. while a study by muhammad kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 260 2005 determines the sources of demand on the housing and specifying the factors affecting the shortage of the overall offers for housing units in kurdistan. it is due to the misuse in the distribution of the lands and shortage in funding the investment in housing projects and the bad exploitation of the lands as a subject of housing. according to the study, its conclusions lead to essential recommendations of economic concerns and to the goal of revising the stated investment law [12]. meanwhile, a study by shamma 2009 does focus on the important role and contribution of the private sector in executing housing projects. also, the necessity of abiding by the investment regulations conducted in kurdistan for all other governorates in iraq through applying the investment law of 2006. this law provides very comfortable facilities for the investor and attracts many investors to apply for such projects [13]. a study by bedoui 201 concentrates on utilizing the modernization of the master plan of haidariya town in najaf to provide sufficiency. this can be accomplished by specifying the total population, number of families and the actual need for units through stating a housing plan each 5 years [4].the researcher in this paper did study housing projects from another point of view, which is identifying and taking details about all housing projects in the city of sulaimani, the researcher studied housing projects in terms of their implementation by the housing department, investment directorate and the municipal directorate. 3. case study sulaimani city is one of kurdistan region province. the limits of the study are divided into spatial, that was represented by the city of sulaimani, including the boundaries of the city master plan. it is divided into four main sectors, which are the provinces of bakrajo, tasluja, raparin, and the city of sulaimani. as shown in figure number one, it was obtained from the municipal directorate.the temporal limits of the paper are from the base year of the master plan in 2009 to the end of 2039. the master plan is divided into three phases; the first stage is from 2009 to 2019, the second stage from 2019 to 2029 and the third stage from 2029 to the year 2039. figure 1: master paln sectors 4. methods and material through the research topic of the implementation of housing projects in sulaimani master plan. and the entities that belong to its housing projects like the sulaimani municipality, the directorate of construction housing and roads and the directorate of investment. the master plan prepared by a german company with the local entity represented by the municipal department that guided the company when preparing a report for the city master plan. the research sample included the crew of the master plan with the engineering staff who works in housing projects from the three entities that the housing projects refer to. the data was obtained kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 261 from the authorities who concerned with the housing sector and the researcher intends to follow the steps indicated in [14]. taking experts opinion on the credibility of the questions listed in the questionnaire: the researcher took the expert opinion on the validity of paragraphs of questions in the questionnaire. a group of experts in the field of urban planning clarified the validity of the questions and the question that obtained apparent validity with a score of (80) or more have been approved [14]. the questionnaire was presented to (9) experts who are specialized in urban planning. the results of the experts’ opinion on the questionnaire and on the validity of paragraphs are shown in the table number one: table 1: the degree of validity of the questionnaire no . the questionnaire valid not valid editabl e the proposed amendment 1 does the presence of a joint committee from the municipality, investment and housing department determine the type of housing projects that are being implemented? x 2 building vertical residential buildings in residential areas located within sixty street. x 3 does equal distribution of tasks between the municipal department, investment and housing help to implement housing projects? x 4 supporting the distribution of housing projects in all proposed housing areas in the master plan for the city of sulaimani. x 5 the higher prices indicate the higher residential units in the vertical buildings, as they are the most in demand in the city of sulaimani. x 6 the higher height of the vertical housing units within the same population density, then it is possible to obtain wide green and recreational spaces between those buildings, and thus increase the possibility of preserving the natural environment of the city of sulaimani within the residential areas. x 7 do you agree to change the official approved green areas to residential? x 8 do you prefer vertical housing units? x 9 do you agree with reducing the implementation of housing projects in residential areas that are located near the city’s entrances? x 10 does the absence of planning put impacts on implementation and and locating some housing projects outside the housing areas in the master plan? x 11 is it preferred that the municipal directorate provides more housing units that the investment and housing directorate? x 12 is the investment department directed to execute residential units more than the housing directorate and municipality? x 13 do you agree with going towards implementation of residential projects instead of individual units? x 14 is it preferred that the housing directorate provides more housing units than the investment department and municipality? x when we analyzed the results of experts’ opinion on the validity of the questions, we found there were some questions that did not obtain a degree of apparent validity, which led to their cancellation. the statements number two, four, five and six, and ten remained. 5. results and discussion kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 262 5.1. characteristic of the selected sample the questionnaire was distributed to (40) people related to the topic and the largest percentage of respondents are planners. in order to obtain accurate results, the researcher used five-digit measure, strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, and strongly disagree. 5.1.1. experience in urban planning for the selected sample we notice in table 4 that the experience in the field of planning for the selected sample is higher for those who have experience between one to four years. it indicates the less planning staff in the departments that have a relationship with the study problem and the lowest percentage is for people who have experience ranges between fifteen years or more. table 2: percentage of the selected samples’ experience in urban planning experience in urban planning 1-4 year 5-9 year 10-14 year 15 more percentage 32.5 27.5 25 15 number 13 11 10 6 5.1.2. first question: does the presence of a joint committee from the municipality, investment and housing department determine the type of housing projects that are being implemented? by observing the figure number 2, 87.5% support the existence of a joint committee between the municipal departments, investment and housing. it determines the type of housing projects that must be implemented and their locations. this percentage varied between 45% of them strongly agrees and 42.5 agree to their existence. on the other hand, the percentage of those who did not agree with the existence of the committee was only 12.5%. figure 2: the ratio of the sample's answer to question one in order for this committee to do its work correctly, many studies must be addressed for each of the three agencies concerned. in terms of investment, studies should be available on the preferred size of housing units, the type of construction and the preferred locations for housing projects. as for the municipal directorate, studies should be provided on the preferred areas for plots of residential land and study of the preferred sites in the basic plan. but for the housing directorate, economic studies must be considered. these studies determine the annual income rates for the family and determine the number of families that are unable to provide adequate housing. 5.1.3. second question: does equal distribution of tasks between the municipal department, investment and housing help to implement housing projects? 45 42,5 0 10 2,5 18 17 0 4 1 strongly agree agree neutral disagree strongly disagree percentage number kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 263 by noticing the figure number 3, the existence of 62.5% disagree with the equal distribution of housing projects between the municipal and investment departments and the directorate of housing and roads. there is a percentage of 37.5% agree to an equal distribution of housing projects among these departments. although, the municipality department fulfilled part of the housing need through distributing residential plots. however, this is related to the provision of housing loans, and the establishment of this type of housing unit is very expensive compared to the housing units. the investment directorate housing projects are more expensive than the housing units implemented from the directorate of housing and roads. figure 3: the ratio of the sample's answer to question two rising in the number of housing projects implemented by one of these three agencies depends on the nature and importance of the housing problem to be solved at that stage. for example, if the aim is to provide housing for poor families, the implementation of housing projects belonging to the housing and roads directorate shall increase to achieve this aim. 5.1.4. third question: do you agree to change the official approved green areas to residential? from figure number 4, the presence of 67.5% does not support changing the classification of some green areas to residential areas in the master plan. even if it gets official approval because this change has negative effects on the urban scene and negative environmental impacts. on the other hand, there is a rate of 25% that supports changing the classification of some green areas to residential areas in the basic plan. if this change is in a studied manner, there is an essential housing need in the city of sulaimani. 7,5 37,5 2,5 40 12,5 3 15 1 16 5 strongly agree agree neutral disagree strongly disagree percentage number kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 264 figure 4 : the ratio of the sample's answer to question three 5.1.5. fourth question: do you prefer vertical housing units? by observing the figure number 5, it appears that 87.5% agree with the necessity of determining the spatial distribution of vertical housing in the residential areas that proposed in the master plan. but, in a way that ensures the achievement of the required urban landscape. on the other hand, the proportion who did not agree was only 12.5%. figure 5 : the ratio of the sample's answer to question four according to these factors, it will be logical to create a study should be carried out by a competent authority, by the municipal department, especially the master plan department, such as studies of the heights of residential buildings and the identification and distribution of housing blocks. 17,5 7,5 7,5 35 32,5 7 3 3 14 13 strongly agree agree neutral disagree strongly disagree percentage number 35 52,5 0 10 2,5 14 21 0 4 1 strongly agree agree neutral disagree strongly disagree percentage number kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 265 5.1.6. fifth question: do you agree with reducing the implementation of housing projects in residential areas that are located near the city’s entrances? by observing the figure number 6 is observed that the proportion of 85%, they agree with this question. this evidence is the higher percentage that agrees to reduce the implementation of housing projects in the areas that are located near the entrances to the city in order to keep the entrance of the city from traffic congestion, which is the main road for the city with other provinces. also, housing projects are not implemented because they lead to risk people lives. according to these factors, it will be logical to create roads link the new residential blocks with the city away from the main roads. furthermore, the percentage of 15%, disagree because they believe that providing alternative roads will lead people to use them as main roads. figure 6 : the ratio of the sample's answer to question five 5.1.7. sixth question: does the absence of planning put impacts on implementation and and locating some housing projects outside the housing areas in the master plan? by noting figure number 7, it was found that 77.5% support the existence of non-planning factors that impress the identification and the implementation of housing projects outside the residential areas in the master plan. otherwise, 17.5% disagree with the presence of nonplanning factors that affect the location of housing projects outside of the boundaries in the master plan. 25 60 5 10 0 10 24 2 4 0 strongly agree agree neutral disagree strongly disagree percentage number kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 266 figure 7 : the ratio of the sample's answer to question six 5.1.8. seventh question: is it preferred that the municipal directorate provides more housing units that the investment and housing directorate? by noting figure number 8 it was noted that 62.5% disagree and strongly disagree, while 35% agree to provide housing units mainly by the municipal department. the largest percentage has not approved, for several reasons. first of all, according to the data that are taken from the municipality as it is written that the properties area is between 100 to 200 square meters. while the projects area is 300 square meters depending on the projects’ site visits and the department of investment. second of all, the high cost of a single apartment building implemented, whether by the municipality, investor or the owner. third, failure to provide housing loans and mortgage loans permanently in addition to the high interest rate, which adds additional cost to the housing units. figure 8 : the ratio of the sample's answer to question seven 22,5 55 5 17,5 0 9 22 2 7 0 strongly agree agree neutral disagree strongly disagree percentage number 15 20 2,5 45 17,5 6 8 1 18 7 strongly agree agree neutral disagree strongly disagree percentage number kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 267 5.1.9. eighth question: is the investment department directed to execute residential units more than the housing directorate and municipality? by observing figure number 9, it is found that 62.5% do not agree because the investment directorate does not provide suitable and affordable housing units for all classes of society. investment projects aim only financial interests. also, these projects were implemented in advanced stages of the master plan. nevertheless, the percentage of those who do not agree are only 47.5%. figure 9 : the ratio of the sample's answer to question eight 5.1.10. ninth question: do you agree with going towards implementation of residential projects instead of individual units? by noting the figure number 10, there is 68% who agree to go towards building housing projects instead of building individual houses. this is because residential projects can be controlled safely, in terms of implementation and provision of infrastructure services . its method of providing is easier, more economical, and services are always available in the housing projects. as for the percentage of 27.5%, not acceptable and prefer individual construction of residential houses over residential projects because of the nature of society prefers independent housing construction. 7,5 30 0 47,5 15 3 12 0 19 6 strongly agree agree neutral disagree strongly disagree percentage number kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 268 figure 10 : the ratio of the sample's answer to question nine 5.1.11. tenth question: is it preferred that the housing directorate provides more housing units than the investment department and municipality? by observing the figure number 11, it is noticed that 62.5% preferred that the directorate of housing provide housing units more than the municipality and investment departments. this is because the directorate of housing has implemented housing projects for low-income people at the lowest cost and takes a monthly premium from these families. but, this is not done by the municipality and investment departments. there are 1000 housing units implemented by the directorate of housing, while there are 1500 residential implemented but, not taken advantage of it and this information was obtained from visiting the housing directorate and interviewing the director, because the municipal directorate has given it lands outside the master plan area, and therefore difficult to provide services to them. while we find that 35% do not prefer that. figure 11 : the ratio of the sample's answer to question ten 22,5 45 5 25 9 18 2 10 strongly agree agree neutral disagree percentage number 22,5 40 2,5 32,5 2,5 9 16 1 13 1 strongly agree agree neutral disagree strongly disagree percentage number kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 269 6. conclusion through this research and according to the questionnaire readings, the researcher concludes that there is a necessity of having a joint committee between the municipality, housing and investment departments to determine the type of housing projects that are to be implemented and determines the locations of these projects. no doubts making detailed maps to implement multi-story housing projects in line with the availability of infrastructure services is an important factor. reducing the interference with the not planed zones to identify and implement housing project sites. in addition, minimizing the implementation of housing projects on lands designated for green and recreation due to its environmental impact on the city. the researcher also concluded that there is a strong desire to go towards residential complexes. in fact, there is no law or penal clause to change land uses in the basic plan, which indicates a lack of respect for the basic plan, which is a constitution for the city. finally, supporting the housing directorate to implement future housing projects because it provides opportunities for medium and poor families to purchase housing units according to acceptable specifications compared to the housing investment sector. finally, this study concludes that the housing directorate is the best and most desirable according to the research samples in implementing housing projects that meet the housing needs. reference [1] d. malpass, “going beyond efficiency: comparing business regulations for domestic firms,” a world bank group flagship report, washington, dc, 2015. [2] a. mabaso, m.d. shekede, i. christa, l. zanamwe, e. bandauko, “urban physical development and master planning in zimbabwe: an assessment of conformance in the city of mutare,” journal for studies in humanities and social sciences, iv (1-2), pp. 072-088, 2015. [3] r.a. beauregard, a. marpillero-colomina, “more than a master plan: amman 2025,” cities, xxviii (1), pp. 62-69, 2011. [4] b. hussaini, “achieving residential sufficiency with the effectiveness of updating the basic plan and satisfying the housing need in al-haidariya district,” iraqi academic scientific journal, xi (34), pp. 239-279, 2015. [5] j.r. thomas, j. kumar, “social performance and sustainability of indian microfinance institutions: an interrogation,” journal of sustainable finance & investment, vi (6), pp. 38-50, 2016. [6] w.y. loh, “classification and regression trees,” wiley interdisciplinary reviews, i (1), pp. 14 -23, 2011. [7] h. taubenböck, t. esch, a. felbier, m. wiesner, a. roth, s. dech, “monitoring urbanization in mega cities from space,” remote sensing of environment, cxvii, pp. 162-176, 2012. [8] j.b. nyakaana, h. sengendo, s. lwasa, “population, urban development and the environment in uganda: the case of kampala city and its environs,” faculty of arts, makerere university, kampala, uganda, pp. 1-24, 2007. [9] i.j. ahluwalia, r. kanbur, p.k. mohanty, urbanisation in india: challenges, opportunities and the way forward, sage publications, india, 2014. [10] a. sharma, “greenway patterns and city planning,” in proceedings of the fábos conference on landscape and greenway planning, pp. 8, 2012. [11] s. fathallah, “land use analysis within the master plan to determine the urban growth trends of the city of sulaimani,” institute of urban and regional planning, baghdad, 2000. [12] m.k. muhammad, residential investment in kurdistan, center for strategic studies, 2005. [13] z. shamma, “the role of the private sector in housing projects for kurdistan region,” institute of urban and regional planning, baghdad, 2009. [14] m.j. allen, w.m. yen, introduction to measurement theory, waveland press, california, 1979.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq effect of using building maintenance information management system in maintenance process in ministry of education twana abdullah hussein ahmet oztas civil engineering civil engineering department college of engineering engineering faculty university of sulaimani tishk international university sulaimani, iraq erbil, iraq twana8a@gmail.com ahmet.oztas@tiu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 5 issue 2 december 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.2.3 article history: received :12 august 2020 accepted : 11 october 2020 educational buildings and schools are one of the important facilities in community directly related to all families and any problems in the buildings affect the learning process, in kurdistan according to the latest status about 60% of schools need maintenance and renovations and these data’s needs to manage properly. information management involves the design of a system in which data is collected and processed into management information, missing building information or outdated lead to ineffective project management. in this research a web-based model namely bmims (building maintenance information management system) is developed to record, kept, manage and share all information between technical staff in directories. the model presented to the technical staffs in moe (ministry of education), perform a survey using the special questionaries’ form. the results show that the system has an impact on maintenance process and information management in moe, the system outcome effect on three themes which are information, communication and cost. the model lead to increase collaboration, communication and productivity, and reducing request for information, losing data, time, rework and administration cost. bmims also improves data gathering, information management, better design and construction decisions, knowledge transfer, and staffs technical skills. the research indicates the factors which lead to implement in moe, training staff is the first one after that the hardware and it issue after that adoption by top managers. this model is most suitable for other ministries carrying out maintenance. keywords: information management, building maintenance management, collaboration, school maintenance, management system. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. mailto:twana8a@gmail.com kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 25 1. introduction building maintenance (bm) considered as a part of the construction sector, is seen as an activity in the larger ambiance of facilities management (fm) [1] [2]. bm purpose to remain building services at acceptable level of standard to enable its functions in results of keeping, holding, sustaining or preserving [3]. it is a process of reservation and restoration activity of the structure and components of a building. it covers the whole building which includes toilets, rooms, walls, roofs, drains, doors, windows, floors and also fix furniture. school maintenance is a continuous process to keep the school buildings, furniture’s, and equipment’s in the best form for regular use [4]. educational buildings and schools are one of the important facilities in community directly related to all families and any problems in the buildings affect the learning process. some studies found that students are likely to do better in newer or newly built buildings than in older ones. [5]. so, maintenance in school buildings are also required to serve staff and students to continue education sector and providing better quality of education. it is clear that without improved communication and efficient means of exchanging information the integration of the design and construction processes alone cannot improve productivity and performance [6]. in a study conducted in 1979 the project information group of the ncc standing committee highlighted the effect of inadequate project information on many areas like time-waste on technical problem solving [7] [8]. missing building information or outdated lead to ineffective project management, time loss, undefined process results, const increase in maintenance, retrofit and repudiation processes [9]. singh and etc. stated that organizations according to their structures and projects necessities will need to improve and develop data management processes. [10]. a set of information held in one place and used mainly for the maintenance and management of a building [11]. information management related to design of a system which processed the collected data into management information. [12]. according to [6] construction information can be grouped into three groups: • general information. • organization specific information. • project-specific information. the general information group defines available information concerning construction products, regulations, standard procedure, etc. publicly or commercially. interested organizations generally have such required information. organization-specific information categorized all information available to a specific organization such as standard solutions for design construction problems that often appear in the form of the library from previously completed projects which are used as reference cases within the organization. this information kept or stored in a digital environment and used any time needed. the project specific information is tie to one specific construction project or other project type. 2. literature review 2.1 previous works the requirement for integration of the construction processes with information has been widely recognized for decades. ioannou and liu (1993) mentioned that construction technology is a computerized database for the classification, documentation, storage, and retrieval of information about emerging construction technologies [13]. document management systems are constructing an essential step towards computer-integrated construction [14]. internet-based web-mediated collaboration tool kit were developed in 1999 by fruchter as a tool for remote offices. the tool kit is aimed to assist team members and owners to capture and share knowledge and information about the project, navigate through the archived information and evaluate performance [15] [16]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 26 it-based tool for document management as a first phase used by dawood [6]. it developed an automated integrated solution for the communication, collection, storage and delivery of project documents among the project team, the system designed under the name autcom by using microsoft access and web programming to an interface. the system capability is to view drawings in the system of cad. the program also offers time-and expense savings. [6]. a buildpass model is the web-based application designed at that level all users can use it engineers and others also, it has a capability to share the experience and knowledge of experts in the system, also linkage their knowledge with the technical standards [17]. the information gathered by the system would be useful for future maintenance management such as decision making, cost monitoring, optimizing the re-use of information and future planned maintenance according to ali [18]. he has developed a prototype system under name mopmit, has identified some problems under three categories which associated with reactive maintenance which are knowledge management, procedures and overall system. using itools and techniques to capture and update a knowledge base that includes a central repository and reuse in later also helps to improve communication and information flow. the web-based systems are controlled accessibility. this means all parties involved in the work can access the system from any remote workplace with their access permissions according to their job responcibilities. [18]. to avoid wasting time, cost and energy with reducing unnecessary paperwork and rework the building maintenance process needs effective management [3]. knowledge sharing between the facility management and design professionals has become possible [19] and enhance the use of project information throughout project’s life cycle [20]. according to (becerik-gerber etal.) project information needs to be incorporated or compliant with fm information systems such as computerized maintenance management (cmms), electronic record management (edms) systems [20]. using a web-based system to using bim models information and storing the knowledge to reuse for any maintenance operation, in 2013 (motawa and etl.) investigated cases in ten organization in kuwait to integrate public sector organization with a developed system to store and retrieve all relevant maintenance information, as an approach to establish the transformation from bim to building knowledge modelling (bkm). the system stored maintenance operation history, before each new task maintenance team can use it as a guide and learn from previous experience and trace the history of effected element [2]. the bim-server to serve as a collaboration platform, it’s organization has features and technical requirements for model management and organization includes (model repository: a server should have a centralized repository to store models, hierarchical model structure, ability to store and present objects of the model as text-based information in repositories, public and private model spaces [10]. effective maintenance management requires knowledge of the building inventory (sizes, types, and association of elements), physical condition (a measure of individual components and building as a whole), component performance (condition over time), and the impact of component performance on overall building performance [21]. 2.2 ministry of education’s current situation education is an essential part of any country as well as it is one of the most challenging sectors to any government to deal with its problems. like any other places, at least a family member of the majority of the kurdistan region of iraq’s (kri) households are reaching schools on a daily bases. according to statistics kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 27 released in 2018 by krg-moe, the total students officially studying in the primary and high schools are 1731629, which the number is nearly a quarter of kri’s residents. in addition to that, moe manages 6563 schools, 127560 teachers, and 33040 staffs which are distributed among the four kri governorates. the organizational structure of moe is like the following. the ministry itself located in erbil, the kri capital, and six general directorates in the cities of (erbil, sulaimaniyah, duhok, halabja, kirkuk and garmiyan administration), each of which contains sub-directories in the districts accordingly, such as in sulaimaniyah the general directorate of education (sgde) has eleven sub-directories. one of these sub-directorates is the general department for rehabilitation and maintenance of the buildings. 2.3 current building maintenance management system normally, the maintenance process in the sgde-moe can be divided into three majors stages. all three stages are explained below: stage a: request for maintenance and inspection. in this stage, the process starts with submitting the requested document from the school administration or educational supervisory department to the general director of education. the inspection team according to the nature of work and the school requirements vary from one to another in regards to the number of engineers and technicians. also, another committee in the sgde is responsible for checking and approving the estimated cost of the works and items. finally, the drawings and bill of quantity submitted to head of the building department to be prepared for the next stage. stage b : decision stage. in the second stage, the building department and finance department ask for a budget for the maintenance. in case if the budget was available, the execution team will be assigned. from there, the second stage will be completed. if not the head of departments informs the head general director. stage c : excusion stage. the last stage of school maintenance, the executive committee will receive an advance in the finance department. then, preparation for labour and materials just begin. also, investigate any variation in the cost and scope of the work. after finishing works and final measurement the handover team will check all works according to drawings and the bq if there is any difference should be repaired after that the project closure and archive the documents. 3. methods and materials the research designed and conducted in three stages; gap assessment using qualitative methods, creating the model, and evaluation the model by quantitative research methods. 3.1 gap assessment the gap assessment is intended to understand the gaps that now exist in the maintenance process. this is done through a qualitative analysis approach using semi-structured interviews with six senior construction engineers who currently managers of building departments in the sgde and education departments in sulaimaniyah districts. 3.1.1 gap analysis qualitative data from the interviews were transcribed, translated and thematic analysis was conducted. this involved coding all the data before identifying and reviewing five key themes. each theme was examined to gain an understanding of participants’ perceptions and motivations. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 28 3.2 proposing model in this phase, a computer model was developed named “building maintenance information management system bmims”. this system was designed to fill the gaps in information management and some extra features to cover other demands and challenges faced during the administration of building maintenance and moderation. 3.3 evaluation of the model the last phase consisted of the validation of the model by designing a questionnaire. this was presented to the sgde engineers, technicians and administrative staff. after that, they filled the survey questionaries which consisted of 29 questions standard five-degree likert scale distributed in four sections: the first section was the demographics of the participants and backgrounds collected profile information about years of experience, the specialist, academic qualification, area of their directories works, roles, responsibility and total years in moe, in eight questions (q1 – q9). in the second section, ten questions (q10 – q19) was set to evaluate the model effect on maintenance management process and information management (collaboration, communication, data gathering and data management, request for information rfi, losing data, time & rework, administration cost, productivity, decision making, knowledge exchange). the third section (q20 – q23) investigate the models main part features and how to fit the purpose and suitable for the procedures and maintenance process and covers the gaps which exist, the main parts are (reporting, boq, inspections and projects). in the last section, the six criteria presented (q24-q29) to know the priorities to implement the proposed model, the factors are (legal, adoption in top management, it and hardware installation, resistance to change, training of staffs, changing work process). 3.4 data analysis model designed in drupal; drupal is a content management software. it is used to make many of the websites and applications used every day. quantitative data are collected from 41 participants and minitab program are used to analyze them. for ensuring internal consistency of the questions testing validity and reliability, the cronbach alpha test was performed. cronbach’s alpha is a statistic that measures the internal consistency among a set of survey items, ranges between 0 and 1. the greater the value of alpha, the more the scale is coherent and thus reliable. (lavrakas, 2008) have proposed a critical value for the alpha of 0.70 . the frequency table for respondents with percent and cumulative percent’s and descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation and coefficient of variance (cv)) has been prepared for all sections. the spearman rho correlation test was used to determine the nature of correlation between factors. 4. bmims model the proposed system for krg-moesgde, uses to enhance and further learn from the maintenance and building mechanisms to reach the best and optimum solutions for the future education projects in the mentioned governorate as a sample. the system designed in drupal; drupal is content management software. it is used to make many of the websites and applications which they are used every day. in the bmims model, each employee includes engineers, technicians and administrative staff, have own account can log in the system according to their granted access and privilege in the moe, the system can install remotely and controlled anywhere and input the required data and use the information, as shown in fig. (1). kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 29 figure 1: map diagram for the proposed moodel the main system parts and sections are: • projects: users store all information related to the maintenance project, also the summarized previous projects shown in the table. • inspections: all inspection requests information records also according to the followup process the status of the request changes and notify, also the users can see the status and summary of all requests in the table format can sort according to type, date and status. the inspection documents attached to the inspection requests. • bill of quantitates: the purpose of this section is to provide the suitable easy useable central standardized tool to prepare boq in the moe, users can easily search for any item want according to the type of item or using in the building parts, only the boq committee can enter the information all engineers can use data if they have any comments can send and improve that item, also shown the summarized data in the table and can see categorial view of any item and any use in the part. • reports: reporting is an important stage and essential work of any mangers to moderate and check the performance and evaluation of progress, in the report section in bmims can easily add, read, edit, modify any type of reports you have, also view summarized table for entire reports also can categories according to types). • documents: can keep all types of documents they have the documents summarized in the table can sort according to type, date and name, also can view according to categories. • forums: forum section provide a medium for conversation and knowledge sharing between engineers, technicians and staffs, also can share experts between them and expand knowledge about the topics. • search: the search section is a helpful tool to reach and find any data anywhere any time recorded you want, just by writing the keyword. after that, you get the result by type and show the location. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 30 figure 2: interface for bmims figure 3: general interface for the user 5. results and discussion all data collected from questionnaires are analyzed and presented in four sections. the sections are (1) the descriptive statistics for demographics of respondents, (2) evaluation of the system features, (3) the model components, and (4) application criteria. the data are collected from 41 participants and using minitab program to analyze the data. also, for ensuring the internal consistency of the questions, testing validity, reliability, cronbach alpha tests were performed and the alpha equal (0.821), which mean high reliability. 5.1 demographics of participants the first section demographics of the participants are summarized in table 1, which are 70.73 % are engineers, 26.83 % are technician, and 2.44 % are administrative staff. furthermore, 58.54 % of them have experience more than 10 years, and 46.34 % of them employed in the moe more than 10 years, the ration of male and females are closer which are 51.22% males and 48.78% female, the qualification and education background majority of them have bachelor in engineering which equal to 65.85 %, only 2.44 % of them have higher than bsc. diploma 29.27 %, also 53.66 % of the employees have than one more task in their department and their roles distribution shown in fig. 4. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 31 table 1: demographic of responders item frequency percent cum. % 1 specialist civil 22 53.66 53.66 electrical 5 12.20 65.85 mechanical 2 4.88 70.73 technician 11 26.83 97.56 others 1 2.44 100.00 2 education level bachelor 27 65.85 65.85 master 1 2.44 68.29 diploma 12 29.27 97.56 others 1 2.44 100.00 3 gender male 21 51.22 51.22 female 20 48.78 100.00 4 experience in their fields 5 1 0 17 41.46 41.46 10 1 5 15 36.59 78.05 15 2 0 4 9.76 87.80 > 20 5 12.20 100.00 5 employed in moe < 5 1 2.44 2.44 5 1 0 21 51.22 53.66 10 1 5 12 29.27 82.93 15 2 0 5 12.20 95.12 > 20 2 4.88 100.00 figure 4: roles of the responsibilities of responders kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 32 5.2 evaluation effects of the model in the second section, ten questions were set to evaluate the systems effect on maintenance management process and information management. the results were summarized in table 3. the results show that the bmims helps the moe building department to increase collaboration, communication and productivity, and reducing request for information, losing data, time, rework and administration cost. also, the bmims improves data gathering, information management, better design and construction decisions, knowledge transfer and staffs technical skills. the results also showed that the factor about losing data in q14 have the coefficeint of variance (cv) 14.12 %. the majority of the respondents think that the system will reduce losing data, also after that cv 14.20% for communication between employees, and the reducing time and rework with cv 14.30 %. after performing the spearman rho correlation test to determine the nature of correlation between factors, the results show that all variables have a positive relations. the results were summarized in table 2. the correlation between q13 (reducing request for information rfi) and q18 (providing a good decision making) are very strong and equal 0.803, it means the system will provide all necessary information’s this lead to good design and construction decision making. correlation between q12 (data gathering and data management) and q14 (reducing losing data) are (0.747) it mean there is a strong positive relationship. the results also showed that there is a strong relationship between communication, reworking and reducing time, the spearman rho value is (0.709) between q11(increasing communication) and q15 (reducing time and rework). table 2: correlation matrix between factors q10 q11 q12 q13 q14 q15 q16 q17 q18 q11 0.612 0.000 q12 0.517 0.573 0.001 0.000 q13 0.330 0.434 0.545 0.035 0.005 0.000 q14 0.349 0.533 0.747 0.696 0.025 0.000 0.000 0.000 q15 0.583 0.709 0.759 0.744 0.724 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 q16 0.400 0.474 0.531 0.619 0.427 0.629 0.010 0.002 0.000 0.000 0.005 0.000 q17 0.432 0.500 0.491 0.669 0.609 0.607 0.694 0.005 0.001 0.001 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 q18 0.324 0.502 0.447 0.803 0.600 0.624 0.567 0.747 0.039 0.001 0.003 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 q19 0.480 0.554 0.601 0.609 0.551 0.687 0.486 0.601 0.622 0.001 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.001 0.000 0.000 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 33 table 3: frequency and descriptive data for section two symbol 1 2 3 4 5 mean se mean st. dev cv q10 / frq. 0 0 4 18 19 4.366 0.103 0.662 15.160 percent 0 0 9.76 43.9 46.34 cum. %. 0 0 9.76 53.66 100 q11 0 0 3 15 23 4.488 0.100 0.637 14.200 0 0 7.32 36.59 56.1 0 0 7.32 43.9 100 q12 0 0 5 15 21 4.390 0.110 0.703 16.010 0 0 12.2 36.59 51.22 0 0 12.2 48.78 100 q13 0 0 5 16 20 4.366 0.109 0.698 16.000 0 0 12.2 39.02 48.78 0 0 12.2 51.22 100 q14 0 0 3 14 24 4.512 0.100 0.637 14.120 0 0 7.32 34.15 58.54 0 0 7.32 41.46 100 q15 0 0 3 19 19 4.390 0.098 0.628 14.300 0 0 7.32 46.34 46.34 0 0 7.32 53.66 100 q16 0 3 5 18 15 4.098 0.139 0.889 21.690 0 7.32 12.2 43.9 36.59 0 7.32 19.51 63.41 100 q17 0 1 4 22 14 4.195 0.112 0.715 17.040 0 2.44 9.76 53.66 34.15 0 2.44 12.2 65.85 100 q18 0 0 7 17 17 4.244 0.115 0.734 17.300 0 0 17.07 41.46 41.46 0 0 17.07 58.54 100 q19 0 1 5 16 19 4.293 0.122 0.782 18.230 0 2.44 12.2 39.02 46.34 0 2.44 14.63 53.66 100 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 34 5.3 evaluation of the model's features the third section investigates the system’s main features and how to fit the purpose and suitable for the procedures, maintenance process and covers the gaps which currently exist. the main parts are reporting, boq, inspections and projects as shown in figure 5. the results show that the most accepted part are boq (q21) part more than 90% of participants agree and strongly agree about this section and have cv 17.47% also has higher percentage of acceptance. figure 5: box plot for responses in chapter three. 5.4 implementation criteria factors in the last section, the six criteria presented to know the priorities to implement the proposed system. the relative important index (rii) and cv were used to rank the factors, which results are summarized in table 3. as results showed that these three factors are most important rather than others: 1. staff training. 2. hardware and it issues. 3. the adoption in top management. table 4: implementation criteria questions variable criteria mean sd cv rii ranking q24 legal 3.146 1.333 42.38 0.629 4 q25 adoption in top management 3.878 1.208 31.15 0.776 3 q26 it and hardware installation 3.878 1.144 29.51 0.776 2 q27 resistance to change 3.268 1.432 43.82 0.654 5 q28 training of staffs 4.390 0.862 19.65 0.878 1 q29 changing work process 3.098 1.625 52.46 0.620 6 q23q22q21q20 q23q22q21q20 5 4 3 2 1 5 4 3 2 1 d at a p kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 35 6. conclusions and recommendations the results show that bmims provide a virtual area to collaboration and knowledge share. in addition to that, it improves the quality of works and better technical standards especially in the areas of preparing boq, inspection, follow-up, monitoring process, project data management and reporting. the remotely controlled feature provides better communication between departments. it also helps the moe building department to increase collaboration, communication and productivity, and reducing request for information, losing data, time, rework and administration costs. also, bmims improves data gathering, information management. the bmims model can be installed in web or local servers, and users can 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[7] m. richards, building information management: a standard framework and guide to bs 1192. bsi standards, 2010. [8] f. khosrowshahi, "building information modelling (bim) a paradigm shift in construction," in building information modelling, building performance, design and smart construction: springer, 2017, pp. 47-64. [9] r. volk, j. stengel, and f. schultmann, "building information modeling (bim) for existing buildings— literature review and future needs," automation in construction, vol. 38, pp. 109-127, 2014. [10] v. singh, n. gu, and x. wang, "a theoretical framework of a bim-based multi-disciplinary collaboration platform," automation in construction, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 134-144, 2011. [11] j. eynon, construction manager's bim handbook. john wiley & sons, 2016. [12] b. chanter and p. swallow, building maintenance management. john wiley & sons, 2008. 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[18] n. ali, m. sun, g. j. petley, p. barrett, and m. kagioglou, "mopmit: a prototype system for reactive maintenance projects in the uk," jurnal alam bina, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 13-28, 2004. [19] r. liu and r. issa, "automatically updating maintenance information from a bim database," in computing in civil engineering (2012), 2012, pp. 373-380. [20] b. becerik-gerber, f. jazizadeh, n. li, and g. calis, "application areas and data requirements for bimenabled facilities management," journal of construction engineering and management, vol. 138, no. 3, pp. 431-442, 2011. [21] d. e. dickerson and p. j. ackerman, "risk-based maintenance management of us public school facilities," procedia engineering, vol. 145, pp. 685-692, 2016. . 1. introduction 2.1 previous works 2.2 ministry of education’s current situation 3. methods and materials 3.1 gap assessment the gap assessment is intended to understand the gaps that now exist in the maintenance process. this is done through a qualitative analysis approach using semi-structured interviews with six senior construction engineers who currently managers of bui... 3.1.1 gap analysis 3.2 proposing model 3.3 evaluation of the model 3.4 data analysis model designed in drupal; drupal is a content management software. it is used to make many of the websites and applications used every day. 4. bmims model 5. results and discussion 5.1 demographics of participants 5.2 evaluation effects of the model 5.3 evaluation of the model's features 5.4 implementation criteria factors 6. conclusions and recommendations [1] p. barrett and d. baldry, facilities management: towards best practice. john wiley & sons, 2009. [2] i. motawa and a. almarshad, "a knowledge-based bim system for building maintenance," automation in construction, vol. 29, pp. 173-182, 2013. [3] s. fong and k.-c. wong, "knowledge and experience sharing in projects-based building maintenance community of practice," international journal of knowledge management studies, 2009. [4] z. a. akasah, s. h. shamsuddin, i. a. rahman, and m. alias, "school building maintenance strategy: a new management approach," in malaysian technical universities conference on engineering and technology (mucet 2009), pahang, universiti malaysia ... [5] s. lavy and d. l. bilbo, "facilities maintenance management practices in large public schools, texas," facilities, vol. 27, no. 1/2, pp. 5-20, 2009. [6] n. dawood, a. akinsola, and b. hobbs, "development of automated communication of system for managing site information using internet technology," automation in construction, vol. 11, no. 5, pp. 557-572, 2002. [7] m. richards, building information management: a standard framework and guide to bs 1192. bsi standards, 2010. [8] f. khosrowshahi, "building information modelling (bim) a paradigm shift in construction," in building information modelling, building performance, design and smart construction: springer, 2017, pp. 47-64. [9] r. volk, j. stengel, and f. schultmann, "building information modeling (bim) for existing buildings—literature review and future needs," automation in construction, vol. 38, pp. 109-127, 2014. [10] v. singh, n. gu, and x. wang, "a theoretical framework of a bim-based multi-disciplinary collaboration platform," automation in construction, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 134-144, 2011. [11] j. eynon, construction manager's bim handbook. john wiley & sons, 2016. [12] b. chanter and p. swallow, building maintenance management. john wiley & sons, 2008. [13] p. ioannou and l. y. liu, "advanced construction technology system—acts," journal of construction engineering and management, vol. 119, no. 2, pp. 288-306, 1993. [14] z. turk, "construction design document management schema and prototype," the international journal of construction information technology, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 63-80, 1994. [15] r. fruchter, "a/e/c teamwork: a collaborative design and learning space," journal of computing in civil engineering, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 261-269, 1999. [16] c. h. caldas, l. soibelman, and l. gasser, "methodology for the integration of project documents in model-based information systems," journal of computing in civil engineering, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 25-33, 2005. [17] d. macek and j. dobiáš, "buildings renovation and maintenance in the public sector," procedia engineering, vol. 85, pp. 368-376, 2014. [18] n. ali, m. sun, g. j. petley, p. barrett, and m. kagioglou, "mopmit: a prototype system for reactive maintenance projects in the uk," jurnal alam bina, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 13-28, 2004. [19] r. liu and r. issa, "automatically updating maintenance information from a bim database," in computing in civil engineering (2012), 2012, pp. 373-380. [20] b. becerik-gerber, f. jazizadeh, n. li, and g. calis, "application areas and data requirements for bim-enabled facilities management," journal of construction engineering and management, vol. 138, no. 3, pp. 431-442, 2011. [21] d. e. dickerson and p. j. ackerman, "risk-based maintenance management of us public school facilities," procedia engineering, vol. 145, pp. 685-692, 2016.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq development and validation of new high performance liquid chromatography analytical technique for separation of diclofenac sodium and lidocaine hydrochloride from ampoule injection mohammed ali salih dlivan fattah aziz chemistry department college of pharmacy college of science university of sulaimani university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani. iraq dlivan.aziz@univsul.edu.iq mohammed.ali@univsul.edu.iq salar ibrahim ali nursing department technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq salar.ali@spu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.1.11 article history: received: 01 april 2020 accepted: 28 may 2020 in the current investigation, a number of chromatographic methods with the accurate, precise and specific criteria have been developed and validated for diclofenac sodium and lidocaine hydrochloride commitment of their large quantities ampule of pharmaceutical dosage form. the high-performance liquid chromatography (hplc) system was performed at 25 ° c; with appropriate chromatographic isolation accomplished through the use of waters symmetry sb-c7 column with a mobile phase containing 0.1 m sodium acetate and methanol (40:60) (v/v). during development the portable stage was delivered at a stream rate of 1 ml/min, the wavelength was adjusted at 254 nm. first of all, the retention times for diclofenac sodium and lidocaine hcl were about 4.1 and 10.8 min accordingly. a performance and technical demonstration of the suggested revers phase-hplc method has been numerically challenged with support to process appropriateness, verticality, scales, simplicity, repeatability, sensitivity, stability, discovery and limits of quantification. in addition, the calibration curves for diclofenac sodium active keywords: diclofenac sodium, hcl lidocaine, reverse phase higher performance chrmomatography, simultaneous estimation mailto:mohammed.ali@univsul.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 116 pharmaceutical ingredient (api) with linear regressions > 0,999895 obtained linear in the distances 1870-5600 μg / ml. moreover, for determining of lidocaine hcl drug, a range of 500 1500 μg/ml of working standard was used, the result showed for lidocain hcl that a linear curve with correlation coefficients of > 0.99980. finally, the both drugs were isolated and resolute with selective and stable characteristics by the proposed technique. in the conclusion, successful validation of the hplc approach has been demonstrated with high precision and accuracy for the assessment of both the mixed dosage form type of both diclofenac sodium and lidocaine hcl. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction diclofenac sodium becomes considered part of derivative of phenyl acetic acid, as well as its chemical structure is shown in (figure 1a) [1]. it has a number of medical importance, such as non-steroidal obviously pro-inflammatory reaction, it’s also performed under different situations, such as rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis and ligament illnesses and even in the prevention of endovascular eye miosis throughout glaucoma processing [2-33]. lidocaine hydrochloride has become a local anesthetic and the chemical name is hydrochloride 2(diethylamino)-n-(2, 6dimethylphenyl)-acetamide, its chemical structure is illustrated in (figure 1b) [1, 34]. lidocaine has a medical importance in using for local anesthesia and its mechanism of action is stopping the nerve signals between nerves in the body, which leads to cause a temporary numbness and a loss of skin and mucous membranes’ feeling [2]. (a) (b) figure 1: compound composition for (a) diclofenac sodium [1] (b) lidocaine hydrochloride [34] a combined dosage form of both diclofenac sodium and lidocaine hcl had been formulated, under the name of olfen ampoules which is available worldwide. the medical importance of the combination form is that the administration of olfen injections shows a low pain at site of injection and also a better local tolerance [1]. according the literature review on both drug in both the united kingdom and the united states, analysis of raw material of diclofenac sodium is performing by pharmacopoeias through using a special method, which is known as potentialometric un-aqueous serial dilutions and that its medication combination dosage forms are determining mostly by reversed phase hplc (rphplc) technique [1, 3, 4]. diclofenac a b figure 1: chemical structures of (a) diclofenac na, (b) lidocaine hcl the two studied drugs have been formulated in combined dosage form, which is called olfen ampoules. the combined formulation is recommended to be used to ensure that olfen injections has a less painful effect and also a better local tolerance. on reviewing the literature, it was found that both united kingdom [3] and the united states [4] pharmacopoeias analyzed dic in its raw material by potentiometric non-aqueous titration and determined it in its dosage forms by rphplc method [3, 4]. dic has been also analyzed along with other drugs by different methods such as spectrophotometric [6-9], multivariate calibration [10], spectroflurimetric [11, 12], tlcdensitometric [1315], hplc [16-19], capillary electrophoretic [20, 21] and electrochemical [22] methods. furthermore, the british pharmacopoeia (bp; 4) and the united states pharmacopeia (usp; 5) suggest several procedures for the assay of lid powder and dosage forms. most bp procedures depend on titrimetry for lid in powder form and hplc was described for the assay of the ointment form. on the other hand, hplc is predominant in the usp monographs of lid in powder form and its dosage forms, while titrimetric procedures are used for the semisolid topical preparations (ointment and jelly) [3, 4]. lid has been also analyzed by different methods such as spectrophotometric [23], multivariate calibration [2], gas chromatography (gc) [25], tlcdensitometric [26, 27], hplc [28-31] and capillary electrophoretic [32] methods. the binary mixture of dic and lid has been analyzed by two reversed phase hplc methods for the simultaneous determination of dic and lid in binary mixture and pharmaceutical formulation [33, 34]. this work concerns with development and validation of three spectrophotometric kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 117 sodium with other drugs were also identified using various techniques, including uvspectrophotometrics [1,5,6,7,8,9], multivariate calibration [10], spectrofluorometric [11,12], tlcdensitometry [1,13,14,15], hplc [16,17,18,19], electrophoretic capillary methods[20,21], and electrical and chemical techniques [1]. furthermore, for assessment of lidocaine hcl in its powder and dosage forms, a number of suggested techniques are using by all other the british pharmacopeia and the united state pharmacopeia companies. moreover, titrimetric method is mostly used by british pharmacopoeia for powder form of lidocaine hcl while for evaluation of lidocaine hcl in the ointment form hplc method was applied. however, in the united states pharmacopeia monograph hplc seems to be a successful technique for estimating of lidocaine throughout powder structure whereas for analyzing dosage forms and semisolid topical arrangements titrimetric method seems more efficient [1, 3]. various techniques were utilized for lidocaine hcl for example uv-visible spectrophotometer [23], multivariate calibration [2], gas chromatography [25], thin layer chromatography densitometry [1], revers-phase higher performance chromatography [22, 23] and capillary electrophoretic techniques [1]. lidocaine hcl and diclofenac sodium are examined by two turned around stage hplc techniques for the synchronous assurance of diclofenac sodium and lidocaine in two-fold blend and pharmaceutical definition [1]. the proposed techniques have the advantage of less time consuming and cost over the distributed hplc techniques; therefore, there is no requirement for high cost instruments or chemicals [1]. 2. methods and materials determination of lidocaine hcl and diclofenac sodium by reverse phase hplc (waters alliance 2695 hplc system) for determination of lidocaine hcl and diclofenac na, the hplc–diode array detector approach has been applied, which has the following characteristics such as waters alliance 2695 hplc system usa, the auto-sampler injection system, flush qua ternary, de-gassing dryer and array group, but rather numerous frequency finders 2487 uv-visible or 996 photodiode array detector, the 2487 uv-visible detector is considered as the greatest sensitive and flexible absorbance detector which is available for hplc. moreover, it has a quality advanced programmability, dual wavelength capacity, un-matchless signal-to-noise performance, decreased optical band width, and unusual linearity associated with a pc stacked with empower software. the column of waters symmetry was used to evaluate both analytes, c7-rp-hplc column 4.6 x 150 mmf column. the injection volume was injected a 20 μl loop. mobile phase filtrated by millipore swinnex filter 0.45 μm particle size. a type of higher performance liquid chromatography is called waters, system 2487 different with the parameter ultraviolet absorption coefficient detector and the waters 2695 plus auto-sampler were utilized individually like a mobile phase at flow 1ml/min,as well as the latter retention moment of lidocaine hcl is a 4.1 ±0.5 min and 10.8 ±0.5 min for lidocaine hcl. degassing was accomplished through ventilation via a 0.45 μm pore size thickness channel and bubble prevention its do sonication. worked on auto sample and column heat at 25 ° c, using wavelength detector at 254 nm. diclofenac sodium and lidocaine hcl were applied by medical pioneer company for pharmaceutical in sulaimani province, kurdistan region of iraq. the purity was found or analsying by pioneer co at 99.9% and 99.7% for diclofenac sodium and lidocaine hcl respectively according to analyzing method by pioneer company. olfen 75 im ampules (batch no. t13415a) every ampule categorized which contains two actives with different concentration 75 mg/2ml for diclofenac sodium and 20 mg/ml for lidocaine hcl respectively produced by mepha pharmaceutical readiness. the chemical materials used for preparation mobile phase is methanol analytical grade and sodium acetate manufactured by sigma-aldrich and deionized water refined utilizing a milli-q reagent grade water system were used as a drug solvents. at the concentration of 1 mg / ml for lidocaine and 3.75 mg / ml for diclofenac sodium, standard solution of diclofenac na and lidocaine hcl was fully prepared in the kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 118 moving phase. applied method and investigation of ampule measurement types a substance of 10 olfen ampules has been correctly combined and exactly measured quantity of 2.0 ml proportionate to 20.0mg lidocaine and 75.0 mg of diclofenac sodium changed into exchanged dissolve and make a full a 50 ml volumetric flask by mobile phase it’s the technique of every strategy was followed and the centralization of diclofenac sodium and lidocaine hydrochloride was determined from the comparing relapse condition. the reverse phase -hplc technique for the diclofenac sodium and lidocaine chloride became accredited in term of precision, reproducibility, linearity, specificity, constrain of discovery (lod), constrain of measurement (loq), and power concurring to ich harmonized tripartite rules [30]. the framework suitability was evaluated by six duplicate investigations of diclofenac sodium and lidocaine hcl at a concentration of 3.75mg/ml and 1.0 mg/ml. the acknowledgment foundation was ±2% within the peak range and maintenance time for diclofenac sodium and lidocaine hcl was for relative standard deviation present. the hplc reversing phase technique was assessed to make which the ingredients. given in the details were not interfered with. a particularity became concentrated by another infusion of ingredients. linearity is considered as the capacity to acquire the results of the test which are straight forwardly relative to the grouping of the materials; furthermore, linearity is normally controlled by three injections of five different concentrations of diclofenac sodium and lidocaine hcl (50, 75, 100, 125 and 150 mg / ml) and then the normal top regions were plotted against the concentrations. at that point, the linearity is assessed by utilizing the calibration bend in order to calculate the coefficient of relationship, which is included incline and captured. in common, an esteem of the relationship coefficient that are more than 0.999; therefore, it is considered as the proof of a satisfactory fit for the information to the relapse line. moreover, the precision of an explanatory strategy communicates the closeness between the anticipated esteem and the measured esteem. this is achieved through measuring a basis points recovery (r percent) of the recovered eluent. therein example, to assess the accuracy of the created technique, progressive examination three diverse concentrations one less than in the real concentration of 75mg/ml and 100 mg/ml and one more than the actual concentration of 125 mg / ml of diclofenac sodium and lidocaine hcl standard was achieved using the strategy developed. in addition, the information of the test was measurably examined by utilizing the equation % recuperation = (recuperated conc. /infused conc.) ×100, which to be considered as the recuperation and legitimacy of the created strategy. the acknowledged cruel recuperation ought to be inside 98–102%. the precision of a quantifiable method is defined as the level of understanding between individual tests, whenever the method of evaluating different imitates is drearily linked of three distinctive events. first, the intraday accuracy was examined by assessing the measurement curves of six duplicates of distinctive inter-day accuracy concentrations by analyzing six replicates of different diclofenac sodium and lidocaine hcl concentrations. its three different days. moreover, the technique's complete precision was communicated like rsd. six imitate examinations at the accumulation of 120 μg / ml of conventional diclofenac sodium and lidocaine hcl have decided on precision within the current strategy improvement and approval convention arrangement utilizing the created strategy and % rsd ≤ 2% was acknowledged. the detection limit smallest quantity of a substance which may be distinguished by a stated confidence level from the absence of that substance. quantification limit would be the lowest intensity of analyte which could be corrected with satisfactory sensitivity and specificit y. in the current investigation, those other two variables are quantified using the equation limit of detection = 3.3 signal/noise equal to 0.76 mg ml−1 for diclofenac sodium and 1.23 mg ml1for lidocaine hcl but quantification limit = 10(sy/s) 1.8 mg ml−1 diclofenac sodium and 0.5 mg ml−1 for lidocaine hcl conventional reaction variation (crest zone) and s = calibration bend inclination. [28, 29]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 119 3. results linearity of diclofenac sodium by hplc for determination of linearity of diclofenac sodium-hplc, the linearity of diclofenac sodium was performed as explained in experimental part and then the average area was calculated by average of three repeat measurements. the slope was 7806.183, intercept 648427.1, correlation (r) 0.999956 and coefficient of correlation (r2) 0.9999 (table 1). the normal top zones were graphed toward their intensity with the esteem of relationship coefficient (r2) 0.99991 and are viewed as the prove of the satisfactory wellness for the information to the relapse line (figure 2). table 1: linearity of lidocaine hcl nomina l value concentratio n (µg/ml) area average area 50% 1873.03 15210882.02 15209917.33 slope 7806.183 15202169.14 intercept 648427.1 15216700.82 r 0.999956 75% 2809.55 22540196.68 22543897.99 r2 0.9999 22547073.83 22544423.47 100% 3746.06 30117886.55 30013805.43 29975982.72 29947547.02 125% 4682.58 37313342.26 37303518.88 37316040.81 37281173.56 150% 5619.09 44368608.9 44383143.93 44385628.88 44395194 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 120 linearity of lidocaine hcl by hplc for determination of linearity of lidocaine hcl by hplc, three injections of five different concentrations of lidocaine hcl were as explained in experimental part and then the average area was calculated by average of three repeat measurements. the slope was 899.0516, intercept -1635.7, correlation (r) 0.999996 and coefficient of correlation (r2) 1.0000 (table 2). the normal peak areas were scheme opposed to their concentrations with the value of correlation coefficient (r2) 0.99999 and therefore, it is revealed as the evidence of the accepted fitness of the data to the regression line (figure 3) table 2: linearity of lidocaine hcl y = 7806,2x + 648411 r² = 0,9999 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500 0,00 0,10 0,20 0,30 0,40 0,50 0,60 a re a m a u x 1 0 0 0 0 0 concentration diclofenac sodium µg/ml x 10000 avearge area diclofenac sodium amount added (%) nominal value (μg ml−1) area average area 50% 500.06 448665.401 449123.4043 slope 899.0516 449853.626 intercept -1635.7 448851.186 r 0.999996 75% 750.09 671495.658 671506.425 r2 1.0000 671174.927 671848.69 100% 1000.12 899508.215 896678.8663 894876.632 895651.752 125% 1250.15 1123823.873 1122981.359 1122796.333 1122323.871 150% 1500.18 1345989.523 1347336.949 1347425.014 1348596.311 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 121 determination and recovery of diclofenac sodium and lidocaine hcl accuracy of an explanatory strategy communicates with the closeness of understanding between the arrangements of estimations acquired from numerous testing of the same homogeneous test beneath the endorsed conditions. for determination of accuracy, the placebo was prepared placebo in accordance to olfen without both diclofenac sodium and lidocaine hydrochloride. the excipients contain (acetylcysteine, edetate sodium, propylene glycol, polyethylene glycol, sodium hydroxide, water for injection). the result shows that in repeatability, percent comparative standard error of diclofenac sodium peak area concentration of 75%, 100%, and 125% was found to be 0.16%, 0.43%, and 0.02%, respectively [table 3]. furthermore, a percent compared standard error of lidocaine hcl peak region standard concentration of 75%, 100%, and 125% was found to be 0.04%, 0.22%, and 0.16% respectively [table 4]. the result revealed that this precision that presented with % rsd values are less than 1.0%; therefore, the mentioned method is considered to be a highly precise and reproducible. moreover, the verification of its technical method was the system of showing the suitability of the quantitative procedure with its original purpose. consequently, the data collected from the verification strategy experiment may be used to measure the performance, efficiency and coherence of the analysis outcomes. the current higher performance liquid chromatography technique for evaluating diclofenac sodium has been developed and validated. in which, several mobile phase compositions were tested, and satisfactory segregation became achieved used the composition of sodium acetate in the mobile phase: methanol (a: b): (40:60 v/v). an optimized chromatogram of blank, standard, and sample was shown in figure 1. the retention time (rt) of diclofenac sodium and lidocaine hcl peak was found to be at 4.022 min and 11.166 min, respectively [figure 4]. the chromatogram of the sample olfen is also shown in [figure 5]. 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 0,00 0,05 0,10 0,15 0,20 a re a m a u x 1 0 0 0 0 0 concentration diclofenac sodium µg/ml x 10000 avearge area lidocain hcl https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc5855379/table/t1/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc5855379/figure/f1/ kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 122 table 3: determination of diclofenac sodium recovery table 4: determination recovery of lidocaine hcl standard data concentratio n(μg/ml) area averag e area sd rsd% 1000.254 903730 907288 2524.65 0.3% 906670 907431 910771 907838 accuracy recovery of lidocaine hcl scale quantity of dropped (μg / ml) area quantity of recovered (μg/ml) % release average recovery %rs d 75% 750.19 684327 754.45 100.57% 100.59% 0.04% 684337 754.46 100.57% 684832 755.00 100.64% 100% 1000.25 905278 998.04 99.78% 100.01% 0.22% 909129 1002.28 100.20% 907754 1000.77 100.05% 125% 1250.32 1139925 1256.73 100.51% 100.47% 0.16% 1141031 1257.95 100.61% 1137459 1254.01 100.30% average 100.36% standard data concentratio n (μg/ml) area average area sd rsd% 3746.730 28899069 28999684.2000 60018.64 0.2% 29025203 29025427 28994749 29053973 accuracy recovery of diclofenac sodium nominal value amount spiked (μg/ml) area amount recovered (μg/ml) % recovery average recovery %rs d 75% 2810.05 22002225 2842.66 101.16% 100.98% 0.16% 21938461 2834.43 100.87% 21945833 2835.38 100.90% 100% 3746.73 29282025 3783.21 100.97% 100.52% 0.43% 29137890 3764.59 100.48% 29033890 3751.15 100.12% 125% 4683.41 36161668 4672.05 99.76% 99.77% 0.02% 36174515 4673.71 99.79% 36167094 4672.75 99.77% average 100.42% kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 123 figure 4: hplc chromatogram of combination of both standard diclofenac sodium 3.75 mg/ml and lidocaine hcl 1mg/ml at 254 nm. figure 5: hplc chromatogram of sample olfen contain 3.75 mg/ml diclofenac sodium and 1mg / ml lidocaine hcl at 254 nm. a re a ( a u ) time (min) a re a ( a u ) time (min) time (min) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 124 figure 6: chromatogram of placebo solution showing no interference. figure 7: chromatogram of the diluent. precision of diclofenac sodium and lidocaine hcl and accuracy three concentration degrees for both diclofenac sodium and lidocaine hcl used three imitate judgments for each concentration within one day were considered in under-day precision and accuracy for the project strategy. essentially, the precision and consistency between the days were checked by assessing a certain three concentrations for each diclofenac sodium and lidocaine hcl usage of three rehashed decisions imitate for several days. using the comparable relapse conditions, recoveries were measured, and they were palatable. the absolute deviation rate and absolute blunder rate (error percent) cannot exceed 2.0 percent, showing the high accuracy and accuracy of the strategy generated to estimate the part in its bulk frame (table 5). time (min) time (min) a re a ( a u ) a re a ( a u ) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 125 table 5: commitment of the sodium diclofenac and lidocaine hcl mixture utilizing the approved revers phase-hplc process. compound analytical form level fractional mean (μg/ml) discovered ±sd (μg/ml) relative standard deviation % error % diclofenac na within-day 75% 2.810 2.8402±0.21 0.20500 -1.07 100% 3.750 3.771±0.457 0.18100 -0.56 125% 4.680 4.672±1.174 0.08000 0.1709 between-day 75% 2.810 2.8404±0.156 0.15600 1.0819 100% 3.750 3.757±0.181 0.45400 0.1867 125% 4.680 4.669±4.16 0.08900 0.235 lidocaine hcl within-day 75% 0.75019 0.75445±0.00 8 0.15 0.5679 100% 1.003 1.002±0.003 0.30004 0.099 125% 1.250 1.2574 0.00960 -0.592 between-day 75% 0.75019 0.75656±0.00 2 0.25000 -0.849 100% 1.003 1.0008 0.04600 0.21 125% 1.250 1.2558 0.06380 -0.464 amean ± standard deviation for three determinations. 4. discussion olfen ampoule is available in kurdistan region pharmacies markets and it is widely used to treat different kind of pains. the analysis of this injection till today is not available in the united states pharmacopeia, british pharmacopeia and not even in indian pharmacopeia. the combination of diclofenac sodium and lidocaine hcl injection was assessed by using reversed-phase hplc-dad in as it were one past distribution [24]. the distributed system included the application of the thermos scientific octadecasilane column as well as a flexible isocratic process consisting 80 % of methanol, 20% of water and 0.01% corrosive acid [24]. its past consideration did not illustrate the strategy's specificity and allow the two analytes to be determined from their associated compounds and objects of restrictedcorruption [35]. can resolve that shortcoming, a modern revers-phase hplc expository strategy was created and approved for assurance of both diclofenac sodium and lidocaine hcl and also to solid specific flexibility-showinginvestigation and performance certainty for diclofenac sodium with lidocaine hcl blend. its foremost imperative viewpoint within the lc strategy advancement is the accomplishment of adequate determination with satisfactory alignment of the crest at sensible examination moment. and accomplish such purpose, hplc – dad 254 nm procedure in their combined pharmaceutical dosage form for assaying dc and ld. the minimal requirement of organic solvents demonstrated simplicity as water was used as a solvent for the preparation of working standard and sample solutions. that indicates that the approach proposed is cost-effective and environmentally friendly. similarly, different from the universal uv detector 280 nm used in the previously published hplc method [35]. , kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 126 numerous studies are performed to improve as well as the fixed stages and the portable stages [35] and between the two materials with a fruitful determination of two components from the tried related substances and subsequently it was utilized in this consider [35].the mobile phase consisted of 0.1m sodium acetate and methanol and column different from the previously published hplc method [35].based on the broad run approach both diclofenac sodium and lidocaine hcl and also lead to the disadvantages of the past distributed strategies for settling the combined combination. therefore, the current investigation aims to create and approve an exact, delicate and specific spectrophotometric method and hplc procedure for measuring diclofenac sodium and lidocaine hcl in a mixture detailing in the absence of planning or handling the test. to evaluate the accuracy of the reversed-phase hplc-uv system. a recovery experiments were performed on three representative standards and two commercial drug samples. and then standard additions method (figure 5) was used for all of these determinations in order to avoid all the possible interferences [25, 26]. method consistency was recorded as a percentage of relative standard deviation, and was calculated by evaluating reproducibility (internal-day measure) for 6 duplicate injections across all lidocaine-hcl concentrations. also, the medium sensitivity (internal-day variety) was also tested over twice days utilizing an appropriate lidocaine-hcl concentration solution. the intra-day average recoveries were in the range (96-100) and interday average recoveries (93-100), which thought to be an acceptable result [27]. 5. conclusion in conclusion, the modern reverse phase higher performance liquid chromatography (hplc) technique is an easy, quick, clearly, accurately, and broadly acknowledged, and it is suggested for productive tests in a schedule work and also as a release reason within the quality control. in this manner, the strategy was demonstrated to be appropriate for diclofenac sodium and lidocaine hcl determination. further explorations are needed to investigate the standardization of each individual compound separately. therefore, this considers a depicted, selective dependable reverse-phase hplc strategy, factual examination demonstrates that the strategy is reasonable for both component in dosage form straightforwardness was outlined by minimum utilized a dissolvable for arrangement of working standard a 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[14] r. ahmed, n. lottfi, “high performance liquid chromatographic method for the determination of diclofenac sodium in pharmaceutical preparations and in environmental samples”. iraqi national journal of chemistry, (44), 467-473, 2011. [15] m. davies, e. anderson, “clinical pharmacokinetics of diclofenac”. clinical pharmacokinetics, 33(3), 184213, 1997. [16] w. jin, j. zhang, “determination of diclofenac sodium by capillary zone electrophoresis with electrochemical detection”. journal of chromatography a, 868(1), 101-107, 2000. [17] e. abdel-hamid, l. novotny, h. hamza, “determination of diclofenac sodium, flufenamic acid, indomethacin and ketoprofen by lc-apci-ms”. journal of pharmaceutical and biomedical analysis, 24(4), 587-594, 2001. [18] a. saleh, f. askal, “spectrophotometric determination of certain local anaesthetics in pharmaceutical preparations”. analytical letters, 28(15), 2663-2671, 1995. [19] ö, aksu, a. bozdoğan, g. kunt, “simultaneous determination of mepyramine maleate, lidocaine hydrochloride, and dexpanthenol in pharmaceutical preparations by partial least‐squares multivariate calibration”. analytical letters, 39(4), 751-761, 2006. [20] w. holt, y. loizou, k. wyse, “gas-liquid chromatographic measurement of lignocaine in small samples of canine myocardium after enzymatic digestion”. journal of clinical pathology, 32(3), 225-228, 1979. [21] w. ali, s. abdelwahab, m. abdelkawy, m. elgebaly, “different spectrophotometric and tlc-densitometric methods for determination of diclofenac na and lidocaine hcl”. beni-suef, cairo, egypt, 3(6), 57-64, 2013. [22] s. liawruangrath, b. liawruangrath, p. pibool, “simultaneous determination of tolperisone and lidocaine by high performance liquid chromatography”. journal of pharmaceutical and biomedical analysis, 26(5-6), 865872, 2001. [23] a. malenovic, m. medenica, d. ivanovic, b. jancic, s. markovic, “development and validation of rp– hplc method for cetrimonium bromide and lidocaine determination”. il farmaco, 60(2), 157-161, 2005. [24] w. cao, j. liu, h. qiu, x. yang, e. wang, “simultaneous determination of tramadol and lidocaine in urine by end‐column capillary electrophoresis with electrochemiluminescence detection”. electroanalysis: an international journal devoted to fundamental and practical aspects of electroanalysis, 14(22), 1571 -1576, 2002. [25] s. el-saharty, m. refaat, z. el-khateeb, “simultaneous determination of diclofenac sodium and diflunisal”. bull fac pharm cairo univ, 40, 47-64, 2002. [26] a. gottschalk, n. raja, “severing the link between acute and chronic painthe anesthesiologist's role in preventive medicine”. anesthesiology: the journal of the american society of anesthesiologists, 101(5), 1063-1065, 2004. [27] j. pavlin, c. chen, a. penaloza, l. polissar, p. buckley, “pain as a factor complicating recovery and discharge after ambulatory surgery”. anesthesia & analgesia, 95(3), 627-634, 2002. [28] l. apfelbaum, c. chen, s. mehta, j. gan, “postoperative pain experience: results from a national survey suggest postoperative pain continues to be undermanaged”. anesthesia & analgesia, 97(2), 534-540, 2003. [29] l. vigneault, f. turgeon, d. côté, f. lauzier, r. zarychanski, l. moore, a. fergusson, “perioperative intravenous lidocaine infusion for postoperative pain control: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials”. canadian journal of anesthesia/journal canadien d'anesthésie, 58(1), 22-37, 2011. [30] r. khoshayand, h. abdollahi, a. ghaffari, m. shariatpanahi, h. farzanegan, “simultaneous spectrophotometric determination of paracetamol, phenylephrine and chlropheniramine in pharmaceuticals using chemometric approaches”. daru: journal of faculty of pharmacy, tehran university of medical sciences, 18(4), 292, 2010. [31] l. vigneault, f. turgeon, d. côté, f. lauzier, r. zarychanski, l. moore, a. fergusson, “perioperative intravenous lidocaine infusion for postoperative pain control: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials”. canadian journal of anesthesia/journal canadien d'anesthésie, 58(1), 22-37, 2011. [32] r. khoshayand, h. abdollahi, a. ghaffari, m. shariatpanahi, h. farzanegan, “simultaneous spectrophotometric determination of paracetamol, phenylephrine and chlropheniramine in pharmaceuticals using chemometric approaches”. daru: journal of faculty of pharmacy, tehran university of medical sciences, 18(4), 292, 2010. [33] u. gasanov, d. hughes, m. hansbro, “methods for the isolation and identification of listeria spp. and listeria monocytogenes: a review”. fems microbiology reviews, 29(5), 851-875, 2005. [34] bhusal, p., sharma, m., harrison, j., procter, g., andrews, g., jones, d.s., hill, a.g. and svirskis, d., 2017. development, validation and application of a stability indicating hplc method to quantify lidocaine from polyethylene-co-vinyl acetate (eva) matrices and biological fluids. journal of chromatographic science, 55(8), pp.832-838. [35] belal, t.s., bedair, m.m., gazy, a.a. and guirguis, k.m., 2015. validated selective hplc -dad method for the simultaneous determination of diclofenac sodium and lidocaine hydrochloride in presence of four of their related substances and potential impurities. acta chromatographica, 27(3), pp.477-493. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 2 | july 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.2.11 prevalence of color vision deficiency among students in hajand and amad high schools in shekhan city masood abdulkareem abdulrahman duhok polytechnic university, shekhan technical college of health. drmasood89@gmail.com abstract: color vision deficiency is a condition affecting human's ability to see or recognize specific colors. it is mostly genetic, x-linked recessive inheritance and thus, is more common among males than females. this cross sectional study was done to find the prevalence of color vision deficiency among high school students in shekhan city and to find the relation of color vision deficiency with different races. the study has been conducted in two high schools that were present inside shekhan city at the time of the study (amad high school for males and hajand high school for females). all students screened by using ishihara 24 plates. 640 students (283 males, 357 females) were screened. students' age range (15-22 years), the mean age for males 17.50 years and for females 17.13 years. the prevalence of color vision deficiency was 6.36% among males and 0.84% among females. the most common types of color vision deficiency among males were deuteranomaly (10cases), protanomaly (5 cases), deuteranopia (2 cases) and protanopia (1 case). there was no significant difference between races and color vision deficiency. similar to dyslexia, before it was well known and well understood, color vision deficiency is an invisible disability and can lead to students becoming disappointment with learning or feeling that they are moronic or less cable than others. it can provide erroneous rules for learning and indeed, even influence how well they do in their exams and consecutively their choice of career. key words: color vision deficiency, ishihara color test, high school students , and shekhan city. 1. introduction color vision deficiency (cvd) is the failure to determine some colors under normal lighting circumstances. it takes place when one or more of three types of color sensitive cone cells (red, green and blue) do not perfectly gather or send the proper color signals to the optic nerve. it may be congenital or acquired. the congenital type usually inherited and linked to the x chromosome (red-green color blindness) and thus, more frequent in males than females, but also it may be commonly an autosomal dominant trait (blue-yellow color blindness) and very rarely an autosomal recessive inherited trait (achromatopsia) [1-3]. congenital type is non-pathologic, incurable, and fixed during the whole life. acquired color vision deficiency frequently results from disease or injury that damages the optic nerve or retina can also cause loss of color recognition. main diseases that can cause color deficits are diabetes, glaucoma, degenerative diseases, and the toxic effect of medications, trauma, and aging process [4]. congenital color blindness may be divided into two main types: dyschromatopsia or achromatopsia {which is either a rare condition in which no cone cells available or just one type of them}. dyschromatopsia (defect in color vision) can be classified into two main types: a. anomalous trichromatic color vision, all the three primary colors is present but there is defective for one or two of them. it may be subdivided into three types: protanomalous: it means defective red color perception. deuteranomalous: it refers to defective green color perception. -tritanomalous: it implies defective blue color perception. b. dichromatic color vision. the ability to perceive one of the three primary colors is entirely absent. it may be also subdivided into further three types: -protanopia: it means a complete red color defect. –deuteranopia: it means complete defect for green color. –tritanopia: it means the absence of blue color appreciation. red-green deficiency (protanomalous, protanopia, deuteranomalous and deuteranopia) is more common. blue deficiency (tritanomalous and tritanopia) is relatively rare [5]. the red-green type has a high prevalence in caucasian populations, commonly identified as being 8% of men and 0.4% women. it is recognized to have lower prevalence in non-caucasian populations [6]. the prevalence of cvd is 4% in japan, 6.5% in china [1], 4% in african countries, 7.3% in turkey, iran (4.7%), india (2.8% to 8.2%, ethnic variations), saudi arabia (2.9%) [7]. the prevalence of cvd in erbil province, kurdistan region has been studied by kareem and saleem in 2013.they conduct a study to find out the prevalence of cvd among students of different educational levels in erbil city. they found (8.47%) of male students and (1.37%) of female students had cvd [8]. there is no any report or document about the prevalence of cvd in duhok province, so this study was done to give an initial reference of cvd in this province especially in shekhan city, where different ethnics lived together. 2. subjects and methods this was a cross-sectional study conducted in shekhan city, duhok province, kurdistan region, iraq. shekhan city is located southeast of duhok city and is a city of coexistence of different ethnic groups, religions, and sects. in this city muslim kurds, yazidi, arabs, and christians are lived together. it's population about (57000). at the time of the study, there were two high schools inside shekhan city (amad for males and hajand for females). all students of both schools in grades 10-12 are included in the study. our major outcome measure was color vision deficiency, which was tested by using pseudo-isochromatic ishihara color http://dx.doi.org/10.24017/science.2017.2.11 mailto:drmasood89@gmail.com test; it is a quick method of screening color blinds from the normal. the ishihara book of 24 plates was caught parallel to the face at a distance of 75 cm from the student, vertical to the line of vision. the test was performed for the enrolled students in a classroom, which should be illuminated sufficiently by daylight. each plate was presented to the student for three to five seconds and they were requested to read the numbers. the student was requested to read the numbers seen on the test plates 1 to 17. an evaluation of the reading of plates 1 to 15 determines the normality or deficiency of color vision. if 13 or more plates are read precisely, the color vision considered as normal. if only nine or less than nine plates are read precisely, the color vision was considered as red green deficient. the plates 16 and 17 are used to discriminate protan and deutan types of color vision efficiency [9].if the person is unable to read numerals, plates 18-24 are used and the winding lines between the two x’s are traced. each tracing should be completed within ten seconds. the answers given by the persons were documented in a specially prepared questionnaire form, which contains information like age, class, and type of red-green deficiency (if observed). in addition to this, other information is obtained like ethnicity, religion, the degree of relationship (consanguinity) between parents, data were entered and analyzed using software program statistical package for the social sciences version 23. frequency, percentage, means and standard deviation were used for categorical variables. chisquare tests were used to assess statistical significances. a p-value of ≤ 0.05 regarded as statistically significant. 3. results overall of 640 persons including (283) male students and (357) female students, their age ranged between 15 to 22 years, finished the study. mean age of males (17.50) years and females (17.13) years. distribution of students according to scholastic years (classes) were 218(34.1%), 189(29.5%) and 233(36.4%) for stage10-12 respectively. ethnic distribution of the population was (84.4 %) kurdish muslim, (15.2%) yazidi and (0.5%) christians. the degree of parents’ relationship (consanguinity) has been assessed. parents with first, second and third-degree cousin-hood regarded as closely related, and others regarded as with no any close relationship. 17.8 % of students have parents with a close relationship. kurdish muslim has the highest percentage 39.3% .table.1. table 1.distribution of study sample by religion and consanguinity. ethnics parents with closed relationship total yes no no. % no. % no. % kurdish muslim 212 39.3 328 60.7 540 100.0 christian 1 33.3 2 66.7 3 100.0 yazidi 29 29.9 68 70.1 97 100.0 total 242 37.8 398 62.2 640 100.0 the study showed that the prevalence rate of cvd among male students in amad high school in shekhan city was (6.36%) and among female students in hajand high school was (0.84%). eighteen cases of cvd are kurdish muslims, 3 cases yazidian and no cases of cvd are reported among christian students. there is no significant statistical association between different ethnic groups and prevalence of cvd (p. value =0.943). table .2. table 2. distribution of studied population and cases of cvd according to ethnic groups and gender. ethnic groups no. of screened students cvd n (%) p . v a lu e male female male female kurdish muslim 244 296 16(6.56) 2(0.68) 0 .9 4 3 yazidi 37 60 2(5.41) 1(1.67) christian 2 1 0 0 total 283 357 18(6.36) 3(0.84) cases of cvd among male students are distributed into four types of color blindness: 5 (1.77%) red color weakness (protanomaly), 10 (5.53%) green color weakness (deuteranomaly), 1(0.35%) red color deficiency (protanopia) and 2(0.71%) green color deficiency (deuteranopia), while female students are distributed into only two types 1 (0.28%) protanomaly and 2(0.56%) deuteranomaly. table.3. table 3. distribution of students according to the gender, types and severity of cvd. gender no. of screened students cvd n (%) protanomaly n (%) deuteranomaly n (%) protanopia n (%) deutanopia n (%) male 283 18 (6.36) 5 (1.77) 10 (3.53) 1(0.35) 2(0.71) female 357 3 (0.84) 1(0.28) 2(0.56) 0 0 total 640 21(3.28) 6 (0.94) 12 (1.87) 1(0.16) 2(0.31) table.4. shows that up to (57.12%) of cases of cvd have closed relationship parents’ and (42.86%) have not close relationship parents, but this difference is not statistically significant (p. value =0.07). table 4. relation of cases of cvd with parents’ relationship. parents’ close relationship cvd total p. value yes no yes 12 (57.12%) 230 242 .070 no 9 (42.86%) 389 398 total 21 619 640 4. discussion ishihara plates can only be used to detect and classify red-green color vision deficiencies, which are the most common types of cvd. ishihara test has the mean sensitivity of 96%, the mean specificity of 98.5%, in addition to it revealed good retest reliability [10]. the color vision deficient person will not just confuse red and green. because the peak of sensitivity of red and green cone cells is very close to each other. these persons will be unable to discriminate any colors, which contain red or green, for example, they will ‘see’ purple as blue because they cannot perceive the red part of the light spectrum, which is added to blue to form the color purple. thus, all reds, greens, oranges, browns, purples, blues and grays will be impossible to identify precisely [11]. this study revealed that prevalence of cvd among male students was (6.36), three previous studies from iraq showed results near to this study result , prevalence rate among the students of erbil city of (8.47) , among adults in baghdad (6.75), and (8.19) among children from basrah province[8,12,13]. results from all these studies situated within the anticipated range for caucasian males; about 8.0–10.0% of the caucasian male population is affected [14]. cvd prevalence in neighboring countries are either lower or higher than this study results as (8.72) in jordan [15] , in iran, three studies are done in different cities in qazvin, zanjan , and tehran, the prevalence of cvd were varied from 3.49 to 8.7 and 8.8 respectively[16-18],7.3% in turkey[19], and 2.9-11% in saudi arabia[20-21]. in some european countries, in three different studies, the prevalence of cvd among male students in germany were (7.8), (7.95) among males in greek and (8.7) among males in denmark [22-24]. in many studies, only males were selected for detecting prevalence of cvd in the population, as the prevalence of cvd among males may give a nearly precise estimate about prevalence of cvd among female population in accordance with the hardyweinberg equilibrium. in view of cvd, is not a lethal condition, the prevalence should last consistent in a randomly mating population [25]. the prevalence of cvd among female participants in the present study (0.84) is near to other studies done elsewhere. abundant random population surveys reveal that the prevalence of cvd in european caucasians is about 0.4% in women [1], in the usa was found to be 0.4-07% [10], 0.83 among indian population[26]. the present study showed that most cases of cvd among males of deutans type 4.24 (green weakness and red deficiency) and protans 2.12 (red weakness and deficiency) with deutans/protans ratio 2:1. most studies worldwide showed that cases of deutans more than protans types. in large study in india, researchers found that 7.95% deutans and 3.22% protans [26], in jordan, 12 of cases of deutan and 7 cases of protans[15], in nepal , 16 cases out of 19 cases of deutan types [27] , in study done in philippine , (78.95%)of cases of cvd of deutan types[28]. in erbil, cases of deutans are slightly more than cases of protans [8].while a turkish study has reported about 5.10% protans and 2.23% deutans among male [29]. because, the cvd is inherited the condition, its allocation is likely to be changeable among ethnic groups. although, the percentage distributions of cvd among ethnics groups in our study were found different and (57.12%) of cases of cvd had parents closely related (consanguineous marriages) but both are statistically not significant. however, shah et al found high prevalence of cvd among indian muslim population which may be related to higher percentages of consanguineous marriages[30], dahlan and mostafa investigated cvd among male secondary students in jizan city in saudi arabia , they found significantly higher prevalence of cvd among students who parents’ were closely related[31]. kareem and saleem concluded that there was no any significant differences among different ethnics in erbil city for both male and female students regarding the prevalence of cvd [8], another study conducted in china concluded that no significant difference was detected in the prevalence of cvd in males between uygur and han nationalities [32]. in the usa, a population-based study revealed that significant ethnicity-related differences in the distribution of cvd among male preschools [33]. cvd is recently being argued. youth need to know their accurate color vision status before making career choices [34]. cole [35] emphasized that students should know if they have cvd so they can be assisted more promptly to find adaptive strategies when they planning for their future career. 5. conclusion the prevalence of cvd among males and females in this study is near to that of caucasian populations. similar to dyslexia, before it was well known and well understood, cvd is an invisible disability and can lead to students becoming disappointment with learning or feeling that they are moronic or less cable than others. it can provide erroneous rules for learning and indeed, even influence how well they do in their exams and consecutively their choice of career. planning for the involvement of 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[35] b.l. cole “impact of congenital color vision deficiency does cause problems” bmj, 330.pp. 96, 2005. acknowledgments the author would like to thank all the participants for their cooperation and with, special thanks for bangeen sa, saadi ms, ismail sm, and nazem hs for assisting in data collection, also thankful to all the staffs and students of various schools, who help us and who were participated as subjects in this study. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/23523042 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/23523042/2/2 http://refhub.elsevier.com/s2352-3042(15)00021-5/sref18 http://refhub.elsevier.com/s2352-3042(15)00021-5/sref18 http://refhub.elsevier.com/s2352-3042(15)00021-5/sref18 http://refhub.elsevier.com/s2352-3042(15)00021-5/sref18 http://refhub.elsevier.com/s2352-3042(15)00021-5/sref18 http://refhub.elsevier.com/s2352-3042(15)00021-5/sref18 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=shah%20a%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=23515069 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=hussain%20r%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=23515069 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=fareed%20m%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=23515069 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=afzal%20m%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=23515069 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=prevalence+of+red-green+color+vision+defects+among+muslim+males+and+females+of+manipur%2c+india https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=qian%20ys%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=19573333 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=abudureheman%20z%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=19573333 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=aximu%20a%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=19573333 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=muhamat%20p%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=19573333 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=yasen%20g%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=19573333 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=aili%20m%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=19573333 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19573333 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=xie%20jz%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=24702753 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=xie%20jz%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=24702753 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=lin%20j%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=24702753 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=lin%20j%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=24702753 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=torres%20m%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=24702753 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=torres%20m%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=24702753 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=varma%20r%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=24702753 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/elink.fcgi?dbfrom=pubmed&retmode=ref&cmd=prlinks&id=24702753 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/elink.fcgi?dbfrom=pubmed&retmode=ref&cmd=prlinks&id=24702753  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 1 | june 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.1.4 a new species of the bee, anthophora latreille, 1803(hymenoptera: apidae) from kurdistan region-iraq nabeel a. mawlood plant protection dept, college of agriculture, university of salahaddin, erbil, iraq nabeel.mawlood@su.edu.kr havall m. amin plant protection dept, sulaimani polytechnicuniversity, sulaimani, iraq havall.amin@spu.edu.iq abstract: a new species of the family apidae, anthophora sulaimanensis sp. nov. is described; main parts illustrated and got comparisons with its nearly related species from iraq-kurdistan region. the species is characterized by mandibles black, bi dentate; labrum black with two brown sculptures on lateral basal sides; clypeus without sculpture; marginal cell of the fore wings broadly rounded apically, strongly bent away from wing margin. the important taxonomic parts have been drawn. localities, plant visiting and collections date have been mentioned. keywords: hymenoptera, apidae, new species, anthophora latreille, kurdistan region-iraq. 1. introduction the largest family of bees is apidae, about 5.700 species described [2]. larvae and adult of bees are plant eaters, use nectar for energy and pollen for protein [4]. bees play a great role in pollination of natural flowering plants, and that is strange to whom not specialist. [8]. they benefit people by increasing food security, improving livelihoods, and by this role they play in conserving biological diversity in agricultural and natural ecosystems [6]. anthophora latreille,1803 is one of very important genus of the family. the bee genus anthophora is one of the largest in the family apidae, with over 450 species worldwide in 14 different subgenera. they are most abundant and diverse in the holarctic and african biogeographic regions. they are solitary bees, however most of them make a nest in large aggregations. nearly all species make nests in the soil, either in banks or in flat ground; the larvae develop in cells with waterproof linings and do not spin cocoons. anthophora individuals can be distinguished from the very similar genus amegilla by the possession of an arolium between the tarsal claws[7]. genus anthophora latreille,1803 revised for the first time in the west indies brooks(1999). in iraq, derwesh (1965) recorded 24 species of the family, included anthophora crinipes smith ,anthophora fulvitarsis (br.). abdul-rassoul (1976) mentioned four species, anthophora crinipes violacea l. . shali and fat-hullalh (1986) recorded five species in sulaimani governorate. type material: (holotype) (♀), iraq-kurdistan region sulaymanyah (qandil), 350 km n baghdad, 11. may. 2014 from cape bugloss, anchusa strigosa; leg haval m. amin; paratype (1 ♂♂ 5 ♀♀): from same locality and dates; the holotype is kept in the insect museum of college of plant protection department-agriculture salahaddin-university-erbil,kurdistan region-iraq. figure 1 anthophora sulaimanensis sp. nov a. mandible b.labrum c.maxilla d.maxillary palp e. labium f. antenna smith, anthophora fulvitarsis brulle, apis mellifera l. g. forewing h.6th abdominal sternite and xylocopa fenestrate fabricius. swailem et al.(1974) recorded five species, anthophora sp., apis mellifera l., xylocopa olivieri lep., xylocopa pubesceus, xylocopa i.7th abdominal sternite. mailto:nabeel.mawlood@su.edu.kr mailto:havall.amin@spu.edu.iq https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/apidae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/pupa#cocoon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/amegilla https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/arolium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/arthropod_leg diagnosis: anthophora sulaimanensis sp.nov.: this species differs from closely related species anthophora agama by the following characters: clypeus without sculpture, mandibles bi dentate, outer denticle indistinct, body length is 12.1-12.3mm. anthophora sulaimanensis sp.nov. description: female body: slender, black, slightly convex, body length 12.1-12.3 mm. head: wider than long, black, without yellow sculpture, broadened, sharply bent away from wing margin. basal vein straight 1.1 times as long as length of marginal cell, three submarginal cells, 2r-m strongly arched, 1st submarginal cell about 1.7 times longer than 2nd and 3rd submarginal cells separetly. metatibia and metabasitarsus densely white and black setose, metatibia with apical margin without comb of setae (rastellum), hind tibial spurs present. pretarsi with arolia. abdomen: nearly slender, dark brown-black, have six visible sternites, surface finely punctuate and densely setae, tergites with white and yellow hair bands apically, th much broader than long, length 3.00-3.2 mm, width 4.4 4.7 mm. eyes oval, brown, densely short setae, inner anterior margin of 6 anterior margin of 7th sternite(figure 1h) concave and sternite(figure 1 i)convex and orbital margin strongly convex, upper inter orbital distance 2.7 mm, lower inter orbital distance 2.7 mm. vertex slightly convex, densely black setae. frons strongly convex, sparsely black setae. facial fovea absent. clypeus convex, black, without yellow sculpture, coarsely punctuate, sparsely short yellow setae, much broader than length, posterior margin strongly concave. malar space narrow. mandible (figure1 a) black, bi dentate, 1.7-1.9 mm length, densely long yellow setae laterally, the base is slightly broader than an apex. labrum (fig.1 b) nearly circular, black, two brown sculptures on lateral basal sides, 1.2-1.3 mm length, impunctuate, surface densely short black setae, apical margin densely short yellow setae, posterior margin strongly convex at the middle, anterior margin slightly convex. maxilla (figure 1c) dark brown, stipes oval inner margin densely yellow setae, with comb in strong concavity of posterior stipital margin. lacinia present, scale-like lobe with hairs near base of galea.galea with postpalpal part greatly elongated, usually longer than stipes, sparsely yellow setae. maxillary palp (figure 1d) six segmented, 2nd segment 3.3 times as long as 1st segment, sparsely setae, 3rd segment 2 times as long as 4th segment, sparsely setae, 5th segment 1.2 times longer than 6th segment, without setae. labium, yellow(figure 1e), 1st and 2nd segments of labial palpi elongate and flattened , 3rd segment cup shaped, 4th segment tubular, 1st segment about 4.6 times as long as 2nd segment, densely yellow setae, 3rd and 4th segments short nearly equal in size, without setae. glossa long, densely short yellow setae, pointed at apex. paraglossa short membranous. antenna (figure 1f) black, consist 12 segments ,1st segment oval , 5 times as long as 2nd segment , 3rd segment tubular shaped 6.5 times as long as the 4th ,the segment 5-7 nearly square same length ,12th segment oval , 1.1 times as long as 11th segment. thorax: pronotum darkbrown, densely yellow and black setae, posterior margin strongly concave, anterior margin slightly concave. prosternum dark brown, impunctuate, densely yellow setae, posterior margin slightly convex, anterior margin strongly concave. mesonotum round, black, finely punctuate, densely yellow setae, anterior and posterior margin strongly convex. axillae round. mesosternum, dark brown, finely punctuate, densely yellow setae. metanotum dark brown, densely yellow setae. propodeum nearly rectangular, dark brown-black, finely punctuate, densely yellow setae, anterior and posterior margin concave. fore wing yellow (figure 1g), length 10.3-10.5 mm, marginal cell with apex invaginated at the middle. male: unknown 2. references [1] abdul-rassoul,“checklist of iraq natural history museum insect collection,” nat. hist. res. cent. iraq. pub.no., 30: 41pp, 1976. [2] j. s. ascher, and j. pickering,“discover life bee species guide and world checklist (hymenoptera: apoidea: anthophila),” in discover life. university of georgia; athens, georgia, 2013. http://www.discover life. [3] r. w. brooks,”bees of the genus anthophora latreille 1803 (hymenoptera: apidae: anthophorini) of the west indies,”. tropical zoology ., 12: 105-124, 1999. [4] delaplane, k. s. and mayer, d. e.,”crop pollination by bees,” cabi publishing; wallingford, 2000. [5] a. i.derwesh,” a preliminary list of identified insects and some arachnids of iraq,”direct. gen. agri. res. and proj. baghdad. iraq. bull. , 112: 123 pp, 1965. [6] c. eardley, d. roth, j. clarke, s. buchmann, and b. gemmill, “pollinators and pollination: a resource book for policy and practice,” african pollinator initiative, african research council, plant protection research institute, pretoria, south africa, 2006. [7] c.d. michener, the bees of the world.the johns hopkins university press baltimore and london, 913pp, 2000. [8] c.d. michener, the bees of the world. johns hopkins university press baltimore, md.,953 pp, 2007. [9] r. a. shali, and b. s. fat-hullah,”list of identified insects and arachnids of sulaimany region,”.state board for applied agricultural research-plant protection research-bakrajo., 63pp, 1986. [10] s. m.swailem, a. a. selim, and a.h. amin, “acontribution to the study of the insect fauna of hammam al-ali,” part i, mesopotamioa j. agric., 9 (1-2):119-141, 1974. acknowledgment we sincerely thank the specialist assist. prof. dr. ali raza monfared in yasuj university-iran for their kind helps in identifying of this species. we deeply express my gratitude to pro. dr. mohammed s. abdul rassoul in division of entomology, natural history research center-university of baghdad / iraq for his kind help and continuous encouragement to this work. authors prof. dr. nabeel a. mawlood specialist: entomology insect taxonomy.academic qualificatio ns: b.sc. in plant protection, college of agriculture, mosul university/ iraq (1980). msc. in plant protec tion, college of agriculture, baghdad university /iraq (1985). phd. plant protection, college of agriculture, baghdad university/iraq (2001). havall m. amin specialist: entom-ology insect taxonomy. academic qualifications: diploma; plant protection . sulaimani techniacal institute, sulaimani polytechnic university (2003). b.sc. plant prot-ection, college of agriculture, salahaddin university/erbil (2007). msc. plant protection, college of agriculture ,salahaddin university/erbil (2015)  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq study of uplink interference in umts network: asiacell company, iraq bakhtiar ali karim bzhar rahaman othmaan communications engineering communications engineering technical college of engineering technical college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq bakhtiar.ali@spu.edu.iq bzhar.rahman@spu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.1.7 article history: received: 04 april 2020 accepted: 07 june 2020 universal mobile telecommunications system (umts), is the third generation (3g) of mobile communication which is based on the wideband code division multiple access (w-cdma) radio access to provide bandwidth and spectral efficiency. interference in 3g system is significantly lower compared to the preceded generations. however, it does not mean 3g is free from the issues associated with interferences, such as low signal quality and call drop. the interference level in umts can be measured by using the well-known parameter received total wideband power (rtwp). this parameter is affected by many factors such as number of the users connected to the system, combining second generation (2g) and 3g frequencies within the same geographical area, geographical causes (difference of altitude), and hardware impairment. in this paper we intensively study how these factors affect the uplink interference level (i.e. rtwp value) in 3g system used by a particular telecommunications company, asiacell company, iraq. the obtained data shows that call drop is the most serious issue raised due to high value of rtwp in 3g system. we demonstrate that system enhancement, in terms of lower rtwp level, are obtained by adding second carrier to the sites, separating 2g band from 3g band using special filter, and optimizing the hardware components. keywords: rtwp, umts, interference, 3g. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 138 1. introduction telecommunication sectors and the internet are integrated quickly due to the rapid developments made in communications technologies. merging these two sectors and the needs for “all ip” services realize 3g system to fulfill the requirements [1]. the european standard for 3g known as universal mobile telecommunication systems (umts) introduced by two standard bodies etsi in europe and arjb in japan. umts is considered as an evolution in terms of increasing communications speed and service types. umts is an interference limited system that the signal of each user introduces severe interferences for others if there is a lack of orthogonality among their codes [2]. the growing demands for high data connectivity and wireless internet access are addressed in umts which guarantees up to 384 kbps and 2 mbps data rates for moving users and stationary users respectively. compared to the second generation (2g), umts are introduced not only to guarantee higher speed, but also variety new services to the mobile users including access to broadcast tv, web browsing, email, and fax in addition to global roaming capability [3]. 3g system built based on the gsm standard because market was dominated by gsm technology before the invention of umts [4]. different studies have been conducted in literature regarding uplink interference in 3g system [5-10]. other-cell interferences under different model of propagations are presented in [5-6]. the authors assumed that fixed and equal number of users, who are evenly spread, exist at each cell. the focuses of the authors in [5] is on the first moment, while [6] investigates the second moment of other-cell interferences. in [7] various analytical methods are developed to characterize the other-cell interference in umts network. authors of [8] introduced an effective interference management method for 3g network integrated with femtocells, in which adaptive attenuation technique at the femtocells is proposed to mitigate uplink interferences. according to their results not only coverage, but also capacity enhancement can be achieved when this technique is applied to a network combined of 3g and femtocells. authors in [9] proposed an uplink interference cancelation (ic) scheme known as post decoding ic. they stated that the high quality channel estimation is one of the primary requirements to provide efficient ic technique in w-cdma/hspa receivers. path-gain based uplink interference estimation technique is studied in [10]. the method is based on the combination between input and the average estimated interference power, which is obtained from the knowledge of the path gain matrix, over specific period and the technique works well under various situations. none of the mentioned works stated the reasons and the consequences of uplink interferences on a particular system, instead they analyzed new techniques in general. thus, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this type of work has not been studied in this form in literature. therefore, this work is different from all the works done before in terms of the way the research is conducted (we practically collected the data for a specific umts system used by asiacell company in sulaimani city, iraq) and the content of the obtained results. the rest of the paper is organized as follows: section two explains interference clarifications, particularly inter-cell and intra-cell interferences, in umts network. in section three, the consequences of interferences and the factors that cause increasing rtwp level, in umts system used by asiacell company are analyzed, and the obtained results are presented and comprehensively discussed. the final section summarizes the main points of the paper. 2. interference in umts system 2.1 architecture of umts network three main parts mentioned below form the general architecture of umts system: kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 139 figure 1: umts network architecture overview [11] 2.1.1 user equipment (ue) eu is the name of the device directly used by the end user and it is the corresponding name of mobile station (ms) used in 2g. 2.1.2 radio network subsystem (rns) rns in 3g called umts terrestrial radio access network (utran), it is the equivalent part of the base station subsystem (bss) in gsm network. rns compromises of base stations and radio network controller (rnc) which provides and manages the air interface between ue and the core network. 2.1.3 core network (cn) the cn is the main part of the umts network which provides the services to the end users. circuit switched and packet switched communication services are supported by umts cn. cn has the functionality done by network switching subsystem (nss) in gsm. different type of networks, such as public switching telephone network pstn, are interfaced to the cn to support different communication protocols. ggsn msc sgsn gmsc auc hlr eir umts core network to public networks . plmn, pstn, isdn, psdn to rnsto rns figure 2: umts core network [11] kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 140 2.2 interferences interference is a phenomenon that occurs in wire and wireless communication systems when two or more signals having the same characteristics pass through the shared medium. the result of this phenomenon is the corruption of the wanted signals by undesired signals. this issue has been the main barrier in front of communication-system designers to optimize the system. 2.2.1 interference classification in cellular network generally interference has different forms [12]:  radio frequency interference (rfi): this is a type of interference, also called electromagnetic interference (emi), is introduced in a wireless system when a nearby external rf source, such as tv or radio transmitter, operates on the same frequency. to avoid the wireless systems from this type of interference, it is crucial to have a sufficient geographical space between the rf sources operating on the same frequency bands.  electrical interference (el): this category of interference is generated by electrical equipment, such as digital devices, computers, lighting systems. this form of interference is not intentional since nobody take advantages out of it.  intermodulation (im): this class of interference is created by the system itself rather than external sources. the im is generated in a nonlinear system due to unwanted combination of different type of signals which produces new and undesired frequencies. this newly generated frequencies will negatively affect the adjacent systems. generally, nonlinear power amplifiers are considered as an active source of im. 2.2.2 interference in umts network due to using cdma technique, interference in 3g is lower than that in the 2g network. however, it does not mean the interference in umts system is negligible. since 3g is an interference-limited system, interference analysis is the primary criteria to evaluate the performance of umts network. generally, the total interference within a particular system composed of intra-cell and inter-cell interferences which are introduced at each uplink and downlink scenarios [13] [14].  intra-cell interference in the uplink, all the other mobile users, who are in the coverage region of a single base station (bs), cause intra-cell interference to the connected user. whereas, in the downlink scenario, the home bs introduces this type of interference to a user. this is due to the absence of orthogonality, which is caused by the multipath effect, among the served mobile users [15].  inter-cell interference in the uplink scenario, inter-cell inference is the total of the signals received from all users located in a cell other than the cell the mobile user connected to. while in the downlink, this type of interference is the result of receiving signals from surrounding bss [15]. both type of interferences in uplink and downlink scenarios are illustrated in the following figures. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 141 figure 3: inter-cell and intra-cell interferences in downlink scenario figure 4: inter-cell and intra-cell interferences in uplink scenario 2.2.3 internal and external interferences. interference can also be categorized as internal and external interferences:  internal interferences this interference occurs due to fault in the equipment. the following factors are the main causes for the internal interference [16]: o if the antenna connector is not screwed properly (too loose or too tight) o if there are too much bending or damages in the antenna feeder. o if power amplifiers are spurious. the following characteristics are observed from this class of interference [16]: o rtwp value for the main path and diversity path are different, whereas it is the same for different frequencies. o the data traffic and the interference are correlated. in the other words, with the absence of traffic there is a low probability of having interference in the system.  external interferences interference could be happening due to some external sources that use frequencies close to the bands used by umts network operators. the external sources can be phone jammers or any microwave transmission devices or illegal use of umts band by other operators. this class of interference has the following characteristics [12]: o in normal cases, rtwp value is the same for both main path and diversity path o in cellular systems, cells with geographical proximity are also affected by this type of interference. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 142 the focus of our paper is on the uplink interference since it is easier to measure and collecting data from base transceiver stations (btss) is far less complex compared to the data collection at the ue (for downlink interference data need to be collected from ue). additionally, there is no a reliable way to measure rtwp level at ue from the radio access network control center at asiacell company, whereas reliable data from the btss can be achieved easily. in this paper, in addition to the consequences of high rtwp value, we analysis the factors that affect the rtwp level which is the basic criteria to measure the uplink interferences in the umts system. 3. results and discussion 3.1 rtwp values one of the more realistic measures to obtain the total noise level within a particular cell of 3g/umts system is rtwp value. this criterion is related to the uplink interference which is the main reason for call drop in umts network. 106 105 104 103 102 101 100 99 98 97 96 95 94 93 92 91 90 89 87 86 85 84 -105 -95 -85 normal uplink interference strong uplink interference mean ptwp (dbm) figure 5: rtwp ranges as shown in the figure 5, rtwp around -105 dbm is a normal situation and denotes that the uplink interference is under control. rtwp value close to -95 dbm indicates that there is an acceptable level of uplink interference. whereas, -85 dbm shows a strong interference in the system that needs to be resolved since it causes problem for the desired signals. the measures of rtwp value can be low, medium, and high. the maximum and minimum values, however, are used only as references since these values may be caused by the high access level in the network. therefore, the value that we focus on in this paper and has most accurate information is the mean rtwp value. to illustrate that we have measured rtwp for two different sites which has different values as shown in figure 6. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 143 figure 6: normal and high rtwp values according to the result in figure 6, sitea-a2 has lower rtwp while sitea-a1 has higher rtwp. thus, uplink interference in sitea-a2 is comparatively less than that in sitea-a1. this could be due to one of the reasons explained in the following sections. 3.2 the problem introduced due to high value of rtwp one of the main issues introduced due to high rtwp value and degrades quality of services (qos) is the call drop. to illustrate that we have measured mean rtwp and call drop rate within a particular cell in asiacell company as shown in the figure 7. figure 7: call drop rate due to high rtwp level the figure clearly shows that rtwp values directly affect call drop rate. call drop is close to 2 when rtwp was near -100 dbm. however, when rtwp reaches -80 dbm, highest call drop rate has been recorded which is nearly 25 calls. the figure also shows that with highest call drop rate the average number of the serving users fall to the lowest number (from over 60 users to under 20 users). 3.3 the factors of increasing rtwp in asiacell company: in umts system, the value of rtwp may be affected by several reasons including the number of users connected to the system, using part of 2g frequency in 3g, geographical reasons, and hardware impairment. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 144 3.3.1 number of users increasing number of subscribers results high uplink interference, thus high value of rtwp. to confirm that, we have calculated mean rtwp within different times while the number of the connected users, to the system, vary as shown in figure below. figure 8: increasing rtwp due to increasing number of users. from the figure 8, it can be observed that when the number of users is minimum (about 3 users per site), lowest value of rtwp has been recorded which is under -100 dbm. whereas, the number of users reaches just under 50, the rtwp value jumped to – 90 dbm. therefore, number of users has direct effect on the uplink interference in 3g system. one way to solve this problem is adding second carrier to the cell which has high rtwp. through this way, the connected users will be divided into two frequency bands rather than one. consequently, the interference between the users will be decreased, thus results lower rtwp value. we have investigated this approach lower and stable rtwp values has been recorded. figure 9: rtwp reduction due to adding second carrier. as shown in the figure 9 due to adding second carrier, rtwp stayed under -100 dbm for the entire period even though number of users fluctuate in this sites. this is a clear indication that rtwp can be controlled by using extra carrier in the same site. however, when applying this method, the spectrum-limitation problem needs to be considered. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 145 3.3.2 using part of 2g frequency bands for 3g in asiacell company, part of the 2g spectrum, around 900 mhz, are re-used in the 3g system. in some areas, for special reasons, 3g spectrum are also re-used for 2g system at the same site or neighboring sites. the interferences caused by combination of 2g and 3g bands result higher rtwp values as shown in figure below. figure 10: high rtwp values due to re-using 2g spectrum within 3g sites from the figure it can be seen that rtwp is between -79 dbm and – 87 dbm. this is unacceptable range of uplink interference and significantly affect the qos. to address the problem of 2g and 3g bands interferences, it is required to add a special filter into the 3g sites to filter out all frequency bands except 3g band. to prove that we have compared the rtwp values of two sites, one with filter and another without filter. as shown in the figure 11, the site which has no filter experiences higher value of rtwp compared to the one with filter. figure 11: rtwp reduction due to using filter in 3g sites to reject 2g bands (sitea-a1 without filter, sitea-a2 with filter) the figure depicts that the rtwp was kept lower, about -105 dbm in average, in sitea-a2 due to filtering out 2g spectrum. whereas, rtwp stayed high, approximately -83 dbm in average, in sitea-a1 because of not using filters to separate 2g band from 3g bands. it is noticeable that figure 6 and figure 11 look similar but they are presented for different purposes. the former one aims to show that rtwp level is vary from one site to another, kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 146 whereas the later one confirms the fact that rtwp value can be minimized using special filter in the sites. 3.3.3 geographical causes (difference of altitude) in this research we focused on the specific area, sulaimani city, iraq. naturally, the city has significant differences in altitude from one place to another. such that the east part of the city has higher altitude compared to the west part as shown in the figure 12. therefore, if the problem is not solved through tilting the signals of the cells located east of the city propagate towards the cells located west of the city. consequently, due to this issue the cells at the west part of the city experience higher rtwp thus higher uplink interferences. figure 12: difference altitude between east and west of sulaimani city asiacell company has tackled this problem by arranging the azimuth and tilt of the antennas that is suitable with the geographical nature of the city. therefore, no data has been recorded since this problem does not exist in the asiacell company. 3.3.4 hardware causes during our research in asiacell company, we have also observed that malfunction of some hardware equipment, such as rru, filters, cables, and jumpers, causes problems for signal transmission and reception, and this results increasing rtwp. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 147 figure 13: high rtwp due to hardware impairments the result indicates that the rtwp value is high (higher than normal range) since the site x1 has problem in its hardware components. due to time constraint and other technical reasons, we would not be able to measure the data of site x1 after repairing the hardware impairments, meanwhile the hardware faults at site x2 had already been solved. therefore, the data was collected at site x2, not site x1, to indicate the effect of hardware cause on rtwp level. figure 14: lowering rtwp after repairing hardware equipment this result indicates that the rtwp value retuned into its normal range as the malfunction of the hardware components has been resolved. 4. conclusion in this paper interference in 3g system particularly uplink interference in umts network has been studied. the primary focus of the paper has been on the factors that influence rtwp value, thus the uplink interference, in the umts system used by asiacell company. it has been proven -107 -105 -103 -101 -99 -97 -95 2 0 1 8 -0 5 -1 2 0 0 :0 0 2 0 1 8 -0 5 -1 2 0 5 :0 0 2 0 1 8 -0 5 -1 2 1 0 :0 0 2 0 1 8 -0 5 -1 2 1 5 :0 0 2 0 1 8 -0 5 -1 2 2 0 :0 0 2 0 1 8 -0 5 -1 3 0 1 :0 0 2 0 1 8 -0 5 -1 3 0 6 :0 0 2 0 1 8 -0 5 -1 3 1 1 :0 0 2 0 1 8 -0 5 -1 3 1 6 :0 0 2 0 1 8 -0 5 -1 3 2 1 :0 0 2 0 1 8 -0 5 -1 4 0 2 :0 0 2 0 1 8 -0 5 -1 4 0 7 :0 0 2 0 1 8 -0 5 -1 4 1 2 :0 0 2 0 1 8 -0 5 -1 4 1 7 :0 0 2 0 1 8 -0 5 -1 4 2 2 :0 0 2 0 1 8 -0 5 -1 5 0 3 :0 0 2 0 1 8 -0 5 -1 5 0 8 :0 0 2 0 1 8 -0 5 -1 5 1 3 :0 0 2 0 1 8 -0 5 -1 5 1 8 :0 0 2 0 1 8 -0 5 -1 5 2 3 :0 0 2 0 1 8 -0 5 -1 6 0 4 :0 0 2 0 1 8 -0 5 -1 6 0 9 :0 0 site x2 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 148 that high rtwp value results higher call drop rate, therefore, reducing number of the serving users within a particular cell. the presented results have shown that rtwp level is proportional to the number of connected users to a dedicated cell. high rtwp level has been recorded as the number of user increase. this problem, however, can be addressed by adding second carrier to the cell. re-using gsm frequency bands for umts system also causes high rtwp value. using filter in umts sites for receiving desired signals has been shown as a solution for such problem. geographical causes and hardware impairments also play a noticeable role at determining rtwp level in umts network. reference [1] c. kappler, “umts networks and beyond”, john wiley & sons; 2009. [2] g. paschos, et al., “the impact of intermodulation interference in superimposed 2g and 3g wireless networks and optimization issues of the provided qos”, the impact of intermodulation interference in superimposed 2g and gr/archive/papers. 2003. [3] m. kyum, et al., “performance analysis of umts cellular network using sectorization based on capacity and coverage”, international journal of advanced computer science and applications, 2(6), pp. 98-104, 2011. [4] g. he, overview of umts. telecommunication software and multimedia laboratory, helsinki university of technology. 2001. [5] k. gilhousen, et al., “on the capacity of a cellular cdma system”, ieee transactions on vehicular technology, 40(2), pp. 303–312, 1991. [6] k. kim, “cdma cellular engineering issues”, ieee transactions on vehicular technology, 42(3), pp. 345 – 350, 1993. [7] t. liu and e. david, "interference and outage probability evaluation in umts network capacity planning", european transactions on telecommunications, pp. 651-660, 2007. [8] m. yavuz, et al., “interference management and performance analysis of umts/hspa+ femtocells”, ieee communications magazine, 47(9), pp. 102-109, 2009. [9] s. sambhwani, w. zhang, and w. zeng, “uplink interference cancellation in hspa: principles and practice”. qualcomm inc. 2009. [10] eg. lundin, “uplink admission control based on estimated interference in wcdma systems”, master's thesis completed at communications systems, linkopings universitet, sweden. 2001. [11] h. kaaranen, et al., “umts networks: architecture, mobility and services”, john wiley & sons; 2005. [12] a.springer, et al., "effects of nonlinear amplifier distortion on umts transmitter system performance," paris, in european conference on wireless technologies, 2000. [13] i. iskandar, i. setyawan, and h. nuraini, “inter-cell interference management technique for multi-cell ltea network”, international journal of electrical and computer engineering; 7(5), pp. 2696-2705, 2017. [14] y.a. adediran, h. lasisi, and ob. okedere, “interference management techniques in cellular networks: a review”, cogent engineering, 4(1):1294133, 2017. [15] y. chen, "soft handover issues in radio resource management for 3g wcdma networks", phd diss., 2003. [16] n.b. carvalho and j.c pedro, "multi-tone intermodulation distortion performance of 3rd order microwave circuits" 1999 ieee mtt-s international microwave symposium digest (cat. no. 99ch36282). vol. 2. ieee, 1999.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq characteristics and risk factors for polycystic ovarian syndrome among females bakhtyar kamal muhammad anesthesia department technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq bakhtyar.talabany@spu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.1.14 article history: received : 29 march 2020 accepted : 15 may 2020 polycystic ovary syndrome (pcos) is a major endocrinal syndrome may affect the female at adult ages. in polycystic ovary, the ovarian seen that are enlarged and the investigation may base on ultra-sonographic detection. polycystic ovarian syndrome always represents a spectrum of syndrome rather than the diseases. also clinically presented by polycystic on ovarian and generally demonstrated by reversible. 104 female patients were examined, 18 (17.3%) of females were diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome. the mean age was 24.62 ± 7.32 years (ranged from 15 month to 50 years-old). 17 (94.4%) of women were less than 25 years-old p-value=0.03, hormonal abnormality was the most frequent symptoms in relation to polycystic ovarian syndrome 10 (55.5%) and p-value=0.001. 16 (88.9%) of women experienced vaginal discharge p-value=0.09. in conclusion, one from six females is expected to experience polycystic ovarian syndrome. young females are probably to be at a high risk for developing polycystic ovarian syndrome. despite uncertain etiology of polycystic ovarian syndrome, marital status, stress or anxiety, doing a regular exercise and pregnancy are all related parameters to the incidence of polycystic ovarian syndrome. additionally, cases with high hormonal abnormality and vaginal excretion could be considerable indicators of polycystic ovarian syndrome. keywords: polycystic ovarian syndrome, risk factor, stress, fertility. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 201 1. introduction polycystic ovarian disorder is a disorder characterized by oligo-menorrhoea, anovulation, hirsutism, overweight, and infertility in adult female with bilaterally enlarged and with cyst in ovaries. the basic biochemical abnormalities are highly producing of androgen and low rates of pituitary stimulating follicle hormone. these abnormalities were associated to primary ovary flawed as illustrated by excellent outcome from chunk resection of the ovarian. recent concept of prognosis of polycystic ovarian syndrome is the irregular secreting stimulating hormone by pituitary gland. also, the polycystic ovarian syndrome is hyper-androgenic syndrome related to chronic oligoanovulatin and polycystic ovarian syndrome morphologies. its clinical expressions may consist of menstrual irregularities, harbingers of androgen profusion, and overweight. polycystic ovarian syndrome is correlated with a widened hazard of type 2 diabetes. since the 1990, nih subsidized conference on polycystic ovarian syndrome, it has converted enjoyed that the problem encircles a larger spectrum of signs and symptoms of ovarian dysfunction than those delineated by the initial diagnostic principles. it is now noticed that women with formal cycles and hyperandrogenism and/or polycystic ovaries may have the problem. it has again been noticed that some women with the disorder will have polycystic ovarian syndrome without clinical confirmation of androgen exuberance but will exhibit confirmation of ovarian dysfunction [1,2]. polycystic ovarian syndrome associated with cognitive deterioration, such as abasements, other attitude, syndromes, metabolic muddles, predominantly insulin defiance and offsetting hyperinsulinemia, which is a responsible cofactors for alteration in androgen preparation and existence [3]. it has been reported that polycystic ovarian syndrome is due to the compounds combination with hereditary, environmental, and attitude factors [4]. regarding to the national institutes of health (nih), investigation benchmark predicted that 4 to 10 percent of female at adult ages go through polycystic ovary syndrome [5]. the prognosis of polycystic ovarian syndrome is alleviating not generally known. previous study demonstrated that polycystic ovary syndrome could be associated with singlenucleotide poly-morphemes (snps) [6]. oxidative stress was studied as a probability like factor in the prognosis of polycystic ovary syndrome, which was more common combination of endrcrinic syndrome and causative agents of infertility in females [7]. overweight, a popular endocrine illness on the earth, were firstly isolated into visceral obesity and tangential obesity by ambiguous in 1956, and called central obesity and lowered body obesity. innate obesity, also called celiac obesity, in which visceral adipose tissue are chiefly compile in the abdominal and apportioned widely on omentum and mesenterium, around entrails, and in skeletal muscles, could be regulated by the elevated waist grith. according to the innate obesity, tangential adipose tissue are chiefly comply under the peripheral skin, especially in backside and legs, also are mostly assessed by body mass index (bmi). about 42% of patients with polycystic ovary syndrome have the complexity of overweight. abdominal adipose tissue is considered to be in relation with metabolic disorders and more significantly than subcutaneous adipose tissue. diagnostic method of abdominal overweight has not been demonstrated yet, but the size and the density of internal fat demonstrated by electronic computer xray technique are often regarded as the base standard. however, waist girth is a simple and reliable criterion always applied to estimate obesity in the abdomen inside the clinic. abdominal overweight is regarded as a common side effect of polycystic ovarian disorder, and the risk of abdominal overweight in polycystic ovarian syndrome in female ranged from 40% to 80% because of the differences of individual and nation. body mass index is used as a popular criterion in clinic to evaluate obesity. however, about 50% of polycystic ovarian syndrome patients with normal body mass index still to abdominal overweight or obesity fatty body or over-weight affects more of the patients with polycystic ovarian syndromes [8]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 202 also polycystic ovarian syndromes can cause infertility due to alteration in rate of excretion and composition of the polymeric-hydrogel, cervical exudate which is important for sperm transport and appreciation. [9, 10]. in women with polycystic ovarian syndrome, especially in the presence abnormal cervical mucus/cvf (cervical vaginal fluid), can elevate the risk infertility, but this remains unclear due to limited published data. in the previous study found that the average foramen size of the cervical excretion fibers could be decreased in polycystic ovary syndrome. also another study demonstrated that any abnormality in composition of cervical secretion occur in polycystic ovarian syndrome [1]. polycystic ovarian syndrome usually affect female but in rare condition affect male in less frequency. however, man not had ovary but occasionally affect (high rate of androgen and low rate of steroidal bind to globulin) and clinical manifestation of polycystic ovarian syndrome could be shown in men and they will be changed to steinleventhal disorder [12, 13]. evaluation of testosterone is approved in the all of the recent clinical instruction but another steroids, like andro-stenedione and dehydro-epiandrosterone suffer “dheas”, were also be seen that benefit in investigation of polycystic ovarian syndrome and could be given further knowledge on metabolism risk-factors [14, 15]. 2. patients and methods a cross sectional descriptive study is used for the current study and the study included two distinct parts, the first part of the study is to describe the demographic characteristic’s adult females. the second part was to determine of magnitude, clinical presentation and outcome polycystic ovarian syndrome from august 2019 to january 2020. the study is conducted in a privet ultrasound center for ultra-sonographic investigation in sulaimani city, were they have patients that referred from clinical and privet sector by a physicians. population for this study includes females that had abnormal condition in their reproductive system and visited to institutional or privet sector for investigation according to clinical signs and referred to privet situation for demonstration internal finding. the data collected from the patients focused on the clinical signs and ultra-sonographic finding, by using selfadministered questionnaire. to achieve the objectives of this investigative work, a questionnaire was used to collect data from the participant. a personal interview was held for filling in the questionnaire. all interviews were conducted face to face. the questionnaire was based on the review of literature related to polycystic ovarian syndrome or female reproductive disorders. pre-test was used in 5% of the sample size before the study to make sure that the data collecting sheet is capable of yielding the required data for the study and some modifications were done according to the results found and to find response from their families, especially girl’s participant. a questionnaire approved by some of specialized physician and health care workers. a structured data collection sheet about polycystic ovarian syndrome was used to assess the characteristic of patients and some of factors related to polycystic ovarian syndrome, burn infection, microbial investigations, antibiotic sensitivity and outcomes. clinical assessment of the wound: cause of burn, site affected, family history, stress, body weight, and regular exercise. chronological data and observation were used by the researcher during the observation visits. data generated from this work were tabulated into microsoft excel sheets and uploaded to spss (statistical package for social sciences) version 22.0 software. percentage / correlating were used for measure and analysis. means, standard deviation and confidence interval to be used to summarize continuous variables whereas categorical variables to be summarized in form of proportions and frequency tables chi-square (χ2) test was used to test for significance of associations between the predictor and outcome variables in the categorical variables to find an outcome related to health issues. t-test used for comparison two means. statistical comparison of microbial isolates and their resistance pattern was done. p-value of < 0.05 was kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 203 considered as statistically significant cutoff. the generated data is compiled by frequency tables, charts, and figures. endnote program and vancouver style was used for references citation. 3. results a total of 104 females participants were studied, 57 (54.8%) of them were married and 45 (45.2%) of women were unmarried. 77 (74.0%) of them were from rural residency and 27 (26.0%) from urban residency. majority of them were <25 years-old 81 (77.9%), followed by 25-40 years 17 (16.3%). the mean age was 24.62 ± 7.32 years (ranged from 15 month to 50 years-old). 66 (63.3%) of females have no family history of polycystic ovaries syndrome. 73 (29.8%) of women do regular exercises. 67 (64.4%) of them has a normal body weight, overweight and underweight were 19 (18.3%) and 18 (17.3%) resepectively.79 (76.0%) of females have no child. while, 18 (17.3%) and 7 (6.7%) of women have 1-4 child and more than 4-child respectively (table 1). table 1: demographic personality of the participants demographic personality number percent marital states married 57 54.8 not married 45 45.2 residency rural 77 74.0 urban 27 26.0 age group <25 81 77.9 25-40 17 16.3 >40 6 5.8 family history with polycystic ovary yes 38 36.5 no 66 63.5 do regular exercises yes 31 70.2 no 73 29.8 body weight normal 67 64.4 overweight 19 18.3 underweight 18 17.3 number of child 0 79 76.0 1-4 18 17.3 >4 7 6.7 mean age (sd) 24.62 ± 7.32 from 104 patients were investigated, 88 (84.6%) were with no symptoms, 12 (11.6) were had hormonal abnormality and 4 (3.8%) of them had hirsutism (figure 2).18 (17.3%) of them were with polycystic ovaries syndromes (figure1). kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 204 figure 1: distribution of participant’s symptom. figure 2: distribution of polycystic ovary. a total of 104 participants, 18 (17.3%) females were diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome (figure 2). 17 (94.4%) of women were less than 25 years-old.1(5.9%) of them was between 25-40 years-old, and none of them shown in age more than 40 years-old, pvalue=0.03. all cases with pcos have no child 18 (100.0%) and this relation statistically significant p-value=0.01. 14 (77.8%) of participants were unmarried and 4 (22.2 %) of them were not married, p-value=0.03. in addition, majority of them were from urban residency 10 (55.6%) followed by rural residency 8 (44.4%), p-value=0.04. the study showed that hormonal abnormality was the most frequent symptoms in relation to polycystic ovarian syndrome 10 (55.5%) followed by no hormonal abnormality 5 (2738%) and few of them with hirsutism 3 (16.7%), p-value=0.001. 10 (55.6%) of women with polycystic ovarian syndrome had not family history and 8 (44.4%) were with pervious family history of polycystic ovarian syndrome. similarly, we observed that all evaluation parameters including, not doing exercise regularly, normal body weight, no thyroid problem, without using contraceptive pills and steroidal uses were 11 (61.1%), 9 (50.0%), 17 (94.4%), 18 (100.0%), 17 (94.4%) respectively, the results were not significant p-value=(0.3, 0.3, 0.6,0.9, 0.6 respectively). however, 16 no symptoms, 88, 84.6% hirsutism , 4, 3.8% hormone abnormality, 12, 11.6% 82,7 17,3 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 no yes p e ce n t polycystic ovaries kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 205 (88.9%) of women experienced vaginal discharge and few of them without vaginal excretion 2 (11.1%), p-value=0.09. (table 2) table 2: distribution of polycystic syndrome person characteristics and risk factors. characteristics and risk factors number (percent) p-value age group <25 17 (94.4) 0.03 2540 1 (5.9) >40 0 (0.0) no of child 0 18 (100.0) 0.01 14 0 (0.0) >4 0 (0.5) marital states yes 4 (22.2) 0.03 no 14 (77.8) residency urban 10 (55.6) 0.04 rural 8 (44.4) symptoms no 5 (27.8) 0.001 hirsutism 3 (16.7) hormonal abnormality 10 (55.5) family history yes 8 (44.4) 0.4 no 10 (55.6) stress yes 14 (77.8) 0.04 no 4 (22.2) do regular exercise yes 7 (38.9) 0.3 no 11 (61.1) body weight normal 9 (50.0) 0.3 overweight 4 (22.2) underweight 5 (27.8) thyroid yes 1 (5.6) 0.6 no 17 (94.4) contraceptive use yes 0 (0.0) 0.9 no 18 (100.0) steroid uses yes 1 (5.6) 0.6 no 17 (94.4) vaginal discharge yes 16 (88.9) 0.09 no 2 (11.1) a total of 104 participants, 86 females were not with polycystic ovarian syndrome. 43 (50.0%) of them were married and 50 (50.0%) of women were unmarried, 67 (77.9%) of them were from urban residency and 19 (22.1%) from rural residency. majority of them were <25 yearsold 64 (74.4%), followed by 25-40 years 16 (18.6%). the mean age was 25.29 ± 7.82 years (ranged from 15 month to 50 years-old). 56 (65.1%) of females have no family history of polycystic ovaries syndrome. 62 (72.1%) of women not do regular exercises. 58 (67.4%) of them has a normal body weight, overweight and underweight were 15 (17.4%) and 13 (15.2%) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 206 respectively. 61 (70.9%) of females have no child. while, 18 (20.9%) and 7 (8.2%) of women have 1-4 child and more than 4-child respectively (table3). table3: demographic personality of the non-polycystic ovarian participant demographic personality number percent marital states married 43 50.0 not married 43 50.0 residency rural 19 22.1 urban 67 77.9 age group <25 64 74.4 25-40 16 18.6 >40 6 7.0 family history with polycystic ovary yes 30 34.9 no 56 65.1 do regular exercises yes 24 27.9 no 62 72.1 body weight normal 58 67.4 overweight 15 17.4 underweight 13 15.2 number of child 0 61 70.9 1-4 18 20.9 >4 7 8.2 mean age (sd) 25.29 ± 7.82 4. discussion a total of 104 female participants were examined, and the mean age was 24.62 years, which is nearly consistence to the mean age reported by previous study [16]. 18 (17.3%) of them were with polycystic ovary, which is nearly accordance with the study of [5]. in our study, most of the females with polycystic ovarian syndrome were less than 25 years-old and it is statistically significant, which is similar to the investigation by [6]. while, another study reported that polycystic ovarian syndrome is affecting 1 out of 15 females aged between 25-30 years-old [17]. our results demonstrated that proportion of polycystic ovarian syndrome was higher in women from urban areas in comparison with women living in rural areas (table2). this finding is nearly consistence to the old study which is done by ricardo azziz et al. who revealed that most of the polycystic ovarian syndrome patients with are expected to be in urban areas [3]. this is because of in our society; females are under depression and spend more of their times at home rather than in other places which can be considered as a significant factor for causing polycystic ovarian syndrome. we investigated that all women with polycystic ovarian syndrome have no child. this can be an indicator of decreasing fertility with the occurrence of polycystic ovarian syndrome. according to our results unmarried polycystic ovarian syndrome patients were more acceptable to experience polycystic ovarian syndrome when compared to married patients. it is also an agreement with earlier finding of [18] who pointed out polycystic ovarian syndrome is more common among unmarried females in comparison with married females. this could lead kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 207 to decrease serum leptin altitude in class of polycystic ovarian syndrome female compared to nonpolycystic ovarian syndrome women [19]. in addition, our results suggested that hormonal abnormality associated to the polycystic ovarian syndrome and it is a major symptoms for detection, also follicular development or hirsutism is another suggestion, even though previous study have demonstrated significant relation between hormonal abnormality and follicular development with polycystic ovarian syndrome [14]. since, change in the hormone especially could lead to endometrial receptivity, improving ovulatory dysfunction in polycystic ovarian syndrome and has been thought to adversely affect reproduction in female [20]. according to the stress criteria, this study modified that polycystic ovarian syndrome would related to the presence of stress and significant association was found, in which nearly consistent to the previous confirmation of raised stress and anxiety to the develop polycystic ovarian syndrome [21] polycystic ovarian syndrome patient’s determination enhanced significantly adrenocorticotropic hormone and cortisol discharge in response to audience speak stressing, and this is apparently not mature to class differences in the hysterical response stress. however, more clear-cut hysterical stress response polycystic ovarian syndrome female, the stress induced raises in anxiety state; it was differ in the group despites raised depression. furthermore, increasing level of serum cortisol was response to an intellectual in in polycystic ovarian syndrome women [22]. in the current study, there was no family history relation and body weight to polycystic ovarian syndrome because most cases with polycystic ovarian syndrome were without presence the expected syndrome in their families and weight relations. previous study is nearly consistence with the result of this study in relation to body weight, this could be related to the level of fatty acid and androgenic regulation which is lead to decrease free testosterone levels, and biochemically morbid polycystic ovarian syndrome [3]. additionally, [23] reported that the risk factors for polycystic ovarian syndrome including family history and obesity. in our study, females with no contraceptive and steroidal uses were the most frequent and reached to peak. while, previous studies demonstrated that oral contraceptive uses benefit for treating polycystic ovarian syndrome, oral contraceptive pills were the early line management to improve clinical sgins of androgen raises for example acne and hirsutism, also help in arrangement the cycle and preventing the endometrium adjacent effects of unanimous action of estrogen [24, 25, 26]. present results also showed that cases with polycystic ovarian syndrome were experienced more secretion of vaginal discharge. additionally, a similar result was reported by [27]. since, cervical mucus is the exudate through the cervical and it is a combination of vaginal exudate, cells and normal flora to form vaginal discharge, cells and flora to form vaginal discharge, this could be due to the biophysical proprieties of cervical and vaginal mucus secretion which are dependent on the hydrogel formation with the high level glycol-protein mucin 5b gene (muc5b) and it is polymer chain reactions [28, 29]. in the current investigation, the polycystic ovarian syndrome is a frequent finding in female with a lack of physical exercise; similar result was previously reported [30]. exercise has shown to modulate insulin sensitivity and lipid metabolism in skeletal muscle. moreover, exercise improves insulin sensitivity by increasing intra-myocellular triacylglycerol concentration [15]. improvement in insulin sensitivity could be due to more efficient lipid turnover resulting in increased muscle lipid uptake, transport, utilization, and oxidation. the literature states the efficacy of exercise training in combating metabolic syndrome in polycystic ovarian syndrome patients by marking improvements in apolipoprotein, adiponectin in the process of lipid turnover, and uptake in skeletal muscles [31]. 5. conclusion polycystic ovary is a major issue among females in our community; one from six females is expected to experience polycystic ovarian syndrome. young females are probably to be at a kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 208 high risk for developing polycystic ovarian syndrome. despite uncertain etiology of polycystic ovarian syndrome, marital status, stress or anxiety, doing a regular exercise and pregnancy are all related parameters to the incidence of polycystic ovarian syndrome. additionally, cases with high hormonal abnormality and vaginal excretion could be considerable indicators of polycystic ovarian syndrome. overweight and contraceptive steroidal uses would not be highly dependent factors for polycystic ovarian syndrome suggestion. reference [1] the rotterdam eshre/asrm-sponsored pcos consensus workshop group, “revised 2003 consensus on diagnosticcriteria and long-term health risks related to polycystic ovary syndrome,” fertility and sterility, 18 (1), pp. 41-47, 2004. [2] r. azziz, e. carmina, d. dewailly, e. diamanti-kandarakis, h. escobar-morreale, w. futterweit, et al., “position statement: criteria for defining polycystic ovary syndrome as a predominantly hyperandrogenic syndrome: an androgen excess society guideline,” j clin endocrinol metab, 91(11), pp. 4237–4245, 2006. [3] h. escobar-morreale, j. botella-carretero, f. lvarez-blasco, j. sancho, j. san milla´n, “the polycystic ovary syndrome associated with morbid obesity may resolve after weight loss induced by bariatric surgery,” j clin endocrinol metab, 90 (12), pp. 6364–6369, 2005. [4] a. bargiota, e. diamanti-kandarakis, “the effects of old, new and emerging medicines on metabolic aberrations in pcos,” ther adv endocrinol metab, 3(1), pp. 27–47, 2012. [5] r. azziz, k. woods, r. reyna, t. key, e. knochenhauer, b. yildiz, “the prevalence and features of the polycystic ovary syndrome in an unselected population,” j clin endocrinol metab, 89(6), pp. 2745–2749, 2004. [6] t. du, y. duan, k. li, x. zhao, r. ni, y. li, d. yang, “statistical genomic approach identifies association between fshr polymorphisms and polycystic ovary morphology in women with polycystic ovary syndrome,” biomed research international, 10 (1), pp. 7, 2015. [7] t. zuo, m. zhu, w. xu, “roles of oxidative stress in polycystic ovary syndrome and cancers,” oxidative medicine and cellular longevity, 10 (11), pp. 14, 2016. [8] a. bargiota, e. diamanti-kandarakis, “the effects of old, new and emerging medicines on metabolic aberrations in pcos,” ther adv endocrinol metab., 3(1), pp. 27-47, 2012. [9] s.suarez1, a. pacey, “sperm transport in the female reproductive tract,” human reproduction update, 12(1) pp. 23–37, 2006. [10] i. gipson, r. moccia, s. spurr-michaud, p. argu, a. gargiulo, j. hill, g. offner, et al., “the amount of muc5b mucin in cervical mucus peaks at midcycle,” jce & m, 86(2), 2001. [11] p. vigil, m. cortés, a. zúñiga, j. riquelme, f. ceric, “scanning electron and light microscopy study of the cervical mucus in women with polycystic ovary syndrome,” journal of electron microscopy, 58(1), pp. 2127, 2009. [12] o. lunde, p. magnus, l. sandvik, s. høglo, “familial clustering in the polycystic ovarian syndrome,” gynecol obstet invest, 28, pp. 23–30, 1989. [13] h. mobeen, n. afzal, m. kashif, “polycystic ovary syndrome may be an autoimmune disorder,” scientifica, 10(1), pp.7, 2016. [14] s. doi, m. al-zaid, p. towers, c. scott, k. al-shoumer, “irregular cycles and steroid hormones in polycystic ovary syndrome,” human reproduction, 20(9), pp. 2402–2408, 2005. [15] b. keevil, “steroid mass spectrometry for the diagnosis of pcos,” med. sci. 7, pp. 78, 2019. [16] j.mellembakken, s. berga, m. kilen, t. tanbo, t. abyholm, p. fedorcsak, “sustained fertility from 22 to 41 years of age in women with polycystic ovarian syndrome,” human reproduction, 26(9), pp. 2499–2504, 2011. [17] s.qureshi, k. shah, j. gupta, n. upmanyu, “prevalence and risk factor of polycystic ovarian syndrome,” asian j pharm clin res, 9(2), pp. 23-25, 2016. [18] b. khalaf, “leptin levels in relation to marital status and neuroendocrine function in iraqi females with polycystic ovary syndrome,” saudi pharmaceutical journal, 18, pp. 41–44, 2010. [19] k. remsberg, e. talbott, j. zborowski, r. evans, k. mchugh-pemu, “evidence for competing effects of body mass, hyperinsulinemia, insulin resistance, and androgens on leptin levels among lean, overweight, and obese women with polycystic ovary syndrome,” fertil. steril. 78, pp. 479–486, 2002. [20] a. shulman, y. ghetler, y. beyth and i. ben-nun, “the significance of an early (premature) rise of plasma progesterone in in vitro fertilization cycles induced by a “long protocol” of gonadotropin releasing hormone analogue and human menopausal gonadotropins,” j assist reprod genet, 13, pp. 207–211, 1996. [21] s. benson, p. arck, s. tanc, s. hahn, k. mann, n. rifaie, et al., “disturbed stress responses in women with polycystic ovary syndrome,” psychoneuroendocrinology, 34, pp. 727—735, 2009. [22] a. gallinelli, m. matteo, a. volpe, f. facchinetti, “autonomic and neuroendocrine responses to stress in patients with functional hypothalamic secondary amenorrhea. fertil. steril, 73, pp. 812—816, 2000. [23] b. shan, j.cai, s. yang, z. li, “risk factors of polycystic ovarian syndrome among li people,” asian pacific journal of tropical medicine, 8(7), pp. 590–593, 2015. [24] sd. reed, d. scholes, az. lacroix, le. ichikawa, we. barlow, sm. ott, et al., “longitudinal changes in bone density in relation to oral contraceptive use,” contraception, 68, pp. 177‑82, 2003. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 209 [25] m. gambacciani, b. cappagli, m. ciaponi, c. benussi, ar. genazzani, “hormone replacement therapy in perimenopause: effect of a low dose oral contraceptive preparation on bone quantitative ultrasound characteristics,” menopause, 6, pp. 43‑8, 1999. [26] m. gambacciani, b. cappagli, v. lazzarini, m. ciaponi, f. fruzzetti, ar. genazzani, et al., “longitudinal evaluation of perimenopausal bone loss: effects of different low dose oral contraceptive preparations on bone mineral density,” maturitas 54, pp. 176‑80, 2006. [27] g. shamim, j. stephen, c. weliam, j. greindian, “the elasticity of cervical-vaginal secretions is abnormal in polycystic ovary syndrome: case report of five pcos women,” endocrinal metab, 16(6), pp. 1019 -1021, 2012. [28] p. morales, m. roco, p. vigil, “human cervical mucus: relationship between biochemical characteristics and ability to allow migration of spermatozoa,” hum reprod, 8, pp. 78–83, 1993. [29] p. vigil, a. perez, j. neira, p. morales, “postpartum cervical mucus: biological and rheological properties,” hum reprod, 6, pp. 475– 479, 1991. [30] b. chandrasekaran, “exercise in polycystic ovarian syndrome: an evidence‑based review,” saudi journal of sports medicine, 17(3), pp. 123-128, 2017. [31] sk. hutchison, hj. teede, d. rachon, cl. harrison, bj. strauss, nk. stepto, “effect of exercise training on insulin sensitivity, mitochondria and computed tomography muscle attenuation in overweight women with and without polycystic ovary syndrome,” diabetologia, 55, pp. 1424‑34, 2012.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 2 | july 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.2.6 limitations of glycated haemoglobin (hba1c) in sulaimani diagnostic laboratories dereen najat chemistry dept, college of science sulaimani university sulaimani, iraq dereen.mohammad@univsul.edu.iq abstract: hba1c is the test of choice in many countries to monitor and diagnose diabetes. there are continuing debates on the hba1c usage. hba1c has some limitations, for example, hba1c test should not be used in pregnant women and children under the age of 13, vitamin b12 deficiency and hypertriglycemia increases hba1c levels, many other conditions such as iron deficiency anemia, stage 4 or 5 chronic kidney disease, hemoglobinopathy all interfere with hba1c results. moreover, sensitivity and specificity of the test vary among different ethnic groups. in this study, we aimed to investigate the knowledge of health professionals on hba1c test limitations and to assess the frequency of hba1c usage in the pediatric population. we also assessed the quality of the instruments used in sulaimani laboratories (labs) to evaluate hba1c. one hundred (100) diagnostic labs in sulaimani city was surveyed to determine hba1c instruments types used in labs. a one-page questionnaire on the practice and hba1c limitations test was given to 100 health professionals. most of the health professionals in this study were unaware of the limitations of the hba1c test, 99% of the physicians were unaware of the inaccuracy of the point of cares testing (poct) devices and the frequency of poct uses in sulaimani diagnostic labs. surprisingly, sulaimani pediatric hospital used the hba1c test to monitor and diagnose type 1 diabetes patients. our survey also showed cobas c111 analyzer was the most common (47.8%) type of instrument used in sulaimani city. the advantage was used by 8% of the labs, biohermes and auto accent was used by 4.3% of labs. surprisingly, the diabetes and endocrine center in sulaimani used the poct device sd a1ccare instrument. in conclusion, almost all health professionals were unaware of the hba1c limitations. continuing education programs to all health professional should be mandated in sulaimani city hospitals to ensure high quality of the hba1c test. most importantly, health professionals need to be aware that poct is widely used in sulaimani labs and that poct is considered an inaccurate method for hba1c evaluation. pediatric physicians need to be reminded that hba1c is not recommended in children. keywords: point of care testing, hba1c, diabetic mellitus, quality control, limitations. introduction glycated hemoglobin is the test of choice for monitoring glycemic index in diabetic patients. low hba1c levels are associated with lower microvascular complications in type 1 and type 2 diabetes mellitus [1]. hba1c basically reflects the amount of sugar bound to hemoglobin for the past three months [2]. practically, it has many advantages over other tests because it is more stable than other analytes, it is not affected by fasting state or other pre-analytical errors. despite the many advantages of hba1c test, but it has serious limitations which are often overlooked by health professionals. hba1c has both clinical and experimental limitations and there are many situations where using hba1c alone for either diagnosing or monitoring glycemic control is not preferred and might cause serious complications [3]. small changes in hba1c levels, 1%, can have huge impact on patients overall health, this 1% hba1c change might cause 14% decrease in myocardial infarction, 37% decrease in microvascular complications and 21% down in death by diabetes. therefore, it is very crucial to be careful when measuring hba1c levels and it is important to use accurate methods of determination [4]. one of the issues of hba1c is that there are ethnic differences in hemoglobin types and there are about 1175 types of hemoglobin variants, about 7% of global populations have different hemoglobin variants, this variation causes interferences with hba1c results [2]. conditions such as hemolytic anemias, blood loss or multiple transfusions or any other conditions which shorten lifespan of red blood cells (rbc) will falsely lower hba1c levels. however, not all anemias will cause low hba1c levels, conditions causing longer rbc lifespan will cause falsely higher hba1c levels, these conditions include pernicious anemia and iron deficiency anemia [2]. furthermore, splenomegaly, rheumatoid arthritis or any other drugs or diseases which might cause short rbc lifespan all causes low hba1c levels. chronic disease also shorten rbc lifespan and causes false low hba1c levels however when jaundice produces raised bilirubin levels this also cause false levels of hba1c levels [2]. in addition to the above mentioned conditions causing false hba1c results, there are many other mechanism which might cause interferences with hba1c analysis. for example, factors affecting the glycation of glucose to hemoglobin, vitamin c and vitamin e inhibit glycation and hence lower hba1c levels. although the mechanism is still unknown, it has been shown that chronic alcoholism also causes lower false hba1c levels [2]. these false results might cause false treatment for diabetic patients and might cause serious complications. in addition to interferences caused by biological variables, instruments used to measure hba1c also produce false hba1c levels. point of care testing (poct) devices, although inaccurate, are used commonly specially in developing countries mainly because of the lower costs of pocts [5]. until now there is no global agreement to harmonize hba1c testing. different methods give variable accuracies, with the poct devices being the least accurate, followed by immunoassays (coefficient of variation, c.v=5-6%), high performance liquid chromatography (c.v=2-3%) and mass spectroscopy being the most accurate method. in 2009 erna lenters-westra etal investigated the performance of common hba1c pocts devices and reported that 6 out of 8 pocts devices didn’t meet the accepted performance criteria of <3% cv, since that study, many company started to withdraw their devices or release modified instruments, this action shows that pocts are generally unreliable and rigorous quality control measure should be used on poct. another study by the same group in 2014 also showed that three out of 7 devices are still not reliable, these manufactures included quo-test, quo-lab, innovastar and many others. a study in germany concluded that among four different labs, there were considerable variations in the hba1c levels performed on 75 patients [6]. moreover, it is still under debate to whether it is relevant to use hba1c in diagnosis, especially in pregnant and pediatric population, a recent study showed that negative bias was evident in these populations and hba1c is more likely should be used to management of diabetic and monitor glycemic index rather than a tool for diagnosing diabetes [7]. based on these controversies around the hba1c usage in both diagnosis and the biological and instrumental limitations of hba1c devices, we sought to estimate the prevalence of pocts devices in selected sulaimani city diagnostic labs; we also investigated the knowledge, awareness of health professionals especially physicians on the limitations of hba1c and the frequency of poct usage among physicians in sulaimani city. materials and methods study design 100 diagnostic labs in sulaimani city were surveyed to determine hba1c instruments types. we surveyed both public and private diagnostic labs. the type of instrument used by each lab was recorded and photographed. the percentage of usage was expressed as % for each instrument used. a diverse group of health professionals (nurses, laboratory technicians, phlebotomists, lab scientists and physicians-including registrars, consultants, those without postgraduate degree and those with boards, phds.. etc) were give a questionnaire. each of the precipitants gave consent. the questionnaire asked respondents about their occupation, age, place of work and duration of work, year of graduation and in case of doctors, whether they finished their residency program. further, the health professionals were asked about their knowledge and attitude toward poct devices. physicians were asked if they had personal poct at their offices, their knowledge about the biological and instrumental limitations of hba1c test, limitations of poct devices; whether they are aware of the type of the instruments used in lab and how important is sensitivity and selectivity of the instruments. paediatric doctors were asked about their practice limitations of hba1c test in paediatric population. hba1c determination 108 diabetic children aged 6-13 years old were included in this study.hba1c results were obtained from pediatric diabetic center. blood samples were withdrawn from diabetic patients. a verbal consent were obtained from the parents of the children. blood samples were transferred in to ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (edta) vaccutainers and then whole blood samples were analysed with cobas c111 analyser (immunoassay method using cobas c 111roche diagnostics gmbh, germany). results 80 diagnostic labs (73% private labs and 27% public labs) in sulaimani city were surveyed to determine hba1c instruments types. 170 health professionals were asked to participate in hba1c limitations awareness survey. lost and incomplete data were not considered in the final results, the final completed data was from 100 health professionals and 50 diagnostic labs. point of care devices are largely used, sd a1ccare instrument, which is used at sulaimani diabetic and endocrine center, was used by 1% of labs. (7%) of private labs did not perform the test at the time of data collection. autoaccent , biohermes, biolabo were used by 1% of diagnostic labs. cobas c111, was most commonly used instrument (11%), figure 1. fig1.types and percentage of instruments used in sulaimani diagnostic labs the questionnaire looked in to state of point–of–care devices at sulaimani health centers, the questionnaire were given to doctors with various specialties at various health centers in sulaimani city.3% of doctors owned personal poct analyzers. only 57 % of the doctors were knowledgeable about the limitations of poct devices and only 1% were aware of the common types of hba1c instruments used in the labs. none of pediatrician were aware of the limitations of hba1c usage in pediatric population. table1. awareness, knowledge, and experience of point-of-care devices of doctors finally, we investigated the use of hba1c levels in pediatrics population and found out that the majority of diabetic children (6-13 years old, n=108) are monitored through the hba1c tests, surprisingly the average hba1c levels were 10.85 in diabetic children aged between 6-13 years old. discussion in the past years, there has been continuous debate on hba1c usage and its limitations. hba1c limitations are mainly caused by many biological factors, which causes false results also, limitations of the instruments used to measure hba1c levels cause misleading results [2]. in this study, we looked in to the type of the instruments used in diagnostic labs in sulaimani city. most physicians report inaccurate results of hba1c testing and they complaint that they have to repeat hba1c tests at least at three different labs to confirm the final results. the main problem with the hba1c results is that is even with small changes in hbaa1c levels, physicians has to change the course of treatment, as a result the limitations of hba1c are both life threating and costly [8]. in the past few years and because of the financial problems hospitals and diagnostic labs reduced their budget, and since poct are less expensive than the other detection methods, poct has spread widely in the city, therefore, we surveyed the types and frequency of instruments used in sulaimani diagnostic labs. our results showed that 7 % of labs didn’t perform the test in the first place because of the high costs of the test. whereas cobas c111, which is regarded as an accurate method was used by 11 % of the labs. pocts such as biohermes, autoaccent and biolabo were used equally by 1 % the labs. dca vantage and sd care was used by 1% of labs, whereas the dca vantage is regarded as an accurate poct, sd care is regarded one of the best poct devices in the market. however, none of the pocts should be used on a continuous bases and final results should always be confirmed at least by immunoassays or by hplc methods [9]. the second part of our study looked in to the awareness and knowledge of physicians and health professionals on the types of the instruments used in diagnostic labs and whether they had awareness on the limitation of hba1c test, surprisingly a high percentage of the doctors were unaware of both of biological and the instrumental limitations. only 1% of the physicians had knowledge about the types and accuracies of the instruments used and they were unaware about the limitations of poct devices. our investigation also revealed that most pediatric physicians were unaware on the limitations of hba1c and that public pediatric hospitals use hba1c frequently. this result should prompt health authorities to raise awareness on the limitations of hba1c in pediatric population [7]. surprisingly, the results for hba1c in 108 diabetic children aged 6-12 showed an average as high as 10.58, only three children had normal hba1c levels. this high hba1c value is alarming, and most likely resulted from pre-analytical or analytical lab errors [10], our results highlights the importance of accurate devices usage and the urgent need to put poct devices used in sulaimani diagnostic hospitals to strict quality control measures and strict monitoring from international quality control programs. our results are limited to a small number of health professionals and younger physicians who are not specialists in internal medicine, this might explain the high percentage of ignorance on hba1c limitations, we didn’t gather information from consultants in internal medicine because they were mostly uncooperative to respond to our questionnaire, therefore, we asked non specialist doctors in our survey. the study was performed on small number of labs and to get conclusive results, we need to expand the number of the labs we surveyed and also reach out for other kurdish cities in the region. another limitation of the study is that the time of the survey was in 2017, which is marked by high economic instability in the region, which prompted the popularity of poct devices. based on our results, we recommend proficiency testing should be mandated for hba1c poct users to ensure quality. the ministry of health and in collaboration with universities need to raise awareness among health professionals in general and physicians in particular on the limitations of hba1c test and the frequency of poct devices in diagnostic labs. health professional should undergo continuous educational programs to ensure that physicians and health professional are updated with the latest information and advancement in the field [11]. conclusion most of health professionals were unaware of the biological and instrumental limitations of hba1c test; poct devices are widely used in sulaimani labs.sulaimani pediatric hospital uses hb1ac test to monitor diabetes in children.most importantly, health professionals need to be aware that and that poct is considered an inaccurate method for hba1c determination. these results indicates that not only health professionals but also policy makers should always consider the limitations of hba1c test before making judgment on glycemic control, otherwise overtreatment or mistreatment of diabetic patients based on false hba1c levels will have serious health complications acknowledgement we are grateful for paediatric diabetic centre at sulaimani paediatric hospital for their huge support during our research, we can’t thank them enough. we also would like to thank all the participating hospitals and health professionals. special thanks to chemistry students for their efforts, without them this research was not possible references [1] mjl. hare, je. shaw, pz. zimmet, “current controversies in the use of haemoglobin a1c,” j intern med, vol. 271, pp. 227–36, 2012. [2] si. sherwani, ha. khan, a. ekhzaimy, a. masood, mk. sakharkar, “significance of hba1c test in diagnosis and prognosis of diabetic patients,” biomark insights, vol. 11, pp. 95–104, 2016. [3] r. hellman, “when are hba1c values misleading?,” aace clin case reports, vol. 2, pp. 377–9, 2016. [4] im. stratton, ai. adler, haw. neil, dr. matthews, se. manley, ca. cull, et al., “association of glycaemia with macrovascular and microvascular complications of type 2 diabetes (ukpds 35): prospective observational study,” bmj vol. 321, pp. 72, 2000. [5] e. lenters-westra, rj. slingerland, “three of 7 hemoglobin a1c point-of-care instruments do not meet generally accepted analytical performance criteria,” clin chem, vol. 60, pp. 1062–72, 2014. [6] j. roth, n. müller, t. lehmann, k. böer, s. löbel, j. pum, et al, “comparison of hba1c measurements using 3 methods in 75 patients referred to one outpatient department,” exp clin endocrinol diabetes, 2017. [7] jl. clark, l. rao, “retrospective analysis of point-of-care and laboratory-based hemoglobin a1c testing,” j appl lab vol.1, 2017. [8] l. heinemann, g. freckmann, “quality of hba1c measurement in the practice: the german perspective,” j diabetes sci technol, vol. 9, pp. 687–95, 2015. [9] j. szymezak, n. leroy, e. lavalard, p. gillery, “evaluation of the dca vantage analyzer for hba1c assay,” clin chem lab med, vol. 46, pp. 1195–8, 2008. [10] o. sonntag, “analytical interferences and analytical quality,” clin chim acta, jun, vol. 404, pp. 37–40, 2009. [11] m fletcher, “continuing education for healthcare professionals: time to prove its worth,” prim care respir j, vol. 16(3), pp. 188–90, 2007.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 2 | july 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.2.5 vaginal birth after previous caesarean section chro n. fattah university of sulaimani, college of medicine, obstetrics & gynecology dept., sulaimani, iraq chro.fattah@univsul.edu.iq hazha jalal maternity teaching hospital, health sector, obstetrics & gynecology dept., sulaimani, iraq hazhajt@hotmail.com abstract: the proportion of women who attempt vaginal birth after prior cesarean delivery has decreased mainly because of the concern about safety. the purpose of this study is to observe maternal & neonatal outcomes in women delivered either by vaginal birth after caesarean section, elective repeat caesarean section or failed trial of labour. to design a definite protocol for selection of patient to achieve successful vaginal birth after caesarean (vbac) section. a prospective observational study was set at sulaimani maternity teaching hospital/ kurdistan region of iraq, from first july 2013 to first july 2014. in which 200 pregnant women (with one prior caesarean section & singleton, term, cephalic presentation) were enrolled, followed up during labour & puerperium for maternal & neonatal complications. data analysis was performed using the statistical software namely (spss version 20). planned vaginal birth was successful in 63.4% of pregnant women, with the least maternal and neonatal complication, apart from 3rd degree perineal tear (2.3%) which was statistically significant (probability value < 0.001). in conclusion, the women who had successful vaginal birth after caesarean, had better result for the mother and neonate than failed trial of labour and those who had elective repeat caesarean section. women with body mass index of < 30kg/m2, age <30 years, inter pregnancy interval >18months, non-recurrent cause of previous scar and estimated fetal weight of < 4kg, had more successful vbac rate. key words: pregnant women, prior caesarean section, vaginal birth, planned elective repeat caesarean section. 1. introduction trial of labor is a planned attempt to labour by a woman who has had a previous cesarean delivery, also known as trial of labour after cesarean (tolac), and a successful trial of labour is termed as vaginal birth after cesarean delivery (vbac). (nih, 2010; acog, 2010) [1]. for more than 30 years, planned (vbac) has been offered as an option to women with prior caesarean section (c/s). this was mainly driven by the need to lower the rising rates of repeated c/s following a previous c/s [2] (90% in us, 83% in australia & 28% in uk), [3] and elimination of the need for major surgery which consequently reduces maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality as well as reduce the financial and psychosocial disadvantages [4]. vbac was therefore seen as an acceptable alternative to elective repeat caesarean section (ercs). this approach was partially motivated by the reported success rates and safety of vbac. recent demographic data indicate that the practice of planned vbac is now prevalent also in developing countries [2], and it was 82.15% in batool hospital in mosul/iraq in 2010 [5]. vaginal birth after caesarean (vbac) is considered to be a safe option for most women who have had a previous c/s [1]. for women who attempt a vbac, the chance of achieving vaginal birth has been variably reported between 56% and 80% [6]. the proportion of women attempting a vbac has been declining in many countries [3], ) fuelled by negative reports of an increase in the risk of maternal and fetal complications related to vbac, including uterine rupture and perinatal death [7]. women with a previous caesarean section who undergo induction of labour are considered to have an increased risk of repeat caesarean section compared with those that come with spontaneous labour. one systematic review showed that women with a previous c/s have a risk of repeat caesarean delivery of 24% during a spontaneous labour but a risk of 48% following induction of labour with prostaglandin e2 (pge2) [8]. to obtain the lowest neonatal respiratory morbidity [9]. if an elective c/s is the decided mode of delivery, the operation is performed when the gestational period is greater than 38 weeks, the rate of respiratory distress syndrome (rds) or transient tachypnea of neoborn (ttn) is 8.2% at 37wk., 5.5% at 38wk., 3.4% at 39wk. 3% at 40wk. of gestation [10]. on the other hand it has long been recognized that a pregnancy which goes beyond 40 weeks is associated with increased perintal mortality and morbidity like stillbirth, neonatal death, meconium staining of the amniotic fluid, intrapartum fetal hypoxia, fetal acidosis, neonatal seizure, birth trauma and shoulder dystocia [11]. in comparing (ercs) with (vbac), appropriate counseling should be undertaken in planning the mode of the delivery [11]. maternal mortality rate is higher for (ercs) than vaginal birth (5.9 for elective c/s versus 18.2 for emergency c/s versus 2.1 for vaginal birth, per 100000 completed pregnancies in uk. during 1994-1996) [12], prolonged recovery, future pregnancies would probably require c/s for delivery, increased risks of placenta praevia and accreta in subsequent pregnancies [11], operative complications such as lacerations and bleeding may occur, at rates varying from 6% for elective c/s to 15% for emergency c/s [12]. fetal risks; increased risk of rds & ttn which is 8.2% at 37wk., 5.5% at 38wk., 3.4% at 39wk. 3% at 40wk. of gestation [10], also a recent study has reported that the risk of unexplained stillbirth in a second pregnancy is somewhat increased if the first birth was by c/s rather than by vaginal delivery (1.2 per 1000 versus 0.5 per 1000). lastly birth by c/s is not generally considered natural or normal [12]. it is recommended to repeat c/s for women with previous classical incision. a scar rupture rate of 12% has been seen in this group. lower segment vertical scars are associated with lower rates of uterine ruptures of 2%. women with a low uterine scar should be considered for vbac. j-shaped and inverted t-shaped incisions are associated with similar rupture rates to low vertical incisions (1.9 %) [11]. magnetic resonance imaging studies of myometrial healing suggest that complete uterine involution and restoration of anatomy may require at least 6 months [10]. inter delivery interval of 18 months or less were associated with a threefold increased risk of symptomatic rupture during a subsequent trial of labour compared with intervals greater than 18 months. similarly, stamilio and co-workers (2007) noted a threefold increased risk of uterine rupture in women with an inter delivery interval of less than 6 months compared with one of 6 months or longer [10]. obesity appears to increase the risk of inefficient uterine activity [11], body mass index (bmi) greater than 30 associated with increased risk of unsuccessful vbac [13]. observational data suggest that for women weighing > 135 kg, the chance of vaginal delivery is very low (13%) [11], and ercs may be a better option in this very obese group [13]. the success of vaginal birth in all women decreases as age increases. studies have shown lower rates of successful vbac in women over 35 years old [11]. other risk factors include; fetal macrosomia [11], birth weight greater than 4000 g [1], induced labour, no previous vaginal birth, no epidural anaesthesia, previous preterm c/s birth [1], delivery after 41 weeks, cervical dilatation of < 4cm at admission, non-white ethnicity, male infant and short maternal stature [11]. 1. patients and methods this study is a prospective observational study, carried out at maternity teaching hospital in sulaimani kurdistan region/iraq which is the main obstetric & gynecological hospital in the city of selamni city (kurdistan region of iraq) and its surrounding areas as a tertiary centre. the annual rate of childbirth in this hospital is 15000 with (28%) by c/s this study was conducted in the period between (july.1st.2013) till (july.1st.2014), 200 pregnant women were enrolled; inclusion criteria: singleton, term (≥37wk), cephalic presentation, with only one lower segment caesarean section delivery, no medical disorder in the current pregnancy. . written consent was obtained from all the pregnant women. of these 200 pregnant women; 66 of them were scheduled for ercs by decision of the c/s committee of the hospital, they were followed up intra operatively, post-operatively and puerperium by phone call & advised them to visit hospital in case of suspected any maternal or neonatal adverse complication. while the remaining 134 pregnant women were referred from the outpatient clinic to labour ward for tolac. they were followed up during the entire process of labour. from these 134 pregnant women, 85 of them were achieved successful vbac the rest 49 pregnant ladies were ended by failed tol & emergency c/s done for them, all groups were followed up during labour ward stay, intraoperative, postoperative and puerperium similar to other groups. the neonates of all groups were followed up by apgar score, birth weight, need for immediate resuscitation( 1st min apgar score <7), nicu admission(5th min apgar score <7) & nicu stay, birth trauma, respiratory distress, septicemia, seizure & perinatal death during hospital stay and then after 4 weeks by phone call & advice their mother to bring them to the hospital in case of any suspected complication. ethical considerations: this study was approved by the research ethical committee of the kurdistan board for medical specializations sulaimani, iraq data analysis: all data collected, analyzed using spss (version 20 software) computer program. statistical analysis included chi-square test to compare between the quantitative variables in both groups (ercs & tolac). in this analysis the probability value (p-value) of < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. 2. results in this study, two hundred, term, vertex presentation, singleton, previous one c/s pregnant ladies were enrolled, and categorized in to two groups (a&b) & subgroups (a1&a2) according to their modes of delivery; group a; tolac group, (134) pregnant ladies, (67%) of the studied cases. a1; successful vbac, (85) pregnant ladies, (42.5%) of the studied cases. a2; failed trial of labour ftol, (49) pregnant ladies, (24.5%) of the studied cases. group b; ercs group, (66) pregnant ladies, (33%) of the studied cases. all maternal demographics, neonatal characteristics, maternal & neonatal outcomes were compared with the mode of delivery (table 1). most women of ftol group (47%) had inter pregnancy interval of less than 18 months, while most women that achieved successful vbac (72.9%) had longer inter pregnancy interval (more than 24 months), so the inter pregnancy interval in relation to the mode of delivery was considered statistically significant. the correlation between the cause of previous c/s and mode of delivery was statistically significant (p value = <0.001); in those who delivered by successful vbac, the most common cause of their previous scar was breech presentation (28.2%), in those who delivered by ercs, the most common cause was prolonged pregnancy (25.7%), while in ftol group the most common cause was failure of progress (28.5%) which is a recurrent cause. as shown in (table 2). there is significant correlation between the colour of liquor & the mode of delivery as highest incidence of clear liquor (94.1%) was recorded in vbac group while highest incidence of meconium stained liquor was found in ftol group. (table 3). table 1. maternal demographic characteristics & mode of delivery: variables frequency (%) group a group b frequency (%) p value a1 frequency (%) a2 frequency (%) age (year) < 0.001 <20 4(2%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 4 (6%) 20 – 30 113(56.5%) 56 (65.8%) 13 (26.5%) 44 (66.6%) >30 83(41.5%) 29 (34.1%) 36 (73.4%) 12 (27.2%) bmi. (kg/m 2 ) < 0.001 <18 2(1%) 0 (0%) 2 (4%) 0 (0%) 18 24.9 55(27.5%) 36 (42.3%) 12 (24.4%) 7 (10.6%) 25 29.9 111(55.5%) 35(41.1%) 26 (53%) 50 (75.7%) 30 34.9 30(15%) 12 (14.1%) 9 (18.3%) 9 (13.6%) ≥35 2(1%) 2(2.3%) 0(0%) 0(0%) group a; tolac, a1; successful vbac, a2; ftol, group b; ercs, bmi; body mass index. table 3. current pregnancy characteristics and mode of delivery variables frequency(%) group a group b frequency(%) p value a1 frequency(%) a2 frequency(%) ga / week <0.001 <39 82(41%) 35(41.1%) 29(59.1%) 18(27.2%) ≥39 118(59%) 50(58.9%) 20(40.9%) 48(72.8%) liquor 0.019 clear 180(90%) 80(94.1%) 39(79.6%) 61(92.4%) meconium 20(10%) 5(5.9%) 10(20.4%) 5(7.6%) group a; tolac, a1; successful vbac, a2; ftol, group b; ercs, ga; gestational age table 2. obstetric characteristics and mode of delivery. variables frequency(%) group a group b frequency (%) p value a1 frequency(%) a2 frequency(%) pregnancy interval / month <0.001 <18 36(18%) 9(10.6%) 23(47%) 4(6.1%) 18-24 42(21%) 14(16.5%) 18(36.7%) 10(15.1%) >24 122(61%) 62(72.9%) 8(16.3%) 52(78.8%) cause of previous c/s: <0.001 fop 45(22.5%) 18(21.1%) 14(28.5%) 13(19.6%) breech 43(21.5%) 24(28.2%) 11(22.4%) 8(12.1%) pet 26(13%) 7(8.2%) 9(18.3%) 10(15.1%) request 25(12.5%) 14(16.4%) 4(8.1%) 7(10.6%) prolonged pregnancy 21(10.5%) 4(4.7%) 0(0%) 17(25.7%) meconium 17(18.5%) 8(9.4%) 5(10.2%) 4(6%) fetal distress 16(8%) 10(11.7%) 6(9%) 0(0%) cholestasis 5(2.5%) 0(0%) 0(0%) 5(7.5%) infertility 2(1%) 0(0%) 0(0%) 2(3%) group a; tolac, a1; successful vbac, a2; ftol, group b; ercs, fop; failure of progress, pet; pre-eclamptic toxemia table 4. maternal complications and mode of delivery variables frequency (%) group a group b frequency (%) p value a1 frequency (%) a2 frequency (%) pph 9(4.5%) 3 (3.5%) 4 (8.1%) 2 (3%) 0.359 blood transfusion 6(3%) 2 (2.3%) 4 (8.1%) 0 (0%) 0.185 uti 5(2.5%) 2 (2.3%) 2 (4%) 1 (1.5%) 0.671 mastitis 4(2%) 2 (2.3%) 1 (2%) 1 (1.5%) endometritis 1(0.5%) 0 (0%) 1 (2%) 0 (0%) pneumonia 1(0.5%) 0 (0%) 1 (2%) 0 (0%) 0.213 group a; tolac, a1; successful vbac, a2; ftol, group b; ercs, pph; postpartum haemorrhage, uti; urinary tract infection table 5. maternal complications related to tolac group variables frequency (%) vbac frequency (%) ftol frequency (%) p value uterine rupture 1(0.7%) 0 (0%) 1 (2%) <0.001 open bladder 1(0.7%) 0 (0%) 1 (2%) perineal tear * 2(1.4%) 2 (2.3%) 0 (0%) vacuum delivery 10(7.4%) 5 (5.8%) 5 (10.2%) 0.541 *; 3 rd degree perineal tear table 6. neonatal characteristics and mode of delivery: variables frequency (%) group a group b frequency (%) p value a1 frequency (%) a2 frequency (%) baby weight / kg < 0.001 ≥ 4kg 25(12.5%) 3 (3.5%) 14 (28.5%) 8 (12.1%) < 4kg 175(87.5%) 82 (96.5%) 35 (71.5%) 58 (87.9%) apgar score < 0.001 1 st min.<7 83(41.5%) 35 (41.1%) 25 (51%) 23 (34.8%) 5 th min.<7 11(5.5%) 1 (1.1%) 10 (20.4%) 0 (0%) gender 0.169 male 110(55%) 41 (48.2%) 27 (55.1%) 42 (63.6%) female 90(45%) 44 (51.8%) 22 (44.9%) 24 (36.4%) group a; tolac, a1; successful vbac, a2; ftol, group b; ercs 3. discussion the absolute and relative risks associated with a tol as compared with ercs delivery without labour are uncertain [14]. the majority of women with an uncomplicated first c/s, in an otherwise uncomplicated pregnancy, are candidates for attempting vbac [1, 20]. in recent years, there has been a reported decline in the use of vbac in several countries [15, 16]. in the usa, the overall rate of vbac (i.e. successful vbac/all women with a previous caesarean section) decreased from 24% in 1996 to 8% in 2010. this downward trend, accompanied by rising rates of primary c/s, has been a significant driver of the overall c/s rate, which continues to cause widespread public and professional concern [16]. analyzing maternal age in to three groups, women who were >30 years old, were more likely to experience an unsuccessful trial of labour. there is a trend that older women are less likely to attempt vbac and more likely to have a ftol because of increasing obstetrical complications on one hand and fibrosis of uterine muscle on the other hand. this is comparable with the studies done by (beena d. kamath et. al 2009) [16] and (cristina rossi et. al 2008) [17]. maternal obesity is a well-known risk factor for caesarean delivery [19, 20]. it has also been reported by some authors that maternal underweight has a protective effect [21, 22]. others have emphasized the role of short stature (<1.55 m) as a highrisk factor [22]. current study demonstrated that bmi was directly associated with ftol, this relationship was shown by several previous studies like; [13] & (cristina rossi et. al 2008) [17], a study done by (g barau et. al in 2006 at carolina university) demonstrated that very lean women (bmi 1014) were more likely to deliver vaginally than lean women ( bmi 15 – 19.9) and more likely than women with normal bmi [18]. ravindu p. guantilake et.al [19] demonstrated that the risk for caesarean delivery increases as bmi increases > 40 among nulliparous extremely obese women attempting a trial of labor, further increases in bmi > 40 among parous women attempting a tol does not seem to add additional risk for cesarean delivery [24]. table 7. neonatal complications and mode of delivery: variables frequency (%) group a group b frequency (%) p value a1 frequency (%) a2 frequency (%) nicu admission 126(63%) 11 (12.9%) 49 (100%) * 66 (100%) * <0.001 causes of nicu admission: observation 63(31.5%) 0 (0%) 17 (34.7%) 46 (69.8%) 0.062 rh incompatibility 25(12.5%) 2 (2.4%) 12 (24.5%) 11 (16.6%) meconium 20(10%) 5 (5.9%) 10 (20.4%) 5 (7.6%) low apgar 11(5.5%) 1 (1.1%) 10 (20.4%) 0 (0%) caput succedaneum 5(2.5%) 1 (1.1%) 0 (0%) 4 (6%) shoulder dystocia 2(1%) 2 (2.4%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) nicu. stay: < 0.001 < 24hr. 106(53%) 10 (11.7%) 38 (77.5%) 58 (87.8%) > 24hr 20(10%) 1 (1.1%) 11 (22.4%) 8 (12.1%) need for resuscitation 16(8%) 4 (4.7%) 11 (22.4%) 1 (1.5%) <0.001 perinatal death 1(0.5%) 0 (0%) 1 (2%) 0 (0%) 0.541 respiratory distress 7(3.5%) 1 (1.1%) 4 (6%) 2 (3%) 0.102 septicemia 2(1%) 0 (0%) 2 (3%) 0 (0 %%) 0.044 seizure 2(1%) 0 (0%) 2 (3%) 0 (0%) 0.044 group a; tolac, a1; successful vbac, a2; ftol, group b; ercs, nicu; neonatal intensive care unit *; it’s a hospital policy to admit all neonates born by c/s to nicu current study revealed that the least inter pregnancy interval (<18 months) was associated with failed vbac, which is comparable with huang and colleagues [25] study (reviewed 1.516 patients who underwent vbac and found that an inter delivery interval of less than 19 months was associated with a decrease rate of successful vbac). in contrast, bujold and colleagues, reviewed 1.527 women attempting vbac and found that an inter delivery interval of 24 months or less was associated with no difference in vbac success rates [21]. the indication of previous c/s had also an influence on the success rate of the trial for vbac, our data clearly shows that those who had a previous cesarean delivery for a nonrecurring indication like breech, ctg abnormalities or meconium stained liquor are more likely to have a successful vbac attempt, while those who had a recurring indication like fialure of progress (fop) are more likely to end by ftol. the same result was founded by (gyamfi et. al 2004) [22]. american college of obstetricians & gynecologists recommends scheduling elective c/s at 39 weeks or later based on menstrual date and first trimester ultrasound [28]. in this study more than two-third (72.8%) of elective cesarean deliveries were performed at 39 weeks or later which is comparable with a study done in the united states on the timing of ercs delivery at term, tita et al. [29], found that (64.2%) of elective repeat caesarean section was performed after 39 completed weeks of gestation, while current study is incomparable with the study done by okeke tc et. al, where (71.3%) of elective cesarean were done before 39 completed weeks of gestation [30], compared to netherlands where (56.6%) of elective caesarean were done before 39 completed weeks [31]. the rates of elective c/s delivery before 39 weeks were higher in the european cohorts (ranging from 51 to 83%) [32]. the overall incidence of maternal complications like pph, blood transfusion, uti, endometritis & pneumonia was slightly higher in women of ftol group but with no significant difference. similar finding was demonstrated by (gymfi et. al 2004), [27] (sharon et. al 2004) [14]. while (shiliang liu et. al 2007) founded that the planned ercs group had increased risk of postpartum bleeding, blood transfusion & infections than vbac group [28] the incidence of serious maternal complications like uterine rupture (0.7%) & open bladder (0.7%) was significantly higher in women who had emergency c/s for ftol. similar findings was reported by previous studies but with different incidence; (michael f. green et. al 2004) [29] reported 0.7%, (cristina rossi et.al 2008) [17] reported 4.4%, (alison g. et. al 2006) [30] reported 0.9%. in contrast (george o ugwu et. al 2014, recorded no case of uterine rupture in his study [31]. our series revealed that baby’s birth weight less than 4kg was clearly associated with successful vbac. similar finding was reported by (landon et. al 2004) [12], (simpson l.et. al 2003) suggested that women with macrosomic infant should retrain from attempting vbac [32] an apgar score < 7 at 5 minute was highest in (20.4%) of ftol group in compare to vbac & ercs group which was (1.1%), (0%) respectively. in contrast (guise jm et.al 2010) [33] in his study, demonstrated that there are no significant differences in five-minute apgar scores or nicu admissions, when infants who delivered by tolac compared with those delivered by ercs [35] there was one perinatal death in this study, which was occurred in tolac group due to rupture uterus & severe intrapartum asphyxia, ercs as planned mode of birth is significantly associated with a lower risk of both stillbirth and neonatal death in comparison with tolac group. for women planning a vbac, our 0.7% risk of perinatal death is similar to that reported from previous cohort studies that compared actual rather than planned mode of birth where risks ranges between 0.13% and 2.4% [7, 34]. we believe further multicentre randomized controlled study with a larger number of data & longer term follow up will need to determine the fetal outcome & long term maternal morbidity in the term of subsequent complications of morbidly adherent placenta, maternal mortality & infertility. .most women should be offered frequent & adequate advice about vbac and offered tol provided that there are no contraindications & facilities available for emergency caesarean section , in the presence of skilled health professional & well equipped labour ward & theater 4. conclusions planned vbac is successful in (63.4% ; approximately 2/3rd) of pregnant women. and had better maternal & neonatal outcomes than ercs & ftol.women with bmi of < 30, age <30 years, long inter pregnancy interval (>18months), non-recurrent cause of previous scar & estimated fetal weight of < 4kg have more successful vbac rate. acknowledgment a special thanks to sulaimani maternity teaching hospital manager, for helping me to conduct my study there. my gratitude goes to dr. sinor k. kokoii, who helped me in analyzing the data.special thanks for the entire pregnant ladies who involved in this study, in which without them i couldn’t do this references [1] royal college of obstetricians and gynecologists, “green-top guideline. birth after previous caesarean birth guideline february,” 2007. 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[17] c. rossi, d. vincenzo & addario, “maternal morbidity following a trial of labor after cesarean section vs elective repeat cesarean delivery,” university of bari, bari, italy, 2008. [18] g barau, p-y robillard, tc hulsy, “linear association between maternal prepregnancy bmi and risk of caesarean section in term deliveries,” university of south carolina, rcog, 2006. [19] p. ravindu, p. michael, b, harris, “predictors of failed trial of labor among women with an extremely obese bmi,” university of north carolina, ajog, 2013. [20] wh. huang, dk. nakashima, pj. rumney, ka. keegan, k. chan, “interdelivery interval and the success of vaginal birth after cesarean delivery,” obstet gynecol, vol. 99, pp. 41–4, 2002. [21] e. bujold, sh. mehta, c. bujold, rj. gauthier, “interdelivery interval and uterine rupture,” ajog, vol.187, pp. 1199–202, 2002. 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[26] fa. wilmink, cw. hukkelhoven, s. lunshof, bwj. mol, jam. van der post, dnm. papatsonis, “neonatal outcome following elective cesarean section beyond 37 weeks of gestation: a 7-year retrospective analysis of a national registry,” ajog, vol. 202, pp. 250, el-8, 2010. [27] r. dobson, “caesarean section rate in england and wale hits,” bmj, vol. 323, pp. 951a, 2001. [28] s, liu, m. robert, “maternal mortality and severe morbidity associated with low-risk planned cesarean delivery versus planned vaginal delivery at term,” canadian medical association. journal, ottawa, vol. 176, pp. 455, 2007. [29] f. michael, “vaginal birth after cesarean revisited,” nejm, 2004. [30] g. alison, m. david, o. anthony, “is vaginal birth after cesarean (vbac) or elective repeat cesarean safer in women with a prior vaginal delivery?,” department of obstetrics and gynecology, washington university in, 2006. [31] o. georg, a. chukwuemeka, e. hyacinth, “maternal and perinatal outcomes of delivery after a previous cesarean section,” department of obtet.& gyne. university of nigeria teaching hospital, 2014. [32] l. simpson, “vbac: is it worth the risk?,” contemporary obgyn, vol. 48, pp. 27–34, 2003. [33] jm. guise, ma. denman, c. emeis, “vaginal birth after cesarean: new insights on maternal and neonatal outcomes,” ajog, vol. 115, pp. 1267, 2010. [34] ramachandrappa, l. jain, “elective cesarean section: its impact on neonatal respiratory outcome,” clin perinatol, vol. 35, pp. 373–9, 2008. [35] ak. hansen, k. wisborg, n. uldbjerg, tb. henriksen, “risk of respiratory morbidity in term infants delivered by elective cesarean section: cohort study,” bmj, vol. 336, pp. 85–7, 2008. biography: assistant professor dr chro n fattah: obtained dgo from trinity college, dublin 2001, mrcog from royal college of obstetricians / gynaecologyist london in 2005, mrcpi from royal college of physicians dublin, ireland 2006, and obtained md degree from university college of dublin ireland 2012. she is accredit colposcopies since 2012 from birmingham. worked in dublin ireland until end of 2012, was a sinore lecturer for university college of dublin medical school for 2 years, then returned and recruited again in university of suleiman, medical school, on the november 2012. have more than 20 publications in international journals .currently working as a head of department of obstetrics/gynecology in medical school assistant professor and a consultant obstetrician/gynecologist in maternity teaching hospital study.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq community-based assessment of knowledge, attitudes, and practices towards covid-19: an epidemiological survey in kurdistan region, iraq zhino raouf ali bayan omar sharif health development and training center health development and training center directorate of healthslemani administration directorate of healthslemani administration ministry of health ministry of health sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq zhino.hdtc@gmail.com omerbayan82@gmail.com aram salih mohammed amin kamali varin tofiq abbas planning dept. infection control dept. directorate of healthgarmian administration directorate of healthslemani administration ministry of health ministry of health kalar, sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq aram.sharwani@gmail.com varin7815@yahoo.com azad karim ahmed shaho osman mahmood cardiac specialty hospital surgical teaching hospital directorate of healthslemani administration directorate of healthslemani administration ministry of health ministry of health sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq azadsg4@gmail.com shahohusman@yahoo.co.uk chiman jamal ahmed sarwat ahmed abdulqader thalassemia and congenital blood disorders center dialysis center directorate of healthslemani administration directorate of healthslemani administration ministry of health ministry of health sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq cheeman.jamal@gmail.com sarwat.abdulqader@gmail.com article info abstract volume 5 issue 2 -december 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.2.1 article history: received: 30 august 2020 accepted: 29 september 2020 covid-19 considered as a pandemic disease and spread very rapidly, the people are needed to respond to this danger situation without becoming complacent because still there is no vaccine for it. the sample of this cross sectional descriptive study was consisted of 1250 kurdish male and female, their ages ranged between 1476 years. the main objective of the study is conducted to assess the people’s knowledge, attitude, and practice (kap study) toward covid19. the data were collected during the period of april 4 up to mailto:zhino.hdtc@gmail.com mailto:omerbayan82@gmail.com mailto:aram.sharwani@gmail.com mailto:varin7815@yahoo.com mailto:azadsg4@gmail.com mailto:shahohusman@yahoo.co.uk mailto:cheeman.jamal@gmail.com kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 2 keywords: covid-19, pandemic, knowledge, attitude, practices, kurdish, kurdistan region june 2020. a selfconstructed questionnaire was used for data collection and it was designed according guidelines, literatures, and articles concerning covid-19; which consisted of 40 variables. the researchers made google form for the questionnaire and distributed by local residents of kurdistan region. relying on the authors’ networks, and sent by (facebook, instagram, whatsapp, and telegram). therefore, the data analyzed through the using of the (spss, version 23). a p value of ≤ 0.05 was considered statistically significant. the findings of the current study concluded that the main way for obtaining knowledge of the participants was social media and it was much more than ministry of health, who and cdc together. also, the study indicated that the age group of 21-30 years old has a high score of knowledge and attitude while the age group of 31-40 years old has a high score of practical issues regarding covid-19. as well as, the female employer by bachelor degree with barely sufficient financial status in urban area had a high score of kap concerning covid-19, lastly the present study observed a strong positive correlation between kap toward coronavirus among the participants. the study recommended to ministry of health and health sectors to present much more scientific healthy issues to improve the knowledge, attitude, and practice of the kurdish citizens concerning coronavirus because the health care workers are much more dependable scientifically than social media toward covid-19 to prevent rapid transmission and control this serious situation. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction an emerging respiratory disease; coronavirus disease is abbreviated as covid-19 or coronavirus disease 2019 that is caused by a novel coronavirus and was first discovered in december 2019 in wuhan, china. high body temperature, myalgia, and dry cough are the main clinical symptoms of this highly infectious disease [1]. this disease has spread very rapidly, and by mid-february, 2020, the virus had reached nearly 30 countries altogether. in response to this serious condition, coronaviruses can cause multiple system infections in various animals and mainly respiratory tract infections in humans, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (sars) and middle east respiratory syndrome (mers) [2, 3]. in 2003 when the sars emerged it was detected that any newly emerging zoonotic coronaviruses has the probable to transmit from person to person, especially in healthcare settings, and lead to severe human sicknesses [4]. one of the first oldest and most effective tools for controlling communicable and epidemic disease outbreaks is quarantine [5]; it was implemented positively as an effective measure during the epidemic disease of sars in 2003 [6]. quarantine is an important element of pandemic disease ideas. it means the restriction of movement of persons who are supposed to have been exposed to an infectious disease but they are still healthy and were not infected or because they are still in the incubation period [7]. designing a social distance or self-isolation is very useful to reduce communications and interactions between people in a wider community, so this serious diseases transmitted by respiratory droplets and the individuals may be infected but have no signs and symptoms or are not diagnosed yet. so it is required from the people to immediately keep away from people and implement social distancing because it is one of the factors that lead to reduce transmission of the disease [8]. keeping away of infected people with infectious diseases from non-infected people is called separation. most governments were in the practice of evacuating kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 3 of their citizens, and these people will be under supervision for fourteen days quarantine up on arrival in their home country to decrease viral shedding in the first few days of illness to prevent transmission of this serious disease [9]. entering and coping with isolation is an important of the fundamental response to the coronavirus pandemic is self-isolation through humans with signs and symptoms or who have been in close contact with contaminated persons. while massive wide variety of studies offer clear proof of terrible effects of psychological problems concerning self-isolation but it can lead to compromise and manage the spread of infectious diseases [10]. coronavirus is that serious disease that could constrain a significant number of individuals to remaining at household and plunking down more noteworthy than peoples ordinarily do. normally exercise has the two focal points for both brain and body; likewise can give daily life pastimes and is an approach to keep on being in contact with loved ones and bringing down the opportunity of gloom. smoking is another demonstration that builds the opportunity the transmission of coronavirus from hand to mouth or coming about, because of sullied cigarettes when contact with lips. for example, water pipes frequently contain the sharing of mouth segments and hoses, which quickly transmitted the coronavirus among resident and social settings. iraq has affirmed instances of covid-19 inside its outskirts. iraq detailed its first case in late february and mid-march; wellbeing specialists had restricted significant open occasions, suspended schools, and shut shopping centers and assembling places [3]. at the beginning time of the coronavirus disease the iraqi ministry of health had confirmed more than 150 cases of covid-19 in iraq; more than 10 of them were fatalities; and less than 50 patients who have recovered from the corona virus; because of this risky situation both of government of iraq and the kurdistan regional government have started strict movement restrictions to try to further stem any transmission of the virus. kurdistan region has been hit by the covid-19 epidemic. some unprecedented measures have been adopted to control the covid-19 transmission in kurdistan with other cities of iraq, including the suspension of public transportation, the closing of public spaces, close management of communities, and isolation and care for infected people and suspected cases [11]. according to ministry of health in kurdistan region about 12450 cases have registered since first cases on february, 2020 till now and more than 490 cases have died [12]. following the guidelines and steps for controlling coronavirus is very important, so lack of knowledge, attitudes, and practices (kap) lead to increase the rate of fear among population and it influenced on their health, while the researchers decided to do this study therefore the aim of this study was assessing of people’s knowledge, attitude and practices toward covid19. 2. methods and materials study design and setting a quantitative approach conducted using descriptive cross – sectional study in kurdistan regional government (krg) iraq, among kurdish residency in four governorates (erbil, slemani, duhok and halabja) toward covid-19 from april 4 to august 20. sample of the study simple random sampling technique was applied to collect data from 1250 people. the respondents were sent via social media bilingual (english-kurdish) questionnaires. primary questionnaire was developed after comprehensive literature review and articles later translated to kurdish language by a native speaker. a final version was agreed on, which was validated in a pilot that tested the clarity and relevance of the statements by ten experts. variables the dependent variables were knowledge, attitudes, and practices toward covid-19 outbreaks. independent variables included age, gender, residential area, educational level, occupation, and monthly income. data sources/ measurement in addition to the demographic data, eleven questions were asked to assess knowledge; twelve questions explored attitudes and ten questions focused on practices towards covid-19 outbreaks. the questionnaire was consisted of short answer of choosing the best answer and kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 4 multiple choice formats. the first hundred forms were completed and resent back for the pilot study was conducted with cronbach alpha (r=0.72). data collection and analysis according to kurdistan ministry of health, and in order to prevent person-to-person contact, bilingual online questionnaire developed and emailed to participants through google forms. corresponding researcher was on-call during the data collection for answering any probable question. this web-based format was selected for lower infection risk. for data analysis, the mean, standard deviation, and interquartile range were calculated. kolmogorov-smirnov test and q-q plot used for checking normal distribution of data with an estimated 95% confidence interval. a t-test, mann-whiney test, and anova and kruskalwallis test used to compare between the subgroups based on test for the normal distribution of data. the questionnaire was labeled and coded by the researchers; data was reviewed for accuracy and completeness and analyzed using spss 23 (ibm corp. released 2013. also using chi-square test, for each domain scores of the study participants were categorized into two categories: good and poor. 3. results out of 1250 participants the minimum age was 14 years, while the maximum age was 76 years old with mean age (32.88 (9.973). table (1) showed that the age of the participants were between (≤ 20 ≥ 41) years, (54.6%) of them were female, nearly half of them were graduated from university which were the highest level (46.2%) and lowest level of their education was graduated from primary school (2.6%), (67.2%) of them were from urban area, only (5.1%) of them were from rural area, and highest rate of their occupation was governmental employ (56.3%). (65.8%) of their economic status were barely sufficient and (83.8%) of them were not smoke any types of smoking such as cigarette and hookah. table 1: sociodemographic descriptive variables categories f (%) age (years) ≤ 20 126 10.1 21 30 436 34.9 31 40 432 34.6 ≥ 41 256 20.5 gender male 567 45.4 female 683 54.6 residential area urban 840 67.2 suburban 346 27.7 rural 64 5.1 educational level primary school 32 2.6 secondary school 145 11.6 diploma 305 24.4 bachelor 578 46.2 master 140 11.2 phd 50 4.0 occupation student 243 19.4 governmental employ 704 56.3 self-employ 139 11.1 housewife 53 4.2 jobless 102 8.2 retired 9 .7 monthly income sufficient 361 28.9 barely sufficient 822 65.8 insufficient 67 5.4 which one of these do you smoke? cigarette 136 10.9 hookah 45 3.6 both of them 22 1.8 none of them 1047 83.8 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 5 table 2: sources of knowledge regarding covid-19 variable categories f % which sources do you mostly use for obtaining dependable information about coronavirus? social media 456 36.48 tv 175 14 tv / social media 124 9.9 tv / radio & social media 30 2.4 official websites of who 118 9.4 ministry of health 105 8.4 ministry of health / who 175 14 official websites of (who & cdc) 37 3 college of nursing and medicine 46 3.68 ministry of health / who & cdc 28 2.24 table (2) demonstrates that the highest source of participant’s knowledge was obtained through social media (36.48%) followed by the lowest source of participant’s knowledge, which they obtained through (ministry of health / who and cdc) together. table 3: knowledge of participants regarding covid-19 no. items response f % k1 if you experienced the symptoms of covid-19, what would you do? call health care services "122" 964 77.1 stay at home and avoid contact with others 261 20.9 i do not take it too seriously 25 2.0 k2 if someone contacted with infected person with the covid-19; what should be do immediately? immediately isolated in the quarantine 1192 95.4 use medication 32 2.6 does not take care to prevent fear 26 2.1 k3 are cigarette and hookah (shisha) smokers more at risk of getting infected by coronavirus infection? yes 1027 82.2 i don't know 171 13.7 no 52 4.2 k4 is coronavirus transmitted from materials that are imported from other countries? yes 634 50.7 no 355 28.4 i don't know 261 20.9 k5 are there enough instructions for people recovering from corona virus after being discharged from the hospital? yes 829 66.3 i don't know 332 26.6 no 89 7.1 k6 are the tv channels continuously spreading bad news about increasing numbers yes 1078 86.2 no 144 11.5 i don't know 28 2.2 k7 does drinking alcohol protect you from corona virus? no 988 79.0 i don't know 208 16.6 yes 54 4.3 k8 is corona virus transmitted from the mosquito? i don't know 585 46.8 no 522 41.8 yes 143 11.4 k9 does self-exposure to sunlight or any temperature higher than 25° c protect you from coronavirus? yes 595 47.6 no 381 30.5 i don't know 274 21.9 k10 which time you should wash your hands? before and after meal 17 1.4 after using wc 28 2.2 after touching money or animals 11 .9 all of them 1194 95.5 k11 is daily physical activity important according to ages and abilities during the outbreak of coronavirus? yes 876 70.1 to an extent 294 23.5 no 80 6.4 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 6 table (3) showed that the participants have recorded good knowledge regarding covid-19 and they were responded the questions correctly in (k1, k2, k3, k5, k6, k7, k10, k11). table 4: participant’s attitude regarding covid-19 no items yes f (%) to an extent f (%) no f (%) a1 in your belief, cleaning your hands and preventing them from touching your face is the best way to reduce the risk of spreading coronavirus. 1017 (81.4) 197 (15.8) 36 (2.9) a2 according to your point of view; does not exist or it doesn't has no a scientific base it mean it is a biological war? 200 (16.0) 400 (32.0) 650 (52.0) a3 do you think keeping social distance in the community is important to the patient even after recovering from coronavirus and leaving the hospital? 812 (65.0) 309 (24.7) 129 (10.3) a4 do you believe that using masks only; is enough to keep you safe from coronavirus? 54 (4.3) 287 (23.0) 909 (72.7) a5 do you believe that using gloves only is enough to keep you safe (away) from coronavirus? 45 (3.6) 272 (21.8) 933 (74.6) a6 do you think that it is a good idea to prevent tv channels and social media from publishing unpleasant and frightening news about the number of people affected and died by coronavirus? 650 (52.0) 354 (28.3) 246 (19.7) a7 do you believe those who took vaccines in their childhood against tuberculosis (tb) will not be affected by coronavirus or will be easily recovered from it? 359 (28.7) 647 (51.8) 244 (19.5) a8 do you believe in the advice about curfew and staying at home? 872 (69.8) 264(21.1) 114 (9.1) a9 in your opinion, will keeping people indoors by force harm people in terms of their finances? 898 (71.8) 313 (25.0) 39 (3.1) a10 do you think that you have to wash your hands in a healthy way that is not less than twenty (20) seconds? 1047 (83.8) 143 (11.4) 60 (4.8) a11 do you think that the health guidelines have been useful for protecting you from coronavirus? 1025 (82.0) 193 (15.4) 32 (2.6) a12 do you think that social media has caused you any confusion regarding coronavirus? 437 (35.0) 494 (39.5) 319 (25.5) table (4) demonstrated that the most participants were believed and answered most of the questions correctly especially in (a1, a3, a4, a5, a6, a8, a9, a10, and a11). table 5: practice of participants regarding covid-19 no items always f (%) sometimes f (%) never f (%) p1 did you try to stay at home and prevent visiting your relatives and friends to protect yourself and others from coronavirus? 884 (70.7 346 (27.7) 20 (1.6) p2 do you use mask and gloves when you go out? 521 (41.7) 578 (46.2) 151 (12.1) p3 do you wash every part of your hands such as palm, thumb, wrist, under nails and fingers very well by soap and water when you return 923 (73.8) 296 (23.7) 31 (2.5) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 7 home? p4 do you do physical activity according your age and ability when you at home because of coronavirus? 220 (17.6) 765 (61.2) 265 (21.2) p5 do you destroy those masks and gloves after using from a suitable place? 987 (79.0) 198 (15.8) 65 (5.2) p6 did you design a healthy suitable schedule for your daily life until you will spend your time far away from stress and fear? 490 (39.2) 579 (46.3) 181 (14.5) p7 do you follow that bad and sadness news which presented from tv and internet regarding increasing number of death and new case of corona virus? 244 (19.5) 682 (54.6) 324 (25.9) p8 did you try to prevent hand shaking with everybody to protect yourself and others from corona virus? 775 (62.0) 411 (32.9) 64 (5.1) p9 do you wash your hand by soap and water or alcohol immediately when you cough or sneeze on your hand? 779 (62.3) 394 (31.5) 77 (6.2) p10 did you annually inject the flu vaccination against seasonal flu? 165 (13.2) 356 (28.5) 729 (58.3) table (5) showed that the participants were always practiced in a healthy way to protect their health toward coronavirus especially in (p1, p3, p5, p8, and p9) except (p2, p4, p6, p7 and p10). table 6: correlation between knowledge, attitude and practice variables rho pvalue knowledge, attitude .296 0.000* knowledge, practice .254 0.000* attitude, practice .287 0.000* *statistically significant at p < 0.05 a correlation between different domains of questionnaire was also assessed. a strong positive correlation was observed between knowledge, attitude, and practice table (6). table 7: mean score with respect to demographics variable k score 1.54 (0.22) mean rank p value a score 1.53 (0.21) mean rank p value p score 1.33 (0.31) mean rank p value age group ≤ 20 570.57 .149 623.01 .070 479.12 .000 21 30 613.21 590.26 605.12 31 40 639.38 645.94 613.25 ≥ 41 650.04 652.26 752.91 gender male 607.14 .099 593.58 .004 569.31 .000 female 640.74 652.00 672.15 residential area urban 637.03 .057 643.56 .004 687.26 .000 suburban 615.26 605.17 509.76 rural 529.58 498.39 440.66 educational level primary school 449.05 .000 640.50 .339 602.28 .000 secondary school 494.55 573.46 617.03 diploma 630.45 652.95 606.74 bachelor 645.75 629.68 602.60 master 692.13 600.34 703.86 phd 667.27 621.54 824.64 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 8 occupation student 617.58 .000 589.44 .020 558.77 .000 governmental employ 665.04 646.61 672.02 self-employ 573.23 561.63 590.04 housewife 430.17 625.08 517.58 jobless 534.40 631.75 552.28 retired 736.94 866.11 800.94 monthly income sufficient 658.31 .000 654.54 .000 699.05 .000 barely sufficient 624.06 625.98 601.64 insufficient 466.43 463.07 521.89 table (7) indicated that highest mean score of (kap) presented in female, retired, urban area in sufficient income in age group of (≥ 41) years, but master degree for knowledge, diploma for attitude and phd degree for practices have a high mean of score. table 8: categorization of study participants score on kap domains variable knowledge p value attitude p value practice p value poor good poor good poor good age group ≤ 20 3 117 0.059 3 122 0.353 44 82 0.00 0 21 – 30 5 426 10 420 80 356 31 – 40 3 424 16 409 74 358 ≥ 41 1 253 1 252 24 232 gender male 9 550 0.038 18 536 0.093 135 432 0.00 0 female 3 670 12 667 87 596 residential area urban 7 821 0.461 14 818 0.000 100 740 0.00 0 suburban 4 339 9 330 96 250 rural 1 60 7 55 26 38 educational level p. school 1 30 0.292 2 30 0.972 6 26 0.00 1 s. school 2 138 2 139 32 113 diploma 3 297 8 296 59 246 bachelor 5 567 12 556 112 466 master 0 140 5 133 10 130 phd 1 48 1 49 3 47 occupation student 9 225 0.015 7 231 0.955 60 183 0.13 0 employment s 1 696 16 682 86 618 self-employ 1 138 2 131 36 103 housewife 1 52 2 51 12 41 jobless 0 100 3 99 28 74 retired 0 9 0 9 0 9 monthly income sufficient 2 355 0.009 8 352 0.447 39 322 0.00 0 barely sufficient 6 802 19 790 154 668 insufficient 4 63 3 61 29 38 total 12 1220 30 1203 222 1028 table (8) demonstrated that the participants have a good level of knowledge, attitude and practices in employed, urbanized female with barely sufficient of economic and bachelor degree in age group (21-30) years, also indicated the significant relationship between (kap) concerning covid-19 with age, gender and level of education, while there are a significant kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 9 relationship between knowledge and practices toward covid-19 and monthly income at p value less than (0.05). 4. discusion covid -19 has spread very quickly all over the world, including the iraqi kurdistan region and causing serious health issues. kurdistan region of iraq is a developing country and most part of the citizens is living in the urban areas. the present study was conducted to assess knowledge, attitude, and practices concerning covid-19 in kurdistan region of iraq. regarding the socio demographic data the current study demonstrated that the age of the participants were between (≤ 20≤ 41) years old, more than half of them were female but (45.4%) were male, lowest level of education was graduated from primary school (2.6%) and highest rate were (46.2%) which graduated from university and (24.4%), (11.6%), (11.2%), (4%) of them were graduated from institute, secondary school, master and doctorate degree respectively. more than half of them were from urban area, (27.7%) were from sub urban area and only (5.1%) of them were from rural area. the governmental employ was the highest and retired was the lowest rate of their occupation (56.3%, 0.7%) respectively however (19.4%, 11.1%, 4.2%, 8.2%) was student, self-employ, housewife, and jobless respectively. also the highest level of their economic status were barely sufficient (65.8) and (28.9%, 5.4% were sufficient and insufficient respectively. the present result was disagree with the study done in nepal and the study in pakistan who reported that the number of male gender who participated in their study was more than female [13, 14], on the other hand, this result was in agreement with the study done in china and reported that number of female participants was more than male and nearly half of them were graduated from the university [15]. and the result about urbanization citizen in the current study was nearly similar to pakistani study, which both of them recorded that more than half of their participants were from urban area [14]. also the result of the current study (83.8%) of the participants were not smoker at all and (10.9%, 3.6%, 1.8%) were smoking cigarette, hooker and both of them together respectively. the result of the current study showed that the highest source of participant’s knowledge was obtained from social media (36.48%) and lowest source was obtained from ministry of health / who & cdc together. however only (2.24%) of them were obtained from collage of nursing and medicine. regarding the participant’s knowledge of the present study, showed that the highest response was (77.1%), which deals with the first action of experiencing the symptoms of covid-19, and they preferred call health care services "122", (95.4%) responded to immediately isolated in the quarantine when they contacted with infected person with the covid-19, (82.2%) of the participants said that cigarette and hookah (shisha) smokers has more at risk of getting infected by coronavirus infection, (50.7%) believe that the coronavirus transmitted from materials that are imported from other countries, (66.3%) of the participants said that there are enough instructions for people who recovering from coronavirus after being discharged from the hospital, (79%) trust that drinking alcohol not protect people from coronavirus; which is similar to the study done in nepal and indicated that the most of their participants trusted that drinking alcohol not cure coronavirus [13]. nearly half of the participants in the current study did not have information about transmitting coronavirus by mosquito;while worldwide organization in 2020 reported that there are no evidence or information to support that the covid-19 could be transmitted by mosquitoes, also reported that alcohol decreases the body’s immune system and increases the risk of adverse health outcomes and leads to weaken the immune system and thus decreases the ability to cope and deal with contagious diseases; so drinking too much alcohol can increase a person's risk of being infected with covid-19 and heighten their symptoms [3]. (47.6%) of the participants considered that the exposure to sunlight or any temperature higher than (25° c) protect you from coronavirus, (k10) was dealt with the essential time of hand washing which was (after using wc, before and after meal, after touching money or animals, none of them) (95.5%) of the participants chaos all of them. and (70.1%) of them believed that the daily physical activity important according to ages and kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 10 abilities during the outbreak of coronavirus; as well as (who, 2020) suggested that daily activity as possible is very important for every people of all ages and abilities [3]. concerning attitude of the participants regarding covid-19, the result of the current study revealed that (81.4%) of them believed cleaning hands and preventing them from touching the face is the best way to reduce the risk of spreading covid19, this result is agreed with the study done in pakistan under the title of knowledge of covid-19 symptoms and prevention among pakistani adults while their participants were aware of the preventive strategies as the majority of them reported that regularly cleaning and washing hands and avoiding to touch eyes face and mouth are very important [14]. (52%) of them trust that coronavirus is not biological war, (65%) of them thought that keeping social distance in the community is important to the patient even after recovering from coronavirus and leaving the hospital, nearly a quarter of them believed that using masks and gloves only are not enough to keep the health from coronavirus (72.7%, 74.6%) respectively, (52%) of them were prevent publishing unpleasant and frightening news about the number of people affected and died by coronavirus from tv channels and social media, (51.8%) of them had no information about the role of vaccines in childhood against tuberculosis that affected by coronavirus or will be easily recovered from it, a study done in usa and they explained that covid-19 has spread to most countries in the world; and the impact of the disease is different in different countries also they recommend that national differences in covid-19 influence could be partially clarified by the different national policies respect to the childhood vaccination of bacillus calmette-guerin (bcg). also they detect that bcg vaccination has been reported to offer broad protection to respiratory infections. also they found that the vaccination of bcg leads to reducing the number of reported covid-19 cases in a country. so the combination of reduced morbidity and mortality makes bcg vaccination a potential new tool in the fight against covid-19 [16]. regarding the best way to protect people from coronavirus in the present study (69.8%) of the participants believed that the advice about curfew and staying at home, (71.8) of the participants trusted that keeping people indoors by force harm them in terms of their finances, (83.8%) of them though that washing hands must be done by a healthy way and must not less than twenty seconds, (82%) of them believed that the health guidelines have been useful for protecting them from coronavirus. according to practices of the participants regarding coronavirus, the present study revealed that (70.7%) of them stayed at home and prevent visiting their relatives and friends to protect themselves and others from coronavirus, (41.7%) of them always used mask and gloves when they go out while (46.2% , 12.1% ) sometimes and never wore them respectively, as well as (79%) of them were destroyed them after using from a suitable place, (73.8%) of the participants washed every parts of their hands such as palm, thumb, wrist, under nails and fingers very well by soap and water when you return home, this result is different with the study done in pakistan in 2020 which their result showed that nearly majority of their participants wore mask when they went out, however, nearly similar to the same study because the majority of them were cleaned their hands very well and performed social isolation and avoid going outside unnecessary [12]. concerning physical activity, (61.2%) of them sometimes were doing physical activity according to their ages and abilities when they were at home because of coronavirus, while (17.6%, 21.2%) of them were doing? always and never respectively, also the result showed that only (39.2%) were always designed a healthy suitable schedule for their daily life until they will spend their time far away from stress and fear, while (46.3%, 14.5%) was designed sometimes and never respectively. the current study demonstrated that only (19.5%) of the contributors were always follow that bad and sadness news, which presented from tv and internet regarding increasing number of death and new case of corona virus while (54.6%, 25.9%) were followed sometimes and never respectively. (62%) of them always prevented hand shaking with everybody to protect themselves and others from corona virus but (32.9%, 5.1%) of them were prevented sometimes and never respectively. also the study indicated that (62.3%) were always washed hand by soap and water or alcohol immediately when they kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 11 cough or sneeze on their hand and (31.5%) of them washed their hands sometimes while still (6.2%) never washed their hands. and the study also demonstrated that only (13.2%) of the participants were always injected the flu vaccination against seasonal flu annually while (58.3%, 28.5%) of them were never and sometimes vaccinated. also the results of the present study demonstrated a strong positive correlation among knowledge, attitude, and practice. the results of the current study were showed that there were no significant relationship between knowledge regarding covid-19 and age, gender, residential area at p value greater than 0.05 except educational level, occupation, and monthly income. also there was no significant relationship between attitude concerning coronavirus and age, educational level and occupation at p value greater than 0.05 except gender, residential area and monthly income at p value less than 0.05. as well as the present study revealed the significant relationship between practices regarding covid-19 and all socio-demographic such as age, gender, residential area, level of education, occupation and monthly income at p value less than 0.05. also the result of the current study demonstrated that the participants had a good level of knowledge, attitude and practices regarding covid-19; this finding was supported by the study done in china and another study in india concerning kap regarding covid-19 and they reported that the majority of their participants had a good level of knowledge, attitude and practice regarding covid-19 [15, 17]. on other hand, this result was disagreed with the study done in nepal which indicated that the knowledge among their people toward covid19 is satisfactory and also the study mentioned a significant number of their participants are lacking confidence when compared to other countries [13]. 5. conclusion the participants obtained knowledge regarding covid-19 from social media more from world health organization, center of disease control, and prevention and ministry of health, the results of the current study were indicated that the knowledge, attitude, and practices are in suitable level when compared to other developed countries. kurdistan region is facing a stiff challenge to control the spread of covid-19 among its population. also the participants were safely practiced such as not going to crowded places, hand washing as who and cdc guidelines suggested. the study recommended to present or spread healthy scientific issues to improve the knowledge of the kurdish citizens because they are much more dependable scientifically than social media toward covid-19 to protect themselves and rapid transmission of the disease and could be controllable for the serious situation. reference [1] c. p. e. r. e. novel, "the epidemiological characteristics of an outbreak of 2019 novel coronavirus diseases (covid-19) in china," zhonghua liu xing bing xue za zhi= zhonghua liuxingbingxue zazhi, vol. 41, no. 2, p. 145, 2020, doi: 10.3760/cma.j.issn.0254-6450.2020.02.003. [2] n. chen et al., "epidemiological and clinical characteristics of 99 cases of 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia in wuhan, china: a descriptive study," the lancet, vol. 395, no. 10223, pp. 507-513, 2020, doi: 10.1016/s0140-6736(20)30211-7. [3] w. h. organization, "coronavirus disease (covid-2019) situation reports," ed: world health organization, 2020. [4] m. o. nour, a. o. babilghith, h. a. natto, f. o. al-amin, and s. m. alawneh, "knowledge, attitude and practices of healthcare providers towards mers-cov infection at makkah hospitals, ksa," international research journal of medicine and medical sciences, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 103-12, 2015. [5] m. cetron and p. simone, "battling 21st-century scourges with a 14th-century toolbox," emerging infectious diseases, vol. 10, no. 11, p. 2053, 2004, doi: 10.3201/eid1011.040797_12. [6] k.-t. goh et al., "epidemiology and control of sars in singapore," annals-academy of medicine singapore, vol. 35, no. 5, p. 301, 2006. [7] m. cetron and j. landwirth, "public health and ethical considerations in planning for quarantine," the yale journal of biology medicine, vol. 78, no. 5, p. 329, 2005. [8] c. f. d. c. a. p. (cdc), "interim guidance on management of coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) in correctional and detention facilities," centers for disease control and prevention (cdc), accessed july 19, 2020 2020. [online]. available: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/correctiondetention/guidance-correctional-detention.html. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/correction-detention/guidance-correctional-detention.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/correction-detention/guidance-correctional-detention.html kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 12 [9] a. wilder-smith and d. o. freedman, "isolation, quarantine, social distancing and community containment: pivotal role for old-style public health measures in the novel coronavirus (2019-ncov) outbreak," travel medicine, vol. 27, no. 2, p. taaa020, 2020, doi: 10.1093/jtm/taaa020. [10] t. day, a. park, n. madras, a. gumel, and j. wu, "when is quarantine a useful control strategy for emerging infectious diseases?," american journal of epidemiology, vol. 163, no. 5, pp. 479-485, 2006, doi: 10.1093/aje/kwj056 %j american journal of epidemiology. [11] u. n. o. f. t. c. o. h. affairs, "iraq: covid-19 situation report no.6," situation report, 17 mar 2020 2020. [online]. available: accessed at https://reliefweb.int/report/iraq/iraq-covid-19-situation-report-no-617-march-2020. [12] k. r. government, "latest information about coronavirus (covid-19)," gov.krd, accessed july 26, 2020 2020. [online]. available: https://gov.krd/coronavirus/dashboard/. [13] a. hussain, t. garima, b. m. singh, r. ram, and r. p. tripti, "knowledge, attitudes, and practices towards covid-19 among nepalese residents: a quick online cross-sectional survey," asian journal of medical sciences, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 6-11, 2020, doi: 10.3126/ajms.v11i3.28485. [14] s. malik, "knowledge of covid-19 symptoms and prevention among pakistani adults: a crosssectional descriptive study," psyarxiv, 2020, doi: 10.31234/osf.io/wakmz. [15] b.-l. zhong et al., "knowledge, attitudes, and practices towards covid-19 among chinese residents during the rapid rise period of the covid-19 outbreak: a quick online cross-sectional survey," international journal of biological sciences, vol. 16, no. 10, p. 1745, 2020, doi: 10.7150/ijbs.45221. [16] a. miller, m. j. reandelar, k. fasciglione, v. roumenova, y. li, and g. h. otazu, "correlation between universal bcg vaccination policy and reduced morbidity and mortality for covid-19: an epidemiological study," medrxiv, 2020, doi: 10.1101/2020.03.24.20042937. [17] b. s. tomar et al., "indian communitys knowledge, attitude & practice towards covid-19," medrxiv, 2020, doi: 10.1101/2020.05.05.20092122. https://reliefweb.int/report/iraq/iraq-covid-19-situation-report-no-6-17-march-2020 https://reliefweb.int/report/iraq/iraq-covid-19-situation-report-no-6-17-march-2020 https://gov.krd/coronavirus/dashboard/  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq the association of codon 392 polymorphism in esr2 gene with breast cancer in iran sakineh abbasi samira kalbasi department of medical laboratory sciences department small pets school of allied medical sciences faculty of veterinary medicine tehran university of medical sciences university of tehran tehran, iran tehran, iran abbasisk@tums.ac.ir samira_kalbasi@yahoo.com volume 4 – special issue: 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) doi: 10.24017/science.2019 .ichms.26 received: 28 may 2019 accepted: 25 june 2019 abstract epidemiological studies revealed that the pattern of age onset of breast cancer in the middle east region differ from those in caucasians. therefore, genomic data for esr2 (er-β) is of the value in the clinical setting for that ethnic group and the aim of the current investigation is investigated whether polymorphisms in the er-β gene are associated with breast cancer risk among iranian women. the coding sequence in exon 7 at esr2 gene was looking for any variation among the iranian breast cancer women by sscp-pcr method. in codon 392 of exon 7, showed a silent snp (silent single nucleotide polymorphism). the frequency of allele g in codon 392 (ctc → ctg was found only in cases (5.7%). we also found that allele g in codon 392 (c1176g) had direct association with development of lymph node metastasis in breast cancer. the current results suggest that esr2 snp in exon 7, codon 392 is associated with various aspects of breast cancer in iran. esr2 gene structure determination, in presurgical evaluation, might be a useful marker in predicting familial breast cancer and metastasis in ln. keywords: breast cancer, estrogen receptor-β (esr2), polymorphism, metastases, pcr-sscp. mailto:abbasisk@tums.ac.ir 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 244 1. introduction breast cancer is the second cause of women death from cancer in the world. the geographical variations in not only in incidence of mortality causes by breast cancer but also in breast cancer development suggest that the environmental factors are of more importance than genetic factors [1]. for example, in iran the average age of onset of breast cancer is 10 years younger than in western countries [2], [3]. however, only 30% of all breast cancers are familial [4], suggesting that might unknown genes act in modification of breast cancer risk. it is still unclear which unknown genes and which biochemical pathways are involved for breast cancer incidence or progression. 2. literature review many studies revealed that estrogen is very important in breast cancer development, while women with menarche at earlier age or menopause with later age can be associated with increasing breast cancer risk [5]-{7]. however, many evidence showed that polymorphisms in both esr1 and esr2 genes were strongly associated with familial breast cancer.[8] and lymph node (ln) metastasis [8]–[12]. at this time there is a little information about esr2 gene expression and variants frequencies in breast cancer. thus, in this study we tried to identify gene variants in exon 7 of estrogen receptor β gene (esr2), and its correlation between gene polymorphisms and some clinical characteristics among breast cancer women in iran 3. methods and materials study population this research was a case-control study from april 2014 to january 2018 in tehran, iran. the breast cancer patients were newly diagnosed in the imam khomeini hospital complex (n =150; median age 47.49 ± 11.43 years old). the control group, healthy women with any history of breast cancer and any other neoplastic diseases, and with no history of breast cancer (n =147; median age 40.75± 10.54 years). after the hospital ethics committee permission, patients were asked for written informed consent and signed before to participate in this study. study population the demographical data with selected risk factors such as; menarche onset age, menopause onset age, first degree family with breast cancer and lymph node metastases. for screening for esr2 polymorphisms by sscp-pcr methods we used the edta peripheral blood. the genomic dna was extract by dngtm-plus extraction solution kit (cinnagen inc, tehran, iran). for each pcr we used 50ng genomic dna and related primers which designed by primer3 version 0.5.0 software. exon 7 f 5' gatgaggggaaatgcgtaga 3' r 5' ggcccagctgtgtgattact 3' 156bp the 30 cycles of pcr were done as follow: at 95°c for 30’’, at 58°c for 35’’ and at 72°c for 40’’, followed by electrophoresis running in 13% polyacrylamide gel, with 250 voltage and 18 hours at 16°c. the dna on gel was stained with0.1% silver nitrate. then the shifted pattern bands on gel were extracted using dna extraction kit, from fermentas co. # k0153 from germany, and sequenced directly by applied biosystem kit, microgen co. us, abi 3130xl sequencer. purification of dna products were done using pcr purification kit protocol (qia quick) (50). 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 245 statistical analysis in order to find theinfluence of snps on breast cancer risk and features we used the χ2 test. using spss software version 20 then for calculating odd ratios with 95% cis (confidence intervals) for examining the effects of selected risk factors in breast cancer .the results were considered as statistically significant when p was greater 0.05. 4. results the esr2 gene is located on chromosome 14, with 8 exons. the encoding region exon 7 of the esr2 gene was examined for any variant region using sscp-pcr. then we found a snp of rs1256054 in codon 392 where codes for leucine amino acid (dbsnp128) in which nucleotide c is converted to g (ctc to ctg) [13] which was presented in the case group, with cg heterozygote 8.7% and gg homozygote 1.3%, while cc with 90.0%.( p=0.029). the g allelic frequency was higher in cases with onset age for menarche, </=12 years old with 9.2% than >12 years old with 3.3%. the g allelic frequency was higher in the cases with breast cancer history with 36.8% than in those without a family history 1.1%, a 35.7%, differences. while the allelic frequencies of allele c is lower in patients without family history (p = 0.001). however, the allelic frequencies of allele g was significantly higher in ln metastases cases with 23.9% in compare with those without ln metastases (2.4%). moreover, the c allelic frequency was lower in ln metastases cases with 67.1% than cases without ln metastases with 97.6 % (table 1). the estimated risk was higher in cases without family history of breast cancer than individuals with breast cancer history (94.8% and 5.2% respectively) who were cc normal homozygote. in compare with cg heterozygote, for codon 392 polymorphism, with threefold higher frequency for individuals with family history than individuals without family history of breast cancer (76.9% and 23.1% respectively) (and with gg genotype, all were presented in the cases with family history. the risk for developing breast cancer was lower for individuals without ln metastases who were cc, normal, in codon 392 (89.6% and 10.4%), but in corresponding cg heterozygote genotype the risk was higher for ln metastases cases (53.8%) than for individuals without ln metastases (46.2%) (or 0.099, 95% ci 0.029-0.337). although, gg homozygote, in codon 392 individuals, all were only within the patients with ln metastases. 5. discussion the snp of estrogen receptor β was only presented in cancer patients, 8.7% in cg heterozygote genotype and 1.3 %in gg homozygote genotype in exon 7 in iranian cancer patients. among german population five snps in erβ gene have been identified [14], however, only rs1256049, showed an association with anorexia nervosa. this snp had shown colorations with ovulatory dysfunction in a chinese and brazilian [15], [16]. moreover, a ca nucleotide repeats in esr2 gene revealed association with bone density in japanese. [17]. the shanghai research center reported an snp at exon 7wich related. to the increase risk of breast cancer [18], and suggested it plays as an enhancer slicing [19], [20]. although, not all polymorphisms in ers associated with increasing the risk of breast cancer development, such as pvuii and xbai polymorphisms [21], [22]. the allele g frequency was higher in ln cases than cases without ln metastases (table 1). moreover, the estimated risk showed higher in cases with familial breast cancer than those without family history (94.8% and 5.2% respectively) who were cc normal homozygote. in compare with cg heterozygote, for codon 392 polymorphism, with threefold higher frequency for individuals with family history than individuals without family history (76.9% and 23.1% respectively) and with gg genotype in the cases with family history. in cg heterozygote, the risk was higher for ln metastasis cases (53.8%) than for individuals without ln metastases (46.2%) (or 0.099, 95% ci 0.029-0.337), in compare with cc normal individuals. although was less likely in the cases (or< 1). (table 2). 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 246 our results revealed that codon 392 polymorphism in esr2 is significantly different in case and control groups (10.1% and 0.0% respectively) in compare with only one similar study in china population (17), it showed same frequencies in codon 392 polymorphism among case and control groups (93.5% and 94.7% respectively). taking these results together, codon 392 snp as conferring the increasing risk of developing breast cancer. we also noted that higher the frequency of allele g, the greater to have ln metastasis in iranian breast cancer women. 5.1. figures and tables table 1. genotypic and allelic frequencies of esr2, exon 7, codon 392: cases / control and selected risk factors codon 392 characteristic er-β genotypes er-β alleles cc cg gg c g breast cancer case (n=150) 135(90.0%) 13(8.7%) 2(1.3%) 283(94.3%) 17(5.7%) control (n=147) 147(100%) 294(100%) 2=4.769 , p=0.029 p=0.001 age at menarche(years) </=12 (n=60) 50(83.3%) 9(15.0%) 1(1.7%) 109(90.8%) 11(9.2%) >12 (n=90) 85(94.4%) 4(4.4%) 1(1.2%) 174(96.7%) 6(3.3%) 2=0.604 , p=0.437 p=0.032 family history of breast cancer first-degree family affected (n=19) 7(36.8%) 10(52.6%) 2(10.6%) 24(63.2%) 14(36.8%) not affected (n=131) 128(97.7%) 3(2.3%) 259(98.9%) 3(1.1%) 2=27.645 , p=0.001 p=0.001 lymph node metastases yes (n=23) 14(60.9%) 7(30.4%) 2(8.7%) 35(76.1%) 11(23.9%) no (n=127) 121(95.3%) 6(4.7%) 248(97.6%) 6(2.4%) 2=17.314 , p=0.001 p=0.001 er expression in breast cancer tissue positive (n=40) 32(80.0%) 6(15.0%) 2(5.0%) 70(87.5%) 10(12.5%) negative (n=92) 87(94.6%) 5(5.4%) 179(97.3%) 5(2.7%) not studied (n=18) 16(88.9%) 2(11.1%) 34(94.4%) 2(5.6%) 2=4.779 , p=0.028 p=0.023 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 247 table 2. estimated risk for selected characteristic and risk factors with esr2, exon 7, codon 392 in different genotypes breast cancer genotype yes n=150 no n=147 p value or (95% ci) normal cc 135(47.9%) 147(52.1%) 0.029 1.0(reference) heterozygote cg 13(100%) homozygote gg 2(100%) age at menarche (years) genotype </=12 n=60 >12 n=90 p value or (95% ci) normal cc 50(37.0%) 85(63%) 0.437 1.0(reference) heterozygote cg 9(69.2%) 4(30.8%) 0.261(0.0770.893) homozygote gg 1(50%) 1(50%) 0.588(0.036 9.613) firstdegree family history of breast cancer genotype affected n=19 not affected n=131 p value or (95% ci) normal cc 7(5.2%) 128(94.8%) 0.001 1.0(reference) heterozygote cg 10(76.9%) 3(23.1%) 0.016(0.004 0.073) homozygote gg 2(100%) lymph node metastases genotype yes n=23 no n=127 p value or (95% ci) normal cc 14(10.4%) 121(89.6%) 0.001 1.0(reference) heterozygote cg 7(53.8%) 6(46.2%) 0.099(0.029 – 0.337) homozygote gg 2(100%) 6. conclusion this was the first study in estrogen receptor gene polymorphism and breast cancer risk in breast cancer. our data suggested that esr2 polymorphism is correlated with various aspects of breast cancer in iran. in esr2 genotype, the higher allelic frequency of allele g in 392 codon the more likelihood to develop familial breast cancer and lymph node metastasis in iranian breast cancer. therefore it represents a candidate marker for predicting for familial breast cancer and ln metastasis. the tehran university of medical sciences & health services, research deputy grants supported this research. reference [1] k. mcpherson, c. steel, and j. m. dixon, “breast cancer—epidemiology, risk factors, and genetics,” bmj, vol. 321, no. 7261, pp. 624–628, 2000. 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[21] s. jahandoost, p. farhanghian, and s. abbasi, “the effects of sex protein receptors and sex steroid hormone gene polymorphisms on breast cancer risk,” journal of the national medical association, vol. 109, no. 2, pp. 126–138, 2017. [22] y. du, t. yan, l. zhou, w. yin, and j. lu, “a single-nucleotide polymorphism of the beta 2-adrenergic receptor gene can predict pathological complete response to taxane-and platinum-based neoadjuvant chemotherapy in breast cancer,” breast cancer: targets and therapy, vol. 10, p. 201, 2018.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq reservoir productivity analysis of intercalated limestone and anhydrite beds in zagros folded belt, kurdistan region of iraq fraidoon rashid department of engineering kurdistan institution for strategic study and scientific research sulaimani, iraq fraidoon.rashid@kissr.edu.krd article info abstract volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.1.1 article history: received: 09/02/2020 accepted: 26/02/2020 the early jurassic rock of alan formation in barda rash field have been examined using petrophysical wireline log analysis, drilling stem test, mud logging reports, drilling cutting and core samples for evaluation of reservoir potentiality and fluid production throughout heterogeneous rocks intervals in three exploration and appraisal wells. the alan formation consists of intercalation of light, chalky and argillaceous limestone beds with shale layers in the upper part and dominantly anhydrite layers from the middle to the lower parts of the formation. qualitatively, weak oil shows of light brown to dark brown and blackish heavy oil have been observed while drilling. furthermore, light brown trace oil has been recorded in the fracture surfaces of the core samples. the wireline log analysis provided an overestimated result for the hydrocarbon bearing interval identification and fluid movability index as the anhydrite layers confused the fluid distribution detection in the drilled interval. however, the combined results achieved from the mud logging reports and drilling stem tests were operated with in the drilled intervals shown a limited productivity levels from the limestone beds of the early jurassic alan formation. the oil production from the studied interval does not exceed 10% and the entire production rates were composed of formation water with a trace amount of gases. as a result, the early jurassic alan formation can be considered as a tight carbonate reservoir rocks in the barda rash field. keywords: alan formation, carbonate, well test, hydrocarbon, petrophysics, zagros basin copyright © 2019 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 2 1. introduction the newly discovered fields in the kurdistan region of iraq contain multiple petroleum systems and isotropic reservoir rocks from triassic to tertiary rocks type with extensive fracture distributions and variable hydrocarbon qualities throughout nw-se elongated surface and sub-surface structures [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. the dominant proved hydrocarbons were expelled from organic rich shale and carbonate rocks of triassic and jurassic formations and entrapped in the heterogeneous and highly fractured carbonate reservoir rocks of the cretaceous and tertiary rocks in zagros folded belt [8, 9,10 ]. the investigated source rocks have variable potentiality and distinctive geochemical properties [11, 12, 13]. besides of the source rock potentiality behaviors of the triassic-jurassic rocks throughout the kurdistan region fields, these successions are considered as a productive reservoir rocks including the upper triassic kurra chine formation in shaikan field [14] jurassic barsarin, sargelu, alan, mus, adaiyah, butmah formations in atrush field [ 15] and jurassic sargelu, mus and butmah formations in the shaikan field [16]. in this work, jurassic alan formation in barda rash field in the zagros folded belt is being selected, that previously identified as a source rock in qarachuq and jabal qand [17] and miran west field [18]. the objectives of this research are to use wireline log information, well tests and rock description to understand variations in the stratigraphy and fluid movability of the alan formation across the field, to assess the lithology and fluid distribution of the reservoirs, and to ascertain how the petrophysical properties of the rocks include porosity and shale volume vary, taking particular role of heterogeneity and anisotropy. these improve the understanding of the lithology variation influences on the reservoir quality including porosity, permeability, and productivity with document potential reservoir intervals in term of available fluid movability. 2. study area barda rash block is located in the kurdistan region of northern iraq, close to the northern boundary of the nw-se trending kirkuk embayment region of the zagros fold and thrust belt. this region contains several nw-se trending subsurface structures included kirkuk, jambur, khabaz, bai hassan, chamchamal and taq taq anticlines. the barda rash anticline lies in the folded foothills to the southwest of the mountain front fault, which separates the high zagros mountains from the kirkuk embayment [19, 8, 20, 21]. the structure is elongated anticlinal developed on the direction nw-se with approximately longitudinal axis of 20 km and cross axis of 6 km, figure (1). the anticline is flanked to the north and south by two major tectonic accidents jumps by about 300-500m towards the northwestern flank and about 200-400m towards south-eastern flank, developed approximately parallel to the axis and gave the appearance like a horst of the structure [22]. this anticline is suited geographically about 25 km north-east of mosul city from the northwest side. the barda rash structure is bound to the northwest by the al khazir river and by sarta and ain sifni structures; to the southeast, by ain-al-safra structure; to the south, by the bashiqa and maqloub structures to the northwest. the miocene-pliocene upper fars-lower fars and bakhtiari formations are cropping out at the surface on and near barda rash anticline. three wells have been drilled on this structure during exploration stage. the exploration well number 1 (br-1) was drilled close to the crest of the barda rash fold, and has mainly targeted to explore cretaceous, jurassic and triassic successions to investigate and estimate fluid content in these intervals [22]. the exploration well number 2 (br-2) is the second on the anticline and was drilled on the north-west of the well br-1. this well was targeted to explore and prove jurassic formations and identify the fluid content in these formations. the third exploration well (br-3) was drilled on south-east of the well br-1 with a distance about 10 km. this well was drilled for proving the jurassic formations extension and estimation of the fluid content [23, 24]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 3 3. methods and materials the gathered data for this work consists of a wireline log data sets from open and non-cased drilled wells from the jurassic alan formation intervals throughout three exploration wells including br-1, br-2 and br-3 in barda rash block. the wireline logs contain the three types of porosity derived logs (sonic, density, and neutron), nuclear radiation gamma ray log, electrical resistivity logs and drawn lithologies strip log. in addition, drilling stem test (dst), mud log reports, core samples and drilled cutting samples have been intercalated with the physical parameters of the logs to improve the reservoir parameters measurements. the achieved data for this study is summarized the table (1). the las format of the wireline logs data have been applied to determine the lithology characterisation, shale volume calculations, porosity counting and fluid content estimation in the alan formation using interactive petrophysics (ip). the log analysis results have been integrated with lithologic description of cutting and core samples, oil show investigation and well test results of the selected wells 3.1. lithology wireline log interpretation is one of the common and effective methods in petroleum industry use to identify hydrocarbon bearing interval, reservoir thickness, fluid type distribution, and to predict a reservoir potentiality by identification of physical properties of the subsurface rocks including the magnitude of porosity, pore geometry and pore filling types [25, 26]. lithological investigation is the dominant result can be achieved from the conventional wireline log analysis. in this analysis limestone, dolomite, anhydrite and clay have been assumed to be present, and the log tool responses (neutron (nphi), density (rhob), gamma ray (gr), sonic (dt) have been used to describe the mineral components of the studied intervals. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 4 the porosity logs have a difference respond to lithological variations and fluid filled pore types, as a result based on the combination of two or all three types of the logs, porosity types and lithology types can be identified clearly for a logged interval [25, 26 and 30]. furthermore, log cross plots give potential results for mineralogical and lithological components examination. the wireline logs cross plots work based on the slope and intersect of two types of porosity logs response, dependent on matrix lithology and pore fluid [29, 31, 25, and 26]. density-neutron and neutron-sonic cross plots are the two essential plots that dominantly used in mineralogical analysis from the petrophysical wireline logs. the outcomes of the lithological investigation from the wireline log data have been integrated with the lithologic description of drilling cutting samples and available core samples of the same logged interval in the selected wells. figure 1: maps show the position of the barda rash structure and selected wells. (a) geologic map of the study area and nearby structures shows the barda rash anticline and drilled well positions modified after [27, 28]. (b) contour map was drawn on the top of jurassic formations throughout the barda rash structure [22, 23, 24]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 5 table 1: summary of the gathered data from the selected wells in the barda rash 3.2. shale content gamma ray log was applied for estimating shale volume content in the studied intervals. the volume of shale (vsh) depends on the magnitude of gamma ray index for each interval throughout the studied field. the gamma ray index (igr) was calculated using equation (1) from the shale base line (gamma reading = 100 api, maximum gamma ray reading), clean sand line (gamma reading= 5.0 api, minimum gamma ray reading) were obtained from the logged well and the gamma ray log reading from the selected interval [32]. igr = grlog − grmin grmax − grmin (1) igr : gamma ray index. grlog : gamma ray reading from log, api. grmin: minimum gamma ray reading (clean carbonate), api. grmax : maximum gamma ray reading (shale), api. the non linear relation models (larionov, 1969) who predicted the volume of shale based on geological age using older (pre-tertiary) consolidated rocks was applied for the shale volume calculation, equation (2). vsh = 0.33(22igr − 1) (2) vsh : shale volume. 3.3. porosity the porosity logs have been used to determine the magnitude of porosity in the studied intervals. the apparent density was collected from the reading of the density logs in combination with value of the standard matrix density and the fluids occupying the pores was converted to the density log derived porosity with applying equation (3). in addition, the hydrogen concentration was recorded from the neutron log can be immediately transferred to neutron porosity [29, 33]. the total log porosity was obtained from the mean value of the density derived porosity and neutron porosity, equation (4) and eventually corrected for the shale content for all intervals , equation (5). ϕρ = (ρma − ρbulk) (ρma − ρfl) (3) data br-1 br-2 br-2 wireline log gamma ray (gr), sonic (dt), compensated density log (cdl), compensated neutron log (cnl) gamma ray (gr), sonic (dt), compensated density log (cdl), compensated neutron log (cnl) gamma ray (gr), sonic (dt), compensated density log (cdl), compensated neutron log (cnl) cutting sample 36 48 44 core sample 40 meters well test dst dst dst mud log mud losses report mud losses report mud losses report kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 6 ϕρ: density porosity, fraction. ρma: matrix density, g/cm3. ρbulk: log reading density, g/cm3. ρfl: fluid density, g/cm3. ϕt = ϕρ + ϕn 2 (4) ϕt: total porosity, fraction. ϕn : neutron derived porosity, fraction. ϕe = ϕt − (1 − vsh) (5) ϕe: effective porosity, fraction. 4. results and discussion the jurassic alan formation was first described from subsurface section in well alan-1 in the northwestern part of iraq as 87 meters of intercalation of anhydrite and limestone beds [34, 35, 20]. in the barda rash field this formation composed of alternation of shales, limestones and anhydrite beds at the top and these components change to intercalation of anhydrite and limestone beds from the middle to the bottom of the formation interval, figure (2) and figure 3 (a and b). the maximum thickness of the alan formation in barda rash field at the current stage was recorded in well br-2 as 245m and this thickness become 185m in well br-1 and 220m in well br-3. shale layers are characterised by dark brown to blackish colour, soft, compacted and occasionally fissile of rocks that dominantly have calcareous composition. the limestone beds are consisting of mudstone to wackestone microfacies with argillaceous and chalky components. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 7 figure 2: typical stratigraphic column of the jurassic alan formation in well br-1. the lithological components were drawn based on rock description of core samples, cutting samples and wireline log analysis. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 8 these beds have light brown to dark brown colour, moderately hard, and fine crystalline texture with poor observed pores and weak oil show observation in well br-1 and br-3 but light brown to dark brown and blackish heavy oil as oil shows have been observed in well br2 as patchy to uniform oil stain distribution on fissures that gave a strong oil order to the drilled intervals, figure 3 (c and d). anhydrite beds were commonly recorded in the middle and lower part of the formation can be identified as white colour to occasionally pearlescent, soft and amorphous microstructure rocks intercalated with limestone beds. in pores of the limestone beds, brown to dark brown oil stain, spotty oil stain; moderately to good oil shows, moderately trace of oil have been recorded. the estimated shale contents were achieved from the gamma ray log reading by applying the equation number (1) and (2) respectively for the drilled intervals throughout the study wells. the magnitude of calculated shale volume in the alan formation changed apparently between the wells. the shale volume in both wells of br-1 and br-3 are similar and the amounts of shale in these two wells are lower than in br-2, figure 4 (a, b, and c). overall, the percentages of the maximum shale contents in the alan formation have reached to 20% in the well br-1 and br-3, while this amount is enhanced to 30 % in well br-3. the calculated effective porosity was obtained from the mean values of the density log derived porosity and the neutron derived porosity of the alan formation and the impactions of shale contents have been corrected. as a result, the porosity value is considered as an effective porosity. the deflections of the total porosities have not had uniform and regular distribution throughout the drilled intervals. the magnitude of the porosity has nearly similar ranges in the alan formation throughout the studied field. the porosity values started from 0.0 from figure 3: core samples drilled from the early jurassic alan formation in well br-2 in the barda rash field. (a) light grey, argillaceous and compacted limestone, 2772m-2777m. (a) light brown, soft and chalky limestone, 2470.5m-2475.5m. (c) light brown oil observed on the fractured surfaces of limestone beds, 2475.5m-2477.5m. (d) dark brown to blackish heavy oil recorded on the surfaces of fractures of dark grey limestone beds. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 9 anhydrite beds to 0.12 for limestone beds with an average of 0.003 in well br-1, figure 4 (d, e, and f). the magnitude of porosity in well br-2 starts from 0.0 to 0.24 with an average of 0.053 and 0.0 to 0.17 with an average of 0.023 in well br-3. figure 4: histogram of the calculated shale volume and total porosity throughout the studied wells. a-c plots are shale volume consents in the alan formation were measured by old rock model. d-f plots are total porosity values derived from wireline log data. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 10 test operation was run for the drilled intervals of the alan formation while drilling progressing includes drilling stem test (dst). the test results show producing different fluid types within the limestone beds of alan formation, figure (5). in well br-2 a number of tests were run consequently for the alan formation interval. dst2 provided recovering of 2000 bbl/d of formation water, film of oil and hydrogen sulfide gas. dst3 was recorded only 965 bbl/d of recovered fluids including drilling mud (96%) and crude oil (4%). the fluid recovered in dst5 was 750 bbl/d that contain formation water (98%), crude oil (1%) and solid content (1%). the last test for this interval was dst6 that was recorded about 792bbl/d composed of formation water (90%), crude oil (9%) and solid content (1%). furthermore, the dst results for well br-1 and br-2 have provided a weak oil show with solid content in drilling mud fluid. the carbonate beds of the early jurassic alan formation are slightly argillaceous and chalky limestone. despite of low shale content, qualitatively these beds do not yield reservoir potential throughout the studied wells. no macro porosity and micro porosity have been observed during core sample description; however, several fractures were observed which possibly provide an unknown amount of open and connected porosity. in contrast, the intercalation of the limestone beds of the formation with shale beds at the top and with anhydrite beds from middle to the bottom of the formation was destroyed matrix porosity and reduced the impaction of fracture distribution on reservoir quality and terminated the fluid path way connectivity within the limestone beds. the wireline log cross plots clearly provide that the limestone beds of the alan formation have tight reservoir properties, figure (6). the plotted data have fallen on the lower part of the limestone line and commonly smaller than 10% of apparent porosity. the scattering of the plotted raw data is related to anhydrite and shale minerals in the limestone beds especially for the density log reading which is very sensitive to matrix and grain density variations. the similarity between results of the n-d and n-s plots refers to the fact that the pores in the limestone beds are dominantly primary origin and these pores has been destroyed by compaction, cementation and dewatering. figure 5: drilling stem test (dst) was run in drilled interval of the jurassic alan formation in well br-2. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 11 figure 6: wireline log data cross plots. neutron-density and neutron-sonic cross plots for the alan formation in the barda rash field. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 12 the early jurassic alan formation is located in the oil bearing zones of the jurassic petroleum system in the barda rash field [21, 22, 23]. the resistivity log in the un-invaded zone (lld) shows high resistivity reading (lld>50 ohm.m) which is probably indicator for oil bearing intervals or the phenomena is related to anhydrite matrix distribution on the rock mass of the formation figure (7). the fluid recovery test results achieved from the drilling stem tests (dst) shown limited amount of oil flow throughout the wells. as a result, high reading of the resistivity logs in the virgin zone are corresponded to the anhydrite rock type intervals [37]. furthermore, resistivity fluctuations were recorded by the msfl from the flushed zone of the same intervals. figure 7: resistivity logs of alan formation in well br-2, barda rash field. the resistivity logs are including deep laterolog (lld) of un-invaided zone, shallow laterolog (lls) of transition zone and microspherically focused log (msfl) of flushed zone. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 13 the buckle plot was drawn between the calculated water saturation and total porosity achieved from wireline log data for understanding the formation water mobility for the flow tested intervals, figure (8). however, the magnitude of the porosity is not yield multiphase fluid flow productivity and the dominant produced fluid is expected to be the formation water. the residual water still can be seen from the plotted buckle figures as the plotted data was fallen to the similar line that represent a non-movable water trapped within nano-scale pores [7,38 and 39] and the movable water data have scattered distribution on the figure. the wireline log analysis was not given a potential sign from the resistivity logs for oil and water zones availability throughout the drilled interval of the early jurassic alan formation, but the dst results were recorded the maximum volume of oil fluid as 5% to 9% while the other amounts are presented by formation water and drilling fluid. the fluid flow tests do not give a commercial result for the volume of the reserved hydrocarbon in this interval for the early stage exploration in this field. this formation with the obtained petrophysical outputs and observed reservoir characterisation possibly has source rock behavior rather than to be acted as a reservoir rocks. however, acidisation of the oil bearing intervals probably improve fracture aperture and consequently enhances the fluid movability and recovery of the available hydrocarbon in the early stage of development of the field or hydraulic fracturing can be considered as an alternative technique for enhancing fluid recovery throughout the jurassic formation in the barda rash field. figure 8: buckles plots are drawn between the log derived porosity and calculated water saturation for alan formation in well br-2, barda rash field. the plotted intervals were chosen based on drilling stem test intervals of the same intervals. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 14 5. conclusion the dominant conclusions of the reservoir characterisation investigation and hydrocarbon movability study the early jurassic alan formation in barda rash field from the wireline log analysis, rock description and test results are as follows: • the alan formation consist of the heterogeneous limestone beds intercalated with shale layers in the upper parts and anhydrite beds in the middle and lower part throughout the studied wells. the shale contents and anhydrite beds are negatively impacted on the reservoir quality of the formation. • the limestone beds are characterised by lack of visible pore types and macro pores cannot be observed within the cored intervals. furthermore, the primary and secondary pores occluded by secondary minerals. in addition, the fracture surfaces filled with anhydrite, shale and calcite and eventually the reservoir fluid flow connection has been destroyed. • the magnitude of the effective porosity is started from 0.0 of the anhydrite layers to 0.18 of the limestone beds with an average of 0.026. the quantity of the available porosity is not enough to qualify the formation as a potential reservoir rocks within the jurassic petroleum system. in contrast, similar to the other carbonate rocks in the zagros basin this formation is considered as tight carbonate reservoir rock and has very limited amount 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[39] f. rashid, d. o. hussein and h.a. zangana , petrophysical investigation of the khurmala formation in taq taq oil field, zagros folded belt. aro-the scientific journal of koya university, 8(1), 516, 2020. http://aro.koyauniversity.org/article/view/aro.10556 http://aro.koyauniversity.org/article/view/aro.10556 1. introduction 2. study area 3.1. lithology 3.2. shale content 3.3. porosity ,ϕ-n. : neutron derived porosity, fraction. 4. results and discussion 5. conclusion acknowledgement  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq sero-epidemiological study of toxoplasma gondii among pregnant women in akre city hogir mohammed shukri saadi ahmed jumaa ahmed health management department department of biology shingal technical institute college of education akre duhok polytechnic university university of duhok duhok, iraq duhok, iraq dna_proten@yahoo.com ahmed.ahmed@uod.ac article info abstract volume 5 – special issue: 4th international conference on the health and medical science : medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) doi: 10.24017/science.2020.ichms2020.8 article history: received : 23 september 2020 accepted: 29 september 2020 recently has been observed globally that toxoplasmosis disease was caused by toxoplasma gondii and generally its asymptomatic infection in people except pregnant women. many previous studies were suggested this pathogen transmits by ingesting of undercooked or raw meat contaminated with the oocytes of this parasite. the study aimed to show the seroreactivity of toxoplasma gondii antibodies among pregnant women and to evaluate association of studied risk factors with infected cases. elisa technique used for detection of antitoxoplasma specific igg and igm antibodies. a biography form interview for participant was performed to estimate between the risk factors and toxoplasmosis. the present study was carried out from the beginning of october 2018 to the end of march 2019 and included 90 pregnant women visited akre general hospital. out of 90 tested samples, 49 (54.46%) and 4 (4.44%) were positive for igg and igm respectively. according to residency factor, pregnant women from villages had higher percentages of igg (57.14%) and igm (4.08%) than those lived in the city which were recorded 0% and 48.48%of igm and igg respectively. a high percentage of igg (65.64%) and igm (7.27%) were found among pregnant women with history of miscarriage. seropositivity for both igg (61.90 %) and igm (9.52%) was higher among pregnant women who had cats compared to those without cat. seroprevalence of igm and igg was 9.67% and 54.83% among population who had undercooked meat, while 1.69% and 59.23% were positive for igm and igg respectively, in those well cooked meat meal. highest positive percentage of igg (77.77%) was keywords: toxoplasma gondii , toxoplasmosis, elisa , anti-toxoplasma antibodies, sero-diagnosis kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 74 recorded at ages 40-50 years while the lowest rate was (40%) at ages <20 year. through a seropositive reaction was found that age groups as a possible risk factor by elisa igg in which risk increased by rising of age categories. significant correlation was detected between consumption of undercooked meat and cases positive for igm. it revealed the association between third trimester and cases with positive igm. in the conclusion, toxoplasmosis is widespread in the area which requires raising awareness among pregnant women to decrease t. gondii infection and subsequently minimize possibilities of congenital transmission. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction in 1908, nicolle and manceaux were the first to describe and isolate this parasite and they detected in blood, spleen and liver of a north africa rodent [1]. the taxonomy has recently changed: phylum: apicomplexa, class : coccidea, subclass: coccidiasina, order : eimeriida, suborder : eimeriorina, family: sarcocystidae, (sarcocystis), subfamily : toxoplasmatinae, genus : toxoplasma [2]. three infectious form have been contributed the life cycle of this protozoan parasite including tachyzoite , bradyzoites and oocysts [3]. toxoplasma gondii cause toxoplasmosis which is one of the main causes of congenital anomalies among infected pregnant women and clinically very important because may cause pregnancy `s fetus death or severity complication such as hydrocephalus or retinochoroidities [4]. it is an obligate intracellular protozoan parasite that has a complex life cycle alternating between asexual reproduction taking place in several tissues of vertebrates (intermediate hosts) and sexual reproduction taking place in epithelial linings of the digestive tract of cats and generally its asymptomatic infection in people except pregnant women [5].high proportion of seroprevalence has been illustrated among pregnant women and women of childbearing age from different parts of the world [6]. many previous studies were demonstrated the transmission of toxoplasma gondii by various methods. it was suggested this pathogenic parasite transmitted by ingesting of undercooked or raw meat contaminated with the oocytes, exposing to contaminated soil and water, passing this infectious from mother to their unborn fetus and others pathway probably involved in transmission of this pathogenic parasite such as blood transfusion and organ transplantation [7]. the definitive hosts of this parasite are member of felidae (cat) family) and warm blooded animal or human could be an intermediate hosts [8] .it has been considering the congenital transmission of t. gondii during pregnancy as a risk factor for the health of newborn infants. while in immune-compromised individuals, the parasite can cause life threatening infections and some nervous system disorder resulted like mental retarders, blindness and fetal death [9]. the rate of transmission of this infection from mother to fetus varies based on gestational period and the severity of infection, according to the trimester of pregnancy, the percentage of infection during the first trimester is 10-15%, which is increase to 45% in the second trimester and the up to 60% in the third stage of trimester [10]. laboratory identification is made by two methods including both directly and indirectly. indirect method by serological methods, while directly methods by amplification of specific nucleic acid sequences (i.e., polymerase chain reaction [pcr]), hybridisation, isolation of organism, and histologic demonstration of the parasite and/or its antigens (i.e., immunoperoxidase stain) [11]. a serological method varies such as latex agglutination test, indirect fluorescent antibody test , immunochemiluminescence (icl) or immunochromatography (ic) and elisa techniques .other rarely used methods include kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 75 demonstration of antigenemia and antigen in serum and body fluids, toxoplasmin skin test, and antigen-specific lymphocyte transformation [12]. the study aimed to show the seroreactive antibodies of t. gondii infection among participant enrolled and to assess the association between the risk factors and toxoplasmosis infected cases in the studied region. 2. literature review toxoplasmosis is a widely prevalent zoonosis caused by toxoplasma gondii . the definitive hosts are domestic and wild cats while intermediate hosts are all mammals including human [13].toxoplasmosis regarded as a main cause of miscarriage and serious health problem in different countries [14], and usually asymptomatic except in immunocompromised people may show some clinical manifestations such as encephalitis , myocarditis, pneumonitis [15]. several methods have been used for diagnosis of toxoplasma gondii including serological tests, polymerase chain reaction, histological examination or by isolation of the organism [16]. recently this epidemic has shown the dangerous picture; unfortunately the range of infection was increased and recorded various substantially among counties [17]. anti toxoplasma gondii igg was detected in 220 (44.4%) and igm in 55 (11.1%) from 496 serum samples taken from pregnant women by elisa technique [18].[13] also used elisa technique and found igg in 36.45% and igm in 4.52% tested samples, while [19] found varies percentage of anti-toxoplasma antibodies 29.4% (58 out of 197) of igg whereas igm positive was 5.6%. [20] found that 18.3% samples were positive for igg and 1.0% for igm using elisa method. 3. methods and materials the cross-sectional study design was to achieve the aim and objectives of current study. from each patient about 5ml of venous blood samples were collected by laboratory technologists using a sterile disposable syringe and then separated into serum for serological diagnosis under aseptic condition using igg (biorex diagnostic limited) and igm antibodies (bioactive diagnostic) elisa test kits. all sample tubes were appropriately labelled with patient's name. the present study enrolled patients who were referred to gulan general hospital laboratories and emergency hospital laboratories in akre. all data were recorded on survey form for each patient: included age, residential area, stage of pregnancy, history of miscarriage, toxoplasma knowledge, presence of pet animals such as cats, undercooked meat. data was statistically analyzed using (statistical package for social sciences) spss software version 21 (spss, ibm company, chicago, usa). p ≤ 0·05 was considered statistically significant. logistic regression analysis was used to predict the association between t. gondii seropositivity and risk factors. 4. results the results in the table 1 reveal about 90 participants were investigate and the seroprevalence of infected women and non-infected women to toxoplasma gondii was 49 (54.46%) and 4 (4.44%) were positive for anti-toxoplasma specific igg and igm respectively, of the total 90 samples. table 1: toxoplasma gondii igm and igg seropostivety results prevalence of toxoplasma gondii igm / % prevalence of toxoplasma gondii igg / % positive 4 / 4.44 49 / 54.46 negative 86 / 95.56 41 / 45.55 total 90 / 100 90 / 100 kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 76 according to the age groups high percentage of igg was 77.77% at age group more than 40 years old whereas the lowest percentage was 40% for those who were less than 20 years, igm was 5.26 in both age groups 20-29 & 30-39based on the significant correlation, the infection increases progressively with increasing of age categories, as shown in the table 2. table 2: toxoplasma gondii igm and igg seropostivety in different ages age no. of p. igm positive igg positive no. % no. % <20 5 0 0 2 40 20-29 38 2 5.26 19 50 30-39 38 2 5.26 21 55.26 >40 9 0 0 7 77.77 total n. 90 4 4.44 49 54.46 it can be seen that the higher rate of seroprevalnce were recorded by elisa immunoglobulin (igg) than immunoglobulin (igm) in rural zones. similarly, 16 (48.48%) of igg and zero of igm were recorded of those who live in urban zones, as reveled in table 3. significantly no difference was found between residency and elisa tests. table 3: toxoplasma gondii igm and igg seropostivety according to setting location table 4 shows the second trimester recorded higher rate of anti-toxoplasma antibodies igg and igm in comparison to others trimester. notable seroreactivity was identified in the third gestation stage by elisa igm. (p value = 0.025) table 4: toxoplasma gondii igm and igg seropostivety according to pregnancy stages trimester no. of p. igm positive igg positive no. % no. % trimester – i 30 0 0 13 43.33 trimester – ii 38 3 7.89 23 60.52 trimester – iii 22 1 4.54 13 59.09 total 90 4 4.44 49 54.46 as shown in the table 5, the seropositivity of igm was detected 4 (7.27%) and igg was 36 (65.45%) of patients who had past history of abortion, whereas the result was 13 (37.14%) and zero of enrolled pregnant women of igg and igm, respectively of those who had no residency no. of p. igm positive igg positive no. % no. % rural 57 4 7.01 33 57.89 urban 33 0 0 16 48.48 total 90 4 4.44 49 54.46 kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 77 miscarriage in their life. no notable influence was identified on the toxoplasma infection in relation to miscarriage factor by elisa method. table 5: toxoplasma gondii igm and igg seropostivety in aborted and non-aborted women comparatively highest rate of seroprevalence of toxoplasma antibodies 4 (9.52%) of igm and 26 (61.90%) of igg were observed in pregnant samples who had domestic cat at their home compared with those who had not. however, not statistical association was found between handling of pet animals like cat and elisa igg and elisa igm, as show in table 6. table 6. toxoplasma gondii igm and igg seropostivety in women that have or have not cat in their house in accordance with toxoplasma knowledge most of the enrolled participants were not aware of being previously tested for toxoplasma. it revealed that 1 (9%) of igm and 4 (36.35%0 0f igg were positive for those who have information about toxoplasma gondii .while, this pathogenic parasite was detected 3 (3.79%) and 45 (56.26%) by elisa igm and igg respectively of those who had not knowledge about this parasitism . as shown in table 7. no statistically significant was detected between knowledge efficacy and elisa test. table7: toxoplasma gondii igm and igg seropostivety depend on toxoplasma knowledge toxoplasma knowledge no. of p. igm positive igg positive no. % no. % yes 11 1 9 4 36.35 no 79 3 3.79 45 56.26 total 90 4 4.44 49 54.46 among seropositive pregnant women who have consumed under cooked meat 3 (9.67%), 17 (54.83%) were recorded as a positive case for igm and igg, respectively. relatively to those who had not consumed under cooked meat 1 (1.69%) were detected igm and 32 (54.23%) of igg , as shown in table 8 . significant association was found between seropositivity of elisa igm, igg and risk factor of consumption of under cooked meat . miscarriage no. of p. igm positive igg positive no. % no. % yes 55 4 7.27 36 65.45 no 35 0 0 13 37.14 total 90 4 4.44 49 54.46 pet animal (cat) no. of p. igm positive igg positive no. % no. % yes 42 4 9.52 26 61.90 no 48 0 0 23 47.91 total 90 4 4.44 49 54.46 kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 78 table 8: toxoplasma gondii igm and igg seropostivety in related to consumption of undercooked meat consumption of undercooked meat no. of p. igm positive igg positive no. % no. % yes 31 3 9.67 17 54.83 no 59 1 1.69 32 54.23 total 90 4 4.44 49 54.46 5. discussion it is crucially important to understand the status of toxoplasma infection in the general population. toxoplasma gondii causes toxoplasmosis around the world and the majority of infections are asymptomatic and without complications except in immunocompromised and pregnant women. various methods are used for diagnosis of toxoplasma gondii. the main focus of the current study is to screening anti-toxoplasma antibodies among surveyed population and to evaluate the association of studied risk factors with infected cases. out of a total 90 patients who were referred to laboratory investigation included in the present study and semi-automated elisa technique was used for detection anti-toxoplasma specific igg antibodies and anti-toxoplasma specific igm antibodies. t. gondii-specific igg is associated with previous exposure to the parasite and is used as a marker for latent infection while igm is used as a marker for exposure or acute infection. based on the results obtained, the percentages of igg and igm were 54.46% and 4.44% respectively. the outcome results were agreeing to those recorded via [21] who diagnosed that 42.5% of igg and 7.5% of igm from cases were positive by elisa method and [22] found that 29.2% and 3.1% of pregnant were positive for igg and igm respectively. while the results of this study were disagreed with those found by [23] who detected high percentages of igm more than igg by elfa (enzyme linked fluorescence assay)-igg/igm .as well dissimilar to study done by [24] who identified higher rate of igm than igg in female gender. these discrepancies in the results of diagnosed t. gondii may referred to many reasons including number samples, socioeconomic status, ethical considerations, genetic characteristics and methodology. seropositive cases in the results of current study was observed the infection of toxoplasma increased by increasing of age and which is similar to the results were recorded by [25], while the results of this study were disagree to the concluded other studies such as [26]. these differences may be due to many factors such as in the last interval age women more active with family and house holding matters so that more susceptible to endangering agents and pass the infection .where as low proportion of infection at younger age group due to less contact causative agent of toxoplasmosis infection , immunocompromised with advanced of age, the kind of test, low number of sample, climate, and cultural differences regarding hygienic and feeding habits. sero-reactive and non sero-reactive cases in relation with risk factors like residency, handling of pet animal like cat, history of abortion, toxoplasma knowledge, there were not statistically significant according to the present results and these results were identical to those found by [27]. our findings were dissimilar to those found by [28, 29] and numerous causes contribute to this differences such as the , high awareness, care and hygiene may decrease the exposure to infection, epidemiology varies widely by geographical areas of the study, mode of transmission a significant relationship was found between consumption of undercooked meat and igm which were similar to those found by [30] .the current outcomes were in correspond to other investigators who found no influence of eating undercooked meat on the present outcomes of elisa igm like [31]. these dissimilarities based on the prior of highlighted analyzes. a considerable correlation was detected between third trimester of pregnancy and igm which was comparable to [32]. the results were differing to those studies who found no kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 79 statistical association such as [33]. the differences in the results can be attributed to obstetric factors, congenital transmission for women with primary and reactivated infections acquired during pregnancy, higher vulnerability to t. gondii infection during gestational period may be due to combination of pregnancy-associated immunosuppression as well as hormonal and physiological factors, number analyzed samples and methodology, effectiveness of treatment during gestation , individual variation and also pertains to the cumulative effect of exposure to the infective stages of the parasite. 6. conclusion the study found the statistically significant between age categories and elisa. t. gondii infection was more among patients who reside in the rural area compared to those who reside in the urban area. toxoplasmosis is widely 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[33] kh.mohamed, a. bahathiq, n. degnah, s. basuni, al . mahdi, a.al malki and a. babalghith," detection of toxoplasma gondii infection and associated risk factors among pregnant women in makkah al mukarramah, saudi arabia," asian pacific journal of tropical disease ,vol.6(2),pp.113-119,2016. 1. introduction 6. conclusion results kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 1 | june 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.1.11 chemical composition and antifungal activity of mentha spicata l. plant from sulaimaniyah in iraq lana ma. mohammed tara faeq m. salah karzan o. qader sulaimani polytechnic university medical analysis department, biology department, technical college of health, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani polytechnic university, medical laboratory department, sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq lana.amin@spu.edu.iq tara.faeq@spu.edu.iq karzan.omer@univsul.edu,iq abstract: aerial parts of mentha plants were collected from sulaimaniyah city, during 15th mar to 1st july 2016. clevenger apparatus was used for plant sample distillation and then obtained essential oils were analyzed by gc and gc/ms. the gc–ms analysis resulted in the detection of thirty eight compounds which made up 100% of total plant essential oil. the major components of the oil were (54.44%) of 2-cyclohexen-1-one, 2-methyl-5-(1 methylethenyl)-, (r)-, (27.72%) of d-limonene, (3.29%) of 2-cyclohexen-1-ol, 2-methyl-5-(1 methylethenyl)-, trans-, (2.16%) of cyclohexanol, 2 methyl-5-(1-methylethenyl)-, (1.83%) of bicyclo[3.1.0] hexan-2-ol,2-methyl-5-(1-methylethyl) (1.alpha.,2.beta.,5.alpha.) and (1.03%) of 3 cyclohexen-1-ol, 4-methyl-1-(1-methylethyl)-, (r)-. the significant inhibition percentages of mentha spicata plants extract on the aspergillus niger mycelial growth were 16.78%, 18.92%, 23.21%, 28.57% and 36.78%, in 32%, 34%, 36%, 38% and 40% dilution respectively, while other concentrations showed no significant effect. keywords : mentha spicata l; essential oil; antimicrobial activity; aspergillus niger. 1. introduction aspergillus niger is a worldwide distributed filamentous ascomycete fungi that is considered as one of the most common spices of genus aspergillus. a. niger lives as saprophyte in many various environments. it was isolated from numerous habitats such as soil, water, dead plant, stored grain, compost piles decayed vegetables and fruits. it causes many diseases on plant because of its ability to produce hydrolytic and oxidative enzymes which could involve in breakdown of plant lignocellulos [24]. it is known as a main causative agent of black mold and rot disease on different fruits and vegetables also commonly used in food industry because of production of extracellular organic acids materials [24, 23, 22, 27]. a. niger has been tagged with the generally recognized as safe status from the us food and drug administration [25]. it is considered as important fungi that has role in the global carbon cycle [3]. moreover, a. niger can be considered as an opportunistic infectious agent of different human diseases. it causes severe lung disorder i.e. aspergillosis if sufficient amount of its spore inhaled by human. it has ability to produce certain mycotoxin which can cause several problems of liver, kidney, skin, muscle, nervous system, digestive tract, respiratory organs, genital organs etc [28]. moreover, aspergillus niger can produce ochratoxin a and fumonisin b2 and aflatoxins [20, 1]. a plant that is known as a strong antifungal medical plant is mentha spicata l. (spearmint). it is known as a member of lamiaceae family. spearmint is a type of the plant that grows in the moist areas without production of seed and increased only by vegetative methods which is rhizomes [18]. it is herbaceous and perennial aromatic herbs which essential oil of this plant used in different industries such as cosmetics, fragrances, flavors, aromatherapy, phototherapy, nutrition and spices [11]. the medical activity of mentha species l. (spearmint) is related to the presence of the two main compound groups: phenolic and essential oil compounds. the main phenolics component of spearmint includes derivatives of caffeic acid and glycosidic forms of the flavonoids luteolin, apigenin, eriodictyol and naringenin [15]. mentha spicata is characterized by a high carvone and limonene, however the carvone content of mentha cardiaca is the same but it has higher limonene content [12]. it has been shown that mint oil (oil obtained from mentha spicata) exhibits antifungal activity against different pathogenic plant fungi such as alternaria alternata, aspergillus niger and fusarium sp. by using agar well diffusion method [2]. spearmint was taken as a tea to treat general digestive and used in commercially manufactured product, cooking and medicine [16]. moreover, two species of spearmint plants were diagnosed and it has been reported that their essential oil mailto:lana.amin@spu.edu.iq mailto:tara.faeq@spu.edu.iq mailto:omer@univsul.edu have strong antimicrobial activity [8]. also studies of [26] on various antifungal properties of essential oil of mentha spicata showed that mentha essential oil has fungi toxic effect. this study evaluated and determined the essential oil composition of mentha spicata plant. also antifungal activity of the mentha spicata plant has been studied against growth of aspergillus niger fungi. 2. materials and methods 2.1. isolation and identification of the fungi black conidia spores of aspergillus niger on infected onion bulbs were collected and transferred to potato dextrose agar plates in the medical laboratory in sulaimaniyah city. later, pda plates were incubated with incubation period 5-6 days, at 25˚c ± 2˚c for complete fungal growth. for purification of aspergillus niger method of single spore and morphological characteristics were used. identification was done based on standard keys [4, 19]. 2.2. preparation of plant materials young leaves and branches of mentha plants were collected from cultivated plant in sulaimaniyah city 15th mar to 1st july 2016. dehydration and milling have been done for all collected parts of plants and then the plant samples were kept at appropriate position considering temperature and light until the next step. later, essential oil was taken from 100 g of the milled sample in hydro distillation method with the help of clevenger set in 500 ml of distal water, kept at 4 °c until use [18]. 2.3. effect of plant extract on radial growth of aspergillus niger: agar dilution technic was performed for detecting the inhibitory effect of different concentration of mentha plant extract on radial growth of aspergillus niger. twenty different concentrations of mentha extract were added to pda medium, that include (2%, 4%, 6% 8%, 10%, 12%, 14%, 16%, 18%, 20%, 22%, 24%, 26%, 28%, 30%, 32%, 34%, 36%, 38%, 40%) each treatment was replicated 3 times. on the center of each petri plate 1 centimeter diameter of fungal block from 4-day-old colony of aspergillus niger was inoculated and incubated at 25˚c ± 2˚c. the measuring of fungal growth diameter of fungal growth colony was performed after 4 days of inoculation. three replicates were used within each treatment. the effect of mentha plant extract on fungal growth was calculated by using the following formula [21]. [growth inhibition% = [(growth in control – growth in sample)/growth in control] × 100]. 2.4. gas chromatography gcms was done at gc-ms lab, college of agriculture university of basra. one μl of the essential oils was injected into the gc-ms instrument using a micro syringe and the scanning was done for 20 min. gc program was (gcms-qp2010 ultra, ion source temp: 200.00 °c , interface temp. : 280.00 °c, solvent cut time :3.00 min, detector gain mode :relative, detector gain :0.70 kv +0.10 kv, start time :3.00min, end time :19.00min, acq mode :scan, event time :0.50sec, scan speed :1666 , start m/z :50.00, end m/z :800.00). after separation of oil compounds, they extracted from the column and followed by the process of detection by a detector with consequence of electronic signal creation after any detection. the size of the signal was depended on the concentration of the samples. 2.5. statistical analysis the effect of mentha plant extract with different concentration on radial growth of aspergillus niger assessed by a one way analysis of variance (anova). mean difference between mentha plant extract was separated by fisher’s [7] test significant difference (lsd) at 1% significant probability level. 3. results the gc–ms analysis of the essential oil of m. spicata l. resulted in the detection of thirty eight compounds which made up of 100% of total plant essential oil. the major compounds were; (54.44%) of 2-cyclohexen-1-one, 2 methyl-5-(1-methylethenyl)-, (r)-, (27.72%) of d limonene, (3.29%) of 2-cyclohexen-1-ol, 2-methyl-5 (1-methylethenyl)-, trans-, (2.16%) of cyclohexanol, 2 methyl-5-(1-methylethenyl)-, (1.83%) of bicyclo[3.1.0] hexan-2-ol, 2-methyl-5-(1-methylethyl)-, (1.alpha.,2.beta.,5.alpha.) and (1.03%) of 3 cyclohexen-1-ol, 4-methyl-1-(1-methylethyl)-, (r)-. see the retention times and chemical composition of essential oils of mentha spicata in (table 1). this research also investigated the antifungal activity of menth spicata extract against aspergillus niger growth activity. it was found that the mentha plant extrac dilutiont has significant inhibitory effect on aspergillus niger mycelial growth when compared with control in 32%, 34%, 36%, 38% and 40% dilution with average inhibitory growth percentage 16.78%, 18.92%, 23.21%, 28.57% and 36.78% respectively (figure 1). table 1. chemical composition of essential oils of mentha spicata from sulaimaniyah city. figure 1; antifungal activity of mentha spicata extract with different dilutions on aspergillus niger growth. 4. discussion several studies have been reported on mentha spicata essential oil composition around the world. while by far there are no reports about mentha spicata essential oil composition in iraq specifically in sulaimaniyah city. the gc–ms analysis of the essential oil of mentha spicata l. resulted in the detection of thirty eight compounds which made up of 100% of total plant essential oil (table 1). the major components of the oil were (54.44%) of 2-cyclohexen-1-one, 2-methyl-5-(1 methylethenyl)-, (r)-, (27.72%) of d-limonene, (3.29%) of 2-cyclohexen-1-ol, 2-methyl-5-(1 methylethenyl)-, trans-, (2.16%) of cyclohexanol, 2 methyl-5-(1-methylethenyl)-, (1.83%) of bicyclo[3.1.0] hexan-2-ol, 2-methyl-5-(1-methylethyl)-, (1.alpha.,2.beta.,5.alpha.) and (1.03%) of 3 cyclohexen-1-ol, 4-methyl-1-(1-methylethyl)-, (r)-. the dominant chemo types of mentha spicata that found in greece were linalool, carvone/dihydrocarvone, piperitone oxide/piperitetone oxide, and menthone/isomenthone/ pulegone, respectively [14]. while, the major components of mentha spicata that found in bejaia location (algeria) were carvone, limonene, and 1,8-cineole [5]. the chemical composition showed that the plant leaves and branches in sulaimaniyah had composition different to those of other mentha spicata essential oils analyzed from bejaia location (algeria) and greece. the inhibition percentages of mentha spicata plants extract on the a. niger mycelial growth was shown in figure 1. the percentage of mycelium growth inhibition were 16.78%, 18.92%, 23.21%, 28.57% and 36.78% in 32%, 34%, 36%, 38% and 40% dilution respectively. it is known that the antifungal effect of plant extract depends on plant species and its chemical components. it has been considered that there is a bond between the chemicals in plant essential oil and the antimicrobial activity [6]. several published researches have been reported the antimicrobial activity of the mentha spicata’s essential oils against gram positive and gram negative bacterial, yeast, and fungal strains. menthe spicata’s essential oil was used as an antimicrobial agent against aspergillus flavus nrrl 391 and candida albicans atcc 1024. the result showed inhibition in mycilial growth with zone diameters > 40 mm [17]. according to another study on antifungal effect of menthe sp. essential oil against several plant pathogrnic fungi, aspergillus niger showed more sensitivity than other tested fungi. furthermore, the diameter of growth inhibition obtained for mentha spicata essential oil against aspergillus ochraceus nrrl 3174 was 43 mm [9]. it has been revealed that mentha spicata showed positive antimicrobial effect on bacterial and fungal strains [9, 13]. moreover, mentha spicata essential oil showed high antimicrobial activity against candida albicans strain. 5. conclusion the study of growth inhibitory effect of mentha spicata extract with different dilutions has given encouraging results, showed their potential use in the management of various plant and human diseases that caused by aspergillus niger. in addition, this study showed the major chemical composition of young leaves and branches of essential oils from mentha spicata plant in sulaimaniyah city. the essential oil that obtained from mentha spicata plant was characterized by gc-ms and 38 volatile compounds were identified which made up 100% of the total essential oil. 6. references [1]. aha. al-abdalall, "production of aflatoxins by aspergillus flavus and aspergillus niger strains isolated from seeds of pulses," journal of food agriculture and environment, 7 33-39, 2009. 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[28]. mw. truckesses and pm. scott, "mycotoxins in botanicals and dried fruit," a review. food addition contamination 25 181-192, 2008.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq comparing the viral load of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 in different human specimens ali hattem hussain nursing department technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq ali.hussain@spu.edu.iq article info abstract special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) doi: 10.24017/covid.15 article history: received:29 may 2020 accepted:5 june 2020 this meta-analysis study analyzed the data of 47 recent studies with data related sars-cov-2 viral load detection in different human specimens. 1099 patients were tested for sars-cov-2 viral load using up to 19 different respiratory and non-respiratory specimens using rt-pcr by targeting different types of viral genes of which orf1ab is the most commonly used target gene. 9909 specimens were taken from the patients. the mean of viral load cycle threshold value is 17.8 (±11.7), with a median of 15.95 with minimum value of 2.5 and a maximum value of 39.5. nasopharyngeal swab has the highest positivity rate (90.5%) for viral load detection followed by bronchoalveolar lavage, nasal swab, nasopharyngeal aspirate, throat swab, and then sputum. for the non-respiratory specimen, stool and rectal swab are most appropriate specimens followed by blood. the urine is not appropriate specimen for viral load detection due to very low sensitivity. the sputum was positive up to 23 days in a daily manner since start of symptoms except for the days 19, 21, and 23. three specimens, the nasopharyngeal swab, throat swab, and rectal swab, showed positive rt-pcr results before the appearance of covid-19 clinical features. possible positive results can be detected up to 43 days in throat swab, stool, and rectal swab. after negative conversion of respiratory specimens, the viral shedding can continue more than one month from stool and rectal swab. the 3rd day since onset of symptoms is the most day of testing (223/2935). the highest positivity of sars-cov-2 viral load was recorded in day 16 since the onset of symptoms. keywords: sars-cov-2, viral load, specimen, nasopharyngeal swab, cycle threshold. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. mailto:ali.hussain@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 132 1. introduction severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 is abbreviated as sars-cov-2 and it is called 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-ncov). it is the causative agent of coronavirus disease (covid-19), which is also mentioned as 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-ncov) infection [1]. covid-19 infection is a respiratory tract infectious disease first reported in wuhan, china in december 2019 [2], which is quickly, became a pandemic infection causing major global infections with obligatory quarantine period in most of the world [3]. the sars-cov-2 virus is a member of coronaviridea family. the virion is enveloped and it contains single stranded, unsegmented, positive sense rna genome within a nucleocapsid. the virus has a diameter of 80-130 nm. projections called peplomers or spikes are radiate out from the surface of the virus through envelop and are seen under electron microscope as solar corona giving the name coronaviruses to this family [4]. any age can acquire the infection; the incubation period of covid-19 infection is believed to be located within 14 days from the exposure day, few (2.5%) patients will develop symptoms within 2 days from exposure while the majority (97.5%) will showed clinical features of respiratory infection after 11 days from exposure [5]. during the incubation period, the patient can transmit the infection to others. the covid-19 infection has a wide spectrum of clinical presentations ranging from asymptomatic disease to life threating critically ill infection. the patient may develop mild infection with features of upper respiratory tract infection like fever rhinorrhea, sneezing, and mild cough; some patients have diarrhea, and vomiting; the disease may progress to feature of lower respiratory infection including pneumonia like dyspnea and hypoxia then critical complications like respiratory failure and multiorgan dysfunction [6]. for the diagnosis of covid-19 infection, the suspected cases are confirmed by molecular techniques mostly by real time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction assays to detect sars-cov-2 viral rna in clinical specimens [7]. respiratory specimens are the most recommended ones, both upper and lower respiratory specimens are collected. for upper respiratory tract specimens, nasopharyngeal swabs and throat (oropharyngeal) swabs are the applied; while for lower respiratory tract specimens' sputum, and if possible, bronchoalveolar lavage and/or tracheal aspirate are used when possible. although sars-cov-2 virus was detected in specimens rather than respiratory ones like stool or serum, the use of this non-respiratory specimen is not recommended for routine molecular diagnosis because the virus dynamics in these specimens is not fully elucidated. serum might be used for serological diagnosis of sars-cov-2 especially when two blood samples taken at acute and convalescent period of infection show increase in antibody titers [8]. understanding the dynamics of sars-cov-2 viral load in different specimens can help in better specimen collection at the appropriate time for confirming the diagnosis and to assess its relation to covid-19 infection severity. in this aspect, the physicians can categorize the patients for different types of management. hence, this meta-analysis study was set out to clarify the sarscov-2 viral load concentrations measured in different human specimens for comprehensive understanding of viral dynamics, and to better choosing of human specimens whether respiratory or non-respiratory specimens for the diagnosis, management, and follow up of patients infected with sars-cov-2. 2. methods and materials between 29 march 2020 and 7 may of the same year, papers and studies relating to covid-19 infection were searched in pubmed, embase, scopus, cochrane library, google scholar, and science direct, figure (1). papers and studies related to covid-19 infection were selected using the search key words: covid-19, sars-cov-2, viral load, 2019-ncov, and cycle threshold. the search strategy mentioned in figure (1) was followed. the relevant data were recorded in microsoft excel worksheet, and then data were analyzed using the same excel worksheet program and the internet-based social science statistic software program. kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 133 figure 1: strategy of internet-based search for papers 3. results in this systematic review, 47 studies, from 11 different countries all over the world, were selected which measured the sars-cov-2 viral load in 19 different types of human specimens; the blood specimen was mentioned as serum, plasma, or whole blood. some studies applied more than one type of specimens for detecting the viral load. according to the number of studies, the top three frequently used specimens, for measuring the viral load, were the nasopharyngeal swab [n=29, (61.7%)], oropharyngeal swab [n=26, (55.3%)], and stool (fecal) specimen [n=18, (38.3 %)]. to a lesser extent, blood or urine were the collected specimens for viral load detection and each of them were used in 13 studies (27.7 %); the frequency and the percentage of each of the 19 specimens are described in table (1). among the 19 specimens, ten types were respiratory specimens while the remaining nine were extra-respiratory specimens. eleven (61.1%) of the 3 and cycle threshold. the search strategy mentioned in figure (1) was followed. the relevant data were recorded in microsoft excel worksheet, and then data were analyzed using the same excel worksheet program and the internet-based social science statistic software program. figure 1: strategy of internet-based search for papers 3. results in this systematic review, 47 studies, from 11 different countries all over the world, were selected which measured the sars-cov-2 viral load in 19 different types of human specimens; the blood specimen was mentioned as serum, plasma, or whole blood. some studies applied more than one type of specimens for detecting the viral load. according to the database searched engine: medline, embase, scopus, cochrane library, google scholar, and science direct duration of search: 29 march 2020 to 7 may 2020 keywords: covid-19, sars-cov-2, viral load, copies/ml filter: english language, human studies pubmed= 67, scopus=8941, embase=7823, cochrane=22, google scholar=1780, science direct=52 results of total number of studies =18,685 papers excluded due to: viral load not mentioned as number, specimen not specified, abstract only, and irrelevant data in addition, web pages, books excluded the final number of studies included in this meta-analysis = 47 kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 134 all specimens were collected by noninvasive procedures while eight (38.9%) of them are taken by invasive methods. the total number of patients enrolled in all the 47 studies was 1099 patients of which 9909 specimens were taken from them to detect the viral load. the overall detection rate was 6053/9909 (61%). the nasopharyngeal specimen (nps), oropharyngeal also called throat swab (ts), nasal swab (ns), blood, and stool were the most frequently used specimens, followed by sputum and urine. these seven specimens were the most commonly used specimens for diagnostic purposes, for patients' follow up, and to announce the decision of cure from infection. the sars-cov-2 was detected in all of these 19 specimens but with different sensitivities. the viral load detection rate was most frequently recorded in nps specimens [n=1695/1873, (90.5%)] followed by bronchioalveolar lavage (bal) [n=16/18 (88.9%)]; while the least detection rate was noted in semen (zero %), the tears 1%, whereas urine (2.7%); the detection rate was not recorded for throat aspirate, lung tissue, and peritoneal swab, as described in table 2. at least 15 different genes were the targets for detection and measuring the viral load of sarscov-2 in different specimens (table 2); most of these genes (n=11) were targeted in nps followed by throat swab (n=6), then nasal swab, stool, sputum, and urine, and for each of them five different target genes were looked for. in each single study, 1-3 genes were targeted. the orf1ab and rdrp genes were the most commonly targeted genes for detection of sars-cov2; each of them was used for detection of the virus in 9 human specimens followed by n and e genes which were detected in 8 specimens. while, rdrp-ip1, s, m, 5′utr, and h, genes were targeted in 5, 4, 3, 2, and 2 specimens respectively; the last group of genes which were detected in only one specimen are rdrp-p1, rdrp-p2, and rnase p, n1, n2, and n3; table (2). the quantitative real time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction technique was used for gene detection by measuring the ct value. in the vast majority of studies, the ct value ≥ 40 was considered as negative. the exact range of cycle thresholds (ct) values for viral rna of sars-cov-2 was mentioned for only 12 human specimens (table 2); the highest ct values range was 2.5-39 (36.5) and it was mentioned for nps, while the least was for urine sediment and it was 36.3-36.5 (0.2). the ct values of sars-cov-2. the results showed that nps and stool (feces) specimens are containing the highest recorded viral concentrations, and unexpectedly they the specimens that recorded the lowest sars-cov-2 concentrations (lowest ct values), as shown in table 2. the mean ct value is 17.8 (±11.7), with a median of 15.95 with minimum value of 0.2 and a maximum value of 36.5. table 1: the frequencies and the percentages of the studies applied different clinical specimen for measuring the sars-cov-2 viral load [8-54] number specimen number of studies (%) reference number type of procedure 1. nasopharyngeal swab 29 (61.7) [11], [12], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [20], [21], [22], [24], [26], [27], [30], [31], [35], [36], [37], [39], [40], [41], [42], [44], [46], [47], [49], [50], [51], [54] noninvasive 2. throat (oropharyngeal) swab 26 (55.3) [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [16], [18], [19], [20], [22], [29], [32], [34], [36], [38], [40], [43], [44], [45], [46], [47], [50], [51], [52], [53] noninvasive kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 135 3. sputum 11 (23.4) [8], [10], [14], [16], [23], [25], [28], [36], [45, [48], [50] noninvasive 4. nasal swab 6 (12.8) [8], [11], [19], [20], [23], [45], [54] noninvasive 5. nasopharyngeal aspirate 2 (4.2) [18], [42] invasive 6. lung tissue 1 (2.1) [46] invasive 7. pleural fluid 1 (2.1) [42] invasive 8. bronchio-alveolar lavage 1 (2.1) [8] invasive 9. fibrobronchoscope brush biopsy 1 (2.1) [8] invasive 10. throat aspirate 1 (2.1) [20] invasive 11. stool 18 (38.3) [8], [9], [10], [12], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [20], [22], [25], [34], [37], [42], [46], [50], [51] noninvasive 12. urine 13 (27.7) [8], [14], [15], [16], [18], [21], [ 22], [25], [37], [42], [45], [46], [50] noninvasive 13. saliva 4 (8.5) [25], [26], [32], [39] noninvasive 14. rectal swab 3 (6.4) [24], [31], [42] noninvasive 15. ocular swab 2 (4.2) [23], [28] noninvasive 16. semen 1 (2.1) [21] noninvasive 17. tears 1 (2.1) [30] noninvasive 18. blood (whole blood, plasma, serum ) 13 (27.7) [8], [15], [16], [18], [19], [25], [33], [37], [42, [45], [46], [50], [51] invasive 19. peritoneal swab 1 (2.1) [20] invasive table 2: the viral load detection rate of sars-cov-2 in clinical specimens; cycle threshold range results and the target genes are displayed [8-54] specimen positive rate target gene ct range nasopharyngeal swab 90.5% (1695/1873) orf1ab, n, e, rdrp, h , s, 5′utr, n1, n2, n3, rnase p, 2.5-39 bronchioalveolar lavage 88.9% (16/18) orf1ab, e, rdrp-ip1, rdrp, 24.7-36.2 nasal swab 82.1% (1261/1536) orf1ab, e, rdrp, n, m 16.62-38.4 saliva 80.3% (232/280) 5′utr region, s 18-35 kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 136 nasopharyngeal aspirate 76.5% (52/68) rdrp-ip1, rdrp nm throat swab 74.3% (1909/2571) orf1ab, e, rdrp, n, rdrp1, rdrp2 18.26-38.6 sputum 56.7% (382/674) orf1ab, n, m, rdrp, e 16.1-38.8 fibro bronchoscope brush biopsy 46.2% (6/13) orf1ab, 26.9-36.8 stool 45.2% (397/878) orf1ab, rdrp, n, e, rdrp-ip1, 4.65 -39.1 ocular secretion 18.4% (7/38) m 21.66-36.56 rectal swab 17.9% (12/67) orf1ab, n 22.5-37 blood 6.2% (64/1025) orf1ab, n, rdrp-ip1, rdrp 34.1-35.4 urine and urine sediment 2.7% (19/710) orf1ab, n, rdrp, e, s 36.3-36.5 tears 1% (1/94) nm semen 0% (0/1) e, s nm throat aspirate na nm peritoneal swab na nm lung tissue na nm pleural fluid na nm n: nucleocapsid protein; orf1ab: open reading frame 1ab; rdrp: rna-dependent rna polymerase; e: envelope; 5′utr region: 5′ untranslated region; s: spike protein; m: membrane protein; h: helicase; rnase p: ribonuclease p; ct: cycle threshold, nm: not mentioned. when distributing the positive results of each specimen according to days since the onset of symptoms, the results revealed that throat swab, stool specimen, and rectal swab could be positive for sars-cov-2 up to 42 days in a daily manner since the first day of patient's complaint. the nasopharyngeal swab, blood specimen, and ocular secretions, are daily detecting the virus for, less durations, 30, 28, and 27 days respectively. day 31 was negative for nps but the day after was positive. the urine, saliva, and the bronchoalveolar lavage are positive for up to 14, 13, and 10 days respectively and in their ct values can be above the threshold in any of these days. day 16 was also positive for urine sample. the sputum was positive up to 23 days in a daily manner since start of symptoms except for the days 19, 21, and 23 that were negative for the virus. the ct values of sars-cov-2 in nasal swabs were positive up to 21 days with only one day, day number 19, was negative for the virus; these results are described in table 3. three specimens, the nasopharyngeal swab, throat swab, and rectal swab, showed positive rtpcr results before the appearance of covid-19 clinical features. table 3: the positive sars-cov-2 viral load in different specimens according to days since the appearance of symptoms; a) days -1 until 21, b) days 22 until 4; doted squares are specimens with no available data/days day since symptoms -1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 137 nps bal ns sa npa ts sp fbb st os rs bl ur te se ta ps day since symptoms 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 nps bal ns sa npa ts sp fbb st os rs bl ur te se ta ps nps: nasopharyngeal swab; bal: bronchoalveolar lavage; ns: nasal swab; sa: saliva; npa: nasopharyngeal aspirate; ts: throat swab; sp: sputum; fbb: fibro bronchoscope brush biopsy; st: stool; os: ocular secretions; rs: rectal swab; bl: blood; ur: urine; te: tears; se: semen; ta: tracheal aspirate; ps: peritoneal swab; lt: lung tissue the respiratory specimens are applied for the laboratory diagnosis of covid-19 infection using rt-pcr technique to detect sars-cov-2; moreover, the cure from infection is also decided by the same technique for the respiratory specimens. surprisingly, the shedding of the sarscov-2 is continuing from the gastrointestinal tract after the confirmed negative conversion of respiratory specimen. this shedding is appearing as positive rt-pcr with ct values for the kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 138 viral genes above the threshold in rectal swab for 42 days and in stool specimens for 32 days after negative respiratory specimens as nasopharyngeal swab or throat swab, table (4). table 4: duration of sars-cov shedding in non-respiratory specimens after confirmed negative conversion of respiratory samples specimen days after confirmed negative respiratory specimens stool 32 ocular secretion not recorded rectal secretion 42 blood not recorded urine not recorded tears not recorded semen not recorded peritoneal fluid not recorded the number of tests that is written in the selected papers with regard to the timeline of testing the viral load was 2935 out of 9909 (29.6%) tested in 43 days from first day of patient's complaint. the 3rd day since onset of symptoms is the most day of testing (223/2935) while the least one of testing specimens were the days 39-42 since appearance of symptoms and for each of these days testing was done only four times (4/2935); table (5). there is gradual increase in positive results since the day of symptom's onset to reach a peak in 16 days after the symptoms, then consistent decline until the day 43; figure (2). the peak of viral load positivity for the most frequently used respiratory and non-respiratory specimens showed that nps is most frequently recorded as positive for sars-cov-2 and this is in the day 16 from start of symptoms. while for throat swab, saliva, sputum, and blood the peak viral load positivity is in the days 7, 5, 13, and 11 post-symptoms' onset respectively. for stool specimen, two days are reported with most positive results, these are days 13 and 15. the rectal swab gave highest positivity in four days, 10, 14, 16, and 18; table (6). table 5: the cumulative daily-recorded positive and negative rt-pcr results for detecting sarscov-2 rna viral load; a) days-1 until 21 since onset of symptoms , b) days 22-43 a) specimen day since symptoms -1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 1 5 16 1 7 18 19 20 21 the frequency of positive (red numbers) and negative (green numbers) viral load nps + 2 17 27 37 25 29 3 0 28 31 37 26 37 22 25 23 2 1 112 1 6 10 19 7 5 nps 3 1 3 3 7 6 13 7 7 7 22 7 11 8 1 0 9 1 6 7 6 5 5 bal + 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 bal 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 nasal swab + 1 2 2 4 3 3 4 3 0 2 1 2 1 1 2 1 2 1 0 1 1 kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 139 nasal swab 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 saliva + 1 2 3 4 5 2 1 4 3 2 1 1 1 saliva 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 npa + 2 2 1 npa 0 0 0 throat swab + 5 12 11 22 26 32 3 0 36 32 31 29 31 25 25 21 1 5 11 9 8 8 5 2 throat swab 0 36 32 28 19 13 5 7 3 8 1 9 3 8 2 6 3 8 3 7 3 6 sputum + 3 1 5 4 5 5 5 4 5 4 5 2 7 4 3 2 3 1 0 1 0 sputum 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 1 2 2 0 1 1 2 1 1 3 1 1 stool + 3 4 5 6 6 9 14 13 15 18 20 19 23 19 2 3 21 1 7 16 17 20 22 stool 32 32 98 26 28 2 4 27 19 19 16 16 10 14 7 7 4 7 4 7 3 3 rectal swab + 2 1 3 3 2 2 2 2 4 1 5 1 4 1 5 1 5 1 5 1 4 1 rectal swab 0 1 0 2 1 3 2 1 2 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ocular secretion + 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ocular secretion 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 blood 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 3 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 blood 2 1 5 2 3 1 8 2 8 1 6 1 7 1 2 1 2 1 3 0 2 urine + 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 urine 0 4 2 1 5 1 8 2 4 1 4 0 4 0 3 0 3 1 3 1 3 tears + 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 tears 2 1 1 1 1 3 2 2 2 2 2 1 5 3 1 1 2 b) specimen day since symptoms 22 23 24 25 26 27 2 8 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 3 9 40 41 42 43 the frequency of positive (red numbers) and negative (green numbers) viral load nps 7 4 5 5 5 4 4 1 1 0 1 0 nps 2 7 3 4 1 3 0 2 0 2 0 1 bal nasal swab saliva + 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 140 saliva 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 npa throat swab + 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 throat swab 1 5 0 5 0 5 0 2 1 2 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 sputum + 1 0 0 0 sputum 1 2 1 1 stool + 15 16 14 13 11 10 8 9 8 9 6 8 7 7 6 6 6 2 2 2 2 1 stool 0 3 0 3 0 3 0 3 0 3 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 rectal swab + 3 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 rectal swab 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 ocular secretion + 1 1 1 1 1 1 ocular secretion 0 0 0 0 0 0 blood + 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 blood 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 urine/ sediment + 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 urine/ sediment 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 0 tears kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 141 figure 2: the chronological distribution of positive rt-pcr results for sars-cov-2 since one day before symptomatology table 6: the peak positive viral load results since the onset of symptoms specimen the day since onset of symptoms nps 16 throat swab 7 saliva 5 sputum 13 nasal swab 4,7 stool 13, 15 rectal swab 10, 14, 16, 18 blood 11 4. discussion in this meta-analysis research, recently published 47 studies about sars-cov-2 viral infection in different countries all over the world were analyzed for the viral load concentration and viral positivity in different types of human specimens. the total number of patients who were tested was 1099 patients using 9909 specimens from up to 19 types of specimens using periodic laboratory investigation to detect viral load by measuring the ct of the targeted gens; the periodic examination explain this large number of specimens collected from the patients with a ratio of 9 tests per patient. the continuous testing of each patient is required to know the clearance of the body from the virus so that to confirm and announce the cure from infection. nps was the most commonly used specimen for viral sars-cov-2 load detection by rt-pcr. this is in accordance to the pervious knowledge that nps is an appropriate specimen for detecting the respiratory viruses, both molecular and antigen detection as respiratory passages are route of entry and site of viral propagation and route of exit from the body [55]. in addition, sars-cov binds to angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 receptors of respiratory epithelium [56]. for these reasons, 9 other different respiratory specimens are used of which throat swab, nasal swab as upper respiratory tract specimens are the most commonly mentioned in the studied enrolled in this meta-analysis; the sputum is the most commonly applied lower respiratory tract specimen. the nps reported the highest range of ct from very low number of cycles that can cross the threshold and record positivity with very high viral titers to many ct with very low viral titer. low ct with high viral titer is also recorded in stool, nasal swab, throat swab, sputum, and saliva. these results indicate the possible importance of measuring the viral concentration, not only to diagnose the infection, but also to assess the severity of the condition. the presence of positive viral load in blood samples indicates viremia and a risk marker of possible disease progression and the need for continuous monitoring of the patient until negative conversion and recovery from symptoms is achieved. saliva is a good alternative, less annoying specimen than the other upper respiratory specimens with relatively high positivity rate (80.3%). this finding increases the suspicion about saliva as a possible route of transmission sars-cov-2 from infected person to others with the possibility of salivary glands as a reservoir for the virus. besides, some researchers found that angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 receptors are abundant in oral mucosa [57]. stool is the most commonly documented non-respiratory specimen for detection of viral load with positivity rate of 45.2% and this suggest the presence of sars-cov-2 in the gastrointestinal tract, which is unusual finding for respiratory viruses to present in the gut. the presence of angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 receptors in the gastrointestinal tract makes the intestinal epithelium a target for viral binding and infection [58]. kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19)| 142 some specimens are not preferred for viral load quantification due to very low sensitivity as in urine, tears, or semen; or due to invasive method of specimen collection as in bal, fibrobronchoscope brush biopsy, pleural fluid, or lung tissue. the presence of noninvasive and high sensitive methods as nps, throat swab, nasal swab, sputum, and saliva made the viral load detection by rt-pcr more efficient technique. this meta-analysis revealed the use of rt-pcr to target more up to 15 different sars-cov2 genes in different specimens this clarify the efforts to find the most specific and sensitive targets to diagnose this rapidly evolving dangerous respiratory infection. the technique and the target gene are tested by comparing its performance in clinical specimens with tissue cultures approved to propagate the sars-cov-2 [59]. when distributing the timeline for positive detection of sars-cov-2, the results revealed daily positivity can be recorded in throat, stool, and rectal swab up to 43 days since the onset of symptoms which signify the importance of these specimens, in addition to nps, in the diagnosis of sars-cov-2. this clarifies the need of testing two or more different specimens at the same time for diagnostic purposes; as negative results are also recorded within the same duration. the positive results are recorded in nps, throat swab, stool, and rectal swab in different patients one day before the appearance of symptoms and this imply the shedding of virus might be start in incubation period before the appearance of symptoms, which make the control of infection without the presence of effective vaccine a more difficult task. furthermore, the results showed that viral shedding from gastrointestinal tract with the feces might be continue more than one month after negative conversion of respiratory samples, which increase the modes of viral transmission from cured people to others. this meta-analysis recorded the peak of viral positivity at 16 days since the start of symptoms; which can help us in timing the specimen collection and better understanding the pathogenesis of covid-19 infection. however, this peak positivity is different with regard to different samples. 5. conclusion different respiratory and non-respiratory specimens are used for detection sars-cov-2 using rt-pcr by targeting different types of viral genes of which orf1ab is the most commonly targeted gene. nasopharyngeal swab has the highest positivity rate for viral load detection followed by bal, nasal swab, nasopharyngeal aspirate, throat swab and sputum. for the nonrespiratory specimen, stool and rectal swab are most appropriate specimens for viral detection followed by blood. the urine is not an appropriate specimen for viral load detection due to very low sensitivity. possible positive results can be present up to 43 days in throat swab, stool, and rectal swab. the viral shedding from stool can continue more than one month from stool and rectal swab. the highest positivity of sars-cov-2 viral load was recorded in day 16 since the onset of symptoms. reference [1] c. lai, p. shih, c. ko, j. tang, r. hsueh, "severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (sars-cov-2) and coronavirus disease-2019 (covid-19): the epidemic and the challenges", international journal of antimicrobial agents, vol. 55, pp. 105924, 2020. 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[59] c. jasper, y. cyril, t. kelvin, "improved molecular diagnosis of covid -19 by the novel, highly sensitive and specific covid-19-rdrp/hel real-time reverse transcription-pcr assay validated in vitro and with clinical specimens", journal of clinical microbiology, vol. 58, no. e00310-20, 2020. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) journal homepage: http://www.spu.edu.iq/kjar issn 2411-7684 (print) – 2411-7706 (online) march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 21 kjar research article architecture as system: study of housing systems evolution hoshyar qadir rasul department of city planning engineering, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, kurdistan region, iraq. corresponding author: hoshyar.rasul@spu.edu.iq received│december 1, 2015 accepted│january 18, 2016 abstract understanding architecture via the concept of system came after numerous, rapid and different developments upon all aspects of architecture, especially since the last third of past century till the present day. some theories characterized architecture as the complex whole that based on the different relationships and interrelationships with different sciences, besides of the multiplicity and independency of internal components, it should be assigned into the world of integrated system. this study attempts to explain the phenomenon of architecture through the concept of (system), in order to include both its cognitive (the subject) which is potential, and realistic presence (the object) -which is explicit. this study tries to explore both sides of the concept, in order to understand the architectural system -in one hand and determining its components -in the other hand. to find out how these systems which have been developed via some housing projects, as an integrated system; comprised by secondary sub-systems with clear limits, within the total system of the housing architecture. this study follows the inductive and descriptive approach as a methodology, depending on the related literatures and applied available theories in housing projects during different periods of time. the study aims to identify the systems and levels, set to reach a comprehensive understanding of the architectural system in general, and the evolutions of housing systems, in particular, benefiting from the rapid developments of this architectural style (housing), which have been seen in many various levels too. key words: system approach, systems and complexity, architectural system, housing, housing systems. introduction architecture is considered as one of the main tributaries of civilization, and form one of its physical components. therefore, some describes architecture as representing the progress of civilization through holding its characteristics and representing the spirit of the time. while other described architecture initially as (civilization) itself, where it has been demonstrated and evaluated by architecture. (robinson et al., 1991). undoubtedly, the production of human idea includes components such as (cultural components), is described as a set of characteristics may also be shared with http://www.spu.edu.iq/kjar mailto:hoshyar.rasul@spu.edu.iq kjar research article housing systems evolution, hoshyar q r, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 22 other properties such as (change, creativity, continuity, generation, etc). what brings these characteristics in a particular and specific framework is the concept of (system), as an integral whole. this includes components linked together by mutual relations, -in one side-, and other relations with the (whole), -in the other side-. thus, the research problem is identified by the lack of scientific view to assigning the architecture through the concept of (system). according to this, the research aims to determine the overall system of architecture –in general-, and housing systems -in particular-, through the integration of its internal systems. to achieve this, the research hypothesis formed as the understanding of ”system” concept, which will contribute significantly in exploring the complex nature of architecture. in addition to this, the identification of the secondary systems (partial), and their integrations will contributes also in determining the overall nature of the comprehensive system of architecture. this study will follow the descriptive methodology based on inductive procedure approach, to prove the validity of hypothesis in one hand-, then to reach the main objective of the study in the other hand. system and system thinking “system” is a collection of parts or components, which interdependence between them leads to form (the complex whole), or (a unity of the complex whole). as this (whole) is composed of parts and elements linked by relationships. these linkages and its mechanisms shall make the models however they are (closed), or (opened). the main part of the general systems theory (gst), insist on strict operations that support certain models. each model is an expression of one thing; that helps to understanding the other things. this approach is trying to help thinking about exploring the general laws. although these laws may be placed on an irregular basis, but helps in the initial understanding. so the system is (a whole), which can be treated as a whole too, with special unity. and also to claims that this unity includes operations, and has inputs and outputs too. inputs came from the outside of the system, once entry into the system and its operations, become a part of that system as shown in the equation below: inputs outputs the equation indicates that there are linkages too. the presence of outputs in the system is an indication of the (direction-oriented goals), which are directing the whole towards it. as well as the existence of operations, will form an index to possess the behavioural characteristics. in order the system appears in such form, all linkages and moral characteristics should work accordingly (handler et al., 1970). thus, it is necessary that the outputs will be correspondent to their targets. if not, the feedback on all parts of the equation must be chosen, to complete the process according to the goals of the system. thus the idea of the system will be completed at last. operations kjar research article housing systems evolution, hoshyar q r, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 23 system approach as a tool in managing the complexity recently, things has become fragmented, and divided into separate and secondary principles. this helped us doubtlessly to imagine how things have been weaved. assigning the world of the system, concepts of mutual relations and different levels of description from accurate to moderate and then to macro levels have been evoked. this is contrary to what exists in the reductionist approach, (which take into account the institutional and structural components only). so according to moschella et al. (2012), system approach keywords are:  levels of description,  the recipient role,  the overlapping principles and,  evolution. the system approach links between (systematic thought) and the (functional thought), where function is the dominant characteristic of things in general. thus the building functions and their components are the way to how they work. system approach thinking, and architecture in modern science, in contrary to the greek conception, (bertalanffy, 1968) assigned, that (dynamic interactions) appears to be the central problem in all fields of reality. its general principles are to be defined by (system theory) (vibaek et al., 2011). in this regard (handler) said that to see architecture as a system – means to see the architectural process in an objective framework, and the architect as (analyzer/designer), required to know and diagnose system procedure with their properties. this leads not only to emphasize the problem in deep, but to provide a good ability in (generalization), where, without this ability, the architect become a tool in isolate within the set of operations (rasul et al., 2003a) thus, it is possible to look at architecture as a (wholeness), includes many and varied parts (systems), interact with each other in the dynamic linkages, seeking to form an integrated composition within multiple integrated configurations, and the nature of these systems oscillating between (physical) and others (non physical), according to certain rules. due to this concept, architecture is an integrated and comprehensive system constantly seeking to create balances between these systems, and so as to achieve its structure, and its final form, and then emphasizing on its (entity, consistency and stability), within this frame. accordingly, the factor that act in distinguishing an architect among the others, is his (her) understanding about the architectural design as a process, in the (implicit system), and how to be used in another (explicit system). here (creativity), lies as a framework to show these systems. (rasul et al., 2003a). this vision requires first, the knowledge with this system, and then the ability to perceive its relationships, -in the second placeand then, build a new vision new system image to the system as whole. as result, the system in an architectural context is seen always, representing a certain time, social situation, and stages of technology. architecture as system interpreting architecture through the concept of kjar research article housing systems evolution, hoshyar q r, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 24 system, is variable and renewable, it depends on codified systems constants. human imagination goes beyond the physical presence of the place itself, and associated beyond it, his understanding for the limited space at a given time, but also the process of space configuration in the place architecture has been changed due to human perceptions variables and his interactions. the variables derive its vitality from constants. variables are the tangible material product in its various forms, and the constant is the codified system for producing the product. between constant and variable activities, the human creativity activated according to his creative capacity. so, each cultural and societal environment has its characters which forms systems, mentioned above. constructing the architectural issues and its components shall be done, to achieve the goals in a given environment, to get -in the endmultiple properties as: (ideas, physical, optical and geometric), or rather, architecture designed to operate a certain behavior in the shade of a series of events and goals for the performance of a particular function and in a particular environment as well (figure 1). the concept emphasized that the system has been working in architecture, and including it, too. and it will be on the opposite side of (organic systems). as the output and processes that contribute in this creative acts, will enter within a particular system and mainly directed to achieve a known humanitarian goals. (rasul et al., 2003b). so the equation formed as: tool user need = building human – function thereupon, the buildings form a (system), with interrelated components (functionally), designed to achieve the certain goals. thus the idea of (system) has entered into a way of thinking and the work of architect. and the architect should have a knowledge with these cognitive processes involved components and its details. he should also to develop goals related to these components on the one hand, and the overall goals of the architectural system as a whole on the other hand. this is via awareness and regular tests of the elements with the surrounding environment and the design problem too. figure 1: architecture as a system. [from (rasul et al., 2003 a]. the architectural system mies, (1990) expressed the state of architecture as a (system), and defined the role of (the subject) in govern the relationship between the (quantity) and (quality) and linked them to place architecture as a state of place expression. where it was considered that the (spatial quantity) represents what is personal, expressed by (openings, materials and other physical elements). but (quality), represents the system which deals with (the object). the system is the base for the process of putting this (quantity) with (qualityhow-) kjar research article housing systems evolution, hoshyar q r, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 25 within that base to configure the image of the place. (meiss et al., 1990). although the object in this area related to the building – as a system-, and then determine this system as (physical and technical aspects), within the building process, but it's in the same time formed a major systemsin the architectural system, depending on the facts that there is no architecture without building or that the architecture always represents the building. the importance of sub-systems is varied from one researcher to another. at a time that handler (2003) emphasizes on the design process, markus (1971) sees the effectiveness behavior take this position. while angyal (1973) emphasizes on the human in his trilogy (human the building the environment), broadbent (1973) gave this importance to the ecosystem. on the other hand, ching (1979) confirms the spatial, structural, enclosure and circulation systems, while rush and ehrenkrantz (1989) confirms on structural systems. rezouki (1996) agreed with them and confirmed the importance of two systems (material and form) evenly (rasul et al., 2003c). human system has interrelated with the design system, and will form both extremes of (subject and object) dualism. how the subject deals with the object is the quality of system configuration. thus we find out that, it is possible to treat them as a single unique system under the title of the (system of thought), whereas it also contains a human deal (designer) with the (design problem), in all its dimensions and relationships. while the (object) configures as all systems outside the (human systems – designer), where in architecture systems determined as (building, form, and the external forces impacted on architecture, social, economic, technology, environment, etc). building process: (design and construction) as a system as ulrich and eppinger, determined that the system level of design phase includes: “definition of the product architecture and the decomposition of the product into subsystems and components. the final assembly scheme for the production is usually defined during this phase as well. the output of this process usually includes a geometric layout of the product, a functional specification of each subsystem, and a preliminary process flow diagram for the final assembly process” (vibaek et al., 2011b). creating systems has always played an essential part in architectural works. by defining basic rules of the building process, the architect has been enabled to manage the structure and the architectural expression of the building. today, the world is facing new challenges; so new systems and new ways of perceiving systems needs to be developed to match an increasingly industrialized way of production. it is important not to see systems as limiting aspects but rather to see them as positive challenges in the creation of architecture. to ensure the architectural quality, new rules needs to be made to create a closer interaction between architecture and new means of production (vibaek et al., 2011c). historically, the building as a system classified in to many types of system during its evolutions such as (the sfb system, bips and dbk – danish kjar research article housing systems evolution, hoshyar q r, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 26 building classification-, bsab, ifc and step, omni class/occs, etc) (vibaek et al., 2011b). ibs (integrated building system) is another and important milestone in this approach, it forms a roadmap in the introduction of -modular coordination (mc). mc is a concept of coordination of dimensions and space, where buildings and components are dimensioned and positioned in a basic unit. the concept allows standardization in design and building components. it encourages participation from manufactures and assemblers to enter the market, thus reducing the price of ibs components. modular need to be adopted to cut down the waste in ibs. however the implementation of modular coordination requires better design planning (mohd idrus din et al., 2012) housing the concept of housing has developed with the evolution of development concept, and that the most important aim is human well-being and his prosperity. housing no longer means, providing dwells with any qualities for human only, and not isolated with the structure of surroundings. today housing means integrity, product, sustainability and social life. housing reflects the degree of complexity in design, attention, dignity, freedom and human’s right to live in the framework of resources –actual and perceived and economic activities. due to their interrelationships, interacting and inter correlations, these influential forces acts as system and raising the degree of design complexity (figure 2). figure 2: architecture and the design complexity. [from vibaek 2011b] habraken (1972) defined housing, as a complex set to achieve purposes that serve inhabitants, where interrelated variables overlapped, and influenced to each other. so, it considered as the field of conflicting forces (habraken et al., 1972). habraken (1972) emphasized that the housing form an issue, in which many variables overlapped, interrelated such as (social, cultural, economic and even political). via integration between them, the ultimate goals of the entire housing process will achieved, creation a healthy, socially, and comfortable residential environment. he pointed out that the housing unit, must be a tool to achieve the requirements of the occupants and a means to represent them in the community. heidegger (1997) confirmed that the interactive relationship between man and his dwell is the basis of the housing process, the positive interaction that achieves the idea of housing (hidegger et al., 1997). kjar research article housing systems evolution, hoshyar q r, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 27 housing from the standpoint of (structuralism), indicates an internal structure similar to the structure of space and includes a number of diverse secondary places with varied characters, and linked to each other via paths, showing various events of daily life. thus the house considered as a dwell’s structure, and a system of meaningful activity (despres et al., 1991). so, housing means more than providing dwells, and influenced by many various, interrelated forces, contributing in forming subsystems to the housing overall and complex system. housing systems modern man, influenced by heredity and environment, can hardly imagine constructing a building in any other way, than producing small or medium sized components, and putting them together at the site. this is a fundamental reason why we are still building so irrationally around the world (schömer et al., 1997). rapaport (1969) confirmed that, building the dwelling unit is only a building of the phenomenon of civilized space, and its shape influenced by cultural environment, which individual belongs to (rapaport et al., 1969). however, housing cannot be seen in isolated affected factors, and environment, it forms a permanent part of this environment. organization of these parts – between each other and with the whole, formed the structure of the housing system. after the second world war different kinds of prefabricated building systems have been developed. the traditional methods in building monoliths are changed to building systems, which uses prefabricated elements. today we have about 200300 types of frequently used prefabricated systems (figure 3). figure 3: housing as a system product prefabricated mass housing (habraken, 1972). a systems-oriented approach to housing conveys not only an understanding of its structural condition, but of the functional purpose of the system in which housing is embedded. for example, we can see housing as part of an ecosystem aimed at reducing energy consumption or as part of an industrialized system whose goal is to produce the maximum number of housing units at a minimal cost. the notion of a system is equally applicable to living beings, physical reality and abstract thinking. in fact, systems-oriented thinking blurs the separation between these realms, between the natural and the artificial, and between the physical and the abstract (ferguson et al., 1975). as a result, we see that the concept of system capable to cover various realms at various levels, (abstract, physical, ecology, society and organisms). case studies the first project: van eyck orphanage in the 1950's, team x introduced concepts such as clustering, association and growth to overcome the notion of functionalism postulated by the kjar research article housing systems evolution, hoshyar q r, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 28 modern movement. these ideas were synthesized in the term of “mat-building” (figure 4) according to smithson, “this concept of building is to epitomize the anonymous collective; where the functions come to enrich the fabric and the individual gains new freedoms of action through a new shuffled order, based on interconnection, close-knit patterns of association and possibilities for growth, diminution and change” (oikodomos et al., 2011) the clarity of the system’s idea through the definition of parts within the formation with its distinct characteristics and known targets also to overcome the abstract functionality which dominated in modernity of 20th century, besides of the continuous movement of blocks and residential units in all directions (without affecting on the design concept of the project), are indicating to growth or dynamic principle of architectural idea (open-ended system). the project leads us to finding out that organic relations between all parts – with each other and with the whole(internal – external and external – external) strengthened the concept of the system of residential complex project. also the values derived are designing the project with open-ended system, which added more flexibility to the housing complex system. the second project: habraken's supports a support is the collective domain controlled by the community, whereas the in-fill is the private domain in command of the individual household. by ascribing a specific realm in the decision making process to the individual user the infill he or she could participate in the creation of the dwelling (oikodomos et al., 2011a). figure 4: “mat building”open ended systemby team x (oikodomos et al., 2011a). habraken’s method epitomizes the distinction between “building systems” and”systems building”. the former refers to “an assembly of building subsystems and components, and the rules for putting them together in a building”. the latter term, “systems building”, pertains to “the application of the systems approach to construction, normally resulting in the organization of programming, planning, design, financing, manufacturing, construction and evaluation of buildings under single, or highly coordinated, management into an efficient total process” (ibid). for example, it is possible to achieve better management by producing building components in a factory, whereas with systems building “the architect is not simply incorporating new technology; he is asking society to radically transform its economic organization, so as to provide shelter more efficiently”. habraken’s theory of (support and in-fill) is therefore an example of system's concept, applied to housing design. the new notion in this regard is public participation (private-public linkage) system in housing. kjar research article housing systems evolution, hoshyar q r, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 29 figure 5: “mass housing project’. support and infill theory by habrakin (oikodomos et al., 2011b). the third project: universal design-maison à bordeaux, by rem koolhaas the term “universal design” was coined by the late ronald l. mace, from the college of design, north carolina state university, usa. in 1988 he defined the term in the following way: “universal design is an approach to design that incorporates products as well as building features which, to the greatest extent possible, can be used by everyone. universal design is a simple concept, but one that requires a fundamental shift in thinking. traditionally, design has catered to averages, creating a world in which few people can actually thrive. universal design strives to encompass the widest possible ranges of size, strength and capability, doing so without the need for adaptation or specialized design. the intent of universal design is to simplify life for everyone by making products, communications and the built environment usable by as many people as possible (oikodomos et al., 2011b). thus, as argued above, ud is a design concept that recognizes, respects, values and attempts to accommodate the broadest possible spectrum of human ability in the design of all products, environments and information systems (figure 6). it requires sensitivity to and knowledge about people of all ages and abilities. sometimes referred to as "life-span design" or "transgenerational design”, ud encompasses and goes beyond the accessible, adaptable and barrier-free design concepts of the past. it helps eliminate the need for special features and spaces. the project (maison à bordeaux, by rem koolhaas), has the advantage of being wheelchairfriendly (figure 6). it accommodates technical facilities for this purpose and reflects certain flexibility in use on its different levels (oikodomos et al., 2011c). so, universal design should incorporate design criteria (technical systems and wide ranges of peoples as users), that can be universally applied to new homes, preferably at minimal cost. each design feature adds to the comfort and convenience of the home while supporting the changing needs of individuals and families at different stages of life. it allows more people to live independently. figure 6: ‘maison à bordeaux’ by rem koolhaas. (oikodomos et al. 2011c). kjar research article housing systems evolution, hoshyar q r, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 30 the fourth project: the system of the system this new approach (the system of systems approach) requires, engineering leadership, and a multidisciplinary approach to the integration of social and economic factors with physical infrastructure, and support a strong and dynamic resolution and tools used by a variety of stakeholders in order to make decisions based on performance and on the basis of the consequences (mirmiran et al., 2015). through this approach, issues of progress, sustainability and resilience can all be addressed systemically and logically. within a "system of systems," it is logical to define terms of progress, and to weigh the impact that change in one system may have on the others. one of the projects that realize these concepts is sulaimaniyia hill residential project. this project design by al-bayatti bureau (2011) on the area about 1257000 sq.m. sulaimaniya hills is not only a place where the people live, interact and work; it is the visible statement of civilization (figure 7). the design has to consider the complicated levels and the contour lines of the site through infrastructure design process. furthermore, it’s point of view, to create a contemporary neighborhood to serve as an important land mark not only in sulaimaniya city but all over iraq and middle east. to develop the given site as an urban designed settlement with all supplement facilities. these facilities with interrelated relationships for project inhabitants –in one handand for the city of sulaimaniya –in the other handwill form the subsystems and added the complexity to the whole system of the project. figure 7: ‘site plan for sulaimaniya hills housing project’ – the system of system concept – (al-bayatti et al., 2011). the fifth project: the cloud path although known as the future approach in residential housing projects, but nowadays, becomes the common dominated approach related to the housing project that is for the land highprices in the center of the cities. the urban forces within the large cities became the new challenge which contributed the architect’s duty more and more complex. the product also faced the new issues which effects on the overall systems of the architectural product. housing as the most interrelated, inter-correlated and interacted domain with the more contemporary forces, is in continuous debate with these notions, so the new ideas has been arises within the housing projects continuously. the mad bureau for architecture introduced the future vision for residential kjar research article housing systems evolution, hoshyar q r, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 31 architecture in the form of the high rise buildings, with the high-density population (figure 8). this project (the cloud path) in los-anglos city, named as (urban village) too (al-benaa et al., 2015). the project realizes the (ma-yan-song) philosophy which relied on architecture to explore the relationships between architecture and nature. high-rise buildings are not new, but (mad) developed his idea via the connection of the towers through bridges. that is the way to enable the habitants to move easily among towers without getting down to the ground levels. the towers also covered with planting, and contain balconies, and open green areas. thus, the project attempted to join all man made systems to the system of nature, including human and circulation system which added more complexity to the project. so, the evolution of system approach in housing developed in parallel with challenges faced to housing architecture and forces influenced, and contributed as systems interrelated with each other and with the whole system of housing. in the same time understanding these (systems), will contribute significantly in adding more values of complexity to the nature of housing architecture (approving the study’s hypothesis). discussion after results that derived from the theoretical part and project’s presentation (briefed in table1), the study will discuss these results as: 1) the complexity and the evolution of the housing concepts, needs to deal with the systems of housing as an integrated and interdependent relations which integrated with each other and figure 8: the cloud path (urban village system) by mad (al-benaa magazine, et al. 2015). constitute dynamic structures, within the deliberate and clear intentions.. interacting with other systems in recent years, such as sustainability, which integrate not only with housing as multi-systems, but with technological and human system as a whole. 2) the impact of the system spreads to cover issues, rather than building engineering. nowadays the system deals with the notion of people with special needs, and other, as flexibility, public participations and sustainability (table 1). therefore, because of its wide influences with contemporary urgent necessities, architecture becomes the systems of system and the degree of its complexity raised above its normal levels. so the architect’s responsibilities became more and more complex too. kjar research article housing systems evolution, hoshyar q r, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 32 table 1: the study results achieved in housing systems evolutions. system evolutions systems related sub-system related values added levels of complexity building system structure construction building components (roofs-walls-openingsservices-facades) engineering building components with each other and with the building as whole industrialized architecture structure-building elementsassembling building elements mass productionarchitecture as product off site-on site linkages ibs building elementsspace configuration building componentssystem of form-system of functions-service system module-monolithic in form and interpretation internal-external linkages integration between systems in different levels open-ended system one unit with other units-public services building as a subsystem to the whole as a system flexibilityindividual multi choices internal-external, external-external linkages support and in-fill building systems social system building components technical and social infrastructure private-public participation building systemssystems buildings universal design building systems special needs building components technical and social infrastructure life-span design bio-medical physic-social comfort and convenience internal-internal internal-external fundamental shift in thinking system of system building system social and environmental systems building componentsenvelop system landscaping multidisciplinary approach change in one system may have on the others social-economicphysical infrastructure – the system of the citythe nature the cloud path-urban village building systemhigh technology systemenvironmental system-the structure of the city’s system building componentsservice systemsenvironmental systemcirculation system (vertically and horizontally) city center systemssustainabilitysocial interactions. internal-internalexternal-the city structure systemsocial & environmental linkages kjar research article housing systems evolution, hoshyar q r, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 33 conclusions the conclusions of this study can be summarized in several points as follow: the concept of system used in a complex fields, at different levels. it is also used in analyzing and interpreting the architecture of housing. these analyses become a difficult subjects, due to its interfere with other systems, such as infrastructure services, social, economic and technological systems. interpreting architecture through system is variable and renewable. it depends on codified systems constants (ferguson et al., 1975). human imagination goes beyond the physical presence of the place itself and associated beyond his understanding of the limited space at a given moment. the system is in a dynamic state constantly, and so for being understanding as concepts of interactions between multiple parts that make up the (whole), among themselves –in one hand, and between themselves and the surrounding environment -in the other hand. accordingly, looking at housing as a system -in planning and design leads to understand the dynamic relations between elements (physical and abstract), in addition to other elements of the surrounding environment (non-physical and vital), too. evolution of housing system concepts from simple to its complex shape, which depended on the structural systems (building systems) in the beginnings, to new, improved and complex concepts –latterly-, included systems (influenced forces), surrounding the housing environment as a whole. which hold to deal with as a complex issue by specialists, but nowadays has become a necessity of planning and design affairs. the study’s relevant to housing evolution systems do not preclude any other systems not addressed in this context, but at the same time it emphasizes the fact that, the process of the housing system’s evolution is a continuous process, and its complexity will increase with the growing numbers of influenced forces and the nature of their complexity. references abaalkhail, m. (2015). futuristic vision to the residential architecture al-benaa magazine. 36, 42. al-bayatti consultation bureau (2011). sulaimanyia hills project documents. sulaimanyia: despres c. (1991). “the meaning of home” literature review and direction for future research and theoretical development. the journal of architectural. 100, 34-46 ferguson, f. (1975). architecture, cities and the systems approach, new york: george braziller inc. habraken n.j. (1972). an alternative to mass housing, london: architectural press. 2. 37. handler, benjamin a. (1970). system approach to architecture. new york: american elsevier publishing company inc. 35-36. hidegger. m. (1997). building, dwelling, thinking. united nations: 38, 15. meiss, pierre von. (1990). elements of architecture from form to place .1st english edition. new york: e &fn son. 63. mirmiran amir. (2012). housing in mega cities a systems engineering approach. istanbul, turkey: the xxxviii iahs world congress. 2012. 16-19 mohd idrus din, noraini bahri, mohd azmi dzulkifly, mohd rizal norman, kamarul anuar mohamad kamar, and zuhairi abd hamid. (2012). the adoption of industrialised building system (ibs) construction in malaysia. gerontechnology. 11, 175-183 moschella a. (2012). systemic approach for a sustainable/responsible design: thinking and kjar research article housing systems evolution, hoshyar q r, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 34 proposals. turkey: the xxxviii iahs world congress april 16-19, 2012, istanbul, 940-945. oikodomos 2011c. housing concepts, lifelong learning programme. 34. oikodomos 2011c. housing concepts, lifelong learning programme. 35. oikodomos 2011c. housing concepts, lifelong learning programme. 36. rapaport, amos. (1969). house form and culture. london, preafice-hall. 4258. rasul, hoshyar qadir. (2003). b. architecture and technology. – the study on technology’s act on architecture. phd thesis, baghdad university – college of engineering, 78-81. rasul, hoshyar qadir. (2003). a. architecture and technology. the study on technology’s act on architecture. phd thesis, baghdad university – college of engineering. 77-78. rasul, hoshyar qadir. (2003). c. architecture and technology, the study on technology’s act on architecture. phd thesis, baghdad university – college of engineering. 85-86. robinson, julia w. (1991). premises; architecture as cultural medium. usa: princeton architectural press. 157. schömer, göran ervin. (1997) .the theory of the production of architectural space. the national association of swedish architects, stockholm, abstract of the report of building research issn. 1400-2930. vibaek, kasper sanchez. (2011). c. system structures and architecture – constituent elements of a contemporary industralised architecture. ph. d. thesis, the royal danish academy of fine arts – school of architecture .14. vibaek, kasper sanchez. (2011). a. system structures and architecture – constituent elements of a contemporary industralised architecture. ph.d. thesis, the royal danish academy of fine arts – school of architecture .75 vibaek, kasper sanchez.( 2011). b. system structures and architecture – constituent elements of a contemporary industralised architecture. ph. d. thesis, the royal danish academy of fine arts – school of architecture .79. architecture as system: study of housing systems evolution hoshyar qadir rasul abstract introduction the fifth project: the cloud path discussion conclusions references  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq liquid and gas corrected permeability correlation for heterogeneous carbonate reservoir rocks sadonya jamal mustafa fraidoon rashid department of engineering department of engineering kurdistan institution for strategic study and scientific research kurdistan institution for strategic study and scientific research sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq sadonya@kissr.edu.krd fraidoon.rashid@kissr.edu.krd khalid mahmmud ismail department of engineering kurdistan institution for strategic study and scientific research sulaimani, iraq khalid.ismael@kissr.edu.krd article info abstract volume 5 issue 2 december 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.2.4 article history: received: 19 sept 2020 accepted: 15 october 2020 permeability is considered as an efficient parameter for reservoir modelling and simulation in different types of rocks. the performance of a dynamic model for estimation of reservoir properties based on liquid permeability has been widely established for reservoir rocks. consequently, the validated module can be applied into another reservoir type with examination of the validity and applicability of the outcomes. in this study the heterogeneous carbonate reservoir rock samples of the tertiary baba formation have been collected to create a new module for estimation of the brine permeability from the corrected gas permeability. in addition, three previously published equations of different reservoir rock types were evaluated using the heterogenous carbonate samples. the porosity and permeability relationships, permeability distribution, pore system and rock microstructures are the dominant factors that influenced on the limitation of these modules for calculating absolute liquid permeability from the klinkenberg-corrected permeability. the most accurate equation throughout the selected samples in this study was the heterogenous module and the lowest quality permeability estimation was derived from the sandstone module. keywords: liquid permeability, porosity, reservoir, baba formation, bai hassan field. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 37 1. introduction permeability is an essential parameter for the evaluation of reservoir potentiality and production rate estimation of a specific field. in addition, this parameter can be used in reservoir simulation of particular rock type [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. the liquid permeability only measure for a specific rock interval and from a limited number of core samples. this restriction is derived from the experiment cost consideration and time consuming of measurement in laboratory. the magnitude of the measured liquid permeability has a limitation and does not cover the entire drilled core rocks and entire reservoir intervals [6, 7]. consequently, the values of this parameter usually obtain from the integration of the experimental measurements of liquid and apparent gas permeabilities with using empirical equation and correlations that encouraged by inputting extra parameters [8, 9]. the magnitude of apparent gas permeability is commonly greater than the amount of brine permeability of the same sample with an average of one to three orders of magnitude of permeability [10; 11]. the result contrast between single point gas permeability and liquid permeability is derived from gas slippage criteria [12, 13, 14, and 15]. a number of mathematical equations have been established and improved for calculation of klinkenberg corrected permeability which is equivalent to the brine permeability for different types of reservoir rocks. each equation has a restricted application and its applicability varies for different types of reservoir rocks as the magnitude of permeability varies based on rock microstructure, pore system, diagenetic modifications and fracture impactions [16, 17, 18]. however, the dominant equation used for predicting klinkenberg-corrected gas permeability from apparent gas permeability is north sea method which is widely applied and considered as an efficient module in petroleum production and development planning. in addition, several modules have been established and improved for prediction the liquid permeability from the corrected gas permeability [6, 8, 9]. the objective of the current research is to examine a relationship between the magnitude of klinkenberg-corrected gas (nitrogen) permeability and liquid (formation water) permeability using a heterogenous carbonate core samples from the tertiary baba formation from bai hassan oil filed in the kirkuk embayment zone. the baba formation is characterized by heterogenous lithology intervals in the studied field and especially throughout the selected wells. the rock fabrics are dominantly consists of dolomite, dolomitic limestone and limestone [19, 20]. in addition, nodules of anhydrite have been recorded from the drilled cutting samples. this reservoir rock has the most potential oil producing intervals throughout the tertiary petroleum system in kirkuk oil fields [20]. furthermore, establish the empirical equation from the correlation between apparent gas permeability and the klinkenbergcorrected gas permeability to predict the brine or corrected gas permeability from single point gas permeability for different types of carbonate reservoir rocks. the outcomes of this work can be applied for estimating permeability for the baba formation in the neighboring fields and other carbonate reservoir rocks throughout the region. 2. methods and materials the rock samples for this study have been selected based on drilled core availability from the tertiary reservoir rock interval of baba formation in bai hassan oil field within kirkuk embayment zone. the bai hassan oilfield is one of the several elongated, asymmetrical, double plunnging anticlines that characterize the foothills region of the unstable shelf zone in northern and eastern iraq, figure (1). the northwest-southeast trending structure has 40 km length and 3.5 km width. the dips of the beds on the flanks are approximately 40 degrees while the noses plunge at approximately 5 degrees [21, 22]. the field is one of iraq’s giant oil fields that contain multiple pay zones similar to most of the northern iraq oil fields [21]. the bai hassan anticline lies between longitudes (43º 50´ to 44º 10´) east and latitudes (35º 30´ to 35º 45´) north. the field is located geographically about 37 km northwest of kirkuk city kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 38 which is parallel to the avanah dome of the kirkuk oil field [23]. the khabaz and jambur oil fields located in the south-east of the bai hassan field and qarachuq structure in the northwest. the surface structure differs from the subsurface structures because of the effect of the faults [22]. the field is of a very complex nature with several major faults and minor faults spreading in the field. in term of structure component, the oil field consists of two different size domes named daoud in the northwestern part of the structure and kithke dome in the southeastern part of the field. the field has been discovered in 1953 by the iraqi oil company (ipc) and having come on production in 1960. the data sets have collected from three wells including well bh-50 in daoud dome, bh-20 and bh-78 in kithke dome, figure (2). figure 1: geological map of the northeast of iraq contains the dominant surface north-west and southeast trending structures. the highlighted structure is the position of the bai hassan anticline in the kirkuk embayment zone of the zagros basin. in total 140 plug samples with 1.0 inch and 1.5 inch of diameter and different lengths were plugged on horizontally on the drilled core samples. consequently, the samples were cut and the cleaned using dichloromethane liquid with applying soxhlet procedure [24] to remove the remained hydrocarbon and consequently the samples were dried with temperature of 70 cº for 72 hours [25]. the plug sample bulk volume (𝑉𝑉𝐵𝐵) and dry weight were measured before progressing petrophysical experiments. the value of grain volume (𝑉𝑉𝑔𝑔), pore (𝑉𝑉𝑝𝑝) volume, and effective porosity (ø) were measured respectively based on gas expansion method of bowel’s law [26] using the equation number (1), (2), (3) and (4) with applying the initial pressure (p1) 180 psi . the dry and clean samples were run in blp-530 nitrogen porosimeter in kurdistan institution for strategic study and scientific research laboratory, figure (3). 𝑉𝑉𝑔𝑔 = 𝑉𝑉2 − 𝑉𝑉3 (1) 𝑉𝑉2: constant of the porosimeter , cm3 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 39 𝑉𝑉3 = 𝑃𝑃1𝑉𝑉1 𝑃𝑃2 (2) 𝑃𝑃1: initial pressure , psi 𝑃𝑃2: expansion pressure , psi 𝑉𝑉1: reference cell of the porosimeter , cm3 𝑉𝑉𝑝𝑝 = 𝑉𝑉𝐵𝐵 − 𝑉𝑉𝑔𝑔 (3) ∅ = 𝑉𝑉𝑝𝑝 𝑉𝑉𝐵𝐵 (4) 𝑉𝑉𝑝𝑝: pore volume of sample , cm3 𝑉𝑉𝐵𝐵: bulk volume of sample , cm3 ∅: effective porosity , fraction figure 2: contour map on the top of the tertiary reservoir rocks of bai hassan field structure, modified from [27]. the anticline composes of two dominant domes; daoud, and kithke. the studied wells including bh-20, bh-50 and bh-78 were drilled in different positions of the field. the permeability was measured for the all core plug samples using the conventional steady state method with injecting of nitrogen gas through the plug samples with known viscosity of the applied gas, figure (4). all measurements were run at an equivalent reservoir pressure of confining pressure, zero back pressure and 25 cº of temperature. the magnitude of permeability was recorded from the darcy law, equation number (5) using reservoir permeability tester in kurdistan institution for strategic study and scientific research petroleum laboratory. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 40 𝐾𝐾 = 14700µ𝑄𝑄𝑄𝑄 𝐴𝐴∆𝑃𝑃 (5) 𝐾𝐾: permeability, md 𝑄𝑄: flow rate, cm3/sec 𝐴𝐴: surface area of the sample cm2 ∆𝑃𝑃 : differential pressure, psi 𝜇𝜇: dynamic viscosity of the fluid, centipoises 𝑄𝑄 : length of the sample, cm figure 3: schematic diagram of nitrogen gas porosimeter set up was used to measure effective porosity of the carbonate plug samples. the volume of reference cell is 53.17 cm3 and the volume of sample cell is 154.45 cm3 [28]. the gas permeability for all samples were run with five points of mean pore pressure including (150,175,200, 225,250) psi respectively. the results of gas apparent permeabilities of each sample were plotted with the inverse of applied pore pressure for each permeability measurement, as shown in figure (5). a straight line is interconnected all points and intersects the y-axis (apparent) permeability where inverse of pore pressure equal to zero presents the mean pore pressure tends to infinity[29]. the intersected permeability is called the klinkenberg permeability and its value close to the brine permeability of the sample [30]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 41 figure 4: simplified diagram of gas and liquid reservoir permeability tester has been used in this study, modified from [31]. in this set up, liquid and gas permeability measurements were progressed separately but all the chambers and valves allocated in one instrument. besides of the gas permeability, 7 plug samples have been selected for measuring liquid permeability with injecting a constant flow rate of the brine (0.10 cm3/sec) to pass through the plug samples, table 1. the differential pressure (∆p) derived from the inlet and outlet pressures have been recorded with continuous measuring of the liquid permeability in each sample as far as the fluid flow reaches to the steady state. at the stable fluid flow condition, the permeameter gives the actual value of the liquid permeability. in this paper we have selected 7 plug samples for measuring the liquid permeability based on the variation of the magnitude of the measured porosity and klinkenberg-corrected permeability distributions throughout the collected plug samples. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 42 figure 5: apparent permeability as a function of mean pore pressure for achieving the klinkenbergcorrected gas permeability of typical sample from baba formation in bai hassan field. the pore pressure and permeability were reordered using nitrogen gas as applied fluid. table 1: depth and dimensions information of the selected samples for measuring brine permeability 3. results the measured gas porosity and corrected gas permeability relationship is shown in semi-log diagram for 140 plug samples in baba formation, figure (6). the presented statical data of the measured porosity and permeability in this work are derived from the current available plug samples and probably its distribution will be changed with adding extra samples specifically fracture core samples. the magnitude of the measured porosity and permeability are varied within the measured plug samples and widely distributed throughout the studied intervals. the value of the measured effective matrix porosity started from 0.010 to 0.37 with an average of 0.20. the sample well depth (m) diameter (cm) length (cm) brine permeability (md) b-1 bh-20 1381 2.54 5.72 0.50 b-2 bh-20 1387 2.54 2.54 12.0 b-3 bh-20 1397 2.54 4.60 256.54 b-4 bh-50 1447 2.54 2.54 44.0 b-5 bh-50 1490 2.54 2.54 23.0 b-6 bh-78 1687 2.54 2.54 0.90 b-7 bh-78 1716 2.54 5.60 2.10 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 43 magnitude of the measured matrix klinkenberg-corrected gas permeability has five orders of magnitudes. the minimum measured permeability is 0.009 md and 879.023md is the maximum measured permeability, the average measured permeability is 123.52 md. the poroperm relationship in carbonate reservoir rocks consistently crucial to achieve especially when the carbonate fabric consists of intercalation of dolostone, limestone and a mixture of both. a non-linear trend of enhancing the magnitude of the corrected gas permeability can be observed with increasing the amount of porosity throughout the measured samples. the plotted corrected gas permeability as a function of the gas porosity has power law relationships with a coefficient of determination (r2=0.67) and this correlation can be presented on the empirical module as shown in equation (6). furthermore, the magnitudes of the measured liquid permeability of 7 samples were plotted as a function of the klinkenberg-corrected gas permeability in log-log plot, figure (7). the mathematical relationship between these two experimental parameters can be explained by a power law relationship (equation 7) with a coefficient of determination (r2=0.99). 𝐾𝐾𝐾𝐾 = 11129∅3.521 (6) 𝐾𝐾𝐿𝐿 = 0.9823𝐾𝐾𝑘𝑘 1.0292 (7) 𝐾𝐾𝐾𝐾: klinkenberg-corrected gas permeability, md 𝐾𝐾𝐿𝐿: liquid (brine) permeability, md the differences between liquid and klinkenberg-corrected gas permeability throughout the measured samples started from 0.0 % for the tightest sample to 23.69% in the most permeable sample, figure (8). the highest difference is coincided with the highest measured permeability specifically higher liquid permeability value. three established equations for predicting the liquid permeability from the corrected gas permeability in sandstone, limestone and dolomite rocks have been examined in this study for appraising validation and applicability of these equations in heterogenous carbonate reservoir rocks using equation number (8),(9) and (10). the estimated liquid permeability based on the correlation with the corrected gas permeability in this research and other equations are presented in figure (9). kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 44 figure 6: the measured klinkenberg-corrected gas permeability as a function of the measured gas porosity for the achieved plug samples of baba formation in bai hassan field (n=140). an average absolute error was used as an index for validity checking of all applied modules using the measured liquid permeability in the laboratory and calculated liquid permeability from the equations as two input variables. the highest percentage of the average absolute error between the two results is relevant with highest discrepancy between the measured and calculated permeabilities. in contrast, the lowest percentage of the error means the identical match between the measured and calculated permeabilities. in comparison with the measured liquid permeability of the selected samples the absolute error percentage with applying equations (7), (8), (9) and (10) the error was 3.22% for the current study established equation and 10.5% was observed from limestone equation. the absolute error percentage increased to 21.52 with applying dolomite equation and the maximum error was recorded once the sandstone equation has been used, 36.89%. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 45 figure 7: liquid permeability as a function of klinkenberg-corrected permeability of the selected samples in baba formation (n=7). 𝐾𝐾𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿 = 0.479𝐾𝐾𝐾𝐾1.14 (8) 𝐾𝐾𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿 = 0.864𝐾𝐾𝐾𝐾 1.039 (9) 𝐾𝐾𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿 = 0.930𝐾𝐾𝐾𝐾 0.9708 (10) 𝐾𝐾𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿: klinkenberg-corrected gas permeability using north sea equation, md 𝐾𝐾𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿: klinkenberg-corrected gas permeability using limestone equation, md 𝐾𝐾𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿: klinkenberg-corrected gas permeability using dolomite equation, md kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 46 figure 8: difference between the liquid permeability and klinkenberg-corrected permeability as a function of the liquid permeability of the same sample set. 4. discussion the single point measured gas permeability usually higher than the liquid permeability of the same sample because gas slippage criteria and this diversity between the apparent gas permeability and liquid permeability can be reduced by applying high pore pressure. the measured permeability of all samples in this study is klinkenberg-corrected permeability and the gas slippage effect has been corrected, as a result the gas slippage impaction is out of the consideration. the reservoir properties of the studied intervals are characterized by heterogeneous rock fabric components and anisotropic petrophysics parameters including porosity and permeability. the magnitude of the measured permeability in the selected samples provide a wide range distribution and has five orders of magnitude of matrix permeability started from microdarcy scale (0.009 md) to greater than 820 md and contain greater than 2 darcy in fractured core samples which is excluded in this study. this diversity in permeability distribution derived from the fact that the reservoir permeability does not depend on porosity alone in carbonate rocks. the magnitudes of permeability are sufficiently influenced by the rock microstructure and pore system [32, 33, 34, 35]. furthermore, this heterogeneity in rock components and reservoir properties reduce the appropriateness of the established equation for estimation liquid permeability in different types of reservoir rocks. the absolute error percentage of the calculated liquid permeability using the current study module (equation 7) has the lowest value (3.22%). the value of calculated liquid permeability locates in the same range of the measured liquid permeability. the similarity of the permeabilities distribution is derived from the fact that the calculated permeability achieved from the correlation between two experimental inputs including the measured liquid permeability and measured gas permeability of the same rock samples. however, these empirical relationships provided an acceptable outcome for this type rock and can be applied within another carbonate rock types, but it possibly needs scale correction because of the influence of reservoir rock heterogeneity in carbonate rocks. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 47 the highest error percentage was recorded from the application of sandstone equation (36.89%) because the equation was originally designed for sandstone reservoir rocks that were characterised by homogenous petrophysical distribution and uniform pore system which are obviously different with carbonate reservoir rock properties [36,37]. the integration of pore system with rock matrix homogeneity in clastic rocks gives porosity dependence of the permeability while this phenomenon is rare or absent in carbonate reservoir rocks. the results of error from the dolomite equation are quite high and cannot be accepted for predicting the liquid permeability in heterogenous carbonate reservoir samples in comparison of the newly proved equation in this study. the dolomite module even for individual core sample which mainly consists of dolomite minerals has error percentage greater than 20% and higher. this contrast between the measured and calculated permeabilities from the dolomite equation is related to the permeability distribution in dolomite module rock samples which has two orders of the magnitude permeability while the magnitude of permeability in studied samples originally have five orders of magnitude permeability distribution. however, both modules are achieved from the dolomite rock types but the closeness and similarity between the measured and predicted permeabilities are low. this diversity probably relates to the rock fabric of dolomite mineral especially shape and type of dolomite crystals that control permeability variation in dolomite reservoir rocks [38].in addition, pore system including pore size is another sufficient factor needs to be considered for permeability modelling [39]. the pore structures probably in the dolomite module samples have different scale of sizes in comparison to the current study samples that made them higher distinction between the calculated and measured permeabilities [40]. the limestone module for calculating liquid permeability was originally applied for samples with 4 orders of permeability distribution [41] which is close to the permeability distribution of the current work samples. this coincidence of the permeability distributions motivated the limestone module to be applicable for the heterogeneous carbonate reservoir samples. besides of the permeability distribution the pore structure parameter including pore size and pore throat size ratio [42] has sufficient impact on the permeability in carbonate rocks. the limestone module based on the porosity-permeability relationship has the pore to pore throat size ratio possibly similar or within the same range of the pore and throat scale within this study core plug samples. the measurement techniques are another point probably has an impaction on the correlation between measured permeability and calculated permeability modules. the applied confining pressure and flow rates are the two dominant parameters which have role in the designing of permeability estimation in reservoir rocks [25, 43]. the liquid permeability for the selected samples was measured with applying reservoir pressure while other modules have not mentioned the confining pressure condition of the permeability measurements to conduct the best correlations between the measured and predicted permeabilities. furthermore, each designed approach for estimation permeability derived from a specific applied fluid flow to measure the magnitude of permeability which eventually causes a wider error when the proved module applies to another reservoir rock. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 48 figure 9: comparison of the liquid permeability estimated from different modules with the measured liquid permeability. the klinkenberg-corrected permeability of the plug samples was used as an input parameter. 5. conclusion • the power law relationship between the measured porosity and klinkenberg-corrected permeability in the heterogenous carbonate reservoir rock samples are dominantly influenced by the heterogeneity of the rock microstructure and anisotropic pore system. • an empirical equation was established (equation number 7) from the correlation between the measured liquid permeability and gas corrected permeability from the selected plug samples of the heterogenous carbonate reservoir rocks in baba formation. • the applicability and validation of three different liquid permeability estimation and this study modules have been examined with the measured liquid permeability of 7 core plug samples. the absolute error percentage of this study has the lowest percentage (3.22%) and the sandstone module has the highest error percentage (36.89%). • the permeability distributions, rock microstructure and pore system are the dominant factors that influenced on the appropriateness of the established permeability modules using the heterogenous carbonate samples. reference [1] h. yong, h. wenxiang, g. bincheng, combining sedimentary forward modeling with sequential gauss simulation for fine prediction of tight sandstone reservoir, 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[18] f. rashid, d. hussein, j.a. lawrence, p. khanaqa, characterization and impact on reservoir quality of fractures in the cretaceous qamchuqa formation, zagros folded belt, marine and petroleum geology, 113, 1041117, 2020. [19] north oil company, geological and petrophysical study of the tertiary and shiranish formation in bai hassan field, unpublished report, kirkuk, iraq, 2004. [20] north oil company, geological study of the tertiary reservoir rocks in bai hassan field, unpublished report, kirkuk, iraq, 1989. [21] q. m. sadeq, and w. i. bin wan yusoff, porosity and permeability analysis from well logs and core in fracture, vugy and intercrystalline carbonate reservoirs, journal of aquaculture research and development, 6, 10, 2015. [22] t. buday, and s. z. jassim, the regional geology of iraq. volume ii. iraq: tectonism, magmatism and metamorphism. dar al-kutib publishing house, university of mosul, 1987. [23] north oil company, 1989. final well report of well bh-86, bai hassan field, kirkuk, iraq. [24] z. j. jassim, and j. c. goff, 2006. the geology of iraq, dolin, prague, 2006. [25] rp40, recommended practices for core analysis. 2nd edition, washington, dc, 1998. [26] m. a andersen, core truth in formation evaluation, schlumberger, oil review, 25, 16-25, 2013. [27] d. r. spain, petrophysical evaluation of a slope fan/ basin floor fan complex: cherry canyon formation, ward county, texas. aapg bulletin, 76, 805-827, 1992. [28] ofi testing equipment, instruction manual of blp-530 gas porosimeter, part no.127-20, version 4, houston, texas, usa, 2015. [29] j. a. rushing, k. e. newsham, p. m. lasswell and t. a. balsingame, klinkenberg-corrected permeability measurements in tight gas sands: steady-state versus unsteadystate techniques, spe 89867, 2004. https://www.onepetro.org/search?q=dc_publisher%3a%28%22society+of+petroleum+engineers%22%29 https://www.onepetro.org/search?q=dc_publisher%3a%28%22society+of+petroleum+engineers%22%29 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 50 [30] f.n. rashid, the kometan formation: reservoir characteristics of tight carbonates in the western zagros basin, phd dissertation, university of leeds, 2015. [31] k. r. aurand, g.s. dahle and o. torsæter, comparison of oil recovery for six nanofluids in berea sandstone cores, the international symposium of the society of core analysts held in avignon, france, 811 september, 2014. [32] d. hussein, j. lawrence, f. rashid, p. glover, and p. lorinczi, developing pore size distribution models in heterogeneous carbonates using especially nuclear magnetic resonance. in engineering in chalk: proceedings of the chalk 2018 conference (pp. 529-534). ice publishing, 2018. [33] f. rashid, d. o. hussein and h.a. zangana, petrophysical investigation of khurmala formation in taq taq oil field, zagros folded belt. aro-the scientific journal of koya university, 8(1), 516, 2020, b. [34] f. rashid, “reservoir productivity analysis of intercalated limestone and anhydrite beds in zagros folded belt, kurdistan region of iraq”, kurdistan journal of applied research, 5, (1), 1-15, 2020. [35] s. n. ehrenberg and p. h. nadeau, sandstone vs. carbonate petroleum reservoirs: a global perspective on porosity-depth and porosity-permeability relationships, aapg bulletin, 89(4), 435–445, 2005. [36] c. hollis, v. vahrenkamp, s. tull, a. mookerjee, c. taberner and y.huang, pore system characterisation in heterogeneous carbonates: an alternative approach to widely-used rock-typing methodologies, marine and petroleum geology, 27 (4), 772-793,2010. [37] j.e. amthor, c. kerans, p. gauthier, reservoir characterization of a shuaiba carbonate ramp-margin field, northern oman, geo arabia special publication 4, 2, gulf petrolink, bahrain, 549–576,2010. [38] f.j., lucia, carbonate reservoir characterization. springer-verlag berlin heidelberg, 336 pp, 2007. [39] g. r. l. chalmers, d. j. k. ross and r. m. bustin , geological controls on matrix permeability of devonian gas shale in the horn river and liard basins, northeastern british columbia, canada, international journal of coal geology, 103, 120-131, 2012. [40] n.w., craigie, p., breuer, a., khidir, chemostratigraphy and biostratigraphy of devonian, carboniferous and permian sediments encountered in eastern saudi arabia: an integrated approach to reservoir correlation , marine and petroleum geology , 72, 156–178, 2016. [41] a. al hinai, r. rezaee, l. esteban, m. labani, comparisons of pore size distribution: a case from the western australian gas shale formations, journal of unconventional oil and gas resources, 8, 1-13, 2014. [42] p. w. j., glover and n., déry. 2010, dependence of streaming potential on grain diameter and pore radius for quartz glass beads. geophysics, 75, 225-241. [43] d., tiab, and e.c., donaldson, petrophysics, theory and practice of measuring reservoir rock and fluid transport properties, gulf professional publishing, 2015. 1. introduction 𝐾=,14700µ𝑄𝐿-𝐴∆𝑃. (5) 𝐾: permeability, md 𝑄: flow rate, cm3/sec 𝐴: surface area of the sample cm2 ∆𝑃 : differential pressure, psi 𝜇: dynamic viscosity of the fluid, centipoises 𝐿 : length of the sample, cm brine permeability (md) length (cm) diameter (cm) depth (m) well sample ,𝐾-𝐾.=11129,∅-3.521. (6) ,𝐾-𝐿.=0.9823,𝐾-𝑘-1.0292. (7) ,𝐾-𝐾.: klinkenberg-corrected gas permeability, md ,𝐾-𝐿.: liquid (brine) permeability, md ,𝐾-𝐿𝑆.=0.479,𝐾-𝐾-1.14. (8) ,𝐾-𝐿𝐿.=0.864,𝐾-𝐾-1.039. (9) ,𝐾-𝐿𝐷.=0.930,𝐾-𝐾-0.9708. (10) ,𝐾-𝐿𝑆.: klinkenberg-corrected gas permeability using north sea equation, md ,𝐾-𝐿𝐿.: klinkenberg-corrected gas permeability using limestone equation, md ,𝐾-𝐿𝐷.: klinkenberg-corrected gas permeability using dolomite equation, md 5. conclusion  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq epidemiology and molecular aspect of pediculosis among primary school children in sulaimani province kurdistan-iraq abdullah a. haama harun s. sdiq research center research center technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq harun.m.l.2016@gmail.com abdullah.hama@spu.edu.iq aweza m. mohammed aziz i. ahmed sulaimani diarectorate of health sulaimani diarectorate of health sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq awezaamin98@gmail.com azizedris12@hotmail.com sina k. esmail hevan a. hama sulaimani diarectorate of health sulaimani diarectorate of health sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq sina.khalil98@gmail.com hevan.abdul@gmail.com sumaya k. esmail sulaimani diarectorate of health sulaimani, iraq sumaya.zhyar99@gmail.com article info abstract volume 5 – special issue: 4th international conference on the health and medical science : medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) doi: 10.24017/science.2020.ichms2020.1 article history: received: 04 october 2020 accepted: 10 october 2020 pediculosis is the term for head lice (pediculus humanus capitis) and the other hairy parts infestation with any stages of lice. the lice are a human blood sucking ecto-parasite which can cause severe itching. direct contact, sharing of clothing and combs can be a way for lice transmission from infected person to another.this study had been done to determine the pediculosis infection rate and risk factors asociassion with head lice among primary schools children in sulaimani province, all cases were evaluated by physical examination (visual inspection) and detail structured questionnaire which was including education levels, family size, hair washing frequency, type and length of hair, mother occupation and education, father occupation, and education was used, the polymerase chain reaction (pcr) used for confirming the head lice clade. a total of 4087 students was inspected from 13 primary schools in sulaimani keywords: head lice, pediculosis, parasite, primarischool children, itching, pcr. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 2 city, with the overall prevalence of 8.3%, the participants were 2046 males and 2041 females with prevalence 2.20% and 6.1% respectively. the age of respondents was between 5-13 years. the prevalence was higher in large family members in comparing to those with small family members. the amplicons product from polymarase chain reaction was visualized on 1.5% agarose gel, and expected dna band size of head lice's was approximately 486 bp which confirms that these lice's belong to the head lice group clade a . in conclusion the school aged children in sulaimani province were suffering from peiculosis with high prevalence rate and it has a direct impact on children cognitive and school activity performance. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the insects are the largest class of animalia kingdom, about 80% of the known animal species in the world belongs to insects, and this class includes the medical importance arthropods as parasite and vectors [1]. lice are an obligate ectoparasite that have various species including: pediculus humanus capitis, pediculus humanus corporis, and phthirus pubis. the adult louse is between 2.5 and 3.5mm in length, grayish in color and inhabits the scalp attached to the base of hair [2], they have a sesame seed shape, and are flattened dorsoventrally [3]. lice belongs to the order: phthiraptera, which are human ecto-parasites, their life cycle consists of three stages, egg, nymph, and adult. the life span of adult pediculus humanus capitis is up to 30 days on a human head, it lay up to 10 eggs per day, the adult louse takes a blood meal several times daily and sometimes it can survive for 36 hours without a blood meal [3]. head lice prefer the scalp surface, which is good source of food, and physically provide good environment. the lice feed on the human blood several times a day [2]. the head lice infestation is a common health concern among children in which have a negative impact on children school activity performance and cognition. transmission of the lice will be directly from infected person to others or indirectly through sharing the clothes, hairbrushes, combs, headgear, scarves, coats and bedding. the common symptoms of pediculosis are pruritus, excoriation and redness [4]. generally, anemia is the most common symptom of ectoparasite and some intestinal parasite infection [56]. also pediculosis may cause myiasis, plica polonica, and allergic reactions [5]. the head lice may be found rarely on the eyebrows. while head lice prefer to remain on the head and behind the ears. the overcrowded and personal hygiene have significant effect on pediculosis among children, symptoms of infestation include pruritus and cervical lymphadenopathy [7]. excoriation and secondary bacterial infection from scratching [8]. although there are no studies indicates that head lice become a vector for any pathogenic microorganisms [7]. light infestations may produce slight itching of the scalp by louse saliva. severe infestations, however, may cause restlessness, aches, pruritus, and fever [9]. the most common presenting symptom of infestation is scalp itching, but sometimes lice can be present without itching, from one week to three months after infestation itching can attack while lack of itching does not mean that there is no lice infestation. if impetigo present on the skin that caused by bacteria, scalp sore may produce and lead to increase children's body temperature and feel unwell [10]. the spread and infestation of pediculosis was relatively high among children in the united states, and incidence rate was about 6 to 12 million infestations each year. some study shows that the girls get head lice infestation more than boys [11]. a population-based kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 3 questionnaire survey indicates the prevalence rate of pediculosis in uk is very low in comparison with the other countries [12]. there was a intimate relation between lice infestation and several risk factors, including, personal hygiene, lifestyle, outdoor activity, hair washing. transportation mode and head lice infestation have no significant impact with the presence of a house servant [13]. there is no adequate data about pedculosis in iraq and kurdistan, the epidemiological study on the pediculocis in erbil, kurdistan– iraq shows the high infestation rate among students (14.52%) [15]. recent studies carried out in the sulaimani province among refugees the low prevalence rates was recorded (1.12%), and indicates the infestation was higher among female than the male [1]. 2. methods and materials epidemiology study this study was carried out among 13 primary schools in sulaimani, kurdistan/iraq located in the longitude (44.5046.16) east and latitude (35.04 36.30) north. the sampling and data collected with collaborating of sulaimani directorate of education, 13 primary schools were selected randomly and visited regularly 3 days a week from october 2019 to april 2020. the total participants was 4087 including 2041 female and 2046 male. during a direct interview each participates was inspected for infestation with head lice directly by visual examination, the detection of adult or any developing stages of head lice was considered infested. after the head inspection, and according to a questionnaire the: age, gender, school activity, family member, the hair washing per week, length of hair, hair type, sharing a common comb, sharing common cloth or bed and duration of infestation were asked, finally the lice were collected and preserved in ethanol separately for molecular study.the epidemiological data were statistically analyzed by using graph pad prism and spss (version 21). molecular studies the dna was extracted from tissue of each louse (n=50) using mini kit of dna extraction kit from tissue protocol and the company instruction was followed to obtain a good quality genomic dna from the lice tissue, the obtained dna was preserved in te buffer (10 mm tris hcl, 1 mm edta). dna samples were subjected to standard pcr, using the specific primer set for head lice (cytb) which was used previously [16]. the pcr profile: one cycle at 95 °c for 7 min followed by 40 cycles (1 min at 94 °c, 30 s at 56 °c and 40 s at 72 °c), and a final step for 6 min at 72 °c. the success of amplification was detected by gel-electrophoresis using 1.5 agarose. 3. results epidemeology of pediculosus table 1: shows the school name, number of inspecting students, number and percentage of positive and negative participants. the result shows that the qaratoxan primary school had the highest prevalence and percentage of head lice among students, which was 14%, while the lowest infestation of head lice were recorded in ibrahim amin baldar primary school (1.1%). kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 4 table 1: distribution of respondents by school name, number of inspected students, number and percentage of positive and negative participants. table 2 shows the distribution of numbers and percentages of infested, non infested and the prevalence of pediculosis among primary school children with associated risk factors of head lice infestation. the risk factors include educational level, family size, frequency of hair washing, length of hair, hair type, common comb, common cloth or bed, scalp disease, father education, father's occupation, mother education and mother occupation the result shows the pediculosis was higher among families which have family members more than 7 members than those who have smaller family size out of 555 cases 74 (13.3%) were more than seven members were out of 240 cases 11 (4.58%) cases had afamily size between 13 members. pediculosis prevalence depending on frequency of hair washing shows there is no significant (p>0.05) effect of hair washing one time to three times a week on head pediculosis. the result of head infestation was higher significantly among children with long hair in comparison to others with short hair out of 721 cases 91 (12.62%) were having long hair while out of 2060 cases 108 (5.24%) cases had a short hair. table 2: the prevalence rate and risk factors of pediculosis among primary school children in sualaimani province. name of school examined students positive negative number percentage (%) numb er percentage (%) qamishlo 192 13 6.7 179 93.3 kandasura 120 14 11.6 106 88.4 kanigoma 433 52 12 381 88 peshkawtn 252 16 6.3 236 93.6 hawarabarza 270 13 4.8 257 95.2 kamyaran 398 31 7.8 367 92.2 zakia samy agha 382 25 6.5 357 93.5 wluba 355 47 13.2 308 86.8 qaratokhan 400 56 14 344 86 asuda 343 8 2.3 335 97.6 ibrahim amin baldar 282 3 1.1 279 98.9 qandil 325 30 9.2 295 90.8 hawraman 335 32 9.5 303 90.4 total 4087 340 8.3 3747 91.7 pvalue prevalenc e of pediculosi s infested non-infested inspected characteristic (factors) % no. % no. % no. 0.000 1 4.58% 0.26 11 5.6 0 229 5.8 7 240 1-3 persons family size 6.55% 1.61 66 23. 02 941 24. 6 1007 3-4 persons 8.88% 4.96 20 3 50. 9 2082 55. 9 2285 5-6person kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 5 13.3% 1.81 74 11. 7 481 13. 57 555 more than 7 0.02 6.37% 1.12 46 16. 5 676 17. 6 722 once a week freque ncy of hair washing 8.32% 3.20 13 1 35. 3 1444 38. 5 1575 twice a week 9.89% 4.33 17 7 39. 4 1613 43. 7 1790 three or more a week 0.001 5.24% 2.64 10 8 47. 7 1952 50. 4 2060 short length of hair 11.88% 3.79 15 5 28. 1 1150 31. 9 1305 medium 12.62% 2.22 91 15. 4 631 17. 6 721 long 0.000 1 7.55% 5.72 23 4 70. 0 2864 75. 8 3098 straight hair hair type 10.91% 1.05 43 8.5 8 351 9.6 4 394 wavy hair 12.94% 1.88 77 12. 6 518 14. 5 595 curly (spring) 0.6 9.14% 1.95 80 19. 4 795 21. 4 875 yes commo n comb 8.53% 6.7 27 4 71. 8 2938 78. 5 3212 no 0.03 10.07% 1.05 43 9.3 9 384 10. 4 427 yes commo n cloth or bed 8.50% 7.60 31 1 81. 9 3349 89. 5 3660 no 0.038 15.22% 0.34 14 1.9 0 78 2.2 5 92 yes scalp disease 8.51% 8.31 34 0 89. 4 3655 97. 7 3995 no 0.06 8.28% 7.12 29 1 78. 8 3224 86. 0 3515 yes father educati on 10.82% 1.39 57 11. 4 470 12. 89 527 no 0.13 9.0% 5.72 23 4 57. 8 2364 63. 5 2598 worker father ocupati on 7.87% 1.88 77 22. 0 902 23. 5 979 employe 7.74% 0.83 34 9.9 0 405 10. 7 439 others 12.68% 0.22 9 1.5 1 62 1.7 71 not 0.001 3 7.94% 6.45 26 4 74. 9 3063 81. 4 3327 yes mother educati on 11.66% 2.12 87 16. 1 659 18. 6 746 no 0.015 9.12% 6.85 28 0 68. 2 2791 75. 1 3071 house wife mother occupa tion 7.32% 1.51 62 19. 2 785 20. 7 847 employe 5.23% 0.19 8 3.5 4 145 3.7 4 153 others 25% 0.09 4 0.2 9 12 0.3 9 16 not kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 6 table 3 shows the prevalence of pediculosis among different age groups. the total prevalence of pediculosis was 8. 3%. the age of participants is classified into three different age groups which are (5-7 years), (8-10 years) and (11-13 years). the highest prevalence rate of head lice infestation was recorded among age group (8-10 years) with 152 (43.30%), and the students of age 11 to 13 years shows about 139 (39.60%) cases out of 1368 inspected students. the lowest prevalence is reported among 5 to 7 years old students, which was 60 (17.09%) out 831 inspected participants. table 3: the age factor and prevalence of pediculosis pcr and gel electrophoresis of head lice gel electrophoresis results of 11 samples were run. the test used to confirm that to which group of lice the samples are belong, fortunately as we expected samples were belong to head lice group with the genome size of 486 kbp. pair of primers called head cytb with the sequence (forward primer: gag cga ctg taa tta ctaatc reverse primer: caacaa aat tat ccg ggt cc) was used in pcr technique. the pcr was to determine the genetic aspect of the lice and to determine the clade of the isolated lice[30]. figure 1: gel electrophoresis represent the results of the pcr products on 1.5% agarose gel. dna ladder, 1-10 sample, con n= negative control 4. discussion prevalence of head pediculosis among primary aged school children the prevalence rate of pediculosis in primary aged school children in this study was 8.3%, which is in agreement with the research carried out in mercin turkey which was 8.6% [17]. the our finding is higher as compared to that reported in the eastern region of the european union (2.01%) among school children [18] it may be due to the culture and socioeconomic factors, personal hygiene and the health system of the each country. the prevalence of age (years) examined samples positive sample pvalue no. (%) no. (%) 5-7 881 21.55% 59 17.35% 0.07 8-10 1831 44.80% 151 44.41% 11-13 1378 33.65% 130 38.23% total 4087 100% 340 8. 3% kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 7 pediculosis in this study is lower than that of a similar study among primary aged school children in erbil city iraq (14.52%) [14]. the high prevalence rate of pediculosis was recorded in bangkok, thailand (23.32%) [119] many factors have an impact on the pediculosis prevalence rate; the method of diagnosuis, prevention and eradication methods, pediculocide and knowledge regarding lice as a health problem. also moisture and suitable environment provide growth and prevalence of head pediculosis as poor hygiene and socioeconomic, season and lack of good medical treatment [1]. as shown in table 3 head lice infestation was most prevalent among students that are between 8-10 years of age with no significant difference (p>0.05) in comparing to that reported in erbil, iraq kurdistan region where the prevalence pediculosis was significantly higher among 6-7 years aged students [20]. in another study that reported in the mersin-turkey region exhibited high prevalence in ages of 10-12 years. the reason for this high rate may be due to poor hygiene and close contact of students together when they play and do their schoolwork’s during 8-10 years of age [17]. the head pediculosis was significantly higher among those children who have a curly hair (p=0.0001) in comparison to mexico indicated the prevalence of head lice was higher among who have straight hair [21] this result may be affected by sample size and quality of head shampoo. the head lice infestation was significantly (p=0.001) higher among student who have a long hair (12.62%) in compare to others with short hair (5.24%). in contrast, of our result the study in new york suggests that hair length has no effect on the head lice distribution [22]. while another study in baghdad, which is supporting our finding indicates the long hair girls were much more infested with pediculus capitis (22.2%) than those with medium or short hair which is similar with collected data in this study [23]. as well as the high prevalence rate of head lice among children with long hair were recorded in jordan it is more difficult to comb and keep clean the long hair in comparison with short hair [24]. the pediculosis was found to be significantly associated with a low frequency of bathing in a study reported in iran [25]. while in present study the significant effect of hair washing was observed (p<0.05). high pediculosis was found among students who was washing their hair three time or more per week while the pediculosis among students who washing their hair once or twice a week was lower than, this is may be due to removing the nit and the shampoo will be has direct effect on the head lice. the result of the present study shows that the infestation with pediculosis among females had significantly higher than males this finding is similar to the study carried out in hamadan, iran who reported high prevalence rate of head lice among females 13.5% [26]. also, most studies reported the prevalence rate of head lice infestation was higher among female in comparsion with the male [24] this is may be due to the style life of female they have long hair and also they will use the fomite sharing between them. also family size has negative impact on the head lice spread, the high prevalence rate was found among most children who have families with 5-6 persons, which is significantly differ from those who have small family size(p=0.0001), in similar study in central iran it was reported the head lice infestation was significantly increased among large size family [27], while in kashan iran shows a positive relationship between the family size and lice infestation [28], in jordan most prevalence with large family members >10 [24]. it is well known that head lice is transmitted directly from person to person and crowded families are mostly at risk for pediculosis. the infestation ratio of pediculosis according to father education was 8.28% for educated father stufents and non-educated farther students was 10.82% and show that students with educated father are less infested than those who have non educated father, otherwise another study done in garmsar city, semnan province, iran shows that student with educated father are more infested than those have non educated father [29]. also in a recent study carridout in northwest ethiopia [30] have same result, while the our result have agreed with a study done in turkey which indicated the student have an educated father are less infested compare to others that have non educated father this is may be due to the awearness of the fathers about kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 8 the pediculosis and also the educated fathr and mother expected to hav a good personal hygene and health care knowledges. the prevalence of pediculosis based on mother education the result was higher significantly among non-educated mother students in comparing to educate mother students, this might be due to giving adequate information about personal hygiene and sanitary conditions by their mothers. same findings reported in northwest ethiopia [28]. 5. conclusion this study concluded that the prevalence pediculosis among primary school children is high (8.3%) in sulaimani province, the age, hair type and education are the common risk factors which have a significant effect on the head lice distribution, pediculosis was higher among females than those of males and pediculosis has negative impact on the school activity performance. reference [1] f.m. ali, a.a. hama, “prevalence of head pediculosis among refugees in sulaimani governorate/kurdistaniraq,” iraqi journal of science, 59(2), pp.1012-8, 2018. [2] j. harman, p. mason, handbook of pharmacy healthcare diseases and patient advice, pharmaceutical press, london. 2002. [3] z. yong, p.é. fournier, e. rydkina, d. raoult, “the geographical segregation of human lice preceded that of pediculus humanus capitis and pediculus humanus,” comptes rendus biologies, 326(6), pp.565-74, 2003. [4] b. madke, u. khopkar, “pediculosis capitis: an update,” indian journal of dermatology venereology and leprology, 78(4), pp.429-438, 2012. [5] g. chandralekha, “a study to assess the effectiveness of neem leaves powder (azadrichta indica) on pediculosis among school children at a selected community in chennai,” international journal for advance research and development, 2(7), pp.29-32, 2017. [6] a. a. hama and z. i. f. rahemo, “intestinal parasitosis in relation to haemoglobin concentration among primary schoolchildren in erbil province kurdistan-iraq,” international science journal, 1(1),pp. 96-99, 2014. [7] c. cummings, j.c. finlay, n..e. macdonald, “head lice infestations: a clinical update,” paediatrics & child health, 23(1), pp.18-24, 2018. [8] a. judith, “ professional guide to diseases”, wolters kluwer healthlippincott williams & wilkins, philadelphia, 2012. [9] c. burhgardt, “lippincott's guide to infectious diseases”, wolters kluwer healthlippincott”, williams & wilkins, philadelphia, 2011. [10] g. b. white, “insects and hygiene. the biology and control of insect pests of medical and domestic importance. james r. busvine, 1980 (3rd edition). london & new york: chapman and hall,” transactions of the royal society of tropical medicine and hygiene, (75) 3, pp. 388–388, jan. 1981. [11] a.m. downs, k.a. stafford, g.c. coles, “head lice: prevalence in schoolchildren and insecticide resistance,” parasitology today, 15(1), pp.1-4, 1999. [12] j. harris, j.g. crawshaw, s. millership, “incidence and prevalence of head lice in a district health authority area,” communicable disease and public health, 6 (3), pp.246-9, 2003. [13] c. cummings, j.c. finlay, n.e. macdonald, “head lice infestations: a clinical update,” paediatrics & child health, 23(1), pp.18-24, 201. [14] k.n. khidhir, c.k. mahmood, w.k. ali, “prevalence of infestation with head lice pediculus humanus capitis (de geer) in primary schoolchildren in the centre of erbil city, kurdistan region, iraq,” pakistan entomologist, 39(2), pp.1-4, 2017. [15] k.s. al-marjan, q.m. koyee, s.m. abdullah, “in vitro study on the morphological development of eggs (nits) and other stages of head lice pediculus humanus capitis de geer,” zanco journal of pure and applied sciences, 27(3), pp.35-40, 2015. [16] b. koyo, c.s. amanzougaghene, n. davoust, b. et al. “genetic diversity of human head lice and molecular detection of associated bacterial pathogens in democratic republic of congo”. parasites vectors 12, 290 (2019). [17] a. kokturk, k. baz, r. bugdayci, t. sasmaz, u. tursen, t.i. kaya, g. ikizoglu, “the prevalence of pediculosis capitis in schoolchildren in mersin, turkey,” international journal of dermatology, 42(9), pp.694-8, 2003. [18] k. bartosik, a. buczek, z. zajac, j. kulisz, “head pediculosis in schoolchildren in the eastern region of the european union,” annals of agricultural and environmental medicine, 22(4), pp.599-603, 2015. [19] w. rassami, m. soonwera, “epidemiology of pediculosis capitis among schoolchildren in the eastern area of bangkok, thailand,” asian pacific journal of tropical biomedicine, 2(11), pp.901-4, 2012. [20] 20 b.s. abdulla, “morphological study and prevalence of head lice (pediculus humanus capitis)(anoplura: pediculidae) infestation among some primary school students in erbil city, kurdistan region,” zanco journal of pure and applied sciences, 27(5), pp.29-36, 2015. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 9 [21] 21 p. manrique-saide, n. pavía-ruz, j.c. rodríguez-buenfil, r. herrera herrera, p. gómez-ruiz, d. pilger, “prevalence of pediculosis capitis in children from a rural school in yucatan, mexico,” revista do instituto de medicina tropical de são paulo, 53(6), pp.325-7, 2011. [22] g.f. slonka, m.l. fleissner, j. berlin, j. puleo, e.k. harrod, m.g. schultz, “an epidemic of pediculosis capitis,” the journal of parasitology, 63(2), pp.377-83, 1977. [23] 23 s.a. mahmood, “head pediculosis among in baghdad area elementary schoolchildren,” iraqi journal of science, 51(1), pp.49-55, 2010. [24] 24 m. al bashtawy, f. hasna, “pediculosis capitis among primary-school children in mafraq governorate, jordan,” eastern mediterraneanhealth journal, 18(1), pp.43-48, 2012. [25] m. moosazadeh, m. afshari, h. keianian, a. nezammahalleh, a.a. enayati. “prevalence of head lice infestation and its associated factors among primary school students in iran a systematic review and meta-analysis, ” osong public health and research perspectives, 2015; 6(6), pp.346-56. [26] m. nazari, m. saidijam, “pediculus capitis infestation according to sex and social factors in hamedan-iran,” pakistan journal of biological science, 10(19), pp.3473-5, 2007. [27] a. saghafipour, j. nejati, a. zahraei ramazani, h. vatandoost, e. mozaffari, f. rezaei, “prevalence and risk factors associated with head louse (pediculus humanus capitis) in central iran,” international journal of pediatrics, 5(7), pp.5245-54, 2017. [28] a. doroodgar et al., “the prevalence of pediculosis capitis and relevant factors in primary school students of kashan, central iran,” asian pacific j. trop. dis., vol. 4, no. 6, pp. 500–504, 2014. [29] s.ghobakhloo, “survey the prevalence of pediculosis capitis and its associated risk factors among girls’ schools students in garmsar city, semnan province (iran) ,” lett health biol sci 3(1): 2026, 2018. [30] h. dagne, a.a. biya, a. tirfie, w.w. yallew, b. dagnew, “prevalence of pediculosis capitis and associated factors among schoolchildren in woreta town, northwest ethiopia,” bmc research notes, 12(1), pp.465, 2019. 1. introduction  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq impact of corona virus on the life status of kurdish people living in kurdistan region of iraq pary m. azize chia h. sadiq nursing department midwifery department sulaimani technical institute sulaimani technical institute sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq pary.azize@spu.edu.iq chia.sadiq@spu.edu.iq lavin luqman othman information technology department the british international school of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq lavin.luqman97@gmail.com article info abstract special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) doi: 10.24017/covid.6 article history: received: 08 may 2020 accepted: 15 may 2020 the novel corona virus (covid-19) is currently one of the most common causing concerns in medical community. the aim of this study is to carry out the effect of corona virus on life status among kurdish people in kurdistan region. an online form (questionnaire) was used to collect the data among the researchers’ social media users, especially facebook as the main platform. 643 participated in the study and filledout the form; however, 510 forms were accepted in terms of statistical point of view. all statistical computations are enhanced using statistical method (spss 21). the data was coded, tabulated, and presented in a descriptive form. the finding shows that the majority of gender respondents were female aged mostly between 15-25 years old, majority were employed, 92.7%, living in sulaimani city, which was the highest rate among all locations. 50% of the participants identified that corona virus was a threatening disease which was the highest. followed by 22% who identified the disease as fatal. social distancing and hand washing were the top choices for self protection against the disease. family connection and relaxation were the two positive aspects of the virus, however, communication with others and safety. were the two negative aspects of the virus stated by the respondents. 26.1% of respondents were distracted themselves from stress by connecting with loved keywords: corona virus, covid 19, life status, environment, social media, life threatening kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 46 ones through social media followed by reading. there is a significant positive statistical correlation between (corona virus and life status) which is (0.846) and that the significant value is (0.000). this illustrates that only 71.6% of factors affect (life status) in (corona virus). as way of conclusion, corona virus has had a significant impact on the people’s life status. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the novel corona virus (covid-19) is a new epidemic virus that has raised a big concern among the medical community [1]. this virus is -induced pneumonia, the first report discovered in wuhan city since 2019 [2]. the number of people living with corona virus across the word is 96,000 cases in 5/3/2020 and 3300 deaths have been reported till the date [3]. corona virus disease can caused multiple system infections especially respiratory tract infection in humans such as severe acute respiratory syndrome and middle east respiratory syndrome (mers) [4]. in addition, cough and fever are the most common symptoms of this virus, some patients have also experienced other symptoms such as diarrhea and liver damage [5,6] , it brings more encounters to patients recovery [7,8]. many people may also be asymptomatic. usually elderly people and those with chronic disease such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, chronic respiratory diseases and cancer are more likely to develop respiratory distress syndrome. droplets of saliva or contact from an infected person are the most common way of transmission. the incubation period is about 2-14 days. the rate of deaths from this virus is likely to be 2% -%3 [9] a study by joseph et al in 2005 investigated, mental health and quality of life during the sars pandemic situation among populations in hong kong,, it indicated social and family support are associated with positive impact of mental health [10]. in addition, a study conducted among chines populations through an online survey between january and february 2020 with about 263 participants. this study reported that the covid-19 was associated with mild stressful impact among local chinese aged ≥ 18 in liaoning province, mainland china [11]. the occurrence of corona virus over the world can led to enormous public responses; continuously social media has reported across limitations to keep all information taught about the pandemic situation. a pandemic has led to stress, and anxiety, which is the most common reaction to any distressing condition [12]. the most effective ways of protection against the virus is social distance.. despite all the preventive measures that has been used by people, but still cause stigma. in an online survey that has been carried out in india to assess the knowledge and attitude of people regarding corona virus, stated that over a fifth of the participants agreed that social distancing, avoiding traveling abroad, frequently using hand sterilizer are protection against the disease, however, stigma and fear are still the dominant factors that stay with them especially because of returning the recovered patients to the society [13]. the aim of this study is to carry out the effect of corona virus on life status among kurdish people in kurdistan region 2. methods and materials design of the study an online survey was conducted, form (questionnaire) was used to collect the data among social media users, especially face book as the main platform. data collection the form spread around first from the researcher’s network especially facebook, then to people who are connected to the researchers facebook accounts all around kurdistan region. the form was created using google forms as the platform. this decision was made because; google is a very sophisticated and very easy to use platform among online users. the platform kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 47 allows to add questions in variety of styles (multiple choice, short answer, checkbox…etc.). the researchers asked everyone to answer. sample and sampling technique the form reached 643 subjects. the researchers studied the forms and filtered out 133 forms as they had not filled the form completely. know the samples are 510 respondents questionnaire the questionnaire is classified into two sections, the first section that this research attempted to find some demographic data such as (age, gender, occupation and educational level….). the second section demonstrates the data collected from the first section of the survey, in this section, 12 questions were asked about their life status during that situation of having covid19. the questionnaire started with the general question about the meaning of corona virus to them, their level of fear to the disease. then we started to ask about their social life under the stress of this disease for example: what does corona virus give and take away from you, how you protect yourself and how you convince and distract yourself to not become stressed while you are home. finally, information was seeked about the benefit of staying home and social distance to change the environment for the better and to the future of this virus. statistical analysis the answers are automatically turned into useful graphs and figures that are easily extracted and can later on be used as representatives of the data. all statistical computations are enhanced using statistical method (spss 21). the data has been coded, tabulated, and presented in a descriptive form. the statistical procedure that was applied to determine the results of the present study included: 1. alpha-cronbach has been used for testing the reliability of the questionnaire. 2. descriptive statistical data analysis (demography, descriptive variables as corona virus and life status) 3. inferential data analysis: pearson bivariate correlation and simple regression model: this model was used to determine as: impact of corona virus on the life status -the significant level of all statistical procedures was determined at (f test), p< 0.000. -there are criteria of the probability level of determining the significance of the test: p -value as: 1. high significant (p< 0.001) 2. significant (p< 0.05) 3. non-significant (p> 0.05) 4. very highly significant (p< 0.000) 3. results reliability of questionnaire reliability means accuracy, dependability, stability, and consistency of the research instrument. according to heale and twycross, (2015) [14], the recommended appropriate sample size is “approximately 200 individuals (or more) for a research” which implies that a sample size of 200 respondents is an appropriate sample size for the current research. table 1: reliability and validity methods result alpha cronbach’s 0.915 validity 0.837 it can be seen in the table (1) that alpha cronbach was used to get the result of the reliability of the participations. as a result, the value of alpha cronbach equals to (0.915) and the validity was (0.837), then the result of alpha cronbach and validity shows the highly reliable of the questionnaire . kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 48 table 2: demographic data variables frequency percent % gender male 208 40.8% female 302 59.2% total 510 100.0 age 15 – 25 years old 211 41.37% 26 – 35 years old 125 24.51% 36 – 45 years old 110 21.57% more than 45 years old 64 12.55% total 510 100.0 education level primary 15 2.9% secondary 38 7.5% institute 183 35.9% college 181 35.5% post graduate 93 18.2% total 510 100.0 location suleimani 473 92.7% hawler 19 3.7% kirkuk 5 1% duhok 3 0.6% halabja 10 2% total 510 100.0 occupation student 152 29.8% employed 179 35.1% teacher 92 18% unemployed 87 17.1% total 510 100.0 it is clear from the table (2): the majority of gender respondents were female, reaching 59.2% of the total. this means the rate of females was more than males. the percentage of males was 40.8%.the highest percentage of age was between (15-25 years old) and 24.51% and 21.57% were between (26 – 35 years old and 36 – 45 years old respectively) and only 12.55% of age was (more than 45 years old).the majority of the educational level was institute, which was 35.9%, while the college, post graduate and secondary were (35.5%, 18.2% and 7.5% respectively) and only 2.9% was primary. most of participants, 92.7% were living in sulaimani city, which was the highest rate among all locations, 3.7% , 2% and 1% were form hawler ,halabja and kirkuk and the minority of location was in duhok, 0.6%. occupational status (employed) from the study sample came in the first rank with a percentage of 35.1%. in the second place were (students) which was 29.8%, and 18% of the occupational were teachers, finally, the lowest rate of occupation, which was unemployed, 17.1%. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 49 table 3: descriptive some questions variables frequency percent % what does corona virus mean to you it is a threatening disease 255 50% it is a fatal disease 112 22% it is a mild disease 137 26.9% others 6 1.2% total 510 100.0 how do you protect yourself from the virus? washing hands 224 43.9% social distancing 277 54.3% taking medication and vitamins 9 1.8% total 510 100.0 what did corona virus give to you? relaxation 203 39.8% family connection 224 43.9% self-care time 56 11% others 27 5.3% total 510 100.0 what did corona virus take away from you? freedom 77 15.1% friendship 33 6.5% communication with others 177 34.7% economy 74 14.5% health 55 10.8% safety 94 18.4% total 510 100.0 how do you distract yourself from the stress of the virus? reading 120 23.5% exercise 44 8.6% connecting with loved ones through social media 130 26.1% telephone calls with loved ones 94 18.4% sleeping 34 6.7% eating 15 2.9% communicating with family members/ house mates 14 2.7% others 56 11% total 510 100.0 it is clear from the table (3): it can be clear that 50% of the [articipant6s felt that corona virus was a threatening disease, which was the highest, 26.9% and 22% felt mild disease and fatal disease respectively. the majority of the participants chose social distancing as the best way of protecting themselves against the disease. which was 54.3% of the total and only 1.8% considered medication and vitamins. according to the study, 43.9% of corona virus gives family connection and 39.8% chose relaxation. 34.7% of participants felt that communication with others was the biggest scarifies that they had to do because of the virus. and 18.4%, 15.1%. 14.5% and 10.8 take safety, freedom, economic and health respectively. 23.5% was kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 50 reading to distract from the stress of virus, and 18.4% made telephone calls with loved ones 2.7% was communicating with family members/ house mate table 4: description of variables questions no somehow yes mean s.d c.v relative importance no no no % % % are you afraid of corona virus? 107 274 129 2.04 0.67 32.84 68 21 53.7 25.3 have you been able to convince yourself to not become stressed? convince by corona virus. 40 174 296 2.5 0.64 25.60 83.33 7.8 34.1 58 is corona virus your life threatening virus? 15 160 335 2.62 0.54 20.61 87.33 2.9 31.4 65.7 do you think that social media adds to the fear of corona? does it make corona seem scary? 50 225 235 2.36 0.65 27.54 78.67 9.8 44.1 46.1 sum 212 833 995 2.38 0.63 26.65 79.33 10.39 40.83 48.77 the data of table (4) on repeat distributions (mean, stander deviation, coefficient of variance and relative importance) indicate explanatory variables that focus on (corona virus). this variable has a mean of 2.38., standard deviation of (0.63) and the relative importance of (79.33%). the percentage of people who responded with “yes” to (48.77%), somehow (40.83%), while the proportion of individuals who syayed “no” with the paragraphs have reached the percentage (10.39%). table 5: description of variables questions no somehow yes mean s.d c.v relative importance no no no % % % do you feel like corona virus is pushing to stay clean? 14 52 444 2.84 0.43 15.14 94.67 2.7 10.2 87.1 do you feel like corona virus has been able to change the environment for the better? 11 74 425 2.81 0.44 15.66 93.67 2.2 14.5 83.3 do you think that we can end corona virus by staying clean and cleaning? 62 171 277 2.4 0.69 28.75 80.00 12.2 33.5 54.3 sum 87 297 1146 2.68 0.52 19.8 89.4 5.69 19.41 74.90 the data of table (6) on repeat distributions (mean, stander deviation, coefficient of variance and relative importance) indicate explanatory variables that focus on (life status). this variable has a mean of 2.68. a standard deviation of (0.52) and the relative importance of (89.4%). the percentage of people who responded with “yes” to (74.90%), somehow kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 51 (19.41%), while the proportion of individuals who stated “no” with the paragraphs have reached the percentage (5.69%). table 6: a relationship between corona virus and life status corona virus life status life status corona virus 0.846 1 correlation life status 0.000 sig. 510 510 sample 1 0.846 correlation corona virus 0.000 sig. 510 510 sample the level of significance at level 0.05 there is a relationship between the statistical function between the corona virus and life status ho: there isn’t a relationship between corona virus and life status h1: there is a relationship between corona virus and life status it is noted from table (6) that there is a significant positive statistical correlation between (corona virus and life status), which is (0.846) and that the significance value is (0.000) and is less than (0.05). this indicates acceptance of the second hypothesis, because a positive correlation between the (corona virus and life status). table 7: regression analysis of a dependent variable (life status) impact of corona virus on the life status model coefficients model summary anova table unstandardized coefficients t test sig. r r 2 adjust r 2 f test sig b std.erro r constant 0.232 0.065 3.594 0.00 0.846 0.716 0.715 1279.67 0.00 corona virus 0.918 0.026 35.773 0.00 ho: there isn’t the impact of corona virus on the life status h1: there is the impact of corona virus on the life status this table indicates that the regression model predicts the dependent variable significantly well. this indicates the statistical significance of the regression model that was run. here, the (p-value) was (0.000), which is less than 0.05, and indicates that, the regression model statistically significantly predicts the outcome variable (it is a good fit for the data).this means that the method is possible to be used to analyze this data and this indicates acceptance of the alternative hypothesis. the r2 value indicates how much of the total variation in the dependent variable (life status), can be explained by the independent variable (corona virus). in other words, r square for this study is (0.716). in this case, 76.2% can be explained, which is very large. in other words, this indicates that 71.6% of the variance of (life status) has been explored in (corona virus), this illustrates that only 71.6% of factors affect (life status) in (corona virus) and the other variables (28.4%) are due to random error. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 52 4. discussion corona virus was a life changing disease for everyone and everything around the world. it had its pros and cons. even though. it was a significant health hazard for humans, but it was able to clean the environment. the virus stopped the life of humans in many countries; however, it was able to restart the life of many other species that used to share the planet with humans. convid-19 also had its benefits for humans, it brought families together, stopped many wars and made equality among the different classes in society. however, it did have sever impacts on the mental, financial and the safety status of humans. all of this was the motivation for the conduction of this study. the aim of the research is to find the impact of the virus on the life status of citizens in kurdistan, iraq. similar to other public health concern for people, corona virus can lead to levels of anxiety and stresses [15]. regarding the importance of psychological variables, the current study indicated that %25.3 of participants were frightened from covid-19. fear is not the highest impact of corona virus; it has been stated that stress is also another factor when it comes to this pandemic situation. these are inconsistent with the result of a study [16]. in an online survey of 808 u.s. among adults, stated that approximately 56% of participants were worried or very concerned about the covid-19 in the u.s. similarly, a group of researchers asked a number of medical students from the college of medicine at king saud university and found that the majority of the subjects fear the disease, interestingly majority 87% of them were female student [17]. regarding awareness about covid -19 pandemic, this study found that most of the participants (%43.9) were aware of the basic elements of the disease. this study’s responders reported that the current use of hand washing indicates the increasing concern of participants toward personal hygiene measure to avoid the virus. this finding is consistent with [18] the study conducted in indian which stated that 97% participants were frequently washing their hands to stop the covid19. in term of social distancing, the majority of the participants in this study reported that more than (54.3%) of the participants agreed that social distancing is a significant impact to avoid the disease. this finding is consistent with the study which indicated that awareness about covid-19 is reflected in their attitude and behaviors considerably as most of the chines participants (about 98%) agreed with social distancing [18]. this study represents that, most of the participants stated that corona virus has the highest (% 83.3) impact to change the environment for the best. this result is supported by a study form china. the study reported that the corona virus can prevent the environment form pollution and significantly contributes in reduction to global carbon emission [19]. in this context, social media may be one of the most important impacts on mental health. this study stated that social media was responsible for spreading fear of covid-19 among participants, which is about (% 46.1) of all individuals. this finding is consistent with [20], the mers outbreak period, which indicated that social media can influence largely express negative words like fear and anxiety with respect to the infectious disease. in contract, as in the locked down situation, social media is the main source to gain information about covid19 in about half of the population [21]. in a two similar studies on mers was consisted results that social media is a main source of information among health care professionals [22, 23]. 5. conclusion as way of conclusion, this study showed that corona virus has had a significant impact on the life status of citizens in kurdistan, iraq. the results showed that the majority of the subjects were suffering from mental instability as the cause of the epidemic. social distancing was chosen as the best way to protect themselves and their families from the contagious virus. convid-19 changed the world in many ways. despite its many negative impacts, it will be able to have long term benefits for humans, the planet and the different species. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 53 reference [1] z na, z dingyu, w wenling, li xingwan , bo yang, s jingdong et al. a novel corona virus from patients with pneumonia in china, the new england journal of medicine. 382, pp.727-33. 2019 [2] li quan, g xuhua, w peng, w xiaoye, z lei t yeqing et al. early transmission dynamics in wuhan, china, of novel coronavirus-infected pneumonia. the new england journal of medicine, 382, pp.1199-1207 2020. 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[16] a, allison. poll: most americans say u.s. “doing enough” to prevent corona virus spread , the coronavirus crisis, 2020. https://www.npr.org/sections/healthshots/2020/02/04/802387025/poll-mostamericans-say-u-sdoing-enough-to-preventcoronavirus-spread. [17] a r abdulkarim , ht mohammad, aa ayman, , hm gamal al-z fahad, al-s sarah, et al., . middle east respiratory syndrome-corona virus (mers-cov) associated stress among medical students at a university teaching hospital in saudi arabia. journal of infection and public health. 13{5), pp. 687-691. 2020. [18] r deblina, t sarvodaya, k k, sujitta, s nivedita, kv, sudhir and k vitas. study of knowledge, attitude, anxiety & perceived mental healthcare need in indian population during covid-19 pandemic. asian journal of psychiatry. 51, pp. 102083. 2020. [19] w qiang, su min a preliminary assessment of the impact of covid-19 on environment a case study of china. science of the total environment. 728, pp.138915. 2020. 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[23] di gaberilla,, a rossella, a. luciania m paolo and af italo. a survey of knowledge, attitudes and practices towards avian influenza in an adult population of italy. bmc infectious disease. 8(36), 2008. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=gong%20f%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=32007143 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=han%20y%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=32007143 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=gong%20f%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=32007143 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=han%20y%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=32007143 https://www.nature.com/nmicrobiol https://link.springer.com/journal/12098 https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/joseph-t.-f.-lau/32294038 https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/yun-kwok-wing/37106797 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=roy%20d%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=32283510 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=kar%20sk%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=32283510 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=verma%20sk%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=32283510 https://www.npr.org/series/812054919/the-coronavirus-crisis https://www.npr.org/series/812054919/the-coronavirus-crisis https://www.npr.org/sections/healthshots/2020/02/04/802387025/poll-mostamericans-say-u-s-doing-enough-to-preventcoronavirus-spread https://www.npr.org/sections/healthshots/2020/02/04/802387025/poll-mostamericans-say-u-s-doing-enough-to-preventcoronavirus-spread https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=tripathy%20s%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=32283510 https://www.x-mol.com/paper/journal/436 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=soudah%20o%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=32340892  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq ameliorated impact of fenugreek seed extract on some blood cellular and biochemical parameters in female albino rats exposed to lead acetate rozhya abduljalil naser rabar yousif mameik department of biology department of biology faculty of science faculty of science soran university soran university soran, iraq soran, iraq email: rojyaabdulljalil@gmail.com email: rabarbaa@gmail.com nazar m. shareef mahmood kurdo bapir chato department of biology department of biology faculty of science faculty of science soran university soran university soran, iraq soran, iraq email: nazar.mahmood@soran.edu.iq email: kurdo.chato@soran.edu.iq article info abstract volume 5 – special issue: 4th international conference on the health and medical science : medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) doi: 10.24017/science.2020.ichms2020.12 article history: received: 23 september 2020 accepted: 28 september 2020 lead acetate (la) is considered as the common hazardous compund present in our habitat. it has a several diverse-organ toxicant effect in various healthy issues included diseases of the hepatic, renal, and other body systems. fenugreek seeds (trigonella foenum graecum l.) were used in curing medicine and as food supplement since ancient times. after that, their antioxidant and hepatoprotective properties have been studied. therefore the presented was based on their biological properties of this plant and conducted to examine the protective impact of fenugreek seed extract upon la toxicity on some blood cellular and biochemical parameters of female albino rats (rattus norvegicus). twenty eight female rats were randomly and equally divided into four groups each one contain seven rats as following; first group received basal diet and tap water ad libitum. second group received basal diet and la 80 mg/l with water ad libitum. third group received basal diet contained 2.5% fenugreek seed extract and la 80 mg/l with water ad libitum. fourth group received basal diet contained 2.5% keywords: fenugreek, lead acetate, body weight, lipid profile, complete blood count. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 106 fenugreek seed extract with water ad libitum. rat’s administration was continued daily for two weeks respectively. the administration of rats with la produced significant reduction in liver weight, food intake, while it increased triglyceride (tg), alkaline phosphatase (alp), aspartate aminotransferase (ast), uric acid (ua) and creatinie (cr). while supplemented diet with 2.5% fenugreek seed extract improved body weight, organ weight, lipid peroxidation, tg, alp, and ast. our results plead for the profiteering of fenugreek seeds as a dietary supplement, because it showed protective effect of their content in polyphenolic flavonoids, antioxidant and membrane-protective effects, against exposure to the la compound to protect injurious risk. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction many medicinal plants were used as sources of many potent and powerful drugs around the world. fenugreek is one of a self-pollinating crop belonging to the family of fabaceae that is leguminous herb cultivated in india and middle east. it grows to an average height about two feet which can grow in dry and semi-dry area, also it has been used in food supplement for thousands of years beside their using in pharmacology as medicine [1]. fenugreek is a medicinal plant that has been used as a treatment for number of disease, and used as the natural products administered by 80% of the people around the world as a medicines especially in the developing countries [1]. on the other hand, la lead is one of the most environmental pollutant toxic [2] which derivate from petrol component in many countries, also many origins such as industrial pollution may include for their elimination [3]. lead exposure could occur during the manufacture of batteries, painting, printing, pottery glazing, and lead smelting processes. furthermore, it occurs during the construction of tank padding, piping and other equipment such as electrical and communication wires [4]. 2. literature review it has been demonstrated that seed extract of fenugreek could be used in many treatments for a number of disorders such as atherosclerosis, rheumatism, drcreasing blood sugar elevation, blood lipids besides its antioxidant and antibacterial [5]. besides that also the fenugreek seed extract could cause a decease total bw, the mechanism action fenugreek seed extract in decreasing of bw and adipose tissue is occurred by the flush-out the carbohydrate from the small intestine because its compound soluble fiber is about 40% could decline the digestion and absorption of food [6]. lead acetate is a white crystalline compound analogous to other lead compound, highly poison and water soluble also is one of the non-essential elements of human body as well as the common path of potential human exposure to la are inhalation, dermal contact and ingestion, which is also absorbed about 1.5 times more rapid than other lead combination by human [7]. lead acetate toxicity of is closely in relationship to age, sex and many various forms of diseases have been associated such as cancer nephrotoxicity and central nervous system effects and kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 107 cardiovascular disease in human. also the la inhalation could adequately lower intelligence quotient damage stability and cause hyperactivity, and hearing loss. accumulation of la in human body produces degeneration effects in the hematopoetical, hematic, renal system and gastrointestinal tract [8]. the la cause increase in bw by hepatic lipid accumulation and having effect on the dna methylation which regulate the glucose and lipid metabolism genes and cause dysfunction of glucose metabolism pathway [9]. previous studies showed that the exposure to lead cause damages to liver cells due to affecting cell membrane permeability [10]. another study, reported that lead drive microcytic hypochromic anemia due to interference with copper and iron metabolism results in iron disruption [11]. it has been suggested that tri ethyl lead toxicity produce some hematological indices and has revealed a significant decrease in some haematological parameters included the mean corpuscular hemoglobin (mch), mean corpuscular volume (mcv) and red blood cells (rbc) and an increase in monocyte number, and platelets [12]. the high dose of lead administration in female rats caused mild anemia, reduced mch, mcv and mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (mchc), erythrocytes enzyme activity declination and elevated of stippled rbcs [13]. 3. methods and materials animals housing the female of inbred albino rats (rattus norvegicus) [14] were produced from the animal house of biology department, faculty of science, soran university, soran, iraq. the present study was conducted on twenty-eight animals. they were weighting 210 – 280 gm and 12 weeks of age at the time when the experiment started. they adapted in an environmentally planned room at steady temperature 22 ± 2 ℃, they were preserved at free access to tap water ad libitu, they fed at a standard pelleted chow feed according to pico lab. rodent diet 20 . during the experiment the cages were wash out once a week. standard diet preparation the component of diet were determined according pico lab. rodent diet 20, with assistance of expert of in erbil poultry project and erbil animal diet factory erbil, iraq, as following; wheat 66.6%, soya 25.6%, fenugreek 2.5%, salt 0.63%, lime stone 1.5%, methionine 0.156%, lysine 0.244%, choline chloride 0.062%, vit cx lay 0.058%, dicalcium phosphate 0.642%, az /1200= 0.080% and trace elements 0.050%. lead acetate dose preparation the la dose was prepared by dissolving 80 mg of la (spain) in 1 liter of tap water and put into bottles were given to animals replaced with water as ad libitum. fenugreek seed extract dose preparation our fenugreek seeds were gained from the soran local markets. they cleaned then grounded by grinder in to fine powder. according to [15] with some alterations according to the method of [16] the fenugreek seed boiled aqueous extract powder was obtained by boiling 25 gm of seed powder in 250 ml of water about 30 minutes . then the powder mixture was filtered out of eight layers of gauze and directly mixed with the standard rat’s diet to obtain the supplemented diet containing fenugreek seeds aqueous extract of 2.5%. experimental design group i (control group): animals were given basal diet and tap water ad libitum. group ii: animals were given standard diet and water contained la (80mg/l) ad libitum. group iii: animals were given diet supplemented with fenugreek seed extract of 2.5% and water contained la (80mg/l) ad libitum. group iv: animals were given standard diet supplemented with 2.5% fenugreek seed extract and tap water ad libitum. the experiment was continued daily for two weeks respectively. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 108 feed intake and body weight measurement at the experiment beginning and the end of each of experimental week, the weight of animals was recorded in gm, and at the end of the two weeks the weights of standard-diet also were recorded in gm/rat. blood samples collection after the twenty four hours of the end of treatment period the experimental animals were anesthetized with a combination of ketamine hydrochloride (90 mg/b.w.) and xylazine (10 mg/ b.w.) intraperitoneally [17]. samples of blood were collected, by animal cardiac puncture and poured into chilled tubes for further measurement of some haematological and biochemical parameters. determination of spleen, liver and right kidney weight after collecting blood sample collection animals are dissected. some organs weight included liver, right kidney and spleen were recorded by precision electronic balances. blood cellular parameters measurement the blood cellular parameters (haematological parameters) including hb, rbc, wbc, plts, hct and mcv were measured by coulter counter (nihon kohden, mek-6410k, japan) for each group [18]. lipid profile measurement lipid profiles parameters including total amount of cholesterol (tc), low density lipoproteins (ldl), triglycerides (tg) and high density lipoproteins (hdl) were measured with cobas analyzer (c 111) . determination of serum malondialdehyde serum mda concentration, was determined spectrophotometrically, 150 µl serum sample the followings were added, firstly, 1ml of 17.5% trichloroacetic acid (tca) then, 1ml of 0.66% thiobarbituric acid (tba) were mixed well by vortex mixer, after that they incubated in boiling water for 15 minutes, and then allowed to cool. next that, one ml of 70% tca was added and the mixture allowed to stand at room temperature for 20 minutes, finally, the mixture was centrifuged at 2000 rpm for 15 minutes, the supernatant was obtained for scanning spectrophotometrically at 532nm [19]. measurement of liver function tests liver function tests including ast, alanine aminotransferase (alt) and alp were measured by cobas analyzer. measurement of kidney function tests kidney function tests including creatinine (cr) and uric acid (ua) were measured by cobas analyzer (c 111). statistical analysis of data our data were analyzed with one-way analysis of variance (anova) by using statistical package for the social sciences (spss). the level of significant ( probability level) fixed at p<0.05. the data expression was shown as mean ± standard error (mean ± s.e.) below each tables of the results and star symbol (*) means the significant differences. 4. results impact of lead acetate and fenugreek on body weight in female albino rats the influence of fenugreek and lead acetate on bw in rats is shown in (table 1). rats administered with la showed non-significant decline of bw in first week and second week as compared to the control group. while treated of rats with both lead acetate and fenugreek caused non-significant decrease of bw in first and second weeks as compared to la group. rats treated with fenugreek significantly (p<0.05) decreased of bw in first and second weeks as compared to the control group. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 109 table 1: body weight parameter group 1st week (gm) 2nd week (gm) control 250.00± 9.258 b 264.29± 6.851b lead acetate 225.71± 8.689 ab 235.71± 9.476 ab fenugreek and lead acetate 210.00± 11.126 a 221.43± 12.426 a fenugreek 208.57± 11.218 a 210.00± 10.465 a data are presented as mean ± s.e, the same letters mean non significant differences whereas the different letters mean the significant differences (*= p< 0.05) impact of lead acetate and fenugreek on liver, spleen and kidney weight in female albino rats the influence of la and fenugreek on some organs weight included liver, spleen and kidney in rats is shown in (table 2). rats administered with la showed significant (p<0.05) decrease in liver weight, and non significant change of kidney and spleen weight as compared to the control group. meanwhile treated rats with la and fenugreek to rats showed non-significant increase of liver ,kidney, and spleen weight as compared to la group. also rats treated with fenugreek showed non-significant increase of kidney and spleen weight except liver significantly (p<0.05) increase as compared to the control group. table 2: organs weight included liver, kidney and spleen parameter group liver (gm) kidney (gm) spleen (gm) control 7.171± 0.289c 0.795± 0.092a 1.185± 0.085 a lead acetate 5.307± 0.136a 0.748± 0.051 a 1.102± 0.117 a fenugreek and lead acetate 6.024± 0.346ab 0.752± 0.047 a 1.115± 0.090 a fenugreek 7.264± 0.286b 1.550± 0.826 a 1.194± 0.125 a data are presented as mean ± s.e, the same letters mean non significant differences whereas the different letters mean the significant differences (*= p< 0.05) impact of lead acetate and fenugreek on food intake in female albino rats the influence of fenugreek and la on food intake in rats is shown in (table 3). rats treated with la showed significant (p<0.05) decrease of food intake in first week and second week as compared to the control group. whereas rats administered with la and fenugreek caused nonsignificant increase of food intake in first week and significant increase (p<0.05) in second weeks as compared to the la group. rats treated with fenugreek elevated food intake nonsignificantly in first week and decreased significantly (p<0.05) in second week as compared to the control group. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 110 table 3: food intake parameter group 1st week (gm) 2nd week (gm) control 108.331± 1.994a 112.672± 0.881 a lead acetate 77.500± 1.945b 64.833± 1.579b fenugreek and lead acetate 84.666± 1.282b 74.666± 1.282c fenugreek 115.672± 4.630a 104.002± 4.618d data are presented as mean ± s.e, the same letters mean non significant differences whereas the different letters mean the significant differences (*= p< 0.05) impact of lead acetate and fenugreek on several hematological parameters in female albino rats the influence of fenugreek and la on some hematological parameters is shown in (table 4). the treatment of rats with la showed non-significant change in wbc,rbc,hb,pcv,plt and mcv parameters as compared to the control group. meanwhile administration of rats with both la and fenugreek also caused non-significant change as a compared to la group. besides that, rats treated with fenugreek showed non-significant change in rbc,hb, pcv and mcv except the plt, was decreased significantly (p<0.05 ) while wbc was significantly(p<0.05 ) increase as compared to the control group. table 4: haematological parameters parameter group wbc (103/µl) rbc (106/µl) hb (gm/dl) pcv (%) plt (103/µl) mcv (fl) control 3.300± 0.762a 6.224± 0.365 a 12.160± 0.551 a 36.620± 2.862 a 565.6± 16.693 a 54.040± 4.875 a lead acetate 4.050± 0.705ab 6.200± 0.179 a 12.050± 0.489 a 35.516± 1.481 a 567.6± 14.298a 52.166± 1.215 a fenugreek and lead acetate 4.100± 0.953 ab 6.252± 0.293 a 12.320± 0.538 a 35.860± 1.411 a 573.2± 18.701a 53.480± 1.184 a fenugreek 6.216± 1.050 b 6.573± 0.258a 13.100± 0.500 a 36.233± 1.359 a 518.5± 6.902b 54.116± 0.611 a data are presented as mean ± s.e, the same letters mean non significant differences whereas the different letters mean the significant differences (*= p< 0.05) impact of lead acetate and fenugreek on serum lipid profile and malondialdehyde parameters in female albino rats the influence of la and fenugreek on serum lipid profile and mda parameters is shown in (table 5). rats treated with lead acetate showed non-significant change of cholesterol,mda, hdl and ldl parameters except significant (p<0.05) increase in tg level as compared to control group. while treatment of rats with both la and fenugreek caused non-significant change of cholesterol, mda , hdl and ldl except tg level significantly (p<0.05 ) decrease as compared to la group. furthermore, rats treated with fenugreek also showed nonkurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 111 significant change of cholesterol , tg,hdl and ldl parameters as compared to control groups. table 5: lipid peroxidation and lipid profile parameters data are presented as mean ± s.e, the same letters mean non significant differences whereas the different letters mean the significant differences (*= p< 0.05) impact of lead acetate and fenugreek on function tests of liver in female albino rats the influence of la and fenugreek on liver function tests parameters is shown in (table 6). rats treated with lead acetate increased alp and ast level significantly (p<0.05) and nonsignificantly decrease alt as compared to the control group. besides that, rats administered with both la and fenugreek showed significant decrease alp and ast parameters in except the alt was non-significant increase as compared to la group, furthermore, rats administered with fenugreek showed non-significant increase alp while non-significant decrease alt and ast parameters as compared to control group. table 6: liver function tests parameters data are presented as mean ± s.e, the same letters mean non significant differences whereas the different letters mean the significant differences (*= p< 0.05) parameter group malondialdehyde (nmol/l) cholesterol (mg/dl) tg (mg/dl) hdl (mg/dl) ldl (mg/dl) control 2.1583 ± 20185 ab 55.833± 1.249a 50.518± 3.602 a 44.666± 2.800 a 15.833± 3.015 a lead acetate 2.6172 ± 0.25877 a 58.285± 2.417 a 63.142± 2.052b 37.428± 3.902 a 13.000± 1.154 a fenugreek and lead acetate 2.1071 ± 03646 ab 56.571± 1.986 a 49.000± 4.680 a 37.857± 3.034 a 15.571± 0.528 a fenugreek 1.8741 ± 0.1393 b 55.285± 2.243 a 50.285± 2.705 a 37.714± 3.590 a 13.571± 2.348 a parameter group alp (u/l) alt (u/l) ast (u/l) control 122.166± 5.653 a 39.3333± 2.848 a 71.000± 5.079 a lead acetate 146.857± 4.214 b 38.4286± 2.877 a 128.86± 8.076 b fenugreek and lead acetate 117.285± 2.382 a 42.7143± 2.781 a 71.428± 6.971 a fenugreek 124.142± 4.588 a 36.7143± 1.445 a 62.100± 1.516 a kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 112 impact of lead acetate and fenugreek on function tests of kidney in female albino rats the influence of la and fenugreek on kidney function tests parameters is shown in (table 7). rats administered with la showed significant increase (p<0.05) of ua and cr level as compared to the control group. meanwhile, treatment of rats with la and fenugreek together showed non-significant change in ua and cr parameters level as compared to la group, furthermore, rats treatment with fenugreek also caused significant (p<0.05) increase in ua level and cr level as compared to the control group. table 7: kidney function tests parameters data are presented as mean ± s.e, the same letters mean non significant differences whereas the different letters mean the significant differences (*= p< 0.05) 5. discussion the declined body weight (table 1) with la administration is in agreement with the finding of studies of [20] who demonstrated that lead produced the reduction in growing rate in experimental animals when fed lead. it has been showed that the reduction in bw in lead encompassed toxicities in rats [21]. whereas the bw gain in the animal treatment by fenugreek agreed by the finding of [22] who suggested that fenugreek extract appeared to motivate the food intake (table 3). it has been proposed that animals owned a continuous exposure with the heavy metals usually lose their bw [23]. the same decrement has been detected in the liver weight significantly, the decrease in liver (table 2) is not only that the outcome of a food decrement intake, but also, from immediate toxicity of the la, perhaps by malabsorption of nutrients from toxic effects on the gastrointestinal tract or by inhibition of protein synthesis [24]. while non-significant increase in kidney weight may attributed to the initial increase the aggregation of lead in the form of nuclear inclusion bodies in the proximal kidney tubular cells, on the other hand he rapid proliferation of the kidney proximal tubules may be in result to injury by the heavy metal [25] and the non-significant change of spleen is supported by the finding of [26]. besides that, the slight elevate of liver, kidney and spleen weight by fenugreek and la treatment is supported with the finding of [27] who suggested that diet supplemented with fenugreek seeds reduce nephrotoxicity. in addition, the fenugreek influence was confirmed in the rats group treated with fenugreek alone. the significant decrement of food intake (table 3) by the la consumption in the drinking water is confirmed by previous study who reported that male rats treated with la (20 ppm) led to bw declination [28]. our result is also supported by the attempt of [29] who reported that rats administered with la led to decrease in food intake and bw. meanwhile, the significant elevation in food intake in the second week of rats treated with fenugreek and la is confirmed with the finding of [30] who suggested that male wistar rats administered with diet combined with fenugreek seed extract orally by gavage (10 and 100 mg/day per 300 g bw) showed significant elevation in feed intake and the cause the eating motivation. furthermore to their physiological signals such as neurotransmitter modifications functions inwards the central nervous system, the feeding behavior is affect by perceptual reason and it depends predominately upon parameter group uric acid (mg/dl) creatinine (mg/dl) control 1.3552± 0.116 a 0.3698± 0.040 a lead acetate 2.2143± 0.565 b 0.6113± 0.038 c fenugreek and lead acetate 1.6501± 0.259 ab 0.5336± 0.035 bc fenugreek 2.0474± 0.130 b 0.5280± 0.019 b kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 113 palatability. thus, the effects of fenugreek on food intake and motivation to eat might be related to the well-known aromatic properties of the seeds [31].the non-significant changes in haematological parameters (table 4) of rats with la administration is confirmed with the result of [32] who suggested that rats administered with la in 0.4% solution in water supply for 12 weeks showed non-significant changes in the haematological parameters. also it confirmed by [29] who suggested that rats treated with 0.1% of la caused non-significant changes in hb, mcv and hct. furthermore the non-significant changes of same parameters in rats treated with la and fenugreek is confirmed by our previous study stated that rats treated with diet supplemented with fenugreek showed non-significant changes in blood cellular parameters [16]. the non-significant elevation of serum mda with la administration in our study was agreed by the finding of [33], who demonstrated that male rat’s treatment with la (500 mg/l) induced the oxidative damage in kidney and liver of rats. current confirmation has reported the crucial role of lipid peroxidation pattern in the regulation of psychiatric diseases related processes, including accelerated aging, inflammatory response and neurodegeneration consequences [34]. on the other hand antioxidant therapy is the most reducing agents of the extent of free radical-mediated tissue damaging represent a rational approach in preventing the onset and/or progression of free radical related to the debilitations. it has been reported that free radicals and oxidative stress perform an important role in the pathogenesis of induced toxicity and its later consequences. the fenugreek seeds extracts acted in mda reducing against la toxicity and agreed with the result of [35] who suggested that rats administered fenugreek seeds showed lipid peroxidation level declination. besides that, whole fenugreek seeds contain 48% total fiber, which included 20% gum and 28% neutral detergent fiber and about 4% of saponins [36]. the level of hdl is known as good healthy cholesterol in the blood stream in order to transports cholesterol to the liver to be expelled from the body. it helps to eliminate excess cholesterol from the body. the deprivation of hdl in our result is associated with elevation of both tg and cholesterol in the group of rats administered by la, meanwhile, we observed the significant differences in the lipid fraction, and this is supported by previous study on atherogenic issue impacted by low doses of lead [37]. in addition, the increased levels of lipids is observed along with increased levels of liver function markers may attribute to the liver dysfunction [38] also our results are in accordance with the results of [39].the present study showed the significant elevation in alp and ast with lead acetate administration these observations are in agreement with the study which reported that rats treated with gradual doses of la lead to an increase of ast level [8, 40] this alteration may be due to the membrane lipids peroxidation of smooth endoplasmic reticulum and it confirmed with slight elevation of serum lipid peroxidation (mda). fenugreek seed extract treatment was minimized the effects of lead acetate in elevated liver enzymes. the beneficial effects of fenugreek seeds are well demonstrated by their ability to improve antioxidant status thereby lowering lipid peroxidation slightly. the antioxidant role of some dietary compounds such as polyphenols and flavonoids of plant origin have been experimentally proved. physiological studies reported beneficial impacts related to consumption of such compounds [41]. in contrast, fenugreek seed extract declined the lead acetate toxicity, it lowered the elevated level of lipid fractions, it confirmed by the finding of [16, 35, 42]. the influence of la on some kidney function test caused an increase in the uric acid and cr level. the renal parameters are highly responsive sensitive to the action of poison because of its intensive metabolic activity. our results are confirmed by result of [43] who suggested that rats administered with lead acetate by orally through the drinking water to adult rats (aged three months) at the rate of 0.3% for 15 executive days lead to creatinemia, on the other hand the significant increase of ua of rats treated with la is agreed with the attempt of [44] who demonstrated that mice were administered with la for 28 days at three levels caused significant decrement of ua and cr. they are considered the most final breakdown product of purine metabolism and as a sensitive to the stress and tissue injures this confirmation was noticed by mda level. meanwhile the none significant increase of both mentioned renal parameters (ua and cr) of rats treated with both la and fenugreek is confirmed by the finding of [45] who proposed that male rats treatment with fenugreek against kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 114 other toxic substances caused increase in the renal function parameters and the current protective impact is commonly referred to their antioxidant properties in fenugreek seed extract components. 6. conclusion our study result and their interpretations concluded that, the la declined of bw, food intake, and liver weight. also it 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[32] m. n. mugahi, z. heidari, h. m. sagheb, and m. barbarestani, "effects of chronic lead acetate intoxication on blood indices of male adult rat," daru journal of pharmaceutical sciences, vol. 11, pp. 147-1, 2003. [33] j. wang, h. zhu, z. yang, and z. liu, "antioxidative effects of hesperetin against lead acetate-induced oxidative stress in rats," indian journal of pharmacology, vol. 45, p. 395, 2013. [34] s. moylan, m. maes, n. wray, and m. berk, "the neuroprogressive nature of major depressive disorder: pathways to disease evolution and resistance, and therapeutic implications," molecular psychiatry, vol. 18, pp. 595-606, 2013. [35] p. ravikumar and c. anuradha, "effect of fenugreek seeds on blood lipid peroxidation and antioxidants in diabetic rats," phytotherapy research, vol. 13, pp. 197-201, 1999. 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[44] s. m. mohammed, "physiological and histological effect of lead acetate in kidney of male micemus musculus," journal of university of anbar for pure science, vol. 4, pp. 17, 2010. [45] n. hfaiedh, h. alimi, j.-c. murat, and a. elfeki, "protective effects of fenugreek (trigonella foenum graecum l.) upon dieldrin-induced toxicity in male rat," gen physiol biophys, vol. 31, pp. 423-30, 2012. 1. introduction 2. literature review 3. methods and materials animals housing standard diet preparation lead acetate dose preparation fenugreek seed extract dose preparation experimental design feed intake and body weight measurement blood samples collection determination of spleen, liver and right kidney weight blood cellular parameters measurement lipid profile measurement determination of serum malondialdehyde measurement of liver function tests measurement of kidney function tests statistical analysis of data 4. results impact of lead acetate and fenugreek on body weight in female albino rats impact of lead acetate and fenugreek on liver, spleen and kidney weight in female albino rats impact of lead acetate and fenugreek on food intake in female albino rats impact of lead acetate and fenugreek on several hematological parameters in female albino rats impact of lead acetate and fenugreek on function tests of liver in female albino rats impact of lead acetate and fenugreek on function tests of kidney in female albino rats 5. discussion 6. conclusion kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 1 | june 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.1.9 distribution of gypsiferous soil using geoinformatics techniques for some aridisols in garmian, kurdistan region-iraq salim neimat azeez iraj rahimi survey dept, survey dept. darbandikhan technical institute , sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university iraj.amin@spu.edu.iq salim.azeez@spu.edu.iq abstract: the paper deals with techniques of image classification developed to distinguish gypsiferous soils, using the integration of field observation and remote sensing and more specific landsat/etm imagery. a landsat image was assembled and used in this study. the image was acquired by the etm/landsat 7 sensor, which was acquired on august, 2012.two main data have been used in this research, i) field and ii) satellite data. the amount of gypsum is different from location to other, may be due to the parent material of some locations of the study area which is rich with gypsum minerals, and there is evidence of gypsic indopedon horizon. the results indicated that the amount of organic matter decreases with increasing the amount of gypsum. in general, the study area is rich with total lime. these results reflect the effect of decalcification and calcification processes caused the formation of illuvial subsurface (calcic) horizon in some location of the study area. the ph values were around neutral to slightly alkaline due to the effect of calcareous parent material and type of climatic conditions. the low ece values indicate that the soil was non-saline reflected by low values of ece. the soil classes of the study area are belonging to haplogypsids, haplocalcids, haplocambids, calciargids and haplargids. two maps were prepared to show the distribution of gypsiferous in the study area, the first one is map which shows the output of supervised classification and maximumlike hood for specific, and the second is the thermal-based classification. thermal-based map could predict the gypsiferous area in a better way, than the classification based only on spectral properties of non-thermal bands. key word: gypsiferous, aridisols, remote sensing, landsat/etm imagery, indopedon horizon, thermalbased map. 1. introduction the studies on the distribution of gypsum in iraqi kurdistan through a very rare technique were not exist, especially in garmian kurdistan region, where the gypsum is important components in several areas such as agriculture, engineering and industry. where soils gypsum spread over large areas of the world's dry, arid and semi-private regions, including iraq, where cover more than 1.2 million hectares and about 28.6% of the soil cover of iraq [1], [2]. gypsiferous soils represent serious problems in many fields of human activity. they have dramatic impacts on buildings and infrastructure. the gypsiferous soils consist of a secondary gypsum-rich crust within the soil, developed after sedimentation of the soil material by increasing evaporation of saline and sulphate-rich groundwater in arid and warm regions. in fact, gypsiferous soils retain most of the original soil components (clay, silt and sand) but, impregnated by variable amounts of gypsum; as nests or disseminations. fine-grained soils contain more gypsum than coarse grained soils [3]. many soil scientists and engineers have studied the gypsiferous soils in variable locations of the world and for different purposes, i.e. agriculture, surveying, civil engineering etc. among those scientists and engineers, some have given different gypsiferous soils classification systems [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13]. many researchers noticed that the coefficient of compressibility and the in-situ void ratio increase with increasing gypsum content. also they found that wetting of gypsiferous soils contributes in increasing of compressibility due to gypsum removal and collapse. [14], [15], [11], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20]. remote sensing (rs) data and techniques have been widely used to observe the earth and getting reliable information about the under, above and on the surface of the earth. soil science, like many other scientific fields has been using the privileges of rs for more than two decades and there are many remotely sensed models to detect mineral, solve soil challenges, and show different mineral distribution on the earth’s surface. in the field of detecting and mapping gypsum and gypsiferous area distribution, rs shall be used effectively as done in many studies. [21] produced thematic maps indicating gypsiferous, and clayey surface using landsat/tm bands 3,4, and 5. they declared that tm is valuable aid for mapping soil in arid regions. [22] used mailto:iraj.amin@yahoo.com decorrelation stretch methods applied on landsat tm data to map halite, gypsum and their chilean salt flat. [23] used landsat tm imagery and spectral mixture analysis to show gypsum, halite, vegetation, and moisture in the chott el djerid salt playa, tunisia. [24] carried a study to identify and decline gypsum mined soils in parts of coimbatore district, tamil nadu state, india using rs focusing on spot1 images. [25] used thermal infrared multispectral scanner (tims) to map playa evaporate minerals such as gypsum, and halite at death valley, california. the research is focusing on the following aims: 1. distribution of gypsiferous soil using geoinformatics techniques. 2. classification of gypsiferous soil. 3. materials and methods 2. 1. description of the study area garmian is a widely region of kurdistan, the study area is lies between latitude 34° 36′ 49.3″ in teran agha vilage to 34° 46′ 57.6″ n in kany maran and longitude 44° 50′ 49.5″ in kngrean to 45° 35′ 44.7″ e in masjed village. the elevation of study area ranged between 161.5 meters in kngrean village and 487.1 meters in kany krmange village. the soil map units of the study area were obtained from the soil map units of garmian, iraqi kurdistan region prepared by [26]. the data of latitudes, longitudes and elevations of soil sample locations were collected using a (gps) receiver model garmin 72. geologically the study area lies within the foot hill physiographic unit for iraq [27], as well as in the tectonic side, it is located in folds' zone [28]. climate of the study area is continental semiarid by pe (pontential evaportrasiration) according to [29]. soil moisture regime of the study area described as torric [30]. while the soil temperature regime is hyperthermic [31]. the native vegetation including cynodon dactylon, ammi majus and alhagi graeccorum [32]. the cultivation in the study area depends only on the rainfall. 2.2. field work soil map units prepared by [26], reconnaissance soil survey map prepared by [33] and topographic map [34] were used as basic maps for this study. a total of 52 location of the study area were selected using a grid system method. the locations of points were georefrenced on the satellite image (august, 2012) after coordination of each point was selected. the coordination of each point on the ground was determined using gps device. samples of surface soil from a depth of (0-30 cm) were taken from each location (figure 1). samples were air-dried, grinded and passed through sieves of (2 mm) opening diameters to determine gypsiferous soil. arcgis software package was used to map the gypsiferous soil units. 2.3. remotely sensed dataset 2.3.1. remotely sensed this paper deals with techniques of image classification developed to distinguish gypsiferous soils, using the integration of field observation and remote sensing and more specific landsat/etm imagery. a landsat image was assembled and used in this study. the image was acquired by the landsat 5 tm sensor, which was acquired on 3rd august, 2012. 2.3.2. dataset two main data have been used in this research, i) field and ii) satellite data. field data include about 45 soil samples with a widespread distribution. the samples have been all tested in the library to see the presence of gypsum. the satellite data used in this study is landsat 7 enhanced thematic mapper plus (etm+) level-1g data which have eight bands sensitive to various wavelengths of visible infrared (vnir), short wavelength infrared (swir), and thermal infrared (tir) [35]. landsat 7 etm+ level-1g data were radiometrically and geometrically corrected to the same map projections, image orientations and spatial resolution. the image which is used in this study is taken in september which vegetation cover in the study area is rare. figure 1: the study area (left) and the way sample points are distributed in the area ( right). 2.4. processing 2.4.1. laboratory analyses soil samples were air dried and mixed to be homogenous, grinded using wood mortar, then passed through 2 mm sieve and kept in plastic containers for gypsum. gypsum was determined by shaking 5 gm of soil sample with distilled water and then the gypsum was measured according to the acetone precipitated method [36], [37], [38]. 2.4.2. satellite analysis considering different suggested methods for different cases it’s decided to use supervised classification. two kind of classifications have been used resulting in two outputs which lets us to make a comparison different ways and different bands capability, besides assessing the ability of rs to map gypsum in the study area. using maximum-likehood classification, at the first place, tried to classify the image using three samples, as training control point, this had been analyzed precisely in laboratory. to get rid of noises, as well as, unnecessary data in the image the classification was proceed with applying principle component analysis (pca) function on the image [39]. the second scenario was, actually, using thermal band to classify the image knowing that gypsiferous areas show quite specific reflection behavior in thermal bands [40]. thermal bandshelp thorough displaying land surface temperature (lst). the temperature calibration of the thermal infrared band into the value of ground temperature has been done using the equations below (eq. 1 and 2), [41]. l=lmin+((lmax-lmin)/255) ×q ....... [eq.1] t=k2 / (ln (k1/l+1) ....... [eq.2] where l: value of radiance in thermal infrared. t: ground temperature (k). q: digital record. k1,k2: calibration coefficients. annual soil temperature (ta) can be predicated from the corresponding annual air temperature (ta) according to the relationships suggested by the usda soil taxonomy as: ta = ta +1˚c...... [eq.3] [41]. only three control points, among about 45 tested field points, have been used to train and classify the satellite image (table 1). the rests have been used to assess how accurate the developed maps could show the distribution of gypsum in the study area. it should be mentioned that the study area is mostly of no tree and very little vegetation cover at the date the image has been taken. therefore, the thermal band mostly shows the soil surface. table 1: points which are used to train the model. 3. results and discussion 3.1. gypsum the results of (table 2) indicated that the amount of gypsum is different from location to other, the high amount was 533 g kg-1 soil in serchem may be due to the parent material of some location of the study area which is rich with gypsum minerals, and evidence of gypsic indopedon horizon is present [26]. while the lowest amount of gypsum was 0.98 g kg-1 soil recorded in chala rash due to parent material which is calcite materials from the soil slum [26]. 3.2. organic matter (om) it is clear from the (table 2) that the study area is poor with vegetation cover, where the highest amount which record was 22.46 g kg -1 soil in while the lowest amount was 8.02 in pera mony because of low rainfall ratio in the region. in general, the results indicate that the amount of organic matter decreases with increasing the amount of gypsum, and thus which mentioned by [43], where gypsum affects the decomposition of organic matter as a result of increasing the concentration of calcium and sulfate in the soil solution in a way that affects the activity of organisms and its enzymes and there may be an effect of calcium carbonate for the packaging of organic matter [44]. also the results agree with the results which obtained by [45], where confirmed that the calcium carbonate is a wrapper around organic matter, when he said that the solubility and re-deposition of gypsum may lead to the creation of gypsum covers around the organic material that protects the organic matter from attacking the organism. it is possible that there will be complexes of organic matter (especially polysaccharides) and dissolved calcium ion, which will increase in quantity in gypsum soils, leading to the increase of such complexities. these complexes inhibit the activity of organisms and their enzymes in the decomposition of organic matter [46]. table 2: the soil sample locations names, their coordinates and some chemical properties. points latitude n longitude e gypsum g kg -1 1 514055 3831740 281.82 2 502174 3843000 219.38 3 494706 3848480 234.78 no. soil sample location name latitude n longitude e gypsum o.m.* total l.** ph ece ( d m s ) g kg-1 soil (extract) (ds/m) 1 kangrean 44⁰50'46.736" 34⁰39'15.2" 510.42 8.15 285 7.37 2.76 2 karez 44⁰55'24.775" 34⁰39'34.809" 530.31 8.70 265 7.12 1.87 3 serchem 44⁰58'44.885" 34⁰39'34.889" 533.71 9.34 250 7 0.98 4 dwanza emam 45⁰1'36.41" 34⁰39'43.474" 484.11 11.22 245 7.1 0.87 5 gakoli 45⁰5'25.147" 34⁰40'13.428" 422.02 15.39 275 7.01 0.79 6 die bne 45⁰13'35.808" 34⁰36'40.197" 100.36 20.76 255 7.38 1.02 7 rezgary 45⁰12'34.5" 34⁰40'15.2" 3.47 14.88 185 7.51 0.94 8 qelai sherwana 45⁰17'25.274" 34⁰35'11.094" 3.35 15.33 255 7.66 0.81 9 wali aga 45⁰21'9.612" 34⁰35'10.503" 2.71 13 245 7.64 0.77 10 teran aga 45⁰26'42.584" 34⁰37'6.234" 3.05 10.38 250 7.51 0.99 11 sobhana 45⁰30'18.609" 34⁰36'51.649" 4.25 11.80 235 7.44 0.87 12 seid mostafa 45⁰32'56.573" 34⁰36'58.182" 2.11 8.16 280 7.53 0.96 13 kany sheran 45⁰35'50.623" 34⁰38'8.064" 3.27 8.23 260 7.41 0.89 14 masjed 45⁰35'45.801" 34⁰54'41.009" 4.49 8.11 280 7.56 1.04 15 palgy bchook 44⁰54'11.499" 34⁰42'31.836" 493.96 8.19 285 7.47 3.22 16 kifri 44⁰54'54.102" 34⁰41'3.608" 528.39 11.92 280 7.45 2.61 17 goban 44⁰58'12.002" 34⁰44'32.3" 477.80 11.73 260 7.48 2.51 18 weli hayer 45⁰5'24.202" 34⁰43'52.3" 96.00 10.52 215 7.49 1.08 19 aola qot 45⁰9'34.504" 34⁰41'39.473" 41.14 12.31 195 7.40 0.96 20 shakel 45⁰11'53.999" 34⁰39'14.664" 2.31 14.84 175 7.53 0.97 21 kalar 45⁰19'39.106" 34⁰38'57.522" 4.12 20.81 285 7.65 1.07 22 ban zamen 45⁰25'2.597" 34⁰39'52.762" 1.97 22.46 280 7.62 0.74 23 sangary saroo 45⁰27'22.401" 34⁰40'1.037" 2.07 19.47 240 7.65 0.63 24 sangary chwaroo 45⁰30'31.303" 34⁰39'59.165" 2.19 19.53 255 7.69 0.65 25 chwar shakh 45⁰1'11.9" 34⁰46'51.172" 152.88 8.09 265 7.45 1.43 26 kany maran 45⁰4'32.201" 34⁰46'57.536" 37.19 14.26 235 7.66 1.07 27 mlesora 45⁰10'11.903" 34⁰47'27.909" 12.63 18.57 220 7.61 0.88 28 peaza jar 45⁰11'22.101" 34⁰48'41.236" 4.80 18.59 215 7.64 0.82 29 poqa 45⁰12'36.601" 34⁰48'41.945" 3.72 18.08 205 7.60 0.95 30 kany chapllay saroo 45⁰14'58.501" 34⁰48'49" 2.91 17.17 180 7.60 1.02 31 torka 45⁰18'9.401" 34⁰49'0.7" 1.33 16.89 225 7.63 0.77 32 zamawanga 45⁰25'17.803" 34⁰47'30.901" 1.88 17.95 255 7.54 0.56 33 chala rash 45⁰27'40.098" 34⁰45'37.972" 0.98 9.41 275 7.52 0.32 34 kany pamo 45⁰32'51.797" 34⁰40'18.409" 1.92 11.63 250 7.82 0.28 35 barda soor 45°32'15.497" 34°40'26.135" 3.55 19.05 255 7.81 0.74 36 kany krmange 45⁰38'25.401" 34⁰51'11.901" 3.66 14.77 205 7.51 0.79 37 zenanei bchook 44⁰51'24.103" 34⁰45'44.436" 209.40 8.16 280 7.43 3.16 38 pera mony 45⁰0'7.199" 34⁰54'23.209" 243.30 8.02 240 7.52 1.64 39 tapa spi 45⁰4'34.6" 34⁰52'19.272" 120.30 9.30 230 7.54 1.13 40 zhalan 45⁰8'20.404" 34⁰51'33.201" 31.80 13.70 200 7.64 0.76 41 hawaralara 45⁰11'58.003" 34⁰50'58.001" 22.90 15.93 255 7.63 0.65 42 hawara barza 45⁰13'43.701" 34⁰50'56.909" 7.30 15.02 240 7.72 0.604 43 garmic 45⁰16'7.103" 34⁰49'58.774" 3.10 12.70 235 7.62 0.58 table 2: the soil sample locations names, their coordinates and some chemical properties (complement). no. soil sample latitude n longitude e gypsum o.m.* total l.** ph ece location name ( d m s ) g kg-1 soil (extract) (ds/m) 44 soferahim 45⁰41'55.701" 34⁰54'6.601" 2.60 11.31 235 7.64 0.55 45 jolal kawa 45⁰24'48.701" 34⁰49'39.937" 1.70 11.83 230 7.63 0.57 46 bawanor 45⁰27'58.398" 34⁰49'27.435" 1.00 14.26 200 7.71 0.51 47 ali pacan 45⁰30'13.299" 34⁰49'38.673" 2.50 17.84 155 7.79 0.73 48 shawaze 45⁰32'14.703" 34⁰50'26.239" 3.42 14.83 205 7.54 0.81 49 palgy gaora 44°56'20.875" 34°46'43.167" 234.75 8.80 280 7.44 2.56 50 ebrahim khan 45°1'17.518" 34°43'36.394" 219.38 9.32 245 7.43 1.96 51 sei malale 45°9'12.821" 34°37'35.29" 281.82 12.39 205 7.45 0.99 52 nehrwan 44°48'33.26" 34°40'35.482" 385.07 8.00 295 7.45 3.04 *= organic matter, **= total lime 3.3. total lime table (2) show that the amount of total lime is ranged between 155 g kg -1 soil in ali pacan and 285 g kg -1 in kangrean and masjed., in general the study area is rich with total lime because the parent material is calcareous. these results reflect the effect of decalcification and calcification processes caused the formation of illuvial subsurface (calcic) horizon in some location of the study area. 3.4. soil reaction (ph) the ph values in (table 2) were around neutral to slightly alkali due to the effect of calcareous parent material and type of climatic conditions. the lowest ph value was 7 in sercham, while the highest value was 7.82 in kany pamo. 3.5. electrical conductivity (ece) the ece values which shown in (table 2). indicate that the soil was non-saline reflected by low values of ece. the low soluble salt contents in all location may be due to natural of parent material. in general, the values of ece of study area ranged between 0.28 ds/m in kany pamo, while the highest values were 3.22 ds/m in palgay bchook. mentioned that the soil of the study area is belong to haplogypsids, haplocalcids, haplocambids, calciargids and haplargids. [26]. 3.6. mapping classification, as per the methods applied, resulted into two maps (figures 2 and 3). the training points are shown in black triangles, while other field points, which are used as check points, are displayed in different shapes and colors. figure (2) shows the map which shows the output of supervised classification, maximumlikehood for specific. at the second place, (figure 3) is of the thermalbased classification. both maps show probable gypsiferous areas in form of some discrete points which their density displays the attendance of gypsum in different places. according to the check points which cover a wide range of gypsum attendance, from about 2 mg to more than 500mg, thermal-based map (figure 3) could predict the gypsiferous area in a better way, than the classification based only on spectral properties of non-thermal bands (figure 2). this results agree with the results of [40] where they explore the possibilities of distinguishing saline from gypsiferous soils, using remote sensing data, especially the landsat tm sensor. they used supervised image classification to differentiate gypsiferous from other soils as well. their study offered thermal band of the landsat tmsensor as the best way to differentiate between gypsiferous and saline soils. it was shown, furthermore, that tm thermal band is quite reliable for mapping soils containing gypsumin a relatively fast and accurate way. in many areas both maps present gypsum distribution almost the same way, but for the areas of high gypsum attendance, thermal map act, considering field points, more accurate (figure 4). for instance, as seen in (figure 4), the overlap between points of high gypsum (green and blue triangles) and map’s predicted gypsiferous area is higher in the left map, which is thermal-based map. while, in predicting the areas of low gypsum attendance the both map, almost, are doing the same way, as well as, satisfying. figure 2: supervised classification (maximum likehood), preceded by applying pca on the satellite image. down-right legend shows the field point and their gypsum level in (mg). figure 3: thermal-based map. upper-left legend shows the temperature in kelvin, while down-right legend shows the field point and their gypsum level in (mg). figure 4: comparison between two applied methods in terms of precision for prediction high gypsiferous areas. the left is thermal, while the right is supervised non-thermal classified map. 4. recommendations it’s suggested to use different satellite resources with different spatial and spectral resolution (e.g. hyperion and spot), to get more precise and reliable outputs. according to the outputs, therefore, it can be implied that remote sensing integrated with field observations, as control points, can be used successfully to find out where, and to what level, may contains gypsum. it should be mentioned that the precision of the estimation is strongly depends on the spectral and spatial resolution of the image and field observations, as well as the method and necessary corrections which may be needed to be applied on the satellite image. 5. references [1] a. s. muhaimed, and r. a. mahmood, "genesis and development of some gypsiferous soils in iraq," altaqani journal of foundation of technical education. issn. 1818653x. vol. 24. issue. 5. pp. 8899, 2011. 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[46] k. h. tan, "principle of soil chemistry," department of crop and soil science, university of georgia. marcel dekker. inc, 2005. http://dl.nsf.ac.lk/bitstream/handle/1/12052/pgiatar-8-114.pdf?sequence=2 http://dl.nsf.ac.lk/bitstream/handle/1/12052/pgiatar-8-114.pdf?sequence=2 http://dl.nsf.ac.lk/bitstream/handle/1/12052/pgiatar-8-114.pdf?sequence=2 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0034425701002620 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0034425701002620 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0034425701002620 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0034425701002620 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0034425701002620 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0034425701002620 http://www.tandfonline.com/author/qi%2c+g+j http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/tres20/29/16 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s001670619800069x  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq patient’s information toward some modifiable risk factors of ischemic heart disease bayan omar sharif aras hamad rasul health development and training center nursing department directorate of healthslemani administration collage of nursing ministry of health university of raparin slemani, iraq rania, iraq omerbayan82@gmail.com arashamad92@gmail.com osman ibrahim mahmud farman nuri abdulla nursing department nursing department collage of nursing collage of nursing university of raparin university of raparin rania, iraq osman.ebrahim.7374@gmail.com rania, iraq farman.ns7090@uor.edu.krd article info abstract volume 5 – special issue: 4th international conference on the health and medical science : medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) doi: 10.24017/science.2020.ichms2020.4 article history: received: 26 september 2020 accepted: 04 october 2020 ischemic heart disease (ihd), , is the condition of heart problems, caused by narrowed coronary arteries that supply oxygenated blood to the heart muscle. there is a shortage of study of bachelor students. the goal of this research was directed to assess level of patient’s information toward some modifiable risk factors of ihd at rania teaching hospital in kurdistan region of iraq during the period of (20th october 2019 10th february 2020). a nonprobability purposive sample of (143) patients; the study instrument was constructed of total (42) items for the purpose of data collection. the content validity of the instrument was determined through a panel of (12) experts. reliability of the instrument was determined through the use of internal consistency reliability (split half) approach which was estimated as r = (0.83) the data were collected through the use of interview technique (face to face approach), the computer files is used to organizing and coding it. the data analyzed by statistical approaches which includes: descriptive and inferential statistical and chi square, data analysis (spss version 25). the outcome showed that most of the sample rang from the age (2540) years and most of them were male from urban, more than half of them were unemployed but nearly half of them were graduated from primary school. 32.2% of them diagnosed by cardiovascular disease. however more than half of them had a high level of information about ihd as a general, and the tv was the first source of their information but more than half keywords: ischemic heart disease, patients, rania teaching hospital, modifiable risk factors mailto:omerbayan82@gmail.com kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 28 of them were overweight, 65% did not do regular exercise, 52.4% were relatively stressful. also, the study demonstrated that there is no significant association between socio demographic data and level of patient’s information toward some modifiable risk factors of ihd, with age, gender, educational level and occupation with ihd, at p value greater than 0.05. the study recommended to ministry of health and directorate of health in rania city to develop and supervise the center of dietary regimen and halls of exercise for the people to implement their information and practice it. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction ischemic heart disease or coronary heart disease is a coronary blood flow reduction caused by coronary artery atherosclerosis, also it often used to describe this syndrome and it is the leading cause of death and disability worldwide. cardiovascular diseases (cvd) are one of the most serious problems of modern times [1]. according to the european society of cardiology (esc) coronary artery disease (cad) is defined as an episode of a reversible condition between the nutrient needs of the cardiac muscle and its demand that is associated with ischemia or hypoxia [2]. aging of the population is one of the high occurrence frequency of predisposing factors for ihd, also it still the most frequent cause of deaths in the world. according to the world health organization (who), the number of deaths that return to ihd will increase from seven millions and two hundred thousand in 2002 to nearly eleven millions in 2020 [3]. modifiable risk factor which collect the most frequent factors that can be eliminated or minimized by changing the lifestyle such as stressful situation, smoking cigarette, elevated glucose, hypertension, visceral obesity, lipid disorders and thrombotic conditions [4]. both of traditional and non-traditional risk factors are contribute to developing of ihd in female and male [5]. overweight or obesity, physical inactivity; unhealthy diet and stressful condition are other risk factors of ihd [6]. healthy lifestyle and continuous interventions for prevention, is useful to reduce occurrence of cad event rates greatly [7]. healthy dietary pattern that emphasizes nutrient dense foods will significantly benefit public health; because high amount of sugars, sodium and cholesterol in daily food lead to increasing cvd risk [8]. the higher consume of fruit and vegetable during young adulthood was associated with lower odds of prevalent coronary artery calcium [9]. obesity, hypertension, dyslipidemia, and type 2 diabetes mellitus in humans are affected by excessive sugar consumption because it is playing a significant role in the epidemics of insulin resistance. evidence on the relationship between eating of sugar and cardiovascular health has emerged since the last american heart association (aha) scientific statement was published [10]. an expansion in cardiovascular yield with physical exercise and expanded skeletal muscle perfusion brings about increased myocardial oxygen request. since myocardial oxygen extraction from the blood is as of now nearly seventy to eighty percent at resting conditions, the support of myocardial oxygen and supplement supply transcendently relies upon coronary blood stream. it has been demonstrated that customary exercise preparing prompts useful and morphologic changes of the vascular tree related with decreased coronary vascular obstruction [11]. ischemic heart disease is a pathophysiological condition caused by the disproportion between the myocardial oxygen demand and its supply. nutrition of the myocardium depends on the oxygen capacity of the blood and the amount of coronary flow [12]. the mortality from ihd has radically reduced throughout the last decades in western nations with greater focus on primary prevention and enhanced possible diagnosis and management of this disease, kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 29 the western lifestyles due to higher prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors while health care systems globalization often improved the adoption and still it is the main global cause of death according to the estimation of world health organization (who) and it accounted more than nine million deaths in 2016 especially in developing countries [13]. epidemiological studies showed that smoking cigarette, lack of physical activity, unhealthy and irregular nutrition, stress, influences the behavior of health to a greater extent than genetic factors, quality of medical care or environmental conditions are considered as the elimination of harmful risk factors [14]. excellent patient’s information can assist with treating numerous patients’ issues. without great data forthright, it is exceptionally hard for any patient to settle on the correct choice with regards to their wellbeing and what treatment plan that best suits for them. in any case, when included, a well-educated patient is bound to stay with their concurred treatment plan than one who does not [15]. the ability of patients to read and understand the words and numbers they come across in a healthcare setting, is the term used to describe health literacy. most adults are comfortable reading healthy information written in language that could be understood by a typical twelve years old, but one in every five adults finds this difficult. more established individuals may have extra difficulties in the event that they have issues with seeing, hearing or thinking. individuals with decreased wellbeing proficiency can benefit from outside intervention to comprehend complex thoughts if the specialist talks gradually, utilizing ordinary words, or if data is given in short areas instead of at the same time [16]. the support of nursing in cardiovascular recovery patients can improve wellbeing results and diminish the danger of another heart occasion. the most consequence for medical caretakers to meet the rehabilitative consideration requirements of clients through instruction, backing, observation and fortification, recovering from heart issues mentally and genuinely is a perplexing procedure that the patients need proceed with care after release from the emergency clinic; and here and there after the cardiovascular sickness occasions the patients experience numerous issues concerning the consequence of the ailment or restoration, remembering worry about the arrival for their ordinary life. so the upsides of enough nursing help and the executives in cardiovascular restoration patients can improve wellbeing results and diminish the danger of another heart occasion. one of the most essential apparatus to meet the rehabilitative consideration needs of patients through guidance, backing, guideline and fortification is nursing practice [17]. the nurse plays a vital role in detecting and helping the patient's discomfort on a regular basis; that is the reason it is significant for attendants to apply clinical rules to the consideration of heart patients so as to lessen their suffering [18]. additionally the expert or professional nurses assume a huge job in diminishing the worldwide weight and taking an interest to improving the result of the individual and networks, so the nurses also need knowledge and skill or practices that will help them to function as the contributor in a multidisciplinary team in solving cardiovascular disease [19]. 2. methods and materials the present study was carried out through the application of quantitative design, a descriptive study and it was conducted patients at rania teaching hospital in rania city that has been implemented to assess patient’s information toward some modifiable risk factors of ischemic heart disease at rania teaching hospital during the period of 20th october 2019 to 10th february 2020. administrative arrangements an approval was issued for the instrument of the study, permission was granted from the college of nursing/ university of raparin, and rania directorate of health to carry out this study at the rania teaching hospital in rania district. study setting the study was approved from rania teaching hospital (medical, surgical, coronary care unit and consultant unit for outpatients) in rania city which are the main wards of this hospital. sample of the study kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 30 non-probability (purposive sample) of (143) patients, (93) males and (50) females who were visited consultant unit and admitted in the medical, surgical and coronary care unit at rania teaching hospital. criteria of including the study sample both adult genders, males and females patients who were visited consultant unit and admitted in to medical, surgical and coronary care unit in rania teaching hospital. criteria for excluding the study sample patients who refused to be interviewed or could not participate in the study. tool of the study for the purpose of data collection, the study tool was constructed and based on extensive review of related literature and studies to assess patient’s level of information regarding ischemic heart disease. the study tool is composed of two parts which were distributed through the followings: (part 1): socio demographic and clinical characteristics of the study this part consists of age, gender, marital status, monthly income, occupation, level of educational, residential area, body mass index (part2): patient’s information and habit toward some modifiable risk factors of ihd, which include: patients’ information and habit regarding exercise this part include these items: information about relation of exercise and ischemic heart disease, doing regular exercise, time and type of it. source of information. patients’ information and habit regarding daily nutrition: this part consists of these items: information and the main sources of healthy food that prevent ihd and eating healthy food daily. patients’ information and habit concerning cigarette smoke this part consist these items: information and source about relation of smoking and ihd, number and years of cigarette smoking, question about ex-smoker and if the patient past smoker, when did he or she quit smoking. patient’s daily stress this part deals with level and the situation of stress. patients’ information toward some modifiable risk factors of coronary heart disease this part includes consist of the following: obesity, physical inactivity, very stressful situation, hypertension, diabetic mellitus, dyslipidemia, abdominal fat and smoking cigarette. patient’s information toward the relation between the nutrition and ihd this part includes these items: excessive eating sweet, salty and high saturated fatty food, eating a low amount of fish, vegetable and fruit. validity of the study tool the content validity of the tool was determined through a panel of (12) experts with average years of experience of 12.6 years, (mean= 12.6 years), in various field of science (nursing, and medicine) to investigate the clarity, relevancy and adequacy of the items of the tool. experts were provided the instrument by their opinions about the suitability of the items included in the form. the majority of the experts agreed upon the items of the study with some comments and suggestions. in addition the experts' suggestions have been taken into consideration. so far, the modifications are employed and the final copy of the instrument is completed and become valid to be an appropriate tool for data collection. pilot study a pilot study was conducted on (15) male and female patients during the period of 20th october up to the 25th of october 2019. reliability of the questionnaire kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 31 reliability was conducted by the application of internal consistency reliability (split half), which was conducted at rania teaching hospital from 15 patients of (medical, surgical, coronary care unit and consultant unit) were gathered for such reliability estimation. the reliability of the current study was (r= 0.83) for some risk factors of ischemic heart disease that put someone to developing coronary heart disease which indicated an acceptable reliability for the questionnaire. rating and scoring the items were rated and scored according to the following patterns: the three point types likert scale yes, no and uncertain is scored as (2) for yes,(1) for uncertain and (0) for no. the two point semantic scale yes and no (2) for yes, and (0) for no. methods of data collection the data were collected through the utilization of adopted and constructed tool, interview technique. the data collection process was performed from the period of 26th november up to 14th of december 2019. interviewing by the use of the questionnaire for demographic data and knowledge took about 10-15 minutes for each patient. ten patients were dropped out from the study sample because they refused participate in the study, for this reason the total study sample remaining only 143 patients. body mass index by using a tape measure and same weight scale for all patients, the researchers find out the bmi through formula: weight by kilogram divided to height by (m)]2 statistical analysis the data were organized and coded into computer files, by using the statistical package for social science (spss, version 25). the two statistical approaches were used for data analysis, which include: descriptive statistical data analysis: such analysis was performed through the following: frequency distribution percentage % = frequency / sample size × 100 mean = σⅺ / n inferential statistical data analysis such analysis was performed through the application of the following procedure: cronbach alpha correlation coefficient was employed for the determination of the instrument reliability. 3. results table (1) showed that highest age of the patients were between (25-40 years) (45.5%), (65.0%) of them were male, (28.0%) were graduated from primary school, (65.0%) were unemployed, (91.6%) from urban area but (51.7%) of them were overweight and (16.8%) were obese. table1: demographic and clinical characteristics of study participants (n = 143) variables categories f (%) age (years) 25 40 65 45.5 41 55 48 33.5 56 and more 30 21.0 gender male 93 65.0 female 50 35.0 marital status single 17 11.9 married 115 80.4 widow/er 11 7.7 kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 32 educational level illiterate 32 22.4 read and write 27 18.9 primary school graduate 40 28.0 intermediate and high school 22 15.4 college and institute 22 15.4 occupation employed 52 36.4 unemployed 85 59.4 retired 6 4.2 monthly income sufficient 55 38.5 barely sufficient 57 39.9 insufficient 31 21.7 residential area urban 131 91.6 rural 12 8.4 body mass index underweight 3 2.1 normal weight 42 29.4 overweight 74 51.7 obese 24 16.8 table (2) showed that (58%) of the participants had information about ischemic heart disease, and their source of information was tv (14%) but only (32.2%) of them was diagnosed by ihd. table 2: patient’s information about ischemic heart disease as a general questions regarding ischemic heart disease categories f % do you have any information about ischemic heart disease as a general? no 60 42.0 yes 83 58.0 if yes, which one is the most source of your information? physician 41 28.7 my relatives 7 4.9 tv 20 14.0 reading books 7 4.9 internet 8 5.6 are you diagnosed by cardiovascular disease? no 97 67.8 yes 46 32.2 how many years do you diagnosed by cardiovascular disease? 1 4 18 12.6 5 9 19 13.3 ≥ 10 9 6.3 table (3) demonstrated that (79.7%) of them had information regarding relation of cigarette smoking and ihd and tv was their source of information (32.9%) but only (28.7%) of them were current smoker and (14%) of them were smoked 20 cigarette daily within (11-20) years. table 3: patient’s information and habit regarding the relation of cigarette smoking and ischemic heart disease questions regarding cigarette smoking categories f (%) do you have any information about the relation of smoking and ischemic heart disease? no 29 20.3 yes 114 79.7 if yes, which one is the most source of your information? physician 45 31.5 my relatives 6 4.2 tv 47 32.9 reading books 3 2.1 internet 13 9.1 kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 33 are you a smoker? no 102 71.3 yes 41 28.7 if yes, how many years do you smoke? 1 10 8 5.6 11 20 9 6.3 21 30 6 4.2 31 ≤ 18 12.6 how many cigarettes do you smoke per day? 110 10 7.0 11 20 20 14.0 21 ≤ 10 7.0 if no, are you: exsmoker 21 14.7 passive smoker 23 16.1 never smoker 58 40.6 if you are an ex-smoker, when did you quit smoking? 1 7 10 7.0 8 14 5 3.5 15 ≤ 6 4.2 table (4) demonstrated that (69.2%) of patients had information regarding relation of exercise and ihd and tv was their source of information (31.5%) but only (35%) had a regular exercise and (21.7%) of them walked. table 4: patient’s information and habit regarding relation of physical exercise and ischemic heart disease questions regarding exercise categories f (%) do you have any information about relation of exercise and ischemic heart disease? no 44 30.8 yes 99 69.2 if yes, which one is the most source of your information? physician 32 22.4 my relatives 4 2.8 tv 45 31.5 2.8 reading book 4 internet 14 9.8 do you do exercise? no 93 65.0 yes 50 35.0 how many times do you do exercise weekly, at least five days and at least 30 minutes for each day? 1-2 times 23 16.1 3-5 times 16 11.2 more than 5 times 11 7.7 which of this exercise do you do? walking 31 21.7 running 8 5.6 gym 8 5.6 football 3 2.1 table (5) showed that (74.1%) of patients had information regarding relation of healthy food that prevent ihd, and tv is the main source of their information (30.8%) but (89.5%) of them did not eat a healthy food. table 5: patient’s information and habit regarding healthy food questions regarding healthy food categories f (%) do you have any information about healthy food that prevents ischemic heart disease? no 37 25.9 yes 106 74.1 if yes, which one is the most source of your information? physician 36 25.2 my relatives 6 4.2 tv 44 30.8 reading books 4 2.8 internet 16 11.2 how often do you eat healthy food daily? (plenty of fruits and vegetables, foods low in saturated fat, not everyday 128 89.5 everyday 15 10.5 kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 34 cholesterol, salt, sugar and high in fibre) table (6) indicated that (52.4%) of patients was relatively stressful and (42.7%) of them were very stressful, but only (4.9%) of them were free from stress. table 6: patient’s daily stress table (7) demonstrated that the highest level of patient’s information toward some modifiable risk factors of ischemic heart disease and information about ischemic heart disease as a general were (74.8%), and (79%)respectively. table 7: level of patient’s information toward ischemic heart disease and it modifiable risk factors variables level of information low (%) medium (%) high (%) mean (sd) level of patients’ information about ischemic heart disease as a general 3 (2.1) 33 (23.1) 107 (74.8) 2.73 (.492) level of patients’ information toward some modifiable risk factors of coronary heart disease 4 (2.8) 26(18.2) 113 (79.0) 2.76 (.489) table (8) showed that the participants believe that obesity, physical inactivity, very stressful situation, hypertension, diabetic mellitus, dyslipidemia, abdominal fat, smoking cigarette, excessive eating high saturated fatty food, excessive eating high sweaty food, excessive eating high salty food, eating low amount of fish, eating low amount of vegetable, eating low amount of fruit (87.4%, 86.7%, 93.0%, 78.3%, 57.3%, 90.2%, 51.0%, 83.9%, 92.3%,73.4%, 77.6%,39.2%, 72.0% ) respectively are lead to coronary heart disease and can put someone at high risk of developing coronary heart disease. table 8: patient’s response rate regarding some modifiable risk factors of ischemic heart disease that can put someone at high risk of developing it question regarding daily stress categories f (%) how do you describe your daily psycho state? very stressful 61 42.7 relatively stressful 75 52.4 free from stress 7 4.9 are the following leads to coronary heart disease and can put someone at high risk of developing coronary heart disease? yes uncertain no f % f % f % obesity 125 87.4 10 7.0 8 5.6 physical inactivity 124 86.7 14 9.8 5 3.5 very stressful situation 133 93.0 9 6.3 1 .7 hypertension 112 78.3 25 17.5 6 4.2 diabetic mellitus 82 57.3 48 33.6 13 9.1 dyslipidemia 129 90.2 10 7.0 4 2.8 abdominal fat 73 51.0 45 31.5 25 17.5 smoking cigarette 120 83.9 17 11.9 6 4.2 excessive eating high saturated fatty food. 132 92.3 7 4.9 4 2.8 excessive eating high sweaty food. 105 73.4 26 18.2 12 8.4 excessive eating high salty food. 111 77.6 22 15.4 111 77.6 eating a low amount of fish. 56 39.2 53 37.1 34 23.8 eating a low amount of vegetable. 103 72.0 25 17.5 15 10.5 eating a low amount of fruit. 105 73.4% 25 17.5 13 9.1 kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 35 table (9) indicated that there was no significant relationship between levels of patients’ information toward some modifiable risk factors of ischemic heart disease with age, gender, educational level, occupation and diagnostic and non-diagnostic patients with ischemic heart disease, at p value greater than 0.05. table 9: association between some socio-demographic data and level of patients’ information toward some modifiable risk factors of ischemic heart disease variables low medium high total f (%) f (%) f (%) f (%) pvalue age 25 40 4 2.8 13 9.1 48 33.6 65 45.5 .401 41 55 0 0.0 8 5.6 40 28.0 48 33.6 ≥ 56 0 0.0 5 3.5 25 17.5 30 21.0 gender male 3 2.1 19 13.3 71 49.7 93 65.0 .596 female 1 0.7 7 4.9 42 29.4 50 35.0 educational level illiterate 0 0.0 5 3.5 27 18.9 32 22.4 .261 read and write 1 0.7 5 3.5 21 14.7 27 18.9 primary school graduate 3 2.1 5 3.5 32 22.4 40 28.0 intermediate and high school 0 0.0% 3 2.1 19 13.3 22 15.4 college and institute 0 0.0% 8 5.6% 14 9.8% 22 15.4% occupation employed 1 0.7% 13 9.1% 38 26.6% 52 36.4% .487 unemployed 3 2.1% 13 9.1% 69 48.3% 85 59.4% retired 0 0.0% 0 0.0% 6 4.2% 6 4.2% by fisher’s exact test 4. discussion this chapter presents and discusses the results of the study with feasible support of the available literatures and related studies. the first part of the data analysis of the current study is about demographic and clinical characteristics, it showed that the highest age of patients were between 25-40 years old, more than half of them were male, level of education represented that highest level were graduated from primary school, and the majority of them were married and more than quarter of them were barely sufficient, most of patient’s residential area were lived from urban area‚ more than half of them were unemployed, more than half of them were overweight. only marital status and employment in this outcome are agreement with the study done by almalki in saudi arabia which reported that more half of their participants were unemployed married but disagree with level of education because the university was highest level of education of their population[20]. also it is agree with the study done by (fahs, et al., 2017) among the lebanese population in 2017 which indicated that nearly half of their participants were overweight, more than three quarter were married and the male participants were more than female [21]. concerning patient’s information about ischemic heart disease as a general, more than half of the patients responded that they had information about ischemic heart disease as a general and tv was the first source of their information. less than half of them diagnosed by cardiovascular disease for five to nine years. the researchers noted that the participant’s information regarding risk factors of ischemic heart disease was varied in the present study for kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 36 example some lifestyle factors that cause ihd, such as stressful situation, smoking cigarette, overweight and obesity, diabetic mellitus, hypertension, abdominal fat, dyslipidemia and unhealthy diet, was the baseline subject of the current topic amongst community members, but the researchers surprised by the skill and lack of the application of this information during their lives, and there are large number of people were on way to grow cvd, and in keeping with the evidence on the increasing occurrence of cvd that related to urbanization. patient’s information regarding cigarette smoking, nearly three a quarter of the participants were not smoked cigarette but 16.1% of them were passive smoker and 7% were ex-smoker and they quit smoking between one to seven years, but nearly half of them were smoked eleven to twenty cigarette per day for more than thirty years. more than three a quarter of the patients had information about the relation of smoking and ischemic heart disease, the tv was the first and physician was the second source of their information. the finding of the current study aggresses with the study done by (kirchberger et al., 2015) in germany who mentioned that the current smoker was (30.9%) [22]. regarding smoking the finding of the present study is agree with the study done by (kumara, and samarawickrama) in 2016 which done at medical clinics in teaching hospital karapitiya, who mentioned that most of their participants had information about that the cigarette smoking is one of risk factors of ihd [23]. induces oxidative stress, endothelial damage and dysfunction, is associated with significantly higher serum concentrations of total cholesterol and triglycerides, reduces the cardio protective hdl are related to basic ingredients of cigarette the nicotine and carbon monoxide, also promoting intravascular inflammation represents a significant risk factor for the development of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease. also nicotine is responsible of deregulates cardiac autonomic function, boosts sympathetic activity, and increase heart rate. world health organization(who) reported tobacco continues lead to death of more than five millions people every year including more than six hundred thousand passive smokers people by cardiac disease, lung cancer, and other illnesses (papathanasiou,et al.,2014) [24]. the results of the current study showed that participants who had information regarding relation of exercise and ischemic heart disease were more than half and the first source of their information was tv and physician was the second one 31.5%, 22.4% respectively. more than half of them did not do physical exercise but 11.2% of them were regularly walked. the result of the present study is agree with the study done by (almalki,et al., 2019 ) in saudi arabia which indicated that 61.1% of their participants did not perform a regular exercise [20]. the finding of the current study showed that nearly three a quarter of the participant had information regarding relation of healthy food that prevent ischemic heart disease, and tv was the first and physician was the second source of their information, but nearly most of them did not eat a healthy food daily such as fruit, vegetable and foods low in saturated fat, salt and sugar. this result is disagree with the result of the study done by (fahs, et al., 2017) which indicated that nearly three quarter of their participants were eating fruit one to three times and more than half of them were consumed vegetable one to two times daily [21]. on other hands, the result of present study is agree with the study done in nairobi by (wekesah,et al.,2019), which mentioned that their participants had a lack of exact way to cook a healthy foods, [25]. the researchers return this result regarding unhealthy food preparation and consumption to stigma among the kurdish people and community because if they do not use much more oil on food, people do not taste it and become not delicious; also if use low amount of sugar and salt, the relatives will ask about any chronic disease that prefer these types of food, because the kurdish people are not consume a healthy food until they get a specific chronic disease. also the result indicated that more than half of the participant had relatively stressful and less than half of the participant had very stressful but a lowest rate of them were free from stress, this result is disagree with the result of (kurd,et al.,2014) while indicated that more than half of their participants had a high stress and less than quarter had relatively or moderate stress [26]. also the current study demonstrated that nearly three quarter of patients had the high level of information about ischemic heart disease as general and nearly the majority of them kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 37 had the high level of information toward some modifiable predisposing factors of chd. this result disagree with many studies such as (boateng, et al.,2017) in africa, (khan, et al.,2006) and (zuhaid,et al.,2014) which showed that the levels of awareness and information about cvd and risk factors of their studies were generally low [27,28, 29]. most of patients believed that very stressful situations, dyslipidemia, excessive eating high saturated fatty food, the majority of them agree that obesity, physical inactivity and smoking cigarette, and nearly three quarter of patients believed that hypertension, excessive eating high salty and sweet food, eating a low amount of vegetable and fruit are put somebody at high risk and leads to increasing the chance of developing coronary heart disease. but a highest level of information regarding eating low amount of fish and person with abdominal fat were (39.2%, 51.0%) respectively, can put someone at high risk of developing coronary heart disease. the results of the current survey is agree with the study done in dhaka, bangladesh by (mirza,et al., 2016) which informed that more than half of their participants recognized hypertension hyperlipidemia, fatty diet and smoking as possible risk factors for coronary artery disease [30];but disagree with the study done by (awad,and al-nafisi,2014) in kuwait which indicated that their participants knowledge concerning cardiovascular disease risk factors was moderate [31]. also the current result is disagree with the study done by (wartak, et al., 2011 ) in western massachusetts which showed that, one in five of the participants were not aware that the disease of diabetic mellitus is a predisposing factor for cvd [32]. however recognizing risk factors of cardiovascular disease is considered as significant first step in preventing heart disease , on other hands, the participants of the current study were more knowledgeable about cardiovascular disease in general, but the researchers believe that existing an information and understanding the risk of cvd alone without improving and practicing the information is not completely useful, without best understanding of the risk factors about cardiovascular disease, the assessments may fail in this area so educational initiatives focused on improving knowledge of risk and the causal relationship between predisposing factors and cvd are needed. the result of the current study demonstrated that there are no significant association between level of patients information toward some modifiable risk factors of ischemic heart disease with age, gender, educational level, occupation, at p value greater than (0.05). a study done in iraq by (mohammad, et al., 2013) and was disagree with the current study and mentioned a significant associations between the risk factors of cardiovascular and the angiographic patients with ihd [33]. 5. conclusion the findings of the present study highlighted a high level of information toward modifiable predisposing factors of ihd among participants while nearly most of them did not eat healthy diet and half of them overweight, relatively stressful and did not do physical exercise that considered as vital modifiable risk factors of ischemic cardiac disease. the findings of the current study targeted more modifying the relationship of knowledge and practice with modifiable risk factors toward ihd in particular is needed. the present study calls for efforts such as targeted public health education to increase the level of performing practices to protect the kurdish people from risk factors of heart disease. education can be provided to the public through the physicians and nurses before social media are need. further study are needed in kurdistan to assess the level of practice regarding modifiable risk factors of ischemic heart disease. also the study recommended to the ministry of health and directorate of health in rania city must supervise much more 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[33] a. m. mohammad, s. k. sheikho, and j. m. tayib, "relation of cardiovascular risk factors with coronary angiographic findings in iraqi patients with ischemic heart disease," american journal of cardiovascular disease research, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 25-29, 2013. 1. introduction 5. conclusion  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq phylogenetic analysis of spike and envelope proteins for a number of bat coronaviruses for understanding the hypothesis of possible origin for the novel 2019ncov salar ibrahim ali nursing department technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq salar.ali@spu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 5 – special issue: 4th international conference on the health and medical science : medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) doi: 10.24017/science.2020.ichms2020.15 article history: received: 08 september 2020 accepted: 22 september 2020 coronavirus disease 19 (covid-19) emergence reveals globally a great health issue and due to the limited information and knowledge on the origin of this novel coronavirus 2019 (2019-ncov). therefore, this study aims to investigate the evolution and analysis of molecular epidemiology for both spike and envelope proteins of 20 available complete genome sequences of different bat coronaviruses including 2019-ncov in order to find out which type of bat coronaviruses is more likely to be the origin of this new 2019-ncov and also multiple amino acid sequences of envelope protein for all bat coronaviruses were aligned for the purpose of finding the greater probability of novel 2019-ncov original host among bat coronaviruses. phylogenetic tree analysis for spike protein revealed that all 2019ncov related coronaviruses isolated from these species of species are discovered in china and hong kong and the middle east bat are less likely to contribute in spreading or to become the origin of 2019-ncov and all coronaviruses that from hong kong and china are located into one clade next to the clade that contains 2019-ncov coronaviruses which indicates that this group of coronaviruses are genetically different for 2019-ncov; moreover, hong kong and usa bat coronaviruses does not contain the bat coronavirus from china and are located into keywords: covid-19, rousettus bat, bat coronaviruses, phylogenetic tree analysis, amino acid alignments. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 138 one clade far from the clade that contains 2019-ncov indicates that all coronaviruses are genetically very different from 2019-ncov, and usa bat coronavirus may has no role in generating of 2019-ncov. the phylogenetic trees analysis of envelope protein showed that envelope protein of different coronaviruses are more similar in comparison to spike protein, usa bat coronavirus has a relatively closeness relationship to 2019-ncov. furthermore, envelope protein alignment showed the closely related amino acid sequence which confirms that the outcomes of phylogenetic tree analysis in which that these bat coronaviruses have genetically close relationship together and more interestingly amino acid sequence (mg772934.1) shows 100% identity with the amino acid sequence of 2019-ncov (nc 045512.2) and the same virus has a close relationship in both spike and envelope due to that in both phylogenetic tree analysis are neighbored with 2019ncov in the same clade. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction during late period in december 2019, the chinse authority was announced epidemic outbarking of the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome like pneumonia, later on the name of coronavirus infectious disease 19 (covid-19) is known by world health organization (who) is named as coronavirus infection disease 19 (covid-19) that revealed a global alert as the most transmissible and infectious disease. the severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (sars-cov2) was considered as zoonotic diseases which is thought to be transmitted from bat and pangolin (intermediate host). subsequently, it was firstly observed that the wet seafood in the wuhan city market of china caused the infection to human and also the transmission of the infection between humans was confirmed in early days during its spread [1,2]. the discovery of the novel sars‐cov in 2003 was identifed as a causative agent for the outbreak of sars [1-3]. in wuhan city of china, there has been a record of cases of severe acute lung inflammation, and this infection was caused because of the new coronavirus (2019‐ncov) emergence and responsible for causing acute human respiratory infections. a number of different pneumonia cases of undefined origin related to permanence have been reported in the wuhan seafood markets since the beginning of this viral infection [2-4]. the 2019‐ncov belongs to subfamily of orthocoronavirinae, which has the distinctness of mers‐cov and sars‐cov [4,5]. until present, the global confirmation of the total of 19,936,210 respiratory infection cases has been reported, and mortality is 732,499 [6,7]. the pandemic outbreak of 2019‐ncov is contributed by the zoonotic transmission; for instance, a high number of infected people in china stated a visiting in november to wuhan seafood markets. in the recent time, research evidence has been reported that this new coronavirus can be transmitted from animals to human and transmission among humans themselves [7,8]. furthermore, most transmission of sars between medical intensive care staff was in fact related with the respiratory air droplets of suffered people from the infection [9]. moreover, in china the covid-19 cases raise and high death rate are likely because of health care system failing, that involves the enhancement and education of public to practice protection interventions, including keeping social distance and restrictions of movement [10]. in an epidemiological investigation, it has been revealed that this 2019‐ncov has the ability in causing the infection in age groups and in a variety of different geographical places [11] and it has been showed that the transmission of disease can be directly and indirectly through contaminated materials [12]. as it is observed in covid-19 patients, there are a different response of the patient to the infection that ranges from lack of symptoms to severs lung infection and such as conditions were observed too in the middle east with mers outbreaks [12,13]. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 139 prompt techniques of identification and quarantine and patients have taken a consideration as the distinctive feature during the preliminary phases of infection control and management of the novel viral pandemic outbreak. moreover, the estimation of genetic variability for the novel coronavirus 2019‐ncov and its rate of evolution, and phylogenetic analysis poses the important findings for understanding the progression of infection, discovery of antiviral treatment, and vaccine development. this study aims to perform the phylogenetic trees analysis of both spike and envelope protein for a number of selected bat coronaviruses including 2019‐ncov created by using the 20 available complete genome sequences of bat coronaviruses including the 2019‐ncov in order to find out which type of bat coronaviruses have the relative closeness relationship with the 2019‐ncov and could has the possibility to be the origin the 2019‐ncov and finally envelope protein amino acid alignment were performed for the selected bat coronaviruses in order to understand and find out the possible real origin of this new human coronavirus (2019‐ncov). 2. methods and materials 20 available complete genome sequences for a number of bat coronaviruses and the novel human coronavirus (2019‐ncov) downloaded from genbank (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/), (ef203067.1 bat/hku2/chn/2006, ef203065.1 bat/ chn/2006, ef203064.1 bat-hku2/gd/chn/2006, nc 009988.1 bat/hku2/chn/2007, mf370205.1 rhinolophus bat/hku2/guangdong/chn/2017, jq989271.1 rousettus bat/hku10/chn/2005, jq989271.1 rousettus bat/hku10/chn/2012, nc 030886.1 rousettus bat/chn/2016, nc 762337.1 rousettus bat/chn/2018, nc 030886.1 rousettus bat/beijing/chn/2018, nc 009021.1 bat/hku91/chn/2007, mg762674.1 rousettus bat/hku9/jinghong/chn/2009, nm211101.1 bat/hku-9-10-2/chn/2010, nc 022102.1 bat-cdphe15/usa/2006, nc 045512.2 covid19/wuhan-hu-1/chn/2019, mg 772934.1 bat sars-like coronavirus isolate bat-slcovzxc21/chn/2020, ky417146.1 bat sars-like coronavirus isolate rs4231/chn/2016, mk211376.1 coronavirus btrs-betacov/yn2018b/chn/2018, dq648857.1 bat coronavirus btcov/279/chn/2005 and dq022305.2 bat sars coronavirus hku31/hk/chn/2005). similarity percentage identified using basic local alignment search tools (https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi). duplicated and very similar sequences excluded from the datasets. sample size is 20 sequences and aligned using multiple sequence alignment tool and manually edited using bioedit program v7.0.5. [14]. the analyses of protein sequences was performed by maximum likelihood (ml) methods due to its importance for estimating the hypotheses of different phylogenetic through calculation of the given model probability evolution that generated from the available information. likelihood ratio test used for comparison of the nested models probabilities. the construction of ml tree was performed by generalized time‐reversible plus gamma distribution and mega‐x was used as evolutionary model for invariant sites (+g+i) [15]. also, full amino acid sequence length for envelope of different selected bat coronaviruses including the 2019-ncov aligned using multiple sequence alignment tool (megax) and clustal w alignment [15]. 3. results for understanding different coronaviruses origin which including the 2019ncov, 20 available entire sequences of amino acids of bat coronaviruses were studies via phylogenetical analysis and clustal w alignment. as it is clarified in (figures 1 and 2); isolated coronaviruses from bat and all bat coronaviruses clade in separated cluster groups (figure 1a, b and c), but all 2019-ncov related coronaviruses are located in one group. spike protein all bat coronavirus sequences used in this study are obtained from different countries (hong kong, china, egypt, and africa) from different species of bat. all bat coronaviruses analysed are divided into three large groups (figure 1a, b , c). for group a, the 2019-ncov of human can be seen gathered with many other isolated coronaviruses from different bat species. as it is seen in cluster a (figure 1 a), all different bat-coronaviruses observed that cluster together and have very close relationship with 2019-ncov. different species of bat which are carrier for different coronavirus strains are rousettus bat (fruit bat), bat-hku9-10 strain, bat-slcovzxc21, btrs-betacov/yn2018b, rhinolophus bat. it is clear that all the 2019-ncov related coronaviruses isolated from these species of bat are discovered in the mainland of http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/) kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 140 china and hong kong. there are fruit bats (rousettus bat) in africa and middle east but none of them are clustered in group a; therefore, the middle east bat are less likely to contribute in spreading or to become the origin of 2019-ncov. for group b, it contains a smaller number of different bat coronaviruses. coronaviruses; bat coronavirus btcov/279, bat-sars coronavirus hku3, and bat sars-like coronavirus isolate rs4231 are claded with each other. all bat-coronaviruses of this group come from bats of hong kong and china isolated in different regions of china revealed in clade next to clade that contains 2019-ncov coronaviruses. therefore, this group collected all coronaviruses that genetically are different from 2019-ncov. group c possess seven different bat-coronaviruses. in this group, coronavirus; bat coronavirus come from bat of hong kong and usa but it does not contain the bats from china. coronaviruses of this group are located into one clade far from the clade that contains 2019-ncov coronaviruses. therefore this group collected all coronaviruses that genetically are very different from 2019-ncov and usa coronavirus isolated from bat may not has a role in generating of the 2019-ncov. figure 1: phylogenetic tree analysis of spike protein for a number of common bat-coronaviruses including 2019‐ncov. phylogenetic tree was created by using maximum likelihood method with phyml and treedyn (www.phylogeny.fr). muscle was applied for protein domain sequences alignments envelope protein envelope amino acid sequences of bat coronaviruses downloaded from ncbi which originated from different species of bat in different countries. the whole bat-coronaviruses including 2019‐ncov are located in two different groups of clusters (figure 2 a, b). in group a, all bat coronaviruses that clustered in this group are genetically far from the group that gathered in the clade that containing the 2019‐ncov. group b possess seven different batcoronaviruses in china and usa. this group is composed of two sub clades. one clades contains more genetically relates coronaviruses but all are isolated from china and hong kong, and the second sub clade contains coronaviruses of bat that found in usa. it shows that the envelope protein of different coronaviruses are more stable and more similar in comparison to spike protein. in addition, usa coronavirus isolated from bat has relatively closeness related to the 2019‐ncov but it is located in different sub clade and its spike sequence is very different and very far from to be concluded that usa bat coronavirus is related to the spreading of the 2019-ncov. http://www.phylogeny.fr/ kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 141 figure 2: phylogenetic tree analysis of envelope protein for a number of common bat-coronaviruses including 2019‐ncov. phylogenetic tree was created by using maximum likelihood method with phyml and treedyn (www.phylogeny.fr). muscle was applied for protein domain sequences alignments multiple amino acid sequence alignments of envelope protein the analysis of the multiple sequence alignments of the full length for envelope amino acid between different bat coronaviruses and including the 2019‐ncov. the amino acid alignments showed that all bat coronaviruses (nc 045512.2, mg772934.1, ky417146.1, mk211376.1, dq648857.1, and dq022305.2) that clustered in group b (figure 2) have a similarity in amino acid sequence except that two amino acid have mutated. this closely related amino acid sequence confirms that the results of phylogenetic tree analysis in which that these bat coronaviruses have genetically a close relationship together. interestingly, one of these amino acid sequences, (mg772934.1) is 100% identical with the amino acid sequence of the 2019ncov (nc 045512.2). the same virus has a close relationship in both spike and envelope amino acid sequence because in both phylogenetic tree analysis (figure 1 and 2) are neighbored with the 2019n-cov (nc 045512.2) in the same clade. therefore, this bat coronavirus, bat sars-like-coronavirus isolate (bat-sl-covzxc21) has a greatest probability to be the origin of the 2019-ncov which are found in china but this type of bat is not exist in iraq. http://www.phylogeny.fr/ kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 142 figure 3: multiple amino acid sequence alignments of envelope for different selected types of batcoronaviruses involving 2019‐ncov and these amino acid sequence alignments is created by clustal w alignment. 4. discussion due to covid-19 pandemic outbreak, it has crucially importance in understanding the epidemiological characteristics of the 2019ncov. therefore, this current investigation studies and aims to find out the more likely possible origin of the new 2019-ncov by using analysis of phylogenetic relationship for different species of bat coronaviruses including the novel 2019-ncov. to recognize the relationship between bat coronaviruses and 2019-ncov coronavirus, the analysis and comparison between the complete genome sequences of spike (s) and envelope (e) proteins of 20 available bat coronaviruses of different types including the novel 2019-ncov were throughout the analysis of phylogenetics (figure 1and figure 2). spike protein phylogenetic tree analysis (figures 1) illustrated that the 2019-ncov in human can be seen gathered with many other different bat-coronaviruses. as it is observed in cluster a in (figure 1 a) the whole different bat-coronaviruses are observed clustered together which have very close relationship with 2019-ncov. different species of bat which are carrier for different coronavirus strains are rousettus bat, bat-hku9-10 strain, bat-sl-covzxc21, btrs-betacov/yn2018b, rhinolophus bat (figure 1 b); therefore, it is clear that all the 2019-ncov related coronaviruses isolated from these species of bat are discovered in the mainland of china and hong kong. there are fruit bats (rousettus bat) in africa and middle east but none of them are clustered in group a; therefore, the middle east bat are less likely to contribute in spreading or to become the origin of 2019-ncov [18,19,20,21]. furthermore, bat coronavirus btcov/279, bat-sars-coronavirus hku3, and bat-sars-like-coronavirus isolate rs4231 are observed to each other in one clade. all bat-coronaviruses of this group come from bats of hong kong and china isolated in different regions of china are observed in one clade next to the clade that contains 2019-ncov coronaviruses. therefore, this group collected all coronaviruses that genetically are different from 2019-ncov. [22]. bat coronavirus come from bat of hong kong and usa but it does not contain the bats from china (figure 1 c). coronaviruses of this group are located into one clade far from the clade that contains 2019-ncov coronaviruses. therefore all collected coronaviruses are genetically very different from 2019-ncov and usa bat coronavirus may not has a role in generating of the2019-ncov. spike protein phylogenetic analysis (figures 1) illustrated all bat coronaviruses that clustered in group a are genetically far from the group that gathered in the clade that containing the 2019‐ncov (figure 2 a). for group b, seven different bat-coronaviruses in china and usa are observed and it is composed of two sub clades. one clades contains more genetically relates coronaviruses but all are isolated from china and hong kong, and the second sub clade contains coronaviruses of bat that found in usa. it shows that the envelope protein of different coronaviruses are more stable and more similar in comparison to spike protein. in addition, usa coronavirus isolated from bat has relatively closeness related to the 2019‐ncov but it is located in different sub clade and its spike sequence is very different and very far from to be concluded that usa bat coronavirus is related to the spreading of the 2019-ncov [18,19,20,21]. the multiple sequence alignments analysis of the full length amino acids for envelope between different bat coronaviruses and including the 2019‐ncov. the amino acid alignments showed that all bat coronaviruses (nc 045512.2, mg772934.1, ky417146.1, kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 143 mk211376.1, dq648857.1, and dq022305.2) that clustered in group b (figure 2) have a similarity in amino acid sequence except that two amino acid have mutated (figure 3) [23, 24]. this closely related amino acid sequence confirms that the results of phylogenetic tree analysis in which that these bat coronaviruses have genetically a close relationship together. interestingly, one of these amino acid sequences, (mg772934.1) is 100% identical with the amino acid sequence of the 2019n-cov (nc 045512.2). the same virus has a close relationship in both spike and envelope amino acid sequence because in both phylogenetic tree analysis (figure 1 and 2) are neighbored with the 2019n-cov (nc 045512.2) in the same clade [25,26]. therefore, this bat coronavirus, bat-sars-like-coronavirus isolate (bat-slcovzxc21) has a greatest probability to be the origin of the 2019-ncov which are found in china but this type of bat is not exist in iraq. the current outcomes have the comparability with many other international investigations findings [18,21,23,24] . 5. conclusion the findings of this investigation alongside with other international research analysis, it clearly reveal that all the 2019-ncov related coronaviruses isolated from rousettus bat, bathku9-10 strain, bat-sl-covzxc21, btrs-betacov/yn2018b, rhinolophus bat are discovered in the mainland of china and hong kong and there are rousettus bat in the middle east is less likely to contribute in spreading or to become the origin of 2019-ncov. bat coronavirus btcov/279, bat-sars-coronavirus hku3, and bat-sars-like-coronavirus isolate rs4231are genetically very different from the novel 2019-ncov and usa coronavirus bat may has no role in generating of the 2019-ncov. moreover, the envelope protein of different coronaviruses are more similar in comparison to spike protein. in addition, usa coronavirus isolated from bat has relatively closeness related to the 2019‐ncov but it is located in different sub clade and its spike sequence is very different and very far from to be concluded that usa bat coronavirus is related to the spreading of the 2019-ncov. the outcome of this study aids in prediction and understand a possible origin of this new virus and importantly in the policy of infection control also, development of a subunit vaccine in improving the human immunity against coivd-19. therefore, there is a requirement to identify the novel 2019‐ncov close relationship with other animal coronaviruses, the alignments of structural proteins of the 2019‐ncov and finally analysis of phylogenetics for the whole viral genome obtained in each geographical places. acknowledgement we acknowledge the presidency of sulaimani polytechnic university and especially assistant professor dr. alan faraydoon ali for his great help and academic support for performing this research. also, we would like to appreciate mam humanitarian foundation for their financial and logistic support. reference [1] c. drosten, s. günther, w. preiser, et al. identification of a novel coronavirus associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome. n engl j med.; 348:1967‐1976, 2003. 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[26] s. ali, t. hama-soor, m. babakir-mina, s. dimonte, f. greco. is it scaly anteater or bat a real origin of the 2019-novel cov: a probable hypothesis?. kurdisatn journal of applied research (kjar), volume 5 (1): 112. http://dx.doi.org/10.24017/covid.1 1. introduction 5. conclusion  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq monitoring and controlling electric power stations using gsm network goran h. ismail bilal a. mubdir electrical engineering department communication department, faculty of engineering technical institute of sulaimani university of sulaimani sulaumani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq goran.hama@gmail.com bilal.mubdir@spu.edu.iq asso r. majeed asaad m. jassim al-hindawi electrical engineering department communication engineering department faculty of engineering technical college of engineering university of sulaimani sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq asso.majeed@univsul.edu.iq asaad.jasim@spu.edu.iq volume 4 issue 2 december 2019 doi: 10.24017/science.2019.2.7 received: 23 july 2019 accepted: 03 october 2019 abstract this paper introduces a system design for monitoring and controls the components of power generation station and substation with help of existing communication link based on gsm network. in this design, a selected programmable logic controller (plc) connected to the fields that needed to be monitored and continuously read changes in measurements of electrical parameters like voltage, current, bus bar circuit breakers…..etc.. these parameters have been monitored by plc, on the base of conditions that plc is programmed. plc generates a text message and forward to other side; control center or mobile phone of engineer and technicians; who are responsible of monitoring. at control center, another gsm modem which has capability to connect with personal computer, receives that text massage using sms and executes it. software written with vb.net, works as human machine interface (hmi) for this purpose. the system performance is acceptable in terms of errors in readings and time delay. the percentage error for the current is about 1%, and for the voltage is about 0.2%. the delivery time to receive new analog and digital inputs data is about 14.125 seconds, while the control of the circuit done after 4.68 seconds. keywords: gsm modem, hmi, plc, sensor, sms mailto:asso.majeed@univsul.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 81 1. introduction at present, the recent technologies developed strongly and the popularity for the electric vehicles is increasing and so the energy consumption is increasing day by day. the energy represents the vital need of the humans being where the energy demand is much greater than the actual energy generated in almost all countries. the energy considered as one of the basic infrastructure for the growth of any economy and a key factor in assessing the progress of any country. in the last two decades, many studies have been conducted to design and implement different types of electrical power management systems based on the use of modern telecommunication system, such as those conducted by ganiyu, et al [1], and al-hindawi, et al. [2],[3],[4] for the system management and electric energy saving. in those papers, an inexpensive products have been used to establish monitoring and control system based on an open source software. dabont, et al. [5] found that the long distance between generators and loads was an important parameter. thus, large quantity of energy exchanges through long distances has been transformed by the lack of electrical power; a great deal of energy is lost during the transmission of generated energy, resulting in a reduction in the amount of energy received at substations. therefore, measurements must be obtained either by one party or by both parties. petrescu, et al. [6] designed and implemented a system of monitoring and control based on smsfor the application of telemetry. they tested some wireless technologies, but they focused on the gsm modem and the efficiency of using sms. sms is used to report a particular position such as power outages. in addition, a controller is used as a processing unit and a gsm modem used for communication purposes. jawarkar et al. [7] developed a remote control system and mobile-based controls, and alerts the user when abnormal conditions such as power outages occur. they have programmed an algorithm to create a text message that can be transmitted to the user's phone. their system embodies a mobile device designed to connect to the gsm network and receive and execute the desired arrangement of the user. xiao, et al [8] presented a system depends on the gsm network, which can monitor the power lines reliably. using the sms service, the network is realized for remote data transfer. the system consists of a control center and smart power lines monitoring instruments. this system was mainly based on information theory and sms system that are analyzed. instruments consist of hardware and software designs. the hardware design consists of the 89c2051 microcomputer, the data transmission mode of gsm, the ground line monitoring service, the ic memory card module (the identification card), and so on. using the sms g100a serial connection controller, the performance of data transmission could be efficient. the designs of communication protocol and transceiver program were the basic of the software programs. test results and practicality show that the design of this system can meet user requirements. this system will be strongly applied in many fields and has a great economic level. sachan[9]introduced a project to obtain remotely the electrical parameters such as voltage, current and frequency and transmit these values in addition to the temperature at the power plant in real time via modem / phone based on gsm network system. by using arunning electromagnetic relay, the proposed system can protect the electric circuits. when the electrical parameters exceed certain values that are specified previously then the relay will be on. this relay can activate the circuit breaker in order to turn off the main power source. the reading of electric parameters could be obtained remotely when the user transmits the required commands in the shape of sms. at regular periods the user can receive the electrical parameters in real time as short massages (depends on time setting).the designed system can alert the user via sms when the circuit breakers are disconnected or when the voltage or current increases over the preset levels. the proposed project uses a computer on board, usually called a microcontroller. this computer can communicate efficiently with the required various sensors. for holding the required code, some of internal memory is provided with the kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 82 used controller. the function of this memory is to dump some set of assembly instructions in the controller. the work of the controller depends on these assembly instructions. it is programmed based on the built-in c language. jusoh, et al. [10] designed a smart remote terminal unit (rtu) which is used as an automatic technology for low voltage (lv) downstream operation of 415 / 240v to increase the power reliability of consumers. the proposed design depends on (gsm) communication. siregar, et al.[11] used the acs712 sensor and the voltage sensor based on the circuit of voltage divider and communicating by gsm system for controlling the battery and the solar panel. the data obtaining from the current and voltage sensors are then processed by a microcontroller. bhaskarwar, et al. [12] studied and focused on control system implementation of heat exchangers of the type of shell and tube through a number of tools such as plc, supervisory control and data acquisition scada, lab view and the internet. the above efforts and works can serve and support the smart grid technology that basically consists of smart meters, sensors, proper monitoring and data management system [13][14][15][16]. the point of the present proposed system in this paper, related to the above selected papers, is most of the work done before, sms has been used to monitor and control the home appliances, transformer and single cable. while in this paper, the proposed system is to use sms service of gsm data transmission network as a simple and easy communication link between the power station and the power substations and control centers for the purpose of monitoring and control. in this kind of system there is high number of signals, therefore time delay is significant, and the control centers transceivers “gsm modem” topology must be designed carefully. therefore, a remote monitoring and control system is designed and developed using sms technology. sms uses signaling channels instead of custom data channels. these messages can be transmitted / received at the same time via proposed gsm link. the main feature of using sms is to follow the method of storage and forwarding, and sms processing can go on during the specified validity period if the network is currently busy or if the user is outside the coverage area. the proposed system offers several features like: 1. monitor remote electrical parameter like “voltage, current, frequency….etc.” 2. receive status of circuit breakers. 3. send control command to change status of breakers remotely. 4. the defined user can send read command to monitor specific parameter. sms users or technicians working on this system can alert when abnormal conditions occurred such as power outages, over-rated parameters, or any other abnormal situation. 2. proposed system design the proposed system design consists of electrical power generating plants, power substation and control center, as shown in figure1. the proposed communication link between them is based on sms of gsm network and this needs programmable logic controller plc (at the generating plant and substation) to gather information from the field and gsm modems as transceivers. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 83 figure1: block diagram of proposed system based on gsm. the electrical station (may represent the power generating plant or substation) consists of, transducers, relay, ac to dc convertor, plc, and gsm modem while the control center consists of gsm modem, cell phone and hmi, as plotted in figure 2 and as follows: figure 2: block diagram of the electrical station and control center. power substation plc gsm modem power plant plc gsm modem control station gsm modem kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 84 1. sensor: it is an energy transformer designed to sense (in the sense of discovering) some of the characteristics of its surroundings [17]. it is used to detect the parameter in one form of energy, and to report it in a certain amount of material. the input signal to the transducer will be changed to physical quantity at output; there are many types of sensors based on output signal such as bipolar signals (±2v, ±10v), true zero signals (0-2/10 v | 0-20 ma) and live zero signals (1/2-10 v | 4-20 ma). 2. relay: a relay is usually an electromechanical device that used to close the open circuit or to open the closed circuit when the current or voltage on the coil of relay is changed. digital output in programmable logic controller (plc) is working as switch to close and open power on the coil terminals. 3. ac/dc convertor: the circuit switch status connected to digital input of plc must be a dc voltage, the value of highest dc voltage that plc consider as on depends on the plc configuration. the plc used in our system input voltage with (24) vdc represents on and (0) vdc is off status. a 220 vac to 24 vdc convertor is used, the output terminals of dc voltage connected to input of plc. 4. programmable logic controller (plc): the word "programmable" is distinguished from the conventional hard-wired relay logic. it can be easily programmed or changed according to the required application. the plc passed the risk of changing the wires. the most important plc ingredientsare [18]: power supply:it can be an external unit or can be built in same plc. the common required voltage levels at the plc (with and without power supply) are 24vdc, 120vac, 220vac. central processing unit (cpu):it is a computer where the logic of the ladder is stored and processed. input/output (i/o):a number of input / output terminals are provided so that plc can monitor the process and initiate actions. there are two analog and digital plc i / o. analog measurement:analog data includes all continuous and variable signals over time from the domain. examples include current, voltage, active energy, interactive power, power factor, etc. digital measurement:digital signals are intermittent signals that change from one state to another in descriptive steps, and separate signals behave as binary keys, simply leading to a signal (on or off) (1 or 0, true or false, respectively). digital signals include switching positions, isolation positions and circuit breakers in the power system. 5. gsm modem: a gsm modem is a specialized type of modem that accepts a sim card and operates via a subscription to a mobile phone operator, just like a mobile phone, it can be a dedicated modem device with a serial connection. instructions at commands used to control the modem. at is the abbreviation attention, and each command line starts with "at" and for this reason modems are sometimes called at commands. the gsm modem supports a set of gsm at commands that include relevant sms commands such as at + cmgs, at + cmss, at + cmgl (sms list), at + cmgr (read sms message). 6. human machine interface (hmi): for monitoring and control purpose, the operators can use the mobile phone or can use a software as human machine interface (hmi). hmi presents the measured values, generate alarms, and sent control commands…etc. the visual studio is used to create hmi. the used gsm modem is wavecom wm 17253, the port settings are: baud rate 9600, data bit 8, stop bit 1 and flow control none. the software connection illustrated with flow chart in figure 3. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 85 figure3: flow chart of serial port connection [3]. 3. results of the system test and discussion a modeled system designed and tested in the lab, an electrical circuit with variable ac source and resistor used to generate the desired current. the measurements are monitored by using two transducer, 24 vdc relay used to control electrical circuit remotely, as it can be seen the single line diagram in figure 4. the current desired in the circuit connected to a current transducer “0-5a” and ac source connected to a voltage transducer “0-250vac”, the output of the transducers are 4-20 ma. the output of transducers connected to analog inputs of plc. an ac to dc transformer is used to convert the ac input voltage of the circuit to 24 vdc, the vdc output is a circuit switch status, 0 vdc means circuit switch off, 24 vdc means circuit switch on. the plc is programmed for any new reading of current or voltage and circuit status (on/off) sent the data by sms to mobile phone or another gsm modem that connected to pc and decode new message by hmi that is written by using vb.net, also the user can send a control command to switch on/off remotely by sending sms the content of message must be the same as it defined at the plc. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 86 the system tested in different ways to see the performance of the communication link based on sms of gsm technology. figure 4: virtual lab prototype single line diagram 3.1. monitor circuit with cell phone: the data of sent current, voltage measurement and switch status to mobile phone, are merged in one sms. the test performed by changing variable resistance or variable voltage, the delivery time for new status by mobile phone measured as illustrated in table 1. table 1:sms delivery time to mobile phone multi-meter sms receive deliver time (second) current voltage current voltage 0.64 220.5 0.63 220.31 10.65 1.95 224.8 1.93 224.80 12.55 2..61 205 2.60 205.10 11.30 3.23 221 3.21 221.00 14.81 0.66 220.2 0.65 220.00 12.25 1.99 230 1.96 229.40 10.92 1.22 220 1.21 220.31 13.92 average 12.22 it can be shown from table 1, the average time to deliver a status of new reading with a mobile phone is nearly 12.22 seconds. if it compared to the normal sms delivery between two mobiles, the average time is 4.94 second. where, the difference is 7.28 seconds. this difference is the time that the transducer converts new input to 4-20 ma, plc scanning input that is normally around (0-5 seconds) and transmits this new status to the serial port.a sample of received sms to a mobile phone can be described in figure 5 which shows the receive a message with 16-signals which are separated by comma (,). the first eight signals are analog inputs and the last eight signals are digital inputs measurements connected to the plc, the second reading is current measurement (0.63 a), the third reading is voltage measurement (230.31) and the signal number nine is the circuit status (1) is means the circuit is switched on. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 87 figure 5: mobile phone receive sms. 3.2. hmi for circuit monitoring and control: the hmi used for this test created by using visual basic; the same connection in section 3.1 is used. the results are shown in table 2. table 2: sms delivery time with hmi hmi current multimeter current error percentage hmi (voltage) multimeter voltage error percentag e time (sec.) 0.65625 0.66 0.5682 % 223.4375 225.7 1.0024 % 12.08 1.321875 1.34 1.3526 % 224.6875 224.5 0.0835 % 15.86 1.96875 1.99 1.0678 % 223.28125 223.2 0.0364 % 14.05 2.628125 2.68 1.9356 % 222.1875 222.2 0.005 % 15..25 3.296 3.32 0.7229 % 220.78125 221 0.099 % 14.24 1.809375 1.84 1.6644 % 205.78125 205.7 0.0395 % 14.76 1.2125 1.22 0.6148 % 205.9375 205.7 0.1155 % 12.08 1.803125 1.84 2.0041 % 205.46875 205.4 0.0335 % 14.68 average 1.2413 % 0.1769 % 14.125 as it can be observed in table 2, the average time to receive a new measurement and represent it on hmi is 14.125 seconds. the time difference for monitoring the same circuit by mobile phones in previous test is 2.186 seconds. this extra time delay is because of execution time needed by visual basic and presents it on monitoring window. the precision of the result in hmi compared to the measurements in multi-meters for the current is about of 2% and for the voltage is about of 1%. example for last results in table2 is shown in figure 6. figure 6: result comparison hmi with multi-meter kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 88 3.4. sending control commands: the time needed for controlling electrical circuit breakers is very significant, for the proposed system, the times is measured when a message is sent to change switch status and the updated data presented on hmi, the results are shown in table 3. table 3: control circuit time current / new status circuit switch change time (sec.) hmi update time (sec.) off/on 6.75 24.02 on/off 4.26 20.20 off/on 4.63 22.46 on/off 2.94 19.21 off/on 3.84 20.11 on/off 5.23 21.67 off/on 6.36 22.31 off/on 3.46 19.73 average 4.68 21.21 from table 3, the time needs to change switch status by using sms is about (4.68 sec.) and (21.21 sec.) to update hmi for new switch status. 4. conclusions the proposed system has two main parts which are prototyped and tested successfully by using an existing gsm infrastructure. first part was the unit that designed to be installed in the power station and aggregate the sensors readings and processed them into a packet ready to send for the monitoring side. second part was the hmi, that designed by using gsm modem and an application built based on visual basic open source platform in order to visualize the received packets of reading from the power stations. plc was used in the first part due to its simplicity and reliability for the industrial and heavy duties usage. the proposed system with its features is very fixable and ready for any expansion without any revisions on the current installed units. testing the system in different situations and environments show that the operation is very easy and cost effective since the only paid cost is the sms toll by the sending side. the time required for the message to be delivered is ranged from 19 to 24 seconds, where 21.21 seconds was the average delay time for the message to be delivered. this time is adequate for monitoring and control purposed in a soft real time application. for applications that required hard real time, it is recommended to use a technique that provides less delay. reference [1] r. ganiyu, o. arulogun,a. adetunji, o. okediran, “development of a gsm based household power management system”,british journal of science,vol. 1 (2), 1 september 2011. [2] b. mubdir, a. al-hindawi, n. hadi, “design of smart home energy management system for saving energy”, european scientific journal, edition,vol. 12, no. 33, pp. 521-536, 2016. [3] n. hadi, b.mubdir, a. al-hindawi, a. ahmed, “design and implementation of smart home energy management system based on gsm network”, kurdistan journal for applied research, volume 2, issue 3, 2017. [4] b. mubdir, a. al-hindawi, s.hussien, h. al-rizzo, “smart energy monitoring and control system based on wireless communication”, international journal of engineering and advanced technology, vol. 3 issue 1, pp. 1-6, 2013 [5] p. daponte, m. di penta, g.mercurio, “transientmeter: a distributed measurement system for power quality monitoring”, ieee transactions on power delivery, vol. 19, issue. 2, pp. 456-463, 2004. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 89 [6] b. petrescu, d. chiciudean, r. cioarga, d. stanescu, “wireless solutions for telemetry in civil equipment and infrastructure monitoring”, 3rd romanian-hungarian joint symposium on applied computational intelligence (saci), may 25-26, 2006. [7] n. jawarkar, v. ahmed, s. ladhake, r. thakare, “microcontroller based remote monitoring using mobile through spoken commands” , journal of networks, vol. 3, no. 2, 2008. [8] j. xiao, shou xu ; guohe wu “monitor system of the intelligent power earth lines based on gsm sms protocol”, 9th international conference on electronic measurement & instruments.( icemi '09), beijing, 16-19 aug. 2009. [9] a.sachan “microcontroller based substation monitoring and control system with gsm modem”,iosr journal of electrical and electronics engineering (iosrjeee), issn: 2278-1676 volume 1, issue 6, pp.13-21, julyaug. 2012. [10] w.jusoh, m. ghani, w.hanafiah, m.a.; s. raman, “development of a new modeling circuit for the remote terminal unit (rtu) with gsm communication”, 2013 ieee conference onclean energy and technology(ceat), pp.18-20, 2013. [11] s.siregar, d. soegiarto, “solar panel and battery street light monitoring system using gsm wireless communication system”,second international conference on information and communication technology (icoict), 2014. [12] t.bhaskarwar, s. giri, r. jamakar, “automation of shell and tube type heat exchanger with plc and labview”, industrial instrumentation and control (icic) international conference, 2015. [13] m. rehmani, a. davy, b. jennings, c.assi, "software defined networks-based smart grid communication: a comprehensive survey", ieee communications surveys & tutorials, vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 2637-2670, 2019. [14] a. abbasi, a. abbasi, s. shamshirband, a.chronopoulos, v. persico, a. pescapè, "software-defined cloud computing: a systematic review on latest trends and developments", ieee access, vol. 7, pp. 93294-93314, 2019. [15] s. reka, t. dragicevic, p. siano, s. prabaharan, “future geharation 5g wireless network for smart grid: a comprehensive review”, energies journal, vol. 12, issue 11, 2019. https://doi.org/10.3390/en12112140 [16] o. machidon, c. stanca, p. ogrutan ,c. gerigan, l. aciu, “power-system protection device with iot-based support for integration in smart environments”,plos one,vol. 13, no. 12, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0208168 [17] c.m. riley, b.k. lin, t.g. habetter, r.r. schoen, “a method for sensor-less on-line vibration monitoring of induction machines”,ieee trans. ind. appl., vol. 34(6), pp. 1240-1245, 1998. [18] g. hancke, c. viljoen, “the microprocessor measurement of low values of rotational speed and acceleration”, ieee transactions on instrumentation and measurement, vol. 39, no. 6, pp. 1014-1017, 1990. https://doi.org/10.3390/en12112140  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq tracking of the most significant laboratory parameters for the identification of covid-19: an overview on the different blood tests seenaa mohammed ali community health department technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq seenaa.ali@spu.edu.iq article info abstract special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) doi: 10.24017/covid.13 article history: received : 29 may 2020 accepted : 06 june 2020 an outbreak of 2019 novel coronavirus disease (covid-19) began in china during december 2019 which unexpectedly spread to other countries and caused high mortality all over the world. covid-19 disease primarily manifests as a respiratory tract infection. however, emerging data indicate that it should be regarded as a systemic disease for affecting multiple systems such as cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal and immune system. there is an accelerated need for detecting the laboratory tests that can aid in identifying infected people and asymptomatic carriers to control the virus transmission process. although the clinical manifestation of covid-19 has been widely defined, an overview of the most significant laboratory findings in patients with covid-19 infection is still limited. elevation was the predominate result among most of the laboratory parameters while a few decreased in value. laboratory data have shown that most patients had a decrease in lymphocyte count, eosinophils count and albumin level. also, laboratory data recorded an elevation in leukocyte, esr, pt, d-dimer, pct, crp, alt, ast, bilirubin, creatinine, ck, ldh, ferritin, troponin, myoglobin, il-6, il10 and tnf. in general, the parameters had more prominent laboratory abnormalities in severe cases than with non-severe cases. it is well known that laboratory tests results play an important role and can support the early diagnosis of many diseases. this study was carried out to review the abnormalities among the laboratory tests and track the parameters that showed a frequently significant result supporting the primary detection of sars-cov-2 infection. keywords: covid-19, sarc-cov2, 2019-ncov, laboratory parameters, blood test copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) | 113 1. introduction on 31 dec 2019, china’s heath officials inform who about a novel coronavirus that caused a cluster of pneumonia cases [1]. on february 11, 2020, the international committee on taxonomy of viruses (ictv) declared that this virus was named severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (sars-cov-2) [2] while, on the same day, world health organization (who) named the disease as coronavirus disease covid-19 [3]. although the mortality rate of covid-19 is lower than middle east respiratory syndrome (mers) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (sars), covid-19 is found to be more severe and can spread in the community more easily than mars and sars [4]. the aggressive behavior and highly contagious feature of this novel coronavirus sars-cov-2, forced who to announce covid-19 as a pandemic disease on 11/3. in iraq, the first case was detected in 24 february [5], while the first case of covid-19 was confirmed in iraqi kurdistan on the first of march [6]. by mid-march, iraqi health authorities had banned major public events, suspended schools, and closed malls and gathering places. to date (may 29, 2020), the number of infected people all over the world surpasses 5 million [1]. one reason for the rapid spread is that symptoms in the early stage are similar with other pneumonia diseases [7] and it is hard to differentiate it if the patients have atypical symptoms [8]. this increases the difficulty of controlling its transmission, since infected persons can not recognize specific symptoms unless it progresses to a moderate or severe stage [9]. the main problem facing the health care system is the progression of the cases from mild to moderate and severe stages, the late two stages need hospitalized care which also increase the possibility of spreading the virus during visitations or admissions to the hospital. as recommended by who, routine identification of sars-cov-2 must be done by the highly specific molecular method rt-pcr. this method is also considered in the assessment of asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic cases [10]. unfortunately, this advanced technique is limited in many countries and the available materials are not sufficient for all suspected cases. according to that, countries with limited molecular diagnostic capacity have to rely on other laboratory tests that can give primary identification while waiting for the confirmation of rtpcr result (if available). in addition, several recent studies have reported around 20% falsenegative results for this test [11–13]. these limitations make rt-pcr unsuitable for rapid and large-scale screening. the chinese guideline of diagnosis and treatment of covid-19 posted that confirmation of covid-19 infection needs nucleic acid testing of respiratory tract samples. however, clinical diagnosis based on symptoms, exposures, blood tests and chest imaging of suspected cases can be used in the primary identification of suspected cases [14]. thus, a simple blood test could help in identifying false-positive/negative rt-pcr tests as well as play a useful role in the screening of potential infected individuals with covid-19 in countries which suffer from a large shortage of rt-pcr reagents and specialized laboratories. a tremendous number of blood test results are accessible since the emergence of covid-19. prospective studies had listed many blood test parameters: complete blood cells count, leukocyte, lymphocytes, neutrophils, eosinophils, platelets, esr, hemoglobin, pt, ddimer, pct, crp, albumin, alt, ast, bilirubin, creatinine, ck, lh, ferritin, glucose, troponin, myoglobin, il-6, tnf and many others. most publications are prospective and conducted china [15–29] in while a few studies are published from other countries [30–33]. lately, a prospective study from iran has been published [34]. elevation was predominate result among the blood parameters while a few decreased in value. in general, the parameters had more prominent laboratory abnormalities in severe cases than with non-severe cases. however, a full clinical and laboratory characterization is still required and a better understanding is prerequisite to provide improved guidance [10] . till now, there is no standard lab parameters for the identification of the virus. the objective of this study is to summarize the finding of different lab parameters reported in currently available studies and to highlight the ones with a significant result. kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) | 114 2. methods and materials pubmed, scopus, google scholar, elsevier, and science of direct were searched. also, the following websites were searched: the who and cdc (centers for disease control and prevention. the search included articles published from january until the end of may 2020. only peer-reviewed published papers of observational studies that included human patients and was written in english were included in this comprehensive search. only studies that enrolled patients with covid-19 infections confirmed by rt-pcr were included in the current study. the search included articles published from january till the end of may 2020.the following terms was used: covid-19, sarc-cov2, 2019-ncov, coronavirus, identification, diagnosis, parameters, significant and laboratory. 3. results 3.1 molecular method rt-pcr who mentioned that the nucleic acid amplification tests (naat) should be used for screening the virus in suspected cases. a well-known technique such as reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rt-pcr) is recommended. so, labs worldwide have customized the test for this novel coronavirus by using different primers for selecting different sections of the virus’s genetic sequence. some countries shared their protocols which can be accessed for the common good [35]. the recent diagnosis protocols for the covid-19 have been listed in a local study published recently. most testing for covid-19 is currently done on viral genetic material from upper respiratory tract specimens; nasopharyngeal swab (np) or oropharyngeal swab (op). if the patient develops a productive cough, sample from lower respiratory tract (sputum) should be collected and tested for covid-19 [36]. 3.2 serological method igm/igg in cases where rt-pcr is negative and there is a strong epidemiological relation coto covid-19 infection, paired serum samples (in the acute and convalescent phase) could support diagnosis [36]. some studies with covid-19 serological data successfully detected both igm/igg antibodies on the serum of infected patients with sars-cov-2 virus [37–41]. this method relies on the detection of specific igm/igg antibodies as a response to infections which can detect patients at different infection stages. the igm antibody can be detected as early as day 3 after exposure. 3.3 routine blood tests through the screening of publications that recorded the findings of different laboratory tests for the identification of the covid-19, the results of all blood parameters that were mentioned have been collected. these include: complete blood cells count, leukocytes, lymphocytes, neutrophils, eosinophils, platelets, esr, hemoglobin, prothrombin time (pt), d-dimer, procalcitonin (pct), c-reactive protein (crp), albumin, alanine aminotransferase (alt), aspartate aminotransferase (ast), bilirubin, creatinine, creatine kinase (ck), lactate dehydrogenase (ldh), ferritin, glucose, troponin, myoglobin, interleukin 6 (il-6), interleukin 10 and tumor necrosis factor (tnf). elevation was the predominate result among most of the blood parameters [15–26], [42]. laboratory data have shown that most patients had a decrease in lymphocyte count, eosinophils count, platelets count, hemoglobin, and albumin level. also, laboratory data recorded an elevation in leukocyte, esr, pt, d-dimer, pct, crp, alt, ast, bilirubin, creatinine, ck, ldh, ferritin, troponin, myoglobin, il-6, il10 and tnf. among these parameters, a few are frequently encountered in patients with covid-19 infection which include: leukocyte, lymphocyte count, esr, d-dimer, crp, ldh, pct, alt, ast and creatinine. the variation in the decrease or elevation value of these parameters have been noticed in many studies [17–20]. the strong association between the decrease in lymphocyte count, eosinophil count and albumin has been noticed in patients with the covid-19 disease. also, high levels of d-dimer, pct, ldh, crp and ferritin have been observed. among the scanning parameters, the ones with significant result which are recommended as supportive tests for the identification and monitoring of covid-19 cases was selected. these significant parameters are: lymphocyte count, eosinophil count, ldh and crp, which is routinely kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) | 115 available in all labs and is also mentioned as significant in publications to aid in the primary identification of suspected cases of sars-cov-2 when the characteristic clinical symptoms are yet to be significant. 3.4 significant hematological parameters complete blood count (cbc) is a cheap and available test currently done by an automated analyzer in advanced labs. luckily, the conventional method of blood film is available in all labs and the result of the total and differential blood cells count can be achieved by either a hematologist or a lab practitioner. among hematological parameters, lymphopenia is clearly associated with disease severity. the common result recorded among the cbc parameters in patients with covid-19 is a decrease in lymphocyte count which can be noticed in the early stage of infection, less commonly mentioned is d-dimer elevation. [19], [20]. also patients who have died from covid-19 have had significantly lower lymphocyte counts than survivors. in fact, reduction of lymphocytes may be an important factor for monitoring the severity of the disease [21]. two studies [22], [23] recorded a significant decline in the number of eosinophil count in patients which can be easily monitored along with lymphocyte count. 3.5 significant biochemical parameters detection of inflammatory factors helps to preliminarily evaluate the immune status of patients. c-reactive protein (crp) is available, cheap, fast and easy test. the high sensitivity elevated value have been recorded by many studies [24–27]. therefore, this test will help in the detecting of suspected cases. one study [28] measured the ratio of lymphocyte-to-creactive protein ratio (lcr) in severe covid-19 cases as both are inflammation markers that reflect systemic inflammatory response. also, the result was significant for monitoring the progression of the disease. among the list of biochemical tests usually presented as a package done by an automated system, a significant elevation in the enzyme lactate dehydrogenase (ldh) was noticed in patients with sars-cov-2, less commonly mentioned is alt, ast, and creatine kinase elevation [25], [26], [29], [34]. fortunately, this test can be done as a single test by a specific kit which is available, cheap, fast and easy. interestingly, chinese diagnosis guidelines used a combination of imaging technique (like chest x-ray or ct scan) finding and specific lab parameter result of white blood cells and lymphocyte counts for the initial identification of suspected cases. the typical early stage chest image features bilateral multiple patchy ground glass opacities [43]. because it is available, the advanced procedure computed topography (ct scan) was used as a primary tool for the initial identification during the covid-19 outbreak in china [11], [43], [44]. fortunately, the same features can be detected (but with less sensitivity) by the conventional plain radiography x-ray [45], [46] which is cheap and available in all hospitals. according to that, countries with limited molecular diagnostic capacity can depend on other tests that can give primary identification while waiting for the confirmation of rt-pcr result (if available). 4. discussion according to who, the decision of subjecting suspected patients to lab tests should be based on patient’s history and clinical symptoms. although rt-pcr test provides a highly specific result, there are many limitations listed by the cdc guideline [47] such as false negative due to improper collection or insufficient number of virus present in the specimen. besides, this impractical test requires expensive lab facilities with technical sophistication and restrictive biosafety levels. also, collection of multiple specimens’ types in different period of time from the same patient is advocated, since the optimum specimen types and timing for peak viral levels during infection caused by covid-19 have not been discovered [44]. interestingly, many studies proved that chest radiographic findings of the computed topography (ct scan) are more sensitive in comparison with rt-pcr result especially in detecting the infection in the early stages [11], [44], [46]. recently, cdc announced the development of a serology laboratory test which detects igm/igg specific antibodies to aid in the determination of kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) | 116 screening the potentially exposed us population to sars-cov-2 virus. on the first of april, the food and drug administration (fda) authorized cellex inc. to produce the product qsars-cov-2 igg/igm rapid test for the qualitative detection of igm and igg antibodies against sars-cov-2 in serum, plasm or whole blood of the suspected cases of covid-19 [41]. with the development of a specific igg/igm antibody test which can be easily applied in the clinical laboratory of any hospital, detection of patients at different infection stages would be possible. if it became widely available in the future, a fast-preforming, large‐scaled serological study can be conducted to collect information about the immunity status of the community. this tests can play a critical role in controlling covid-19 by helping in identifying people who have previous exposure to the sars-cov-2 virus and developed an immune response. such information can be used to help determine people who are no longer susceptible to infection and can return to their normal life and communicate safely with other people. although molecular identification of sars-cov-2 is the gold-standard for covid19 diagnosis, common laboratory parameters play a key role in case detection and progression monitoring in developing countries with limited access to molecular diagnostics. according to that, countries with limited molecular diagnostic capacity should depend on other tests that can give primary identification while waiting for the confirmation of rt-pcr result (if available). an early epidemiological study [42] published during the outbreak in china summarized the weekly report from the chinese center for disease control and prevention which included 72314 cases [14]. however, only 62% of systematic cases were diagnosed based on positive pcr test results. 15% of cases were diagnosed based on clinical symptoms, exposures, and presence of lung imaging features consistent with coronavirus pneumonia, while 22% of suspected cases were diagnosed based on clinical symptoms and exposures only. the remaining 1% represent asymptomatic people diagnosed as covid-19 cases by pcr. the explanation for this unusual practice is that pcr testing capacity was insufficient at that time. so, clinical diagnosis may be made based on exposures, symptoms, and chest imaging [42]. another experience in italy, where the infected cases passed 100,000 with a mortality rate of 10%, the shortage, specialized laboratory and reagents forced the government to limit the swab test to suspected cases who show symptoms of severe acute respiratory syndrome [48]. in this italian study, the blood test results of 207 patients with covid19 symptoms admitted to the hospital emergency room, were tested by rt-pcr. of them, 102 tested negative whereas 105 tested positive. the levels of white blood cells (wbcs), platelets, alanine aminotransferase (alt), c-reactive protein (crp), aspartate aminotransferase (ast), lactate dehydrogenase (ldh) and alkaline phosphatase (alp) in the two groups have been analyzed, with the aim of highlighting statistically significant differences that could be useful for the identification of negative and positive covid-19 patients. different recommendations for using specific lab test can be found in different studies. a systemic review orchestrated by researchers from 14 countries [16] summarize the laboratory findings of 19 researches with 39 case reports. the study revealed the p value of 12 parameters. another review done by two italian authors [17] summarize the lab results of eight chinese studies which included 22 parameters and the significance of the parameters was showed by percentage. furthermore, meta-analysis and systematic review of 43 studies mentioned the result of 11 laboratory parameters assessed by i2 value [18]. limitation of these studies can be recorded because of the variation in the final presentation of the results. also, not all studies divided the cases as severe and non-severe. in general, the parameters had more prominent laboratory abnormalities in severe cases than with non-severe cases. a few parameters show a decrease in value; lymphocyte, eosinophil and ldh which are usually notable in non-severe stages while albumin and hemoglobin lowering in severe stage. 5. conclusion • amplification of viral rna by rt-pcr serves as the gold standard for confirmation of infection, yet it needs a long turnaround time. 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[48] d. ferrari, a. motta, m. strollo, g. banfi, and m. locatelli, “routine blood tests as a potential diagnostic tool for covid-19,” clinical chemistry and laboratory medicine. pp. 1–5, 2020.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 4 | issue 1 | june 2019 | doi: 10.24017/science.2019.1.4 received: 09 april 2019 | accepted: 16 june 2019 designs of pmsms with inner and outer rotors for electric bicycle applications harwan m. taha ismaeil r. alnaab computer science department electrical power engineering department cihan university duhok basra engineering technical college energy engineering department southern technical university technical college of engineering basrah, iraq duhok polytechnic university ismaeil.r.alnaab@stu.edu.iq duhok, iraq harwan.taha@dpu.edu.krd 20 abstract: in this paper, designs of two rotor structures of permanent magnet synchronous motor (pmsm) are proposed in order to find the suitable one to drive an electric bicycle, namely, inner rotor and outer rotor. both motors are designed to run at a rated speed of 20 km/h and rated power of 250 w. this paper compare the performance of both proposed motors and the comparison between them is in terms of motor size, weight, cost and efficiency. in addition, this work use the second design, which is the pmsm with outer rotor to investigate the effects of some motor parameters on motor performance; the parameters are current, advanced angle, stack length and external diameter. in this work, motor solve software is used to design and analyze the performance of both motors. according to the simulation and calculation results, both motors achieved the required rated speed and torque at high efficiency and reasonable cost. nevertheless, the pmsm with inner rotor obtained the required specifications with lighter weight and smaller size than the pmsm with outer rotor. therefore, it is a proper choice for driving an electric bicycle that has a limitation regarding the motor space. regarding parameters’ effect, the simulation figures and data show that the motor torque will increase if we increase supply current, stack length and external diameter, while speed decreases as it inversely changes with torque. except for advance angle which helps motor to produce maximum possible torque at a higher speed. keywords: permanent magnet synchronous motor, inner rotor, outer rotor, electric bicycle, motor solve. 1. introduction over the decades, the world faces many environmental issues such as global warming and air pollution. part of the air pollution problems are vehicles that use fossil fuels and emit harmful gases. in addition to the environmental reasons mentioned above, traffic jams and high prices of oil products also made many countries to use alternative methods of transportation that are environmentally friendly, such as electric vehicles (evs). among electric vehicles, the electric bicycle is one of the appropriate choices for short line transportation because of its attractive features such as cheap price, easy riding, convenient parking, health benefits and ecofriendly [1][2]. the bicycle’s electric motor is an important and effective part, so it must be carefully designed in order to provide high efficiency, high torque and low noise. therefore, in recent years, designers and researchers have studied different types of motors to determine the most efficient one to drive electric bicycles. the most used motors for such applications are: switched reluctance motor (srm), permanent magnet flux switched motor (pmfsm), multi-flux permanent magnet (mfpm) and permanent magnet synchronous motor (pmsm) [1] [2] [3]. these motors share common features, as they are small in size and light in weight due to the unnecessity of brushes in their design. the rotor part of the motor of an electric bicycle can be one of the two common designs: motor with an inner rotor that can be fitted in the area between the two cranks and chain wheel, and motor with an outer rotor which can be fitted into the wheel. in this paper, two designs are proposed using pmsm type. the first one is pmsm with inner rotor while the second one is pmsm with outer rotor. pmsms are widely used because of their ability to achieve a high torque, high power density and high efficiency. moreover, their mechanical robustness, compactness, ability of wide flux weakening and highspeed operation make them proper for electric vehicle applications. despite the benefits of the pmsms, they suffer from the high cost because of using magnets in their designs to provide the magnetic field [4]. pmsm is divided into two types according to the position of its rotor, which are inner rotor and outer rotor pmsms, as illustrated in fig. 1. the figure clearly shows that the external diameter of the motor with an outer rotor is larger than that of the motor with an inner rotor. therefore according to equation (1), motor with an outer rotor structure can produce more torque; because the torque is directly proportional to the square value of rotor diameter. the motor copper loss occurs in stator windings, where the heat generated from. thus in terms of heat dissipation, motor with an inner rotor can be refrigerated easier as its stator surface is directly attached to the outside. whilean outer rotor usually needs its own coolant system. 21 𝑇𝑇 = 𝐾𝐾𝐷𝐷2𝐿𝐿𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎 (1) where 𝑇𝑇 is motor torque (n.m), 𝐾𝐾 is a constant depends on motor parameters, 𝐷𝐷 is rotor diameter (m) and 𝐿𝐿 is the active length of the motor (m). a. b. figure 1: pmsm rotor structures: a: inner rotor and b: outer rotor in this section, a brief introduction has been given while section two shows a literature review about a number of researches has been done in the same field. then section three shows the methods that were used to design the motors. in section four, the results and comparison between both proposed designs have been discussed whereas in section five the effects of motor components have been investigated. 2. literature review riders of electric bicycles are looking for lightness, cheapness, eco-friendly and reliable bicycles. while reviewing recent researches on bicycle’s electric motor, it can be noticed that most of them are trying to make efficient, light and cheap motors to satisfy the customer needs. this study also tried to design efficient motors and it could achieve better results compared with some other reviewed papers. in paper [5], a pmsm with inner rotor was designed and its author claims that “outer rotor pmsm motors are usually 15% lighter than the inner rotor designs”. however, our paper and paper [6] found that the weight of the inner rotor motor design is lighter than the outer rotor motor design. paper [7] discussed the design of an interior pmsm with an outer rotor type of machine for an electric bicycle application; the design achieved around 92.6% efficiency. while, paper [8] and [9] combined radial and axial flux to design a multi flux permanent magnet (mfpm) motor for electric bicycle applications, their motor efficiencies were poor compared to our presented designs, which both achieved an efficiency of more than 94%. while authors of paper [10] tried to design emerging machines that included four different types of permanent magnets which were: pm hybrid, pm vernier (pmvb), pm magneticgeared (pmmg) and pm memory (pmmb). some of their machines achieved the desired torque with the assistant of a gearbox while the speed range was limited to 1000 rpm but their motors consumed high current which sometimes reached 18.5 a. some other researchers used cheap type of magnets to reduce the price of the motor, for example in the paper [1], authors used ferrite magnet in their design as it is cheap compared to ndfeb: neodymium iron boron which was used in our design. but this kind of magnet (ferrite magnet) gives low flux, thus authors of paper [1] had to use a large amount of magnet in order to produce the required energy, which led to an increase in the size and weight of the motor. moreover, they used an inset gearbox inside the motor to increase the torque which in our case is a drawback due to the limited space. 3. methods and materials as it has been mentioned in section one, space where the motor should be placed in the bicycle is limited. therefore, the challenge was to design a motor that is capable to spin at the desired speed at a small size and lightweight. in this study, two types of rotor structures were designed by using motor solve software which in turn based on finite element analysis (fea). the two types were interior and exterior rotors. 3.1. first design: pmsm with inner rotor this design used inset magnets to produce flux, magnet type was ndfeb: neodymium iron boron, as shown in fig. 2. the parameters of this design were chosen quite accurately to meet the desired speed and torque with high efficiency. this type of motor with the interior rotor is suitable to fit the area between the two cranks and the chain wheel of the bicycle. figure 2: 3d model design of pmsm with inner rotor. 3.2. second design: pmsm with outer rotor whereas, the second motor was designed to havean exterior rotor structure with surface mounted magnets. magnet type (ndfeb: neodymium iron boron), as shown in fig. 3. it was designed to fit within the wheel, thus the rotor part of the motor was chosen to be external in order to rotate the tires of the electric bicycles. 22 figure 3: 3d model design of pmsm with outer rotor. as has been discussed earlier that this paper used suitable parameters for both designs in order to run the motors more efficiently, and the purpose was to run the motors at rated speed 1143 rpm, which is equal to 20 km/h. in addition, the rated power and the rated voltage were 250 w and 70 v respectively. therefore, the parameters of each design, inner and outer rotor pmsms, have been selected separately to achieve the above requirements, specifically the small size and lightweight. table 1 shows the parameters that were used to design both motors. table 1: design parameters of the proposed inner and outer rotor structures of pmsms mass inner rotor outer rotor rotor core mass (kg) 0.240 0.877 rotor magnets mass (kg) 0.258 0.227 rotor sleeve mass (kg) 0 0 stator core mass (kg) 0.993 1.46 stator winding mass (kg) 0.355 0.495 rotor dimensions inner rotor outer rotor rotor outer diameter (mm) 74 170 rotor inner diameter (mm) 58 150 magnet thickness (mm) 4.5 3 magnet angle (mm) 20 20 number of poles (magnets) 16 12 stack height(mm) 40 stator dimensions inner rotor outer rotor number of slots 24 18 number of phases 3 3 number of turns 12.5 16 coil fill factor 35 40 air gap thinness(mm) 0.5 1 stator inner diameter (mm) 75 108 stator outer diameter(mm) 110 148 slot depth(mm) 14 13 slot opening width (mm) 2 9 tooth tang angle (mm) 20 tooth width (mm) 6 stack length (mm) 32 supply voltage (volt dc) 70 70 rated current (a) 3.52 3 rated speed (rpm) 1143 1143 4. results and discusion this work, as we discussed earlier, has designed two motors of pmsm with different rotor structures. in the first motor design, the rotor was chosen to be an inner type to fit in the area between the two cranks and the chain wheel of the bicycle. while in the second motor design, the rotor was chosen to be an external type to fit within the wheel. meanwhile, the challenge is the lack of space where the motor should be fitted into. the comparison between the two proposed motor designs was regarding the motor volume, mass, cost and efficiency, as shown in table 2. from the motor solve simulation results, it can be noticed that the first motor could run at rated speed with a reasonable torque as shown in fig. 4. in terms of motor flux, the flux density distribution of the first design was quite satisfying with an average distribution varies between 0.6 to 1.5 wb, as demonstrated in fig 5. in addition, the motor with internal rotor was rotating at a high efficiency as shown in fig. 6. in terms of costs of the motors, this research estimated the cost by calculating the price in $ per kg of each motor element individually, which are given in table 1; including copper, steel and magnet. then the total cost was obtained by mixing all costs of those individual elements. bearing in mind that such calculations of cost could vary between time to time depending on the market. the results showed that the efficiencies and costs of both designs were so close but the difference was in weight and size. the volume of both designs was calculated by using equation (2, 3 and 4) based on the parameters shown in table 1. the mass was also calculated according to the mass parameters given in table 1 that belongs to the proposed designs. 𝑉𝑉𝑉𝑉𝑉𝑉𝑉𝑉𝑉𝑉𝑉𝑉 = 𝜋𝜋 𝑟𝑟2ℎ (2) ℎ = 𝑉𝑉 + 2(ℎ𝑉𝑉𝑒𝑒𝑒𝑒ℎ𝑡𝑡 𝑉𝑉𝑜𝑜 𝑉𝑉𝑒𝑒𝑒𝑒 𝑤𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑒𝑒𝑒𝑒𝑒𝑒𝑒𝑒𝑒𝑒) + 2(ℎ𝑉𝑉𝑉𝑉𝑜𝑜𝑉𝑉 𝑡𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑒𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑒𝑒𝑉𝑉𝑜𝑜𝑜𝑜) (3) 𝑟𝑟 = ℎ𝑉𝑉𝑉𝑉𝑜𝑜𝑉𝑉 𝑡𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑒𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑒𝑒𝑉𝑉𝑜𝑜𝑜𝑜 + 𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑎𝑎𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑎𝑎𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑 𝑜𝑜𝑜𝑜 𝑎𝑎ℎ𝑑𝑑 𝑑𝑑𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎ℎ𝑑𝑑𝑖𝑖𝑑𝑑 2 (4) where 𝑟𝑟 is radius of outer diameter (m) and 𝑉𝑉 is axial (stack) length (m).the motor was assumed cylindrical. another calculation for volume can be made using the density, as given below: 𝑉𝑉𝑉𝑉𝑉𝑉𝑉𝑉𝑉𝑉𝑉𝑉 = 𝑉𝑉𝑚𝑚𝑜𝑜𝑜𝑜/𝑒𝑒𝑉𝑉𝑒𝑒𝑜𝑜𝑒𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑑𝑑 (5) figure 4: torque-speed characteristics of inner rotor pmsm. magnet price is the most expensive part in machines. in this work, the first motor is designed using 16 poles with 4.5 mm thickness, while the second motor is designed using 12 poles with 3 mm thickness. therefore the price of the second motor is slightly lower than the price of the first motor. 23 figure 5: flux density distribution of inner rotor pmsm. figure 6: efficiency map of inner rotor pmsm. the performance of the second design was also satisfying as it rotated at an efficiency exceeding 95%, as represented in fig. 7. moreover, the desired speed was achieved at the outer rotor with high torque as shown in torque-speed characteristics (fig. 8). while fig. 9 shows the flux density distribution of the outer rotor pmsm. it can be seen from results of both motors that the flux distributed uniformly inside the core of the motors. therefore, the rotations of the motors were quite satisfactory. figure 7: efficiency map of outer rotor pmsm. figure 8: torque-speed characteristics of outer rotor pmsm. figure 9: flux density distribution of outer rotor pmsm. table 2 presents a comparison between the two rotor structure motor designs. the result shows that the two motors were run efficiently with low cost. however, the torque of the motor with an outer rotor was slightly more than the torque of the inner rotor type of motor. table 2: comparison of pmsm with inner and outer rotor. inner rotor design outer rotor design motor volume (mm3) 639205.82 1240297.31 motor mass (kg) 1.846 3.059 motor cost ($) 29.31 28.53 motor efficiency (%) 94-100 96-100 5. the effects of motor parameters this work also investigated the effects of motor parameters on the motor performance. the second design, which is pmsm with outer rotor was chosen as an example for this purpose. the following parameters were changed in order to investigate their effects: 5.1. current effect the current was increased by 50% to check its effect on motor performance. after increasing current, the flux linkage will increase as a result the motor torque increased as it is directly proportional to flux linkage according to the following formula: 24 𝑇𝑇 = 3 2 ∗ 𝑃𝑃 2 ∗ ψ𝑑𝑑𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 (6) 𝑇𝑇 = 60 𝑃𝑃 2𝜋𝜋 𝑁𝑁 (7) where 𝑃𝑃 is the number of pole pairs and ψ𝑑𝑑𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 is stator flux linkage (wb), which is directly proportional to the stator current. from fig. 10, it can be seen that the speed decrease slightly with increasing current as it is inversely proportional to motor torque according to equation (7), figure 10: torque-speed characteristics of outer rotor pmsm with different current values 5.2. advanced angle effect (field weakening) when the motor reaches the base speed at the rated source voltage 70 volt, the current regulator reaches its saturation [11]. therefore, to attain further acceleration, field-weakening control is necessary [12]. through increasing the advanced angle (ө) which is an angle between quadrature axis of the motor and the current, an increase in the speed range can be noticed. this angle affects the performance of the motor because any increase in advance angle will achieve a maximum torque at a higher speed [13]. fig. 12 shows the effect of the field weakening, which increased speed after increasing angle from 0 to 10. the q-axis and d-axis components, those are shown in fig. 11 (𝐼𝐼𝑑𝑑 𝑖𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑛𝑛,𝐼𝐼𝑖𝑖 𝑖𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑛𝑛), are calculated according to adjusted phase angle. when increasing the angle ө, the d-axis current will increase while q-axis current will decrease, and therefore, the system switches to fieldweakening mode [11] [13]. fig. 11 describes the process clearly. 𝐼𝐼𝑑𝑑 𝑖𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑛𝑛 = 𝐼𝐼𝑖𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑛𝑛 sin 𝜃𝜃2 (8) 𝐼𝐼𝑖𝑖 𝑖𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑛𝑛 = 𝐼𝐼𝑖𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑛𝑛 cos 𝜃𝜃2 (9) figure 11: advanced angle figure 12: torque-speed characteristics of outer rotor pmsm with different advanced angles 5.3. stack length effect according to equation (10), stack length has a direct impacton machine torque. thus after increasing stack length the motor torque increased; while motor speed decreased distinctly, as shown in fig. 13. 𝑇𝑇 = 𝐵𝐵𝑔𝑔 ∗ 𝐼𝐼𝑔𝑔 ∗ 𝑉𝑉 ∗ 𝑟𝑟 (10) where 𝑇𝑇is the torque per meter, 𝐵𝐵𝑔𝑔 is the air-gap flux density and 𝐼𝐼𝑔𝑔is instantaneous current. figure 13: torque-speed characteristics of outer rotor pmsm with different stack length. 5.4. external diameter effect external diameter has a significant influence on pmsm performance because all parameters inside motor will change while changing external diameter. this paper investigated the effect of external diameter on motor torque and speed after changing its value from 32 mm to 42 mm, as shown in fig. 14. as a result, the torque increased with increasing diameter because torque is directly proportional to the rotor radius. however, the speed decreased as it is inversely changes with torque. figure 14: torque-speed characteristics of outer rotor pmsm with different external diameters 25 6. conclusion this paper proposed two designs of pmsms with different rotor types, which were inner and outer rotors, which in turn will be used to rotate wheels in an electrical bicycle. in addition, this paper presented a comparison between both proposed motors to choose a proper one. the comparison was based on four criteria, which were: size, weight, efficiency, and price (table 2). the presented designs showed that both motors have high efficiency and low price, while the differences were in size and weight. the first motor design, that has an inner rotor, achieved the desired speed and torque at a lower weight and smaller size than the second design which has an outer rotor. the result that this study has reached is that the size of the motor and its weight are important due to the lack of enough space, beside the negative effect of high weight on the bicycle and its pedals. therefore, a pmsm with inner rotor is best suited for electric bicycle applications. finally, this paper investigated the effects of some major motor components, such as stack length, external diameter, advance angle and supply current. results show that any increase in these components will increase torque and decrease speed except advance angle, which slightly increases speed only. references [1] s. b. bhat, s. p. nikam and b. g. fernandes, "design and analysis of ferrite based permanent magnet motor for electric assist bicycle," in 2014 international conference on electrical machines (icem), 2014. [2] j. lin, n. schofield and a. emadi, "external-rotor 6-10 switched reluctance motor for an electric bicycle," ieee transactions on transportation electrification, vol. 1, pp. 348356, 2015. [3] t. f. chan, l.-t. yan and s.-y. fang, "in-wheel permanentmagnet brushless dc motor drive for an electric bicycle," ieee transactions on energy conversion, vol. 17, pp. 229-233, 2002. [4] a. h. isfahani and s. sadeghi, "design of a permanent magnet synchronous machine for the hybrid electric vehicle," world academy of science, engineering and technology, vol. 45, pp. 566-570, 2008. [5] d. martinez, design of a permanent-magnet synchronous machine with non-overlapping concentrated windings for the shell eco marathon urban prototype, 2012. [6] w. chlebosz, g. ombach and j. junak, "comparison of permanent magnet brushless motor with outer and inner rotor used in e-bike," in the xix international conference on electrical machines-icem 2010, 2010. [7] k.-s. kim, s.-h. lee, h.-r. cha, k.-s. lee and s.-j. park, "design and analysis of outer rotor type ipmsm for an electric bicycle," in intelec 2009-31st international telecommunications energy conference, 2009. [8] a. g. jack, b. c. mecrow and c. p. maddison, "combined radial and axial permanent magnet motors using soft magnetic composites," 1999. [9] j. m. seo, s. h. rhyu, i. s. jung and h. k. jung, "a design of multi flux permanent-magnet machine for electric bicycles," in 2015 9th international conference on power electronics and ecce asia (icpe-ecce asia), 2015. [10] c. liu, c. h. t. lee and m. chen, "comparison of outer-rotor permanent magnet machines for in-wheel drives," in 2013 ieee international symposium on industrial electronics, 2013. [11] j. li, q. wang, j. yu and j. xiong, "field-weakening control algorithm for interior permanent magnet synchronous motor based on space-vector modulation technique," journal of convergence information technology, vol. 8, pp. 1-9, 2013. [12] m. s. mohd and m. n. karsiti, "effect of phase advance on the brushless dc motor torque speed respond," in iop conference series: materials science and engineering, 2015. [13] x. liu, h. chen, j. zhao and a. belahcen, "research on the performances and parameters of interior pmsm used for electric vehicles," ieee transactions on industrial electronics, vol. 63, pp. 3533-3545, 2016. 1. introduction [1] s. b. bhat, s. p. nikam and b. g. fernandes, "design and analysis of ferrite based permanent magnet motor for electric assist bicycle," in 2014 international conference on electrical machines (icem), 2014. [2] j. lin, n. schofield and a. emadi, "external-rotor 6-10 switched reluctance motor for an electric bicycle," ieee transactions on transportation electrification, vol. 1, pp. 348-356, 2015. [3] t. f. chan, l.-t. yan and s.-y. fang, "in-wheel permanent-magnet brushless dc motor drive for an electric bicycle," ieee transactions on energy conversion, vol. 17, pp. 229-233, 2002. [4] a. h. isfahani and s. sadeghi, "design of a permanent magnet synchronous machine for the hybrid electric vehicle," world academy of science, engineering and technology, vol. 45, pp. 566-570, 2008. [5] d. martinez, design of a permanent-magnet synchronous machine with non-overlapping concentrated windings for the shell eco marathon urban prototype, 2012. [6] w. chlebosz, g. ombach and j. junak, "comparison of permanent magnet brushless motor with outer and inner rotor used in e-bike," in the xix international conference on electrical machines-icem 2010, 2010. [7] k.-s. kim, s.-h. lee, h.-r. cha, k.-s. lee and s.-j. park, "design and analysis of outer rotor type ipmsm for an electric bicycle," in intelec 2009-31st international telecommunications energy conference, 2009. [8] a. g. jack, b. c. mecrow and c. p. maddison, "combined radial and axial permanent magnet motors using soft magnetic composites," 1999. [9] j. m. seo, s. h. rhyu, i. s. jung and h. k. jung, "a design of multi flux permanent-magnet machine for electric bicycles," in 2015 9th international conference on power electronics and ecce asia (icpe-ecce asia), 2015. [10] c. liu, c. h. t. lee and m. chen, "comparison of outer-rotor permanent magnet machines for in-wheel drives," in 2013 ieee international symposium on industrial electronics, 2013. [11] j. li, q. wang, j. yu and j. xiong, "field-weakening control algorithm for interior permanent magnet synchronous motor based on space-vector modulation technique," journal of convergence information technology, vol. 8, pp. 1-9, 2013. [12] m. s. mohd and m. n. karsiti, "effect of phase advance on the brushless dc motor torque speed respond," in iop conference series: materials science and engineering, 2015. [13] x. liu, h. chen, j. zhao and a. belahcen, "research on the performances and parameters of interior pmsm used for electric vehicles," ieee transactions on industrial electronics, vol. 63, pp. 3533-3545, 2016.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq investigation of enterotoxigenic coagulase-negative staphylococci isolated from local and imported dairy products; a microbiological study niyaz sirwan ali huner hiwa arif food science and quality control biology department halabja technical college of applied science college of science sulaimani polytechnic university university of sulaimanyah sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq neeaz.sirwan.ali@spu.edu.iq huner.arif@univsul.edu.iq article info abstract volume 5 issue 2 december 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.2.8 article history: received: 17 nov 2020 accepted: 02 dec 2020 coagulase negative staphylococci (cns) have been recorded as a conveying vector for virulence genes and have been implicated in some cases of food poisoning. research interest in cns has increased over the past decade following their implication in infections in animals and humans. this study was aimed to detect cns isolated from 150 dairy products (yoghurt, several types of cheese, lork, and serezh) in sulaimani and halabja governorate. thirteen isolates out of 150 samples were identified as cns using the vitek® 2 system as an identification method. results revealed that the most common isolates species including staphylococcus saprophyticus, staphylococcus sciuri and staphylococcus xylosus each species have been identified in 3 samples separately (23%), followed by staphylococcus vitulinus was in 2 samples (15%), staphylococcus equorum found in 1 sample (8%), and staphylococcus gallinarum also was in one sample (8%). the isolated cns did not have enterotoxins type a to e according to ridascreen kit test. studying the growth limits of s. saprophyticus and s. vitulinus results showed that s. saprophyticus grew better at ph levels (5,6,7) at (25℃,37℃) and low nacl concentration (5%), while low bacterial activity was observed at ph 4 at all temperatures and nacl concentrations and also at 4℃ at all ph and nacl levels. s. vitulinus behaviour was almost the same as s. saprophyticus but, s. vitulinus was able to tolerate different nacl concentrations and overall had higher bacterial activity in all parameter’s interactions than s. saprophyticus. investigating the effect of acetic acid and lactic acid on the growth of previous species where studied, s. saprophyticus grew better in different concentrations of l.a but keywords: coagulase-negative staphylococci, dairy products, ph, temperature, nacl, acetic acid, lactic acid. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 83 s. vitulinus showed more activity than s. saprophyticus in a.a and the growth of both species inhibited at 0.4% of l.a at the first 24 hours of incubation. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1 introduction the coagulase-negative staphylococci group consists of more than 50 different species and subspecies with approximately a dozen generally found in the milk of dairy cows [1, 2]. coagulase-negative staphylococci (cns) are a group of opportunistic pathogens, that are not only found in humans and animals but also widely spread in the environment, such as water, soil, air, and dust [3]. cns had little interest to scientists because it was considered non-pathogenic members of the genus, but research interest in cns has increased over the past decade following their implication in infections in animals and humans [4]. due to the formation of staphylococcal enterotoxins (ses) in foods staphylococcal food poisoning (sfp) become one of the most common food-borne diseases worldwide [5]. dairy products were well-known vehicles of staphylococcal poisoning, with raw milk and cheese being linked to outbreaks [6]. food contamination is a major problem in all societies. it can occur at any point in the course of food production, transport, storage, or preparation [7]. contaminated food with staphylococci due to improper handling and storage of food can be the reason behind staphylococcal food poisoning (sfp) [8]. epidemiological studies showed that dairy products can be contaminated with cns by using unpasteurized raw milk and also during manufacturing practices by workers. a case study of food poisoning outbreaks linked cns strains with contaminated unpasteurized milk [9]. although enterotoxins are produced mainly by cps, there has been interest in some cns involved in different infections of humans and animals [10]. few is known about cns growth in foods. in the past, cns strains were rarely involved in food poisoning since they do not rapidly grow in foods. however, since humans are common carriers of these microorganisms cns can contaminate foods and some can be associated with specific infections in humans [11]. coagulase-negative staphylococci group is frequently considered as a positive food biota; therefore, it’s generally applied in industry. cns are widely used as an ingredient of cheese and meat starter culture because of their positive impact on sensory characteristic and fermentation processes of products [12, 13]. cns are part of the microbiota of traditional cheeses, particularly smear soft cheese or surface mould soft cheeses, semi-hard and hard cheeses [14-16]. this study aims to determine the rate of contamination in a range of local traditional and imported (commercial) dairy products by staphylococci. to determine the rate and types of enterotoxins production by coagulase-negative staphylococci isolated from local traditional and imported dairy products. also, to evaluate the inhibitory effects of ph, sodium chloride, temperature and preservatives such as (acetic acid and lactic acid) on coagulase-negative isolates. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 84 2 methods and materials 2.1 sampling a total of (150) dairy product samples including yoghurt, cheese, serezh (a kurdish traditional product made from buttermilk), and lork (a product similar to local kurdish cheese made from bovine colostrum) were collected from sulaimani and halabja governorates (located in the kurdistan regional government of iraq) from retail sale sites along with hypermarkets during november 2018 to january 2019. from these number of samples 68 samples were yoghurt of which 44 samples were from local shops, 6 samples from local factories and the rest of 18 samples were imported samples, 63 samples consisted of different type of cheese; 26 traditional handmade, 4 made by local factories and 33 imported samples. the number of serezh and lork were 12 and 7 respectively. 2.2 isolation and identification of cns all samples (5 g of each sample mixed with 45 ml peptone water) were homogenized in sterile blender cheese, serezh and lork required the use of 2% sodium citrate[17] to disperse the samples. the count of and isolation of presumptive staphylococci were conducted by plating tenfold serial dilutions (10-1 to 10-8 for local samples and 10-1 to 10-3 for imported samples) on nutrient agar and mannitol salt agar for 2448 hrs of incubation at 37 ℃ in three replicates as the total samples 100×8×3 local and 50×3×3 imported. the selected colonies were purified by streaking on mannitol salt agar and sheep blood agar. all isolates were preliminarily tested for their morphology, gram staining, mannitol fermentation, haemolysin production, catalase production, coagulase enzyme production using the traditional method [18], the isolates were further confirmed by vitek® 2 compact system. 2.3 detection of coa gene for further confirmation, all staphylococcus isolates were used for molecular testing using the pcr technique which was selected by the detection of the coa gene. the primers that were used (f 5′-ata gag atg ctg gta cag g-3′), (r 5′-gct tcc gat tgt tcg atg c3′). the polymerase chain reaction was done in a final volume of (25 𝜇𝜇l) in a thermal cycler. each reaction contained (5 𝜇𝜇l) of dna, (1𝜇𝜇l) of forward and reverse primer, and (13 𝜇𝜇l) of (2 x) amplicon master mixes. then the nuclease-free water was used to adjust the volume of this mix too (25 𝜇𝜇l). the pcr cycles consisted of preheating at 94°c for 45 sec, denaturation at 94°c for 20 sec, annealing at 57°c for 15 sec, and extension at 70°c for 15 sec. the amplification was performed for 30 cycles with a final extension step at 72°c for 2 min [19]. 2.4 detection of enterotoxins all of the isolates were subjected to a procedure that enhances in vitro enterotoxin production using brain heart infusion agar supplemented with phenol red. after 24 hrs of incubation at 37 ℃ the required growth to induce the production of enterotoxin in which indicated by the change of the medium’s colour from yellow to red-violet (ph 8.2) [20]. for accurate results sandwich enzyme immunoassay ridascreen® set a, b, c, d, e kit (r-bio farm, germany) was used for determining the presence of staphylococcal enterotoxins according to the manufacture's protocol. 2.5 survival of staphylococcus saprophyticus and staphylococcus vitulinus to evaluate the effects of different levels of sodium chloride concentration (nacl), ph, and temperature on the growth of s. saprophyticus and s. vitulinus, the experiment was arranged in a factorial design in bhib and cultured on bhi agar. this design included four levels of ph (4, 5, 6, and 7) adjusted by hcl which each level of ph applied in six levels of nacl (0, 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25%) and three storage temperatures (4, 25 and 37°c) for (24 hrs). in each temperature level, two blanks without ph justification was applied as for each designated ph level, a set of 42 tubes were considered for a combination of different incubation temperatures kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 85 and nacl concentrations. each set of tubes inoculated with one of the two species of staphylococcus isolates to reach the known bacterial concentration/ml (0.1 ml of mcfarland 1 for each tube) and each set of tubes was incubated in different temperatures for (24 hrs). after incubation, the cultures were serially diluted and inoculated on sterile bhi agar using the spreading method, and the plates were incubated at (37℃) for (24 hrs). the number of colonies was counted and calculated as cfu/ml [21]. 2.6 the sensitivity of staphylococcus saprophyticus and staphylococcus vitulinus to different food additives two sets of flasks were prepared, each consisted of twelve (250 ml size) conical flasks containing (100 ml) bhi broth with different concentration of lactic acid and acetic acid (0, 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 and 0.4%) v/v. each set of flasks inoculated with one of the two cns species and all incubated at (37℃) for 3 days. the first day of incubation (24 hours) the cultures were serially diluted and inoculated on sterile bhia and incubated at (37℃) for (24 hrs) and the same procedure was repeated for the second day (48 hours), and the third day (72 hours) of incubation. the numbers of colonies were counted for each day and the results were calculated as cfu/ml [22]. 3 results and discussion 3.1 enumeration of bacterial numbers bacterial growth was observed on cultured nutrient agar in (81samples; 54%), out of 150 samples while (69 samples; 46%) showed no growth on n.a. table (1) shows the bacterial counting range on nutrient agar in different samples. table 1: bacterial counting on nutrient agar medium origin type of sample growth range cfu g-1 local handmade yoghurt 3.0 ×103 1.1×1010 white soft cheese 4.8×104 8.0×109 block cheese 1.8×108 6.4×109 pesta cheese 5.0×105 1.9×107 cheese (high fat) 7.0×104 1.1×109 serezh 9.6×104 7.6×109 lork 1.1×106 6.0×109 local factories white cheese 1.5×107 imported yoghurt 1.0×106 spreadable cheese 8.0×104 hard cheese 1.6×104 3.6×105 in a study conducted in al-diwaniya/iraq to determine contamination levels in local and imported milk and its derivatives samples where 54 of (milk, cream, cheese, and yoghurt) samples were collected from markets. their results showed that total bacterial count in local yoghurt was between (37×107 to 15×108 cfu g-1) comparing with the current study which only (2 samples; 5.7%) of yoghurt had the total count above their reported range. in disagreement with this study, they found that total bacterial count in imported iranian yoghurt samples was (62×108 cfu g-1), while there was no bacterial growth in iranian yoghurt samples in this study and for their tested cheese samples the level of the bacterial count of local cow and buffalo cheese was between (213×109 78×1011 cfu g-1) was a little higher compared to this study [23]. in another study where they examined samples of tilsit cheese and they found the total bacterial cell counts ranged between (3 × 1073.4 × l08 cfu/cm3) of analyzed cheese which is comparable with the results of current study[24]. [25] found that values of total viable counts (tvc) in slovak cheeses samples after opening ranged from (1.68 × 103 cfu.g-1 to kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 86 2.91 × 103 cfu.g-1) which is considerably lower than the average of total bacterial count (1.2×109 cfu g-1) of cheese samples in the current study. staphylococci growth on msa was only observed in a different type of cheese, serezh, and lork, unlike yoghurt samples which showed no growth on msa this result could be caused by the acidity of yoghurt heat treatment during production and the salt added in yoghurt. it has been reported that yoghurt had the least attention among dairy products because of its milk pasteurization and high acidity which are effective barriers to the growth of pathogens [26] and imported samples also were not contaminated with staphylococci. staphylococci growth indicated in (30 samples; 20%) out of 150 samples and staphylococcal count range as shown in table (2). table 2: staphylococcal count on msa origin type of sample staphylococcal count on msa local handmade white soft cheese 7.2×103 2.9×106 block cheese 5.4×104 1.8×106 pesta cheese 3.1×105 5.7×106 cheese (high fat) 2.2×104 5.8×104 serezh 1.4×106 lork 2.2×104 4.4×105 local factories white cheese 7.8×103 only (13 samples; 43.3%) out of 30 were able to ferment mannitol (10 samples; 76.9%) out of that 13 samples were originated from local traditional handmade cheese that includes (pesta cheese (salted ripened), and white soft cheese (salik), and (2 samples; 15.3%) were lork and 1 sample (7.6%) was serezh and these samples were chosen for further investigations. according to [27] staphylococci, cell count in 3 samples of raw goat’s milk cheese on msa was variable from (104-105 cfu g-1). i similar study their results showed (102-105 cfu g-1) of viable cell count of staphylococci in different european raw milk cheeses [28] the results of the two previous studies were near to the current study with an average of staphylococcal count in cheese samples (7.88×105 cfu g-1). there are limited studies on the cns isolated from foods in spite of being very common in food, especially dairy products. in another study [29] f where they tested 90 samples of dairy products for the presence of cns, found that out of 60 sample of soft cheese and processed cheese only (19 samples 31.6 %) were contaminated with cns, with a slight different with the current study in which 22 samples out of 63 cheese samples (34.9%) were contaminated with staphylococci. however, in disagreement with the current study where there was no growth indicated in yoghurt samples their results showed that 5 samples of yoghurt out of 30 samples 16%, were contaminated with cns. also, [30] detected that out of 200 sample of cottage cheese only (44 samples 22%) were contaminated with staphylococci which is lower than the amount of staphylococci contamination in our study (34.9%), and biochemical results found that (19 samples; 9.5%) were contaminated with cns. but in disagreement with current study where no staphylococcal growth was indicated in yoghurt samples their results showed out of 200 yoghurt samples (13 samples; 6.5%) were contaminated with staphylococci and biochemical characterization results showed that only (4 samples; 2%) were contaminated with cns. in another study by [31] conducted in turkey showed that out of 40 sample of goat cheese (23 samples; 57.5%) contaminated with cns which is higher than the current study, and in agreement with this study, all 20 samples of salted yoghurt found free of cns. the reason for the different ratio of contamination may be the difference between the cheese types manufactured by different production procedures and cheeses manufactured from milk obtained from animals in different species such as cow, goat and sheep. 3.2 cns species identification gram-positive cocci, mannitol fermenters, catalase-positive, and coagulase-negative isolates and pcr results also showed that none of the isolates owns coa. gene as shown in figure 1. the results of vitek® 2 compact system as shown in table (3). kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 87 table 3: identified staphylococcal isolates using vitek® 2 compact species type of sample staphylococcus saprophyticus pesta cheese block cheese lork staphylococcus xylosus 2 samples of white soft cheese lork staphylococcus sciuri 2 samples of block cheese serezh staphylococcus vitulinus 2 samples of white soft cheese staphylococcus gallinarum white soft cheese staphylococcus equorum pesta cheese figure 1: uniplex pcr products on agarose gel electrophoresis for the detection of coa. gene. l: 100 bp dna ladder; lane p.c: positive control (s. aureus atcc 6538); lanes 1 to13: isolates [32] used vitek® 2 system for identifying cns species isolated from 72 samples of different type of cheese in turkey reporting that only 17 samples 23.6% were cns, where 6 (35.3%) staphylococcus saprophyticus, 3 (17.6%) staphylococcus epidermidis, 2 (11.8%) staphylococcus haemolyticus, 2 (11.8%) staphylococcus hominis, 1 (5.9%) staphylococcus warneri, 1 (5.9%) staphylococcus xylosus, 1 (5.9%) staphylococcus vitulinus, and 1 (5.9%) staphylococcus lentus. their results compared to the current study showed that some of the kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 88 isolated species were not detected in our tested samples while other species were the same as current study such as s. saprophyticus, s. vitulinus and s. xylosus but in a higher rate. another study reported that out of 40 samples of goat cheese 48 of cns strains were isolated. the most dominant species in cheese were s. saprophyticus (29 strains 60.4%), s. xylosus (6 strains; 12.5%), and it was followed by s. haemolyticus (4 strains, 8.3%), s. equorum (3 strains; 6.3%) s. capare (2 strains; 4.2%), s. carnosus (2 strains; 4.2%), s. sciuri (1 strain; 2.1%) and s. simulans (1 strain; 2.1%). their results showed that 4 cns species were the same as the current study but in a higher range [31]. these differences in the results can be due to the samples with different sources of contamination, animal species, and applied measures of milking and production hygiene. 3.3 detection of staphylococcal enterotoxin the results of culturing method showed that the isolates were identified as nonenterotoxigenic staphylococci and did not change the color of the bhia medium supplemented with phenol red from yellow to red-violet. on the other hand, using ridascreen® set a, b, c, d, e for detecting cns enterotoxins where the detection limit of the test was 0.25 ng ml-1. the absorbance value for positive controls for all samples was greater than (1.0) and the mean absorbance value for negative controls was less than (0.2) which implies that the test was performed correctly. for the entire samples, the absorbance value for all enterotoxins (a to e) was smaller than the threshold value (mean value of negative controls + 0.15) which indicates no one of samples had enterotoxins type a to e in the defined detection limits for this special kit. the overall result of enterotoxin indicated that those dairy products available in our market could be accounted for as safe and with no enterotoxigenic bacteria. in a study conducted in south-eastern brazil, 10 cns strains were isolated from 6 minas frescal cheese, and the most dominant strains isolated were s. saprophyticus (40%), s. xylosus (30%), s. sciuri (20%), and s. piscifermentans (10%). by using ridascreen® set a, b, c, d, e for detecting cns enterotoxins, in disagreement with current study which there was no enterotoxin detected, their results showed that out of 10 cns strains 9 strains were able to produce sea, seb, sec, sed, and see in concentrations ranging from 0.12 to 1.8 ng/ml and in-line with current study one strain of s. saprophyticus did not produce sea to see enterotoxins using this essay [33]. in another study conducted in turkey where they tested 40 samples of non-ripened white cheese where they isolated 48 cns strains consisted of s. saprophyticus, s. xylosus, s. haemolyticus, s. equorum, s. caprae, s. carnosus, s. sciuri, and s. simulans. this study showed a little diversity to the current study with only one cns strain of s. sciuri isolated from one cheese sample was able to produce enterotoxin b and the other strains were non-producers [31]. in agreement with this study [34] found that none of the cns isolates from 121 different foodstuffs including goats’ cheeses produced enterotoxins. [35] found that out of 129 cns strains isolated from several types of cheese and dry fermented sausages only one strain of s. saprophyticus carried a sec gene, where the others did not have any of the classical encoding genes (i.e. sea to see). similarly, to current study, enterotoxin genes were not detected in 87 cns strains isolated from dairy products and meat [36]. the differences in these results may be due to the ability of cns to produce se or different sources of the samples from which cns strains were isolated or such difference between studies can be because of a bias in the cns strains studied, as well as the nature, the number and geographical origin of isolates. 3.4 growth limits of staphylococcus saprophyticus and staphylococcus vitulinus as a function of ph, temperature, and sodium chloride (nacl) concentration ph staphylococcus saprophyticus were isolated from pesta cheese and staphylococcus vitulinus from white soft cheese (salik), due to the high consumption of these two types of cheese they were selected for this experiment. most of the parameters had a significant effect on the growth of s. saprophyticus referred to as (b1) and s. vitulinus as (b2). the effect of ph kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 89 individually (ranged 4, 5, 6, and 7) at (37℃) for 24-hour incubation with (zero%) nacl was performed on b1 and b2 which the ph was adjusted using hcl. as shown in figure (2) no growth occurred in ph 4 for b1 and b2. the average bacterial growth for both species b1 and b2 showed a slow increase for ph 5 (3.9×106 and 1.2×105 cfu ml-1 for b1 and b2, respectively) and then more enhanced in ph 6 (2.1×107 and 6.5×106 and cfu ml-1 for b2 and b1, respectively). the ph 7 showed the highest growth for both species with significant increasing (1.3×108 and 1.5×108 cfu ml-1 for b1 and b2, respectively). there was no significant difference observed among the effect of ph 4 and ph 5 (p = 0.58) however, a significant difference was seen between ph 5 and ph 6 (p< 0.05) and also ph 7 was considerably higher and significantly different with all other phs (p<0.001). also, the differences between the growth amount for both b1 and b2 were significant (p<0.05). in agreement with this study [37] studied the effect of different ph acidic, neutral, and alkaline on s. saprophyticus and found that acidic situation affects the protein related to iron storage in these bacteria when exposed in ph 5.5 and also cause down-regulation of some other enzymes whilst this issue was not found in neutral and alkaline ph. figure 1: effect of ph individually on s. saprophyticus and s. vitulinus nacl different concentration of nacl was used (0, 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25%) for both bacteria b1 and b2 at ph 7 with incubation temperature (37℃) for 24 hours. as indicated in the figure (3) bacterial growth in both strains at (zero%) nacl was high and gradually started to decrease with an enhancement of nacl concentration. the highest growth point (between treatments) for both bacteria was at (5%) nacl with an average of (7.05×107 cfu ml-1) for b1 and (9.93×107 cfu ml-1) for b2 and the lowest bacterial growth was at (25%) nacl with an average of (3.82×105 cfu ml-1) and (1.09×105 cfu ml-1) for b1 and b2 respectively. the difference between bacterial growth at the different nacl concentration was statistically significant (p< 0.01) except (15%) and (20%) nacl (p = 0.872), 15%, 25% nacl (p= 0.878), and 25% and 20% nacl (p = 0.994) which there was no significant difference. furthermore, there was a significant difference between the growth of both bacteria species (p< 0.01). kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 90 figure 2: effect of nacl individually on s. saprophyticus and s. vitulinus temperature for the effect of refrigerator temperature 4℃ and incubation temperature at 25℃ on the growth of b1 and b2 as shown in figure (4) were nearly the same with an average of (2.13×105 cfu ml-1) and (1.23×108 cfu ml-1) for b1 at 4℃ and 25℃ respectively. while the average of b2 growth during the incubation period was (6.47×105 cfu ml-1 at 4℃ and 1.24×108 at 25℃). at 37℃ temperature had a different effect on both bacteria. slightly rose was observed in the growth of b1 with an average of (1.30×108 cfu ml-1) but, b2 had the highest growth at (37℃) with an average (1.52×108 cfu ml-1). there was no significant difference between b1 and b2 (p> 0.088). although, there was a significant difference between all three temperatures 4℃, 25℃, and 37℃ (p < 0.0001). in another study [38] carry out the influence of different temperature (23, 30 and 37℃) on different coagulase-negative bacterial community which is important in the fermented meat industry. they found that in each temperature different kind of cns bacterial community are predominant for example in temperature (23℃) s.xylusus is predominant whilst in elevated temperature s. epidermidis had optimum growth. in compare with our study s.vitulinus had better growth in lower temperature (4 ℃) than s. saprophyticus and with a slight difference, s. vitulinus showed an increased population in higher temperature ( 25 and 37℃) rather than s. saprophyticus. [39] investigated the behaviour of s. lugdunensis, s. aureus, and s. epidermidis, when exposed for a long time to low temperature (4 ℃), and how this factor affected amino acid composition, colony morphology, and cellular ultrastructure. the three staphylococci when it was exposed to low-temperature stress caused the formation of increasing proportions of small colony variant (scv) phenotypes. their results showed that scv cells had significantly more diffuse and thicker cell-walls than their corresponding samples for s. aureus and s. epidermidis, however for s. lugdunensis the changes were not significant. the data revealed that the staphylococci responded by transforming into scv populations during extended periods of cold-stress treatment. the observed amino acid and ultra-structural changes were suggested to represent response mechanisms for staphylococcal survival species until favourable conditions arise again. this could be a mechanism that why the population of s. saprophyticus and s. vitulinus were decreasing during cold temperature stress however the above study shows that this process kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 91 could be a response to survive and probably temporary and cold stress is the factor to control the bacterial population until the situation would be favourable to grow again. figure 3: effect of temperature individually on s. saprophyticus and s. vitulinus interactions ph and temperature the first interaction is between different levels of ph (4,5,6, and 7) with three temperature levels (4℃,25℃, and 37℃) and their effect on the growth of s. saprophyticus (b1) as shown in figure (5 a) and s. vitulinus (b2) in figure (5 b) which statistical analysis shows interaction was significant (p< 0.01). the lowest bacterial growth was at ph 4 at 37 ℃ for both bacteria the mean for b1 was (5.15×104 cfu ml-1) and b2 no growth was indicated at ph 4 at 37 ℃. this implies that b1 is more tolerable to the acidic situation rather than. with increasing the ph value bacterial growth in ph 5 and ph 6 was slightly increased but in ph 7 the bacterial population dramatically enhanced in both bacteria. the growth rate of bacteria under temperature (4℃) treatment remained steady with a slight change in growth in b1 and b2. this shows that temperature is the factor that could control growth. the highest growth for both bacteria was in ph 7 at temperature 37 ℃ and the mean for b1 and b2 was (3.47×107 cfu ml1) and (4.77×107 cfu ml-1) respectively. there was a significant difference among all ph interaction (p<0.01) except between (ph 5) and (ph 4) with no significant difference b1 (p=0.176) and b2 (p=0.528). as well as all interactions between temperature had a significant effect on both species (p<0.01). as it can be seen in the figure (5 a and 5 b the general trends are correct for b2 but statistically the difference of bacterial growth in ph (4,5 and 6) was significant (p<0.01) except (ph 7) which the differences in b1 and b2 was not significant (p = 0.173). figure (5 a and 5 b) shows that the only ph that bacteria could grow in an optimum rather than other ph was (ph 7) and in all three temperatures, the other three-level of ph had lower bacterial growth. these two figures can clearly show the interaction of both two factors on each other. overall, despite the temperature ph 4 had the lowest bacterial growth and ph 7 had the highest growth in both bacteria. however, s. vitulinus (b2) can tolerate different levels of ph and temperature more than s. saprophyticus (b1). kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 92 figure 4: effect of interactions between ph and temperature on s. saprophyticus (a), s. vitulinus (b nacl and temperature the effect of various salt concentrations (0, 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25%) at various temperature (4℃, 25℃, and 37℃) on the growth of s. saprophyticus (b1) figure (6 a) and s. vitulinus (b2) in figure (6 b) has been shown. the bacterial growth started at its peak with the highest growth in both bacteria at temperature (37℃) with no nacl added. bacterial activity gradually decreased starting with (5%) to (25%) nacl which had the least bacterial growth. also, figures show that the activity of bacteria starts to significantly decrease from (10%) salt for b1 and (15%) salt for b2 and almost remained steady in (20 and 25%) nacl in both bacteria. while the lowest growth for b1 was (1.45×105 cfu ml-1) at temperature (4 ℃) with nacl (25%) and b2 was at temperature 37 ℃ with 25% nacl (5.94×104 cfu ml-1). among all temperatures (4 ℃) mostly affected in case of bacterial growth for both bacteria in different nacl concentrations and no significant difference was indicated. significant difference appeared between other nacl concentration except for (10% 15%), (15% 20%), (15% 25%), and (20% 25%) in b1 and (15% 20%), and (20% 25%) for b2. the highest bacterial growth can be achieved in no nacl addition and lowest temperature as bacterial growth in temperature (37℃) particularly in b2 is relatively high even in nacl (15%) treatment. from this, it can be concluded that lower temperatures are more effective for bacterial prevention rather than nacl addition but to reach the minimum bacterial growth occurred in less temperature and nacl addition. figure 5: effect of interactions between nacl and temperature on s. saprophyticus (a), s. vitulinus (b) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 93 nacl and ph the interaction between different concentrations of nacl (0, 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25%) in four levels of ph (4,5,6 and 7) and their effect on the bacterial population has shown for s. saprophyticus (b1) in figure (7 a) and s. vitulinus (b2) in figure (7 b). bacterial growth for b1 was at its highest in ph 7 where the mean was (8.43×107 cfu ml-1) and for b2 was (9.22×107 cfu ml-1) without nacl addition. adding nacl starting with (5%) the activity of bacteria started to drop down to (3.02×107 cfu ml-1) and (4.22×107 cfu ml-1) for b1 and b2 at ph 7, respectively. bacterial growth gradually started to decline with increasing nacl concentration and the growth was almost steady at (10, 15, 20 and 25%) nacl for b1 while bacterial activity in b2 appeared to be approximately stable at (15, 20 and 25%) nacl. the lowest growth for b1 and b2 was at (ph 4) with (25%) nacl with the mean (3.63×104 and 3.70×104), respectively. overall, bacterial growth in both strains was higher in (ph 7) with low nacl concentrations and ph 4 and ph 5 had the lowest growth in all nacl concentration for both bacteria b1 and b2 however, from ph 6 b2 has started to increase gradually but for b1 still limitation effect of ph 6 can be observed in figure (7). this again depends on the different behavior of b1 and b2 and a more tolerable level of b2 rather than b1. in addition, [40] fulfilled experiment studying the effect of ph, temperature, glucose, and nacl on the growth of 12 different staphylococcus strains in meat and sausage industry. the results showed with increasing temperature and ph from (10 to 26 ℃) and (4.6 to 6) respectively will increase the growth for all strains while increasing nacl from (5 to 15%) decreases the growth but, the effect of temperature and ph was much stronger than nacl. the results also showed that bacterial growth after 30 hours and 48 hours were similar. also, they reported that a high concentration of nacl has considerable negative effect at high temperature than lower temperature. the same was seen for interaction between ph and nacl similarly to the results of this study showed increasing in growth at higher temperature and ph but, bacterial growth decreased at high nacl concentrations. also, general growth was lower when interactions of ph and temperature or nacl and temperature were carried out whilst when interactions of nacl and ph was conducted the overall growth was higher. this can show that for the 2 strains temperature had a predominant effect on bacterial growth than other factors. however, in agreement with the study of (729-2) our results show that negative effect of nacl was greater in elevated ph (7) and temperature (37℃) from (45 cfu ml -1 to zero). according to mauriello, et al. [41] all strains s. saprophyticus, s. xylosus and s. equorum, grew at 10, 15 and 20 ℃, in the presence of 10% and 15% of nacl and at ph 5.0 and 5.5. the results showed that a wide range of staphylococcal starter cultures adaptable to various sausage manufacture practice and technological conditions. figure 6: effect of interactions between nacl and ph on s. saprophyticus (a), s. vitulinus (b) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 94 3.5 effect of acetic acid (a.a) and lactic acid (l.a) on s. saprophyticus (b1) and s. vitulinus (b2) growth acid and time the highest growth in b1 was in lactic acid at (24 hrs) first incubation with mean (1.03×108 cfu ml-1) at the same time maximum bacterial growth in acetic acid at (24hrs) was (8.26×107 cfu ml-1) with the same incubation time as shown in figure (8 a and b). furthermore, s. vitulinus activity was at its peak in acetic acid at (48 hrs) unlike s. saprophyticus with an average of (8.74×107 cfu ml-1). one of the reasons for this could be that b2 had to tolerate to acetic acid at first and then be able to grow in the first (24 hrs) and decreasing from (48 hrs). s. vitulinus growth was at its highest in lactic acid at 24 hrs with a mean (8.04×107 cfu ml-1). the activity of b1 gradually started to drop in both a.a and l.a with expanding incubation period. the lowest growth for b1 in acetic acid and lactic acid was at an incubation time of (72 hrs) with an average (2.79×107 cfu ml-1) and (3.31×107 cfu ml-1), respectively. while b2 had its minimum growth in acetic acid with (24 hr) of incubation with a mean (2.69×107 cfu ml-1) and in lactic acid after (72 hr) of incubation with an average (2.77×107 cfu ml-1). this behavior for b2 was unexpected and it implies that b2 can tolerate and grow in acetic acid until (48 hr) and then gradually decreases slowly in a way that still the bacterial population is higher than 24h. there was a significant difference between lactic acid and acetic acid and between incubation time (p<0.0001) for both bacteria. significant difference was observed among different (a.a) and (l.a) concentration (p<0.0001) except between (0.3%, 0.4%) there was no significant difference with value (p=0.999) in b1 and (p=0.960) in b2. overall, s. saprophyticus activity in lactic acid was higher than acetic acid in all (24, 48, and 72hr) incubation time, unlike s. vitulinus that had better growth at acetic acid than lactic acid. figure 7: effect of interactions between acid and time on s. saprophyticus (b1) (a), s. vitulinus (b2) (b) acid and concentrations normal bacterial growth of both bacteria without adding acetic acid or lactic acid was around (2.10×108 cfu ml-1) for b1 and (2.08×108 cfu ml-1) for b2. with adding (0.05%) of a.a and l.a to both bacteria their activities started to decline continually as shown in figure (9 a and b) with (8.20×107 cfu ml-1) as the mean of the highest growth for b1 in the first concentration (0.05%) of acetic acid followed by (7.32×107 cfu ml-1) for lactic acid. as the same step was repeated for b2 and the maximum growth was in both acids with a slight difference with an average for lactic acid (9.63×107 cfu ml-1) and acetic acid (9.59×107 cfu ml-1). bacterial ability to increase started to fall gradually with rising the concentration of acids in both bacteria. there was no growth in acetic acid and lactic acid (0.4%) for b1. however, the minimum growth for b2 in acetic acid was (7.22×102 cfu ml-1) but there was no growth in (0.4%) lactic acid. this can imply that lactic acid has a higher ability of prevention rather than kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 95 acetic acid and also the same as other treatments b2 acts more tolerable in acetic acid rather than b1. figure 8 : effect of interactions between acid and time on s. saprophyticus (b1) (a), s. vitulinus (b2) (b) time and concentration bacterial activity in b1 without adding any acids at the first incubation time for (24 hrs) with an average (2.61×108 cfu ml-1) slowly decreased with increasing the acid concentration. but b2, unlike b1, had higher growth with longer incubation time rather than the first (24 hrs) with a mean (2.76×108 cfu ml-1) for (48 hrs) of incubation at (0%) of acids (figure 10 a and b). starting with (0.05%) of a.a and l.a bacterial activity in b1 decreased at first (24 hrs) and suddenly dropped to (4.40×107 cfu ml-1) after (48 hrs) of incubation. the population of b2 after adding (0.05%) of a.a and l.a began to decline slowly at first (24 hrs) with a mean around (1.1×108 cfu ml-1) but after (48 hrs) the activity of the bacteria fell to an average (9.80×107 cfu ml-1). with rising a.a and l.a concentration, the growth of b1 and b2 declined gradually with almost steady growth at (0.2%), and no growth was observed after (48 hrs) of incubation with (0.3%) of a.a and l.a in both species. as for (0.4%) of a.a, no growth was indicated for b2 after (48 hrs) of incubation. also, a concentration (0.2%) bacterial growth of b1 is more than b2 unlike the behavior of b2 which was more tolerable in all the treatments, however, b1 appears to have more ability to tolerate at that concentration but finally, the concentration of (0.3%) and (0.4%) as mentioned above had the ability to restrict the growth of both bacteria. the acidic ph within the cell results in damage and deformation to dna structure, proteins, and enzymatic activities, thereby damaging the extracellular membrane [42]. acetic acid and lactic acids are widely used sanitizers, and both are commonly recognized as safe [43]. also, it revealed that lactic acid is less effective than acetic acid [44]. a study concluded that cells that recovered after exposure to sanitizers, were subsequently more resistance to them [45]. this is because of widespread use of them in food as in the case of antibiotics which thought to induce evolutionary changes in bacteria that helps them to survive these materials [46]. [47] studies the ability of acetic acid to inhibit the growth of various types of pathogenic bacteria by using concentration of 40mm,50 mm and 70 mm. streptococcus agalactiae, e. coli, and s. aureus almost completely inhibited at 70 mm, although the growth of streptococcus pneumonia, proteus mirabilis, streptococcus mutans, and klebsiella pneumoniae were not inhibited by the same concentration. after 24 hours of incubation in the current study, we evaluate that 70 mm considered as the minimum inhibitory concentration. the result of our study showed a high similarity as the inhibitory concentration of acetic acid found (0.4 %) which is equal to 66 mm of this organic acid. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 96 figure 9: effect of interactions between acid concentrations and time on s. saprophyticus (b1) (a), s. vitulinus (b2) (b) 4 conclusion the contamination of dairy products with coagulase-negative staphylococci (mannitol fermenter) were detected in (8%) local products including cheese, lork and serezh and in (1%) of a cheese sample from local factories. coagulase-negative staphylococci was absent in yoghurt samples (local and local factories) and imported samples. local cheese samples were more contaminated than any other samples. a low rate and lowest range of bacterial growth (contamination) of local traditional handmade fermented dairy products by staphylococci mean high microbiological hygiene quality (hygienic processes) and this is important for consumer health and safety. detection of cns enterotoxigenicity using brain heart infusion agar supplemented with phenol red (ph 5.4) showed that all isolates were non-enterotoxin producers. using ridascreen® set a, b, c, d, e showed that none of the samples were enterotoxigenic. staphylococcus saprophyticus grew better at 37℃ and 25℃ in different ph especially (5,6 and 7) while ph 4 was more dominant than the other parameters on the growth of s. saprophyticus and lower bacterial activity was observed at it. better growth was indicated in 5% nacl while 20% and 25% nacl had lower growth. staphylococcus vitulinus had better activity in ph (6,7) at 37℃ and 25℃ with different nacl concentrations except for 20% and 25% where lower growth was observed. as s. saprophyticus ph 4 had the same effect on s. vitulinus. overall s. vitulinus had better bacterial activity in all parameters than s. saprophyticus. s. saprophyticus grew better in lactic acid while s. vitulinus had greater activity in acetic acid. lactic acid had more inhibitory effect than acetic acid on both bacteria. reference [1] b. e. gillespie, s. i. headrick, s. boonyayatra, and s. p. oliver, "prevalence and persistence of coagulasenegative staphylococcus species in three dairy research herds," vet microbiol, vol. 134, no. 1-2, pp. 65-72, feb 16 2009. [2] o. c. sampimon, h. w. barkema, i. m. berends, j. sol, and t. j. lam, "prevalence and herd-level risk factors for intramammary infection with coagulase-negative staphylococci in dutch dairy herds," vet microbiol, vol. 134, no. 1-2, pp. 37-44, feb 16 2009. [3] c. e. okoli, e. o. njoga, s. i. enem, e. e. godwin, j. a. nwanta, and k. f. chah, "prevalence, toxigenic potential and antimicrobial susceptibility profile of staphylococcus isolated from ready-to-eat meats," vet world, vol. 11, no. 9, pp. 1214-1221, sep 2018. [4] c. von eiff, g. peters, and c. heilmann, "pathogenesis of infections due to coagulasenegative staphylococci," the lancet infectious diseases, vol. 2, no. 11, pp. 677-685, 2002. [5] a. paparella, a. serio, c. rossi, g. mazzarrino, and c. chaves lópez, "food-borne transmission of staphylococci," pp. 71-94, 2018. 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[26] n. benkerroum, h. oubel, and w. e. sandine, "effect of nisin on yogurt starter, and on growth and survival of listeria monocytogenes during fermentation and storage of yogurt," internet journal of food safety v, vol. 1, pp. 1-5, 11/30 2002. [27] a. ruaro, c. andrighetto, s. torriani, and a. lombardi, "biodiversity and characterization of indigenous coagulase-negative staphylococci isolated from raw milk and cheese of north italy," food microbiol, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 106-11, may 2013. [28] v. perreten, n. giampà, u. schuler-schmid, and m. teuber, "antibiotic resistance genes in coagulasenegative staphylococci isolated from food," systematic and applied microbiology, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 113120, 1998. [29] m. a. el-zamkan, a. g. mubarak, and a. o. ali, "prevalence and phylogenetic relationship among methicillinand vancomycin-resistant staphylococci isolated from hospital's dairy food, food handlers, and patients," j adv vet anim res, vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 463-473, dec 2019. [30] s. argaw, m. addis, and h. degefu, "identification and antimicrobial resistance pattern of staphylococci isolated from cottage cheese (ayib) and yoghurt (ergo) in selected districts of jimma zone, ethiopia," health science journal, vol. 12, no. 1, 2018. [31] s. p. onen and o. aygun, "enterotoxin producing ability and antimicrobial susceptibility of coagulase negative staphylococci isolated from goat milk, cheese and salted yoghurt in turkey," international journal of scientific & technology research, vol. 6, no. 10, 2017. [32] c. kurekci, "short communication: prevalence, antimicrobial resistance, and resistant traits of coagulasenegative staphylococci isolated from cheese samples in turkey," j dairy sci, vol. 99, no. 4, pp. 26752679, apr 2016. [33] r. s. casaes nunes, c. pires de souza, k. s. pereira, e. m. del aguila, and v. m. flosi paschoalin, "identification and molecular phylogeny of coagulase-negative staphylococci isolates from minas frescal kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 98 cheese in southeastern brazil: superantigenic toxin production and antibiotic resistance," j dairy sci, vol. 99, no. 4, pp. 2641-2653, apr 2016. [34] j. p. rosec, j. p. guiraud, c. dalet, and n. richard, "enterotoxin production by staphylococci isolated from foods in france," international journal of food microbiology, vol. 35, 1997. [35] s. even et al., "low occurrence of safety hazards in coagulase negative staphylococci isolated from fermented foodstuffs," (in eng), international journal of food microbiology, vol. 139, no. 1-2, pp. 87-95, 2010/04// 2010. [36] blaiotta et al., "pcr detection of staphylococcal enterotoxin genes in staphylococcus spp. strains isolated from meat and dairy products. evidence for new variants of seg and sei in s. aureus ab-8802," j appl microbiol, vol. 97, no. 4, pp. 719-30, 2004. [37] b. s. v. souza et al., "the influence of ph on staphylococcus saprophyticus iron metabolism and the production of siderophores," microbes infect, vol. 21, no. 10, pp. 456-463, dec 2019. [38] d. a. stavropoulou, p. filippou, s. de smet, l. de vuyst, and f. leroy, "effect of temperature and ph on the community dynamics of coagulase-negative staphylococci during spontaneous meat fermentation in a model system," food microbiol, vol. 76, pp. 180-188, dec 2018. [39] l. a. onyango, r. h. dunstan, j. gottfries, c. von eiff, and t. k. roberts, "effect of low temperature on growth and ultra-structure of staphylococcus spp," plos one, vol. 7, no. 1, p. e29031, 2012. [40] a. k. søndergaard and l. h. stahnke, "growth and aroma production by staphylococcus xylosus, s. carnosus and s. equorum; a comparative study in model systems," international journal of food microbiology, vol. 75, pp. 99-109, 2002. [41] g. mauriello, a. casaburi, g. blaiotta, and f. villani, "isolation and technological properties of coagulase negative staphylococci from fermented sausages of southern italy," meat sci, vol. 67, no. 1, pp. 149-58, may 2004. [42] e. mani-lópez, h. s. garcía, and a. lópez-malo, "organic acids as antimicrobials to control salmonella in meat and poultry products," (in eng), food research international (ottawa, ont.), vol. 45, no. 2, pp. 713-721, 2012/03// 2012. [43] d. o. cliver, "microbial decontamination, food safety and antimicrobial interventions," 2007. [44] b. ray, fundamental food microbiology, 3rd ed. crc press, 2004. [45] p. j. bremer, g. c. fletcher, and c. osborne, "staphylococcus aureus," new zealand instit, 2004. [46] u. tsegmed, "staphylococci isolated from raw milk of yak and cattle in mongolia studies on the occurrence, characterization, detection of enterotoxin and antimicrobial susceptibility profile of the isolates.," m. sc., agricultural sciences, swedish university uppsala, 2005. [47] m. ewadh, h. hasan, i. bnyan, f. mousa, j. sultan, and m. ewadh, "antibacterial activity of 2(2hydroxy phenylimino) acetic acid," advances in life science and technology, vol. 7, 2013. 1 introduction 2 methods and materials 2.1 sampling 2.2 isolation and identification of cns 2.3 detection of coa gene 2.4 detection of enterotoxins 2.5 survival of staphylococcus saprophyticus and staphylococcus vitulinus 2.6 the sensitivity of staphylococcus saprophyticus and staphylococcus vitulinus to different food additives 3 results and discussion 3.1 enumeration of bacterial numbers 3.2 cns species identification 3.3 detection of staphylococcal enterotoxin 3.4 growth limits of staphylococcus saprophyticus and staphylococcus vitulinus as a function of ph, temperature, and sodium chloride (nacl) concentration ph 3.5 effect of acetic acid (a.a) and lactic acid (l.a) on s. saprophyticus (b1) and s. vitulinus (b2) growth 4 conclusion  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq experimental investigation on the effect of polyvinyl alcohol on cement fluid loss in oil wells mohammed jamal awl atta sheakh karim abdulla petroleum engineering department city planning engineering department faculty of engineering | koya university technical college of engineering technical college of engineering | sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university koya, iraq sulaimani, iraq mohammed.jamal@koyauniversity.org atta.karim@spu.edu.iq nabil adil tayeb petroleum and energy engineering department technical college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq nabil.talabani@spu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.1.9 article history: received: 12 april 2020 accepted: 26 may 2020 this study presents the effect of polyvinyl alcohol cement fluid loss additive (pva flac) on the api filtration property of a cement slurry. in cementing operations of oil wells, different type of fluid loss agents and chemicals are used based on the condition of the wells. pva flac recently introduced in kurdistan oil industry as loss agent additive to reduce the api filtration rate and fluid loss of the cement slurry. four cementing formulations with different concentration of pva flac additive prepared and their api filtration rates are measured. the results showed that when adding 1.94 gm, 2.91 gm and 3.88 gm of pva flac additive to the cement slurry, the api filtration rate reduced by %17, %29 and %42, respectively. the new concentration significantly reduced the rate of filtration when compared to using only 0.97 gm of pva flac additive. keywords: flac, pva, api filtration rate, slurry, cement, hpht filter press. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction cement is a material which used in oil and gas wells as well as in buildings and other constructions, it can cement materials together. it contains tricalcium silicate, dicalcium silicate, tricalcium aluminate and tetracalcium aluminoferrite. there are four types of cements mailto:mohammed.jamal@koyauniversity.org mailto:atta.karim@spu.edu.iq mailto:nabil.talabani@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 129 based on cement standards: first is natural cement, the origin of this type is argillaceous, clay and lime rocks, also it is cheap. second is pozzolanic cement, the origin of this type is volcanic ash which is composed of aluminum, lime, calcium and iron. third is slag cement, the origin of this type comes from a mixture of hydrated lime, aluminum silicate and calcium silicate. fourth is portland cement, the origin of this type is limestone, and it consists of a mix of iron, alumina, silica and lime, it was used in buildings since mid of 19th century in england. different forms of current portland cement are exist including fast setting and quick hardening which can be changed for white, colored and pozzolanic cement [1]. the process of oil and gas wells cementing include injecting cement slurry from surface and passing through the casing and up to the annulus between the casing and the open hole. any cement slurry consists of portland cement (cement class g, cement class h, etc), water and some additives, the amount and type of additives differ from an application to another application [2]. for designing cement slurry, the laboratory is required for testing slurry at wellbore condition. these tests explain the effect of various additives on the cement properties such as thickening time, compressive strength, density, api fluid lose and rheological properties. in addition all parameters help the engineer in cementing design [3]. dehydration of slurry occurred when water was released from the slurry, this process called filtration; also filtration rate can affect the setting of cement. the measurements in filtration test are volume of fluid loss in (ml), filtration rate in (ml/30sec) and thickness of solid deposited on filter paper in (in). to reduce filtration rate, fluid loss additives should be added to the slurry, the additives such as: anionic synthetic polymer, non-ionic synthetic polymer, cationic polymer and cellulose derivative [4]. recently polyvinyl alcohol is considered as the best type of cement fluid loss additive (flac) that is used by oil service companies including companies in kurdistan region. the objective of this study is to formulate four different slurry systems with different concentration of polyvinyl alcohol (pva)flac additive and measure the api filtration rate property for each slurry system and see the effect of the pva flac additive efficiency on this property of the slurry system. 2. literature review 2.1 previous study as explained in [5], which showed that the application of many additives for fluid lose control such as flac, also in most cases flac was observed to have noticeable effect on cement slurry. as demonstrated in [1], a mixture of nano particles with portland cement was studied, these nano particles can improve some properties of slurry such as fluid lose rate, density, thickening time and compressive strength. also shown that the effect of nano barite on the cement slurry property. in addition, this nano barite reduces fluid loss, plugs pores of cement slurry and increase the compressive strength of cement. because of barite had low cost and more availability, it is more used than other nano particles. according to [6], the role of fluid loss control additives for cement slurry properties in oil and gas industry are explained and highlighted. moreover, they explained that fluid loss control additives are not suitable for primary cementing job, because of high density of cement slurry and harmful for formation water invasion by fluid filtrate from the cement slurry. as demonstrated in [7], the reasons for creating fluid loss at the time of pumping cement slurry were studied. these reasons were high cement slurry density, having gas migration, cement slurry dehydration and failure job of cementing or squeeze cementing. furthermore, the researchers illustrated the dry surfactant such as naphthalene sulphonate formaldehyde condensate nsfc has been in use for cementing of oil and gas wells since 1960. today this type of dispersant most commonly used to reduce viscosity of cement slurry and it makes effect on cement fluid loss. another fluid loss control additive used in oil/gas wells is called acrylamide/acrylic acid copolymers [8]. in their study a relationship between temperature and fluid loss is concluded. with increasing temperature the amount of fluid loss is also increased. hence, under extreme condition (high temperature) more fluid loss control additive is needed for cementing jobs. as demonstrated in [9] cellulose or hydroxyl ethel cellulose (hec) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 130 studied as a fluid lose control additive. this additive is acceptable environmentally and it can work in high temperature up to 280 f. a detailed study [10] showed that the fluid loss control additives had not any effect on the fluid loss property of cement slurry after cementing operation, however it had effect on slurry before setting cement slurry, since cement after its initial setting point became hard enough to seas any unwanted flow of water from cement to the formation so no more fluid loss occurred. according to [11], during cementing operation, a thin filter cake had been created, this filter cake decrease the filtrate of cement slurry to the formations around the wellbore. the infiltration rate of around 100 ml/30 min is considered as high and not acceptable for cement job [12]. best case value for api fluid loss is in the range between 10 to 30 ml/30 min, and depends on geometry of the well, design of cementing, fluid loss properties of drilling fluid and overbalance pressure. 2.2 cement classes and functions there are eight specified classes of portland cement based on api standards that were used in oil well cementing operation: class a: it is type i cement in astm (american society for testing materials). it can be used in oil and gas wells to depth of 1830 m; this type does not have any special property. this class is ordinary sulphate resistance (osr), means that no tricalcium aluminate (c3a) restrictions. class b: it is type ii in astm, it can be used in oil and gas wells to depth of 1830 m; in addition. this class is moderate to high sulphate resistance (msr) to (hsr), means that contain %8 to %3 tricalcium aluminate (c3a) class c: it is type iii in astm, also in oil and gas wells can be used to depth of 1830 m; in addition. this class may be ordinary, moderate or high sulphate resistance (osr), (msr) and (hsr), means that it can contain %0, %8 or %3 tricalcium aluminate (c3a). class d: in oil and gas wells can be used from depth of 1830 m to 3050 m under high pressure and temperature. this class is moderate to high sulphate resistance (msr) to (hsr), means that contain %8 to %3 tricalcium aluminate (c3a). class e: in oil and gas wells can be used from depth of 3050 m to 4270 m under high pressure and temperature. this class is moderate to high sulphate resistance (msr) to (hsr), means that contain %8 to %3 tricalcium aluminate (c3a). class f: in oil and gas wells can be used from depth of 3050 m to 4880 m under very high pressure and temperature. this class is moderate to high sulphate resistance (msr) to (hsr), means that contain %8 to %3 tricalcium aluminate (c3a). class g + class h: in oil and gas wells can be used to depth of 2440 m, and used to extremely deep wells at temperature. however the particle sizes of class g is smaller than class h this class is moderate to high sulphate resistance (msr) to (hsr), means that contain %8 to %3 tricalcium aluminate (c3a) [4]. purposes of cementing operations or functions are to: 1. separate the oil and gas of a formation to pollute another formation, 2. support and protect the well casing, 3. eliminate and fill the borehole caving and fractures 4. provide suitable space for production tools and equipment. 5. avoid casing from corrosion by water and any other fluids [13]. 2.3 cement fluid loss additives cement fluid loss additives is abbreviated as flacs, are mixed with cement slurry for controlling unwanted water losses from the slurry while pumping slurry to the weak formations around the wellbore. there are three types of flacs based on working mechanisms. first, polyvinyl alcohol pva, it can fill the filter cake pores of cement and make bridge particles by adsorbing water drop between cement particles. this application of long chain flacs decreased fluid loss and permeability of filter cake. pva works in temperature below 38°c, above this temperature it cannot be used as fluid loss control. in kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 131 order to be used at temperature range from 38°c to 60°c, dispersant should be added to the slurry due to higher solubility of dispersant and more anionic. second, polyethylene imine, it plugs the filter cake pores of cement and prevent water loss from the cement to the formations. third, the cellulose polymer which can bound huge amount of water and prevent water loss during the process of filtration [14]. 2.4 cement laboratory properties cement tests should be applied on representative samples of cement, mix water and additives that will supplied by the rig’s cementing crew. the detailed of cement tests are illustrated in api 10a and b. these tests or cement properties consists of the following: 1. thickening time: is the time of remaining cement as a pumpable state under well condition. the pumpability (consistency) is measured in burden unit of consistency (bc). while 1 bc is equivalent to 2080 gm-cm of torque, maximum consistency can be achieved in laboratory is 70 bc. mixing time and displacement time should be added to the thickening time as a safety factor. the device for measuring this property called high pressure high temperature (hpht) consistometer, and the device capacity is 2500 psi and 400°f [4]. 2. slurry density: cement slurry applies hydrostatic pressure on the open hole formations. this property is important to avoid lost circulation, formation fracturing and gas kicks. the device which is used for measuring cement density called pressurized mud balance [15]. 3. compressive strength: this property needs to suspend the casing in place, support wellhead equipment and control the formation pressure effect on the cement. minimum acceptable compressive strength after cement hardening is 500 psi before resuming any operation. the device is used for measuring this property known as ultrasonic cement analyzer (uca) [15]. 4. yield: is the number of slurry sacks per one cubic foot of water. one sack of cement contains 94 pounds [15]. 5. lost circulation: is the lost volume of drilling fluid to the surface or cement slurry to the casing annulus, the slurry or drilling fluid is loosed due to fracture, cavernous and permeable formations [15]. 6. fluid loss: is the volume of mix water that is released from the cement slurry. it can be determined by standard api filter press device in room temperature and 100 psi pressure or by hpht filter press device in the laboratory, the device capacity is 1000 psi [15]. this property is very important for determining cement quality in cementing design [1]. the standard api filter press used for measuring filtration rate and thickness of the solid residue deposited on the filter paper caused by the loss of mud or cement fluids. this device is shown in figure 1 and consists of a mud or cement cell, pressure assembly and filtering device. filter paper in the cell represents the wall of the well. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 132 figure 1: standard api filter press [3] 3. methods and materials 3.1 overview change this heading title to something like (experimental procedure) in order to achieve the objective of this study, high pressure high temperature filtration experiment program was set up to study one of the properties of the cement with different concentration of polyvinyl alcohol cement fluid loss additive (pva flac). the cement slurry was prepared and tested in sprint company for oil and gas service laboratory in erbil. the mixer and hpht filter press devices shown in figure 2 and figure 3. figure 2: constant speed mixer figure 3: hpht filter press four slurries were tested to determine filtration rate according to api spec 10b, second edition, using (250-300) ml of cement under 1000 psi pressure using nitrogen gas (n2) for applying this pressure because n2 has no effect on cement property, the prepared cement slurries classified as low weight cement lw and consist of a combination of api cement class g and cenosphere, both mixed with additives to provide the desired properties, see table1. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 133 table 1: material components of cement slurry, descriptions and purposes materials chemical origin purposes light weight cement (lw cement) cement class g + cenosphere having small density to the slurry defoamer polypropylene glycol this additive used to prevent the foam in the cement slurry pva flac polymer this additive used to reduce the fluid loss or filtration rate of the slurry. dispersant sulphonate this additive used to reduce the viscosity of the slurry. gas migration control additive polymer this additive used to prevent gas flow through the slurry. high compressive strength (hcs) agent micro-silica this additive used to increase the strength of the slurry after hardening. retarder lignosulphanate this additive used to increase the thickening time of the slurry. water (h2o) it is fresh water or mix water. 3.2 laboratory working procedure: in general, the api filtration test procedure and sequence can be seen in the flow diagram figure 4. figure 4: flow chart for laboratory working procedure the right volume and weigh water, lw cement and additives are determined and presented in table 2 , but 0.20,0.40, 0.60, and 0.80 percent of pva flac was used for sample1, sample2 , sample 3, and sample 4 respectively which they stand for 0.97 gm ,1.94 gm, 2.91 gm, and 3.88 gm of pva flac. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 134 table 2: additive concentration sprint code/type description unit concentration laboratory concentartion for 1 bbl lw blend lw cement ib/bbl 1 sack 603.39 gm 352.49 lb c011 defoamer gps* 0.02 0.86 ml 0.060 gal c200 dispersant %bwoc** 0.90 4.34 gm 2.538 lb c303n gas migration control additive gps * 0.35 15.00 ml 1.050 gal c351 hcs agent gps * 0.25 10.71 ml 0.750 gal c102 retarder %bwoc** 0.05 0.24 gm 0.141 h2o 261.72 ml 0.436 bbl * gps: gallon per second ** %bwoc: by weight percent of cement the determined volume 261.72 ml of water pureed in the cup of the constant speed mixer runs in 4000 rpm for 15 second, at that time the additives added to the water and finally lw cement added, the water called mix water, mixed water with additives and lw cement called slurry, then the slurry mixed at 12000 rpm for 35 second then the mixer put on auto speed state for mixing the slurry. for filtration experiment the author added (250-300) ml of each cement slurry sample to the cell of hpht filter press under (1000 psi) and (95°f) for (30 minute), in his test we measure the volume of api fluid loss from the cement slurry and api filtration rate from this volume is determined. similarly, the same procedure was followed to test the other for four samples with different concentration of poly vinyl alcohol (pva) flac. 4. results table 3 presents the results of api filtration rate of the cement slurry. whilst figure 4 demonstrates the relation between pva flac concentration and api filtration rate for the four different formulation of cement slurry. table 3: api fluid loss results sample number pva flac concentration % pva flac weight (gm) api filtration rate (ml/30 min) sample 1 0.20 0.97 gm 48 sample 2 0.40 1.94 gm 40 sample 3 0.60 2.91 gm 34 sample 4 0.80 3.88 gm 28 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 135 figure 5: the standard deviation of lab concentrations of pva flac with api filtration rate 5. discussion table 3 shows that increasing of the amount of added flac decreases the api filtration rate which means it aids to prevent fluid loss from the slurry; this is due to that pva flac has the following features: . because pva flac is a polymer, it can increase the gel strength and viscosity of the slurry, also reduce free water and sedimentation. . having pva flac additive in the slurry, can make more resistant to brines and acids. . pva flac additive does not retardation effect on the cement setting time. . having lower cost than other fluid loss control additives. . good compatibility with other cement additives. . reduce fluid loss during cementing within api standards. if the water content in the slurry was lower than normal range, the following phenomena will be occurred: 1increase of slurry viscosity and density. 2decrease in permeability of the flowing slurry. 3sedimentation will be occurred. 4 free fluid and fluid loss will be created. considering that all other additives are the same while slurry samples preparation, this research finds the obvious effect of pva flac on the changes of filtration rate, figure4 demonstrates the relation between lab concentrations of pva flac additive and api filtration rate, this relation is inversely proportional. when the amount of pva flac increased in the slurry, the api filtration rate decreased. this additive, polymer, can decrease the porosity of the slurry and reduce the uncontrolled fluid loss from the slurry. accordingly, pva flac can reduce the api filtration rate, it can also plug the pores of the cement slurry and decrease the filter cake permeability of the cement [14]. the results of this study shows that using the optimum amount of pva flac, provide the cement slurry which has good properties such as maximum strength after setting, also filling the annulus without any gap between cement particles from the casing shoe to the surface. 6. conclusion inspections have been performed within in four cementing systems and determining the api filtration rate property for four different cement slurries. the findings by this study can be concluded as that the api filtration rate property of the slurry can be decreased when increasing poly vinyl alcohol (pva) flac additive concentration to the slurry. the results show that when adding 1.94 gm, 2.91 gm and 3.88 gm of pva flac additive to the cement 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0,97 1,94 2,91 3,88 a p i f il tr a ti o n r a te ( m l/ 3 0 m in ) lab concentration of flac (gm) lab conc. flac vs. api filtration rate kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 136 slurry, the api filtration rate were reduced by %17, %29 and %42 compare to 48 ml/30 min filtration rate from using 0.97 gm of pva flac additive respectively. the best sample was sample number 4, due to having minimum filtration rate and optimum property of cement slurry. reference [1] a. atashnezhad, t. coryell, and g. hareland, “barite nanoparticles reduce the cement fluid loss,” spe 185114-ms, pp. 27–31, 2017. [2] w. f. prassl, “drilling engineering curtin university of technology,” 2017. [3] institute of petroleum engineering, “drilling engineering heriott watt university,”. [4] h. rabia, “well engineering & construction,” p. 1 to 789, 2002. [5] j. p. pavlich and w. w. wahl, “field results of cementing operations using slurries c ontaining a fluid loss additive for celnent.”spe133,1962. [6] j. f. baret, “why cement fluid loss additives are necessary,”spe 17630, 1988. [7] d. t. mueller and w. s. bray, “characterization of surfactant-enhanced cement fluid-loss additives,” spe 25442, 1993. [8] l. f. mckenzie and p. m. mcelfresh, “acrylamide/acrylic acid copolymers for cement fluid loss control,”spe 10623, 1982. [9] b. dao and p. vijn, “environmentally acceptable cement fluid loss additive,” spe 74088, 2002. [10] j. p. haberman, m. delestatlus, d. g. hines, g. daccord, and j. f. baret, “downhole fluid-loss measurements from drilling fluid and cement slurries,” jpt & spe 1992. [11] j. griffith and s. o osisanya, “effect of drilling fluid filter cake thickness and permeability on cement slurry fluid loss,” journal of canadian petroleum technology, 1999. [12] c. e. bannister and v. m. lawson, “role of cement fluid loss in wellbore completion,” spe 14433, 1985. [13] n. j. adam, “drilling engineering a complete well planning approach,” pennwell publishing company, tulsa, oklahoma, 1985. [14] j. plank, f. dugonji, n. r. lummer and d. sadasiwan, “comparative study of the working mechanisms of chemically different cement fluid loss polymers,” spe 121542, 2009. [15] m. ilyas, n. sadiq, m. a. mughal, h. pardawalla, and s. m. noor, “improvement of cementing in deep wells,” spe/papg annu. tech. conf. 2012, patc 2012, pp. 155–172, 2012. [16] api recommended practice 10b-2 second edition, april, 2013.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq optimization of tilt angle of a pv system to get maximum generated power: a case study harwan mohammed taha sipan mohammed hameed energy engineering energy engineering technical college of engineering technical college of engineering duhok polytechnic university duhok polytechnic university duhok, iraq duhok, iraq harwan.taha@dpu.edu.krd sipan.post@gmail.com article info abstract volume 5 issue 2 december 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.2.7 article history: received: 28 august 2020 accepted:26 november 2020 the amount of solar irradiance falls onto photovoltaic (pv) panels depends highly on the tilt angle between the panels and the horizontal plane. therefore, this angle must be chosen carefully so that the panels can absorb the largest possible amount of the solar beam. it is more convenient for the panels to be installed with the fixed tilt angle once a month or year as the cost and complexity of the solar tracking systems are high. this research determines monthly and yearly optimum tilt angles for 50 kwp solar system in duhok city, duhok polytechnic university campus (latitude/longitude: 36.862, 42.980). moreover, this work examines the performance of the system with different pv technologies which are crystalline silicon, cadmium telluride (cdte), and copper indium selenide (cis) to determine which one is more convenient for duhok weather. this work uses the pvgis simulation tool, and the result shows that the 32.7 degree is the optimum tilt angle for fixed annually adjustment for the mentioned city. while the monthly optimum tilt angles were different for each month (the lowest tilt angle was 1.5˚ observed in june and the highest tilt angle was 63.9˚ recorded in december). regarding pv technologies, the cdte types generated more annual pv energy than other mentioned types, followed by cis which produced more output pv energy than crystalline silicon. keywords: solar energy, solar radiation, monthly optimum tilt angle, yearly optimum tilt angle duhok city, pvgis. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction currently, most countries around the world tend to use renewable energy to produce energy instead of using conventional power plants that are usually harmful to the environment and have a high cost. one of the most popular and effective renewable energy is solar energy that converts sunlight into electrical energy. solar energy is free and environmentally friendly energy, and it is available everywhere. this energy is generated by solar pv panels which kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 72 absorb the solar radiation and convert it to direct current. the greater the amount of absorbed solar radiation, the greater energy produced. the amount of solar radiation varies from a country to another according to their geographical location on the earth. the geographical location of iraq is suitable for installing solar systems as it is located near to the equator which receives (6.5-7) kilowatt-hours per square meter. further, the sunshine hours of iraq are between 2800 to 3300 hours per year [1]. but unfortunately, iraq in general and kurdistan region in particular, rely on traditional power sources to produce electricity such as oil and gas. however, their production is not enough for population requirements, and there is a shortage of electricity throughout the country. according to a statement from the ministry of electricity in the kurdistan regional government, the kurdistan region needs about 4200 mw to cover the people’s electricity demand. whereas, according to that statement, the ministry can generate 3200-3300 mw of that power [2]. this is why the government should use renewable energies as alternative sources of power to conventional energy sources. using renewable energy became so important especially after global warming hazards. fortunately, community awareness has increased to protect the environment from pollution so they consider using renewable energy to fill the electricity shortage. solar energy is considered an important source of renewable energy sources, which produces electricity from solar radiation. the generated energy from solar radiation is affected by many factors. one of the factors is an angle between pv panels and the horizontal plane which is called tilt angle. this tilt angle relies on the geographical latitude and climate of the selected location. for this reason, the optimal tilt angle should be chosen to maximize the absorbed amount of sun radiation by photovoltaic panels. therefore, this manuscript presents the optimum tilt angle of a 50 kwp pv system in duhok city. the above paragraph gives a brief introduction to the specifications of iraq weather and the situation of the electricity in the country. the next section presents a theoretical background of solar radiation and the angles that impact on its amount. whereas section three reviewed some of the related papers that have been done in iraq in general and in duhok in particular. section four shows the geographical location of duhok city on the map where the proposed solar system to be installed and also produces the simulation program that was used in this research with a table of the descriptions. then section five displays the obtained results of monthly and annually optimum tilt angles as well as the comparison between pv technologies. it also demonstrates an explanation of the obtained results. 2. solar radiation the earth receives a massive amount of solar radiation energy, an average of 141.7 10× kw which is 10000 times more than the world's current energy demand. hence the importance of studying and calculating the amount of direct and indirect hourly solar radiation, as it enters the process of converting solar energy into electricity through photovoltaic cells [3]. the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth’s surface cannot be controlled because it constantly changes and influences by several important factors. one of these factors is extraterrestrial solar radiation which is the average value of solar radiation reaching a per meter square in the outer atmosphere. this value depends on the space between the sun and earth. yet this space is not constant since the orbit of the earth around the sun is elliptical. however, according to the world meteorological organization (wmo), this value is equal to 1367 w/m2 [4]. other factors influence the rate of solar irradiance falling on the surface of the earth. these factors are solar angles which will be discussed in detail in the section below. 2.1. solar angles solar angles have a great role in influencing the amount of the solar beam reaching the earth (fig. 1). one of the most effective angles, especially concerning solar energy panels, is the tilt angle (β) which is the angle between the pv panels and the horizontal plane, as shown in fig. 2. it is oriented to the north for the southern part of the earth which is located below the equator line (southern hemisphere). whereas it is oriented to the south for the other part kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 73 which is above the equator line (northern hemisphere) [5]. figure 1: solar basic angles figure 2: tilt and incidence angles equation (1) can be used to calculate the tilt angle when the plane is rotated around the westeast horizontal axis with daily adjustment [5]. β φ δ= − (1) where latitude angle ( φ ) is the angle between a particular point and the equator plane, and its value varies between 90 90φ− ≤ ≤ +  . while, δ is declination angle that lies between the solar radiation and equator plane as shown in fig. 3, and its value varies between kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 74 23.45 23.45δ− ≤ ≤ +  . it can be calculated using the following equation. ( )284 23.45 sin 360 365 d δ  + = × ×    (2) where d is the day of a year and it starts from 1st of january (i.e. 1d = ) [6][7][8][9]. whereas, equation (3) is used to calculate the tilt angle if the plane is rotated around the westeast horizontal axis with continuous adjustment. tan tan cosz sβ θ γ= ⋅ (3) where zθ is zenith angle which lies between the vertical axis and the beam radiation, as shown in fig. 2. it can be calculated using the following equation [10]: cos cos cos cos sin sinzθ φ δ ω φ δ= ⋅ ⋅ + ⋅ (4) where ( sγ ) is solar azimuth angle which is the angle between direct beam radiation and the south or north position of the sun. 1 sin sin sincos cos coss α φ δ γ α φ −  ⋅ −=  ⋅  (5) where ( α ) is solar elevation angle which is between the horizontal plane and the beam radiation, so it can be calculated as follows: 90 zα θ= − (6) hour angle (ω ) is one of the most important solar angles used in calculating solar radiation, and it is defined as the angle that the earth must be revolved to become the point studied just under the sun; which is the angle measured at the level of the equator between the longitude of the sun’s light and longitude of the location. this hour angle is measured in hours and calculated by the following equation: ( )15 12stω = × − (7) where st is solar time (hours) [11]. from fig. 2, the incidence angle (θ ) is the angle between sun radiation to a surface and the normal of that surface. it is calculated depending on other angles as follows [5][7]: [ ]1cos cos cos cos sin sinθ φ ω δ φ δ−= ⋅ ⋅ + ⋅ (8) while if the plane is rotated around the north-south horizontal axis with continuous adjustment, equation (9) is used to calculate the tilt angle. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 75 ( )tan tan cosz sβ θ γ γ= ⋅ − (9) where (γ ) is the azimuth angle which is the angle between the south direction and the horizontal projection of direct sun radiation, as shown in fig. 1. this angle varies between 180° and +180°, it is equal to 0° in the south, positive in the west, and negative in the east. figure 3: declination angle 3. literature review many researchers have focused on the effect of the tilt angle on the amount of produced energy from the sun. the optimum tilt angle of pv projects cannot be compared with each other too easily because the output energy of pv panels highly relies on the geographical location. however, this paper reviews some of them, especially those conducted in the duhok city or locations near duhok city geographically. starting from reference [12] that used a program on nasa website to find optimum tilt angles of all iraqi provinces, and the results showed that the duhok province has the highest tilt angle which is 34.5°. dissimilarly, the proposed work in our paper determined that the 32.7° is a more appropriate yearly tilt angle for a pv system in duhok city, which is distinctly different from that given in [12]. while reference [13] chose a tilt angle of 32.33º as the optimum angle for the same city (duhok), which is slightly different from our result (32.7°). additionally, another work was done in [14] to determine the best tilt angles of the northern iraqi cities (including duhok city) using the engineering equation solver (ees) program, it chose a tilt angle of 34° as the optimum angle of duhok city. reference [15] used a simulation tool for a solar system in southern iraqi cities. it mentioned that the iraqi southern cities had the same angle of 50° as the optimal tilt angle. on the contrary, reference [16] used a mathematical model programmed by ees in order to determine the optimum tilt angle of some southern iraqi cities which kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 76 were basrah, amarah, and nasiriyah; the result presented that the mentioned cities had different optimum tilt angles which were 28°, 30°, and 29° respectively. ref. [17] examined the optimum tilt angle of three iraqi provinces which were baghdad (latitude 33°20′), tikrit (34°35′) and diyala (33°14′), and the result showed that the mentioned locations had the same optimum tilt angle which was 31°. ref. [18] proposed an algorithm to optimize the tilt angle based on matlab software for three different cities, one of them was najaf which is located in the south of iraq. its result showed that the optimum tilt angle was approximately equal to the location's latitude where the pv panels to be installed. similarly, the yearly tilt angle in [19] was near to the latitude of the selected location, which was the city of khatkar kalan (31.06°). 4. methods and materials the purpose of this work is to find the optimum tilt angle of 50 kwp solar system to be installed in duhok polytechnic university campus which in turn located in the center of duhok city (latitude/longitude: 36.862, 42.980) in order to raise the rate of absorbed solar beam. duhok city is one of the kurdistan region’s cities which is located in the northwest of iraq, as shown in fig. 4. in this research, the pvgis simulation tool was used for 50 kwp fixed mounting, free-standing, crystalline silicon pv system; considering 14% system loss as given in table 1. the value of the tilt angle was changed from 0 to 90 degrees (with increments of 1 degree) to examine the system performance with various tilt angles. the photovoltaic panels were oriented to the south as the chosen position located in the northern hemisphere. the results were observed for each tilt angle and compared to each other to determine the optimum degree, as given in the next section. the optimum tilt angle for the selected location in duhok was determined then as an extra step the performance of the system was examined with three different pv technologies which are cdte, cis, and crystalline silicon. figure 4: geographical location of duhok city kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 77 table 1: description of the system latitude/longitude 36.862, 42.980 pv installed power 50 kwp pv technology crystalline silicon mounting system fixed mounting, free standing system loss 14% 5. results and discussion 5.1. monthly optimum tilt angle as it has been mentioned earlier that the pvgis simulation is used to investigate 50 kwp pv system performance in the duhok city with different tilt angles for the sake of determining monthly optimum tilt angles, as shown in fig. 5. the figure shows the monthly collected pv energy with different tilt angles. while table 2 gives the monthly radiation and energy output of the pv system which were recorded for each tilt angle to determine the monthly optimum tilt angles. it is obvious from the results that the lowest optimum tilt angle appeared in june which was 1.5° while the highest optimum tilted angle was 63.3° in december. in the summer season, which includes may, june, july, and august months concerning iraqi weather, the pv panels gave more energy with low tilt angles. while during the winter season (i.e. november, december, and february), more energy was acquired with high tilt angles. the pv panels generate more energy in summer due to the fact that the declination angle is high which in turn shorts the path of the sun-ray. correspondingly, the panels’ tilt angle can also be changed seasonally if the average value of optimum tilt angles of the four seasons is used to increase the absorption of solar radiation. table 2: pv panels’ optimum tilt angle for each month of the year month optimum tilt angle (degree) monthly radiation 2kw m monthly energy output kw h january 60.8 122.75 5052.38 february 52.1 130.3 5253.24 march 39 169.89 6612.7 april 23.6 184.89 6960.9 may 9.4 222.11 8159.91 june 1.5 249.35 8711.55 july 5 255.7 8733.4 august 18.5 239.57 8402.44 september 35.3 218.99 7918.76 october 49.3 181.11 6802.87 november 59.4 152.37 6080.84 december 63.6 134.22 6463.84 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 78 figure 5: monthly collected pv energy versus tilt angle 5.2. yearly optimum tilt angle as it has been discussed before that the cost of tracked pv panels is high, so the fixed mounting system was used in this research. for yearly fixed mounting panels, a yearly optimum tilt angle should be founded to maximize the output power. for this step, the tilt angle was modified from 0 to 90 degrees in steps of 1 degree, and the pv output energy was recorded for each angle using the pvgis simulation program in order to determine the annually optimum tilt angle. the result shows that the angle of 32.7° is the yearly tilt angle of duhok city. fig. 6 displays the yearly collected pv energy absorbed from sun radiation by the 50 kwp pv array. it was noticed that the output pv energy increased with increasing the tilt angle until it reached the maximum energy at the optimum tilt angle. whereas further increasing the tilt angle, the output energy reduced gradually. the maximum yearly pv output energy obtained at the optimum tilt angle which was 79760.9 kwh (fig. 8) and the minimum output energy was 49266.65 kwh at the tilt angle of 90°. on the other hand, fig. 7 presents the variation of yearly in-plane irradiance fallen on the pv panels at different tilt angles. figure 6: yearly collected pv energy versus tilt angle located in duhok kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 79 figure 7: yearly collected in-plane irradiation vs tilt angle located in duhok figure 8: yearly collected power energy vs tilt angle located in duhok city 5.3. optimum tilt angle with different pv technologies after determining the optimum tilt angle of the pv system in duhok city, the optimum tilt angle was used with various pv types which were crystalline silicon, cadmium telluride (cdte), and copper indium selenide (cis). in order to find the best pv type to be installed in duhok city. in other words, to find which pv technology is more appropriate for duhok weather. the results showed that solar radiation was the same for the three pv technologies as it is not depending on pv types (fig. 9). contrary, the output pv energy influenced by changing pv technology. the cdte and cis technologies produced more power than crystalline silicon in summer months as shown in fig. 10. while in winter crystalline silicon produced higher power than cdte and cis. however, as an overall result, the cdte produced higher yearly pv output energy which was 81766.96 kwh. whereas, cis and crystalline silicon pv panels generated yearly energy of 79935.12 kwh and 79760.9 kwh respectively. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 80 which means that the cdte is more appropriate than cis and crystalline silicon for duhok weather, followed by cis type. figure 9: monthly solar radiation with different pv technologies figure 10: monthly output energy with different pv technologies 6. conclusion this research has examined the tilt angle of 50 kwp solar systems to be installed in duhok city in the kurdistan region of iraq, as well as the performance of the system with different pv kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 81 types. the tilt angle was varied from 0 to 90 degrees (with increments of 1 degree) using a simulation tool to choose an optimum angle. the results demonstrated that the monthly optimum tilt angles were under 30° in summer while in the winter the angles were above 50° in duhok. due to the fact that the sun is near to the horizon in summer. thus, the fixed mounting solar systems can be modified monthly or seasonally. however, if a constant tilt angle is selected for the whole year between photovoltaic panels and the horizontal plane for solar energy projects in duhok city, the tilt angle of 32.7° is the most appropriate angle according to the current results. in terms of pv technologies, cdte gives higher yearly output energy than other types. in the future, the amount of absorption of the solar irradiance can be increased by choosing an optimum azimuth angle alongside the optimum tilt angle for the aforementioned city. reference [1] a. a. k. al-waeli, 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[11] r. a. messenger and a. abtahi, photovoltaic systems engineering, crc press, 2017. [12] i. j. khadim, e. j. mahdi and a. h. ubaid, "determining tilt angle for fixed solar panel tosites of iraq's provinces by using the programs on nasa and google earth websites," engineering and technology journal, vol. 32, pp. 498-506, 2014. [13] s. na'man, h. y. yacoob and o. s. omar, "optimum tilt angle for south facing flat solar collectors in duhok city," science journal of university of zakho, vol. 1, pp. 405-413, 2013. [14] a. k. s. al-sayyab and m. k. taher, "optimum tilted angle of photovoltaic cell located in northern iraq cities to get maximum generated electric power," in national renewable energies conference and their applications, 2013. [15] a.-s. t. hussain, "measuring pv module performance at different tilt angles in southern iraq based simulation," international journal of engineering & technology, vol. 7, pp. 84-88, 2018. [16] a. k. s. al-sayyab and m. k. taher, "optimum yearly tilted angle of photovoltaic cell to receive maximum solar radiation in southern iraq cities," thi-qar university journal for engineering sciences, vol. 5, pp. 1-14, 2014. [17] a. m. a. morad, a. k. s. al-sayyab and m. a. abdulwahid, "optimisation of tilted angles of a photovoltaic cell to determine the maximum generated electric power: a case study of some iraqi cities," case studies in thermal engineering, vol. 12, pp. 484-488, 2018. [18] h. muslim, "solar tilt angle optimization of pv systems for different case studies," eai endorsed transactions on energy web, vol. 6, 2019. [19] a. kumar, n. s. thakur, r. makade and m. k. shivhare, "optimization of tilt angle for photovoltaic array," international journal of engineering science and technology, vol. 3, pp. 3153-3161, 2011. https://www.basnews.com/ar/babat/650227 1. introduction 2. solar radiation 2.1. solar angles latitude/longitude 36.862, 42.980 5.1. monthly optimum tilt angle month 5.2. yearly optimum tilt angle 5.3. optimum tilt angle with different pv technologies  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq| email: kjar@spu.edu.iq study of physiochemical properties of local wheat cultivars and their effect on white layer cake quality shano abdulrahman omer dlir amin saber biotechnology and crop science food science & quality control college of agricultural engineering science college of agricultural engineering science university of sulaimani university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq shano.omer@univsul.edu.iq dlir.sabir@univsul.edu.iq volume 4–issue 2 december 2019 doi: 10.24017/science.2019 .2.17 received: 03 november 2019 accepted: 20 december 2019 abstract physiochemical and rheological properties of local wheat cultivars were studied to determine and develop their relationship to baking quality of white layer cake. the investigation carried out via studying four different wheat cultivars (adana, sham 6, tamooz 2, and slemani 2), and comparing to a locally produced flour (from sulaimani cereal milling company) as control. according to physical parameters the highest value were obtained by slemani 2, and in terms of falling number control also recorded the highest. in regards to chemical composition (such as; protein, fat, ash, and moisture) the greatest values were reported by (tamooz 2, sham 6, adana, and slemani 2) respectively. nevertheless, rheological characteristics for farinograph in terms of (water absorption, developing time, stability, and tolerance mixing index), the highest values were achieved by (tamooz 2, adana, control, and sham 6), respectively. while for amylograph characteristics the highest values were recorded in slemani 2, and control in terms of (pasting temperature, and peak viscosity) respectively. the gluten yield parameters tested for gluten index, and dry gluten in which the results obtained for control, and sham 6 were the greatest. for physical characteristics of the white layer cake the control achieved the highest value for volume index, symmetry index, and specific volume. finally, the control and adana have scored the highest values for sensory evaluation. in general, the best white layer cake quality was obtained from the control, adana, and sham 6, hence the protein quality and quantity have great influence on the end product. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 174 keywords: wheat cultivar, rheology, physico-chemical, sensory evaluation, gluten index ,and white layer cake. 1. introduction wheat is the major food and principal crop and can grow almost anywhere on the earth and different weather conditions i.e. hard weather status. it is also grown on the different types of soils due to adaptability characteristics. [1].the most important physiochemical properties in wheat quality is grain hardness. the wheat quality is also based on various factors such as environmental fluctuating, type, and genetic nature. the environmental condition has a major effect on the quality and quantity of the wheat proteins, and protein quantities influenced by the nitrogenous fertilizers according to research [2].wheat flour dough was the most attracted dough structure by the authors for further investigation due to its unique viscoelastic behavior in forming a dough which is from the wheat protein characteristics [3, 4]. many studies have reported on the rheology of wheat flour constituents such as gluten which is considered as the most important factor to produce elasticity in the wheat flour dough[5]. extensive studies performed by [4, 6, 7]on the dough components (gluten, starch, lipid and water content) in the mixture to investigate the dough rheological behavior. whereas the rheological evaluation has been utilized to study the flour quality and other parameters like elasticity and viscosity of the dough are also considered as valued factors in the flour quality measurement [8].the previously named rheological factors are always critical in the bakery marketing and production because it is helping the producers to have the overall idea about the end-use of flour. the rheological properties are also important in specifying the ingredients, quality control and stabilizers to input in the elaborated products which also have a direct effect on its processing and end-use quality[9]. further, the dough rheological measurement is used to determine its physical properties. the principal purpose of the rheological measurement is to gain the quantitative determination of the materials, to increase knowledge about the construction and molecular structure of the material, it is also useful to characterize and figure the material’s performance also for quality control [10]. rheological estimations are an important tool to help in prepare control and handle plans[11].numerous rheological tests are used to foretell the end product quality such as mixing behavior, sheeting, and heating execution [12].dough rheology can greatly affect the potential of the wheat flour, to produce maximum results of dough preparation chemical analysis has been explored. due to the complicated biological, the production can make lack of understanding[13]. wheat cultivars have different physiochemical and rheological characteristics which are the ability of materials to regain the original shape, and directly influence the quality of the wheat product like bread, and biscuits [14]. hard wheat flour is qualified by having high protein content (gluten) which is used for bread making and cakes, durum wheat semolina for making pasta products. a lower protein content flour or soft wheat is used principally for crackers, cookies, cakes and breakfast cereals. having differences in the kernel hardness and also which product is produced from them is refer to the gluten content of them[15]. the purpose of this study was to characterize the fundamental rheological properties of dough from different wheat cultivars. also, to evaluate the quality of wheat cultivars and differentiate between them, and to predict the contraction of the dough after processing, and also sensory evaluation of white layer cake from different locally wheat flour cultivars. 2. methodsand material 2.1 materials four locally available wheat cultivars were obtained from bakrajo agricultural research center (adana, sham 6, tammoz 2, and slemani 2) in sulaimani, kurdistan region, iraq, then compare with flour from sulaimani cereal milling company as control. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 175 2.2 milling the wheat grains were milled through universal mill instruments, (inc.de-200g, stainless steel, 1200 w) home electronic miller to obtain flour. 2.3 physical analysis the hectoliter weight of wheat grain was determined by an approved method of the american association of cereal chemists aacc method no. 55-10.01[16], thousand kernel weight was obtained by counting 1000 grains of wheat and then weighing them (in grams),and the falling number was determined by using an approved method of aacc method 56-81.04[17]. 2.4 proximate chemical analysis the following methods were used for wheat flour chemical analysis. aacc method 44-01.01 calculation of percent moisture for rapid estimation of moisture content[18]. aacc method no. 8-21.01 prediction of ash content in wheat flour-near -infrared method, it is probably that (nir) calibrations are associated with cellulosic components of bran fractions in the flour[19]. aacc method 30-10.01 crude fat in flour, bread, and baked cereal products[20].aacc method no. 39-11.01 near-infrared reflectance method for protein determination in wheat flour[21]. the proximate total carbohydrate content was calculated by difference according to aoac[22]. 2.5 rheological properties rheological tests were evaluated by using farinograph-e instrument (brabender, germany)following standard method of aacc method 54-21.02 by mixing 300 g of wheat flour with water on 14% moisture basis which was added as the dough was mixed to a consistency of 500 bu, while the amount of water needed to produce the 500 bu dough consistency was clarified as the water absorption percentage[23]. moreover, an amylograph test was performed by using 60 g of flour mixed with 450 ml of distilled water according to aacc method 61-01[24]. 2.6 gluten yield and gluten index 2.6.1 gluten index the gluten index was determined according to standard methods of aacc 38-12.02[25]. the gluten index yield was calculated by the given formula below: 𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺 =𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤ℎ𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑡𝑡𝑤𝑤𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑤𝑤𝑡𝑡 𝑟𝑟𝑤𝑤𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑤𝑤𝑡𝑡𝑤𝑤𝑑𝑑 𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤ℎ𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑡𝑡𝑤𝑤𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑤𝑤𝑡𝑡 × 100.............(1) 2.6.2 dry gluten yield dry gluten yield was determined by drying the total amount of the wet gluten at 150 c0for 4 min following formula: 𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷 𝑔𝑔𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺 𝐷𝐷𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺 =𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤ℎ𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑑𝑑𝑟𝑟𝑡𝑡𝑤𝑤𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑤𝑤𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑟𝑟𝑤𝑤𝑡𝑡𝑤𝑤𝑑𝑑 × 860 100−% 𝑠𝑠𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑠𝑠𝑡𝑡𝑤𝑤 𝑟𝑟𝑡𝑡𝑤𝑤𝑠𝑠𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑟𝑟𝑤𝑤 .............(2) 2.7 white layer cake procedure the product was prepared with some modification in the method given for cake preparation in aacc method 10-90.01[26],with 200g flour, 280g sugar, shortening 100g, 24g non-fat dry milk,120g egg whites, 6.0g salt, 7.0g baking powder, and 250ml water. and the cake was baked at 175 0c for 40 min. and the following formulas were determined: 2.7.1 volume index the volume index was determined by carefully cutting the cake vertically through the center to two equal pieces and important measurements were made for one piece according to aacc method 10-91.01[27]. 𝑉𝑉𝑉𝑉𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝑉𝑉𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺 = 𝐵𝐵 + 𝐶𝐶 + 𝐷𝐷.............(3) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 176 2.7.2 symmetry index symmetry = 2c b d..............(4) 2.7.3 uniformity index uniformity index = b – d...........(5) while b, c, and d means the diameters of the cake as illustrated in the figure below: figure 1: physical indices of the cake 2.7.4 shrinkage value shrinkage value is the diameter of cakes measured from (a to e) to the nearest 0.1 cm then subtract the diameter from 20.3 cm (pan diameter). shrinkage = 20.3-(diameter of the cut section of cake) 2.7.5 evaluation of cake the cake was evaluated for its weight, volume, and weight to volume ratio. cake volume was determined by rapeseed displacement according to standard methods of aacc 10-05.01[28]. specific weight was calculated by the given formula below: 𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝐺𝐺𝑆𝑆𝐺𝐺𝑆𝑆𝐺𝐺𝑆𝑆𝐶𝐶𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝐺𝐺𝑉𝑉𝑉𝑉𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝑉𝑉𝐺𝐺: = 𝑐𝑐𝑟𝑟𝑐𝑐𝑤𝑤𝑐𝑐𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑟𝑟𝑤𝑤 (cm3) 𝑐𝑐𝑟𝑟𝑐𝑐𝑤𝑤 𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤ℎ𝑡𝑡(𝑤𝑤) .............(6) 2.8 sensory evaluation of white layer cake white layer cake made from different wheat cultivars flour were evaluated according to the method described by aacc method, the cake samples were left at room temperature to cool for one hour, after that the cake was cut with an electronic knife and situated to the panel test, with the following degrees: cells with 30 degrees include (uniformity 10, size of cells 10, and the thickness of the walls 10), grain 16, texture 34(moistness 10, tenderness 14, and softness 10), crumb color 10, flavor 10, and overall 100 degrees. 2.9 statistical analysis the results were finalized in triplicates and expressed by means except for the determinations. statistical significance was done using analysis of variance (anova) models to calculate the studied parameters. the significance of differences was evaluated according to duncan's multiple range analysis which was carried out using xlstat software. 3. results and discussion 3.1 physical analysis the data included in table 1 is presenting the physical parameters of wheat kernel which showed that there was a significant difference among all cultivars in terms of thousand kernel weight, moisture content, and hectoliter. the slemani 2 cultivar was reached the highest values, while for falling number control was the greatest among all cultivars. thousand kernel weight is controlled by gene however, the environment may influence these parameters[29]. similar results was obtained for sham 6 cultivar in term of thousand kernel weight[30]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 177 hectoliter is considered as an important factor which can result in increasing the wheat seed yield because values over 78 kg/hl may increase the commercial production[31]. the falling number above 400 seconds showed that flour is lacking in alpha-amylase and the flour should supplement with amylase to obtain desirable enzyme activity level[32]. table1:physical parameters of wheat grain. cultivars thousand kernel weight (g) kernel moisture content (%) hectoliter (kg/hl) falling no. (sec) control 41.17bc 8.16b 78.13b 665 slemani 2 47.46 a 8.33a 81.46a 446 adana 41.95b 7.93c 77.80c 600 sham 6 32.48d 8.00c 76.33d 565 tamooz 2 40.31c 7.43d 74.83e 554 3.2 proximate chemical analysis data in table 2 indicates that there were significant differences for chemical composition among all cultivars in terms of ( protein, fat, carbohydrate, moisture, and ash), which they reached the highest values for ( tamooz 2, sham 6, adana, slemani 2, and adana) were (13.2%, 2.18%, 77.55%, 8.16%, and 2.48%) respectively. the low moisture content of wheat or flour is stable during the storage, higher moisture content higher than (14.5%) can lead to attracting insect, molds, and bacteria[33], the wheat protein maintains a great contribution to the rheological characteristics of the wheat flour dough[34]. the broad range in protein content in the results from wheat cultivars suggest that there were flours for various applications, involving cakes and biscuits (lowest values), and whole bread. while wheat cultivars with the lowest content of ash is containing higher amounts of endosperm and eventually produce more flour[33]. different wheat cultivar had different values of fat content this may be as a result of climatic factors at growth and genetic differences of wheat cultivars [34]. furthermore, variation in fat content among wheat cultivars may due to the way they are milled, despite making a small amount of the wheat flour weight fat can have a great influence of the dough properties, at lower concentrations, fat can restrict starch granules swelling, decrease protein extractability and reduce the product's volume, also at higher concentrations, they can increase volume through gas cells stabilization[35]. table2: proximate chemical composition of flours from different wheat cultivars. cultivars moisture (%) protein (%) fat (%) ash (%) total carbohydrate (%) control 7.83 b 12.03 c 1.13 e 2.02 b 76.98 b slemani 2 8.16 a 11.80d 2.00 b 1.70 c 76.33 c adana 7.56 d 10.63 e 1.76 d 2.48 a 77.55 a sham 6 7.70 c 12.33 b 2.18 a 2.32 a 75.46 d tamooz 2 7.30 e 13.20 a 1.89 c 1.93 b 75.67 d kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 178 3.3 rheological properties 3.3.1 farinograph test data in table 3 for rheological characteristics of wheat cultivars indicated that there were significant differences between them in terms of farinograph parameter for (water absorption, developing time, stability, tolerance mixing index, time to break, and farinograph quality number) which they reached the highest values for ( tamooz 2, adana, control, sham 6, adana, and adana) were (87.3%, 4.36, 13.0, 306.66, 4.76,and 47.66) respectively. [36] showed that wheat flour having a high content of protein and starch damage has more water absorption value than those flours which have lower protein content and damaged starch, [34] stated that different wheat cultivars have different developing time, and it is affected by the quantity and the concentration of the wheat protein. also [37] reported that the wheat cultivars are varying in dough stability. table 3: farinograph results of wheat cultivars. cultivars water absorption % developing time min. stability min. tolerance mixing index fu time to break min. farinograph quality number degree control 73.06 c 2.40 d 13.00 a 53.66 c 3.83 b 38.33 bc slemani 2 85.33 ab 3.06 c 1.33 b 238.66 b 3.53 b 35.33 bc adana 86.36 a 4.36 a 2.33 b 241.66 b 4.76 a 47.66 a sham 6 83.80 b 3.30 bc 1.30 b 306.66 a 3.73 b 34.66 c tamooz 2 87.30 a 3.73 b 1.66 b 243.66 b 4.00 b 40.00 b 3.3.2 amylograph test according to table 4 and figure 2 for amylographic characteristics the results are showing that the pasting temperature was ranged between (63-87c0) for control, and slemani 2 respectively, while the peak viscosity was ranged between (200-420 au) for slemani 2, sham 6, and control, in case of the peak viscosity temperature was about 90 c0 for all cultivars. the results also showing that the similarity between tamooz 2, and the control for peak viscosity, and peak viscosity temperature, while there is a similarity between sham 6, adana, and slemani 2 in terms of pasting temperature. from the previous studies indicate that differences in peak viscosity of flours of different wheat cultivars were as a result of differences in amylase activity, and also the whole flour's peak viscosity is influenced by nature and wheat cultivar [38]. table 4: amylograph properties of different wheat cultivars cultivars pasting temperature c0 peak viscosity au peak viscosity temperature c0 control 63 420 92 slemani 2 87 200 90 adana 81 230 90 sham 6 81 200 90 tamooz 2 73 230 93 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 179 figure 2: pca of amylograph properties of wheat cultivars 3.4 gluten yield according to the determination of the gluten yield for wheat cultivars which is presented in table 4 and figure 3, in terms of (weak gluten, total gluten, gluten index, and dry gluten), the highest values recorded for ( slemani 2, sham 6, control, and sham 6) which were (23.6, 27.6, 93, and 8.9) respectively. also, the results are showing the similarity between the control, and adana in terms of the gluten index. while there were similarities between sham 6 and tamooz 2 in terms of weak gluten, total gluten, and dry gluten. it is clear that the gluten index is a good indicator of the wheat flour quality which means the higher the gluten index the better end-product quality[39]. table 4: the determination of gluten yield of wheat cultivars. cultivars weak gluten (%) total gluten (%) gluten index (%) dry gluten (%) control 1.6 24 93 8.5 slemani 2 23.6 24.3 2.8 8.2 adana 2.1 23.8 91.1 8 sham 6 16 27.6 42 8.9 tamooz 2 17.9 26.3 31.9 8.6 adana tamooz 2 control sham 6slemani 2 pasting temperature c peak viscosity au peak viscosity temperature c -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 f2 (1 7. 77 % ) f1 (81.16 %) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 180 figure 3:pcaof gluten yield of wheat cultivars 3.5 white layer cake data in table 5 for physical characteristics of white layer cake indicates that there were a significant differences between all cultivars for (volume index, symmetry index, uniformity index, shrinkage value, and specific volume) which have obtained ( 8.83, 1.36, 0.8, 1.1, and 1.72) for (control, control, adana& sham 6, slemani 2, and control) respectively. also[40] has reported that the index parameters and characteristics give only a concept about the cake volume. table 5:physical characteristics of white layer cake cultivars volume index(cm) symmetry index (cm) uniformity index (cm) shrinkage value (cm) specific volume(cm3/g) control 8.83 a 1.36 a 0.43 a 0.23 c 1.72 a slemani 2 6.43 c 0.06 b 0.73 a 1.10 a 1.43 a adana 7.20bc 0.60 b 0.80 a 0.56 bc 1.68 a sham 6 7.93 b 0.66 b 0.80 a 0.46 c 1.55 a tamooz 2 6.93 c 0.56 b 0.43 a 0.96 ab 1.05 b 3.6 sensory evaluation of white layer cake according to the results in table 6 for sensory evaluation of white layer cake indicated that there were significant differences between wheat cultivars in terms of ( uniformity, size of cells, thickness of walls, moistness, tenderness, softness, grain, crumb color, and flavor) which reached from the highest for control (5.6, 9.6, 9.6, 10.0, 13.6, 9.6, 9.6, and 91), to the lowest for slemani 2 ( 3.0, 4.6, 2.3, 5.3, 8.0, 7.0, 9.0, 3.3, 9.0, and 51) respectively. figure 3 presented the white layer cake samples made with different cultivars of wheat. control slemani 2 adana sham 6 tamooz 2 weak gluten total gluten gluten index dry gluten -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 f 2 (3 1. 85 % ) f1 (65.57 %) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 181 table 6: sensory evaluation of white layer cake with different wheat cultivars. c ak e sa m pl e u ni fo rm it y -1 0 si ze o f c el l -1 0 t hi ck ne ss of w al ls -1 0 m oi st ne ss 10 t en de rn es s -1 4 so ft ne ss -1 0 g ra in -1 6 c ru m b c ol or -1 0 f la vo r10 t ot al sc or e10 0 control 5.66 a 9.66a 9.66a 10.00a 13.66a 9.66a 13.66a 9.66a 9.66a 91.00a slemani2 5.00a 5.66cd 2.33c 5.33c 8.33c 7.00c 9.00b 3.33c 9.00a 54.98b adana 5.00a 7.66b 9.66a 9.66ab 1.33b 7.66bc 15.00a 7.33b 9.00a 82.33a sham 6 3.00b 7.00bc 9.66a 9.33ab 11.00b 8.66ab 14.33a 7.66b 9.66a 80.33a tamooz2 5.33a 4.66d 5.00b 8.66b 8.00c 7.66bc 9.33b 3.66c 9.00a 61.33b (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) figure 3: physical appearance and layers of cake made with different cultivars (a) cake made with control flour, (b) cake made with adana cultivar, (c) cake made with slemani 2 cultivar, (d) cake made with sham 6 cultivar, and (e) cake made with tamooz 2 cultivar. 4. conclusion there are significant differences among all cultivars in terms of physiochemical, rheological, gluten yield, physical characteristics, and sensory evaluations. adana and sham 6 have the best values among the tested cultivars in terms of sensory evaluation as compared to the control. the general conclusion achieved from the literature review and the results obtained from the laboratory tests are showing that the best quality cultivars are those that produce low protein flour hence to make a cake with good quality in terms of uniformity, softness, grain, and size of cells. this report also concluded that the control reached the best cake quality because it consists of mixing with wheat cultivars. the recommendation for future study is to mix more cultivars for achieving the best cake quality. reference [1] a. kamal, m. islam, b. chowdhry, and m. m. talukder, "yield performance and grain quality of wheat varieties grown 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[27] aacc approved methods of analysis, 11thed. method 10-91.01.use of layer cake measuring template. cereals & grains association, st. paul, mn, u.s.a, 2000. [28] aacc approved methods of analysis, 11th ed. method 10-05.01. guidelines for measurement of volume by rapeseed displacement. cereals & grains association, st. paul, mn, u.s.a, 2000. [29] p. willams, f. j. el-haramein, h. nakkaoul, and s. rıhawi, "crop quality evaluation methods and gudilines," ed: icarda, 1986. [30] a. al-saleh and c. s. brennan, "bread wheat quality: some physical, chemical and rheological characteristics of syrian and english bread wheat samples," foods, vol. 1, pp. 3-17, 2012. [31] g. g. piccinin, a. l. braccini, l. g. dan, c. a. scapim, t. t. ricci, and g. l. bazo, "efficiency of seed inoculation with azospirillum brasilense on agronomic characteristics and yield of wheat," industrial crops and products, vol. 43, pp. 393-397, 2013. [32] s. p. cauvain and l. s. young, "technology of breadmaking," 2007. 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[40] m. o. raeker and l. a. johnson, "a micro method for cake baking (high ratio, white layer)," cereal chemistry, 1995. 1. introduction 4. conclusion  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq the role of using motorized diamond burr polisher instrument in minimizing the recurrent rate of pterygium excision sakar abdulkarim nidhamalddin shahid aso eye hospital general directorate of health /sulaimani ministry of health sulaimani, iraq sakardr@yahoo.com article info abstract volume 5 – special issue: 4th international conference on the health and medical science : medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) doi: 10.24017/science.2020.ichms2020.14 article history: received: 22 september 2020 accepted: 28 september 2020 to compare the effects of using motorized diamond burr polisher in pterygium excision versus manual polishing of the corneoscleral bed in reducing the recurrent rate. a prospective, comparative and interventional study of 90 consecutive patients with different grads of primary pterygium, who underwent pterygium excision at shahid aso teaching eye hospital in sulaimani city, between august 2018 till september 2019, which was performed by single surgeon. in group a (45) eyes polishing of the corneoscleral bed done using motorized diamond polishing burr, and in group b (45) eyes using manual crescent blade for polishing. recurrent rate was evaluated after about (8±2) months postoperatively. ethical consideration of the risks and the benefits of the procedure was observed for each individual patient. a 90 patients with the mean age of group a (48.84±12.7) years and group b (49.67±12.3) years, complained of different grads of primary pterygium, group a had 31(68.9%) male and 14(31.1%) female, while group b had 22(48.9%) male and 23(51.1%) female. each individual factors like age, gender, visual acuity, bcva pre and postoperatively, iop measurement, dryness of the eye and risk factors like smoking and uv exposure affecting the recurrence were assessed. in both groups the main indication for surgery was sign of irritation. the mean surgical time was calculated and the difference between two groups were significant. after follow-up of average six months the outcomes and recurrent rate were checked, recurrent rate was in group a 1(2.2%) while in group b was 6(13.3%) patients. it significantly decreased. corneal scar happens in only 1(2.2%) case of group a while in 11(24.4%) cases in group b, corneal scar was statistically significant. in both groups the change of bcva was significant but the visual change was more significant in group a in compare to group b. motorized diamond burr is a safe instrument for polishing the cornea during pterygium excision, it is easy to handle, low price, need lesser operative time, its effect on recurrence postoperatively is significant and beside it leaves lesser corneal scar and early visual recovery postoperatively. keywords: pterygium, diamond burr, blade, complications, recurrence, intraoperative time kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 130 copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction a pterygium (from greek, pterygos, “little wing”) [1], clinically it is a wing like fibrovascular growth originating from the bulbar conjunctiva invading the superficial cornea [2], histologically the head of the conjunctival epithelium consists of hyperproliferative vessels while the body is degenerated connective tissue, which show elastotic degeneration [3]. so the invasion and destruction of corneal stroma and bowman’s membrane by degenerated fibrovascular tissue arising from subconjunctival tissue is the proses of pterygium formation [4]. pterygium mainly found in areas with high ultraviolet radiation, and also dry, hot, dusty, windy, and smoky environments are other cause of it. nasal side more commonly affected than temporal side and even bilateral (kissing) pterygia can be noticed [5]. sign of chronicity of pterygium is iron deposition in the basal layer of corneal epithelium which called stocker’s line. despite the variety of treatment, the surgical removal is the most effective one [6,7]. surgery is indicated when visual acuity is affected due to irregular astigmatism, threatening of visual axis, recurring irritation, chronic inflammation, diplopia due to motility disorders and cosmetic reasons [6,8]. preventing the commonest complication of pterygium surgery which is the recurrence is the golden goal of it, and this can be achieved by restoration of limbal anatomy which can be enhanced by smoothing of the corneoscleral bed that in turn help in faster reepithelialization and this prevent the pterygium to have the chance of recurrence [9]. following the removal of pterygium corneoscleral bed is polished to remove any attached remnants of the tissue and to smoothen the irregular surface, and this is usually done differently by the surgeons using a crescent blade [10], motorized diamond burr [11], westcott scissors [12], iris spatula [13], or no. 64 beaver blade [14]. figure 1: diamond burr since the early 1960s number of surgical techniques have being found [15], including the bare sclera technique, simple closure with absorbable sutures, sliding flap, rotational conjunctival flap, mucous membrane graft, and conjunctival autograft and amniotic membrane grafting. for preventing the recurrence other therapies are added to a number of these techniques like using strontium-90 and mitomycin c or fluorouracil as an antimetabolite [16]. risk factors for the recurrence are geographic location, age, gender, morphology and grade of pterygium, and the type of surgical technique. [16,17] most of the recurrences take place within first 6 months postoperatively, and it has been attributed to the upregulation of the inflammatory process. [16,17] kenyon et al described conjunctival autograft in 1985 for the first time. the proses is to apply a free piece of conjunctiva that has been taken from nearby side to the bare sclera where the pterygium is removed. [18] since the procedure is associated with lower recurrence rates it is considered to be the most effective method for pterygium treatment. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 131 2. methods and materials this prospective, comparative and interventional study comprised of (90) eyes of (90) patients undergoing pterygium surgery at shahid aso teaching eye hospital in sulaimani city, iraq, between august 2018 till september 2019. patients including in the study between age (2574) years having primary pterygium involving any eye. ethical consideration regulated by ministry of health was observed during operation and research, informed consent after clarification of the procedure and its outcome and risks was taken from the patients. the surgical procedure was performed in the same fashion by the same surgeon. thorough history was taken and documented at the time, eyes with any pathology which would affect wound healing were not included in the study such as ocular trauma within the past 6 months, active infection and inflammation, sever dry eye, allergic disease and systemic disease such as autoimmune disease, bleeding tendency also were excluded. each individual factors like age, gender, associated eye disease like cataract and refractive error were documented. risk factors like excessive sun exposure, smoking, dry environment preoperatively and post operatively which affect the recurrence were considered. indications for the surgery were classified as followed; sign of irritation, blurring of vision, cosmetics, difficulty in intraocular lens measurement for patients who have cataract by the pterygium, and obscuring the visual axis by the pterygium. preoperative assessment included visual acuity, refraction, best corrected visual acuity (bcva), measuring intraocular pressure(iop) using air puff tonometer, slit-lamp bimicroscopy for examining the anterior chamber and fundus examination. grading of the pterygium was done using r.m. youngson system which means invasion of <1.5mm of cornea regarded as grade i and more >1.5mm is grade ii, if more than half of radius of cornea is invaded by pterygium regarded as grade iii, and finally grade iv is means that even the center of the cornea is invaded. figure 2: grading of pterygium using r.m. youngson system a (90) patients with primary nasal pterygium underwent operation by excision of pterygium followed by conjunctival autograft that fixed in place by suturing with 10.0 nylon suture. the patients divided into two groups, (45) patients were regarded as group (a) motorized diamond burr (alger brush ii) used for polishing of the corneal bed, and the other (45) patients as group (b) crescent blade manual polishing was used. surgical technique the same surgeon did all the surgeries using the same technique. the procedure was carried out under topical and local anesthesia, proparacain (0.5%) eye drops were used for 5 min in each case, subconjunctival hcl lidocaine (2%) was injected into the pterygium by a25-gauge needle after applying speculum to expose surgical area. minimal area of the pterygium was outlined and bluntly dissected from the underling sclera then the body was excised by using westcott scissors, followed by excision of the pterygium head by carful dissection of the head from the surface of the cornea using toothed forceps to lift the head and crescent knife to excise the head from peripherally until the limbus. tenon’s capsule removed so that the conjunctival autograft can be applied on to the sclera, the procedure done carefully not to damage the medial rectus muscle. the remnant tissue after excision of the head and body of the pterygium on the surface of the cornea require to be cleaned and smoothed that aids in reepithelization and healing. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 132 according to the polisher used in this study dividing of the patients is done into group (a) and group(b). in group (a)motorized diamond burr (algerbrush ii) used, this instrument composed of (2.5mm fine grit round diamond burr with cap, handpiece, aa battery and chuck). precise polishing and perfect smoothing of the surface can be done by using this instrument, to avoid burning of the cornea and providing evenly removal of the tissue, the burr is moved in circular motions with continues surface irrigation. figure 3: alger brush ii mdb in group (b) crescent blade used gently to scrape the remnant tissue. excessively bleeding vessels were cauterized. surgical caliper was used to measure the defect of the conjunctiva, the same size of limbalconjunctival autograft was taken from the same eye (superotemporal quadrant) after injection of xylocaine to subconjunctival tissue, the resected graft oriented limbus-to-limbus and put in place and sutured by 10–0 nylon sutures in simple interrupted fashion. thereafter, gently removed the speculum and the eye was dressed for 24 h using chloramphenicol eye ointment, the operative time was documented. average surgical time was 24.57 ± 2 min, range 12–44 min. in the first day postoperative the eye was examined for the sign of any complication(s) under slit lamp. medication postoperatively was combination of tobramycin-dexamethasone six hourly for one month and artificial tear four times daily for two months, at the end of second week postoperatively sutures were removed. all patients were followed up as follow; first day, first week, second week, one month, 6 months after the operation. at each postoperative visit, biomicroscopical slit‑ lamp examination was done searching for sign of any recurrence and complications (granuloma formation, subconjunctival haemorrhage, corneal scar, cyst), any complaint was recorded. 3. results a total of 90 eyes of 90 patients with primary pterygium were included in this study, they underwent surgical excision with conjunctival auto graft. their age started from (25) years to (74) years. the mean age of group a was (46.84±12.7) years, and the mean age of group b was (49.67±12.3) years (p=0.07).(table 1).group a had 31(68.9%) male and 14(31.1%) female, while group b had 22(48.9%) male and 23(51.1%) female. table 1: age distribution between two groups frequency percent polisher 25-34 9 20.0 35-44 8 17.8 45-54 17 37.8 55-64 7 15.6 65-74 4 8.9 total 45 100.0 blade 25-34 6 13.3 35-44 12 26.7 45-54 8 17.8 55-64 13 28.9 65-74 6 13.3 total 45 100.0 kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 133 in both groups, they present with different grades, from i to iv. group a included grade i5 (11.1%) patients, grade ii-13 (28.9%), grade iii-24 (53.3%), grade iv-3 (6.7%). group b included grade i-7 (15.6%), grade ii-21 (46.7%), grade iii-15 (33.3%), grade iv-2 (4.4%). (table 2). table 2: grading of pterygium frequency percent polisher one 5 11.1 two 13 28.9 three 24 53.3 four 3 6.7 total 45 100.0 blade one 7 15.6 two 21 46.7 three 15 33.3 four 2 4.4 total 45 100.0 in most of cases sign of irritation was the chief complain for group a 20(44.4 %)in group b 22 (48.9 %) and for cosmetics the same in both groups for each 10 (22.2%), blurring of vision in group a 7 (15.6%)and 8 (17.8%) in group a iol measurement was 7 (15.6%) and in group b 4 (8.9%) and obscure visual axis for each group only one (2.2%) patient. most of the cases had no risk factors in group a 20 (44.4%) and 22 (64.4%) in group b, and10 (22.2%) patient was smoker in group a and 9(20.0%) in group b,15 (33.3%) had sun exposure in group a 7 (15.6%) in b. both groups were not statistically significant in age, gender, grading, indications and the risk factor p value more than 0.05. there were no complications in 38(84.4%) cases of group a and 27 (60.0%) cases of group b, in each groups 4 (8.9%) cases had granuloma and 2 (4.4%) cases had corneal inflammation, and only one (2.2%) case had retention cyst in group b, corneal scar happens in only one (2.2%) case of group a while in 11 (24.4%) cases in group b, there were more cases of complication (corneal scar) among the group b, there is statistical significant between two groups in the rate of complication p value = 0.01 (table 3). table 3: development of complications. frequency percent polisher no complication 38 84.4 granuloma 4 8.9 corneal scar 1 2.2 inflammation 2 4.4 total 45 100.0 blade no complication 27 60.0 granuloma 4 8.9 retention cyst 1 2.2 corneal scar 11 24.4 inflammation 2 4.4 total 45 100.0 kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 134 the mean surgical time taken in group a was (20.2±6.2) min and in group b was (28.9±7.5) min, the mean surgical time was less in group a in compare to group b. the difference between two groups was significant p value = 0.001. the preoperative mean of bcva in group a was 0.583, in postoperative the mean of bcva became 0.726 p value= 0.000 and in group b the preoperative mean was 0.586 and in postoperative became 0.614 p value= 0.09, in both groups the change of bcva was significant but the visual change was more significant in group a in compare to group b. patients were all checked for signs of recurrence of pterygium and recurrence was found in only one (2.2%) case of group a while in six (13.3%) cases of group b (table 4) after six months of follow up. the recurrent rate difference between the two groups was significant p value = 0.04. after the period of 6 months of follow up no other recurrence was noted in the rest of the patients table 4: group b six (13.3%) cases had recurrence and they were as follows. no. age gender grade other rf case 1 57 male iii no rf case 2 58 male iii smoker case 3 44 female ii no rf case 4 35 female ii no rf case 5 59 male ii no rf case 6 40 female ii no rf to compare mean t test and for correlation chi square test were used at the significant level of 0.05. in this the of recurrence, complications and mean intraoperative time were significant (table 5). table 5: significant factors between two groups. variable percentage in group a percentage in group b p value recurrence 2.2 24.4 0.04 complication 20.22 28.93 0.01 mean intraoperative time 20.22 28.93 0.001 4. discussion multiple factors affecting the recurrence of pterygium after excision, among them age, gender, grads, risk factors like smoking, sun exposure and the type of the surgery [20]. despite various techniques and modifications of the procedure used for pterygium excision still the main complication is the recurrence, so the recurrence is still a big challenge and problem after pterygium surgery [21] and in general the recurrence take place within first 6 months postoperatively [22,23]. depending on the fact that, restoration of the limbal anatomy after pterygium excision will decrease the chance of recurrences in future and smoothing of the corneoscleral bed is helping in this restoration which in turn lead to earlier reepithelialization and this will lead to corneal clarity enhancement postoperatively, in addition to that any attached remnants of the tissue which tightly adheres to the corneoscleral bed and cannot be easily removed will lead to regrowth of the fibro vascular tissue [9] which is considered to be one mechanism of pterygium recurrence [24] so to prevent this need excellent polishing and smoothing of the surface and this can be achieved with the use of motorized diamond-tipped drill [25] in this study we compare polishing with motorized diamond burr and manual polishing by crescent blade in the rate of recurrence, so patients divided into two groups, group a diamond burr used and group b crescent blade used for cleaning the surface. excision of the pterygium performed with the same technique in both groups using conjunctival auto graft since this technique has the highest success rate and the safest procedure in decreasing the recurrence [24,26], although fixing the graft with suture created kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 135 some complications related to the suture like: conjunctival granuloma, retention cyst, and conjunctival inflammation which were non serious complication in both groups [27]. since no study could be found comparing the results of the two methods of corneal polishing, so we conclude the result from statistical analysis of the study and also the effect of other risk factors on the recurrence. after follow up of six months only one( 2.2%) case of group a recurrence has been observed and the case was a (34) year old male with grad(iii) pterygium, the patient had history of sun exposure and he presented with sign of irritation , as we observe in this case with the use of diamond burr for polishing he had several factors affected the recurrence as in the study conducted by p anguria p et al was young patient’s age determines pterygium recurrence after surgery, also in the study of ba olusanya et al concluded that younger age less than 50 years of age to be a risk factor for recurrence, since the pterygium of this case was grad (iii) and in the study of tan dt et al [17] considered that pterygium morphology is a risk factor for recurrence, also in the study of sang won ha et al discussed about the effect of ultraviolet radiation on pterygium and considered it as one of the risk factor which affect the recurrence beside young age group and morphology of the pterygium considered to be other risk factors, in the study of soo hyun kwon et al analyzed the risk factors and concluded that younger age group and larger pterygium related to the recurrence. so in this study in spite of using motorized diamond burr recurrence took place because of presence of other multiple risk factors. group b had six (13.3%) cases of recurrence, they had less risk factors as demonstrated in the (table 4) three patients their age more than 50 years, four of them had grad ii and only one patient has history of smoking, so the higher rate of recurrence in this group can only be explained due to the different technique used for polishing. 5. conclusion the study concluded that comparing the use of motorized diamond burr in polishing of the corneoscleral bed during excision of primary pterygium with the manual polishing by crescent blade gives better results in the rate of recurrence, beside that corneal polishing with diamond burr need less intra-operative time, it leaves less corneal scar and early visual recovery postoperatively. the instrument has low coast, easy to handle and little surgical expertise required. so using this tool is strongly recommended during pterygium surgery. reference [1] ardalan, s. ravi singh, l. 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[30] s. ha, “clinical analysis of risk factors contributing to recurrence of pterygium after excision and graft surgery,” international journal of ophthalmology, 8(3), pp. 522-7. 2015. 1. introduction 5. conclusion  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq covid-19 outbreak: routes of transmission, precautions, and economic impact on dentistry-a review article mohammed tahir abdalqadir department of prosthodontics college of dentistry university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq mohammed.abdalqadir@univsul.edu.iq article info abstract special issue on coronavirus ( covid19) doi: 10.24017/covid.3 received : 28 april 2020 accepted : 01 may 2020 in late 2019, a novel coronavirus appeared in wuhan, hubei province, china, and then rapidly spread around the world. the virus produces severe and even fatal pneumonia; the most common clinical symptoms among infected persons include fever, shortness of breath, cough, fatigue, and abnorm al chest ct. though the virus first traveled from animal to human, it can now spread from human to human through direct transmission such as coughing, sneezing, and inhalation of droplets; and through contact with mucus membranes of oral, nasal, and eye. covid-19 also can be transmitted through saliva and the fecal– oral route. the risk of cross-infection between patients and dental practitioners is high due to the nature of dental work, so this outbreak has made a powerful impact, both medically and economically, on the dentistry sector. dental practitioners should have comprehensive knowledge of the virus and its route of transmission, and they should take proper precautions during dental treatments to protect themselves and their patients. this article provides a review of covid-19, its transmission routes, necessary precautions during dental setting, and the virus’s impact on the economy of the dental industry. keywords: covid-19, dentistry, coronavirus, sars-cov-2, transmission, economy copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction in december 2019, a new pneumonia outbreak with an unspecified etiology originated in wuhan, hubei province, china. the majority of the cases were bound to a hunan local seafood market buying and selling live animals; this commonality suggested that the pathogen had been transmitted from animals-to-humans and had quickly escalated to human-to-human transmission. this pneumonia-like infection quickly spread to most of other provinces from mailto:mohammed.abdalqadir@univsul.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) | 24 wuhan, and today, 212 countries and territories around the world have reported more than 3,305000 confirmed cases of the covid-19 and more than 235,000 deaths [1-4]. the most common clinical symptoms among infected patients include dry cough, shortness of breath, fever, atypical chest ct, and fatigue. in addition, less common symptoms include headache, diarrhea, sputum, and hemoptysis [5-7]. a novel coronavirus was formally reported as the causative pathogen of covid-19 on january 8, 2020, by the chinese center for disease control and prevention, and this disease has since become a severe public health problem both in china and the rest of the world[8, 9]. the world health organization (who), on january 30, 2020, announced that the covid-19 outbreak was a public health emergency of international concern [10]. the novel coronavirus was first called 2019-ncov and was then officially named severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (sars-cov-2). the who, on february 11, 2020, announced covid-19 as the official name for this new viral pneumonia disease, while the international committee on taxonomy of viruses (ictv) named the novel coronavirus sars-cov-2 [11-13]. certain demographics are more susceptible to contracting covid-19; the infection is most contagious among people, particularly men, aged 65 years and above; healthcare staff treating patients with covid-19; individuals with liver and kidney failure; patients with immunodeficiency; and individuals who have close contact with patients in clinical settings [14, 15]. the risk of cross-infection between dental patients and practitioners may be high because of the nature of the dental setting. it is urgent that dental practitioners in countries and regions affected by covid-19 apply effective and strict infection control protocols. this article provides a thorough review of the covid-19 outbreak and its relation to and impact on dentistry. 2. literature review 2.1 what is covid-19? coronaviruses are minute in size, about 65–125nm in diameter, and they are a member of the coronaviridae family in the nidovirales order, composed of a single-strand rna molecule as a nucleic genome material ranging in size from 26–32 kb in length [16-18]. covid-19, which emerged in wuhan, china, belongs to the β-cov (betacoronavirus) genus according to the phylogenetic analysis of the viral genome [19, 20]. according to a recent study, sars-cov-2 is zoonotic, similar to sever acute respiratory syndrome (sars-cov) and middle east respiratory syndrome (mers-cov). the most probable origin is chinese horseshoe bats (rhinolophus sinicus), and the intermediate host most likely is the pangolin [14, 21, 22]. the structure of covid-19 is a mutated form. the genome of the virus encodes four important structural proteins, as shown in figure 1: spike (s) glycoprotein, membrane (m) protein, envelope (e) protein, and hemagglutinin esterase (hes) [23-25]. the s protein from the coronavirus promotes viral–host cell fusion and facilitates viral entry into target cells [26-29]. the m protein helps viral envelope formation, confirms the nucleocapsid stability, interacts with other structural proteins of the coronavirus, encourages viral gathering, and encapsulates the genetic materials of the virus [30-32]. the smallest e protein involves in virion envelope inside the infected cells [33]. there is another protein known as n protein that helps in the replication process and can bind to the genome of the virus to form an n protein–rna complex called a nucleocapsid [34, 35]. the hes protein envelopes glycoproteins and mediates attachment to o-acetylated sialic acids [36]. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-toll/ kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) | 25 figure 1: the structural characteristics of coronavirus [37] 2.2 transmission routes of covid-19 covid-19 can be transmitted through direct transmission like a sneeze, a cough, or inhalation of droplets or through contact with oral, nasal, or ocular mucous membranes [2]. the disease also can be directly or indirectly transmitted through saliva [38]. covid-19 may be transmitted through aerosols formed during medical procedures [39]. there may be a risk of transmission of the virus through the fecal–oral route, as researchers identified covid-19 in the stool of patients from the united states and china [40]. a study revealed that sars-cov2 could be spread from mothers to their newborns (vertical transmission) [41]. there is a report of one case of covid-19 infection in germany showed that transmission could occur through contact with asymptomatic patients [42]. 2.3 transmission routes of covid-19 in dental practice a report published by the new york times on march 15, 2020, entitled “the workers who face the greatest coronavirus risk” revealed that dentists are the workers most susceptible to the risk of contracting covid-19, even more susceptible than general physicians and nurses are [43]. when a person talks, coughs, laughs, or sneezes, aerosols and droplets are generated ranging from large (>5 μm diameter) to small (≤5 μm diameter). while larger particles quickly fall to the ground because of gravity, necessitating close physical proximity between an infected person and others for transmission to occur, smaller droplets can remain for a prolonged time in the air and travel farther before contaminating surfaces or entering the respiratory tract [44]. results from one study showed that aerosols from highly virulent pathogens like sars-cov could travel more than two meters [45]. one study reported that the air of the dental office contains 38 types of microorganisms [46], and to et al. reported the presence of live coronaviruses in the saliva of infected persons by viral culture method [38]. covid-19 uses ace2 as a receptor to invade cells, and ace2 receptors in epithelial cells of salivary gland ducts were shown to be a prime target of sars-cov-2 infection [20, 47]. dental practitioners and patients are at high risk of exposure to pathogenic microorganisms, including covid-19, because of the nature of dental work, which involves persistent exposure to blood, saliva, and other body fluids, face-to-face communication with patients, and handling sharp instruments. covid-19 in dental settings can be transmitted through inhalation of the virus while airborne; direct contact with oral fluids and blood; contact between droplets or aerosols containing the virus and the oral, nasal, and conjunctival mucosa; and through indirect contact with contaminated surfaces and instruments [47–49]. an epidemiological study showed that covid-19 has superior transmissibility than sars-cov and mers-cov have [49]. the infectious covid-19 could be spread through any of the above conditions in dental clinics and hospitals, as shown in figure 2. kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) | 26 figure 2: transmission routes of covid-19 in dental clinics [50] 2.4 precautions in dental practice and dental clinics during this 2019-ncov epidemic, patients who are suspected to have covid-19 should not be treated in dental clinics; instead, dentists must quarantine the patients and inform the control department in the shortest time as possible. the body temperature measurement of patients is strongly recommended using a contact-free forehead thermometer. each patient should be asked to report any fever, respiratory symptoms like cough and shortness of breath, history of travel to a suspected country or region, recent contact with people who have traveled to a suspected country or region, or participation in any meeting or gathering in the past two weeks. if the patient replies “yes” to any of the above questions and the patient’s body temperature is below 37.3 °c, dental treatments should be postponed until 14 days after the exposure. if the patient replies “yes” and the body temperature is above 37.3 °c, then the patient should be quickly quarantined, and the dentist should contact the local health department or infection control department. if the patient replies “no” and the body temperature is above 37.3 °c, then instruction should be given to the patient to go to specialized clinics for covid-19 for further medical care [50]. the following precautions should be used during dental treatments, especially emergency cases, because of the high transmissibility of covid-19: 2.4.1 waiting area/reception area all patients in the reception area should use masks and gloves; when coughing or sneezing, they must use a tissue or their elbow to cover their nose and mouth, quickly put the tissues used into the waste bin, and ensure hand hygiene. the distance between two patients in the waiting area should be at least 1 m [1]. the waiting area should have adequate ventilation: a room with natural ventilation with a capacity of 60 l/s per patient can be considered as proper ventilation [51]. 2.4.2 hand hygiene hand washing has a crucial role in preventing infections, and recently there is an increasing in awareness of the value of hand washing in the prevention of acute respiratory infections. epidemiological studies showed that washing hands with soap and water; and 70–90% alcohol-based hand rubs was effective in suppressing sars-cov transmission [52, 53]. the who reports that hand hygiene either with soap and water or with an alcohol-based hand rub are equally effective. when the hands are not visibly dirty, an alcohol-based hand rub is preferred, but when the hands are visibly soiled, soap and water must be used [54]. the who suggests that hand hygiene should be performed before the aseptic procedure, before touching a patient, after touching a patient, after exposure to bodily fluid, and after touching a patient’s surroundings [55]. kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) | 27 2.4.3 personal protective measures dentists are more prone to infection and transmission of oral microorganisms, especially to the inner part of the eye and nose, during dental procedures; the eye and the nose are essential areas for transmission of infection due to proximity between the dentist and the patients [56, 57]. airborne droplets are the primary means for the transmission of covid-19, so the use of barrier protection measures like masks, gloves, eyewear, face shields, caps, and other types of protective wear is strongly recommended for all dentists and other healthcare providers in hospitals and clinics during this epidemic. 2.4.4 mouth rinse before dental treatments an effective way of decreasing the number of microorganisms in oral aerosols is the mouth rinse before dental treatments [58, 59]. a study reported that the use of a mouth rinse containing chlorhexidine, cetylpyridinium, and essential oils before the dental procedures resulted in a decrease in the formation of colony units in dental aerosol by 68.4% [59, 60]. chlorhexidine showed activity against several viruses, including human immunodeficiency virus (hiv), herpes simplex virus (hsv), and hepatitis b virus (hbv) [61], but it may not be effective against 2019-ncov. mouthwashes that contain 1% hydrogen peroxide or 0.2% povidone as an oxidative agent can reduce the oral microbes in saliva, including covid-19, because 2019-ncov is vulnerable to oxidation [50]. 2.4.5 use of rubber dam isolation the application of rubber dams can reduce saliva and blood-contaminated aerosols especially when ultrasonic devices and high-speed handpieces are used, and these dams can get rid all pathogens rising from respiratory secretion. if the rubber dam is placed and used correctly, the tooth that is undergoing treatment would be the only source of contamination [62]. the use of rubber dam could importantly minimize airborne particles in the operational field by 70% [63] and reduce the spread of microorganisms by 90% [64]. when the application of a rubber dam is not possible, the four-handed operation should be used, and the use of manual devices like a hand scaler and carisolv are recommended for periodontal scaling and caries removal to reduce the generation of aerosols [50]. 2.4.6 use of anti-retraction handpiece the use of a high-speed dental handpiece with anti-retraction can decrease the backflow of the hepatitis b virus and oral bacteria into the tube of the dental handpiece far more efficiently than a dental handpiece without anti-retraction property can [65]. during this covid-19 outbreak, the use of an anti-retraction handpiece, especially one with anti-retractive valves, is recommended, and handpieces without anti-retraction vales should be avoided as an additional preventive step to prevent cross-infection of covid-19 [50]. 2.4.7 disinfection of surfaces the aerosols and droplets that are generated during dental procedures contain infective microorganisms and can be deposited on nearby devices and surfaces. a study showed that exposure of coronaviruses to 0.1% sodium hypochlorite, 0.5% hydrogen peroxide, and 62– 71% ethanol can significantly reduce their viral infectivity, and this helps to prevent further spread of the virus [48]. therefore, disinfection of devices and surfaces, especially surfaces in close contact with the operating areas, is essential. disinfection and cleaning should include all parts, such as desks, chairs, and door handles, of the waiting areas. 2.4.8 medical waste management all dental waste should be managed appropriately, those items that are reusable should be cleaned, sterilized, and properly stored. disposable wastes, including protective measures considered as infectious medical waste, should be stored in yellow double-layer medical waste bags with gooseneck ligation and should be disposed of according to the requirements for the manipulation of medical waste [50]. kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) | 28 2.5 impact of covid-19 on the dental economy though covid-19 is a new virus, the who has recognized the virus’s role in sparking a global pandemic. covid-19 has strongly affected and slowed down economies worldwide, limited transportation, reduced travel and tourism, shuttered holy places, and dramatically decreased the price of oil. covid-19 will undoubtedly affect the dental job market and economy; according to a study for 2000, dentistry noted to have more than two million jobs throughout the world, and total spending on dental services was calculated at $203.6 billion. taxes produced directly or indirectly from dental practice totaled more than $33 billion, and the annual effect of one additional dentist on the economy was estimated at $1,278,253 [66], but these numbers decreased nowadays during covid-19 outbreak. according to a study in china during the rise of covid-19, the novel coronavirus was found to significantly influence the use of dental services among the general population. the overall number of dental emergency patients decreased by 38%, and non-urgency cases decreased to three-tenths of pre-covid-19 rates [67]. in some countries or areas, such as the kurdistan region of iraq, there has been a total lockdown of all dental clinics, except for few specialized governmental hospitals for treating emergency cases using the above precautions, for more than a month. the lockdown and decrease in patients seeking dental services will continue to have a negative impact on the dental economy. 3. conclusion the emergence of covid-19 has proven to be a challenge and responsibility for dentists because dentists have a high chance of exposure to infectious diseases. a good understanding of covid-19, its risks, and routes of transmission, especially in dental clinics, will help to protect dentists and patients alike. though lockdowns and decreases in dental activities have had a profound effect on the economy of this sector, all the aforementioned precautions should be used during any dental treatment during the covid-19 epidemic. refrence [1] z. ge, l. yang, j. xia, x. fu, and y. zhang, “possible aerosol transmission of covid -19 and special precautions in dentistry,” journal of zhejiang university-science b 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[67] h. guo, y. zhou, x. liu, and j. tan, “the impact of the covid -19 epidemic on the utilization of emergency dental services,” journal of dental science, 2020, doi: 10.1016/j.jds.2020.02.002.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 2 | july 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.2.1 knowledge, attitude and practice toward breast cancer among kurdish women in sulaimani governorate/ iraq bekhal abdalwahid amin technical institute in sulaimani sulaimani polytechnic university, kurdistan region, iraq kaziwanana@yahoo.com fadhil ahmed mohialdeen technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university kurdistan region, iraq fadhilahmed@hotmail.com muhammed babakir-mina technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university kurdistan region, iraq m.babakir@yahoo.com mohammed i m gubari technical college of health, sulaimani polytechnic university kurdistan region, iraq mohammed.gubari@spu.edu.iq abstract: breast cancer is a devastating affliction, the frequency of which is gradually increasing all over the world. cancer may be cured if properly intervened at the right time. the correct treatment, aided by professionals and the right technology can provide critical life support to breast cancer patients. this study was conducted to assessment knowledge, attitude and practice of breast cancer among kurdish females visited maternity teaching hospital in sulaimani. a face-to-face interview through a question¬naire to assessment of knowledge and practices toward breast cancer of 500 non-breast cancer women visited maternity teaching hospital was done. data were computerized and analyzed using statistical package for the social science (spss, version 22). p-value of < 0.05 was considered as statistically significant. out of 500 participants in the current study on knowledge and practices toward breast cancer among non-breast cancer women, consequently were 227 (45.4%) and 201 (40.2%) practiced breast self-examination(bse) and clinical breast examination respectively. in this study the participants having no symptoms and lack of knowledge about how to do bse where regarded as the barriers of not practicing bse (44.7%, 55.3%) respectively. the most common reason for not doing clinical breast examination (cbe) is fear of the outcome and no sign & symptom of breast cancer (28.8%, 61.9%) respectively. the high education level showed significantly more knowledge of breast selfexamination and mammography than illiterate women p≤ 0.001 and p≤ 0.03 respectively. on the other hand, the high education level women showed significantly more practice of breast self-examination p≤ 0.001. in conclusion, the present study found the facts to the inadequate knowledge of female about breast cancer and recognized the negative influence of low knowledge on the practice of bse, cbe and mammography and the breast cancer incidence. therefore, more determinations are needed to develop a positive attitude toward bse, cbe and mammography screening and practice in sulaimani. keywords: knowledge, attitude, practice, breast cancer, kurdish women, sulaimani. 1. introduction breast cancer is a major health burden in women; it is the most common cause of cancer death among women in both high recourse and low recourse countries [1]. the incidence, mortality and survival rate in different parts of the world vary from 4 to 10 fold. recent global cancer statistics indicate that breast cancer incidence is rising at a faster rate in populations in developing countries [2, 3]. the primary risk factors for breast cancer are: genetic susceptibility, increasing age, family history, early menarche and late menopause, oral contraceptive pills, postmenopausal hormone therapy, late first pregnancy (30 years or older), lack of breastfeeding, smoking, alcohol consumption, and obstetric history [4,5]. delayed presentation of breast cancer is associated with lower survival rate [6], moreover the late stage of disease and high mortality are seen with delayed in diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer [7]. there is data suggesting that, factors related to women's knowledge and beliefs about breast cancer and its management may contribute significantly to medical helpseeking behaviors [8,9]. the three screening methods recommended for breast cancer includes breast self-examination (bse), clinical breast examination (cbe), and mammography. unlike cbe and mammography, which require hospital visit and specialized equipment's and expertise, the breast selfexamination is inexpensive and is carried out by the women's themselves. several studies, based on breast cancer patient's retrospective self-report on their practices of the exam, have established that a positive association exists between performance of the exam and early detection of breast cancer [10]. there are many studies in the world showed that lack knowledge and practice about breast cancer lead to delayed presentation, on the diagnosis and treatment of the disease with lower survival rate [6,7], therefor increasing knowledge and practice toward breast cancer is very important among the individuals to decrease the incidence and increase early detection of the disease. therefore the role of education and knowledge in decreasing delayed presentation and diagnosis has been confirmed in other study [11, 12]. so the study aimed to assess knowledge, attitude and practice toward breast cancer among kurdish females. 2. methods and materials the cross sectional study, was conducted on 500 kurdish women in sulaimani governorate/iraq aged from 20-74 years who attended to maternity teaching hospital in sulaimani from the 20th of december to 20th july 2016. the method of selection sampling was convenient sampling method. inclusion criteria -females with non –breast cancer aged between 20-74 years. -only population of the sulaimani and it's surrounding. mailto:kaziwanana@yahoo.com mailto:fadhilahmed@hotmail.com mailto:m.babakir@yahoo.com mailto:email@univ.com -only the kurdish populations were included. exclusion criteria -females under 20 years old. -females with breast cancer and other types of cancer. -non kurdish females. -females out of sulaimani-governorate. a face-toface interview through a questionnaire with nonbreast cancer females who visited sulaimani maternity teaching hospital. verbal consent was taken from women, after disclosure statement regarding the purpose of the study. data were collected during the period of study. the questionnaire was consisted of two main parts: part one: socio-demographic characteristics of the study sample. part two: questions related to knowledge, attitude and practices. the data were collected and tabulated. the recorded data were analyzed using computer based statistical package for social science (spss, v.22). simple descriptive statistics were used (frequency with percentage distribution for categorized variables). chi-square cross tabulation was used to test the differences to get the association in proportions of categorical variable between two or more groups and assess/find correlation between the variables. the level of statistical significance was set at probability p≤ 0.05. 3. results the study includes 500 participant females, were visited maternity teaching hospital. table 1. showed the socio-demographic characteristics of the participants. the age of the studied female ranged from 20 to 74 years with a mean ±sd of (35.9 ±8.96) years. majority of participants 223 (44.6%), were between 31to 40 years of age .467 (93.4%) were married. the majority of the participants 174(34.8%) of them were high education level. regarded occupational status of the participants majority of the participants were house wife 299(59.8%). regarding marital status, 469(93.4%) of participants were married. in addition, from 500 participants 390(78%) were with urban residency and 110 (22%) of participants had rural residency. when we asked the participants about the risk factors for the breast cancer in table 2 (80.2%) indicated that positive family history was the common risk factor while (75.5%) and (70%) demonstrated that smoking and alcohol consumption respectively. table 3.when we asked the participant about the knowledge toward the signs & symptoms of breast cancer 380 (76.0%), 370 (74%) and 366(73.2) indicated that lump in the breast, discoloration/ dimpling of the breast and change in the size of the breast were the common signs of breast cancer respectively. table1.demographical characteristics of the participants (no.=500) characteristics no. (%) age (years) 20-30 137 (27.4) 31-40 223 (44.6) 41-50 105 (21.0) 51-60 28 (5.6) above 60 7 (1.4) education illiterate 127 (25.4) primary 108 (21.6) secondary 91 (18.2) high education 174 (34.8) occupation house wife 299 (59.8) student 25 (5.0) employer 176 (35.3) marital status married 467 (93.4) unmarried 33 (6.6) residence urban 390 (78.0) rural 110 (22.0) total 500 (100) as illustrated in table 4. 175 (35.0%) of the participants were confirmed the breast self-examination (bse) usefulness in early detection of breast cancer. on the other hand, 228 (45.6%) participants were confirmed the clinical breast examination (cbe) usefulness in early detection of breast cancer. only 22 (4.4%) confirmed mammography usefulness in early detection; however, only 112 (22.4%) of the participants had knowledge of the correct age for screening mammography. in addition, 199 (39.8%) of the participants recognized the correct bse frequency. as illustrated in table 5. when we asked the participants about the practice of breast self – examination (bse), out of 500 participants, only 227 (45.4%) were practiced breast self-examination, while only 74 (32.5%) identified the correct time for practice of breast self-examination. in addition 54 (23.8%) of the participants recognized the correct age for starting breast self-examination, on the other hand when we asked about the reasons for not practicing breast selfexamination the highest percentage of chosen barrier 151 (55.3%) was "i don’t know how to do that" and followed by 122 (44.7%) “i don't have breast problem”. as illustrated in table 6. when we asked the participants about the practice of clinical breast examination (cbe) out of 500 participants only 201 (40.2%) were admitted clinical breast examination (cbe), 121 (60.2%) of the participants visited breast clinics only one time, 57 (28.4%) and 23 (11.4%) of the participants visited breast clinics 2-3 time and 3-5 time respectively. consequently, when we asked about the reasons for not going through consulting clinical breast examination, the highest percentage of chosen barrier 185 (61.9%) was “i don't have sign and symptom” followed by 86.0 (28.8%) “fear of outcome”. as showed in tables 7. the knowledge of breast selfexamination as a method of early detection was higher in the age group (31-40) (40%), compared to the other age group (20-30) (31.4%), (41-50) (20.6%), (51-60) (7.4%), and above 60 (0.6%) respectively. however, this difference was statistically not significant. regarding the level of education the knowledge of participants toward breast self-examination was higher among highly education level 96 (54.9%), compared to the other level of education illiterate, primary level and secondary level were 21(12.0%). 31 (17.7%) and 27 (15.4%) respectively. however, this difference was statistically significant p≤0.001. about the knowledge of participants toward breast self-examination was higher among married women 165 (94.3%), compared to the unmarried10 (5.7%) and this difference was statistically not significant. as illustrated in tables 8. the knowledge of clinical breast-examination as a method of early detection was higher in the age group (31-40) (50.4%), compared to the other age group (20-30) (28.2%), (41-50) (16.2%), (51-60) (4.8%), and above 60 (0.4%) respectively, and this difference was statistically significant p≤0.02. regarding the level of education; the knowledge of participants toward clinical breast--examination was higher among higher education level 75 (32.9%), compared to the other level of education illiterate, primary level and secondary level 68(29.8%). 47 (20.6%) and 38 (16.7%) respectively. however, this difference was not statistically significant. the knowledge of participants toward clinical breastexamination was higher among married women 212 (93%), compared to the unmarried 16 (7.0%) and this difference was statistically not significant. as showed in tables 9. the knowledge of mammography as a method of early detection was higher in the age group (41-50) (50%), compared to the other age group (20-30) (18.2%), (31-40) (22.7%), (5160) (9.1%), and above 60 (0%) respectively . however, this difference was statistically not significant. regarding the level of education the knowledge of participants toward mammography was higher among high education level 14 (63.6%), compared to the other level of education illiterate, primary level and secondary level 3(13.6%). 2 (9.2%) and 3 (13.6%) respectively. however, this difference was statistically significant p≤0.03. about the knowledge of participants toward mammography was higher among married women 21 (95.5%), compared to the unmarried 1.0 (4.5%) and this difference was statistically not significant. table2.information about the breast cancer risk factors identified by the participants(no.=500) risk factors no. (%) increase age yes 198 (39.6) no 302 (60.0) positive family history yes 401 (80.2) no 99 (19.8) high fat diet yes 318 (63.6) no 182 (36.4) smoking yes 377 (75.4) no 123 (24.6) alcohol consumption yes 350 (70.0) no 150 (30.0) late first pregnancy yes 269 (53.8) no 231 (46.2) early menarche yes 112 (22.4) no 388 (77.6) late menopause yes 207 (41.4) no 293 (58.6) stress yes 230 (46.0) no 270 (54.0) large breasts yes 166 (33.2) no 334 (66.8) total 500 (100) as illustrated in table 10, the practice of breast selfexamination was higher in the age group (31-40) (42.7%), compare to the other age group (20-30) (26.9%), (41-50) (20.7%), (51-60) (7.1%), and above 60 (2.6%) respectively. however, this difference was statistically not significant. regarding the level of education, the practice of breast self-examination was higher among higher education level 102 (44.9%), compared to the other level of education illiterate, primary level and secondary level 43(18.9%), 46 (20.3%) and 36 (15.9%) respectively. however, the association was statistically significant p≤0.001. about the practice toward breast self-examination was higher among married women 211 (93%), compared to the unmarried 16 (7.0%) and this difference was statistically not significant. table3.information about the sign & symptoms of breast cancer as identified by the participants(no.=500) sign & symptoms no. (%) lump in the breast yes 380 (76.0 ) no 120 (24.0) discharge from the nipple yes 266 (53.2) no 234 (46.8 ) pain and soreness in the breast yes 310 (62.0) no 190 (38.0 ) change in the size of the breast yes 366 (73.2) no 134 (26.8) discoloration/ dimpling of the breast yes 370 (74.0) no 130 (26.0) ulceration of the breast\nipple yes 358 (71.6) no 142 (28.4 ) weight loss yes 313 (62.6) no 187 (37.4) changes in the shape of the breast yes 349 (69.8) no 151 (30.2) inversion retraction yes 347 (69.4) no 153 (30.6) lump under armpit yes 305 (61.0) no 195 (39.0) scaling/ dry skin in nipple region yes 243 (48.6) no 257 (51.4) total 500 (100) as shown in tables 11. the practice of clinical breastexamination was higher among the age group (31-40) (45.8%), compared to the other age group (20-30) (23.9%), (41-50) (23.4%), (51-60) (6.5%), and above 60 (0.5%) respectively, however, this difference was statistically not significant p=0.3. regarding the level of education; the practice toward clinical breast-examination was higher among higher educated level 62 (30.8%), compared to the other level of education illiterate, primary level and secondary level 45(22.4%). 51 (25.4%) and 43(21.4%) respectively. however, this difference was statistically not significant p=0.1. about the practice toward clinical breast-examination was higher among marred women 189 (94%), compare to the unmarred 12 (6.0%) and this difference was statistically not significant. table 4. knowledge about method of early detection of breast cancer identified by the participants(no.=500) method no. (%) breast self examination(bse) yes 175 (35.0) no 325 (65.0) do you know at which age breast self examination should be started yes 369 (73.8 ) no 131 (26.2) do you know how to perform self-breast examination yes 300 (60.0) no 200 (40.0) do you know how often breast selfexamination should be done daily 16 (3.2) weekly 102 (20.4) monthly 199 (39.8) don’t know 183 (36.6) clinical breast examination (cbe) yes 228 (45.6) no 272 (54.4) do you know how often cbe should be done until a women reach 40 years once in a year 466 (93.2) once in two years 4 (0.8) once in three years 1 (0.2) don’t know 29 (5.8) ultra sound yes 36 (7.0) no 464 (92.8) mammography yes 22 (4.4) no 478 (95.6) do you know recommended age for mammography examination to start at the age of 30 107 (21.4) at 35 87 (17.4) at 40 112 (22.4) at 45 33 (6.6 ) don’t know 161 (32.2) table 5.practice of breast self – examination(no.=500) practice of breast self examination no. (%) do you practice breast selfexamination (bse) yes 227 (45.4) no 273 (54.6) how often you practice breast –self examination once a week 32 (14.1 ) once in a month 74 (32.5 ) once in 3 months 35 (15.5) not very often 86 (37.9) at which age you started practicing breast –self examination <25 of age 54 (23.8) 25-30 73 (31.9) 30-35 31 (13.7) >35 69 (30.6) breast self-examination barriers don't have breast problem 122 (44.7) don’t know how to do that 151 (55.3) table 6. information about practice of clinical breast examination (cbe)(no.=500) clinical breast examination (cbe) no. (%) yes 201 (40.2) no 299 (59.8) frequency of clinical breast examination once 221 (60.2) 2-3 times 57 (28.4) 3-5 times 23 (11.4) why do you reluctant to participate in clinical breast examination (cbe) -concern about extra money 3 (1.0) -concern about extra time 10 (3.3) -fear of outcome 86 (28.8) -too young to participate 11 (3.7) -no signs & symptoms of breast cancer 185 (61.9) -no one recommended 4 (1.3) table 7 .knowledge of breast self-examination (bse) as a method of early detection, according to age, education level and marital status. bse yes (no.=175) no (no.=325) (p value) characteristics no. (%) no. (%) age (years) 20-30 55 (31.4) 82 (25.2) 31-40 70 (40.0) 153 (47.1) 41-50 36 (20.6) 69 (21.3) (0.2) 51-60 13 (7.4) 15 (4.6) above 60 1 (0.6) 6 (1.8) education illiterate 21 (12.0) 106 (32.6) primary 31 (17.7) 77 (23.7) secondary 27 (15.4) 64 (19.7) high education 96 (54.9) 78 (24.0) (0.001)* marital status married 165 (94.3) 302 (92.9) unmarried 10 (5.7) 23 (7.1) (0.5) table 8. knowledge of clinical breast examination (cbe) as a method of early detection, according to age, education level and marital status. cbe yes (no.=228) no (no.=(272) (p value) characteristics no. (%) no. (%) age (years) 20-30 64 (28.2) 73 (26.8) 31-40 115 (50.4) 108 (39.7) 41-50 37 (16.2) 68 (25.0) (0.02)* 51-60 11 (4.8) 17 (6.3) above 60 1 (0.4) 6 (2.2) education illiterate 68 ( 29.8) 59 ( 21.7) primary 47 (20.6) 61 (22.4) secondary 38 (16.7) 53 (19.5) (0.2) high education 75 (32.9) 99 (36.4) marital status married 212 (93.0) 255 (93.7) unmarried 16 (7.0) 17 (6.3) (0.7) table9. knowledge of mammography as a method of early detection of breast cancer according to age, education level and marital status mammography yes (no.=22) no (no.=478) (p value) characteristics no. (%) no. (%) age (years) 20-30 4 ( 18.2) 133 (27.8) 31-40 5 (22.7) 218 (45.6) 41-50 11 (50.0) 94 (19.7) (0.1) 51-60 2 (9.1) 26 (5.4) above 60 0 (0.0) 7 (1.5) education illiterate 3 (13.6) 124 (25.9) primary 2 (9.2) 106 (22.2) secondary 3 (13.6) 88 (18.4) high education 14 ( 63.6) 160 (33.5) (0.03)* marital status married 21 (95.5) 446 (93.3) unmarried 1 (4.5) 32 (6.7) (0.6) table 10 .practice of breast self-examination bse according to age, education level and marital status bse yes (no.=227) no (no.=273) (p value) characteristics no. (%) no. (%) age (years) 20-30 61 (26.9) 76 (27.8) 31-40 97 (42.7) 126 (46.2) 41-50 47 (20.7) 58 (21.2) (0.1) 51-60 16 (7.1) 12 (4.4) above 60 6 (2.6) 1 (0.4) education illiterate 43 (18.9) 84 (30.8) primary 46 (20.3) 62 (22.7) secondary 36 (15.9) 55 (20.1) high education 102 (44.9) 72 (26.4) (0.001)* marital status married 211 (93.0) 256 (93.4) unmarried 16 (7.0) 17 (6.6) (0.204) 4. discussion 4.1. knowledge and practice toward breast cancer the present study results showed that the majority of the participants were in age between (31-40) years old, 93.4% of participants were married; this high percentage of marriage was assigned to socio-demographic factors as islamic culture trend for early marriage and economic state (table1). this finding is nearly in accordance to the previous cross sectional study that design among female aged more than 19 years in mosul city, iraq (both rural and urban) in 1996 which show that 92.5 % of the sample were married [13], our' result was consistent with study done among adult saudi women [14]. regarding the associated risk factors for breast cancer, about 80.2% table11. practice of clinical breast examination cbe, according to the age, education level and marital status cbe characteristics yes (n0.=201) no (n0.=299) (p value) no. (%) no. (%) age (years) 20-30 48 (23.9) 89 (29.8) 31-40 92 (45.8) 130 (43.5) 41-50 47 (23.4) 59 (19.7) (0.3) 51-60 13 (6.5) 15 (5.0) above 60 1 (0.5) 6 (2.0) education illiterate 45 (22.4) 81 (27.1) primary 51 (25.4) 58 (19.4) secondary 43 (21.4) 48 (16.1) (0.1) high education 62 (30.8) 112 (37.5) marital status married 189 (94.0) 278 (93.0) unmarried 12 (6.0) 21 (7.0) (0.6) of the participants knew that positive family history is the risk factors of breast cancer (table2), other study conducted in nigeria have also reported similar finding where that study have presented that the incidence of breast cancer is to be slightly higher in persons that have first degree relatives with a history of breast cancer [15]. in our study 75.4% of the participants said that smoking is a risk factors of breast cancer (table2), these results were similar to that reported in a study done in lagos where that study had presented that the incidence of breast cancer is to be slightly higher in persons that had history of smoking [16]. while 63.6% knew that high fat diet also an implicated risk factor (table2), this is consistent by several studies conducted in nigeria [15,16], previous studies have presented that the incidence was also increased with increasing age of the patient, obesity, physical inactivity, radiation exposure, intake of alcohol and high fat. most of the participants in our study didn't know the association between breast cancers and increasing age 39.6%, early menarche 22.4% and large breast 33.2% (table2), contrary to that other studies conducted in nigeria presented that the incidence of breast cancer is also increased with increasing age of the patient and early menarche [16]. also, around 70.0%, 53.8% and 41.4% of participants realized the effect of alcohol consumption, delivery of first child after the age 30 and late menopause respectively were risk factors of breast cancer (table2), our results are similar with the study conducted in nigeria [17]. the result of our study showed that the participants have poor understanding of major breast cancer risk factors, may be due to poor knowledge, some of breast cancer risk factors can be changed with health education [18]. in the present study, 76.0% of the studied population knew that a breast lump could be a warning sign of breast cancer (table8). in another study among a nigerian population, only 33% of population identified that a breast lump is the commonest symptom of breast cancer [19]. contrary to that, other researchers conducted in jordanian established that the warning signs of breast cancer (e.g., painless lump, nipple retraction, bloody discharge from the nipple) were not well known among their participant women [20]. in the current study, 53.2% participants answered correctly when they asked about bloody discharge from nipple and 74.0% about change in breast skin(discoloration/dimpling of breast ) (table3), other studies conducted in nigeria women have also reported similar findings [21]. in our study only 38.0% of the participants said that pain and soreness in the breast are not signs of breast cancer (table 3), this luck of information may be due to poor knowledge about symptoms of breast cancer. whereas in another study conducted in iran only 27% said that pain is not a sign of breast cancer [22]. these wrong information's or assumptions about breast lumps may account for some of the reasons why some of our patients present late to the hospital [23]. the current study showed that 35% and 45.6% of the participants were informed about breast self-examination (bse) as well as clinical breastexamination (cbe) respectively and little about mammography 4.4% (table4). the high educational level was variable found to have a significant correlation (p< 0.001) with knowledge of breast self-examination (bse) (table7). on the other hand, the age was variable found to have a significant correlation (p< 0.02) with knowledge of clinical breast examination (cbe) (table8). this could be explained by the limited mammography services and information. this finding is really similar to study conducted in turkey found that the majority of the women had no knowledge about mammography [24]. the low levels of education in majority of the women who participated in the current study are another reason, in that the women may not know how to access accurate information about breast cancer. like the study conducted in turkey showed that majority 77.6% of the participants did not know the age range when mammography should be done nor did they know its potential in detecting early breast cancer [24]. regarding breast ultrasound, only 7.2% of the participants thought that it is a method for early detecting breast cancer (table4). this striking finding is contrary to study conducted in turkey [24], but it is similar to study conducted in uganda [25]. regarding the aspect of practicing breast self-examination (bse), the current study revealed that 45.4% of the participants were performed breast self-examination (bse), only 32.5% regularly (table5). in other studies, the percentage of monthly breast self-examination (bse) have been found to be 32.1% among under graduated students in nigeria[26] , 66% among nursing students in saudi arabia[27]. 52% among jordanian nurses, and 38.7% among jordanian nursing students [28], and 36.7% among selected female university students in malaysia [29]. in the current study the participants were have no symptoms and lack of knowledge about how to do bse were regarded as the barriers of not practicing breast self-examination (bse) (44.7%, 55.3%) respectively (table5). these findings are similar to findings among malaysian, women [29]. lack of knowledge about how to perform breast self-examination (bse) among participant's women might have been due to insufficient education programs for breast health awareness. breast health awareness provides women with some knowledge of the part they can play in being empowered to fight breast disease [30]. the practice of clinical breast examination (cbe) by physician was the second step in breast screening program [31].american cancer society has recommended clinical breast examination (cbe) for women aged 20 years once every two years and at age 40 annually. in our studies 40.2% of participants were examined clinically and 59.8% were never tried clinical breast examination (cbe). however, the most common reason for not practice clinical breast examination (cbe) were the fear of the outcome and no sign & symptom of breast cancer 28.8%, 61.9% respectively (table6). similarly, study conducted in vietnams found that the annual clinical breast examination (cbe) percentage was 45% in educated women [32]. this percentage was higher than the finding that reported in iranian women in another studies [33]. on the other hand, this finding is lower than the study of wu ty and his coauthor in (2006) the study showed that 59% of educated asian immigrants, who living in the us performed clinical breast examination (cbe) annually [34]. the implication of all of these is poor knowledge toward method of early detection of breast cancer. 4.2. limitation or weaknesses of the study our study has some limitation as well given the social and cultural circumstance; some women in our study might have hesitated to speak openly about breast cancer to a stranger, even though some of the advantages of face-to-face such as : accurate screening of question, capturing verbal and non-verbal questions, keeping the interviewee focused on track to capture emotion and behaviors, the approach may lead to many limitation like the quality of data by interviewer, manual data entry and limited sample size. 5. conclusion the present study found the facts to the effect of inadequate knowledge of females on breast cancer prevalence and recognizes the negative influence of low knowledge on the practice of bse, cbe and mammography. acknowledgments i would like to express my great thanks to 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[31] g. r. sadler, c. m. ko, j. a. cohn, m. white, r.-n. weldon, and p. wu, "breast cancer knowledge, attitudes, and screening behaviors among african american women: the black cosmetologists promoting health program," bmc public health, vol. 7, p. 57, 2007. [32] v. ho, j. m. yamal, e. n. atkinson, k. basenengquist, g. tortolero-luna, and m. follen, "predictors of breast and cervical screening in vietnamese women in harris county, houston, texas," cancer nursing, vol. 28, pp. 119-129, 2005. [33] p. yavari and m. a. pourhoseingholi, "socioeconomic factors association with knowledge and practice of breast self-examination among iranian women," asian pac j cancer prev, vol. 8, pp. 618-22, 2007. [34] s. salimipormehr, n. kariman, z. sheykhan, and h. alavimajd, "investigation of breast cancer screening tests performance and affecting factors in women referred to ardebil’s health and medical centers, 2009," journal of ardabil university of medical sciences, vol. 10, pp. 310-318, 2010. [35] t.-y. wu, b. west, y.-w. chen, and c. hergert, "health beliefs and practices related to breast cancer screening in filipino, chinese and asianindian women," cancer detection and prevention, vol. 30, pp. 58-66, 2006.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq big data analytics for organizations: challenges and opportunities and its effect on international business education twana saeed ali tugberk kaya management information system management information system university of sulaimani institute of graduated studies and research directorate of information technology cyprus international university sulaimani, iraq lefkosa, northern cyprus twana.ali@univsul.edu.iq tkaya@ciu.edu.tr volume 4–issue 2 december 2019 doi: 10.24017/science.2019.2.13 received: 23 october 2019 accepted: 20 november 2019 abstract big data refers to large volumes of information. this information varies from pictures, videos, texts, audios and other heterogeneous data. in recent years, the amount of such big data has exceeded the capacity of online or cloud storage systems. the amount of data collected yearly has doubled in the past years and the concern for the volume of this data has reached its exabyte yearly range. this paper focuses on the major issues and opportunities as well as big data storage with the aid of academic tools and researches conducted earlier by scholars for big data analysis. modern learning environment (mle) has to be understood in order to know how it supports learning in areas of big data such as university education systems. the utilization of online resources and web pages with laptops and mobile phones need to be understood as an attempt to integrate the modern learning environment and improve teaching in international bossiness. big data can be fine-tuned and used to create new online learning programmers. data collected by government departments, universities and institutions could be used as a new innovative learning system such as (mle) which has a passive and active character i.e. it can be accessed anywhere at any time. this would also help in minimizing extended classroom activities because students would have controlled access to online knowledge from their homes. keywords: big data, storage, structured and unstructured data, disk, velocity, volume, dashboard kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 138 1. introduction storage of data is adopted by many fields from academic purposes to government and private sectors of businesses, firms and organizations. the technological timeline has sped up so fast from storing information and data in books, catalogues and hard drives to making use of the online cloud facilities. this speed in technology has evolved the world into a global machine, with the help of computer and mobile devices, everyday 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is created, this data comes from digital pictures, videos and social media sites. the data is received from various sources come in different formats as well. 2 billion of the international world’s populations use the internet and about 5 billion are using mobile devices. this rise in the utilization of devices has created a lot of data either structured or unstructured[1]. big data when used and analyzed properly has a lot of values for businesses and organization, in customer service organizations the data being collected is tailored and created to make decisions that best fit a consumer taste. there is no doubt that big data and its potential is becoming a driving force of services and worlds innovation business and organizations must not only be able to store the data but must be capable of using the data to derive business value. there is no formula for deriving benefits and value from big data but the value depends on the application of the data being collected. business intelligence and analytics examines the challenges and opportunities of data storage and further research into the tools and concept of analyzing big data, what kind of technologies exist and what may serve as a potential threat to big data. the speed at which big data has evolved into every sector of life has left the academics and researchers no time to completely study and figure out what big data is made up of and its potentials to make customer service easier. hence there is not enough fundamental information in the academic field to completely understand big data. a major contribution of this paper is to bring forth the ignored dimensions of big data. when “big data” is mentioned, the first thing that comes to one’s mind is size, but big data goes beyond size, other factors such as frequency, volume, velocity and variety of big data are also important to study because they make the framework of big data. with the big data technology, they have been some potential threats relating to cyber risk and the privacy of individuals who use them. there is going to be a review concerning privacy issues and most importantly the opportunities big data offer for international businesses. these are going to be a topic of discussion. a major contribution to this is that firms who participate in the international business world are able to supervise new trends and unveil opportunities that are abroad with the help of big data analytics and participate in their supply and production duties as well as distribution activities around the globe. a major contribution of international business education is its ability to convey information and data to a third-party body that translates the data being received and customize it to meet the users need. 2. literature review each international business or business organization, little or enormous, needs valuable data and insights, with regards to understanding your intended interest group and client's inclinations, big data assume a significant job. it even encourages you to foresee their needs, the right data should be successfully displayed and appropriately broke down. it can help a business organization accomplish to achieve various goals. according to researcher[2], big data generally refers to data sets that have become too huge for and become too hard to even think about working with utilizing the traditional tool and database the system management. an additionally suggests data sets that have a lot of variety and velocity, producing a need to create potential answers for remove worth and data from wide-going, quick-moving data sets. according to an oxford english dictionary, “big data” as a term is characterized as “extremely large data sets that may be analyzed computationally to reveal patterns, trends, and kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 139 associations, especially relating to human behavior and interactions”. research by gandomi and haider in (2015)[3] illustrative that various implications of enormous information are utilized in research and business. these big data definitions change contingent upon the acknowledgement of the client, with some mindful on the characteristics of big data as far as volume, variety, and velocity, some centered around what it does, and others characterizing its subjects to their business' necessities. a past research work laney in 2001[4] focused on big data description based on the 3vs (volume, velocity, and variety). sagiroglu and sinanc in 2013[5] ulterior presented a big data research review and observed its security issues, while lomotey et al in 2014[6] defined big data by 5vs, extending the work done by laney in 2001 from 3vs to include value, and veracity[7]. a ren et al in 2019[8] thus recently developed a set of up-to-date big data definitions, in figure 1 shows predictions of global data volume provided by international data corporation (idc) [9]. also, a research by wang et al in 2016[10] the enormous volume of big data, the composite structure of this new data and the hard in managing and protective such data have added further issues. then the idea of big data was higher, it has so become one of the greatest generals focuses in both technical and international business and engineering areas. demonstrations many big data definitions or characteristics since the period 2001 to 2017. six illustrative definitions of big data adopted [8].global data volume forecast through idc) [10]. figure 1: developed a set of up-to-date big data definitions 3. methods and materials in this paper a research methodology approach that comprises of three stages. the first stage would is a descriptive stage to understand what big data is and the major terminologies used when referring to big data, while the second stage would be conducted by a comprehensive literature review of journal articles by different scholars on the topic of big data with the use of statistical data such as chats, figures and other related findings retrieved from earlier researches. this paper also proposes a model that can be used for enhancing learning through innovative means by integrating big data frameworks in different sources of information and knowledge in universities and other higher institution of learning. lastly, the literature review of an organization that has adopted big data for improving customer satisfaction with the help of a unique structural technique. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 140 table 1: showing examples of big data data set/domain description large hadron collider/particle physics (cern) 13-15 petabytes in 2010 internet communications (cisco) 667 exabytes in 2013 social media 12+ tbytes of tweets every day and growing. average retweets are 144 per tweet. human digital universe 1.7 zbytes (2011) -> 7.9 zbytes in 2015 (gantz and reinsel 2011) british library uk website crawl 110 tbytes per domain crawl to be archived other rfids, smart electric meters, 4.6 billion camera phones w/ gps 4. t of big data besides internet communications and social media services, other organizations utilize the concept of big data as well, a study was conducted from the year 20152017 on attitudes of organizations towards the adoption of big data and the results were amazing, earlier in the study organizations were reluctant to adopt the big data management concept but with the visible growth exhibited by those who embedded the concept into their organizations, other organizations were sooner persuaded to join the bandwagon. figure 2: showing the growth of big data adoption www.solverglobal.com http://www.solverglobal.com/ kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 141 before being able to understand and solve the needs of big data storage, it is important to know the major characteristics of data which are volume, velocity and variety. each of them playing a major role in determining how data is being analyzed and processed. 4.1. the five v’s of big data and how they pose as a challenge a lot of business promises come along with big data but what exactly is the reality of big data, this section explains the various data frameworks are commonly known as the 5 v‟s of big data. this includes data volume, variety, volatility, velocity and veracity and how these factors affect data efficiency. figure 3: the five v” s of big data characteristics based on doug laney at 2001[11]  volume: volume refers to the spaces defined to store information, in other words, simply said data volume is the amount of data/information in a file. the volume of a data especially those generated by data machines is reaching its peak. the amount of data created is expected to reach 35 zeta-bytes (zb) by 2020 (according to ibm).as data volume increases, the value of data decreases in proportion to age, quantity, richness and other factors. media such as facebook and twitter create 9+ terabytes of data every day. the challenge is how to deal with the size of big data that gets processed every day.  variety: variety of data refers to the formats in which this data is being received, data is received in some cases as unstructured because it requires time and a lot of effort and machine performance to categorize all the data received. a lot of data is unstructured or some might have a complex structure that is hard to represent in machine columns and rows. hence the problem of how to process such multiple sources of data in different formats at a required time poses a problem.  data quality: data quality simply talks about the exact precision of data being received, how true this data maybe, were there external factors that lead to the result of the data received? these are typical questions asked when data quality is involved. tsunami recordings of a disaster that happened might not match the readings to those in another country, is data quality high in some countries and low in some due to the technology available, all these uncertainty and imprecision are major setbacks in big kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 142 data analytics. besides having machine-related issues, data management is also very important. major challenges of these are data privacy, security and ethical usage of the data. matters relating to whether data is used correctly, abiding by the laws and its intended uses.  data velocity: data velocity measure the speed at which data travels. ecommerce has increased the speed of data used for different business transactions [5].  linking data: linking data refers to how the data is being connected to each other, usually, data is collected from different data sets and combined together to create meaning. poor data frequency would mean a bad result and vice-versa. collecting big data is an objective while being able to take advantage of it is another challenge. most businesses lack the knowledge necessary to turn data into organizational values. this lack of knowledge stems from their incapability of processing statistical data and their inability to catch up with the technology time clock. as little as these setbacks may sound, every new technology takes time to learn so as it is with big data, it would take a period of time before it reaches its maturity stage. besides dealing with data variety, velocity and veracity, another important aspect to deal with in data architecture is privacy[12]. privacy causes a lot of problems in creating data, for example an individual who wants to hide a piece of information may pose as a barrier to data analysis because when the received data is to be aggregated and associated the privacy sets barriers to accessing the full information being received and also cause a lot of inconsistencies during cleansing big data. 4.2. data processing other challenges of big data are related to the processing of data. generally, these processes are shown below in figure4 below and would be further dissolved to really understand what happens in every stage of processing data[13]. figure 4: showing the data processing stages kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 143  data acquisition and recording: every big data has a source it’s coming from, it does not just emerge from outer space, from health organizations to scientific experiments petabytes data is being recorded and sourced every day. the major challenge is how these data being sent every day is filtered. smart computers should distinguish between which data is useful and to capture and which data is not useful to be deleted. for example, faculty weather sensors would give a different metric reading to sensors that are fully functional, however, this should not cause a major course of concern as it could be solved with analytical logarithms that process the data being streamed and reduce it based on similarities with other corresponding reading. the most challenging aspect of the recording is the automatic domain that records every piece of metadata being generated before it is stored[14]. a scientific experiment that records every stage and condition of its process might have a compromised or wrong result if there is an error encountered on subsequent stages, each stage relies on the previous one to develop and generate results, therefore research should develop systems that would generate precise metadata and carry along a provenance data throughout all stages of analysis.  information and extractions: the formation which data is collected cannot be used unless it is processed and extracted to pull out the required information which is saved in a standard and structured form ready for analysis the big data being saved is not always true, it might have some false information in it that would affect how it is used and applied, hence quality control has been a major issue and no technique has been successful in quality control models for most big data which present another major challenge[15].  data integration and aggregation: the stream of data is composed of different dissimilar parts and elements which makes it difficult to capture all parts. for example, the data retrieved from a company survey about consumer behavior would vary from the region due to cultural and social consumer effects, it is wrong to ignore the variables that affect change in results. thus, the problem comes when differences on the host subjects are dominant, the company/organization would not be able to satisfy both consumers from diverse regions at the same time and this would lead to an alternative forgone. a lot of work has been done concerning this subject to achieve at equilibrium in data collection but more work has to be done.  query processing, data modeling and analysis: techniques used to process data are different from those used to analyses it. big data is very huge, unreliable, and interconnected, however big data has more potential of deriving business intelligence than small data because a repetition of patterns in big data statistics can be used to assume a common pattern and reveal more hidden knowledge. however, big data creates a large network of information that are not similar but which would be compensated for missing information. a lot of requirements for data mining include cleaning, integration, reliability and powerful computing environment. data mining/collection can assist in improving quality and suggest intelligent query functions. just as organizations’ have multiple networks sometimes errors are being made when analyzing these data, on the other hand, knowledge being extracted from the analysis can help to remove constraints and ambiguity. a consumer might refer to his consumption pattern/behavior as occasional, this might mean something else for another person. therefore, when making analysis, more attention and emphasis should be placed on such answers that would determine exactly what was intended.  interpretation: whatever data being analyzed by users would have limited value if it cannot be understood. at the end of every data analysis, the results would be sent to decision-makers who would interpret it. interpreting data includes all assumptions made and reviewing the analysis. as stated already, errors might come from different sources and dysfunction of computer systems and assumptions made from the models. decision-makers or end-users must understand and verify the results gotten from computers as the computers ease work for them, but due to big data complexity, this kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 144 has prone to be a big challenge. assumptions have always existed since the beginning of time, but most are initiallymade before data is collected, therefore it is mandatory for decision-makers to include additional information describing how each step was arrived at and what variable inputs were considered while making a decision, this supplementary information is called provenance of data. in conclusion, more research should be performed to uncover the best methods to capture and store provenance in relation to the technique to create adequate metadata. 4.3. management challenges at the center of every technological advancement including big data analytics is the problem of ethical concerns that technology does not put into consideration, technology might have a default way of solving problems but the moral and ethical boundaries of any discipline must be put into consideration[16]. privacy: privacy has been a major concern when dealing with big data, in the health sector, laws have been put in place to govern the privacy of patients. the fear of unlawful use of personal data especially when this data comes from multiple sources has been a major issue. location-based services may demand subscribers to give their exact location resulting in privacy concerns, other users might think disclosing their location or address might result in unlawful acts that would compromise their wellbeing, but i real “data world” when a location is sent to the receiver, the service provider can assume the identity of the subscriber by tracing subsequent location information, this is done by leaving a trail by the subscriber which is being followed and attached to a particular person. a lot of personal information is being shared on twitter and facebook by different users and until now people don’t understand what it means to share data whereas this data can be put together to come up with more business intelligence and personal use not intended to be shared. analytics: analytics is a group of techniques based on mathematical principles used to count a number of historical events in any given data with the aim of identifying patterns. analytics helps to predict the unknown and the outcomes in order to make important decisions to avoid any anticipated impact or loss. the most common types of analytics include descriptive analytics, predictive analytics and prescriptive analytics. figure 5: types of data analytics of data. source: naser t big challenges of data (2015) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 145  descriptive analytics: descriptive analytics is the easiest type of analytics that only involve the description and summary making of data collected with the use of statistical and mathematical methods such as mean, mode, variance and deviation. the kind of data sued in descriptive analytics is mostly historical data because when compared can be used to predict patterns and make correct management reports [17]. however descriptive analytics are considered to be backward because it reveals what has clearly happened but however it is used most times to predicts the future.  predictive analytics: predictive analytics basically entails determining future possibilities based on supervised models [18]. with the aid of statistical methods behavior can be predicted and the new solution made. unlike descriptive analysis that uses only historical data, the predictive analysis uses both historical and current data to predict the future. it can be used to predict customers’ tendency and inclination to certain goods by comparing frequent behavior of usage and fault indicators [19]  prescriptive analytics: prescriptive analytics is carried out to determine what must have caused an analytic result. it entails the use of knowledge gained from predictive analytic models, compared to other analytic methods, prescriptive analytics is the most difficult to deploy but has a strong effect of managing information shift and continuous evolution of business process models [20]. in general, this analytics method support business in making decisions by evaluating actions and assessing their effect regarding business goals. 5. big data analyses before big data which is received raw and unstructured can be used for business intelligence, it has to be analyzed into 4 stages commonly known as the 4 “a’s of data analyses namely acquisition or access stage, assembly or organization stage and the analysis or action stage. these stages would be further explained and broken down for easy understanding. acquisition: acquisition is the analyses stage were big data is filtered from a variety of sources e.g. (web, dmbs, oltp, nosql). these sources come in different varieties and these varieties have to be dealt with diverse protocols. in a situation where the generation of data is important, the acquisition has to make further analysis to capture the metadata and store them with their similar corresponding data. organization: this is the arrangement of data that come in various formats e.g. texts, compressed files and various other formats. the big data receiver has to extract the actual information and ignore the irrelevant data to avoid data overload. the important data are named entities coming from different sources, organization deals with these sources and integrates the received data either structured or unstructured and store them in the right location (nosql, database, data marts or operational data store). analysis: this stage basically examines big data to know its trustworthiness and to understand its semantics. this involves running queries and building algorithms to find new insights. this process helps to provide an intelligent approach to understanding big data. decisions are being taken from the analyzing stage and it is important for the user of big data to know what is being obtained by verifying outputs through a stage called provenance. this is supplementary information that seeks to explain to the user how the results were derived and to help in understanding what is being obtained. 6. opportunities of big data big data offers numerous opportunities for organizations. the amount of importance you can get from big data depends on the values that could be derived from it. this process is called the analytic stage or analytics of big data. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 146  analytics analytics could improve existing projects and services by embedding big data with organizations i.e. using big data as a new way of doing business. a device called a progressive new “snapshot” monitors driver’ behavior and determines whether or not a driver is suitable for a job description. this kind of analytic surveys helps in improving work attitudes and behavior. more also, in the case of a designing process where robots are used in modelling 3 dimensional printed models, the ease gained from big data analytics and international business practices permits the production of same design models but with slight differences made to suit the end-users taste due to changes in region and other feasible factors that may be considered. whereas traditional business practices and production may not be able to adapt to. traditional manufacturing processes also create a lot of waste due to the usage of the excess material that is not utilized in the real market because of customer expectation and needs. international business procedures can also be reversed where there is a glitch or an error and the manufacturer does not need to be centralized as in local production. with the help of big data, materials could be transported to areas where needed.  implications of big data analytics for international practices. high technology such as smart machines that are used to derive and gather data are still in their early stages but have had much impact on the data protection laws. the regulation concerning data access and reachability would need to be formulated to keep the privacy of individuals and put borders across what can be accessed, stored or transmitted both locally and internationally. this is important because a lot of concerns have been laid on the growing rate of feudal activities with data stolen from the international business database and used in mischievous ways. a security firewall must be made to chatter for the increasing rate of data.  health care services in the past years, electronic health records have been adopted by health organizations and clinics all around the world. the knowledge of a certain type of patient’s disease and a better understanding of the symptoms can be gleaned through previous existing data saved in the hospital's catalogue. this would give them a better understanding of the diseases and virus and how to go about the treatment. more also, health social media site helps in empowering patient especially in chronic diseases like cancer and diabetes. an insurance company called humana uses big data to improve its business services. with the help of data analytics, the company can determine who is most likely to have an accident and with this information, intervene quickly. this insurance company and other health organizations use their patient’s data to save lives and another casual occurrence. data is also used by organizations in decision making, in a situation where medication may vary from person to person depending on their body’s reaction to the treatment, this would give the medical team an edge on how to go to about the treatment without compromising the patients’ health. with the same big data approach, an emergency unit called nsw ses has received attention from scholars and researchers because of the technique they use in responding to natural disaster victims such as floods, tsunamis, cyclones and other natural disasters. these kinds of disasters are accountable for a lot of human and economic losses in every part of the world. these losses have estimated to claim the lives of 244.7 million people and cost about $366.1 billion economic losses [21] government in different countries have made the prevention of these disasters their core objective, therefore, establishing such response unit called the nsw ses. nsw ses was founded by the new south wales (nsw) state government in australia. rendering emergency services with full efficiency does not only require the availability of information from sensors, satellites and gps signals but also a higher level of collaboration between emergency responders, decision-makers and lower community organization. april 1955 was the year the nsw ses was formed by the government of australia and covers about 800,000km2 which is about thrice the size of the united kingdom. the technique used by the nsw ses was what made it get so much attention, the organization depends on small group pf 280 workers who oversee a larger group of 9000 volunteers, nsw further built a strong relationship with other emergency responding units such as fire service, rescue services kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 147 and other units spread all across australia. the nsw serves as the control centre for the other sub emergency units and provides the big data analytic needed to execute any emergency operation. figure 6: nsw network for the emergency services delivery. as seen in fig nsw ses (new south wales) emergency headquarters with its available technical resources (sensors for earthquake and tsunami) controls the other smaller emergency units when it receives signals from the censors it sends the regional branches with the volunteers to react quickly to the scene to evacuate the area or help victims as the situation may be. besides only working with the emergency u is to aid rapid response, the nsw ses also shares its weather information with the public, giving real-time access of accurate weather forecast and emergency information. with cutting edge tools and technologies, nsw has been very effective compared to a typical response operation which would involve multiple information gathering and processing. after this study of how nsw ses has changed its emergency response, another key benefit from nsw is that it also helps in decision making, helping government to decide where to allocate resources and aid against future reoccurrence. it takes only a good manager who is willing and understands how to integrate a good work structure to its organization and good employees who are willing to push themselves to make any ‘big data” work structure effective.  contribution in international business education. an important tool that international business use is the dashboard. this is a natural display of the most relevant information and data needed to arrive at one or more conclusions, arranged on a single screen so the information can be accessed at a glance. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 148 figure 7: the dashboard display concept this dashboard data streams compromise of metric figures and quality control concerning deliveries and supplies. the concept helps to give a full-time display of all ongoing processes at a glance which is appealing and fast. however, some setbacks are encountered when working with a dashboard as there is performance error due to the bad production of the dashboard and may give the manager a false record of events. there is also a poor training problem as some managers do not acquire the skills in interpreting readings from the dashboard, how to interpret low and high risks and what action is needed to be taken to avoid a loss. 7. discussion in this research acquired the point of the big data, the big data concept of business, especially of the education business, then the business has several consequences to develop productively and modernize a proxy system that used to turn out more innovation and growing various types of organization and business. and modernize dashboard concept helps a lot in the decision-making process as managers have a tool in which they take critical decisions when working with suppliers. big data is a term to utilize for data collection and sets. the variety of data that it encompasses. the big data always brings a number of challenges relating to its volume and complexity. so there are big data technologies used to store and analyses big data. we can categorize them into two (storage and querying/analysis) which’s (apache hadoop, microsoft hdinsight, nosql, hive, sqoop, polybasic, big data in excel and presto). to become efficient in the data game, an organization must exercise 3 characteristics of data stakes.  the data itself  a format allowing the data to be accessible and  advanced analytical tools such as hadoop and nosql. these are platforms that are readily available in the market. parallel database or nosql datastore is the current art of technology in data analysis. it is connected to a platform called hadoop. hadoop provides an open source to process the big data being received. this technology was inspired by googles map reduce and google file system (gfs). all these deal with a higher-level data language’s, users of this system are top phd holders with high expertise in analysis and database. there are only a few of such practitioners who have the license to run their hadoop infrastructure. other similar tools and techniques available for big data management include google big table, simple db, not only sql (nosql) data stream management systems (dsms) and kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 149 voldemort. big data differs from traditional data, therefore, companies must develop special tools and technologies that can store, access and analyze large volumes of data, the new big data technology improves organizations capability to process and store a large amount of unstructured information, it also aims to reduce the use of hardware and the cost of processing data. properly managed big data are accessible, secure and very reliable. 8. conclusion we started our study by defining the term ‘big data’ and giving a wide range of how big data is being used by different fields from the government to private organizations and everyday life. we also examined the challenges of big data relating to its management and analytic stage with help from earlier research and study conducted by experts in the game of big data and examined major tools such as sql and db used in by big organizations to for data management and processing. two case studies were also provided to further explain how big data have been used perfectly to improve service. these all have contributed in makings understand the question regarding what, how and why the term big data is used. volume, velocity, variety, veracity and value are the five keys to making big data a huge business. we live in an age of information; were the amount of information and knowledge one poses determines its power. it has also become clear that more data is different from other existing data. in a few years with the promising technological advancements, more data would be collected in a year than it has ever be collected. mankind is 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[21] d. guha-sapir, f. vos, r. below, and s. ponserre, “annual disaster statistical review 2011: the numbers and trends,” 2012.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq the correlation between lipid profile and renal function tests in patients with cardiovascular disease in erbil city, kurdistan region of iraq hardi rafat baqi shkar rzgar k. rostam medical laboratory techniques department biology department halabja technical institute | research center school of science/ faculty of science sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani university halabja, iraq sulaimani, iraq hardi.baqi@spu.edu.iq shkar.rostam@univsul.edu.iq article info abstract volume 5 issue 2 december 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.2.5 article history: received : 12 august 2020 accepted : 12 november 2020 cardiovascular disease patients frequently suffer from the incidence of renal dysfunctions, the prevalence of the correlation, however, remains ambiguous. this study aims to see how cvd and renal function are related to the subjected group of patients suffer from symptoms of cvd. the method recruited for this objective was using of serum lipid profile test as a marker for evaluating the cvd and making correlations to the blood urea, serum uric acid, and serum creatinine levels as markers for assessing renal function on 159 individuals with cvd symptoms in erbil city. two statistical analysis methods (the linear regression and pearson’s correlation) were employed for determining the existence from a lack of relationship between them. the results showed a statistically significant correlation p<0.05 by both methods between the renal function markers and tc. the ua was correlated to tg, ldl-c, and vldl-c p<0.05 by regression analysis. the scr was correlated to tg and ldl-c p<0.05 by both methods, and to vldl by regression analysis. according to the outcome of the current study both lipid profile and renal function markers are correlated in mostly a statistically significant manner. yet, the results are not conclusive, further studies are needed in this area for indemnify the irrefutable evidence concerning this relation. keywords: lipid profile, renal function, cvd, kidney disease. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. mailto:hardi.baqi@spu.edu.iq mailto:shkar.rostam@univsul.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 52 1. introduction elevated lipid profile levels are well known as a major risk factor in the development of cardiovascular diseases (cvd). the risk of cvd increases in patients with comorbidities such as diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and obesity [1], [2]. chronic kidney disease (ckd) and cvd are both causes in development of inflammations that induce changes in lipid balance [3]. the cvd which comprises a group of heart and blood vessel disorders such as coronary heart disease, hypertension, cerebrovascular disease, heart failure, peripheral vascular disease, congenital heart disease, rheumatic heart disease, and cardiomyopathies [4]. hypertension, one of the highest risk factors for both cvd and ckd can increase the progression of cvd in ckd patients more than people with normal kidney function [5]. lipid profile abnormalities play a part in the development of diabetic nephropathy other than cvd [6]. the lipoproteins in plasma are categorized into major groups by their size that is (hdl, idl, ldl, vldl, chylomicrons, chylomicron remnants, and lipoprotein-a) [7]. any distortions from reference ranges of lipid profile components are called dyslipidemia. dyslipidemia may occur because of many different reasons such as hereditary, obesity, age, and lifestyle [8]. periodic and early lipid profile measurements are critical in avoiding the risks of cvd [9], [10]. the test named serum lipid profile includes serum total cholesterol (tc), serum triglycerides (tg), serum high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (hdl-c), serum low-density lipoprotein (ldl-c), and very low density lipoprotein (vldl) [9], [10]. as a result of dyslipidemia, atherosclerosis which is a major risk factor for cvd is developing [11], [12]. severe atherosclerosis along with cvd is considered as a major factor leading to death in patients who suffer from chronic kidney diseases [13]. also, chronic renal failure is a major risk factor for cvd [14]. the risk of developing cvd is two to four times higher in patients who their kidney function is compromised and has high levels of albumin in their urine [15]. the assessment and monitoring of the proper kidney function are critical for cvd and renal disease patients. for routine kidney function analysis, markers including creatinine, urea, and uric acids are used [16]. the creatinine (cr) is produced as the muscle creatine phosphate breaks down and produces energy at an estimated constant rate that depends on mostly the muscle mass of the body [17]. urea, on the other hand, is the end product of amino acids and proteins catabolism which is the highest in concentration among non-proteinous nitrogen compounds in the body and is produced in the liver [18]. while the uric acid is formed as in the purine metabolism as an end product [19]. the levels of these markers elevate in renal failure patients. the higher mortality rates in severe renal failures are highly associated with dyslipidemia among many other factors. according to newer guidelines for cvd monitoring, performing renal function test is the major determinant in the assessment process [20]–[22]. moreover, increased serum creatinine (scr) level or lower than normal creatinine clearance is a robust indicator for higher mortality rates because of cvd [23]. chronic renal failure and chronic kidney diseases (ckd) affect 10-16% of europe, asia, and the usa’s general population, so, it’s a major worldwide health problem. [14], [24], [25], [26]. the ckd is named after continuous decline of the estimated glomerular filtration rate (egfr) of less than 60 ml per minute per 1.73 square meters or might also be defined if one marker of kidney damage lasts for at least three months. these markers include sediments in urine, structural or histological abnormalities or albuminuria. the cvd and ckd can occur simultaneously or they can lead to one another. sometimes distinguishing the primary from the secondary disease might be a challenge [27]. in previous studies throughout the literature, the relationship between tc and ldl-c with low glomerular filtration rate (gfr) of kidney maintained unchanged, while for the tg an increase and for hdl-c a decrease was observed [28], [29], [30]. as the correlation between cvd and ckd comes under investigation, more researches are required worldwide for a better and comprehensive understanding of the way these two diseases interact and also for establishing a better strategy of diagnosis, early detection, prevention, treatment, and management of the diseases as well. for this purpose, an international multidisciplinary conference titled as “heart failure in ckd” is convened in april 2019. in one section of the conference, they prioritized the need of researches in certain fields for timely understanding of hf and cvd in kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 53 ckd [27]. although, the best predictor for measuring and assessing of the kidney function is the measured glomerular filtration rate (mgfr) [31], yet, in the current study, the correlation between the lipid profile variables with blood urea, ua, and scr as measurement tools for kidney function in patients who visited internist clinic in erbil city of kurdistan region of iraq is investigated in an attempt for participating in the worldwide prompt for understanding the relation between cvd and ckd. 2. methods and materials 2.1 study design cross-sectional research that contained adult cardiovascular disease patients who visited internist clinics in erbil city from (january–june 2020), some of the encounters of the study were pre-diagnosed cvd patients with renal complications, while others had symptoms which were not diagnosed with cvd or kidney problems yet. in the study a total number of 159 individuals including 92 (57.9%) males and 67 (42.1%) females were tested for their lipid profile (tc, tg, hdl-c, ldl-c, and vldl-c), and renal function tests (blood urea, ua, and scr). informed consent was achieved from each individual who tested and their data used anonymously in this study. 2.2 inclusion and exclusion criteria out of 200 patients, 159 adults aged (18-85) had cvd symptoms. the mean age was (47±14.072). the average ages for males and females were 47 and 48 respectively. cvd is defined according to who’s definition [4]. the outlier test results were eliminated from the results for the sake of higher accuracy in the statistical analysis. 2.3 sampling and biochemical assessments blood samples (5 ml) were taken by using a sterile syringe from fasting patients (10-12 hours) and transferred into gel separated tubes where it left to clot, then centrifuged at 3800 rpm for ten minutes. the obtained clear serum was pipetted into eppendorf tubes and tested for lipid profile (tc, tg, hdl-c, ldl-c, and vldl), and renal function tests (blood urea, ua, and scr) using biochemical analyzer (roche cobas-e311). the normal reference ranges were calculated for tc below 200 mg/dl, [32], tg below 150 mg/dl [33], hdl-c higher than 40 mg/dl [34], ldl-c below 120 mg/dl [35], vldl-c levels 40 mg/dl [32], urea between 15-48 mg/dl [36], ua from 3.4 – 7.0 mg/dl in males and 2.4 -6.0 mg /dl in females, while scr normal range is from 0.6 to 1.2 mg/dl [37]. 2.4 statistical analysis the data were analyzed using statistical analyzing application spss (ibm spss statistics 26). the linear regression analysis recruited to examine the association between all variables. the pearson correlation coefficients used to indicate the variables correlation rates. spss descriptive and frequency analysis used for viewing and summarizing the data. the results are presented using apa style. the statistically significant p-value calculated at smaller than 0.05. 3. results 3.1 linear regression analysis the linear regression analysis for determining the relationship between the lipid profile components and renal function test component are shown in (table 1), and (figure 1) demonstrates the regression line between different variables. according to the data, there is a positive linear regression between blood urea vs lipid profile variables. the regression is statistically significant for tc p<.000 (r= .284) and ldl-c p<.001 (r= .258). while the relationship between blood urea vs tg, hdl-c, and vldl p>0.05, ns. was not statistically significant. also, there is a positive linear regression between ua vs lipid profile variables. the regression is statistically significant for tc p<.000 (r= .281), tg p<0.05 (r= .220), ldl-c p<.001 (r= .268). while the relationship between ua vs hdl-c, and vldl p>0.05, ns. was not statistically significant. also, there is a positive linear regression between scr vs lipid profile variables. the regression is statistically significant for tc p<.001 (r= .254), tg kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 54 p<0.05 (r= .156), ldl-c p<.002 (r= .248). while the relationship between scr vs hdl-c, and vldl p>0.05, ns. was not significant. table 1: the linear regression analysis between lipid profile variables (tc, tg, hdl-c, ldl-c, and vldl-c) and renal function markers (blood urea, ua, and scr). no. regression r r square sig. 1 b. urea vs. tc .284 .081 .000 2 b. urea vs. tg .043 .002 .586 3 b. urea vs. hdl-c .002 .000 .985 4 b. urea vs. ldl-c .258 .066 .001 5 b. urea vs. vldl-c .085 .007 .285 6 ua vs.tc .281 .079 .000 7 ua vs. tg .220 .048 .005 8 ua vs. hdl-c .080 .006 .318 9 ua vs. ldl-c .268 .072 .001 10 ua vs. vldl-c .193 .037 .015 11 scr vs. tc .254 .065 .001 12 scr vs. tg .156 .024 .049 13 scr vs. hdl-c .139 .019 .081 14 scr vs. ldl-c .248 .061 .002 15 scr vs. vldl-c .155 .024 .051 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 55 figure 1: the linear regression analysis between lipid profile variables (tc, tg, hdl-c, ldl-c, and vldl-c) with renal function markers (blood urea, ua, and scr). 3.2 pearson’s correlation pearson’s correlation value demonstrates the way two variables are associated together, pearson’s correlation table (table 2) shows how all the variables are correlated to each other with the exact correlation value. for blood urea, there is a statistically significant p<.000 correlation for each of ua, scr, and tc with pearson correlation value of .669**, .765**, and .339** respectively. while the blood urea’s correlation for tg, hdl-c, ldl-c, and vldl-c is not statistically significant p>0.05 ns. for ua, there is a statistically significant p<.000 correlation for each of scr and tc with pearson correlation value of .557** and .280** respectively. while, the ua’s correlation for tg, hdl-c, ldl-c, and vldl-c is not statistically significant p>0.05 ns. for scr, there is a statistically significant p<.000 correlation for tc with pearson correlation value of .342**, for tg, ldl-c, and vldl-c p< .05 with pearson’s correlation value of .184*, .177*, and .191* respectively. while the scr’s correlation for hdl-c is not statistically significant p>0.05 ns. for tc, there is a statistically significant p<.001 correlation for tg, hdl-c, ldl-c, and vldl-c with pearson correlation values of .327**, .255*, .889**, and .284** respectively. for tg, there is a statistically significant p<.001 correlation for ldl-c, and vldl-c with the pearson correlation values of .197* and .949** respectively. for hdl-c, there is a significant p<.000 with vldl-c the correlation value is -.408** and non-significant p>0.05 to ldl-c. for ldl-c, there is a nonstatistically significant p> .05 ns. correlation for vldl-c with pearson correlation value of .139. table 2: pearson’s correlation analysis between all lipid profile variables and renal function markers. ua mg/dl scr mg/dl tc mg/dl tg mg/dl hdlc mg/dl ldlc mg/dl vldlc mg/dl blood urea mg/dl pearson correlation .669** .765** .339** .116 .036 .145 .145 sig. (2tailed) .000 .000 .000 .146 .651 .068 .068 ua mg/dl pearson correlation .557** .280** .110 .093 .089 .122 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 56 sig. (2tailed) .000 .000 .169 .241 .262 .125 s creatinine mg/dl pearson correlation .342** .184* -.006 .177* .191* sig. (2tailed) .000 .020 .942 .025 .016 tc mg/dl pearson correlation .327** .255** .889** .284** sig. (2tailed) .000 .001 .000 .000 tg mg/dl pearson correlation -.400** .197* .949** sig. (2tailed) .000 .013 .000 hdl-c mg/dl pearson correlation .044 -.408** sig. (2tailed) .584 .000 ldl-c mg/dl pearson correlation .139 sig. (2tailed) .080 **. correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). *. correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). 4. discussion there is a strong relationship between renal function and heart in cvd patients, the connection is shown in many previous studies [38]. according to a study in the uk, the cvd patients had a 63% prevalence of kidney dysfunctions [39]. the higher mortality rate because of reduced renal sufficiency in swedish heart failure patients is seen. the increase in mortality rate is regardless of the age or other comorbidities [40]. in this cross-sectional study, 159 cvd patients were included, of which the renal function of many of them is compromised. the relationship between cvd and renal function is investigated in the current study through comparing the lipid profile markers (tc, tg, hdl-c, ldl-c, and vldl-c) to renal function markers (blood urea, ua, and scr tests) which are widely used for interpretation of renal function in the clinical practice. the linear regression analysis demonstrated positive regression between all of the lipid profile variables and renal function markers. the relationship was significant p<0.05 between blood urea, tc, and ldl-c. however, p>0.5 ns. non-statistically significant results were observed between blood urea, tg, hdl-c, and vldl-c. the linear regression between ua and tc, tg, and ldl-c is a positive linear regression that has a statically significant value. yet, hdl-c and vldl-c have greater than significant level p-value. while scr vs. lipid profile variables have linear positive regression with statistically significant p-value for each of tc, tg, and ldl-c. however, the hdl-c and vldl-c are non-statistically significant to scr. the results of the present study are in agreement with the majority of literature, yet, in many studies, the direct and independent relationship between higher levels of lipids with the progression of kidney diseases was missing [41]. the relation between hdl-c with kidney dysfunction is presented in many studies, yet, the topic remains controversial whether it can be used as an indicator for predicting renal dysfunctions [42]. in a previous study, lipid dyslipidemia in kidney disease patients is linked to high tg levels, normal or slightly low ldl-c, and decreased hdl-c levels [43]. the exact mechanism for the dependability of lipid profile and renal function is ambiguous, moreover, many studies propose that hdl-c roles as anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and anti-thrombotic factor that reduces the risk of atherosclerosis development in the arteries of kidneys, which maintains normal kidney function [44]. however, pathogenesis of kidney diseases in association with dyslipidemia has been known since 1860 when first suggested by virchow as he was examining renal tissue biopsy from bright’s disease patients kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 57 [45]. the mechanism by which lipoproteins participate in kidney pathogenesis is through making changes in glomerulosclerosis and tubulointerstitial [46]. in order of pertaining a profound understanding of the correlation between all of the variables in the current study, pearson’s correlation statistical analysis was performed. the results of this test determine the exact mechanism of connection between two variables whether being related to each other or not. other than the correlation of lipid profile and renal function markers, pearson’s correlation between each group of markers is also performed to indicate how they are correlated between themselves. the blood urea is strongly correlated to ua, scr, and tc, meaning that the value of blood urea increases directly as ua, scr, and tc elevates. since ua and scr are both markers for renal function, its common sense to be related in such a strong correlation. however, the way tc is related to blood urea is noteworthy. the tg, hdl-c, ldl-c, and vldl-c however, showed a non-statistically significant yet positive correlation value. seemingly, scr is significantly correlated only with ua and tc other than tg, hdl-c, ldl-c, and vldl-c. the scr on the other hand is to tc, and also has a statistically significant correlation to tg, ldl-c, and vldl-c. while the hdl-c and scr have a strong negative correlation. throughout the literature, similar results are observed for these similar correlations [45]. advanced stages of renal failure that is linked to proteinuria is mostly associated with lipoprotein transport abnormalities [47]. the lipid profile variables in this study used as markers of cvd showed a strong correlation between themselves, tc is strongly correlated with tg, hdl-c, ldl-c, and vldl-c. seemingly, tg is on a strong correlation with hdl-c and ldl-c. the vldl-c and tg are almost in a linear dependent statistically significant correlation between each other. the hdl-c is significantly correlated to vldl-c, however, its relation to ldl-c is non-significant. the key strength point of this study is that the correlation between renal function markers namely blood urea, ua, and scr with lipid profile markers including tc, tg, hdl-c, ldl-c, and vldl-c is determined in a specific population who are cvd patients visiting internist clinic seeking treatment for their symptoms in erbil city of kurdistan region of iraq. although the outcome of the current study observes a strong correlation between the variables, however, there are some limitations in the decisiveness of the results of the study, one important limitation is the study design which is a cross-sectional study that can’t be compared to randomized controlled trials. another limitation is using the tc, tg, hdl-c, ldl-c, vldl-c, blood urea, ua, and scr as the only markers for pertaining cvd and renal dysfunctions respectively and not considering other methods for the assessment of the diseases, though, these variables are widely employed for evaluating the cvd and renal dysfunctions in clinical practice in kurdistan region of iraq. 5. conclusion dyslipidemia and renal dysfunctions are correlated to each other in which the serum lipid profile assessment markers are highly correlated with renal function assessment markers in cvd patients who visited internist clinic in erbil city of kurdistan region of iraq. the strongest statistically significant correlation is between tc vs blood urea, ua, and scr. while tg is only correlated to scr. the ldl-c and vldl-c, however, are only correlated to scr as well. the lipid profile markers show robust correlation between themselves except for hdl-c vs ldl-c and ldl-c vs vldl-c. the renal function assessment markers have strong correlation with each other as well. the outcome proposes that patients with higher lipid profile values are at higher risk of developing renal dysfunctions. reference [1] k. borch-johnsen and s. kreiner, “proteinuria: value as predictor of cardiovascular mortality in insulin dependent diabetes mellitus.,” br. med. j. 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[47] n. d. vaziri, “molecular mechanisms of lipid disorders in nephrotic syndrome,” kidney int., vol. 63, no. 5, pp. 1964–1976, 2003. 1. introduction 2.1 study design 2.2 inclusion and exclusion criteria 2.3 sampling and biochemical assessments 2.4 statistical analysis 5. conclusion  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq depression, anxiety, and stress in the time of covid-19 pandemic in kurdistan region, iraq niaz mustafa kamal nasih othman pediatric nursing health, kurdistan institute for strategic studies and scientific research technical institute of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani polytechnic university nasih.othman@kissr.edu.krd sulaimani, iraq niaz.kamal@spu.edu.iq article info abstract special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) doi: 10.24017/covid.5 article history: received : 02 may 2020 accepted : 04 may 2020 the global spread of the covid-19 pandemic, its threat to people’s health and its indirect impacts through the subsequent measures taken by governments to control the disease have led to uncertainty and huge disruption in the way people used to live with a negative impact on mental health and wellbeing. the current study estimate prevalence of the common mental health disorders among a sample of the adult population in the kurdistan region during the pandemic. through an online survey using dass-21 to measure depression, anxiety, and stress data of 548 adult participants were collected during april 2020 and analyzed. the sample was mainly from sulaimani (89%), mean age was 37.9 (sd 13.5) and male/female ratio was 1. prevalence of any severity levels of depression, anxiety, and stress was 45%, 47%, and 18% respectively. in regression analysis, notably female sex was a significant independent factor for higher levels of depression (coefficient 1.89, p<0.05), anxiety (coefficient 2.19, p<0.001), and stress (coefficient 1.52, p<0.05). postgraduate education and other occupations were also significantly associated with depression (coefficient 3.81, p<0.05; coefficient 2.39, p<0.05 respectively), anxiety (coefficient 2.92, p<0.05; coefficient 4.1, p<0.001 respectively) and stress (coefficient 3.83, p<0.001; coefficient 4.1, p<0.001 respectively). the study indicates high levels of common mental health disorders during the pandemic and calls for public health measures to promote the mental health and resilience of the population. keywords: depression, anxiety, stress, dass-21, kurdistan region, covid-19 copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 38 1. introduction the novel coronavirus disease infection (covid-19) started in first started in china in december 2019 and a few months spread to almost all countries of the world. the infection was declared by the world health organization as a global pandemic in march 2020[1]. as of the end of april, over 3.2 million cases of the infection and over 326,000 deaths have been reported globally with the majority of infections and deaths reported from western europe and north america [2]. the unprecedented pandemic has led many countries to declare it as a public health emergency with the implementation of far-reaching measures to curb its spread including travel restrictions, emergency response procedures, and even entire country lockdowns. apart from the fear and uncertainty about the spread of infections, people faced other challenges that could impact their mental health and psychological well-being including movement restriction, changes in their lifestyle, living conditions and jobs, closure of schools [3]. the unexpected and sudden nature of the outbreak and the infectious power of the virus, will inevitably would probably cause people anxiety, stress, and other mental health symptoms. indeed, fear of contacting individuals who are possibly infected by covid-19 has been reported [4]. the emergence of the covid-19 with its vicious pandemic and rapid spread has exacerbated fears worldwide leading to mental health problems, and even stigma and discrimination in some cases[5, 6]. therefore it imperative to investigate and understand the psychological status of the public during this troubled and destructive time[7]. in addition to its direct impact on the health of people who are infected with a relatively high mortality rate, measures implemented to control covid-19 could impose broad psychological impacts on human societies. a review of the literature concludes that covid-19 pandemic has negatively impacted mental health outcomes such as depression, anxiety stress, stress, posttraumatic stress, anger, and feeling of social isolation and loneliness [8]. health workers are reported to be more vulnerable, and other factors such s loss of income and duration of quarantine were associated with the degree of psychological impact [8]. with the stretching of the restrictive measures and resultant economic hardship, it is feared that such a negative impact could continue and have long-lasting implications. the pandemic is only a few months old and its yet early to understand its true impact, and generally there are no much literature on the psychology and mental health status of the general public during the peak of the covid-19 epidemic[9]. like iraq and neighboring countries, kurdistan region was affected by the epidemic which gradually led to lockdown in march and april and widespread disruption of people’s life and activates. we are not aware of studies done recently to assess common mental health condition during the pandemic. therefore the purpose of this study was to investigate levels of depression, anxiety and stress among a sample of the adult population who responded to our online survey. 2. methods and materials this quantitative survey was conducted online from 14 to 18 april 2020 after a month of the lockdown due to coronavirus pandemic in kurdistan region. a total of 548 adult participants (aged 18 and above) took part in the survey. the survey was created in survey monkey (www.surveymonkey.com/) and the link was send with invitations to potential participants through online social media (facebook) and were eligible after reading the purpose of the study, the written consent part in the first section of the online survey. if they agreed then they could proceed to complete the questionnaire. the main part of the questionnaire was the kurdish translation of the depression, anxiety, and stress scale (dass–21) which is a standard 21 items (statements) tool with three sub-scales of 7 items for each of depression, anxiety, and stress [10]. each statement is rated on a scale of 4 (0 = did not apply to me at all, and 3 = applied to me most of the time). the scores of each subscale are summed and multiplied by 2 to represent the total for the subscale. higher scores indicate higher levels of the condition. the scores for each subscale are then categorized to indicate the level of each condition from mild to extremely severe. to check reliability of the scale we calculated cronbach’s alpha for the entire scale and the three subscales. in our study, alpha was 0.92, 0.8, 0.79, 0.83 for the kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 39 entire scale, depression scale, anxiety scale, and stress scale respectively all of which indicate god internal consistency and reliability. in addition to dass-21, participants were also requested to answer a few socio-demographic questions such as age, sex, occupation, education, and residence. answering the questionnaire lasts 5 minutes on average by only clicking the checkbox for answering. this study has been approved by the presidency of sulaimani polytechnic university. stata version 12 was used for statistical analysis after the data were automatically recorded in the excel file of the survey and then imported to the stata. demographic variables were described using frequencies and percentages. the dass-21 scores were first presented in means and standard deviation then we categorized them according to the scale guidelines[10] into 5 levels of severity (none, mild, moderate, severe and extremely severe), then for further analysis, the levels were dichotomized to presence and absence of the condition (i.e. we combining all 4 severity levels to one category). bivariate association of socio-demographic characteristics with the prevalence of depression, anxiety, and stress was evaluated using a chi-square test. finally, we used multiple regressions to investigate the association of the total scores of each subscale with the sociodemographic variables. 3. results a total of 548 people completed the online survey. the mean age of the participants was 37.9 (sd 13.5) years with a minimum age of 18 and the maximum age of 81 years. males and females similarly participated in the study (49.6% vs. 50.4%) respectively. one third of the participants were married (75.5%). the sample was biased towards higher levels of education where (70.4%) had college/institute education and (15.3%) had postgraduate education. the majority of the participants were from sulaimani city (88.9%) while the remaining was from erbil (11.1%). see table 1. table 1: socio-demographic factors among participants (n=548) characteristics number percentage age group (mean± std deviation ) 37.9± 13.5 18-25 146 26.8% 26-35 110 20.1% 36-45 114 20.8% 46-55 132 24.1% >55 46 8.4% sex male 272 49.6% female 275 50.4% marital state married 414 75.5% not married 134 24.5% education level basic/high school 78 14.2% institute/college 386 70.4% postgraduate 84 15.3% residence sulaimani 487 88.9% kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 40 erbil 61 11.1% occupation student/unemployed 122 22.3% health/medical 130 23.7% other occupations 296 54.0% in terms of employment, 23.7% worked in health/medical professions, 54% had other jobs, and 22.3% were not employed. figure 1 shows a more detailed distribution of the employment categories. figure 1: distribution of participants' occupation 3.1. scores and prevalence of depression, anxiety, and stress table 2 shows mean score of the three subscales for depression, anxiety, and stress, overall and by sex. depression scores for females were significantly higher than males (mean 8.1, sd 6.2 vs. mean 7.0, sd 6.8, p<0.05). the same was true for anxiety where mean score for females was 11.4 (sd 7.6) vs. 7.7 (sd 7.9) for males (p<0.05). there was no significant difference between males and females in relation to stress cores. table 2: mean scores for depression, anxiety, and stress, overall and by sex scale all (n=548) mean (sd) male (n=51) mean (sd) female (n=143) mean (sd) t, p-value depression 9.3 (7.6) 7.0 (6.8) 8.1 (6.2) -2.14, 0.04 anxiety 7.6 (6.5) 7.7 (7.9) 11.4 (7.6) -2.03, 0.04 stress 9.3 (7.0) 9.1 (7.4) 9.5 (6.5) -0.56, 0.57 dass-21l 26.2 (19.1) 24.8 (20.02) 27.6 (18.06) -1.78, 0.08 table 3 shows the severity levels of the three conditions. in terms of severity levels, 55.1% had no depression, 17.5% had mild, 18.9 had moderate and 8.4% had severe/extremely severe symptoms of depression (i.e. 44.9% had depression of any severity). as for anxiety, 52.9% were normal, 9.5% had mild symptoms, 26.3% had moderate symptoms and 11.3% had severe/extremely severe symptoms (i.e. 47.1% had anxiety of any severity). stress was less common with 8% mild, 7.3% moderate, and 2.2% severe/extremely severe stress (i.e. 17.5% of the respondents showed the stress of any severity). 20.4% 19.7% 18.6% 14.6% 8.0% 6.2% 5.1% 4.7% 2.6% 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 41 table 3: prevalence of severity levels of depression, anxiety and stress (n=548) severity level depression (%) anxiety (%) stress (%) normal 302(55.1) 290 (52.9) 452 (82.5) mild 96(17.5) 52 (9.5) 44 (8.0) moderate 104(18.9) 144 (26.3) 40 (7.3) severe/ extremely severe 46(8.4) 62 (11.3) 12 (2.2) 3.2. prevalence of depression, anxiety, and stress by socio-demographic factors table 4 analyses the prevalence of the three conditions by various socio-demographic characteristics. for depression, sex, education, and occupation were significant factors. females showed a higher prevalence of depression than males (50% vs. 39.7%, p<0.05). in terms of education, the highest prevalence of depression was found among postgraduate respondents with a prevalence of 57.1%. in terms of employment, the prevalence of depression was highest among the unemployed and students (52.5%). as for anxiety, again sex and occupation were significant factors. the prevalence of anxiety was 54.4% in females compared to 39.7% in males (p<0.05). the highest prevalence of anxiety was found among people with other occupations (51.4%) as compared to (38.5%) among health professionals. the prevalence of stress was also highest among people in other professions (22.3%) and those with postgraduate education (21.4%). see table 4. table 4: analysis of prevalence depression, anxiety and stress as a binary variable by various characteristics of participants characteristics depression 246(44.9%) anxiety 258 (47.1%) stress 96(17.5%) sex number (%) χ2, p number (%) χ2, p number (%) χ2, p male 108 (39.7) 5.87, 0.02 108(39.7) 11.8, 0.001 44 (16.2) 0.68, 0.4 female 138(50) 150(54.4) 52 (18.8) age in years 18-25 68 (46.6) 1.39, 0.85 66 (45.2) 5.4, 0.25 26 (17.8) 7.4, 0.1 26-35 50 (45.5) 52(47.3) 10 (9.1) 36-45 48 (42.1) 62 (54.4) 24 (21.1) 46-55 62 (47.0) 62 (47.0) 26 (19.7) >55 18 (39.1) 16 (34.8) 10 (21.7) marital state married 178 (43.0) 2.46, 0.12 67 (50.0) 0.6, 0.44 27(20.2) 0.85, 0.36 not married 68 (50.8) 191 (46.1) 69 (16.7) education level basic/secon dary 32 (41.0) 6.12, 0.05 36 (46.2) 2.36, 0.3 4 (5.1) 9.9, 0.007 institute/co llege 166 (43.0) 176 (45.6) 74 (19.2) postgradua te 48 (57.1) 46 (57.8) 18 (21.4) occupation kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 42 unemploye d/student 64 (52.5) 9.6, 0.008 56 (45.1) 6.1, 0.05 14 (11.5) 10.2, 0.006 health/med ical 44 (33.9) 50 (38.5) 16 (12.3) other occupation s 46 (46.6) 152 (51.4) 66 (22.3) residence sulaimani 217 (44.6) 0.19, 0.66 227 (46.6) 0.39, 0.54 43 (17.0) 0.68, 0.4 erbil 29 (47.5) 31 (50.8) 13 (21.3) table 5 shows the results of multiple regression for the scores of each of depression, anxiety, and stress continuous outcomes and sex, age, education, marital status, occupation, and residence as risk factors. female sex still remained the most important independent factor for higher levels of depression (coefficient 1.89, p<0.05), anxiety (coefficient 2.19, p<0.001), and stress (coefficient 1.52, p<0.05). postgraduate education (coefficient 3.81, p<0.05) and other occupations (coefficient 2.39, p<0.05) were also significantly associated with depression. as for anxiety, apart from female sex, postgraduate education (coefficient 2.92, p<0.05) and other occupations (coefficient 4.1, p<0.001) were also significantly associated with anxiety. same factors were significant for stress: postgraduate education (coefficient 3.83, p<0.001) and other occupations (coefficient 4.1, p<0.001). table 5: regression analysis of factors associated with depression, analysis, and stress scores risk factor depression score anxiety score stress score coefficient se p coefficient se p coefficient se p sexmale reference reference reference sexfemale 1.89 0.71 0.01 2.19 0.59 <0.001 1.52 0.64 0.02 city: sulaymaniyah reference reference reference city: erbil 1.45 1.0 0.15 1.63 0.86 0.06 1.59 0.92 0.09 age(10 year interval) -0.52 0.34 0.12 -0.51 0.29 0.07 -0.37 0.31 0.23 job: unemployed reference reference reference job: health/medical -1.3 1.14 0.25 1.31 0.96 0.18 1.55 1.03 0.13 job: other 2.39 1.13 0.03 4.1 0.95 <0.001 4.1 1.02 <0.001 marital: not married reference reference reference marital: married -0.51 0.81 0.53 -0.90 0.69 0.19 -0.92 0.73 0.21 education: basic/secondary reference reference reference education: institute/college 1.29 0.96 0.18 0.01 0.82 0.99 1.98 0.88 0.02 education: postgraduate 3.81 1.27 0.003 2.92 1.07 0.007 3.83 1.15 0.001 constant 7.53 1.28 <0.001 5.34 1.09 <0.001 5.48 1.16 <0.001 4. discussion our study which is unique of being undertaken at the time of the lockdown in the middle of the pandemic provides valuable findings on prevalence and factors associated with depression, anxiety, and stress. we found high levels of depression and anxiety among the study which is understandable although we do not know how much of this is actually contribute by the current situation. our results conform with a study done on the general population in italy showing that covid-19 outbreak has had a psychological effect on the people [11]. we also found that females reported significantly higher prevalence and scores for depression, anxiety, and stress which is in the line with the study was done in indian, reporting that women significantly have a high prevalence of depression, anxiety, and stress compared to the men [12]. on the other hand, a study done in iran revealed only anxiety was higher in males than kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 43 females while depression and stress were not significantly different [13]. higher levels of education were significantly associated with depression, anxiety, and stress probably indicating that these people were more health-conscious concerned and worried both due to their existing situation and the difficulties brought about by the pandemic. these results are in line with a study from china reporting more psychological symptoms among people with higher education probably because of high self-awareness of their health [14], however, another study has not found any association between education and common mental health problems [15]. it notable in our study that health professionals had lower levels of the depression, anxiety, and stress than people with other occupations which could be partly explained by the fact the pandemic was mild in the region and with few hospitalizations and no pressure on the health care as seen in countries with large numbers of the infection and hospitalizations. a study from singapore, a country quickly responded and controlled the pandemic, report's findings similar to our study [16]. we did not find significant associations between mental health problems and age and marital status although some studies have shown such association [13, 17]. during normal times younger ages may be more at risk of mental distress but the effect of the pandemic and the restrictive measures unanimously affected the population probably similarity affecting their mental health. the lockdown kept families together for longer hours at home and it would be interesting to know how this might have affected their mental health. the current study is probably the first to investigate common mental health problems during the pandemic which a large sample that could provide meaningful analysis. however, the sample was convenient as the survey was made available through social media for volunteers to respond, and this might have caused selection bias. people who have participated were probably biased towards higher levels of education and, they were also people with more awareness and concerns about their health. thus, the results might not be generalizable to the adult population. however, this is an inherent problem with online surveys where people are free to participate or not and researchers have no control over who participates. the results should be interpreted in the context of the current situation where people were under lockdown during the pandemic. we do not know the levels of anxiety, stress, and depression before the pandemic therefore we don’t know whether there was an increase from prior levels or not. this requires further research to see how these rates might change over time, and also to explore how people feel the short-terms and long-term impact of the situation on their mental health. 5. conclusions using a standard psychometric tool, the study showed a high prevalence of depression in the adult populations of kurdistan region during the covid-19 pandemic and identified a number of significant factors associated with these mental health problems. the findings could serve as a baseline for future studies to assess the impact of the pandemic on mental health of the population. the study could also draw attention of researchers to this important and largely overlooked aspect of population health populations especially at these difficult times where the pandemic, the disruptive measures, and the financial hardship could all join to exert a more negative impact on mental health and wellbeing. increasing public awareness of depression, anxiety, and stress and coping strategies is essential to promote mental health. we believe that this and further research on this issue can help inform mental interventions to prevent and mitigate the negative mental health impact of the pandemic. acknowledgment the authors wish to thank all the individuals who volunteered to participate in this online survey study and the presidency of sulaimani polytechnic university for their permission for completing this study. kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 44 reference [1] w. h. organazayion, "rolling updates of coronavirus disease (covid_19). available at: ," https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/events-as-they-happen accessed on 29 april 2020. [2] worldmeter, "coronavirus (covid-19 pandemic. available at: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries. ," worldmeter (2020). , p. worldmeter (2020). , accessed on 29 april 2020. [3] c. wang, r. pan, x. wan, y. tan, l. xu, c. s. ho, et al., "immediate psychological responses and associated factors during the initial stage of the 2019 coronavirus disease (covid-19) epidemic among the general population in china," int j environ res public health, vol. 17, mar 6 2020. [4] c.-y. lin, "social reaction toward the 2019 novel coronavirus (covid -19)," social health and behavior, vol. 3, p. 1, 2020. [5] c. k. t. lima, p. m. m. carvalho, i. lima, j. nunes, j. s. saraiva, r. i. de souza, et al., "the emotional impact of coronavirus 2019-ncov (new coronavirus disease)," psychiatry res, vol. 287, p. 112915, may 2020. [6] o. hahad, d. a. gilan, a. daiber, and t. munzel, "[public mental health as one of the key factors in dealing with covid-19]," gesundheitswesen, apr 30 2020. [7] y. wang, y. di, j. ye, and w. wei, "study on the public psychological states and its related factors during the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) in some regions of china," psychol health med, pp. 1-10, mar 30 2020. [8] s. rohr, f. muller, f. jung, c. apfelbacher, a. seidler, and s. g. riedel-heller, "[psychosocial impact of quarantine measures during serious coronavirus outbreaks: a rapid review]," psychiatr prax, vol. 47, pp. 179-189, may 2020. [9] c. wang, p. w. horby, f. g. hayden, and g. f. gao, "a novel coronavirus outbreak of global health concern," the lancet, vol. 395, pp. 470-473, 2020. [10] l. s. lovibond pf, "manual for the depression anxiety stress scales (2nd ed.)," psychology foundation: sydney. , (1995) [11] l. moccia, d. janiri, m. pepe, l. dattoli, m. molinaro, v. de martin, et al., "affective temperament, attachment style, and the psychological impact of the covid-19 outbreak: an early report on the italian general population," brain behav immun, apr 20 2020. [12] s. s. h. kazmi, k. hasan, s. talib, and s. saxena, "covid -19 and lockdwon: a study on the impact on mental health," available at ssrn 3577515, 2020. [13] s. ashtari, a. vahedian-azimi, m. moayed, f. rahimibashar, s. shojaei, and m. pourhoseingholi, "compare the severity of psychological distress among four groups of iranian society in covid -19 pandemic," 2020. [14] y. zhang and z. f. ma, "impact of the covid-19 pandemic on mental health and quality of life among local residents in liaoning province, china: a cross-sectional study," int j environ res public health, vol. 17, mar 31 2020. [15] j. qiu, b. shen, m. zhao, z. wang, b. xie, and y. xu, "a nationwide survey of psychological distress among chinese people in the covid-19 epidemic: implications and policy recommendations," general psychiatry, vol. 33, 2020. [16] b. y. q. tan, n. w. s. chew, g. k. h. lee, m. jing, y. goh, l. l. l. yeo, et al., "psychological impact of the covid-19 pandemic on health care workers in singapore," ann intern med, apr 6 2020. [17] m. dosil-santamaria, m. picaza-gorrochategui, and n. idoiaga-mondragon, "stress, anxiety, and depression levels in the initial stage of the covid-19 outbreak in a population sample in the northern spain," cad. saúde pública, vol. 36, p. e00054020, 2020.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq the role of nutrients in supporting the immune system against viral infection; newly emerged coronavirus (covid19): a narrative review halgord ali m. farag hardi rafat baqi nursing department medical laboratory science technical college of applied sciences | research center technical college of applied sciences | research center sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq halgord.farag@spu.edu.iq hardi.baqi@spu.edu.iq yousif taha hussein osama hamid shareef nursing department medical laboratory science technical college of applied sciences | research center technical college of applied sciences | research center sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq yousif.taha@spu.edu.iq osama.shareef@spu.edu.iq syamand ahmed qadir amany el afifi medical laboratory science clinical pharmacy department technical college of applied sciences | research center faculty of pharmacy sulaimani polytechnic university al azhar university of gaza sulaimani, iraq gaza, palestine syamand.qadir@spu.edu.iq amany.elafifi95@gmail.com abdel hamid el bilbeisi clinical nutrition department faculty of pharmacy al azhar university of gaza gaza, palestine abedazhot@gmail.com article info abstract special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) doi: 10.24017/covid.10 article history: received: 11 may 2020 accepted: 20 may 2020 balanced nutrition is vital for peak performance of immune function, especially when a global pandemic is emerging, and there is major lack in approved treatments for it. many nutrients and their abundance in cells induce immune function. we performed a narrative review to describe existing literature with regard to role of nutrients in supporting the immune system against viral infection including coronavirus (sars-cov-2). pubmed, scopus and google scholar databases were searched for relevant articles. this review represents a picture of the current state of the art. in mailto:halgord.farag@spu.edu.iq mailto:hardi.baqi@spu.edu.iq mailto:yousif.taha@spu.edu.iq mailto:osama.shareef@spu.edu.iq mailto:syamand.qadir@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue of coronavirus (covid-19) | 85 keywords: covid-19, nutrition, viral infections, vitamins and minerals particular, we classified the nutrients by means of their types, abundance, importance and possible antiviral effects in immune system. the macronutrients such as carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins are essential for cells to generate energy and participate in immune function as well. however, unbalanced diet with high levels of macromolecules could lead to chronic diseases that impair the body’s immune abilities. the micronutrients including vitamins and minerals participate in immune system on a bigger scale that almost all body’s immune mechanism depends on the expressions of micronutrients. vitamins improve immune responses. some vitamins include a, d, k, b, and c enroll in antiviral mechanism of the immune cells. a group of trace elements including zinc, copper, selenium, magnesium, manganese, and iron are heavily contributed in maintaining body’s immunity. the susceptibility toward the infectious diseases is highly elevated in cases of their deficiencies. besides their antiviral roles, vitamins such as e and c with minerals in the cells adopt antioxidant properties that help immune cells to fight oxidative stress in the cells. nevertheless, the high levels of minerals such as iron could threat the immune system by growing the oxidative stress. so, maintaining rich and balanced nutrition could improve body’s immune function, and possibly prevent viral infections including covid-19. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction when most people hear the word “virus” they consider of disease-causing viruses, for example, the flu, common cold, human immunodeficiency viruses (hiv), chickenpox, and others. likewise, viruses can influence many organ systems in the body, including the digestive, reproductive, and respiratory systems [1],[2]. a recent pandemic coronavirus infection began in wuhan, hubei’s province of china and called cov-2019, later on, renamed by world health organization (who) to covid-19 [2]. the common direct reason of death in covid-19 is because of severe pneumonia. additionally, pneumonia is the cause of death for individuals who develop influenza that may develop worldwide with pandemic [3]. presently, there are no certified treatments for this novel virus. given the enormous financial effect of viral infection, especially coronavirus treatment, alternative solutions need to be found to decrease the risks of infection and death. various standards have been adopted to reduce the risks of spreading respiratory virus such as personal hygiene, staying at home and away from individual showing symptoms and covering sneeze and cough [4]. fortunately, there are many other ways we can give our immune system a boost to the ideal immune function. in addition, the nutritional status of the human body could decrease the risk of viral infection and its consequences [5]. many evidences suggest that poor nutrition diminishes the immunity, and increases the risk of infection [6],[7]. indeed, the nutrition deficiencies lead to decrease the immune response and cause an increase in the duration and susceptibility to viral infections. the relation between nutrition and viral infection can be discussed in two ways, the impact of nutrients on the development of the humans immune system, and the relation between malnutrition and immunodeficiency [8]. besides, the crucial role of nutrients in the immune system was confirmed by other evidence which demonstrated antiviral properties [9],[10]. indeed, single nutrient deficiency significantly impairs the immune response and increases the susceptibility to viral infections during exposure [11],[12]. fortunately, the human immune system is intended to fend off disorders and viruses. but unfortunately, our immune system can be kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue of coronavirus (covid-19) | 86 weakened by certain things such as; medication, toxins, modern lifestyle, stress, poor nutrient, unhealthy nutrition, and lack of exercise. this keeps our bodies from successfully fending off infections. this review focuses on the evidence related to the effect of nutrient intake on immunity for fighting viral infection. 2. literature review 2.1 immune system the immune system keeps us healthy as we float throughout the ocean of pathogens. the immune system is spread all through the body and can be divided in to non-antigen specific (innate) and antigen-specific (adaptive) responses. the fast, non-antigen specific defense is comprised of a physical barrier like skin, antimicrobial peptidase, and mucus membrane [13]. they are naturally present and directly act as the first line to recognize and destroy pathogen via inflammatory process [13],[14]. despite of their fast responses, they lack specificity, so, they are less active than antigen-specific response. antigen-specific defense includes the b lymphocyte (b cell system), which can produce and secrete antibodies specific to infecting pathogens, and t lymphocyte (t cell system) is cellmediated immunity and or kill virally infected cell. they are compelling in checking the scatter of infection and killing the attacking organisms. however its action is slower than nonspecific antigen, but it is responsible for producing immunological “memory”, following reinfection and exposed with a similar pathogen it will generate an incredible, quick antigenspecific reaction [13],[15]. with the information regarding the novel coronavirus (sarscov-2) outbreak, supporting our immune system is of the highest priority. we can do this by making a couple of key adjustments. 2.2 effect of nutrients in immune system the role of nutrition to supply vigorous immunity against viral infectious has been immensely investigated. many researches show improving nutrition has a significant role in encouraging the immune system and keeping up appropriate immune function. so we would inspire and keeping up a balance diet to help our immune capacity. the roles of specific micronutrients, vitamins and minerals, were assumed as significant and complementary roles in supporting the immune system. moreover, the nutritional deficiencies are negatively related to immune function and cause in decreasing body resistance to infections as a result of food shortages or malnutrition [16],[17],[18]. however, excessive intake of some nutrients can also be adversely associated with immune responses [19]. therefore, it is vital to have an adequate amount of nutrients with a variety of ingredients, to defend against pathogens in the future. 2.3 macro-nutrients 2.3.1 carbohydrates carbohydrate s are macronutrients that containing hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen [20]. eating staple carbohydrate during daily activities induce immune system and can aid the body's recovery because they act as a fuel for immune cells [21]. for example, the anaerobic glycolysis showing an increase in lymphocytes as immune cells and detects the elevation of glucose as a fuel source for energy. besides, the carbohydrate gives the body with around 60% of the essential energy, so when you cut them out entirely, or taking a low-carb diet, the body is going to miss them [20]. studies suggested that ingesting 30–60 grams of carbohydrate supplements during intensive, prolonged exercise increase the counting number of blood neutrophil and monocyte, stress hormones, and anti-inflammatory cytokines molecules [22],[23],[24]. generally, the carbohydrates mechanisms of work lead to decrease central nervous system activation and stress hormone output, lowering beta-oxidation of lipid fuels, inhibiting cytokine mrna expression, attenuating il-6 release from the working muscle tissue and reducing pro-inflammatory signals [24],[25]. moreover, jonathan peake in a press release said that the body's stress response is reduced when having stable blood sugar levels, which in turn, moderates any undesirable mobilization of immune cells [21]. in addition, more researches kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue of coronavirus (covid-19) | 87 claim that this also helps to avoid infections and illnesses [26]. on the other hand, overconsumption of carbohydrates can also be a part of harm, especially simple carbohydrates and foods with a high glycemic index [27],[28]. 2.3.2 fats fat is an essential macronutrient in the diet that can be found in animal sources in solid state like butter that is called visible fat and vegetable source in liquid state like sunflower and groundnut which named invisible fat. it provides a source of energy and assumes a significant role in both health and disease. excessive consumption of fat gotten from animal source lifts the blood cholesterol which causes cardiovascular and other related diseases [29]. simultaneously, these conditions are too connected to constant inflammatory polarization of t lymphocytes, macrophages, and chronic inflammation [30]. “raised dietary admission of saturated fatty acids (sfas), palmitate, and stearate unequivocally correspond with inflammation and metabolic conditions” [31]. conversely, “unsaturated fats (oleate and linoleate), especially polyunsaturated fatty acids (pufas), may forestall or decrease inflammation. the amassing of saturated fatty acids (sfas) and diacylglycerols (dags) can be poisonous by actuating endoplasmic reticulum stress, which additionally drives the inflammatory m1 phenotype in macrophages” [32]. based on the previous evidence it is recommended that “the development of autoimmune disease in mice is caused by excess accumulation of cholesterol in immune cells; furthermore, the accumulation of cholesterol in antigen-presenting cells developed t cell preparation through antigen presentation and promoted the b cell proliferation factors production, thereby driving the expansion of autoreactive b cells. eventually, it is important to note that promoting reverse cholesterol overexpressing hdl constituent consulted protection from the development of autoimmune disease” [33]. some studies suggest that there is an interrelationship between essential fatty acid (efa) metabolism and their capacity to respond to viral infection. in vivo and in vitro viral infection induces abnormalities of essential fatty acid metabolism. these perceptions propose that a normal level of essential fatty acid metabolism is critical in directing the viral infection response [34]. on the other hand, low degrees of cholesterol are common during the beginning periods of hiv-1 infection and related to the explicit immune system modification, proposing that hypocholesterolemia might be a helpful marker of disease progression [35]. 2.3.3 proteins proteins can make building blocks of widely diverse products as hormones, enzymes, and antibodies. plant proteins are ordinarily by-products of vegetable oil production, so, some studies used these iso-caloric and iso-nitrogenous diet containing sesame, sunflower seed, groundnut and cottonseed as source of protein [36]. “l-tryptophan (l-trp) is an essential amino acid that represents a crucial role by activating aryl hydrocarbon receptor (ahr), assume a significant role in immune system regulation and antimicrobial protection [37]. furthermore, a combination of tryptophan (trp) with arginine (arg) may cause a balanced immune response against infectious bursal disease” [38]. on the other hand, protein-calorie malnutrition is a causal role in increasing immune dysfunction and host susceptibility to viral infection. so on, researchers have examined the effect of protein deficiency on sensitivity to viral infection [39]. however, an expanding requirement for protein in infection disease doesn't suggest a total therapeutic strategy. otherwise, infections should be handled appropriately and nutrition maybe used as an adjunctive treatment. while lysine supplementation to the required level, improves immune function, however, there is no enough evidence to show clinical outcomes [40]. some studies demonstrate “a critical role of three essential proteins including leucine, l-arginine (arg), and l-glutamine (gln) every one of which has been recently appeared to slow muscle proteolysis and could synergistically modify the course of muscle wasting in patients infected with (aids) by the decrease in the hiv viral and an increase in cd3 and cd8 cells” [41],[42]. 2.4 micronutrients kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue of coronavirus (covid-19) | 88 2.4.1 vitamins 2.4.1.1 vitamin a vitamin a is essential for protecting epithelial, normal growth, and maintaining the vision [43], it acts in improving immune function either in innate or adaptive immune responses [44]. hypovitaminosis a is known as nutritionally acquired immune deficiency disorder as a result of weakened antibody responses to protein antigens, resulted in epithelial damage in newcastle and rotavirus infection [45], [46]. study indicates that increased antibody response in vitamin a supplementation was observed after measles [47],[48] and anti-rabies vaccination [49], and anti-rabies vaccination [49]. more study is required in terms of antiviral effect regarding newly emerged coronavirus. generally, vit a is known to influence gene translation, ordinarily encourage the creation of interleukins 4 and 5 (il-4-5) and differentiation toward t helper 2 (th 2) cell [50]. the il-4 was found to decrease the vulnerability of vero e6 cells to sars-cov and inhibiting its replication through down-regulation of “angiotensin-converting enzyme” [51], [52]. conflicting with this outcome, treatment with il-4 in infected viral influenza in mice repressed both primary and secondary antiviral immune reaction [53]. thus, the antiviral mechanism effect of vit a can contributes to the il-4 intervened suppressive impact. considering recent viral infection covid-19, where no successful preventive and treatment, vit a may be one of the vulnerable choices. further studies are required. 2.4.1.2 vitamin d vitamin d (vit d) is a fat-soluble vitamin. the major source is derived from uv (ultra violet) light-induced conversion of its precursor 7-dehydrocholesterol under the skin to cholecalciferol, vit d3 [54]. study shows that “the active form of vit d is triggered by uvb radiations and leading to increase production of antiviral peptidase, increasing the oxidative burst potential of microphage and prevent the excessive expression of inflammatory cytokines” [55],[56]. it has been known that vit d enhances the innate immunity by upregulation of the expression and excretion of potent antimicrobial peptides in immune cells and epithelial lining, which boosts mucosal defense again viral infection [57]. the protective effect of vit d in response to viral infection has been proved by many studies. vit d plays important role in mediating the immune system's reaction to entry pathogens [58]. recently, study suggests that a population with vit d deficiency is prone to frequent viral infection compared to a non-deficient population [59]. hypovitaminosis d is associated with viral respiratory infection [60], human immune deficiency virus (hiv) [61], as well as upper respiratory tract infection (urti) including influenza [58]. taken in to account the moderately high doses up to 2000 to 5000 iu per day can be taken for a year [62],[63],[64]. however, the antiviral properties of vit d have not been finally established, it may be linked to the primary circulating form of vit d in the kidney and other cell types including immune cells to its biologically active compound calcitriol by 1-α hydroxylase enzyme [65]. vit d due to its vit d receptors response elements are expressed in immune cells such as antigen-presenting-cell, monocyte, b and t cells [65],[66]. additionally, active vit d has been associated with the expression of specific micro rnas (mirs), which is associated with redundant pro-inflammatory responses under the pathological situation [60]. there is a possibility that vit d may slow non-specific effect on severe viral respiratory infections. 2.4.1.3 vitamin e vitamin e (tocopherol) is a vitamin that dissolves in fat. an antioxidant property of vitamin e has an important function in the human organ, which means that it assists to slowdown cells from damage [67]. vitamin e regulates t-cell functions either directly by affecting t cell membrane integrity and/or cell division, and indirectly regulate t cell function by influencing inflammatory created from other immune cells [68]. in animal study hypovitaminosis e has shown a significant effect on the human immune system and resulted in enhancing immune function including resistance to bacterial and viral infection [69]. other shows that, kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue of coronavirus (covid-19) | 89 hypervitaminosis e significantly intensified influenza viral clearance in aged mice compared to young mice [68],[70],[71]. taken together, the outcome suggests that vitamin e is a significant supplement for keeping up the immune system particularly in the aged group. furthermore, the protective impact of vitamin e in the treatment of chronic viral hepatitis and viral replication has been proved [72]. also, moderate increase by vitamin e in natural killer (nk) cells is participating in its beneficial effect [73],[74]. also, evidence displayed that viral infection changes the redox status of the host cell. these changes among pro-oxidant and antioxidant activity play an important role in various cell pathways that are abused by viral for their publication and subsequently the progression and severity of virus-induced disease [75]. based on the previous evidence it is recommended that vitamin e is an important antioxidant that modulates immune function as it influences have helplessness to infection disease, for example, respiratory system [69] as a sign of newly diagnosed covid-19. 2.4.1.4 vitamin k vitamin k is one of the fat-soluble vitamins [76]. vitamin k plays key roles in different physiological functions [77]. it can also act as a coenzyme of some plasma proteins and affect immune parameters, particularly t cells and inflammatory pathways [78]. vitamin k has been found to have anti-inflammatory activity directed through inhibition of proinflammatory transcriptional factor, nuclear factor-kappa b (nf-κb) signaling pathway [79]. “several in vitro studies also showed that vitamin k2 inhibits the production of prostaglandins and major pro-inflammatory cytokines including il-1, il-6, tnf-α” [74],[80],[81]. consistent with these results, increases in cytokine levels are directly correlated with increase viral load, increased mortality, and severity of the disease [82]. these results suggest that inhibition of the pro-inflammatory cytokines by vitamin k may contribute to viral clearance and tissue resolution [83]. inconsistent with these results, “various studies suggest that treatment of cells with tnf-α plays a protective role in viral infection and can inhibit the replication of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (hiv-1), vesicular stomatitis virus, encephalomyocarditis virus, and herpes simplex virus in a dose-dependent manner and can prevent the development of cytopathic effects. also, they suggest that tnf-α serves as the first line of defense against influenza virus infection in the natural host” [84],[85]. furthermore, our literature search was unable to identify a proven mechanism examining the use of vitamin k for the treatment of specific viral infections. however, study revealed that vitamin k can indirectly affect immunity through complement system pathways [86]. 2.4.1.5 vitamin b the b-complex vitamins are class of water-soluble vitamins. they play important roles in cell metabolism and in the maintenance of immune homeostasis [87]. it has been reported that the antibody formation to influenza virus pr-8 in the rat was markedly impaired in pantothenic acid, vitamin b5and pyridoxine, vitamin b6deficient rats. but a pronounced thiamine, vitamin b1, deficiency failed to affect antibody production [88],[89]. the most recent studies showed that “the total number of nk and cd8+ t cells was decreased markedly in patients with sars-cov-2 infection and the function of nk and cd8+ t cells was exhausted with the increased expression of nkg2a in covid-19 patients” [90]. it was also reported the potential involvement of nk cells in the previous severe acute respiratory syndrome (sars) disease in china in november 2002 [91]. these data show the importance of vitamin b in improving the immune response and consequently may contribute to virus elimination and disease control in covid-19 patients. 2.4.1.6 vitamin c vitamin c, also known as l-ascorbic acid, is a water-soluble vitamin [92]. several investigations indicated that vitamin c is an essential factor for the anti-viral immune responses through increasing production of anti-viral cytokine, interferon (ifn)-α/β especially against influenza a virus (h3n2) at the early time of infection [93],[94]. similarly, in another animal study, vitamin c deficiency increased the lung pathology of influenza virus-infected kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue of coronavirus (covid-19) | 90 gulo-/mice. the authors suggest that vitamin c is required for an adequate immune response in limiting lung pathology after influenza virus infection [95]. in addition to demonstrate the activity against influenza and hiv, vitamin c has been documented to have inhibitory activity against several other viruses including avian rna tumor viruses, herpesviruses and paramyxoviruses, venezuelan equine encephalitis, parvovirus, rabies virus and human lymphotropic virus type 1 (htlv-1) among others [96],[97]. however, a review of the current evidence on the ameliorative effect of vitamin c to alleviate the symptoms of the common cold suggests that the role of vitamin c in the treatment of common cold should be reconsidered due to consistency of the previous results [98],[99]. moreover, high dose intravenous vitamin c treatment has been shown to significantly improve symptoms in people with severe viral infections [100]. 2.5 minerals a group of trace elements is critical in maintaining the immune system. these are zinc, copper, selenium, magnesium, manganese, and iron. any variations in the amount of these metals induce immune function in different ways, including antibody responses, cell-mediated immunity, and the activity of natural killer (nk) cells. a well-functioning immune system is significant for cells to eliminate or reduce infections. this is particularly important for all people in the time of the global pandemic. so, keeping the optimum levels of all nutrients, including trace elements for the maximum immune function should be taken seriously. moreover, these trace elements such as selenium and zinc can affect the genetics of a viral pathogen other than the host cells and efficiently impair the replication of many rna viruses [101],[102]. 2.5.1 zinc zinc (zn) is one of the most investigated trace elements for its affection on the host immune system. the susceptibility to infectious diseases has been noted to increase in zn deficiency syndromes [103]. the effect of zn deficiency in 30 days of suboptimal zn levels feeding period in mice led the thymus size to be reduced, macrophages and lymphocytes in spleen to be depleted [103],[104]. the health of children with pneumonia (1 month to 5 years) who supplemented with zn has improved in terms of duration of the illness, oxygen saturation, and respiratory rate when compared to the placebo group [106]. lower than normal levels of zn also have been linked to the decreased antibody responses and function of t-cell [107]. while the restoring of zn levels to normal caused the status of the immune system to be restored as well [108]. higher than normal levels of zn also suppress the immune system by decreasing the activities of polymorphonuclear leukocytes, tcell proliferation to mitogen, and antibody production [109]. therefore, zn either high or low levels adversely alters the immune function. 2.5.2 copper one of the essential nutrients for humans is copper (cu), however, the deficiency of cu is a rare condition. cu participates in immune function by developing and differentiating immune cells [110]. cu demonstrates antiviral effects in-vitro. a study showed the inhibition effect of thujaplicin-copper on the replication of human influenza viruses [111]. while the in-vivo effect of cu regulates the lifecycle of the influenza virus [112]. animals with deficient cu have a higher susceptibility to bacterial, viral, and parasitic infections [113]. menkes syndrome in children which is a genetic disease of cu malabsorption causes death due to the infectious bronchopneumonia [114]. long term high cu intake leads to the improvement of antioxidant status [115]. human studies showed the effect of a low cu diet on the immune system. healthy adults with low cu intake caused lymphoproliferative responses to mitogen to decrease. the il-2 receptor’s secretion decreased as well. but, the b-cells increased with the unchanged numbers of t-cells. the neutrophil phagocytic function remained unchanged [116]. although normal levels of cu are critical for the immune system, the exact mechanism kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue of coronavirus (covid-19) | 91 of its participation is not quite clear. moreover, the biochemical activities of cu might be important in reducing oxidative stress 2.5.3 selenium selenium (se) an important trace element with anti-inflammatory properties [116],[117]. se deficiency leads to oxidative stress in the host that is an overabundance of the free radical production and other oxidants while comparing to the defensive antioxidants. this stress affects the host cells in many ways. the free radicals damage 10,000 dna bases daily and some of them are not repaired [119]. se supplementation increases antiviral activity [117]. broome et al. searched for the effect of an increase in se intake by (50-100 µg/day), the result showed an improvement in the immune function of adults [120]. the effect is caused by increased plasma concentration of se, lymphocyte phospholipid and the activity of cytosolic glutathione peroxidase [120]. a randomized control trial (rct) lasted 12 weeks, healthy adults with suboptimal se levels (<110 ng/ml) were supplemented with daily doses of yeast enriched se capsules. the results showed favored and un-favored effects [121]. the t-cell proliferation of the se supplemented group increase based on the daily dose, but in an opposing effect the granzyme b content of cd8 cells decreased [121]. furthermore, se supplementation showed an effect on the skin response delayed-type hypersensitivity (dth) [122]. a control group in this study (low se) increased the numbers of nk cells and induced anergy in skin responses dth, while the responses in the treated group (high se) were normal, proposing that se blocks the induction of dth anergy [122]. the increase in susceptibility toward pathogens in se deficiency might be because of decreasing the production of antibodies and the impaired response of lymphoproliferative [123]. 2.5.4 magnesium magnesium (mg) is important micronutrients, and it has many roles in biological systems, specifically in immune systems [124]. many studies propose that mg has a role in developing an immune response against viral infections [125]. it has an immense influence on many processes of the immune function, including synthesis of immunoglobulins, immune cell adherence, immunoglobulin m (igm) lymphocyte binding, antibody dependent cytolysis, macrophage response to lymphokines, and t helper-b cell adherence [126]. 2.5.5 manganese manganese (mn) is a widely distributed metal among mammalian tissues and it participates in many processes such as antioxidant defenses, immune regulation, neuronal function, and reproduction [126],[127]. although, manganese's exact contribution to innate immunity stay undefined, yet, some findings suggest its involvement in the defense system of the host cells against dna viruses [129]. mn showed activities in host immunity against dna viruses by increasing cgas dna sensor and sting the adaptor protein [130]. the production of cytokine in mn-deficient mice was diminished and was more exposed to dna viruses [130]. mn is fundamental for mn superoxide dismutase (sod2) metalloenzyme, it also regulates many mn-dependent enzymes [131],[132]. 2.5.6 iron iron (fe) is needed for the activities of both the pathogens and host cells [133]. many studies prove that iron is a major element for good immune function [134]. fe metabolism presents the dynamic interaction of antioxidants and oxidative stress in many pathophysiological processes [135]. the deficiency of fe impairs the immune function of host cells, while the fe overload leads to oxidative stress that generates viral mutations [136]. the catalase enzyme converts hydrogen peroxide into harmless water and oxygen in two steps in which the reduction of the hydrogen peroxide is done by fe [137]. fe deficiency is a risk factor for developing recurrent acute respiratory tract infections [138]. kurdistan journal of applied 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[136] j. a. a. s. jayaweera, m. reyes, and a. joseph, “childhood iron deficiency anemia leads to recurrent respiratory tract infections and gastroenteritis,” sci. rep., vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 1–8, 2019.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq knowledge, attitude and practice of medical students of sulaimani regarding modern lifestyle and its effect on health bushra m. ali saman mohammed family & community medicine department college of medicine family & community medicine department college of medicine university of sulaimani university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq bmakfb.2002@yahoo.com dr.saman_am@yahoo.com shajwan akram saya salar college of medicine college of medicine university of sulaimani university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq shajwanakram 10@gmail.com saya.maziz330@gmail.com lezan baxtiar lawen ismail college of medicine college of medicine university of sulaimani university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq lezanbaxtiar@gmail.com lawenismail44@gmail.com shad nawzad college of medicine university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq shadnawzad919@gmail.com article info abstract volume 5 – special issue: 4th international conference on the health and medical science : medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) doi: 10.24017/science.2020.ichms2020.6 article history: received : 22 september 2020 accepted : 02 october 2020 the objectives of this study are to assess level of knowledge, attitude and practice of medical students about modern lifestyle and its impact upon health, in association with different colleges. a cross sectional study was conducted among 420 students, in a convenient sampling way, data collected from 18th to 22nd of september 2019 in a self-administrated manner from four different medical colleges (medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and veterinary.) in university of sulaimani. data entered on excel sheets and analyzed with spss program version 22. chi square was used to get the mailto:10@gmail.com mailto:lezanbaxtiar@gmail.com mailto:shadnawzad919@gmail.com kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 50 keywords: modern life style, medical students, sulamani. iraq association p value equal and less than (0.05) regarded statistically significant. most of the students (82.1%) had heard about a modern lifestyle with highest percentage of participants (90.5%) from college of medicine, and (69.3%) knew that technology has a major role in creating a modern lifestyle, with a significant p value of (0.001). nearly half of the students (54.5%) believed to be living a modern lifestyle and most of them (66.2%) were from college of dentistry. about (49.5%) of students believed that financial status can sometimes put limits on lifestyle choice with most of them (52.7%) being from college of dentistry with p value of (0.001). majority of students (995%) used social media with most of them (97.4%) being from college of medicine. nearly (66%) of participants didn’t exercise and highest percentage (78.1%) from college of pharmacy with a significant (p value 0.007). participants in general had good knowledge and positive attitude regarding the topic, but they had a negative practice with managing stress, time and depression and had negative habits regarding exercise and having healthy diet. in addition college of medicine had highest knowledge and attitude among the four medical colleges, but regarding the practice college of pharmacy was the best. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction life style is defined as way of living of individuals, families, and societies, which they manifest in coping with their physical, and psychological, social, and economical environment on a daily basis…this definition explains that a particular lifestyle of an individual has a great impact on activities, interests, their opinions and ambitions, as lifestyle can be treated as an indicator of social attitudes and of the ideologies that are functioning in the social space [1]. on the other hand, life style itself is tremendously affected by multiple factors including family, culture, social class, the individuals instincts, technology, and social media. in the olden days, life was natural, slow, and somehow difficult at time but nowadays in modern times, life is fast paced, comfortable, readily made but however, is stressful. modern life style slowly crept in with changing times [2]. modern lifestyle offers important information about nutrition, physical activity, stress control, medical services, physical/mental health, social support, education, technology, and our chief goals. regarding diet and nutrition, an important aspect of modern lifestyle is the change in food habit. in most homes traditional simple food has given way to fast food, which is high in calories, especially children and young adults are too attracted to fried and oily food that now is easily available. also eating habits, such as eating while watching tv(snacking between meals and munching when there’s no work ,all has contributed to life style diseases. these caused children to adults put on weight which has become a very common problem that has exposed us to some dangerous health hazards like high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity, these conditions which were earlier seen in people past fifty years are now seen in younger age groups .and they’ve become a common lifestyle kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 51 diseases and are causes of worry all over the world. [2] it goes without saying that technology had a major role in building modern society and lifestyle, and there’s absolutely no doubt that over the years technology has been responsible for creating amazingly useful resources which put all the information we need at our fingertips. the development of technology has led to so many mind-blowing discoveries, better facilities, and better luxuries, but at the same has dramatically changed our daily lives. various highly-developed gadgets, connected to the internet, have changed the way we communicate, use humor, study, work, shop, play, and behave. [3] previously children were going out to play, but nowadays seeing children playing and sweat it out is a rare sight, with everyone glued to the tv or play video games or on the internet for hours. this along with growing competition among parents and facilities , kids are forced to attend many hobby classes and tuitions, all of which leaves less time for playing and having outdoor physical activities that has impact on the health. same goes for adults , with advancements in technology, everything from social gatherings, variety of facilities available for transportation, to environment at work places and many more changed from what they were in the past .and with all this change it’s difficult to find time for physical activities. all of these factors created a sedentary life style which has become a lead to many diseases. [2] in addition, one of the bases of healthy life is sleep. sleep cannot be apart from life. and nowadays sleep disorders have several social, psychological, economical and health consequences. lifestyle can has effect on sleep which has clear influence on mental and physical health. [3] the other aspect of modern lifestyle is level of medical services that has much progressed compared to the past regarding primary care and prevention, providing health insurances, vaccinations, many facilities for disease screening and new treatment for diseases and even cure for some. these are a lot of things that nobody would have thought were possible a few years back but now are being practiced and they’re actually saving lives. lifestyle describes a complex behavioral strategies and routines, attitudes and values, and with each day advancements we create a modern way of living that has impact on us in almost every way. the role of health in terms of modern lifestyle is very well recognized nowadays. [4] evaluations of healthy lifestyle among greek university students demonstrated that there was a positive correlation between medical student’s healthy behavior and their quality of life. also several studies have been conducted in iran indicating that the majority of medical students did not have appropriate physical activity nor sleep pattern. [5]. the aims of this study are to estimate knowledge, attitude, and practice of medical students of university of sulaimani regarding the modern lifestyle and effects on health and to estimate association between different colleges and their knowledge, attitude, practice about modern lifestyle. 2. methods and materials for this research, a cross sectional study was conducted. the study was conducted in university of sulaimani, faculty of medical sciences, included four different medical colleges: colleges of medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and veterinary. from 18th to 29th of september 2019. a sample of 420 students participated from all colleges and all stages of each college was conducted in a convenient way. a self-administered questionnaire was prepared consisted of four sections:8 questions about socio-demographic, 9 questions about knowledge of students regarding lifestyle, another 9 about attitude and 9 about practice. all making a total of 35 questions. a pilot study has been done and study was adjusted accordingly with help of a few medical colleagues within same colleges in which study was conducted. data collection was in both online google forms (340) and hard copies (80) with keeping total privacy and participants and reassuring their agreement to fill out. data were entered on excel sheets (microsoft excel 2010), all analyzed with spss program (version 22).tables and graphics were used to present data in a descriptive statistical way. chi square: used to test the association between variables and p value was accounted as probability of statistics with value of 0.05 and less taken as significant. for ethical considerations, official permission was taken from college authority for distribution of hard copies, and informed consent was taken from all participants for both kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 52 online and hard copy. all students were informed that their participation is completely voluntary and all the collected information was kept confidential. 3. results (table 1) shows socio-demographic status that majority of participants were single (93.3%) and female(60.2%), they were mostly from inside city (68.3%) and majority had a moderate financial status(77.9%), with the highest percentage of participants being in college of medicine(55%) . table1: socio-demographic data of the sample. (figure 1) shows distribution of participants according to bmi group. it shows that the majority of the participants (75.95) were in normal body mass index group. figure 1: distribution of participants according to bmi group. sdd number percentage % gender female male 253 167 (60.2) (39.8) residency inside city outside city 287 133 (68.3) (31.7) college medicine dentistry pharmacy veterinary 231 74 64 51 (55) (17.6) (15.2) (12.1) marital status single married divorced/widow 392 26 2 (93.3) (6.2) (0.5) socioeconomic status low moderate high 39 327 54 (9.3) (77.9) (12.9) total 420 (100) kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 53 (table 2) shows the association between different colleges and their knowledge regarding lifestyle, most of the participants (82.1%) had heard of modern lifestyle with highest percentage from college of medicine take highest percentage (90.5%), proven by p value of (0.001) that states a significant and strong association. and nearly half of these students had heard about it from the internet (49.3%). and highest percentage (77.4%) of participants knew lifestyle can affect mental health and were mostly from college of medicine (87% ) and there is a significant association between the colleges and their answer (p value= 0.001). and again there’s a significant association between colleges and their knowledge regarding the effect of physical health that most of participant(78.3%) had knowledge and majority were from college of medicine(90.5%) with p value significance of (0.001) stating association. and most of participants (73.3%) took lifestyle as a factor that can affect academic life ,and among them college of medicine predominated and (84%) of “yes” answers which was dominant answer were from them, with a p value of (0.001) stating significant association. regarding the effect of technology on lifestyle the highest percentage (69.3%) of responders said yes and most of them were from college of medicine (78.8%) with correct answer, a p value of (0.001) states significant associations between the college of participants and their answer to the question. and most of participants (68.3%) regarded regular medical checkups being a part of modern lifestyle, with highest percentage were from college of medicine (78.8%),p value was equal to (0.001) showing clear and significant association similarly, diabetes/hypertension as a wrong answer was chosen and majority who answered this way were from college of medicine (51.5%) a p value of (0.001) shows significant association. table 2: association between different colleges students and their knowledge regarding modern lifestyle questions medicine no./% dentistry no./% pharmacy no./% veterinary no./% total no./% p. value have you heard of modern lifestyle? yes no 209 (90.47) 22 (9.52) 52(70.3) 22(29.7) 44(68.8) 20(31.3) 40(78.4) 11(21.6) 345(82.1) 75(17.9) 0.001 from where did you hear about it? people internet book college academic life those who didn’t hear about it 40(17.3) 140(60.6) 10(4.3) 19 (8.2) 0(0.0) 22(9.52) 12(16.2) 23(31.1) 5(16.2) 12(6.8) 0(0.0) 22(29.7) 9(14.1) 23(35.9) 3(14.1) 9(4.7) 0(0.0) 20(31.3) 10(19.6) 21(41.2) 4(7.8) 4(7.8) 1(0.2) 11(21.6) 71(16.9) 207(49.3) 22(5.2) 45(10.7) 1(0.2) 75(17.9) 0.001 lifestyle can affect mental health? yes no i don’t know 201(87) 12(5.2) 18(7.8) 47(63.5) 17(23) 10(13.5) 45(70.3) 9(14.1) 10(15.6) 32(62.7) 9(17.6) 10(19.6) 325(77.4) 47(11.2) 48(11.4) 0.001 lifestyle can affect physical health? yes no i don’t know 209(90.5) 15(6.5) 7(3) 46(62.2) 11(14.9) 17(23) 44(68.8) 7(10.9) 13(20.3) 30(58.8) 10(19.6) 11(21.6) 329(78.3) 43(10.2) 48(11.4) 0.001 lifestyle can affect academic kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 54 (figure 2) shows the association among college students regarding knowledge about impact of lifestyle on nutritional deficiencies or illnesses. most of participants(68.1%) knew that illness and deficiency can be related to certain lifestyle, college of medicine students took the highest percentage(81.8%) regarding knowledge and p value of (0.001) states significant association. figure 2: association among college students regarding their knowledge about impact of lifestyle on nutritional deficiencies or illnesses (table 3) shows association between colleges and the attitude of students regarding modern lifestyle clarifying that about (54.5%) of participants think they live a modern lifestyle, and highest percentage(66.2%) are from college of dentistry ,and a p value of (0.078) does not state the association (meaning that there is no significant association between the college and their answer to the question. and about (64.3%) of participants only sometimes were willing performance? yes no i don’t know 194(84) 18(7.8) 19(8.2) 44(59.5) 11(14.9) 19(25.7) 39(60.9) 11(17.2) 14(21.9) 31(60.8) 9(17.6) 11(21.6) 308(73.3) 49(11.7) 63(15) 0.001 technology has a major role in modern lifestyle? yes no i don’t know 182(78.8) 21(9.1) 28(12.1) 45(60.8) 8(10.8) 21(28.4) 31(48.4) 14(21.9) 19(29.7) 33(64.7) 3(5.9) 15(29.4) 291(69.3) 46(11) 83(19.7) 0.001 healthy diet and regular medical checkup is part of a healthy modern lifestyle? yes no i don’t know 182(78.8) 16(6.9) 33(14.3) 37(50) 14(18.9) 23(31.1) 38(59.4) 7(10.9) 19(29.7) 30(58.8) 6(11.8) 15(29.4) 287(68.3) 43(10.2) 90(21.5) 0.001 total 231(100) 74(100) 64(100) 51(100) 420(100) kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 55 to change their lifestyle inspired by other people, and highest percentage (73.6%) were from college of medicine and p value of (0.001) shows significant association. highest percentage of respondents (65.2%) thought keeping up with certain lifestyle can sometimes be stressful, and highest percentage of them(70.6%) were from college of medicine, p value of (0.001) states significant association. and most of participants (66%) think people sometimes pretended to have a certain lifestyle to attract people and most of them (75.3%) were from college of medicine, p value of (0.001) states significant association with the college. nearly half of students (49.5%) thought financial status can sometimes put limits on living a certain lifestyle, and most of those (57.6) were from college of medicine and p value of (0.001) shows significant association with the college. and regarding religion, nearly half (45.5%) believe that it can force a certain lifestyle, with highest percentage being from college of veterinary (52.9%) a p value of (0.019) rules out any significant association with this factor. nearly half of the students (46.4%) that geographical area always affects choosing a lifestyle with highest percentage being from college of pharmacy (51.6%) with p value =0.078 indicating it’s not significant. and only about (64.5%) think that diet restrictions due to lifestyle can sometimes lead to illness and nutrition deficiency with highest percentage being from college of pharmacy (73.4%) and (p value=0.113, no significant association is stated. table 3: association between different colleges students and their attitude regarding modern lifestyle. questions/attitude medicine no./% dentistry no./% pharmacy no./% veterinary no./% total no./% p. value in your opinion are you living a modern lifestyle? yes no 117(50.6) 114(49.4) 49(66.2) 25(33.8) 32(50) 32(50) 31(60.8) 20(39.2) 229(54.5) 191(45.5) 0.078 you are willing to make changes in your life inspired by people around you? always sometimes never/rarely 27(11.7) 170(73.6) 34(14.7) 11(14.9) 34(45.9) 29(39.2) 9(14.1) 29(45.3) 26(40.6) 6(11.8) 37(72.5) 8(15.7) 53(12.6) 270(64.3) 97(23.1) 0.001 do you think that keeping up with a certain lifestyle can be stressful? always sometimes never/rarely 47(20.3) 163(70.6) 21(9.1) 18(24.3) 43(58.1) 13(17.6) 14(21.9) 35(54.7) 15(23.4) 11(21.6) 33(64.7) 7(13.7) 90(21.4) 274(65.2) 56(13.3) 0.059 do you think people may pretend to have a certain lifestyle to attract others? always sometimes never/rarely 34(14.7) 174(75.3) 23(10) 25(33.8) 38(51.4) 11(14.9) 20(31.3) 33(51.6) 11(17.2) 12(23.5) 32(62.7) 7(13.7) 91(21.7) 277(66) 52(12.4) 0.001 do you think financial status can put limits on living a certain lifestyle? always sometimes never/rarely 79(34.2) 133(57.6) 19(8.2) 39(52.7) 29(39.2) 6(8.1) 27(42.2) 23(35.9) 14(21.9) 19(37.3) 23(45.1) 9(17.6) 164(39) 208(49.5) 48(11.4) 0.001 do you think you kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 56 are forced to follow a certain lifestyle because of you religion? always sometimes never/rarely 53(22.9) 114(49.4) 64(27.7) 29(39.2) 29(39.2) 16(21.6) 27(42.2) 21(32.8) 16(25) 14(27.5) 27(52.9) 10(19.6) 123(29.3) 191(45.5) 106(25.2) 0.019 do you think geographical area affects choosing modern lifestyle? always sometimes never/rarely 106(45.9) 98(42.4) 27(11.7) 37(50) 24(32.4) 13(17.6) 33(51.6) 20(31.3) 11(17.2) 19(37.3) 18(35.3) 14(27.5) 195(46.4) 160(38.1) 65(15.5) 0.78 do you think any diet restrictions due to a certain lifestyle changes can lead to illness and deficiency of nutrition? always sometimes never/rarely 56(24.2) 147(63.6) 28(12.2) 16(21.6) 46(62.2) 12(16.2) 5(7.8) 47(73.4) 12(18.8) 10(19.6) 31(60.8) 10(19.6) 87(20.7) 271(64.5) 62(14.8) 0.113 total 231(100) 74(100) 64(100) 51(100) 420(100) figure 3: shows the associations among colleges regarding attitude about lifestyle and their culture and it shows nearly half of participants (48.3%) felt that sometimes culture can force a certain lifestyle with highest percentage from college of veterinary (56.9%) with (p=0.001) showing significant association. figure 3: associations among colleges students about if they feel that their culture force them to follow a certain lifestyle. (table 4) shows association between college of participants and their practice regarding lifestyle. comparing current lifestyle to the past, most of participants (59.8%) are feeling more stressed and majority is from college of medicine (62.3%), and p value of (0.485) rules out any significant association. most of students (63.8%) had difficulties arranging time due to lifestyle choice, and highest percentage being from college of medicine (73.6%), p value of kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 57 (0.001) shows significant association. and majority of respondents (95%) use social media as a part of their lifestyle, and highest percentage (97.4%) was among medicine , p value of (0.077) shows that there’s no significant association. highest percentage of students (70.9%) didn’t playing video games , and most of them were from college of pharmacy(75%) , p value of (0.457) rules out association. and data shows that most of participants (66%) of students didn’t exercise as a part of their lifestyle, highest percentage (78.1%) were from college of pharmacy , p value of (0.007) states significant association. half of participants (51.7%) never had depression because of not being able to have a certain lifestyle, with highest percentage being from college of pharmacy (70.3%) (p value=0.003).and healthy diet wasn’t included as a part of lifestyle by most of responders (59.3%) , and they mostly (63.5) were from college of dentistry, p value of (0.681) ruled out association, in addition most of them (58%) didn’t have health issues due to their diet ,and most of those who responded were pharmacy students (60.9%) and p value of (0.843) again rules out association. table 4: association between different colleges students and their practice regarding modern lifestyle. questions/practic e medicine no./% dentistry no./% pharmacy no./% veterinary no./% total no./% p. value comparing your current lifestyle to your past, are you more stressed? yes no 144(62.3) 87(37.7) 44(59.5) 30(40.5) 33(51.6) 31(48.4 30(58.8) 21(41.2) 251(59.8) 169(40.2) 0.485 have you ever had any difficulties arranging your time? yes no sometimes 170(73.6) 52(22.5) 9(3.9) 30(40.5) 43(58.1) 1(1.4) 33(51.6) 31(48.4) 0(0) 35(68.6) 15(29.4) 1(2) 268(63.8) 141(33.6) 11(2.6) 0.001 do you use social media? yes no 225(97.4) 6(2.6) 69(93.2) 5(6.8) 59(92.2) 5(7.8) 46(90.2) 5(9.8) 399(95) 21(5) 0.077 do you play video games? yes no 68(29.4) 163(70.6) 19(25.7) 55(74.3) 16(25) 48(75) 19(37.3) 32(62.7) 122(29.1) 298(70.9) 0.457 do you exercise? yes no 95(41.1) 136(58.9) 20(27) 54(73) 14(21.9) 50(78.1) 14(27.5) 37(72.5) 143(34) 277(66) 0.007 have you ever had depression because of not being able to have a lifestyle? yes no 126(54.5) 105(45.5) 31(41.9) 43(58.1) 19(29.7) 45(70.3) 27(52.9) 24(47.1) 203(48.3) 217(51.7) 0.003 are you on a healthy diet? yes no 100(43.3) 131(56.7) 27(36.5) 47(63.5) 24(37.5) 40(62.5) 20(39.2) 31(60.8) 171(40.7) 249(59.3) 0.681 due to your diet have you ever had any nutritional 97(42) 134(58) 30(40.5) 44(59.5) 25(39.1) 39(60.9) 24(47.1) 27(52.9) 176(42) 244(58) 0.843 kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 58 deficiency? yes no total 231(100) 74(100) 64(100) 51(100) 420(100) (figure 4) shows that this bar chart shows the associations among colleges regarding practice of sleep with their lifestyle schedule and most of students (59.3 %) did not get enough sleep with their lifestyle, with highest percentage (71.6%) from college of dentistry , p value of (0.001) showing significant association. figure 4: associations among colleges students regarding if they get enough sleep with their lifestyle schedule. 4. discussion in this study which was conducted among medical students in university of sulaimani. mean age of the participants were 20.88 +/1.482 nearly similar to a research which was done in malaysia [6]. this similarity is due to the standard age acceptable for medical college students. it was found that majority of the participants were females (60.2%) this goes in contrast with a study done in india which number of male participants were more. [7] however this study is similar to a research done in malaysia which female participants were more [6] and the explanation is that females were more cooperative for our participation than males. the majority of the responders were from inside city (68.3%) this is similar to a study done in china [8] this is because that the resources for a modern lifestyle are more available in the city centers, and thereby they were more familiar with the topic and more cooperative. most of the participants were among college of medicine (55%) similar to a study done in kuwait [9] regarding the marital status nearly (93.3%) of the responders were singles similar to a research done in malaysia [6], this is because our participants are college students and were not at the appropriate age for commitment yet. socioeconomic status of most of the students (77.9%) was moderate similar to a research was done in malaysia [6] majority of the participants (75.95) were in normal body mass index (bmi) group, this is similar to a research in saudi arabia [10]and this is because participants are college students and at a young age, with more care regarding their weight and appearance. majority of the students (82.1%) heard about modern lifestyle and they were mostly from college of medicine (90.5%) with a significant association regarding p-value (0.001)in contrast to a research done in kedah/perlis among university students [11] it was found that the respondents knowledge of modern lifestyle was (52.1%) and this difference has happened because medical college students have higher iq and are usually from higher social classes and try to keep up to date kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 59 with new changes. in this research, most of students (49.3%) heard about it from internet with college of medicine taking highest percentage (60.6%) with a significant association regarding p value (0.001). most of students (77.4%) knew that lifestyle can affect mental health, with highest percentage from college of medicine (87%) with a significant association regarding p value (0.001), similar results were found in two researches, one done in bochum, germany, [12] another in ohio state university. [13] and most of our participants knew that lifestyle can affect physical health (78.3%) and they were mostly from college of medicine (90.5%) with a significant association regarding p value (0.001), in contrast, a study done in saudi arabia, king saud university [10] students didn’t largely relate lifestyle activities to have a great impact on health. in this study (73.3%) of students knew that lifestyle choice to have impact on academic performance and they were mostly from college of medicine (84%) with a significant association regarding p value (0.001), this goes with a research done in shahrekord university of medical sciences, iran [14] this result is probably because all medical colleges have a great deal of requirements and a modern lifestyle can sometimes be an obstacle to a perfect academic performance. in this study (69.3%) of students knew that technology has a major role in lifestyle, college medicine again taking highest percentage (78.8%) with a significant association regarding p value (0.001), this goes with a study done by american heart association.[15] about (68.3%) of the students knew that healthy diet and medical checkup are a part of modern lifestyle, and college of medicine taking highest percentage (78.8%) with a significant association regarding p value (0.001) this goes in contrast to a study done in kuwait university[16] regarding attitude, more than half of the participants (54.5%) thought they are living in a healthy lifestyle and with a highest percentage in a college of dentistry (66.2%), in contrast to a study was done in spain university [17] which nearly half (47.7%) of students didn’t think they have a healthy lifestyle. most of the participants (64.3%) thought sometime changing their lifestyle inspired by other people, with highest percentage in college of medicine (73.6%) with a significant association regarding p value (0.001), this may be because of the influence of social media and surrounding people. most of the participants (65.2%) thought that sometimes they have been stressed due to their lifestyle with highest percentage in college of medicine (70.6%), this goes in contrast to a research done in james madison university ,virginia ,usa [18] which most of the students (50.8%) thought that they always have been stressed due to their lifestyle this may be explained by their busy lifestyle due to colleges assignments and duties. about (66%)of the students thought sometimes people pretend to have a certain lifestyle to attract others with a highest percentage in college of medicine(75.3%) with a significant association regarding p value (0.001), in contrast to a research done in university of north florida, usa [19] because in our society our students care about other people’s opinion. almost half of the participants (49.5%) thought financial status sometimes affects living a healthy lifestyle with highest percentage in college of medicine (57.6%), which is similar to a research conducted in james madison university, virginia, usa [18] . most of the participants (48.3%) thought sometimes cultures have role in living a certain lifestyle with a highest percentage in college of veterinary (56.9%) with a significant association regarding p value (0.001) , which is similar to a study done in university of india [20] because of the culture is conservative and restrictive in both societies. most of the participants (45.5%) thought sometimes religion have role on living a certain lifestyle with highest percentage in college of veterinary (52.9%) with a significant association regarding p value (0.019), this goes in contrast with a study done in putra university in malaysia [21] where most of the students (52%) thought religion always has a role on living a modern lifestyle because of influence of religion on relation with family and friends and basis of daily activity. most of our participants (46.4%) thought that geographical area always can affect lifestyle choice, with highest percentage in college of pharmacy (51.6%), which is similarly an article by the earth bound reports [22] explains that geographical area and factors like climate and location is largely related to development, and this result may be due factors like war, poor economics and politics. most of respondents in our study (64.5%) thought that sometimes diet restriction due to certain lifestyle lead to nutritional deficiency with highest kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 60 percentage in college of pharmacy (73.4%), in contrast to a study done by cleveland clinic [23] shows that students thought that always lifestyle choices with physical activity, poor diet and other choices can largely cause nutritional deficiency and chronic diseases like diabetes mellitus and hypertension. regarding practice, more than a half (59.8%) of respondents with highest percentage (62.3%) in medicine, are more stressed with their current life compared to their past, similarly a study done in university of putra, malaysia [24] this may be due to students did not fully understand their academic courses and get poor result for the subjects, and intrapersonal aspect is the concern about own appearance. about 63.8% had difficulty arranging time due to lifestyle with highest percentage being from college of medicine (73.6%) with a significant association regarding p value (0.001) . similarly, a research done in dhofar university, salalah, oman.[25] this result is expected and may be due to lack of proper planning exam times and deadline projects. majority of participants in our study (95%) use social media with most of them being from college of medicine (97.4%), compared to a study done in dhofar university, salalah, oman. [25] similar response were found this may be due to the role and necessity of social media in college life such as keeping up with assignments and homework. participants mostly (70.9%) didn’t play video games with highest percentage of respondents from college of medicine (70.6%) in contrast, a study done in university of cumberland, kentucky, usa [26] about (66%) of their student participants were online players, this difference is probably due to that our participants are from medical colleges and they have more assignment dues and many studies that can prevent them to include video games in their lifestyle. highest percentage of our participants (66%) didn’t exercise and most of respondents were from college of pharmacy (78.1%) with a significant association regarding p value (0.007), a similar result was found in a study done by college of education in kuwait university, kaifan, kuwait [16] this result may be due to lack of time, motivation, equipment. in this study most of students (51.7%) didn’t have depression because of not having a certain lifestyle, most of who responded were from college of pharmacy (70.3%) with a significant association regarding p value (0.003) in contrast to a study done in usa [27], this may be due to cultural and geographical differences. in our research, about half of the students (59.3%) didn’t get enough sleep with their lifestyle schedule, mostly being from college of pharmacy (75%) with a significant association regarding p value (0.001), similar results were found in a study done in kuwait university. [16] this result may be due to the stress and anxiety that mostly accompanies college lifestyle. most of students in this study (59.3%) didn’t have a healthy diet with most of participants from college of dentistry (63.5%) in contrast to a study done among university students [28] shows that most of their participants follow a healthy diet, this difference may be due to lack of nutritional knowledge and better and easy access to fast food during college hours and also simply not having time to cook a proper healthy meal. most of participants (58%) with most of them being from college of pharmacy (60.9%) said that they didn’t have any nutritional deficiency, but in contrast to a study done among university students in australia [29] states that they got nutritional deficiencies and take supplements, this difference may be explained by persistent medical checkup in australia where simplest nutritional deficiency can be detected. 5. conclusion participants in general had knowledge and positive attitude regarding the topic but they had a negative practice. college of medicine had the highest knowledge regarding modern lifestyle, as most of the students were familiar with the topic and heard about it from internet. they had good knowledge regarding the aspects of our lives that are affected by our lifestyle such as mental/physical health and academic performance. they also acknowledged that technology has a major role in modern lifestyle. in addition that healthy diet and medical checkups also play a part, and in fact that illness or nutritional deficiencies can be related to an unhealthy lifestyle. most participants from college of medicine believed that they are living a modern lifestyle, however keeping up with this lifestyle is stressful, and that some people pretend to kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 61 have a certain lifestyle to attract others. they also believed that culture, religion, geographical location, and financial status can limit lifestyle choices. majority of participants from college of pharmacy had a negative practice with modern lifestyle, in which they were feeling more stressed, used social media, did not exercise, were not on a healthy diet , and did not get enough sleep. reference [1] w. inc. 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[29] a. r., a.o.b.,g. k.,s. cicerale , k.e., and m.g "micronutrient supplement use and diet quality in http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/lifestyle.html kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 62 university students.," nutrients journal, 2015. 1. introduction 5. conclusion  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq terahertz microstrip patch antennas for the surveillance applications rashad hassan mahmud physics department college of education salahaddin university erbil, iraq rashad.mahmud@su.edu.krd article info abstract volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.1.2 article history: received: 13 february 2020 accepted: 06 april 2020 this paper presents a new design of the microstrip patch antenna operated at the terahertz frequencies (700-850 ghz). the conventional microstrip patch antenna dimensions shrink to a few microns when operating at such terahertz frequencies. thus, the design of the patch and its feeding network will be miniaturized extremely, and their fabrications would be extremely difficult. in this paper, the configuration of the proposed microstrip patch antenna is suited in a way that it can be modelled using multilayers structure. this multilayer structure facilitates the modeling, and considering its fabrication. the proposed microstrip antenna has been designed using three layers. the top layer is used to model the rectangular patch; while the second layer is for the substrate, and the bottom layer is for the ground plane. the physical dimensions of the layers and the fed-line are optimised using the microwave computer simulation technology (cst) simulator in order to enhance the electrical parameters of the antenna such as antenna realised gain, bandwidth, total and radiation efficiencies, and radiation patterns. in addition to that, the impact of the physical dimensions of the rectangular patch on controlling the resonant frequency of the dominant mode (tm01) have been investigated. keeping the lower and higher propagating modes out of the frequency band of interest is another aspect which has been addressed in this paper. the antenna has been simulated, and its realised gain fluctuates from 6.4 dbi to 9.7 dbi over the operating frequency range (700-850 ghz). also, it provides extremely large reflection coefficient bandwidth (s11) which it is below -10 db over the entire operating keywords: microstrip patch antenna, terahertz frequency band, multilayer technique, large bandwidth, surveillance applications. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 17 frequency band. the total efficiency is more than 75 %. due to its simplicity and providing large bandwidth, the proposed antenna could be of interest in many security and surveillance applications. copyright © 2019 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction terahertz frequencies band and terahertz communication components are being the subject to research in the last decades due to the demands for a large bandwidth not only in the fields of astronomy and science [1, 2], but also in security and surveillance applications [3]. usually, multiple reflectors in the surveillance systems are employed when operating at low frequencies to detect hazard materials and explosives. operating the system at terahertz frequencies could introduce some unique features to the system. for instance, the terahertz frequencies can penetrate different types of materials and belongings [4], and this could be beneficial for the system to scan the object. also, the photo resolution is extremely high when “terahertz radiography” is used due to the inverse relation of resolution with the wavelength [4]. figure 1 shows a terahertz photo taken for a closed box containing some plastic and metallic items. all the items can be recognized easily without opening the box. this property of terahertz frequencies could be useful in the airports and train stations to check the passenger bags and belongings without the need of opening. a key a polystyrene washer a metal nut a metal nut a 10 mm thick rubber eraser a metallic paper clip a metal pin with a polystyrene handle figure 1: a closed cardboard box taken by terahertz radiography [4]. another advantages of the terahertz frequencies and terahertz spectrum is the availability of a larger bandwidth as pointed out before. this could fulfill the demand of users of wireless systems to transmit or receive varieties of information simultaneously like texts, video, animations and so on [5]. the increasing of data rate capability of a system is another reason which encourage the researchers to focus on terahertz communication systems and its components [6-11]. when talking on a terahertz communication system, the first issue faces the researchers is the high value of free path loss [4] which degrades the transmission/reception of the signals over a long-distance communication coverage. employing a high gain and wide bandwidth antenna could minimize the free space path loss issue [5]. there are several limitations regarding the high gain antenna designs when operating at terahertz frequencies. one of the limitations is the physical dimensions which will be kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 18 minimized extremely. thus, the design of an antenna, which can be fabricable with the presence technique, would be a challenge. there are several techniques presented in the literature in order to facilitate and fabricate the design of terahertz antennas. the silicon micromachining was utilized in [12] to design and fabricate a travelling wave rectangular waveguide antenna at 23-245 ghz. also, the metal deposition process was used in the fabrication of a corrugated rectangular waveguide at frequencies 130-180 ghz [13]. a reconfigurable loop antenna operated at terahertz frequencies was designed using the graphene metal approach [14]. there is another technique with high precision for the design of terahertz components, which is named micromachined su-8 layers technique. many terahertz components were designed and made using that technique [15-19]. also, we used the su-8 layer technique to design a travelling wave slotted waveguide antenna [15], and an 8×8 planar array slotted waveguide antennas [20] which were both operated at 220-325 ghz. more details regarding the su-8 layer technique is given in the following. the su-8 is a kind of polymer which is bulky and act as insulator. in order to use su-8 layers in the fabrication of any terahertz components like an antenna, they are to be coated by a conductor like silver or gold as detailed in [15, 18]. based on the previous designs [15, 20], the su-8 layer technique can confidently be used to make any terahertz antennas with dimensional errors of only a few microns and introducing very low losses. several kinds of antennas that could be suitable to model and fabricate by means of the micromachined su-8 layer technique. in this paper, a microstrip patch antenna is configured in a way that can be modelled according to the multilayer technique for the first time. this paper is organized as follows. the proposed microstrip patch antenna layout, which is arranged in the light of the multilayer, is presented in section 2. the impacts of the physical parameters on electrical performances are analyzed in section 2. the cst optimizations have been conducted for some of the physical dimensions of the antenna in order to achieve the goals which are defined in section 3. comparisons between the electrical properties of the proposed microstrip patch antenna and some antennas presented in the literature are shown in section 4 for more clarification. it is then followed by a conclusion in section 5. 2. design method and layout conventionally, a microstrip patch antenna consists of three layers. the top layer is used to make the rectangular patch out of it, the second layer is the substrate layer to hold the rectangular, and the third layer is to make the ground plane. the dimensions of the microstrip patch antenna are defined in terms of wavelength (𝜆). for the proposed terahertz microstrip patch antenna, the operating centre frequency is chosen to be 770 ghz. usually the microstrip patch layer has a thickness (t) which is much smaller than the wavelength. however, because of the higher operation frequency here, the (t) value becomes so small. thus, the (t) value is increased and is chosen to be 0.04 mm in order to avoid the design and fabrication limitations as shown in figure 2. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 19 ground layer substrate layer rectangular patch fed-line t t1 t a b l t figure 2: the configuration of the proposed microstrip patch antenna which is modelled using the cst simulator. substrate is made from rogers rt6006 with 𝜀𝑟=6.15. dimensions in mm are as follows. patch dimensions; a = 0.6 and b = 0.4. patch and fed-line thickness; t = 0.04. fed-line length; l = 0.3. substrate thickness; t1 = 0.2. the material used in the cst for the ground layer and patch is perfect electrical conductor (pec). the pec material is later changed to sliver material so as to demonstrate its impact on the electrical performances. this will be addressed in section 3. using the patch antenna cavity model [21], the resonant frequency of the propagating modes (tmmn) in the microstrip can be determined using the following expression. 𝑓𝑚𝑛 = 𝑐 2√𝜀𝑒𝑓𝑓 √( 𝑚 𝑎 ) 2 + ( 𝑛 𝑏 ) 2 (1) where; εeff is the effective relative permittivity which is defined mathematically in terms of physical dimensions by (εeff = εr+1 2 + εr−1 2 [1 + 12 t1 a ]−0.5) [21]. 𝑚 and 𝑛 are positive integer numbers, and 𝑎 and 𝑏 are radiation side dimensions of the rectangular patch as labelled in figure 2. it should be mentioned that the resonant frequency of the propagating dominant mode (tm01) can be calculated when the dimensions (a, b) are known with the relative permittivity of the substrate layer using equation 1. it has been considered in this work that when the patch dimensions (a) and (b) are changed, resonant frequency of the tm01 is tuned, and propagating of higher modes could occur nearby the dominant mode frequency range. more details regarding the design procedure for the (a) and (b) calculations are discussed in section 3. the substrate layer thickness is chosen to be (t1 = 0.2 mm), and it is made in cst from rogers rt6006 with relative permittivity εr=6.15. 3. analysis and simulated results the proposed terahertz microstrip patch antenna has been simulated using the cst simulator within the frequency range 700-850 ghz. the current line distribution on the rectangular patch at the centre frequency 770 ghz is shown in figure 3. all the current lines have the same direction, confirming the propagation of the dominant tm01 mode at the centre frequency. in order to see the effect of the patch dimensions (a, b) on the tuning of the resonant frequency of the tm01 mode, the following investigations are performed. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 20 tm01 mode microstrip patch figure 3: the 3d view of the proposed microstrip patch antenna with radiation pattern visualization using the cst simulator at centre frequency 770 ghz. the initial patch dimension (a) values are changed from 0.5 mm to 0.9 mm in order to see its influence on the resonant frequency of the tm01 mode. one can see from the figure 4 that the resonant frequency shifts to higher operating frequency when the (a) dimension is decreased. on the other hand, the increase of (b) value shifts the resonant frequency to the lower operating frequency as depicted in figure 5. it is worth mentioning that the (a) and (b) values also have influences on propagating other harmonic modes like tm20, tm21, and tm22 on the patch within the frequency band of interest. attention is paid here on achieving the main goal which was obtaining a large reflection bandwidth (s11 below -10 db from 700-850 ghz) without degrading the radiation pattern. figure 4: the influence of (a) dimension variation of the rectangular patch on the resonant frequency shift of the dominant mode tm01 when the (b) dimension is fixed at 0.4 mm. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 21 figure 5: the influence of (b) dimension variation of the rectangular patch on the resonant frequency shift of the dominant mode tm01 when the (a) dimension is fixed at 0.6 mm. the (a) and (b) values are chosen, based on the analysis mentioned above, to be 0.6 mm and 0.4 mm respectively. these values can fulfill the goal which make the antenna resonant at centre frequency 770 ghz with a reflection coefficient s11 below -10 db within the operating frequency range as shown in figure 6. it can be seen that there is a very good impedance matching over the entire operating frequencies, especially at 770 ghz. this leads the antenna to provide an extremely large impedance bandwidth. figure 6: the s11 response of the microstrip patch antenna versus the operating frequencies. the impact of the patch thickness (t) on the electrical performances such as the antenna gain and bandwidth is investigated in this paper. it has been found in this work that the patch (t) has no significant influence in tuning the resonant frequency and enlarging the bandwidth. however, the increasement of the patch thickness (t) degrades the antenna peak gain at 770 ghz as can be noticed clearly in figure 7. in this work, a thickness of 0.04 mm is chosen as an optimum dimension for the patch due to the fact that such dimension can facilitate the modeling and the fabrication process. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 22 figure 7: the peak gain variation versus patch thicknesses at centre frequency 770 ghz. the antenna has a simulated directivity which is about 8.1 dbi at the centre frequency 770 ghz as presented in figure 8. while, the realised gain is smaller than the directivity and is equal to 7.15 dbi. this difference goes back to the losses introduced by the material (silver) used in the design of the patch and the ground. also, the propagations of the other harmonic modes within the operating frequency band could contribute in the creation of the losses. as shown in figure 9, the antenna efficiency is poor at the start frequency band and resonant frequencies (75 %), but it has become more efficient around 780-820 ghz, and the difference between the directivity and realised gain values become smaller. as mentioned before, the patch and ground plane layers of the antenna are modelled in cst out of pec material. in case the fabrication process is considered, the pec material is converted to a lossy silver material with conductivity (α=6.3×107) in order to see its impact on the antenna realised gain and directivity. figure 8 shows that there is a negligible degradation in the realised gain and directivity values. figure 8: the directivity and realised gain variation versus frequencies for both pec and silver materials. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 23 figure 9: the radiation and total efficiencies variation versus frequencies. the radiation pattern for both the electric (e) and magnetic (h) planes are investigated at the operating frequencies 750 ghz, 770 ghz, and 790 ghz, respectively. they are shown in figure 10. the e-plane pattern has a lower side lobe level (below – 8 db) when comparing with h-plane over the entire operating frequencies. the asymmetry of the patterns in the hplane goes back to the asymmetry of the rectangular microstrip patch antenna in that plane. it should be mentioned that more directive patterns can be obtained when the array theory principle is applied on the design. in this paper, extensive review has been conducted on the performance of a single microstrip patch antenna operating at terahertz frequencies. to the knowledges of the author, it has been concluded that the performance of the proposed microstrip terahertz antenna is unique and competitive especially in terms of the gain, reflection bandwidth, and geometry simplicity. for more clarifications, in the following section a comparison has been made with those works presented in the literature on the terahertz patch antennas. a comparison table has been placed as well to compare the physical dimensions (size and volume) and electrical performances (gain, bandwidth, efficiency, and so on) of the presented works in the literature. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 24 (a) (b) (c) figure 10: the eand h-planes radiation pattern of the proposed microstrip patch antenna at the frequencies; (a) 750 ghz, (b) 770 ghz, and (c) 790 ghz, respectively. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 25 4. comparions and discussion a comparison between the electrical properties of the proposed terahertz microstrip patch antenna with some other high operating microstrip patch antennas presented in the literature is conducted in this section. microstrip patch antennas have been focused extensively recently to operate at millimeter-wave and terahertz frequencies due to their compactness, planar structure, and low fabrication cost [22, 23]. a compact microstrip patch antenna is proposed in [24] for terahertz applications. a method to improve the gain and fabrication tolerance of a microstrip patch antenna at 95-105 ghz is proposed in [25]. a new model to design the substrate layer for microstrip patch at terahertz frequencies range based on the silicon is discussed in [26]. a new configuration for the microstrip patch is introduced in [27] for the purpose of biotin detection application. designing the multiband terahertz antennas is a new task for researchers which has been investigating extensively. a dual band microstrip patch antenna operated at terahertz frequencies was presented in [28] for the surveillance systems. a technique to enlarge microstrip patch size is introduced in [29] for the purpose of increasing the fabrication tolerance at millimeter and terahertz frequencies. two new techniques to feed microstrip patch and microstrip patch array are discussed in [30, 31]. some of the electrical properties of the microstrip patch antennas mentioned above have been summarized in table 1 with their applications. also, they are compared with the electrical properties of the proposed terahertz microstrip patch antenna for further clarification. table 1: summary of the electrical properties of some terahertz patch antennas refs. frequency band (ghz) antenna structure peak gain (dbi) bandwidth (%) (s11 below -10 db) total effici ency (%) applications [24] 600 rectangular microstrip 7 10.1 na sensing and communicati on [25] 95-105 microstrip antenna array 13.4 5.5 93.7 na [26] 300-440 dual-patch na na na sub-thz radiation detector [27] 150-500 new shape of microstrip patch 5.17 2.2 na biotin detection application [28] 600-800 two-layer substrate 9.8 12.8 79.7 surveillance system [29] 54-58 microstrip patch 7.7 3.2 90.8 na [30] 288-312 novel feed microstrip 4.39 3.3 na na [31] 288-312 patch array feed source 10 3 na thz communicati ons propo sed anten na 700-850 microstrip patch antenna 7.15 19.4 75-90 surveillance 5. conclusion a new configuration of microstrip patch antenna operated at frequencies 700-850 ghz was introduced in this paper. three layers were utilized in the design of the presented antenna. one of the unique features of the presented microstrip patch antenna was its adaptation with kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 26 multilayer structure. investigations on the effects of the geometrical parameters of the microstrip patch on the electrical performance has been conducted. the genetic algorithm optimisation technique in the cst simulator was utilised in order to enhance the realised gain and reflection bandwidth of the microstrip patch antenna. with the design analysis presented, the antenna performance was in good agreement with the theoretical expectation. the antenna provided extremely wide bandwidth for such operating frequency range. also, the size is small and compact which could be of interest in employing at many security and surveillance applications. 6. acknowledgment the author would like to thank the university of birmingham, uk and the emerging device technology (edt) research group for all the technical supports and allowing to use the microwave cst simulator. reference [1] p. h. siegel, "thz instruments for space," ieee transactions on antennas and propagation, vol. 55, pp. 29572965, 2007. [2] p. h. siegel, "terahertz technology in biology and medicine," ieee transactions on microwave theory and techniques, vol. 52, pp. 2438-2447, 2004. [3] s. galoda and g. singh, "fighting terrorism with terahertz," ieee potentials, vol. 26, pp. 24-29, 2007. [4] a. dobroiu, c. otani, and k. kawase, "terahertz-wave sources and imaging applications," measurement science and technology, vol. 17, p. r161, 2006. [5] k. r. jha and g. singh, terahertz planar antennas for next generation communication: springer, 2014. [6] r. c. daniels and r. w. heath, "60 ghz wireless communications: emerging requirements and design recommendations," ieee vehicular technology magazine, vol. 2, pp. 41-50, 2007. [7] r. c. daniels, j. n. murdock, t. s. rappaport, and r. w. heath, "60 ghz wireless: up close and personal," ieee microwave magazine, vol. 11, pp. 44-50, 2010. 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[20] r. h. mahmud, "synthesis of waveguide antenna arrays using the coupling matrix approach," university of birmingham, 2016. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 27 [21] y. lo, d. solomon, and w. richards, "theory and experiment on microstrip antennas," ieee transactions on antennas and propagation, vol. 27, pp. 137-145, 1979. [22] c. a. balanis, modern antenna handbook: john wiley & sons, 2011. [23] d. m. pozar, microwave engineering: john wiley & sons, 2009. [24] s. s. kashyap and v. dwivedi, "compact microstrip patch antennas for terahertz applications," in 2015 9th asia modelling symposium (ams), pp. 157-163,2015. [25] m. rabbani and h. ghafouri-shiraz, "improvement of microstrip antenna's bandwidth and fabrication tolerance at terahertz frequency bands," 2015. [26] p. kopyt, b. salski, p. zagrajek, d. obrębski, and j. marczewski, "modeling of silicon -based substrates of patch antennas operating in the sub-thz range," ieee transactions on terahertz science and technology, vol. 7, pp. 424-432, 2017. [27] r. bhatoa and e. sidhu, "novel terahertz microstrip patch antenna design for detection of biotin applications," in 2017 international conference on big data analytics and computational intelligence (icbdac), pp. 289292, 2017 [28] k. r. jha and g. singh, "dual-band rectangular microstrip patch antenna at terahertz frequency for surveillance system," journal of computational electronics, vol. 9, pp. 31-41, 2010. [29] m. rabbani and h. ghafouri‐shiraz, "size improvement of rectangular microstrip patch antenna at mm‐wave and terahertz frequencies," microwave and optical technology letters, vol. 57, pp. 2585-2589, 2015. [30] k. r. jha and s. k. sharma, "waveguide integrated microstrip patch antenna at thz frequency," in 2014 ieee antennas and propagation society international symposium (apsursi) , pp. 1851-1852, 2014. [31] k. r. jha and s. k. sharma, "waveguide integrated microstrip patch array feed source for a reflector antenna at thz frequency," in 2014 ieee antennas and propagation society international symposium (apsursi), pp. 1465-1466, 2014.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq measuring service quality of bus services in sulaimani city niyan hussein ibrahim rozhen kamal mohammed-amin city planning department technical college of engineering city planning technical college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq niyan.ibrahim@spu.edu.iq rozhen.mohammed@spu.edu.iq alan faraydoon ali presidency sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq alan.ali@spu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.1.19 article history: received: 26 april 2020 accepted: 15 june 2020 this research paper presents a descriptive model to assess the quality of bus services by measuring passengers’ satisfaction in sulaimani city. transportation facilities are enlivening the economic activities of any country. public transportation services are an important aspect of any urban transportation system, as they provide mobility for a number of passengers to different destinations in different directions at the same time via one transportation facility. public transportation is considered a sustainable mode of transportation. this study intends to assess the services’ quality and identify the challenges to sustainable development in public transportation in order to achieve sustainable development for the current public transportation system. a passenger survey was conducted in order to assess the level of service quality including 300 participants. the study depends mainly on the passengers’ survey, as well as interviews and personal observations for data collection. spss software and gis are used for data analysis. the results show the outcomes of the assessment process of the current system based on passenger’s opinions. the results reveal the system’s aspect in detail which is further clarified in the conclusion. the paper recommends several steps to be adopted in order to improve the current public transportation system in sulaimani and other cities, it also suggests future studies that can integrate with this study and contribute in achieving its goal. keywords: public transportation, service quality, passenger satisfaction, bus service urban mass transport copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. mailto:niyan.ibrahim@spu.edu.iq about:blank about:blank kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 271 1. introduction public transportation is a sustainable and cost-effective mean for mass movement. it comes at various types, shapes, and systems. bus system is one of the most adaptable forms of public transportation [1]. bus system is known for its flexibility of serving throughout the needed access of an urban area [1]. bus services can be used in solving several transportation issues, such as unaffordable fare of private car ownership, or a taxi for urban residents in need for daily commuting to work and/or leisure [2]. bus services also help with minimizing and controlling traffic congestion and the number of cars in crowded cities and towns [2]. with worldwide growing population and urbanization, developing or expanding sustainable transportation systems have become a global necessity, [3],[4]. the complexity and multilayer nature of public transportation development (including reliable bus systems) and maintenance require extensive planning and continuous performance assessment [4], [5]. assessing the sustainability of existing or proposed public transport systems has increasingly drawn global attention in the last few years [6]. some countries have even started to set benchmarks and standards for further development of their public transportation systems sustainably [4], [5] and [7]. unfortunately, such studies in kurdistan region of iraq (kri) are still limited in scope and depth. like many other cities around the world, increasing population, rapid urbanization, improved income, and significant demand for private car ownership and daily use are threatening the living quality and sustainable development of the cities in kri, including sulaimani city [8], [9]. in sulaimani, like in other kri cities, bus system was and still is the only available mode of mass transportation. this system, however, barely contributes to solving the many transportation issues the city encounters like traffic congestion, environmental pollution, poor safety on-road, and other related issues. the poor condition and quality of this bus system combined with improved personal income, low fuel price, lack of sustainable urban planning policies (including transportation taxes and low price parking) are negatively affecting the use of public transportation for daily uses in the city. lack of regional transportation planning and under-planned or random urban design and road projects are further aggravating the state of public transportation in the city and across the country. sustainable public transportation can take different forms and shapes and at different levels [10], [3] such as buses, bus rapid transit (brt) trains, light rail transit (lrt), or metro. this paper intends to contribute in covering the lack of knowledge in the literature by assessing the sustainability performance of bus system in the city of sulaimani. due to the scope of the wider research and page-limitations in this paper, the assessment focuses on and reports the results from a comprehensive passenger satisfactory survey, which was carried out with 300 passengers from 3 bus lines across the city. in addition to assessing the bus service quality in the city, the research identifies the sustainable development challenges and potentials of the current bus system and contributes to the development of the sustainable guidelines and measures in the public transportation of the region and the country. 2. literature review performance measurement refers to the assessment of an organization’s outputs in terms of managing its internal resources and operation in the environment to achieve the success and durability of the organization [10,11]. eboli & mazzulla [10] argue that the performance measurement of public transportation helps in reaching many aims of the transportation systems; it helps with evaluating the overall performance of a public transportation system and its management. it can also help in diagnosing problems with balancing costs and providing service [10]. service refers to “an activity or a series of activities that take place in interaction with a contact person or a physical machine which provides customer satisfaction” [12] customer satisfaction is, therefore, a key concern to the success of any service. customers' requirements for higher standards goes-hand-in-hand with providing a higher quality of service. decline in provided kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 272 service leads to declination in customer satisfaction. customer satisfaction is important because it produces profits and contributes to market share generation. scholars like susniene discuss the importance of travel speed and other services for making public transportation more competitive than private vehicles [13]. passengers travel mode choice is mainly affected by the quality of bus services, which is an important part of urban public transportation [14]. evaluating passenger’s expectation of the service quality is; therefore, important to determine the bus service quality. for example, while studying the rise of private car ownership in indonesia, budiono [15] suggests assessing public bus services through passenger satisfaction. many service quality elements can be contextual and differ from a context to another [12], [14], and [2]. service quality is considered as the comparison between customer expectation and perception of service. to determine and evaluate passenger satisfaction [15], weng, et. al. [14] used an indicator system to understand the passengers’ perception. their study used a questionnaire to analyze the indicators and construct service quality indexes that include timeliness, safety, convenience, comfort, reliability, and economy. these indicators are composed of two levels; the first level includes six upper-level indexes that are divided into twenty-one lower level indexes. the study of ellis [12] categorizes the same attributes into five main elements of tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. each of these five elements is then quantified by several factors [12]. in budiono’s study [15] four main attributes are identifying for service quality of the public bus system. the attributes are reliability of the bus transport system, treatment by employees, simplicity of information, and design. the study used a self-rating questionnaire to find out about passengers’ satisfaction with the busy system. the questionnaire collected perception data about several quality factors that are divided into two main groups of soft and functional factors. the quantitative data analysis observed a low satisfaction about public bus services mainly due to frequency, comfort, security on buses, and travel time factors [15]. the findings from the study also indicate that functional factors (including frequency, punctuality, price, and travel time) are considered to have a bigger impact on customer satisfaction than soft factors (security issues and comfort). accordingly, the study recommends giving more attention to the functional factors to increase the use of public buses. this customer satisfaction study was further verified by being applied to two other different cities and being ended with similar results [15]. the study of li et. al, [16] evaluated bus routes operation performance based on data envelopment analysis. in their study, four main key indexes were used: average running speed, average dwell time, service reliability, and passenger load rate. among the models for evaluating public transportation operations such as the analytic hierarchy process (ahp), back propagation artificial neural network, fuzzy evaluation, and data envelopment analysis (dea), the study has used the dea to evaluate the performance of public transportation operation [16]. the authors’ justification for applying the dea model is due to the nonparametric nature of the model, which enables easy and objective measurement. the study of weng et. al, [14] uses 21 indexes from field survey questionnaires to collect data from 3012 passengers on 100 different bus lines across beijing to determine passengers’ satisfaction level. the study first tested the indicators for their reliability and validity and then introduced a model for evaluating satisfaction, which was weighed by the related coefficient. in addition to assessing the indicators, the study also analyzed demographic information. qualitative passenger opinions were also used to further examine and interpret results from the quantitative analysis. the results showed that 70% of the passengers are satisfied with the service with a satisfaction rate of 78.2%. in addition to the results from the case study, the study also methodologically added to the literature as it contributed to normalizing performance evaluation for public transportation, which can then enhance the sustainable development of bus systems [14]. the studies of baharum et. al. and sinha et. al. [17] and [18] consider the quality of service as a sustainability dimension that helps in the process of decision making and identifying policy challenges within the three traditional sustainability dimensions which are environmental, social and economic. the sustainability model in this study of [17] assesses passengers’ satisfaction according to the travel experience. the assessment used accessibility, reliability, kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 273 responsiveness, physical facilities, safety and security, understanding, environment, image, time, and fare indexes as indicators. over 100 bus users participated in the survey. qualitative methods such as observation, photo-taking, and analysis, and interviews were also used for further analysis of the quantitative results. statistical t-test was performed and the top five rated indexes by the passengers were identified in addition to analyzing the provided services. results from the study show that passengers’ satisfaction is affected by demographic and trip characteristics [17]. the method of this study is useful in determining the existing service quality and identifying the required improvement. 3. methodology and data collection assessing the quality of public transport means enables improving their quality and eventually increasing the numbers of their users. in assessing bus service quality, customer's satisfaction is considered the best method because it helps with clear identification of any deficiency in an existing bus system [19]. passenger surveys are important tools for local transport entities for planning and marketing purposes. this is mainly because transportation mode choices and patterns can vary according to passengers’ demographic variables such as gender, income, age, and occupation [20]. studies show that different people make different perceptions in similar situations. to identify public bus service perception, it is, therefore, necessary to collect and analyze relevant insights and concerns directly from the passengers. passenger refers to any person who uses any vehicle to reach a specific destination without holding any responsibility toward the vehicle or the road [21]. to assess the quality of service provided by public bus transport in sulaimani city for this study, a comprehensive passenger questionnaire has been conducted. the questionnaire collects three main types of data: passengers’ demographic information, trip characteristics, and passengers’ preferences. part of the questionnaire and on-site observation collected both qualitative and quantitative data for a total of 14 attributes from five major first-level elements for service quality: tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. table 1 summarizes the five major first-level-elements and their associated second-level-attributes [12]. the categorical and 5-point likert scale questions collected data about the quantitative attributes, while the open-ended questions collected data about additional qualitative attributes. the likert scale questions helped with measuring the degree of participants’ feelings or attitudes towards the attributes. the categorical questions were useful to collect data about the attributes that were collected through direct observation of the authors or did not exist in the local context. the questionnaire randomly collected data from a total of 343 users in three sublines (rizgary, twi-malik, and qalawa) of three bus lines (rizgary, twi-malik, and shekh mhedin). although the sample size is relatively small for a city with a population of over 768,058 people due to scope and time limitation, to our best knowledge, the results from this study are the first systematic investigation and in-depth documentation of passenger’s perception on service quality of the local bus lines in the region and the country. these results can well inform and guide future research design and interpretation in kurdistan region of iraq and similar context. the targeted three bus lines are all located within malik mahmood ring road due to data availability, access, and some other research design considerations. in choosing the sublines, we aimed for three different route directions and geographic reach from the main station in the city center as well as three different socioeconomic levels [22] and [23]. the passenger questionnaire was conducted in the course of a week from july 8th to july 15th, 2019. the questionnaire included a range of categorical and 5-point likert scale questions. the first part of the questionnaire included demography questions, while the second part of the survey included questions related to the passengers’ usability behavior and motivation for using the bus service. the last part of the questionnaire collected data about the participants’ perception of the quality of the bus service and trip characteristics. copies of the questionnaire were distributed in the bus stations and stops (during waiting for departure) or inside the buses (on-board), depending on the respondents’ preference. the later (onboard data collection) is considered the most accurate data collection form for passenger surveys [19]. although the questionnaire was designed to be self-completed, sometimes it was kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 274 conducted through interviews due to the various levels of literacy skills among the respondents and to increase the accuracy of the data collection. to increase the accuracy of the collected data, 43 incomplete questionnaires were discarded. as a result, data from 300 respondents (100 respondents from each subline) were entered and analyzed by the spss software. to verify and better analyze the bus service quality, in addition to passengers’ responses, we also carried out semi-structured interviews with public bus servicerelated departments, decision-makers, and stakeholders. during the interviews, secondary data such as the number of buses, bus stations, bus stops were obtained. we also collected data about taxes, bus fees, bus line directions, service zones, and numbers set for each line during these interviews. during the interviews, we also collected qualitative data about the thinking, attitudes, and plans of the decision-makers towards public bus conditions inside sulaimani city. due to the quantity of collected data through different methods, scope, and page limitations, in this paper, we only report results from the passenger survey and some of the interview responses. table 1: service quality attributes and measurement method. (source: authors based on [12]) no. first level second level measurement 1 tangibles bus stop condition likert 2 comfort while seating categorical 3 reliability walking distance likert 4 waiting time likert 5 punctuality likert 6 ticketing system categorical 7 responsiveness complaint handling categorical 8 crew service likert 9 readiness to help categorical 10 assurance safety likert 11 empathy information system categorical 12 accessibility likert 13 comfort level inside bus likert 14 affordability likert the demographic data analysis in table 2 shows that the sample is (almost) equally divided between males and females. therefore, the opinions of none of the two genders are dominant in the questionnaire. the vast majority of the participants (over 65%) ages between 18 and 40 years old. only 7.7% of the participants are under 18. less than half of these bus users have had any post-high school education. the majority of the participants are employed (in government or private sectors) or had freelancing works. a total of 97% of the bus users are residents of the city. of these, 70.7% are born and raised in the city. the low use of buses by new or non-residents may be due to unfamiliarity with or unreliability of the bus services in the city. only 35% of these bus users owns car. this implies the limited use of public transportation by car owners in the city. table 2: the participant’s demographic data. (source: authors) demographic data categories percentage gender male 50.7% female 49.3% age under 18 7.7% 18-25 30.3% 26-40 39.3% 41-50 13.7% 51-60 5.7% kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 275 60 and above 3.3% education level non or primary 15.3% middle school 18.3% high school 25.0% diploma 3.3% bachelor 36.0% graduate degree 2.0% employment status student 9.7% unemployed 30.7% working in public sector (government) 22.0% working for private sector 18.0% freelancer 19.7% years living in sulaimani city since i was born 70.7% up to one year 4.0% less than five years 1.3% less than ten years 3.7% more than ten years 17.3% i do not live in sulaimani 3.0% car ownership yes 35.0% no 65.0% geo-location of the participants’ residential neighborhood concerning the subline they used during the data collection indicates that the majority of the respondents use the corresponding subline (and possibly public transportation in general) to directly travel between their resident location and city center (a pre-dominantly commercial part of the city). this shows the concentration of the respondents’ residential location in or near the subline in which the data collection was carried out. the residential neighborhood of a small number of respondents located outside the coverage area of the subline they used during the data collection (see figure 1). kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 276 figure 1: geo-location of the respondents’ residential neighborhood (source: authors) 4. results and discussion questionnaire’s answers reveal that nearly half of the participants use the buses daily (32 %) or 2-3 times per week (17%). the rest are occasional users, including once a week as well as other miscellaneous frequencies that are not specified in the questionnaire (figure 2). this can be related to the fact that %40 of the participants are employees in either the government sector or the private sector. while another %9.7 of the participants are students. in which both categories of participants have daily trips to conduct. the majority of the participants (56%) are long-term users of the buses. only 7% of the patricians are new users of buses. using the buses only since working and/or studying has been reported by 13% of participants. this can be further clarified by the fact that the majority (%70.7) of total participants have lived their whole lives in the city. 21% of the participants recalled using the buses occasionally and not for a long time. while only 3% checked the ‘others’ option which refers to the other durations that are not particularly mentioned in the questionnaire (figure 3). kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 277 figure 2: participants’ regularity of bus use. (source: authors) figure 3: participants’ familiarity of bus by (source: authors) half of the participants selected shopping as the main purpose of using buses (figure 4). this is not surprising considering the buses’ destination; the city center. the use of buses for shopping was also observed in the participants’ residential neighborhood geo-location, which was discussed earlier (figure 1). the vast majority of the participants from the three sublines (70%) reported that they are regular users of buses. this high percentage is inconsistent with the participants’ previous answers to the multiple-choice answer about the frequency of using the buses. 32% 17% 14% 32% 5% every day 2-3 times per week once a week occasionally others 56% 7% 21% 13% 3% as much s i recall recently occasuinally since i start workin/studying others kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 278 figure 4: participants’ purpose of bus use. (source: authors) the vast majority of participants selected low bus fare (43%) and (34%) of them chose convenience as answers for the main reason for using buses. other participants’ answers include; not having a private car (19%) and environmental concerns (2%); the rest (2 %) referred to other reasons without elaboration (figure 5). these answers indicate low environmental prioritization among the participants. figure 5: reasons for using buses. (source: authors) the assessment of the bus service quality in the last part of the survey shows that the average ratings of the nine attributes of the first-level-elements are over 3 on the scale of 5, suggesting an overall medium satisfaction with the bus service quality by the participants. the reliability element composed of; walking distance, waiting time, and punctuality attributes, achieves the highest average rating (3.9) within reliability, walking distance has the highest average rating (4.31), while punctuality has the lowest average rating of (3.39). still, the average ratings of waiting time and punctuality appear to be high considering the lack of the written and nonwritten bus schedules in the local bus stations see table 3 for the attributes measured via likert 31% 13% 50% 2% 4% for work for school/university for shopping for leisure others 43% 34% 19% 2% 2% it is cheap it is convenient i do not have a private car environmental factors other kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 279 scale and table 4 for the attributes measured via categorical questions. the majority of participants may have contributed to this high rating due to being accustomed to low expectations. empathy service quality element ranks the second-highest average rating, while the tangible element has the lowest average rating among the five assessed service quality elements (figure 6). figure 6: service quality attributes scoring. (source: authors) table 3: service quality for the attributes measured by likert scale questions (source: authors) no. first level second level attributes measurement mean range 1 tangibles bus stop condition likert scale 3.27 medium 2 reliability walking distance 4.31 good 3 waiting time 4.02 good 4 punctuality 3.39 medium 5 responsive ness crew service 3.4 medium 6 assurance safety 3.41 medium 7 empathy accessibility 3.6 medium 8 overall comfort level inside the bus 3.39 medium 9 affordability 4.02 good table 4: service quality for the attributes measured by the categorical questions (source: authors) no. first level second level attributes measurement yes no 1 empathy information system categorical qustions √ 2 responsive ness readiness to help √ 3 responsive ness compliant handling √ 4 reliability ticketing system √ 5 tangibles comfort while seating √ (%68) √ (%32) within the rated nine attributes (see figure 7), walking distance and affordability collect the largest number of 5 ratings (very good) and a smaller number of 2 (bad) and 1 (very bad) ratings, 2.8 3 3.2 3.4 3.6 3.8 4 tangibles reliability responsivness assurance empathy kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 280 followed by waiting time attribute. the bus stop conditions, punctuality, crew service, and overall comfort level inside the bus have more neutral or negative (bad or very bad) ratings. there is more division in rating among the participants for accessibility and safety attributes. feedback from the bus drivers and participants (verified with our observation) revealed that four (information system, readiness to help, compliant handling, ticketing system) out of the remaining five attributes are missing in these three sublines (and all the bus lines in the city). in the survey, %68 of the participants across the three sublines agreed on the seat comfortability (table 4). figure 7: participants’ satisfaction regarding the nine attributes. (source: author) in addition to the 14 targeted attributes, the survey also collected the participants’ open opinions on the negative and positive aspects of the bus services in sulaimani and their suggestions for improvements. as it appears in figure 8, half of the participants (in various wordings) referred to the high level of crowds in buses as a negative aspect. buses’ condition and on-board condition was the second negative aspects of the bus services with its identification by 24% of the participants. this open response, to some extend, is inconsistent with the unanimous agreement on the seat comfortability in the categorical (yes or no) question in the survey. the other mentioned aspects such as price, safety consideration, coverage area and service hours, irregularity, and inappropriate bus stations and stops are identified by a much lower number of participants ranging from 1 to 4%. 8% of the participants did not identify any negative aspects. figure 9 shows samples of bus stops’ and bus stations’ condition, while figure 10 shows the situation inside typical buses. 5.67 10 13 14.7 17.7 16 40.3 55.33 26.7 37.3 34 33.3 34.7 37.6 31.3 44.7 30 50.7 40 44.7 38.3 33.7 33 36 11 9.3 15.3 12.7 7.3 11.3 11 8.7 11 3 5 6.7 4.33 4 4 6 3 6 1 0.33 0.7 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 bus stop condition punctuality crew service safety accessibility comfort level inside bus affordability walking distance waiting time very good good medium bad very bad kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 281 figure 8: participants’ opinion about negative aspects of the bus service (source: authors) figure 9: bus stop (alwand street) and bus station condition (twi-malik bus station) in suleimani (source: authors) 8% 1% 50% 1% 2% 2% 4% 24% 5% 3% nothing everything have not decided price safety consideration coverage area and service hours irregularity bus condition and on board condition high level of crowd inappropriate location for both stations and stops bus statin bus stop kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 282 figure 10: condition inside bus, and comfort level (source: authors) most of the participants (51%) could not think of or were undecided about any positive aspects of the bus services, suggesting a non-positive overall impression of the bus services. this contradicts the overall medium satisfaction with the bus service quality that appeared in the average ratings in nine attributes in the rating questions. emotional or social pressure by some participants in responding to the rating questions may have contributed to a higher rating [24]. at a ratio of as little as 12% and 10%, affordability and accessibility, availability, and reduced travel time were identified as the top two positive aspects in the bus services by the participants, respectively (figure 11). 7% of the participants referred to “everything” as positive aspects of the bus services, while an equal ratio identified “nothing”. only 1 to 2% of the participants identified the quality of buses, bus stops and stations location, reduced congestion and comfortability on board, driver’s behavior and social respect, and safety and security as positive aspects (figure 11). kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 283 figure 11: participants’ opinion about positive aspects of the bus service (source: authors) the vast majority of the participants (86%) suggest an improvement in the bus quality (figure 12), while only 5% of the participants suggest regulating headways and the number of passengers for departure. within the local buses’ operation context, this suggestion helps with improving bus departure and arrival timing (reliability) and regularity. this suggestion and the absence of other suggestions for regulating the time, reveal the lack of the participants’ awareness about other ways for regulating bus timing (such as schedule-based bus operation) that is common in bus operation in developed countries. other suggestions at much smaller percentages include regulating bus line and dedicating bus lanes, including passenger information system pis, increasing service hours and including new bus lines, increasing bus drivers’ awareness about the provided services, improving bus stations and stops, including the ones of the private sector, and developing a ticket system (figure 12). 7% 7% 51% 2% 10% 6% 2% 1% 2% 12% nothing everything have not decided safety and security accessibility, availability and reduced travel time driver's behavior and social respect reducing congestion and comfortability on board location of bus stations and stops quality of buses affordability kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 284 figure 12: suggestions made by the participants to improve bus service (source: authors) 5. conclusion bus service is an important tool for sustainable development in urban areas. enhancing the quality of bus services is an important way for not only keeping existing bus users but also attracting new users who can contribute to reducing the number of private vehicles on roads. in this paper, we presented our assessment for the bus service quality in three sublines as a case study for bus services in the city of sulaimani. our observation from this preliminary baseline study is that the bus services in sulaimani are not in good condition and those bus users in sulaimani seem to be inexperienced with what is considered globaly as good bus services. this does not appear from the responders’ direct response to the survey questions, but rather due to our interpretation of their low expectation of what “good” bus services should look like. the very few complaints about the absence of the essential services of ticketing systems, compliment handling, readiness to help and information system is an evidence that supports that interpretation. we also noticed that passengers’ travel means choice is mainly affected by the quality of that means services. the second part of this research explores the stakeholder and decision-makers’ insights and plans on bus service quality in sulaimani. more research also needs to be undertaken; especially those that are related to objective measurements of bus services in comparison with bus services in developed countries to determine the quality of bus services of sulaimani. investigating more bus lines with different destinations and more passengers are also essential for drawing an accurate generalization about bus line service quality in sulaimani and similar context within the kurdistan region and the rest of iraq. 6. recommendation 1. more systematic investigations and assessments for bus service quality and other aspects of public transportation in the context of sulaimani and other cities in developing countries need to be carried out for developing informed sustainable public transportation strategies, policies, guidelines, and interventions. %1 %86 %0.5 %0.5 3% %1 %2 %5 %0.5 %0.5 have not decided improvement in bus quality regulating bus lines and dedicating bus lanes including pis increasing service hours and including new bus lines increasing bus drivers awareness improving bus stations and stops regulating headways and number of passengers fo departure include private sector include ticket system kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 285 2. undertaking more studies on infrastructure, administration, operation, services, and funding of existing public transportation systems and investigation on best practices in sustainable public transportation development and management from around the world and similar context. 3. simple, but essential, upgrades and improvements like developing passenger information system, ticketing system, and bus route maps as well as changing passenger number-based operation to time-based one can contribute to big improvements in the bus service quality in sulaimani and increase the use of public transportation. 4. exploiting new technologies (such as gps and cctv camera) for tracking, monitoring, and assessing various aspects of bus services and informing the improvement of service quality. 5. undertaking regular passenger satisfaction surveys and involving and consulting the local community with the development of new bus lines and services in the city. 7. future research in addition to assessing service quality of the local public transportation system in sulaimani through measuring the passengers’ satisfaction towards14 attributes, the scope of this study can be expanded through the inclusion of other attributes and sublines in the city. future studies can collect and analyze additional qualitative and quantitative data with a larger number of passengers across different bus lines in the city. interview and focus group with related authorities, decision-makers, and other stakeholders will also help with deepening the assessment of bus service 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[24] d. cramer, p. p. biemer, r. m. groves, l. e. lyberg, n. a. mathiowetz, and s. sudman, measurement errors in surveys, vol. 44, no. 4. 1993.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq designing a framework to control the spread of covid-19 by utilizing cellular system awder mohammed ahmed communication engineering department technical college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq awder.ahmed@spu.edu.iq article info abstract special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) doi: 10.24017/covid.16 article history: received 25 may 2020 accepted 30 may 2020 nowadays coronavirus (covid--19) has become a concerning issue in the world, according to who latest report more than 8,000000 of people in our planet have been infected and more than 400000 of people have died until the writing of this paper. everybody on this planet is exposed to get this pandemic. scientists, organizations, governments, and universities around the world endeavor to find proper solutions to control the spread of covid-19. thus, the aim of this paper is to propose an applicable framework to control the spread of covid-19 by utilizing cellular system. this is done by haversine formula to calculate the distance between mobile phones based on cell towers. and it can also be fulfilled via designing a framework which is composed of four phases. phase 1, deals with distance calculation and data collection about the infected and suspected persons. then in phase 2, the authorized clinical center (acc) delivers the id of the infected person to the telecom company (tc) to gather information about the unknown suspected persons. in turn, phase 3 diagnoses the infected persons and informs them to visit the acc. in the last phase, the suspected persons are tested and the infected ones are recognize. keywords: covid-19, cellular system, cell tower, mobile phone, haversine formula. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction nowadays coronavirus pandemic named covid-19 has become a global health problem on this planet, which till recent date more than 8 million of confirmed cases have been registered and more than 400000 of people have died. kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) | 147 the physical structure of communities, such as vicinity to assets like basic need stores, green space, the blend of businesses, conveniences, and lodging, influences the covid-19 widespread [1] meaning that, it is revealed that on one hand, covid-19 has a direct impact on different sectors such as; transportation, agriculture, and businesses and on the other hand, it leaves a negative impact on our health and humanity of this planet. the virus originated in wuhan, china, where in december 2019 a cluster of 27 cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology was observed [2]. according to [3], who report more than 215 nations, regions and regions have detailed cases of the infection to date and it's widespread has overpowered some of the foremost progressed and sophisticated wellbeing frameworks within the world. from the very beginning of coronavirus spreading, for the control and prevention of spread of covid-19 in some countries, governments have practiced quarantine process, but the fact is to what extend this process will be continuing. a huge number of employees in private sectors have lost their jobs. thus, the world has faced a deep recession and so the global economy might go into recession in the near future. epidemiologically, the morbidity and mortality rate has dramatically increased due to coronavirus [4]. covid-19 has a brooding period that shifts from 2 days to 14 days and is initially characterized by flu like side effects but may lead into creating serious hacks, shortness of breath, stomach pain, loose bowels, sore throat, misfortune of taste and scent, tiredness, muscle aches/pain, rehashed shaking with chills, and fever[1]. covid-19 is one of the seven sorts of coronaviruses that taints people, regularly driving to genuine upper respiratory issues which cause illness [1]. as mentioned earlier and from the above quotes, it is revealed that covid-19 will be represented as one of the most affective types of pandemic disease that has been known to human being. the covid-19 has put humanity in front of a big challenge. furthermore, it is the responsibility of governments, organizations, and universities to take control of the spreading of this pandemic disease. thus from the beginning of coronavirus spreading, the infected countries have started to perform different techniques and procedures to control the spread of the virus. from this perspective, this paper aims to propose an applicable framework to control the spread of covid-19 by utilizing cellular system in which the facilities that are provided by this technology will be used as a key factor to implement the proposed framework properly. by dividing the framework into 4 phases, where in phase 1, the information of the infected and suspected persons is sent to the main office (a specific telecom company) via the cell towers and then the data is stored. in phase 2, the authorized clinical center sends the infected person's id to the telecom company. in turn, in phase 3, the telecom company determines the people who were around the infected person and treating them as suspected persons and sends their data to the authorized clinical center. then, in phase 4, the clinical center subjects the suspected persons to take medical examinations and this is done in private where people's privacy is taken into consideration. and finally the new infected people are sent to be quarantined and to get the sufficient treatment and those with negative results are let free. 2. related work over recent years, cellular system or mobile technology has become a part of our daily routine activities; a huge number of activities such as transactions, transportations, marketing will be achieved by utilizing this technology. furthermore, this technology has been used widely to facilitate the management process of different sectors such in healthcare system. there are limited numbers of researches that have been published till now regarding the addressing of the covid-19 through the use of information technology and cellular system because this virus has started to spread with the start of 2020. moreover, most of the governments, researchers, and organizations have focused on finding a reliable covid-19 vaccine. in whole, there are numbers of researches that have been developed to detect and address the covid-19 virus. according to [5] a deep learning technique based on convolution neural network (cnn) has been implemented to disclose covid-19 disease by utilizing chest x-ray images. in addition, an architecture called modified alexnet has been kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) | 148 proposed which compares the two datasets and uses convolutional neural network and this implies that architectures have a significant ability of reveal covid-19 from x-ray. in [6] the authors proposed both of artificial intelligence (ai) and big data as suitable technology to prevent the spread of covid-19 and the severe effects of the covid-19 pandemic. where this paper shows that, reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rt-pcr) test is a standard technique to combat the covid-19 pandemic, but this standard might not be suitable to be utilized by every country because on one hand, some countries have limited budgets and cannot get enough testing kits. and on the other hand, it is time-consuming. they proposed as an alternative combining ai framework with smart device and cloud computing to tackle the issue. and the role of big data have been raised as big data relate with cleverly ai-based tools that can construct complex recreation models utilizing coronavirus data streams for episode estimation. and finally, different applications of big data related to address covid-19 pandemic have been presented. from the related works that have been presented in this section, it is revealed that technology has a great impact to address covid-19 pandemic. thus, we aim to take this opportunity to control the spread of pandemic by utilizing cellular system through designing applicable framework to disclose the suspected people with covid-19 pandemic while having switched on mobile phone. 3. cell tower nowadays, the numbers of mobile phone users have rapidly increased especially in urban areas because through this technology people can perform their daily activities easily. at the same time, in order to serve all of those mobile phones with a good quality of signal, telecom companies need to increase the number of cell towers to cover the required areas because the cell towers will be represented as a unique point to connect mobile phones to together. in over the world the number of cell phones and cell towers are dramatically increasing and the conspicuous developments in cell phone technology have made our life much easier [7]. the individual cell phone is controlled by communicating with installation of cell tower (base station) or a telecommunications structure [8]. in other words, it is revealed that mobile phones are getting and transmitting its services via cell towers and the processes of phone calling, messaging, and internet browsing are accomplished by the closer cell tower from our cell phone which depends on signal strength. furthermore, each cell phone is surrounded by a number of cell towers while moving, but this device will transmit the data via one cell tower at the same time. the geographical distribution and signal strength of the samples in the same bs will determine the location and type of the base station [9]. cell phone communicates in the range of radio frequency, which is a low frequency non-ionizing radiation. a mobile phone base station is designed in such a way that the cell phones coming under its coverage area should be able to transmit and receive enough signals which enable proper communication within a few kilometers [7]. each mobile network (telecom company) seeks to have clear information about the number of mobile phones that are connected on each cell tower, to reach that, the procedure of connection between the base station and mobile phone is accomplished through; first, the mobile phone network should detect the mobile phone users around the covered areas, this is to determine who and how many users are there. second, when mobile phones send data to the cell tower, it chops up time into some modicum and then the cell tower allocates each of those tiny time slots to a specific mobile phone. third, the procedure of allocating different time slot should be accomplished at this stage. let's consider this scenario; consider if there are 3 mobile phones and they need to allocate time in order to connect with the cell tower. when those phones arrived at the base station while moving they have to arrange when they have arrived based on the allocated time slot by cell tower with different distances. as a result correct time slots will be assigned to each mobile phone. fourth, in order to improve the communication between base station and mobile phone, it does not have to bide for it is slot time instead the distance between mobile phone and cell tower should be calculated. kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) | 149 gsm technique is used by telecom companies to observe and detect the number of mobile phones which are connected with a band of particular cell tower, furthermore, the distance between cell tower and mobile phones while moving is calculating by this protocol. there are a number of approaches that ask for rss to be transformed into distance. radio propagation models are used to reach such transformations. naturally, network measurements report (nmr) is sent by any gsm phone at a rate of 480 ms. and thus, the location of any active subscriber is easily calculated by the core network [10]. in general, multiple antennas which are called sectors have been plugged on a cell tower which provide signal in limited area to mobile phones. the number of supported mobile phones depends on sector type or model. for mobile station and cell tower, radio link specific merits such as; toa (time of arrival), rss (received signal strength), and pdp (power-delay profile), are extracted from obtained signals and then are utilized by a special algorithm to calculate an estimate of the mobile station location [11]. the use of each of those techniques depends on different factors. in other words, for instance; the accuracy outcome form the use of those techniques depends on environment of the place. according to [12] there are two types of localization techniques that are existed; geometrical and nongeometrical. in the first type, the related equations will be assigned between the known positions of the cell tower with unknown position of the mobile station and the calculation of the mobile position. while, the second type utilizes the fingerprinting method and cooperative mobiles in order to calculate mobile position. 4. distance measurement this section aims to find a proper technique in order to find the distance between the infected people by covi-19 and suspected persons through their mobile phones. and then subjects the suspected persons to take a coronavirus test, thus the concerned authorities can easily isolate the infected people and direct them to quarantine. through the search there are different equations and formulas have been found in order to calculate the required distance. as a result the haversine formula is proposed in this paper to be used as a proper formula for distance calculation. according to [13], in order to find a straight distant line between two coordinates on the earth using longitude and latitude parameters the haversine formula is an essential equation, this algorithm discusses the shapes of sides and angles in spherical triangles. the reliable academic authority revealed that in 1805, a scientist created a haversine table to determine a distance between points and the haversine equation is utilized to calculate the space between user’s area and the point of planning destination [14]. the distance calculation between 2 or more mobile users is the key point that will be used as the core issue in this proposed framework in which the distance should be in meter. additionally, haversine formula is represented as great circle space (removal), this equation performs calculation from main point to the goal point with trigonometric work by using scope and longitude which produces distance data between two points in meters [15]. generally, (mobile station) ms location is composed of two or three dimensions and it may include information such as; the latitude and longitude of where the ms is located [14]. in order to calculate the distance between two points, the haversine formula is the proper formula in this regard, which latitude is represented as input and longitude as the initial and last point. 4.1 implementation of haversine formula for the purpose of calculating the distance between two points, the haversine formula is utilized, in which each of 𝜃1 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝜃2 have been represented as latitude of mobil1 and mobile2, and 𝜆1 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝜆2 as longitude of mobil1 and mobile2. the output is the value of the distance between the locations of the two mobile phones. legend: d: distance between the two points. 𝜃1, 𝜃2: latitude of first point and latitude of second point (latitude of mobil1 and mobile2). kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) | 150 𝜆1, 𝜆2: longitude of first point and latitude of second point (longitude of mobil1 and mobile2). r: earth's radius (6371 km). d= 2𝑟 ∗ sin−1 (√𝑠𝑖𝑛 2 ( 𝜃2−𝜃1 2 ) + 𝑐𝑜𝑠 𝜃1 ∗ 𝑐𝑜𝑠 𝜃2 ∗ 𝑠𝑖𝑛 2 ( 𝜆2−𝜆1 2 ) ) … … … … … … … . (1) 4.2 experimental results this sub-section is dedicated to calculate the distances between the mobile phones' position through the haversine formula, to get accurate results; the calculation test has been implemented on 10 proposed cell towers. the calculation has been done by utilizing matlab-r2020a as a computer programming language as follow: th1=input ('enter the first pt. latitude x1') th2=input ('enter second pt. latitude x2') psi1=input ('enter the first pt. longitude y1') psi2=input ('enter the second pt. longitude y2') t1= (th2-th1)/2; %for simplicity the arg of sin=t1 t2= (psi2-psi1)/2; %for simplicity the arg of sin=t1 r=6.371; %radius of the earth in km d=2*r*sqrt((sin(t1*pi/180))^2+cos(th1*pi/180)*cos(th2*pi/180)*(sin (t2*pi/180)^2)) table 1: distance calculations of mobile phones no: location latitude of mobile 1 longitude of mobile 1 latitude of mobile 2 longitude of mobile 2 distance 1 cell tower a 1 2 2 2 0.1572 2 cell tower b 1.5 2 2 1.80 0.0599 3 cell tower c 1.80 2 2.1 2 0.0334 4 cell tower d 2 2.1 1.6 1.5 0.0802 5 cell tower e 2.1 2.5 3 1.3 0.1667 6 cell tower f 3 1.8 2 2 0.0222 7 cell tower g 3.2 1.7 2.8 1.7 0.0445 8 cell tower h 2.6 1.6 3 1.4 0.0497 9 cell tower i 2.8 1.5 2.3 1.9 0.0712 10 cell tower j 3.6 1 3 1.2 0.0703 table 1 shows the results of calculated distances between mobile phones. where, cell tower a-j represents the number of cell towers at 10 different locations, while latitude of mobile 1 and 2 and longitude of mobile 1 and 2 represent the latitude location of mobile 1 and 2 and longitude location of mobile1 and 2 respectively. based on the obtained results as expressed on equation (1), we propose this procedure to be implemented by telecom companies to calculate the distances between mobile phones' subscribers. this calculation procedure will be issued in the first phase of the proposed framework, by implementing this procedure the socalled telecom company is able to diagnose the distances between subscribers via mobile phones and cell towers. furthermore, the data of the calculated distance can be kept there and based on request by an authorized clinical center; the telecom company in turn can retrieve kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) | 151 those data to designate the subscribes who were around the infected person (subscriber id) during the last 14 days. 5. proposed framework in this section, we present a proposed framework to collect the data about the infected and suspected persons with covid-19 based on the mobile phones distances that have been calculated in section 4 (distance measurement) and then inform the suspected people to take the covid-19 test and get the required instructions and treatments by an authorized clinical center of the hospital. by implementing this framework properly, the healthcare authority can collect data about suspected people with covid-19 easily and perform the required procedures. for the implementation of the proposed work, this framework has been categorized in to 4 phases as follow: 1phase one (cell tower): in section 3, it has been clarified that mobile phone transmits its services such as phone call, messaging, and internet browsing through the nearest cell tower based of signal strength. each cell tower cover a limited signal area and all switched on mobile phones with the same radio frequency are in a direct contact with this cell tower. in turn, the cell tower is transmitting the mobile phones data into the mobile central office and those data will be kept for a period of time for different purposes. as a result, the so-called telecom company has the number and id of mobile phones that have been covered by a certain cell tower concurrently. in section 4, the distance calculation between the mobile phones of subscribers has been done. thus, from this point of view this paper proposes the procedure of distance calculation to determine the suspected persons with covid-19 via the infected person (the data of all mobile phone users including the distance of each of mobile will be sent to the central office). 2phase two (authorized clinical center ): generally, the infected country with covid-19 has assigned a number of authorized clinical centers in each area; the suspected persons can visit those centers to take covid-19 test, if the test showed positive results, this person would be indicated as an infected person. at this stage, according to this framework the authorized clinical center should send the id of infected person to the related telecom company to determine the people who were around this infected person in the last 14 days. this period of days has been proposed based on who official report. covid-19 has an brooding period that shifts from 2 days to 14 days and is characterized initially by flu-like side effects but may lead into the creation of serious hacks, shortness of breath, stomach pain, loose bowels, sore throat, misfortune of taste and scent, tiredness, muscle aches/pain, rehashed shaking with chills, and fever[1]. 3phase three (telecom company) at this stage of the framework, once the id of infected person is known by the authorized clinical center, the responsible department such as rf (radio frequency) department or other related field of the telecom company should search for mobile data of target person and collect information about the people who were around this person in the last 14 days and inform those people via sending sms or making a phone call to visit the authorized clinical center to take covid-19 test. at this stage, those people should be considered as suspected persons. kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) | 152 figure 1: proposed framework to control covid-19 4phase four (evaluation and dissection) the last phase of the framework has been assigned as the final stage, in which the people who have been informed by the telecom company should visit the authorized clinical center. there they will be assigned to take the covid-19 test and then persons with positive results will be sent to a quarantine to get the required treatments, while those with negative results test can follow his/her daily life style. 6. conclusion and future work this paper is proposed of an applicable framework to be used as a tool to control the spread of coronavirus (covid-19) by utilizing cellular system. this framework comprised of two main parts. the first part defined and implemented a suitable formula to calculate the distance between mobile phones while switched on in which the haversine formula was used to gain the sufficient outcome. through the implementation of the so-called formula the calculation of the distances between the mobile phones with cell towers were made easier to be diagnosed. in the second part, an applicable framework was designed and through its implementation the suspected persons can be recognized. in addition, this can be regarded as a way to diagnose those who are unknown and were in touch with the person who is infected with covid-19. the limitations of this paper might be defined as the occurrence of the amount of error in calculating the distances between points. and with increasing the number of mobile phone users in a day, the issue of analyzing and releasing the results are difficult tasks. it is suggested that, to make use of data mining to reduce the level of the occurrence of error in distance calculation. to address the issue of analyzing, it is suggested to use the big data technique which is implemented nowadays in telecom companies to deal with a huge data. kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) | 153 reference [1] j. turner-musa, o. ajayi, and l. kemp, “examining social determinants of health, stigma, and covid -19 disparities,” healthcare, vol. 8, no. 2, p. 168, jun. 2020, doi: 10.3390/healthcare8020168. 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[15] c. nurul. alam, k manaf, a. r. atmadja, and d. k. aurum, “implementation of haversine formula for counting event visitor in the radius based on android application, ”  enhanced recovery program after cesarean section in sulaimani maternity teaching hospital savinaz abubakir mohammed ariana khalis jawad department of gynecology and obstetrics department of gynecology and obstetrics sulaimani maternity teaching hospital hawler medical university sulaimani, iraq hawler, iraq safinaz.abubakir@gmail.com aryianadr@yahoo.com srwa jamal murad college of medicine university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq srwa.murad@univsul.edu.iq article info abstract volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.1.20 article history: received: 09 april 2020 accepted : 25 june 2020 enhanced recovery program (erp) for cesarean section (c/s) is improving patient health and is cost-effective for healthcare providers. we aimed to assess how erp improves patient satisfaction, ambulation time, severity of pain, decrease hospital stay among patients attending sulaimani maternity teaching hospital and fetal outcome. a quasi-experimental study was performed on 200 patients in sulaimani from june 2019 to december 2019. the participants divided into two equal groups. the intervention group was 100 women who underwent elective c/s in sulaimani maternity teaching hospital and subjected to erp. while the control group was the other 100 women who were not subjected to the erp, and they were from the emergency department of the same hospital. the women in the intervention group were supervised by anesthetists from preoperatively, intraoperatively, through postoperatively. the intervention group showed significantly better outcome regarding time to ambulate; all patients were able to ambulate 45 hours postoperatively. also, the duration of hospital stay was better in the intervention group; all the patients discharged before 24 hours, but five patients in the control group discharged after 24 hours. besides, fetal apgar score after five minutes was also better in the intervention group; at the first minute, the mean±sd (standard deviation) of apgar score was 8.36±1.38 and 8.08±1.69 for the intervention, and control groups, respectively (p-value = 0.2). while at five minutes, the mean±sd of apgar score was 9.59±064, and 8.96±1.12 for the intervention, and control groups, respectively (p-value = <0.001). this intervention had favorable outcomes regarding pain, time of ambulation, and fetal apgar score. we recommend implementing erp at a broader scale as it gives better outcomes. keywords: cesarean delivery, elective cesarean section, enhanced recovery program, fast-track surgery. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. mailto:srwa.murad@univsul.edu.iq 288 1. introduction a natural event of women's life is childbirth. childbirth is associated with emotional and physical changes; therefore, cesarean section (c/s) is a surgical procedure that changes the mother and baby interaction of the postpartum period into the postoperative period [1]. the c/s is one of the most common surgeries performed in the united states; about one-third of childbirth (nearly 1.3 million annually) is performed by c/s [2-3]. in canada, the rate of c/s was increased from 17% of all births in 1995 to 29% in 2010-2011 [3]. besides, in france, 21% of annual deliveries (about 160000 c/ss) were performed by c/s [4]. thus, c/s is a common procedure and public health challenge [4]. therefore, the recovery principles applied to c/s require effective collaboration between non-medical and medical teams who are caring for the mother and newborn [4]. the main concern for the women who are undergoing c/s is postoperative pain, which causes distress and compromises early mother and baby interaction and delay recovery [1]. nowadays, about 12% of the patients who are undergoing surgeries still suffer from severe pain after discharge from the hospital [1]. good management of pain can improve the mother and baby bonding. physical contact between the mother and the baby during childbirth is essential for the development of this bonding [5]. the idea of the enhanced recovery program (erp) after the surgery was emerged more than 15 years ago [6-7]. this program is also known as fast-track surgery [6-7]. the erp is a standardized interdisciplinary and evidence-based approach involving nursery teams, surgeons, anesthesiologists, and postpartum teams, to improve the care of patients who are undergoing surgeries [2, 8]. the erp is not only for humanistic purposes, but it is also used for economic purposes [1, 3, 8-9]. when erp is combined with an audit system and multidisciplinary team, it results in the reduction of surgical stress, enhances physiological and functional recovery, and decreases hospital stay, rapid return to regular activity, and fewer complications [3, 8-9]. therefore, erp has a triple aim; improving quality of care, increase patient satisfaction, and decreasing the costs [10]. the purpose of the program is to optimize patients' perioperative care by accelerating the patients' recovery to normal physiological state [6-7, 11-12]. also, the erp pathway is the concept of enhancing and improving recovery from the catabolic and inflammatory body responses to surgery [2]. further, this program had been used for patients who underwent colorectal surgeries; however, the same idea had also been used in general surgery, breast surgery, urology, orthopedics, and gynecological oncology and general gynecology [2-3, 6, 12]. however, its implementation was slower in obstetrics despite the increasing numbers of c/s performed each year [7]. in theory, many elements of erp could apply to obstetrical surgeries as in the major surgeries involving the abdomen [3]. although there are some limitations to early discharge in obstetrics, including maternal acceptability, concerns about neonatal safety and establishment of breastfeeding, the national institute for health and care excellence (nice) had integrated erp into its guidelines [6-7]. the nice stated if a woman after c/s recovered well and did not have complications can be offered an early discharge from the hospital within 24 hours and looked after at home [2, 13]. the women after c/s without the application of this program are usually discharged home at least two to three days postoperatively [6-7]. however, the women will be discharged home within 24 hours after the c/s if the program was implemented [6-7]. thence, it results in a significant saving of the costs due to bed occupancies, delayed starting time and postponement of delivery for some subsequent elective c/ss, and limiting the availabilities of healthcare [2, 6-7]. the erp had created a maternal focused pathway from 30-60 minutes before skin incision to the time of maternal discharge [8, 11]. its components are including preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative elements [7, 14]. moreover, the preoperative elements are fasting periods of at least six hours before the surgery; clear fluids for up to two hours before surgery including oral carbohydrate fluid drinks women without diabetes mellitus, i.e., providing a preoperative carbohydrate load, prophylactic antibiotics, premedication with an 289 antacid and histamine 2 (h2) receptor antagonist, and skin preparation with chlorhexidinealcohol is preferred over povidone-iodine [2, 7-8, 14]. however, cleansing of the vagina with povidone-iodine is protective against surgical site infection [8]. besides, the intraoperative elements are anesthetic managements, prevention of hypothermia, ensuring euvolemia, and surgical technique [7, 14]. the postoperative elements are chewing gums, management of nausea and vomiting, multimodal analgesia to control postoperative pain, and management of fluid and blood pressure, early oral intake, tight control of blood glucose, early removal of a foley catheter, drain and intravenous cannula, early patients mobilization, and breastfeeding, and antithrombotic prophylaxis [2, 4, 7-8, 14]. neonatal care is another elements of postoperative in erp and should be commenced with delaying cord clamping; at least 30 seconds for preterm baby and one minute at term, maintaining the body temperature of the newborn between 36.5 °c and 37.5 °c, and resuscitation in room air immediately [8]. analgesia is the main principle of erp after c/s, and a multimodal approach to the management of pain is needed in order to limit the use of opioids [9, 15]. neuraxial analgesia, such as spinal or epidural analgesia, can reduce pain in patients who are undergoing c/s [15]. epidural or subarachnoid morphine injection, despite its side effects such as nausea, vomiting, pruritus, urinary retention, sedation, and respiratory depression, is the gold standard for controlling postoperative pain after c/s [9, 15]. also, a transversus abdominis plane block is another route of analgesia which associated with less gastrointestinal transit [9]. besides, regularly scheduled administration of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, as well as paracetamol, anxiolytics, neuraxial analgesia, and regional nerve block, can help in controlling postoperative pain and limit the use of opioids [8, 15]. the study aimed to assess how erp improves the patients' satisfaction, ambulation time, severity of pain, reduce hospital stay among patients who were undergoing c/s in sulaimani maternity teaching hospital and fetal outcome. 2. patients and methods a quasi-experimental design was performed on 200 patients in whom they had either elective or emergency c/s in sulaimani, kurdistan, iraq. the participants divided into two equal groups; the intervention group was 100 women who underwent elective c/s in sulaimani maternity teaching hospital and subjected to the erp. while the control group was 100 women were not subjected to the erp, and they were chosen from the public emergency department of the same hospital. besides, the study performed from june 2019 to december 2019. the study was started after approval from the ethical committee of the kurdistan board of medical specialties (kbms) and the directorate of the sulaimani maternity teaching hospital. also, informed consent was taken from each participant after a full explanation. inclusion criteria were pregnant women who were undergoing c/s. the exclusion criteria were women who were suffering from significant medical comorbidities like diabetes mellitus and hypertension, and who were refusing to participate in the study. the sociodemographic data of the patients were recorded. the patients in the intervention group fasted for seven to eight hours for solid food and two hours for clear fluid. moreover, optimization of the hemoglobin level performed to reduce the risks related to anemia, such as delay recovery. besides, a preload of 500-1000 ml crystalloid, vasopressors, zantac ampoule, and thromboprophylaxis, were given. furthermore, prophylactic antibiotics, and a low prophylactic dose of oxytocin infusion (10-15 units per hour), were given to all the patients in both groups. postoperative painkillers were given to the intervention group on a regular base during the first 12 hours and then given depending on the visual analogue scale (vas), a pain rating scale measured from zero (no pain) to ten (severe pain) [16-17]. furthermore, the administration of painkillers started intraoperatively by infiltration of the incision by 0.5% marcaine, i.e., field block. then, two doses of indomethacin suppository were given; the first dose was given immediately after the surgery and the other after 12 hours. also, injections of 290 50 mg pethidine and rolac ampoules —the first dose was given two hours after indomethacin, and the second dose was 12 hours later—, were performed. concomitantly, paracetamol vial (one gram) was given two hours after rolac ampoule and then every six to eight hours. meanwhile, the pain of the patients in the control group was managed according to the routine practice of the hospital, depending on their need for painkillers. all women in the intervention group were started oral fluid intake two hours after the c/s, early ambulation after four to five hours, initiation of breastfeeding, and removal of the urinary catheter after six hours. besides, patients’ satisfaction was measured numerically; least satisfaction was considered 22 and a satisfaction of 55 indicated the most satisfaction. the "ibm spss statistics version 25" was used for the analysis of the data, and both descriptive and inferential statistics were used. furthermore, p-values of (≤0.05 and <0.001) were considered as statistically significant, and highly significant associations, respectively. also, pearson chi-square was used to find out the significance of the association between categorical independent and dependent variable pairs, and the student's t-test was used to compare numerical independent and dependent variable pairs. 3. results the ages of women in the intervention group were slightly older as compared to women in the control group. besides, the majorities (84%) of women in both groups were 25 years old and more; 44% in the intervention group as compared to 40% in the control group. although these differences in ages between the groups were little, it was statistically significant difference (table 1). the majorities (65%) of the patients were from sulaimani center and there were not statistically significant differences among both the groups for residencies of the women (table 1). also, there was statistically non-significant difference for blood groups among both the groups and the majority of women were either group a (33%) or group o (30.5%) as shown in table 1. further, the majorities (84%) of the women in both the groups were multiparous and the difference of gravidity among both the groups was statistically significant (table 1). table (1): sociodemographic features of the study participants patient characteristics intervention group control group p-value age 0.01 15-24 years 12 (6%) 20 (10%) 25-34 years 50 (25%) 61 (30.5%) ≥35 years 38 (19%) 19 (9.5%) mean±sd 31.9±5.7 29.7±5.9 residency 0.43 sulaimani center 63 (31.5%) 67 (33.5%) territory 36 (18%) 30 (15%) other governorates 1 (0.5%) 3 (1.5%) blood group 0.18 a+ 26 (13%) 34 (17%) a3 (1.5%) 3 (1.5%) b+ 15 (7.5%) 15 (7.5%) b1 (0.5%) 4 (2%) ab+ 6 (3%) 6 (3%) ab2 (1%) 0 (0%) o+ 27 (13.5%) 31(15.5%) o2 (1%) 1 (0.5%) gravidity <0.001 primigravida 3 (1.5%) 29 (14.5%) 291 gravida 2-4 80 (40%) 56 (28%) gravida ≥5 17 (8.5%) 15 (7.5%) sd = standard deviation all the women in the intervention group were started to ambulate after four to five hours, while all the women in the control group were ambulated after six hours; the differences between them were statistically significant (table 2). besides, although post c/s pain was more severe in the control group, but the difference was not statistically significant (table 2). furthermore, there was a statistically significant association among the groups and maternal hospital discharge; five patients in the emergency group discharged home after 24 hours (table 2). table (2): ambulation time, the severity of pain measured by vas, and hospital discharge time among both the groups operation outcome intervention group control group p-value ambulation time <0.001 after 4-5 hours 100 (50%) 0 (0%) after 6 hours 0 (0%) 100 (50%) vas 0.34 0 – 3 61 (30.5%) 52 (26%) 4 – 6 36 (18%) 42 (21%) 7 – 8 3 (1.5%) 6 (3%) hospital discharge 0.02 <24 hours 100 (50%) 95 (47.5%) >24 hours 0 (0%) 5 (2.5%) vas = visual analogue scale our results showed a statistically insignificant association of both groups with patient satisfaction and pain scores (table 3). in contrast, the association of apgar scores in the fifth minutes with the groups was statistically significant (table 3). table (3): fetal apgar score, patients' satisfaction score and vas for both the studied groups operation outcome intervention group control group p-value apgar score ( first minute) (mean±sd) 8.36±1.38 8.08±1.69 0.2 apgar score (fifth minute) (mean±sd) 9.59±0.64 8.96±1.12 <0.001 patient satisfaction score (22 to 55) mean±sd 45.47±4.89 46.37±5.78 0.24 vas (mean±sd) 2.97±1.62 3.36±2.07 0.14 sd = standard deviation, vas = visual analogue scale 4. discussion child birth is the most common indication for admission to the sulaimani maternity teaching hospital, and the most common surgery to help childbirth performed is c/s. therefore, the erp is a method of choice to be applied to improve patient outcomes and quality of care with the use of the evidence-based approach. according to the statistics department of the sulaimani maternity teaching hospital, 4313 (32.88%) out of the total of 13119 birth in 2018 were delivered by c/s, which is a remarkable portion of total annual births. in the current study, the majorities of women were aged 25-34 years old and were multiparous; 55.5% and 84%, respectively (table 1). these findings were slightly different in 292 the literature that may be due to the differences between the social customs and norms among the studied populations. for example, the majorities of women in the study of a. kett et al. [18] were aged 20-30 years and were primiparous. in comparison, the majorities of women were 30-39 years old and multiparous in the study of e. enabudoso et al. [19]. although the mean ± sd score of the pain rating scale (vas) was lower in the intervention group (2.97 ± 1.62 and 3.36 ± 2.07 for intervention and control groups, respectively), it was not statistically significant (tables 2 and 3). it was because most of the emergency patients of the control group underwent a trial of vaginal delivery and then followed by the c/s. moreover, we used a pain scale from zero to 10 and were assessed at two, six, and 12 hours after surgery. while in the study of l. renfro et al. [16], the patients were assessed at rest, six, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 42, and 72 hours, although they used the same vas. furthermore, our study is similar to the study of l. renfro et al. [16], who involved a multi model pain regimen that initiated immediately after the delivery of the baby. it was also similar to the study of i. veličković et al. [20] in their multi-model approach to pain control. all of our elective patients in the intervention group were discharged from the hospital in less than 24 hours, but five (2.5%) of our emergency patients in the control group were discharged after 24 hours (table 2). the study of n. c. teigen et al. [21] also found that erp was associated with significantly decreased postoperative hospital stay when compared with standard care (median length of stay of 73.5 hours vs. 75.5 hours from surgery, respectively). however, g. a. macones et al. [22] found a non-significant reduction in the length of stay between the two groups. in the current study, the patient's satisfaction score ranged from (22 to 55) with a score of 22 being very dissatisfied and was considered the lowest score, and a score of 55 was the highest score and represented very satisfied. besides, the mean ± sd of satisfaction scores in our study were 45.47 ± 4.89 and 46.37 ± 5.78 for the intervention and control groups, respectively (table 3). in contrast to our study, in the study of e. enabudoso et al. [19], the satisfaction with cesarean deliveries was higher among women who had elective cesarean deliveries as compared with emergency cesarean deliveries. these differences in our study may be due to that, although the patients who were undergoing elective c/s were counseled over time, psychologically prepared, and they knew the reason for surgery, their expectation was high. while the patients in the control group who suffered more during the emergency situations that they had, they expected less than the prepared patients for elective c/ss who had had high expectations. in the current study, the removal of the foley catheter was after six hours for all the patients in both intervention and control groups. in contrast, in the study of i. veličković et al. [20], the urinary catheter was removed at least after the first postoperative day. 4. conclusion the erp is a critical program to be applied for early hospital discharge after cesarean deliveries because it reduces the cared burden and costs for obstetrical units. our main limitation was difficulties in choosing much identical control group due to the limited time and the responsibilities of intervention. therefore, we recommend performing same intervention and comparing the results to much identical groups of elective cases. reference [1] p. lavand'homme, “postoperative cesarean pain: real but is it preventable?”, curr opin anaesthesiol, 31(3), pp. 262‐267, 2018. [2] e. e. fay, j. e. hitti, c. m. delgado, l. m. savitsky, e. b. mills, j. l. slater, et al., “an enhanced recovery after surgery pathway for cesarean delivery decreases hospital stay and cost”, am j obstet gynecol, 221(4), pp. 349.e1‐349.e9, 2019. [3] j. huang, c. cao, g. nelson, r. d. wilson, “a review of enhanced recovery after surgery principles used for scheduled caesarean delivery”, j obstet gynaecol can, 41(12), pp. 1775-1788, 2019. 293 [4] b. deniau, n. bouhadjari, v. faitot, a. mortazavi, g. kayem, l. mandelbrot, et al., “evaluation of a continuous improvement programme of enhanced recovery after caesarean delivery under neuraxial anaesthesia”, anaesth crit care pain med, 35(6), pp. 395-399, 2016. [5] a. laronche, l. popescu, d. benhamou, “an enhanced recovery programme after caesarean delivery increases maternal satisfaction and improves maternal-neonatal bonding: a case control study”, eur j obstet gynecol reprod biol, 210:212-216, 2017. [6] i. j. wrench, a. allison, a. galimberti, s. radley, m. j. wilson, "introduction of enhanced recovery for elective caesarean section enabling next day discharge: a tertiary centre experience," int j obstet anesth, 24(2), pp.124–130, 2015. [7] s. j. bowden, w. dooley, j. hanrahan, c. kanu, s. halder, c. cormack, et al., "fast-track pathway for elective caesarean section: a quality improvement initiative to promote day 1 discharge," bmj open qual, 8(2), pp. e000465, 2019. [8] m. m. killion, “enhanced recovery after cesarean birth”, mcn am j matern child nurs, 44(6), pp. 358, 2019. [9] a. jarraya, j. zghal, s. abidi, m. smaoui, k. kolsi, “subarachnoid morphine versus tap blocks for enhanced recovery after caesarean section delivery: a randomized controlled trial”, anaesth crit care pain med, 35(6), pp. 391-393, 2016. [10] a. f. peahl, r. smith, t. r. b. johnson, d. m. morgan, m. d. pearlman, “better late than never: why obstetricians must implement enhanced recovery after cesarean”, am j obstet gynecol, 221(2), pp. 117.e1117.e7, 2019. [11] u. ituk, a. s. habib, "enhanced recovery after cesarean delivery," f1000res, 7:f1000 faculty rev-513, published 2018 apr 27. doi:10.12688/f1000research.13895.1 [12] m. hedderson, d. lee, e. hunt, k. lee, f. xu, a. mustille, et al., “enhanced recovery after surgery to change process measures and reduce opioid use after cesarean delivery: a quality improvement initiative”, obstet gynecol, 134(3):511-519, 2019. [13] nice institute for health and care excellence, "clinical guideline 132 on caesarean section," sep. 2019. [online]. available: https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg132/chapter/1-guidance#care-ofthe-woman-after-cs. [accessed: mar. 13, 2020]. [14] r. d. wilson, a. b. caughey, s. l. wood, g. a. macones, i. j. wrench, j. huang, et al., "guidelines for antenatal and preoperative care in cesarean delivery: enhanced recovery after surgery society recommendations (part 1)," am j obstet gynecol, 219(6), pp. 523.e1-523.e15, 2018. [15] p. parikh, i. sunesara, s. singh multani, b. patterson, e. lutz, j. n. martin jr, “intra-incisional liposomal bupivacaine and its impact on postcesarean analgesia: a retrospective study”, j matern fetal neonatal med, 32(6), pp. 966-970, 2019. [16] l. renfro, m. todd, h. mustafa, "post-cesarean section analgesic safety and efficacy of exparel (liposomal bupivacaine) infiltration locally versus transversus abdominis plane infiltration. pcpc study, "2017. [online]. available: https://clinicaltrials.gov/provideddocs/95/nct03377595/prot_000.pdf. [accessed: mar. 16, 2020]. [17] d. a. delgado, b. s. lambert, n. boutris, p. c. mcculloch, a. b. robbins, m. r. moreno, et al., "validation of digital visual analog scale pain scoring with a traditional paper-based visual analog scale in adults," j am acad orthop surg glob res rev, 2(3), pp. e088, 2018. [18] a. kett, e. cherot, "enhanced recovery program reduces length of stay & improves value for patients undergoing elective cesarean section," obstet gynecol,131, pp. 106s, 2018. [19] e. enabudoso, a. r. isara, "determinants of patient satisfaction after cesarean delivery at a university teaching hospital in nigeria," ijgo, 114(3), pp. 251-254, 2011. [20] i. veličković, i. budic, "enhanced recovery after surgery," front med (lausanne), 6, pp. 62, 2019. [21] n. c. teigen, n. sahasrabudhe, g. doulaveris, x. xie, a. negassa, j. bernstein, et al., "enhanced recovery after surgery (eras) at cesarean to reduce postoperative length of stay: a randomized controlled trial," am j obstet gynecol, 22(4), pp. p372.e1-372.e10, 2019. [22] g. a. macones, a. b. caughey, s. l. wood, i. j. wrench, j. huang, m. norman, et al., "guidelines for postoperative care in cesarean delivery: enhanced recovery after surgery (eras) society recommendations (part 3)," am j obstet gynecol, 221(3), pp. 247.e1-247.e9, 2019. https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg132/chapter/1-guidance#care-of-the-woman-after-cs https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg132/chapter/1-guidance#care-of-the-woman-after-cs https://clinicaltrials.gov/provideddocs/95/nct03377595/prot_000.pdf  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq exploration of cosmetic factors contributing to rhinoplasty among both genders in iraqi kurdistan aram salih mohammed amin kamali hedi hassan rostam planning department college of nursing directorate of healthgarmian administration university of raparin ministry of health rania, iraq kalar, iraq hedihassan70@gmail.com aramkamali.86@gmail.com awat alla khdir omer aula mina college of nursing college of nursing university of raparin university of raparin rania, iraq rania, iraq awatkhdir7@gmail.com omermangury2@gmail.com article info abstract volume 5 – special issue: 4th international conference on the health and medical science : medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) doi: 10.24017/science.2020.ichms2020.2 article history: received: 28 september 2020 accepted: 03 october 2020 the most outstanding feature of face is the nose which is in furthering than any other feature to facial characteristics. furthermore, the appealing aspects of the nose are an essential olfactory organ. over and beyond the aesthetic and functional aspects the client's reaction to his/her owns nose as well as the reaction of the people around to it impacts to the psychic characteristics. a nonprobability purposive sample of this cross sectional descriptive study was consisted of 100 young male and female in kurdish ethnicity, their ages ranged between 2125 years. the main objective of the study is conducted to assess the cosmetic factors, contribute to rhinoplasty among both genders at raparin district. the data collecting period were during the (december 15th, 2019 to january 5th, 2020). a self-administration questionnaire was used for data collection and it was designed according guidelines, literatures, and articles concerning rhinoplasty; which consisted of 26 variables. data were analyzed using spss version 23. the study results revealed that most of participants (67%) were female when only (17%) of them were married, however, more than half (67%) were students. whenever, they about (56%) were barely sufficient in their monthly income. moreover, about (61%) of participants interested to surgically alter the appearance of their nose, closely twothird (74%) of participants wanted to surgically change the function of their nose. therefore, almost (87%) of participant relatives have been operated with rhinoplasty. also, the study demonstrated there is a statistically keywords: rhinoplasty, cosmetic surgery, cosmetic factors, un-functional factors, gender, kurdistan, iraq mailto:hedihassan70@gmail.com mailto:aramkamali.86@gmail.com mailto:awatkhdir7@gmail.com mailto:omermangury2@gmail.com kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 11 significant relationship between cosmetic factors contributing to rhinoplasty with age (p=0.035) and occupation (p=0.037). when, there were strongly statistically significant association between cosmetic unfunctional factors contributing to rhinoplasty with level of education (p=0.003). the study recommended to plastic surgeons evaluate patients carefully before rhinoplasty surgery to get rid of unnecessary surgeries because there are lots of complications related to rhinoplasty and the psychological needs of the patients who undergo rhinoplasty should be considered. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction rhinoplasty is one of the most universally carry out cosmetic surgery procedures for both aesthetic as well as functional purposes according to the statistical analysis of the american society of plastic surgeons [1, 2]. as well as, the nose reshaping is considered one of the most challenging ones among the different cosmetic procedures. this surgery is that a wide proportion seeks this type of cosmetic procedure which has associated with rhinal disease, such as nasal obstruction due to septal deviation or sinusitis and allergic rhinitis [3]. beside with limits error, accurate techniques for an excellent functional and aesthetic outcome are essential [4, 5]. the determining of successful rhinoplasty results are leading to patient’s satisfaction and improvement in the quality of life [6]. satisfaction of patient varies based on a number of characters such as gender, age, culture, education level, ethnicity, and particularly, the level of patient’s thoughts [7]. when, the plastic surgeons’ concept of surgical outcome may be different from patients’ expectation [8]. while, the nasal deformities pay attention to these features, recognize them as consider a surgical correction, or stigma. motivation to request a well-looking after changing of the nose often remains doubtful in rhinoplasty candidates, psychological characteristics may be expected [9]. beside of cosmetic rhinoplasty, nasal blockage is a common presenting complaint to the plastic surgeon. it has been estimated that more than one-quarter of those with rhinal obstruction seek surgical treatment for their issues [10]. contrary to its difficulty, one of the most common cosmetic maneuvers which performed by plastic surgeons is a remains rhinoplasty. in 2014, aesthetic rhinoplasty globally has recorded as the 5th most common cosmetic operation procedure with over 850,000 [5]. rhinoplasty also in the us of america was arranged as the 5th most popular aesthetic surgery, with close to 145,000 rhinoplasty achieved in 2014, an increment of 6.5% as 1997 [4]. in latter few decades, selfwatching, media awareness, and improvement in surgical operations have increased in asia which lead to raising rhinoplasty significantly. as well as, this attitude has been noticed among both male and female gender frequently among young age group [11]. pursuant to the association of american plastic surgeons, 3.8 million cosmetic surgeries were performed from 2003 to 2012, which compared to 1997, 299% increased [12]. in middle east countries such as saudi arabia, rhinoplasty recently representing 30% of all aesthetic procedures [13]. as well as, the neighboring countries such as iran is a top ranked globally in the world regard to the number of cosmetic surgeries; therefore, among cosmetic surgeries tendency to rhinoplasty also in iran is more than other countries [14, 15]. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 12 however, no study was conducted in iraqi kurdistan to determine the incidence and/or prevalence to primary and/or secondary rhinoplasty. the evaluation and assessment of the epidemiology of rhinoplasty could be useful as a guideline to prevent or treat such damages and complications as well as the outcomes. the aims of the previous literatures are to recognize major psychic disorders as well as evaluation of rhinoplasty outcome. furthermore, the principal purpose of the present study is to conduct exploration of the cosmetic factors which are contributed to rhinoplasty among both genders in iraqi kurdistan region. 2. methods and materials study design and setting a quantitative design, crosssectional descriptive study which is conducted on young males and females in raparin district in sulaimani province, kurdistan region of iraq that has been implemented to demonstrate the cosmetic factors which contribute to rhinoplasty during the november 15th, 2019 to january 5th, 2020. sample of the study non-probability (purposive sample) technique was applied to collect data from (33) males and (67) females who accepted to participate in this study. both gender who are available at the time of data collection was included. original questionnaire was developed after comprehensive literature review and articles later translated to kurdish language by a native speaker. a last questionnaire version was agreed on, it was validated in a pilot that tested the clarity and relevance of the statements by ten experts. data sources/ measurement in addition to that, the socio-demographic characteristics, the self-administered questionnaire was designed according guidelines, literatures, and articles concerning rhinoplasty, which eleven questions were asked to assess cosmetic factors as well as ten questions focused on cosmetic un-functional factors towards rhinoplasty. the questionnaire was consisted of 5 point likert scale, with the options of (1 = not at all, 2 = somewhat, 3 = moderately, 4 = very much, or 5 = completely) for fist part when for second part was (1 = not a problem, 2 = fairly problem, 3 = moderate problem, 4 = very problem, or 5 = severe problem). the first fifteen forms were completed for the pilot study was conducted with cronbach alpha (r = 0.81). data collection and analysis selfadministered questionnaire was used to collect the data from the people with rhinoplasty. the participants were responded the prepared questionnaires by themselves. the (100) questionnaires were filled in some different private clinics at both cities ranya and qaladiza. for the statistical data analysis, the mean, standard deviation, and interquartile range were calculated. kolmogorov-smirnov test and q q plot used for checking normal distribution of data with an estimated 95% confidence interval. a t-test, mann whiney test, chi square test, and anova test used to compare between the subgroups based on test for the normal distribution of data which was categorized into two categories: aesthetic factors and cosmetic unfunctional factors. the questionnaire was labeled and coded by the researchers; data was reviewed for accuracy and completeness and analyzed using spss 23 (ibm corp. released 2013). ethics considerations this paper is the outcome of the bachelor science research project approved by the ethics committee of the university of raparin / college of nursing. before collecting data, verbally consent was obtained from each participant. the respondents were informed about the purpose kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 13 of the study and that participating in this study was voluntary. furthermore, the participants were told that their answers were kept confidential and only used for research purposes. 3. results the result showed study finding. a hundred young individuals in both genders engaged this study. participant’s mean age (+ sd) was 23.90 + 5.01 years old, ranging from 16 to 41. table (1) showed that highest age of the patients was between (21 – 25 years) (39%), about (67%) of them were female, when only (17%) of participants were married. however, more than half (68%) were student. whenever, about (56%) were barely sufficient in their monthly income. table 1: sociodemographic descriptive (n = 100) variables categories no. (%) age (years) ≤ 20 28 28.0 21 – 25 39 39.0 ≥ 26 33 33.0 gender male 33 33.0 female 67 67.0 marital status single 82 82.0 married 17 17.0 divorced 1 1.0 level of educational primary school 6 6.0 secondary school 9 9.0 high school 16 14.0 institution 23 23.0 college 41 41.0 occupation employed 12 12.0 unemployed 20 20.0 student 68 68.0 monthly income sufficient 23 23.0 barely sufficient 56 56.0 insufficient 21 21.0 table 2: general questions regarding rhinoplasty variables categories no. (%) would you like to surgically alter the appearance of your nose? definitely 61 61.0 possible 27 27.0 probably not 4 4.0 no 8 8.0 would you like to surgically change the function of your nose? definitely 74 74.0 possible 16 16.0 kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 14 probably not 5 5.0 no 5 5.0 any of your relatives have been operated with rhinoplasty? no 13 13.0 yes 87 87.0 table (2) revealed that about (61%) of the participants interested to surgically alter the appearance of their nose. however, almost two third (74%) of participants wanted to surgically change the function of their nose. moreover, majority participant’s relatives (87%) have been operated with rhinoplasty. table 3: participant’s response rating regarding each items of aesthetic factors items n ot at all f req = % som ew hat f req = % m oderately f req = % v ery m uch f req = % c om pletely f req = % how well do you like the appearance of your nose? 12 13 21 28 26 how well do you accurately breathe through your nose? 4 11 31 27 27 do you feel how well people around and your loved ones like your nose? 8 14 21 41 16 how much do you feel your current nasal shape limits your social and/or occupational activities? 41 18 14 20 7 how confident are you standed up if your nasal shaping changed to be you want it? 13 14 19 32 22 do you feel that cosmetic surgeries/procedures would have/have had a positive effect on your feelings? 31 13 12 26 18 are there any celebrities whose image has influenced you to consider cosmetic surgery? 77 13 1 5 4 table (3) showed that the participant’s response rating regarding each items of cosmetic factors contributing to rhinoplasty from “not at all to completely”. table 4: response’s rating regarding each items of cosmetic un-functional factors items not a problem f req = % f airly problem f req = % m oderate problem f req = % v ery problem f req = % severe problem f req = % nasal congestion or stuffiness 46 34 10 7 3 nasal blockage or obstruction 39 25 15 16 5 trouble breathing through your nose 46 22 12 15 5 trouble sleeping 60 14 18 6 2 are you snore while you sleep? 70 16 5 5 4 your snoring after rhinoplasty 67 21 6 4 2 kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 15 headache 51 23 11 9 6 bleeding 80 16 3 1 0 sneezing 38 32 13 12 5 facial pain 69 15 9 5 2 table (4) illustrated that the participant’s response rating regarding each items of unfunctional factor contributing to rhinoplasty from “not a problem to severe problem.” figure 1. compared mean between cosmetic factors and unfunctional factors figure 1 showed that mean (sd) of aesthetic rhinoplasty factor was higher than unfunctional cosmetic nasal surgery (2.69 (0.53), 1.79 (0.63), respectively). table 5: association between some socio-demographic data and cosmetic factors contributing to rhinoplasty. variables n cosmetic factors cosmetic un-functional factors mean (sd) f/t-test pvalue mean (sd) f/t-test pvalue gender male 33 2.66 (.57) .37 .716 1.76 (.67) .376 .707 female 67 2.7 (.51) 1.81 (.61) age groups ≤ 20 28 2.62 (.53) 3.49 .035 1.87 (.65) .40 .668 21 – 25 39 2.58 (.52) 1.73 (.62) ≥ 26 33 2.88 (.5) 1.81 (.64) marital status single 83 2.69 (.51) .15 .880 1.83 (.62) 1.19 .236 married 17 2.67 (.62) 1.63 (.67) level of education school graduated 29 2.71 (.53) .06 .938 1.76 (.6) 6.02 .003 institute students 26 2.66 (.57) 1.49 (.45) college students 45 2.7 (.52) 2.00 (.67) occupation employed 12 2.83 (.51) 3.40 .037 1.48 (.35) 2.67 .074 unemployed 20 2.91 (.56) 1.67 (.66) students 68 2.6 (.51) 1.89 (.64) monthly income 2.69 1.79 cosmetic factors unfunctional factors kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 16 sufficient 23 2.81 (.43) 1.52 .224 1.9 (.58) .38 .682 barely sufficient 56 2.7 (.55) 1.77 (.67) insufficient 21 2.54 (.57) 1.76 (.58) in term of association between different variables of some socio-demographic data and mean score of cosmetic factors and cosmetic un-functional factors were shown in (table 5). the observed finding demonstrated that there were significant relationship between age groups (p = 0.035), occupation (p = 0.037), and cosmetic factors. when, cosmetic un-functional factors was strongly statistically significant with level of education (p= 0.003). however, the finding indicated that there were no relation between other variables in socio-demographic profile. 4. discussion the most outstanding feature of face is the nose which is in furthering than any other feature to facial characteristics as well as which affects our personality development and body image. iraqi kurdistan is a part of developing country and mostly citizens are living in the urban areas. the current study was conducted to explore the cosmetic factors contribute to rhinoplasty among both genders at iraqi kurdistan. globally, rhinoplasty one of the most common cosmetic surgery around the world, the current finding also showed that rhinoplasty is a more popular in iraqi kurdistan when majority of participants (87%) had at least one relative who was underwent rhinoplasty. regarding the socio demographic profile the study finding illustrated that the participants were belong to the young people, ranging from 14 – 41. there is a similar with the annual statistical report of american society of plastic surgeon. which showed that decreased number of rhinoplasty with getting more elder [1]. overall, previous studies were conducted in the age range comparable to the current findings. as it is known, most aesthetic rhinoplasty participants of the study were female this is ongoing with zanyar and his colleague’s study which demonstrated that majority of rhinoplasty candidates are females as they are more concerned about their facial appearance [16]. regarding educational level, study disclosed that mostly had a bachelor’s which is also similar with an epidemiological study conducted to kazemy and his colleagues [14]. these both mentioned results above are together also in line with few studies [14, 17, 18]. as well as, the finding revealed that there was a strongly statistical significant relationship between the level of education and rhinoplasty based on the chi-square test (p<0.05). which is almost identical with kazemy’s result [14]. it is on contrary with study conducted to alsubeeh and her colleagues [13]. over and above that the study conducted to loghmani and her colleagues demonstrated that more than half of the high school girls in kerman, iran were interested to undergo rhinoplasty. which is alike to current study outcome [15]. khanjani et al and kazemy and his colleagues in two deferent studies disclosed that most aesthetic nose surgery candidates who underwent rhinoplasty were students which is exactly in line with current study results [14]. the study finding showed that the primary goal of rhinoplasty is to gain a better form of the nose rather than make its function better. while other studies show that the essential aims of rhinoplasty are to improve the functional and appearance of the nose for the long life [9]. the current study finding also found that majority of participants liked to surgically make change the form of their nose because it makes them to socially be acceptable. which is consistent to study conducted to mansour salehi and his colleagues showed that improvement in their participant's appearance had a positive effect on surrounding populations [19]. moreover, the current finding revealed that more than half of participants felt great and more confident when the shape of their nose to be the same as they want. which is in line with few studies[9, 19]. therefore, the limitation of our study was short time period due to final term exam when this study was part of bachelor project. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 17 5. conclusion the current study disclosed that highest number of patients undergo rhinoplasty were females. as well as, almost all participants were young when younger people more practice this surgery to end up with their desired appearance that they demand. the participants liked to surgically alter the appearance of their nose because improvement in their participant's appearance had a positive effect on surrounding populations which makes them to socially be acceptable. however, arguably another common reason for contributing to rhinoplasty is to improve batter nasal functional problems. overall, study finding showed that most of participant's relatives have been operated with rhinoplasty. which means nowadays, nose reshaping is much popular to modern community. 6. recommendation researchers of the current study recommend that the evaluating patients carefully before rhinoplasty surgery to get rid of unnecessary surgery because there are a wide range of complications related to rhinoplasty. as well as, the psychological needs of those patients who undergo rhinoplasty should be considered. reference [1] a. s. o. p. surgeons, "plastic surgery statistics report at 2018," asps national clearinghouse of plastic surgery procedural statistics, 2018. [online]. available: https://www.plasticsurgery.org/documents/news/statistics/2018/plastic-surgery-statistics-full-report2018.pdf. [2] z. a. m. amin and a. a. al-hulfi, "factors that influence the periorbital edema and ecchymosis after open septorhino-plasty," journal of kurdistan board of medical specialties, vol. 5, no. 1, 2019. [3] b. marcus, z. patel, j. busquets, p. h. hwang, and t. a. cook, "the utility of concurrent rhinoplasty and sinus surgery: a 2-team approach," j archives of facial plastic surgery, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 260-262, 2006. [4] d. o. beck and j. m. kenkel, "evidence-based medicine: rhinoplasty," j plastic reconstructive surgery, vol. 134, no. 6, pp. 1356-1371, 2014. [5] g. kayabasoglu and a. nacar, "the soft triangle: an often neglected area in rhinoplasty," j aesthetic plastic surgery, vol. 39, no. 5, pp. 659-666, 2015. [6] m. barone, a. cogliandro, n. di stefano, v. tambone, and p. persichetti, "a systematic review of patient-reported outcome measures after rhinoplasty," j european archives of oto-rhino-laryngology, vol. 274, no. 4, pp. 1807-1811, 2017. [7] l. meyer and s. jacobsson, "the predictive validity of psychosocial factors for patients' acceptance of rhinoplasty," j annals of plastic surgery, vol. 17, no. 6, pp. 513-520, 1986. [8] s. c. izu et al., "validation of the rhinoplasty outcomes evaluation (roe) questionnaire adapted to brazilian portuguese," j quality of life research, vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 953-958, 2014. [9] a. m. saleh, a. younes, and o. friedman, "cosmetics and function: quality‐of‐life changes after rhinoplasty surgery," j the laryngoscope, vol. 122, no. 2, pp. 254-259, 2012. [10] p. s. phillips et al., "functional and cosmetic outcomes of external approach septoplasty," j american journal of rhinology allergy, vol. 25, no. 5, pp. 351-357, 2011. [11] s.-k. han, h.-s. woo, and w.-k. kim, "extended incision in open-approach rhinoplasty for asians," j plastic reconstructive surgery, vol. 109, no. 6, pp. 2087-2096, 2002. [12] z. farshidfar, r. dastjerdi, and f. shahabizadeh, "acceptance of cosmetic surgery: body image, self esteem and conformity," j procedia-social behavioral sciences, vol. 84, pp. 238-242, 2013. [13] n. a. alsubeeh, m. a. alsaqr, m. alkarzae, and b. aldosari, "prevalence of considering revision rhinoplasty in saudi patients and its associated factors," j maxillofacial plastic reconstructive surgery, vol. 41, no. 1, p. 59, 2019. [14] s. kazemy, f. najari, m. khalilzadeh, h. safavi, and d. najari, "complications of rhinoplasty in patients: an epidemiological study," j international journal of medical toxicology forensic medicine, vol. 8, no. 3 (summer), pp. 109-112, 2018. [15] s. loghmani, s. loghmani, h. baghi, m. a. hoghoughi, and f. j. w. j. o. p. s. dalvi, "demographic characteristics of patients undergoing rhinoplasty: a single center two-time-period comparison," vol. 6, no. 3, p. 275, 2017. [16] f. a. h. hawrami, z. m. amin, m. mahmood, and r. a. j. j. o. c. m. s. hama, "evaluation esthetic and functional outcomes after rhinoplasty," vol. 6, no. 2, 2020. [17] s. sperry, j. k. thompson, d. b. sarwer, and t. f. j. a. o. p. s. cash, "cosmetic surgery reality tv viewership: relations with cosmetic surgery attitudes, body image, and disordered eating," vol. 62, no. 1, pp. 7-11, 2009. https://www.plasticsurgery.org/documents/news/statistics/2018/plastic-surgery-statistics-full-report-2018.pdf https://www.plasticsurgery.org/documents/news/statistics/2018/plastic-surgery-statistics-full-report-2018.pdf kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 18 [18] m. keivanara, r. rabbani, and m. zhianpour, "social stratification and physical improvements (plastic surgery as a symbol for social class)," 2010. [19] e. a. afkham, m. salehi, m. ghalebandi, and t. a. kafian, "psychological health and expectations of patients seeking cosmetic rhinoplasty," medical journal of the islamic republic of iran, vol. 22, pp. 198 202, 2009, art no. 4. 1. introduction 4. discussion 5. conclusion 6. recommendation  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq oxidative stress and its association with covid-19: a narrative review hardi rafat baqi halgord ali m. farag medical laboratory science nursing department technical college of applied sciences research center technical college of health | research center sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq hardi.baqi@spu.edu.iq halgord.farag@spu.edu.iq abdel hamid h. el bilbeisi rafee habib askandar clinical nutrition department nursing department faculty of pharmacy technical college of health al azhar university of gaza sulaimani polytechnic university gaza, palestine sulaimani, iraq abedazhot@gmail.com rafee.askandar@spu.edu.iq amany m. el afifi clinical pharmacy department faculty of pharmacy al azhar university of gaza gaza, palestine amany.elafifi95@gmail.com article info abstract special issue on coronavirus (covid19) doi: 10.24017/covid.11 article history: received: 28 may 2020 accepted: 30 may 2020 the naturalness of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infections (sars-cov-2) appears to impact the respiratory system and lungs. however, the etiology of many cases exhibited several various features of the disease. the coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) symptoms are not limited to the virus’s first definitions. this review gathered the contemporary information throughout pubmed, scopus, and science direct databases regarding possible effects of the virus in generating reactive oxygen species and causing oxidative stress. however, this endures a hypothesis for now, yet from the literature and incidence of covid-19 symptoms along with comorbidities we can observe the potentials of the virus in the generation of oxidative stress. especially the virus’s route to cell entry via angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ace2) receptor is well known that leads to pathogenesis in angiotensin ii (at ii) which are critical in nadh/nadph oxidase inducing ros generation. moreover, the virus’s activity to replicate seems to be reduced in high antioxidant glutathione level concentrations. the outcome of the review proposes a hypothesis that covid-19 is associated with reactive oxygen species and its comorbidities keywords: ace2, covid-19, oxidative stress, ros, sars-cov-2 mailto:hardi.baqi@spu.edu.iq mailto:halgord.farag@spu.edu.iq mailto:rafee.askandar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 98 mostly joined with oxidative stress including hypertension, cardiovascular, thrombosis, obesity, and diabetes besides of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the emerging pandemic with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (sars-cov2) initiated with symptomatic individuals of respiratory infections in wuhan, china's hubei province in mid-december 2019. at first, the exact causes of the new outbreak were unknown, so the cases were classified as "pneumonia of unknown etiology." after intensive investigations, the etiology of the disease linked to the coronavirus (cov) family’s novel virus [1]. the new virus is a non-segmented enveloped rna virus that comes from widely dispersed in animals and humans subfamily of viruses namely sarbecovirus, orthocoronavirinae [2],[3]. the single-stranded virus has a diameter of about 65-125 nm with a crown-like outer surface. it comes as a novel β-coronavirus following earlier identifications of mers-cov and sars-cov which assured outbreaks mostly in china, guandong, and saudi arabia with symptoms of strong respiratory tract infections and pulmonary failure. the origin of the new novel coronavirus is doubted to be from bats. researchers found 96.2% similarity in genome sequencing between the bat cov ratg13 and sars-cov-2 [4],[5]. the new 2019-ncov adopts the same entry mechanism as its ancestor sars-cov, which is exploiting the receptor angiotensin-converting enzyme ii (ace2) [6]. the mechanism of the cellular entry relies on the tethering of the subsequent s protein prepared by the cellular proteases and spike (s) protein to the receptor [7]. although the virus's path of entry is through the lungs, but the virus's ace2 receptor is broadly expressed in the human body, especially in the heart, gastrointestinal system, kidney, and the lung’s type ii alveolar [8], which makes it feasible for the virus to do its damage in cells other than of respiratory system. oxidative stress (os): the os is an imbalance in prooxidant-antioxidant level gratifying the prooxidants that costs cell to die [9]. during the normal physiological functions of cells, reactive oxygen species (ros) are essential to maintain smooth biological function, however, the role of ros is firmly coordinated via redox regulation, redox sensing, and redox signaling [10]. during abnormal physiological conditions, the os occurs due to the uncontrolled ros production in which redox signaling is disrupted and causes molecular damage [11]. although, the new redox signaling pathways redefined os with two new mechanisms including disruption of thiol redox circuits and macromolecular damage leading to irregular signaling of the cells and non-functioning redox control [12],[13]. this disruption in redox circuits by specific reactions with thiol elements that are sensitive to redox reactions change the electron transfer or interrupt the gating mechanism that has a crucial role in physiopathology and physiology [13]. os induces protein oxidations and deregulates cell signals causing impairment of many important processes in vascular function, activation of immune cells, remodeling of cardiovascular, renal dysfunction and the sympathetic nervous system excitation such as inflammation, apoptosis, proliferation, migration, and fibrosis [14]. generation of high ros levels due to toxins, pollutants, and airways viral infections are linked with os that causes damage to the cells. the respiratory system’s viral infections are linked with the production of cytokine, cellular damage, inflammation and some other pathophysiological processes that have potential links with os or redox imbalance. high levels of ros with deprived antioxidant mechanisms are of great importance for viruses to replicate, and cause disease kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 99 [15]. there is a certain association between os and inflammation [16]. many viruses that infect the respiratory system induce an increase in ros formation in response to high levels of infected cells. besides, viral infections act on antioxidant mechanisms making an imbalance status between oxidative-antioxidants that result in cell damage because of the os. the mechanisms by which ros induce the function of the cell are through post-translational modification including phosphorylation, and oxidation (nitrosylation, sulfenylation, glutathionylation, and carbomylation) [17],[18],[19]. the proteins that are sensitive toward the oxidation effect of the ros are receptors, ion transporters, signaling molecules, transcription factors, matrix metalloproteases (mmp) and cytoskeletal structural proteins in which all participate in the regulation of vascular, cardiac, and renal function [19],[20]. in normal balanced status of oxidative-antioxidants, during exposure to pro-oxidants, the (nrf2) a nuclear factor erythroid-2-related factor 2 is activated and an antioxidant response regulates the status, but in respiratory viral infections the nrf2 factor is inhibited and (nf-kb) a nuclear factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer of activated b cells signaling is activated that causes further inflammation and cell damages due to os [21]. cell proliferation is induced via oxidative stress, apoptosis, inflammation and hypertrophy through initiation of chain redox reactions. the activity of free radicals with other ros molecules can oxidize various molecules. protein oxidations and lipid oxidation results in damages of vascular smooth muscle cells (vsmcs), endothelial cells, myocardial cells, and by changing the expression of redox genes, an intracellular calcium overload, and fragmentation of dna [22]. sars-cov-2 entry mechanism to the cell the length of sars-cov-2 strains showed to have 29.2 kb. the sample isolates were taken from covid-19 patients with pneumonia from wuhan’s seafood market [23]. the structure of sars-cov-2 is comprised of many accessory proteins with four main structural proteins that are small envelope (e) glycoprotein, nucleocapsid (n) protein, spike (s) glycoprotein, and membrane (m) glycoprotein, [24]. on the surface of the virus, the s spike proteins with molecular weights of about 150 kda are located. the s protein binds the virus with host cells by forming homotrimers sticking on the top of the virus which accelerates the binding between the ace2 enzymes in the cells of the lower respiratory tract with the envelope virus. the glycoprotein from the surface of the virus is cleaving into two subunits s1 and s2 by the activity of protease enzymes from the host cell. the s1 part is responsible to the cellular tropism for making of a binding domain to the receptor and determination of host-virus range. whereas, the mediation to the fusion of the virus in transmitting host cells is done by s2 part [4],[25],[26]. the ace2 receptor is highly expressed in lung’s type ii alveolar cells (at2), stratified epithelial cells, and upper esophagus with cells from the colon and ileum, myocardial, kidney’s proximal tubule, cholangiocytes, and proximal urothelial cells [27]. the abundance of ace2 receiver in other than respiratory cells expand the symptomatic features of covid-19 to include problems such as cardiovascular, digestive tract, and kidneys [28]. nadh/nadph oxidase: the majority of vasculature’s ros are come from nadh/nadph oxidase, these are nonphagocytic oxidases that include (nox1, nox2, nox4, nox5 (humans) and nox1, nox2, nox4 (rodents)) [29],[30]. many pathways mediate nadh/ nadph oxidase induced ros production [31], one of the main sources is because of at ii [32]. the ace2 receptor generates angiotensin 1,7 (at 1,7) from angiotensin ii (at ii) that balances the ace effect in which generates at ii from at i [33]. at ii with et-1 are among many vasoactive factors in circulation that are important in pathophysiology hypertension [34],[35]. high ros levels in vascular as an effect of atii, et-1with some other vasoactive peptides activates the ca2+ channels that piles up the ca2+ activating nox sensitive to ca2+, this process consequently leads to amplification of redox signaling and damages the epithelium cell [36]. kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 100 2. literature review 2.1 the association of os markers with some viral infection the association of os markers with some viral infection severities such as hepatitis c (hcv) virus is obvious, yet regarding the sars-cov virus the clinical data is finite, even though some lines of evidence propose that the ros overproduction along with depletion of antioxidant functions have a great importance in the pathogenesis of sars-cov infections accompanied by the severity and development of the respiratory diseases. animal studies of sars models exhibited an increase in levels of ros with distress in antioxidant levels in the time of infection with sars-cov [37]. the lung injury severities of infected sars-cov patients are speculated to be in association with transcription factors including nf-kb that are activated as a result of os coupling with innate immunity, worsen the pro-inflammatory response of the host cell [38]. a viral protease enzyme 3clpro of sars-cov is entangled in apoptosis of cell by increasing the generation of ros in hl-cz cells. the viral protease enzyme activates a reporter gene that is nf-kb factor-dependent that linked with ros generation in hl-cz cells. the nf-kb factor also appears in other apoptosis and proinflammatory genes, this suggests that the viral protease plays a central role in sars-cov pathophysiology [39]. moreover, 3a protein of sars-cov is linked with mitochondrial cell death pathways. the mechanism of this protease in huh7 cells is depended on the activation of p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (mapk) and involves high levels of p53 protein expression and bax oligomerization. mapk are activated due to oxidative stress, dna damage, viral infections and carcinogenic stimulations [40]. the active phosphorylated mapk form has been found in infected sars cov cells [15]. the pathogens, including viral such as sars cov can amplify the inflammatory response of the host cells in a reaction to oxidative stress induced on nf-kb, this finally causes lung injury [41]. the bond between os, pathogenesis and inflammation of sars-cov is proved by regulation of mitochondrial genes and genes responsible for os in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (pbmc) in recovering sars cov patients. the sensitive genes to os such as, fth1, prdx1, and fos exhibited a striking increase in their expression, furthermore, ifrdi, il-ib, and some other genes that are associated with stress response protein dnajbi all overexpressed in pbmc of sars-cov infected patients [42]. in the consequence of os with deprived antioxidant mechanisms aging process occurs [43],[44], in aged mice, sars cov induced more severely than the younger mice. the expression of the virus in the proinflammatory medium is higher as seen in older mice. this result suggests the age-related os with weak antioxidant system disturbs the balance and rises the ros. consequently, other than the adaptive immune function that is affected by the ageing process, but the whole host cell becomes a proinflammatory environment. however, an immune response of host cells with differential expression of inflammation-associated genes in which nf-kb played a central role, was stronger in younger macaques [45]. 2.2 os effect on cardiac function the key signaling molecules for mediation of the regulation and homeostasis of intracellular calcium that is critical for the maintenance and triggering of the vasoconstriction and cardiac contractions are ros in which signal the vasoactive agents like atii, endothelin-1 (et-1), prostanoids and aldosterone [46],[47],[48],[49]. the vascular and cardiac cell proliferation, hypertrophy, inflammation, and mitigation is controlled by (mapk) a mitogen-activated protein kinase that all of its three members jnk, erk1/2, and p38mapk are activated by ros [48],[49],[50],[51]. high intracellular levels of h2o2 promote the phosphorylation of p66shc that is a major ros regulator in mitochondria in which involves vegf which is important in angiogenesis, proliferation, and migration in endothelial cells [52]. according to both clinical and pre-clinical studies, the os biomarkers in males are confirmed to be higher than females [53], [54], [55]. the highly abundant ros in the cardiovascular system are (o2– ), (h2o2), (onoo–), and (no) [10],[11],[56]. o2– is very unstable, impermeable molecule to the cell membrane with a short half-life, h2o2 with longer half-life is more stable and kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 101 permeable, making it more efficient molecule in signaling [57],[58]. no which is a prototype endothelial vasodilator is produced by the activity of nos enzymes [59], [60]. the product of combining the two radicals o2– and no is onoo– a short-lived highly unstable molecule with strong oxidation capabilities, if protonated (hoono) becomes permeable to the cell membrane [61]. the interconversion between no and o2– accompanied by uncontrolled production of o2– and h2o2 costs the redox signaling a change in the cell leading to cells and tissue damage as a result of oxidative stress [62]. 2.3 antioxidant system elevated ros levels in the cells lead to oxidative stress, some are free radicals possess unpaired electrons that have oxidizing power including superoxide anion (o2–), no, and hydroxyl radical (oh). others like hydrogen peroxide (h2o2), hypochlorous acid (hocl), and peroxynitrite (onoo–) are non-free radicals with oxidation abilities. ros produced in many cells like vascular smooth muscle cells (vsmcs), endothelial cells, and mononuclear cells by catalyzing activities of many enzymes such as nicotinamide-adenine dinucleotide phosphate (nadph) oxidase, uncoupled endothelial no synthase (enos), xanthine oxidase, cyclooxygenase, lipoxygenase, glucose oxidase, and mitochondrial electron transport [22]. the enzyme superoxide dismutase (sod) of three isoforms which are the cytosolic cu/zn sod, the extracellular sod, and mitochondrial mn-sod convert o2– to water through the process of detoxification that also includes catalase, and glutathione peroxidase (gpx) [22],[63]. the homeostasis between the extent of the antioxidant defense and oxidative stress indicates the susceptibility ratio of the vascular cells to the ros [63]. 2.4 glutathione glutathione is a tripeptide composed of three amino acids which are cysteine, glycine, and glutamate role as a copious antioxidant that stops the ros from damaging the cells [64]. keeping inflated concentrations of a reduced form of the glutathione gsh, in cells is enough to exhibit its importance in jurisdiction of many biological processes including folding of proteins, vitamin e and c regeneration, anti-viral actions, cell proliferation regulation, immune response, apoptosis and detoxifying the endogenous and external oxidants [64],[65]. many studies stressed out the advantages of glutathione on human body acting as an anti-viral, yet, this prominent antioxidant in pathology and clinical applications is misconstrued [66]. the glutathione exhibits antiviral activities in various ways, it’s well-known for its role in the inhibition of many types of virus replications, and since the gsh is not limited to one single processes, common sense suggests the possibility of its effectiveness over sars cov-2 as well. the ros/gsh ratio is correlated with the severity of covid-19, in moderate and severe cases the ros/gsh ratio was bigger than the milder covid-19 symptoms. the outcoming results postulate the inactivity of the sars cov-2 to replicate in high glutathione levels [66]. 2.5 evidence supporting bipartite role for oxidative stress and covid-19 however the mechanism is not clear, yet the covid-19 complications in cardiovascular are becoming a prominent threat of the disease other than respiratory diseases [67]. there is evidence that covid-19 is linked with the incidence of thrombosis [68]. covid-19 patients with moderate and severe symptoms showed elevated ros levels accompanied by a decrease in glutathione and a bigger ratio of ros/gsh, while the patients with milder symptoms kept their glutathione levels [66]. many studies suggest that atii pathogenesis increases the production of o2– in vascular cells, the sars-cov-2 interferes atii while the virus binds to the ace2 receptor [69],[70],[71]. in covid-19 patients, neutrophils significantly increase [72], it is well established that neutrophils increase ros and use for defense mechanism [73]. the ace2 by generating at1,7 reduces the ros effects, maintains functionality of the endothelial cells and through inhibition of the inflammatory response, prevents early atherosclerosis [74],[75]. in an original investigation about comorbidities among 5700 hospitalized patients of covid-19 in new york city area, researchers found out kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus ( covid-19) | 102 hypertension was the most common with 56.6% of the cases, then comes obesity with 41.7%, and diabetes with 33.8%. only 30.7% were febrile, among all patients 17.3% were suffering respiratory issues with 24 breathes per minute and only 27.8% of the total number of patients needed supplemented oxygen. the rate of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (copd) and asthma hospitalized patients were only 5% and 9% respectively. from all cases, 553 patients (21%) died, 320 (12.2%) of patients putted on a mechanical ventilator in which only 38 (3.3%) discharged alive, 81 (3.2%) of the patients were received therapy for their kidneys [76]. atherosclerosis starts from endothelial dysfunction leading to cardiovascular diseases. oxidative stress results in the impairment of the endothelial function and development of cardiovascular diseases through distorting the balance between high reactive oxygen species (ros) and low no production in particular superoxide [22]. os and hypertension are associated in various ways including hypertension induced by endocrine (aldosterone, at ii, deoxycorticosterone acetate doca)), stroke-prone shr (shrsp), genetic hypertension (spontaneously hypertensive rats (shr), diet-induced hypertension (zinc, fat, salt), hypertension induced by surgery (two-kidney one clip (2k1c), aortic banding), pre-eclampsia, neurogenic hypertension and pulmonary hypertension [77],[78],[79]. vascular injuries as a result of endothelial dysfunctions are linked to highproduction levels of vascular ros, os, and vascular inflammations [80]. the ros production in vascular smooth muscle cells (vsmc) of hypertensive patient’s arteries, showed elevations of enzymatic catalytic activity of nox. the inflammatory response of the cells in hypertensive patients enhanced by o2and h2o2, in comparison to cells from normotensive counterparts [81]. evidence suggests that the er stress participates in os by a high generation of o2-, activation of the mitochondrial oxidases, and decrease in antioxidants [82],[83]. the mortality rate of newly emerged sars cov-2 or covid-19 infection is associated with the patient’s age and sex [84]. the data suggests the case fatality rate in adults be estimated less than 0.2% while in elderly patients above 80 reaches 9.3%. the os markers in men are generally higher than women and the levels of the ros in postmenopausal women increases from premenopausal [54].in addition, chronic diseases like hypertension, obesity, and diabetes elevate the fatality risk by a factor of 5 times. meanwhile, the risk is milder in younger covid-19 patients [85]. 3. conclusion to conclude this review, the hypothesis proposes that, rather than the obvious route of action that sars cov-2 dispatches to perform most of its damage, which is pneumonia in the lungs, another highly possible destination for the virus to vandalize is epithelium 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abstract volume 6 – issue 1june 2021 doi: 10.24017/science.2021.1.4 article history: received 1/2/2021 accepted 5/3/2021 background: iraq and the kurdistan region was affected by the epidemic of covid-19 which gradually led to a lockdown in march and april and a wide-spread disruption of people’s life and activates. objective: in this study, the researcher investigated psychological hardiness and its relation to health awareness among citizens of the kurdistan region during the corona epidemic. methods: across sectional design quantitative survey, conducted online from 1st to 18 april 2020. the survey was carried out after two months of lockdown due to the covid-19 in the kurdistan region. a questionnaire consist of 25 questions was prepared to measure psychological hardiness. results: the researcher observed a low level of psychological hardiness, because of the pandemic of covid-19. it has shown the non-significant association between psychological hardiness and health awareness also identified several significant factors associated with this psychological hardiness and health awareness. conclusion: the study showed that the psychological hardiness of the citizens of the kurdistan region is at a low level during the covid-19 pandemic. the results can contribute to further research to investigate the effect of the pandemic on the public`s association of psychological hardiness with health awareness. keywords: psychological hardiness, health awareness, kurdistan region, covid 19 pandemic. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 30 copyright © 2021 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the coronavirus (covid-19) is a group of viruses that cause illnesses and disorders in the respiratory tract. covid-19 is a new type of coronavirus and it's not found before, it appears for the first time when the outbreak began in china (wuhan), at the beginning of december 2019. the covid-19 has been confirmed as a pandemic disease worldwide by the world health organisation (who) [1]. coronaviruses are mostly affected the respiratory and gastrointestinal tract. the covid-19 virus it’s not only an effect on physical aspects but also affects people's mental health and emotional aspects as several theories imply [2]. this new pandemic and uncertain prognosis for this new version of the virus all-cause experience of fear and anxiety among adults and children whole the world. all the actions that do by public health for protection and decrease of spreading of covid-19 like social distance, isolation from each other, and loneliness make more stress, fear, and anxiety [3]. all these three reactions (stress, fear, anxiety) are a normal response to real threats when people faced unknown what happens and uncertainly treatment, and people at the end experience fear during the covid-19 pandemic [4]. fear experience on one hand is very significant changing in daily living activities and routines of people to settle down and help for reducing of spreading of covid-19 [5], working online at home and distance learning for kids, reduce of physical activity and less contact with colleagues and friend and limitation in our social contact all of these difficulties effect on people`s mental and emotional aspects and also physical aspect and health status [6]. the experience to respond to all of these problems that occur during covid-19 depends on many factors such as their background and social support by government and families, financial status, their physical and psychological status, and the community that they live in it [7]. the most main result that appears with covid-19 in the world is psychological hardiness that faced to all society and countries [8,9]. the positive psychological and mental aspects of the individual have a main role to accepted the sudden community health crisis [10]. based on several kinds of literature about positive emotional and mental health techniques and skills at the human being has a direct effect on reducing the level of stress and anxiety during such pandemic as covid-19 [11]. social support, sense of coherence, optimism, hardiness, and self-esteem are all some of the factors that lead to positive mental health that all-important to tolerate during covid-19 [12]. based on hardiness theory, three elements can improve coping in an individual [13]. “control” is the first element and in this element, individual beliefs can control the environment. during covid19 individual believes can control all precautions methods and find a new alternative to improve new way and make better and more stable mental health statement. “commitment” is the second element of this theory and its engagement and do activities like writing, drawing, reading, cooking and other activities that make individual busy and reduce the level of stress and anxiety during covid-19 pandemic. “challenge” is the third element of psychological hardiness theory, which is the ability of acceptance of all changing and do the new activities and try to find new opportunity to the better condition [14]. all of these challenges and opportunities make more positive mental health and psychological wellbeing [13]. nowadays covid-19 is considered the most important event and problem in the world. most of the studies are toward this aspect. one of the important issues in this area is psychological hardiness, which is needed to evaluate and interpret. psychological hardiness is mostly affected by people's knowledge, attitudes, and practices (kap) towards covid-19 by kap theory [15,16]. the outbreak in 2003 from sars recommended that knowledge and attitudes confront of infectious diseases and illnesses have the direct relation to the level of fear and emotional imbalance among the people, that can lead to negative effect to prevent and help to control the spread of the viruses [17,18]. the covid-19 pandemic is now spread in the world for near of one year but still very short in psychological and mental health literature and studies https://www.physio-pedia.com/antiviral_drugs kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 31 related to this problem in the world [19]. iraq and the kurdistan region were among the areas affected by the covid-19 pandemic. as a result, the government applies lockdown in march and april, which this decision has a main role and effect on the public activities and daily livings routine of people. understanding the population awareness about covid-19 is essential in iraq to a more effective process to success in this crucial period. in this study, the researcher investigated psychological hardiness according to gender and age, and its relation to health awareness components among citizens of the kurdistan region during the corona epidemic. 2. literature review or related work or introduction this section allows the authors to describe the problems proposed in this paper as well literature review regarding the discussed subject. the structure of the paper is able to be different based on the type of the manuscript: literature review, study case, letter. 3. methods and materials design of the study across sectional design quantitative survey that was done online from 1 st to 18th april 2020 after two months lockdown in kurdistan region for covid -19. participant the sample consists of 1203 adult participants, including 874 from sulaimani, 210 hawler, 84 halabja, and 33 dhok provinces. the age of the sample ranged between 18 and 48 or above. the survey was established in a google survey and the participants were invited to take part in the survey through online social media (facebook). the first part included a written consent to inform the participants about the objective of this research. after participant's agreements, they could continue to complete the questionnaire. measures extensive literature review and related previous studies were established for the questionnaire and the questionnaire was accurate with the same modification by the researcher after the process of 3 steps (internal review, input for the target population , and external review by expert, in the step of input for target population the researchers select 100 samples to the answered questioner by their opinion, to benefits from them to frame and re-arranging the questioners of the measure. after these steps, a questionnaire of 25 questioners to measure psychological hardiness, later the researchers got the psychometric qualities as follow: 1(construct – validity) for this kind of validity, the researchers depend on (relation of each question with the overall score of scale or measure), which means the relationship between the degree of each question with the total degree accounted for all the measures. the researcher’s dependent on (pearson correlation) by using (spss) program, which shows the level of the correlations between each question with the overall score of scale , which was between (0.230-0.534), and according to (ebeil standard) if the correlation coeffici ent of each question was less than (0.19) regarded as weak and should be removed, while if it was more than (0.19) so that question is regarded as strong and should be remained [20]. 2to assess the level of reliability for the (psychological hardiness measure) before applying it to the research sample, the researchers used (re -examining test), which applied to a sample of (70) person through a private e-mail, then the same questionnaire was applied after 2 weeks. later by using pearson correlation between the two tests the result was (0.889), which was very strong depending on the indicator (0.01). kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 32 table (1): test and re-test for sample stability. tests test 1 test 2 correlation between the two tests n 70 70 0.886 mean 38,500 38.152 sd 4.28 4.32 3-finally, after assessing the psychometric qualities the measure of psychological hardiness became 22 questions, for each of them were 3 chooses for the answer to select as a follower. table (2): scoring for psychological hardiness. answers the score of positive questions the score of negative questions i am strongly agree 3 1 i am agree 2 2 i am not agree 1 3 the key component of the questionnaire was the kurdish translation of the questioner first part psychological burden containing 22 items so that by comparison the mean of the sample with the hypothesized mean for the scale which is 44 degrees will calculate the level of psychological hardiness. the second section consists of health awareness, including knowledge, practice, and attitude. the questions were distributed to 12 questions for knowledge, 6 questions for practice, and 8 questions for attitude with respectively hypothesized mean (6,4,3). the socio-demographic characteristics were limited to age and gender. by only clicking the answer checkbox, it takes an average of 10 minutes to respond to the questionnaire. this research was approved by the presiden cy of sulaimani university. statistical analysis for statistical analysis, spss version 22 was used . all the data recorded in an excel file and then analyzed by spss. the researcher used descriptive and inferential analysis. 4. results (table 3) illustrated that the average degrees of psychological hardiness among citizens of the kurdistan region, in general, is (38.95) degrees and a standard deviation of (4.32), and it appeared that the arithmetic mean is smaller than the hypothetical mean (44) on the triple scale of psychological hardiness. when comparing the arithmetic mean of the research sample as a whole with the hypothetical average of the scale and using the t-test and comparing the value of the calculated t (311.7) with the value of the tabular t (1.96), it was found that t the difference is significant and at the level of (0.05). it appeared that the psychological hardiness of the citizens of the kurdistan region is at a low level. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 33 table (3): level of psychological hardiness. variable mean std. deviation degree freedom hypothesized mean t value t table significant psychological hardiness 38.95 4.32 1200 44 31 1.96 0.05 (table 4) to identify the difference in the level of psychological hardiness according to the gender variable, the statistical analysis (t-test) was used according to the comparison of the arithmetic mean of males of (38.62) with a standard deviation of (4.45) with the arithmetic means of the psychological hardiness of females of (39.21) and a standard deviation the value of (4.20), and the calculated t value reached (2.35), which is higher than the tabular t value (1.96). it was found that there are significant differences between males and females in the level of psychological toughness, as shown in (table 3). table ( 4): compare by gender for psychological hardiness level. (table 5) explained the evidence from this table that the calculated final value of psychological hardiness (8.14) at the significance level 0.05, with a horizontal degree of freedom (4) and a vertical degree of freedom (1196), is a statistical function, meaning that there are differences in the level of psychological hardiness among citizens according to age. table (5): analysis of variance for the significance of the difference in the level of psychological hardiness according to age groups (sheffy-toki) test. (table 6) the table shows that the level of psychological hardiness is more among the age groups of (18-25years) and( 26-32 years). variables number of samples mean std. deviation t value t table significant gender male 539 38.62 4.45 2.35 1.96 0.05 female 662 39.21 4.20 the tabular value at indication level 0.05 f sum of square mean square df source of contras (psychological hardiness) 2.37 8.14 596 149.16 4 between groups 21897.64 18.30 1196 within groups ---------- --------- 1201 total kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 34 table (6:) the level of psychological hardiness according to age groups table 7, has shown a weak correlation between psychological hardiness level and health awareness. table (7): correlation between psychological hardiness and parts of health awareness variables the correlation coefficient (r test) nr significant level knowledge with psychological hardiness -0.133 1201 0.01 practice with psychological hardiness -0.247 attitude with psychological hardiness -0.292 table 8 according to this table's comparison between the health awareness components knowledge, practice, and attitude showed the highest mean is distributed with knowledge component with 8.83 and sd 1.78. the practice has the lowest mean average of 3.78. the table shows that have high significant level is between the health awareness components. table (8): level of health awareness according to health awareness components. fields of health awareness no. of sample s mean std. deviation degree freedom hypothesized mean t value t table significant knowledge 1201 8.83 1.78 1200 6 171.01 1.96 0.05 practice 3.78 1.02 4 127.89 attitude 4.95 1.34 3 128.03 5. discussion the researcher observed low psychological hardiness levels in the study, because of the covid19 pandemic. researchers believe that easy spreading, fewer etiological knowledge, treatment methods, and a huge number of deaths in the world all lead to panic and anxiety among individuals [22]. the quarantine also took place during the data collection in the kurdistan region. this can also affect the psychological aspects of the person. the results are consistent with a survey of the general population conducted in italy, which showed that the outbreak of covid-19 had a psychological effect on individuals [21]. in the study by kurdistan/sulaiman and turkey, their findings show no significant relationship between psychological hardiness variables number of samples mean std. deviation age 18-25 360 39.88 4.77 26-32 232 39.23 4.13 33-39 239 38.37 3.87 40-47 205 38.32 4.10 48or above 165 38.15 4.09 total 1201 38.95 4.32 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 35 and gender [23,24]. the study result also found that women have reported a significantly higher prevalence of psychological hardiness, which is the opposite of indian studies, that show anxiety and stress are more common among men [24]. according to an iranian study, anxiety is more among men than female and in the level of depression they have not any differences [26], and researchers argue that it could be due to several social media and news stories suggesting that covid-19 has a greater influence on male than female, and this aspect contributes to better psychological well-being for women than men [26]. otherwise, as men prefer to be outside more than women in the kurdistan culture, men have more negative effects on the quarantine situation than women. this way depression, anxiety, and panic are showed more in males than females. on the other hand study from singapore, which does significantly and very fast control and prevents to spread of the covid-19 in their country has a varying result from our result [25]. although some studies have shown such a correlation, we have found substantial associations between psychological hardiness and age [26,27]. the lockdown situation and reduction of people`s daily activity among the young age group especially during this pandemic period all affect mental health and psychological hardiness. this study identified a weak psychological hardiness relationship with health awareness and in musl/iraq region, a finding in contrast with our findings, [28] study in oman shows that they found considerable variations in self -efficacy and not the main differences in psychological hardiness [29]. 5. conclusion the study showed that the psychological hardiness is at a low level among citizens of the kurdistan region during the covid-19 pandemic. it has shown the non-significant association between psychological hardiness and health awareness. the researchers found that the public health in the kurdistan region needs more focus on population awareness, especially during this crucial period such as a pandemic, economical suffering, and political disturbances that all these factors have a direct effect on the populations' mental health status. elevated the level of people`s health understanding of psychological 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[29] m. s. hammoud, b. s. bakkar, m. m. abu-hilal, and y. s. m. al rujaibi, “relationship between psychological hardiness and career decision-making self-efficacy among eleventh grade students in sultanate of oman,” int. j. psychol. couns., vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 6–14, 2019.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq detection of antichlamydial antibody in patients with ectopic pregnancy and normal pregnancy srwa jamal murad obstetrics & gynecology department college of medicine sulaimani university sulaimani, iraq srwa.murad@univsul.edu.iq article info abstract volume 5 – special issue: 4th international conference on the health and medical science : medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) doi: 10.24017/science.2020.ichms2020.1 8 article history: received: 21 september 2020 accepted: 27 september 2020 aim of the current research is to assess the chlamydia trachomatis infection role in the development of early pregnancy complication including ectopic pregnancy and miscarriage in sulaimanyia maternity teaching hospital. it is a comparative study conducted in gynecology clinic and emergency department of sulaimanyia maternity teaching hospital during the period from 1st of september 2018 to 31st of march 2019. the study groups included of 70 pregnant women; the first group included 35 ectopic pregnant women and the second group included 35 normal pregnant women that both groups had been selected randomly. pregnant women with history of ectopic pregnancies, women used intrauterine device, in vitro fertilization, assisted reproduction and history of pelvic surgery. blood sample (2 ml venous blood) collected to test for antibodies level for chlamydia trachomatis by alegria test system for both studied groups and patients with ectopic pregnancy detected by beta human chorionic gonadotropin and ultrasound scanning. the collected data analyzed by spss program and for compare between means of two variables independent sample t-test was used while for comparison of categorical variables chi square test was used with considering ≤ 0.05 p-value as significant level. the results shows that the mean age of normal pregnancy were (28.3±4.6) group compared with mean age ectopic pregnancy (29.5±4.9) group. the mean igg (6.3±5.1) of patients with ectopic pregnancy was found to be significantly higher than mean igg (2.8±1.1) for normal pregnant patients (p-value 0.01) and igm mean (4.5±2.4) of patients with ectopic pregnancy was significantly higher than mean igm (1.6±1.2) for keywords: chlamydia trachomatis, ectopic pregnancy, antibodies. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 161 normal pregnant patients with p-value 0.01. in conclusion, infection of chlamydia trachomatis has a significant relationship with the development of ectopic pregnancy therefor screening and treatment of chlamydia infection may reduce ectopic pregnancy rate with low cost. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the implantation of the gestational sac outside of the uterine cavity known as ectopic pregnancy. the major implantation locations in the orders are in the fallopian tubes (95.5%), followed by the ovaries (3.2%) and abdominal cavity (1.3%) [1]. globally, it is one of the main causes of maternal mortality, with incidence in developed countries as 1-2% and higher in developing countries [2, 3]. in the united kingdom (uk) around 10,000 ectopic pregnancies are diagnosed annually and ectopic pregnancy incidence rate is 11.1 in the uk for each 1000 pregnancies which causing 0.35 deaths per 1000 ectopic pregnancies in the period 2003 to 2005 [4]. ectopic pregnancy have three types; cornual pregnancy is pregnancy that implant inside the rudimentary horn of a bicornuate uterus and interstitial pregnancy is the pregnancy in the interstitial part of the tube while heterotopic pregnancy is a rare type which is a fertilized egg implant inside and outside the uterus [5]. the mechanism and the cause of the implantation of gestational sac outside the uterine cavity is unknown. the four main possibilities are an anatomic obstruction, an abnormal zygote, abnormalities in the tubal motility and trans peritoneal migration of the zygote [6]. multiple factors can leads to ectopic pregnancy; the causes may be impaired tubular motility, obstruction of the tubes by one or both functional and anatomical causes, cilliary dysfunction and tubal implantation promoted and stimulated by the molecular chemotactic factors [7]. the risk factors that may increase probability of ectopic pregnancy are history of ectopic pregnancy, infertility and it is treatments such as ivf. maternal high age, smoking and tubal damages caused by surgery or infection [8, 9]. also, another main risk factor that lead to ectopic pregnancy is a history of pelvic inflammatory disease which is rise the incidence of ectopic pregnancy in the united kingdom including chlamydia infection which is the main cause of pelvic inflammatory disease. ectopic pregnancy will increase by seven fold after acute salpingitis; prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases and pelvic inflammatory disease will decrease the rate of ectopic pregnancies also rate of heterotopic pregnancy increased after assisted reproductive techniques used [9-11]. in the developing countries, out of all the pregnant women who diagnosed with the ectopic pregnancy, near 10% of them die by this condition. also, ectopic pregnancy causing many morbidity for pregnant women such as; sever pain in the pelvic area, vaginal bleeding and if the condition not treated may lead to infertility, because of those complications ectopic pregnancy condition is a major cause of maternal morbidity [12]. therefore, early diagnose and treatment will prevent development of this life-threatening conditions [13]. chlamydia is a gram-negative microorganism that infect the epithelium of the genital tract. it is one of the main sexually transmitted infections worldwide and it is mostly affects sexually active adolescents and young adults. 80% of women are asymptomatic, there for diagnosis will be missed in most of the cases [14]. chlamydial infection complications are chronic pelvic pain, pelvic inflammatory disease (pid), ectopic pregnancy (ep) and infertility [15] also it may cause neonatal conjunctivitis and pneumonia if infection occurs during vaginal delivery [16]. peritonitis caused by chlamydia trachomatis leads to fibrin exudate on the surface of the ovary and adhesion formation. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 162 infection occurs because of chlamydia cells by specific receptors that entered the columnar cells. inclusion bodies form inside columnar cells and divide by binary fission rapidly. these divided cells reform new infection particles and released from the infected cells. the infected cells die and the body immune system response which leads to more cell damages [17].the adhesions leads to pelvic pain and tube obstructions, with subsequent episodes of pid more damage occur so may leads to ectopic pregnancy and infertility [18]. there are different diagnosis methods to diagnose chlamydial infection such as; nucleic acid amplification test for chlamydia bacteria dna with high sensitivity but need log duration after exposure and have three methods; urine, swab and direct fluorescent antibody. urine samples need to collect first-catch urine avoid dilution. direct fluorescent antibody (dfa) for swab culture from endocervical, for antibodies (igm) that present in the blood and lymph fluid enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (elisa) test used, enzyme immunoassay (eia) for antibodies (igg) present in the every body fluids and the last method is fluorescent antibody test for culture of the chlamydia cells which is need around 5 to 7 days get result [19]. the goal of the current study is to assess the role of the chlamydia trachomatis infection in the pregnancy complications including ectopic pregnancy and early pregnancy miscarriages in comparison to normal pregnancy in sulaimanyia maternity teaching hospital. 2. methods and materials this is a comparative study carried out from 1st september 2018 to 31th march 2019 in the gynecology department of maternity teaching hospital in sulaimanyia city. for this study 70 pregnant women selected randomly which divided into two groups; first group 35 patients with normal pregnancy and second group included 35 women with ectopic pregnancy that their age ranges from 18-38 years old in the first trimester of pregnancy and those who had history of ectopic pregnancies, intrauterine device (iud), in vitro fertilization (ivf) and assisted reproduction, previous pelvic surgery and patients who refuse to participate have been excluded from the study. a sample of 2 ml venous blood was drawn from women in both groups and centrifuged, all sera aliquots were kept at -20c until evaluation for anti-chlamydial antibody igg and igm in the hospital’s laboratory has been performed. patients with ectopic pregnancy were admitted to emergency ward and diagnosed by beta human chorionic gonadotropin (hcg) blood test and ultrasound examination. chlamydia trachomatis antibodies (igg & igm) were assessed by the alegria test system. the alegria test are used for the differentiation of various immunoglobulin subtypes of the antibodies for both acute (igm) and previous (igg) bacterial infections, it is very useful test for the asess of the patient's immune status. this test was used for both women with first and second groups. normal value for serum anti chlamydia antibody by elisa for igg level were < 20u/ml and for igm level <20u/ml. the data entered and analyzed by spss software program version 20. descriptive statistics presented in frequency and percentage while continuous variables presented in the mean and standard deviation also spss soft wear program used to generate tables and figures. in addition, for the relationship between two categorical variables chi square test was used and if 20% of the expected variables were less than 5 of total variables fishers exact test was used. however, for comparison between two means independent sample t-test used with consider pvalue less and equal to 0.05 as significant level for all tests. 3. results the current study included 70 pregnant women separated into two groups; the first group (normal pregnancy) consist of 35 pregnant women and the second group consisted of 35 pregnant women with ectopic pregnancy condition. the age mean and standard deviation of the normal pregnancy group were 28.3±4.6 lower than ectopic pregnancy group 29.5±4.9 and there was only 1 (2.9%) women at lower than 20 years old in the normal pregnancy women group compare with ectopic pregnancy was a none. for other age groups, there were 18 kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 163 (51.4%) at the 20-29 years old for normal pregnancy group compare with ectopic pregnancy group were 17 (48.6%) and women in the 30-38 years old were 16 (45.7%) in the normal pregnancy group while 18 (51.4%) were in the ectopic pregnancy group. in addition, according to the age between first and second groups there was a non-significant relationship with p-value 0.2. for the pregnant women address in the current study. results show that, pregnant women in the urban areas were 31 (88.6%) for the normal pregnancy group compare to ectopic pregnancy group were 29 (82.9%) women and pregnant women in the rural areas were 4 (11.4%) and 6 (17.1%) for the normal pregnancy group and ectopic pregnancy group respectively. furthermore, there was a non-significant relationship (p-value 0.4) between normal pregnancy group and ectopic pregnancy groups according to the pregnant women living location. the gravidity mean and standard deviation of the ectopic pregnancy group were higher 3.2±1.7 compared with normal pregnancy group 2.9±1.3 and primigravida were higher in the normal pregnancy group 4 (11.4%) compare with ectopic pregnancy group were 3 (8.6%) while multigravida were higher among ectopic pregnancy group 32 (91.4%) compare with normal pregnancy group were 30 (85.7%) women. also, there was a non-significant relationship (p-value 0.3) between normal pregnancy group and ectopic pregnancy group according to the women gravidity. in addition, for the parity the current study shows that mean and standard deviation were approximately similar for the normal pregnancy (1.6±1) and ectopic pregnancy group (1.6±1.4) also were similar for the nulliparous 5 (14.3%) and multipara 30 (85.7%) for both normal pregnancy group and ectopic pregnancy group and between the first and second groups there was a non-significant relationship with p-value 0.9. finally, for the miscarriage the study reveals that; out of the 35 pregnant women in the ectopic pregnancy group 14 (40%) had abortion and 21 (60%) were higher compare to normal pregnancy group 6 (17.1%) women had abortion and 29 (82.9%) did not have abortion. also, there was a significant relationship for women with previous miscarriage and did not between normal pregnancy group and ectopic pregnancy group with p-value 0.03. table 1 table 1: demographic variables between the two studied groups variable normal pregnancy no (%) ectopic pregnancy no (%) p-value age (mean±sd) 28.3±4.6 29.5±4.9 <20 years 1 (2.9) 0 (0) 0.2 20-29 years 18 (51.4) 17 (48.6) 30-38 years 16 (45.7) 18 (51.4) residence urban 31 (88.6) 29 (82.9) 0.4 rural 4 (11.4) 6 (17.1) gravidity (mean±sd) 2.9±1.3 3.2±1.7 primigravida 4 (11.4) 3 (8.6) 0.3 multigravida 31 (88.6) 32 (91.4) parity (mean±sd) 1.6±1 1.6±1.4 nulliparous 5 (14.3) 5 (14.3) 0.9 multipara 30 (85.7) 30 (85.7) miscarriage yes 6 (17.1) 14 (40) 0.03 no 29 (82.9) 21 (60) kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 164 to reveal the presence of chlamydial infection in the second group (ectopic pregnancy group) the tests for the presence of igg and/or igm antibodies combined of chlamydial infection show that out of 35 pregnant women in the ectopic pregnancy group 82.9% of them had a positive igg and/or igm antibodies in their blood at 1st trimester of pregnancy period and reaming pregnant women in the ectopic pregnancy women group 19.1% had negative results for presence of igg and/or igm antibodies of chlamydial infection in their blood samples at 1st trimester of pregnancy period. figure 1 figure 1: the distribution of positive igg and igm antibody among patients with ectopic pregnancy. table 2 shows the demographic and previous pregnancy characteristics among ectopic pregnant group separately and the relationship between these variables. for the age, majority 18 (51.4%) of the ectopic pregnant women were between 30-38 years old followed by 17 (48.6%) between 20-29 years old and there was a significant relationship for women in the ectopic pregnancy group between age groups with p-value <0.001. in addition, most of ectopic pregnant women 29 (82.9%) were from urban areas rather than rural area 6 (17.1%) and there was a significant relationship between ectopic pregnant women from different living areas with p-value <0.001. for the ectopic women gravidity, majority of women had multigravida 32 (91.4%) compare with primigravida 3 (8.6) with a significant relationship (p-value <0.001) between multigravida and primigravida among women with ectopic pregnancy and for the women parity among ectopic pregnancy group, most of the women 30 (85.7%) had multipara rather than nulliparous were minor 5 (14.3%) with a significant co-relationship (p-value <0.001) between multipara and nulliparous cases among ectopic pregnancy women group. finally, for the miscarriage history among ectopic pregnant women group, out of 35 women 14 (40%) of them had abortion while rest of them 21 (60%) women did not have history of miscarriage and there was a significant relationship (p-value <0.001) between women with history of the miscarriage and not among women in the ectopic pregnancy group. table 2: distribution of demographic and previous pregnancy characteristics among the ectopic pregnancy group. variable ectopic pregnancy group no (%) p-value age <20 years 0 (0) <0.001 20-29 years 17 (48.6) 30-38 years 18 (51.4) residence urban 29 (82.9) <0.001 rural 6 (17.1) gravidity primigravida 3 (8.6) <0.001 kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 165 multigravida 32 (91.4) parity nulliparous 5 (14.3) <0.001 multipara 30 (85.7) miscarriage yes 14 (40) <0.001 no 21 (60) table 3 illustrate the mean and standard deviation of igg and igm chlamydia antibodies rats in the blood for both groups; normal pregnancy and ectopic pregnancy. the mean igg in the ectopic pregnancy group 6.3 (u/ml) were higher compare to the igg chlamydia antibodies mean rate 2.8 (u/ml) in the normal pregnancy group and there was a significant relationship between igg chlamydia antibodies means between normal pregnancy group and ectopic pregnancy group with p-value 0.01. also, the mean igm chlamydia antibodies in the ectopic pregnancy group 4.5 (u/ml) were higher in comparison with the igm chlamydia antibodies mean rate 1.6 (u/ml) in the normal pregnancy group and there was a significant relationship (p-value 0.01) between igm chlamydia antibodies means between normal pregnancy group and ectopic pregnancy group. table 3 table 3: distribution of anti-chlamydia immunoglobulin according to ectopic pregnancy and normal women. variable normal pregnancy group (mean±sd) ectopic pregnancy group (mean±sd) p-value igg (u/ml) 2.8±1.1 6.3±5.1 0.01 igm (u/ml) 1.6±1.2 4.5±2.4 0.01 4. discussion chlamydia affects reproductive age of both males and females, the rate are 2.8% among males in comparison with females are 4.0% [20]. about 10%–30% of females will get chlamydia infection one or more time [21, 22]. majority of chlamydia infections up to 70% are asymptomatic cases, because that many cases are remain untreated and are vulnerable to complications of chlamydia infection like ectopic pregnancy, pelvic inflammatory disease (pid), chronic pelvic pain and tubal factor infertility [23]. the current study showed that anti-chlamydia immunoglobulin mean (igg and igm) were significantly higher among women with ectopic pregnancy in comparison to women with normal pregnancy. this relationship is similar to results of many studies such abdullah study in iraq [24] and mpiima study in uganda which revealed a significant positivity of igg and igm antibodies for chlamydia trachomatis among ectopic pregnancy group compare to women with normal pregnancy [25]. also, a study carried out in nigeria by agholor [26] on 90 women with ectopic pregnancy and 98 women with normal pregnancy; they found that chlamydial infection has a limited effect in the pathogenesis of ectopic pregnancy with elevation of serum igg and igm antibodies for chlamydia among women with ectopic pregnancy. a recent study conducted in pakistan found that rate of igg antibodies was much higher (25%) in ectopic pregnancy women in comparison with control group (11.3%). pelvic inflammatory disease (pid) are main cause of ectopic pregnancy which is caused by bacteria such as chlamydia trachomatis and gonorrhea and other causes of ep include the use of contraceptive, surgery and smoking [27]. in addition, many recent reports indicate that chlamydia trachomatis is the major causative agent in the progress of pid and ep compared to gonoccocal infection [28]. the genital chlamydia trachomatis infection relationship with ep has been established mostly from seroepidemiologic researches which are recruiting and comparing normal pregnant women group with ectopic pregnancy group women that have kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 166 chlamydia trachomatis infection which will lead to detectable formation of igg antibody in the chronically infected women’s serum [2]. many report indicated that the serological test of chlamydia trachomatis antibodies are not cost effective and beneficial, while isolation of this agent by cell culture has not been applied to date [2, 29]. a prospective case-control study done in saudi arabia by ashshi [30] showed a prevalence of 31.8% of sexually transmitted disease among 135 participants and the frequencies were higher in case of ectopic pregnancy. out of this, chlamydia trachomatis infection had a higher rate 27.4%, of frequency in ectopic pregnancy compared to other sexually transmitted disease. but the technique used for testing the chlamydia infection was by naat and multiplex pcr. also, study in egypt stated that elisa screening test which is noninvasive and simple method might be used with a high predictive value for detection of chlamydia trachomatis infection antibodies igg among infertile tubal occlusion egyptian women [31]. in the current study, history of positive abortion factor have a significant effect (p-value 0.03) with the ectopic pregnancy. this finding coincides with results of park [32] study concluded that abortion history was correlated significantly with ectopic pregnancy in the south korea by analyzing data of six years from 2009 to 2015. ectopic pregnancy is result of pregnancy a complication instead of abortion medical treatment complications. because of some unknown reasons it is remain unclear the ectopic pregnancy rate among early aborted pregnant women is much lower compare to all pregnancies rate1.9% in the united states [33]. 5. conclusion chlamydia trachomatis has a significant relationship in the development of ectopic pregnancy and it is obviously elevated in women with ectopic pregnancy. also, previous miscarriages are also more in patients with ectopic pregnancy therefore screening and treatment of chlamydia infection may decrease the rate of ectopic pregnancy with low cost. reference [1] f.-a. taran, k.-o. kagan, m. hübner, m. hoopmann, d. wallwiener, and s. brucker, "the diagnosis and treatment of ectopic pregnancy," deutsches ärzteblatt international, vol. 112, p. 693, 2015. 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[33] e. a. el hakim, u. d. gordon, and v. a. akande, "the relationship between serum chlamydia antibody levels and severity of disease in infertile women with tubal damage," archives of gynecology and obstetrics, vol. 281, pp. 727-733, 2010. 1. introduction 5. conclusion  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq| email: kjar@spu.edu.iq skin tumors diagnosis utilizing case based reasoning and the expert system roza fuad majeed soran ab. m. saeed information technology department vice presidence of technical college of informatics scientific affairs sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq roza.fuad@spu.edu.iq soran.saeed@spu.edu.iq dana abdulmajeed abdilkarim haval mohammed sidqi medical laboratory database department technical college of health computer science institute sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq dana77@doctor.com haval.sidqi@spu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.1.10 article history: received: 26 january 2020 accepted: 12 march 2020 skin cancer is considered as the most type of cancer that happens in humans. three basic types of cancer occur which are basal cell carcinoma (bcc), squamous cell carcinoma (scc). skin cancer leads to death if it is not diagnosed in an early stage. fortunately, early diagnosis of skin cancer raises the survival rate of victims. computer-aided has a great role to detect skin cancer which leads to saving human life. based on that, this study proposes a computer-aided diagnosis (cad) system that detects skin cancer using digital images, techniques of image processing, by using the case-based reasoning and expert system. the main goal for designing this system is to create a cheap, easy-to-use, and relatively accurate system for detecting skin cancer in an early stage to save human life, raises the survival rate, and decreases the cost of the dermoscopy test. keywords: skin cancer, bcc, scc, melanoma, cbr, expert system. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. mailto:roza.fuad@spu.edu.iq mailto:dana77@doctor.com kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 97 1. introduction skin is the largest part of the human body; it protects our body from heat and cold. the skin also protects the body from physical hazards such as ultraviolet light, mechanical hazards such as traumas and friction, biological hazards such as viruses, bacteria and fungi. the skin consists of three layers which are epidermis, dermis and the subcutaneous adipose tissue. fifteen percentage weight of the body is the skin [1].cancer is considered as a common issue of clinical medicine. it is known by the abnormal growth of the cells which leads to death if it is not controlled. the unusual growth of the cell that remains in the same location is called benign, while the abnormal cells that do not remain in the same location or the cells spread then it is called malignant. malignant tumors divided into two types, a primary tumor and secondary tumor. skin cancer is a type of cancer and considered as the common type of cancers which is approximately %50 of all cancer is skin cancer. skin cancer happens in peoples who have fairskin and in the people exposed to the sun and ultraviolet light for a long time and in the people who are exposed to the xradiation [2]. skin cancer divided into three types two of them are nonmelanoma skin cancer (nmsc) and they are basal cell carcinoma which is the common type, squamous cell , the third type of skin cancer is melanoma which is known as melanoma skin cancer (msc) [3]. computer-aided detection or diagnosis (cad) systems have a great role in the field of medical image diagnosis. it helps dermatologists to raise the accuracy. for classifying image of skin into benign and malignant different rules can be used such as image processing techniques by using pre-processing and extracting feature parameters [4], [5]. in this paper, case-based reasoning used which is a branch of artificial intelligence (ai), an expert system for the implementation of the proposed system image processing techniques are used in the pre-processing step for analyzing the image, and a database used for the implementation. over 110 images collected as real cases from emergency hospitals and from the dermatology hospital and from the ali kamal hospital and also from the private clinics. the aim of this paper is to present the techniques and analyze the image of the skin lesion and design the proposed system and to implement the system for detecting skin cancer in an early stage in order to save human life and decreasing cost for recognizing skin cancer. 2. literature review in recent days, skin cancer is the most common and most hazardous type of cancer found in humans. computer vision plays an important role in medical image diagnosis. in this field, there are many authors using different rules and methods for skin cancer detection and classify the image of the skin as a benign or malignant. in a related study conducted by fernandez et al. [6] proposed an intelligent system and they used the following methods for running the system. in the beginning they used the image that was taken from the international skin imaging collaboration (isic), after that the image segmentation started by applying the wavelet – fuzzy c-means algorithm. next, the feature extraction stage begins. authors determined the specific features, and also determined the regions–of–interest (roi), then they used abcd guide for extracting the feature, and an ensemble of clusters that were able to extract the red-green-blue values. the extraction feature stage includes the grey level co-occurrence matrix (glcm) method. finally, the proposed system made a classification for the image into a benign or malignant tumor, they used roc curve for calculating accuracy, specificity, sensibility. another two authors worked on melanoma skin cancer detection in periyasamy et al. [7] the mr image of the human skin was used, and convert the images into a binary image, in addition, pre-processing done on the images that consist of two parts, the first part is resizing the image to the perfect size for the detection system. the second part is hair removal by using the frangi vesselness algorithm. for image segmentation, the k-means clustering algorithm was used. features extracted from the image by using the abcd rule, and classify the images into normal skin or malignant. in the anas et al. [8] proposed a system classification for skin cancer, they used a combination of the color and texture features, because this combination gave the best result compared to using kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 98 gray level information or color alone. they made segmentation for the image of the lesions by using the k-means clustering algorithm, feature extraction made by six different color-textures from the segmented image. the accuracy of the proposed system evaluated on four types of classifier, and the value of the system compared with one another, and to perform better analysis the result of the evaluation of the proposed system compared with five classification rates. khirala et al. [9] wavelet function introduced to the interested technical person outside of the digital signal processing field. the history of the wavelets described that the wavelets beginning with fourier, and comparison done between the wavelet transform and the fourier transforms, and they discussed their properties and other special aspects of wavelets and also include some interesting applications such as de-noising noisy data, musical tones, and image compression. kolkur et al. [10] discussed various classifiers for skin disease detection. authors collected data for ten common skin lesions; they applied different classifiers on the skin lesions such as k nearest neighbors (knn), support vector machine (svm), decision tree, and artificial neural networks (ann), after applying the classifier the result showed that the classifier that has the best accuracy and performance is the artificial neural networks (ann). moreover, chandrahasa et al. [5] made a smartphone application for skin cancer (melanoma) detection in early stage, they used the (abcde) properties which means asymmetry, border, color variation, diameter and expansion for the lesion. they used many different techniques for image processing such as converting the rgb color image into the grayscale image and segmentation for the image and contour and histogram analysis. shukran et al. [11] made diagnosing for melanoma skin cancer by using image processing techniques the process begins with input the image of the skin lesion the dermoscopy image and then the image pre-processed by using techniques for resizing image and de-noise for the image such as hair removal after that the denoised image go to the another stage which is segmentation for the image by using clustering and thresholding and another step is feature extraction by using the (abcde) rule and the image classified in to the normal or cancer . this article also presented the possible methods for detection steps and provided some of the possible classifiers for classification of the image such as ann classifier and artificial intelligence methodologies. bindhu et al. [12] proposed a system for the segmentation of skin lesions by using matlab for implementing the proposed system. the image used in the system captured by the digital camera for locating the skin lesion for the digital image they used texture distinctiveness lesion segmentation (tdls) for the segmentation of the image and find the regions–of–interest (roi). in the tdls method, the method learned the texture of the skin and the lesion then made a calculation for the td metric and classifies the image as a part of the lesion class or part of the skin class. annan et al. [13] made a review on the image segmentation methods and techniques that are widely used in the field of image segmentation. they reviewed the following algorithms such as segmentation by edge detection, segmentation by region-based, segmentation by thresholding, and segmentation by featurebased clustering. the images analysis’s outcome gave the result that the thresholding and region growing gives better results than edge detection and clustering. lamy et al. [14] made an article for using case-based reasoning in the breast cancer field. they proposed the cbr method that automatically executed and presented visually, the system combined qualitative and quantitative approaches. the proposed method tested on three public datasets that have classification accuracy comparable to the k-nearest neighbor (knn) algorithm. through the small user study, they tested the proposed method for the better explainable. kawahara et al. [15]demonstrated a linear classifier that classified 10 varies skin lesions , feature extracted by using the modified alex net from the fully connected layer to the convolutional layer this modified features applied on 1300 clinical images of 10 class dataset of skin lesions with the accuracy of 81.8%. vijayalakshmi [16] presented a fully automated system for recognizing the dermatological disease through image of the skin lesion. the system consists of three phases which are compromising data collection and augmentation, designing model and prediction. multiple ai algorithms used such as, support vector machine and convolutional neural network and amalgamated it with image processing tools the system has with the accuracy of 85%. codella et al. [17] presents an approach for recognizing melanoma in kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 99 dermoscopy images that combines sparse coding, deep learning, and support vector machine (svm) learning algorithms. unsupervised learning used within the domain and feature transferred from the domain of natural photographs. methodology and performance evaluated on a dataset from the international skin imaging collaboration (isic) that contains 2624 clinical cases, the presented approach achieves an accuracy of 93.1%. pomponiu et al. [18] presents a method that automatically extracts a set of representative features for diagnosing skin lesions, pre-trained deep neural network (dnn) used for diagnosing skin lesions, knearest -neighbor classifier used for the classification, 399 images apply on the knn method with the result of 93.64% accuracy. in current study the researcher proposed a system to detect and predict the skin tumour by using case-based reasoning method and expert system and also present the similarity rate between similar cases and their features which is useful for the medical field for detecting skin tumor in the early stage and safe human life through this, and to prevent the painful derma test for the patients. 3. skin cancer skin is considered as the largest part of the human body [1]. cancer is considered as a common issue in the medical field. cancer starts when the cells are uncontrolled growth [2]. skin cancer is the most common type of cancer. this type of cancer happens in humans with the fair-skin and commonly in the type 1 and type 2 of skin color according to the fitzpatrick scale who exposed to the sun and other x-radiation and ultraviolet light for a long period of time [19]. there are three types of skin cancer which are the basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, melanoma [3]. 3.1 basal cell carcinoma (bcc) bcc is the type of skin cancer which is a non-melanoma skin cancer (nmsc). bcc arises from the basal layer of the epidermis, and it is the common type of skin cancer found in humans which is approximately (75% to 80%) of all skin cancers [20]. this type of cancer appears mostly in the face and neck, in this type of cancer the metastasis is extremely rare in case if it is spread it leads to poor functional and cosmetic outcomes [21] figure 1 shows the basal cell carcinoma. figure 1: basal cell carcinoma 3.2 squamous cell carcinoma (scc) scc is the type of non-melanoma skin cancer that is developed from the squamous cell and arises from basal keratinocytes of the skin. squamous cell carcinoma less occurred than basal cell carcinoma, but it is more spread than bcc and metastasize in 2% to 5% of cases and causes another type of cancer (secondary tumor). it mostly occurs in the hand, ear, lip, and another part of the body that is exposed to the sun and tobacco use and the parts of the body kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 100 that have uv exposure [22] [3] [23]. figure 2, shows squamous cell carcinoma in the right check and the scc metastasizes and developed a secondary tumor. figure 2: shows squamous cell carcinoma and the scc metastasize and developed a secondary tumour. 3.3 melanoma skin cancer: malignant melanoma is the type of skin cancer which is known as melanoma skin cancer (msc). it is the less common cancer that occurs in humans compared to the bcc and scc. melanoma skin cancer happens as a bleeding mole or changing the mole size and shape and color. this type of cancer is easily spread and it is a serious form and needs to be created early because later it is difficult to be treated [24]. figure 3, present the melanoma skin cancer. figure 3: melanoma skin cancer [2] 4. architecture design the architecture design for the proposed system includes the case-based reasoning (cbr) method and the expert system. the proposed system is used for predicting skin tumor and shows the similarity rate between the target image and the source image. in the cbr method, when a new case detects as a target image, the image pre-processed and analyzed by using image processing technique, and also re-analyzed by the expert doctor, and extract features from the image, and the image stored in the knowledge base (kb) [25]. then the image starts with the case-based reasoning cycle which begins with the retrieve step which is responsible for retrieving a similar case, the target problem retrieve from memory cases to solve the problem [26], after that the reuse step begins, in this step the solution of the target problem or the solution of the most similar case reused for the new cases. [27] when the new case suggested then in the revised step the suggested solution tested to know if it is possible to use, this step is used to make the evaluation of the applicability of the solution that suggested from the reused step .the retain step is the last step for the cbr method, in this step the tested solution added to the database and retains the learned base to be used in the future [28]. figure 4, shows the case-based reasoning cycle. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 101 figure 4: case-based reasoning (cbr) cycle [27] 5. proposed system the proposed system for skin cancer detection consists of two phases, the first phase is adding archival cases and the second phase is testing the new case. the proposed system compares the skin lesion image of a new case (target image) with the old cases (source image) in the knowledge base (kb), each case represented with its own weight and information related to the skin lesion, and the proposed system find the most similar case to the target case, and reuse the solution of the similar case for the target case, after that the solution tested for the new case to represent if it is possible to use or not, and in the last step the evaluation for the new case or the learned case store in the database to be one of the source cases and it is ready to be re-use for the future use. figure 5, presents the proposed system work. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 102 figure 5: flow chart of the proposed system work. start read image new case of skin lesion preprocessing for the image calculating pcc between new case and the source cases if result between 0 and 1 show the result retrieve image as a similar case image end yes no if result close to normal normal cancer yes no kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 103 5.1 phases of the proposed system: the first phase of the proposed system for skin cancer detection is adding archival cases to form our knowledge base. each new case includes a patient skin lesion image and information about the skin lesion ( by filling the questionnaire)by the expert doctor, then pre-processing done on the image after that, both image and digitized information put in the database (knowledge base).figure 6, present the first phase of the proposed system. figure 6: first phase (archiving data) of the proposed system data acquisition fill the questionnaire skin lesion picture information digitalized storing data in the database (knowledge base) preprocessing kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 104 in the second phase of the proposed system, the archived image, and information of the target case compared with the images and information in the source cases by using the (pcc) function, the result of the similar cases sent to the case-based reasoning to select the most similar cases and solve the image problem by testing the similar image and find the most similar case to the target case, if it is suitable then select the case as a new learned case. figure 7 represents the second phase of the proposed system. figure 7: second phase of the proposed system user interface advice (solution) new case (query) image of the skin lesion features that extracted from the image and information from the questionnaire retrieve similar cases check the similarity proposed solution (knowledge base) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 105 6. data collection and investigations 6.1 datasets: three different data sets are used and they are: emergency hospital burn surgery center: 44 cases have been collected and they are composed of 8 normal and the rest of cancer cases, they are diagnosed by our case expert. images all are 1280 x 960 pixels. hiwa hospital: 15 cases were collected from hiwa hospital all of the cases are biopsy based proved cancer cases, the report of the cases was diagnosed by the shar hospital lab, histopathology department and as the second decisions all cases are re diagnosed by the specialized expert doctor, the images are all of a good quality, images was taken by using the digital camera the size of images are different some of images are 640x480 pixels and another’s are 960x1280 pixels. ali kamal hospital: 50 cases collected from the ali kamal hospital which consists of 22 normal cases and 28 cancer cases, images taken by the digital camera, size of the images are different. xabat skin center: 14 cases collected, three of them are normal cases and the rest are cancer cases, images taken from digital camera with 960x1280 pixels. private clinics: 22 cases collected, six cases are normal cases and the rest are cancer cases, images taken from digital camera with 960x1280 pixels. standard dataset from the dermis: 206 cases collected from the dermis [29], 119 of the cases are melanoma, and the rest of non melanoma skin cancer; all images are 550x538 pixels. 7. expert system the case-based reasoning system for detecting skin cancer firstly needs the information from the expert (doctor) in the same field which is the derma doctor and the plastic surgery doctor. after the data collection and diagnosing then the feature extracted from the image and data to detect the cancer lesion, after that the all data converted to the information and encoded to the proposed system, and the processed data and the learned case in the knowledge base (kb) for the future use. figure 8, show the expert system. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 106 figure 8: the main components of an expert system 8. representation of the cases when new cases enter the system, the case includes the questionnaire and the image of the skin lesion. each case is about the skin lesion, represented in the knowledge base as the following features of the skin lesion: id: to represent the id of the patient and used as an index in the cbr system.  age: (10-20, 21-30, 31-40, 41-50, 51-60, 61-70, 71-80, above 80).  smoking: (yes, no).  nature of work :( exposed to the sun, not exposed to the sun).  border of the lesion: (regular, irregular).  color of skin (skin scale): (type i, type ii, type iii, type iv, type v, type vi) according to the fitzpatrick scale [30].  diameter: (greater than 1/4 cm, less than 1/4 cm).  duration of the lesion: (less than 12 months, more than 12 months, unknown).  the experience of the experts is very important to detect the well-known feature in the skin cancer weight such as, nature of work, duration of the lesion and other features. in the case-based reasoning system, the index is important for the retrieval step, in the proposed system the id of the patient and the image required as an index. the experts experience is the most important feature in prediction of skin cancer is the nature of work, then the border of the lesion, after that the duration of the lesion and then other features. expert doctor user interface interface engine knowledge base user (non-expert) new case (query) solution (advice) knowledge expert system kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 107 9. image pre processing the proposed system needs the image and the information for the similarity process. first the image of the skin lesion captured then the image cropped in order to show the region on interested area (roi) [31] all images are with size 128*128 pixels [7] .figure 7, shows the image and the cropped image (roi) image. a. the whole image b. the (roi) image figure 9: shows the image and the cropped image (roi) image. 9.1 wavelet transform: image-processing includes varying operations such as resizing the image, copying, displaying and so on. unfortunately, these manipulations lead to degrading the image quality and made many kinds of noise. in the proposed system, noise removal achieved by using the mathematical function called wavelet function. wavelet used for image compression and denoising image. when wavelet applied on the image the wavelet image consist of the low-frequency sub-band which describes the global image (ll) part and the approximation of sub-band symbol as ll and the detail sub-bands symbol as lh, hl, and hh[32]. the compression of an image works as shown in the figure 8. figure 10: wavelet transforms compression of an image. in the figure 11 presents the wavelet function applied on the image by using a small program that written with visual studio c# 2015 to remove noise from the image. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 108 figure 11: wavelet applied on the image after this step the ll part takes from the image, and this leads to resize the image, figure 12 show this step. figure 12: extract the ll part from the image 9.2 gray scale: converting a color image into the grayscale image is one of the image processing techniques. the grayscale image is also called the achromatic image. the contrast shade range of the grayscale is between 0 which is the black color to 255 which is the white color; the rest of the color between 0 and 255 is the grey color [33].in the proposed system the image that wavelet function apply on it and the ll take from the image converted into the grayscale image as show in the figure 13. figure 13: the rgb image converted to the grey scale kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 109 10. similarity for the image the pre processed image which is the target image entered to the proposed system to check the similarity rate between the target image and the source image which are the cancer table and normal table from the database which is built by using microsoft access, the similarity rate stored in the table in the database, and the proposed system choose the nearest result which is the similar case to the target by using the pcc (equation (1)) [34]. (1) xi, yi: represents the intensity value for the target case. xm, ym: represent the intensity value of the source image in the proposed system. the proposed system checks the pixel by pixel’s image’s similarity, and finds the relation and similarity rate between images. the images similarity rate filled with (0 and 1), if the result is so then there is the similarity between images but if the result is negative skin means that there is no connection between images, and the proposed system neglect the negative result. depending on the result the proposed system retrieves the similar case from the knowledge base and tests the case and store the target case in to a database as a learned case to be ready for the future use. 11. implementation and result for the proposed system to predict and define the skin cancer works as below: after the pre-processing of the image, the pre-processed image and data for the patient entered into the system for analyzing data and image. in the proposed system all data converted to numbers for easy calculation by using statistics method by weighting parameters, after entering the data the target image loaded into the system to compare the target image and target data to the source image and source data in the knowledge base (kb), then the system shows the similar cases based on the number of cases that the expert wanted to see. the result of the similar cases shows in the table with their own images, after that the system adds the target data into a table in the source table and also adds the target image into the source image to be a learned case and to be ready for the future use. figure 14 shows the process of the comparison and presentation of the similar cases in the system. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 110 figure 14: the proposed system’s work in the interface of the system that showed in the previous figure shows that the first step is entering data for the patient or new case or the target case. figure15 shows the data entry. figure 15: shows the data entry after the data entry then by clicking on the load picture button, the target image loaded in to the system, then by click on the check in kb cancer the process of comparing between the target image and the source image (cancer) in the knowledge base, and the same process done for the normal case by clicking on the check in kb normal .in figure 16 , shows the comparison process. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 111 a b figure 16: comparing process a. represents the target image. b.represent the source image which is changes the image over the time, for example if there are 350 cases in the source, so the target image compare with all 350 cases in the source. when the comparing process done then the process of presenting similarity begins with clicking on the similarity cancer button for presenting the similar cancer cases, and the same process for the normal cases by clicking on the similarity normal, the number of the similar cases entered by the expert manually for example in the figure 17, shows the 10 similar cases with their data. figure 17: shows the similar cases with their data when the similar cases presented then the target case stored as a new learned case in the cancer source by click on the store picture cancer, and if you want to store the case in the normal case you can click on the store picture normal as a new learned case to be ready for the future use. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 112 12. bench mark through analyzing the methods and algorithms that are used for diagnosing and detecting skin tumors from the previous papers, these results achieved which is shown in table 1.this table contains the algorithms and methods that used for skin tumor detection, and some of their advantages and drawbacks. the proposed system worked on the diagnosing skin tumor by using the image processing tools, case based reasoning and expert system, pcc function used for measuring the similarity between images with the accuracy from 68% to 100%. table 1: presentation of the benchmarks paper/author(s) method/algorithm accurac y reference s v. pomponiu, h. nejati and n. cheung, "deepmole: deep neural networks for skin mole lesion classification," 2016 ieee international conference on image processing (icip), phoenix, az, pp. 262326272016. k-nearest neighbors (knn) 93.64% [18] n. codella, j. cai, m. abedini, r. garnavi, a. halpern and j. r. smith,” deep learning, sparse coding, and svm for melanoma recognition in dermoscopy images,” 10.1007/978-3-319-24888-2,2015 svm 93.1% [17] s. kolkur,d.r. kalbande, v. kharkar,” machine learning approaches to multiclass human skin disease detection,” international journal of computational intelligence research ,vol. 14, no. 1 ,pp. 2939, 2018 neural network 90% above [10] vijayalakshmi m m,” melanoma skin cancer detection using image processing and machine learning,” international journal of trend in scientific research and development (ijtsrd),vol. 3,no. 4,pp.780784,2019 convolutional neural network and support vector machine and amalgamated it with image processing tools 85% [16] j. kawahara, a. bentaieb, and g. hamarneh,” deep features to classify skin lesions,” 1397-1400. 10.1109/isbi.2016.7493528,2016. linear classifier 81.8% [15] 13. conclusion this paper, described different types of skin cancer and different techniques for the target image’s preprocessing (image of the skin lesion) such as, cropping the image to detect the (roi) area, applying the wavelet transform function to reduce the noise from the image and to compress the image, and converting the color image into the grayscale image. the case-based reasoning and expert system used to detect and make a prediction for skin cancer. after the pre-processing the pre-processed image entered into the cbr system to retrieve the image and reuse the image to solve the problem and test it if it is solved then revise the image to confirm the solution and retain the image as a learned case and stored in the knowledge base for the future use. for the case-based reasoning, it needs the expert doctor to diagnose the case and extract features from the case and data encoded to use in the proposed system to detect skin cancer. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 113 reference [1] h. yousef and s. sharma, " anatomy, skin (integument)," epidermi., 2017. [2] s. r. silp and v. chidvila, "a reveiw on skin cancer," international research journal of pharmacy, vol. 4, no. 8, pp. 1-8, 2013. [3] m. i. qadir, "skin cancer: etiology and management," pakistan journal of pharmaceutical sciences, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 1-6, 2016. [4] sh. jaina, v. jagtap and n. pise, "computer aided melanoma skin cancer detection using image," international conference on intelligent computing, communication & convergence(iccc),pp. 1-6, 2015. [5] m. chandrahasa , v. vadigeri and d.salecha, "detection of skin cancer using image processing techniques," international journal of modern trends in engineering and research(ijmter), vol. 3, no. 5, pp. 111-114, 2016. [6] h. c.fernández,o.l.ortega and f. castro-espinozaa, v. ponomaryov, "an intelligent system for the diagnosis of skin cancer on digital images taken with dermoscopy," acta polytechnica hungarica, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 169-185, 2017. 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[11] m. a. m. shukran, n. m. s. ahmad, s. ramli and f. rahmat, "melanoma cancer diagnosis device using image processing techniques," international journal of recent technology and engineering (ijrte), vol. 7, no. 5s7, pp. 490-494, 2019. [12] s. bindhu and m. mohan , "segmentation of skin lesions using texture distinctiveness lesion segmentation algorithm," algorithm, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 56-60, 2015. [13] s.kannan, v. gurusamy and g.nalini,"review on image segmentation techniques,” 2014. [14] j.b. lamy, b. sekarb, g. guezenneca, j. bouauda and b.séroussia, "explainable artificial intelligence for breast cancer: a visual case-based reasoning approach," artificial intelligence in medicine, 94. 10.1016/j.artmed.2019.01.001, 2019. [15] j. kawahara, a. ben taieb, and g. hamarneh,” deep features to classify skin lesions,” 1397-1400. 10.1109/isbi.2016.7493528,2016. 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[26] s. v. shokouhi , p .skalle and a.aamodt, "an overview of case-based reasoning applications in drilling engineering,” artificial intelligence review, 41. 10.1007/s10462-011-9310-2, 2014. [27] m. a. mohammed, b. al-khateeb and d. a.ibrahim, "case based reasoning shell frameworkas decision support tool," indian journal of science and technology, vol. 9, no. 42, pp. 1-8, 2016. [28] h. y. a. abutair, a. belghith, “using case-based reasoning for phishing detection ," procedia computer science, 109. 281-288. 10.1016/j.procs.2017.05.352,2017. [29] melanoma images, dermis http://www.dermis.net [30] s. sachdeva,” fitzpatrick skin typing: applications in dermatology,” indian journal of dermatology, venereology and leprology. 75. 93-6. 10.4103/0378-6323.45238,2009. [31] a. wasilewska , j. pauk and m. i. touski,” image processing techniques for roi identification in rheumatoid arthritis patients from thermal images,” acta mechanica et automatica, vol. 12, no. 1,pp. 49-53,2018. [32] s. ross-howe and h.r. tizhoosh ,” the effects of image preand post-processing, wavelet decomposition, and local binary patterns on u-nets for skin lesion segmentation” accepted for publication in proceedings of the ieee world congress on computational intelligence (ieee wcci),rio de janeiro, bra zil, 8-3 july, 2018. http://www.dermis.net/ kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 114 [33] c. saravanan, “color image to grayscale image conversion,” 196 199. 10.1109/iccea.2010.192,2010. [34] a. kaur, l. kaur and s. gupta,” image recognition using coefficient of correlation and structural similarity index in uncontrolled environment,” international journal of computer applications, vol. 59, no. 5, pp. 3239,2012.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq promoting walkability in streets: analytical study of salem street, sulaimani, iraq daban abdullah salam binaee yaseen raof engineering department department of city planning kurdistan institution for strategic studies and scientific research, kurdistan technical college of engineering sulaimani, iraq sulaimani polytechnic university daban.salam@kissr.edu.krd sulaimani, iraq binaee.yaseen@spu.edu.iq sara dhiaadin bahaadin department of city planning technical college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sara.bahaadin@spu,.edu.iq article info abstract volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.1.6 article history: received accepted walking represents a vital transport system for people to maintain balanced and healthy lifestyles and to improve the environmental conditions. within a contemporary metropolitan society, other means of transport are often preferred. the presented paper aims to examine the methods of how to encourage people to walk. by organizing it into three main sections to begin with, the work of in order to investigate the nature of the metropolitan individual and the contemporary society. the second section builds on the outcomes of the first section. hence it provides a clear rationale for the adoption of strategies that would encourage people to walk. salim street which is one of the important and vibrant streets inside sulaimani city is being chosen for this study, its possibility to be a walk able street is analyzed. the third section provides practical solutions and steeps on how to promote walking among the contemporary society. then, a brief conclusion summarizes the key arguments encompassed in the presented paper and draws wider implications and recommendations for city planners to build more pedestrian friendly streets. keywords: walkability, promoting walking, sustainable transportation, sulaimani city, salim street. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. mailto:daban.salam@kissr.edu.krd mailto:binaee.yaseen@spu.edu.iq mailto:sara.bahaadin@spu,.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 78 1. introduction the key rationale for the studied question can be found in the notion of sustainability and its three main dimensions environmental, social and individual. [1]pointed out the interlinked nature of these three dimensions by highlighting the interactions of individual effects on the social outcomes and consequently on the environmental dimension of sustainability until lately, people were not aware of the effects of architectural concept and urban planning on human behaviors, and a great impact of physical outdoor activities. more recent studies suggest that minor details, such as the selection of materials and color, might lead to certain activity. as a result, builds on the existing body of research and aims to examine the practical ways in which the urban planners could encourage people to walk. lack of walkability is mainly related to the urban structure design, many factors influencing the walking habits such as, the quality of the pavements, road condition, traffic, land use, street fabric accessibility and above all pedestrian safety. [2] 2. literature review 2.1 contemporary metropolitan society both simmel and walter benjamin [3] described a contemporary metropolitan citizen in terms of being over-stimulated by sensory overload which results in the fragmentary existence. while benjamin focused on the examination of inner motives that lead to this state, simmel emphasized the sociological aspects of the society. overall, an individual is depicted as a product as well as defense against modern city lifestyle: “the psychological foundation upon which the metropolitan individuality is erected is the intensification of emotional life due to the swift and continuous shift of external and internal stimuli. man is a creature whose existence is dependent on differences i.e. his mind is stimulated by the difference between present impressions and those which have proceeded. to the extent that the metropolis creates these psychological conditions with every crossing of the street, with the tempo and multiplicity of economic, occupational and social life it creates in the sensory foundations of mental life, and in the degree of awareness necessitated by our organization, as creature’s dependent on differences, deep contrast with a slower, more habitual more smoothly flowing rhythm of the sensory mental phase of small town and rural experience.” [1] the work of [4]highlights the differences between metropolitan life and a life in smaller cities in terms of an individual’s perceptions as well as the crucial role of surroundings on the stimuli observed and mental states achieved. [1] , went even further and outlined the term “cityscape” referring to the parallel nature between the land and the city. according to the author, metropolitan cities can be transformed into providing positive stimuli for it citizens, depending on the issues relating to urban design and city initiatives. in essence, while the contemporary metropolitan city suggests a high level of sensory overload for its citizens, effective “cityscape” strategies can successfully address this issue and promote a healthy life style amongst the citizens. [5] while the policies have traditionally focused on highlighting the health and personal benefits of walking and the behavioral change amongst the citizens has been anticipated, a number of constraints have been shown to moderate this relationship. according to the authors, constraints created by household responsibilities and the perceptions of normality represent the key factors that prevent people from an active engagement in walking despite their understanding of the health and personal benefits associated with this activity. in line with the work of [1],the study conducted by [5] emphasized the social and environmental factors that drive an individual’s behavior. as a result, the authors concluded that an effective strategy of promoting walking needs to address the normative perceptions and lead towards the perception that walking is the logical and normal means of transport. on the other hand, [6],argument was about that kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 79 planers as well as mayors before any design process for the city they should ask these main questions like: what type of city will flourish economically? what sort of city will keep its dwellers safe and healthy? what sort of city will sustain for the next generation? health, wealth and sustainability are the key arguments to promote walking in our cities. to put it in a nutshell, this section highlighted the very nature of contemporary metropolitan city and metropolitan life within the city.. this parallel suggests that urban planning issues and city initiatives can successfully address the sensory overload experienced by citizens of a metropolitan city. arguably, walking represents one of the cornerstones of a successful “cityscape” as its effective promotion depends on both the sensory perceptions of the city and the practical strategies developed by city planners. many studies have shown that city fabric has great effect on pedestrian movements; moreover, axial map researches showed that there is a significant effect from grid pattern to urban movement. pedestrian movement is more in complex interiors where the movement is more exploratory and less linear [7]. the following sections of the presented paper build on this notion and examine the value of walking for citizens of a contemporary metropolitan city as well as investigate the practical options available for city planners to encourage walking amongst the population of a city. . [6] argument was planers as well as mayors before any design process for the city they should ask these main questions like: what type of city will flourish economically? what sort of city will keep its dwellers safe and healthy? what sort of city will sustain for the next generation? health, wealth and sustainability are the key arguments to promote walking in our cities. 2.2 importance of walking the existing body of literature on walking has associated this activity with a number of positive impacts on an individual. overall, walkers’ experience can encourage new brain cells, many studies show that physical activities stimulate positive thinking and encourage new brain cells, because staying active maintain good blood circulation and decrease the danger of many serious disease such as, stroke, heart attack, diabetes and alzheimer’s. mental condition can be promoted by walking memorizing different routes, observing traffic signals and taking decisions [8]. furthermore, a number of health and traffic problems can be solved by promoting walking. due to the invasion of cars, less area is provided for walking and more spaces are dedicated to cars. nowadays, there seems to be a lack of spaces for citizens to enjoy comfortable walking. [9] the harm of private cars cannot be ignored as this issue accounts for major environmental, health and traffic issues in cities. also, the high demand of fuel and the extensive usage of energy can cause numerous problems in various ways. for example, burning fuel leads to co2 emissions that pollute the air and damage the ozone layer. in essence, the negative effects of the overuse of cars in cities can be examined on a number of levels and undoubtedly, the encouragement of walking could at least partially address some of them. unfortunately, the development of contemporary metropolitan cities has resulted in the lack of opportunities for walking for the citizens which often prevents them from doing so. figure 1 (below demonstrates this ongoing problem in contemporary metropolitan cities. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 80 figure 1: the rapid increase in a private car use in numerous cities around the world (ref: amonline.com). 2.3 ways for promoting walkability in streetscape 2.3.1 pedestrian street spaces urban and traffic planners should pay more attention to the needs of increasing pedestrian street spaces. one of the most important basic way to promote walking is providing enough space for pedestrian to move freely without being pushed by other people all the time; and also, dimensioning the streets according to the density of the population, without neglecting the importance of having enough for people to enjoy the view [9]. 2.3.2 attractive scenery nice scenery is important for dwellers to enjoy and have a good walking experience. in order to change human attitude about walking, the city planners should address the importance of providing attractive views by adding green area, playgrounds and designing the facades in a way to attract pedestrians as can be seen in figure (2). landscape designers can inspire people to walk in certain places by selecting different materials and colors. for example, people are sensitive to the pavements finishing and surface and most of them prefer even surfaces. because while people walk unconsciously brain determine each step‘s height and length. therefore, if the surface was uneven more falling accidents occur. figure 2: attractive landscape can inspire people to walk (ref: pintrest.com) 2.3.3 accessibility easy access for people with special need and baby carriages are essential by providing ramps and lifts that allowed them to move from point a to b without suffering. in jan gehl’s book [10] the author highlights the fact that “special demands for space are required by the “wheeled” walking traffic: the baby carriage, the wheelchair, the shopping cart, and so forth. consideration for this traffic will generally necessitate more ample dimensioning than that”. furthermore, the authors also refer to how increasing the width of the pedestrian’s path in kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 81 copenhagen had a positive effect and raised the number of pedestrians in the first year by 35 per cent, whereas the number of baby carriages increased by 400 per cent [10], figure 15 depicts the importance of the width of the pedestrian’s streets to both promote their accessibility and maximize the number of pedestrians. 2.3.4 orientation good and effective sign-posts are to play an important role in showing people how they can get to their destination in an easy way figure (3). better understanding of the routes and their destination encourage dwellers to walk. moreover, demonstrating the shortcuts and their linking to the capital routes can be helpful for walk promotion. figure3: showing how to get to the key locations inside the cities / towns is important for pedestrians as these locations are usually used as a marker to further destinations ( ref: https://signaturestreetscapes.com/) 2.3.5 weather conditions: different weather condition, such as hot, wet, windy and cold can be frustrating for pedestrian, however these problems are solvable by different solutions such as, building shade have positive impact on walkers because usually people prefer safe and intimate place to walk. another solution is growing trees and vegetation in hot places also building the blocks in a way that blocks the wind from the pedestrian streets. for hot-dry climate shading is the best solution which can be made by different building materials and vegetation s in order to minimize solar access to the sidewalks. shading is useful for • minimizing the direct solar radiation absorbed by a pedestrian. • decreasing the heat released by the surrounding. • reduction in the air temperature. these aspects are depicted in figure (4, 5 and 6) below. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 82 figure 4: shading with wood structure (jurgenmayer from seville, spain) figure 5: jurgenmayer(ref: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/figura-2-jurgen-mayer-metropolparasol-sevilla-composicion-realizada-a-partir-de_fig2_298654766) figure 6: trees provide shad for sunny days and provide a cooling breeze in hot-dry days 2.3.6 removing obstacles minimizing stairs and steps in the pedestrian streets, because in a way they are considered to represent major obstacles for people [9],it is common for pedestrians to avoid staircases and they prefer to walk longer distance instead of using the stairs (as shown in figure 7 below). therefore, building ramps is better for walking. in many places where both stairs and ramps exist it is obvious that the majority of people would use the ramps instead of the stairs. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 83 figure 7: pedestrians prefer ramps against stairs(ref: https://www.creativemove.com/) 2.3.7 connected networks and street fabric better connected networks and links between the capital streets, homes, public squares, schools, shops and parks represent another vital strategy to promote walking within a city. these networks should be safe, functional, comfortable and attractive with good sign post for direction. also, linking the route with public transportation is important for decreasing the use of private cars [11] a city’ diversity, distinctiveness and richness can be characterized by its capital route which consists of five main dimensions: • morphology: urban spatial setting in its static and physical form. • dynamism: diversity and character of public activity patterns and their social and economic dependencies. • teleology: use of public urban spaces. • symbolic: meaning of public urban spaces, in particular in an associative. • hermeneutics: cultural sense. given the prominent nature of the capital route, it tends to represent the key focus of the city authorities and attracts large portion of the developmental activity. in essence, given the fact that capital route characterizes the city in the eyes of the citizens as well as visitors, the city planners tend to focus their attention towards promoting the capital route. furthermore, the importance of the capital route can be found in its function of a node, connecting various parts and facilities within the city. in summary, the system of connected networks within a city predicts its potential for the introduction of strategies promoting walking. capital route plays a central role in the development of connected networks and is commonly used as a walking zone with the prohibited access of cars into the area. 2.3.8. spatial design spatial designing by the planners that should provide the dwellers with most of the everyday services and facilities with a walk able distance from home such as, shops, parks, public transport stations and business parks. better land using to minimize car usage by reducing urban sprawl and giving the priority to the pedestrian roads also closing car accessing points to these areas [10], 2.3.9 access and condition pedestrian’s streets should be opened most of the time day and night all year long. pedestrian streets and cycling paths should be cleared from ice and ensuring that the pavements are dry in order to prevent any injury during different weather condition. figure 8) documents the lack of use of the pavement due to its poor condition in winter. setting light is essential spatially during nights placing it in different positions to give the pedestrians the sense of security that allow them to walk safely [10]. 2.3.10 lights during the night walking in in dark considered uncomfortable experience; therefore, adding lights is important to give secure sensation to the pedestrians generally, and like michael r. bloomberg said “sidewalks should be appropriately lit at night, with pedestrian scale lighting spaced at appropriate intervals to provide the correct level of illumination”. [12] kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 84 2.3.11 safety safety is the key elements to have an enjoyable walking experience. adding cross intersection and zebra line, in order to cross safely from one side of the pedestrian’s path to the other side of it, without been interrupted by the cars. usually people prefer to walk continuously and safely. restaurants, café and shops can help sidewalks [12] stay vibrant during the day and night, keeping “eyes on the street,” as jane jacobs said. figure 8: people avoid wet and slippery pavements. (ref: jeziorki.blogspot.com) research aims the purpose of this study is to examine the walkability in salim street and outline the challenges and problems for enhancing its walkability. aim for this research is to highlights several policy recommendations for improving the current pedestrian infrastructure and gives logical solutions to make salim street more walkableoriented street. 3. case study and research method 3.1 case study (salim street) salim street considered one of the vibrant capital roots in sulaimani city crossing the city nearly from the middle as can be seen in figure (9 and 10), which creates a major urban transect, that has pedestrian flow with strong, flow indicators – mass, direction and speed, for most of the day/night hours. overall, salm street determines the urban interfaces with numerous public spaces, civic and public buildings and thus provides the basis for the examination of tourism, commerce, retail, administration, cultural, residential and transportation opportunities. typically, the capital route tends to be between 1,000 – 3,000 meters long and takes 2 – 3 hours of walking time. it provides residents and visitors of a city with significant urban diversity and characterizes the image of the city. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 85 figure 9: sulaimani city map. (ref: ecoi.net ,2017) https://www.ecoi.net/en/document/1160964.html figure 10: the study area within salim street (ref: mapz.com, accessed may 2020) https://www.mapz.com/export/398915# salim street starts from sarchnar cross, and ends with the beginning of mawlawi street as illustrated in figure (11). it is about 4.5 km distance. however, our case study starts from khasraw khal bridge until shahid raoof bug under-path and the distance is about 2 km. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 86 figure 11: satellite image of salim street (ref: satellites.pro accessed may 2020) https://satellites.pro/iraq_map#35.558712,45.424100,18 salim street is very important for sulaimnai city as most of the anniversary events such as nawroz and new year festivals take place in this street as seen in figure (12). during the events the street will be car free zone, only pedestrian are allowed to enter the street, however, like many other capital streets in sulaimani city salm street is not flawless it has many problems, such as traffic jam, uneven surface, lack of walkability, lack of safe crossing and many other issue as shown in the figure (13, 14, 15 and 16), which we will highlight on them in the next paragraphs. figure 12: nowroz festival in salim street (ref: the researcher) figure 13: lack of parking space in salim street (ref: the researcher) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 87 figure 14: obstacles in the pedestrian paths that left no space for walking (ref: the researcher) figure 15: unfinished surface of the pedestrian paths (ref: the researcher) figure 16: uneven pavements are less accessible for disables and baby carriages (ref: the researcher) on the other hand, salim street you can observe many bus roots and many bus stations, but few people ride them due to the poor condition of the buses and uncomfortable experience during the journey. moreover, according to the observations done by the authors, the only public transportation exist in the street was bus lane, with the absence of tram or train lanes on it, it is problematic for city dweller to use only buses to get to their destinations, the side streets around the main streets previously was constructed in order to reduce traffic jam on the salm street, on contra, the results were more traffic on both streets and less pedestrian paths, planners should design for people and spaces not for cars and traffic figure (17). kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 88 figure 17: side streets in salm street (ref: the researcher) there are some plots located on salim street, currently they are empty and not used for any obvious projects, but they might be useful for futuristic design proposals figure (18-19), figure 18: empty plot located on salim street (ref: the researcher) lately a few traffic light were inserted in the street for more safer crossing for pedestrian, and also to give pedestrian more right to the street, however, many don’t obey traffic regulations and choose to cross the street without waiting for the green light, which makes it more unsafe journey for both car users and pedestrian figure(19-20). moreover, along salim street only three traffic lights were inserted for pedestrian that makes it for every 1.5 km there is only one traffic light, according to the street users this number could not cover the demand for this vibrant and busy street. figure 19: unsafe street crossing for pedestrian, with the absence of traffic regulation in salim street (ref: the researcher) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 89 figure 20: adding traffic lights on point in salim street (ref: the researcher) in saholaka part of salim street, a few buildings were demolished for the sake of building more space for car parks, which can be seen in figure (21 22). on the other hand, some shop owner stated that they had to change the type of their business due to car invasion on the street and they were not able to keep their business because of the number of car parking along the street. figure 21: car park space in salim street (ref: the researcher) figure 22: car park in salim street (ref: the researcher) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 90 3.2 research method in order to determine walkability in salim street firstly, understanding the physical features that affect it is essential; therefore, this study conducted both quantitative and qualitative approaches for collecting data. quantitative data were collected by a questionnaire on the other hand; qualitative data were collected via interviews and direct observation of the street. an interview including open-ended questions was conducted with 20 shop owners who are working in salm street. they were asked questions about the strength, opportunity, weakness and threat of this street on the basis of the environment, road attributes and walking environment. these criteria are crucial because environment managed with less tangible but nevertheless important features of the road that ought to be taken under consideration when surveying the pedestrian environment. moreover, road attributes as the condition, characteristics and dimensions of a roadway that can have a direct impact on the quality of the pedestrian environment. consisted of walking environment and appeared that the components of a street and generally the image of the street are contributed in assessing the pedestrian environment. [13] 4. results and discussion 4.1 questioner questioner has been done about the salim street (100 person) participated and answered the questions with different ages, and their answer are used for making charts depending on their age, two various categories were chosen first with age (15-30) years the other peoples that their ages between (30-60) years as the majority of pedestrian on the salm street are about these ages. moreover, all of them answered (5) questions as shown below: nearly 35% of the people with age (30-60) years they said that they feel pleasant while they are walking on the pavement chart (1). however, the result for other ages is totally different, as they mentioned the bad condition of the pavement when they have been asked about their answer. figure 23: shows people’s feeling while walking on the pavement. figure (17, 18 and 19) illustrate the present condition of the salim street and the people’s answer proved that the crosswalks are not helpful especially for people with special needs and baby carriage. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 91 figure 24: how pavements and crosswalks help people with special needs. the answered of the questions 3 is shown in the chart below illustrates that the question that most people agree on it is that crossing the salm street is not easy and not safe, it is important to take this point with consideration. even though lately a few traffic light were inserted for safer crossing, but not many pedestrian follow the regulations and use them. on the other hand, salim street is about 4.5 km and there are only three traffic lights for pedestrian which is not enough according to the interviews with the people whose using the street. figure 25: dose crossing the street is easy and safety. more than %80 people in the different range of ages answered that the numbers of cars that are parking on the street create an obstacle for the people to cross the street chart (4), and this answer should be considered while trying to make the part of this street as a pedestrian. 0 20 40 60 80 100 no yes do pavement or crosswalks are helpful for people with special needs 30 to 60 15 to 30 0 20 40 60 80 100 no yes does crossing the street is easy and safety 30 to 60 15 to 30 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 92 figure 26: the effect on the parking on the crossing. chart number (5) explains that the most people of both categories find that it is more appropriate to design a part of the salm street as a pedestrian road. figure 27: people’s answer about designing salm street as a pedestrian. 4.2 swot analysis tables (1,2 and 3) explains the summary of these interviews. table (1) shows the items related to the environment that some weaknesses connected to traffic jam and air pollution are mentioned. however, in table (2) most of interviewees stated weaknesses regarding to road attribute such as, poor street condition, maintenance service and car parking problems on the street. furthermore, not having appropriate sidewalks, lack of greenery, un sufficient pavement width for pedestrian and lack of street furniture with lack in providing street pedestrian with sufficient amenities such as public toilets are mentioned by almost all the interviewees. there are some strength points that are declared by shop owners when they asked about walking environment for example, providing different type of street food, having sufficient lighting with combination of activities and places such as, shops, cafés and restaurants with sufficient lighting, table (3). 0 20 40 60 80 100 no yes obstacles on the street to cross it 30 to 60 15 to 30 0 20 40 60 80 100 no yes is it better to design a part of the salm street as pedestrian? 30 to 60 15 to 30 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 93 table 1: issues correlated to environment strength  mixed used road that works as a major network links most of the city together weakness  traffic jam during both day and night opportunity  crossing sulaimani city from the middle threats  air pollution due to car invasion table 2: issues correlated to road attribute strength the maximum allowed speeds is 50 km/hour weakness  poor street condition  high density of car traffic and car domain the street  poor maintenance service  lack of car parking on the street  few traffic control at the intersections and cross walks  lack in obeying the regulation when it comes to using the street by both drivers and pedestrian. opportunity  considered as the capital rout of sulaimani city threats  na table 3: issues correlated to walking environment strength  named by the shop owners as best place in sulaimani city  providing different type of street food  sufficient lighting  a diverse combination of activities and places, such as shops, cafés and restaurants weakness  uneven sidewalks  lack of greenery and trees  lack of sufficient pavement width for pedestrian  lack of street furniture and shelters for different weather condition  in some locations trees located in the middle of the sidewalks  lack in providing street pedestrian with sufficient amenities such as public toilets  no consideration for special needs people in designing the street opportunity  convenient site to promote walkability threats  unsafe crossing 5. conclusion the aim of this paper is to critically investigate the methods of how to promote walking amongst the contemporary society and to provide practical ways in which the urban planners could encourage people to walk. the benefits of walking can be found in the area of health and a notion of a sustainable and livable environment. building on the extensive review of the kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 94 existing body of research on the studied topic, the paper provided a firm rationale for the need to promote walking in salim street. furthermore, a number of practical recommendations have been summarized which are expected to provide guidance for the city planners in pursuing such initiatives. despite the interest of academics and urban planners in this phenomenon, the contemporary metropolitan society tends to prefer other means of transport due to their convenience. according to the questionnaire which investigated by the authors, and the target were asking salim street pedestrians which the range of their age were about (15-60) years old, which they were asked some essential question about the current street situation and their vision for any futuristic developments. most of the pedestrian answered that they are struggling during walking on the pavements due to its bad condition and uneven surface also they were concerned about crossing the street as they find it not safe enough even though lately a few traffic lights were inserted to salim street but still many people don’t obey the regulation properly. on the other hand, lack of enough parking spaces was another concern by the pedestrian as they described as major obstacle. furthermore, making saholaka part of salim street car free zone during night time can be a convenient solution for the uncomfortable traffic jam to make more room for pedestrian, moreover, as a result of the questionnaire which was done by the authors, majority of the participant preferred saholaka part of salim street to be only for pedestrian rather than to be dominated by cars. many practical solutions for encouraging walking inside the city are explained in the previous sections that could be applied in the salim street in which increasing pedestrian street spaces can help pedestrian to move freely. providing attractive views by adding green area, playgrounds and designing the facades in a way to attract pedestrians is also a suitable solution for the chosen street. furthermore, easy access for people with special need and baby carriages is one of the most important points that need to be considered by urban planner with showing people how they can get to their destination in an easy way. in a hot and dry climate, as in our country providing shading for people is essential and can be achieved by growing trees, vegetation and building shade. reference [1] g. f. giusti, "mapping the experience of the walker: a spatio-dynamic method of designing a responsive environment for the 21st century pedestrian culture," in walk21-vi “everyday walking culture”, zurich, 2005. [2] n. al-qemaqchi and w. abdulla, "the effect of walkability on the sustainable university campuses a comparison between the old and new campuses of sulaimani university," in 7th engineering and 1st international scientific conference college of engineering , baghdad, 2017. [3] g. gilloch, mythe and metropolis: walter benjamin and the city, oxfordshir: polity press, with blackwell publishers ltd, 1996. [4] g. simmle, the metropolis and mental life, newyork: free press, 1950. [5] g. c. pooley, d. horton, g. scheldeman, c. mullen, t. jones, m. tight, a. jopson and a. chisholm, "policies for promoting walking and cycling in england:a view from the street," transport policy vol.27, pp. 66-72, 2013. [6] j. speck, walkable city, new york: farra, straus and giroux, 2012. [7] b. hillier, "a theory of the city as object," urban design international, pp. 7(3-4), 153-179, 2002. [8] a. association, "stay physically active," 2018. [online]. available: https://www.alz.org/helpsupport/brain_health/stay_physically_active. [accessed 1 april 2019]. [9] j. gehl, cities for people, washington, dc: island press, 2010. [10] j. gehl, life between buildings, washington , dc: island press, 2011. [11] l. steg, "can public transport compete withthe private car?," iatss research, pp. vol.27, issue 2, pp. 27-35, 2003. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 95 [12] m. r. bloomberg, a. burden , d. burney, t. farley and j. sadik-khan, "active design: shaping the sidewalk experience," new york city department of city planning, city of new york, 2013. [13] h. khder, s. mousayi, t. khan and hayat, impact of street's physical elements on walkability : a case of mawlawi street in sulaymaniyah,iraq, malaysia: faculty of built environmnet, universiti teknologi, 2016, pp. v3(1), 18-26.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq incidence of rod shaped gramnegative hospital acquired bacterial infection and antibiotic resistance: a retrospective based population study kamal jalal rashid anesthesia department technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq kamalashty73@yahoo.com article info abstract volume 5 – special issue: 4th international conference on the health and medical science : medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) doi: 10.24017/science.2020.ichms2020.9 article history: received: 05 october 2020 accepted: 12 october 2020 the gram-negative, especially rod shapes vary in the frequencies that they cause the most frequent types of hospital-acquired infection: pneumonia, surgical site infection, urinary tract infection, diabetic infection, and burn and bloodstream infection. the presented study determined the microbial spectrum and antimicrobial susceptibility of gram-negative bacteria isolated from various infection sites in hospitalized patients in sulaimani city. this study included 735 patients who underwent surgical and wound treatment admitted to the hospital. a microbiological standard technique was used for identification, isolation and antimicrobial susceptibility. the data in this job were scaled into excel sheets and transferred to spss (statistical package for social sciences) version 24.0 software. the significance of associations between variables and predictor done by chi-square (χ2). p-value of <0.05 was regarded significant. male was the most common cases 52.5%. patients less than 18 years-old were the most frequently affected 54.3%. gram negative infection is the most common and most serious complication of burn injuries and it is the majority suspected clinical finding nearly to 60%. the most common bacteria separated from wound and sepsis were pseudomonas aeruginosa 91.91%. individual pathogens’ incidence differ significantly between location of infection p<0.001. pseudomonas aeruginosa, only resistant stabled at the lowest rates for colistine and imepenim (0.1% and 7.8%) and keywords: hospital acquired infection, gramnegative, pseudomonas aeruginosa, antimicrobial susceptibility. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 82 significant finding was confirmed p<0.001. but highly resistance to ticarcillin/clavulanic acid, cefepime, tobramycin, and gentamicin (85.6%, 80.8%, 79.3%, 79.2%) in conclusion, these population-based study gramnegative infections predominate in burn wounds. microbial resistance to the confirmed drugs leads to repeated antimicrobial treatment modifications and long-time of treatments. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction incidences of hospital acquired or nosocomial infection vary in frequencies and the most common causes include; pneumonia, surgical site infection, urinary and blood stream infection. during the past years, because of the change in health surveillance, infection control practices and manufacturing more antimicrobial by different company the bacterial resistance especially, gram-negative bacteria associated with hospital and nosocomial infection [1]. origins of micro-organisms were found in the patient’s itself, from outside in the surrounding, and from health staff or family. the maximal sort type of hospital acquired infection were bloodstream infections, pneumonia, urinary tract infection, skin including burn wound and incision infections. pathogens such as gram-positive, gram-negative bacteria, fungal and viral and are the major causes of nosocomial infections. common problem in the treatment of hospital acquired infections in patient wards in hospitals are increasing the frequency of antibiotic-resistant organisms, usually within a week of the injury [2, 3]. burn injury is the most common types to likes to develop infection. the burn area with more pathogens increase the risk of drug resistance, illustrates the need for a drug policy by the hospitals for burn patients. the separated bacteria showed high resistances to antibiotics. the results show that antibiotics should be given logically in burn suited striped by the bacterial resistance manner [4]. exposed open complicated wound site that containing diet tissue make burned patients more likely to be infected. in addition, a general condition of immunodepression is due to defect in the action of neutrophils and the immune system. in these situations, pathogens readily can grow and increase in number. also, burn patients need more care in intensive care units for long duration, may be intubated and vine section and urinary bladder catheterization; also these places the climate is very infected [5].the parentage of contamination is related to the extent of the open wound [6]. in general, screening activities were the 1st steps in developed control of infection, which helps in decreasing the emerging of infections and reducing costs. systematic screening of infection in burn patients should be applied, systemically and clinically to evaluate incidence and rates the risks of infection. at least, systematic screening of patients includes data collection of burn wound, non-wound. wound surveillance includes sign of healing (granulation), change to infection, and follow up of wound cultures. non-wound surveillance consists of monitor respiratory, urinary and gastro intestinal tract [7, 8]. 2. litreature review more of virulence factors plays important role in wound infections when single or several microorganisms which present in a wound or around the environment surrounding the wounds. the natural immune systems invade the microorganism in viable cell and tissues kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 83 provoke a series of localized or systematic human response. the progression of wounds to patients itself wound contamination, and likelihood of increasing injury infection. incidence of surgical, burn and diabetic wound infection are recognized having microbial etiology especially gram-negative bacterial microorganisms [9]. operational wound infection the occurrence of operational wound infection is based on the microbial contamination susceptibility of wound, post-operative wound infection carried out by clean surgery 1 to 2% risks of infection and not cleaned of procedures are more significant to patients itself contamination previous study estimated 17% of infection [10]. regarding to the different medical records in previous studies, the surgical wound infection rates are relatively low 2 to 6.8% [11, 12, 13], but in the last two previous studies the rate of surgical wound infection are increased 40 and 52.9% [14, 15]. soft tissue infection microbial wound infection investigations cause cutaneous abscesses, necrotizing infection and traumatic wounds. previous studies shown that cutaneous abscesses approximately 25 to 30% of infection [16, 17]. but other studies revealed that nearly 30 to 50 of cutaneous abscesses were infected [16, 18, 19]. bite wound infection because of the complex nature of microorganisms in the oral of human and animals most of the pathogens harmful and harbor which leads to infection on the area of bites such as (provotella, porphyromonas, bacteroides and peptostreptococcus species) [20]. previous study demonstrated that 10 to 50% of infection depends on the gravidity and location of bite, and more than 20% of bites caused by dog, while 30 to 50% of infected wound caused by cat bite [21]. leg and foot lesion infections leg and foot lesion infection develop as a continued outcomes of skin pressure up to bone prominences, which cause skin erosion, ischemia to local tissues and necrosis. more than 25% of leg and foot ulcer infection caused by underlying osteomyelitis and bacteremia [22, 23]. approximately, 36% of the total number of bacterial infection caused by gram-negative bacterial isolate from chronic ulcer of leg and foot [24], while low incidence of leg and foot ulcer infection isolates shown about 5% [23]. burn wound infection regarding to the national healthcare safety network (nhsn), hospital acquired infections are centralized or systemic status caused by adverse response to the presence of pathogens or its toxins. hospital acquired infections develops during patient's admission to hospitalization. it causes a common problem in health care facilities, leads to long duration hospital stays, actual morbidity and mortality, and high costs. usually ≥ 48 hours after admission bacterial will produce and can crow which lead to hospital-acquired infections [25, 26]. big open wound sites that containing dead tissue makes burned patients more likely to get infection. also, a general condition of immune depression from loss of functioning of neutrophils and the cellular and humeral immune cells lead to infection. in these conditions, pathogens can easily reproduce and grow wounds to high consistency. patients by burn are need to remain for log periods intensive care units, during which they may be intubated with endotracheal and/or bladder catheterization which are the risk of contamination [27]. the degree or amount of contamination is depending to the opened wound size [28]. provenances of pathogens are found in the patients itself, from surrounding, and from healthcare staff or families. the most common type of hospital acquired infections in burned patients are circulatory infections, pneumonia, urinary tract infection, soft and operational areas infections. gram-negative bacteria, gram-positive bacteria, yeast and viral pathogens are most common causes of burned hospital acquired infections. antibiotic-resistant is the most common issue in the management of hospital acquired infections in hospital wards after a kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 84 week of the burn damage [29, 30]. also, drug resistances increase the emerging of multi drug pathogens, this need to follow the drug guidance for burn patients. the isolated bacteria exhibited multiple resistances to antibiotics [31,32]. infection essentially produced by microorganisms which invasive burn wound such as gramnegative organisms like; (pseudomonas aeruginosa, escherichia coli, klebsiella pneumonia, serratia marcescens, enterobacter species, proteus species, acinetobacter species, and bacteroides species). thermal injury is the most major causes of emerging bacterial infection which the biggest problem especially, in developing countries. regarding to data from different medical reports in many countries, the pathogens etiology of burn patients were reported by: p. aeruginosa (25-74%), e. coli (5-35%), enterococcus species (9-14%), s. aureus (9-17%), cons (2-21%), a. baumannii (1-24%) [33]. the isolated infectious agents were: pseudomonas spp. (36.84 %), acinetobacter species (28.07 %), and e. coli (7.01%), enterobacter species 5.26 %, s. aureus and candidia albicans 3.50 % [34], however, pseudomonas spp. isolates were the commonest bacteria (20.4 %) followed by mrsa (8.1 %%), enterobacter species (2.6 %), mrcns (2.1%), e. coli (1.7 %) and acinetobacter species (0.9 %) [35]. antibiotic resistance antibiotic resistance common in hospital acquired infections. gram-negative bacterial separation classified in to three or more first line classes depending to the multi-drug resistance of antimicrobials; beta lactams, aminoglycoside, and fluroquinolone in which they are resistance to ≥3 drugs (3rd/4th descent cephalosporins, piperacillin/tazobactam, imipenem, meropenem, fluoroquinolones, and aminoglycosides) [36]. a previous study in north iran revealed that pseudomonas spp. has less resistant to antibiotics like amikacin (50%), gentamicin (42.85%), ciprofloxacin (94.4%), carbenicillin (42.85%), tobramycin (87.52%) and ceftazidime (33.3%) [34]. but a study in iraq revealed that pseudomonas spp. is the commonest multi-drug resistance for amoxicillin, augmentin, cefadroxil, and cefotaxime 100%, followed by klebsella species about 100% mdr for amoxicillin, augmentin, cefadroxil, cefotaxime, and co-trimoxazole. while, staphylococcus. arueus was less resistant to above antibacterial agents (39.761.9%) [37]. 3. methods and materials the presented study determined the microbial spectrum and antimicrobial susceptibility of rod shaped gram-negative bacteria separates from several infection areas in admitted patients to hospitals including operation room, patient wards and intensive care units in sulaimani city. this study included 735 patients who underwent surgical and wound treatment admitted to the hospitals between january 2015 to end of december 2018. to obtain the objectives of this fulfillment work, a structured data collection sheet about wound injury and infection patterns were used to estimate the specialty of patients and most of related factors to infections, microbial determination, and antibiotic sensitivity. consistency, separation and antimicrobial sensitivity checking of bacterial isolates were done by using standard techniques of microbial investigations. the swabs of the wound were taken on admission. almost, the swabs were taken before dressing and before drug administration wherever possible. also, the swabs were at the times were clinical signs of skin infections appeared and cultures of urine cultures were taken per week for those with intubated urinary catheterization and on the onset signs and symptoms of urinary tract problem. antibiotic sensitivity test was taken at the microbiological laboratory inside those hospitals. the data in this job were scaled into excel sheets and transferred to spss (statistical package for social sciences) version 24.0 software. the significance of associations between variable kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 85 and predictors confirmed by chi-square (χ2). p-value of <0.05 was regarded significant. 4. results a total of 735 patients were studied, in which 386 (52.5%) patients were males and 349 (47.5%) were females. the mean age is 25.9 years (ranged from 10 month to 96 years-old). patients less than 18 years of age reported more proportion of the admitted patients 399 (54.3%) followed by more than 40 years-old 184 (25%). individual pathogens’ incidence differ significantly between age groups p<0.001. (table1). table 1: patients characteristics in relation to individual pathogenic infection patients characteristics no. % p-value gender male 386 52.5 1.45 female 349 47.5 age group <18 399 54.3 0.001 18-40 152 20.7 >40 184 25 the study shown that burn open wounds were most frequently infected 437 (59.3) followed by surgical closed wound, surgical opened wound and blood culture 192 (26.1%), 67 (9.1%) and 22 (3.0%), respectively. (table 2) table 2: distribution site of infection in the patient’s body site of infection no. % bed sore 6 .8 blood culture 22 3.0 burn open wound 436 59.3 diabetic wound 2 .3 surgical open wound 67 9.1 surgical closed wound 192 26.1 urine culture 10 1.4 total 735 100 the most common bacteria isolated from wound and sepsis were pseudomonas species especially, pseudomonas aeruginosa 455 (62.0%), followed by providencia species especially providencia stuartii 52 (7.08%) and proteus species especially, proteus rettgeri 14 (1.91%). while aeromons salmonicida were less isolated bacteria 4 (0.55%). (table 3) table 3: distribution of bacterial isolate bacterial isolate no. % achromonas xylosis 6 0.82 aeromonas hydrophilia 11 1.50 aeromons salmonicida 4 0.55 burkholderia cepaciae 5 0.68 pasteurella pneumotropica 5 0.68 proteus mirabilis 9 1.23 proteus rettgeri 14 1.91 providencia rettgeri 18 2.45 providencia stuartii 52 7.08 pseudomonas aeruginosa 455 61.91 pseudomonas fluorescens 50 6.81 pseudomonas fluorescens 44 5.99 pseudomonas luteola 20 2.73 pseudomonas putida 18 2.45 pseudomonas stutzeri 5 0.68 kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 86 ralstonia pickettii 11 1.50 stenotrophomonas maltophilia 8 1.09 the highest resistances were seen against for ticracillin-clavic acid 619 (84.2%) followed by tobramycin, gentamicin, cefepime and ceftazidim 577 (78.5%), 576 (78.4%), 569 (77.4%), and 419 (57.0%) respectively. while most antibiotic active against (sensitive) seen for colistine and imipenem 730 (99.3%) and 607 (82.6%). (table 4) table 4: distribution of antibiotic sensitivity test. antibiotics i no. (%) r no. (%) s no. (%) total no. ticarcillin/clavulanic acid 11 (1.5) 619 (84.2) 105 (14.3) 735 cefipime 41 (5.6) 569 (77.4) 125 (17.0) 735 imipenem 68 (9.3) 60 (8.2) 607 (82.6) 735 meropenem 60 (8.2) 353 (48.0) 322 (43.8) 735 ceftazidim 20 (2.7) 419 (57.0) 296 (40.3) 735 amikacin 57 (7.8) 388 (52.8) 290 (39.5) 735 gentamicin 12 (1.6) 576 (78.4) 147 (20.0) 735 tobramycin 18 (2.4) 577 (78.5) 140 (19.0) 735 ciprofloxacin 63 (8.6) 291 (39.6) 381 (51.8) 735 colistine 0 (0.0) 5 (0.7) 730 (99.3) 735 i: intermediate, r: resistant, s: sensitive from the total of 455 pseudomonas aeruginosa samples, the more common areas of infection founded were burned injury infection 256, followed by surgical closed wound and surgical open wound 109 and 32. but for the other site of infection the number were in different. (table 5) table 5: bacterial identification in relation to site of infection. (p<0.001) site of infection bacterial isolate b ed s or e n o. b lo od cu lt ur e n o. b ur n op en w ou nd n o. d ia be ti c w ou nd n o. su rg ic al op en w ou nd n o. su rg ic al cl os ed w ou nd n o. u ri ne cu lt ur e n o. t ot al n o. achromonas xylosis 1 0 3 0 0 2 0 6 aeromonas hydrophilia 0 1 5 0 1 3 1 11 aeromonsa salmonicida 0 0 1 0 0 3 0 4 burkholderia cepaciae 0 0 1 0 0 4 0 5 pasteurella pneumotropica 0 0 2 0 0 3 0 5 proteus mirabilis 0 1 4 0 0 4 0 9 proteus rettgeri 0 1 7 0 1 5 0 14 providencia rettgeri 0 0 10 0 2 6 0 18 providentia stuartii 0 5 30 0 8 7 2 52 pseudomonas aeruginosa 1 5 303 2 32 109 3 455 pseudomonas fluorescens 2 2 20 0 12 12 2 50 pseudomonas fluorescens 1 3 16 0 8 14 2 44 pseudomonas luteola 1 2 12 0 2 3 0 20 pseudomonas putida 0 1 10 0 1 6 0 18 pseudomonas stutzeri 0 0 2 0 0 3 0 5 ralstonia pickettii 0 0 5 0 0 6 0 11 stenotrophomonas maltophilia 0 2 4 0 0 2 0 8 kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 87 total 6 22 436 2 67 192 10 735 for pseudomonas aeruginosa, the resistances of antibiotics were seen against to ticarcillin/clavulanic acid, cefipime, tobramycin and gentamicin 85.6%, 80.8%, 79.3%, and 79.2% respectively. but most antibiotic were sensitive for pseudomonas aeruginosa and less resistance are colistine and imipenem 0.1% and 7.8%. in addition, colistine seen the less or no resistance for all of the bacterial isolate ranged from 0.0% to 0.1%. (table 6). table 6: antibiotic resistance according to bacterial isolates. (%) site of infection bacterial isolate t c c % c p m % im p % m r p % c l % a k % g e n % t o b % c ip % c a z % achromonas xylosis 96.2 100.0 100.0 100.0 aeromonas hydrophilia 26.9 aeromonsa salmonicida 100. 0 92.3 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 burkholderia cepaciae 100. 0 96.2 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 pasteurella pneumotropica 100. 0 57.7 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 proteus mirabilis 42.3 100.0 100.0 proteus rettgeri 96.2 providencia rettgeri 96.2 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 providentia stuartii 96.2 33.3 33.3 33.3 33.3 pseudomonas aeruginosa 85.6 80.8 7.8 49.1 0.1 52.8 79.2 79.3 40.2 57.6 pseudomonas fluorescens 100. 0 20.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 80.0 100.0 pseudomonas fluorescens 96.2 50.0 pseudomonas luteola 50.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 pseudomonas putida 100.0 100.0 100.0 pseudomonas stutzeri 40.0 20.0 ralstonia pickettii 100. 0 100.0 stenotrophomon s maltophilia 50.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 p-value 0.000 0.000 0.001 0.5 0.000 0.3 0.01 0.02 0.05 0.000 tcc: ticarcillin/clavulanic acid, ctx: cefotaxime, caz: ceftazidime, cpm: cefipime, mrp: meropenem, imp: imipenem, ak: amikacin, gen: gentamicin, cip: ciprofloxacin, atm: aztreonam, tob: tobramycin, cl: colistine. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 88 5. discussion it is confirmed that effective screening and soon detection of infections helps in better treatment of patients and decrease incidence infection, mortality average, duration of hospitalization and associated cost especially, in our community. we found that male was more affected than female and the mean age was 29.9 years-old, it is nearly consistent to the previous study by ngai kien le et al. [38]. nevertheless, other study have reported that female was more affected than male and mean age was higher compared to the current study[39]. there was a big difference between age groups, and we found that pediatric age were more likely to get infection. also statistical significant was founded p=0.001. similar result was found in the previous study revealed that pediatric age was the most frequent patient’s affected [high prevalence]. but another study showed that old ages were more frequent patients to get infection [40]. pediatric ages are susceptible to most infection because they didn’t yet develop immunity. also close proximity of high proportion numbers of infection and them susceptible host favors to transmit infection, and behavioral or emotional characteristics of them such as; inadequate hygiene, direct contact to ply objects, frequent mouthing of hand, incontinence and frequent contact with facilitate are risk for getting infection [41, 42, 43]. this study established that burn wound is the most frequent causing hospital acquired infection and with rod shaped gram-negative bacterial infection. this could be due to centralized or systemic status caused by adverse response to the presence of pathogens or its toxins. hospital acquired infections develops during patient's admission to hospitalization. it causes a common problem in health care facilities, leads to long duration hospital stays, actual morbidity and mortality, and high costs. usually ≥ 48 hours after admission bacterial will produce and can crow which lead to hospital-acquired infections [25, 26]. previous studies agree with this finding [44, 45]. in the current study, the more common bacterial isolates from injury and sepsis were pseudomonas species especially, pseudomonas aeruginosa. similar result was found in the previous study [38]. also pseudomonas aeruginosa is founded more frequently among burn wound infected patients. statically significant was found for these differences p<0.001. ticarcillin/clavulanic acid, cefipime, tobramycin and gentamicin sowed the high resistance rate than the other antibiotics. but colistin and imipenem are with less resistance rate. the antimicrobial drugs with antibiotic resistant proportion to p. aeruginosa more than 70% includes; ticarcillin/clavulanic acid, cefipime, tobramycin and gentamicin, while resistant rate for colostine and imipenem was lower than 10%. this result is agree to the previous study which is conducted by souli, m., i. et al in europe [46]. another study by jafar, e., m.r. shakibaie, and l. poormasoomi showed that p. aeruginosa has another resistant proportion because of the plasmid genes encoded in different, more stability, and low healing efficiency and easy transmission through connecting to the other hospital acquired microbes [47]. moreover, resistances rate are less for aeromonsa salmonicida, burkholderia cepaciae, pasteurella pneumotropica, pseudomonas luteola, pseudomonas fluorescens, and stenotrophomonas maltophilia relaitivily high for most of the antibiotics, while aeromonas hydrophilia, proteus rettgeri, pseudomonas fluorescens, and pseudomonas stutzeri, and ralstonia pickettii. this could be due to the frequency of isolates of those bacteria. repeated using of mentioned antibacterial may be common factors leads to raises of resistant proportions for the most of them and cause impairment drugs action. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 89 6. conclusion challenges for hospitals infection and control is to prevent passed community acquired infection especially, inside the hospitals and other health care unite or environment. the study showed that rod shape gram-negative bacteria especially, pseudomonas aeruginosa was high risk for hospital acquired infection. burn wound was the most dangerous site in human body like to get infection. antibacterial management modifications were more repeated and the treatment time was longer than observed because of the microbial resistance to the confirmed drugs. also most of those antibiotics have no effect to reducing the infection. reference [1] r. gaynes, j. edwards, “overview of nosocomial infections caused by gram-negative bacilli,” clinical infectious diseases 41, pp. 848–54, 2005. 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[47] e. jafar, mr. shakibaie, l. poormasoomi, “isolation of a novel antibiotic resistance plasmid dna from hospital isolates of pseudomonas aeruginosa,” journal of clinical & experimental pathology, 3(2), pp. 1-5, 2013.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq comparative study of diode laser versus intense pulsed light (ipl) for the management of hirsutism in sulaimani government burhan tahir saeed nursing department technical collage of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq burhan.karadaghy@spu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 5 – special issue: 4th international conference on the health and medical science : medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) doi: 10.24017/science.2020.ichms2020.5 article history: received: 04 october 2020 accepted: 10 october 2020 hirsutism defined as excessive hairiness, hirsutism can negatively affect individuals, particularly females. hirsutism has been attributed to the presence of high levels of androgen. there are different procedures to treat hirsutism; however, diode laser and intense pulsed light (ipl) are the most common methods. the present study was carried out in order to compare diode laser and ipl procedures regarding their effectiveness in decreasing hirsutism, patient satisfaction, and pain level. the present cross-sectional prospective study was carried out on 66 patients with hirsutism who regularly visited a dermatology clinic in sulaimani, kurdistan region-iraq over a period of 8 months from february to october 2020. they were assigned into a diode laser group (n=35) and an ipl group (n=31). each patient had 8 laser sessions, once every month. required data were collected through photos taken in every session. the collected data were analyzed through statistical package for the social sciences (version 22.0). the patients’ mean age was 33.12 years. over 53% and 35% of them had a family history of firstand second degree hirsutisms, respectively. both procedures led to good and very good primary outcomes in 43.9% and 36.4% of the patients, respectively. patient satisfaction was high in 42.4% of them. our research has showed that ipl has fewer side effects (p-value<0.001), better primary outcome (p-value<0.001), and better patient’s mood (p-value<0.002). the two procedures led to similar level of patient satisfaction, and they were not significantly different in this regard (p-value=0.3). in terms of hair types, the two procedures were significantly different (p-value<0.001), such that ipl was better for thin hair, while diode laser for thick hair. both diode laser and ipl procedures were found to be efficient in terms of primary outcome, patient keywords: hirsutism, diode laser, intense pulsed light, auxiliary hair removal kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 41 satisfaction, and patient’s mood. however, diode laser is proper for dark-skinned patients with thick hair and ipl for thin hair. diode laser was found to be better choice for our patients because most clients in the region are dark-skinned with thick hair. copyright © 2020kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction hirsutism can be defined as an excessive hairiness [1] according to the local kurdistan the ministry of health (moh) report, it is the most prevalent endocrinal condition among female in our society, which causes enormous psychological effect on the quality of life of our patients. the excessive hairs will be on the face, chest and back of the patients. the excessive hairs in women is present in male pattern characteristic [2]. excessive hairiness is due to presence of high level of androgen which can be due to serious or most likely nonserious medical condition [3]. hirsutism, in some women can cause severe psychological effect on general wellbeing of the patient. it can be seen as loss of femininity and may produce stress, anxiety or even depression. due to its cosmetic effect, it may lead to isolation of the patient [4]. the main purposes in treating patients with hirsutism are to exclude serious medical problem and manage the condition accordingly [5]. the majority of women have minor hirsutism which can be due to high or low level of androgen. it is obvious that androgens are produced in the adrenal gland or the ovaries. it is clear that the most dominant and active form of androgen is testosterone which is produce by the male testis [6]. in treating patients with hirsutism, it is important to tell the patient carefully the cause of the problem and reassure the patient that hirsutism does not mean loss of femininity [7]. in our community, the majority of hirsutism is idiopathic hirsutism which mean the exact cause of hirsutism is not known. however, if the cause is known the direction of intervention should be towards the underlying causes [8]. treatment of hirsutism can be either by cosmetic method or systemic therapy. cosmetic method has immediate result however systemic therapy can have slow effect. in some situation we can use both systemic and cosmetic method [9]. cosmetic method includes different type of depilation such as plucking, shaving, depilatory creams, waxing and lasers, systemic therapies include medication that either decrease androgen production by the ovary and adrenal gland or inhibit the action of androgen in the skin. systemic therapy medications can be spironolactone, flutamide, finasteride, oral contraceptive pills, cyproterone acetate and insulin sensitizer such as metformin or rosiglitazone [10]. laser therapy is the best option for treating hirsutism. in some situation hirsutism can be treated only with laser without any other modality of treatment [11]. photothermolysis is the basic principle of hair removal lasers therapy, generally through penetration of laser energy to the components of the hair follicle [12]. for the darker terminal hair, diode laser is considered one the most effective type of laser, but its effectively on light lighter terminal is less, it has fast repetition rate, and it cover larger area allowing treatment of the whole body easer. in contrast. intense pulsed light (ipl) devices the second most common technique used in our country for hair removal. this laser equivalent considered a difficult technique and require a trained and efficient trephination to operate, and it is mechanism and concept are the same of selective photothermolysis. there are limit reports available in our country to compare these two methods of treatment for hirsutism. therefore, the aim of the current research was to compare the diode laser versus intense pulsed light (ipl) devices for the treatment of hirsutism in single center in sulaimani city. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 42 2. methods and materials sixty-six patients were recorded in this cross-sectional prospective study. the patients were routine visitor to dermatology clinic center / sulaimani city, and they all complains of having unwanted hair on their face. they wanted to have laser treatment. in our society the patient is usually skin type iiiv. recorded informed consent were taken from all patients prior to the research. acceptance of sulaymaniyah directorate of health ethical committee was taken prior the start of the study. exclusions criteria were; vellus hair which is non pigmented fine hairs, any recent laser treatment or electrolysis to face, pathological cause of hirsutism, gross hormonal dysfunction, pregnancy, history of keloid or hypertrophic scars, and immunosuppression patient. the patients were split into two main groups of 35 patients for diode laser in group i. diode laser is lumenis type laser which is the universal leader in the field of laser based medical solutions for esthetic, surgical and optic care applications. it is a germany made equipment. the rest 31 patients for ipl laser in group ii ipl laser is ellipse laser which is intense pulse light it is a selective waveband technology (swt) for permanent hair reduction in all skin types. the machine is manufactured in denmark. prior to carrying out the laser treatment, photograph was taken of the site of the hirsutism. the patients were having laser session on monthly basis. the study started on 1/2/2020 till 1/10/ 2020, total of 8 session were performed. photographs were also taken on monthly laser session to check the amount of hair reduction. full detailed history, pelvic ultrasound, hormonal test was performed to exclude any pathological cause of hirsutism. for the safety reason, all patients were told to apply cold pack on the site of the laser immediately post laser session, they were instructed to avoid sun exposure for few days and informed about the importance of sun cream. the fluence and duration of the pulse laser were performed according the patient’s tolerance to the laser and side effects post laser treatment. the patients were advised to avoid shaving or applying depilary cream 14 days prior to the next session for the sake of checking the amount of hair reduction. the two group were compared for the effectiveness and safety of the lasers at the end of the treatment. efficacy were ranked into four categories from category 1; very good80% reduction of hair, category 2; good-50-80%, category 3; fair-25-50% and category 4; poor<25%. the primary end result was the percentage of hair reduction on each session. 3. results sixty six patients were enrolled in the current study, the mean age of the patients was mean ± sd (33.12 ± 7.76), most of the patients were their age less than 40 years (83.0%), inside city (71.2%), had first degree of family history 53.0%, and thick hair type (66.7%) table 1: demographical characteristic of the patients patients demographic age groups in years mean ± sd (33.12 ± 7.76) 20 – 30 31 – 40 41 – 50 address inside outside family history of first degree yes no family history of second degree yes no hair type thick 27(40.9) 28 (42.4) 11 (16.7) 47 (71.2) 19 (28.8) 35 (53.0) 31 (47.0) 26 (35.0) 31 (47.0) 44 (66.7) kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 43 thin 22 (33.3) table 2. shows the general outcome of both procedures on 66 patients. in general, more than half of the patients were not shown side effect of the procedure, 74% of the outcome of the procedure were good and very good, in addition more than 80 % of the patients were satisfied for the both procedures, and 60 % of them feel happy post procedure. table 2: general outcome of procedures side effect none 35 (53.0) pain 16 (24.2) pain and redness 6 (9.1) redness 9 (13.6) primary outcome very good 29 (43.9) good 24 (36.4) fair 9 (13.6) poor 4 (6.1) patients satisfaction very satisfy 28 (42.4) satisfy 29 (43.9) unsatisfied 9 (13.6) patients mood/pre depress 35 (53.0) stress 31 (47.0) patients mood/post very happy 26 (39.4) happy 40 (60.6) table 3 shows the relation between laser types and the side effects of procedures post treatment. it is cleared that lpl show significant less side effect compared to diode procedure. in term of pain and redness. p value <0.001 table 3: side effects related to the laser procedure laser type p-value diode ipl side effects none 8 27 <0.001 22.9% 87.1% pain 13 3 37.1% 9.7% pain and redness 5 1 14.3% 3.2% redness 9 0 25.7% 0.0% table 4 shows the relation between laser types and the outcomes of procedures post treatment. it is cleared that lpl show significant good and very good outcome compared to diode procedure. in p value <0.001. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 44 table 4.: primary outcome related to the laser’s procedure laser type p-value diode ipl primary outcome very good 25 4 <0.001 71.4% 12.9% good 6 18 17.1% 58.1% fair 4 5 11.4% 16.1% poor 0 4 0.0% 12.9% table 5 shows the relation between laser types and satisfaction of the patients of procedures post treatment. it is cleared that lpl and diode showed no significant differences in term of patients’ satisfaction in p value <0.3. table 5: patient satisfaction with the laser procedure laser type total diode ipl patients satisfaction very satisfy 17 11 0.3 48.6% 35.5% satisfy 15 14 42.9% 45.2% unsatisfied 3 6 8.6% 19.4% figure 1 shows the before and after-treatment of a 24-year-old female post eight sessions of diode laser. the percentage of the hair reduction was 80% figure 1: before and after-treatment photo of a 24-year-old female post eight sessions of diode laser figure 2 shows the before and after-treatment photograph of a 30-year-old women post eight sessions of lpl laser. the percentage of the hair reduction was 90% kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 45 figure 2: before and after-treatment photograph of a 30-year-old woman after eight sessions of lpl laser table 6 shows the relation between laser types and patient’s mood of procedures post treatment. it is cleared that lpl showed significant difference in term of the patient’s mood after the procedure, as most the patients were shown happy impression after the procedure p value 0.002. table 6: patient’s mood in related to the post lasers procedure laser type p-value diode ipl patients mood/post very happy 20 6 0.002 57.1% 19.4% happy 15 25 42.9% 80.6% 4. discussion nowadays, both the intense pulsed light (ipl) and the diode laser are quite popular and broadly employed by dermatologists. although many research studies have shown that these two methods are quite efficient and safe in removing unwanted hair, these two technologies have been compared in very few studies. in this regard, different results have been reported by various studies. for example, ormiga et al compared diode laser and the ipl and introduced them as safe and effective methods that can lead to lasting elimination of undesirable hair [13]. however, the results of a similar study performed by cameron et al revealed that, compared to the ipl, the diode laser led to better results in terms of the objective reduction of hair [14]. similarly, the results of the study conducted by haak et al to compare diode laser and ipl effectiveness in removing facial hair indicated that these two methods are significantly different [15]. in this regard, the results of the present study revealed that the hairy women with normal range of testosterone had equal response to facial hair treatment through diode laser and ipl. the results also showed no sufficiently great difference in the patients’ level of satisfaction; however, the level of pain described by them was invariably greater in treatment with ipl compared to diode laser. over half of the participants in the present study had a history of first-degree hirsutism and 35% had a history of second-degree hirsutism. in this regard, it has been stated that hirsutism often develops on a familial basis because of the familial clustering of some of its underlying diseases like polycystic ovarian syndrome (pcos) or congenital adrenal hyperplasia (cah). also, it has been shown that 35% of the mothers and 40% of the sisters of the participants with pcos were affected by pcos. often, a positive family history of hirsutism is found in half of the people. that is why the etiology of excessive growth of hair can be assisted by obtaining a family [16]. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 46 as reported by half of the participants, the application of none of the products was associated with any side effects. in addition, about one-fourth of them reported pain, less than one-tenth pain and redness, and 13.6% complained of redness. in line with this finding, atta-motte and zalęska pointed out that treatment with a diode laser is commonly associated with bruising, blisters, excessive swelling, scarring, damage to the natural skin texture, and discomfort [17]. in the present study, the primary outcome of therapies was reported by over 80% of the participants to be good or very good. in this regard, the results of the study conducted by khodaeyani et al indicated that the treatment outcomes from ipl, diode lasers, alexandrite, and ruby laser were comparable, while nd:yag laser lead to less satisfactory outcomes. they also concluded that ipl successfully treated the chin and neck within three sessions, and the outcomes were 3.94 times better than those of the ruby laser. additionally, they observed that diode laser and ipl had the same level of efficacy [18]. more than 86% of the participants declared that they were satisfied or very satisfied with both treatment procedures. different studies have reported a high rate of satisfaction in treatment with both methods of diode laser and ipl. for example, zaleska and atta-motte [19] concluded that unwanted hair might not be permanently removed; however, ipl is more favored in terms of the patient satisfaction rate. however, they demonstrated that there was no importatnt difference between one or two sessions of removing auxiliary hair through ipl. moreover, they found no statistically significant differences in hair reduction rates between the groups treated with ipl and diode laser [19]. the outcome of the present study showed that the diode laser has higher side effects in comparison with ipl procedure. in this regard, zaleska and atta-motte concluded that skin color and hair thickness have a significant effect on the rate of side effects and the efficiency of ipl and diode laser procedures. they also reported that treatment with ipl before the diode laser can have a negative impact on the treatment efficiency [19]. in the present study, comparing unwanted hair removal outcomes of treatment with ipl and diode laser procedures has shown that ipl leads to remarkably better outcomes than diode laser. in this regard, puri recommended the diode laser for patients with dark hair because this procedure has a narrow margin of safety, in which appropriate preand post-procedure cooling is recommended. in addition, although the diode laser is associated with more side effects, it is more effective than other procedures [20]. according to the results of the present study, it was concluded that there were not any differences between the diode laser and ipl procedure in terms of patient satisfaction. as shown by the results of a study conducted by al-hamamy et al, both diode laser and ipl are effective in increased duration of hair regrowth, hair diameter, hair density, and hair reduction. however, they reported that treatment with ipl is associated with higher levels of pain compared to with laser. also, diode laser procedure results in more post-treatment side effects like burn, hyperpigmentation, and erythema in comparison with ipl. finally, al-hamamy et al observed a higher rate of patient satisfaction among those treated with ipl, compared to the diode laser, although the pain level associated with treatment through ipl resulted in more pain [21]. a large number of ipl devices exist; therefore, it is to some extent difficult to select appropriate parameters. moreover, there is less experience published with the use of ipl devices. additionally, compared to laser devices, ipl devices are harder to use and require a very experienced and skilled clinician to employ. furthermore, the energy produced by a lamp in ipl devices is less powerful and more diffuse; therefore, it is proper to use for fairer skin types [22]. however, treatment with ipl devices is more cost-effective. ipl devices are also computer-driven, leading them to be more precise and tremendously versatile [19]. in the present study, patients with thicker hair and darker skin color reported more satisfactory outcomes with the diode laser. while the ipl procedure was more appropriate for thin hair. in line with this finding, jo et al concluded that hair regrowth decreases remarkably in treatment with ipl; however, permanent removal of auxiliary hair cannot be obtained in patients with thicker hair. only a small percentage of the ipl energy is effectively absorbed by the hair kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 47 follicle to achieve hair reduction; therefore, more and regular treatments are required, as thicker and deeper hair follicles might not be reached and disabled effectively [23]. 5. conclusion in conclusion both diode laser and ipl are successful modes for hair reduction. however, for skin type 3 and 4 with dark hairs. but, since the diode laser has a narrow margin of safety, proper preparation of the patient is needed before and after the procedure. however, in competent hands this type of procedure is economical and more cost effective. it was seen that for our patients, diode laser was the excellent type of laser affecting coarse thick hairs, while ipl laser was not applicable for patients who have brown or black skin as it targeted only fine and thin hairs. reference [1] bo. yildiz, s. bolour, k. woods, a. moore, r. azziz, “visually scoring hirsutism,” human reproduction update, 16(1). pp. 51-64, 2010. [2] mofid, sa. seyyed alinaghi, s. zandieh, t. yazdani, “hirsutism,” international journal of clinical practice, 62(3), pp. 433-43, 2008. [3] k. unluhizarci, g. kaltsas, f. kelestimur, “non polycystic ovary syndrome–related endocrine disorders associated with hirsutism,” european journal of clinical investigation, 42(1), pp. 86-94, 2012. [4] jh. barth, j. catalan, ca. cherry, a. day, “psychological morbidity in women referred for treatment of hirsutism,” journal of psychosomatic research, 37(6), pp. 615-9, 1993. [5] r. azziz, d. ehrmann, rs. legro, rw. whitcomb, r. hanley, ag. fereshetian, et al., “troglitazone improves ovulation and hirsutism in the polycystic ovary syndrome: a multicenter, double blind, placebocontrolled trial,” the journal of clinical endocrinology & metabolism, 86(4), pp. 1626-32, 2001. [6] rl. rosenfield, “9 pilosebaceous physiology in relation to hirsutism and acne,” clinics in endocrinology and metabolism, 15(2), pp. 341-62. 1986. [7] ks. oláh, “the modern management of hirsutism,” reviews in gynaecological practice, 4(4), pp. 211-20, 2004. [8] ke. sharquie, ka. al-khafaji, “the prevalence of hirsutism in iraqi females,” annals of saudi medicine, 12(5), pp. 453-5, 1992. [9] ka. martin, rr. anderson, rj. chang, da. ehrmann, ra. lobo, mh. murad, et al., “evaluation and treatment of hirsutism in premenopausal women: an endocrine society clinical practice guideline,” the journal of clinical endocrinology & metabolism, 3(4), pp.1233-57, 2018. [10] rp. dawber, “guidance for the management of hirsutism,” current medical research and opinion, 21(8), pp. 1227-34, 2005. [11] dv. bode, da. seehusen, dc. baird, “hirsutism in women,” american family physician, 85(4), pp. 373-80, 2012. [12] ev. ross, z. ladin, m. kreindel, c. dierickx, “theoretical considerations in laser hair removal,” dermatol clin, 17, pp. 333–55, 1999. [13] p. ormiga, c. ishida, a. boechat, m. ramos-e-silva, “comparison of the effect of diode laser versus intense pulsed light in axillary hair removal,” dermatologic surgery, 2014. [14] h. cameron, s. ibbotson, r. dawe, j. ferguson, “within-patient right-left blinded comparison of diode (810 nm) laser therapy and intense pulsed light therapy for hair removal,” lasers med sci, 23, pp. 393–7, 2008. [15] c. haak, p. nymann, a. pedersen t, “hair removal in hirsute women with normal testosterone levels: a randomized controlled trial of long-pulsed diode laser vs,” intense pulsed light. br j dermatol, 163, pp. 1007–13, 2010. [16] martin, r. anderson, r. chang, d. ehrmann, “evaluation and treatment of hirsutism in premenopausal women: an endocrine society* clinical practice guideline,” journal of clinical endocrinology & metabolism, 103(4), 2018. [17] m. atta-motte, i. zalęska, “diode laser 805 hair removal side effects in groups of various ethnicities – cohort study results,” j lasers med sci, 11(2), pp. 132–137, 2020. [18] e. khodaeyani, m. amirnia, s. babaye-nazhad, h. alikhah, b. brufeh, “efficacy of intense pulsed light in hirsutism,” pakistan journal of biological sciences, 13, pp. 635-641, 2010. [19] zaleska, m. atta-motte, “epilation results comparison: diode laser versus ipl. the effectiveness of diode laser epilation following non-coherent light therapy,” conference: euroscicon conference on dermatology and skin. the section of professional cosmetology, the faculty of motor rehabilitation, university of physical education in krakow, poland, 2019. [20] n. puri, “comparative study of diode laser versus neodymium-yttrium aluminum: garnet laser versus intense pulsed light for the treatment of hirsutism,” journal of cutaneous and aesthetic surgery, 8(2), pp. 97-101, 2015. [21] h. al-hamamy, a. saleh, z. rashed, “evaluation of effectiveness of diode laser system (808 nm) versus intense pulse light (ipl) in the management of unwanted hair: a split face comparative study,” international journal of medical physics, clinical engineering and radiation oncology, 53, pp. 540-7, 2015. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 48 [22] m. sochor, a. curkova, z. schwarczova, r. sochorova, m. simaljakova, j. buchvald, “comparison of hair reduction with three lasers and light sources: prospective, blinded and controlled study,” j cosmet laser ther, 13, pp. 210-5, 2011. [23] s. jo, y. kim jin, j. ban, y. lee, o. kwon, w. koh, “efficacy and safety of hair removal with a longpulsed diode laser depending on the spot size: a randomized, evaluators-blinded, left-right study,” ann dermatol, 27(5), pp. 517–522, 2015. 1. introduction 5. conclusion  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq confounding risk factors in developing type 1 diabetes mellitus among children and adolescents at sulaimani chronic diabetes health center chia h. sadiq pary m. azize midwifery department nursing department sulaimani technical institute sulaimani technical institute sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimaniiraq sulaimaniiraq chia.sadiq@spu.edu.iq pary.azize@spu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 6 – issue 1june 2021 doi: 10.24017/science.2021.1.7 article history: received: 16/03/2021 accepted: 16/05/2021 diabetes mellitus consider as a common chronic health condition throughout the world and the most common endocrine disease in children and adolescences. the study aim is to determine the risk factors, which lead to type 1 diabetes mellitus among children and adolescent in diabetes health center at sulaimani city. the study was conducted using descriptive cross sectional study at a special center for type 1 diabetes miletus a questionnaire was created and administered to a (170 ) mothers or fathers as a convenience sample. descriptive statistics analysis such as (frequency, percentage, mean and stander deviation) and also to identify the effective factors affecting diabetes in children and adolescents factorial analysis (principal component analysis) was used. the finding show that, 39.4 % of samples were aged between (9-13) years old, which stated as the highest rate among all age groups, while the minority of age was between (1-4) years old, which was equal to 8.2% of the total and the (mean ±s.d) was equal to 10.44±4.04 respectively. the majority of age at diagnosis was between (5-8) years old, which is 35.3% and their food habit was normal diet, which is 73.5%, while the sugar diet and fatty diet were 25.9% and 0.6%y respectively. most of the participants, 19.4% of the participant’s family history was type 2 diabetes, which was the first rank of the family history and majority of them were kurdish in nationality. age at diagnosis and mode of delivery considered as the first factor affect the type 1 diabetics mellitus. the second most common factor effect on diabetes disease in children and adolescents are maternal habit and maternal disease followed by gestational age at birth and neonatal disease, then food habits, neonatal weight was estimated as the fourth component factors affecting type 1 diabetes mellitus. the fifth component factors in ranking are residency and family history of autoimmune disease, finally the weakest factor is nationality by total variance of 8.552%. the early year of child’s life played a vital role in development of type 1 diabetes keywords: effect, type 1diabetes mellitus, children, adolescence, chronic, diabetes center, mailto:chia.sadiq@spu.edu.iq mailto:pary.azize@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 57 mellitus, also maternal diseases ( gestational diabetes, preeclampsia and perinatal infection during pregnancy), healthy diet during pregnancy and education programs are recommended 1. introduction diabetes mellitus (dm) is a common chronic health condition throughout the world and the most common endocrine disease in children and adolescences [1]. globally, the rate of type i diabetes mellitus has been increased by 2-5% annually, and approximately in 2010 about 1:300 cases in 18 years of age were suffered from t1dm in the us population [2]. the incidence has decreased among children aged 2-6 years with significant increases between age 10 14 years [2,3]. deficiency in secretion of insulin or an autoimmune disease of the beta cells destruction of pancreas mostly leads to type 1 diabetes among children, [3]. t1dm ( insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus) that is due to 'unknown cause' [4]. various causes of impairment in the pancreatic beta-cell functions are dietary component, viral infection, the autoimmune disease. although, genetic risk factors is another predisposing risk factor for developing t1dm, allowing the autoimmune process to progress [5,6]. typically, t1dm is diagnosed after the onset of obvious hyperglycemia [7]. islet autoimmunity has defined as the persistently existence of autoantibodies to pancreatic beta-cell islet antigens. usually, islet immunity occurs in early life, and the prevalence has increased in the second years of life [8,9]. recently a study has been indicated that perinatal infection that affects children in utero, or during early childhood [10]. a variety of maternal-related incidents are linked in the development with risk of type 1diabetes among children but not in adults [11]. another factor that may contribute to diabetes, is thyroid disease. a strong relationship between the occurrences of thyroid disease and relatives of a diabetic patient in compared with children and adolescents did not have diabetes[12]. this study has been conducted to find out the maternal and neonatal risk factors in the development of t1d among children and adolescents in the diabetes health center at sulaimani city. 2. methods and materials this study was conducted through using a descriptive cross sectional study at a special center for t1dm children at sulaimani city. either parent of diagnosed t1dm children were participated in this study. a structured interview has been applied using a validated questionnaires based on t1dm‘s epidemiological risk factors in children and adolescents after a comprehensive review of literature in order to reach the study's objectives. a questionnaire was created and administered to a (170 ) mothers or fathers as a convenience sample. the data were about child and adolescent socio-demographic information such as (age , age of diagnosis, residency, nationality, food habit and family history of autoimmune disease) then potential maternal risk factors during pregnancy ( prenatal) such as maternal food habit and maternal disease during pregnancy) and potential neonatal risk factors ( postnatal such as mood of delivery, gestational age, neonate weight and disease) affecting t1dm using a structured informant questionnaire. the data was collected from (170) enrolled either parents who registered their children to the diabetes center through a telephone conversation because of the situation of covid 19. non probability sampling was used to select purposive sample of participants who met the criteria of selection. the permission was taken from the center first, and then the researchers were asked about the telephone number for each family in order to get their approval for their participation in this study. interviews were conducted individually with each with telephone follow-up, the kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 58 data were about child and adolescent socio-demographic information such as (age , age of diagnosis, residency, nationality, food habit and family history of autoimmune disease) then potential maternal risk factors during pregnancy ( prenatal) such as maternal food habit and maternal disease during pregnancy) and potential neonatal risk factors ( postnatal such as mood of delivery, gestational age, neonate weight and disease) affecting t1dm using a structured informant questionnaire. all statistical computation is enhanced using statistical method (spss 21). the data had been coded, tabulated, and presented in a descriptive form. the statistical procedure that was applied to determine the results of the present study included: 1. alpha-cronbach has been used for testing the reliability of the questionnaire. 2. descriptive statistical data analysis (child and adolescent demography, potential maternal risk factors and potential neonatal risk factors) 3. inferential data analysis: a. descriptive statistics data (frequency, percentage, mean and stander deviation) b. factorial analysis (principal component analysis) was used in order to identify the effective factors affecting diabetes decease in children and adolescents c. one way anova (f-test) 3. results table 1): child and adolescent demography data variables frequency percent age (date of birth ) 1-4 years old 14 8.2 5-8 years old 42 24.7 9-13 years old 67 39.4 14-17 years old 47 27.6 mean ±s.d 10.44±4.04 age at diagnosis of type 1 diabetes (if known) 1-4 years old 58 34.1 5-8 years old 60 35.3 9-11 years old 47 27.6 1417 years old 5 2.9 residency rural 7 4.1 urban 97 57.1 sub-urban 66 38.8 nationality kurd 169 99.4 arab 1 0.6 other 0 0.0 childs and adolescent food habits normal diet 125 73.5 fatty diet 1 0.6 sugar diet 44 25.9 family history of autoimmune disease type i dm 4 2.4 type i dm 33 19.4 type i +type ii dm 5 2.9 thyroid disease 23 13.5 heart disease 11 6.5 cancer disease 3 1.8 no disease 23 13.5 type 2 diabetes mellitus +thyroid disease 23 13.5 type 1 diabetes+ thyroid disease 3 1.8 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 59 thyroid disease + heart disease 9 5.3 type 2 diabetes mellitus + heart disease 9 5.3 type 2 diabetes mellitus + cancer disease 3 1.8 heart disease + cancer disease 2 1.2 type 1 diabetes mellitus + cancer disease 1 0.6 thyroid disease + cancer disease 1 0.6 type 1 dm + type ii diabetes mellitus +heart disease 1 0.6 type ii dm + thyroid disease + heart disease 8 4.7 type 11 dm + thyroid disease + cancer disease 5 2.9 type ii dm+ heart disease + cancer disease 3 1.8 maternal habits normal 97 57.1 tea 73 42.9 maternal disease no disease 104 61.2 pre-eclampsia 8 4.7 gestational diabetes 2 1.2 perinatal infection 52 30.6 gestational diabetes + perinatal infection 4 2.4 total 170 100 it is clear from the table (1): 39.4 % of participants were aged between (9-13) years old, which estimated as the highest rate among all age groups followed by 27.6% were between (1417) years old, while the minority of age 8.2% were between (1-4) years old and the (mean ±s.d) was to equal 10.44±4.04. in addition, the majority of age at diagnosis was between (5-8) years old, which was 35.3%,34.1% were diagnosed between (1-4) and 27.6 of age at diagnosis 34.1% and 27.6 of age at diagnosis (9-11) years old and only 2.9% was between (14-17) years old. among the study participants, 57.1% were from urban residency. the majority of nationality was kurdish nationality which was 99.4% of the study. the majority of the childs and adolescent food habits was normal diet, which was 73.5%, while the sugar diet and fatty diet were 25.9% and 0.6% by respectively. most of the participants, 19.4% of family history was type 2 diabetes, which, was the first rank of the family history. while, 2.9%, 1.8% and 1.2% of the family history was (type 1+type 2diabetes), (type 2 diabetes + cancer disease) and (heart disease + cancer disease) respectively. in addition, the majority of 57.2% of maternal habits were normal followed by only 42.9% were tea habits. in addition, the highest rate 61.2% of maternal not suffered from disease and 30.6% had perinatal infection, and only 2.4% was (gestational diabetes + perinatal infection ) which was the lowest percentage among all maternal diseases. table (2): potential neonatal risk factors data variables frequency percent mode of delivery vaginal delivery 101 59.4 instrument vaginal delivery 0 0.0 cesarean section 69 40.6 gestational age at birth preterm 26 15.3 full term 136 80 post term 8 4.7 neonatal weight normal weight 140 82.4 underweight 11 6.5 overweight 10 5.9 obesity 9 5.3 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 60 neonatal disease no disease 64 37.6 respiratory disease 10 5.9 jaundice 36 21.2 infection 29 17.1 heart disease 2 1.2 respiratory disease + jaundice 14 8.2 jaundice + infection 9 5.3 jaundice + heart disease 1 0.6 respiratory disease + infection 1 0.6 respiratory disease + jaundice disease + infection 4 2.4 total 170 100 it is clear from the table 2: 59.4% of participants had vaginal delivery and only 40.6% was caesarean section. most participants, 80% were full term and only 15.3% were preterm. while, 4.7% of them were post term. most participants, 82.4% were normal weight while 6.5% and 5.9% of the neonatal weight were underweight and overweight respectively and only 5.3% of them were obesity. in addition, 37.6% of them were healthy no neonatal disease and the second rank of the neonatal disease was infection which was 17.1%. jaundice + heart disease and respiratory disease + infection of the neonatal disease was the lowest percentage among all neonatal disease table (3): socio-demographic risk factors (3.1) :total variance explained component initial eigenvalues extraction sums of squared loadings rotation sums of squared loadings total % of variance cumulative % total % of variance cumulative % total % of variance cumulative % 1 1.692 21.148 21.148 1.692 21.148 21.148 1.684 21.055 21.055 2 1.396 17.452 38.600 1.396 17.452 38.600 1.370 17.127 38.182 3 1.046 13.069 51.669 1.046 13.069 51.669 1.079 13.487 51.669 4 .974 12.172 63.841 5 .961 12.018 75.860 6 .945 11.818 87.678 7 .668 8.351 96.029 8 .318 3.971 100.000 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 61 (3.2):rotated component matrixa factors component 1 2 3 age .913 .022 .007 age at diagnosis .892 .013 -.040 residency -.117 .287 -.684 nationality .006 -.311 .046 childs and adolescent food habits .061 .478 .151 family history of autoimmune disease -.147 .193 .754 maternal habits .057 .625 -.016 maternal disease -.107 .731 -.127 table (3.1) and (3.2) shows three socio-demographic data affecting the rate of diabetes in children and adolescents using the correlation matrix analysis, among risk factors by using (principal component analysis pca). the analysis indicated that three in eighth items were eliminated are as follows: the first principal component is the age of the child, it represents the most effective factor, which explained the variance equal to (21.148%) from the total cumulative variance (51.669%) in loading value equal to (0.913) followed by age at diagnosis factor, as the other most effective risk factor in loading value equal to (0.892). the second most common factor effect on diabetes disease in children and adolescents and its occupied variance value equal to (17.452%) from the total cumulative variance (51.669%) and includes four risk factors: nationality risk factor in loading value equal to (-0.311), childs and adolescent food habits risk factor in loading value equal to (0.478), maternal habits risk factor in loading value equal to (0.625) and maternal disease risk factor in loading value equal to (0.731). third principal components: it's occupied variance value equal to (13.069%) from the total cumulative variance (51.669%) and it includes two risk factors: family history of autoimmune disease risk factor in loading value equal to( 0.754) and residency risk factor to loading value equal to (-0.684). maternal habits risk factor in loading value equal to (0.625) and maternal disease risk factor in loading value equal to (0.731). third principal components: it's occupied variance value equal to (13.069%) from the total cumulative variance (51.669%) and it includes two risk factors: family history of autoimmune disease risk factor in loading value equal to( 0.754) and residency risk factor to loading value equal to (-0.684). the analysis indicated that three in eighth items were eliminated are as follows: 1st factor: this factor containing these variables (age of the child and age at diagnosis) by total variance 21.148%. f1 = 0.913(age of the child) +0.892(age at diagnosis) 2nd factor: this factor containing these variables (nationality, childs and adolescent food habits, maternal habits and maternal disease) by total variance 17.452%. f2 = -0.311(nationality) +0.478(childs and adolescent food habits) +0.625(maternal habits) +0.731(maternal disease) 3rd factor: this factor containing these variables (family history of autoimmune disease and residency) by total variance 11.050%. f3 = 0.754 (family history of autoimmune disease) -0.684(residency) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 62 table (4): potential neonatal risk factors (4.1):total variance explained component initial eigenvalues extraction sums of squared loadings rotation sums of squared loadings total % of variance cumulative % total % of variance cumulative % total % of variance cumulative % 1 1.228 30.706 30.706 1.228 30.706 30.706 1.183 29.585 29.585 2 1.096 27.393 58.100 1.096 27.393 58.100 1.141 28.514 58.100 3 .962 24.040 82.140 4 .714 17.860 100.000 (4.2):rotated component matrixa factors component 1 2 mode of delivery .174 -.772 gestational age at birth -.738 .372 neonatal weight .121 .520 neonatal disease .770 .368 table (4.1) and (4.2) underlines two potential neonatal risk factors in the fourth items, which affects the presence of diabetes in children and adolescents as it represents below: first principal components: its occupied variance value equal to (30.706%) from the total cumulative variance (58.100%) and it includes two risk factors: gestational age at birth in loading value equal to (-0.738) and neonatal disease to loading value equal to (0.77). second principal components: its occupied variance value equal to (27.393%) from the total cumulative variance (58.100%) and it includes two risk factors: mode of delivery in loading value equal to (-0.772) and neonatal weight to loading value equal to (0.52). the analysis of study identified from factor, which are clarify 58.100% of the variance, and the result identified four (2) factors, for example 1st factor: this factor containing these variables (gestational age at birth and neonatal disease) by total variance 30.706%. f1 = -0.738 (gestational age at birth) +0.77(neonatal disease) 2nd factor: this factor containing these variables (mode of delivery and neonatal weight) by total variance 27.393%. f2 = -0.772 (mode of delivery) +0.52 (neonatal weight) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 63 table (5): risk factors for diabetes mellitus among children and adolescents (5.1): total variance explained component initial eigenvalues extraction sums of squared loadings rotation sums of squared loadings total % of variance cumulative % total % of variance cumulative % total % of variance cumulative % 1 1.975 16.45 7 16.457 1.975 16.457 16.457 1.881 15.67 6 15.676 2 1.550 12.91 6 29.373 1.550 12.916 29.373 1.419 11.82 6 27.501 3 1.179 9.823 39.196 1.179 9.823 39.196 1.306 10.88 1 38.382 4 1.105 9.206 48.402 1.105 9.206 48.402 1.108 9.235 47.618 5 1.035 8.626 57.028 1.035 8.626 57.028 1.105 9.211 56.829 6 1.026 8.552 65.580 1.026 8.552 65.580 1.050 8.752 65.580 7 .926 7.719 73.299 8 .862 7.187 80.486 9 .763 6.361 86.847 10 .659 5.488 92.335 11 .615 5.126 97.461 12 .305 2.539 100.00 0 (5.2):rotated component matrix factors component 1 2 3 4 5 6 age (date of birth ) .860 -.027 -.125 .001 -.035 -.061 age at diagnosis .874 -.061 -.023 .053 .009 -.036 residency -.051 .119 .171 .010 .824 .045 nationality -.082 -.135 -.158 .068 -.053 .842 childs and adolescent food habits .029 .237 -.036 -.817 .052 -.037 family history of autoimmune disease -.092 .128 .451 -.022 -.585 .148 maternal habits -.029 .738 -.201 .029 -.100 -.209 maternal disease -.027 .671 .335 -.111 .218 .140 mode of delivery -.519 -.192 -.139 .112 -.077 -.463 gestational age at birth .285 .305 -.557 .027 -.044 .175 neonatal weight .061 .420 .036 .632 .106 -.005 neonatal disease .055 .094 .740 .079 .022 -.048 according to the table (5.1) and (5.2) shows six risk factors affecting the presence of diabetes in children and adolescents using the correlation matrix analysis, among risk factors by using (principal component analysis pca). the analysis indicated that three in eighth items were eliminated are as follows: kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 64 the analysis of study identified from factor, which are clarify 65.580% of the variance, and the result identified four (6) factors, for example 1st factor: this factor containing these variables (age, age at diagnosis and mode of delivery) by total variance 16.457%. f1 = 0.860 (age) +0. 874 (age at diagnosis) -0.519(mode of delivery). 2nd factor: this factor containing these variables (maternal habits and maternal disease) by total variance 12.916%. f2 = 0.738(maternal habits ) +0.671(maternal disease) 3rd factor: this factor containing these variables (gestational age at birth and neonatal disease) by total variance 9.823%. f3 = -0.557 (gestational age at birth) +0.740(neonatal disease) 4th factor: this factor containing these variables (childs and adolescent food habits and neonatal weight) by total variance 9.206%. f4 = -0.817 (childs and adolescent food habits) +0.632(neonatal weight) 5th factor: this factor containing these variables (residency and family history of autoimmune disease) by total variance 8.626%. f5 = 0.824(residency)-0.585 (family history of autoimmune disease) 6th factor: this factor containing these variables (nationality) by total variance 8.552%. f6 = 0.842 (nationality) table (6): comparison between potential maternal risk factors during pregnancy with age of child and adolescent variables items mean s.d significance test maternal habits normal 10.33 4.27 f=0.171 p=0.68 tea 10.59 3.73 smoking 0 0 maternal disease no disease 10.72 3.91 f=0.913 p=0.458 pre-eclampsia 8.00 4.75 gestational diabetes 11.00 2.83 perinatal infection 10.29 4.18 gestational diabetes + perinatal infection 9.75 4.65 it is clear in the table (6) that there is no statistically significance difference between age of child and adolescent in maternal habits p=0.68 and maternal disease p=0.458 because the result of the p-value was more than the common alpha 0.05. table (7): comparison between potential neonatal risk factors with age (date of birth) of child and adolescent variables items mean s.d significance test mode of delivery vaginal delivery 11.2 3.88 a) b) f=9.17 7 p=0.003 instrument vaginal delivery 0 0 cesarean section 9.3 4.03 gestationa l age at birth preterm 8.1 3.65 f=5.578 p=0.005 full term 10.9 3.96 post term 10.0 4.34 normal weight 10.3 4.08 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 65 neonatal weight underweight 9.7 4.07 f=0.808 p=0.491 overweight 11.8 3.05 obesity 11.7 4.21 neonatal disease no disease 11.0 4.06 f=1.379 p=0.201 respiratory disease 9.7 3.3 jaundice 10.56 4.44 infection 10.38 3.36 heart disease 11.5 7.78 respiratory disease + jaundice 8.14 4.67 jaundice + infection 8.67 2.4 jaundice + heart disease 12.0 --- respiratory disease + infection 8,0 --- respiratory disease + jaundice disease + infection 12.25 2.36 it is clear in the table (7) that there is statistically significance difference between age (date of birth) of child and adolescent in mode of delivery p=0.003 and gestational age at birth p=0.005, because the result of the p-value was less than the common alpha 0.05.but, there is no statistically significance difference between age (date of birth) of child and adolescent with neonatal weight and neonatal disease, because (p-vale >0.05). 4. discussion insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (iddm) is also known as type 1 diabetes, which is a chronic autoimmune disease in children. this study anticipated determining the environmental factors that dispose to type 1dm in children and adolescents. potential maternal predisposing risk factors during pregnancy ( prenatal) such as maternal food habit and maternal disease during pregnancy) and potential neonatal risk factors ( postnatal such as the mood of delivery, gestational age, neonate weight, and disease) affecting t1dm among children and adolescents. regarding the child and adolescent demographic data, the current study found that the highest rate of age was between (9-13) years old. age at diagnosis of t1dm is a major risk factor for the development of t1dm, the majority of age at diagnosis of type 1 diabetes is between 5-8 years old. this was further reported in a study [2] that demonstrated that the incidence of type1diabetes is higher in children rather than the adult. furthermore, in a similar study conducted in a six-center in the usa, the study revealed that approximately 80% of all dm cases for all type diabetes were found among those less than 9 years of age[13]. family history of type 2 diabetes appears to be a risk factor for t1dm. this article reported that family history of t2dm has been listed among the crucial risk factors in contributing to the risk of t1dm. therefore, the majority of diabetic patients were from a family history of t2dm in first and second-degree relatives. similarly, a study by [14] in yogoslavia revealed and [15] in sweden also adjusted and found the association between t1dm and family history of t2dm. however, the finding is inconsistent with the study, which was conducted in italy, the study noted that children who have family history of type 2 diabetes mellitus was not impacted the risk of type 1 diabetes [16]. in terms of another autoimmune disease ( such as thyroid disease ), this study represents that about 13.5% of the family history was thyroid disease among the first and second degree of a diabetic patient. similarly, a study in 2009, reported that [12], thyroid daises among relative of the diabetic patient was significantly classified with increased risk of developing t1dm. the most common endocrine disease is both dm type i and thyroid disease. (hla-dr3) genes kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 66 were the major hlaallele causative to the genetic thyroid disease and type 1 diabetes susceptibility [17]. regarding the maternal habits and mother who have illness in pregnancy, this study referred to the higher number of diabetic children’s mothers had no particular dilatory habits, and only about nearly half of maternal habits were drinking tea at the time of pregnancy, being a confounding risk factor in the association between type 1 dm of their offspring , in a similar study has stated by visalli et al. in italy, tea habits during pregnancy were considerably linked to dm type 1 in their offspring [18]. among maternal diseases ( gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia, and prenatal infection), this indicated that the highest percentage of maternal diabetic children had no diseases during pregnancy, but a quarter of maternal infection during pregnancy is relatively small as a confounding risk factor of t1dm. in a study in sweden, the investigator indicated that enter viral infection in pregnancy is a risk factor for childhood-onset diabetes in their children before 15 years of age [19]. however, in a cohort study between (1989-1998) from norway [20], this study identified 1824 cases were diagnosed with t1 diabetes diagnosed, the study has determined that perinatal infection, pre-eclampsia, and cesarean section have not contributed factors for an increased occurrence of type 1 dm in their offspring. mother gestational diabetes (gdm) in this study estimated as the lowest percentage among all maternal disease, this results is inconsistent with [21], the study showed in an iranian hospital in 2015, in a case-control retrospective study, one-hundred participants aged between 1-15 years were recruited, the study reported that there was an important relationship between mothers gdm and early childhood type 1diabtes, which noticed (or=3,789 p=0.05). this study has demonstrated that birth weight is not correlated with an increased risk of type i dm among children and adolescents, this result is consistent with a matched case-control studies, which concluded that there was no relationship between birth weight and dm type1 [22,23]. in contrast, in a recent meta-analysis revealed that over birth weight (more than 4 kg) was associated with a higher risk of t1dm ( 10% (or 1.10, 95% ci (1.04, 1.19); p = 0.003), in comparison to those who have a birth weight between 3.0 and 3.5 kg [23]. regarding potential neonatal risk factors, this study stated the highest percentage of participants had no diseases during the childhood period. jaundice and infection in this study indicated 21%,17% respectively. similarly, a study in the uk [24], in europe [25], was reported neonatal jaundice, infection, and respiratory disease are risk factors for t1dm. in addition, an iranian study was also stated that children who have jaundice at delivery birth, or after delivery, and abo incongruity are at increased risk of type1dm [10]. among mothers types of delivery such as (nvd(normal vaginal delivery), cesarean section(s.c). the results of this study found that nearly half of mother's diabetic patients had delivered by s.c, this is results in a meta-analysis observational [26], the study indicated that cesarean section is linked with the developing to the risk of type 1 dm of their offspring. 5. conclusion the early childhood period of age has a significant role in developing an increased risk of t1dm among children and adolescents, also maternal diseases (gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia, and prenatal infection during pregnancy), maternal habits (tea drinking during pregnancy). besides, there was a higher percentage of t1dm in those who have a family history of thyroid disease and type 2 dm in the first -degree and second-degree relatives and is one of the significant confounding risk factors for type 1diabetes among children and adolescents. a healthy diet during pregnancy and education programs are recommended for their family to give awareness about the importance of routine screening test in order to detect the disease in early age of children. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 67 reference [1] e hyppönen, sm virtanen , mg kenward , m knip , hk akerblom, ''obesity, increased linear growth, and risk of type 1 diabetes in children''. diabetes care journal. 23(12): 1755-60. 2000. 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[23] c.r., cardwell.,l.c., stene, g.,joner , e.a., davis, o. cinek, j. rosenbauer, , j. ludvigsson, c. castell, j. svensson , m.j goldacre and t. waldhoer," birthweight and the risk of childhood-onset type 1 diabetes", a metaanalysis of observational studies using individual patient data, diabetologia. 53(4): 641-651. 2010. [24] l.c., stene , k.s., rønningen , m. bjørnvold, d.e. undlien, and g. joner," an inverse association between history of childhood eczema and subsequent risk of type 1 diabetes", that is not likely to be explained by hla‐dq, ptpn22, or ctla4 polymorphisms, pediatric diabetes. 11(6): 386-393. 2010. [25]g.g dahlquist , c. patterson, and g. soltesz , "perinatal risk factors for childhood type 1 diabetes in europe". the eurodiab sub study 2 study group, diabetes care. 22(10): 1698-1702. 1999. [26] cr cardwell , lc stene , g joner , o cinek, j svensson , mj goldacre , rc parslow , p pozzilli , g brigis , d stoyanov , b urbonaité , s šipeti( e schober , c ionescu-tirgoviste , g devoti , ce de beaufort , k buschard , cc patterson , " caesarean section is associated with an increased risk of childhood onset type 1 diabetes mellitus". a metaanalysis of observational studies, diabetologia . (51): 726-735. 2008.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq immunological approaches and different strategies for vaccine development against sars-cov-2 muhammed babakir-mina medical laboratory department technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq m.babakir@yahoo.com article info abstract volume 5 – special issue: 4th international conference on the health and medical science : medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) doi: 10.24017/science.2020.ichms2020.10 article history: received: 12 september 2020 accepted: 24 september 2020 globally, sars-cov-2 outbreak is considered as pandemic viral infection by the world health organization (who). in the immunological response aspect, a very limited understanding has been progressed, mainly innate and adaptive immunity responses toward the virus. sars-cov2 causes severe respiratory disease and sometimes ended with the death. the body of the patients has ability to develop the immunity to cure the patient and more importantly both humoral and cellular immunity have studied against sars-cov-2. there are different immune responses against the viral infection as it has seen in other previous diseases such as sars-cov and mesr. on the base on immune response detected in recovered patients, scientists have started to develop the vaccines. moreover, there are different strategies that used by researchers and pharmacological companies to develop vaccines including attenuated or killed viruses, rna of a spike protein, and vector expressing a particular protein of the virus. the common antibodies have detected to work against sars-cov-2 in sera of infected or recovered patients are immunoglobin g ( igg) and immunoglobin m (igm). the sera of patients recovered from covid-19, after tittering of immunoglobulins (igg titer) can be used for either treatment of disease or prophylaxis of infection by sars-cov-2. this study gives an update on the current immunological approaches and vaccination strategies for the emerging sars-cov-2, and discusses the challenges and hurdles to overcome for developing efficacious vaccines against this dangerous pathogen. keywords: sars-cov-2, immunity, igg, igm, vaccines, serum therapy kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 92 copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction anatomically, respiratory tract is an opened tube divided into upper and lower parts; the upper respiratory tract consists of the nose, mouth and pharynx, while trachea, bronchi and lungs are a part of the lower respiratory tract, which lining by epithelial tissues. the epithelial tissues in the respiratory system serve as a barrier layer that separate and protect the internal tissues from outer environment, provides a marvelous first lines of body defense against pulmonary diseases by pathogens. goblet cells seems among ciliated columnar epithelial cells, along with club and tuft cells secret a surfactant substance, together produce impermeable barrier via construction of tight junctions occupied the tope surface of the epithelial cells [1][2]. the action movement upward of the mucocilla is another element of the epithelial tract, which accelerates clearance of trapped particles pulled to upward of the respiratory tract then, eliminated or facilitates by coughing [3]. damaging of epithelial tissues, tight junctions and changing in the permeability of epithelial cell membrane by air pollutant or allergen and infections by respiratory viruses. additionally, the epithelial of respiratory tract is immunologically active; it has an essential function for regulation and immune response activation in lung [4]. pulmonary epithelial cells can detect pathogen associated molecular pattern (pamp) in action of expressing pattern-recognition receptors (prr) [5], also epithelial cell has the ability to secrete variety of humoral agents such as cytokines and chemokines which associated with local immunity leads to eliminate of dead cells via apoptosis and actions of proinflammatory cells, this process done by intracellular signaling which mediates by gtpase ras-related c3 botulinum toxin substrate 1 (rac1). rac1 regulate secretion of several cytokines of bronchia epithelial cells, such as il-10 and il-33 it may have crucial roles in regulation of allergic reactions. in addition, the airway epithelial cells able to secret of different antimicrobial molecules, such as lysozyme, complement proteins, collectins and defensins. in the response of foreign particles most of the molecules produced and secreted by pulmonary epithelial cells can regulate and generate immune responses, activate the cells of both innate and adaptive system [6] [7]. the respiratory systems continuously exposure to the exterior environment, alveolar epithelial cells are a target of viral infections includes coronaviruses (cov) [8]. cov is an enveloped non-segmented plus single stranded rna (ssrna) virus, the entire genome size ranged from 26 to 32 kilobases, double stranded rna (dsrna) produces as an intermediate of synthesize viral rna genome during viral replication in the cytosol of infected cells [9]. who announced on severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (sars-cov-2) as a pandemic that leads to novel coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) [10]. in case of sars-cov-2 infected patients, the histopathological examination of airway show non-specific inflammatory responses includes; infiltration of inflammatory cells (such as neutrophils, monocytes, and eosinophils) and edema, also determine serious alveolar epithelial cells exfoliation and found widening and damaging in alveolar septa. pathologically, cov infection seems leads to degeneration, hyperplasia and infiltration, further pulmonary interstitial arteriolar walls destruction, demonstrated nonspecific inflammatory responses have been a critical role all over the viral infection [11]. while sars-cov infects a person, host immune response triggered against virus. middle east respiratory syndrome coronavirus (mers-cov) can affect a variety of cells in the human body, such as moncytes, t cells and it may be infected dcs also. the ability of mers-cov infections a wide range of cells may be refer to presence the dipeptidyl peptidasehttps://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/intracellular-signaling https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/guanosine-triphosphatase kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 93 4 rceptor on the surfces cytoplasmic membrane of activated white blood cell, while both sars-cov and sars-cov-2 consider the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ace2) as a speecific receptor [12]. ace2 receptor expressed mostly in the type-2 alveolary in the lungs, the study reported that cov capable to infect macrophage and t-lymphocytes directly and it is a major factor of virus mediated pathogenesis [13] [14]. innate immunity can recognize the viral dsrna by ppr, such as toll like receptors (ltrs) and retinoic acid-inducible gene i (rig-i)-like receptors (rig-ⅰ) trigger and activate interferon regulatory factors (irf) which initiate interferon (ifn) type ⅰ production includes ifn-α and ifn-β, recruit phagocytic cells such as macrophage and dendritic cells (dcs) natural killer cells cytotoxic t-lymphocytes (ctl) followed by elimination of the virus [15] 16] [17]. dcs is one of the professional antigen presenting cells (apcs) capable to engulf viruses migrate to lymphoid tissues and display viral particles to helper t-lymphocytes via aids of major histocompatibility class ⅱ (mhc ⅱ) [18], dcs have great impact in both cellular and humoral immunity responses, they obviously able to induce the activation of b and t lymphocytes, hence link innate and adaptive immunity [19] [20]. consequently dcs is one of the target invasions by microbes, such as hiv drive different mechanisms to manipulate and effects on the functions of dcs, eventually hiv escape from the immune system and facilitating cell to cell diffusion [21]. this study gives a base for more further investigation for immunological protection against sars-cov-2, and to understand the pathogencity of covid-19, and more importantly for the development of efficient vaccine against this new pandemic viral infection. humoral immune responses the cytokine of production is affected when patients are infected by mers and sars coronaviruses due to the impairment of the function of innate cells of immunity in the infected host [22]. the entry of sars coronavirus is facilitated via spike (s) protein of the virus. receptor binding domain (rbd) of the spike protein which is located in s1 subunit of the spike is important for the attachment steps of viral replication. furthermore, the protease enzyme is priming the s protein of the sars cov2 helping cleaving of the spike into s1/s2. this helps the fusion of the virus membrane to the host receptor membrane. this process is held by s2 of the spike docks on ace2 (angiotensin-converting enzyme 2) receptor and then it helps priming of the spike proteins for entry process via transmembrane protease, serine 2 [23,24]. t and b immune cells responses create important parts of the adaptive immune response. humoral immunity through producing large amount of circulating antibodies play a vital roles in the protection of the infected host in late stages and also in future protection of recurrent infection. in the previous outbreak of sars-cov, all structural proteins of the virus, m, n, s and e, were mapped by epitopes of the b and t cells [25]. it’s revealed that infected patients carry a strong human immune response after being infected by sars-cov [26]. the pattern of antibody production, igm, igg, and iga, of sars-cov2 is similar to other coronavirus infections. at the 4-8 days of the beginning of the infection and appearing symptoms, the host creates the first ab against sars-cov n protein which is made by bcells [27]. cleaning of blood from sars cove is mainly depends on normalizing ab, iggs. during convalescent stage of the disease, igg peak to the highest amount and it will drop down during recovery [28]. it is difficult to immune system to mutualize s protein when its masked by n-glycan because it has a structure called s protein glycan which works as a shield to be not recognized easily by abs. but, less saturated s protein with glycan is less protected from abs and it becomes a target of iggs [29, 30,31]. infected ferrets had serum neutralizing antibodies at 12 days post-infection, but so far, no rechallenge experiments have been reported. rhesus macaques are susceptible to sars-cov-2, where infection causes a respiratory disease lasting 8–16 days, with detectable high viral loads in the nose, throat and bronchoalveolar lavages. all animals seroconverted to the spike protein and showed neutralizing antibodies by 10 days post-infection, in another study in rhesus macaques, two animals were re-challenged with virus at 28 days from the primary infection, when anti-spike immunoglobulins were detectable and neither became infected, by this way, antibody responses increased against sars-s after vaccination or infection of the host which kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 94 gives some protection level against sars-cov-2 [32,33,34]. investigation was done by [35]. during epidemic of the virus infection, igg saturated serum was used to treat debilitated patients. this convalescent serum which is useful for treatment of the infected hosts by different viruses which recorded in different times of history against different viruses including h1n1 2009 pandemic infection, the west african ebola epidemic in 2013 [37]. investigation was done by [35]. during epidemic of the virus infection, igg saturated serum was used to treat debilitated patients. this convalescent serum which is useful for treatment of the infected hosts by different viruses which recorded in different times of history against different viruses including h1n1 2009 pandemic infection, the west african ebola epidemic in 2013 [37]. this covalence serum was tests successfully in sars-cov infection which works gains s protein of the virus [38]. on the other hand, pre-prepared monoclonal ab is another and a good choice to cure and control sars-cov2 pandemic and it can be used as a vaccine used for rapid response [39]. when vaccine therapy is not available now, the covalence serum of recovered patient is the most successful way of emergency treatment for cleaning of the virus in the infected hosts and it has been tried in different countries [40,41]. this is approved to use by the food and drug administration (fda) for the current therapy of sars-cov2 and it can be taken from recovered patients who passed 3 weeks after the last negative pcr test for the virus. the important step of this treatment is availability of the serum donors who are recovered from the infection [42]. the roles of iga antibody in covid-19 infection the iga antibody is the major class secreted in mucosal secretion for defense against microorganisms entering the body through mucous membranes of the respiratory tract, gastrointestinal tract, and genitourinary tract. this secretory iga (siga) presents in body secretions protects the body from pathogenic adhesion to mucous membranes [43]. on one hand the antibody immune response and inactivate sars-cov-2, on the other hand, antibodies can form immune complexes with viral particles and participate in pulmonary inflammatory response which exacerbate or prolong the covid-19 infections [44]. currently, covid -19 infection is suggested to follow antibody dynamics similar to other respiratory viral infections; the igm antibody is the first appear in antibody response, but class switching can result in the formation of iga antibodies specific to sars-cov-2 within few days after the appearance of the symptoms. these iga antibodies are produced by plasma cells in the lamina propria adjacent to the mucosa in the respiratory lining. the iga antibody is the main antibody fights against respiratory viruses in respiratory secretions. it can bind to sars-cov2 in respiratory tract and thus prevent viral attachment to respiratory epithelium [45]. systematic studies on iga antibodies in covid-19 are lacked, as most of the studies are focusing on igm and igg antibodies which are associated with recent and previous infections respectively [46]. with the current global challenges due to covid-19 infections and with more than 1.16 million worldwide, there is a need for understanding the iga antibody response against sars-cov-2 and its effectiveness in controlling infections with this virus. the iga is positive in about 6 days after the onset of clinical features, which is the same time for igm seroconversion, thus after one week of covid-19 infection, both iga and igm anti covid-19 antibodies are detectable in blood of the patients [47]. then these two antibodies are decline within 3 weeks up to one month after the start of symptoms [48]. while igg anti covid-19 antibodies detected within blood in the period of 10-18 days after the clinical features and continue for months [46]. vaccine development and strategies covid-19 is a new virus to human to understand its structure and behavior and the immunological responses to this virus have not completely understood. strategies to develop a successful vaccine are not clear until now. therefore, it is crucial to work on developing vaccines on different platforms at the same time. therefore, from appearing covid-19 at the beginning, all of the world countries are competing each other to develop a successful vaccine. till now there are a number of vaccine candidates which are in progressing and aims to be useful in the clinical developments [50]. however, it is not clear whether generate it can be safe and affective immune response against covid-19, therefore the best strategies is kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 95 required and the expectation of successful vaccine is important in next years. several attempts have undergoing for covid-19 vaccine development to stop and reduce the viral transmission and mortality. the most common attempt of vaccine is to induce immunity against the spike protein of the virus [51]. until july, 2020, under the strategy of developing vaccines, 158 vaccines are on the way and 135 of them reached in the pre-clinical and clinical tests and the stages of developments. at the time of this study, many companies has vaccine developments and they are in advanced phases of i/ii clinical trials such as inovio, inc. (ino4800); cansino biologicals (ad5-ncov); moderna (mrna-1273); university of oxford (chadox1) and shinzengeno-immune medical institute [52]. there are different ways of building vaccines such as preparing vaccine from attenuated virus or inactivated (killed) virus. recent development of vaccine can be generated from preparing a protein of the virus such as virus-like particles, viral vector expressing the protein of interest (replicating and non replicating) [53]. to improve the immunogenicity, different technologies of adjuvant of vaccines such as as03 (gsk), cpg 1018 (dynavax), mf-59 (novartis) are under the construction of vaccine development [54]. the immuno-informatics methods are another way for epitope identification of covid-19. this has useful role in recognizing epitopes of tcells for proteins of covid-19 such as of b-cell and cytotoxic t cells [55,56]. advancements in vaccine production and natural immunity the major trouble is producing vaccine in a short period of time is testing safety and mass production of vaccine to all. this may take very long time to reach to the point of to solve this problem at the first step. according to the report of who, 70 covid-19 vaccine are under progress. the kaiser permanente washington health research institute was the first place who started producing corona virus vaccine. mrna-1273 vaccine is one candidate made by the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases scientists and their collaborators at the biotechnology company moderna. the phase 1 of clinical trial to the mentioned vaccine was supported and started by the coalition for epidemic preparedness innovations [57,58]. another viral vaccine called s‑protein vaccine is in progress. jenner institute at oxford university with astrazeneca pharmaceutical company have developed this vaccine. it remains unclear to understand how immunity works against covid-19. however, it is induced immunity using vaccine may be different from immunity come from the natural that depends on the natural invasion of the active viral agent. therefore, importantly it is crucial for understanding development of natural immunity to help further understanding of vaccine inducing immunity using effective vaccine to become a strategy of choosing and select the best vaccine for therapeutic purposes. it is crucially important to understand how immune response works in different cases of patients such as patients with different clinical signs and also according to the severity of infection, severe cases, mild cases or even asymptomatic cases. furthermore, it is important to understand natural immune responses in different stages of the disease such as whether it’s in early stages of infection or in the late stages. in addition, the severity of infection according to ages should be understandable by understanding the reason why and how immune response is different from young people in elderly. it is believed that 40-70 of covid-19 cases are going without clinical symptoms, asymptomatic or mild [59,60]. it is estimate that people who carry the virus without symptoms, significantly spreading the virus more that symptomatic patients [61]. on the other hand, mild patients or asymptomatic produces lower antibody (natural immunity) against the virus and that impedes the process of developing immunity in community and making herd immunity to be difficult to gain. specific antibodies and t cell mediated immunity in most cases of this novel coronavirus infections, both igm and igg produce after one to two weeks of infection [62]. although, it is still unclear how the t-cell, and specific antibodies related to each other. but t-cell production and response is correlated with high levels of circulated antibodies in the blood of infected individuals [63,64], and this is beneficial to treat infected patients with convalescent plasmas of recovered persons [65]. in the a study, it was revealed that the high level of neutralizing antibodies in the recovered patients is correlated to the severity of infections [66]. same as other common cold diseases, the levels of neutralizing kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 96 covid-19 antibodies in most of infected cases were in few weeks of infection [66,67]. in addition, the level of neutralizing antibodies production in asymptomatic covid-19 individuals is about the same as in symptomatic patients, but it is different in the time of decreeing antibody titer and it drops faster in asymptomatic patients [61]. the main target of immune system to produce neutralizing antibodies is spike (s) protein sars-cov2. spike protein has two main domains, (s1) and (s2) domains. receptor binding domain (rbd) of s protein locates in s1 domain of a spike protein which has important role in binding to host cells’ ace2 receptor [68]. sars-cov2 s protein has identical property by 88% with s protein in sars-cov, which enables both of them to bind cellular ace2 with high affinity [68]. if the antibody catches the rbd s protein, directly block rbd of s with ace2 receptor interaction. while, if antibodies catch the other regions of s1 or s2, prevent the conformational changes of s protein which inhibit the process of membrane fusion between the host cell and virus membrane [69,70,71]. the successful vaccination program of different viruses like influenza viruses is largely depend on not only antibody production, but also t cell mediated and antibody mediated immunity to build affective protection. the same requirements are necessary for sarscov-2 [67,72]. furthermore, the important role of cytotoxic cd8+ t cells for viral clearance is completely understood when there are not enough neutralizing antibodies [73]. cd4 and cd8 are important for viral protection. it is revealed in a study that people who cured from covid-19 infection have 100% t cells + cd4 which are specific to spike protein and 70% t cells + cd8 which are specific to spike protein [64]. in pre-clinical study, its revealed that covid-19 infection is related to suppression of innate immunity and late t cell activation during 2-12 days of virus incubation or in presymptomatic cases of infected person [74,75] and the same phenomenon was seen in to previous viral diseases, mers and sars. the high levels of t cells and protective antibodies have detected from individuals who recovered from severe covid-19 cases, while people who recovered from mild cases of infection have larger number of t cells and cd8 in respiratory tracts [63,64,76]. 2. conclusion there are difference immune responses against this novel coronavirus as it has been seen in previous diseases such as sars-cov and mesr. on the base on immune response detected in recovered patients, scientists started to develop vaccines. there are different strategies used by researchers and pharmacological companies to develop vaccines 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[76] m. liao, "singlecell landscape of bronchoalveolar immune cells in patients with covid-19," nat. med, 26, pp. 842–844, 2020. 1. introduction 2. conclusion  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 75 pear fruits ripening response to ethylene and temperature treatments ikbal muhammed-gharib al-barzinji tahir aziz ahmed department of biology department of horticulture and landscape faculty of science and health college of agriculture koya university mosul university koya, iraq mosul, iraq ikbal.tahir@koyauniversity.org tahir.aahmed666@gmail.com nameer najib fadhil department of horticulture and landscape college of agriculture mosul university mosul, iraq nameer-hadeed111@gmail.com article info abstract volume 6 – issue 2– december 2021 doi: 10.24017/science.2021.2.7 article history: received 25/7/2021 accepted 24/11/2021 an experiment was carried out on two cultivars of pears (pyrus communis l.) spadona and compote cv. with a factorial complete randomized design to study the effects of ethylene and temperature treatments on fruit ripening. the experiment included three treatments in addition to the control which was remaining the fruits on trees, the first treatment was keeping the fruits at 7 c° with exposure to ethylene gas (300 mg/l) for 24 hours, the second and third treatments were putting the fruits in the ripening cabinet at room temperature 20±1 c° either for 8 days, or 12 days. results indicate that the compote cultivar differed significantly in decreasing weight loss and fruits firmness and increasing fruits peel pigments content and peroxidase enzyme activity compared to the spadona cultivar. a slower ripening process was gained from control treatment where the fruits remained non-ripened compared to other treatments, whereas ripening fruits at 20±1c° for 12 days fastened the ripening process by giving the highest tss, and weight loss percent, besides lowest fruits firmness. for the condition of northern iraq, the best treatment for ripening pear fruits is to treat them with ethylene gas or ripen the fruits at 20±1c° for 8 days. keywords: artificial ripening, ethylene, pear storability, peroxidase activity, weight loss. copyright © 2021 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction pears fruits (pyrus communis l.) are considered as an important climacteric fruit that grows in the temperate zone. it is cultivated in the middle and northern parts of iraq depending upon the cold requirement for breaking dormancy, where in iraq, pear trees are cultivated in an area mailto:ikbal.tahir@koyauniversity.org mailto:tahir.aahmed666@gmail.com mailto:nameer-hadeed111@gmail.com kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 76 reaching 1293 hectares giving 8625 tons in 2019 [1, 2]. most of european pears, unlike climacteric fruits, resist ripening at harvest even when they are picked in a suitable physiological ripening stage [3], therefore artificial ripening is the choice. artificial ripening is important for many fruits that cannot ripen easily on trees, like pears and bananas. it is a process that aims at enhancing ripening to obtain an early price [4]. this process helps in artificial ripening activation of different chemical and physical changes in fruits to gain fruits ready to eat earlier than the natural ripening. there are many methods for fruit ripening in each locale and chemicals are used. for the chemical methods, ethylene (ch2=ch2), the natural gaseous plant hormone, is used for this purpose. the application of ethylene gas at limited recommended concentrations is used worldwide for fruit ripening in large-scale and commercial states [5]. ethylene treatments induced the changes that combined with the ripening process, like, decreasing in fruit firmness, disappearing the green color due to analyzing the chlorophylls and appearing the carotenoids and other coloring pigments, and synthesizing the distinguished variety of color, sugar accumulation, lowering acidic content, converting non-soluble pectin to soluble pectin, disappearing bitter and astringent tastes, and increasing fruit respiration in climacteric fruits [6, 7]. many studies were conducted about the effects of temperature and ethylene as ripening treatments on pear, such that of sugar and einhorn [8] and makkumrai et al. [9] or the effects of both factors such that of chino et al. [10], whom they found that most chemical and physical characters of pear can be altered significantly, where these factors are used. this study aimed to compare some ripening treatments including ethylene and temperature on edible characteristics of two cultivars of pear. 2. methods and materials 2.1plant materials and ripening treatments yellow-green fruits of two cultivars spadona and compote cv. of (pyrus communis l.) were selected and considered as the first factor of the experiment which was conducted in two-way factorial-crd, each cultivar fruits divided into four groups which were the levels of the second factor (three ripening treatments, in addition to the control); the first group was the control in which fruits remained on trees without any treatment (table 1), fruits of the second group kept in the ripening cabinet at 7 c° and exposed to ethylene gas (300 mg/l) for 24 hours, fruits of the third group placed in the ripening cabinet at ambient temperature 20±1 c° for 8 days, and fruits of the fourth group putted in the ripening cabinet at the ambient temperature of 20±1c° for 12 days. the experiment data was taken in two different seasons; 2015 and 2016. table 1: table 1: average of temperature, relative humidity, and amount of rainfall during the remaining fruits on trees for the control, throughout 2015 and 2016. month (cultivars) air temperature c° relative humidity % rainfall (mm) 2015 2016 2015 2016 2015 2016 june (spadona) 35.2 34.5 59.0 50.8 october (compote) 23.5 23.9 86.4 52.6 98.9 0.4 2.2studied characteristics where the ripening period was ended, the following parameters were recorded in the laboratories of koya university as follows: weight loss which calculated as a percentage of the loss of water in comparison with the initial weight [11], fruits firmness measured on pared surfaces on the opposite sides of each fruit using a penetrometer with a 7.9 mm diameter tip and expressed in terms of kg/cm2 [12], total sugars were estimated according to joslyn [13] by using mixing 1 ml of the sample extraction with (5%) phenol, and 5 ml concentrated sulfuric acid (h2so4), by using a spectrophotometer at absorbance 490-nanometer wavelengths, the absorbance for different solutions was taken. standard solutions were kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 77 prepared from glucose. total soluble solids (tss) was estimated in freshly prepared juice by using a hand-refractometer according to a.o.a.c. [14], total acidity estimated by titrating freshly prepared juice with 0.1n sodium hydroxide, and phenolphthalein as indicator, expressed as mg of malic acid per gram as it mentioned in ranganna [15]. the reference that total chlorophylls and carotenoids pigments were determined, where 0.25g of fresh fruits peel of each experimental unit were taken, then mixed with 10 ml 80% acetone, 1 ml of this extraction was taken to add to 9 ml of acetone, chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b and total chlorophyll were measured by a spectrophotometer (pd-303) at 642 nm, 660 nm, and 470 nm wavelengths. finally, peroxidase enzyme activity as absorbing units per gram of fruit was determined as mentioned in nezih [16] by weighing 0.1 g of fresh fruit with 10 ml of buffer solution put in a blender then filtered by medical gauze and got the sample extract. then a mixture of 0.1 ml of the sample extract, 1 ml of h2o2 solution, and 1 ml of guaiacol solution has been prepared, then, directly afterward measured in a spectrophotometer (genesys 10 uv spectrometer, thermo electron corporation, usa) and recorded the result at 420 nm wavelengths. 2.3statistical analysis a complete randomized design as factorial experiment two-way anova crd (two cultivars x four ripening treatments) with 3 replicates was used in this study. analysis of variance was used for data analysis by using the sas program. duncan`s multiple range test (p≤ 0.05) was used for comparing the treatment's means [17]. 3. results and discussion results in tables 2,3 and 4 showed that the compote cultivar records the lowest values (p≤0.05) of weight loss (1.59 and 3.78%), total acidity (0.87 and 1.41%), peroxidase enzyme activity (2.53 and 1.84 absorbing unit/minute/ml) for both study seasons, chlorophyll b (0.09 mg/ml) and total chlorophylls (0.17 mg/ml) for second season, whereas it records the highest values of fruit firmness (14,13 and 20.42 kg/cm2), total sugars (16.72 and 12.26%), tss (12.90 and 13.00%) for both seasons, a, b and total chlorophylls and total carotenoids (0.08, 0.14, 0.22 and 0.09 mg/ml) for first season compared to spadona cultivar. although, the time of fruit maturing and remaining on trees was different between spadona and compote cultivars; june for spadona and october for compote (table 1), most of the differences in characteristics of the two studied cultivars are controlled by genetic factors [18] as a result of differences in internal hormones, enzyme activities, and fruit structure, where fruits with more cells density and less internal spaces are firmer [19, 20], which reflects on the characteristics of the cultivars of the same species to a significant level, as shown in weight loss, fruit firmness and total sugars (table 3 and 4). regarding ripening treatments, from the results of the same tables, it appears that the control had the slower ripening process for both seasons where it recorded the lowest values of weight loss (0%), total sugars (12.11 and 8.55%), tss (11.90 and 11.77%), peroxidase enzyme activity (2.50 and 2.38%) and total carotenoids (0.04 and 0.14 mg/ml) compared to other ripening treatments that record highest values significantly of fruits firmness (14.97 and 19.00 kg/cm2), total acidity (1.59 and 1.83 %) and total chlorophylls (0.27 and 0.38 mg/ml) for both seasons respectively. fruits ripened at 20±1c° for 12 days increased significantly fruits weight loss, total sugars, tss and total carotenoids, whereas it decreased significantly fruits content of chlorophyll a, b and total carotenoids compared to the control and ethylene ripening treatment. regarding the interaction effects between the cultivar and ripening treatments, the trend was the same for each factor individually, where interactions of compote cultivar with different ripening treatments recorded the lowest values in respect to each of fruits weight loss, total acidity, peroxidase activity, and with the highest fruit firmness, total sugars, tss, and total carotenoids characteristics compared to the spadona cultivar. from the results, it was clear that the ripening process for control fruits was slower compared to other treatments for both compote and spadona cultivars. for all studied characteristics, it is also clear that the response kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 78 of the spadona cultivar to ethylene was greater than the response of the compote cultivar in most studied characteristics (table 2, 3 and 4). faster ripening was seen when fruits ripened in a chamber with 20±1 c° for 12 days for both spadona and compote cultivars. the fruit's weight loss during the ripening process may be due to the sudden increase in the respiration rate [22], or because of the ongoing respiration and transpiration processes during ripening [23]. table 2: effects of cultivar, ripening treatments, and their combinations on fruit weight loss, firmness, and total sugars during two seasons for spadona and compote pear cultivars. treatments weight loss (%) firmness (kg/cm2) total sugars (%) 2015 2016 2015 2016 2015 2016 cultivars spadona 6.10a 8.10a 7.48b 10.13b 13.03b 8.4b compote 1.59b 3.78b 14.13a 20.42a 16.72a 12.26a ripening treatments control 0.00d 0.00c 14.97a 19.00a 12.11c 8.55b ethylene 4.94b 6.54b 10.58b 16.75b 14.16bc 8.85b 20±1c° for 8 days 3.96c 6.85b 10.75b 13.75c 17.20a 12.35a 20±1c° for 12 days 6.47a 10.38a 6.92c 11.58d 16.02ab 11.55a interactions between cultivars and ripening treatments spadona x control 0.00f 0.00e 13.93b 16.7d 10.65c 8.1b spadona x ethylene 8.66b 12.6a 4.50e 10.8e 14.11c 8.1b spadona x 20±1c° for 8 days 6.16c 8.40c 9.00d 7.5f 13.17c 8.9b spadona x 20±1c° for 12 days 9.60a 11.4b 2.50e 5.5f 14.18c 8.5b compote x control 0.00f 0.00e 16.00a 21.3ab 13.58c 9.0b compote x ethylene 1.23e 0.5e 16.67a 22.7a 14.21c 9.6b compote x 20±1c° for 8 days 1.76e 5.3d 12.50bc 20.0bc 21.23a 15.8a compote x 20±1c° for 12 days 3.35d 9.3c 11.33c 17.7cd 17.86b 14.6a means in the same column followed by the same symbol are not significantly different at p ≤ 0.05 level based on the duncan test. table 3: effects of cultivars, ripening treatments, and their combinations on fruit total soluble solids (tss), total acidity, and peroxidase activity during two seasons for spadona and compote pear cultivars. treatments total soluble solids (%) total acidity (%) peroxidase activity (absorbing unit/minute/ml) 2015 2016 2015 2016 2015 2016 cultivars spadona 11.85b 11.80b 1.64a 2.00a 4.31a 3.35a compote 12.90a 13.00a 0.87b 1.41b 2.53b 1.84b ripening treatments control ethylene 11.90b 11.77c 1.59a 1.83a 2.50b 2.38a 12.20b 12.37b 1.15bc 1.63a 3.78a 2.05a 20±1c° for 8 days 12.40b 12.43b 1.31b 1.64a 3.63a 3.03a 20±1c° for 12 days 13.01a 13.03a 0.97c 1.71a 3.77a 2.92a interactions between cultivars and ripening treatments spadona x control 11.20c 11.1c 2.41a 2.05a 3.23b 3.47ab spadona x ethylene 12.00bc 12.3b 1.14c 1.95a 4.60a 2.63a-d kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 79 spadona x 20±1c° for 8 days 11.60bc 11.5c 1.88b 1.94a 4.37a 3.33a-c spadona x 20±1c° for 12 days 12.60ab 12.3b 1.14c 2.08a 5.03a 3.97a compote x control 12.60ab 12.4b 0.76d 1.61ab 1.77c 1.30d compote x ethylene 12.40ab 12.5b 1.16c 1.31b 2.97b 1.47cd compote x 20±1c° for 8 days 13.20a 13.3a 0.74d 1.35b 2.90b 2.73a-d compote x 20±1c° for 12 days 13.40a 13.8a 0.80d 1.35b 2.50bc 1.87b-d means in the same column followed by the same symbol are not significantly different at p ≤ 0.05 level based on the duncan test. table 4: effects of cultivars, ripening treatments, and their combinations on some pigments in fruit peel of spadona and compote pear cultivars during two seasons. treatments chlorophyll a chlorophyll b total chlorophylls total carotenoids (mg/ml) 2015 2016 2015 2016 2015 2016 2015 2016 cultivars spadona 0.02b 0.10a 0.08b 0.18a 0.09b 0.28a 0.02b 0.09b compote 0.08a 0.08a 0.14a 0.09b 0.22a 0.17b 0.09a 0.18a ripening treatments control 0.08a 0.19a 0.19a 0.20a 0.27a 0.38a 0.04c 0.14b ethylene 0.07a 0.12b 0.16b 0.18a 0.24b 0.30b 0.06bc 0.17b 20±1c° for 8 days 0.03b 0.02c 0.04c 0.08b 0.06c 0.11c 0.06b 0.22a 0.20a 20±1c° for 12 days 0.02b 0.03c 0.03c 0.08b 0.06c 0.10c 0.08a interactions between cultivars and ripening treatments spadona x control 0.01e 0.23a 0.16b 0.25a 0.17b 0.48 a 0.02c 0.09b spadona x ethylene 0.03d 0.13b 0.08c 0.18b 0.10c 0.31 b 0.02c 0.10b spadona x 20±1c° for 8 days 0.01e 0.01c 0.03d 0.14b 0.04d 0.15 c 0.01c 0.10b spadona x 20±1c° for 12 days 0.01e 0.02c 0.03cd 0.14b 0.05d 0.16 c 0.03c 0.08b compote x control 0.14a 0.14b 0.23a 0.14b 0.37a 0.28 b 0.06b 0.10b compote x ethylene 0.12b 0.10b 0.25a 0.18b 0.37a 0.29 b 0.09a 0.13b compote x 20±1c° for 8 days 0.04c 0.04c 0.04cd 0.03c 0.09cd 0.06 d 0.10a 0.24a compote x 20±1c° for 12 days 0.03d 0.03c 0.03cd 0.02c 0.07cd 0.05 d 0.10a 0.24a means in the same column followed by the same symbol are not significantly different at p ≤ 0.05 level based on the duncan test. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 80 the firmness of any fruit depends mainly on cell wall density and storage materials like pectin, starch, etc., so decreasing fruit firmness is due to transforming non-soluble pectin into soluble pectin [24] as a result of the reaction of polygalacturonase, lipoxygenase, cellulose, and pectin methylesterase enzymes which analyze cell walls and increase fruit softness [25]. the differences between two pear cultivars compote and spadona in these reactions may due to differences in their fruit`s firmness in both seasons. the decrease in fruits firmness during the ripening period reached 12 days may be due to analyzing the non-soluble pectin to soluble pectin as a result of increasing the activity of endopolygalacturonase and cellulase enzymes [26]. the results of this study agree with that of dhillon et al. [27] where exposing pear fruits to 20±1c° decreased fruit firmness and increases fruit tss and total sugars which are also considered as ripening markers. keeping high acidity in fruits from control treatment for both cultivars and seasons may be due to decreasing in respiration and ethylene production [28], and its role in decreasing pectin dissolving [29] and delaying fruits ripening. increasing the fruit's tss may be due to increasing the activity of hydrolysis enzymes like invertase and starch phosphorylase [30] or as a result to increasing the soluble organic material as a result of water loss from fruits (tables 2 and 3). fruits ripened for 8 and 12 days at 20±1c° had more total sugars significantly compared to the control and ethylene treated fruits which agreed with that of singh [31] and dhillon and mahajan [23]. it is found that treating fruits with ethylene or ethephon increase chlorophyll degradation and the appearance of yellow color in many fruits [22]. the changes in colors during ripening are due to carotenoids synthesis which is stimulated by chlorophyll degradation. the results agree with the findings of kulkarni et al. [32] and dhillon and mahajan [23]. treatment with ethylene accelerates the degradation of chlorophylls and the appearance of orange or yellow colors, also, the firmness of some ripening fruits and vegetables will decrease when treated with c2h4 (5). peroxidase enzyme is responsible for non-preferable ripening characteristics in fruits including browning through phenol reduction [6]. it was shown that peroxidase enzyme activity decreased in the control fruits for both seasons, whereas the highest activity was recorded in the fruits ripened for 12 days at 20±1c°. generally, the effects of ethylene on pear fruit quality were minimal compared with the effects of temperature. these results agree with the findings of bower et al. [7] and retamales et al. [33] that treating pears varieties ‘packham’s triumph’, ‘beurre bosc’ and bartlett with ethylene during the storage had slight effects. 4. conclusion from this study, it is concluded that the compote cultivar showed the best response for artificial ripening concerning weight loss compared to spadona cultivar. it is also concluded that degrees of temperature had an important role in accelerating pear ripening and improving their edible characteristics than treating them with ethylene. exposing fruits to ethylene for 24 hours had non-significant effects on the edible characteristics of pears, whereas keeping thems at 20±1c° for 8 days improved these characteristics, so we can avoid the cost of artificial ripening with ethylene which is not available for most producers in northern iraq. further work about the effects of using ethylene gas in different concentrations such as 400, 500, or more is recommended, also studying the effects of prolonging the time of the exposure to ethylene gas is recommended. 5. acknowledgment a very special thanks and gratitude to the science and health research center and department of chemistry of the faculty of science and health, koya university, for their help in the practical part of this study. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 81 reference [1] k. usha, m. thakre, a.k. goswami, n, deepak g., fundamental of fruit production. division of fruits and horticultural technology. indian agricultural research institute. new delhi. 2015. 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[25] m. asghari, m.s. aghdam, “impact of salicylic acid on postharvest physiology of horticultural crops. trends food sci. technol., 2: 502–509, 2010. [26] m.a. martin-cabrejas, k.w. waldran, r.r. selvendaran, m.l. parket, g.k. maotes, “ripening related changes in cell wall of ‘spanish’ pear”, physiol. pl., 91, pp. 671-679, 1994. [27] w.s. dhillon, b.v.c. mahajan, a.s. dhatt, a.s. sandhu, “waxing and storage studies in soft-pear cv. punjab beauty”, acta horti., 696, pp.485-492, 2005. [28] l. andreu-coll, m.e. garcía-pastor, d. valero, a. amorós, m.s. almansa, p. legua, f. hernández, “influence of storage on physiological properties, chemical composition, and bioactive compounds on cactus pear fruit (opuntia ficus-indica (l.) mill.)”, agriculture, 11, 62. https://doi.org/10.3390/ agriculture11010062, 2021. [29] l. chen, y. pan, x. jia, x. wang, j. yuan, x. li, “constant storage temperature delays firmness decreasing and pectin solubilization of apple during post-harvest storage”, j. food proc. preserve. .15655, 2021. [30] c.b. watkins, a. leake, s.m. hoggett, j.h. bowen, “maturation and storage quality of six 'golden delicious' x red dougherty apple selections”, new zealand j. crop and hort. sci., 23 : 49 – 54, 1995. [31] a. singh, standardization of ripening technique in ‘baggugosha’ pear. m.sc. thesis, punjab agric. univ. ludhiana, 1999. [32] s.g. kulkarni, v.b. kudachikar, vk.v.r. rawana, “studies on effect of ethereal dip treatment on ripening behavior of mango”. j. food sci. technol., 41, pp. 216-220, 2004. [33] j. retamales, r. campos, d. castro, “ethylene control and ripening in packham’s triumph and beurre bosc pears”, acta hortic,. 475,pp. 559-566, 1998. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfpp.15655  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq molecular characterization of methicillin resistant and extended spectrum β-lactamase staphylococcus aureus isolated from burn patients shawnm ahmed aziz dlnya asad mohamed medical laboratory technology department biology department sulaimani technical institute college of science sulaimani polytechnic university university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq shawnm.aziz@spu.edu.iq dlnya.mohamed@univsul.edu.iq article info abstract volume 5 – special issue: 4th international conference on the health and medical science : medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) doi: 10.24017/science.2020.ichms2020.16 article history: received: 05 october 2020 accepted: 10 october 2020 antibiotic resistance has become a major world health challenge and has limited the ability of physician's treatment. staphylococcus aureus the most notorious pathogens causes morbidity and mortality especially in burn patients. however, staphylococcus aureus rapidly acquired resistance to multiple antibiotics. vancomycin, a glycopeptide antibiotic remains a drug of choice for treatment of severe methicillin resistance s. aureus infections. this study aimed to detect the emergence of betalactam and glycopeptide resistance genes. 50 clinical specimens of s. aureus collected from burn patients in burn and plastic surgery units in sulaimani-iraq city. all specimens were confirmed to be positive for s. aureus. all the isolates were assessed for their susceptibility to different antibiotics depending on nccl standards, followed by extended spectrum beta lactamase detection by double disk diffusion synergy test. the production of βlactamases was evaluated in the isolated strains by several routine methods and polymerase chain reaction. among the isolates 94% were methicillin resistance and 34.28% were extended spectrum beta lactamase producer. pcr based molecular technique was done for the bla genes related to βlactamase enzymes by the specific primers, as well as genes which related to reduced sensitivity to vancomycin were detected. the results indicated that all isolated showed the pbp1, pbp2, pbp3, pbp4, trfa and trfb, grasr, vras except the vrar gene and the prolonged therapy of keywords: methicillin resistance staphylococcus aureus, extended spectrum beta lactamase, vancomycin, penicillin binding proteins. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 146 methicillin resistance infection with teicoplanin have been associated with progress of resistance and the rise of tecoplanin resistance may be a prologue to evolving vancomycin resistance. in conclusion, beta-lactam over taking can rise vancomycinintermediate s. aureus strains leading to appearance of vancomycin resistance although the treatment of vancomycin resistant infections is challenging. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction staphylococcus aureus being the most versatile human pathogen and one of the major causative microbe in bacterial infections, because of its impressive capacity to colonize and persistence in a range of diverse environments [1]. inhibition of bacterial transpeptidases enzyme (penicillin-binding proteins, pbps) that facilitate bacterial cell wall formation is the mechanism of action βlactam antibiotics. in contrast, vancomycin is binding to the cterminal of the cell wall precursor pentapeptide (lipid ii) and restricts its use for cell wall synthesis. to encounter the action of β-lactam drugs the bacteria produce a surrogate transpeptidase by production of a new enzyme named the penicillin-binding protein 2´ (pbp2´) with low affinity for β-lactams. [2]. when exposed to high levels of β-lactam antibiotics staphylococcus aureus cope this problem by producing a cell wall of distinct muropeptide structure and the four native pbps become inaction and their transpeptidase function is substituted by pbp2 [3]. changes in gene expression related to resistance phenotype and to compare susceptibility of s. aureus when faced different environment stress such as antibiotics has been studied by microarray which provide a greater information about molecular basis for understanding the resistance mechanisms. in response to vancomycin (van) and methicillin an essential protein the penicillin-binding protein 2 (pbp 2) of staphylococcus aureus plays an important role [4], [5]. upon growing of s. aureus in the inhibition of cell wall, and cell wall active antibiotics, a set of genes the vrasr system is activated [6]. s. aureus is known for its adaptability to environmental stresses such as exposure to antibiotics by a variety of mobile genetic elements such as transposons, staphylococcal cassette chromosomes, pathogenicity islands and plasmids that aid in genetic exchange between bacteria via horizontal gene transfer (7). efficient steps of infection control and specially to cure staphylococcal infections require a knowledge about s. aureus susceptibility patterns and molecular characterization of genes influenced resistance [8]. different virulence factors that produce by strains of s. aureus (table 1) which enhance their dissemination across the adjacent tissue and multiplication [9]. table 1: genes associated with the visa phenotype. associated genes functions reference grasr stress survival, cell wall and pathogenesis control pathways also involved in modifications of cell envelope. [10],[11] vrasr up-regulation of vrasr, reduced susceptibility to vancomycin. [12] trfa/trfb associated with reduced susceptibility to vancomycin. [13] pbp1 essential for growth of both mssa and mrsa [14] pbp4 thickening of cell wall and reduced autolytic activity. [15] 2. methods and materials collection and identification of staphylococcus aureus this study was conducted in microbiology laboratory in burn and plastic surgery hospital in sulaimani city. a total of 50 clinical samples of staphylococcus aureus were collected from kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 147 burn patients. all specimens were confirmed to be positive for staphylococcus aureus using selective mannitol salt agar medium, biochemical tests, and api staph system. antibacterial sensitivity the susceptibility profiles were tested by the conventional disk diffusion method to different antibiotics and aligned with nccl standards. in addition, disc diffusion method according to clsi were used to detect the tolerance of the strains to methicillin [16]. staphylococcus aureus was tested for methicillin resistance by using an oxacillin disk. agar plates containing 2-4% nacl were incubated at 35ºc and read after 24 hours of incubation. organisms were deemed methicillin resistant when the zone of inhibition was 10 mm for s. aureus. detection of extended spectrum β-lactamases (esbl) disc approximation method were used to detect βlactamase producers of staphylococci. tested bacterium were inoculated on muller –hinton agar plates and left for 5-15 min at room temperature. placed on the center of the medium amoxicillin-clavulanic acid disc 30 µg/ disc, then cefotaxim 30 µg/disc, ceftazidime 30 µg/disc and pipracillin 100 µg/disc placed around amoxicillin–clavulanic acid about 3 cm far from the centric disc. followed by incubation at 30-35°c for 24 hr. presence of esbl producers were confirmed by an enhanced zone of inhibition around the amoxicillinclavulanic acid disc with one or more of the used antibiotics. genomic extraction the most resistant bacterial isolate which was mrsa was subjected to genomic dna extraction according to the manufacture company (tiangene) information for bacterial genomic extraction provided with the kit. for pcr application from each test sample 2.5 µl of the total extracted material was used as a template dna. amplification of bla genes primers specific for pbp1, pbp2, pbp3, pbp4, trfab, vrasr, and grasr synthesized by sigma and cinnagen (table 2). pcr amplifications were performed according to manufacture instruction. the pcr products were analyzed by electrophoresis using 2 x trisborate buffer at 60 v for 3 hours, the gel was examined by ultraviolet illumination and photographed by a digital camera. table 2: pcr primers used in this study primer or probe sequence of primer ( 5´ 3´) company trfa forward tcc ccc ggg caa gtt ggt tat aat sigma trf a reverse cgg gat ccg cat cat cat cag aca sigma trfb forward tcc ccc ggg gga caa atc gca aac sigma trfb reverse cgg gat ccc ttg ctt gcc aca cac sigma vrar forward gga tga tca tga aat ggt acg tat agg sigma vrar reverse gtg caa gat aga aca caa gct gtt atc sigma vras forward tta cat atg aac cac tac att aga ac sigma vras reverse aag ctt atc gtc ata cga atc ctc ct sigma grasr forward tac atc tat acg att ata tc sigma grasr reverse aca tat gac taa cat cta tc sigma pbp1 sense gat acg cga gga aag attgc cinnagen pbp1 reverse ttt acg gca taa gag gcc ag' cinnagen pbp2 sense tcg aag tat ttt gga aga g' cinnagen pbp2 reverse gtg aat gac tga ttt tacg' cinnagen pbp3 sense gta tga tta ctt gtt cgg tctc' cinnagen pbp3 reverse caa cca tgc gct aca caatc cinnagen pbp4 sense gag taa gtt tgc tct tcg' cinnagen pbp4 reverse gta cag aag gca ttt cgacg cinnagen 3. results and discusion collection and confirmation of s. aureus all of 50 isolates were derived from burned wound and tissue. among 50 staphylococcus aureus, 3 isolates were methicillin sensitive s. aureus (mssa), the remaining 47 isolates 94% were identified as mrsa. coagulase production is a key character of s. aureus and most pathogenic and toxigenic staphylococci are confined to this species, so the detection of coagulase is very important in routine identification of s. aureus by using either the slide or the tube coagulase test [17]. all s. aureus isolates were subjected to further bacteriological and biochemical analyses. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 148 api staph system was used to differentiate the isolate and to confirm s. aureus identification; the results obtained were found to be in excellent agreement with earlier classical biochemical tests of coagulase positive staphylococci [18]. antibacterial response the sensitivity of 50 s. aureus isolates has been tested against 22 antibiotics (figure 1). the inhibition zones diameters were measured and aligned with the standard of clsi (2011). the results obtained indicated that all the isolates were 100% susceptible to penicillin. in another study on chemical bombarded exposed patients in halabja 75km southeast suleimani, it was revealed that 100% of s. aureus isolated were resistant to penicillin [19] our observations were in agreement with these conclusions. the results presented in this study indicated that all isolates (100 %) were resistant to pencillin g, (94%) to oxacillin, (88.57%) to cotrimoxazol, (85.71%) to erythromycin, (85.71%) to tetracyclin, (82.85%) to gentamycin, (82.85%) to ciftriaxone, (80%) to fucidic acid, (77.14%)to doxycyclin , (71.42%) to chloramphenicol, (68.57%) to clindamycin, (62.85%) to amoxillin-claviculin, (54.28%)to piperacillin, (54.28%) to rifampicin, (37.14%) to ciprofloxacin , (31.42%) to norfloxacin, (28.57% ) to levofloxacin, (2.85%) to nitrofurantion, also (2.85%) were resistant to quinupristin dalfopristin, all isolates were sensitive for minocyclin, vancomycin, and teicoplanin and (34.28% ) were extended spectrum βlactamase producer. figure 1: percentage rate of antibiotic susceptibility pen: penicillin g, oxa : oxacillin, tsu: cotrimoxazol , ery: erythromycin , tet: tetracyclin gen: gentamycin, cro: ciftriaxone , fuc: fucidic acid , dox: doxycyclin c : chloramphenicol , cli: clindamycin, ampc: amoxicillin-clav , tzp: piperacillin -tazobactum, rfa: rifampicin, cip: ciproflocacin , nor : norfloxacin , lvx : levofloxacin ,fur : nitrofurantion , qda: quinupristin dalfopristin , , min : minocyclin , van : vancomycin , tec : teicoplanin . high resistance to most antibiotics noticed in this study. spreading of epidemic strains is linked with high rate of mrsa infection in different countries [20]. the mec a gene which is found in staphylococcal cassette chromosome (scc) in s. aureus is responsible of resistance to methicillin [21], [22]. meca gene transfer horizontally among different gram positive bacteria and staphylococci species [23]. in addition, meca gene has been illustrated to be responsible for the synthesis of penicillin binding protein 2a (pbp2a). pbp2a is different from other pbps in that its active site has been shown to block the binding of all β-lactams but it allows the transpeptidation reaction to proceed [24]. detection of extended spectrum β-lactamases (esbl) double disk diffusion method was used for the detection of extended spectrum βlactamases. esbl producing bacteria detected by synergistic of the inhibition zone between each of the cephalosporine disks and the disk containing clavulanate. [25]. the results showed that 34.8% isolates were positive for esbl production (fig-2). in resistance to third-generation cephalosporins such as cefotaxime, ceftazidime, and cefepime kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 149 the extended-spectrum beta-lactamases (esbls), play a significant role. all the esbl positives were mrsa which were resistance to most of the antibiotics. figure 2: a:( positive result) extended spectrum β-lactamase production by s. aureus b: (negative result). the obtained results reveals that esbl confirmed tolerance to penicillin, and other broad spectrum cephalosporins and related oxyimino βlactams . 4-4 amplification of the β-lactamase determinants the bla genes related to βlactamase enzymes were assayed by pcr with the corresponding primers for the pbp1, pbp2, pbp3, pbp4, trfa,trfb, grasr, and vrar and vras genes. the results of the amplified pcr products showed that all the mrsa isolates according to multidrug resistance were positive for the βlactamase determinants except vrar gene (figures 3). pcr amplified product gel electrophoresis of isolate of mrsa strain: figure 3: gel electrophoresis of the pcr amplified products (line 1: dna marker, iine2: trfa gene, lines 3: trfb gene, line 4: vrar gene, line5: vras gene, line 6: grasr, line 7: pbp1 gene, line8: pbp2 gene, line 9: pbp3 gene and line 10: pbp4 gene, isolates negative with the: vrar gene. s. aureus penicillin binding proteins pbp1 to pbp4 are enzymes concerned with the last stages of peptidoglycan biosynthesis. [26]. in addition, these pbps have gained a lot of attention since they are the aims of beta lactam antibiotics which bind covalently to these proteins, affecting synthesis of bacterial cell wall [27]. 2 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 pb fragment 1 2000 800 a b 0 1000 2000 2500 2500 2400 1500 1kb 3 300 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 150 it was noted that over expression of pbp4 resulted in an increase in β_lactam resistance and in greater peptidoglycan cross-linking [28]. s. aureus pbp4 is identical to other lmm pbps and is arranged into the super family of penicillin-susceptible and our observation were in a good agreement with these correlations. inactivation of the over produced pbp4 increase β_lactam susceptibility and decrease the mic for isolates resistant to vancomycin [29]. the majority of studies to date have approved an increase in the level of pbp4 when s. aureus isolates are exposed to β_lactam antibiotics [30]. it means that even in the presence of β-lactam antibiotics the active site of this enzyme can remain intact. the biochemical features of pbp4 enable activators to modulate the activity of this enzyme to prolong the effectiveness of glycopeptide antibiotics such as vancomycin [31]. all isolated have been confirmed to harbor the grasr genes which are associated with oxidative stress survival, stress response, cell wall alteration and control mechanisms for pathogenesis [11]. in addition to these results, a β-lactam antibiotics enhanced two components regulatory system (vrasr) consisting of a sensor kinase (vras) and a response regulator (vrar) that control β_lactam-dependent induction of pbp 2 transcription as well as that of other cell wall biosynthesis genes [32]. the vrasr disturbance in mrsa clinical strains, results not only the decrease of β_lactam and/or vancomycin mics but also in the reducing transcription of pbp 2 [34]. esbl genes are coded on plasmid and are passed from one strain to another; leading to emergence the multi drug resistance nosocomial pathogens bacteria whose infections failed to cure by widely used antibiotics. all isolated showed the trfa and trfb gene and the continued treatment of mrsa infection with teicoplanin have been involved with resistance progress [34]. at sub inhibitory concentrations beta-lactam antibiotics can induce in vitro intermediate vancomycin resistance. the intact trfa locus was necessary for this induction and the prior use of beta-lactam antibiotics can weaken vancomycin potency in the curing mrsa infections [35]. the most widely used medications for the treatment of multi resistant methicillin resistant s. aureus are vancomycin and teicoplanin. resistance to glycopeptide in s. aureus can be induced by mutation and selection when exposed to glycopeptides. in addition, resistance to tecoplanin is more rapidly attained than vancomycin resistance and the emergence of tecoplanin resistance may be a precursor to expand vancomycin resistance [36]. 4. conclusion in conclusion depending on the antibacterial susceptibility tests unnoticed high rate of mrsa were detected that increase the risk of nosocomial infections. the meropenem antibiotics was the most effective antibiotics. further studying the esbl types and relation between esbl types and antibacterial susceptibility test. introducing pcr technology in to hospital laboratories for early detection of pathogens because bacteria producing esbl should be detected rapidly so that suitable antibiotics received by patients. reference [1] r. aftab, and i. iqbal, “bacteriological agent of neonatal sepsis in nicu at nishter hospital multan,” journal of coll physicians surg pak. 16(3) pp.216–219,2006. 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[36] k. hiramatsu, “vancomycin resistance in staphylococci,” drug resistance updates 1,135-50. 1998. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 110 shadi park renovation with social development emphasis: a case study halabja city, iraq mihraban othman mustafa masoumeh faraji agriculture project management landscape design engineering halabja technical college of applied science horticulture and landscape design sulaimani polytechnic university university of tehran halabja, iraq karaj, tehran mihraban.othman@spu.edu.iq mfaraji_1987@yahoo.com zaniar jamal salih muhammed saeed rasheed agriculture project management food industry halabja technical college of applied science halabja technical college of applied science sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university halabja, iraq halabja, iraq zaniar.salh@spu.edu.iq muhammed.rasheed@spu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 6 – issue 1june 2021 doi: 10.24017/science.2021.1.12 article history: received 2/3/2021 accepted 30/6/2021 the expansion of urbanization and the lack of open spaces in cities, urban green spaces have become very important, especially in recent decades. among urban green spaces, parks are important because they have leisure and recreational functions, and the favorable physical and mental effects on humans have been proven today. depreciation of materials, park equipment, destruction of vegetation and lifestyle changes over time have changed the needs and desires of the people and caused the old parks do not meet the needs of citizens. today, improving parks is a new approach that makes parks matches the demands human beings have evolved over time with the advancement of technology. shadi park in iraq is one of the regional urban parks; the lack of its design, as well as the wear and tear of some uses, lack of optimal lighting system and various uses by different age groups reduces the number of visits. in this research, based on field perceptions of the park and public opinion polls, prioritization and solutions to strengthen the presence of people has been pointed out. the results of the questionnaire indicate the priority of people's demands, the most important of which include: building a sports venue for women, proper service of restaurants and cafes during the day and night, the presence of swimming pools and fountains in the park, parking at the entrances, space allocation to hold cultural and artistic festivals. keywords: urban green spaces, halabja, urban parks, shadi park, park facilities. copyright ©2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. mailto:mihraban.othman@spu.edu.iq mailto:mfaraji_1987@yahoo.com mailto:zaniar.salh@spu.edu.iq mailto:muhammed.rasheed@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 111 1. introduction today, the importance of urban green spaces, especially green areas such as urban parks, has become very important due to the expansion of urbanization and the lack of open space in cities. it can be said that parks are the most important recreational and leisure spaces with ecological functions in cities. the quality of design, equipment, and various uses and service conditions in urban parks are among the factors that increase the sustainable presence of people. lack of proper knowledge of the space for the construction of the park and not paying attention to the interests and desires of local people have reduced their presence in the parks and this factor causes the park to be abandoned and unused, the absence of citizens in the parks as the main users. this factor itself causes the lack of attention to the maintenance and closure of some uses such as amusement parks, cafes, restaurants, shops. in general, the absence of people will affect the maintenance and development of the park over time, and the parking space will move towards non-use and abandonment, and the areas of crime and delinquency in the park will increase. improving old parks and adapting them to the needs of people that change over time is one of the new approaches, which is called "improving urban parks". and the desires and interests of the people as the main users according to age groups culture and gender. 1.1 park definition the design of the approach of outdoor areas to meet the physical and social needs, visually appropriate and have high standards have begun to take place nowadays [1]. according to [2] the space that is planned to meet the need for joint activities and community interaction called is a green open space. urban parks are defined as delineated open space areas, mostly consisted of vegetation and water, and generally reserved for public use [3]. according to dunnett et al. [4] urban green spaces include many forms of green area; green space consists of urban parks and gardens and both of them used to recreation and amenity. urban parks and gardens can be named as landscapes also can define this metonymy by designed and are managed the land to complete the needs of the population, needs are consisting of enjoying nature, spending the free time, social activities, sports, and physical activities in some situations, to entertain the architectural, aesthetic, historical, and environmental quality, also urban parks can also urban parks can be used for educational and cultural purposes. [4].gardens and parks are made landscapes, and all of them are created by human activity by mix nature and art in a development amalgam at a moment in time and space. places have a great social role such as a way of implying wealth and power, the scene for political action, part of nature, and part of the broader landscape. moreover, can attract touristic by historic gardens and parks it’s important for positive economic attributes [5]. 1.2 the importance of urban parks and green spaces urban parks are important to supply social needs and city sustainability [6]. to develop and contribute cities and achieve the quality of life the best way is well-design urban parks [7]. the idea of public space has a significant role for planners because public spaces are part of the city in which all citizens can access; particularly citizens with extreme needs e.g. low income, elders, persons with disabilities [8]. the presence of natural areas in urban is important for improving the quality of life in cities. alongside important environmental services (like water and air cleaning, filtration wind and noise, the constancy of microclimate), natural areas have another role such as; supply social kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 112 and psychological services which are necessary for the livability of abate cities and stressreduction and mental health [9]. moreover, urban parks will also progress the environmental quality in cities because plants decrease the urban heat and pollution, besides this, improve the urban ecosystem by providing habitats for wildlife, so urban parks usually reflects the social, cultural, and economic image of the cities [10]. the best way to enhance psychosocial, health, and comfort of urban residents are visiting the parks for spent leisure time [11]. urban parks are an important element of a sustainable city [12]. the landscape has a great role to improve the urban environment such as increase biodiversity, recover the atmosphere, decrease wasting water, and reduce crowded noise city [13]. according to [14] city parks also have important historical and cultural benefits. in the u.s. cities considered to have economic benefits too, for example, increased tourism value, costsaving for city government (wastewater, air pollution), cost-saving factors to citizens (health value). “an amount of public green spaces per inhabitant”, “public parks”, and “recreation areas” are frequently used as factors of making a city attractive to people [15]. the urban green space may have three benefits types including; (i) economic and aesthetic benefits such as energy conservation and property values (ii) the environmental the benefit which consists of ecological benefits, pollution control, biodiversity and nature conservation, and (iii) social and physical benefits which include recreation and wellbeing and human health [16]. additionally, public parks and green spaces can have a statistically significant effect on the sale price of houses in close proximity to those resources [6]. urban green spaces have great importance to meet the needs of daily life within its environment; parks are functional and aesthetic spaces, giving peace to the city. while providing opportunities for protection, utilization, health, and education, they also organize social life. urban parks should be planned in terms of natural and cultural features of the most exclusive places in cities, they should appeal to every age group, and have active and passive recreation opportunities and facilities [1]. open spaces are the part of social park which contains playgrounds and athletic fields and also has a green area. it can preserve microclimate, reduce air pollutions and provide natural resources and save the areas during disasters, furthermore, open spaces contain a platform which is a special place that people can use for their activities [2]. 1.3 definition of regeneration regeneration means re-activation or revival of, physical and environmental, economic, and socio-cultural aspects, and urban regeneration is the regeneration of urban centers that have rejected due to changes in the industrial structure and the widening of new cities and new urban centers. the city is disappearing and prospering after repeated growth, decline and regeneration after birth. in order to keep sustainable growth, it is important to implement urban regeneration to plan and implement desirable urban change. since the subject of urban regeneration is a local resident, the unique culture of the region, geographical environment, local history, and identity should be considered [17]. 1.4 the importance of revitalizing urban parks and green spaces today, the redesign of urban parks and gardens are unavoidable due to the incapacity of parks to meet the needs of people and update these needs and the erosion process that occurs during the operation of parks [18]. to determine an effective strategy for a national park, organize and management should discover and analyses the drivers which transmit the number of visitors to national parks [19]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 113 landscapes and urban arranging depends on the category of history and memories that are visible in physical urban elements such as considerable monuments, buildings, and governmental and public spaces [20]. according to [2] park revitalization necessary for the community can be as nature-based infrastructure that also functioned as a refugee point when a disaster occurs. the renovation of public parks promotes young people to become more physically active, especially in a poor society in which youth concern about rates. [21]. the capacity of the parking space to make a sense of place is often overlooked but is probably the crucial element that should be count in planning [8]. playground renovations can have an important role in park utilization [22]. as the nature of the renovations must focus on increase positive social outcomes and reducing any potential negatives [23]. park renovations were followed by significant increases in park use and physical activity levels among park users, as well as recovery in the conceptions of park safety [21]. urban regeneration is for local residents and currently, municipalities are mainly planning parks as an element of urban regeneration, in other words, the revitalizing can be the beginning of sustainable growth [17]. it is imperative to take action in two pylons; the first is raising public awareness of the issue. the second is aiming at taking advantage of existing legal documents, and also creating new versions, to secure reduction of further loss and decay and target protection, conservation, restoration, and management procedures. this paper is an introduction to the subject [5]. in general, landscape architects can play a major role in the rehabilitation of contaminated soil, particularly former landfills, and can provide a positive impact on ecology and biodiversity. the regenerative design approach will not only restore habitat resources but also treat air and water source. in addition, the suitable selection of plant materials that have a high potential for the treatment of contaminated soil, with cheaper cost can play an important role in improving the environment [24]. [25] wrote that in this new century, we are facing a different kind of threat to urban parks not only one of disuse but of patterns of design and management that exclude some people and reduce social and cultural diversity. given the concerns about low rates of physical activity among low-income minority youth, many community-based organizations are investing in the creation or renovation of public parks, in order to encourage youth to become more physically active [21]. in improvement, the parks must be considered renewable energy for park tools [6]. in the urban regeneration, people can use new plan but is not sustainable every time due to problem in processing the plan. the presence high amount of people in a certain place means that the place is can deserve them and also the area will change and grow. this is can cause an increase in people's economic activity and growth [17]. 1.5 the importance of social development in parks research of older people in sweden explained that open spaces in the cities had sufficient effect to increase the social interactions and predicted the strength of ties among residents. also, useful to avoid people for being an individualistic life in the urban area[26]. [27] in the study of community-dwelling elderly people shows that the important way to improve health-related quality of life (hrqol) is participating in social relationship and cognitive activities. so, according to world health organization (who) since 1948, complete health consists of physical, mental and social comport, and not just luck of disease or illness [26] shows that delight in the sharing of enjoyable activity, improve health situation, given the opportunity to reduce depression and meet new people. [26] discovers that the number of the visitor to national parks influences by the presence the attractive views such as water bodies, obtainability of trails, and minor roads. in contrast, wetlands and grasslands, kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 114 broadleaf and coniferous forests and the copious of other national parks have a negative effect to reduce visitor numbers [19]. urban parks are a good environment to host outside concerts and theatrical representation, it is important to promote cultural entertainment to be offered in a public park (such as festival, music, art, and history) share to a social sense of place [29]. a study in america shows that providing a plan park program for different age groups and genders like supervised activities and social events will increase the number of park visitors, the study explained that supervised activity could increase park usability by 48% and physical activity by 37% [30]. 1.6 factors affecting the social development of parks activities are the basic building blocks of space. in fact, they are one of the reasons why people come to space first and come back again. activities can also make a space special and unique. when there is no activity to do, a place will be empty and unused, and this generally means that something is wrong [31]. edges with semi-shaded conditions and under-hanging trees provide a good opportunity to stay in space. opportunity for relative hiding and at the same time visibility, in spaces that are usually chosen to stay, people usually choose corners and recesses or next to pillars, trees, lights, and other physical objects that somehow support them. these objects can also define places of rest and accommodation. therefore, vegetation and especially trees have an effective role in creating activity in space [32]. the impact of security on the presence of people in space is also very effective, "if crime and violence actually occur in any space and region if people feel insecure and capable, they will leave that space and region" [33]. having the right opportunities to sit down paves the way for a variety of activities that are among the primary attractions of being in space. these activities include eating, reading, sleeping, playing chess, sunbathing, watching people, talking [34]. walking, sitting, standing, and staying in space are some of the events that can happen in one space and pave the way for other activities in space. therefore, paying attention to providing design facilities and suitable environmental conditions for their proper occurrence can be very effective [31]. the aggregation of activities in many cases can lead to an increase in the amount of activity and thus increase the amount of presence in space ("people are attracted to each other and new activities occur in the vicinity of ongoing activities.") human activities that can watch the activity other human beings are the most attractive in the range. the type and personality of outdoor activities depend a lot on the physical design of the space, it is determined through the design decisions of the pattern of activities. sometimes providing new facilities in space also leads to the creation of new activities [34]. research has shown if the number and location of trees are suitable in the parks, the park users and permanence of the peoples are increase, ergo the presence of trees multiply the use of public spaces [35]. in general, one of the important factors to the success of the green open space is community enthusiasm, desire to participate in voluntary works became to grow and financial capital effect to maintain and grow the green open space and encourage the community to save and preserve the area and sometimes improve the site by own expense, also, participate in peoples as a user can note the needs, inclusive infrastructure and management. in this way can select the ideal point of view for green open space [2]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 115 2. methods and materials 2.1 study area: the study was conducted in the city of halabja located in the northeast of baghdad, 241.402 km along the 36-35 n and 46 e, and in the southeastern sulaymaniyah city, iraq. the area of halabja is about 1,600 km2 with 122,412 populations for the year 2019 according to [36]. 2.2 climate of halabja [37]. temperature and solar radiation: halabja city is characterized by the large differences in temperature seasons. the lowest temperature degree -5.5 °c will record in january and highest 49.1 °c in july with an average of 21.5 °c. the solar radiation of 12.8 h d-1 is a record in jun, while this decrease to the of 9.85 h d-1 in december. precipitation: the region is characterized by an abundance of precipitation during the seasons of the year, which starts at the end of october and continues to may. the precipitation is mostly rained with an average rate of 700 mm with snowing during from december to february. humidity: the relative humidity changes during the year, it may reach the highest of 95% in winter but the lowest is 18.2% in july and august with an average of 51.1% annually. 2.3 history of shadi park shadi park is located in the southeastern of halabja city, which was designed and implemented by the kurdistan regional government (krg) in 2012 as the largest city park. its area is about 10.2 hectare as it is shown in (figure 1). the city people use it for recreation and leisure. the park is currently managed by the city municipal. figure 1: location of shadi park scale1:1000, papersize-a1 (source: authors, 2021) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 116 shadi park leads from the north, northwest, south and southwest to residential areas and ends from the east to orchards and barren lands in the foothills (figures 2). due to its closeness to residential areas, this park if properly improved, the city citizens can visit it daily. figure 2: (a) western view of the park and the surrounding residential context and (b) eastern view of parks and orchards and barren lands (source: authors, 2021) 2.3 research methodology the results of this study are divided into two parts. the first part is based on the library documents study, field visits, researchers' findings and the preparation of a report on the park. but, the second part is related to the analysis of people who visited the park and filled the questionnaire. 2.4 available park conditions the park has six entrances, which are currently two entrances from the south and southwest side, and traffic is from that part and the other four entrances are not used. the main uses of the park are amusement, playground, sports and courier, picnic space, stalls selling various products and restaurants in the park, which are closed during the study and also contain a big fountain in the park but inactive. there is car parking on the west side with walking pavement access to the park for people, and vehicles. a large part of the park on the east and southeast sides and north part are remained abandoned due to lack of barren design (figure 3). the main vegetation of the park is different tree species such as: robinia pseudoacaciavar, cupressus arizonica, chamaecyparis lawsoniana, platycladus orientalis, fraxinus syriaca, robinia pseudoacacia, pine, juniper, salix babylonica and the major shrub and plant hedges include of ligustrum vulgare and ligustrum ovalifolium while grass has been used to cover the bed and contain some type of climbers like climber roses and vine, lonicera japonica. irrigation of the vegetation is operating using sprinkler irrigation system. and also, the park is depending on rainfall during raining season. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 117 figure 3: existing land use plan of shadi park (source: authors, 2021) 3. results and discussions 3.1 the park problems the park analysis based on visiting the park by the research team, which they found the following problems: people do not visit the park at night due to lack of lighting in and increase the insecurity. restaurants and service spaces in the park are currently inactive. this is caused by reducing the number of visitors. on the other hand, the presence of staffs and services in the park during the day and night increases the security of the park. the vegetation cover in the park does not enough. and also, luck of the variety, desirability, and the standardization of the landscape during the year has reduced visiting. the park furniture is currently limited to benches, buckets, tabs and pavilions and without applicable quality, number and distribution. increasing the number of benches, their variety and creating individual and public relaxing spaces and improving pavilions for picnics can have a great impact on the presence of more visitors with remaining for more time. existence of undersigned and abandoned spots in the park, as well as the existence of vacant workshop spaces that have become a place of accumulation of garbage and waste storage, kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 118 have created hazardous spaces, especially children and women in the park and psychologically it has a negative effect on people. the lack of different uses for special groups, including women, the elderly, adolescents and young people, has reduced their desire to attend the park. also, the existing uses, including playgrounds and children's play areas are not of the desired quality. lack of parking in the park is also one of the problems that have reduced the number of people coming to the park. 3.2 interview with park users questionnaire analysis the visitor’s questionnaire included some questions about their satisfaction with the existing conditions of the park, which included their general information such as age, gender, marital status and level of education. also, their visits were evaluated daily, weekly and monthly. the total number of respondents to the questionnaire was 395 people. the respondent`s age ranged from 10 to more than 35, with the highest number of respondents in the group (18-35) which was 65.2%. the gender included consisted of 64.1% male and 35.9% female. another question asked was about the level of education, the people were different in the stage of education but more of them had bachelor certification which approximately 41.5%. to be more precise, about 55.1% of them were married and 44.9% were single. on the other hand, about 7% of people have visited the park daily, 21.8% weekly, 33.1% monthly and 38.2 yearly as shown (figure 4). figure 4: review of respondents' personal characteristics (source: authors, 2021) the purpose of this questionnaire is to examine the park conditions from the users' point of view and their satisfaction with the current conditions and their suggested points of view in order to improve the park. the questions and their satisfaction can be seen in (table 1). as shown in the table we asked about devices and playgrounds, water and water fountains, parking, green spaces at the park, security the park along the day and night, restaurant, cafeterias and the public service, are the all ages at the park are comfort and the service are suitable for all ages …et. the answers for all these questions are shown at the (table 1) and the percentage of the responses. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 p e rc e n t kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 119 as in (table 1) about 74.19 of the response satisfied the fitness place unsuitable for ladies. also, 73.28% are having note and disagree with the restaurant and the cafeteria. and about 62% of people don’t agree with the water pool and foundations. about the devices and playground, approximately 59% of people think unsuitable for entertainments. although 62.26% of people reckon the parking and the parking place unfit. on the other hand, 60.75% of responses like to have music programs and culture festival at this park . another question and the user responses percentage are shown at the table. table 1: questionnaire questions and user’s response percentage (source: authors, 2020) no. question a lot % in part % less % 1 do the devices and playground suitable in this park for satisfaction entertainment? 5.5 35.89 58.61 2 are water pool and fountains suitable in this park? 11.82 25.71 62.47 3 are you satisfied with green space at this park? 24.84 55.61 19.55 4 do you feel secure at this park? 21.6 50 28.4 5 do you like the restaurant and the cafeterias are suitable at this park? 3.02 23.7 73.28 6 are swimming pool and the club suitable for every age and genera? 10.45 39.61 49.94 7 is the park suitable for enjoyment entertainment along night? 11.4 47.15 41.45 8 is the park fitness place suitable for ladies and safe for visitors? 6.56 19.25 74.19 9 are ladies feel enjoy full at the park 8.5 46.38 45.12 10 do you like to have music programs and culture festival at this park? 60.75 26.72 12.53 11 do you like; visit this park at the cool seasons? 11.92 31.64 56.44 12 do you agree to have to peddler and vender at this park? 27 33.44 39.56 13 is it suitable for children, adult and older? 18.36 55.47 26.17 14 is lighting facility suitable along the night at this park? 14.51 42.22 43.27 15 do the green space suitable according to beauty and quantity along with the all four seasons? 12.57 41.75 45.68 16 are parking and parking places suitable for travelers? 11.72 26.02 62.26 at the end of the questionnaire, to find out the personal views of the respondents, they were asked; what factors increase their presence in the park and what changes are needed to improve the conditions of the park; people that stay close to the park-like changing these factors at the park: improve the parking and add the number of parking area for visitors. design the parks are impiety and they don’t have service still. improve park security particularly the park does not have particular space for family activates like (party, picnic….et.) in the park some services like toilets are not enough for visitors. there is no bulletin board in the park. there is no public transport for visitors to the park. the services in the park are not helpful and should be better especially in the holiday and the seasons. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 120 restaurants and café should open for longer hours improve the play spaces particularly space for lady’s game. improve the lighting along the night and increasing the number of light around the roads and relaxing sites. adding and improving the green spaces in the park by increasing shade plants. there are no enough seats in the park for a high number of visitors. there is not a particular space for picnic, party and festivals. 3.3 design of an abandoned and unused part of the park the southeast side of the park (figure 3) remains abandoned due to lack of design and use of people and have an unsuitable appearance and this factor has reduced the amount of traffic to this part of the park and has caused an insecure atmosphere in this park. the research of this section is designed for design based on the point of view of people and respondents to the questionnaire, which is followed by the study objectives. 3.4 goals and criteria 3.5 crossing routes: the zoning has been done in order to increase the traffic routes and the placement of sitting benches in a desirable and scattered manner throughout the section designed to rest and prolong the presence of people and increase public monitoring and reduce insecurity in the park (figure 5). figure5: overview section of the design (source: authors, 2021) 3.6 security room next to the entrance door from the northeast side of the park, a guard room has been considered to control traffic and increase the security of the park (figure 5). 3.7 toilet due to the size of the park, it is necessary to open water closets in the different parts of the park, which is also located in this part of the park (figure 6-a). 3.8 bicycle station due to the large area of the park and the wide walkways, visitors can use the bicycle station to rent a bicycle for sports and walking in the parking area (figure 6-b). 3.9 restaurants, cafes and buffets selling the variety of food and service in the park will increase the presence of citizens. in this section, a restaurant, cafe and a buffet space are considered, and the interior of the buildings is also designed to serve and the surrounding area (figure 6c & d) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 121 (a) (b) (c) (d) figure 6: (a) guard building (b) toilet service (c) bicycle station (d) buffet selling food products figure 6: restaurant and café (source: authors, 2021) pergola: the roofed pavilions in the park are suitable for use during the year and the lighting system is used for use at night. the fireplace in some pavilions is intended to increase the presence of people during the cold seasons of the year. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 122 3.10 picnic tables in the forest gardens for the optimal use of the forest parts, picnic tables have been placed for the use of the people. 3.11 vegetation diversity a good combination of deciduous plants and evergreens due to the stability of the green cover throughout the year. planting perennial flowering plants and seasonal flowers to create variety and beauty. planting shrubs and flowering trees in different seasons for beauty and variety. there are pergolas in the passageways on which various climbing and flowering plants are located. 3.12 strengthen nesting and the presence of birds in the park and increase biophonic due to its large size, this park has the ability to nest birds. hearing the birds singing in the park can have a positive effect on increasing the presence of people in the park. in this section, different plant species have been used for nesting and feeding birds. 3.13 lighting system during the night in order to create security and increase the presence of people in the night hours, a lighting system is necessary to create security and beauty. and the fountains are also illuminated. 3.14 waterfall and drinking water in the park two fountains have been designed in the squares of this part of the park, which will cause people to gather, and the presence of people around it will increase due to lighting, living platforms, beautiful planting design, including a variety of flowering and aromatic plants (figure 7). figure 7: different views section of the design (source: authors, 2021) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 123 4. conclusion and recommendations based on the achievements of this research, it can be said that shadi park has potentials and strengths, which are mentioned in the following important cases: park area existence of old vegetation adjacent to residential texture convenient access no visual and noise pollution based on the above, it is expected that by improving the park based on studies and public opinion polls, favorable conditions will be provided for the widespread and stable presence of citizens in various traditional groups throughout the year. in general, the following can be said as suggestions for improving the physical and service conditions of the park: design and usability of abandoned areas. organizing land uses and service equipment, including food stalls, cafes and restaurants, toilets and drinking water, mosques, etc. increasing the equipment and furniture and its optimal distribution in the park, including benches, trash cans, pavilions and barbecues, etc. entrance and access from different sections and parking. improving the lighting and strengthening the security of the park through the guards, as well as lighting to increase the presence of people in the early hours of the night. strengthening special uses such as children's playground in different traditional groups under 5 years old and 6 to 13 years old, sports spaces for teenagers and young people, amusement park, cultural center, library, space for the elderly and disabled, special space for women, bicycle station. holding various cultural and artistic festivals in the park. strengthening diverse vegetation (shady tree structure, flowering plants, species that are beautiful during different seasons) along with strengthening the presence of birds. creating a favorable atmosphere for family parties and picnics. reference [1] r. d. çay, "recreation and urban park management", chapter 21, recreation and urban park management, 302312, 2015. [2] o. c. dewi, l. p. shantia, t. u. atmokoa, a. a. napitupulub. m. anggraenib, "sustainability assessment on community park revitalization", asean journal of community engagement, volume 1, number 1, 83-95. 2017 [3] c. c. konijnendijk, m. annerstedt, a. b. nielsen and s, maruthaveeran, "benefits of urban parks: a systematic review". a report for ipfra. ifpra, 2013. [4] n. dunnett. c. swanwick and h.woolley. "improving urban parks, play areas and green spaces". department for transport, local government and the regions, london (uk). http://www.ocs.polito.it/biblioteca/verde/improving_full.pdf, last access february 2015, 2002. [5] e. athanasiadou, "historic gardens and parks worldwide and in greece: principles of acknowledgement, conservation, restoration and management", heritage 2019, 2, 2678–2690; doi: 10.3390/heritage2040165, www.mdpi.com/journal/heritage. 2019 http://www.mdpi.com/journal/heritage kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 124 [6] l. loures and r. panagopoulos, "urban parks and sustainable city planning the case of portimão, portugal, wseas transactions on environment and development", issue 10, volume 3, october 2007,171-180 issn: 17905079, 2007. [7] h. hamdan, n. sh. khalid, n. f. baba, "people in city: the relation of urban park and the quality of life", 3rd aqol2017kuching, 14-16 oct 2017 / e-bpj, 2(6), nov 2017 (p.311-318), 2017. [8] d. ellis, and, r. schwartz, the roles of an urban parks system, 2016. [9] a. chiesura, "the role of urban parks for the sustainable city. landsc. urban plan", 68, 129–138. 2004 [10] m. f. shahidan, m. m. sharif, p. jones, e. salleh, a. m. abdullah, "a comparison of mesua ferrea l. and hura crepitans l. for shade creation and radiation modification in improving thermal comfort", landsc. urban plan. 97 (3) (2010) 168–181, 2010. [11] a.bakar, and s."samsudin, determinants of health care seeking behavior: dose insurance ownership matter?" (issc 2016),11-13-april 2016, university utara malaysia, 2016. [12] s. atwa, e. einen, nasr, m., khedr, a. "contemporary trends in landscape design at urban parks", https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331801910, 2015. [13] t. tempesta, "benefits and costs of urban parks: a review", aestimum 67, dicembre: 127-143, 2015. [14] l. tyrväinen, s. pauleit, k. seeland and s. de vries, "benefits and uses of urban forests and trees". in kuser j.e. (ed.), urban and community forestry in the northeast, 2nd ed., springer, pp.81-114, 2007. [15] e. shafray, "unique projects of a universal ‘public park making’ trend viewed on the example of four global cities", urban sci., 2, 107. www.mdpi.com/journal/urbansci, 2018. [16] s. m. a. haq, "urban green spaces and an integrative approach to sustainable environment. journal of environmental protection" (2), 601-608, 2011. [17] h. won and y. yeo, "a study on the role of park as urban regeneration in korea and its direction and strategy for success", uia 2017 seoulworld architects congress, 2017. [18] g.s. rumao, "assessing users’ perceptions of campus landscapes: learning from the university of texas at arlington". presented to the faculty of the graduate school of the university of texas at arlington in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of masters of landscape architecture, 2016. [19] j. stemberk, j. dolejs, p. maresova, and k. kuca, "factors affecting the number of visitors in national parks in the czech republic". germany and austria, international journal of geo-information, 7, 124; doi:10.3390/ijgi7030124, 3-10, 2018. [20] f. hussein, j. stephens, r. tiwari, "cultural memories and sense of place in historic. urban landscapes: the case of masrah al salam", the demolished theatre context in alexandria, egypt, land 2020, 9, 264 ; doi:10.3390/land9080264, www.mdpi.com/journal/land, 1-16, 2020. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331801910 http://www.mdpi.com/journal/urbansci http://www.mdpi.com/journal/land kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 125 [21] d. a. cohen, b. han, j. isacoff, b. shulaker, s. williamson, t. marsh, t. l. mckenzie, m. weir, and r. bhatia, "impact of park renovations on park use and park-based physical activity", journal of physical activity and health, 12(2), 289 -295, 2015. [22] s. slater, o. pugach, w. lin, and a.bontu, "if you build it will they come? does involving community groups in playground renovations affect park utilization and physical activity?" environment and behavior 48(1), 246–265, 2016. [23] w. poortinga, "community resilience and health: the role of bonding, bridging, and linking aspects of social capital. health & place", 18, 286–295. doi: 10.1016/j. healthplace.2011.09.017, 2012. [24] sh. k. h. s. o. thani, n. a. rahim, "mohamad n. h. m., hashim, n. h. m., grey to green: rehabilitation of urban dumpsite through regenerative landscape design", 7thace-bs2016taipei, taiwan,09-10 apr. 2016 / e-bpj, 1 (3) august 2016 (pp.193-202), 2016. [25] s. low, d. taplin, and s. schelrethinking, "urban parks. texas: university of texas press", 2005. [26] j. m. dergance, w. l. calmbach, r. dhanda, t. p. miles, h. p. hazuda, & c. p. mouton, "barriers to and benefits of leisure time physical activity in the elderly: differences across cultures". journal of the american geriatrics society, 51(6), 863-868, 2003. [27] m. p. lawton, "a multidimensional view of quality of life in frail elders. the concept and measurement of quality of life in the frail elderly", 3-27, 1991, [28] j. ph. schägner, l. brander, m. l. paracchini, j. maes, f. gollnow, b. bertzky, "spatial dimensions of recreational ecosystem service values:a review of meta-analyses and a combination of meta-analyticvalue-transfer and gis, ecosystem services", 1-15, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324274896, 2012. [29] m. m. abdelhamid, and m. m. elfakharany, "improving urban park usability in developing countries: a case study of al-shalalat park in alexandria", alexandria engineering journal, 59, 311–321, 2020. [30] e. caryn, h., h. peter, k. linda, "active parks, healthy cities: recommendations from the national study of neighborhood parks, city parks alliance", 2018. [31] m. kathleen,and a. schwarts, "how to turn a place around: a handbook for creating successful public spaces / project for public spaces", inc. new york, ny: project for public spaces, c2000. ,https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/7892731/version/22832430, 2000. [32] w. whyte, "the social life of small urban spaces, project for public spaces", 1980. [33] b. sherman, "cities fit to live in themes of variations", edited by derek jones, channel four television, 1988. [34] j. gehl, "life between buildings", washington-covelo-london: island press, 1986. [35] j. maas, r. a. verheij, s. de vries, p. spreeuwenberg, f. g. schellevis, p. p, groenewegen. "morbidity is related to a green living environment". j epidemiol community health. 2009 dec;63(12):967-73. doi: 10.1136/jech.2008.079038. epub 2009 oct 15, 2009. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324274896 https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/7892731/version/22832430  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq prevalence of helicobacter pylori infection and its associated risk factors among symptomatic residents of sulaimani city, kurdistan region, iraq, 2020 seerwan hama rashid ali sabiha sharif salih community health department laboratory technic department technical college of health technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani city, iraq sulaimani city, iraq hseerwan@yahoo.com sabiha_sh@yahoo.com taib ahmed hama sour goran mohammad raouf laboratory technic department pathology and forensic pathology department technical college of health college of medicine sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani university sulaimani city, iraq sulaimani city, iraq dr.taibahmed@gmail.com araz latif rahim kurdistan center for gastroenterology and hepatology sulaimani teaching hospital goran.raouf@univsul.edu.iq ministry of health sulaimani city, iraq araz197575@gmail.com article info abstract volume 6 – issue 1june 2021 doi: 10.24017/science.2021.1.1 article history: received 29/4/2021 accepted 11/6/2021 helicobacter pylori (h. pylori) bacteria are a microaerobic gram negative that colonizes in the gastric and duodenum of human. it can cause prolong infection in the human life if not treated. many of the studies showed that infection by h. pylori can cause some important gastrointestinal illness, such as peptic ulcer, chronic gastritis, gastric adenocarcinoma and mucosa associated lymphoid tissue lymphoma. recurrence is generally considered as h. pylori recrudescence infection after one year of eradicated treatment. there are many factors involved in the h pylori reinfection, such as the epidemiology of h. pylori infection, development of economical state, and health conditions. the objectives of this study were to estimate the prevalence and determine the risk factors of infection by h. pylori bacteria in dyspeptic patients in sulaimani city. the aims of the study are to estimate prevalence of the h. pylori and patients’ characteristics in sulaimani city. this is a cross-sectional study, using a urea breath test or stained the gastric sample with gimza stain, which is including all participants aged between (12-87) years during keywords: prevalence, dyspepsia, helicobacter pylori, risk factor, sulaimani. mailto:hseerwan@yahoo.com mailto:dr.taibahmed@gmail.com mailto:goran.raouf@univsul.edu.iq mailto:araz197575@gmail.com kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 2 the period starting from 1 january until 31 december 2020 on iraqi male and female patients were visiting –center for gastroenterology and hepatology in sulaimani, city, iraq. three hundred and four patients were included, all of them underwent urea breath test only but eighty-one of the participants underwent endoscopy and stained the gastric sample with gimza stain. results: the prevalence rate of h. pylori infection in our study is 54.9%, and mean age of the study participants was (40.49 ±16.39) one hundred and ninety-one cases 62.8% were female and one hundred and thirteen cases 37.2%were male. infection by h. pylori bacteria is rife in dyspeptic patients; and is more common in the age group of 31-40 years. one of noninvasive test to diagnosis h. pylori is urea breath test. in conclusions the rate of h. pylori infection in our study is 54.9% among the symptomatic patients, and the overall incidence of h. pylori ubt and giemsa stain detection rate were 73.4 and 26.6% respectively. copyright © 2019 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1.introduction the h. pylori bacterium is a gram negative, microaerophilic, has urease-production effect and spiral-shaped [1]. for the human life, the infection by h. pylori is considered as the most common chronic bacterial infection. [2, 3] the infection by h. pylori in more than half of the world's population which are causes chronic gastritis, in advanced stages of infection, the bacteria are associated with peptic ulcer and increased the chance of developing risk to stomach cancer.[4] barry marshall and robin warren, they were isolated h. pylori in 1982 for the first time. the bacterium is a gram-negative type and microaerophilic, and can causes inflammation in the gastric mucosa; it is the main causative agent of upper gastrointestinal diseases in the countries which have poor socio-economic status and not developed [5] gastric antrum and areas of gastric metaplasia in the duodenum are the main habitat place for h. pylori [6]. the epithelial lining of the stomach is place of choice to invade by h. pylori. clinical signs of h. pylori infection are abdominal distention, epigastric burning sensation, and nausea, but in most of the patients the infection will be asymptomatic. [7] in human the one of the main causes of peptic ulcer disease is infection by h. pylori, and it is one of the predisposing factors for gastric cancer. for treatment of the disease, the risk of recurrence reduction with avoidance of its complication results in ulcer healing. best treatment needs using multi drugs including antibiotics and anti-acid for 10-14 days.[8] in 1983 the scientists’ discovery of h. pylori as a main cause of gastric and duodenal ulcer illness. [1] h. pylori is not like as majority of pathogenic bacteria, it is typically colonizing the host for life unless specific treatment is given human migration pattern correlates with strain types that predominate within certain regions of the world [9]. disease evident is not common in most infected individuals, this conduct us to make the hypothesis that some type of h. pylori strains which are harmless or even have benefit effect; although, in the recent years show that the list of diseases caused by h. pylori infection has been increased will conclude that any strain is commensal [10]. almost 50% of world population exposed to infection by helicobacter pylori bacteria. there is clear distinction among developing and developed countries. the prevalence in kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 3 developing countries as middle east, sub–saharan africa and latin america was 90% or more, while it is 40% or less in developed countries like swaziland, western europe, north america and australia [11]. commonly infection of stomach is present patients infected by h. pylori and appear as acute or chronic. gastritis may be, corpus or antral-predominant or spread.[12] the loss of acid secretion is accompanied the entire gastric which effected by acute gastritis [10]. sometimes metaplasia and adenocarcinoma progressed [13]. proton pump inhibitors mediates chronic acid suppression and it can lead to alter the antral predominant to pangastritis, the risk of cancer development does not increase by duodenal ulcers and antrumpredominant gastritis [14]. gastric adenocarcinoma is mainly caused by helicobacter pylori [15]. some complications followed h. pylori infections which include ulceration that making by the part of the body that can damage the cell lining epithelium of the gastric and then acidity of the stomach help the progression and formation this type of ulcer, so h. pylori should be treated to avoid ulcer formation. in case of stomach cancer: h. pylori considered as one of the risk factors for gastric carcinoma. treatment for ten days by using omeprazole, clarithromycin and amoxicillin or treating for fourteen days via using bismuth subsalicylate, tetracycline and metronidazole; or treating for ten to fourteen days by using lansoprazole, clarithromycin and amoxicillin, are the regimens that recommended for h. pylori eradication by the national institute of clinical excellence. [16] the evidence illustrates that the vaccination or treatment and eradication of h. pylori infection [17] may decrease the risk of stomach cancer and gastric ulcer. because in kurdistan region a few studies about prevalence of helicobacter pylori especially investigation via both urea breath test and endoscopy finding and re-infection of stomach mucosa by helicobacter pylori bacteria. the aim of the current study is to discover the prevalence of helicobacter pylori and risk factors among dyspeptic patients visited kurdistan center for gastroenterology and hepatology in sulaimani city in 2020. 2. materials and methods the study population are included iraqi male and female patients aged 12-87 years which are living in sulaimani city and visiting center for gastroenterology and hepatology in sulaimani, city, iraq. sample size and technique we select 304 cases of dyspeptic patients referred to kurdistan center for gastroenterology and hepatology in 2020. study area the selected study area was including center municipality of sulaimani city and rural of it, the cases was visited the kurdistan center for gastroenterology and hepatology in sulaimani city. duration of the study the data collection time was started from 1 january 2020 to 31 december 2020. study design a cross sectional design of the study, by using urea breathes test and staining of gastric biopsy histology (by applying it’s in giemsa stain for 24 hours) was used as a diagnostic test. the study included dyspeptic cases aged (12-87 years) in 2020 and were subjected to routine upper gastro-intestinal endoscopy for suspected gastric infection, peptic ulcer disease and stomach cancer. data collection method • data was collected by applying the questionnaire which include socio demographic characteristics, hygiene, lifestyle factor and behavioral of symptomatic patients. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 4 • the urea breath test was done by using machine (heliprobe® system, manufacture in sweden) to detect h. pylori infection. biopsy taking and laboratory diagnosis the endoscopic mucosal biopsy from gastric antrum mucosa and endoscopic mucosal biopsy from gastric erosion for histological diagnosis and staining by giemsa stain. statistical analysis of data all dyspeptic patients’ data are analyzed via application of the spss version 26. the descriptive of statistics put forward as (mean±sd) and frequencies as percentages, and chisquare used for test group differences or categorical variables. in all statistical analysis, level of significant (p.value) set as ≤ 0.05 and the study results showed as figures and tables. the inclusion criteria: all patients presented by dyspeptic symptoms as (epigastric pain, heartburn, nausea, vomiting, early satiety, bloating) aged between 12-87 years were referred to kcgh; they were not previously screened or treated for h. pylori infection. exclusion criteria: patients below 12 years, who had a history of ppi, h2 receptor antagonist, bismuth, warfarin, and steroid use within 2 weeks before, or antibiotic use within 4 weeks, active gastrointestinal bleeding, and history of gastric surgery and h. pylori eradication pregnant women, and noniraqi participant. the human ethics: ethical approval was taking from the community health department / technical college of health / sulaimani polytechnic university for doing this study. in addition, the permission was taken from kcgh center to conduct our study on h. pylori infection. before the data collection an informed consent for each patient or from their parents in adolescent patient under 18 years are taking with signature of it and confidentially keeping our results. 3.results the response rate of the participants; to determine the rate of responses by participants, the following equation was used. the response rate = no of patient responded to questionnaire/n0 of sample size *100 = 304/323*100 = 94.1% prevalence of h. pylori infection and demographic characteristics the current study includes 304 adult and adolescent’s dyspeptic patients who are living in sulaimani city-and rural areas of sulaimani, they were visiting center for gastroenterology and hepatology during the period of 1 january until 31 december 2020. the total of 304 dyspeptic patients 167 of the patients were have a positive result for h. pylori infection, which are giving an overall incidence of 54.9%. sixty-three (37.7%) male and one hundred and four (62.3%) of female participants were positive result for h. pylori but there was not statistically significant different in with the age, mean ± standard deviation (sd) (40.49 ±16.39) and the majority of participants age were in between (31-40) years old group, 75 (24.7%). the table.1 is summarized the socio-demographic characteristic of the studies participant. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 5 presence of gastric ulcer to investigate the presence of ulcer in dyspeptic participants have a role on their result of ubt for patients affected by h. pylori bacteria, the result showed that majority of dyspeptic patients who have positive result for h. pylori test were have ulcer in their stomach 92 (55.1%) and only 75 (44.9%) who not had ulcer in their stomach from dyspeptic patients and score result of h. pylori-infection, statistically there was a significant relationship between presence of gastric ulcer of dyspeptic patients and their score of result of h. pylori-infection (p-value 0.0001). (figure 1) figure 1. distribution of dyspeptic patient’s result regarding to present of gastric ulcer table 1. prevalence of h. pylori-infection according to ubt result for dyspeptic participants which respect to socio demographic variables (n=304) variables +ve ubt frequency -ve ubt frequency total percentage % p-value sex male 63 50 113 37.2 0.507* female 104 87 191 62.8 age ≤ 20 14 23 37 12.2 0.138 21-30 32 20 52 17.1 31-40 50 25 75 24.7 41-50 36 28 64 21.0 51-60 18 22 40 13.2 > 60 17 19 36 11.8 residence rural 39 50 89 29.3 0.044* urban 128 87 215 70.7 occupation 1)student 19 30 49 16.1 0.009* 2)government/ employee 43 29 72 23.7 3)medical staff 23 12 35 11.5 4) worker 25 14 39 12.8 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 positive negative have gastric ulcer no have gastric ulcer kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 6 5)housewife 54 41 95 31.3 6)others/ unemployed 3 11 14 4.6 education no legal education 16 25 41 13.5 0.326 grade 1–6 33 28 61 20.1 grade 7–12 56 35 91 29.9 institute / university 62 49 111 36.5 family size 1–3 / ˂ 4 49 30 79 26 0.160 > 3 / ≥4 118 107 225 74 h. pylori test result negative (0) 49 88 137 45.1 0.00001* mild (1) 24 39 63 20.7 moderate (2) 31 41 72 23.7 sever (3) 9 23 32 10.5 economic state 1)poor 80 69 149 49 0.253 2)moderate 68 55 123 40.5 3)rich/opulent 19 13 32 10.5 blood groups 1)type a 47 35 82 27 0.488 2)type b 22 22 44 14.5 3)type o 91 73 164 53.9 4)type ab 7 7 14 4.6 rhesus (rh) rh + ve 161 128 289 95.1 0.566 rh-ve 6 9 15 4.9 nutritional state under weight 13 13 26 8.6 0.446 normal 67 50 117 38.5 over weight 59 57 116 38.1 obese 28 17 45 14.8 present of gastric ulcer yes 92 17 109 35.9 0.0001* no 75 120 195 64.1 *ubt: urea breath test table 2 association of h. pylori prevalence detection with respect to hygiene, lifestyle factor and behavioral of symptomatic patients in kcgs in sulimani city in 2020 (n=304). variables +ve ubt frequency -ve ubt frequency total p-value did you have psychological disorder 1)yes 133 89 222 0.005* 2)no 34 48 82 family hx. of gastric ulcer 1)yes 89 56 145 0.053 2)no 78 81 159 eating meals at 1)home only 68 75 143 0.019* 2)restaurant|&home 99 62 161 drinking water source 1)tap water 95 74 169 0.647 2)well water 17 20 37 3)filtered water 55 43 98 hand washing practice yes 93 120 213 0.00001* no 74 17 91 clinical symptoms yes 163 116 279 0.001* no 4 21 25 cigarette smoking/ smoker yes 16 18 34 0.718 never 151 119 270 alcohol drinking yes 12 4 16 0.215 no 155 133 288 diabetes mallets yes 18 13 31 0.375 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 7 *ubt: urea breath test *kcgh: kurdistan center for gastroenterology and hepatology 4. discussion dyspeptic patient’s and prevalence of h. pylori dyspepsia is a frequent issue in those seeking medical help and also the general public. it is diagnosed when signs are present that are considered to come from the gastro-duodenal zone (early satiety, halitosis, nausea, distension of abdomen, excessive burping, epigastric pain or burning) [19]. the occurrence of h. pylori infection within dyspeptic participants sent to kcgh in sulaimani, city was 54.9 percent, which is consistent with a local analysis done by bashdar mohammed hussein et al, in hawler city, kurdistan region [21] was (55.8 percent) also is approximately lower than the average sheikhani, et al [20] in sulaimani (62.7 percent), the outcome is smaller than those in nearby countries, such as turkey 63% [22]. and indicated the same occurrence of h. pylori as other studies which done in asia and the middle east, by researcher alazmi et al [24]. but study in kuwait [23] was (49.7%) of the prevalence of h. pylori. this variance may be related to the nature of our research, which surveyed only dyspeptic patients admitted to kurdistan center for gastroenterology and hepatology in sulaimani district, and due to their history, they could have a different life style in comparison of the rest of the community. in another study done by r.p. jackman, et al in america, et al. [25] prevalence was only (10.4%). the explanation for this variance in h. pylori positivity frequency is most likely related to the size of sample differences; age ranges, geographic areas, socioeconomically aspects and time frames the studies were conducted. relationship between demographic factors of dyspeptic patient’s and prevalence of h. pylori-infection female dyspeptic participants were appeared to be more diagnosed with h. pylori than male dyspeptic patients in the present research (p value: 0.504). this was in contrast to what others have said [22]. it's possible that women stay more time in the kitchen and take more time in preparing food than men for cultural reasons; some time it could be due to menstrual or sex hormones. there is a different study on the association regarding infection with h. pylori occurrence and patient ages. extremely similar incidence was found by researcher (dorji et al., 2013) in bhutan city [26] and by (zhang et al., 2013) in china [27], with non-significant differences between age groups. likewise, previous research undertaken in other countries found no substantial connection between infection by helicobacter pylori and patient ages [28, 29]. this is in line with our results, which found that there was not statistically significant link regarding age and infection with h. pylori bacteria (p.value 0.138). wubejig abebaw et al. (2014) [30] stated a relationship between age with occurrence of helicobacter pylori infection. the frequency of infection with h. pylori was shown larger in dyspeptic patients from city environments than in those from rural regions in this research. living conditions are becoming denser, with a large number of families residing in a small region of sulaimani, increasing the possibility of water and air pollution. and our results demonstrate this case by statistically significant (p.value 0.044). according to the findings of al-mashhadany et al rjlbpcs 2018 [31], males in rural and urban regions have a higher occurrence of helicobacter pylori antibodies, with 41.3 % and 38.2 %, respectively. ndipetal. (2004) [32] found that the h. pylori-infection prevalence it differs between rural and urban populations. dyspeptic patients who work different occupations in their life, the outcome demonstrates that more statistically significant (p < 0.009). abdurahaman seid et al (2018) [33] found a no 149 124 273 method of diagnosis 1)endoscopy&ubt 37 44 81 0.002* 2)ubt 130 93 223 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc5991442/#cr22 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc5991442/#cr33 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 8 substantial relationship between kind of career and occurrence of h. pylori-infection. this finding is in line with the results of a report from northwest ethiopia in (2018) [30], but not with those of dorji et al. (2013) [26], according to the findings of our research, patients who work as housewives are more probable to have infection by h. pylori than those who have other profession. there was no statistically relevant correlation regarding socioeconomic status and h. pylori occurrence in this research (p=0.253). this contradicts a report conducted in erbil (bashdar hussen et al., 2013) [21]. as to the educational achievement of the dyspeptic patients, our research demonstrates that the highest rate of infection with h. pylori was noted in the patients who finished institute/university degree (p.value 0.021), numerically a strong relation was observed between h. pylori occurrence and academic achievement, which due to going to check their gastric and test in order to detect them self about bacterial infection as h. pylori. this result is similar to other findings of the study which done in developed countries; similarly, no statistically relevant correlation was identified regarding h. pylori occurrence and degree of school achievement, which are consistent with other study done in ethiopian [28]. while high number of family size is recognized as a potential cause for infection by h. pylori pathogenic bacteria [35], the family size in a house do not show any significant cause occurrence of h. pylori infection in our research (p.value 0.160). this conclusion is in line with the finding of an iranian explorer (mansouri-ghanaei et al., 2009) [36]. this research also observed a non-significant interaction among abo blood groups and ubt findings (p.value 0.488), which is compatible with other researches that found no significant relationship [37, 28]. but in our research, there was no statistically relevant relationship between rhesus (rh) blood group and h. pylori occurrence (p=0.566). large percentage of dyspeptic patients in our study revealed that they are overweight in nutritional state (38.5%), accompanied by normal according to body mass index (bmi) (38.5%), then obese and underweight (14.8%), (8.6%) respectively. despite the fact that there is no association between dyspeptic patients and body mass index in our research (p.value 0.446), this is compatible with the results of solhpour a. et al [38]. in terms of gastrointestinal ulcers, it was discovered that individuals with peptic ulcers are more probability to infected by h. pylori pathogen (55.1 %) than others who did not have any ulcers. majority of peptic ulcer events are triggered by bacteria of h. pylori, because it is transmission between the familial member; statistically, there was a significant correlation regarding gastric ulcer of patients and their score of outcomes of h. pylori-infection (p.value 0.0001). the result of our study is in line with the outcomes of ghalia khoder et al. in the united arab emirates in 2019 [39]. relationship between h. pylori prevalence and it’s respected to behavioral, lifestyle factors and hygienic issue for dyspeptic participants the current research reveals that the majority of dyspeptic patients had a psychological disorder, considering the fact that 73% of all participants in this study had a psychological disorder, and 79.6% of positive h. pylori-infection patients in our research had this concern. the current research found a statistically significant negative relationship between frequency and psychiatric illness (p.value 0.05), which is compatible with many another research (takeoka et al., 2017; seid et al., 2015). [41, 33] and about gastrointestinal features, it found that people who have family background of peptic ulcer disease were more 53.3% susceptible to infection by helicobacter pylori. in addition, the present analysis reported that is a relatively irrelevant correlation between the occurrence of helicobacter pylori-infection and a family background of gastric ulcer disease (p.value 0.053). these results are in compatible with a finding of muhammad o. et al. and ramin nikman et al. [42, 43] kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 9 in this research, the dyspeptic positive patients who ate and ingested food in a restaurant or from a street vendor made up 59.3 percent of all dyspeptic participants, contrary to other patients who only ate and ingested food at home, with a significant relationship (p.value 0.019). our findings are consistent with findings from other countries, such as taweesak tongtawee et al [40] in thailand, who reported a significant connection regarding dyspeptic patients who ate and ingested food from a restaurant or a street vendor and occurrence of h. pylori-infection (p.value 0.01); that can be attributed to the fact that many pathogenic bacteria such as h. pylori, escherichia coli and another pathogenic microbe can sometime contaminate the street vendor and restaurant. is also thought that the occurrence of h. pylori various depending on the water source for consumption. in our study, show that h. pylori and water forms were not correlated with a drinking source (p vale: 0.647). this is related to a study in erbil that found no connection between sources of drinking water and h. pylori (p vale: 0.738). (bashdar hussen et al., 2013) [21]. this is may be attributed to brand new developments in drinking water supply and essential utilities. our analysis found that washing hands has a greater probability of preventing infection by h. pylori and has highly significant impact on h. pylori occurrence (p.value 0.00001), which contradicts the findings of abdurahaman seid et al (2018) [33]. although bad hygiene is thought to be a significant risk factor for h. pylori illness, such as lack of home sanitation facilities (dube et al., 2009) [34]. other investigators have found anomalies which demonstrate that hygienic activity is not important in terms of h. pylori occurrence (alizadeh et al., 2009) [45]. in term of clinical gastrointestinal symptoms, in those with gastrointestinal symptoms such as (heartburn, halitosis, vomiting, dyspepsia and epigastric pain) the overall frequency of 97.6% positive h. pylori was recorded (p.value 0.001) however, our results show that the incidence of helicobacter pylori was correlated substantially with dyspeptic patient clinical gastrointestinal symptoms. this is equivalent to other discoveries made in jordan by hamed alzoubi et al. (2020) [44], and it is also similar to the findings of sheikhani et al [20]. we also investigated the relationship in dyspeptic patients between cigarette smoking and positivity of h. pylori infection, we find anomalies that in our study there was no statistically significant difference between cigarette smoking and positive rate of helicobacter pylori-infection (p.value 0.718), and this consistent with the finding of mohie khalifa in saudi arabia [18]. regarding to relation between alcohol intake and the occurrence of infection with h. pylori is widely conflicted. in our research, there was no significantly important relation between alcohol intake and positivity occurrence of h. pylori infection (p=0.215). this is agreed with the finding performed in sulaimani done by (muhammad. o et al., 2018) [42]. a large percentage of dyspeptic patients in our sample indicated that they did not have diabetes miletus (89.2 % of all members with positive h. pylori bacteria results), with insignificant relationship between diabetes miletus and h. pylori occurrence in our research (p.value 0.375). this conclusion is line with the observations of jafarzadeh's 2011 research in iran's south-east [45]. finally, in accordance with the methods of testing, the findings of our study revealed that an individual was 73.4 % more detected the infection by h. pylori by ubt route. and, based on this ratio of individuals, the present analysis shows that over half (58.3 %) of dyspeptic patients was positive for h. pylori by ubt screening; clinically, statistically there was nonsignificant relation between occurrence of helicobacter pylori and techniques of diagnosis (p.value 0.350). this result is compatible with the conclusions of research made in jordan by hamed alzoubi et al in 2020 [44]. 5. acknowledgements thanks to assistant professor doctor muhammed b. mina the deans of the technical college of health for his cooperation. we like to thank dr. goran m. raouf, mr. hawar taha mina and abbas osman husein in the kcgh, and muhammed s. qader for their cooperation. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 10 thanks for the all participants. special thanks to dr. taib ahmed hama sour and assistant professor sabiha sharif salih for critically reviewing the manuscript. 6. conclusion in conclusions: our study showed that prevalence of h. pylori was 54.9% among dyspeptic patients in sulaimani city, most of h. pylori patients in sulaimani city are females. the patients who had positive for h. pylori infection via ubt have more endoscopic findings than others with negative h. pylori via ubt it is endemic in kurdistan region and iraq but the continuously is higher in incidence across (31-40) age groups despite significant community frequent antibiotic use or abuse of it, ubt is non-invasive and plain test to diagnosis gastric infection by h. pylori. the overall h. pylori ubt and gimza stain identify rate were 73.4 and 26.6% respectively. even also statistically significant and agreement between results of ubt and giemsa stain was not strongly convincing. h. pylori-prevalence was statistically significant associated with residence, occupation, psychological disorder, place of eating meals, hand washing practice, present of clinical symptoms and present of gastric ulcer. but no significant association observed between other lifestyle factors and sociodemographic variables as family history of gastric ulcer, source of drinking water, cigarette smoking, alcohol drinking and diabetes mallets of dyspeptic patients and h. pylori ubt detection. reference [1]b. marshall and j. r. warren, “unidentified curved bacilli in the stomach of patients with gastritis and peptic ulceration,” lancet, vol. 323, no. 8390, pp. 1311–1315, 1984. 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[45]j. a1, r. mt, and n. m, “helicobacter pylori seropositivity in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus in south-east of iran,” acta med iran, vol. 51, no. 12, 2013.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |95 potassium adsorption phenomenon in calcareous soils of shahrazur plain article info abstract volume 6 – issue 1june 2021 doi: 10.24017/science.2021.1.10 article history: received 5/6/2021 accepted 1/7/2021 a laboratory study for adsorption of potassium (k) determination was conducted on six soils located in sharazur plain from the kurdistan region of iraq in 2021 using the batch technique method. potassium (k) adsorption isotherms were achieved by equilibrating 5.0 g of soil samples with eight grades of k (0 to 300 mg l-1) as kcl in 50 ml of 0.01m cacl2 solution. to match the data of adsorption, freundlich, langmuir, and temkin adsorption isotherms were used. the results show that the amount of adsorbed k ranged between (45.78 to 52.49) % added k. the freundlich model fit the equilibrium k adsorption data better for the serwan location of soil (silty loam), as demonstrated by a greater coefficient of determination (r2 =0.90). the value of heterogeneity factor 1/n for the freundlich model ranged from (0.34 to 0.47) kg mg-1, which was less than one. the sorption processes for all of the studied soils were normal adsorption. the constant of the langmuir isotherm (kl) aligned from (0.107 to o.425) l mg -1. smaller kl values mean that more adsorbed k would be transformed to a non-exchangeable form, either through the creation of crystalline k or through ion occultation. the rl values indicate the type of isotherm, the values of rl> 1 that means the adsorption nature to be unfavorable. the temkin equilibrium binding constant (at) was high for all studied soils except the soils of bestan sur and grdigo locations, the high value of at indicates high binding energy. the temkin constant (bt) ranged from (10.46 to 13.47) j mole-1 that was related to the nature of the adsorption energy, a positive value indicates that the adsorption process is exothermic. keywords: potassium adsorption, freundlich model, langmuir model, temkin model. copyright © 2021 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction one of the fundamental nutrients for the growth of the plant is potassium (k), and when it exists at an insufficient level in soils, plant growth is seriously hampered. potassium is available to plants in the form of inorganic cations (k+) [1]. over sixty (60) enzymes involved in carbohydrate production, sugar translocation, numerous enzyme actions, yield, efficiency parameters, disease tolerance, processes to resolve abiotic tension, cell permeability, and kamil sabir saeed protected agriculture department bakrajo technical institute sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq kamil.saeed@spu.edu.iq mailto:kamil.saeed@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |96 stomata opening are stimulated by potassium. it also affects the microbial population in the rhizosphere [2]. various soil processes, such as the physical, chemical, and biological properties, influence k availability [3]. the release of potassium influences by the interaction of soil mineralogy, soil texture, and biological processes [4]. potassium is present in the soil in four different types. soil minerals like feldspar and mica make up (90 to 98) percent of the total potassium in the soil. plants can only use a small portion of this potassium supply. the second type of soil potassium is non-exchangeable potassium, it is related to the 2:1 clay mineral and ranges from 1% to 10% of total soil k. in the soil, the nonexchangeable potassium source functions as a potassium reserve. non-exchangeable k release has a major impact on soil k fertility. the exchangeable or readily available potassium, which makes up 1 to 2 percent of the soil potassium, is found in the soil solution or on cation exchangeable sites [5]. the root system of the plant readily absorbs potassium from the soil solution, which is then replaced by potassium from the exchangeable sites. since crops respond to applied potassium earlier, the rate of k+ adsorption after fertilizer addition differs among soils, and thus its unpredictability is since different soils have varying potassium adsorption properties. clay colloids can adsorb up to 57 % of the applied potassium, depending on the amount and form of clay minerals [6]. kinetic and thermodynamic variables influence the amount of potassium adsorbed on clay particles [7]. according to jalali [8], calcareous soils with enough exchangeable k and k-bearing minerals are capable of releasing enough k for optimal plant production. however, the exchangeable k in calcareous soils is not always reliable as a source of potassium for plants. the phenomenon of k adsorption in soils has altered the soil-plant system fertilization efficacy by converting available k into an unavailable form for plants. due to the availability of different compelling potassium pools in the soil which could be mobilized by the chemical resistance of the mineral in the soil, understanding the process of k adsorption in the soil is essential [9]. a simple approach for determination k adsorption may aid in understanding the relationship among the adsorption of the alternative k soil characteristics [10]. the balance between k in the interlayer, the exterior, and k in the edge sites of the mineral crystal lattice is maintained by the solubilized k in soil solution which controls the potassium adsorption mechanism. the key elements impacting the equilibrium include clay mineral forms, soil (ph), soil organic matter (som, al (oh)3, moisture state of soil, cation exchange capacity (cec), fertilizer rate, and the process of tillage [11]. due to the complexity of the adsorption of potassium by the soil, it is difficult to explain it by the occurrence of a single reaction. many equations have been advanced for the calculation of soil potassium. the freundlich, langmuir, and temkin adsorption isotherms are often utilized to illustrate the relationship between the potassium quantity fixed per weight unit in the soil and the potassium concentration in the solution. the freundlich equation was initially used by russell and prescott in 1961, and it is the earliest adsorption equation in the soil literature. it's a mathematical statement for an adsorption model that the sympathy term declined rapidly with increasing adsorption. the freundlich equation effectively predicted k adsorption for a limited range of conditions [12]. the energy of adsorption decreases as the sum of adsorption increases, according to the freundlich equation. the temkin isotherm includes a component that accounts for adsorbent-adsorbate interactions and it is based solely on the exterior analysis [13]. the temkin isotherm is intensely used for an exterior energy system that is heterogeneous [14]. 2-methods and materials 2.1 study area and soil sampling a study was conducted on the soil of sharazur plain, which was located between the provinces of suleimania and halabja, situated in the southeastern part of kurdistan region, iraq (figure 1). the soil samples were randomly taken at 0 to 30 cm depths of the six major agricultural locations of the plain of shahrazur during the spring season of 2021. for soil analysis and sorption experiments, the soil samples were air kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |97 dried then it was grounded and screened through a (2) mm screen. according to gee and bauder [15], the pipette method was applied to obtaining the soil particle size distribution (psd) of the soil samples. a ph meter professional benchtop, model (bp3001), and ec meter herman paulsen, model (d-2000 hamburg) was used for measuring the soil reaction (ph) and electrical conductivity (ece) for the soil suspension 1:2 respectively. the soil samples cation exchange capacity (cec) was determined by saturating the soil with 1m ammonium acetate (nh4oac) at ph 8.1 as an extraction solution according to the method described by suarez [16]. the content of organic matter (o.m.) was determined using nelson and sommer [17] technique. a quick titration method, based on the approach technique of rayment and higginson [18] approach, was used to quantify the total carbonate minerals in soil expressed as carbonate minerals equivalent. the active equivalent carbonates (aec), were estimated by the 0.5 m nh4-oxalate method as described by drouimeau [19]. 2.2 potassium adsorption experiment procedure for the construction of the potassium adsorption isotherm, each soil sample of 5.0 g was placed into a plastic bottle of 100-ml and then equilibrated with so ml of 0.01 m cacl2 with (soil/solution ratio of 5/50), using various concentration of potassium (k) which were (0, 25, 50, 100, 150, 200, 250, and 300 mg l-1 k as kcl). the suspensions were then shaken for 2 hours at 180 rpm and 298 k in a horizontal flask shaker before being allowed to equilibrate overnight. every solution was centrifuged at 250 rpm for 5 minutes after that, it was filtered through whitman filter paper no. 42 and tested for k concentration using a flame photometer jenway model pfp7. by subtracting the quantity measured in the solution which was supernatant from the original amount of added k, the amount of k adsorbed was estimated, as shown below: 𝑎𝑑𝑠𝑜𝑟𝑏𝑒𝑑 𝐾 = 𝐶𝑜 − 𝐶𝑒 . . . . . . . . . . . (1) where co = the initial concentration of added k (mg l -1) and ce= concentration of k (mg l -1) in the equilibrium supernatant solution. the removal efficiency was determined by computing the percentage adsorption using the formulae in mandal et al. [20]. 𝐾 𝑎𝑑𝑠𝑜𝑟𝑏𝑒𝑑(%) = (𝑐𝑜𝑛. 𝑜𝑓 𝑎𝑑𝑠𝑜𝑟𝑏𝑒𝑑 𝐾 (𝑚𝑔 𝐿−1 )𝑥 100) 𝐶𝑜 (𝑚𝑔 𝐿 −1) . . . . (2) according to vanderborght and van grieken [21], the amount of adsorbed kat equilibrium (mg kg-1) was determined as follows: 𝑞𝑒 = (𝐶𝑜 − 𝐶𝑒 )𝑉 𝑊 … … … . . . . . . . . . . . … … (3) where qe represents the quantity of k adsorbed from the solution (mg kg-1), kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |98 figure 1: geographical location of studied sites. v represents the volume of the solution (l), and w represents the weight of the soil sample used in the experiment (kg). the linearized forms of the freundlich, langmuir, and temkin isotherms were used to calculate the results. 2.3 freundlich adsorption isotherm freundlich isotherm was one of the first to propose an adsorption isotherm equation [22]. the freundlich isotherm is an empirical model for non-ideal adsorption on homogeneous surfaces, as well as multilayer adsorption with an uneven distribution of heat of adsorption and sympathies all over the surface that was heterogeneous [23]. based on sorption onto a heterogeneous surface, the empirical freundlich equation is: qe = kf ce (1/n) …………………(4) by taking logarithms, eq.(4) can be rearranged to obtain a linear form. equation (5): 𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑞𝑒 = 𝑙𝑜𝑔 𝐾𝑓 + 1 𝑛 𝑙𝑜𝑔𝐶𝑒 . . . . . . . . . (5 ) where kf is the energy of sorption or distribution coefficient (mg kg -1). in the adsorption process, n is the dimensionless constant, and 1/n is a function of the strength of adsorption in the adsorption process [24]. the partition between the two phases is concentration-independent if the freundlich affinity value n equals 1. if 1/n is smaller than 1, the value shows normal adsorption. however, if the value is more than 1, it suggests cooperative adsorption [25]. the freundlich sympathy value, n is important for consideration sorption processes and heterogeneity of the system. the process of sorption is favorable when the value of n is between 1 and 10, [26, 27]. a 1/n value approaching unity denotes a more homogenous system, while a 1/n value near zero denotes a more heterogeneous system [28]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |99 2.4 langmuir adsorption isotherm the langmuir model assumes monolayer adsorption of solutes on homogenous sorption sites, and the langmuir equation defines the distribution of k between the solid-liquid interface equilibrium. the langmuir isotherm was the most extensively used linear expression for studying the interactions between solute concentrations in the liquid and solid phases at equilibrium conditions [29, 30]. equation (6) describes the langmuir isotherm model. 1 𝑞𝑒 = 1 𝑏 + 1 𝑏𝐾𝐿 𝐶𝑒 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (6) where qe represents the amount of adsorbed potassium per unit of soil weight (mg kg-1), ce represents the concentration potassium in the solution at equilibrium (mg l-1) point, kl represents the bonding energy or affinity constant of potassium to the soil (l mg-1), and b represents the soil's highest monolayer coverage ability while k is adsorbed (mg kg-1). a consecutive line with a slope of 1/bkl and an intercept of 1/b when plotted against 1/ce. rl is the dimensionless constant called the equilibrium parameter for langmuir isotherm [31]. 𝑅𝐿 = 1 (1 + 𝐾𝐿 𝐶𝑜 ) . . . . . . . . . . . (7) where kl is a constant relative to bonding energy (l mg -1) and co is the initial k concentration (mg l-1), rl values indicate the shape of isotherm [32]. the rl value indicates whether the adsorption is favorable (0 <rl< 1), unfavorable (rl> 1), linear (rl = 1), or irreversible (rl = 0). according to reyhanitabar et al. [33], the buffering capacity (mbc) which was at its highest value was estimated as the product of kl and b. 𝑀𝐵𝐶 = 𝐾𝐿 ∗ 𝑏 . . . . . . . . . . . . . (8) 2.5 the temkin isotherm the temkin isotherm was estimated that the heat of adsorption decreases in a linear rather than logarithmic manner. furthermore, it is restricted to chemical adsorption and has homogeneous binding energy [34]. equation (9) can be used to describe the temkin isotherm. 𝑞𝑒 = 𝑅𝑇 𝑏𝑇 𝑙𝑛(𝐴𝑇𝐶𝑒 ). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (9) 𝑞𝑒 = 𝑅𝑇 𝑏𝑇 𝑙𝑛𝐴𝑇 + 𝑅𝑇 𝑏𝑇 𝑙𝑛𝐶𝑒 …….….(10) the linear form of the temkin isotherm model is given by the following [35]: 𝑞𝑒 = 𝐵𝑙𝑛𝐴𝑇 + 𝐵𝑙𝑛𝐶𝑒 . . . . . . . . . . . (11). where qe = the mass of k adsorbed per unit mass of the soil (mg kg-1), ce is equilibrium solution k concentration (mg l-1), at is the temkin isotherm equilibrium binding constant (l kg −1), and b is a constant linked to the heat of sorption (j mol−1) computed as: 𝐵 = 𝑅𝑇 𝑏𝑇 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (12) where bt is the temkin constant linked to the nature of the adsorption energy (j mol −1) a positive value of bt indicates that the adsorption process is exothermic while a negative value of bt is an kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |100 indication of the endothermic process [36] r is the universal gas constant (8.314 j mol−1k−1), t stands for the temperature with an absolute value of 298 kelvin. a plot of qe versus lnce (equation 10) results in a straight line of slope rt/bt and intercept 𝑅𝑇 𝑏𝑇 𝑙𝑛𝐴𝑇 enables the determination of the isotherm constants at and bt. 3-results and discussion table 1 demonstrates some of the soil characteristics (physical and chemical) that were studied previously. the concentration of equilibrium k in the soil solution ranged from 1.65 to 3.76 mg l-1 for 25 mg l-1 added k, and from 170.15 to 181.81 mg l-1 for 300 mg l-1 added k. the direct proportionality that existed was demonstrated by the linear relationship between additional k and equilibrium k (mg l-1) (figure 2). with increasing k concentrations, the percent of k adsorbed did not increase equally (figure 3). the range (%) of the adsorbed potassium (k) was lined in a range between 84.953 to 93.421% for the added k concentration which was lowest (25 mg l-1) and from 39.398 to 43.284% for the maximum added concentration of k (300 mg l-1). all the studied soils indicated a decrease in percentage adsorption k after initially adding with different k levels for the three first k levels and the presence of adsorbed k for all studied soils at the latest three added k concentration levels, are close to each other and in parallel. these results are similar to the finding by auge et al [37]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |101 c c e * * ( g k g -1 ) a c ti v e 4 1 .0 8 2 .0 6 1 .0 9 9 .0 1 2 0 .0 8 9 .0 * s l , si lt y l o a m , c , c la y , s c l , si lt y c la y l o a m , * * c c e , c a lc iu m c a rb o n a te e q u iv a le n t t o ta l 6 1 .0 1 2 1 .0 1 0 6 .0 1 4 6 .0 1 8 6 .0 1 3 9 .0 o m (g k g _ 1 ) 1 3 .5 1 6 .2 1 7 .4 1 5 .3 1 6 .6 1 7 .1 c e c (c m o l c k g -1 ) 4 3 .5 0 3 7 .0 0 3 8 .0 0 3 5 .0 0 4 0 .0 0 4 2 .0 0 t e x tu re * s l s l s l c c s c l p a rt ic le s iz e d is tr ib u ti o n ( p s d ) (g k g -1 ) c la y 1 9 0 2 2 0 2 2 0 5 4 0 5 4 0 3 6 0 s il t 6 2 0 6 4 0 5 7 0 2 8 0 2 7 0 5 5 0 s a n d 1 9 0 1 4 0 2 1 0 1 8 0 1 9 0 9 0 e c d s m -1 0 .2 4 1 0 .4 7 2 0 .5 1 2 0 .3 9 2 0 .4 9 4 0 .4 9 8 p h (1 :2 ) 7 .7 3 7 .9 1 7 .9 2 7 .7 4 7 .8 5 7 .8 8 l o c a ti o n s b e st a n s u r s e rw a n g rd ig o k h u rm a l k h a rp a n y k a n y p a n k a t a b le 1 : s o m e p h y si c o c h e m ic a l p ro p e rt ie s o f th e s tu d ie d s o il s kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |102 figure 2: potassium adsorption characteristics of (a) bestan sur, (b) serwan, (c) grdigo, (d) khurmal. (e) kharpany, and (f) kanypanka locations. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |103 figure 3: percent k adsorbed as a function of different k concentration levels of studied soils. 3.1 comparison of different adsorption isotherms the sorption isotherms precision alters depending on the soil. in comparison to the langmuir and temkin models, the freundlich model exhibited an advanced match (figure 4) of equilibrium k adsorption for the soil of silty loam type at srwan site, as demonstrated by the (r2) values coefficient (table 2). these findings are consistent with kassa et al. [38], who indicated that the freundlich model performed better than the other model in describing k adsorption. this was due to qualitative changes in the mineralogy and chemistry of the fractions that were separated [39]. freundlich's isotherm assumes low adsorption energy, for the constant kf, and 1/n (table 2) as a measure of adsorption extent [24]. the buffering capacity of the soil is performed by the constant value of 1/n. [40]. the 1/n value is a heterogeneity parameter, and it is a function of the strength of adsorption in the adsorption process, with less 1/n values indicating more heterogeneity [26]. as a result, the soils of the whole studied locations have a high heterogeneity, and a normal adsorption process [25] the n parameter values reflect even if the process of sorption is favorable or not [37]. for favorable sorption processes, the value of n is lies between one and ten [37,27]. depending on the values of n parameters in this study the sorption processes for the whole studied soils are favorable (table 2). these findings are consistent with mam rasul [41] findings. the adsorption capacity (kf) freundlich constants describe the amount of potassium (k) held on non-specific sites they are ready to be released for uptake by plants during cropping season [24, 40]. it was 74.75 to 156.39 mg kg-1 on average, with a mean value (112.41 mg kg-1). the langmuir isotherm assumes that all adsorption sites have the same affinity for the adsorbate molecules. as a result, the existence of adsorbed molecules at a nearby location is noteworthy [26]. from the intercept and slope of the straight equations of figure 5, depending on the langmuir isotherm model's the maximum monolayer coverage capacity (b) ranged from 500.00 to 714.29 mg kg-1 (table 2), all the studied soils indicated high monolayer coverage capacity possessing the best fit to langmuir model. these findings are consistent with those of auge et al. [37]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |104 figure 4: freundlich adsorption isotherm for (a) bestan sur, (b) serwan, (c) grdigo, (d) khurmal. (e) kharpany, and (f) kanypanka locations kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |105 t a b le 2 : f re u n d lic h , la n g m u ir a n d t e m ki n is o th e rm s co n st a n ts f o r th e a d so rp ti o n o f p o ta ss iu m o n t h e s tu d ie d s o il t e m k in i so th e rm b j m o l-1 1 8 6 .9 3 2 1 5 .9 1 1 8 5 .3 0 2 0 8 .3 1 2 3 6 .7 6 2 3 5 .5 7 2 1 1 .4 6 b t j m o l-1 1 3 .4 7 1 1 .4 8 1 3 .3 7 1 1 .8 9 1 0 .4 6 1 0 .5 1 1 1 .8 6 a t l k g -1 0 .0 0 3 0 .1 4 8 0 .0 4 1 0 .3 4 6 0 .4 6 4 0 .4 7 9 0 .2 8 0 r 2 0 .6 8 0 .7 4 0 .5 5 0 .5 8 0 .6 0 0 .5 8 0 .6 2 la n g m u ir i so th e rm r l 1 .1 1 1 .0 1 1 .2 1 .0 7 1 .0 3 1 .0 2 1 .0 7 m b c l k g -1 2 1 2 .6 7 7 6 .4 3 2 5 0 .0 0 1 3 0 .0 0 8 8 .5 0 8 5 .0 0 1 4 0 .4 3 k l l m g -1 0 .3 1 9 0 .1 0 7 0 .4 2 5 0 .2 4 7 0 .1 7 7 0 .1 5 3 0 .2 8 8 b m g k g -1 6 6 6 .6 7 7 1 4 .2 9 5 8 8 .2 4 5 2 6 .3 2 5 0 0 .0 0 5 5 5 .5 6 5 9 1 .8 5 r 2 0 .6 5 0 .8 4 0 .5 1 0 .4 3 0 .3 3 0 .4 9 0 .5 4 f re u n d li ch i so th e rm k f m g k g -1 1 5 6 .3 9 1 1 0 .4 3 1 4 6 .2 2 1 0 5 .1 2 7 4 .7 5 8 1 .5 3 1 1 2 .4 1 n 2 .9 2 2 .4 4 2 .9 2 2 .4 9 2 .1 2 2 .2 0 2 .1 6 1 /n k g m g -1 0 .3 4 0 .4 1 0 .3 4 0 .4 0 0 .4 7 0 .4 6 0 .4 0 r 2 0 .8 4 0 .9 0 0 .7 1 0 .7 0 0 .6 6 0 .7 3 0 .7 5 lo ca ti o n s b e st a n s u r s a ra w g rd ig o k h u rm a l k h a rp a n y k a n y p a n k a m e a n the maximum monolayer capacity (b) can be used to calculate how much fertilizer should be applied to unfertilized soil [25]. the langmuir isotherm constant (kl) ranged from 0.107 to 0.425 lmg-1. smaller kl values, according to mehandi and taylor [42], mean that the adsorbed k is more accessible to transform to non –exchangeable form, either through the production of crystalline k or through occultation through k ions. kl indicates the measurement of adsorbent kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |106 sympathy, according to del-bubba et al. [43], a high kl value, according to anderson and wu [44] indicates the power of attaching to the minerals of the soil was clay. the adsorption nature of the potassium (k) for all studied soils is unfavorable because of the diffusion coefficient values (rl>1) (table 2). these results not matching with the results of mam rasul [41], who found that the adsorption nature of potassium for calcareous soil in the kurdistan region of iraq is linear because in his study the value of rl=1. the maximum buffering capacity (mbc) of the studied soil ranged between (85.00 to 250) l kg-1 (table 2). mbc is a capacity factor that assesses the soil's ability to release the restored k ions from adsorbed k to soil solution as mentioned by rehman et al. [45]. the ability of a soil to give k to the soil solution, according to fried and shapiro [46], is an important component in determining a soil's k status. figure 5: langmuir adsorption isotherm for (a) bestan sur, (b) serwan, (c) grdigo, (d) khurmal. (e) kharpany, and (f) kanypanka locations. the temkin isotherm equilibrium parameters are calculated from the intercept and slope of the straight-line equation of figure 6. the binding constant, at (l kg -1) value, ranged from (0.003 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |107 to 0.479) l kg-1 (table 2), the soil of kanypanks location had a high binding constant. the values of bt ranged from 10.46 to 13.47 j mole -1 with the mean of 11.86 j mole-1, a positive value of bt implies that the adsorption processes in the soil of the analyzed areas are exothermic. furthermore, high constant values related to sorption heat, b (j mol-1) demonstrate a high contact between the adsorbent and that of adsorbate, implying the mechanism of the exchange of ion [26]. these findings are consistent with the results of mam rasul [41]. . figure 6: temkin adsorption isotherm for (a) bestan sur, (b) serwan, (c) grdigo, (d) khurmal. 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[46] m. fried and r. shapiro, "phosphate supply pattern of various soils," soil science society of america journal, vol. 20, pp. 471-475, 1956.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq a new asymmetric fully homomorphic encryption scheme for cloud banking data zana thalage omar fadhil salman abed department of computer department of information technology college of science and technology kalar technical institute university of human development, sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq kalar,iraq zana.omar@uhd.edu.iq fadhil.abed@spu.edu.iq shaimaa khamees ahmed computer engineering college of engineering university of diyala diyala, iraq shaymaakhamees88@gmail.com article info abstract volume 5 issue 2 december 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.2.12 article history: received: 24 november 2020 accepted: 24 december 2020 most banks in our time still use the common traditional systems of high cost and relatively slow, we are now in the era of speed and technology, and these systems do not keep pace with our current age, so saving cost and time will be considered a fantastic thing for banks. the way to that is to implement cloud computing strategies with considering data security and protection when it comes to using the cloud. the best solution to protect data security on the cloud is fully homomorphic encryption systems. the time it takes to encrypt and decrypt data is one of the main barriers it faces. our current research provides a new algorithm for a publicly-keyed encryption system to keep bank data from tampering and theft when stored on the cloud computing platform, and our new system achieves fully homomorphic encryption, which allows mathematical operations to be performed on the encrypted text without the need for the original text. the security of the new system depends on the issue of analyzing huge integers, which reach 2048 bits, to their prime factors, which are considered almost impossible or unsolvable. a banking application has also been created that encrypts the data and then stores it on the cloud. the application allows the user to create accounts and deposits, transfer and withdraw funds, and everything related to banking matters. keywords: fully homomorphic encryption, cloud computing, asymmetric encryption, large number, banking security. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. mailto:zana.omar@uhd.edu.iq mailto:fadhil.abed@spu.edu.iq https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_org&hl=en&org=18342936164438069611 mailto:shaymaakhamees88@gmail.com kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 153 1. introduction the world is witnessing rapid development and prosperity of cloud computing, as cloud computing allows the sharing of services such as (applications, storage, processing) with cloud users. the focus is on increasing the effectiveness of shared resources[1]. one of the services provided by the cloud is to save users 'data on the cloud, hence the challenges and difficulties facing the cloud providers begin, as it is their responsibility to protect the security of user data on the one hand, on the other hand, the user does not fully trust the cloud providers because they can access, modify, and delete user data intentionally, this issue is an obstacle to cloud providers[2]. another phenomenon is a problem when storing data on the cloud as data exchange has become a common phenomenon among cloud providers under the service agreement because this phenomenon occurs in the scenes where the data owner is not aware of this process and is considered a violation of privacy security of user data, especially untrusted parties may participate in this process [3]. many believe that the solution lies in the use of encryption methods when storing data in the cloud and certainly should not use low-level security encryption methods. on the contrary, it must use high-level encryption methods in terms of security[4]. most of the existing encryption systems face two main challenges. the first is that the principal distributions face threats in most symmetric key encryption systems [5]. the second is that data must be decrypted to make adjustments to it. therefore, cloud providers have the decryption key, and thus the data becomes unsafe[6]. in this paper, we focus on the second challenge, where we create an encryption algorithm that allows modifications to the encrypted data without the need to decrypt it. this type of encryption is called homomorphic encryption systems (he)[7]. the term "homomorphism" is derived from a greek word-initially composed of two parts. "homos," which means the same, and "morphic" means the form, this type of encryption (he) is used in computer science, where it can convert plain text into encrypted text and make adjustments to it without the need to decrypt it[7]. this type of encryption is done through three stages: the stage of generation of the encryption key, the stage of encryption, and the stage of decryption. there are several types of it, one that supports multiplication operations, one that supports addition operations, and these two types are called (partial homomorphic encryption)[8], [9]. and one that supports multiplication and addition operations together and is called (fully homomorphic encryption), which is the type that we present in this paper. it supports addition and multiplication operations on encrypted data without the need to decrypt the data. the proposed algorithm generates the encryption key as described in section 8, the key generation part, and then the data is encrypted using the encryption key through a mathematical algorithm described in the encryption part in section 8. the data is stored on the cloud in an encrypted form and when any modification or addition is made to the data, amendment to it while it is in its encrypted state without the need to decrypt it, as the decryption key is owned by the owner of the data only and can decrypt the data through the mathematical equation described in the decryption part in section 8 encryption is an essential and necessary factor when storing data on the cloud where only the owner of the data can access the data, so the correct choice of the encryption algorithm is necessary for the cloud providers and users also where more efficiency and security accuracy is available [10]. 2. statement of the problem cloud providers provide many services, including applications and storage many companies and users do not trust the providers of these services due to security concerns. where the user does not upload his personal data to the cloud because the cloud providers are able to read and modify every bit loaded on the cloud and use it for personal purposes, and this thing does not comply with respecting the user’s privacy. furthermore, some cloud providers still use traditional security techniques that are not secure with low-security level to protect user privacy. some of the cloud providers have started to use high-level technologies to protect the privacy of users and the security of their data, but there remains a problem that the provider of the cloud itself is still able to access user data, and this is not safe for users. this problem can be solved when following fhe systems when storing data on the cloud where these systems can encrypt kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 154 the data and store it in the cloud in an encrypted form and thus the cloud provider or others cannot see the data and use it, so the privacy of users and the security of their data are protected. 3. related work a symmetric encryption system was introduced to provide more data security and protect it from any serious attack in the year 2019 by [11], and about two years before that, specifically in )2017 )data security problems were presented when stored in the cloud and a method was proposed to provide complete data security using aes encryption technology with the use of standard encryption 128 bit by [12],in (2018) an encrypting system was introduced based on the pailler algorithm that supports the addition process and on the rsa algorithm that supports the multiplication process on the encrypted data by [13], an encrypting scheme based on a pattern called asymmetric cipher padding (oaep) was introduced with the symmetric cipher algorithm that stands for the rsa algorithm in (2018) by [14], and a completely symmetric encrypting system based on euler's theory has been introduced and time complexity has been calculated and compared to other methods the size of an encryption key up to bits in (2018) by [15], while the size of the encryption key in our algorithm reaches more than 2048 bits and the encryption process is accomplished through more complicated and powerful mathematical equations, in (2018) a completely symmetric encrypting system was introduced on that relies the principle of changing a number from the plain text to another number using a secret key without converting on binary format then compare the result with dghv and sds systems by [16]. not all banks use online banking services despite the tremendous benefits they enjoy due to the attacks they are subject to by cybercriminals. [17], [18] the authors present many attacks that occur on different components of online banking services, such as spy_eye malware. fraud and educational phishing are among the most common attacks on banking services, as these attacks steal user login confidentiality. [19]–[23] researchers offer many possible solutions to phishing and attacks within browsers and across sites, but without these solutions fix the cloud-based environments. also, risks related to banking services jobs were presented by researchers in [24]. 4. bank services in the cloud because of the limited use of cloud services by companies in various fields and banks, it has also created a strong incentive for cloud services providers to develop their services, especially security, as researchers in cloud affairs have been stimulated to intensify their research and efforts to find appropriate solutions for bank safety and information. the use of cloud services for banks is considered a dangerous matter to some extent because to this day storing data on the cloud is not considered a safe matter because when the data is uploaded to the cloud, control over customer data (such as account numbers, deposits, etc.) is lost, but on the other hand, there are many reasons makes banks and other institutions to use cloud services, whether public or private, including scalability, agility and saving many costs, but these benefits come with risks related to data security, you should consider these risks when using cloud services. this problem can be solved if cloud providers use strong encryption algorithms when storing customer data in the cloud. this risk is illustrated by us national law [25]. most cloud service providers who use encryption algorithms require their customers to trust them and use their decryption keys when making any modification to their previously stored data. this does not fit with the principle of respecting the privacy of customer data security. given the high costs of computers, the recent financial crisis, and current health conditions (covid-19), banks must reduce their information technology costs, but this should not be done at the expense of data security and integrity. all these reasons drive banks to use cloud services. this paper offers a simplified banking system for storing data on the cloud, this system relies on a new asymmetric fully homomorphic encryption scheme, as this algorithm relies on data encryption, storage on the cloud and modification on request without the need to decrypt data and own a private secret key for customers, and thus the privacy of customer data security has been respected and therefore customer data (banks) on the cloud is encrypted and cannot be kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 155 viewed anyone who is not authorized is required. our new algorithm is explained further in the remainder of this paper. 5. homomorphic encryption categories there are three main categories of homomorphic encryption schemes: partially homomorphic encryption phe, somewhat homomorphic encryption swhe, and fully homomorphic encryption fhe schemes. phe schemes, such as rsa [8], elgamal [26], paillier [9], etc., allow to applying either addition or multiplication on encrypted data. g. kalpana et al. [27], allowing unlimited additions and a single multiplication. construction of scheme supporting both operations addition and multiplication simultaneously is possible in 2009 by gentry [28] by using fully homomorphic encryption. 5.1 partially homomorphic encryption (phe) an encryption technique is called a partially homomorphic encryption (phe) if it applies only one operation on encrypted data, i.e., either addition or multiplication but not both [29]. 5.2 somewhat homomorphic encryption (swhe) the scheme that supports a limited number of homomorphic operations known as somewhat homomorphic encryption [30]. an encryption technique is called somewhat homomorphic encryption (swhe) if it performs a limited number of addition and multiplication operations on encrypted data. 5.3 fully homomorphic encryption (fhe) an encryption technique is called fully homomorphic (fhe) if it performs both addition and multiplication simultaneously and can compute any operation [6]. 6. properties of homomorphic encryption 6.1 additive homomorphic encryption: a homomorphic encryption is additive if: 𝐸𝑛𝑐 (𝑚1 ⊕ 𝑚2) = 𝐸𝑛𝑐 (𝑚1) ⊕ 𝐸𝑛𝑐 (𝑚2). (1) 6.2 multiplicative homomorphic encryption: a homomorphic encryption is multiplicative, if: 𝐸𝑛𝑐 (𝑚1 ⊗ 𝑚2) = 𝐸𝑛𝑐 (𝑚1) ⊗ 𝐸𝑛𝑐 (𝑚2). (2) 7. fermat and euler theorems two important theorems presented the first by pierre de fermat and the second by leonhard euler. both theorems are related to powers in modular arithmetic. fermat’s little theorem suppose that p is prime and gcd (a, p) = 1 (or a and p are relatively prime or p does not divide, then m p-1 ≡ 1 (mod p) (3) 7.1 euler’s theorem euler’s theorem is a generalize of fermat’s little theorem. suppose n be an arbitrary positive integer, ø(n) denote the number of integers 1 =< a <= n such that if gcd(a, n) = 1, then: m ø (n) ≡ 1 (mod n) (4) so that: m r* ø (n) +1 ≡ m (mod n), when r is an integer, m<n and n=p*q where p and q are two primes number. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 156 8. proposed fully homomorphic encryption system 8.1 the proposed scheme works as follows: generating the encryption key and then encrypting the numbers and texts and storing them in encrypted form on the cloud. in our work, we use a local cloud and experiment with the proposed scheme on it. the purpose of this process is to save the data encrypted on the cloud so that no one can view the data and use it for personal purposes, therefore, when the data owner needs to perform an amendment of the encrypted data on the cloud, an encrypted request is sent to the server and the server performs mathematical operations on the encrypted data and returns an encrypted result where this encrypted result can only be decrypted through the private encryption key which is with the owner of data only so that he can decrypt the encrypted result and see his data. in this way, we have maintained the privacy and security of the data when stored in the cloud. these procedures go through three stages. generation the encryption key stage, the encryption stage, and the decryption stage. 8.2 algorithm of a new asymmetric fully homomorphic encryption  key generation: generate two large prime number p, q select two big random integer z and w compute 𝑛 = 𝑝 ∗ 𝑞 and ø (𝑛) = (𝑝 − 1) ∗ (𝑞 − 1) calculate = 𝑛 ∗ 𝑧 , 𝑒𝑘 = 𝑤 ∗ ø (𝑛) and 𝑃𝑢𝑏𝑘𝑒𝑦 = 𝑃𝑘 ∗ 𝑒𝑘 the public key is (pubkey,ek) and private key is (p, q)  messages encryption: the message m will always be less than pk, that (m1&m2), (m1+m2) and (m1*m2) < pk the schema of message encryption is: 𝑪 = 𝑷𝒖𝒃𝒌𝒆𝒚 + 𝒎 𝒆𝒌+𝟏 𝒎𝒐𝒅 𝑷𝒌 (5) which depended only public-key (pubkey, ek, pk) to send the message where m: plain-text(message), c: cipher-text  message decryption: the schema of cipher decryption is: 𝑀 = 𝐶 𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑛 (6) 8.3 evaluate of fully homomorphic encryption properties 8.3.1 to proof correctness of the scheme: c = pubkey + m ek+1 mod pk m=c mod n = pubkey + m ek+1 mod pk (mod n) = pubkey( mod n) + m ek+1 mod n (mod pk) =0+ mek+1 mod n (mod pk)= m mod pk=m (since m< pk) 8.3.2 the proof of additive homomorphic if the following condition is fulfilled, it becomes clear to us that the proposed scheme additive homomorphic: 𝒎𝟏 + 𝒎𝟐 = 𝒅𝒆𝒄 [𝒆𝒏𝒄 (𝒎𝟏) + 𝒆𝒏𝒄 (𝒎𝟐)] where dec is the decryption function and enc is the encryption function proof: 𝑐1 = 𝑃𝑢𝑏𝑘𝑒𝑦 + 𝑚1 𝑒𝑘+1 (𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑃𝑘 ) = 𝑃𝑘 ∗ 𝑒𝑘 + 𝑚1 𝑒𝑘+1 (𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑃𝑘 ) 𝑐2 = 𝑃𝑢𝑏𝑘𝑒𝑦 + 𝑚2 𝑒𝑘+1 (𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑃𝑘 ) = 𝑃𝑘 ∗ 𝑒𝑘 + 𝑀2 𝑒𝑘+1 (𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑃𝑘 ) 𝑐1 + 𝑐2=[𝑃𝑘 ∗ 𝑒𝑘 + 𝑚1 𝑒𝑘+1 (𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑃𝑘 )+ 𝑃𝑘 ∗ 𝑒𝑘 + 𝑚2 𝑒𝑘+1 (𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑃𝑘 )] mod n =𝑃𝑘 ∗ 𝑒𝑘 (𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑛)+ 𝑚1 𝑒𝑘+1 (𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑛) mod 𝑃𝑘 +𝑃𝑘 ∗ 𝑒𝑘 (𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑛)+ 𝑚2 𝑒𝑘+1 (𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑛) mod 𝑃𝑘 = m1+m2 [𝑚1 𝑒𝑘+1 (𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑛)mod 𝑃𝑘 =m1 mod 𝑃𝑘 = [𝑚1] ,by fermat’s little theorem kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 157 (m1 r* 𝜭 (n) +1 mod n ≡ m1) [𝑃𝑘 ∗ 𝑒𝑘 (𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑛) = 0], since 𝑃𝑘 =n *z, which is multiple of n modular n equal to zero. and so on the same for other terms. 8.3.3 the proof of multiplicative homomorphic if the following condition is fulfilled, it becomes clear to us that the proposed scheme multiplicative homomorphic: m1*m2=dec [enc (m1) * enc (m2)] where dec is the decryption function and enc is the encryption function proof: m1*m2=dec [enc (m1) * enc (m2)] 𝑐1 = 𝑃𝑢𝑏𝑘𝑒𝑦 + 𝑚1 𝑒𝑘+1 (𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑃𝑘 ) = 𝑃𝑘 ∗ 𝑒𝑘 + 𝑚1 𝑒𝑘+1 (𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑃𝑘 ) 𝑐2 = 𝑃𝑢𝑏𝑘𝑒𝑦 + 𝑚2 𝑒𝑘+1 (𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑃𝑘 ) = 𝑃𝑘 ∗ 𝑒𝑘 + 𝑀2 𝑒𝑘+1 (𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑃𝑘 ) 𝑐1 ∗ 𝑐2 = [𝑃𝑘 2 ∗ 𝑒𝑘 2+𝑃𝑘 ∗ 𝑒𝑘 ∗ 𝑚2 𝑒𝑘+1 ( 𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑃𝑘 )+ 𝑃𝑘 ∗ 𝑒𝑘 ∗ 𝑚1 𝑒𝑘+1 ( 𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑃𝑘 )+ 𝑚1 𝑒𝑘+1 (𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑃𝑘 )* 𝑚2 𝑒𝑘+1 (𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑃𝑘 )] mod n =𝑃𝑘 2 ∗ 𝑒𝑘 2(𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑛)𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑃𝑘 + 𝑃𝑘 ∗ 𝑒𝑘 ∗ 𝑚2 𝑒𝑘+1 ( 𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑛) mod 𝑃𝑘 +𝑃𝑘 ∗ 𝑒𝑘 ∗ 𝑚1 𝑒𝑘+1 ( 𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑛) mod 𝑃𝑘 +𝑚1 𝑒𝑘+1 (𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑛) mod 𝑃𝑘 ∗ 𝑚2 𝑒𝑘+1 (𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑛) mod 𝑃𝑘 =m1*m2 [𝑚1 𝑒𝑘+1 (𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑛)mod 𝑃𝑘 =m1 mod 𝑃𝑘 = [𝑚1] ,by fermat’s little theorem(m1 r* 𝜭 (n) +1 ≡ m1) [𝑃𝑘 ∗ 𝑒𝑘 (𝑚𝑜𝑑 𝑛) = 0], since 𝑃𝑘 =n *z, which is multiple of n modular n equal to zero. and so on the same for other terms. 9. results and discussion our proposed method has been applied in java language on a laptop that has these characteristics intel (r) core (tm) i7-8550u cpu @1.80ghz 2.00ghz, 8 gb ram, 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor, windows 10 and big integer library of java is used. 9.1. case studies in this section, several studies will be presented that we conducted to test our system to prove the creation of the secret key and its use for encryption and decryption case study 1: let us choose two different number m1= 4, m2 = 8, select prime numbers p=467, q=307, select random number r=401, z=271 and w=449 and compute n, ø (n) =(p-1) *(q-1), pk,ek and pubkey where n = p*q , pk=n*z, ek=w* µ(n) and pubkey = pk*ek, as in figure 1, so n = 57490969 , ø (n) = 57038400, pk=15580052599, ek=25610241600 and pubkey = 399008911201097918400 now we will compute c1, c2 where c1= pubkey +m1 ek+1 mod pk c1= 399008911201097918400+4 25610241600+1 mod 15580052599 c1= 399008911209721563754 c2= pubkey +m2 ek+1 mod pk c2= 399008911201097918400+8 25610241600+1 mod 15580052599 c2= 399008911201097918408 a. check the additive homomorphism let us define c3 is the result of c1+c2 c3= c1+c2 c3= 399008911209721563754+ 399008911201097918408 c3= 798017822410819482162 m3= c3 mod p m3= 798017822410819482162 mod 467 m3= 12, which is the same of m1+m2 = 4 + 8 =12 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 158 b. check the multiplication homomorphism let us define c4 is the result of c1*c2 c4= c1*c2 c4= 399008911209721563754* 399008911201097918408 c4= 159208111221326555237218115498200062183632 m4= c4 mod p m4= 159208111221326555237218115498200062183632 mod 467 m4= 32, which is the same of m1*m2 = 4 * 8 =32 case study 2: we took as an example of 2048 bit a message containing several languages: english, kurdish, arabic and chinese, to indicate that our scheme works in all languages. the message was: fully homomorphic encryption system is the best solution when storing data in the cloud التشفير التماثلي التام يعد افضل حل عند تخزين البيانات على السحابة 全同态加密系统是在云中存储数据时的最佳解决方案 هومومورفيك ئينكريپشن باشترين ڕێگايه بۆ ههڵگرتنی زانياری له كاڵودا p=17677407741877305812974453795695829556481143458816523982107269504893610803 58551018895584377087249191335724085433447024543185504758455631650550492203454 64241056074079024109166204002367569192042605346490577631743669656928602593119 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51160642892464178663003766675944121364487852226241867052819190294856408013991 2399 r=221704313573415863159846363027780946932749477453300762390358010519665644221 87140855682320560549672999017524704999360401622672733792707046542939076114622 71294645777433048961662607368834573356607007276968285901809569193575593361195 95183592425870109416627348226330225417095167338356961355353440978586915860732 25295416801346356644268401349085223233791565552540400714669486000596164658328 53354843569032953795841177317760938909217583755697157793455522895018625285194 62537280823951426545206331004884970981539080382288397414773455434023413361954 47440852503074070578011632695922887511174829871285336692705513320415788577077 679 z=275249857110002837815800172710466356018329806961099866732193189637794181023 63701442691287193897733121259027100064136824329301210609187447135330014261476 50949829649323789524585055409208200878901235351905015521587034028332528553850 11614529987564845152327785052325832471682154173508783558623331252252968152219 16027089844912780553832369867433821093674360804418144757102515585490143240810 04911834111030009876069187484163346362681914347253110719669693609577828580519 55506648516062732533087705315351585063502912220372815271233309365462638783981 32239648469349585337867535450178014597005244053675435612025992973391019104165 051 w=27970928086245618554130758033009128606102344747844162488872725298013994846 66750703759209951503644756559344326593436488713439727941370882474185729394202 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 159 26568930125038906366151005406608696506059925021656511039066192720032347527969 16825734793075507607756350581033260197597066561939143858829691043997062844545 31619047315794357733653339906082961824373494521550887529988893790465408818017 14334723034181238734693852986203812112960241219323273443674522837689161421055 48731309980467698859425343574740941094513723675441376882831853221735200060302 65054894069344437565316320341105324384528818788195486201847329573292754450278 3547 n=10769580094727002503471943187166493982427611244942262080176583144009934659 81143042618421771243562508741529558462567496164974218162794828070090102743116 14675744981617706981159659278840348642493533661619004418505278308630146273559 49776532784746004292342193106772858086635741189742878628382470222788825482078 61943946691808699382242542777997373518125113923399713103380525808288086413349 19212781469514351491835805699434775073115335471855882883646035920190250024882 58963291569442031252109254395186706720792585518142909784365241155548844983342 83189320986270780236136127138605362150211782152865745381504375705543553816512 21080065655104503709942786890696056308249476633106547878851299305806005512585 83541393276463237096719409790300468531918013125461699424164364113733499007492 38417041896555095544181828755557265971346981037514011439434062675852888528243 74771452124934839087438528317526026501724778542161519207350378280716665713992 33093893068896685065293401056907219377231430933622052700439764141956013176800 08441865070124950005050281952689339441458657533442962099842432475896256930594 04126544402701922750498619154017022505738530444115173928551210212914269478804 12860202143331118919677011230626375006094163641104605963225042768615177326418 04068211108887647811534025697434933102079051297094993378106248264111141798110 06075632477579241815254478917115784613782075604252933691662961011635444393974 09530862792837844730182746315230788913885544817429507257108778271967617395803 69155228561187843144824186591120699659377823199894425771268810353616296436945 83356611341470626782237814429171429730166442379827572105352396392849523835926 02752329293726120327361136868710322352784471970286028331332376113647464712430 52579019338540424638344553771108463500791094165293405274249922836843857047119 94952998965052165507568745669931336591389786290832307146403761468886675257507 99641 the message after encryption (cipher text): 89295900219191118519022931543915293570526367958119369756690615872509965393822 31001740321331646477256733520778478120002484749463886513532178306089038239543 02840563285267128770795997132212844773626461847056101966474470314533455350620 35961583853467335353692058643877483368839024324323253148702413976549021747125 84267662290418187689873676027208635786466580431611882199972233892265537394995 11808792503513297027206315025447067373256990258810928316926704967052369318515 39123933129291735790734203167224718452036002934602397499396928658480040019814 48753794055536037412565397913390978373800211854455912862135884453189535416422 48643350177392070083256386839997606638372180955482018837827049995130280291737 80477854749578970665250919555137362702387050753022510647671078135904779199076 99613784625827003099595182929464504486913045408507958278445397409776501583072 08218365845189684157830888068028334654562249806532825451487522249699122205996 68854356943638262766852210468449630191908418239367807625716544138399309127329 81414556161366337124764581505287880141762366994590146327071125276854185469427 99348536482500412527825762989106752138717310011092660740968429827301331409068 42543259406882786575288370599930117936612945953571324798139866765622746682555 71132508113770654369759346831687920038271029897667892423374810263220958410482 11999897930106631362581295255946251804804094917660182672337363831278103290372 31174843643462187324258096511620171705278849528849072515299421288789465771681 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 160 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 8 kilobyte 12 kilobyte 20 kilobyte 28 kilobyte 40 kilobyte encryption and decryption time measured in miliseconds encryption time (ms) decryption time (ms) 43248593387968474598670964355373653052749795427143289149329468840372409439550 54849884901788502012854967911585319237252603534567463085636877395614784177845 96965108486808004477401942768168047222903019793219239964275477699956509410684 52328268610784830191025845961252703855535813829958762877983640392413802255355 46428135007324080259252467858536957855977571160173001816724564278149168611602 45823522934535900592968120713467599445675667134123013501889780848602863778123 26326135402160036272556155249730667204639551120185330579724202900318999797435 42879664943985365924734927922050496995004574143976224500409164715995045548258 80591841522178517562068523430265973738052677570728032144342485814823604886324 50637171202401642868793240782799510215265259095894494535471354049093275530862 39224260691868986164678833953163322689297576670114211557653732496694098293514 17825457316748989715570095449667266994555193687741260632502600000910540602742 76914747724897228602651401673101955313890555932552792140290794613348372108415 57663927723446685822998162225135864218539770247362377169461300200659677780338 82526148523095531246278362277516264723046543270412030208182692229566558800145 51506581473160603366883980285215638955963339387612200134501841503508805535949 21185510472589502996007692047569736831254613398327847474835174479696247965785 6968471415060827235319400271780….etc due to the length of the encrypted text (cipher text), which reaches more than 530 pages, it has been truncated. where the encrypted time was 151225 ms and the decrypted time was 157 ms. we have also tested it on text with 8kb in its size and several different keys in terms of size, and we compared the results with the planners from in terms of velocity, we obtained the following results as shown in table 1 and figure 1 table 1: performance of small file size encryption and decryption measured in a millisecond with 64bit key length. file size encryption time (ms) decryption time (ms) 8 kilobyte 444 ms 54 ms 12 kilobyte 517 ms 56 ms 20 kilobyte 1262 ms 209 ms 28 kilobyte 1705 ms 385 ms 40 kilobyte 2504 ms 818 ms figure 1: computation encryption and decryption time of our schema kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 161 .9.2 our asymmetric fully homomorphic encryption scheme applied to banking data in the cloud: the bank application work as shown in figure 2 9.3 cloud and banking app experiences: as for our banking application, we created two accounts and encrypted them with a 2048-bit encryption key using our previously mentioned algorithm which required 1264 milliseconds as encryption time and stored it on a local private cloud as shown in figures 3 and 4. and also requests 65 milliseconds as the decryption time as is shown in figures 5 and 6 9.4 results of nist statistical tests on the generated secret keys: the randomness of this novel proposal is evaluated by the well-known nist test suite[31]. table 2 shows the test results of the proposed algorithm from the nist statistical tests, demonstrating that the best statistical performance was obtained with this algorithm. figure 2: scheme representing the link between the bank and its data hosted in a cloud provider server figure 3: create a new account and encrypt it at bank application level then send to the cloud server kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 162 figure 4: user login data in encrypted form at cloud server leve figure 5: user data in encrypted form at cloud server kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 163 figure 6: user data at bank application level after decrypting it table 2: nist test results for the proposed algorithm tests p-value result frequency (monobits) 0.969730 success block frequency 0.934397 success cumulative sums (cusum) 0.955178 success runs 0.791649 success longest run of ones 0.812369 success rank 0.828802 success discrete fourier transform 0.749568 success non-overlapping template matching 0.865923 success overlapping template matching 0.667917 success approximate entropy 0.879027 success random excursions 0.919402 success random excursions variant 0.942381 success serial 0.842202 success linear complexity 0.909160 success kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 164 10. conclusion in this paper, a new encryption technology based on asymmetric(public key) fully homomorphic encryption scheme has been proposed to ensure the security of user data when stored on the cloud and respect their privacy at rest that support all languages like(english, arabic, kurdi and chinese) and others, very large prime numbers (up to 617 digits, 2048 bit) represent the strength for attack of our scheme because the proposed system depends on the problem of factorization to the primary factors, which are considered mathematical issues under discussion at the present time and the user data is encrypted with different keys and thus provides effective security which prevents attackers from analyzing it and using it for personal purposes that ensure the security measures of the proposed technology it is resistance for any kind of brute force, mathematics, and time attacks, it explains that it can protect user data even if it is leaked to unauthorized parties, thus the proposed scheme ensures data security when it is stored in the cloud. reference [1] b. varghese and r. buyya, “next generation cloud computing: new trends and research directions,” futur. gener. comput. syst., vol. 79, pp. 849–861, 2018, doi: 10.1016/j.future.2017.09.020. 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[31] p. mell and t. grance, “the nist definition of cloud computing. national institute of standards and technology. special publication 800–145. 2011.” 2019.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq novel approaches to diagnose covid-19 solaf jawhar ali nursing department technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq solaf.jawhar@spu.edu.iq article info abstract special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) doi: 10.24017/covid.7 article history: received: 9 may 2020 accepted: 15 may 2020 an widespread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (sars-cov-2) in december 2019 has occurred worldwide. public health agencies are in need of developing diagnostic tools which will have a major impact in tracking the virus and suppressing the transmission. diagnosis of the disease is based on clinical symptoms, epidemiological history and laboratory examinations. severe acute respiratory diseases with fever and ,cough and dyspnea, are used as the case definition to select people for testing. different samples taken from the human body such as oropharyngeal (op) and nasopharyngeal (np) swabs are used to detect the virus. sars-cov-2 can be detected with different methods in the laboratory including real time rt-pcr, chest ct scan and immunoassays. viral nucleic acid testing has played important role in control covidi-19 outbreak. more recently, a new crispr-based detectr assay has been developed to detect covid-19. this test is rapid (~30 min), lowcost, and precise for identification of sars-cov-2. in addition, immunoassays and medical imaging can use as supplementary tests, combined with rt-pcr. this review is conducted to summarizes the current information on the present diagnostic approaches for sars-cov-2. keywords: sars-cov-2, covid-19, diagnosis, testing. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction coronaviruses are single-strand rna viruses (26-32 kb), with around 40 described species that cause disease in birds and mammals. severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (sars-cov 2003-2004) and middle east respiratory syndrome coronavirus (mers-cov 2012) have caused endemic diseases in past decades with a high case fatality rate (cfr). the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (sars-cov-2) was first reported in december 2019 from chin and causes covid-19, as named by the world health mailto:solaf.jawhar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) | 67 organization (who) in february 2020. sars-cov-2 is similar to its coronavirus predecessors sars (79%) and mers (50%) and was declared a pandemic on march 11, 2020. according to genetic data, the covid-19 pathogen is considered as a member of the betacoronavirus genus, and can attach to the human angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ace2) receptor [1]. similar to the two previous coronaviruses that causes pandemics, sars-cov-2 is a zoonotic disease, transmitted to humans by infected animals, most likely bats. covid-19 is spread from human to human by direct contact, or indirect contact with surfaces or objects used by an infected person [2]. furthermore, the virus can survive as aerosols in the air for around three hours and cause infection in the population. there is little evidence on oral-fecal transmissibility of the virus, but in one study, covid-19 rna was detected in fecal specimens of patients with gastrointestinal symptoms (2-10%) such as diarrhea. therefore, fecal-oral transmission should be considered as a possible infection method during case tracing [3]. sars-cov-2 moved through many regions in china more rapidly than the previous pandemics. according to the latest data, there are more than 3.6 million confirmed cases of sars-cov-2, with 253,000 deaths and 1.2 million recoveries. despite mers-cov and sars-cov having a higher case fatality ratio (cfr), sars-cov-2 has caused more deaths due to its larger case numbers and because it is more infectious [2]. the incubation period for covid-19 based on who reports varies from 2 to 14 days in human to human transmission, with the average incubation period recorded as 5-6 days [3]. typical symptoms of sars-cov-2 are fever, cough, dyspnea, viral pneumonia and lower respiratory tract disease in older patients and in any age groups who have serious underlying medical conditions. however, there are also asymptomatic laboratory-confirmed cases; therefore, it is very important to increase the number of laboratory tests carried out in order to overcome the transmission of the virus and stop the pandemic [4]. 2. methods and materials in order to identify relevant papers in this study, a search was conducted in the different databases such as science direct, pub med, google scholar and scopus. the result of the broad search was scanned by title and abstracts to retrieve relevant articles. any articles without relevant title and/or abstract about diagnosis of covid-19 were excluded. subsequently, i checked for the full text of the papers. the reference lists of all studies identified by the above techniques have been checked. 3. results 3.1 diagnosis strategies for sars-cov-2 a rapid diagnosis of sars-cov-2 is crucial in preventing transmission of the disease. various methods have used to diagnose the virus including clinical manifestations, epidemiological history and laboratory examinations, and these will be discussed here. 3.2 clinical manifestations severe acute respiratory diseases with a cough and shortness of breath, are used as the case definition to select people for testing. this strategy involves typical symptomatic presentation, but inadequately identifies unusual manifestations, such as cases without, or only very mild, respiratory symptoms[5]. one modeling study stated that up to 86% of patients might have been missed in china, and reports of patients with unusual presenting symptoms are increasing globally[6]. diagnosis of the new pathogen based on clinical symptoms is difficult and preliminary disease symptoms are usually nonspecific. mild common cold symptoms including sore throat, dry cough, low fever or body aches are prevalent. if the clinical manifestations worsen after a few days, people usually visit emergency units. due to the wide range of clinical symptoms, research on biomarkers and clinical criteria predicting prognosis is of first priority to facilitate differentiation of mild cases needing limited monitoring and more severe cases that may require more interventions in infection’s early stages. 3.3 nucleic acid detection technology kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) | 68 viral nucleic acid testing has played significant role in control of covid-19 outbreak. realtime reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rt-pcr) is used in routine confirmation of cases of sars-cov-2. the specificity and sensitivity of rt-pcr is dependent upon preanalytical and analytical factors such as the sample type, timing of sample collection, number, shipment and packaging of the samples which might affect the diagnostic accuracy of the test. clinical samples could be collected from saliva, nasopharyngeal (np), pharyngeal (op), blood and stool. at the early stage of infection, both np and op are recommended. however, in china, sars-cov-2 rna extraction is mostly via np swabs rather than op swabs. at the later stage of the disease, a rectal swab can be used for rt-pcr, as a high viral load was demonstrated in the stool of patients[7]. target selection for rt-pcr is one of the factors that have a role in accuracy detection of sars-cov-2. many gene targets that are needed for viral replication have used to specify the virus by pcr assay such as the transmembrane region (m), envelope glycoprotein spike (s), envelope (e), nucleocapsid (n) and helicase (hel) genes [8]. different researchers have used different viral genes targets for rt-pcr assays. however, the optimization of each target in different locations is important. moreover, using more than one target is essential to avoid any misleading as a result of unspecific reaction with other coronaviruses. in the united states, in order for a positive laboratory confirmation of infection, both tests of nucleocapsid proteins n1 and n2 should be positive. three targets in the n gene can be used too[9]. furthermore, in china two or more targets are used to detect sars-cov-2. species-specific accessory genes are other possible target genes for rt-pcr that are essential for viral replication such as open reading frames orf1a and orf1b, hemagglutinin-esterase (he) and rna-dependent rna polymerase (rdrp) assay. e gene target is first recommended by who to detect the virus followed by confirmation test using (rdrp) assay [8]. in germany, rdrp, e and n genes are checked. in one study, authors compared different pcr systems and different rt-pcr assays and reported that one-step rt-pcr systems are more efficient and sensitive for diagnosis of sars-cov-2 [10]. another research group from spain has provided a simple, rapid and inexpensive method to identify patients infected by sars-cov-2 with high specificity and sensitivity. this protocol includes a simple step for rna extraction (2-propanol precipitation) followed by one-step rt-qpcr for both n1 and n2 genes [11]. despite rt-pcr being a common genetic method for sars-cov-2 diagnosis, it has some limitations. first, a particular target locus in a specific region can be amplified by rt-pcr; yet, if this region is absent there will be a negative false result. therefore, it is important to select a conserved region in each target to avoid the effect of genetic mutations in more variable regions, which might occur especially when the virus introduced in new populations. additionally, rt-pcr is unable to provide total viral genome data, which is crucial for full development of diagnosis, treatment and prevention (vaccine) strategies of the disease. finally, rt-pcr requires expensive instrument and efficient technicians with qualified laboratories, which may not be available to all countries worldwide. this limitation of false result rt-pcr could be overcome by deep nucleic acid sequencing such as next generation sequencing performed to define any future mutations in the viral genome. whilst these methods are sensitive and accurate for viral diagnosis, they are time consuming and laborious. the multidisciplinary group of researchers from usa, austria and china developed a new diagnostic technology based on whole genome sequencing (polar protocol). this method is reliable, inexpensive and can detect the virus even before the infected person becomes contagious. however, this technology is comparatively slow as it requires 24 h from sample collection to diagnostic result [12]. due to limited availability of equipment and reagent tests to diagnose covid-19, therefore, there is still an urgent need for a new rapid technology such as crispr. 3.4 crispr based detectr assay recently, a new crispr-based detectr assay has been developed to detect sars-cov-2 a short time (~40 min). this technology combined high-fidelity crispr detection enzyme with isothermal amplification using loop-mediated amplification (rt–lamp) to provide fast results. after viral rna extraction, e and n2 genes of sars-cov-2 are amplified using kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) | 69 isothermal recombinase polymerase amplification (rpa) and subsequently cas12a (crispr detection enzyme) was used to detect the specific sequence in the viral genome. to visualize the result, lateral flow strips and a biotin reporter made to catch labeled nucleic acids were used. simple apparatus is required for this test including pipettes, tips, plastic tubes, heat blocks or water bath, reagents, nuclease-free water, and lateral flow strips. therefore, this new crispr-based detectr assay can overcome the limitation of expensive equipment that is required for rt-pcr. this assay is very sensitive and can detect 10-100 copies of sarscov-2 rna per microliter. the sensitivity and specificity of infection detection are 97 percent 100 percent, respectively. furthermore, the same test is able to be utilized to detect sars-cov-2 in saliva with a high viral load without carrying out rna extraction. the detectr system was validated in 2018 for detecting human papillomavirus (hpv) in human samples and accurate results were demonstrated. developing portable lyophilized reagents and microfluid cartridges run the assay could enable the tests to be used outside laboratory settings, such as in local emergency units, health clinics, airports and other places. however, usually an rna extraction step is still required for this assay and the fda approval of this assay has not yet been obtained [13]. 3.5 medical imaging false-negative results of rt-pcr could lead to missed diagnosis for some patients with suspected covid-19. therefore, medical imaging such as computed tomography (ct), positron emission tomography-ct (pet/ct), lung ultrasound, and magnetic resonance imaging (mri) are recommended as a one of the diagnostic standards for covid-19 and supplement examination for rt-pcr. yan li1 liming xia reported a very low rate of missed diagnosis 3.9% using the ct scan method and showed that this can be used as a standard rapid method to detect covid-19. ct scan manifestations are used to monitor and predict different phases of covid-19[14]. chest ct imaging of patients infected with mers-cov, sarscov and sars-cov-2 showed ground-glass opacities and lung consolidation, which are different characteristics from other types of viruses. however, the similarity of the disease presentation of coronaviruses does mean that one of limitations of the ct method is the inability to distinguish the exact species causing the disease and therefore nucleic acid testing still the primary diagnostic tool to identify the causal agent of covid-19 [15]. 3.6 immunoassays as the lower respiratory tract is the target site for sars-cov-2, the test samples are largely nasal and pharyngeal swabs that are subsequently used for rna extraction. high viral load is observed from sputum, with a positive rate from 74.4% to 88.9%, and the positive rate ranging from 53.6% to 73.3% for nasal swabs. sample collection from the lower respiratory tract requires a professional operator and a suction device. the complexity of the process might lead to false negative results. therefore, a test which is sensitive, easy to use, fast and precise is still need to rapidly identify patients infected with sars-cov-2 to inhibit virus transmission[16]. in one study, an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (elisa) assay for diagnosis of sars‐cov‐2 were evaluated at different times of the disease by assessing the production of igg and igm in serum specimens from 214 confirmed covid-19 patients. a high positive rate was observed of the rn-based and rs-based elisa for both igg and igm antibodies (80.4% and 82.2%, respectively). however the positive rate was less than 60% at the beginning of the infection for both igg and igm, and after 35 days of infection the positive igm dropped dramatically[17]. similar assays are available from other research groups. for example, another group developed a rapid test where they found that igg‐igm combined antibody tests were more sensitive and specific than separate igg or igm antibody test. the test they developed is easy to use and fast, taking around 5 minutes to get the result confirming recent infection, although not current presence of the virus. therefore, an immunoassay can used as supplementary test combined with rt-pcr[18]. other immunoassay tests that have been developed include an assay for identifying the nucleocapsid protein of sars-cov-2 using fluorescence immunochromatographics. it is a simple, precise and fast technique for detection of covid-19. the nucleocapsid protein of sars-cov-2 can be detected in the urine of the 73.6% of detected covid-19 patients [19]. kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) | 70 3.7 cell culture for biosafety reasons, cell culture is not recommended in routine diagnostic laboratories for suspected cases. however, cell culture is a crucial test for development of vaccines and therapeutic agents. different cell lines such as llcmk2 are used to isolate corona virus[20]. 4. discussion many factors should be considered in the choice of diagnosis method and sampling collection including viral load and infection kinetics that are influenced by host factors and the limitations of diagnostic methods with different sample types and timing. as a result of the limitations for the diagnostic methods for detecting covid-19, there is concern that the diagnostic test for covid-19 is not sensitive or specific enough. the problem is that tests almost never have 100% sensitivity and 100% specificity. most of the published papers are conducted in idealized conditions, the accuracy of the results depends on the analytical validity and the diagnosis tests are not validated in community-based suspect cases. however, some diagnostic tests for covid-19 have been agreed by the food and drug administration (fda) on february 4, 2020 based on analytical validity under an emergency use authorization without performing clinical validations[10]. therefore, a critical next step is to design a general population sampling approach that includes accurate information about whether tested patients had clinical sequences consistent with covid-19[21]. both molecular and serological diagnosis methods for sars-cov-2 should assess their sensitivity and specificity as well as their performance across different populations. finally, some of the studies that include in this rapid review were published when the virus was endemic, and the tests were done in asymptomatic population. now the disease defined as a pandemic which might have effect on the diagnosis tests as a result of sampling methods and number might change in population with high probability of the disease. 5. conclusion  there still remains a need for a fast and specific diagnostic test to detect covid-19  the combined use of molecular and serological approaches is highly recommended.  nucleic acid testing via rt-pcr remains the gold standard of clinical analysis.  at least two specific genomic targets are used to specify the virus by rt-pcr assay.  the crispr-based assay can address the problems of lack of pcr reagents and insufficient rt-pcr machines, however this essay has not been approved yet by fda,  elisa is an important supplementary technique to detect sars-cov-2.  the accuracy of rapid igm‐igg combined antibody test kit to detect sars-cov-2 is higher than in separated igg or igm antibody test.  ct imaging is a clinical tool to monitor the progression and management of covid19.  rectal swab from patients with covid-19 pneumonia can be used for detecting sars-cov-2 by rt-pcr reference [1] l. zhang, f. m. shen, f. chen, and z. lin, “origin and evolution of the 2019 novel coronavirus,” clin. infect. dis., no. ml, pp. 2019–2020, 2020. [2] q. bi et al., “epidemiology and transmission of covid-19 in 391 cases and 1286 of their close contacts in shenzhen, china: a retrospective cohort study,” lancet infect. dis., vol. 3099, no. 20, pp. 1–9, 2020. [3] g. kolifarhood et al., “19; a narrative review,” clin. asp. covid, vol. 8, no. 1, p. 41, 2020. [4] s. s. unhale, q. b. ansar, s. sanap, s. thakhre, and s. wadatkar, “a review on corona virus ( covid -19 ),” world j. pharm. life sci., vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 109–115, 2020. [5] p. vetter, d. l. vu, a. g. l’huillier, m. schibler, l. kaiser, and f. jacquerioz, “clinical features of covid-19,” bmj, vol. 369, no. april, pp. 1–2, 2020. [6] r. li et al., “substantial undocumented infection facilitates the rapid dissemination of novel coronavirus kurdistan journal of applied research | special issue on coronavirus (covid-19) | 71 (sars-cov2),” science, vol. 3221, no. january, pp. 1–8, 2020. [7] y. w. tang, j. e. schmitz, d. h. persing, and c. w. stratton, “the laboratory diagnosis of covid -19 infection: current issues and challenges,” j. clin. microbiol., no. april, pp. 1–22, 2020. [8] r. lu et al., “genomic characterisation and epidemiology of 2019 novel coronavirus: implications for virus origins and receptor binding,” lancet, vol. 395, no. 10224, pp. 565–574, 2020. [9] m. l. holshue et al., “first case of 2019 novel coronavirus in the united states,” n. engl. j. med., vol. 382, no. 10, pp. 929–936, 2020. [10] r. konrad et al., “rapid establishment of laboratory diagnostics for the novel coronavirus sars-cov-2 in bavaria, germany, february 2020,” eurosurveillance, vol. 25, no. 9, pp. 2–6, 2020. [11] i.-c. a. alcoba-florez jgonzalez-montelongo r, “fast sars-cov-2 detection protocol based on rna precipitation and rt-qpcr in nasopharyngeal swab samples,” pp. 1–22, 2020. [12] b. g. s. hilaire et al., “a rapid, low cost, and highly sensitive sars-cov-2 diagnostic based on whole genome sequencing,” biorxiv, p. 2020.04.25.061499, 2020. [13] j. p. broughton et al., “crispr – cas12-based detection of sars-cov-2,” 2019. [14] y. li and l. xia, “coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19): role of chest ct in diagnosis and management,” ajr. am. j. roentgenol., no. june, pp. 1–7, 2020, doi: 10.2214/ajr.20.22954. [15] d. dong et al., “the role of imaging in the detection and management of covid 19 : a review,” 2020, [16] y. yang et al., “evaluating the accuracy of different respiratory specimens in the laboratory diagnosis and monitoring the viral shedding of 2019-ncov infections,” medrxiv, p. 2020.02.11.20021493, 2020. [17] w. liu et al., “evaluation of nucleocapsid and spike protein-based elisas for detecting antibodies against sars-cov-2,” j. clin. microbiol., no. march, 2020. [18] z. li et al., “development and clinical application of a rapid igm-igg combined antibody test for sars-cov-2 infection diagnosis,” j. med. virol., no. february, 2020. [19] b. diao et al., “diagnosis of acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2 infection by detection of nucleocapsid protein,” medrxiv, p. 2020.03.07.20032524, 2020. [20] m. j. loeffelholz and y. w. tang, “laboratory diagnosis of emerging human coronavirus infections–the state of the art,” emerg. microbes infect., vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 747–756, 2020. [21] v. c. bachelet, “do we know the diagnostic properties of the tests used in covid -19? a rapid review of recently published literature,” medwave, vol. 20, no. 03, pp. e7891–e7891, 2020.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.1 plagiarism detection techniques for arabic script languages: a literature review ribwar bakhtyar sulaimani polytechnic university-iraq college of informatics university of human development-iraq ribwar.ibrahim@spu.edu.iq karzan wakil sulaimani polytechnic university-iraq college of informatics university of human development-iraq karzanwakil@gmail.com soran saeed sulaimani polytechnic university-iraq soran.saeed@spu.edu.iq abstract: plagiarism is generally defined as literary theft and academic dishonesty. this considered as the serious issue in an academic documents and texts. there are numerous of plagiarism detection techniques have been developed for various natural languages, mainly english. in this paper we investigate and review the plagiarism detection techniques and algorithms which have been developed for arabic script languages (asl), and providing a literature review of the utilized methods in terms of techniques and outcomes. the result of this paper will help the researchers who are going to commence their development and extend their researches in asl like arabic, persian, urdu, and kurdish. keywords: plagiarism detection techniques, literature review, arabic, kurdish, persia, urdu. 1. introduction plagiarism in simple definition is representing other’s works and thoughts as one’s own original work, or using the words and ideas of someone else as own work without authorization [1]. it includes disguising the source after coping the words or ideas of others then diffusing them as one’s own which know as literary theft. many people think of plagiarism as copying another’s work, or borrowing someone else’s original ideas. however, terms like “copying” and “borrowing” can disguise the weightiness of the crime [2]. there are many objects which can be plagiarized, in text (illegal text reuse), music, pictures, maps, technical drawings, paintings, etc.[3]. many language-sensitive tools for detecting plagiarism in natural language documents have been developed, particularly for english [4]. the big concern and the most significant problem for universities, academic organizations and researchers are text plagiarism [5]. students easily can find and copy documents and journals through the internet due to existing giant search engines. some of them are just copying and pasting others works without pointing to the owner of the documents. several types of plagiarism exist, using the published text without mentioning the sources by copying of phrases directly from it, passages or entire document, plagiarism of ideas, sources, and authorship. there are other types of plagiarism which are more advanced than ordinary, like translating content to another language, converting the plagiarized item with same content but in different media like images, videos and texts, and using program code without permission [6]. plagiarized document detection has a great impact in many applications, such as file management, copyright protection, and plagiarism prevention [7]. interest in this literature is more oriented towards asl plagiarism detection. arabic script languages (asl) are the languages which use the arabic alphabetic for writing such as arabic, kurdish, persia, urdu, and so on. these languages more complex in morphological compared with other languages like english[8-9]. the objective of this paper is to investigate and explore the researches and works that have been done for detecting plagiarism in asl. furthermore reveal the outcomes of the utilized techniques. our main research question is what are the techniques and algorithms that have been developed in asl? to demarcate this question we perform a deep literature review of existing works. the paper is organized as follows: in section 2, we present a short overview of the context in which the current study has been conducted, and we explain most recent works. section 3 describes how this research has been done, and shows the stages and the processes of the workflow. the result and discussion are presented in section 4. conclusion discussed in section 5 and explains suggestions for future work. 2. related work there are a lot of works have been proposed for finding plagiarism detection in different languages with different techniques, in this section we explain important works a (survey and literature reviews) that have been presented recently on plagiarism detection algorithms. maurer, et al., 2006 focused on textual plagiarism rather than plagiarism in music, paintings, pictures, maps, technical drawings, etc., firstly they discussed the complex general setting, then report on some results of plagiarism detection software. they believed that this type of papers have a value to all researchers, educators and students and should be considered as influential work that optimistically will support many still deeper analyses. finally they claimed that the improvement of existing plagiarism techniques and algorithms are highly needed due to increasing digitizing documents day after day [10]. five years later a group of researcher ali, et al., (2011) argued that plagiarism is so difficult to be 100% detected by recent methods so it will continue rising and raising up. according to their survey, each method has some advantages and disadvantages. most of them use clustering as techniques of sorting and summarization tool. they emphasized on using cluster based retrieval or clustering to achieve better results in plagiarism detection systems, and they pointed the limitation of the grammar-based method and the semantics-based method, instead of them they advised to use semanticsbased method for cluster based method as it will achieve much better results. they provide and list the advantages and disadvantages of the latest and the important effective methods used or developed in automatic plagiarism detection, according to their result. mainly methods used in natural language text detection, index structure, and external plagiarism detection and clustering based detection [11]. another valuable work is osman, et al., (2012), they presented a professional study as they classified most techniques in text plagiarism into seven categories and explained the advantages and limitation each of them. moreover they argued many important issues regarding plagiarism detection like tasks and processes of the current plagiarism detection. finally they explained the weaknesses of some techniques which are lacking for detecting some types of plagiarized text [12]. in different work another survey in same year has been published by bin-habtoor, et al., (2012), they classified their survey into four categories which are plagiarism in (documents, code, techniques and algorithms). they stated that plagiarism detection for information is a big concern in universities and for teachers, policy-makers and students. hence they proposed a system that is able to detect many plagiarism tries in deferent fields (elearning, e-business, and e-journals) and can be used to check programs, papers with images included [13]. the most recent study is eisa, et al. (2015), they have analyzed and identified the state-of-the-art plagiarism techniques in terms of their attributes, limitations, processes and taxonomies. they revealed that the existing techniques are incapable to perform an intelligent detection efficiently for plagiarized ideas, figures, tables, formulas and scanned documents therefore they recommended that the integration of structural features and contextual information with semantic similarity methods can help to detect these types of plagiarism. they also stated that turnitin is the most accurate in detection and steadiest tool among the existing seven tools, after analyzing their performance. furthermore they discovered areas where further improvements are required in existing techniques and the current trends in plagiarism detection [14]. most previous works have been focused on reviewing and analyzing the existing plagiarism detection techniques, algorithms, methods, systems, and tools meant for english language not for arabic, persia, urdu or kurdish. the absence of such survey and literature review that reflects the need of highlighting and identifying the existing plagiarism detection techniques, algorithms, methods and tools for asl is the motivation of this work. besides helps researchers through discovering the areas where further improvements are required in existing techniques and the current trends in plagiarism detection for asls. 3. methodology 3.1 research question research questions in plagiarism detection, acquiring a general idea of the present techniques, algorithms and tools within the scope of the asl is the objective of this study. to clarify this aim, we demarcated three research questions: rq1: what are the techniques and algorithms that have been developed in asl? many algorithms and methods have been developed for plagiarism detections mainly in english language; we try to concentrate on the algorithms that utilized in plagiarism detection in asl. this question is meant to observe how far these approaches provide for the overall goals at present. rq2: what diverse kinds of results of utilizing different algorithms for asl plagiarism detection? this question meant providing thorough comparison between the results of the works have been done for asl. 3.2 research strategy for any work or study there should be a plan to obtain the its goal so the strategy of this work consists of two main phases as shown in the figure 1, the first phase is search process which includes, search string, literature resources, and utilizing endnote to preparing the extracted papers to the second phase. primary study selection as second phase includes four stages. more details about research strategy explained as below:  search process: the search process conduct by the search string the resulting search terms were: (approach or method or methodology or technique) and (plagiarism detection or plagiarism software or plagiarism tool) and (arabic or persia or urdu or kurdish) the recourse of the string is literature resources. five electronic database resources were used to extract data for synchronization in this research: ieee xplore, acm digital library, science direct, springer and google scholar. title and index terms were used to conduct searches for published journal papers, conference proceedings, workshops, symposiums, book chapters and ieee bulletins. a survey of extracted papers entails a comprehensive search of all relevant sources about a subject of discussion. for managing and referencing purposes all found papers imported to endnote software. figure 1 research strategy  primary studies selection process: this phase starts directly after importing all extracted papers through endnote software; the first stage of this phase is removing the duplicated papers and performing title off from extracted papers which has been prepared in the previous phase from literature resources. preparing those papers for reviewing the abstract, introduction and conclusion are performed in the second stage in order to segregate the topic related papers which are contains the required and enough info that coverage the focused research area. the number of papers that cover our research question is 28 papers. the third stage is the most time consuming process because we reviewing the 28 papers in deep, from collected papers in the previous stages so that we can perform a second extraction then apply our criteria to achieve first research question. furthermore; the all works were gathered classified and categorized based on their utilized algorithms and their results. as a final process of the final stage all works are explained and performing the evaluation in terms of their results. 4. result and discussion in this section we explain the results of the survey on plagiarism detection for asls that has been reviewed. we organize a table to explain a thorough survey of state-of-the-art plagiarism detection techniques and to better understanding we produce some charts based on our literature review statistics. most techniques detect plagiarism by using certain text features along with fingerprint matching techniques and most of the them used some algorithms in the pre-processing stage of the system like normalization, tokenization, stemming and part of speech (pos) tagging, stop-word removal, sentence segmentation, synonymy recognition, number replacement, lemmatization. it is obvious that all utilized techniques are showed in the table 1 has its own impact on developing plagiarism detection for asl. most of the studies and developments are stretched in literal type of plagiarism while the minor works dealt with intelligent type. a few numbers of study produced an implemented tool or software meanwhile the others proposed a development in a particular algorithm or technique, the summery of each study that have been reviewed are explained in table 1. table 1: extracted papers based on the criteria ref. type source or target year langu age techniques result [15] intellige nt document 2009 arabic fuzzy technique in information retrieval stated that fuzzy technique is better than boolean ir , in plagiarism detection [16] literal text 2009 urdu based on interpolation of ngram probabilities techniques. it proposed method based on interpolation of n-gram probabilities of author attribution to urdu that outstanding bigram and trigram results for urdu poetry. [17] literal e-learning 2009 arabic syntax similarity based detection for the first time created apd tool for arabic in elearning. [18] literal text 2010 arabic fingerprint matching improved fingerprint matching technique through adding four key features of the text. [19] literal text 2011 urdu n-gram model for word retrieval tri-gram model is better than both bi-gram and fourgram models for urdu text plagiarism. [20] literal document 2011 arabic fingerprinting aplag, a plagiarism detection tool for arabic language. [21] literal text 2012 arabic stylysis tool. discover the effect of some well-known languageindependent stylistic features on arabic text to improve plagiarism detection. [22] literal text & document 2012 arabic winnowing n-gram fingerprinting it proposed mono-lingual system (iqtabs 1.0) for plagiarism detection that precedes multi-lingual [4] literal document 2012 arabic fingerprinting and similarity metric improved aplag [23] intellig ent text 2013 arabic examined the existing literal it presented a new taxonomy of plagiarism that highlights differences between literal and intelligent systems. plagiarism. they emphasized that existing systems for intelligent plagiarism detection are failed. [24] literal authorshi p 2013 arabic word n-grams. stated that good attribution performances with an optimal score of 80% of good authorship attribution [25] literal authorshi p 2014 arabic mbnb technique naı¨ ve bayes classifiers attribute the author of a text with an accuracy of 97.43%. [26] literal authorshi p 2014 arabic two popular classifiers: ft and svm. stated that the ft method has better performance as accuracy of 82% was achieved. [27] literal text 2014 persia nlp techniques and n-gram it proposed amzppd: implemented system using python, [28] literal text 2015 persia an artificial obfuscation strategy the first plagiarism detection corpus in persian language [29] literal document 2015 arabic similarity technique in information retrieval a web-based plagiarism detection framework for arabic documents. [30] literal document and text 2015 persia fuzzy approach it presented fuzzy method pfpd to distinguish paraphrased cases. [31] literal text 2015 persia a mixed fuzzy inference system method it proposed method gained accuracy rate of 78% which increases precision and recall measure. it also proposed to overcome the ambiguity and consider structural features and author style of writing in the similarity measurement in persian texts [32] literal text and document 2016 persia obfuscation strategies to provide corpus an intrinsic and extrinsic plagiarism detection corpus that consists of thousand persian academic texts mahak samim. [33] literal text 2016 persia n-gram. it proposed a method, word by word and sentence by sentence. this method has resulted in %90.6 plagiarism detection; % 85.8 recalls, %95.9precision on the pan2016 provided data sets. [34] literal document and text 2016 persia fingerprinting the text in the tri-grams words. it stated that the lack of accuracy in the language-free tools in relation to the language-sensitive methods, it showed the effect of data-mining algorithm prevent excess comparison. [35] intellig ent text 2016 persia n-gram their approach was unable to achieve the expected result based on modification to the approach used for pan between 2011 and 2014. [36] literal document and text 2016 persia vector space model it proposed a method which consists of three building named seeding, match merging and extraction filtering. it can remove the common words in the sentences which are likely to be a source of plagiarism. [37] literal text 2016 persia n an extrinsic svmbased the functionality and performance of svm method to detect plagiarism in persian texts was evaluated. a new approach called “index word replacement” was suggested to detect semantic similarities. [38] literal text 2016 persia sentence-level algorithm based on tf-idf features it proposed an algorithm designed for near-copy and paraphrasing types of plagiarism. [39] literal document and text 2016 persia bi-gram and a graph structure based method. they stated that graph based approach achieve better results in plagiarism detection. [40] intellig ent text 2017 persia similarity techniques in information retrieval, it proposed a method for a cross-lingual plagiarism detection based on a semantic approach. they revealed that the highly accurate translation has a big impact on intelligent plagiarism detection. compared its method with/out employing google translation. 98.82% when employing highly accurate translation tools, 56.9%. without accurate translation. it also showed that monolingual methods. [41] literal document 2017 arabic word stemming, fingerprinting. a web-based plagiarism detection framework for arabic documents. to better understanding and make our literature review more clear, we generate a bar chart of publications per year as shown in figure 2. figure 2 shows 28 papers per year between 2009 and 2017; the result of a bar chart is the publication of continual plagiarism detection growth. in 2009, only three papers were found, but in 2016 there were 8 papers, with most publications between 2014 and 2016. however, the result for 2017 was such because probably, our search in march 2017 found some unpublished papers. hence these results state that this area is a new and active area, which means that in the last decade the researchers have focused on this area in publications especially in the last three years. figure 2 publications per year we generate a pie chart to display a distribution for all works that have been found for asl and present in figure 3, figure 3 shows the distribution 28 papers of plagiarism detection for asl(arabic, persia and urdu), arabic portion is (47%), followed by persia (46%) and urdu (7%). figure 3 distributions of languages we make another distribution for found papers for plagiarism detection based on plagiarism taxonomy[42], most of the papers that are related to the literal type of plagiarism detection focused on document and text, text, authorship and rarely e-learning, meanwhile there are only four papers that dealt with text and document in a smart way for detecting plagiarism which this refers to the intelligent type, as shown in figure 4, figure 4 shows distribution of plagiarism detection types figure 4 distribution of plagiarism detection types for asls the results of our literature review will be aff ected by various factors, for instance, the researchers who conducted the study, the databases, and the search string developed, as well as the time restrictions chosen. 5. conclusion and future work in this paper we have analyzed and presented a thorough review of state-of-the-art plagiarism detection techniques that have been proposed for asls. to the best of our knowledge this is the first study that survey on plagiarism detection for asls. we revealed that the most techniques detect plagiarism by using certain text features along with n-gram with fingerprint matching techniques. furthermore some techniques like normalization, tokenization, stemming, etc. are used in pre-processing stage to make the system more efficient. in asl most of plagiarism detections mainly belonging to literal type meanwhile there are a few works that dealt with intelligent type. we recommend researchers that there are many areas in asls especially in arabic and persia that can be develop with intelligent type. there is no plagiarism detection for kurdish language so far, neither literal nor intelligent. for that matter, we think it will be a hot topic for the next few years. 6. references [1] plagiarism.com, "glatt plagiarism services," 2017. 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[36] n. ehsan and a. shakery, "a pairwise document analysis approach for monolingual plagiarism detection," in fire (working notes), 2016, pp. 145-148. [37] f. esteki and f. s. esfahani, "a plagiarism detection approach based on svm for persian texts," in fire (working notes), 2016, pp. 149153. [38] m. mansoorizadeh, et al., "persian plagiarism detection using sentence correlations," in fire (working notes), 2016, pp. 163-166. [39] m. momtaz, et al., "graph-based approach to text alignment for plagiarism detection in persian documents," in fire (working notes), 2016, pp. 176-179. [40] f. safi-esfahani, et al., "english-persian plagiarism detection based on a semantic approach," journal of ai and data mining, vol. 5, pp. 275-284, 2017. [41] y. a. abdelrahman, et al., "a method for arabic documents plagiarism detection," international journal of computer science and information security, vol. 15, p. 79, 2017. [42] s. m. alzahrani, et al., "understanding plagiarism linguistic patterns, textual features, and detection methods," ieee transactions on systems, man, and cybernetics, part c (applications and reviews), vol. 42, pp. 133-149, 2012.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.2 comparative study of classification techniques for large scale data case study nigar m. shafiq surameery building and construction engineering dept. college of engineering university of garmian kalar, sulaimani, iraq nigar.mahmoud@garmian.edu.krd dana lattef hussein database dept. computer science institute sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq dana.hussein@spu.edu.iq abstract: the existence of massive datasets that are generated in many applications provides various opportunities and challenges. especially, scalable mining of such large-scale datasets is a challenging issue that attracted some recent research. in the present study, the main focus is to analyse the classification techniques using weka machine learning workbench. moreover, a large-scale dataset was used. this dataset comes from the protein structure prediction field. it has already been partitioned into training and test sets using the ten-fold cross-validation methodology. in this experiment, nine different methods have been tested. as a result, it became obvious that it is not applicable to test more than one classifier from the (tree) family in the same experiment. on the other hand, using (naivebayes) classifier with the default properties of the attribute selection filter has a great time consuming. finally, varying the parameters of the attribute selections should be prioritized for more accurate results. keywords: classification techniques, weka, data mining, bioinformatics, knowledge discovery, large-scale data. 1. introduction nowadays, a large amount of data is being gathered and processed. the traditional way is manually accumulating the data but this task becomes uninteresting in the case of huge amounts of data (pavlidis, et al. 2002). computers have brought about substantial improvements to technology that helps to deal with enormous amounts of data (bergmann, jan and naama 2003) (fayyad and paul 1997). the new technologies make it possible to use and organize the huge volumes of data (angus-hill, et al. 2001) (kifaya 2009). managing large-scale data has become a major field of research, namely data mining (li and wong 2002). data mining is a process of identifying the unique and the required patterns in large scale data. its learning techniques can be classified in to both supervised and unsupervised. a common unsupervised technique is clustering (huttenhower, et al. 2006). while the common supervised learning techniques, which are useful to be used in medical and clinical research, are classification, association rules and statistical regression (schreiber and baumann 2007). this study will focus on the usage of different classification techniques on large-scale bioinformatics dataset. the weka software has been used to perform the classification process. this is because it consists of the major learning techniques that can be used in classifying and analysing massive amounts of medical data such as bayesian classifiers and decision trees. (yang, et al. 2007). 2. literature review in this part, the most relevant works to this study have been reviewed. the concentration of the review has been given to the aim of the work, the classifier types and the results. the study conducted by (al-nabi and ahmed 2013), comparing the performance efficiency among three classification's techniques (decision tree, knn, bayesian) and analysing the required time complexity using a survey. as a result, the authors argued that all decisiontree's algorithms are the easiest algorithm as compared to knn and bayesian algorithms and have the least error rate. the result showed that the decisiontree outperformance and bayesian classification had the same accuracy while the other methods that based on clustering, such as knn classification, are not giving good results. the study supposed that while using knn classifier, it is possible to improve the efficiency of results by increasing the number of datasets while increasing the attributes can affect the efficiency of the result for bayesian algorithm classifier. another group of researchers (david, saeb and al rubeaan 2013) have conducted a study for analysing data mining tools and classification algorithms in medical bioinformatics. the medical bioinformatics analyses have been performed to demonstrate the usage of weka in the diagnosis of leukemia. “leukemia_all_72x7129” database, which has 7130 attributes and 72 instances, has been used for comparing the (decision tree j4.8, bayesian network and a naïve bayes) classification techniques depending on their reported accuracy, learning time and the error rate. during the experiment, the highest accuracy reported was 98.6111% for bayesian in 0.17 seconds and the lowest was 81.9444% for decision tree.j48 in 0.62 seconds. another research done by (tan, et al. 2010) was concentrated on analysing huge volume data mining and compares their performance to the mapreduce model. the authors used the naive bayes classification technique with different methods dealing with the training set. using a real-world huge volume data set in their research, they explored and compared the accuracy of three large-scale data mining approaches. the result of the experiments shows; for building a more accurate model, more data in training should be used. in other words, with increasing the sampling size, the sampling model can also get the same accuracy as the ones built on the available data. moreover, the authors explored the relationship between the accuracy of the model with the sampling size in sampling model and the model accuracy with the data partitioning size in ensemble model. based on their analysis, they proposed an idea of utilizing mapreduce framework to help improve the accuracy and efficiency of sampling. 3. methods and materials 3.1. weka software in this study, weka software has been represented as useful tool for performing the classification mechanism, pre-processing and analysis of result (fayyad and paul 1997) (erica and falk 2009). it represents a collection of machine learning algorithms written in java programming language; provide the required tools to obtain a better understanding that allows the biological problems to be solved. the name of weka software stands for “waikato environment for knowledge analysis”. it is available under the general public license. “weka software was developed at the university of waikato in new zealand”. (schreiber and baumann 2007). as shown in figure (1), the weka software can be started from one of the four different interfaces on the main gui chooser window. these interfaces are explorer, experimenter, knowledge flow and simple cli. the following is a simple explanation for each of them (tan, et al. 2010) (kretschmann, fleischmann and apweiler 2001). simple cli: “simple command-line” interface that can be used for the direct execution of weka commands on operating systems that do not provide their own command line interface (pavlidis, et al. 2002). knowledge flow: which represents is an interface that creates a flow of information by connecting the individual learning components graphically (kifaya 2009). experimenter: this is an “environment for conducting statistical tests between learning schemes and performing experiments that could be distributed across more than one computer running remote experiment servers”. (yoo, et al. 2012) explorer: this is the main interface in weka; through the explorer, users can load data in various formats arff, c4.5, csv, and library (li and wong 2002). in the present study, the explorer interface was used to load the data and applying the classification process. as shown in figure (2), there are six (6) tabs in the weka explorer window, which can be used to perform different tasks such as pre-process, classify, associate, cluster, select attribute and visualize. 3.2. classification techniques classification techniques can be used to process and analyse a huge volume dataset. it takes each instance of the data and assigns it to a specific class in order to decrease the classification errors. this procedure is used as recognized method for making the same decisions in any new situations (guerra, et al. 2011) (eisen, et al. 1998). the classification process applied in two-steps. in the first step, the classification algorithm applied on training data set to create a model. while in the second step; the extracted model is tested against a predefined test dataset in order to measure the accuracy and performance of the model. (john and langley 1995) (luscombe, greenbaum and gerstein 2001). as result, the classification techniques can be defined as, “the process to assign class label from such a dataset whose class label is unknown”. (david, saeb and al rubeaan 2013). 3.3. brief description of the data set in this experiment, there is a large-scale bioinformatics dataset that comes from the protein structure prediction field. it has been partitioned into training and test sets using the ten-fold cross-validation methodology adapted to protein datasets. each training set has about half 234000 instances. the dataset has 180 attributes and there is no missing value to be treated in this experiment. the train set details (instances, class distribution, attributes and type of attributes) has been provided in table 1, while table 2 contains the same details for the test set. from table (1) and table (2), it is clear that there are (180) attributes for each fold of the data set, and all of them are numeric. regarding to the class distributions, each fold has only 2 types of classes with different amplitude (number of instances for each class). 3.4. experimental design in this section the combinations of methods, which have been used to design the experiment and solve the problem will be explained. by using [weka] software, the experiment has been easily designed and (9) different methods have been tried. in all of the (9th) methods the following components have been used: -the (arffloder) from the (data sources tab) that is used to add the data sets and loading the data. -the (classassigner) from the (evaluation) tab which is used to specify which column to be the class. the (trainingsetmaker) from the (evaluation) tab, that is used to make a data set into a training set. -the (testsetmker) from the (evaluation) tab, that is used to make a data set into a test set. -the (classifierperformanceevaluator) from the (evaluation) tab, which is use to evaluate the performance of patch trained/tested classifier. -the (textviewer) from the (visualization) tab, that’s used to show the result of the experiment after loading the data from the (arffloader). in addition to the previous components, the attribute selection filter (type of filters that can be chosen from the filter tab and used to specify the feature selection method that will be used with different classifiers have been used for each method) have been used with its default properties for the all methods except (method8) where its evaluator has been changed to(wrappersubseteval) and its (search) to (geneticsearch) and (method 9)where its evaluator has been changed to (classifiersubseteval) and its (search) to (geneticsearch). method 1 as shown in figure (3), (bayesnet) classifier has been used, it represents a probabilistic relationship among a set of random variables graphically. method 2 as shown in figure (4), (ladtree) classifier has been used. it is a class that uses the “logitboost” strategy for generating a multi-class alternating decision tree. method 3 as shown in figure (5), (j48) classifier has been used. it represents a class for generating an un-pruned or a pruned c4.5 decision tree. method 4 as shown in figure (6), (naivebayesmultinominalupdaeable) classifier has been used. it is a class for building and using a multinomial naive bayes classifier. method 5 as shown in figure (7), (filteredclassifier) classifier has been used, which removes the necessity of filtering the data before the classifier can be trained. method 6 as shown in figure (8), (reptree) classifier has been used, it represents a fast decision tree learner that builds a decision (regression) tree using information gain/variance and prunes it using reduced-error pruning. method 7 as shown in figure (9), (naivebayes) classifier has been used. (naivebayes) classifier algorithm based on bayesian theorem and it is suited when the dimensionality of the inputs is high. in spite of its simplicity, naive bayes can often outperform more sophisticated classification methods. method 8 as shown in figure (10), (adtree) classifier has been used, which represents a class for generating an alternating decision tree. method 9 as shown in figure (11), the (adtree) classifier have used with changing the properties of attribute selection. 4. results in this experiment, (9) different methods have been tested. these methods have been applied on each fold of the data set separately. consequently, (9) results have been obtained. these results represent the accuracy of the correctly classified instances that was obtained from each tried method. in this part, the average of the ten folds outputs has been calculated for each method separately. on the other hand, the time consuming by each fold of the data set was calculated while running the different (9) methods. the average of the time, including the time of the loading, consumed by the ten folds set for each method have been calculated separately from other methods. the results have been shown in table (3): between these (9) methods, there are (3) methods that their classifiers are from (bayes) family and (4) methods that their classifiers are from (tree) family. table (4) displays the (bayes) family methods while table (5) shows the (tree) family methods, although they are already parts from the methods in table (3). 5. discussion in this section, the alternative classification techniques that have been used in the experiment will be compared in terms of the metrics reported in the previous section. the main focus was given to the percentage of the correctly classified instances as well as the consuming time to run this experiment, which was greatly changed from the minimum (0:1:16) to maximum (0:17:09). the collected results were shown in table (4). one of the good obtained results was from (filteredclassifier) algorithm. although the obtained average of accuracy was not the best, but it could be considered as the best method has been run during this experiment. this is because it consumed only (0:01:37) to run it with good accuracy comparing to the consumption times by other methods with the default properties of the attribute selection. regarding the methods that their classifiers were chosen from (bayes) family (table (4)), the most challenging point was in (naivebayes) algorithm, where the average of its accuracy was the best between the methods from the same family (bayes) but it takes an average time about (0:17:09). this is a great amount of time comparing to (bayesnet) algorithm which spent less than a half of this amount of time with an average of accuracy a bit less than (naivebayes). as a result, it can be argued that it is not good to use (naivebayes) classifier with the default properties of the attribute selection in experiments that is sensitive to the time consumption. comparing method (2) with method (6), it can be easily proved that it is not applicable to test more than one classifier from the (tree) family (with the default properties of the attribute selection) in the same experiment. this is because the average of the accuracy and the time consumption in both of them were approximately the same, although different classifiers have been used, but these classifiers were both from the same family (tree) as it is shown in table (5). on the other hand, the components of (method 8) and (method 9) exactly the same, the difference was only in changing the properties of the attribute selection (evaluation). from table (5), it is clear that although they have exactly the same average of the accuracy of the correctly classified instances; the time consumed by (method 8) was approximately three times more than the time consumed by (method 9). another challenging point was, the classifier (j48) have been used with the attribute selection (with changing the evaluator). it consumed more than (1:30:00) to run only one fold (fold 00) of the data set with accuracy not more than (71.4554). that is not a good result comparing either to the time it consumed or to the accuracy that was obtained from (method 3) where the same classifier (j48) have been used with the attribute selection (with its default properties of evaluation and search). the same operation tested again on the classifier (j48) with applying a second change on the evaluator of the attribute selection. it consumed more than (8 hours) to run only one fold (fold 00) of the data set. from previous points, it can be assumed that changing the properties of the attribute selection (search and the evaluator) always leads to significant reduction in the time consumption. as a result, if this experiment have been designed again, it is better to keep in mind the previous realizations in order to apply the classification process with high accuracy in less amount of time. 6. figures and tables 6.1. figures: figure 1: testing dataload current (amperes) figure 2: weka explorer figure 3: bayesnet method figure 4: ladtree method figure 5: j48 method figure 6: naivebayesmultinominalupdaeable method figure 7: filteredclassifier method figure 8: reptree method figure 9 naivebayes method figure 10 adtree method figure 11: adtree method with changing the properties of attribute selection 6.2.tables table 1: the characteristic of the training set table 2: the characteristic of the test set table (3): the average of the accuracy and the time consuming of the correctly classified instances methods average time consumi ng mehtod1 (bayesnet) 76.25191 0:08:17 mehtod2 (ladtree) 77.265755 6 0:09:09 mehtod3 (j48) 75.948333 3 0:08:23 mehtod4 (naïve bayesmultinominalupdaeable) 70.0338 0:10:20 mehtod5 (filteredclassifier) 76.53422 0:01:37 mehtod6 (reptree) 77.617722 2 0:08:59 mehtod7 (naivebayes) 77.009922 2 0:17:09 mehtod8 (adtree) 70.149455 6 0:03:42 mehtod9 (adtree changing the properties of attribute selection) 70. 149455 6 0:01:16 table (4): bayes family classifier methods methods average time consuming mehtod1 (bayesnet) 76.25191 0:08:17 mehtod4 (naivebayesmultinominal updaeable) 70.0338 0:10:20 mehtod7 (naivebayes) 77.0099222 0:17:09 table (5): tree family classifier methods methods average time consuming mehtod2 (ladtree) 77.2657556 0:09:09 mehtod3 (j48) 75.9483333 0:08:23 mehtod6 (reptree) 77.6177222 0:08:59 mehtod8 (adtree) 70.1494556 0:03:42 mehtod9(adtree/changing the properties of attribute selection) 70. 1494556 0:01:16 7. conclusion the aim of this paper was to test the results of (9) different classification methods applied on one a large scale dataset. the main focus was given in analysing and learning the classification techniques rather than the data set itself. these methods were differs from each other in terms of the type of the classifier and/or the properties of the attribute selections that have used. from the obtained results, it became obvious that in this case of a large-scale bioinformatics dataset that comes from the protein structure prediction field, we can conclude the following points:  it is not applicable to test more than one classifier from the (tree) family, with the default properties of the attribute selection, in the same experiment, as the result will be approximately the same  comparing to the other classifiers in the (bayes) family, it is not preferred to use (naivebayes) classifier with the default properties of the attribute selection in experiments care about the time consuming.  varying the attributes of the feature selection (evaluator and search) always affect the result.  among the seventh classifiers algorithms that have been used with the default properties of the attribute selection, the (filteredclassifier) algorithm has better classification accuracy comparing to consumption time over and above compared algorithms. finally, fine-tuning the experiment platform changing the parameters of the attribute selections should be prioritized for more accurate results in any experiments further. 8. reference [1] al-nabi, luqman delveen, and shukri shereen ahmed. “survey on classification algorithms for data mining:(comparison and evaluation).” computer engineering and intelligent systems 4, no. 8: pp.18-27 (2013). 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[30] yoo, i., et al. “data mining in healthcare and biomedicine: a survey of the literature.” journal of medical systems 36, no. 4: pp.2431-2448 (2012). 9. biography 1nigar m. shafiq surameery https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=3kp8xw gaaaaj 2dana lateef hussein https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=nzv2esaaaaj&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=3kp8xwgaaaaj https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=3kp8xwgaaaaj https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=nzv2e-saaaaj&hl=en https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=nzv2e-saaaaj&hl=en  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq novel polymorphism in a promoter of mbl2 gene result in lower mbl expression in chronic infection caused by hcv paywast jamal jalal biology department college of science university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq paywast.jalal@univsul.edu.iq article info abstract volume 5 – special issue: 4th international conference on the health and medical science : medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) doi: 10.24017/science.2020.ichms2020.13 article history: received: 03 october 2020 accepted: 11 october 2020 the pathogen recognition receptors (prrs) is an active protein in the immune system. the prrs that secreted in the liver and we addressed were l-ficolin, mbl and h-ficolin. previous studies revealed that both mbl and l-ficolin were hampered the hcv entry and infectivity. however, h-ficolin impact still needs to be addressed more so as determining their role during hcv infection. for these purposes, we aimed to determine the effect of different level in the serum of these proteins on the hcv infection and treatment outcome. initially, we selected (25) hcv positive patients and (25) hcv negative control patients from the trent cohort and regional haemophiliac study and to present the differences in serum concentrations of mbl, hand l-ficolin. the level of these proteins was measured by elisa method and compared with each other based on the detected snps by pcr and sequencing methods in the responsible genes. our results showed that the polymorphism at position -221 in the mbl2 promoter significantly reduce the level of mbl protein more than the snp at position -551. interestingly, a new deletion of six nucleotides [aggaag] detected in the promoter at position -319 to -324 that succeeded by four other mutations at position -328, -336, -349 and -427 in most of the analyzed sequences. the 6bp deletion was statistically decreasing the concentration of mbl below 1µg.ml-1, precisely among non-responder patients. in conclusion, the existence of the new deletion in the promoter region of mbl2 gene and the additional newly detected polymorphisms, reduce the level of mbl protein and as a result impacts on the response to treatment among hcv-infected patients. keywords: mbl, snps, prrs, l-ficolin, h-ficolin, hcv infection. mailto:paywast.jalal@univsul.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 117 copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction human liver tissue expresses soluble pattern recognition receptors (prrs) in response to infection and inflammation [reviewed in 1]. two important classes of these receptors are the collectins and the ficolins. collectins and ficolins both bind to repeating patterns of carbohydrates associated with the surface of bacterial and viral pathogens, and particularly viral glycoproteins. these complement-activating proteins directly bind hcv virions through interactions with the virus-encoded glycoproteins e1 and e2. these interactions result in the direct neutralization of the entry [2] and the complement cascade activation through interaction with the serine proteases mbl-associated serine proteases (masp-1 and masp2) [3]. hcv-encoded proteins actively inhibit activation of the complement cascade [4, 5], suggesting that this component of the immune system contributes to the elimination of virus particles and infected cells. if inactivation of the complement cascade is required for the establishment of persistent replication, the activity of these pattern recognition receptors might contribute to protection against chronic hcv infection. this area of the immune reaction to hcv is currently poorly understood and warrants further research. as well as a potential protective effect of lectins and ficolins in hcv infections, it is also possible that expression of these proteins and activation of masp-1 results in activation of hepatic stellate cells, producing extracellular matrix and ultimately resulting in accumulation of fibrotic tissue [6]. role of both ficolins and lectins are still unclear during hcv pathogenesis, but this might constitute an essential mechanism of liver damage in chronic infections [7]. the prr genes polymorphisms have a direct impact on the susceptibility to infections [8] and the severity of infection caused by hcv. moreover, the molecular clones of the allelic variants of l-ficolin have different abilities to recognize hcv particles [9]. it remains to be demonstrated if these phenotypic differences affect the degree of infectivity in hcv-infected individuals. 2. literature review the component of the complement system considered as a role maker in response to any viral disease. during infection, the soluble proteins in this system named as pattern recognition receptors (prrs) activate the immunity and trigger the pathogen receptors. the prrs, lficolins and h-ficolin and mbl (mannose-binding lectin) are active lectins in the immune system which secreted in the liver and has a role in the initiation, regulation, and amplification of the immune response [10, 11]. they activate the lectin complement pathway and promote opsonization [12-14]. the prrs gene polymorphisms were effect on the activity of the prr proteins, which may up-regulate the risk of developing severe case due to the fluctuating the concentration of these proteins [15]. the previous study revealed that the single mutation in the mbl2 gene was related to the fetal loss [16], infant recurrence of disease [17] and adult severity and chronicity of infection [18]. on the other hand, the higher level of mbl has a role in increasing the inflammation in patients with diabetes mellitus [reviewed by 19]. the snps in the mbl2 promoter were identified at nucleotide –550 (h/l), nucleotide –221 (x/y) and the -66 and +4 in the 5́ utr (p/q) [20]. three other structural mutations found in the mbl2 exon 1 called d, b and c alleles at codon 52, 54 and 57, respectively that impair mbl multimerization then decreases binding to the ligand which as a result causes an impair of complement activation [10]. our previous results shown that purified mbl [2] and l-ficolin [9], which are secreted by the liver, directly inhibit entry of hcv into target cells. however, h-ficolin that also secreted by kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 118 the liver still no evidence suggested their direct role in the innate immune response to hcv infection. furthermore, it is not known whether serum concentrations of these molecules which affected by the gene polymorphisms were impacts hcv infection or treatment outcome. in this study, we addressed the previous snps that detected in the promoter of the mbl2 gene. when the sequence analyzed, the 6bp deletion was detected in the promoter region, which decreased the level of mbl protein and impacting the response to treatment among non-responder patients. 3. methods and materials samples total of 50 samples was recruited for this study from three cohorts group of chronic hcv and haemophilia patients also hcv-ve group as a control [table 1]. the samples of the serum were kindly obtained from the trent hcv cohort with the permission of virology research group in faculty of medicine and health sciences, university of nottingham, united kingdom. the samples labelled with ukn (united kingdome nottingham) followed by the genotype/subtype and the patient number in each cohort. different serum samples for each patient were selected for elisa analysis which collected during infection and treatment then retrieved from -80oc. the same samples were used for genotyping of mbl2. the selection of the samples in each hcv infected cohorts was based on the different level of each protein (high, medium, and low level) and the response to the treatment [svr (sustained virological responder), rr (relapsed responder) and nr (non-responder)]. table 1: number of patients recruited in this study for both elisa and genotyping. cohorts no. of patients response to treatment no. of samples status no. of patients elisa pcr control / hcv-ve 25 25 4 chronic hcv 15 svr nr rr 6 5 4 219 15 haemophilia / hcv 10 svr nr 5 5 69 10 elisa the hcv in the serum samples were inactivated using the inactivated buffer. the inactivation method followed in this study was a solution composed of the nonionic surfactant triton x100 which can destroy the viral glycoproteins and resulted in a loss of infectivity [21]. all the samples diluted in an inactivating buffer 2% tbstx100 [tbs, triton x-100] then used for elisa and preserved at 4°c before analysis. mbl binding assay the level of mbl was detected using elisa method based on brown [22] with some modification. the maxisorp® plates (nunc, denmark) were coated with 50µl mannan (1µg.ml-1) in a coating buffer [0.1m nahco3; ph= 9.5] in duplicate. after overnight incubation at 4oc, wells were incubated for 2hr at room temperature (rt) with 200µl blocking buffer [phosphate buffered saline (pbs) and 0.1% (v/v) tween-20] then the wells were washed three times with wash buffer [10mm hepes; 1m nacl; 5mm cacl2; 0.1% (v/v) tween 20; ph= 7.4]. 50µl of each previously inactivated serum samples was diluted 1/5 in wash buffer and added in duplicate to each well. purified mbl (1µg.ml-1) used as a standard control and serially diluted 1/12.5 in the tbstx100 and wash buffer. the plates incubated overnight at 4oc. before antibody binding the washing repeated then in each well 50µl of anti-rmbl were added [polyclonal antiserum to recombinant mbl, diluted 1/700 in wash buffer] then incubated for 2h at rt. wells were washed and incubated 1hr at rt with 50µl kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 119 of 1/2000 dilution of alkaline phosphatase (ap) conjugated monoclonal anti-rabbit igg (a2556, sigma) in wash buffer. the wells washed again and added 100µl pnpp (ρ-nitrophenyl phosphate) substrate (sigma fast n-2770, sigma). the od at 492nm was determined after 20min incubation at rt, and the results were compared to the standard curve made be a serially diluted purified mbl. ficolin binding assay the level of both l-ficolin and h-ficolin were evaluated by elisa method with some modification from krarup [23]. maxisorp® elisa plates (nunc, denmark) coated with 50µl acetylated bovine serum albumin (bsa) [50 µg.ml-1] in phosphate-buffered saline (pbs). following overnight incubation at 4°c, wells blocked with pbs-tween buffer [pbs; 0.05% tween 20; 5% milk] then washed three times with tbs-tween [10mm tris–hcl; 140mm nacl; 0.05% tween 20; 5mm cacl2; ph=7.4]. the inactivated serum diluted in 10mm tbst-ca [tbs; 10mm cacl2; 0.05% tween 20] and tbstx100, then added in duplicate and incubated overnight at 4°c. recombinant and purified ficolin [4µg.ml-1] used as a standard and serially diluted 1/12.5 in tbst-ca and tbstx100 buffers then added to the coated wells in duplicate. after washing 3x, both primary antibodies, biotin-labelled anti-human l-ficolin antibody (gn5, 0.5µg.ml-1) and h-ficolin-3 purified goat igg (af2367, r&d system/usa) used for detecting of l-ficolin and h-ficolin, respectively, were added then incubated for 2hrs at room temperature (rt). wells washed again (3x) and incubated with a 1:1000 dilution in wash buffer of an anti-mouse igg (fc-specific) alkaline phosphatase antibody produced in goat (sigma) and monoclonal anti-goat/ sheep igg alkaline phosphatase antibody produced in mouse (sigma), respectively. the washing repeated three times with tbs-tween. the pnitrophenyl phosphate substrate (pnpp) substrate (sigma) used for visualizing the binding. measuring the absorbance by the microplate reader at 405 nm (fluostar omega/ microplate reader, bmg/labtech-uk) after 20-30 min incubation at rt. level of ficolin was quantified by comparison to a generated standard curve from diluted serum with a defined lficolin and h-ficolin concentration. direct polymerase chain reaction a single-copy gene sequence up to 450bp was directly from the serum. for this method, we used thermo scientific phusion blood direct pcr kit (f-5475) according to the manufacturer instruction and all the primers used for this study were designed and analyzed previously by thio et al. [19]. mbl2 promoter amplified using mblp550f [actctgccagggccaacgta] and mblp221r [tgatgagcagtggggatccta]. a single pcr reaction was made up with 0.5μl of the inactivated serum sample, 0.5µl (5 pmol) of both the sense and the antisense primer, 10µl (2x) phusion blood pcr buffer, 0.6µl mgcl2, 1µl edta, 0.4µl of high fidelity taq which were added in a 20μl reaction volume. amplification was carried out with one cycles of initial denaturation at 98°c for 5min, and 35 cycles of denaturation at 98°c for 15sec, annealing at 63°c for 5sec, and extension at 72°c for 15sec. a final extension step performed at 72°c for 2min. sequencing amplified pcr products sequenced using the sanger method and by applied bioscience (uk). both primers used for amplifying the fragment were used for sequencing. also, two more internal primers used for sequencing mbl2 promoter, which was: mblp550r [cagctgattcccctccaggac] and mblp221f [gggattcaggtggcagatgg]. the sequences were analyzed by both mega7 ink program and an online http://multalin.toulouse.inra.fr software. confirmation of the deleted nucleotides in the promoter of mbl2 deletion of 6bp detected in the mbl2 promoter region of when the sequences analyzed in some patient's sample. the following steps were followed to confirm the presence of the deletion: cloning and transformation to confirm the deletion in the promoter, the previously amplified fragment from serum was purified using genelute™ pcr cleanup kit (sigma-aldrich) according to the manufacturer's instructions and then cloned into a vector using pcdnatm 3.1 directional topo expression http://multalin.toulouse.inra.fr/ kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 120 kit (invitrogen life technologies). briefly, topo cloning reaction prepared as follow: 0.5µl from each of topo vector and the salt solution was mixed gently with 2µl of the purified insert and completed to 10µl of sterile water. the mixture was incubated first at 22oc for 1hr, then directly on ice for 5min. the transformation was done as follow: 1.25µl of the ligated insert were mixed with the 25µl competent cell (stellartm competent cell, st0231) and followed by incubation on ice for 30min. at 42oc, the cells were heat-shocked during 45sec, then immediately transferred to the ice for 5min. the transformed product was mixed with 250µl preheated soc medium and incubated 1hr at 37oc. 100μl of the transferred cells were cultured on a pre-warmed lb agar plate (containing 100µg.ml-1 ampicillin) followed by incubation overnight at 37⁰c. transformant analysis the positive transformants were analyzed by directional pcr and by sequencing. colony pcr the positive transformants were tested by direct pcr without the need for extraction, using two sets of primers; t7 [5'-taatacgactcactataggg-3'] as a forward primer and bgh [5'-tagaagg cacagtcgagg-3'] as a reverse primer. the cloned gene was amplified by pcr kithotstar taq polymerase kit. an aliquot of the pcr made up by mixing a portion of the colony with 1.5µl 10x buffer, 0.6µl of each of the primer, 0.5µl dntps, and 0.075µl enzyme then completed with water to 12.5µl. the pcr program was initially started with a heat activation step for 15min at 95oc followed by 25 cycles of denaturation for 20sec at 95oc, annealing for 20sec at 55oc, and extension for 1.30min at 72oc. lastly, another cycle of extension for 2min at 72oc was performed. sequencing the sequencing was done for plasmids that the colony screening on gel gives the correct size. the plasmids were prepared using gene elute™ plasmid miniprep kit (sigma-aldrich) according to manufacturer protocol. the sequencing performed using both t7 and bgh as external primers and both mblp550r and mblp221f as internal primers. the sequences were aligned and analyzed with the reference sequence, accession no. ng_008196.1, from ncbi. statistical analysis the analysis was performed by the graphpad prism 7 to determine the association between the snps and the concentration of each protein. the level of each protein determined by normalizing with the specific standard proteins used for each one. the difference in the median levels for different categories was assessed by one way anova test analysis. for all the analysis, the significant evaluated when the p-value < 0.05. 4. results measuring the level of mbl by elisa the normalized value from the elisa analysis showed no statistically significant increase in the median level between the chronic and haemophilia patients when compared to the control group, which are hcv-ve [figure 1]. the level of the protein among the chronic patients was increased in most of the patients; however, among the haemophilic patients, the level of mbl was remained in the same range as the hcv-ve samples. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 121 figure 1: comparison between serum mbl levels between hcv infected patients and hcv-ve group. these samples which their mbl level presented in the graph were selected to address the 6bp deletion in the mbl2 promoter. each dot is the median concentration of one hcv patient, and the bars are the mean with sd. each dots in control represent the normalized concentration of mbl in the serum sample of one individual. alignment of the sequences when the sequence analyzed the 6bp deletion at position -324, aggaag -319 observed which located between the two previously detected snps -550 and -221 [figure 2]. the deletion was detected in 12 samples, one in the hcv-ve, while the others in the hcv+ve samples. for comparison, 14 other samples were selected in both chronic and haemophilia as an hcv+ve sample with no detected deletion in their sequences. moreover, 25 hcv-ve samples were selected as control with the same age range as infected hcv patient's age. the chromatogram of the deleted 6bp nucleotides (aggaag) was showed repeated mixed picks at position -324 to -319 in the mbl2 promoter region. figure 2 presented the alignment of those sequence which performed between those sequence with deletion and those with no deletion. the alignment is done by online http://multalin.toulouse.inra.fr software. the alignment showed the deletion of 6bp of aggaag nucleotides at positions -324 to -319. three snps preceded the deletions at positions -328, -336 and -349 which a changed to g with different frequency among the sequences. moreover, another snp detected at a position 427 a>c in all the sequence which the deletion included. the single mutations in the promoter region (-550 and -221) were homozygous for most of the samples, and the latter one was more frequent among all the sequences. other variations were detected as well in both promoter and the exon region table 2. the snps of the promoter region were at positions -550g>c, -427a>c, -349a>g, -336a>g, 328a>g and -221c>g. the most frequent variation among those sequence had a 6bp deletions at positions -427 and -221. the snps in the coding region were at codon 54 and 57 while no snps were detected in the codon 52. the variations in the exon region were detected to be less frequent among the selected samples. a p r o t e i n c o n c e n t r a t i o n µ g . m l 1 c o n t r o l / h c v v e c h r o n i c h c v h a e m o p h i l i a c / h c v + v e 0 1 2 3 4 5 http://multalin.toulouse.inra.fr/ kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 122 b figure 2: sequence alignment of the mbl2 promoter. a) schematic map showing the 6bp deletion position. two primers used to amplify 475nt; then for confirmation of the deletion, two internal primers were used when cloned and re-sequenced. b) the alignment showing the 6bp deletion (-324 to -319) preceded by three snps. the first snp at position -550 c>g followed by snp at position -427 a>t. the three snps at position -328, -336 and -349 were preceded the deletion. the last snps showed in the alignment is at position -221 c>g. table 2: detected snps in the selected samples for the analysis of the 6bp deletion in the mbl2 promoter. the snps in both -550 and -221 of the promoter and the variations in the exon region (codon 52, 54 and 57) were showed as a genotype. samples -550 -427 -349 -336 -328 -324_-319 -221 codon 52 codon 54 codon 57 g>c (h/l) a>c a>g a>g a>g aggaag c>g (x/y) c>t (a/d) g>a (a/b) g>a (a/c) hcv-ve control uknc4 h a a a a del y uknc6 l a a a a del y uknc7 h c a g a aggaag y uknc8 h a a a a del y hcv+ve with deletion kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 123 ukn1bch26 l c g g g del y ukn3ach29 h c a g a del y ukn3ach39 l c a g a del y ukn1ach54 l c g g g del y a a a ukn3ach95 l c g g g del y ukn1ahaem9 l c g g a del y a a a ukn1bhaem23 l c g g a del y a b a ukn3ahaem24 h c a a a del y a a a ukn2ahaem27 l c a a a del y a a c ukn3ahaem4 l c a g a del y a b a uknhaem22 l c a g a del y a a c hcv+ve without deletion ukn3ach19 h a a a a aggaag y a a a ukn2bch65 h a a a a aggaag y ukn1ach74 l a a a a aggaag y a a a ukn1ch76 h a a a a aggaag y a a a ukn1bch78 l a a a a aggaag x a a a ukn1bch81 l c a a a aggaag y a a a ukn3ach92 h a a a a aggaag y ukn4ch100 l a a a a aggaag x ukn1ach107 l a a a a aggaag x ukn1ach123 h a a a a aggaag y ukn1haem7 l a a a a aggaag x a a c ukn1haem10 l a a a a aggaag x a a a ukn1bhaem11 h a a a a aggaag y a a a ukn1bhaem16 h a a a a aggaag y a a a relation between the deletion and mbl level each patient had a different level of mbl during the entire period of treatment. the concentration in the samples with deletion ranges between 0.04 to 3.67µg.ml-1 and for samples not including the 6bp deletion range between 0.05 to 4.29µg.ml-1. the mean value of the mbl level were 1.89, 2.48 and 1.71µg.ml-1 for the healthy control, hcv+ve without and hcv+ve with deletion, respectively. according to the anova analysis, a significant (p <0.0001) variation observed between the mean of the mbl level during the entire period of infection and treatment in each patients sample [figure 3]. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 124 figure 3: the level of mbl for each patient at a different time of infection and treatment. each circle represents one sample. the red circles represent samples with 6bp deletion while the blue circles represent samples without deletion. the black bars are the mean with sem. a comparison between median mbl concentration between different categories of hcv-ve, samples with 6bp deletion and samples without deletion was carried out to determine the general outcome of the 6bp nucleotide deletion in the mbl2 promoter. both anova and kruskal-wallis tests showed p < 0.05, which considered significant variation in the levels of mbl in these groups [figure 4]. the level of the hcv+ve samples with deletion was lower than both hcv-ve and hcv+ve without deletion. the hcv+ve samples with no deletion had a higher concentration of mbl than the other groups. figure 4: comparison of the median mbl level in patients with and without 6bp deletion in the mbl2 promoter. each dot represents a median concentration of a patient in both hcv infected groups. the dots in the control group present the normalized level of mbl in a healthy individual. the black bar represents the mean and sd. impact of the 6bp deletion on the treatment outcome in order to get the answer for the effect of the deletion in the mbl2 promoter on the response to therapy, we grouped the patients based on the treatment outcome into nr, rr and svr [figure 5]. mbl level increased among the groups of the samples which the deletion not detected within the range of 1.8 to above 3µg.ml-1. our analysis showed a significant impact of the 6bp deletion on the nr group via decreasing the level of this protein below 1µg.ml-1 in most of the serum samples. however, the 6bp deletion in the promoter has not changed the level among the svr patients. the concentration of mbl among the rr patients were not u k n 1 b c h 2 6 u k n 3 a c h 2 9 u k n 3 a c h 3 9 u k n 1 a c h 5 4 u k n 3 a c h 9 5 u k n 3 a h a e m 4 u k n 1 a h a e m 9 u k n h a e m 2 2 u k n 1 b h a e m 2 3 u k n 3 a h a e m 2 4 u k n 2 a h a e m 2 7 u k n 3 a c h 1 9 u k n 2 b c h 6 5 u k n 1 a c h 7 4 u k n 1 c h 7 6 u k n 1 b c h 7 8 u k n 1 b c h 8 1 u k n 3 a c h 9 2 u k n 4 c h 1 0 0 u k n 1 a c h 1 0 7 u k n 1 a / 1 b c h 1 2 3 u k n 1 h a e m 7 u k n 1 h a e m 1 0 u k n 1 b h a e m 1 1 u k n 1 b h a e m 1 6 0 1 2 3 4 5 p r o t e i n c o n c e n t r a t i o n µ g . m l 1 h c v + v e / w i t h 6 b p d e l e t i o n h c v + v e / w i t h o u t 6 b p d e l e t i o n p a t i e n t s s a m p l e s p r o t e i n c o n c e n t r a t i o n µ g . m l 1 h c v v e / n o d e l e t i o n h c v + v e / n o d e l e t i o n h c v + v e / 6 b p d e l e t i o n 0 1 2 3 4 5 kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 125 showed noticeable impact because of the low number of patients in this group in comparison to other groups. figure 5: effect of the mbl2 6bp deletion on the treatment response. the hcv infected patients were grouped based on the response to treatment to non-responders (nr), relapsed responder (rr) and sustained virological responder (svr). each dots present the median concentration of the mbl protein in a patient. the black bars are the mean and se. 5. discussion in this study, six nucleotides [aggaag] deleted in the mbl2 promoter that located between the two previously detected snps at -550 (rs11003125) and -221 (rs7096206) at position -319 to -324. notably, this deletion was more frequent among non-responders patients. moreover, some other snps at position -328, -336, -349 and -427 were preceded the deletion. to our knowledge, no previous studies are pointing to these snps and mutation that we investigated. the mbl levels were elevated when the infection started (figure 1), then this level changed during treatment. it is worth noted that these mutations and the deletion reduce the level of mbl to be lower than 1µg.ml-1, in comparison to that participant which were homozygous allele for -221. as well as, the low level of mbl was detected in comparison to the level of both l-ficolin and hficolin in most of the hcv-infected haemophiliac patients. many studies were interested in the innate immunity proteins, specifically, mbl, which may be due to its impact in the increasing the activity of the complement system, it is oligomerization difference, and level in the serum. the concentration of this protein should be considered because it is fluctuated during the entire lives depend on the age and environment [16, 24, 25]. eventually, the level of mbl changed depend on the presence of different mutations observed in the mbl2 gene precisely in both exon and promoter. madsen and his colleagues have first reported the relationship between the level and different variant allele at position -221 [20]; also it has been shown that different haplotype in the promoter (hy, ly, and lx) show association with high, medium, and low levels of mbl in the serum [26]. in this study, the homozygous snps at -221 were more frequent in most of the hcv seropositive samples, and this agreed with the result published by brown [27]. while due to the deletion of the six nucleotide in the promoter, the level reduced to be less than 1µg.ml-1. regarding the snps at -550 promoter, only some of the patients were heterozygous, and it has been proven that the snp at this position has a low impact on the mbl level [19, 28, 29]. supporting the relation between snps and the mbl level recent studies pointing out that these snps produce a genetic balance which could explain the degree of difference in many populations [10, 28] also affect the number of lectin domains per molecule [2]. in general, the concentration below 0.1 µg.ml-1 was considered as mbl deficiency [8]. our results showed that this deficiency led to non-responding or relapsed to the treatment [figure 5] in most of the p r o t e i n c o n c e n t r a t i o n µ g . m l 1 h c v v e n r r r s v r n r r r s v r 0 1 2 3 4 5 h c v + v e / 6 b p d e l e t i o n h c v + v e / n o d e l e t i o nc o n t r o l kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 126 patients who associate to the viral persistence and opsonic deficiency [19, 28, 30]. this result agreed with the study by matsushita [31] on a japanese population, which concluded that people infected with hcv and with the low level of mbl were less response to interferon. it has been reported that mbl deficiency due to the snp at -221 position could be beneficial for the host [10] and could be used as a marker for development of the disease to hepatocellular carcinoma [32]. in a new study on a group of people infected with hbv revealed that the polymorphism in the mbl2 gene act as a modifier for the susceptibility of the virus and progression of the disease [33]. on the other hand, some other researcher stated, no relation observed between the mbl level and the snps. our results showed that some of the patients responded to the treatment despite the snps in the -221 promoter which may be due to the high level of other prrs [figure 6] [34] or the genotype of the virus [35, 36]. the last result agreed with kilpatrick, which demonstrated that there is no connection between the concentration of mbl and vulnerability to hcv infection [37], disease severity or therapy response [38]. interestingly, kilpatrick showed a slight relationship between the high level of mbl and chronicity of hcv [37]. however, zupin [39] were reported the association of the snps with svr instead of susceptibility to hcv or viral clearance. the level of all other prrs should be encountered when studying the immune system. the level of both ficolins (h and l) have fluctuated with the level of mbl during the treatment and a balance observed with each protein in most of the patients [data not showed]. for instance, when the level of mbl is low, the level of l-ficolin, h-ficolin or both was high, and this may be due to the necessity of compensation within the lectin pathway. it has been reported that when mbl deficient the level of l-ficolin increased [40] due to the genetic balance and importance of the reparation in the immune system [41]. 6. conclusion this study is confirming the effect of the snps in the mbl2 promoter from the selected samples of european background. the high level of mbl in most of the serum samples could be due to low variations in the structural gene which thought to effects on the level of this protein which lead to the severe cases of these patients. furthermore, the low level of this protein may be due to the presence of the mutation at position -221 in most of the sequences. the existence of the new deletion with other polymorphisms in the mbl2 gene promoter of significantly reduce the quantity of the mbl protein in hcv-infected patients and precisely among non-responder. this deletion could be a biomarker for the progression of the disease due to not responding to the treatment. for more confirmation, more samples with the different ethnic group should be included, as well as; the control group should be from the same background with the infected patients. the expression of the protein level should be studied and compared to the serum protein level. more work needs to determine the actual impact of all the new 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[26] a. m. oudshoorn, f. a. van den dungen, k. p. bach, i. koomen, w. p. fetter, a. catsburg, et al., "mannose-binding lectin in term newborns and their mothers: genotypic and phenotypic relationship," hum immunol, vol. 69, pp. 344-8, jun 2008. [27] e. e. brown, m. zhang, r. zarin-pass, t. bernig, f.-c. tseng, n. xiao, et al., "mbl2 and hepatitis c virus infection among injection drug users," bmc infectious diseases vol. 8, 2008. [28] p. garred, f. larsen, h. o. madsena, and c. koch, "mannose-binding lectin deficiency—revisited," molecular immunology, vol. 40, pp. 73-84, 2003. [29] r. steffensen, s. thiel, k. varming, c. jersild, and j. c. jensenius, "detection of structural gene mutations and promoter polymorphisms in the mannan-binding lectin (mbl) gene by polymerase chain reaction with sequence-specific primers," journal of immunological methods, vol. 241, pp. 33-42, 2000. [30] p. garred, s. thiel, h. o. madsen, l. p. ryder, j. c. jensenius, and a. svejgaard, "gene frequency and partial protein characterization of an allelic variant of mannan binding protein associated with low serum concentrations," clin. exp. immunol., vol. 90 pp. 517-521, 1992. [31] m. matsushita, m. hijikata, y. ohta, k. iwata, m. matsumoto, k. nakao, et al., "hepatitis c virus infection and mutations of mannose-binding lectin gene mbl," arch virol, vol. 143, pp. 645-651, 1998. [32] y. lin, c. su, j. niu, z. guo, and l. cai, "impact of mannose-binding lectin 2 polymorphism on the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma: a case-control study in chinese han population," j epidemiol, vol. 25, pp. 387-91, 2015. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 128 [33] x. gu, q. ji, h. wang, m. jiang, j. yang, m. fang, et al., "genetic variants of mannose-binding lectin 2 gene influence progression and prognosis of patients with hepatitis b virus infection in china," clin res hepatol gastroenterol, feb 5 2016. [34] j. liu, m. a. m. ali, y. shi, y. zhao, f. luo, j. yu, et al., "specifically binding of l-ficolin to n-glycans of hcv envelope glycoproteins e1 and e2 leads to complement activation," cellular & molecular immunology, vol. 6, pp. 235-244, 2009. [35] j. m. pawlotsky, "therapy of hepatitis c: from empiricism to eradication," hepatology, vol. 43, pp. s20720, feb 2006. [36] k. sasaki, a. tsutsumi, and n. wakamiya, "mannose-binding lectin polymorphisms in patients with hepatitis c virus infection," scandinavian journal of gastroenterology, vol. 35, pp. 960-965, 2009. [37] d. c. kilpatrick, t. e. s. delahooke, c. koch, m. l. turner, and p. c. hayes, "mannan-binding lectin and hepatitis c infection," clin exp immunol vol. 132, pp. 92-95, 2003. [38] a. c. vallinoto, r. f. da silva, r. b. hermes, i. s. amaral, e. c. miranda, m. s. barbosa, et al., "mannose-binding lectin gene polymorphisms are not associated with susceptibility to hepatitis c virus infection in the brazilian amazon region," hum immunol, vol. 70, pp. 754-7, sep 2009. [39] l. zupin, v. polesello, g. alberi, g. moratelli, s. l. croce, f. masutti, et al., "mbl2 genetic variants in hcv infection susceptibility, spontaneous viral clearance and peghylated-interferon plus ribavirin treatment response," scand j immunol, may 2 2016. [40] m. ishii, i. ohsawa, h. inoshita, g. kusaba, k. onda, m. wakabayashi, et al., "serum concentration of complement components of the lectin pathway in maintenance hemodialysis patients, and relatively higher levels of l-ficolin and masp-2 in mannose-binding lectin deficiency," ther apher dial, vol. 15, pp. 4417, oct 2011. [41] h. bjarnadottir, m. arnardottir, and b. r. ludviksson, "frequency and distribution of fcn2 and fcn3 functional variants among mbl2 genotypes," immunogenetics, vol. 68, pp. 315-25, may 2016. 1. introduction samples elisa mbl binding assay ficolin binding assay direct polymerase chain reaction sequencing confirmation of the deleted nucleotides in the promoter of mbl2 cloning and transformation transformant analysis colony pcr sequencing measuring the level of mbl by elisa alignment of the sequences relation between the deletion and mbl level impact of the 6bp deletion on the treatment outcome 6. conclusion  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 117 epilepsy and child history in dr. jamal ahmad rashid pediatric teaching hospital sulaymaniyah /iraq awayi ghazy abdulkareem pediatric department college of nursing university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq awayi.abdulkareem@univsul.edu.iq article info abstract volume 6 – issue 2– december 2021 doi: 10.24017/science.2021.2.11 article history: received 25/10/2021 accepted 24/1/2022 epilepsy is a chronic neurological illness that is the most prevalent severe brain problem worldwide. the purpose of this research is to determine the importance of certain risk variables for epilepsy in children in sulaymaniah city, such as age, gender, head trauma, nervous system infectious diseases including meningitis and unusual perinatal history, low birth weight, neonate respiratory failure, neonatal seizure, socioeconomic status, as well as parent consanguinity. this research was created based on 104 cases (where 51 of the patients were male, while 53 of the patients were female) among the inpatient and outpatient neurology unit of dr jamal ahmad rashid pediatric teaching hospital from 20/12/2020 to 29/4/2021. in this research, all the children were evaluated, as well as their medical and personal information was collected. a relation between the phenomenon of epilepsy with numerous risk factors was made; the ratio was calculated to determine the essential variables linked with epilepsy. data were collected through interviewing of the patients then analyzed through the application of statistical analysis descriptive. as a result of the study each of age, head trauma, gender, febrile, positive family history for epilepsy, unusual perinatal history, and neonatal infection has been shown to have a statistically significant link to epilepsy. keywords: epilepsy , children, history, risk factors, neurological disorder copyright © 2021 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction epilepsy is a brain illness that produces seizures in children. this is among the most prevalent nervous system illnesses, affecting adults & children of whole races and ethnic origins. as a burst of aberrant electric signals disrupts the normal brain signals, a seizure occurs; everything that disrupts the normal regular connections among nerve cells in the brain could trigger a seizure. these contain a high temperature, low or high blood sugar, alcohol or other drug kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 118 withdrawals, or a head injury. epilepsy, on the other hand, is diagnosed when a child has two or more seizures without a known cause [1]. in most population-based epilepsy epidemiology research, two or more seizures occurring at least 24 hours apart are defined as epilepsy."; in theory, an epileptic seizure is described as "a brief appearance of signs and/or symptoms caused by abnormally high or synchronous neuronal activity in a brain’ [2]. as a result, epilepsy is currently the most common childhood brain condition, and it is a brain disorder that causes an infant to suffer from recurring seizures. the electrical and chemical activation of the brain are both altered, which causes seizures, seizures could be influenced by everything that damages the brain, such as brain injuries, infections, poisoning, and even development of the brain issues before birth. generally, the causes of the seizures as well as epilepsy could not be identified. [2]. epilepsy is caused by many reasons. common causes of childhood seizures or epilepsy include fever (febrile seizures), genetics, head trauma, infections of the head and its covering, lack of oxygenated blood, hydrocephalus (excess water in the brain canals), and brain developmental anomalies [3]. seizures are based on a combination of genetic and cultural factors in each person; inheritance is highly significant as a cause of epilepsy; epilepsy was also regarded as a mainly inherited illness in the nineteenth century, generally as one symptom of the ‘neurological trait'. as well as provoking elements, despite the complex nature of causation, instances could be divided into four groups based on the primary cause (or presumed reason). idiopathic epilepsy is recognized as epilepsy that is mostly genetic in the origin, so that it has no substantial neuroanatomical or neuropathological abnormalities. a single gene such as kcnq2 produces a few uncommon epilepsies; more widespread are epilepsies via polygenic or complicated inheritance. many 'idiopathic generalized epilepsies' including 'benign epilepsies of children' fall into to this group. the word idiopathic is selected since the epilepsy is caused by a complicated mix of likely genetic and non-genetic pathways, including epigenetic and epistatic pathways, via chance and environmental factors acting throughout time as the brain grows. symptomatic epilepsy is described as epilepsy that is caused by an inherited or genetic origin and linked via neuroanatomical or neuropathological abnormalities indicating an underlying illness or condition. this group involves acquired diseases and developmental and congenital illnesses that are linked with pathological brain alterations, whether genetic (acquired) in the origin [4]. certain ‘provoked epilepsies' will also have a genetic foundation, while others will have an acquired base. this group includes reflex epilepsies (that are generally genetic) and epilepsies with such a strong seizure precipitant. cryptogenic epilepsy is described as epilepsy of suspected symptomatic origin where the reason has not been determined. the numerous of all such instances is decreasing. however, it remains an influential group, accounting for at least 40percentage points of adult-onset [5]. they have been assumed to be the outcome of a genetic predisposition or a one-of-a-kind style of inheritance. symptomatic epilepsies are thought to be caused by a localized or diffused brain lesion, as confirmed by history taking, functional neuroimaging, eeg (human electroencephalogram) results, or biological tests [5]. seizures that are partial (focal, local): simple partial seizures (without loss of consciousness): through motor indications, sensorial signals, autonomic symptoms or signs, psychic signs, and so on [6]. complex partial seizures (via impairment of consciousness), simple partial-onset guided by impairments of consciousness: via simple partial parts followed by impaired consciousness, automatisms, via impairment of consciousness at the beginning, partial seizures proceeding to secondary generalised seizures, simple partial seizures progressing to generalised seizures, complex partial seizures progressing to generalised seizures that are widespread: myoclonic seizures, clonic seizures, tonic-clonic seizures, atonic seizures, and tonic seizures are the most common types of seizures [7]. cae is a common ige that affects otherwise healthy school-aged teenagers. the clinical picture is one of frequent absence seizures. inter-ictal eeg demonstrates natural background kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 119 activities and generalised three hz spike-and-wave discharge, which transforms into a clinical seizure after 4–5 seconds. a diagnosis is made by identifying the condition based on symptoms and signs. seizures with no apparent cause, such as fever or trauma, are frequently diagnosed as epilepsy. while the diagnostic process for each child may vary, the following phases are often included: parents with epilepsy may be asked questions concerning their child's high fever, serious head injury, staring, inattention, or breath-holding. a detailed seizure report: the person(s) present during the child's seizure will be interviewed. computed tomography (ct) scan: a ct scan can assess whether an acute brain lesion or disease causes a seizure. eeg: this could be used to predict seizure recurrence risk and identify seizure types and epilepsy syndromes. brain picture recommended for analyzing teenagers with new-onset seizures or seizures that started in a specific location of the brain. an epilepsy diagnosis is made after an examination, testing, and observation period [8]. on average, 0.5-1% of adolescents have epilepsy, making it the most frequent chronic neurologic condition in infancy. epilepsy symptoms are important for parents, educators, and other caregivers. notably, many of these symptoms are characteristic of childhood. even if they are frequent and uncommon, it is crucial to remember that seizures are not invariably epilepsy. high fevers and many illnesses can trigger seizures. attention span, memory, muttering, or no reply, unanticipated stomach ache with disorientation and lethargy, unanticipated abnormal tiredness with irritation when awoken. rapid and recurrent fear or anger clusters of seated babies "jackknifing" and clusters of neonates clutching with both arms [9]. 2. methods and materials 2.1. the research design the quantitative (descriptive study) is a purposive design used to find out the “prevalence of some of risk factor among children with epilepsy in sulaymaniah city”. the study was carried out from 2nd february 2021 till 18th march 2021. 2.2. administration arrangement and ethical considerations official permission was obtained from dr. jamal ahmad rashid pediatric teaching hospital / chronic disease department for this study was granted after verbal informed consent was achieved from whole participants before their involvement in this research to gain their confidence and acceptance to participate in the current study. 2.3. the setting of the research this research was carried out at dr. jamal ahmad rashid pediatric teaching hospital, founded in 1970 to serve children and located in sulaimaniah city. the sample of this study taken in the chronic disease department, it was a daily based patient department, this centre founded in 2014 every month more than 300 children after diagnosed with a chronic disease. like (epilepsy, mental growth retardation,) of neonate till 18 years old they visiting this center. for receiving chronic medication, follow up, checking. this department consists of staff that specializes in dealing with a child with chronic disease. 2.4. sample of the research the non-probability essential sampling was used, a sample of (104) children via epilepsy who attend the chronic disease department in dr. jamal ahmad rashid pediatric teaching hospital, the children were chosen according to the following criteria: 2.4.1. inclusion criteria 1. whole children with epilepsy. 2. children aged less than 18 years old. 3. children registered in the chronic center in dr. jamal ahmad rashid pediatric teaching hospital. 4. children and their parents who have voluntarily accepted to participate in this research and consent were given. 2.4.2. exclusion criteria kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 120 1. children who do not have epilepsy 2. children who mentally retarded 3. children and their families who refuse to participate 4. for the present study child with other chronic diseases 2.5. the study instrument a questionnaire was developed mainly to find the “some risk factors prevalence among children with epilepsy in sulaymaniah city”. the development of the questionnaire is based on some intensive review of available literature and measurement tool and questionnaire used in previous related studies. the questionnaire includes two parts. the first part is sociodemographic characteristics of the child, which includes age, gender, child order in the family, children at diagnosis, residency, one of seizure age, seizure types, when was the last attack of seizure, has your child ever been hospitalized for seizure, gestational age, type of delivery, place of delivery, low birth weight, did the child have any head abnormality, neonatal jaundice pathologic, head trauma, febrile convulsion, neonate respiratory failure, infection neonate period, admitted to nicu, and neonatal seizure. the second part is the family's sociodemographic characteristics, including a family history of epilepsy, parent consanguinity, mother's chronic disease, mother's age at birth, and whether the mother was under any medication during pregnancy. 2.6. validity of questionnaire form the face validity of a present study questionnaire was established through the panel of (13) experts. the specialists were requested to assess the questionnaire for content clarity, relevancy, and appropriateness to accomplish the research objectives. 2.7. pilot study a pilot research was conducted on the unpurposive sample of 10 epilepsy children from 15 january to 25 of january 2021. pilot research aims to evaluate the instrument's reliability, assess the instrument's clarity, and estimate the average time required for data collection. according to the outcomes of the pilot research time required for the interview ranged between 25 to 30 minutes for each respondent. on the other hand, cronbach's alpha values were estimated to check the internal accuracy of data depending on reliability test which it is a scale tool of reliability [10, 12]. in this pilot study, the reliability result based on alpha cronbach result on 10 children is 0.89 it passes the reliability analysis α–value greater than the acceptable minimum value of cronbach's alpha [11, 14]. 2.8. statistical procedures data were prepared, organized, and entered into the program named statistical package for social service (spss, version 23). in this study, descriptive statistics were found for all demographic questions [15]. chi-square tests were also utilized to determine the association between children’s social and parents' demographics [13, 11]. the chi-square test of independence is a famous nonparametric test for determining whether at least two categories of samples are independent or not. a common question about a contingency table is whether it is independent. independence indicates the absence of any link among row and column parameters (the quantity of a row variable would not help us guess the value of a column variable) [16]. the null theory implies that understanding the level of variable a does not assist you to anticipate the level of variable b (there is no connection between two variables). in contrast, the alternative theory is that there is a link between two variables. the null, as well as alternative hypotheses, are stated in chi-square tests of independence [11]: h0: the two categorical variables are unrelated to one another. ha: the two categorical variables are related. 3. results table 1 represents the children's socio-demographic characteristics, including age, gender, child order, age of diagnosis, and residency. the result showed that most children are aged between six to ten (36.5%) while most are diagnosed between ages one to five (46.2%). the percentage of females (51%) is higher than kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 121 the percentage of males (49%) since most of them are living in urban (67%). second-order child is the most percentage in the family (33.7%) followed by third (28.8%), first (16.3%), fourth (15.4%), and fifth (5.8%) respectively. table 1: socio demographic questions of the children frequency percentage (%) age 1-5 23 22.1% 6-10 38 36.5% 11-15 35 33.7% 16-20 8 7.7% gender male 51 49.0% female 53 51.0% child order in the family first 17 16.3% second 35 33.7% third 30 28.8% fourth 16 15.4% fifth 6 5.8% children age at diagnosis 1-5 48 46.2% 6-10 37 35.6% 11-15 15 14.4% 16-20 4 3.8% residency rural 32 31.1% suburban 3 1.9% urban 69 67.0% table 2 represents the socio-demographic characteristics of the children about seizure. the onset of seizure age between one to five years old is the highest percentage among other ages (47.1%) followed by 6 to 10 (34.6%), 11 to 15 (14.4%) and 16 to 20 (3.8%), respectively, while type for most of them are generalized seizure (71.2%). majority of the children who were attacked by last seizure in 2020 (51.9%) while most of them have not been hospitalized for a seizure (78.8%) table 2: socio-demographic characteristics of the children about the seizure frequency percentage (%) the onset of seizure age 1-5 49 47.1% 6-10 36 34.6% 11-15 15 14.4% 16-20 4 3.8% seizure types generalized seizure 74 71.2% focal seizure 29 27.9% unknown 1 1.0% when was the last attack of seizure? 2016 1 1.0% 2017 2 1.9% 2018 4 3.8% 2019 29 27.9% 2020 54 51.9% 2021 14 13.5% has your child ever been hospitalized for a seizure yes 22 21.2% no 82 78.8% table3 represents the socio-demographic characteristics of the children at birth. results showed that most children (88.5%) who participated in this research responded nvd while most were at the hospital (98.1%). the highest percentage of children had low weight during kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 122 birth (93.3%) and 96.2% of them had no head abnormality and 93.3% have no head trauma. the percentage of having no pathological jaundice at birth (94.2%) are higher than children who had pathologic (5.8%). in contrast, most children (65.4%) had no febrile convulsion and had no neonate respiratory failure (94.1%). in addition, the majority of children had no infection (92.3%) since fewer of them had admitted to nicu (25%). table 3: socio-demographic characteristics of the children about birth frequency percentage(%) gestational age preterm 5 4.8% mature 98 94.2% post term 1 1.0% type of delivery nvd 92 88.5% cs 12 11.5% place of delivery home 2 1.9% hospital 102 98.1% low birth weight yes 7 6.7% no 97 93.3% head abnormality no 100 96.2% sturge weber syndromes 1 1.0% hydro cephalous 1 1.0% microcephaly 2 1.9% neonatal jaundice (pathologic) yes 6 5.8% no 98 94.2% head trauma yes 7 6.7% no 97 93.3% febrile convulsion yes 36 34.6% no 68 65.4% neonate respiratory failure yes 6 5.9% no 96 94.1% infections neonate period no infection 96 92.3% tonsillitis 1 1.0% dermatitis +uti 1 1.0% uti 3 2.9% flu 3 2.9% admitted to nicu yes 26 25.0% no 78 75.0% table4 represents the socio-demographic characteristics of parents. most of the parents have negative epilepsy (80.8%) and have no consanguinity (81.7%). the majority of parents have no chronic disease (97.1%) and most of them were aged between 20 and 25 (30.8%). in addition, most of the parents used dm medication during parents (95.2%). table 4: socio-demographic characteristics about parents frequency percentage(%) family history of epilepsy positive 20 19.2% negative 84 80.8% parent consanguinity no 85 81.7% other relatives 19 18.3% mother chronic disease no chronic disease 101 97.1% heart disease +htn 1 1.0% heart disease +d.m 1 1.0% htn 1 1.0% kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 123 mother age at birth 20-25 32 30.8% 26-30 26 25.0% 31-35 25 24.0% 36-40 15 14.4% 41-45 6 5.8% did the mother under any medication during pregnancy hypertension (heart disease) 4 3.8% drugs for dm 99 95.2% drugs for thyroid 1 1.0% table 5 showed a statistically significant association between febrile convulsion and family history of epilepsy depending on (chi-square value = 4.21 and p-value=0.032). table 5: association between febrile convulsion and family history of epilepsy using chi-square test family history of epilepsy total chi-square value p-value positive negative febrile convulsion yes 3 33 36 4.21 0.032 no 17 51 68 total 20 84 104 table 6 showed a statistically significant association between hospitalized for a seizure and parent consanguinity depending on (chi-square value = 6.118 and p-value=0.019). table 6: association between hospitalized for a seizure and parent consanguinity using chi-square test parent consanguinity total chisquare value p-value no other relatives has your child ever been hospitalized for a seizure yes 14 8 22 6.118 0.019 no 71 11 82 total 85 19 104 4. discussion the identification of risk factors for epilepsy by a city would make an essential contribution to the battle against epilepsy in that city as well as in other cities. having the largest sample size in our city is important when assessing risk factors. according to residency, 67 % of children lived in urban areas while 31.1 % of children lived in rural areas; hence, the domicile has been recognized as a potential risk factor. despite the fact that this was discovered while examining risk variables that were not determinate in the analysis of multivariate [17]. in our study, there was a weak association between children's head abnormalities and the development of epilepsy since the rate of head abnormality was 96.2 percentage and just 1.9 percentage had microcephaly [24]. concerning gender, our study indicates that epilepsy is more common among females, it is about 51 % compared to males who were 49 %. similarly, another study indicated that the rate of influence in gender is generally close to the two genders, according to their findings., of shiraz city in iran, who are primarily male children in shiraz were affected, then females and affected age 3 to 12 years old in the same research, compared to children under 18 in sulaimaniyah city in 104 cases of epilepsy in children 54 affected and exposure with epilepsy especially generalized seizure and 52 contains female with epilepsy and common in both genders, where the majority of epilepsy is male, but we are not found the child order in the family influence epilepsy more [18]. in another study, that has been done in irbid city in jordan where males are more likely to develop this condition than females, 124 are male and 76 females out of 200 patients are male and 76 are female compared to children in sulaimaniyah city, and in sulaimaniyah, the male kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 124 rate is higher in this case [19]. based on the patients’age of diagnosis, the current study showed that the majority of the case was diagnosed between ages 1-5 years old. they are about 46.5 % and the minority of them was between 16-20 years old and it was 7.7%, patients with febrile seizures had a lower risk, where 65.4% of participants had no febrile convulsion. the patients of the current study showed a background of febrile convulsions increased the likelihood of having epilepsy by just 36% [26]. the danger of epilepsy in febrile seizures individuals really was not uniform in which around 71.2% of patients who already had generalised seizures produced epilepsy, and having the highest incidence. furthermore, females, older age, and having more seizures per year were linked to a worse quality of life. thirty participants with the type of (focal seizure) have appeared while those of the unknown have appeared. we discovered that generalised seizures raised the chance of developing epilepsy by 75 times [21]. the high proportion of consanguineous among the epilepsy might be ascribed to the low percentage of individuals with epilepsy. however, we were unable to show statistical significance (it is only 18.9%). we identified a statistical difference using the controlled experiment. the incidence of epilepsy following head trauma has been widely investigated in children 104 cases. this research shows a low incidence of epilepsy following head trauma, which is only 6.6 %. similarly, children with a significant background of head trauma had a (6.6) fold risk of adverse epilepsy compared with the control group (93.4%) through the current study [22]. among epilepsy patients, there has been no history of cns infection, such as meningitis. this finding is consistent with al. rajeh that reports 46 instances in pakistan [23]. according to an iranian study conducted on 90 iranian children who had febrile seizure, 80 cases of them were febrile seizure, 53 were male and 37 children are female. for percentage, male 66% affected with febrile seizure in iranian children and 34% affected with a febrile seizure while in sulaymaniyah city children are more affected with generalized seizure, secondly affected with a febrile seizure. [24]. the risk of developing epilepsy increases, if there is a positive history of epilepsy, in our study, we compared our findings to those of other researchers in about.17,40,47,48. according to iranian studies cited by asadi-pooya and hojabri 14, living in a city increases one's risk of developing epilepsy by a factor of 3.34. consanguineous nations like turkey (50 instances), jordan (15 cases), and pakistan (15 cases) [25] may be expected to have higher rates of epilepsy [26]. hypertension with cardiovascular illness before or during pregnancy increased the risk of epilepsy by 9 times when compared to the control. this result is consistent with findings of several studies that looked into this risk variable. hypertension is known to be a major risk for possible quiet cerebrovascular resulting in seizures. finally, despite the fact that only six people had newborn respiratory failure, the researchers did not find respiratory failure syndrome (rds) or asphyxia could be a risk factor in the development of epilepsy [7]. neonatal jaundice was previously identified as a risk factor exclusively in patients through mental retardation or cerebral palsy. nevertheless, just a few studies have found a link between epilepsy and newborn jaundice, only 6 children had pathologic, and 100 children had no pathologic in the study [19]. we discovered, using univariate analysis, that neonatal jaundice raised the chance of developing epilepsy developing by 5.7 times. despite the considerable sample size, this research has two major limitations. this is not a large-scale case-control study. since it was focused on one group, it reflected that rather than the whole. if the witness's memory of the events is flawed while such data are collected, the resulting incidence may be larger than it really is [20]. at last, we discovered that the incidence rate differs by gender in two separate locations, with the incidence rate in irbid and shiraz being higher than in sulaimaniyah due to the proximity of males. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 125 5. conclusion conclusion: the majority of the patients were aged between six to ten while most of them was the middle child of their families. the results of the sample also showed that most of the children were diagnosed between ages one to five while most of the patients have a generalized seizure. on the other hand, there was a statistically significant association between febrile convulsion and family history of epilepsy depending. conclusion: generalized seizure is the most prevalent form in children aged one to five. most of the attacked youngsters had their last seizure in 2020 and were not hospitalized. most hospitalized youngsters nvd. most of the children were born underweight with few if any neurological problems. pathological jaundice at birth is more common. no febrile convulsions or neonatal respiratory collapse. less nicu admissions meant fewer infections. the majority of parents experience negative epilepsy. most parents are healthy and aged 20 to 25. feverish convulsions had a statistically significant connection to epilepsy family history. seizure hospitalization was linked to parent consanguinity recommendation: health staff and professional maternity staff should not be excessively forced to pull the child's head during surgery or normal delivery; he or she is likely to cause nerve damage. informing the child's parents about the disease so that they do not become worried about any neurological disorders, ministry of health should instruct more parents whose children have this disorder in the nerve that is epilepsy so that they do not face disaster and be protected from falling immediately, our recommendation for nurses, neurology field and neurology specialists and neurologist when such child neuro-patients enter the hospital immediately and quickly and get the necessary treatment. reference [1] h.-j. meencke, “pathology of childhood epilepsies,” cleve. clin. j. med., vol. 56, pp. s111–s123, 1989. 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[24] b. p. hermann, “quality of life in epilepsy,” j. epilepsy, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 153–165, jan. 1992, doi: 10.1016/s0896-6974(05)80134-3. [25] a. serdaroglu, s. ozkan, k. aydin, k. gücüyener, s. tezcan, and s. aycan, “prevalence of epilepsy in turkish children between the ages of 0 and 16 years,” j. child neurol., vol. 19, no. 4, pp. 271–274, 2004. [26] a. nicolosi, w. a. hauser, e. beghi, and l. t. kurland, “epidemiology of central nervous system infections in olmsted county, minnesota, 1950–1981,” j. infect. dis., vol. 154, no. 3, pp. 399–408, 1986. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq design and implementation of a chatbot for kurdish language speakers using chatfuel platform hemn mela karim barznji jamal ali hussein information technology computer department computer science institute college of science sulaimani polytechnic university university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq dr.hemn@yahoo.com jamal.ali@univsul.edu.iq article info abstract volume 5 issue 2 december 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.2.10 article history: received : 22 sept 2020 accepted: 30 december 2020 chatbot is a software agent that is used to conduct intelligent conversations between machines and humans. chatbots are mostly depend on natural language processing (nlp). in this paper, the design and implementation of a chatbot are provided to help kurdish speakers in using online conversations via texts to find answers instead of direct contact with human agents. the nlp-based software agent is implemented using the chatfuel platform. chatfuel uses artificial intelligence to communicate with humans by simulating human conversations through voice commands or texts. the proposed chatbot is tested on an electronic tourist guide that helps visitors to the religious places in the mountainous village of barzanja that is located in iraqi kurdistan. the case study is conducted by using threehundred questions and answers. one hundred volunteers participated in this study. the participant asks a question and the bot provides an answer if it recognizes the question, otherwise it provides a default answer along with a suggestion of how to use the system properly. the data of these experiment is collected, analyzed, and problems regarding kurdish language are detected. designing software agents for processing kurdish texts faces many challenges. kurdish texts have not yet been processed using natural language processing (nlp). in addition, kurdish font disorder and the lack of standardized keyboards and writing styles makes processing kurdish text difficult. furthermore, kurdish language consists of variety of different dialects with different typing styles. in this research, we specifically focus on the design of a software agent for the central kurdish (sorani) dialect. we managed to solve some of the problems related to the kurdish language and suggest solutions to others. keywords: chatbot, kurdish language, nlp, software robotic, artificial intelligent, kurd agent. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. mailto:dr.hemn@yahoo.com mailto:jamal.ali@univsul.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 118 all rights reserved. 1. introduction chatbot is a software agent that is used to conduct friendly intelligent conversation between a machine and human. the chatbot term refers to text conversation, but now growing through other communication means such as voice. enhanced chatbots can also reply using images, relational links, gallery, video, etc. [1]. the basic conceptual and objective of chatbot creation is that the computer talks in natural language with human in reality, which should be as human as possible. based on this, the chatbot is built for conversations and usually offers a special idea such as searching the internet, organizing files on a computer, arranging engagement and appointments, and so on [2]. there are numerous chatbot applications for helping users in finding flights, hotels, travel destinations, and jobs. chatbot is used in many areas, such as ecommerce, banking, entertainment, health, and education [3]. chatbots have many advantages over direct conversations, such as availability, reduced costs, and the enhancement of social experiences. there are many software applications available to create chatbot agents. these applications are simple to implement because they allow users to create chatbots without writing any code, but they also enable professional developers to write codes if necessary. common examples of ai chatbot platforms are: chatfuel, bot framework, wit.ai, manychat, dialogflow, etc. we have worked with the chatfuel platform since it is one of the best chatbot engines that uses artificial intelligence (ai) to communicate with human. it simulates human conversation through voice commands or text conversations or both. the focus is on automation and adaptability, from answering questions to collecting data [4]. we use this powerful chatbot builder to create a chatbot as a tourist guide for barzanja1 village. although we focus on central kurdish (sorani) dialect speakers using kurdish alphabet, which a common writing style in iraqi kurdistan, but the proposed chatbot system is capable of enhancing its response whenever a new word or question is entered by the users even if they use different dialect or writing styles. a case study that consists of three-hundred questions and answers and one hundred participants is conducted. when we applied this research, some challenges have occurred, such as kurdish font disorder, different typing styles, punctuations and non-standardized kurdish language. we provide solutions to some of the problems related to using kurdish language in nlp systems and provide suggestion to some other problems. 1.1 challenge and problems the following challenges and problems are related to nlp of the kurdish language: 1writing styles variation: kurdish language has several formal writing styles with some unformal styles such as latin style, english alphabet, central kurdish style (sorani) and arabic alphabet. for examples, the following words have the same meaning ('come' in english) but have been written using either different words or the same word with different writing styles: بھو بةو وەرە وةرة بێ بيَ بي بيَ 2dialectal variation: kurdish language has different dialects according the area of kurdistan. each dialect has its own grammar and vocabulary. mixing these dialects is problematic when using kurdish text in nlp based systems such as chatbots. 3orthographic ambiguity and inconsistency: in kurdish language; vocabulary, grammar and writing styles sometime cause ambiguity and inconsistency that are difficult to determine and classify. 1 a thirteenth century village located in a mountainous area near the city of sulaimani (sulaymaniyah) in iraqi kurdistan. it is a place for many islamic and yarsani shrines and holy sites. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 119 4morphological richness: kurdish words are inflected for a several of features, such as gender, number, person, voices, aspect, etc., that have different formats according to the dialect. for example, the following pair of words have close spellings with totally different meanings: milk شیر lion شێر short كوڵ blunt كول 5idiomatic dialogue expressions: since some idiomatic expression in kurdish language are common, but others are less common, it becomes challenging when replying to a question by the bot. the following two expressions have a close meaning using different words: good morning بھیانیت باش morning of light بھیانیت رۆشن 1. literature review natural language processing (nlp) is new for kurdish language, so it is hard to find nlp works on kurdish in the literature. therefore, we review some researches that are close to the kurdish language such as the arabic language. an artificial intelligent agent chatbot for kurdish language has been proposed in [5] by using artificial intelligent markup language (aiml) on the free and opensource platform pandorabots with a facebook account. it can answer queries in kurdish. this system takes the input in text format, then it displays the results in text and provides accurate and quick answers to users. writing style of arabic language is close to that of kurdish. in [6], an arabic chatbot for children with autism spectrum disorder (asd) is developed based on pattern matching (pm). a new arabic short text similarity (sts) measure is used to extract facts from user’s responses to match rules in scripted conversation in a particular domain (science). the researcher proposed the system on grammatical and morphological. the first chatbot using for an arabic dialect was presented in [7] exploring each challenge that faces the creation of conversational agents. it uses the egyptian dialect of the arabic language. the researchers illustrate several solutions and explain all elements of botta chatbot. the database of botta is available to all researchers that are working on arabic chatbots or the languages close to arabic in their writing styles such as kurdish, urdu and persian. in the research proposed in [8], several obstacles and challenges that need to be resolved when developing an effective arabic chatbot is presented. this is important for other languages that use an alphabet close to the arabic language alphabet. 2. the properties of the kurdish language the kurdish language is the backbone of this research, so we define and introduce this language, we especially focus on the central kurdish (sorani) branch. kurdish (kurdish: kurdí, كوردی, kurdî) language is a branch of indo-european family of languages. but dialects of kurdish are members of the indo-iranic languages of the northwestern subdivision. the kurdish language is not dependent language because it has all features of languages such as historical development, continuity, grammatical system and rich living vocabularies [9]. the kurdish language belongs to the “median” language or “protokurdish”. people of kurdistan speak several dialects of the language. kurdish language dialects are [10]: 1) nordic kurdish dialects, also called kurmanjí and badínaní. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 120 2) central dialects, also called soraní 3) the southern kurdish dialects, also called pehlewaní or “pahlawanik”. the other two branches of kurdish language are dimílí also called “zaza” and hewramí also called goraní. according some references about linguistic, the southwestern branch of the indian and iranian languages of the lurrí (luri) branch is classified as a sub branch of kurdish [9]. the kurdish nation is divided among five countries: iraq, iran, turkey, armenia and syria. kurdish literature was written in arabic, persian or turkish, although the kurdish language, written in central kurdish (sorani) and kurdish latin alphabet script, began to appear in the seventh century ad. nowadays, kurdish is written in three different writing styles. 1) the iraqi and irani kurdish are using central kurdish alphabet, for example: کوردی. 2) the kurdish of turkey and syria use kurdish latin alphabet, for example: kurdî. 3) the kurdish of armenia use cyrillic alphabet, for example: քրդի. the letters are 34 but the sounds of kurdish language are 37 for central kurdish alphabet, but kurdish latin alphabet is 31 letters commonly [11], as show in table 1. in sulaimani and kirkuk, the letter d is often softened to the point of being inaudible. the most prominent example of this case is the present modal prefix "دە ": laimani and kirkuk) (in suمھڕۆ= ئ (standard)مەڕۆد in kurdish language, especially in sorani dialect, no words begin with "ر", all initial rs are trilled "[13] [12]" ڕ: رۆژگار = ڕۆژگار generally, the letters of kurdish language are pronounced as written that is divide in two parts: vowel letters: it is consisting of long and short vowels as we present as:ە , ئــ ، ا ، ئـا, constant letters: they are another letter that is determined constant .وو ,و ,ی یــــ ,ێ ، یــَ sound, look the table 1. the words are constructed using combine of two letters or more [13] [14]. according the parts of speech and syntax, kurdish language words classifies to 8 parts: the verb (فھرمان/كار), the noun (ناو), the pronoun (ڕاناو/جێناو), the adjective (ئاوەڵناو), the adverb is (ناو) the noun .(ژمارە) and number (قسھھھڵدان) the interjection ,(ئامڕازەكان) tools ,(ئاوەڵفرمان) a word can add (the ەكھ), (a, an -ێك ) and (plural ان) that is a main in part of speech. this words that name of people, thing and place. it is not related to the time. كچ ، ساڵ، ئاو، كوڕ، دڵشاد، ڕووپاك، گوڵھگھنم، شھكرە سێوو the pronoun (ڕاناو/ج ێناو): it substitutes for nouns or noun phrases and designates persons that is very important because it is commonly used such as . generally, it is divided into: personal pronoun such asمن، تۆ، ئھو، ئ ێمھ، ئێوە، ئھوان . possessive pronouns is divide into fourth group that is transitive past verb pronouns such as م مان، ت تان ، ی یان , imperative past verb pronoun such as م ین، ی یت ن، ن , transitive and imperative present verb pronoun as م ئھمھ demonstrative pronouns as . ن ، ه imperative verb pronoun as , ین، ی یت ن، ات ێت ن ,چی ,كێ the interrogative pronouns and adverbs as .كھ relative pronouns as . ئھمانھ ، ئھوە ئھوانھ .چھند ,چۆن ,كوێ ,كام the adjective ( ئاوەڵناو) is a word that can add (-er,تر ) and (-est, ترین) such as smarter زی رەكتر. but the adverb (ئاوەڵفرمان) is a word that modify verbs and adjectives such as بھ خێرایی quickly. the tools (ئام ڕ ازەكان) is a word that use to any causes and to create relations between words or sentences such as بھ، لھ، دە، لھگھڵ، بۆ، لھسھر، ێك، ەكھ، و but the interjection (قسھھ ھڵدان) usually expresses emotion and is capable of standing alone such as ئ ۆی oh, بھراست ؟ really, �یھڵ come kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 121 on! the number (ژمارە) is consisting of cardinal and ordinal number. finally verb (فرمان/كار) is an expresses existence, action, or occurrence. [14] [13] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] table 1 : the table of kurdish letters alphabet, central kurdish (sorani) and kurdish latin alphabet. central kurdish alphabet kurdish sound kurdish latin alphabet no. sorani examples examples letter a/ amed; zana a, a/ ئیش ئـ 1 a:/, long a batman; kellebab b, b/ ئاوات ا 2 b/ urdun; dund c, c/ باران؛ داب ب 3 p/ çoman; kiç ç, ç/ پار؛ قاپ پ 4 t/ dihok; berd d, d/ تاو؛ پیت ت 5 d͡ʒ/ erzirrom; bere e, e/ جام؛ تاج ج 6 t͡/ چاو؛ خاچ چ 7 ʃ/ êwan, pêrê ê, ê h/ firat; def f, f/ حھیران؛ حھ سار ح 8 x/ gever; deng g, g/ خاک؛ ناخ خ 9 d/ hewlêr, ah h, h/ داس؛ ئازاد د 10 r/ sirinçik i, i/ برین؛ بیر ر 11 bold /r/ îlam, sînî î, î ڕاست؛ مھڕ ڕ 12 z/ jawero; kîj j, j/ زانست؛ ناز ز 13 ʒ/ kobanê; erk k, k/ ژیار؛ کیژ ژ 14 s/ laliş; mel l, l/ سارد؛ کراس س 15 ʃ/ mehabad; dem m, m/ شین؛ باش ش 16 gh/ nisêb n, n/ عێراق؛ دهعبا ع 17 gh/' pawe; esp p, p/ غونچھ ؛ قۆناغ غ 18 f/ oremar; boso o, o/ فیل؛ ماف ف 19 v/ qûçan; deq q, q/ ڤیان؛ حھ ڤده ڤ 20 q/ dar r, r/ قیر؛ تاق ق 21 k/ ranye; perr rr, rr/ کانی؛ پیک ک 22 ɡ/ sine; kras s, s/ گا؛ سینگ گ 23 l/ şengal, baş ş, ş/ الو؛ دیل ل 24 bold /l/ tirbesipî; kat t, t گو�ڵھ؛ ماڵ ڵ 25 m/ urdun; dund u, u/ مار؛ سام م 26 n/ ûrmiye, sûtû û, û/ ناو؛ بان ن 27 h/ vêtnam; bav v, v/ ھیوا؛ بھھره ھـ 28 e/ wan; naw w, w/ ھھڵھ؛ ھھڵوژه ه 29 u/ xaneqîn; qonax x, x/ وانھ ؛ داو و 30 o/ yêrîvan; key y, y/ دۆ؛ دۆشاو ۆ 31 u:/, long /u/ zaxo; berz z, z/ دوو؛ بوو وو 32 /i/ یاد؛ دایھ ی 33 bold i دێ؛ ڕێ ێ 34 the sentences are the largest unit in syntax of kurdish language that are consisting of above part of speech as (subject, object, adverbial, adjunct, complement and verb). hemin runs – ھێمن ڕادەكات .hemin and his friends run at the park every day ھێمن و ھاورێكانى، ھھموو ڕۆژێ لھ باخچھكھدا ڕادەكھن in addition to the transitive verb and the non-transitive verb, there is a third type of verb called the connecting verb. the word (or phrase) that accompanies a connecting verb is not an object, but a complement. the subject complement can be a noun, an adjective or a preposition. most common linking verb is " بوون ", which is equivalent to “to be” in english. .chro is in university – چرۆ لھ زانكۆیھ | .chro is lecturer – چرۆ وانھبێژە kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 122 the order of components of each kurdish sentences are بكھر subject, ب ھركار object and كار .verb. generally, the tense in kurdish language are present and past [20] [21] [13] (فرمان) table 2: table of kurdish language tenses كات tense ج ۆر type یاسا rule نموونھ example وو رد ڕاب p as t سادە simple ھاتین ڕەگى ڕابردوو + ج ێناو (ڕاناو) ى لكاوو خواردمان بھردەوام continuous دەھاتین دە + ڕەگى ڕابردوو + جێناو (ڕاناو) ى لكاوو دەمانخوارد تھواو perfect ھاتبووین ڕەگى ڕابردوو +بوو+ جێناو (ڕاناو) ى لكاوو خواردبوومان مھرجى conditional بھاتینایھ ب+ ڕەگى ڕابردوو + جێناو (ڕاناو) ى لكاوو+ایھ بمانخواردایھ وو رد ھب ڕان p re se nt سادە simple دەنووسین دە + ڕەگى داھاتوو + جێناو (ڕاناوو) لكاوو دەنووین تھواو perfect ڕەگى ڕابردوو + وو + ڕاناوو (ج ێناوو ) ى لكاوو + ــھ ، بھ�م (ــھ) لھگھڵ تێن ھپھڕدا و تھنیا لھگھڵ كھسی سێھھمى .تاك دەردەكھوێ خواردوومانھ نوستوو ین مھرجى سادە simple conditional بڕۆین ب + ڕەگى داھاتوو + ڕاناوو (ج ێناوو )ى لكاوو بشۆین مھرجى تھواو perfect conditional ھاتبین ڕەگى ڕابردوو + ب + ڕاناوو (ج ێناوو ) ى لكاوو كردبمان داخوازى imperative ب + ڕەگى داھاتوو + ــھ (ئھگھر ڕەگھكھ بھ كپ كۆ تاى ھاتبێ) بنووسھ بشۆ 3. natural language processing for kurdish language natural language processing (nlp) is branch of linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence that helps computers understand, interpret and manipulate human language [22] however, nlp was originally known as natural language understanding (nlu), it is now well understood that although the goal of nlp. nlu is real, it has not yet been achieved. but the main goal of nlp is “to accomplish human-like language processing”. [22] nlp have a challenge to developing a program that understands natural language is a difficult problem. nlp has more application such as: searching and indexing for large text. word processor software. information retrieval. text categorization using classification. text summarization software automatically. question answering (qa) applications. [23] to understanding and applied the nlp to kurdish language, both things are necessary: the first one is kurdish language component and grammar. the second one is component of nlp that is divided into natural language understanding (nlu) and natural language generation (nlg) [24] the main techniques of nlp are syntax analysis and semantic analysis: first – syntax analysis: it is referring to the sentences that words arranged in this structure of text and they have grammatical meaning. also known as parsing. it has more techniques: tokenization and pattern matching are an essential operation used to break up a string into words, punctuation marks, numbers and other items. for example: “dr. hawzhin, mr. sherko barznji”, said kurdistan, introducing us. can be tokenized as in the following, where each token is enclosed in single quotation marks: ‘"’ ‘dr.’ ‘hawzhin ‘,’ ‘mr.’ ‘sherko ‘barznji’ ‘"’ ‘,’ ‘said’ ‘kurdistan ‘,’ ‘introducing’ ‘us’ ‘.’ the important task in this step is finding the boundary of words. in kurdish language, the kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 123 boundary of words can determine using the fully separated by space, separated by half – space or be related to each other. من پسپۆری بھرنامھ سازیم من پسپۆری بھرنامھسازیم in the first sentence, the بھرنامھ سازیم is two words, if we determine by space separator, but in the second sentence the بھرنامھسازیم is one words. the second form is correct but the first form in incorrect. parts of speech (pos): another nlp task is speech tagging to identify the part of speech for every word and categorized of words that have same properties of grammatical, for example: table 3: pos tag for kurdish sentences example kurdish sentence . من دەرۆم بۆ قوتابخانھ english sentence . school to go i pos tags punctuation noun preposition verb pronoun lemmatization is a common technique to solve words in the form of their dictionary, which requires a detailed dictionary in which the algorithm can search for words and link them to their respective prepositions. چوون -دەچم - دەچووم -بچۆ --چوو بوو –چووە، باش -باشتر -باشترین stemming: it is a process to convert from inflected or derivates words to steam, base or root form. commonly, it removes all the suffixes and affixes based on some predefined linguistic rules. ه--.ه ، ھھیھ –ھھیھ ، ھھبووە – ھھیھ ، ھھبێت – ھھیھ، ھھبوو – ھھیھ، ڕۆشتنھوە – ڕۆشتن، ڕۆشت بوو - ڕۆشت stemming for kurdish language classify to verbal stemming and non-verbal steaming. input: x for 𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟 in creation_rule_of_verb do if x == 𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟 do x′=𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟 𝑟𝑟𝑜𝑜 x if x′ 𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 𝑣𝑣𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑣𝑣_𝑑𝑑𝑖𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑟𝑟 then add x′ to collection_of_suggestion end end end if collection_of_suggestion != empty then return shortest word in collection_of_suggestion as stem else return x end figure 1: algorithm of verbal stemming in kurdish language input: x for collection_of_suffix/collection_of_affix do for y in collection_of_suffix/collection_of_affix do if x ends with y then x′= x[0:(𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑖𝑖(x)−𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑖𝑖(y))] if x′ is in 𝐿𝐿𝑟𝑟𝐿𝐿𝑖𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑟𝑟𝑖𝑖_𝑑𝑑𝑖𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑟𝑟ionary then add x′ to 𝑑𝑑𝑐𝑐𝑖𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑖𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑐𝑐𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟_collection end end end end if 𝑑𝑑𝑐𝑐𝑖𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑖𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑐𝑐𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟_collection != empty then return shortest word in 𝑑𝑑𝑐𝑐𝑖𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑖𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑐𝑐𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟_collection asstem else return x end figure 2: algorithm of nonverbal stemming in kurdish language kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 124 parsing: this includes performing grammatical analysis for the sentence provided. the syntactic parser usually receives a sentence containing margins as input and returns a parsed syntax as output. second – semantic analysis: it is referring to the meaning that is sent by text and focus of meaning identification of language. it is the difficult part of nlp that has not yet been fully solved. some computer technique and algorithms are created to understand and interpretation of words. common techniques are: name entity recognition (ner) is a most common task in semantic analysis that is extracting entities from text. the entities can be name, place, email address, and more. natural language generation, this includes using a database to obtain semantic goals and convert them into human language. it is a special technique that is used to convert from plain text to raw structured data. [25] [26] [24] [23] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] 4. chatbots the chatbot is a software agent based on artificial intelligence which is used in conversation between users and software robot [2]. this agent can interact with human carefully using nlp as a basic to produce this process [32]. chatbot is a simulation of human user conversations especially over the internet, but it is possible to apply it as an offline software for specific purposes, such as travelling guide, education or self-learning of languages [33]. the idea of chatbot belongs to the alan turing test [34]. eliza chatbot is the first agent that was developed by joseph weizenbaum in ai laboratory at massachusetts institute of technology (mit) in 1966. [35] [36]. parry is another chat bot that was created by the psychiatrist and computer scientist kenneth mark colby at the department of psychiatry in stanford university in 1972 [35]. the chatbot jabberwacky was created by british developer rollo carpenter in 1988. it was intended to simulate a natural human dialogue [1]. in 1992, dr. sabaitso chatbot was created by creative labs for ms-dos. in 1994, the term of chatbot was coined. in 1995, alice was created by richard wallace, which is an acronym for “artificial linguistic internet computer entity”. in 2001, wallace published aiml specifications [2] [37]. smarter child was an intelligent chatbot created in 2001; it has some features such as accessing data quickly and funny personalized conversations [1]. in 2006, the watson chatbot was created by ibm, it is a question answering system. in 2010, siri was created by apple as part of the apple operating system; it is a text and voice chatbot [1]. in 2012, mitsuku chatbot was created by steve worswick. it uses aiml language to understand the user’s response [38]. in the same year, the google now was developed by google using nlp [39]. the alexa chatbot was developed in 2015 by amazon, it is capable to interact with voice and it uses algorithms of nlp to receive sounds, recognize and respond [40]. in the same year, microsoft company created cortana bot for mobile and personal computers that use windows operating system. [41]. in 2016, social networking site facebook provided a platform of messenger that allows developers to build a bot for facebook users [42]. 4.1. types of chatbot chatbot classify in some classification to determine chatbot types. common categorized of chatbot according different parameters are: the knowledge domains that are categorized based on the knowledge they have access to or the amount of data they receive. the providing services is another classification of bots are based on the branch of knowledge that deals with the amount of space that people feel it necessary to set between themselves and others in the goal's classifications, chatbots are categorized based on the early objectives that is aim to achieves. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 125 the processing of input and method of response generations: the categorization of chatbot are according methods that are divides to 2 models: the rule based approach (rba), the chatbots trains based on predefined set of rules that was trained in the early stages to answer questions. self – learning approach (sla), the chatbots can learn on their own using the advanced technologies such as ai and machine learning. it is divided into: 1retrieval-based approach of chatbots has much easier structure to create bots and provide more predictable result. because it is applying functions on predefined patterns of input and responses that uses heuristic method to deliver suitable response. now, this approach is very common and more practical. 2generative based approach of chatbots are the hereafter of chatbots that build a smarter chatbot. unfortunately, it has not wide range to use by developer, because it is now more in laboratories. if chatbots are about general topic conversation and response properly, it is opened domain chatbots. otherwise, if chatbots are about specific topic and specialized title, it is closed domain. [43] [44] [45] [46] 4.2. the design techniques of chatbots the design techniques used by chatbot developers are: 1) parsing: it is used to analyze and process the input from users by using several functions of nlp, such as python nltk tree [47]. 2) artificial intelligence markup language (aiml): it is the main technique that is used to design chatbots. [48]. 3) chat script: this is a technique that helps in cases when no matches return from aiml. it makes the best syntax to build a reasonable default answer. it offers a set of features such as variable concepts, facts, and and/or logic operations [47]. 4) pattern matching: this technique is about the artificial intelligence that is used to design the chatbots to match the input from users with the database-stored answers and then returning the identical response [49]. 5) sql and relational database: a method that has recently been used in chatbot design to remember chatbot previous conversations. 6) markov chain: chatbots are used to create responses that are more likely to be useful and therefore more accurate. the markov chain idea is that there is a probability of occurrence for any letter or word in the same textual dataset [3] [50]. 4.3. aiml – artificial intelligence markup language aiml is a standard of artificial intelligence markup language that is a language for artificial intelligent applications creation. it built based on extensible markup language (xml) dialect invented. the aiml is very important to ai software agent, especially natural language software agent development because it use in structure of semantic and syntax as theoretical structure. aiml was developed during 1995 to 2000 by the alicebot free software community and dr. richard s. wallace, the aiml is created using the techniques of pattern recognition or pattern matching. it is manipulated to natural language modeling for conversation between human and chatbots that use simulation response approach. [51] the main purpose of aiml is the definition of some knowledge that chatbot has [52]. according the technical of speaking, aiml basic anatomy and structure is tag. each tag consists of open/start tag and close/end tag as following example: <tagname> </tagname> aiml has some static tag. category, pattern, and template are three most common important tags. the category tag is used to knowledge unit definition of conversation. the tag of pattern is used to identify the user input and the template tag is used to response to user input kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 126 specifically. the three tags and all aiml tags must be wraps and write between the open/start aiml tag and close/end <aiml version = "1.0.1" encoding = "utf-8"?> <category> <pattern> پرسیارى بەكارھێنەر </pattern> <template>وە�مى گونجاو بۆ پرسیارى بەكارھێنەر </template> </category> </aiml> other common aiml tags are the following tags: 1<random> tag: is used to get random response of same input differently. this tag is used with <li> tag to carry items of different response: <random> <li> وشە یان ڕستە وەك وەالم </li> <li> وشە یان ڕستەى لێكنزیك وەك وەالم </li> <li> وشە یان ڕستەى لێكنزیك وەك وەالم </li> <li> وشە یان ڕستەى لێكنزیك وەك وەالم </li> </random> 2<set> and <get> tags: are used with variables. the set tag is used to set value in a variable but get tag is used to get value from a variable: <set name = "variable-name"> نرخ پێدانى ھەمیشە گۆڕاوو </set> <get name = "variable-name">وەرگرتنەوەى نرخى ھەمیشە گۆڕاوو </get> 3<that> tag: is used to respond base on the context: <that> وە�مدانەوە بە پێى دەق </that> 4<break> tag: it is used to create line break. <category> <pattern> تكایە ئەم وشانە بخوێنەرەوە </pattern> <template> ئاو <break/> باران <break/> با </template> </category> 5button tags: they are some tags that are used to create a button to apply specific action, see the following: <button> <text> ڕاستترین بۆچوون دەربارەى وشەى بەرزنجە </text> <postback> وشەكەلە ڕاستى بەرزەنجە یە، دەگەرێتەوە بۆ وشەى بەرزەنگە، كە وشەیەكى <postback> </button/> كۆنى كوردى گۆرانە، واتای بەرز، بڵند، با�، كەژ و كێوو دەدات the text tag is optional that is use to preview a text that appear on the button, but content of postback tag is appear by chatbot when user click on the name of button. sometime the developer of chatbot use the url tag. <button> <text>ڕاستترین بۆچوون دەربارەى وشھى بھرزنجھ </text> <url>https://barzanja.com</url> 2 </button> 6quick reply tags: these tags are other rich media element with text and postback such as post back button. the text tag is appeared on the reply response but the post back tag send message to bot. <reply> <text>مێژووى بھرزەنجھ </text> <postback>barzanja history</postback> </reply> 7<image> tag: it is a rich media element tag that is used as advanced aiml chatbot implementation to solve some problem and to chatbot response for user. <image>barznja.png</image> 8<video> tag: this tag is used to allow chatbot to send back video as response: <video>barzanja.mp4</video> 9card tag: it is used to wrap around other tags to collect all elements such as image tag, buttons tag, title tag, sub title tag, text and so on. the result is containing navigation all of rich media elements: <card> <image>barznja.png</image> <title>شارۆچكھى بھرزەنجھ </title> <subtitle>زێدى زانایان </subtitle> <button> <text>مێژووى بھرزەنجھ </text> <postback>barznja history</postback> </button> <button> <text>ناوداران و زانایان </text> <postback>zanayan</postback> 2 this website url is not existing in internet. it is just test to url tag. <random> <li> سەرچاوو </li> <li> س�وو </li> <li> س�وو، دڵخۆشم بە بینینت </li> </random> kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 127 </button> </card> [54] [55] [56] [57] 4.4. chatbot platforms and construction components we created a chatbot to experiment the kurdish language problems with natural language processing techniques, then we suggest solutions to solve these problems. we use chatfuel platform to create a chatbot for barzanja village that consists of 300 questions and answers to apply this work. there are several software platforms available to create chatbot agents. common examples of ai chatbot platforms are: chatfuel, bot framework by microsoft, wit.ai, manychat, dialogflow, ibm watson powered by neural network,botsify, reply.ai, aivo, pandorabots, boost.ai, mobilemonkey [58]. table 4 compares between three of these platforms [59] [60] [61]. table 4: this table is differentiation between microsoft bot, dialogflow and ibm watson microsoft bot dialogflow bot ibm watson developed by microsoft developed by google. developed by ibm. it has open source sdk that is used to test the bot before deployment in to the channel. inline code and multifunctional intelligent integrations. watson offers pre-trained and pre-integrated architecture it is support text, sms, video and speech. it is support natural language and speech to text conversations. it is support natural language processing and questionanswering system interact with skype, slack, etc. interact with google, alexa, etc detect the disease ai and machine learning bot. machine learning and ai bot. neural network and ai bot. 4.5. chatfuel platform chatfuel is one of the best platforms to create chatbots. it provides a wysiwyg interface that allows users to create chatbots [62] [4]. so, it is a useful and important platform since it provides ai technology to script conversations interactively. several companies use chatfuel platform, such as adidas, uber, techcrunch, british airways, goal.com, volkswagen, and mtv [3]. other main properties of the chatfuel platform are: chatfuel provide templates and prebuilds to create chatbot from. chatfuel makes chatbots directly by asking users to choose from suggested topics to produce a meaningful conversation. [58] [4]. the design and implementation of bots consist of the following basics and important components: 1) automate: it is an important part to create each bot, consists of the following: ablock: it is the main part of the bot that is used as the base to link the cards. the blocks are like webpage of websites [63], [4]. bcards: it is the block content that include elements such as text, images, galleries, videos, audios, comments, quick replies, attributes, and so on. cplugin: it is a small program to enhance the bot [58]. 2) live chat: it is an important part to monitor active users at the time of chatting. 3) ai setup: this is a special part to enter all possible questions and answers. [63]. the structure of chatfuel is easy for building conversations between human and bot. the user opens the facebook messenger and then type a phrase or tap a button to start a conversation. the chatfuel engine determine the user's action and then redirect it to a block or text. then it replies to the user with a correct or the best nearest answer. figure 3 illustrates those steps. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 128 figure 3: the general diagram of chatfuel applications [63] 5. propose of barzanja chatbot barzanja chatbot is a tourism guide to the religious holy sites in the village of barzanja for kurdish language speakers. that we proposed using aiml and chatfuel as platform. it consists of 300 general and common questions with answers. figure 4: the dashboard of barzanja chat bot 5.1. barzanja chatbot components the design and implementation of barzanja chatbot software agent consists of blocks, cards and ai setup as the main components. 5.1.1. blocks and cards ablock: we use blocks to prepare answers or to connect them with questions. when a user sends questions, the bot sends to the user these blocks as answers. other blocks are used for special information that bot sends to users such as the welcome block; this block appears when a user getting started, while the default answer block is used to reply to a user who sends a question that cannot be recognized by the bot. but block in aiml is a category tag, other all tags are cards that are used between open/start and close/end tag of categories to create component of block such as text, image and video. for example: figure 5: wireframe diagram of blocks in barzinja chat bot that is consists of block name and cards. bcards: common cards of barzanja chatbot is text cards, but sometimes we use cards that represent images, galleries, quick replies and so on. figure 7 and figure 8 examples for block and block contents (cards) with aiml code. <category> <pattern> پرسیارى بھكارھێنھر </pattern> <template> وە�مى گونجاو بۆ پرسیارى بھكارھێنھر </template> </category> <carousel> <card> <reply> <text> بھرزەنجھ مێژووى </text><postback>barzanja history</postback> </reply> </card> <card> <reply> <text> جوگرافیا </text> <postback>barzanja geography</postbac k> </reply> </card> <card> <reply> <text> ناوداران </text> <postback>nawdaran </postback> </reply> </card></carousel> kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 129 figure 6: a quick reply card that appears as a suggestion answer by the chatbot to any users. the gui of welcome message block and aiml of welcome message is a common block and card in a chatbot as the following: figure 7: gui of block and card example 5.1.2. set up ai we use this part of the dashboard to enter 300 questions and possible bot answers to reply to users’ questions. figure 8: wireframe diagram of general set up ai and aiml code to set up ai below aiml codes shows a sample question and the bot’s answer. <category> <pattern> <pattern/> #بھرزنجھ # بھرزەنجھ # بھرزنگھ # برزنجھ # زانیارى وێنھى # ئھلبوم # ئھلبووم# وینھ # وێنھ # <template> <carousel> <card> <text> شارۆچكھى بھرزەنجھ </text> <image> bh.png</image> </card> <card> <text> قھ�ى سرۆچك </text> <image> sro.png</image> </card> <card> <text> مھرقھدەكان </text> <image> mar.png</image> </card> </carousel> </template> </category> <category> <pattern>#بھرزنجھ چیھ؟ #برزنجھ؟# بھرزنجھ بناسێنھ #برزنجھ جیھ؟# بھرزنجھ جیھ؟ #</pattern> <template> <random> <li>شارۆچكھیھكھ لھ شارباژێڕ </li> <li> كیلۆمھتر لھ سلێمانى یھوە دورە 62شارۆچكھیھكھ </li> <li>زێدى زانایانى بھرزەنجى یھ </li> <li> ھرى كوردستانھزھئھ </li> </random> </template> </category> <card> <image>barznja.png</image> <text> بھخێربێیت <id/> بھرزەنجھ، كھ سھرجھم باس و بابھتھكانى بھخێربێن بۆ الپھرەى تایبھت بھ مێژووى .تایبھتھ بھ مێژووى بھرزەنجھ لھ كۆتاى سھدەى پێنجى كۆچی تا ئیمڕۆ .ئھم الپھرەیھ لھالیھن نھوەكانى حاجى بابا شێخى بھرزەنجى یھوە بھ رێوە دەبرێ <text> <button/>.دووبارە بھخێربێن <text> پھیوەندى تھلھفۆنى </text> <text>07701515582 </text> </button> </card> <pattern> پرسیارى بھكارھێنھر </pattern> <template> وە�مى گونجاو بۆ پرسیارى بھكارھێنھر </template kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 130 5.1.3. live chat we use this component of the dashboard to see the users that connect to the bot and their conversations. 6. using and analyzing the chatbot after creating all parts and components of the barzanja chatbot with 300 questions and answers, we test the project with 100 volunteer users. the volunteers of use barzanja chatbot according the activity diagram illustrated in figure 9. figure 9: general activity diagram of chatbot using by users for one cycle when a user starts a conversation. the system immediately replies by using the welcome message. this welcome message is provided for all users, after that users can start asking questions, for example: user: س�و chatbot: سھ رچاوو ،خۆتان بناسێنن if the user uses the kurdish latin alphabet or english alphabet, the bot cannot understand this message because the system developed for sorani (central kurdish) dialect. so, the bot replies by using the default message: user question: sllaw the bot answer: جۆرێ تر بپرسیت ؟ كرێت بھ، ده chroرێزبھ ببوره ڕێنووسی ئھم تێبینییھ تکایھ ڕێنووسی کوردی ناوەڕاست، واتھ سۆرانی بھکاربێنھ :تێبینی samples of interaction between users and the barzanja chatbot via questions and answers are show in table 5. 7. results and discussion after using and analyzing the chatbot, we collect user's information to determine the problems in using the kurdish language with technology, then we analyze the performance of the bot according the users’ participation and the bot’s response. after creating the chatbot agent, we tested with 100 users, the total results of testing users’ participation (as shown figure 11) are: • %25 uses the english alphabet and kurdish latin letters. the first question of user starts with english or kurdish latin alphabet, for more clearing, we discuss two examples: for example, first user starts to conversation as: choni? the second user start to conversation as: çonî? • %20 uses the arabic alphabet letters. the user starts arabic alphabet to write any question to conversation, for example: جؤنى؟ • %15 uses mixed typing between arabic, english letter and kurdish latin letters. the question of users is mix in the start of conversation to end of conversation, for more clearly see the following example.the user state conversation using arabic alphabet, after that the bot say: please use kurdish alphabet. but user use the english alphabet and so on: kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 131 سَالوو ؟ تیتر بپرس ێرۆج بھ تێكر، ده aso زێربھ ببوره . ھنێکاربھب ی رانۆس ھوات است،ەڕناو یکورد ی نووسڕێ یھ:تکاینیبێت sllaw • %40 uses the central kurdish alphabet (sorani) via kurdish unicode keyboard. all users use kurdish alphabet to start conversation, then continue until the conversation is finish. figure 10: pie chart to determine typing style according users sometime other problems may occur, especially when using different keyboard alphabets. to solve those problems, we suggest the following solutions: to solve the problem of using english alphabet and latin letters: awhen the user starts the application, the bot suggests downloading and installing the central kurdish keyboard (sorani unicode). the sorani keyboard shown in figure 11 can be used by the chatbot users in case the operating system they use does not support kurdish unicode. figure 11: wireframe of central kurdish (sorani) keyboard bthe user can use the english keyboard to type directly kurdish text. however, some problems may occur, for example, the number of the english letters is 26, while the number of kurdish letters is 34. in this case we suggest using some symbols and double letters to express the kurdish letters that do not have corresponding letters in english alphabet. figure 16 shows the kurdish letters and their corresponding english single or double letters, or a letter and an apostrophe. 25% 20% 15% 40% results according typing style keyboards english alphabet and kurdish latin letters arabic alphabet letters arabic, english and kurdish latin letters kurdish unicode keyboard kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 132 figure 12: central kurdish keyboard (sorani alphabet) to convert english and latin alphabe table 5: user information about chatting with questions – answers name user questions bot answers chro ahmad sllaw جۆرێ تر بپرسیت ؟ كرێت بھ، ده chroرێزبھ ببوره ڕێنووسی ئھم تێبینییھ .تکایھ ڕێنووسی کوردی ناوەڕاست، واتھ سۆرانی بھکاربێنھ:تێبینی ئھم کاتھت باش سھرچاوو بھرزنجھ چیھ ؟ گوندێکھ لھ شارباژێڕ barzan barznji . بھرزنجھم پێ بناسێنھ؟ گوندێكھ 62 كیلۆمھ تر لھ سلێمانیھوه دووره shano barzan س�وو سھرچاوو بھرزنجھ چیھ ؟ گوندێكھ لھدوو رێگھ وه بۆى دهچیت، سلێمانى عھربھت یان سلێمانى سیتھك sherzad ahmad جونن؟ سھرچاوو برزنجھ جیھ؟ .گوندێكھ 62 كیلۆمھ تر لھ سلێمانیھوه دووره sherko ahmad چۆنن؟ سھرچاوو برزنجھ چییھ؟ گوندێکھ لھ شارباژێڕ arsh omer س�وو سھرچاوو بھرزنجھم پێ بناسێنھ؟ .دووره وهسلێمانیھ تر لھكیلۆمھ 62 گوندێكھ cwgrafiay barznja تر بپرسیت ؟ جۆرێ كرێت بھ، ده arshرێزبھ ببوره ھ ڕێنووسی ئھم تێبینیی .وردی ناوەڕاست، واتھ سۆرانی بھکاربێنھێنووسی کتکایھ ڕ :تێبینی زانیاری جووگرافی ؟یھ رزنجھستت جوگرافیای بھ بھمھ بھڵێ زیاتر فر و بارانی زۆره، سارده و بھ یھی ھھرزنجھ ، بانی بھ گوندێکی شاخاوییھ 8. conclusion and future work in this research, we create a chatbot to access information about barzanja chatbot automatically 24 hours a day without need to any human intervention. we determine some problems in sorani dialect of the kurdish language. such problems include lack of research on kurdish language with natural language processing (nlp), kurdish font disorder, lack of standardized keyboards and writing styles, etc. the proposed chatbot was capable of responding to any question asked by a user even if it has not been 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[63] n. asher, "a warmer welcome : application of a chatbot as a facilitator for new hires onboarding," linnaeus university press, 2017. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 2 – december 2020 | 135 1. introduction 1.1 challenge and problems 1. literature review 2. the properties of the kurdish language 3. natural language processing for kurdish language 4. chatbots 4.2. the design techniques of chatbots 4.3. aiml – artificial intelligence markup language 4.4. chatbot platforms and construction components 4.5. chatfuel platform 5. propose of barzanja chatbot 5.1. barzanja chatbot components 5.1.1. blocks and cards 5.1.2. set up ai <card> <text> شارۆچكەى بەرزەنجە </text> <image> bh.png</image> </card> <card> <text> قەڵاى سرۆچك </text> <image> sro.png</image> </card> <card> <text> مەرقەدەكان </text> <image> mar.png</image> </card> </carousel> </template> </category> 5.1.3. live chat <carousel> <card> <card> <reply> <text> جوگرافیا </text> <postback>barzanja geography</postback> </reply> </card> <card> <reply> <text> ناوداران </text> <postback>nawdaran</postback> </reply> </card></carousel> 6. using and analyzing the chatbot 7. results and discussion 8. conclusion and future work  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq |21 proceeding conference (not peer reviewed): 5th international conference on the health and medical science : toward gathering iraqi medical powers (ichms 2021) protective effect of thyme extract on albino rats exposed to paraquat mohammad hasso jawher bewar muhsin rashid department of medical microbiology department of medical microbiology faculty of science faculty of science soran university soran university soran, iraq soran, iraq email: mohammadhasso943@gmail.com email: bewarbradosty91@gmail.com nazar m. shareef mahmood shorish mustafa abdullah gorony department of biology department of medical microbiology faculty of science faculty of science soran university soran university soran, iraq soran, iraq email: nazar.mahmood@soran.edu.iq email: shorish.gorony@soran.edu.iq ranjbar muksy mohammed shareef department of medical microbiology faculty of science soran university soran, iraq email: renjbar.muksy@gmail.com article info abstract proceeding conference (not peer reviewed): 5th international conference on the health and medical science : toward gathering iraqi medical powers (ichms 2021) (cannot be used for academic title promotion or for postgraduate students) paraquat (pq), as a frequently used compound in many applications while the herbal providing is vigorously used in the curing of broad spectrum diseases such as liver disease, the influence of thyme extract or thymus vulgaris l. (t.vulgaris) and their constituents was previously reported. the purpose of this study is to explore the influence of t.vulgaris extract toward pq induced toxicity in male albino rats. the current study was conducted on thirty two male albino rats, they were randomly separated upon four equal groups, all groups were fed standard diet and tap water ad libitum as following; the first group was considered as control. the second group was treated with pq (0.3ml/rats) orally by needle gavage, the third group as administered with pq (0.3ml/rats), and 200ml/kg body weight (bw) of t.vulgaris extract orally by needle gavage, the fourth group was administered with 200ml/kg bw of t.vulgaris extract orally by needle gavage. the treatment duration was continued for eight executive days. paraquat administration showed significant decrease in bw, food intake, liver, kidney weight also pq increased malondialdehyde (mda), low density lipoprotein (ldl), uric acid (ua) and alkaline phosphatase (alp) keywords: paraquat, t. vulgaris, malondyaldehyde, low density lipoprotein and alkaline phosphatase. | 22 significantly. the current results indicate that, the herbicide pq showed adverse effects through initiation of lipid peroxidation, while t.vulgaris extract produced a significant recovery in ameliorating some aspects of pq toxicity. copyright © 2021 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction paraquat (1,1'-dimethyl-4,4'-bipyridinium dichloride) can be defined as a quaternary ammonium herbicide which cause its toxicity via ingestion, skin and respiratory route [1]. the systemic effects of it are attributed to promote oxidative stress through reactive oxygen species promoting in a redox cycling manner via microsomal nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate oxidase (nadph‐cytochrome p‐450 reductase) [2]. previous attempts demonstrated high mortality varying from 35-50%. especially through the respiratory tract and multi organs failure [3]. paraquat toxicity could result as a outcome of either by free radical impact or nadph diminishing fr cellular [4]. based on the previous study, t. vulgaris contains polyphenol, flavonoids, tannin, saponins and triterpenes. furthermore favonoids are including luteolin, naringenin, apigenin, eriodictyol, cirsilineol, cirsimaritin, salvigenin, thymoine, thymusine. while, triterpenes are including oleanolic and ursolic acids as well [5]. 2. literature review or related work or introduction recent studies suggested that, ros elevation induce non‐selective oxidation of biomolecules included lipids, proteins promoting cell degeneration as well [6]. previous attempt has demonstrated that, pq-exposed animals also promote its toxicity mechanism through mitochondrial, microsomal oxidation and reduction systems [7]. previous attempts have demonstrated that, it also provokes many influences on amphibian’s growth and development via orally drinking, and eventually it accumulates throughout body organs, particularly in lungs larger than it in plasma compartments due to their higher distribution volume. therefore, in case of severe poisoning, death could occur due to respiratory failure especially, edema and fibrosis [8]. on the other hand, various medicinal plants are conducted around the globe as an alternative to the pharmacological products. thyme (t. vulgaris l) in the mint family (lamiaceae). historically, it offered various uses in folk medicine for curing many diseases including bronchopulmonary and gastroenteric disorders [9]. numerous attempts have suggested that, it provokes fungus expelling from digestive system included stomach and intestine route, and it able to enhance appetite due to its thymol component against bacteria and parasites. different studies have demonstrated pharmacological ability of t. vulgaris containing biological components [10]. therefore, the present study aimed to estimate t. vulgaris extract impacts on some physiological parameters in rats treated with pq induced toxicity. | 23 3. methods and materials preparation of laboratory animals male albino rats rattus norvegicus [11] were obtained and housed in animal-house, department of biology, faculty of science/ soran university, iraq. male albino rat’s body weight about 150-250 grams. they acclimatized in controlled environmentally at stable temperature (22 ± 2 ◦c) on a lightening period (12 hours light and 12 hours darkness), rats were kept at free access to normal pelleted food and drinking water. cages were cleaned every three days through the experiment period. preparation of standard rodent’s diet standard diet constituents are determined in accordance of pico lab. rodent diet (which assisted with expert in erbil poultry project and erbil animal diet factory) which involved 9.98% of wheat, 3.84% of soya, 65.25% of oil sun flower, 22.455% of lime stone, 95.1% of salt, 23.4% of methionine, 36.6% of lysine, 9.3% of choline chloride, 8.7% of vit cx lay, 96.3% of dicalcium phosphate, 12% of az /1200 ,and 7.5%.of trace elements preparation of paraquat dose paraquat herbicide was purchased from the local agricultural markets, 0.3ml/rats was determined and injected orally by gavage daily for eight executive days. preparation of thymus vulgaris extract dose the t. vulgaris was obtained from the kherezok countryside, mergasor district, iraq in summer 2019, the plant was washed, dried, crashed and dissolved into two solvents (70% ethanol and 30% water) then the solvents was evaporated by rotary evaporator vacuum system until the crude obtained (butters & whitehouse, 2003). the t. vulgaris extract dose was prepared according to the previous studies and the moderate dose (200 mg/kg bw) was selected against the pq toxicity orally by needle gavage daily for eight executive days. phytochemical screening of thymus vulgaris extract thyme extract was analyzed with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (gc/ms) in a research center, soran university, soran, iraq in order to estimate the phytochemical component of t vulgaris hydro-ethanolic extract. experimental design group i (control), rats were fed standard diet, and tap drinking water ad libitum. group ii (pq group), rats were fed standard diet with tap drinking water ad libitum and pq (0.3ml/rat) daily via needle gavage orally. group iii, rats were fed standard diet with tap drinking water ad libitum and pq (0.3ml/rat) and t. vulgaris extract 0.3ml/ kg bw daily via needle gavage orally. group iv, rats were fed standard diet with tap drinking water ad libitum and 0.3ml/kg bw of t. vulgaris extract daily via needle gavage orally. blood sampling and absolute organ weight at the last day of the experiment and 24 hours of rats fasting, rats were anesthetized via injection of ketamine hydrochloride 0.7 ml and xylazine 0.3 ml. blood was collected via cardiac puncture then it chilled into tubes after that, they were centrifuged with 3000 revolution per minute about 15 minutes, for measuring serological parameters. then the liver , right kidney and spleen are weighted (gm) with electronic balance. measurement of malondialdehyde serum mda (nmol/l) level was measured depending on the previous method, the 150 µl of serum followed adding 1ml of trichloroacetic acid (17.5%) and 1ml of thiobarbituric acid (0.66%), mixed quite with vortex, and it incubated via boiled water till a quarter hour, then after it left to be cooled. eventually 1 ml of trichloroacetic acid (70%) had added, the mixture was left to stand at room temperature till further 20 minutes, and then it centrifuged at 2000 rpm for 15 minutes, the supernatants were used for spectrophotometric scanning at 532nm according to equation (no1) [12]. | 24 measurement of serum lipids parameters serum lipids included total cholesterol, tg, hdl and ldl were measured (mg/dl), serum total cholesterol was determined with according to the laboratory kit obtained from centronic gmbh (germany). measurement of liver function test and kidney function parameters serum parameters included alt and alp (ui/l) of liver and cr and ua of kidney (mg/dl) were measured with automatic instrument. data analysis data are analyzed with statistical package for the social sciences (version 16.0) using one-way anova and duncan test as a post hoc. the level of significant is fixed ( p<0.05), and data are showed as means ± standard errors. the similar superscript letters indicate no significant, while the different superscript letters indicate significance (*= p< 0.05). 4. results phytochemical properties of thymus vulgaris extract the results obtained by gc/ms analysis of the essential biological components it characterized by its richness and its variety (table 2). effect of paraquat and thymus vulgaris extract on body weight the impact of pq and t. vulgaris on bw parameter are presented in table 1. animals were treated with pq produced significant level (p< 0.05) in declining bw against normal group. on the other hand, the administration of pq and t. vulgaris elevated bw significantly (p< 0.05) as compared with pq group. meanwhile, the non-significant changes were observed in rats treated with pq + t. vulgaris and t. vulgaris from control group. effect of paraquat and thymus vulgaris extract on some organs weight the pq and t. vulgaris influences on organs weight liver kidney weight are presented in table 3. animals were treated with pq produced non-significant decline included liver, kidney and spleen absolute weight from normal rats. while rats administered with pq and t. vulgaris showed non-significant elevation include liver and kidney weight, with non-significant decrease in spleen weight from pq group. furthermore, the supplementation of rats with t. vulgaris produced non-significant changes in all mentioned organs weight as compared versus control group. effect of paraquat and thymus vulgaris extract on food intake the pq and t. vulgaris impact on food intake are presented in table 4. the administered group with pq produced declined food intake (p< 0.05) from control group. in contrast, rats administered with pq and t. vulgaris, increased significant (p< 0.05) food intake from pq group. meanwhile, no change was observed in food intake of rats administered with t. vulgaris from control group. effect of paraquat and thymus vulgaris extract on malondialdehyde level and lipid profile the impact of pq and t. vulgaris extract on lipid profile and serum mda level are presented in table 5. in the pq group, the level of mda was elevated significantly (p< 0.05) from control rats, while the mda level of the pqt. vulgaris group showed a decrease significantly (p< 0.05) from rats administered with pq. on the other hand, animals were supplemented with t. vulgaris produced non-significant change of mda from control group. while, serum lipids parameters (ldl level) showed significant increase (p< 0.05) of pq rats from control. at the same time the significant increase (p< 0.05) changes were occurred in ldl of rats treated with pq and t. vulgaris extract from second group. in the thyme group the significant (p< 0.05) changes also was occurred with ldl which confirmed the action of t. vulgaris extract. | 25 effect of paraquat and thymus vulgaris extract on renal tests the impact of pq and t. vulgaris extract on renal test are shown in table 6. the administration of rats with pq elevated significantly (p< 0.05) of ua level, and nonsignificant increase in creatinine parameter from control group, while both parameters were decreased nonsignificantly, in pq with t. vulgaris group from pq group. furthermore t. vulgaris administration alone produced significant (p< 0.05) declination in both parameters from control rats. effect of paraquat and thymus vulgaris extract on liver function tests the impact of pq and t. vulgaris extract on liver function test are shown in table 7. animals were administered by pq produced significant elevation change (p< 0.05) included ast and alp level from control group, besides that alt level was increased non-significantly against control group. in addition, rats were administered by pqt. vulgaris together produced decreased both of ast and alp level significantly (p< 0.05) from pq group. while, alt was declined non-significantly from pq group. furthermore, the administration of rats with t. vulgaris extract declined ast and alp significantly (p< 0.05) from control rats, but it increased alt level significantly (p< 0.05). 5. discussion the decreasing of bw, (table 2) under pq impact was in accordance with the attempt of [13] who proposed that, the single dose of ld50 caused loss in rats bw sharply. in addition, this loss appeared as an indicator from a declined food intake. on the other hand, t. vulgaris extract ameliorated the bw loss in rats were treated with both pq and thyme extract and this action of thyme is confirmed by [14] who proposed that, albino rats were received t. vulgaris extract, 400 mg/kg lead to gain weight loss against another toxic substance. on the other hand, bw increase in group ii may be attributed to increase of food intake in the same rats (table 4). the significant decrease was observed in the liver and spleen weight (table 3) of rats treated with pq and the present data are confirmed with the attempt of [15, 16], who demonstrated that female wistar rats were injected daily of pq included 10, 15 and 25 mg/ kg bw, via gavage about 28 days caused declined organ weight. t. vulgaris extract positively recovered organ weight loss in both liver and kidney while in spleen it remained as non-significant change. previous studies have suggested that, orally gavage treatment of t. vulgaris ethanolic extract in sub-acute toxicity attempt raised mice liver weight [17]. it has been reported that, rats treated with t. vulgaris offered less protective effect on the internal organ against another toxic substance [18]. rats treated with pq showed significant decrease in their food intake our result is supported with previous finding that demonstrated that rats administered with diet contained 20% pq showed significant decrease in the food intake [19], another study reported that, pq administration generate oxidative damage to such organs involved lungs, liver, kidneys and heart as well [20, 21]. in contrast, rats were fed with diet combined with thyme extract caused to increasing of food intake, accordingly, hassan and awad, [22] found that t. vulgaris diet of broilers at 5 g/kg bw improved ood intake. furthermore, we attributed to contain many bioactive substances besides their essential oil to enhance food intake and hormones amelioration such as thyroid gland. in the present result, the significant decrease of serum mda (table 5) with pq is agreed with the finding of melchiorri et al, 1996 who reported that both strains (sprague-dawley and wistar) rats were treated with pq at dose 50 mg/kg bw/ rat [23]. in contrast, the significant decrease of elevated mda level with thyme is supported with the attempt who investigated that, quail treatment with diet contained thyme extract showed significant decrease in mda level, also it has been reported that male albino rats administered with thyme extract against paracetamole produced protective role as antioxidant [10]. on the other hand, the lipid peroxidation was confirmed by the nonsignificant increase in cholesterol level and tg, it has been demonstrated that rabbit treated with graded administration doses ( 3 and 6 mg/kg ) of pq daily for a period (14 days) caused | 26 decreased in tg level [22]. along with the tg elevation, the ldl increased was also agreed with the previous study who demonstrated that, rats treated by10 mg/kg bw, before decapitation produced a significant ldl elevation, hdl could speed up cholesterol diminishing in peripheral tissue back to liver in order catabolism excretion process. besides that, raised hdl may collaborate with ldl in smooth muscle cells arterial receptors therefore, it partially inhibits its uptake, and the lipids in hdl are preferentially oxidized before those in ldl as well. the significant difference in serum ldl between the pq with thyme and pq alone groups. however, as it mentioned previously, the present results can be expressed by the same significant along with mda elevation. in the present result the pq administration induce nonsignificant elevation of creatinine significant increase in uric acid are supported by the attempt of [24] who demonstrated that, the administration of rats by pq (10 mg/kg bw) led to decrease kidney function parameters. creatinine is considered as more specific than the others in renal function tests. therefore, the damage in kidney is considered the only significant indication to the level creatinine may it attributed to toxic effect resulted from vasoconstriction and renal injury respectively [25]. on the other hand, the kidney parameters are unchanged sharply after thyme and pq administration, which is in accordance with results of [26]. the significant increase in alp level with pq administration from our result is in accordance with finding of [27] who reported that, the intraperitoneally administration of pq sub-lethal dose (1.5 mg/kg/bw) caused impaired in liver enzymes. previous attempts proposed that, cellular molecules oxidative damage under pq exposure produces both of functional and biochemical changes along with liver damage [28] with liver enzymes elevation [29]. furthermore, it has been demonstrated that pq administration provoke the same observation and produced the liver enzyme activity due to liver toxicity [30]. in addition, t. vulgaris extract and pq intake administration against pq action showed the reversion of serum liver enzymes, and it confirmed by the study of [30] who suggested that, t. vulgaris extract (200 mg/kg bw) orally by gavage for 21 days treatment promote slight decrease in the liver enzymes. previous study indicated that thyme administration reduced mda for their appropriate antioxidant content [31]. it has been reported that, rats treated with thymol (one of the most phytochemical substance of thyme in table 1) for 15 days offered strong ameliorative impact against oxidative stress induced rats in hepatic tissues [32]. 5.1. tables table 1: phytochemical properties of thymus vulgaris extract components molecular weight p-cymene 134.11 o-cymene 134.11 .gamma.-terpinene 136.125 thymoquinone 164.084 phenol, 2-methyl-5-(1-methylethyl)150.104 thymol 150.104 phenol, 2-methyl-5-(1-methylethyl)150.104 | 27 table 1: effect of paraquat and thymus vulgaris extract on rats body weight parameters groups before treatment (gm) after 8 executive days * (gm) control 183.861 ± 7.2257 a 201.864 ± 8.081 a pq 180.292 ± 8.340 a 187.145 ± 7.781 b pq + t. vulgaris 185.003 ± 6.813 a 207.146 ± 6.060 a t. vulgaris 182.864 ± 6.441 a 209.293 ± 6.824 a table 2: effect of paraquat and thymus vulgaris extract on some organs weight parameters groups liver (gm) kidney (gm) spleen (gm) control 5.266 ± 0.349 a 0.666 ± 0.061 a 0.916 ± 0.054 a paraquat 4.480 ± 0.399 b 0.500 ± 0.054 b 1.040 ± 0.191 a paraquat + thyme 5.495 ± 0.742 a 0.657 ± 0.020 a 0.771 ± 0.042 a thyme 5.885 ± 0.288 a 0.775 ± 0.242 a 0.850 ± 0.290 a | 28 table 3: effect of paraquat and thymus vulgaris extract on food intake table 4: effect of paraquat and thymus vulgaris extract on lipid profile and malondialdehyde level parameters groups food intake * (gm)|8day control 100.571 ± 1.461 a pq 60.000 ± 1.812 b pq + t. vulgaris 90.000 ± 1.712 a t. vulgaris 110.000 ± 1.212 a parameters groups mda* (nmol/l) cholesterol (mg/dl) tg (mg/dl) hdl (mg/dl) ldl* (mg/dl) control 0.4521 ± 0.1224 a 27.8333 ± 2.93731 a 24.8333± 2.40023 a 18.3333± 2.65414 a 26.6667± 0.88192 a pq 1.6850 ± 0.0804 c 29.4000± 2.24944 a 35.4000± 4.30813 ab 21.8000± 4.44297 a 34.6000± 0.81240 b pq + t. vulgaris 1.0542 ± 0.0218 b 28.0000 3.27327 a 30.0000± 2.57275 ab 18.0000± 2.36039 a 30.5714± 1.13089 c t. vulgaris 0.5437 ± 0.0711 a 32.7500 2.49583 a 26.5000± 0.28868 b 28.7500± 6.65050 a 23.0000± 0.91287 d | 29 table 5: effect of paraquat and thymus vulgaris extract on kidney function tests table 6: effect of paraquat and thymus vulgaris extract on liver function test 5.2. equations 6 10 eo×l nm 532at absorbance )( xdxlnmolmda = (1) mda: malondialdehyde 6.7= ref./0.15in usedvol. ml 1 =factor dilution :d .cm 1-m 105×1.56t coefficien extinction :e (1cm)path light :l 10 parameters groups creatinine * (mg/dl) uric acid * (mg/dl) control 0.1500± 0.023 a 0.516± 0.016 a pq 0.160± 0.040 a 0.960 ± 0.263 b pq + t. vulgaris 0.162± 0.045a 0.600 ± 0.403 ab t. vulgaris 0.140± 0.110 b 0.410 ± 0.018 a parameters groups ast * (ui/l) alt * (u/l) alp * (u/l) control 63.833 ± 1.922a 16.500± 1.47761a 97.0000± 1.31656 a pq 68.400 ± 2.1587 a 23.800± 1.15758 a 121.4000± 1.36382 c pq + t. vulgaris 52.714 ± 4.02796 b 20.714± 3.04501 a 112.572± 1.08797 b t. vulgaris 52.750 ± 0.62915b 32.250± 2.80995 b 119.000± 0.40825 c | 30 6. conclusion the 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[31] l. radwan nadia, r. hassan, e. qota, and h. fayek, "effect of natural antioxidant on oxidative stability of eggs and productive and reproductive performance of laying hens," international journal of poultry science, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 134-150, 2008. [32] h. r. aboelwafa and h. n. yousef, "the ameliorative effect of thymol against hydrocortisone-induced hepatic oxidative stress injury in adult male rats," (in eng), biochem cell biol, vol. 93, no. 4, pp. 282-9, aug 2015.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq the causes of variation orders and their effects on cost and time of projects in sulaimani governorate karukh hassan noori ali civil engineering civil engineering college of engineering college of engineering university of sulaimani university of cihanerbil sulaimani, iraq erbil, iraq karukh.mhamad@univsul.edu.iq noori.ali@cihanuniversity.edu.iq basira majeed administration and economic college of administration and economic university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq basira.najm@univsul.edu.iq article info abstract volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.1.16 article history: received:24 march 2020 accepted:14 june 2020 variation orders are a permanent phenomenon in the construction of projects and industries around the world, and particularly in the province of sulaymaniyah. where construction industries suffer from variation orders. it includes an amendment of the initial scope of work as in the awarded contract. this study analyses the causes of variation orders and their effects on cost and time of projects in sulaimani governorate. this study involves a questionnaire survey to selected 36 causes and 10 effects of variation orders from the perspective of owner, design consultant, and contractors. a total of 223 completed questionnaire sets were returned out of 270 questionnaires distributed among the practitioners. then the data was analyzed statistically. also, 40 projects at different construction sectors that constructed during 2007-2013 were investigated by calculating cost and time overrun because of variation orders. the results showed that in sulaimani governorate the most effective causes of variation orders are owner's financial problems, preparing typical design for different districts, errors and omission in design, desired profitability of contractor and lack of adequate or appropriate site before design stage to construct of project. on the other hand of impacts of variations, the study discovered that top five effects of variation orders on the projects are: schedule overrun, cost overrun, productivity degradation, dispute between contract stockholders and payment delay. also, all projects affected by cost and time overruns at average of 20 percent of cost and 65.4 percent of time of project. keywords: causes of variation order, cost overrun, construction projects, effect of variation order, time overrun, variation orders. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. mailto:basira.najm@univsul.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 219 1. introduction construction projects are involved of more complicated small activities and different stakeholder's involvement that make them complex. the difficulty of construction activities indicated that is seldom to being executed an entire project lacking of variations to the design or to the process of construction. the most significant problem that occur during construction management process is variation orders. changes or variations as “deletions, additions, or other amendments inside the initial scope a tender that origin of an adjustment to the initial contract duration or awarded cost of contract” [1]. another author defined change as the variance in what was designed and what in fact implemented [2]. hegazy et al. [3] differently summarizes the definition that variation in any modification to the guidance of contract which provided to the contractor by the owner or by owner's representative. variation orders is another general term in construction projects should be defined. various authors defined variation orders as official documents which are used to amend the signed agreement after it is accepted by the client or client's representative it becomes part documents of the project [4] [5] [6]. memon et al. [7]defines variation orders as the formal signed agreement between the contract parties that represent an addition, deletion, or appraisal to the contract tender documents, also identify the deviation in contract duration and contract amount, it also define the nature of the contains work. arain & pheng [8] and halwatura et al. [9] indicated that a change orders is the formal document which is used to alter the awarded contract provided by the client to the contractor, and it became an official part of the previous documents of contract. kurdistan general condition of contractor summarize variation order as any change in scope, quality and quantity of "works" or any part of the project thereof if it necessary or it is desirable and for that reason the "contractor" should carry out any of the following works include in variations: increase and decrease the quantity of any items in the bill of quantity, delete any part of works, substitute and specification, quality, or item with any of the work, replacing levels position and dimension for any part of work and perform additional work if it required to complete the works [10]. this study is analysis the causes of variation orders and their effect on cost and time of projects in sulaimani province. 2. literature review in order to develop a better understanding of the research objective, an extensive review has been conducted focusing on identifying the reasons of variation orders and their effect on time and cost of projects. diekmann et al. and ibbs [11, 12] classified causes of variation orders into three groups; design changes, unforeseen conditions and design errors and omissions. from another principle keane et al. and arian et al. [13, 14] classified the sources of variation orders based on the contract parties into three groups and an extra source for reasons non relating to any of parties of contract , the groups were owner related causes, design consultant related causes, contractor related causes and other related causes. according to aljeshi and almarzou [15] change in plan by owner is the main reasons of variation orders, and also replacing materials and procedure, errors and omission in design were the most occurrence causes of variation order, authors found that contract cost overrun and contract schedule overrun were to be the most important impact of variation order on project. another study by ismail et al. [16] to determine five critical causes of variation orders out of twenty six causes, it was revealed that "change of plan and scope by owner, errors and omissions in design, differing site conditions and financial difficulty to the contractor" were to be the most occurrence causes of variation order in project in iran, and also discovered that overrun in contract cost and time were the most observed effects of variation orders. table 1 presented selected causes and effects variation order from reviewed related studies. studies related to cost and time overrun due to variation orders, kumaraswamy et al. [17] stated that contract schedule overrun due to change orders were 10-50% of contract duration and it participate to 6-17% of contract cost overrun. sunday [18] found that variation orders were contribute for time overrun between 27-68% and overrun of contract cost of between 25-78%. ismail et al. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 220 [16] conducted a study for five large roadway projects which completed between 2013 and 2017 was suffered from variation orders. the results of variation orders in these projects were delays from 50% to 137% from duration of original contract in some cases. otherwise, increase in project cost to 15% from original contract value. oyewobi et al. [19] stated that change orders have a direct impact on both schedule and cost performance in projects in nigeria, with average time and cost escalation of 29.45 and 33.95percent, respectively, from the original project agreement. dickson et al. [20] used a questionnaire to evaluate the impact of variations on projects in kenya. results showed that variations affected on time and cost overruns in rate of 32 179% and 70 151% respectively. table 1: identifying causes of variation of studies in review author/year/country/ reference n o . causes of variation orders a ri a n e t a l. ( 2 0 0 4 ) [2 1 ] s u n ( 2 0 0 8 ) [2 2 ] n d ih o k u b w a (2 0 0 9 ) [2 3 ] e n sh a ss i (2 0 1 0 ) [2 4 ] s u n d a y ( 2 0 1 0 ) [1 8 ] is m a il e t a l. ( 2 0 1 2 ) [1 6 ] h a lw a tu ra ( 2 0 1 3 ) [9 ] a z iz ( 2 0 1 3 ) [2 5 ] a sa m a o h (2 0 1 3 ) [2 6 ] a la ry a n e t a l( 2 0 1 4 ) [2 7 ] m sa ll a m e t a (2 0 1 5 ) [2 8 ] k a rt h ic k e ta l( 2 0 1 5 ) [2 9 ] h a n if (2 0 1 6 ) [3 0 ] a k sa n a ( 2 0 1 6 ) [3 1 ] m o h a m e d . (2 0 1 7 ) [3 2 ] s a u d i a ra b ia u k s o u th a fr ic a p a ls ti n e s e y c h e ll e s ir a n s ri la n k e g y p t g h a n a k u w a it jo rd a n in d ia p a k st a n e rb il s u d a n 1 change in design by consultant during construction stage √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 2 errors and omissions in design √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 3 conflict between contract documents √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 4 lack of coordination among project parties in design stage √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 5 lack of consultant's knowledge due to omission in term of reference of project √ √ √ √ 6 design complexity √ √ √ 7 time limitation in the design phase √ √ 8 inadequate working drawing details √ √ √ √ √ √ 9 change in plan and scope by owner √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 10 owner's financial difficulties √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 11 change in specification of materials and procedure by owner √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 12 inadequate experience of owner's staff √ √ 13 owner fails to make decision at right time √ 14 owner instruct to modification to design √ √ 15 lack of appropriate site before design stage to construct of project √ 16 differing site conditions. √ √ √ √ √ 17 failure of the contractor to provide the required material from outsourcing √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 18 lack of specialized construction manager √ √ √ 19 misunderstanding of contract documents during cost estimate stage √ 20 lack of contractor's involvement in design √ √ √ √ 21 contractor's lack of required data √ √ 22 contractor's desired profitability √ √ √ √ √ √ kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 221 23 financial problems of the contractor √ √ √ √ √ 24 changes in the boq of work √ 25 weather conditions √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 26 safety consideration √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 27 change in economic conditions √ √ √ 28 internal political problems √ √ 29 unforeseen problems √ √ √ 30 change in government regulations √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ effects of variation order on projects 1 time overrun √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 2 cost overrun √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 3 dispute between contract parties √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 4 delay in payment √ √ √ √ √ 5 additional specialist equipment & staff √ √ √ 6 degradation of quality standards √ √ √ √ √ √ √ 7 productivity degradation √ √ √ √ √ 8 rework and demolition √ √ √ √ √ 9 logistics delays (procurement delay) √ √ 10 additional payment for contractor √ √ √ √ √ √ 3. methods and materials 3.1. questionnaire design a questionnaire form was designed to evaluate the point of view of owners, contractor and consultant about frequency of occurrence and effects of causes of variation orders. the questionnaire was separated into three sections. respondents general information took part as first section. second section was about frequency of occurrence and their effect of causes on both cost and time overrun. the causes were categorized into their sources as: owner related causes, contractor related causes, consultant related causes and other related causes. effects of variation orders on project were the third section of the questionnaire. after questions of general information were answered, participants were asked about the potential of all causes according to their frequency of occurrence and their impact on cost and time overrun based on following likert scale: for frequency of occurrence :never occurrence(1), rarely occurrence(2), sometimes occurrence(3), often occurrence(4),always occurrence(5). and also, for effect scale: none effect (1), little effect (2), moderate effect (3), great effect (4), extreme effect (5) were used. 3.2. experimental study after a questionnaire designed, experimental study was conducted to make an effective survey. it can help finding the weaknesses and strengths of the questionnaire. twelve questionnaires form were distributed to specialized construction engineers. the causes were simplified and paraphrased depending on criticism and advice from experts and specialized, therefore context of the causes developed more clearer in order to be easy for stating respondents' point of view, it can help to reach objectives of the study. eventually, a number of causes and effects from the experimental study stage were merged, added, deleted or modified. following opinions were summary of major views extracted from experimental study: 1. the following reasons were added to different groups: i)lack of adequate road to reach project location; ii) change project location after design stage or before construction stage; iii) lack of adequate or appropriate site before design stage to construct of project; iv) preparing typical design for difference districts; v) corruption; vi) mep (mechanical, electrical and plumbing), road, sewerage and water service 2. some causes were rearranged so as to give more appropriate and dependable meaning. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 222 3.3. method of analysis the study was used mean score analysis to rank the causes and effects of variation orders based on occurrence and their effects on time and cost overrun, then average of the mean score of these three criterions to calculate the overall ms and ranking. mean score (ms) was calculated by following formula. mean score (ms) = ∑(fxs) n (1) where: ms = mean score, f= frequency of response for each score, s= score given to each factor (0 to 5), n=total number of responses for each factor. spearman correlation coefficient was used to evaluate the agreement between respondents point of view in ranking causes and effects of variations [24]. and it was calculated using the following for equation. 𝑟𝑠 = 1 − [ 6∑d2 n(n2−1) ] (2) where: rs= spearman correlation coefficient, d= different between ms assigned for each cause, n= number of parties of rank. in terms of reliability of the questionnaire cronbach coefficient alpha was applied to evaluate the reliability of the questionnaire. it calculated by using following formula: ∝= 𝐾 k−1 × (1 − ∑ 𝑉𝑖 𝑉𝑡𝑒𝑠𝑡 )…………… (3) where: ∝=cronbach alpha, k=number of questions, vi variance of scores on each question, vtest= total variance of overall scores. 3.4. case study in order to examine the cost and time deviation due to variation orders, a case study for 40 projects was adopted which is constructed during 2007 to 2013 in sulaimani governorate. one way anova was used for analysis of case study. 4. results and discusion 4.1. the reliability of the data general information this section generally design to provide respondent’s general information. table 2 shows the respondents’ profile. table 2. respondents general information's general information frequency percent (%) sector respondents work in public sector 62 27.8 private sector 117 52.5 combined 44 19.7 parties respondents worked for client 70 31.4 consultant 70 31.4 contractor 83 37.2 respondents specialist civil 160 71.7 architecture 35 15.7 electrical 14 6.3 mechanical 14 6.3 respondents experience ≤ 4 years 0 0 (4 – 9) years 25 11.2 (9 – 14) years 33 14.8 (14 – 20) years 45 20.2 over 20 120 53.8 max. contract amount respondents work in less than 1 milliard iqd 27 12.1 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 223 (1 – 5) milliard iqd 52 23.3 (5 – 10) milliard iqd 54 24.2 over 10 milliard iqd 90 40.4 respondents involvement in arranging of variation orders yes 203 91 no 20 9 4.2. origin agents of variation orders as shown in table 3 consultant with ms=3.35 is the main origin agent of variation orders in projects in sulaimani governorate. table 3. variation orders origin agent origin agent mean score ranking consultant 3.35 1 contractor 2.48 2 owner 2.1 3 end user and others 2.07 4 4.3. causes of variation orders the number overall causes selected based on review and experimental study were 36 causes, the analysis of the data shown in appendix a. the top ten of causes are selected and discussed in next sections. 4.3.1. top ten most frequent causes of variation orders table 4 shows the top ten most occurrence causes, all these ten top causes are discussed in followings: table 4. top ten most frequent causes of variation orders causes owner consultant contractor overall ms rank ms rank ms rank ms rank preparing typical design for difference districts 3.4 2 3.5 2 3.39 3 3.43 1 errors and omissions in design 3.44 1 3.11 6 3.39 4 3.31 2 owner's financial problems 3.4 3 3.1 8 3.40 2 3.3 3 lime limitation in design stage 3.11 8 3.53 1 3.11 8 3.25 4 design complexity 3.27 5 2.9 18 3.42 1 3.2 6 desired profitability of contractor 3.2 6 3.16 5 3.22 5 3.19 5 significant changes in boq of work 3.13 7 3.11 7 3.22 6 3.15 7 change in design by consultant during construction stage 3.07 10 3.23 3 3.11 9 3.14 8 differing site conditions. 3.09 9 2.99 14 3.13 7 3.07 9 change in specification of materials and procedure by owner 3.3 4 2.9 17 3 12 3.06 10 4.3.2. preparing typical design for difference districts preparing typical design for difference districts is the most occurrence causes of variation order in projects in sulaimani governorate. it was ranked first depending overall ms with 3.43. as illustrated in table 4 the results show high level of agreement among the respondents to put it as the first most occurrence causes. it was ranked in the second order with ms = 3.4 by the owner, ranked in the 2nd order with ms = 3.5 by the consultant and in the third order with ms = 3.39 by the contractor. during ten years of economic growth and infrastructure development، kurdistan government mostly prepared a typical design and tender for the sectors of schools, preschool, police station, security station, and most of other type of building then awarded over difference districts. because of variety of sulaimani land most of the projects were suffered due to variation especially in the underground work such excavation, grabbing and grading it was definitely affected on project cost and duration. this kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 224 factor was added during pretesting questionnaire by the nine respondents among all of respondents were answered pretesting questionnaire. 4.3.3. errors and omissions in design errors and omissions in design was revealed to be the second most occurrence causes of variation orders. although owner ranked first but by overall respondent it was ranked second with ms of 3.31. arain et al. [21] found that errors and omissions in design is a significant causes of completion delay. this finding concludes that design errors and omissions in design are very common in projects in sulaimani. when a project designed with inappropriate coverage of all project's aspects or with errors and omissions would affect the productivity of work and schedule of project. errors should be corrected during the process of design if not it will arise during the. this result is inline with mohammed, a. j. [31] who found that this cause is one of the top ten most occurrence in project in erbil province. 4.3.4. owner's financial problems owner's financial problem was ranked in third position with overall ms=3.3 which shows compliance with contractor, consultant and owner to order it in top ten occurrence cause of variation orders.it ranked in 3rd position with ms=3.4 by the owner, ranked in 8 th position with ms=3.1 by the consultant and ranked in 2nd position with ms=3.4 by the contractor. owner or government suffered from difficulties of financial situations in kurdistan that started since 2014. the financial problem lead owner to order variations to suspend the projects due to economic crises in order to reduce the contract amount to make budget match with his financial capability and to make the project feasible. 4.3.5. time limitation to the design stage this cause ranked in fourth position with overall ms = 3.25. it was ranked by both of owner and contractor in 8th position with ms = 3.11 by both of them and ranked in the first position with ms = 3.53 by the consultant. from 2007 to 2014 due to the infrastructure development and economic growth in kurdistan the government allocated a large amount of budget to make projects. sometimes the local government and directories prepared design and bill of quantity in insufficient time to get their own portion of budget and local government prepared project design in limited time to avoid return remained budget to finance ministry. it leaded to make variation in projects during execution phase and also impact on project cost and project time. 4.3.6. design complexity and difficulty to understand this cause was ranked in 5th most occurrence causes of variation orders with overall mean score being equals "3.2”. complexity of design highlights the require of involvement of skilled expertise and construction methods [8]. meanwhile, it impacts the progress of activities of works, while simple projects are easier to execute [4]. the more complication in design, more difficulty appears and generate chances of occurring variations in project [29]. 4.3.7. others most occurrence causes of variation orders “contractor's desired profitability” was ranked in sixth order as the most occurrence factor with ms = 3.19. variations are initiated additional work and activity for the contractor so, variations can appear as an additional monetary payment for the contractor. in sulaimani, the contractor may eventually try to persuade the client of the project to issue positive variation orders, leading to get more financial profits for contractor. “changes in the bill of quantities of work “was ranked in seventh order with overall ms=3.15. a boq is a document which used in tendering process in the construction projects in which materials, parts, and labor (and their units and costs) are listed. due to the inaccurate measuring the quantity of materials that require to finish the projects variation orders may arise during the construction phase. shortage of quantity of any materials need to variation order to complete the work. the eighth most occurrence factor that cause variation orders was revealed to be the "change in design by consultant during construction stage" with overall ms = 3.14. the change in design by consultant may happen reflects to the lack of information about all structure mechanical and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/call_for_bids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/building_material kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 225 electrical information which require to reach the project objectives. the causes of recurrent change in design by consultant is may deficient time in design process. this finding is match with wu et al. [33] who concluded that this cause is one of the ten most occurrence cause of variation orders in project. the ninth most occurrence cause was "differing site conditions" with ms = 3.07 according to the overall respondents’ answer. during construction stage contractor often face with underground or unseen conditions which are unpredicted, it may have a major negative effect on cost and time of execution their activities and generated variations due to site condition. the results indicated that "change in specifications by owner" ordered in tenth position with ms=3.06 based on overall feedback of respondents. in multiactivity situation like construction of project, owner my require to order a major variations and modifications in specifications an procurement activity 4.4. top ten factors rankings as per effect on project cost overrun table 5 shows top ten most important causes per effect on cost overrun according to the overall respondents. table 5: top ten factors rankings as per effect on project cost overrun causes owner consultant contractor overall ms rank ms rank ms rank ms rank preparing typical design for different district 3.2 2 3.4 1 3.19 2 3.26 1 errors and omission in design 3.1 4 3.14 6 3.27 1 3.17 2 lack of adequate site before design stage to construct of project 3.2 1 3.1 8 3.1 4 3.13 3 desired profitability of contractor 3.11 3 3.21 3 3.04 5 3.12 4 design complexity and difficulty to understand 3.09 5 2.81 15 3.16 3 3.02 5 change project location after design stage or before construction stage 3 6 3.1 9 2.9 8 3 6 unforeseen problems 2.93 8 3.16 5 2.86 12 2.98 7 time limitation in the design phase 2.79 19 3.19 4 2.87 11 2.95 8 change in design by consultant during construction stage 2.91 9 2.91 11 2.94 7 2.92 9 changes in the bill of quantities of work 2.83 14 3.14 7 2.78 18 2.92 10 4.5. top ten factors rankings as per effect on project time overrun table 6 shows top ten most important causes per effect on time overrun according to the overall respondents. table 6: top ten factors ranking affecting on project time overrun causes owner consultant contractor overall ms rank ms rank ms rank ms rank owner's financial problems 4.2 1 4.2 1 4.10 1 4.17 1 owner instructs modification to design 3.4 2 3.3 3 3.2 5 3.3 2 errors and omission in design 3.33 3 3.2 6 3.28 2 3.27 3 preparing typical design for difference districts 3.2 7 3.4 2 3.17 8 3.26 4 change in design by consultant during construction stage 3.26 5 3.14 8 3.24 4 3.21 5 lack of adequate or appropriate site before design stage to 3.23 8 3.1 10 3.2 6 3.18 6 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 226 construct of project contractor financial problems 3.27 4 3.07 12 3.17 9 3.17 7 desired profitability of contractor 3.13 9 3.04 13 3.18 7 3.12 8 failure of the contractor to provide the required material from outsourcing 2.96 16 3.24 4 2.99 15 3.06 9 weather conditions 2.91 18 3.24 5 2.96 16 3.04 10 4.6. ten top causes affecting cost and time (cost and time overruns) table 7 shows top ten important causes based on average ms of three criterions according to the overall respondents (most effective causes). table 7: top ten causes based on average mean score of occurrences, effect on cost and time causes overall occurrence overall cost overrun overall time overrun average overall ms rank ms rank ms rank ms rank owner's financial problems 3.30 3 2.80 16 4.17 1 3.42 1 preparing typical design for difference districts 3.43 1 3.26 1 3.26 4 3.32 2 errors and omissions in design 3.31 2 3.17 2 3.27 3 3.25 3 desired profitability of contractor 3.19 6 3.12 4 3.12 8 3.14 4 lack of adequate or appropriate site before design stage to construct of project 2.97 13 3.13 3 3.18 6 3.10 5 change in design by consultant during construction stage 3.14 8 2.92 9 3.21 5 3.09 6 time limitation in design stage 3.25 4 2.95 8 2.99 14 3.07 7 design complexity and difficulty to understand 3.20 5 3.02 5 2.96 18 3.06 8 owner instructs modification to design 2.80 18 2.83 13 3.30 2 2.98 9 differing site conditions. 3.07 9 2.87 11 2.98 16 2.97 10 4.7. analysis frequency of occurrence of groups factors. several parties take part in construction project namely the majors party: contractor, consultant and owner. the study analysis based on different source of causes as follow: 4.7.1. occurrence of owner related causes on variation orders table 8 shows ms and ranking of owner related causes, “preparing typical design for difference districts” was the most occurrence factors. it was ranked first, according to overall with ms of 3.40. the results show high level of agreement among the contractor, consultant and owner to rank it in the 1st most occurrence causes. "owner financial problems" ranked in 2nd position with overall ms=3.3. "change in specification by owner" ranked in third order with overall ms=3.05. owner and contractor ranked this factor in third order with ms=3.3 and ms=3 respectively while consultant was ranked it in sixth position with ms = 2.9. table 8. ms and ranks of the occurrence of owner-related factors on variation orders causes owner consultant contractor overall ms rank ms rank ms rank ms rank preparing typical design for difference districts 3.4 2 3.5 1 3.39 1 3.40 1 owner financial problems 3.4 1 3.1 2 3.4 2 3.3 2 change in specification of materials and procedure by owner 3.3 3 2.9 6 3 3 3.1 3 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 227 lack of adequate site before design stage to construct of project 2.9 4 3.1 3 2.9 4 3 4 change project plan or scope by owners 2.9 5 3 4 2.8 5 2.9 5 owner instructs modification to design 2.8 6 2.8 7 2.8 6 2.8 6 fail owner in decision making at write time 2.7 7 2.6 8 2.8 7 2.7 7 change project location after design stage or before construction stage 2.5 9 3 5 2.5 9 2.7 8 inadequate experience of owner's staff 2.6 8 2.6 9 2.6 8 2.6 9 lack of adequate road to reach project location 2.3 10 2.3 10 2.2 10 2.3 10 4.7.2. occurrence of consultant related causes on variation orders table 9 shows the ms and ranking of consultant related causes. "errors and omissions in design" was revealed to be the most occurrence causes of variation orders with overall ms=3.32. time limitation in the design phase “was ranked in second position with overall ms = 3.25. also, the results demonstrate an agreement between contractor and owner. the third most occurrence cause was found to be "design complexity and difficulty to understand" with overall ms of 3.19. table 9. ms and ranks of the occurrence of consultant -related factors on variation orders. 4.7.3. occurrence if contractor related causes on variation orders table 9 shows ms and ranking of contractor related causes. “desired profitability of contractor” was ranked in first order as the most occurrence factor with ms = 3.19, according to overall respondents. there was a significant matching between respondents' point of view about this cause. "significant change in bill of quantity" was ranked in second position as the most occurrence factor with ms = 3.16, based on average respondents. "differing site conditions" was ranked in third most occurrence cause of variation orders with overall ms=3.07. table 10: ms and ranks of occurrence of contractor related causes on variation orders causes owner consultant contractor overall ms rank ms rank ms rank ms rank desired profitability of contractor 3.20 1 3.16 2 3.22 1 3.19 1 significant changes in the bill of quantities of work 3.13 2 3.11 3 3.22 1 3.16 2 differing site conditions. 3.09 3 2.99 4 3.13 3 3.07 3 failure of the contractor to provide the required material from outsourcing 2.90 4 3.17 1 2.89 4 2.98 4 causes owner consultant contractor overall ms rank ms rank ms rank ms rank errors and omissions in design 3.44 1 3.11 3 3.39 2 3.32 1 time limitation in design stage 3.11 3 3.53 1 3.11 3 3.25 2 design complexity 3.26 2 2.90 5 3.42 1 3.19 3 change in design by consultant during construction stage 3.07 4 3.23 2 3.11 3 3.13 4 lack of consultant's knowledge due to omission in tor of project 3.00 5 3.01 4 3.08 5 3.04 5 inadequate working drawing details 3.00 5 2.87 6 3.01 6 2.96 6 lack of coordination among project parties in design stage 2.73 7 2.63 7 2.83 7 2.74 7 conflicts among contract documents 2.21 8 2.30 8 2.22 8 2.24 8 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 228 lack of expert construction manager 2.80 6 2.90 6 2.76 6 2.82 5 financial problems of the contractor 2.83 5 2.66 9 2.77 5 2.75 6 searching for compensating costs for his low prices if any 2.56 7 2.93 5 2.59 7 2.69 7 misunderstanding of tender documents during cost estimate stage 2.51 9 2.77 8 2.58 8 2.62 8 lack of contractor's involvement in design 2.53 8 2.79 7 2.55 9 2.62 8 contractors lack of required data 2.29 10 2.23 10 2.39 10 2.30 10 4.7.4. occurrence of other-related factors on variation orders. the occurrence of other related causes has been analyzed. the findings are shown in table 11. the “unforeseen problem” was ranked as the most occurrence factor on the variation order with mean score ms=2.8 according to the overall respondents’ answer, that means the respondents were agree on this factor, unforeseen conditions are often encounter in the construction projects, if these conditions are not properly solved, they may cause major variations in projects [5]. “change in economic conditions” was ranked as the second most occurrence factors with ms=2.74 according to the overall respondents. conditions of economic in the country is the significant reason that impact on the whole construction industry and contributors, finally, this may cause the unfavorable variations to the project [4]. "weather conditions" was ranked in 3rd most occurrence cause of variation orders with overall ms=2.62. fisk and o'brien. [4] [5] revealed that contrary weather conditions can impact outdoor activities in projects. this factor may force the contractor to change his schedule of work and results in adjustment of contract schedule to compensate the lost time due to change in weather conditions. furthermore, extreme weather may result in damage and the contractor will be compensated according to contract condition if it stated in it [34]. table 11: ms and ranks of the occurrence of other -related factors on variation orders causes owner consultant contractor overall ms rank ms rank ms rank ms rank unforeseen problems 2.7 2 3.04 1 2.67 2 2.8 1 change in economic conditions 2.71 1 2.8 3 2.72 1 2.74 2 weather conditions 2.56 3 2.76 4 2.55 3 2.62 3 mep, road, sewerage service 2.5 4 2.93 2 2.41 5 2.6 4 change in government regulations 2.43 5 2.5 7 2.43 4 2.45 5 corruption 2.13 7 2.71 5 2.22 6 2.35 6 internal political problems 2.24 6 2.66 6 2.18 7 2.35 7 safety consideration 2 8 2.23 8 1.99 8 2.07 8 4.8. analysis of effects of variation the third objective of this study was to investigate the effects of variation order on projects in sulaimani province. table 12 shows the effects and their ranks of time overruns, cost overrun, productivity degradation, dispute between contract parties and delay in payments were the five most observable effects of variations on project. quite contrary rework and demolition were the least observable effect of variation orders. top five effects are discussed as follow: table 12: ms and ranks effects of variation orders on the projects effects owner consultant contractor overall ms rank ms rank ms rank ms rank time overrun 3.86 1 3.84 1 3.86 1 3.85 1 cost overrun 3.70 2 3.44 3 3.67 2 3.61 2 productivity degradation 3.09 4 3.21 4 2.94 5 3.07 3 disputes between contract parties 3.19 3 3.20 5 2.83 6 3.06 4 delay in payment 3.06 5 2.97 8 3.08 3 3.04 5 logistics delays 2.87 7 3.47 2 2.76 7 3.02 6 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 229 additional specialist equipment & staff 2.90 6 2.89 10 3.02 4 2.94 7 additional payment for contractor 2.67 8 3.03 7 2.65 8 2.78 8 rework and demolition 2.24 9 3.07 6 2.23 9 2.50 9 degradation of quality standards 1.90 10 2.91 9 1.94 10 2.23 10 4.8.1. time overrun the 1st most occurrence effect of variation orders on projects in sulaimani was revealed to be project time overruns, with ms of 3.85. the findings show perfect agreement among all respondents on the position of this effect. variations have an impact on the order and duration of the activities in the schedule so, bolin [35] said “if the activities on the critical of schedule or near-critical paths are affected by changes of scope, the project initial completion date may be extended unless hurrying in work is performed”. this result agrees with alaryan et al. , mohammed, a. j. and desai et al. [27, 31, 36] whose found that increase in duration of project was one of the top five impacts of the variation order. 4.8.2. cost overrun cost overrun ranked in 2nd most occurrence effect of variation orders on projects in sulaimani governorate with overall ms=3.61. as shown in table 12 there is a high level of agreement among the three respondents. it not totally unpredicted for the contract amount to increase because of frequent variation orders in project. arian and pheng [14] stated that project's total direct and indirect costs may impact by variation orders, consequently, contract cost overrun my occur due to any major addition or amendment in the design. this result inline with mohammed, a. j. [31] who found that project cost overrun one of the most occurrence effect of variation orders in projects in erbil governorate and orders in 1st position. 4.8.3. productivity degradation the third most occurrence effect of variations was revealed to be the decrease in productivity, with overall ms of 3.07. there is a perfect agreement among all parties on the position of this effect. variation is the most crucial factor in a range of factors effecting labor productivity [37]. the variation orders frequently related with disruption, so any modification and adjustment of works have an adverse effect in decreasing labor productivity [38]. thomas and napolitan [39] stated from their study change orders commonly lead to disruptions and it have a potential for labor degradation of productivity of work on average 30 percent of loss of productivity occur when variations being executed. 4.8.4. disputes between parties of contract the fourth most occurrence effect of variation orders in sulaimani governorate is dispute between contracting parties with ms = 3.06 based on overall respondents’ response. it is obvious there is a significant level of match among the three parties the owner, consultant and contractor. this result matched with mohammed, a. j. [31] who found that dispute between contract parties projects in erbil governorate is one of the most occurrence effect of variations. 4.8.5. delay in payment delay in payment was one of the top five most commonly occurred effects of variation order and ranked in the 5th order with ms = 3.05 based on overall respondents. there is a relatively moderate degree of agreement among the three parties. construction projects are extremely dependent on receipt payments made by the owner. delays payments for a month or more are common. delay in payments often because of variations in projects, this eventually affects payment to the contractor which also affects his overall cash flow and the payment to be made to the subcontractors and suppliers since the contractor may not pay them unless he gets payment from the client [6, 8]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 230 4.9. comparison of top five most occurrence causes and effects of variations table 13: comparison the most important factors causing variation orders n o . current study (2020) amiruddin ismail (2012) memon, et al. (2014) alaryan, et al. (2014) mohamed, a. j. (2016) wali, k. i., & saber, n. i. (2019) [40] sulaimani iran malaysia kuwait erbil iraq 1 financial difficulty of owner change of plan or scope by owner equipment unavailability change of plan by owner change in bill of quantity poor project management 2 preparing typical design for difference districts errors and omissions in design poor workmanship change of scope by owner change of plans and schedule by owner change in economic conditions 3 errors and omissions in design differing site conditions complexity of design problems on site inadequate contractor experience lack of experience of contractor 4 desired profitability of contractor financial difficulty of contractor change in schedule by owner errors and omissions in design errors and omissions in design poor cost estimation. 5 lack of adequate site before design stage to project weather condition decision making process change of schedule by owner owner's financial difficulties quality assurance/con trol table 14. comparison top five most occurrence effects of variation orders no. current study (2020) amiruddin ismail (2012) memon, et al. (2014) alaryan, et al. (2014) mohammed, a. j. (2016) sulaimani iran malaysia kuwait erbil 1 time overrun delay in completion work increase project cost increase in project amount increase project cost 2 cost overrun increase in contract cost delay in completion work delay in completion work delay in completion work 3 productivity degradation disputes between owner and contractor logistic delays increase in individual activities increase in duration of individual activities 4 dispute between parties to the contract decrease in quality slower activity progress additional money for contractor additional money for contractor 5 delay in payment additional revenue for contractor causes rework delay in payment disputes between owners and contractor 4.10. reliability test cronbach's coefficient alpha was applied for the second and third section of questionnaire. table 15 shows that the results for all fields were greater than 0.75. this range is considered acceptable as it is greater than 0.7 and good results when it is between 0.7 and 0.9. therefore, the findings ensure the reliability of the questionnaire. table 15. reliability cronbach's alpha no. fields cronbach’s alpha (cα) 1 frequency of occurrence 0.7557 2 effect on cost overrun 0.7814 3 effect on time overrun 0.7914 4 effects of variation orders 0.8266 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 231 4.11. spearman rank correlation to ensure the validity between the respondent categories of owner, contractor and consultant were correlated or not, spearman's correlation coefficient was applied. table 16 shows that there is relatively significant correlation between each two respondent's group in ranking causes of variation orders based on frequency of occurrence, effect on cost overrun and effect on time over run. the highest level of match for frequency occurrence ranking is between owner and contractor with a correlation coefficient 0.981, in addition the correlation between owner and contractor for effect on cost overrun is strongly correlated with a correlation coefficient 0.968. for effect on time overrun answers of owner and contractor correlated with highest level of agreement with a correlation coefficient 0.971. due to significant correlation each two respondent, the findings of the study can be reliable. table16: spearman's correlation coefficient respondents category frequency occurrence effect on cost overrun effect on time overrun coefficient p value coefficient p value coefficient p value owner vs consultant 0.767 0.000 0.629 0.000 0.714 0.000 owner vs contractor 0.981 0.000 0.968 0.000 0.971 0.000 consultant vs contractor 0.772 0.000 0.624 0.000 0.689 0.000 4.12. case study for reliability of cost and time overrun in order to get reliability of cost and overrun due to variations orders in projects in sulaimnai governorate a case study of 40 projects were taken to analysis cost and time deviation. table 16 presents mean values of project cost and time overrun based on different type of projects along with their f value, f critical and p value. cost and time overrun mean for sewerage, school, building and road and highway projects statistically were not. p value was larger than 0.05. therefore, it could not be concluded, statistically, that the sample means were different. table 17: anova findings for cost and time overrun based on project types type of project unite mean f p value f critical project cost overrun sewerage sector % 18.63 2.567 0.070 2.866 school sector % 23.44 building sector % 29.8 road and highway sector % 15.64 project time overrun sewerage sector % 73.02 0.75 0.53 2.87 school sector % 48.34 building sector % 50.26 road and highway sector % 77.32 table 18 shows the cost overrun because of variations in sector of sewerage in range of 8.8% and 54.6% increasing contract amount. while the cost overrun for school sector varied between 9.7% and 53.5% increasing contract amount. in building construction sector, the cost overrun varies between 16.3% and 55.4% increasing contract amount. furthermore, cost overrun in road and highway sector differs from 8% to 22.4% increasing contract amount. time overrun in sewerage sector varies between 13% and 210.7% of project duration. while in school sector the time overrun is between 15.8% and 112% increasing project duration. in building sector time overrun in range of 13% to 168.5%. in addition, time overrun in road and highway sector due to the variation order causes varies between 11.1 and 210.3%. as stated in review of related study that variation orders contribute to overrun of contract cost and time. in order to determine the average of this contribution related data were about 4 projects which completed since 2007 to 2013. all collected project affected by overrun of completion time in range of 11.1 percent to 210.7 percent of initial duration, and also all projects affected by cost kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 232 overrun in the range of 8% to 55.4% of contract amount. depending on gathered data variations accounted 20% of the total cost overrun and 65.4% of the total time overrun. table18: the percent of cost and time deviation no. project name cost deviation time deviation contract amount*103 contract duration actual cost*103 actual duration idq*103 % days % sewerage sector 1 bakrajo sewerageproject 1850690 150 2013455 303 162765 8.8 153 102 2 zhala village water project 71530 75 82156.207 90 10626.207 14.9 15 20 3 bakrajo pipe network 523880 56 579008.64 174 55128.64 10.5 118 210.7 4 zargata complementary 2588708.5 195 2815385.5 263 226677 8.8 68 34.9 5 bawamurad box sewerage 1050000 90 1309877 219 259877 24.8 129 143.3 6 water pipe for shex abbas 2094747.5 150 3237860 185 1143112.5 54.6 35 23.3 7 azady sewerage project 1130925 89 1301910 132 170985 15.1 43 48.3 8 48 sewerage chamchamal 2090620 104 2294195 164 203575 9.7 60 57.7 9 baxtyary sewerage project 2387635 133 2848646.88 199 461011.88 19.3 66 49.6 10 ashty sewerage project 1175240 104 1408240 146 233000 19.8 42 40.4 school sector 1 27 classroom school in qrga 4427926.88 426 4855745.252 850 427818.372 9.7 424 99.5 2 12 classroom in kanigoma 1109186 300 1322091.682 549 212905.682 19.2 249 83 3 6classroom in gullan village 389234 228 480932.82 264 91698.82 23.6 36 15.8 4 6 classroom school grdygo 346200 142 413733.6 181 67533.6 19.5 39 27.5 5 12classroom school in kalar 1020000 240 1131715.034 295 111715.034 11 55 22.9 6 18classroomschoolqularaisy 1178932 300 1629578.8 408 450646.8 38.2 108 36 7 18classroom schoolzargatay 1135194 300 1311762 358 176568 15.6 58 19.3 8 12classroom in halabjaytaza 891975.888 263 1005020.538 316 113044.65 12.7 53 20.2 9 12classroom innergz village 950458 320 1459120.718 471 508662.718 53.5 151 47.2 10 6 classroom school 279000 117 366701.011 248 87701.011 31.4 131 112 building sector 1 ranya security station 1061840 310 1407159.15 406 345319.15 32.5 96 31 2 chamchamal civilian police 1370300 250 1607916.3 285 237616.3 17.3 35 14 3 saidsadq civilian police 1284130 231 1496036.375 261 211906.375 16.5 30 13 4 dwarf community building 552264 154 824741 262 272477 49.3 108 70.1 5 qaradagh youth center 1325744.5 290 1694435.5 378 368691 27.8 88 30.3 6 tskia youth center 1155488 320 1431514.471 390 276026.471 23.9 70 21.9 7 new governorate building 23505300 420 27332500 606 3827199.999 16.3 186 44.3 8 kalar terminal 1181268 294 1618281.061 399 437013.061 37 105 35.7 9 sulaimani passport building 8197547 750 12736394.55 2014 4538847.55 55.4 1264 168.5 10 quality control building 4768396 650 5816373.14 1130 1047977.14 22 480 73.8 road and highway sector 1 hawari shar road and 10143560 360 10955044.8 1117 811484.8 8 757 210.3 2 sulaimani-tasluja road 18121420.11 210 21436475.9 320 3315055.791 18.3 110 52.4 3 penjuen main street project 9759420.78 240 11290197.18 393 1530776.4 15.7 153 63.8 4 rzgary asphalt paving 946105 240 1126824.5 290 180719.5 19.1 50 20.8 5 bepyaz road project 317970 100 381064 153 63094 19.8 53 53 6 zharawa road project 172106 45 205459 67 33353 19.4 22 48.9 7 bngrd road project 849865.5 270 948193.5 300 98328 11.6 30 11.1 8 sarchnar interchange bridge 8646690 180 9585991.85 261 939301.85 10.9 81 45 9 bakrajo road 3803509.5 150 4654279.2 450 850769.7 22.4 300 200 10 main street industrial area 1945430 140 2163033.673 235 217603.673 11.2 95 67.9 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 233 5. conclusion based on the findings of the study the following conclusions were summarized: 1. the most effective causes of variation orders in sulaimani governorate are: owner's financial problems, preparing typical design for difference districts, errors and omissions in design, desired profitability of contractor and lack of adequate or appropriate site before design stage to construct of project. 2. the most occurrence causes of variation orders of owner related causes are: preparing typical design for different districts and financial difficulties of owner and the least two occurrence variation causes are lack of adequate road to reach project location and inadequate experience of owner's staff. 3 the most occurrence of variation orders related to consultant causes are: errors and omissions in design and time limitation in design stage and the least occurrence variation causes are lack of coordination among contract parties in design stage and conflicts among contract documents. 4. the most occurrence causes of variation orders related to contractor are desired profitability of contractor and significant changes in the bill of quantities of work and the least occurrence variation causes are the lack of contractor's involvement in design and searching for compensating costs for his low prices if any. 5. in view of the other related factors, the most occurrence causes of variation orders are unforeseen problems and change in economic conditions and the least occurrence factors are the internal political problems and safety 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[43] w. t. hester, t. c. chang, & j. a. kuprenas, "construction changes and change orders: their magnitude and impact," construction industry institute, 1991. appendix a. analysis of causes of variation orders based on frequency of occurrence, effect on cost overrun, effect on time overrun and average mean score no causes frequency of occurrence effect on cost overrun effect on time overrun average mean score owner consultant contractor overall owner consultant contractor overall owner consultant contractor overall ms rank ms rank ms rank ms rank ms rank ms rank ms rank ms rank ms rank ms rank ms rank ms rank ms rank 1 owner's financial problems 3.4 3 3.1 8 3.40 2 3.3 3 2.9 11 2.6 24 2.9 10 2.8 16 4.2 1 4.2 1 4.10 1 4.167 1 3.42 1 2 preparing typical design for difference districts 3.4 2 3.5 2 3.39 3 3.43 1 3.2 1 3.4 1 3.19 2 3.263 1 3.2 7 3.4 2 3.17 8 3.257 4 3.32 2 3 errors and omissions in design 3.44 1 3.11 6 3.39 4 3.313 2 3.1 4 3.14 6 3.27 1 3.17 2 3.33 3 3.2 6 3.28 2 3.27 3 3.25 3 4 desired profitability of contractor 3.2 6 3.16 5 3.22 5 3.19 6 3.11 3 3.21 3 3.04 5 3.12 4 3.13 9 3.04 13 3.18 7 3.117 8 3.14 4 5 lack of adequate or appropriate site before design stage to construct of project 2.9 13 3.1 9 2.9 13 2.967 13 3.2 2 3.1 8 3.1 4 3.133 3 3.23 8 3.1 10 3.2 6 3.177 6 3.10 5 6 change in design by consultant during construction stage 3.07 10 3.23 3 3.11 9 3.14 8 2.91 9 2.91 11 2.94 7 2.92 9 3.26 5 3.14 8 3.24 4 3.213 5 3.09 6 7 time limitation in the design phase 3.11 8 3.53 1 3.11 8 3.25 4 2.79 19 3.19 4 2.87 11 2.95 8 2.89 21 3.16 7 2.92 17 2.99 14 3.07 7 8 design complexity and difficulty to understand 3.27 5 2.9 18 3.42 1 3.20 5 3.09 5 2.81 15 3.16 3 3.02 5 3.21 6 2.4 33 3.27 3 2.96 18 3.06 8 9 owner instructs modification to design 2.8 18 2.8 21 2.8 17 2.8 18 2.8 15 2.9 12 2.8 16 2.833 13 3.4 2 3.3 3 3.2 5 3.3 2 2.98 9 10 differing site conditions. 3.09 9 2.99 14 3.13 7 3.07 9 2.97 7 2.67 21 2.98 6 2.873 11 3 15 2.94 18 3 14 2.98 16 2.97 10 11 failure of the contractor to provide the required material from outsourcing 2.9 14 3.17 4 2.89 14 2.987 12 2.84 13 2.89 14 2.83 14 2.853 12 2.96 16 3.24 4 2.99 15 3.063 9 2.97 11 12 significant changes in the bill of quantities of work 3.13 7 3.11 7 3.22 6 3.15 7 2.83 14 3.14 7 2.78 18 2.917 10 2.61 27 2.96 17 2.82 23 2.797 24 2.96 12 13 change in specification of materials and procedure by owner 3.3 4 2.9 17 3 12 3.06 10 2.9 10 2.7 19 2.9 9 2.833 14 3 14 2.9 20 2.9 20 2.933 20 2.94 13 14 unforeseen problems 2.7 21 3.04 10 2.67 22 2.803 17 2.93 8 3.16 5 2.86 12 2.983 7 3.01 12 2.96 15 3.02 12 2.997 13 2.93 14 15 change project plan or scope by owners 2.9 15 3 12 2.8 16 2.9 15 2.8 16 2.9 13 2.8 17 2.833 15 3.1 10 3 14 3 13 3.033 11 2.92 15 16 change project location after design stage or before construction stage 2.5 28 3 13 2.5 28 2.667 24 3 6 3.1 9 2.9 8 3 6 3 13 3.1 11 2.9 19 3 12 2.89 16 17 financial problems of the contractor 2.83 16 2.66 27 2.77 19 2.753 19 2.87 12 2.41 33 2.82 15 2.7 20 3.27 4 3.07 12 3.17 9 3.17 7 2.87 17 18 lack of consultant's knowledge due to omission in term of reference of project 3 11 3.01 11 3.08 10 3.03 11 2.69 20 2.67 22 2.75 20 2.703 19 2.84 22 2.79 23 2.87 22 2.833 22 2.86 18 19 change in economic conditions 2.71 20 2.8 22 2.72 21 2.743 20 2.57 23 3.24 2 2.57 23 2.793 17 2.91 19 3.14 9 2.92 18 2.99 15 2.84 19 20 lack of specialized construction manager 2.8 17 2.9 19 2.76 20 2.82 16 2.61 22 2.59 27 2.65 21 2.617 22 2.93 17 2.91 19 3.04 11 2.96 17 2.80 20 21 lack of coordination among project parties in design stage 2.73 19 2.63 29 2.83 15 2.73 21 2.66 21 2.6 26 2.77 19 2.677 21 3.01 11 2.77 25 3.1 10 2.96 19 2.79 21 22 inadequate working drawing details 3 12 2.87 20 3.01 11 2.96 14 2.8 18 2.6 25 2.84 13 2.747 18 2.61 26 2.37 35 2.65 25 2.543 29 2.75 22 23 weather conditions 2.56 25 2.76 25 2.55 27 2.623 26 2.41 28 2.79 16 2.46 27 2.553 27 2.91 18 3.24 5 2.96 16 3.037 10 2.74 23 24 owner fails to make decisions at the right time. 2.7 22 2.6 30 2.8 18 2.7 22 2.5 26 2.7 20 2.6 22 2.6 24 2.9 20 2.9 21 2.9 21 2.9 21 2.73 24 25 searching for compensating costs for his low prices if any 2.56 24 2.93 15 2.59 24 2.693 23 2.37 29 2.76 18 2.36 29 2.497 30 2.8 23 2.79 24 2.8 24 2.797 23 2.66 25 26 inadequate experience of owner's staff 2.6 23 2.6 31 2.6 23 2.6 29 2.8 17 2.5 30 2.5 26 2.6 25 2.7 24 2.7 27 2.6 26 2.667 26 2.62 26 27 mep, road, sewerage and water service 2.5 29 2.93 16 2.41 30 2.613 28 2.54 25 2.59 28 2.41 28 2.513 29 2.63 25 2.96 16 2.54 27 2.71 25 2.61 27 28 misunderstanding of tender documents during cost estimate stage 2.51 27 2.77 24 2.58 25 2.62 27 2.5 27 2.67 23 2.57 24 2.58 26 2.47 29 2.67 29 2.54 28 2.56 28 2.59 28 29 lack of contractor’s involvement in design 2.53 26 2.79 23 2.55 26 2.623 25 2.54 24 2.76 17 2.52 25 2.607 23 2.34 32 2.83 22 2.39 30 2.52 30 2.58 29 30 corruption 2.13 35 2.71 26 2.22 32 2.353 32 2.29 32 2.99 10 2.28 31 2.52 28 2.31 33 2.61 30 2.3 31 2.407 32 2.43 30 31 change in government regulations 2.43 30 2.5 32 2.43 29 2.453 30 2.29 31 2.41 34 2.25 32 2.317 32 2.36 31 2.7 28 2.29 33 2.45 31 2.41 31 32 internal political problems 2.24 33 2.66 28 2.18 35 2.36 31 2.19 34 2.5 31 2.13 34 2.273 33 2.56 28 2.74 26 2.43 29 2.577 27 2.40 32 33 lack of adequate road to reach project location 2.3 31 2.3 33 2.2 34 2.267 34 2.2 33 2.4 35 2.1 35 2.233 34 2.4 30 2.5 31 2.3 32 2.4 33 2.30 33 34 contractor’s lack of required data 2.29 32 2.23 35 2.39 31 2.303 33 2.33 30 2.39 36 2.36 30 2.36 31 2.1 36 2.36 36 2.16 35 2.207 36 2.29 34 35 conflicts among contract documents 2.21 34 2.3 34 2.22 33 2.243 35 2.1 35 2.44 32 2.16 33 2.233 35 2.2 34 2.4 34 2.24 34 2.28 34 2.25 35 36 safety consideration 2 36 2.23 36 1.99 36 2.073 36 1.94 36 2.51 29 1.95 36 2.133 36 2.13 35 2.49 32 2.12 36 2.247 35 2.15 36 kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) journal homepage: http://www.spu.edu.iq/kjar issn 2411-7684 (print) – 2411-7706 (online) march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 12 kjar research article study of the chemical and sensory properties of a calcium–milk coagulum rahela siamand¹, jasim m. s. al-saadi2* 1department of food science, salahaddin university, erbil, iraq. ²department of food science, sulaimani polytechnic university, halabja, sulaimani, iraq. *corresponding author: jasim.salih@spu.edu.iq received│november 17, 2015 accepted│january 6, 2016 abstract the chemical and sensory properties of a calcium–milk coagulum which were prepared from heated skim milk were investigated. the yield of calcium milk coagulum was 18.16%, and this value was higher than the yield of soft cheese which was 10.6%. at zero degree of cold storage, the moisture, total solids, acidity, lactose, proteins and ash% in calcium milk coagulum were 66.6, 33.3, 0.14, 3.7, 26.9 and 1.7 % respectively, while these values in soft cheese were 72, 27.9, 0.13, 3.5, 21.8 and 1.4 % respectively. sensory evolution scores for flavour, holes, bitterness, appearance & colour of calcium milk coagulum at zero degree and after 28 days of storage at 7±1°c were higher than soft cheese, while texture and body scores were less than soft cheese. after 14 days storage at (7±1 °c) the total bacterial count, coliform count and fungi count of the soft cheese sample was significantly higher than that in calcium milk coagulum. key words: milk coagulum, ionic calcium, cheese, sensory. introduction gelation of milk proteins is an important process in dairy manufacture. the resulting gels have long linear chains of molecules that are cross-linked at different points. the chains can be cross-linked with covalent bonds or non-covalent cross-links such as salt bridges, entanglements and microcrystalline regions (damodaran, 1996). \gel formation occurs when protein–protein interactions lead to the formation of a threedimensional network capable of entraining water molecules. a balance between the attractive forces necessary to form a network and the repulsive forces necessary to prevent its collapse is required (zirbel and kinsella, 1988; mangino, 1984). the ability of various proteins to form different gel structures is very important to the food industry. the textural properties, sensory characteristics and yield of processed foods such as cheese, yoghurt, custards and sausages are directly related to the formation of protein gels during heating. (clark, 1992). gelation is known to consist of two major steps: first, partial denaturation of protein molecules; second, gradual association or aggregation of the denatured proteins (kinsella & whitehead, 1989). there are three major influences that determine the nature of the protein gel formed: first, environmental conditions, such as ph, ionic http://www.spu.edu.iq/kjar mailto:jasim.salih@spu.edu.iq kjar research article calcium–milk coagulum, rahela & jasim, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 13 strength, and mineral content. second, protein composition, extent of denaturation, and concentration. third, processing condition, such as heating and cooling rates (aguilera, 1995; hines & foegeding, 1993). the gels can be induced through heating, cooling, and by changing specific molecular interactions. heating denatures globular proteins and forms gels, the strength of which depends on the rate of heating, physicochemical properties, and the nature of the proteins in the system (damodaran, 1996). gels can also be formed by changing colloidal interactions using different ph, salt concentrations and ionic strength, and enzyme action (fox and mcsweeney, 1998). several different types of protein gels are produced from milk and milk components. acid gels are the most important due to their formation in yogurt and related products (lucey and singh, 1998). the mechanism of formation of acid gels is well understood and involves the reduction of the repulsive forces on the micelle as the ph is lowered towards the isoelectric point of the proteins. in yogurt manufacture, denatured whey proteins play an important role in the formation and stability of the gel. whey proteins alone form heat-set gels when denatured at >70°c (mulverhil and kinsella, 1987). this is the basis of the manufacture of some dairy products such as ricotta cheese. the caseins in milk are considerably more heatstable than the whey proteins, but under intense heat treatment (140°c for >20 min), they too form gels; the gelation is ph-dependent and this relationship is utilised in heat stability studies (singh 2004). protein gels are involving both whey proteins and caseins can form during roomtemperature storage of uht-sterilised milk and concentrated milk products. this phenomenon, commonly known as “age gelation”, limits the shelf-life of such products (datta and deeth, 2001). while the exact nature of the gel is unclear, it is known to involve the casein micelles embedded is a protein network composed of whey proteins as well as caseins released from the micelle (nieuwenhuijse and van boekel, 2003). several factors affect the formation and strength of dairy gels. however, one of the most important is the concentration of electrolytes such as calcium salts. removal of small amounts of ionic calcium by citrate, phosphate or ion exchange has been shown to improve the firmness of yogurt gels whereas removal of a large amount of calcium and addition of ionic calcium have adverse effects on the gels (ozcan-yilsav et al., 2007; ramarubramanian et al., 2008). several workers (johns and ennis, 1981; schmidt and morris 1984; mulvihill and kinsella, 1987) have reported that addition of electrolytes, such as calcium and sodium salts, affect the strength and texture of heat-set whey protein concentrate (wpc) gels. at low calcium concentrations, weak gels were formed, while at calcium concentrations up to 11 mm, gels with increased strength were formed. modler (1985) and modler and jones (1987) found that the addition of 5-20 mm cacl2 or 0.1 to 0.3m nacl increased the gel strength of heated wpc. calcium has also been shown to influence the gelation of casein in heat stability studies. in general, addition of ionic calcium reduces heat stability but also alters the heat stability–ph profile (singh, 2004). kjar research article calcium–milk coagulum, rahela & jasim, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 14 heating milk at 70°c with added calcium chloride at concentrations of 20 to 200 mm causes coagulation of the proteins with release of whey (ramasubramanian et al., 2012). however, when milk is heated with lower concentrations of added calcium chloride, a gel forms without release of whey (ramasubramanian, 2013). three effects, or a combination thereof, have been proposed to account for the role of calcium in greatly enhancing aggregation (simons et al., 2002): first, interpreting ion bridges, involving carboxylic groups and the calcium ion (mulvihill & kinsella, 1988). second, ion-induced conformational changes, leading to hydrophobic interactions (jeyarajah & allen, 1994). third, electrostatic shielding of negative charges. de wit et al. (1988) also demonstrated a relationship between ionic strength and gel formation. removal of calcium and lactose before thermal processing followed by addition of calcium salts prior to gelation resulted in improved gel formation by whey proteins. during the work of (siamand et al., 2014) they were able to produce calcium–milk gel using heat treatment and calcium addition. the main objective of this study was to produce coagulum from calcium–milk gel then characterize the chemical and sensory properties of calcium–milk coagulum in comparison with soft cheese. such coagulum may provide the dairy industry with an attractive calcium-fortified product produced without the use of acid, or rennet. materials and methods milk samples raw cow milk was collected from 13 cows by local erbil farmers. skim milk was produced by separation of raw milk with a separator. soft cheese and calcium – milk coagulum manufacturing: soft cheese was made by pasteurization of skim milk at 63⁰c for 30 min. then cooled to 35 ⁰c, the rennet was added to milk followed by incubation at 35 ⁰c for 40-45 min for coagulation, the curd was cut and left for 5 min and after that the curd was agitated gently and whey was drained .salt (2%) was added and the curd was molded and pressed. cheese yield was calculated using the following equation: 𝑌𝑖𝑒𝑙𝑑(%) = wieght of cheese wieght of milk x100 for manufacturing calcium – milk coagulum, skim milk was subject to pre-heat treatment at 85°c for 20 min and cooled to ~22°c. calcium chloride was added to the milk to give added ca2+ concentrations of 13.5mm, and mixed thoroughly. the milk was then heated to 85°c and left undisturbed at this temperature for 20 min to produce a milk gels. gel was cut and left for 5 min and after that coagulum was agitated gently and whey was removed. salt (2%) was added and the curd was pressed. coagulum yield was calculated using the above equation. storage to study the changes in calcium–milk coagulum and cheese properties during storage ,the samples were stored at 7°c(±1) and samples were taken for analysis after 1, 7,14, 21 and 28 days. kjar research article calcium–milk coagulum, rahela & jasim, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 15 determination chemical composition of calcium milk coagulum & cheese: protein, moisture, ts, acidity and ash % in calcium milk coagulum & cheese were determined according to aoac 1980. npn % was determined according to (ling, 1956). lactose % in (calcium milk coagulum and soft cheese) samples was determined according to acton (1977) method. polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (page) calcium milk coagulum and soft cheese samples were analyzed by the urea–page method of andrews (1983) using direct staining with coomassie brilliant blue g-250. electrophoresis was carried out on a vertical slab unit (bdh gel tank; bdh merck) and consort power supply. the electrophoresis gels were made up of stacking and separating gels containing 5% and 12.5% acrylamide, respectively. ten microliters of calcium milk coagulum and soft cheese solution (2 mg/ ml) was dissolved in stacking gel buffer containing 8 m urea and 0.1 m β-mercaptoethanol and heated at 95ᵒc for 5 min before analysis. the gels were run under constant voltage of 200 v for about 3.5 hours. sensory evaluation the samples were served in small cups and evaluated by 8 trained panelists from among the staff of food technology department, college of agriculture, salahaddin university. the samples were evaluated for flavor, appearance & color, bitterness, texture holes and body for calcium milk coagulum & cheese as stated by conochie & sutherland (1965).the maximum score for each property was 10. samples were served in a randomized order and evaluated in duplicate. mineral water was used to rinse out the testers’ mouths between consecutive samples. tests were conducted in a standardized room. microbiological tests enumeration of total yeast and molds pda was used for enumerated yeast and mold count. plates were incubated at 25⁰c for 5 days (iso no. 6611, 2004). enumeration of total coliform macconkey agar was used for enumerated coliform. plates were incubated at 37⁰c for 24 hours (iso no. 4832, 2005). enumeration of total count plate nutrient agar was used for enumerated of total bacteria. plates were incubated at 30⁰c for 72 hours (iso no. 4833, 2003). statistical analysis all data were analysed using statistical program (sas, 2005). the significant differences between means of traits included in this study were determined using the probability (p≤ 0.05). results yield and chemical properties of calcium milk coagulum and soft cheese the yield of calcium milk coagulum and soft cheese is shown in (table 1). the yield of calcium milk coagulum was 18.16%, and this value was statically higher than the yield of soft cheese (10.6%). kjar research article calcium–milk coagulum, rahela & jasim, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 16 table 1: yield of calcium milk coagulum and cheese. curd type yield (%) calcium milk coagulum 18.16 soft cheese 10.6 the changes in the chemical properties of calcium milk coagulum in comparison to soft cheese during cold storage is summarized in (table 2). the moisture content in calcium milk coagulum and soft cheese were 66.67 and 72.09 % and these values changed to 61.67 and 64.53 % respectively after 28 days of storage at 7± 1ºc. these decreasing in moisture was accompany with increasing of total solids content in calcium milk coagulum and soft cheese during storage and this related to losing water from curd during storage. total solids in calcium milk coagulum and soft cheese were 33.33 and 27.91 % and these values changed to 38.24 and 35.47 % respectively after 28 days of storage at 7± 1ºc. at zero degree the acidity of calcium milk coagulum and of soft cheese were 0.14 and 0.13 % and these values increased gradually to 0.36 and 0.31 % respectively after 28 days of storage at 7± 1 ºc. this increase in acidity is due to the activity of microorganisms in conversion of residual lactose to lactic acid and formation of h+ ions (madkor et al., 1987), or due to the increase in total solids content in curd (ozer et al., 1998). table 2: sensory evaluation of calcium milk coagulum and soft cheese during storage for 28 days at 7± 1 °c (a; calcium milk coagulum, b; cheese). different letters (a, b, c, d, or combination of these) indicate the presence of significant differences between values within the column. lactose content at zero degree in calcium milk coagulum and soft cheese were 3.7 and 3.5% and these values changed to 2.6 and 2.3% respectively after 28 days of storage at 7± 1ºc. protein content in calcium milk coagulum was significantly higher than soft cheese. protein content in calcium milk coagulum at zero degree was 26.91%, while protein content in soft cheese was 21.83%. the page of calcium milk coagulum and cheese (figure 1) show the presence of whey proteins in calcium milk coagulum. after 28 days of storage at 7± 1ºc the protein content increased in calcium milk coagulum and storage time flavor texture hole body bitterness appearance& color a b a b a b a b a b a b 0 8.50ab 6.33c 8.33d 9.66ab 10.0a 9.16a 8.33c 9.83ab 9.66a 9.16a 10.0a 9.66a 7 9.00a 6.66c 8.83cd 9.66ab 10.0a 9.33a 9.00ab 10.0a 9.50a 9.50a 10.0a 9.50a 14 9.33a 7.83b 9.00bcd 9.83a 10.0a 9.66a 8.50c 9.83ab 9.33a 9.00a 10.0a 9.50a 21 9.33a 7.83b 9.00bcd 9.83a 10.0a 9.50a 8.50c 9.83ab 9.66a 8.66ab 10.0a 9.33a 28 9.33a 8.33ab 9.16abc 9.83a 9.83a 9.50a 8.66c 9.83ab 9.16a 7.83b 9.66a 9.16a kjar research article calcium–milk coagulum, rahela & jasim, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 17 figure 1: page of calcium milk coagulum (a) and cheese (b) stored at 7± 1ᵒc. 1, zero degree; 2, samples stored for 7 days; 3, samples stored for 14 days; 4, milk samples stored for 21 days; 5 samples stored for 28 days. soft cheese to 31.79 and 28.95% respectively and this increase in protein content is related to the decrease in moisture in curd. npn % was determined as indicator for proteolysis in dairy products. npn content in calcium milk coagulum and soft cheese at zero degree were 0.88 and1.05% and these values increased to 1.09 and 1.21% respectively after 28 days of storage at 7±1 ᵒc. ash content in calcium milk coagulum and soft cheese at zero degree were 1.7 and 1.4 % and these values increased to 2.9 and 2.7 % respectively after 28 days of storage at 7±1ᵒc. sensory evaluation of calcium milk coagulum and soft cheese sensory evaluation scores of calcium milk coagulum and cheese during storage at 7±1 ᵒc for 28 days is summarized in (table 3). flavour scores of calcium milk coagulum and cheese at zero degree were 8.5 and 6.33 respectively. these values increased to 9.33 and 8.33 respectively after 28 days of storage at 7± 1ᵒc. table 3: sensory evaluation of calcium milk coagulum and soft cheese during storage for 28 days at 7± 1 °c (a; calcium milk coagulum, b; cheese). the scores given to calcium milk coagulum were significantly higher at significant level 0.05. texture and body score given for calcium milk coagulum were significantly lower than the scores given to soft cheese at zero degree and during storage for 28 days at 7± 1ᵒc, and this is related to presence of whey proteins in calcium milk coagulum. the high water binding capacity of whey proteins, influences the texture of calcium milk coagulum, and make its protein matrix β-cn αs-cn α-la β-lg + 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 ba ba storage time flavor texture hole body bitterness appearance& color a b a b a b a b a b a b 0 8.50ab 6.33c 8.33d 9.66ab 10.0a 9.16a 8.33c 9.83ab 9.66a 9.16a 10.0a 9.66a 7 9.00a 6.66c 8.83cd 9.66ab 10.0a 9.33a 9.00ab 10.0a 9.50a 9.50a 10.0a 9.50a 14 9.33a 7.83b 9.00bcd 9.83a 10.0a 9.66a 8.50c 9.83ab 9.33a 9.00a 10.0a 9.50a 21 9.33a 7.83b 9.00bcd 9.83a 10.0a 9.50a 8.50c 9.83ab 9.66a 8.66ab 10.0a 9.33a 28 9.33a 8.33ab 9.16abc 9.83a 9.83a 9.50a 8.66c 9.83ab 9.16a 7.83b 9.66a 9.16a kjar research article calcium–milk coagulum, rahela & jasim, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 18 structure becomes coarser and more compact (fox et al., 2000). the colour and appearance and holes scores of calcium milk coagulum and cheese were statically non-significant at level 0.05. bitterness scores of calcium milk coagulum and soft cheese at zero degree were 9.66 and 9.16 and these values decreased to 9.16 and 7.83 respectively after 28 days of storage at 7± 1°c. in the first 2 weeks of storage there were no statically differences at level 0.05 between bitterness scores of calcium milk coagulum and cheese, but after 3 weeks of storage the differences became significant. the scores given to calcium milk coagulum were higher than soft cheese scores and this may be related to the activity of rennet which attack casein, especially βcasein and lead to the production of bitter peptides in cheese (sullivan & jago, 1972). microbiological properties of calciummilk coagulum and soft cheese the microbiological properties of calcium milk coagulum and cheese is shown in (table 4). in the first week of storage there was no microbial growth in calcium milk coagulum and cheese. after 14 days of storage the total bacterial count in soft cheese sample was significantly higher than total bacterial count in calcium milk coagulum. coliform count and fungi count also were higher in soft cheese than calcium milk coagulum and this may relate to the higher heat treatment used in preparation of calcium milk coagulum in comparison with soft cheese. in general, after 28 days of storage at 7± 1 °c the total bacterial count, coliform and fungi count in soft cheese were 10×10⁴ , 4×102 and 3×103 (cfu/gm), while these values in calcium milk coagulum were 5×10⁴,3×102 and 2×103 (cfu/gm) respectively. table 4: microbiological properties of calcium milk coagulum and soft cheese during storage for 28 days at 7± 1 °c (a; calcium milk coagulum, b; soft cheese). discussion yield and chemical properties of calcium milk coagulum and soft cheese higher yield of calcium milk coagulum in comparison with soft cheese may be related to the presence of whey proteins in calcium milk coagulum which increase the quantity of proteins in the curd (al-saadi and deeth, 2011). the increase in acidity was significantly higher in calcium milk coagulum than soft cheese and this can be explained by the effect of added calcium in storage (days) t.c.p(cfu/gm) coliform (cfu/gm) fungi(cfu/gm) a b a b a b 0 7 14 3×102 c 3×10⁴ bc 7×101 b 9×101 b 5×101 d 1×102 d 21 4×102 bc 4×10⁴ b 1×102 b 4×102 a 1×103 dc 2×103 bc 28 5×10⁴ a 10×10⁴ a 3×102 a 1×103 b 2×103 ab 3×103 a kjar research article calcium–milk coagulum, rahela & jasim, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 19 increasing acidity of calcium milk coagulum (ramasubramanian et al., 2012). the decreasing in lactose was due the activity of microorganisms which convert it to lactic acid .the higher microbial count in cheese (table 4) explains the reason which made its lactose content lower than lactose content in calcium milk coagulum after 28 days of storage at 7± 1ºc. while the increase in protein ratio in calcium milk coagulum was occur due to heat treatment which cross-linked whey proteins with caseins in the curd (al-saadi et al., 2013). the higher increment in npn in soft cheese at zero degree is due to the action of rennet on casein which cause the release of peptide from proteins (hill et al., 1974), while the action of rennet and the higher bacterial count cause the higher increment of npn soft cheese in comparison with calcium milk coagulum after 28 days of storage. the higher ash content in calcium milk coagulum in comparison with cheese is related to using of calcium in preparation this product, beside that the heat treatment used in preparation of this product convert calcium from free ionic form to colloidal form and this cause decreasing calcium concentration in whey and increase its bonding to casein micelles (ramasubramanian et al., 2012). conclusions calcium milk coagulum was produced from skim milk using heat treatment and calcium chloride addition (13.5 mm). the yield and protein content in calcium milk coagulum was significantly higher than soft cheese. sensory properties and microbiological quality of calcium milk coagulum was higher than soft cheese. acknowledgment the authors wish to thank the staff of food science department, sulaimani polytechnic university, halabja, for their support. references acton, g.h. 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(2008). effect of calcium on the physical properties of stirred probiotic yogurt. journal of dairy science, 91, 4164-4175. sas. (2005). statistical analysis system, user's guide for personal computer.version 9.1 sas institute inc. cary،nc،usa. schmidt, r. h. and morris, h. a. (1984). gelation properties of milk proteins, soy proteins, and blended protein systems. food technology, 38, 8596. siamand, r.; deeth, h. c. and al-saadi, j. m. (2014). textural and sensory properties of a calciuminduced milk gel. journal of food engineering, 139, 10-12. simons, j.; kosters, h. a.; visschers, r. w. and de jongh, h. h. (2002). role of calcium as trigger in thermal beta-lactoglobulin aggregation. archives of biochemistry and biophysics, 406, 143–152. singh, h. (2004). heat stability of milk. international journal of dairy technology, 57, 111-119. sullivan, j. j. jago, g. r. (1972). the structure of bitter peptides and their formation .from caseins, australian journal dairy technology, 27,98-104. zirbel, f. and kinsella, j. e. (1988). factors affecting the rheological properties of gels made from whey protein isolate. milchwissenschaft , 43 ,691–694 study of the chemical and sensory properties of a calcium–milk coagulum rahela siamand¹, jasim m. s. al-saadi2* abstract introduction materials and methods results discussion conclusions acknowledgment references  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 2 | july 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.2.14 estimation of vitamin c human protective dose for acetaminophen toxicity, using acute animal toxicity study mudhaffar i. al-farras department of emergency medicine, king hamad university hospital muharaq kingdom of bahrain. mudhaffar.ismael@khuh.org.bh khalid k. abdul-razzak department of clinical pharmacy, faculty of pharmacy, jordan university of science and technology irbid jordan kkalani@just.edu.jo mohammed yacoub department of toxicology and forensic sciences, school of medicine, jordan, university of science and technology, irbid jordan mohyac@gmail.com wael m. hananeh faculty of veterinary medicine, department of pathology and public health, jordan university of science and technology, irbid jordan whananeh@just.edu.jo abstract: acetaminophen (apap) is the main cause of fulminant hepatic failure. vitamin c is a natural antioxidant with protective potentials against apap toxic damage. in this animal study, and after an ld50 determination and selection of suitable lethal dose, the investigation was done to select a proper protective dose of vitamin c against lethal apap dose. all 6 animal groups received a lethal dose of apap (3250 mg/kg), group ii, iii and iv received 500, 1000 and 1500 mg/kg vitamin c respectively, group v received 1200 mg/kg n-acetylcysteine (nac), and group vi receive 1000 mg/kg vitamin c and 1200 mg/kg nac. mortality was recorded and liver histopathology was carried out. the results showed, the mortality rate in the group i was 68.75% and 37.5%, 31.25% in group ii and iii respectively, while group iv showed a higher mortality rate and in group v and vi it was 25%. there was also a gradual reduction in the grade of histopathological damage in all groups, ranging from 2.4 ± 0.55 in group i to 0.4 ± 0.55 in group v and vi. in conclusion, vitamin c showed an increasing reduction in mortality and more histopathological protection, and it was more significant at 1000 mg/kg. nac adds no more protection or reduction in mortality. the estimated protective dose of vitamin c was 700 to1127 mg for each gram of apap. incorporation of this dose of vitamin c with apap preparations may be considered as a promising method for reducing mortality or severity of apap intoxication. keywords: acetaminophen, vitamin c, liver, protective dose, in vivo study 1. introduction acetaminophen (paracetamol, apap) is an effective, well tolerated and widely used analgesic and antipyretic agent, but its safety is greatly linked to an appropriate dose [1]. fulminant hepatic failure was reported after acute and chronic use of apap, with increasing number of reported cases [2-3]. it’s the main cause of fulminant hepatic failure in many countries [4-5]. apap overdose represents 50% of self-poisoning hospital admission and it is the commonest cause of acute liver failure [5-6]. in jordan, drug poisoning accounted for more than 42% of poisoning cases, and apap products were responsible for 13.4% of all drug poisoning cases [7]. apap is metabolized in the liver to inactive glucuronid and sulfate conjugated metabolites that are eliminated through the kidneys. 5% of apap is excreted unchanged in the urine and only 5-10% of it is converted to the reactive toxic intermediate metabolite, n-acetyl-pbenzoquinone imine (napqi) through oxidation by hepatic cytochrome p450 enzymes. napqi is inactivated by conjugation to glutathione, and eliminated through the urine [8]. napqi will be in high level and binds to cellular nucleophil proteins leading to hepatocelluar toxicity following overdose, or when glutathione depletion occurs and if cytochrome p450 enzyme is induced [9]. according to previous studies, oxidative stress with increased generation of reactive oxygen species, depletion of reduced glutathione (gsh) and lipid peroxidation play a crucial role in the development of apap-induced hepatic and renal damage [9-11]. n-acetylcysteine (nac) is a cysteine prodrug and a glutathione precursor molecule with antioxidant properties that has free access to intracellular compartments. nac is used in clinical practice as an acceptable antidote and antioxidant because it's reduced thiol groups and has the ability to scavenge oxygen free radicals. the indirect vasodilatory effect of nac by increasing local nitric oxide concentration, also contributes to its antioxidant characteristic. as well as, nac prevents apap toxicity by increasing sulfate conjugation. in addition, nac has a safe profile with minimum adverse reactions [12-15]. vitamin c (ascorbic acid) is one of the nonenzymatic cell protective natural antioxidant. a number of animal studies have investigated the potential role of vitamin c in the prevention of apap induced hepatotoxicity. but only romero-ferret et al 16 showed no reduction in mortality, while others showed significant protective effects [17-19]. prevention of apap poisoning remains globally an important issue. several measures have been considered to reduce apap overdoses, including, adding of apap antidote to paracetamol tablets, reducing the therapeutic dose, inclusion of warnings on packs and reducing publicity [20-22]. many agents that have been investigated for modulation of liver toxicity of apap are of little value in clinical practice as they are to be administered before (chemoprevention) or concomitantly with apap (chemoprotection) [9] and still options for the apap toxicity and associated complications prophylaxis are limited [23].therefore chemoprotective agents for apap related hepatic complications become of great importance because most of previously used measures were of little or no significance [22]. the present animal study was design to study the protective effect of simultaneous administration of vitamin c to a lethal dose of apap and to select a protective dose of vitamin c, then extrapolation of the proper human protective dose of vitamin c from the animal study. no previous study designed to extrapolate the vitamin c protective dose for apap lethal doses was published. 2. materials and method 2.1. drugs and chemicals paracetamol tablet (contain 500 mg paracetamol) was purchased from the local market as panadol ® , and prepared as suspension in distilled water to simulate normal human conditions of poisoning. nac was purchased from sigma chemicals company, st. louis, while vitamin c from acrose ® company and were added to the paracetamol suspension at different concentration according to the experiment. 2.2. animals adult male wistar rats weighing 180-200 g were housed in metal cages at 23 0 c and fed ad libitum control pellet diet. all animals were maintained on a 12/12 hour light/dark cycle (lights on at 8 am). they were allowed one week to acclimate before experimental manipulations began. experiments were performed between 9-10 am after overnight fasting. the research was approved by animal care and use committee of jordan university of science and technology. 2.3. experimental design because the ld50 is well known to vary according to animal species, route, type of preparation and many environmental factors [24], the ld50 was determined. also, since the mortality rate was utilized in this study as an indicator for vitamin c protective effect, therefore the selection of suitable dose with a known mortality rate is essential to avoid unexpected high or low variation in mortality. animals were randomly divided into two groups, the first one used to extrapolate the oral acute toxicity (ld50) of apap and the second, to test the protective effect of simultaneous oral administration of vitamin c and lethal dose of apap. 2.4. determination of ld50 extrapolation of the ld50 for the apap was done by using 5 groups 10 animals each. animals were given orally an increasing dose of aqueous suspension of apap started with 2500 mg/kg after an overnight fasting. 2.5. protective effect of vitamin c against paracetamol acute toxicity ld50 was calculated as previously described [25-26]. a dose of 3250 mg/kg was selected (above ld50) to get higher mortality rates, so the protective effect of vitamin c can be observed. to test this hypothesis; animals were allocated randomly into groups, each of eight animals. all experimental groups received papa dose of 3250 mg/kg orally and increasing dose of vitamin c started with 500 mg/kg with or without anc after an overnight fasting and as follows: group i: received only apap. group ii: apap + 500 mg/kg vitamin c. group iii: apap + 1000 mg/kg vitamin c. group iv: apap + 1500 mg/kg vitamin c. group v: apap + 1200 mg/kg nac alone. group vi: apap + 1000 mg/kg, vitamin c and 1200 mg/kg nac. death response was recorded after 24 hours, lived animals were scarified and livers were removed, 3-4 small pieces were fixed immediately in 10% formalin solution for 24 hours and processed routinely for histological examination. the examination was performed by a pathologist who had no prior knowledge of the treatment groups. the grades of histopathological damage were ranged from 0 to iii as follows: 0, no centrilobular degeneration and necrosis; i, up to 30% of the lobules involved with necrosis; ii, 3060% of the lobules affected; and iii, more than 60% of the lobules affected. it is worth to mention that, 16 animals were used for group received 3250mg/kg papa to have sufficient survival (group i), while the best protective dose of vitamin c was repeated twice for validation of the results. while the results of other groups were not validated due to logistic difficulties 3. statistical analysis ssps ® 16.0 for windows statistical software was used for statistical analysis of the data. chi square test was used to find the significance between different groups. the data was expressed as a mean ± sd. p value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. 4. result and discussion the ld50 for apap was estimated to be 2976.7 ± 124.239mg/kg (table 1 and figure 1). the mortality for group received 3250mg apap/kg (group i) was 68.75% as expected since the dose was greater than ld50.but when 500mg vitamin c was administrated simultaneously with apap, the mortality rate was reduced to 37.5% (3/8) (group i vs. iii, p=0.142) and 1000mg vitamin c significantly (p=0.034) reduced the mortality rate of acute apap toxicity to 31.25% (5/16) (group i vs. iii).the beneficial effect of vitamin c in reduction the mortality rate of acute apap toxicity was not observed at a dose of 1500mg vitamin c/kg body weight (group 1 vs. iv) (table 2). simultaneous administration of anc along with 1000mg vitamin c did not show any additive or synergistic effect in reduction of mortality rate of acute apap toxicity (group v and vi vs. group i). although simultaneous administration of 1200mg/kg anc and 3250mg apap showed statistically significant reduction in mortality rate (group v vs. i p=0.043) (table 2). table1. experimental animal groups used to extrapolate the ld50. group dose mg/kg log dose dead % correcte % probits 1 2500 3.398 0 2.5 3.04 2 2750 3.439 30 30 4.48 3 3000 3.477 50 50 5 4 3250 3.511 70 70 5.52 5 3500 3.544 100 97.5 6.96 *calculated ld50 = 2976.7 ± 124.239. figure 1: the correlation between the log dose of apap and probit units. regarding, the grade of histopathological changes, for group i the average changes were 2.4 ± 0.55 while 1.4 ± 1.34 for group ii and this reduction was not statistically significant. group iii showed a greater reduction in average (0.4 ± 0.69) but it was significant at p value =0.053. no more significant protection from the histopathological point of view with an average of (0.4 ± 0.55) was observed in both groups v and vi. concerning group iv, no histopathological investigation was done because of the high mortality rate (87.5%) and insufficient number of surviving animals were not obtained. results are shown in table 2. table 2. death response with average histopathological grade for the tested groups g r o u p i g r o u p ii g r o u p iii g r o u p iv g r o u p v g r o u p v i mortality% 6 8 .7 5 3 7 .5 3 1 .2 5 8 7 .5 2 5 2 5 grade of histopatho logy 2 .4 ± 0 .5 5 1 .4 ± 1 .3 4 0 .4 ± 0 .6 9 0 .4 ± 0 .5 5 0 .4 ± 0 .5 5 paracetamol (apap) is the most widely used over-thecounter (otc) analgesic and antipyretic agent in the world. although it is considered a very safe drug, but it can induce liver damage after single large dose ingestion [27] and also through repeated ingestion of supra therapeutic doses [28] or through chronic low dose intake [29].thus, finding a chemoprotective agent against apap hepatotoxicity is of great importance. in previous studied, vitamin c was investigated for its protective and preventive effect either at toxic doses of apap or given in repeated doses, or used through nonoral routes [16,18]. other studies were conducted using mixtures including vitamin c or nac [19,30]. all previous studies showed significant preventive or protective effect of vitamin c except romero-ferret et al [16] who reported that, vitamin c did not cause any decrease in the mortality rate when administrated either simultaneously or two hours after the oral administration of 875 mg/kg of paracetamol to mice. this could be explained by a high sensitivity of mice to hepatic toxic effect of apap [9]. no reported study was designed to estimate the proper protective dose of vitamin c utilizing the normal poisoning scenario in human with a single dose apap. in this study, vitamin c showed an increased reduction in mortality, which was parallel to the presence of histological protection in treated groups with increasing vitamin c dose. simultaneous administration of 1000 mg/kg and apap showed a maximum protection against apap toxicity, as compared to 500mg/kg vitamin c. the beneficial effect of vitamin c in reducing mortality rate is related to its function as powerful antioxidants, which may inhibit the generation of free radicals by apap metabolites [31] reducing the intermediates back to the parent compound [32]. besides, vitamin c can bind covalently to apap reactive metabolites [33] disturbing the billiary excretion of its glutathione conjugates [34]. using nac alone or in combination with 1000 mg/kg vitamin c added no more great significant reductions in both mortality and histopathological protection. in addition, neither high dose vitamin c nor nac or both in combination have a high protection from apap toxicity to be considered as a single dose antidote. high dose vitamin c (1500 mg/kg) showed a pro-oxidant effect [34-37] which lead to high mortality rate that’s consistent with the results shown by abraham et al [38] although it was investigated for nephrotoxic effect. to extrapolate the proper and useful initial protective dose of vitamin c to be added to the apap preparations that expected to reduce both toxicity and mortality in human, 1000 mg vitamin c was used. extrapolation was done using the method described fda guidance [39] by dividing the animal dose to a factor 10, or specific factor, according to the animal species used if conversion from animal to human dose based on surface area (6.2 for rodents). so, starting safe dose in human for further studies will range between 100 – 161 mg/kg. since, a single dose of apap in adult above 10 grams or 200 mg/kg of body weight, have a reasonable likelihood of causing toxicity [40]. by dividing the estimated safe dose of vitamin c to this toxic dose, then the recommended vitamin c dose to be added for each 1 gram paracetamol will be between 700 mg to 1127 mg. a lower dose is recommended since high doses carry a risk for pro-oxidant effect. 5. conclusion combining apap with a suitable dose vitamin c can be considered as a promising method to reduce severity and mortality that resulted from acute hepatic damage due to apap lethal doses, and further studies will be required with large number of animals with monitoring of liver enzymes or on human who are at risk of acute liver injury due to high therapeutic doses. adjusted doses of vitamin c will be required since very high dose, render the patient at risk of more serious injury due to its prooxidative effect. in addition, administration of vitamin c along with nac will be a more effective antidote for apap induced acute hepatotoxicity. the estimated safe dose of vitamin c to be incorporated into apap preparations according to this study was 700 – 1127 mg for each gram, and better to start with the lower dose for future human studies. 6. acknowledgments to the deanship of research in jordan university of science and technology for their grant (115/2011) to support this research. reference [1] r. jalan, r.williams, j. bernuau, “comment: paracetamol: are therapeutic doses entirely safe?,” the lancet, vol. 368, pp. 2195-2196, 2006. 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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=day%20ro%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=20213329 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=.%2c+fda+proposals+to+limit+the+hepatotoxicity+of+paracetamol+(acetaminophen)%3a+are+they+reasonable http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=jones%20al%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=11971821 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=dargan%20pi%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=11971821 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=emerg+med+j2002%3b19%3a190-192+doi%3a10.1136%2femj.19.3.190 ../../../downloads/material%20safety%20data%20sheet%20name%20of%20product:%20acetaminophen, ../../../downloads/material%20safety%20data%20sheet%20name%20of%20product:%20acetaminophen, http://www.nsfrs.org/.../files/msds/acetaminophen_msds.pdf http://www.nsfrs.org/.../files/msds/acetaminophen_msds.pdf http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=prescott%20lf%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=4100436 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=roscoe%20p%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=4100436 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=wright%20n%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=4100436 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=larson%20am%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=16317692 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=polson%20j%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=16317692 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=fontana%20rj%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=16317692 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=acute%20liver%20failure%20study%20group%5bcorporate%20author%5d http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=acute%20liver%20failure%20study%20group%5bcorporate%20author%5d http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=bonkovsky%20hl%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=8175135 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=kane%20re%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=8175135 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=jones%20dp%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=8175135 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21030226 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21030226 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21030226 http://www.fda.gov/cder/guidance/index.htm  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 105 the effect of the financial crisis on investment projects case study: kurdistan region of iraq amanj jalal faiq college of administration and economic university of human development sulaimani, iraq amanj.faiq@uhd.edu.iq article info abstract volume 6 – issue 2 december 2021 doi: 10.24017/science.2021.2.10 article history: received 28/8/2021 accepted 14/9/2021 domestic and international investments are critical for a country's economic growth since they facilitate the transfer of technology, job creation, increase the exports of goods, and services. the financial crisis in kurdistan region has several economic consequences for domestic and foreign investments, especially on the investment projects throughout: the rate of capital, the numbers of projects, the rate of sectors distribution, nationality investors and the distribution of projects on governors. since 2014, the kurdistan region faced financial and economic crisis, which had a huge negative effect on investment projects. as a result, the influence of the investment projects of economic development suffered from fluctuation and instability. this study attempts to evaluate the effect of financial crises on investment projects in kurdistan regional which are implemented by domestic and foreign investors. to accomplish this objective the statistical technique and economic analysis was applied for annual time series data from 2006 to 2017 by applying the compound annual growth rate gordon growth model (cagr). this study finds that the financial crisis has a huge negative effect on local and international investment initiatives during the last decades. keywords: financial crisis, investment projects, domestic and foreign investment, kurdistan region-iraq copyright © 2021 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the investment environment has improved significantly over the last two decades, owing in part to increased awareness of the advantages of foreign direct investment (fdi), which has expanded quickly across the global economy, especially, in developing countries. most of the mailto:amanj.faiq@uhd.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 106 developing countries have become part of the international economic and the place for attracting fdi. thus, the large volume and diversity of fdi serve as a critical lever for increasing global economic integration. the advantage of investment, particularly fdi, stems from its impact on a country's economic growth via technology and know-how transfer, export promotion, and positive effects on the commerce and balance of payments through recruiting and training available labor. the global crisis is manifested by a restriction on access to financial resources, including loans and sources of capital, a decline in profits as a result of sales declines, and thus a reduction in financing resources devoted to self-financing activities, acquisitions, and mergers at the international level, as well as the principles of strong economics based on cooperation. after 2013, kurdistan region has suffered from the higher financial crisis since the fall of previous regime. 2014 marked the end of the growth rated in local and foreign investments in whole economic sectors that started in 2006 and kurdistan investment projects flows reach a historic record of 40 billion usa dollars in 2013. due to the impacts of continues kurdistan financial crisis on local and foreign direct investment (fdi) flow has brought several consequences; such as decrease number of projects, inter of rising unemployment, growth slowdown, a substantial decline in international capital flows and a shift in the direction of trend capital flows to economic sectors as a primary outcome of previous financial crises. this study tries to evaluate the effect of financial crises on investment projects in kurdistan region which are implemented by domestic and foreign investors through the board of investment which are licensed under the law no: 4 of 2006. also, finding out a trend of investment projects and investment environment in kurdistan region by considering how financial crises influence kurdistan economic development through analysis and comparison and providing some recommendation for kurdistan region development specially to excesses in financial crises. a research question raised in this study is to what extend does the investment projects influenced by the current financial crises. based on the related literature and to achieve the aims of the study it is hypothesized that; the financial crisis has a negative effect on economic growth through investment projects. 2. literature review the financial crises have not only generated through losing financial market, but also through the main economic aggregates such as gross domestic production (gdp) growth and investment. consequently, numerous studies have shown that the financial crisis had a ripple effect on other sectors, most notably the economic sector. for instance, the sub-prime crisis was sparked by a financial issue in the united states housing market, establishes a serious effect on all united states economic sectors and the global economy as well, particularly growth and the investment [1]. additionally, fdi is a kind of capital flow that finances local investment, particularly in nations with little resources. additionally, it adds to the import of modern technology and encourages sophisticated management, which drives development. [2] demonstrated that capital flows may act as a source of investment, particularly for nations with little resources. further, it adds to the import of modern technology and encourages sophisticated management, which drives development. economic growth is shown in the literature to rise with both capital accumulation and high efficiency of investment. athukorala [3] identified that financial crises creates a detrimental impact on the activities of multinational corporations in crisis-affected economies. he identified three adverse impacts of currency collapse on fdi. massive depreciations lower domestic manufacturing costs, making countries more appealing to export-oriented foreign investors. fdi becomes more lucrative as a result. a second impact would be a reduction in investment expenses as a result of lower asset costs when demand declines. finally, the anti-crisis package and new foreign control laws may open up new possibilities for acquisitions and mergers. negative impacts may be kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 107 defined as those that have a detrimental influence on domestic market-oriented foreign investment. during crises, the behavior of the subsidiaries of transnational companies was more stable in compare to the local firms even during non-crisis period. chen and alfaro foreign businesses [4] responded more strongly to crises than domestic firms, even though they had comparable economic features, since overseas firms usually get financial assistance from their foreign parent corporations when they confront a tough financial and credit position in the host nation. when a crisis arises solely in the host nation, ties to the parent firm provide more stability, since the mother company is unaffected by the local crisis. on the other hand, although some research highlights fdi's greater stability relative to other forms of capital, others argue in the other direction. for example, claessens et al. [5] demonstrate that fdi volatility is similar to that of other types of investment. also, reinart and rogoff [6] outlined the characteristics of the financial crisis that struck 18 developed countries in 2008. given the relative insignificance of crises, they focused on those that happened in five countries and had a disproportionate impact: spain (1977), norway (1987), finland (1991), sweden (1991), and japan (1991). (1991). (1992). the study's findings corroborate three typical features of financial crises: a sharp decline in asset values, a significant decline in output and an increase in unemployment, and an alarming growth in public debt. the financial crisis acted as a sobering reminder of the government's policy shortcomings. the effectiveness of government policies – both domestic and international – in handling the financial crisis and its economic consequences is essential for creating conditions favorable to a fairly fast recovery in both fdi flows and economic growth [7]. consequently, although few studies have attempted to objectively analyze the unusual behavior of bilateral fdi flow after financial crises, [8] showed that fdi remained relatively stable throughout the 1982 latin american, 1994 mexican, and 1997 east asian crises. the collapse of economic sectors, particularly private ones, as a result of local and global financial crises has generated considerable interest in determining the causes and effects, both experimentally and conceptually. prior to the 1990 japanese asset price crisis, the 1997–1998 asian financial crisis, the 2000 to 2001 dot-com bubble burst crisis, and the robust economic growth and attractive stock returns in a variety of regions throughout the world, foreign investors redirected their funds to those regions' financial and capital markets [8]. numerous studies, on the other hand, have studied the financial crisis's effect on economic growth and the investment process. indeed, as [9] and [10] found, financial crises decrease investment incentives, slow the pace of demand, especially for products, and raise uncertainty about capital and risk premium returns. on the other hand, the majority of businesses face less favorable financing circumstances as a consequence of tighter lending criteria, rising borrowing rates, and a restricted availability of credit. cerra and saxena [11] shown that political or financial crises account for more than half of all economic crises; their research relies on low-income nations as a significant source of conflicting data on postwar development. becker and mauro [12] discovered that financial shocks and macroeconomic linkages are more expensive for emerging nations (in terms of yearly gdp per capita losses), and that trade shocks and interest rates are detrimental to emerging nations. according to reinhart and rogoff [13], previous financial crises have had a detrimental longterm impact on economic growth. this finding is corroborated by [5]. additionally, the same research discovered that international crises, particularly financial crises, had a far stronger impact (at least twice as strong) on the level of employment and output than regular crises. on the other hand, academics assert that the current financial and economic crisis may provide some helpful insights. indeed, [14] shown that crises have a range of impacts on economic potential. they examine the post-crisis era and discover that half of nations improve their potential development. additionally, increase in factor productivity seems to be a significant element explaining the variation in potential growth rates across nations. according to the kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 108 approach proposed by [15], this quantifies the impact of financial crises on gdp. gdp dropped by an average of 1.5 percent to 2.4 percent after a crisis. the decline spans five years. finally, financial crises have a detrimental impact on both the financial industry and the whole economy. it has spread from nation to country and region to region, wreaking havoc on the level of activity in industrialized countries, rising economies, and developing economies. for example, the previous recession resulted in decreased industrial output, and foreign commerce, including the united states, contributed to the developed world's worst recession since the conclusion of world war ii. the crisis in the economy of industrialized nations has resulted in a decrease in demand for raw resources and commodities. this has a detrimental effect on emerging nations, exposing them to the risk of economic catastrophe 3. previous crisis and the evolution of investment this section must include good technical information to allow the experiments to be repeated. the sources of all media (like name and location of manufacturer) or components of a new formulation must be provided. 3.1 the latin america crisis of 1982 according to [8] after starting the latin american currency crisis in 1982, all types of inward investment gradually declined. this crisis resulted in a decline in regional investment flows. fdi continues to be good, even though it will reach pre-crisis levels in 1988. rather than that, portfolio assets saw a decline in value in 1983 and began to recover only in 1988. kiminsky and reinhart [16] demonstrated that latin america suffered from financial crises more than any other emerging region between 1970 and 1995; they found that financial crises had a greater impact on latin america than on western and asian countries by more than 50%. additionally, the characteristics of the crisis vary considerably by region; for instance, the east asian crisis has certain characteristics with the latin american crisis (volatile capital flows and a weak financial system). additionally, lipsey [8] observed that fdi had a smaller drop than other types of investment during the latin american crisis. however, mexico's crisis was similar; fdi flows decreased, albeit much less than other kinds of capital, and never reached a negative level. on the other hand, fdi inflows into east asia decreased somewhat in 1998 but increased significantly in 1999. generally speaking, the latin america crisis of 1982 was survived by the world direct investment inflows. the manufacturing affiliates from u.s was contributed more than their share to the subsequent growth of exports and to their host countries’ switching from local to export markets, on the other hand, they also moved faster than other host country firms to abandon local, host country, markets until these recovered. 3.2 the global financial crisis during 2008-2009 the financial crisis that began in 2007 was characterized by a decline in foreign direct investment, making it the most severe financial catastrophe since the great depression of 1930. it is characterized by fast global spread. due to the rapidity with which it happened, in addition to the aforementioned components or separate regions, varied intensities evolved over time [7]. the global financial crisis began in the united states of america as a sub-prime mortgage crisis, which rapidly extended to the country's entire financial sector and subsequently to nonfinancial sectors worldwide. according to unctad 2009, the global financial crisis in 2009 resulted in the collapse of fdi flows globally, which had reached a record 2 trillion dollars in 2007 as a consequence of four years of expansion; furthermore, fdi fell by more than 14% at the global level in 2008. the financial crisis disproportionately impacted rich nations, with a 30% drop in 2008; nevertheless, developing countries continued to receive fdi at a rate of more than 17% in 2008, compared to 2007. globally, fdi fell by more than 30% in 2009 compared to 2008. on the other hand, the financial crisis did not impact developing nations in 2009, and as a result, the majority of countries have attempted not only to attract new investment and capital flows, but also to retain current ones [17]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 109 miles ferretti and tille recognized three different phases of the crisis [18]. the first started in august 2007 with the explosion of the lehman brothers issue; the second began in september 2007 with the collapse of the lehman brothers issue, which resulted in a decline in foreign capital flows into developed nations' banking systems. the second stage, which lasted from late 2008 to early 2009, was marked by capital repatriation, particularly banks loans. the last stage started in the second half of 2009, when non-flows and banking in latin america and asia saw a modest recovery. poulsen demonstrated that the financial crisis began in the united states of america and europe and then extended to the rest of the world [1]; he also shown that the greatest decrease is occurring in mergers and acquisitions in emerging nations. all fdi components saw decreases in 2008, although the most significant one was the one reported by equity investments, indicating that the recovery of fdi flows may continue for some time. according to the unctad report 2009 [17], the decline in global fdi since the financial crisis of 2008 is due to a number of factors, including the financial crisis itself, the decline in the stock market, the decline in funding capabilities due to the increase in the cost of credit, the decline in global demand, and the decline in corporate profitability. additionally, hill and jongwanich [19] demonstrated that portfolio investment started to decline only in late 2008, remaining relatively stable and progressively increasing in 2009. in comparison to the asian crises, portfolio investment dropped precipitously. 4. kurdistan region: political and economic challenges according to the oecd study [20], iraq is in a state of internal strife and change almost 15 years after saddam hussein's baathist government fell. institutions and governance systems continue to be frail and insecure. iraq's stabilization and reconstruction process has been inconsistent; in general, international investment inflows and the business environment have been relentlessly denigrated. iraq remains a highly polarized state along ethnic and religious lines, with high levels of conflict. since 2003, the primary focus of political debate has been on containing persistently high levels of sectarian violence in large parts of the country and implementing the constitution, which recognizes iraqi kurdistan as a federal region with a broad range of executive powers. above all, the calculation of the kurdistan regional government's (krg) agreed 17 percent share of the national budget and the management of oil resources have been contentious in talks between the krg and the iraqi central government. the krg enacted a distinct kurdistan oil and gas legislation in 2007. additionally, the krg signed contracts with foreign oil firms that are being challenged by the federal government. tensions with the krg have risen since july 2015, when it began exporting oil without informing or paying the central government and publicly discussed organizing an independence referendum. iraq's position deteriorated further in june 2014, as the islamic state (is) advanced into northern iraq, escalating already-existing tensions and difficulties. although is seems to have been contained, the organization still controlled significant portions of iraq in june 2016 and had the capability to launch offensives and destabilize the nation [20]. previously, the krg faced a military battle against is, a resulting humanitarian catastrophe, central government budget cuts, decreased oil prices, and local strife between various political parties. as a result, krg has hit by a deep financial crisis since 2014, has made many consequences on the whole economic and people, in particular on private sectors and investment projects. after 16th october 2017, the krg faced with lost most of revenue sources such as many big oils field, airport authority, trading and tariff-customs and even foreign loan and outside supports. currently, day by day, krg conflict with a big crisis. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 110 5. kurdish board of investment the investment procedure in iraqi kurdistan is governed by the krg investment law no. 4 of 2006, which governs non-hydrocarbon projects (hydrocarbon projects falling under the kurdistan oil and gas law of 2007). the kurdistan region investment promotion law no. 4 of 2006 was established to promote investment in the kurdistan region. it aims to remove legal barriers and to promote domestic and foreign capital investment in a range of development projects that contribute to the region's economic development process. numerous incentives are provided in the form of amenities and tax cuts to promote investment in the region [21]. 6. result and analysis the study of data and information is based on the compound annual growth rate (cagr) gordon growth model and model estimation through the autoregressive distributed lag (ardl) method with the stationary test, since they are relevant measures of growth across various time periods. it may be viewed of as the growth rate that takes you from the original investment value to the final investment value, assuming that the investment compounded through time. the cagr formula is presented in equation (1). cagr = (iev / ibv)1 / n 1 (1) where: iev = investment's final value. ibv = investment's first value. n = period of time (months, years, etc.). kurdistan region hit a deep financial crisis at the beginning of 2014, we are going to compare between the periods before the financial crisis (2006-2013) and, the periods of financial crisis (2014-2017), and however, the financial crisis still continues. table 1 gives a general information of investment projects from 2006-2017 in kurdistan region of iraq provided by the kurdish board of investment. the total project is 713 projects which are distributed on three main governorates and the total capital has reached more than 46 billion us dollars. table 1: general information of investment projects from 2006-2017 in kurdistan region of iraq [21] governorate no. licenses capital in dollar area in donums national investor`s foreign investor`s jointventure`s erbil 345 26,215,540,812 31,469 298 35 12 sulaimani 215 13,721,616,780 16,859 204 1 10 duhok 230 6,458,712,372 13,194 211 10 9 total 790 46,386,869,964 61,522 713 46 31 over the course of 8 years from 2006 to 2013 the investment grew from 438000.0 to 11761254.0. its cagr is 50.88. but from the beginning of financial crisis from 2014 to 2017, the investment grew from 3962828.0 to 711173.0. its compound annual growth rate (cagr) is -34.91 %. it means the decrease of investment reached -34.91 through the crisis period. table 2 presents the annual investment of capital in million dollars from (2006-2013) compared to (2014-2017) by using cagr formula. table 2: the annual investment of capital in million dollars from (2006-2013) compared to (20142017) by using cagr model [21] the period time before, and after financial crises cagr for investment projects by capital in dollar (%) 2006 – 2013 50.88 2014 – 2017 -34.91 over the course of 8 years before financial crisis the number of licensing projects grew from 2.0 to 118.0. its (cagr) is 66.48 %, but over 4 years of financial crises (2014-2017) the kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 111 number of licensing investment projects were declined by more than -19.35 depending on cagr model. table 3 shows the annual investment of number of licensing projects from (2006-2013) compared to (2014-2017) by using cagr model. table 3: the annual investment of number of licensing projects from (2006-2013) compared to (2014-2017) by using cagr model [21] the period before, and after financial crises cagr for investment projects by number of projects licensing (%) 2006 – 2013 66.48 20142017 -19.35 over the course of 8 years, before of financial crises the investment at all sectors grew in different range, for example, the industrial sector grew so rapidly from 1.0 to 700000000.0. its (cagr) is 1175.37 %. meanwhile, some other sectors have grown at lower range such as trade and education sectors. on the other hand, over the course of 4 years of financial crises the all sectors have affected by different range, additionally, the financial crisis has affected all sector and led to decrease of capital inflow over the all sectors, for example, the sector of art, transportation and communication having not been received any projects. so, many other sectors have affected in lower rang such as industrial and agricultural sectors: the capital flow at industrial sector for financial crisis period has grown from 10173881.0 to 240000000.0. its compound annual growth rate (cagr) is 120.38 %. additionally, over the course of 4 years of financial crises the investment at agricultural sector grew from 3252032.0 to 150000000.0. its compound annual growth rate (cagr) is 160.61 %. additionally, over the course of 8 years before financial crisis the housing sector one of the most profitable sector which are at the top of other sectors for capital and number projects but, for 4 years of financial crises; does not show any result because the housing sector are not received any new project as a result of its not giving new licensing by krg from 2012. table 4 shows the annual investment by capital – sectors in dollar from (2006-2013) compared to (2014_2017) by using cagr model (%). table 4: the annual investment by capital – sectors in dollar from (2006-2013) compared to (20142017) by using cagr model (%) [21] no. sectors total capital 2006-2018 2006-2013 2014-2017 1 industry 16,702,400,322 1175.37 120.38 2 agriculture 837,052,066 531.32 160.61 3 trading 4,386,137,966 25.28 -2.67 4 tourism 6,724,817,355 790.39 -20.6 5 housing 14,985,787,204 118.77 6 educational 727,359,739 467.91 -41.33 7 services 91,775,715 663.57 25.55 8 health 918,611,662 842.39 -47.64 9 communication 220,890,942 628.06 10 banks 756,682,661 856.39 -31.71 11 art 12,317,467 593.47 12 sports 98,902,849 529.09 -28.69 13 transportation 104,204,000 856.39 note:( -) it means for that period, there are no any projects have licensed by boi over the course of 8 years, before of financial crises at erbil governorate the investment grew from 1.0 to 5533382.0. its (cagr) is 596.42 %. duhok governorate the second rang of capital inflow compared to sulaimani is a last one, but over the course of 4 years of financial crises the sulaimani governorate has affected more than any two other governorates of financial crisis even before crisis period, sulaimani has received the lowest capital flows. over the kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 112 course of 4 years of financial crisis, the investment grew at sulaimani governorate grew from 1308794.0 to 50362.0. its compound annual growth rate (cagr) is -55.71 %. table 5 represents the annual investment by capital – governorates in dollar from (2006-2013) compared to (2014-2017) by using cagr model. table 5: the annual investment by capital – governorates in dollar from (2006-2013) compared to (2014-2017) by using cagr model [21] governorate cagr (2006-2013) cagr (2014-2017) erbil 596.42 -38.58 sulaimani 33.49 -55.71 duhok 500.34 -5.67 over the course of 8 years the licensing projects number for erbil governorate grew from 1.0 to 46.0. its (cagr) is 61.38 %. meanwhile, sulaimani governorate has received at lower rang compared by two other governorates. the licensing projects number for sulaimani governorate grew from 2.0 to 37.0. its (cagr) is 44.01 %. but, over the course of 4 years of financial crisis, sulaimani governor has affected more than any other governorate which its (cagr) is -28.38 %. comparably, erbil (cagr) is -24.02, and duhok (cagr) is -14.63. table 6 shows the annual investment by licensing projects – governorates from (2006-2013) compared to (2014_2017) by using cagr model. table 6: the annual investment by licensing projects – governorates from (2006-2013) compared to (2014-2017) by using cagr model [21] governorate cagr (2006-2013) cagr (2014-2017) erbil 61.38 -24.02 sulaimani 44.01 -28.38 duhok 55.96 -14.63 over the course of 4 years of financial crises the foreign type investment most effected compared with two other of nationality investments which are national and joint-venture types: the foreign investment grew from 66199.0 to 1.0. its (cagr) is -93.77 %. meanwhile the joint-venture stayed positively, its (cagr) remain at positive grew at 25.07. however, over the course of 8 years, before of financial crises the all types of investment received the different positive ranges. (table 7) the annual investment by capital in dollar investment type from (2006-2013) compared to (2014-2017) by using cagr model table 7: the annual investment by capital in dollar investment type from (2006-2013) compared to (2014-2017) by using cagr model [21] investment type on capital cagr (2006-2013) cagr (2014-2018 national 40.23 -34.73 foreign 528.29 -93.77 joint-venture 539.0 25.07 over the course of 8 years, the number of licensing projects for national investment most grew from 2.0 to 109.0. its (cagr) is 64.84 %. when over the course of 4 years of financial crises the number of licensing projects at national types is most effected, its (cagr) is -18.56 %. table 8 presents the annual investment by licensing projects investment type from (20062013) compared to (2014-2017) by using cagr model. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 113 table 8: the annual investment by licensing projects investment type from (2006-2013) compared to (2014-2017) by using cagr model [21] investment – type on licensing projects cagr (2006-2013) cagr (2014-2018 national 64.84 -18.56 foreign 18.92 -15.91 joint-venture 22.28 0.0 6.1 model specification and estimation this section contains variable descriptions and model definition utilizing the autoregressive distributed lag (ardl) technique in conjunction with the stationary test. 1. variable descriptions to provide further information, the present research makes an effort to define all variables utilized in statistical analysis; these variables are as presented in table 9. table 9: description of variable and their sign variabl es description the sign according to theory the sign according to literature expected sign cap project capital (current us$). fi financial crisis (0 and 1). (-) (-) (-) note: 0 denoted the events that have not happened. 1 denoted the event happened. 2. model specification a functional form model can be expressed in equation (2) to describe the connection between project capital and financial crisis: 𝐶𝐴𝑃 = 𝑓(𝐹𝐼) (2) as shown below, the functional equation (3) may be converted into an econometric model by adding a drift parameter, the slop of an explanatory variable, and a stochastic error component. 𝐿𝐶𝐴𝑃𝑡 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝐹𝐼𝑡 + 𝑈𝑡 (3) where: lcap = project capital. fi = financial crisis. β = intercept parameter. u = random error normally distributed. the coefficients are the model's parameters, and they describe the connection between project capital and financial crisis in terms of both its direction and intensity. the main coefficient of interest indicates the percentage change in project capital in reaction to a percentage change in financial crisis. 3. time series estimation by using ardl the current study uses (ardl) estimation methods to ascertain the financial crisis's effect on project capital. the variables are estimated with the use of e-views 9 and monthly data. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 114 4. stationary test unit root test a stationary series is one whose mean is no longer time dependent. numerous stationary tests have been published in the literature, including the augmented dickey–fuller (adf), phillips–perron (pp), and (kpss) tests. the adf and the pp are the two tests that are most often used in the literature. as a consequence, the adf and pp unit root tests were employed in this study. the findings of the stationary test are summarized in table 10. table 10: unit root test result for project capital phillips-perron (pp) level first difference variable intercept trend variable intercept trend project capital 0.0150 0.1176 project capital 0.0000* 0.0000* augmented dickey–fuller (adf) level first difference variable intercept trend variable intercept trend project capital 0.0150 0.1169 project capital 0.0000* 0.0000* * and ** represents significant at 1%, 5% respectively. acceptance level of p-value is equal or less than 0.05. according to table 10, at the 1% and 5% significance levels, project capital with log is stationary in the first difference (intercept and intercept with trend). 6.2 model estimation for financial crisis and project capital estimation is the process of calculating an estimate or approximation, which is a numerical value that may be utilized for particular purposes despite the fact that the input data may be incomplete, inaccurate, or unstable. there are hundreds of techniques for estimation in the literature, but the most often used are ardl. thus, this research used ardl methods, and the tables below illustrate the ardl estimate results. as seen in table 11, (financial crisis) has a negatively signed coefficient. it demonstrates that the financial crisis had a negative and statistically significant impact on both longand shortrun project capital. thus, a one percent rise in (financial crisis) results in a 0.27 percent reduction in (project capital) in the short term, but this impact is considerably greater in the long run, equivalent to (-2.42 percent). by and large, the coefficient of the ecm term is 0.1126, implying a gradual adjustment process. thus, to maintain the long-term connection between the variables, the project capital should be increased by (0.8874). table 11: model estimation result of relationship between financial crisis on project capital variables type of variable coefficient std. error t-statistic probability beta (c) constant 21.7682 0.7528 28.9170 0.0000 ardl estimation/ short run effect variables type of variable coefficient std. error t-statistic probability project capital dependent variable financial crisis independent variable -0.2727 0.1320 -2.0666 0.0405 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 115 ardl estimation/ long run effect variables type of variable coefficient std. error t-statistic probability project capital dependent variable financial crisis independent variable -2.4209 1.3336 -1.8154 0.0715 equilibrium points for relationship between small project and family income project capital financial crisis coefficient std. error t-statistic probability equilibrium (co-integration) (-1) /ecm -0.1126 0.0846 -1.3315 0.1851 monthly data from 2006 2018 the observation number is 146 the independent variable number is 1 6.3 statistical indictors for goodness of fit tables, checking the model and its goodness of fit is a critical stage in the estimate process. the aim of statistical validation is to ascertain the appropriateness of the employed technique. table 12 below summarizes the statistical indicators. according to the same table, the ardl models are adequately specified, since both the r2 and modified r2 are overly large. this result establishes that the model matches the data and is stated properly. as a result, the standard error (s.e.) in the ardl model is (0.72), which is less. table 12: statistical indicators and diagnostic tests and for the model indictors r-squared adjusted r2 s.e. of regression s.d. dependent variance durbinwatson stat value = 0.88 = 0.87 = 0.72 = 2.07 = 1.99 7. conclusion and recommendation the bulk of these research found a negative connection between crises and both growth and investment. additionally, the duration of crises varies by kind and also across industrialized, developing, and early-development countries. moreover, the present research demonstrates the cooperation of two distinct periods of financial crises in the kurdistan region: eight years before to and four years during after financial crises. financial crises have a major impact on investment approaches in a variety of ways, including the trend of capitals, sectors, governorates, investment type, and number of licensing projects. the impact of the kurdistan region's financial crisis on the actual economy has remained largely unexplored, most likely due to the difficulties of conducting such an evaluation. meanwhile, the krg should adopt a variety of proactive legislative steps to bolster critical infrastructure and influence regional investment behavior. although the area is abundant in natural resources, the question of who has the right to utilize them has not been resolved. clarification of this matter is a high priority for the krg. the investment law does exist, but it has not been examined or evaluated for its merits and weaknesses. for a variety of reasons, the legislation has been rather unsuccessful in attracting productive inbound fdi and encouraging total investment. along with being an attractor of fdi, the newly improved banking sector may result in a rising trend in outbound fdi. governance is ineffectual, and the majority of institutions are in existence but ineffective. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 116 references [1] l. poulsen and g. hufbauer, “foreign direct investment in times of crisis,” transnatl. corp., vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 19–38, 2011. 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[14] g. j. koopman and i. p. szekely, “the financial crisis and potential growth: policy challenges for europe,” ecfin econ. br., vol. 3, pp. 59–66, 2009. [15] v. cerra and s. c. saxena, “growth dynamics: the myth of economic recovery,” am. econ. rev., vol. 98, no. 1, pp. 439–457, 2008. [16] g. l. kaminsky and c. m. reinhart, “financial crises in asia and latin america: then and now,” am. econ. rev., vol. 88, no. 2, pp. 444–448, 1998. [17] u. ctad, “assessing the impact of the current financial and economic crisis on global fdi flows,” in united ations conference on trade and development. u ctad/diae/ia/2009/3. geneva, april, united ations publication, 2009. [18] g. m. milesi-ferretti and c. tille, “the great retrenchment,” the graduate institute of international and development studies, 2010. [19] h. hill and j. jongwanich, “outward foreign direct investment and the financial crisis in developing east asia,” asian dev. rev., vol. 26, no. 2, p. 1, 2009. [20] m. p. effective coalitions, “development co-operation report 2015.” [21] “kurdistan board of investment.” [online]. available: http://www.kurdistaninvestment.org/. [accessed: 04feb-2021].  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 37 effect of covid-19 on severity of signs and symptoms of autoimmune diseases nabaz ali ahmed ramand mohammed haji nursing nursing college of nursing college of health raparin university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq nabaz.ali@uor.edu.krd ramand.haji@spu.edu.iq shakhawan azad ahmed nursing college of nursing raparin university sulaimani, iraq shakhawanazad@uor.edu.krd article info abstract volume 7 – issue 1june 2022 doi: 10.24017/science.2022.1.4 article history: received 15/2/2022 accepted 18/4/2022 it is an observational cross-sectional study, the data collected by convenience sampling method from 33 patients in the ranya general hospital and private clinics for follow-up patient’s autoimmune diseases state in the ranya city from the 10th november 2020 to the 20th may 2021 and the study included all the patients had autoimmune diseases that recovered from the covid-19 disease. for the study materials, the data was collected by a questionnaire form that included demographic and autoimmune disease questions also questions about the patient’s intensity of their autoimmune disease’s signs and symptoms before and after they recovered from covid-19. determine patient’s autoimmune disease signs and symptoms intensity based on the prescribed drug for a treat the autoimmune diseases which are changed by special doctors. furthermore, the data were analysed by spss software to produce descriptive statistic measures and to find the difference between dependent categorical variables sign test were used but chi-square test used for the categorical independent variables with regarding 0.05 as a significant critical value. the result reveals that range of their age started from 42 to 74 years old with mean± standard deviation (57.3 ± 8.06) and most of cases 15(45.5%) were between (55-65) years old, followed by less than 55 years old 13(39.4%) and more than 65 years old age 5(3.8%) cases respectively. rheumatoid arthritis was a major type 16 (48.5%) of the autoimmune disease compared to other types, ankylosing spondylitis 8(24.2%) cases, and ulcerative colitis 6(18.2%) cases respectively while crohn's disease was the minimum 3(9.1%) cases and before they got covid-19 most of the cases 25(75.8%) had moderate intensity signs and symptoms of their autoimmune diseases and 8(24.2%) cases had severe signs and symptoms but after they recovered from the covid19 disease the rate of their signs and symptoms changed to mild 19(57.6%) and moderate 14(42.4%) intensity while severe intensity signs and symptoms were zero with highly significant differences (p-value 0.0001). despite the current study keywords: covid-19, autoimmune diseases, signs and symptoms kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 38 concluded autoimmune disease patients recovered from the covid-19 their autoimmune diseases signs and symptoms intensity decreased significantly but still further studies needed with bigger sample size to determine and explain this association. 1. introduction since 2019, a novel coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) arise in wuhan city in the hubei province in china, spread to clearing over the globe to be a pandemic that infects most of the countries. covid-19 was formally announced globally widespread (pandemic) by the world health organization on march 2020. an enormously covid-19 is a highly contagious respiratory disease which caused by sars-cov-2 virus. covid-19 is a respiratory disease with extremely spreading capability caused by a virus called the sars-cov-2. the sarscov-2 virus can spread in both direct and indirect routes, in the direct route by the droplets from the infected person when coughs, sneezes, or breaths to the non-infected person directly while the indirect route occur when the non-infected person touches a surface or an objective that is contaminated by the virus then transfer to the body ports such as mouth, nose, or eyes by infected hands. the covid-19 most observed abnormal clinical manifestations include fever, difficulty in breathing and cough. in addition, fewer observed abnormalities are headache, fatigue, chills, body ache, sore throat, lack of flavor, runny nose, nausea or vomiting, diarrhea. the clinical manifestation’s intensity may be ranked from mild to severe and the appearance of signs and symptoms need 2 to 14 days after exposure to the sarscov-2 virus. the infected person with the sars-cov-2 virus may be asymptomatic cases but still, they have the ability to infect healthy persons when they contact directly or indirectly. [1] the majority of the infected people with covid-19 with good health care recover without needing unique treatment, but elder people and people with chronic diseases (cancer, diabetes and a weak immune system) or serious medical disorders are at high risk of serious consequences of the disease. [2] autoimmunity the presence of an antibody active against a tissue constituent of the individual producing it (antibodies against autoantigens) or producing by an organism and acting against its own cells or tissues (self-reactive). lymphocytes without the induction of any pathological changes (structural and/or functional) in tissues and/or organs as a consequence of autoreactive cells. virus infections as an environmental factor have contributed to the development of autoimmune diseases such as inflammatory arthritis, systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis, multiple sclerosis, sjogren's syndrome, systemic lupus erythematosus, polymyositis, primary biliary cholangitis, uveitis, henoch schonlein purpura, hashimoto thyroiditis, systemic sclerosis and autoimmune hepatitis. [3] also, there well-known viruses that cause autoimmune reaction among infected patients such as; epstein-barr virus (ebv), hepatitis a and c virus, parvovirus b19, herpes virus-6, htlv-1, cytomegalovirus (cmv), and rubella, those are specific types of viruses associated with that trigger and beginning of autoimmune conditions. [4] the term "autoimmune disorder" describes a range of painful symptoms put on by a malfunction in the body's interconnected pattern. in autoimmune diseases, this inflammation persists, causing pains and long-term changes or damage to the tissues involved. autoimmune illnesses are difficult to identify because they have no known cause for that frequent remission and recurrence patterns occur. [5] autoimmune disease is influenced by a wide range of factors (genetic and environmental factors), and the preponderance of autoimmune conditions are chronic in nature, requiring long term treatment. both molecular mimicry or cell mimicry have indeed been suggested as pathways for generating autoimmunity. [6] kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 39 bystander activation is the activation of antigen-presenting cells by the infection such as virus have a role by further activating pre-primed lead to auto-reactive t-cells, final result cause tissue damage by the production of pro-inflammatory mediators. [7] the reaction between environmental and hereditary factors influence the appearance of the autoimmune illness. the contribution of the heredity risk in the autoimmune disease is near one-third of all cases while environmental factors (non-hereditary) occupy the remaining 70% of cases of autoimmune diseases. the role of the hereditary factors is assumed to be polygenic (caused by many genes) for the majority of autoimmune disorders. on the other hand, environmental factors also have a significant role in modifying, developing and promoting autoimmune disorders. the environmental factors may trigger the beginning of the illness and they have a role in determining the nature of the first manifestations of autoimmune disease. [3] for the direct viral damage for autoimmune diseases, only a few mechanisms such as; the production of cryptic self-peptides, bystander activation, molecular mimicry, antigenic spread and the adjuvant effect are suggested for how infections can lead to autoimmune disease. when a microorganism's antigens closely resemble self-antigens, autoimmunity is produced, according to the concept of molecular mimicry. while the immune response has been stimulated inside a non-specific way, bystander activation can also happen. [7] there are two general types of autoimmune diseases which are organ specifics such as thyroiditis, skin diseases, reproductive diseases, hemolytic anemia, myasthenia gravis, ophthalmic diseases, insulin dependent diabetics and neurological disease while non-organ specifics are rheumatoid arthritis and polyarthritis also systemic lupus erythematosus and dermatomyositis. treating autoimmune diseases depend on the proper diagnosis which establish by careful clinical evaluation. general principles for autoimmune therapy are treating reversible causes of weakness, fatigue and weight loss for that first choose treatments for those patients are non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (nsaids) after that there are other treatment classes such as anti-inflammatory drugs (antimalarial medications (hydroxychloroquine) and sulfasalazine) immunosuppressant drugs (methotrexate, cyclophosphamide and b cell suppressive therapies) and biological and molecular therapies. [8] the main goal of the study was to determine the consequence of the covid-19 disease on the intensity of the signs and symptoms of the autoimmune diseases among autoimmune immune patients who recovered from the covid-19 disease. 2. methods and materials the current study is an observational cross-sectional study where the data was collected in the ranya general hospital and private clinics for follow-up patient’s autoimmune diseases status in the ranya city from the 10 th november 2020 to the 20 th may 2021. convenience sampling method used for selecting 33 patients and the data collected by direct interview with patients and also follow-up data collected from patients file with considering patient privacy. furthermore, the samples inclusion criteria of the study included two conditionals, first all the patients in the data collecting settings who had autoimmune diseases and second condition included those patients who recovered from the covid-19 disease recently. for the study materials, the data collected by a questionnaire form that consists of three sections as follow; section one included questions about patient’s demographic character and questions about patient’s autoimmune disease type and section two contained the questions about autoimmune disease’s treatment before and after covid-19 while the last section specified for the questions about covid-19. determine patient’s autoimmune disease signs and symptoms intensity (level) category based on the prescribed drugs for treat autoimmune diseases which are prescribed and changed by their special physicians after full medical assessment for their autoimmune disease signs and symptoms progress in each visit (follow-up). the treatment was classified into three categories as follows; first, those who used analgesic drugs were considered as a mild level and those kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 40 who use immunosuppressant drugs (disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (dmards) and prednisone drugs) considered as a moderate level while those who used biological drugs were classified as a severe intensity level. in addition, spss (statistical package for the social sciences) software used for data entering and analyzing the collected data to produce descriptive statistic measures such as standard deviation, mean, percentage and frequency and to find the difference among two categorical dependent variables the sign test used while chisquare test were used for two independent categorical variables but if number less than 5 included in the expected value, fisher's exact test used instate of the chi-square test with considering equal or less than 0.05 as a significant critical value. 3. results this study included 33 persons who had autoimmune diseases and recovered completely of covid-19 diseases in the ranya city. the minimum age of the participates were 42 years old while the maximum age were 74 years, with the mean ± sd (57.3 ± 8.06) and most of them 15 (45.5%) were between (55-65) years old, followed by age group less than 55 years old which consist of 13 (39.4%) of the cases and more than 65 years old age group 5 (3.8%) cases respectively. furthermore, about participates gender for the current study, 21 (63.7%) of them were male and the remaining 11 (33.3%) were female. table 1 rheumatoid arthritis was a major type 16 (48.5%) of the autoimmune disease comparing to other autoimmune disease types then followed by ankylosing spondylitis 8 (24.2%) cases and ulcerative colitis 6 (18.2%) cases respectively while crohn's disease was the minimum 3 (9.1%) cases. table 1 for the characters of the covid-19 diseases, the mean and standard deviation of the duration of covid-19 diagnosis were (4.7 ± 1.26) days while minimum days were 2 days duration and 6 days were maximum duration for the diagnosis and most of the cases had a moderate 30 (90.9%) covid-19 disease’s signs and symptoms and the remaining cases 3 (9.1%) had a severe signs and symptoms. in addition, only 4 (12.1%) cases out of the 33 cases with autoimmune diseases during covid-19 diseases needed supplemental oxygen (o2). table 1 table 1: demographic and diseases characters of the study participates variables groups frequency percentage age groups lower than 55 13 39.4 55-65 15 45.5 more than 65 5 15.1 gender male 21 63.7 female 11 33.3 missing 1 3 type of autoimmune disease rheumatoid arthritis 16 48.5 ulcerative colitis 6 18.2 crohn's disease 3 9.1 ankylosing spondylitis 8 24.2 duration of covid-19 diagnosis (day) mean ± std. deviation 4.7 ± 1.26 minimum 2 maximum 6 intensity of covid-19 signs and symptoms mild 0 0 moderate 30 90.9 severe 3 9.1 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 41 did you need supplemental oxygen (o2) during covid-19 disease period? yes 4 12.1 no 29 87.9 to reveal the consequence of the covid-19 disease on the autoimmune disease cases the patient’s intensity signs and symptoms of their autoimmune were compared with intensity of the same signs and symptoms after they recovered from covid-19 disease (comparison of autoimmune signs and symptoms before covid-19 and after they recovered form covid-19) between the results were as follow; before the covid-19 most of the cases 25 (75.8%) had moderate intensity signs and symptoms of their autoimmune diseases and 8 (24.2%) of the cases had severe signs and symptoms but after they recovered from the covid-19 disease most of them 19 (57.6%) had mild intensity followed by moderate 14 (42.4%) signs and symptoms while severe signs and symptoms were zero. in addition, the p-value difference between intensity of the signs and symptoms before and after they recovered from covid-19 diseases among autoimmune disease cases was 0.0001 which mean highly significant difference caused (affected) by the covid-19 disease on the intensity of the autoimmune disease’s signs and symptoms. figure 1 & 2 figure 1: signs and symptoms frequency of the autoimmune diseases before covid-19 figure 2: signs and symptoms frequency of the autoimmune diseases after covid-19 for the correlation between variable groups with the intensity level after covid-19, the results shows that lower age cases (42-65 years old) their intensity of the autoimmune signs and symptoms more in the mild degree comparing to the older cases but the relationship were non-significant (p-value 0.648) and also almost in the all autoimmune diseases types the signs and symptoms of their autoimmune were at the lowest level (mild) comparing to the more intense level (moderate) but this difference were non-significant (p-value 953). furthermore, despite the non-significant difference between the covid-19 intensity signs and symptoms with the autoimmune disease’s signs and symptoms (p-value 0.244) but still the results show that all (3) cases who had severe covid-19 intensity signs and symptoms had lowest level (mild) of the autoimmune disease’s signs and symptoms also nearly same effect observed among moderate level of the covid-19 signs and symptoms. table 2 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 42 table 2: relationships between age and covid-19 characters groups with signs and symptoms of autoimmune after covid-19 variables groups autoimmune signs and symptoms after covid-19 p-value frequency percentage total age groups lower than 55 7 (53.8%) 6 (46.2%) 13 0.648 55-65 10 (66.7%) 5 (33.3%) 15 more than 65 2 (40%) 3 (60%) 5 total 19 (57.6%) 14 (42.4%) 33 type of autoimmune disease rheumatoid arthritis 9 (56.3%) 7 (43.8%) 16 0.953 ulcerative colitis 4 (66.7%) 2 (33.3%) 6 crohn's disease 2 (66.7%) 1 (33.3%) 3 ankylosing spondylitis 4 (50%) 4 (50%) 8 total 19 (57.6%) 14 (42.4%) 33 intensity of covid-19 signs and symptoms mild 16 (53.3%) 14 (46.7%) 30 0.244 moderate 3 (100%) 0 (0%) 3 severe 19 (57.6%) 14 (42.4%) 33 4. discussion the autoimmune diseases relationship with covid-19 disease is a complex relation, there are many different conclusions been reported globally. some studies showed that the autoimmune disease have positive effect on the covid-19 patients such as liu [9] study and wang [10] study used some medications for treatment of the autoimmune diseases have therapeutic effect on the covid-19 such as chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine and also other studies reported that autoimmune diseases patients those who use immunosuppressed medications compared with others not at increased risk of covid-19 and not need special attention during disease’s period to recover form covid-19 disease. [11, 12] moreover, covid-19 is viral infection there are evidence showed that the covid-19 molecular mimicry the autoimmune diseases body immune system responses.[13] on the other side, there many reports show that the autoimmune patients have higher mortality rate (death rate) especially those patients that are on the immunosuppressed medications [14] and also some studies reported that as other virus infection covid-19 have capability to trigger autoimmune responses and develop autoimmune disease after infection which cause severe interstitial pneumonia.[15-17] the outcome of this study reveals that most of the cases 30 (90.9%) cases had moderate degree signs and symptoms during effect by covid-19 pandemic diseases, through the time just 3 cases (9.1%) had severe syndrome covid-19 pandemic diseases, at the same time all the 33 cases not have mild manifestation covid-19 universal diseases. furthermore, only 4 (12.1%) cases out of the 33 cases with autoimmune diseases during covid-19 diseases needed supplemental oxygen (o2). all three cases who had severe syndrome all of them needed supplemental oxygen (o2) and before a month they effected by covid-19 they took biological medications. other studies showed controversial risk of infection among autoimmune diseases cases with covid-19 prognosis. [9] the current study results show that before the covid-19 most of the cases had moderate intensity signs and symptoms of their autoimmune diseases but after they recovered most of them had mild intensity followed by moderate signs and symptoms while severe signs and symptoms were zero. the decrease of the autoimmune disease’s signs and symptoms among the patients who recovered from covid-19 disease might be related to more than one factor, among those factors is that the studies on the patients who had autoimmune diseases kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 43 concluded that the some medications used for treatment of the autoimmune diseases have therapeutic effect on the covid-19 such as chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine [10] and also the pathological study [18] showed that t lymphocytes (cd8+) suppressors observed in numerous numbers in the different organs among dead patients by covid-19 by using bright lineage of immunohistochemistry, targeting cd8+ suppressers previously been used to treat autoimmune diseases. [19] the small sample size (33 cases) and the short period data collection (type of the data collection method) also might affected the conclusion of the current study and can be considerate as the study limitations for that we recommend the studies with larger sample size longer durations (cohort studies) to determine the relationship of the covid-19 disease with the autoimmune disease’s signs and symptoms intensity. 5. conclusion despite the current study concluded that autoimmune disease patients who recovered from the covid-19 their autoimmune diseases signs and symptoms intensity decreased significantly but still further studies needed with a bigger sample size to determine and explain this association. also, the current study concluded that in the lower age groups (42-55 years old) intensity of the autoimmune disease’s signs and symptoms decreased more compared to the oldest patients after they recovered from covid-19 and among the majority of the autoimmune disease types, the intensity of the autoimmune disease’s signs and symptoms decreased to the lowest (mild) level after covid-19. reference [1] t. struyf, j. j. deeks, j. dinnes, y. takwoingi, c. davenport, m. m. leeflang, et al., "signs and symptoms to determine if a patient presenting in primary care or hospital outpatient settings has covid‐19," cochrane database of systematic reviews, 2021. [2] e. j. williamson, a. j. walker, k. bhaskaran, s. bacon, c. bates, c. e. morton, et al., "opensafely: factors associated with covid-19 death in 17 million patients," nature, vol. 584, p. 430, 2020. [3] a. floreani, p. s. leung, and m. e. gershwin, "environmental basis of autoimmunity," clinical reviews in allergy & immunology, vol. 50, pp. 287-300, 2016. [4] h. m. hussein and e. a. rahal, "the role of viral infections in the development of autoimmune diseases," critical reviews in microbiology, vol. 45, pp. 394-412, 2019. [5] l. wang, f. s. wang, and m. e. gershwin, "human autoimmune diseases: a comprehensive update," journal of internal medicine, vol. 278, pp. 369-395, 2015. [6] a. ercolini and s. miller, "the role of infections in autoimmune disease," clinical & experimental immunology, vol. 155, pp. 1-15, 2009. [7] fujinami, r., von herrath, m., christen, u. and whitton, j., 2006. molecular mimicry, bystander activation, or viral persistence: infections and autoimmune disease. clinical microbiology reviews, 19(1), pp.80-94. [8] n. rose and i.mackay, the autoimmune diseases, 6th: elsevier science & technology, 2019. [9] y. liu, a. h. sawalha, and q. lu, "covid-19 and autoimmune diseases," current opinion in rheumatology, vol. 33, p. 155, 2021. [10] m. wang, r. cao, l. zhang, x. yang, j. liu, m. xu, et al., "remdesivir and chloroquine effectively inhibit the recently emerged novel coronavirus (2019-ncov) in vitro," cell research, vol. 30, pp. 269-271, 2020. [11] g. figueroa-parra, g. m. aguirre-garcia, c. m. gamboa-alonso, a. camacho-ortiz, and d. a. galarzadelgado, "are my patients with rheumatic diseases at higher risk of covid-19?," annals of the rheumatic diseases, vol. 79, pp. 839-840, 2020. [12] a. druyan, m. lidar, m. brodavka, i. levy, a. barzilai, and f. pavlotsky, "the risk for severe covid 19 in patients with autoimmune and/or inflammatory diseases: first wave lessons," dermatologic therapy, vol. 34, p. e14627, 2021. [13] d. kanduc and y. shoenfeld, "on the molecular determinants of the sars-cov-2 attack," clinical immunology (orlando, fla.), vol. 215, p. 108426, 2020. [14] m. ayala gutiérrez, m. rubio-rivas, c. romero gómez, a. montero sáez, i. pérez de pedro, n. homs, et al., "autoimmune diseases and covid-19 as risk factors for poor outcomes: data on 13,940 hospitalized patients from the spanish nationwide semi-covid-19 registry," journal of clinical medicine, vol. 10, p. 1844, 2021. [15] j. finsterer, f. scorza, and a. fiorini, "sars‐cov‐2 associated guillain‐barre syndrome in 62 patients," european journal of neurology, 2020. [16] r. bonometti, m. sacchi, p. stobbione, e. lauritano, s. tamiazzo, a. marchegiani, et al., "the first case of systemic lupus erythematosus (sle) triggered by covid-19 infection," eur rev med pharmacol sci, vol. 24, pp. 9695-9697, 2020. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 44 [17] f. caso, l. costa, p. ruscitti, l. navarini, a. del puente, r. giacomelli, et al., "could sars-coronavirus-2 trigger autoimmune and/or autoinflammatory mechanisms in genetically predisposed subjects?," autoimmunity reviews, vol. 19, p. 102524, 2020. [18] v. zinserling, m. vashukova, m. vasilyeva, a. isakov, n. lugovskaya, t. narkevich, et al., "issues of pathology of a new coronavirus infection covid-19," jurnal infektologii, vol. 12, 2020. [19] c. konya, j. j. goronzy, and c. m. weyand, "treating autoimmune disease by targeting cd8+ t suppressor cells," expert opinion on biological therapy, vol. 9, pp. 951-965, 2009.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 45 hydrological information related existed dam sites assessment using arcgis in zawita district zahraa mahmood klari dadvan hakeem abdulrahman water resources department geography department engineering basic education duhok duhok duhok, iraq duhok, iraq zahraa.klari@uod.ac dadvan.abdulrahman@uod.ac article info abstract volume 7 – issue 1june 2022 doi: 10.24017/science.2022.1.5 article history: received: 16/9/2021 accepted: 24/5/2022 one of the critical pillars that sustain human civilization is meeting the water demand for different purposes like storage, electricity, flood control, and others. in another hand, the mismanagement of water resources and unplanned urbanization is denoted as the most obstacles for developing the arid and semiarid regions. for this, it is important to know the appropriate places to construct such important projects and to evaluate those places if those places are suitable for constructing dams or not. in this paper, a hybrid geographic information system (arcgis) decision-making technology powered by fuzzy logic is molded to assess seven small dams' sites in the zawita district. some hydrological criteria were depended for evaluation like rainfall, geological formations, and types of soil, slope, surface hydrological properties, and drainage density. the results show that all dams within the zawita district are located in areas with suitable geological formations except bari bhar which may suffer from sedimentation problems next years. while regarding slope and drainage density criteria; all dams are located in an appropriate site. finally, by using the fuzzy logic strategy, it turns out that three finished dams were built in relatively suitable places, they are botiya, bari bhar, and bhiri. finally, as for the unfinished dams, one dam is considered an unsuitable location according to all the criteria used, which is the talwa dam and one dam within a relatively suitable location, which is the eminki dam, while the bisre dam was one of the appropriate dams that have not been built yet. from the result, it should be noted selecting the most suitable site to build dam has a great role in proper management of the limited water resources in duhok to meet the whole demand especially in recent years it has been considered that water scarcity is the most serious issues due to climate change. keywords: assessment of dam site, water scarcity, standard criteria, zawita district, arcgis. mailto:zahraa.klari@uod.ac mailto:dadvan.abdulrahman@uod.ac kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 46 1. introduction water can be characterized as the foremost important component for surviving life veldkamp [1]. the scarcity of water has been increased after urban development and growing population which in turn leads to ever-increasing in demand as forwarded by al-ruzouq et al. [2]. this postures a major concern which restricting the usage of the plans and programs related to water division improvement as revealed by almohseen and klari [3] in addition, the unplanned urbanization with the mismanagement of the limited resources of water make many obstacles face the developing countries, to manage these resources to fit water supply alruzouq et al. [4]. dams are considered one of the greatest and biggest civil facilities ever built by man. these dams have changed the features of human civilization. the construction of dams of various kinds is increasing in all countries of the world. rather, they invented many different models of dams to resist violent waters, the limits of the water facilities that are established to conserve and store water and prepare it for consumption. several studies have been suggested [5, 6, 7]; any breach or break happening in a dam leads to massive losses in the area downstream of it (loss of life and economy) as well as negative effects on the environment could occur. this has. in this manner, the issue of selecting the best appropriate sites to build new dams is pivotal. by and large, dam location choice is conducted by conventional strategies, such as ordinary decision-making strategies or agreeing to a political interface. in recent years, the progression in satellite and computational control has upgraded the opportunity to oversee diverse hydrologic parameters and territory characteristics. rs and arcgis offer tall flexibility of joining of spatial data with distinctive progressed numerical, real, and decision-making techniques, such as fuzzy logic, and multicriteria assessment procedures and counterfeit insights as stated by kumar, et al. [8]. several studies have been conducted to evaluate dam sites based on varying criteria. al-ruzouq, et al. [4] highlighted some key factors that affect dam location suitability; table 1 below highlighted the key components that influence dam location propriety within the literature. recently, some studies were done in the kurdistan region of iraq for assessing dam sites. othman and al-maamar et al. [33] determined suitable sites to construct new dams within the khabur river basin within the duhok governorate. they used the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (ahp) and weighted sum method (wsm) to compare appropriate dam sites. gis was utilized to generate 14 thematic layers for assessing dam site including lithology, tectonic zones, distance to active faults, distance to lineaments, soil type, land cover, hypsometry, slope gradient, average precipitation, stream width, curve number grid, distance to major roads, distance to towns and cities, and the distance to villages. also, ali, et al. [9] used geographical information systems (gis) with remote sensing (rs) through satellite images and digital elevation model (dem). gis helped to build objective maps of the garmiyan region located in iraqi kurdistan, which are geomorphological, geological, and hydrological maps, as well as hydrogeological maps to determine the appropriateness of the location of the underground dam. another study was done in al-tharthar basin northern of iraq by al thanoon and ahmed [34], to choose the best dam site using gis. the location of the dam they chose depended on which dam had more lake storage with a lesser length and the existence of substantial foundation materials. the above highlighted the importance of studying the hydrological information and morphology of any catchment before deciding on building dams and how it will affect the expected storage and safety of these dams in the future especially as the water resources are limited and with time while the population and demands are increasing klari [3]. so the present study adopts six parameters like surface hydrological properties, precipitation, geological formation, type of soil, the density of water pool, slope to assess dam site suitability in zawita where some are finished, and some are under construction. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 47 table1: recent dam site suitability studies. references study area utilized factors utilized technique mohammed et al. [10] greater zab river, northern iraq rainfall, geology, soil type, fault line, tectonic line, altitude, slope, road network, lu/lc, material used for dam construction analytical hierarchal processes (ahp) and fuzzy logic sayl et al. [11] western desert of iraq western desert of iraq elevation area volume curve method jamali et al. [12] northern pakistan northern pakistan analytical hierarchal processes (ahp) and the factor interaction method (fim) jamali et al. [13] boda-kalvsvik, sweden boda-kalvsvik, sweden water balance calculations and overlay analysis weerasinghe et al. [14] sao-francisco and nile catchment sao-francisco and nile catchment soil conservation service curve number (scs-cn) equation, compound weighted index (cwi) and multi criteria evaluation technique pandey et al. [15] karso, hazaribagh, india karso, hazaribagh, india overlay analysis (integrated mission for sustainable development (imsd) guidelines darshdeep and litoria et al. [16] soankhad watershed, punjab, india soankhad watershed, punjab, india overlay analysis (imsd guidelines) and water balance study kumar et al. [7] bakhar watershed of mirzapur district, uttar pradesh, indea bakhar watershed of mirzapur district, uttar pradesh, indea overlay analysis (imsd and indian national committee of hydrology(incoh) das et al. [17] himalayan region, india himalayan region, india calculation of available flow of water rantnam et al. [18] yarafeni watershed in midnapur district, west bengal, india yarafeni watershed in midnapur district, west bengal, india sediment yield index (syi) and weighted overlay analysis baban et al. [19] langkawi island, malaysia langkawi island, malaysia weighted overlay method 2. study area duhok is one of the districts of duhok governorate north of iraq, as it is located coordinately at 40˚48ʹ00ʺn, 43˚17ʹ 30ʺe and it is located in the center of duhok governorate with a total area of 1015.02 km². the study focused on zawita which is the biggest town of duhok located coordinately at 36˚54ʹ21ʺn, 43˚08ʹ 34ʺe. it is about 16 km away from the city of duhok having an area of 430 km² approximately 43 % of duhok total area (figure1), and it consists kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 48 of 71 villages. figure 1: location of zawita. duhok is located in a semi-arid region; the average monthly rainfall is 88.76 m while the mean yearly rainfall is 798.7 mm between the years 2000 and 2015. monthly and yearly rainfall in zawita rainfall station is shown in (table 2) from the ministry of agriculture and water resource [21]. table 2: the average monthly and yearly rainfall (mm) of zawita station between 2000 and 2015. s ta ti o n j a n . f e b . m a r . a p r . m a y j u n . j u l. a u g . s e p . o c t. n o v . d e c . y e a r ly z a w it a r a in fa ll (m m ) 1 8 0 .1 1 3 7 .5 8 5 8 6 .6 0 0 0 3 0 .9 1 5 .7 3 9 .5 8 1 .1 7 1 4 2 .4 7 9 8 .7 figure (2) show the natural vegetation in zawita district is classified between pine and oak trees with only 2.9% of the total area of the area while the rest is herbs and shrubs. the mentioned percentage of vegetation cover was found after classifying the area using gis according to the satellite image (landsat 8 oli) downloaded from the usgs website on 10/20/2019. tables (3) show the land use classification of zawita using the same procedure for vegetation cover. this meant that curve number may be between 70 to 85 as can be assumed depending on land use/vegetation cover from many previous studies, so runoff occurring is predicted well duhok kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 49 table 3: land use classification in zawita district percentage (%) area (km 2 ) land use 2.2 9.25 pine and oak trees 41 170.57 herbs and shrubs 33 137.01 weed 0.5 1.89 orchards 5.7 23.87 residential 8.9 36.92 rocks 0.4 1.78 waters 7 29.14 soil 1.3 5.35 burnt 100 415.76 total figure 2: the vegetation cover in the zawita district. in zawita, there are six finished dams, with a total storage capacity of 843,000 m3 of water and this is very good if it is used in dry years to meet the water needs of the district. the number of unfinished planned dams will reach three dams where they can store water with a volume of 375805 m3. if these dams are built with the volume of water in the finished dams, the volume of water that can be absorbed by all dams within the district will reach 1218805 m3; dams are divided into two main parts, namely, finished and actually existing dams and the other part is under construction i.e. unfinished (figure3). most of these dams are used for irrigation purposes. more detailed information on dams was obtained from dams directorate in duhok (unpublished data, table4). kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 50 table 4: dams in zawita district. execution year dam height storage (m 3 ) latitude longitude finished dams 2001 6 30,000 36°57′04′′ 43°10′22′′ xalbok 2005 18 380,000 36°57′03′′ 43°13′04′′ bhiri 2006 10 45,000 36°56′31′′ 43°09′31′′ kurt kavanagh 2007 16 230,000 36°56′25′′ 43°00′00′′ botiya 2009 13 120,000 36°52′26′′ 43°05′33′′ bari bhar 2009 12 38,000 36°53′24′′ 43°07′39′′ zawita under construction 16.5 149,513 36°49′22′′ 43°10′21′′ talwa under construction 10 142,395 36°51′31′′ 43°3′47′′ bisre under construction 10 83,897 36°52′46′′ 43°5′28′′ eminki arcgis program was used to create the spatial, slope, basins, and drainage density maps of these dams. then re-referencing other maps like geological and soil type maps were created by other researchers as will be explained later. the next step is extracting the referenced map according to the study area required for the study which is zawita to make the thematic layers that would be used for assessment of the dam site. a)) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 51 figure 3 (a, b): the spatial distribution of dams in the zawita district. 3. methods and materials 3.1 methods it is known that the process of evaluating dam sites is not an easy matter at present if it follows the correct scientific foundations and in the light of modern software and technologies, as it requires an extensive reading of all the factors controlling them, so it must be set as basic criteria: binary and the fuzzy logic system. in the binary system, two values (01) were used to give weight to the properties of some variables, the value (0) was given for the unsuitable positions and the value (1) for the appropriate positions, while the fuzzy logic system was used for the variables whose regions were divided to degrees in terms of relevance according to the variable, and then the final result was categorized into three degrees that included the positions (appropriate, relatively appropriate, and unsuitable). as mentioned by al-kofari [32], based on the needs of the study area, the geographical location and the population distribution, a specific mechanism was reached regarding the criteria chosen to determine the optimal sites for water harvesting; for example, the dam should be built on a solid ground. the land on which the specified site is located must be flat or with gentle slopes, because if the slope exceeds a specific value, it will lead to soil erosion processes. the acceptable slopes should be within the range (0° to 11°). in other side, soil types have a great influence on dam site selection. if the soil type is a clayey, it is most suitable, but with soil having a high permeability like sandy soil then it considered as unsuitable. moreover, as the greater the percentage of accumulation of runoff (drainage density) indicates the increase in the area of the feeding basin finally, the process of fuzzy method in evaluating the locations of dams in this study depends on the integration of the previous criteria depending on the degree of importance of the criteria used in the matching process within the arcgis 10.5 program (table 5). table 5: is the percentage of criteria used in the spatial assessment process for the locations of small dams in the zawita district. criteria percentage (%) drainage density 40 slope 20 geology 20 the soil 20 total 100 b)) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 52 3.2 materials towards assessing the dam site, six parameters were adopted as criteria: precipitation, surface hydrological properties, geological formation, soil type, drainage density, and slope. a brief description of each parameter is indicated as shown below: precipitation: the climatic criterion is one of the important criteria that have a direct impact on the process of water harvesting. high rainfall zones are considered appropriate for dam construction al-ruzouq, et al. [4]. the areas suitable for water harvesting must have an annual rainfall of not less than 50 mm as shown by awawdeh, et al. [20]. slope: the slope is defined as a surface of the earth that descends from the horizontal plane of the surface by a degree not exceeding (90) degrees, and the slope or slope is defined according to arcgis as the amount of change in height between each cell and the adjacent cell, as each cell is surrounded by eight neighboring cells the greater the slope, the greater the elevation in the area, and the smaller the slope, the closer the area is to a flat shape. the slope is defined by dem 30 m from the usgs.gov site using arcgis table 6 illustrates the degree and area of the slope in zawita. table 6: slopes degree, area and percentage of zawita district. description slope degree area (km 2 ) percentage (%) flat-level 0-1.9 8.6 2.1 slight wave 2-7.9 113.6 27.8 wavy 8-15.9 150.4 36.8 intermittent 16-29.9 118 28.8 severely choppy more than 30 17.8 4.3 total 408.4 100 geological formations: when choosing sites for water harvesting, geological studies of the study basin must be conducted because of their importance in knowing the types and characteristics of rocks and the extent of their hardness or porosity, as this reflects on the economic nature of the construction of dam sites and the provision of materials needed for construction. some types of geologic formation are described in table7. table 7: geological formations in the study area. geologic formation description sharnish the composition consists of two units, the lower one consisting of marl limestone and marline shale in abundance, and the cans unit consisting of blue marl with little resistance to force factors as classified by al-hidan and al-samraai [22] belaspi the rock consists mainly of limestone, diolamine, clay and dolmen white to cream and light gray white miniature, respectively, and well-layered by hasan [23] jrx it is characterized by its red sequences, which consist of successive folds interspersed with sand and silt stones and queens tide with the presence of layers of gypsum in the upper parts as reported by al-brefkani, et al. [24]. this formation is spread within the upper folds in (gali kabirka) and in the areas surrounding mount (zarwa) in the north and northwest and in eastern parts of the side. khurmalah its rocks are composed of finely stratified limestone (smaller and paler) and limestone referenced by hsasn, et al. [25] kolosh abdel-aziz [26] classified kolosh as a formation consisting of igneous rocks, represented by shale rocks, mudstones, sand and others, ranging in color, between gray and black this formation is spread along the feet of the mountains. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 53 anjana it represents the transitional phase between marine environments and aquatic environments, and that the igneous rocks of this formation are clayey, alluvial and sandy rocks as denoted by al-mufti [27] slot its rocks are composed of limestone, gypsum, marl, a little sand, alpha, and anhydrite sediments of the slopes it appears on a large scale in areas of gradient change and increases towards low and flat lands, and includes the northwestern part abdel-hakim [28] sediments of the sedimentary plain khidir [29] stated that sediments of the sedimentary plain is represented by the sedimentation resulting from floods and the repetition of these sediments secreted by the formation of plain lands on the side of the two valleys with varying areas, increasing in breadth in the areas of twists and turns ranging in width from several meters to reach about (50) meters and rarely up to (100) meters (, 2001) types of soil: soil means the crumbled surface layer of the earth’s crust above its surface, in which the plant grows by its roots and derives its water from it abdel-hakim [28]. soil is one of the natural factors affecting the surface drainage process because there is a reciprocal relationship between surface runoff and soil texture as explained in several studies [29, 30]. three types of soil were found in the study area as shown in table 8. table 8: type of soil within zaweta district. soil type description clayey soil also called heavy soil, it has a smooth texture when it is dry, while its texture becomes sticky when it is wet, and although it contains many nutrients; it does not allow water and air molecules to pass through it. side panelsclay mixture soft soils of clay textures, including soils containing (40%) or more by weight of clay. sandy loamy soil it is the soil that has more sand than clay and has good permeability due to the presence of sand surface hydrological properties: the hydrological standard determines the amount of surface water that flows into the drainage basin and the volume of storage in the dam lake in rainy years, as this is related to the amount of rainfall, the coefficient of surface runoff, and the area of the drainage basin, which must be sufficient to fill the storage lake, and then the locations of the constructed dams must be within a network the water bodies in the drainage basins al sulaiman [31]. on this basis, the criterion of accumulation of runoff was used, as the greater, the percentage of accumulation of runoff indicates the increase in the area of the feeding basin. so it represented the surface hydrological characteristics of the river basins, the drainage network, and the aggregate density of water, as each of the mentioned characteristics have a role in determining and evaluating the optimal sites for the small dam and can be studied as follows: the main basins of the study area: the study area has three main basins, which are komel basin, hashkerou, and baidawa. figure4, table 9 shows that the hashkerou basin has the highest area among the basins of the zawita district, with an estimated area of (166.4) km², and the lowest of the baidawa river basin with an area of (36.5) km². kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 54 figure 4: the main basins of the study area. table 9: area percent of the basins. river basin area (km 2 ) percentage (%) the upper basins of the hashkerou river 166.4 40.74 the upper basins of the komel river 205.5 50.31 the upper basins of the bedaoa river 36.5 8.93 total 408.4 100 drainage density: the density of the water gathering is one of the important criteria in evaluating the locations of dams and knowing the places that accumulate the most water at the basin level, where we can determine sites for gathering and whether the dams are built or planned to be built on sites with sufficient water gathering or not. 4. result and discussion zawita rainfall exceeded 50 mm/year, so all dams' sites were located within a suitable area. so by using arcgis, as a beginning to the second criteria, water harvesting projects must also be built on the rocks of resistance. figure5 and table 10 clarify the geological formation distribution according to the map of the iraqi geological survey, scale of 1:250,000. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 55 figure 5: geological formations within zawita district. table 8 represents the areas in kilometers for each type of geological strata that appear in the angular area placed as a percentage. the large layer that appeared in duhok was jrx, which represents 40.79% and the least formation was sediments of the slopes, which represents 1.22% of the total layers. table 10: percentage of the geological formations in zawita district. geological formations area (km 2 ) percentage (%) sharnish 10.4 2.54 belaspi 130.2 31.88 jrx 166.6 40.79 khurmalah 13 3.18 kolosh 21.8 5.33 bakhtiari / muqdadiya 12.6 3.08 anjana 11.4 2.79 slot 34.1 8.34 sediments of the slopes 3.3 0.80 sediments of the sedimentary plain 5 1.22 total 408.4 100 as cleared in figure 6 and table 11, approximately most dams are located within appropriate geologic formations. except for bari bhar that located in an unsuitable dam site, it should be mentioned that this site suffered from this situation right now. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 56 figure 6: visual assessment of dam site suitability according to geological formations. table 11: degrees of suitability according to the geological formations in the study area. geological formation description area (km 2 ) percentage (%) sharnish, khurmalah, jrx, belaspi appropriate 320.3 76.90 fatha, floodplain sediments, kolosh, anjana, muqdadiya, slope sediments unsuitable 96.2 23.09 total 516.4 100 by the way, soil type map of zawita was extracted from soil type map of duhok generated by ameen [35] figure 7 and table 12 represents the areas of the soil types that appear in its corner, where the most visible are clay soils with an area estimated at (160.3) km², and the kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 57 least visible are sandy-clay soils with an area of (120.9) km². figure 7: soil types within zawita district. table 12: type and percent of soil in zawita district soil type area (km 2 ) percentage (%) clayey soil 160.3 39.25 side panelsclay mixture 127.2 31.14 sandy loamy soil 120.9 29.60 total 408.4 100 relying on the characteristics of each type of soil that was previously mentioned in the second section of the study, the study basin was classified into three types in terms of suitability for evaluating the positions of dams. sandy) as for the second type of soil within the study basin, it is relatively suitable for the construction of dams, and it is (clay mixture). as for the last type, which is the most suitable, it is (clay) soil (figure8, table 13) we can summarize the following: kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 58 figure 8: distribution of dams according to soil type in terms of suitability percent. table 13: distribution of dams according to soil type in terms of suitability percent. dam type suitability xalbok finished relatively appropriate bhiri finished appropriate kurt kavanagh finished appropriate botiya finished relatively appropriate bari bhar finished appropriate talwa unfinished unsuitable bisre unfinished appropriate eminki unfinished appropriate moreover, the surface slope criterion was applied as one of the topographic criteria according to the slope layer. figure9, table 14, both of them represent the slope of the land in its angle, which is from flat land to severely interrupted (i.e., steeply sloped), as the flat land in its corner is few, and the undulating land is the most extensive. the acceptable slopes degree within which the dams are located are ranging between (0-11) degrees according to zing international standards al-kofari [32] kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 59 figure 9: slope according to zing specification, distribution of dams according to the slope criterion. table 14. distribution of finished and unfinished dams according to slope degrees. dam type slope degree suitability botiya finished 2-5.9 very good bari bhar finished 6-8.9 good kurt kavanagh finished 2-5.9 very good bhiri finished 6-8.9 good kerber finished 9-11 fair xalbok finished 2-5.9 very good talwa unfinished 9-11 fair eminki unfinished 9-11 fair bisre unfinished 0-1.9 excellent as shown above, it appears that the distribution of dams according to the slope criterion is one of the most important criteria used in evaluating the positions of established and non-finished dams that the positions of three dams among the dams are of medium suitability, two of the dams are good and three of the dams that are very good in terms of suitability, and one dam was in excellent condition according to this criterion. on another basis, the criterion of drainage density was used, as the greater; the percentage of accumulation of runoff (drainage density) indicates the increase in the area of the feeding basin (figure10, table 15) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 60 figure 10: drainage density in zawita district. table 15: distribution of finished and unfinished dams according to the drainage density. dam type suitability botiya finished appropriate bari bhar finished appropriate kurt kavanagh finished relatively appropriate bhiri finished appropriate kerber finished relatively appropriate xalbok finished relatively appropriate talwa unfinished relatively appropriate eminki unfinished appropriate bisre unfinished appropriate after determining the degree of importance of each criterion, the process of fitting the criteria is carried out within the tool raster calculator in arcgis (figure11, table 16) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 61 figure 11: spatial distribution of finished and unfinished dams according to the standard of water collection in the zawita district. table 16: distribution of finished and unfinished dams according to the criteria used. dam type suitability botiya finished relatively appropriate bari bhar finished relatively appropriate kurt kavanagh finished unsuitable bhiri finished relatively appropriate kharbir finished unsuitable xalbok finished unsuitable talwa unfinished unsuitable eminki unfinished relatively appropriate bisre unfinished appropriate 5. conclusion the present study gives clear sights into the importance of selecting the best site for dam construction before making the final decision. the dam location evaluation process depends on the integration of the hydrological standard criteria using binary and fuzzy logic process in the arcgis 10. 5 interface. the priority criteria first considered is the drainage density while geological formation slope and soil type have the same priority after the drainage density. it should be noted that the study concentrated on existing dams in zawita to check the suitability of their sites according to the criteria-based. there are nine dams within zawita some are finished and others are unfinished. gis was used to introduce a visual and digital view of the results of fuzzy logic methods that were used to assess dam location hydrologically. the criteria depended for assessments were: precipitation, surface hydrological properties, geological formation, type of soil, the density of water pool, and slope. firstly, as precipitation within the zawita district exceeds 50 mm, there is no problem with water harvesting. secondly, it is found that most dams within the zawita district are located in areas with suitable slope degrees and good drainage density. also, all of the dams had kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 62 appropriate sites according to soil type criteria except talwa. it is should be noted that all dams sites have a good geological formation except bari bhar which located in unsuitable site and the problem of sedimentation was beginning last years and this belongs to the faults of building the dam in this site that will lead to a decrease the efficiency and age of dam. finally, it turns out that three finished dams were built in relatively suitable places: botiya and bhiri, except bari bhar suffered. while, there are three others in unsuitable places: kurt kavanagh, karbir, and xalbok. as for the unfinished dams, one dam is considered an unsuitable location according to most of the criteria used, which is talwa dam and one dam within a relatively suitable location, which is eminki dam, while the bisre dam was one of the appropriate dams that have not been built yet. the conclusion of this study highlights the importance of applying all the hydrological criteria before taking the final decision to build a dam in a particular site, especially in recent times, where the impact of climate change has begun to be evident in the limited water resources, which in turn sheds light on the need to manage water resources in a way that reconciles supply and demand. reference [1] t.i.e. veldkamp, y. wada, j.c.j.h. aerts, p. döll, s.n. gosling, j. liu, y. masaki, t. oki, s. ostberg, y. pokhrel. 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[35] sh. a. ammen,''soil erosion measurement in duhok district'', master thesis. not puplished. 2016  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.31 multi-objective optimization of grid computing for performance, energy and cost ahmed badri muslim fanfakh computer dept. college of science for women university of babylon, iraq wsci.ahmed.badri@uobabylon.edu.iq ali yakoob yousif computer dept. college of science for women university of babylon, iraq wsci.israa.hadi@uobabylon.edu.iq esraa alwan computer dept. college of science for women university of babylon, iraq wsci.ali.yakoob@uobabylon.edu.iq abstract: in this paper, new multi-objective optimization algorithm is proposed. it optimizes the execution time, the energy consumption and the cost of booked nodes in the grid architecture at the same time. the proposed algorithm selects the best frequencies depends on a new optimization function that optimized these three objectives, while giving equivalent trade-off for each one. dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (dvfs) is used to reduce the energy consumption of the message passing parallel iterative method executed over grid. dvfs is also reduced the computing power of each processor executing the parallel applications. therefore, the performance of these applications is decreased and so on the paid cost for the booking nodes is increased. however, the proposed multi-objective algorithm gives the minimum energy consumption and minimum cost with maximum performance at the same time. the proposed algorithm is evaluated on the simgrid/smpi simulator while running the parallel iterative jacobi method. the experiments show that it reduces on average the energy consumption by up to 19.7 %, while limiting the performance and cost degradations to 3.2 % and 5.2 % respectively. keywords: multi-objective optimization, grid computing, parallel message passing iterative applications and dvfs. 1. introduction in the field of parallel computing over heterogeneous architectures such as grid or cloud, authors defined many optimization problems. traditionally, they were introduced problem of execution time optimization techniques that maximized the speedup of the parallel applications over the heterogeneous platform. moreover, providers of grid and cloud computing platform specified prices to use their own infrastructures. therefore, minimizing the cost of booking nodes in the distributed heterogeneous architectures must be taken into consideration. for example about commercial grid and cloud see gridpp [1] and amazon ec2 services [2]. recently, energy consumption minimization problem become an important topic in the literature due to the increased in consumed power by the processors of higher frequency gears or processors with multi-core [3]. many techniques used to reduce the total power consumption of these heterogeneous architectures. the most widely used tool to reduce the energy consumption of these platforms is the dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (dvfs). this technique scales down the frequency of the processor to save its energy consumption [4]. while, the main drawbacks of this technique is reduced the performance of the processor. therefore, the execution time of parallel applications is increased when the frequency of the processor executing them is decreased. in this paper, the execution time, the energy consumption and the paid price for booking nodes in the grid platform is optimized at the same time. new optimization function and new online algorithm is presented to select the best vector of frequencies that gives the best trade-off between these three objective functions. 2. related works in this section, three types of works to optimize energytime trade-off, time-cost trade-off and time, energy and cost of reserving nodes trade-off of the grid parallel architecture is presented. in [5-7 ], proposed time-energy trade-off optimization algorithms for homogeneous, heterogeneous cluster and grid. the proposed algorithms were applied to parallel application with iteration to select the best frequencies that gives the best compromising between the performance and the energy consumption. in [8], mathematical optimization model was proposed to find the optimal frequency for each node depending on its computational power. they set the slowest node to maximum frequency in the system to keep application performance degradation to minimum. authors in [9], proposed five algorithms. they address an algorithm called multiple-work flows-slack-time-reclaiming to reclaim slack time using dvfs. the slack times is occurred when the fastest tasks waiting the slowest ones. the second type of works is optimized both execution time and the paid cost for computing resources in the distributed heterogeneous platforms. in [10], authors proposed online scheduling algorithm that takes into consideration the characteristics of cloud computing to compromise both execution time and cost with user input constrains. in [11], an ant colony multi-objective scheduling algorithm for the performance of parallel tasks and cost of used resources in the cloud is proposed. the algorithm depends on proposed cost model that consider the cost of the processing and storage resources. in [12], the authors proposed a heuristic swarm optimization algorithm to schedule both processing time and cost under the deadline and budget constraints. the proposed algorithm works off-line to converge to the best possible solution. in the third type of works, the time, energy and cost optimized at the same time to find the best possible tradeoff between them. the complexity of multi-objective optimization problem with several parameters (more than two) is higher. to solve this problem, researchers used more complex techniques to find the best trade-off. they used offline methods that take more execution time such as heuristics methods, evolutionary algorithms, linear programming and etc. according to our knowledge, very small numbers of works have been introduced for this problem. for example, authors in [13], proposed a method for multi-objective workflow scheduling in clouds. the method depends on the dvfs technique to minimize energy consumption. they develop offline swarm algorithm to optimize the energy, performance and the cost of parallel tasks execution over data center. the algorithm finds many solutions and it allows the user to select the best frequencies. the main contribution of this paper is to develop a method to optimize three objective functions, time, energy and cost at the same time. the proposed method works online without the need for training or learning with a very small overhead. 3. multi-objective modeling in this section, three objective functions are described. the three objectives are time, energy consumption and the cost of executing synchronous parallel applications over grid infrastructure. the time is the overall execution time of the parallel applications running over the grid. the energy consumption is the total amount of energy consumed of all nodes in the grid that executing the parallel applications. the cost is the total cost of the price that paid when booking nodes of the grid for computing. the next subsections, present the models of these three objectives. 3.1. the execution time model the execution time of a parallel program is composed from computation and communication times. dvfs (dynamic voltage and frequency scaling) is a modern techniques allowed in recent processors to minimize their frequencies to reduce their energy consumption. using dvfs to change the frequency of the processor of the node in the grid will increase only the computation times linearly without changing the communication times, see [5] for more details. the process of changing the frequency of the processor can be expressed by the frequency scaling factor s, which is the ratio between the maximum frequency and the new frequency (s=fmax/fnew). therefore, the frequency scaling factor s increase linearly the computation time only without affecting the communication time because the processor remains idle during these times. in synchronous parallel applications the execution time of the program is execution time of the slowest task. in the grid structure where there is a heterogeneous nodes from different site which are different in term of computing power (frequencies), a vector of frequency scaling factors are available. however, the execution time model of a parallel program can be defined by computing the maximum products of the computation time and the frequency scaling factors added to the minimum communication time as in the equation (1). the minimum communication time refer to that these times are without idle times, see [7]. 𝑇𝑇𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡 = 𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑖𝑖=1,…,𝑁𝑁 𝑗𝑗=1,...,𝑀𝑀 �𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑖𝑖𝑗𝑗. 𝑆𝑆𝑖𝑖𝑗𝑗� + 𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑖𝑖=1,…,𝑁𝑁 𝑗𝑗=1,...,𝑀𝑀 �𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑖𝑖𝑗𝑗� (1) where n is the number of clusters, m is the number of nodes per cluster, tcp is the computation time, tcm is the communication time and s is the frequency scaling factor. 3.2. the energy consumption model there are two power consumption meters for a processor. the first one is called dynamic power, which is consumed during the computation times. the latter is called static power, which is consumed during all the times that the processor is turn on [14]. in the considered heterogeneous grid platform, each node j in cluster i may have different dynamic and static powers from the nodes of the other clusters, noted as pd and ps respectively. additionally, each node has different frequencies according to its computing power. however, it has different scaling factor value from the nodes of the other clusters. according to the grid platform, different vectors of frequency scaling factors are available. the frequency scaling operation is used to reduce the dynamic energy consumption by factor of s-2. whereas, the frequency scaling factor not affecting the static power, refer to [6,8]. moreover, the frequency scaling factor increases the execution time according to the equation (1). however, the total energy consumption of a parallel application executed over grid is the sum of the total dynamic energies and the total of static energies from all the node of all clusters in the grid as in the equation (2). 𝐸𝐸𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡 = ∑ ∑ 𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑖𝑖𝑀𝑀𝑗𝑗=1 𝑁𝑁 𝑖𝑖=1 . 𝑆𝑆𝑖𝑖𝑗𝑗 −2. 𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑖𝑖𝑗𝑗 + ∑ ∑ 𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑖𝑖𝑗𝑗𝑀𝑀𝑗𝑗=1 𝑁𝑁 𝑖𝑖=1 . 𝑇𝑇𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡 (2) this energy model was proposed in our previous work to predict and measure the energy consumption of parallel application with iterations, refer to [7]. 3.2. the cost model according to the services provided by grid, administrator determines prices for booking nodes of the clusters for computing. moreover, they also determine prices for transferring data between nodes. for example, the unit of transferring data is measured in mb per seconds. while the price of computing services is measured by hours. therefore, the total cost model is the sum of the computation cost ccomp and the communication cost of transferring data ccomm as in the equation (3). 𝐶𝐶𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡 = 𝐶𝐶𝑐𝑐𝑡𝑡𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐 + 𝐶𝐶𝑐𝑐𝑡𝑡𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐 (3) the cost of computation services is measured during the computation times of the message passing application. when dvfs is used the computation times are increased linearly with the new frequency scaling factors as in equation (1). then, the computation cost for the node j in the cluster i that has the price pcompij is computed in the equation (4). 𝐶𝐶𝑐𝑐𝑡𝑡𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐 = ∑ ∑ �𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑖𝑖𝑗𝑗. 𝑆𝑆𝑖𝑖𝑗𝑗. 𝑃𝑃𝑇𝑇𝑃𝑃𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑖𝑖𝑗𝑗�𝑀𝑀𝑗𝑗=1 𝑁𝑁 𝑖𝑖=1 (4) the cost of transferring data is measured by computing the price of communication pcommij during the communication times for all nodes as in equation (5). 𝐶𝐶𝑐𝑐𝑡𝑡𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐 = ∑ ∑ �𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑖𝑖𝑗𝑗. 𝑃𝑃𝑇𝑇𝑃𝑃𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑖𝑖𝑗𝑗�𝑀𝑀𝑗𝑗=1 𝑁𝑁 𝑖𝑖=1 (5) however, the total cost of executing a parallel application over grid is measured in as in the equation (6). 𝐶𝐶𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡 = ∑ ∑ �𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑖𝑖𝑗𝑗. 𝑆𝑆𝑖𝑖𝑗𝑗. 𝑃𝑃𝑇𝑇𝑃𝑃𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑖𝑖𝑗𝑗�𝑀𝑀𝑗𝑗=1 𝑁𝑁 𝑖𝑖=1 + ∑ ∑ �𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑖𝑖𝑗𝑗. 𝑃𝑃𝑇𝑇𝑃𝑃𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑖𝑖𝑗𝑗�𝑀𝑀𝑗𝑗=1 𝑁𝑁 𝑖𝑖=1 (6) indeed, in the grid each cluster has different price from other clusters according to its nodes' computing power and its communication network characteristics (e.g link bandwidth and network latency). 4. optimization function of time, energy and cost the main goal is to optimize all time, energy and cost objectives at the same time when dvfs is used. therefore, all the objective functions must minimize as in the equation (7). 𝐹𝐹 = 𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀(𝑡𝑡𝑀𝑀𝑇𝑇𝑡𝑡, 𝑡𝑡𝑀𝑀𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑒𝑒𝑒𝑒𝑒, 𝑇𝑇𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑡𝑡) (7) as shown in the models (1), (2), (3), the relation between the frequency scaling factor and each one of these models is different. the scaling factor s increases both the time and the cost functions when it is increased. whereas, this factor is decreased the energy consumption function when it is increased. therefore, the relation between these three objective functions are complex and nonlinear. the process of optimizing all of them at the same time is hard problem. in addition the nonlinear relation between them, they are measured using different metrics, for example, time in seconds, energy consumption in joules and the cost in dollars. to solve this problem, the normalized value for each of these three functions is computed to solve the differences in metrics. the normalized execution time computes the ratio between the new execution time (after scaling down the frequencies of some processors) and the old execution with maximum frequency for all nodes as follows: 𝑇𝑇𝑀𝑀𝑃𝑃𝑒𝑒𝑇𝑇 = 𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇 𝑇𝑇𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑇𝑇 (8) in the same way, the normalization is computed for both the energy and cost as follows: 𝐸𝐸𝑀𝑀𝑃𝑃𝑒𝑒𝑇𝑇 = 𝐸𝐸𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇 𝐸𝐸𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑇𝑇 (9) 𝐶𝐶𝑀𝑀𝑃𝑃𝑒𝑒𝑇𝑇 = 𝐶𝐶𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇 𝐶𝐶𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑇𝑇 (10) where told, eold and cold are computed as follows: 𝑇𝑇𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑇𝑇 = 𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑖𝑖=1,…,𝑁𝑁 𝑗𝑗=1,...,𝑀𝑀 𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇 + 𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑖𝑖=1,…,𝑁𝑁 𝑗𝑗=1,...,𝑀𝑀 𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇 (11) 𝐸𝐸𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑇𝑇 = ∑ ∑ 𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑖𝑖𝑀𝑀𝑗𝑗=1 𝑁𝑁 𝑖𝑖=1 . 𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑖𝑖𝑗𝑗 + ∑ ∑ 𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑖𝑖𝑗𝑗 𝑀𝑀 𝑗𝑗=1 𝑁𝑁 𝑖𝑖=1 . 𝑇𝑇𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑇𝑇 (12) 𝐶𝐶𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑇𝑇 = ∑ ∑ �𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑖𝑖𝑗𝑗. 𝑃𝑃𝑇𝑇𝑃𝑃𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑖𝑖𝑗𝑗�𝑀𝑀𝑗𝑗=1 𝑁𝑁 𝑖𝑖=1 + ∑ ∑ �𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑖𝑖𝑗𝑗. 𝑃𝑃𝑇𝑇𝑃𝑃𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑖𝑖𝑗𝑗�𝑀𝑀𝑗𝑗=1 𝑁𝑁 𝑖𝑖=1 (13) the process of selecting frequencies that minimize these three objectives when considering the heterogeneity of the grid in terms of computing power, dynamic and statics powers, computation to communication ratio (granularity), number of available frequencies and paid prices for each node is not easy. this problem can be solved by making the optimization process for energy, cost and execution time follow the same evolution according to the vector of scaling factors (s11 , s12 , . . ., snm ). therefore, the equation of the normalized execution time is inverted which gives the normalized performance equation, as follows: 𝑃𝑃𝑀𝑀𝑃𝑃𝑒𝑒𝑇𝑇 = 𝑇𝑇𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑇𝑇 𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇 (14) however, the objective function that optimizes performance, energy and cost at the same time is computed the maximum perimeter of the triangle as in the equation (18). the perimeter of triangle computes the sum of round sides, denoted as rs1, rs2 and rs3. each side is computed as the distance between two objectives as follows: 𝑅𝑅𝑃𝑃1 = 𝑃𝑃𝑀𝑀𝑃𝑃𝑒𝑒𝑇𝑇 − 𝐸𝐸𝑀𝑀𝑃𝑃𝑒𝑒𝑇𝑇 (15) 𝑅𝑅𝑃𝑃2 = 𝑃𝑃𝑀𝑀𝑃𝑃𝑒𝑒𝑇𝑇 − 𝐶𝐶𝑀𝑀𝑃𝑃𝑒𝑒𝑇𝑇 (16) 𝑅𝑅𝑃𝑃3 = 𝐶𝐶𝑀𝑀𝑃𝑃𝑒𝑒𝑇𝑇 − 𝐸𝐸𝑀𝑀𝑃𝑃𝑒𝑒𝑇𝑇 (17) according to equations (15), (16) and (17), there are different distances values can be computed for each vector of frequency scaling factors. if the performance curve is higher than others then the distance value is positive. otherwise, the distance value is negative. therefore, the objective function is computed as follows: 𝑃𝑃𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑒𝑀𝑀𝑇𝑇𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑒 = 𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑖𝑖=1,…,𝑁𝑁 𝑗𝑗=1,...,𝑀𝑀 𝑘𝑘=1,...,𝐹𝐹 (𝑅𝑅𝑃𝑃1 + 𝑅𝑅𝑃𝑃2 + 𝑅𝑅𝑃𝑃3) (18) figure(1): multi-objective optimization figure(2): perimeters of the three objectives figure(1) shows there are different triangle perimeters for each vector of frequency scaling factors. the best vector is the one that gives the maximum perimeters according to the equation (18) . the maximum one gives the best trade-off between the energy consumption, performance and cost at the same time. figure (2) demonstrates the computed perimeters for all available vectors of the frequency scaling factors. 5.multi-objective algorithm this section presents the proposed multi-objective algorithm (1), that depends on the proposed multiobjective function (18) to select the best vector of frequency scaling factors that gives the best trade-off between energy, performance and cost for parallel message passing iterative applications executed over grid. the algorithm works online during executing the iterative parallel application. it gathers the initial information after the first iteration of iterative application. the gathered information are computation time, communication time, maximum frequency, minimum frequency, dynamic power, static power and the prices of services for each node in the grid. depending on these information, the algorithm predicts the performance, energy and the cost for each available vector of frequency scaling factors. it selects the frequencies vector that maximizes function (18). at the beginning, the algorithm computes the initial frequencies proportionally to the gathered computation times to start its search space as follows: 𝐹𝐹𝑖𝑖𝑗𝑗 = 𝑀𝑀𝑡𝑡𝑀𝑀�𝑇𝑇𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖�.𝐹𝐹𝑐𝑐𝑡𝑡𝑀𝑀𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 𝑇𝑇𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 , 𝑀𝑀 = 1, . . . , 𝑁𝑁, 𝑗𝑗 = 1, . . . , 𝑀𝑀 (19) where fij is the initial frequency, fmaxij is the maximum frequency and tcpij is computation time from the first iteration for node j in the cluster i. algorithm (1) gathering the initial information; computing the initial frequencies as in equation (19); computing the initial frequencies scales sij = fmaxij / fij; computes the initial time, energy and cost using equations (1),(2) and (6) respectively; computes the initial perimeter as in equation (18); while ( perimeter>0 or reaching to min frequencies) do scale down all frequencies . computing the new frequencies scales sij = fmaxij / fij; computes the new time, energy and cost using equations (1),(2) and (6) respectively; computes the new perimeter as in equation (18); if (new perimeter> initial perimeter) then { store all new frequency scaling factors in sbest vector; initial perimeter= new perimeter; } end while return the best frequencies vector from sbest vecto; end algorithm 6.experimental results the multi-objective algorithm (1) was applied to parallel message passing iterative jacobi method, algorithm that executed over grid. the experiments were conducted over simgrid/smpi simulator [15]. this simulator introduces good and easy tools to simulate the grid platform. 6.1. experiments configuration the parallel iterative jacobi method computes the global maximum residual (gmres) to converge, see [16] for more details. the used errors accuracy of the convergence of the iterative algorithm is equal to 1*10-4. the grid platform was simulated using simgrid/smpi simulator with four different types of heterogeneous computing clusters. each cluster in the grid platform has nodes with different characteristics from the other clusters such as computing power (frequency), the dynamic and static powers, available frequencies rang, network latency, link bandwidth, computation price for each node (dollar/hours) and communication price for data transfer between nodes (dollars/hours). as an example about the grid platform see figure (3). table (1) shows the data used in the experiments configuration. table (1): data for experiments configuration cluster max freq. ghz min freq, ghz dynamic power static power comp. price/h comm. price/h cls1 2.50 1.20 20 w 4 w 1.5$ 0.8$ cls2 2.66 1.60 25 w 5 w 2.0$ 1.2$ cls3 2.90 1.20 30 w 6 w 3.0$ 2.5$ cls4 3.40 1.60 35 w 7 w 4.0$ 3.0$ figure (3): an example about grid of three clusters 6.2. results of multi-objective algorithm the multi-objective algorithm (1) was executed many times over parallel jacobi iterative program. two grid platform scenarios were used, the first one used grid with four types of clusters as in table (1) and the later used grid with three cluster (the first three clusters in table(1)). the first and second grid scenarios were applied to parallel jacobi method that solve a two dimensional spare matrix of size 10000*10000 and 9000*9000 respectively. moreover, each grid scenario utilized different number of nodes for each cluster. three different configurations were used to each scenario. for example, g4-2_10000 scenario means the grid is composed from 4 clusters each with 2 nodes, total number of nodes equal to 8, that applied to parallel jacobi method solving the spare matrix of size 10000*10000. figure(4): the results of performance degradation, energy saving and cost degradation figure (4) presents the results of applying the multiobjective algorithm. the results are the percentages of energy saving, performance degradation and cost degradation. both performance and cost degradations percentages are increased when the number of clusters increased. the increase in the number of clusters is increased the communications times due to the high latency of the external communication network between clusters. while the inverse is happened for the energy saving that decreases when the number of cluster and the total number of nodes is increased. the increased in the communication times will decrease the granularity, which is the computation to communication ratio. the highest granularity gives highest energy saving results because the dynamic energy reduces by double during the computation times with the reduced frequencies as in the equation (2) and verse versa. however, the average of the performance degradation, energy saving and cost degradation of the first scenario (grid with four cluster) are equal to 4.9%, 17% and 9.5% respectively. whereas, the second scenario (grid with three clusters) the average results are equal to 3.2%, 19.7% and 5.2% for performance degradation, energy saving and cost degradation respectively. figure (5): the perimeter percentages correspondingly, the perimeter of the performance degradation, energy saving and cost degradation can be computed as in the figure(5). it shows that the best scenario (maximum perimeter) to optimize all these three objectives at the same time is g3-2_9000. this scenario gives the highest energy saving and the lowest degradation for both performance and cost compared with other scenarios, see figure (4). 4. conclusion in this paper, new multi-objective optimization algorithm that selects the best frequency gears for distributed grid platform is presented. it gives the minimum energy consumption and minimum cost with maximum performance for message passing iterative applications. the proposed algorithm defines a new optimization function that computes the maximum perimeter between the normalization values of the execution time, energy consumption and cost. the simulated results over simgrid simulator show that the algorithm reduces up on average the energy consumption by 19.7 % and limiting the degradation of both the performance and the cost by 3.2 % and 5.2 % respectively. in the future, we plan to take into consideration anther objectives such as the cpu temperature and the energy consumed by the communication devices. moreover, it is also interested to apply the proposed algorithm to other iterative method that solves very big spare matrix over a larger number of nodes. 5. reference [1] gridpp, distributed computing for data-intensive research, online available: https://www.gridpp.ac.uk. 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[16] j. burgerscentrum, iterative solution methods, applied numerical mathematics, 51(4): 437-450, 2011. biography dr. ahmed badri muslim fanfakh, lecturer at the university of babylon, college of science for women, computer department. google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=dheiquiaaa aj&hl=en dr. ali yakoob yousif, lecturer at the university of babylon, college of science for women, computer department. google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=9bkhtv0aaa aj&hl=en dr. esraa alwan , lecturer at the university of babylon, college of science for women, computer department. google scholar https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=aoxel5qaa aaj&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=dheiquiaaaaj&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=dheiquiaaaaj&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=9bkhtv0aaaaj&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=9bkhtv0aaaaj&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=aoxel5qaaaaj&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=aoxel5qaaaaj&hl=en 1. introduction 4. conclusion  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq knowledge of healthcare professionals regarding hepatitis b in rania hospitals zhino raouf ali mohammed rasol ahmed health development and training center nursing department directorate of healthslemani administration college of nursing ministry of health university of raparin slemani, iraq rania, iraq zhino.hdtc@gmail.com mohammed.ns7090@uor.edu.krd khalid muhamad hamad zhiar hussen wsu nursing department nursing department college of nursing college of nursing university of raparin university of raparin rania, iraq rania, iraq xalidmuhamad58@gmail.com zhiarhussen99@gmail.com article info abstract volume 5 – special issue: 4th international conference on the health and medical science : medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) doi: 10.24017/science.2020.ichms2020.20 article history: received: 27 september 2020 accepted: 04 october 2020 hepatitis b virus (hbv) infection is a major public health problem worldwide especially for healthcare professionals (hcps). it is a potentially lifethreatening condition because leads to liver infection, and liver cancer. there is a shortage of research on undergraduate students. the main aim of this study was conducted to assess the level of knowledge of health care professionals regarding hbv at rania hospitals in the kurdistan region of iraq during the period of 20th october 2019 to 16th april 2020. nonprobability purposive sample of (303) hcps; for data collection, the study instrument was constructed and designed through reading literature, books, and articles which included (42) items. reliability of the instrument was determined through the use of stability reliability (test and retest) approach which was estimated as r = (0.83.)the data were collected through the use of the interview technique then organized and coded into computer files. statistical approaches were uses for data analysis, which includes: descriptive and inferential statistics and chi-square, data analysis (spss version 25). the results indicated that the majority of the study samples were in the age group (≤ 30)) years and the female participants was more than male, threequarters of the participants were married, most of them were graduated from institute nursing and keywords: knowledge, hepatitis b virus, health care professionals, rania hospitals, kurdistan region of iraq mailto:zhino.hdtc@gmail.com kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 179 less than half of hcps had 6-10 years of employment, but the majority of the participants were not trained at all, and most of them had not immunized against hbv vaccine. three-quarters of hcps had moderate knowledge regarding hbv infection. also, the current study demonstrated a significant association between the educational level and hcp's knowledge regarding hbv, at a p value less than 0.05. on the other hand, there was no significant association between hcp's age, gender, marital status, years of employment, and training course concerning hepatitis with the level of knowledge regarding hbv. the researchers recommended to the ministry of health and directorate of health in rania city to complete vaccinate against hbv for all hcps and participating their staff in healthy scientific issues and symposiums. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction hepatitis b is a viral infection and is one of the very serious infections that can cause both acute and chronic diseases [1]. according to a 2020 world health organization as of 2016, 27 million people (10.5%) of all people estimated to be living with hepatitis b) were aware of their infection, while 4.5 million (16.7%) of the people diagnosed were on treatment [2]. hepatitis b virus infection primarily affects the liver. typically the incubation period for hepatitis b in 90 days (range, 60150 days). newly acquired acute hbv infections only cause symptoms some of the time. the presence of signs and symptoms varies by age. most children under age 5 years and generally asymptomatic, whereas 30%50% of people aged ≥5 years have signs and symptoms of acute infection include malaise, fatigue, poor appetite, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, fever, dark urine, light color(clay-colored) stool, joint pain, and jaundice. hepatitis b virus transmission can take place through exposure to infectious blood, semen, and other body fluids. this is termed horizontal transmission. infected mothers can transmit to infants at the time of birth or an infected family member to an infant in early childhood. this is termed perinatal transmission (sometimes also called vertical transmission). transfusions of hbvcontaminated blood and blood products and contaminated injections during medical procedures may also be responsible for hbv transmission [3]. the standard precautions can take as measures to prevent the spread of infection and to reduce transmission of micro‐organisms to other patients or hcps. standard precautions include the use of personal protective equipment (ppe) when performing certain tasks. ppe consists of garments and apparel that protect the health care professional from contracting a disease from a resident. standard precautions are used anytime the hcps anticipate contact with blood or any moist body fluid( except sweat), secretions, or excretions and also used anytime will have mucous membrane contact [6]. hcps are closely related to the patient’s blood or body fluid due to occupational exposure. they are likely to sustain non-sterile exposures either in the form of needle-sticks, sharps-related injuries, or splashes of body fluids to eyes and mucus membranes. if one sustains a needle stick and the source (patient) is an infected one, the risk of transmission of hiv, hbv, and hcv per exposure is 0.3%, 37-62%, and 1.8% per exposure respectively[5]. each year it is predestined that about 66,000 of hcps globally sharps-related injuries cause hbv [6]. throughout the world, a safe and effective vaccine kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 180 against hbv is available but one of the reasons for not vaccinated against hbv is the resource-poor countries and maybe lack of knowledge regarding the vaccine [7]. 2. methods and materials a non-probability, purposive sample of (303) healthcare professionals, male and female. had been executed to assess the level of hcps knowledge towards hepatitis b at rania hospitals (chwarqurna hospital, rania pediatric and maternity hospital, raparin health center in rania district, shahid ahmad ismail hospital, rania teaching hospital, dialysis center, and rania dental center) from the period of 20th of october 2019 up to 16th of april 2020. the written official, consent was obtained from the college of the nursing/ university of raparin, and rania directorate of health to perform the study at the rania hospitals. the data were collected through the utilization of the constructed tool; interview techniques were entered and analyzed with a statistical package for social sciences version 25 software. the content validity of the tool resolve through a panel of (5) specialists with average years of expertise of 13.6 years, in various fields of science (nursing, and medicine) to explore the clarity, relevancy, and adequacy of the items of the instrument. a pilot study is applied to (20) male and female hcps, during the period of 8th of january 2020 to 22th of january 2020. reliability of the sheet was determined through the use of items, stability (test and re-test) approach; using pretest for the (20) hcps to assess the level of knowledge regarding hepatitis b and after two week’s applied the same questionnaire for the same hcps to assess the level of knowledge. the items rated and scored according to the following patterns: three-point type likert scale is used for rating the items as yes, no, and i don't know. is scored as (2) for yes, (1) for i don't know, and (0) for no for positive questions, but negative questions are scored as (0) for yes and (2) for no and (1) for i don’t know. 3. results (table 1) showed (≤ 30) that the highest age of the participants, (50.5%) of them were female, (64.0%) were graduated from institute, (31.4%) of them were years of employment between (6 – 10), (86.8%) were not trained concerning hepatitis, (63.0%) of them were completely vaccinated, (65.3%) were believed that the doses of hepatitis b vaccines they needed for complete protection were (3) doses. table 1: socio-demographic descriptive (n = 303) variables categories no. (%) age (years) ≤ 30 87 28.7 31 35 63 20.8 36 40 72 23.8 ≥ 41 81 26.7 gender male 150 49.5 female 153 50.5 marital status single 73 24.1 married 225 74.3 divorced 5 1.7 educational level intermediate school 7 2.3 secondary school 28 9.2 institute graduate 194 64.0 kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 181 college and postgraduate 74 24.4 years of employment ≤ 5 62 20.5 6 10 95 31.4 11 15 56 18.5 ≥ 16 90 29.7 did you train concerning hepatitis? yes 40 13.2 no 263 86.8 completely vaccinated? yes 191 63.0 no 112 37.0 how many doses of hepatitis b vaccines needed for complete protection? 1 2 0.7 2 6 2.0 3 198 65.3 4 34 11.2 5 24 7.9 i do not know 39 12.9 (table 2) showed that that the severity of item (1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 23, 24, 29, 30) were high and items (4, 5, 13, 14, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28) were moderate in severity. table 2: participant’s response rating regarding each item no. items yes (%) no (%) i don't know ms severity 1 the kidneys affected by hepatitis b infection 199 (65.7) 59 (19.5) 45 (14.9) 1.46 h 2 hepatitis b is a risk factor for liver cancer 228 (75.2) 41 (13.5) 34 (11.2) 1.62 h 3 hepatitis b affects liver function 285 (94.1) 7 (2.3) 11 (3.6) 1.92 h 4 hepatitis b transmitted through food 96 (31.7) 168 (55.4) 39 (12.9) 1.24 m 5 hepatitis b transmitted through drink 111 (36.6) 154 (50.8) 38 (12.5) 1.14 m 6 hepatitis b transmitted through blood to blood contact 296 (97.7) 3 (1.0) 4 (1.3) 1.97 h 7 hepatitis b transmitted through unsafe sex 261 (86.1) 22 (7.3) 20 (6.6) 1.79 h 8 hepatitis b transmitted through tattoos 238 (78.5) 26 (8.6) 39 (12.9) 1.70 h 9 hepatitis b transmitted through sharing needles 294 (97.0) 2 (.7) 7 (2.3) 1.96 h 10 hepatitis b transmitted by unsterilized surgical instruments 286 (94.4) 8 (2.6) 9 (3.0) 1.92 h 11 hepatitis b is transmitted through infected mother to infant during birth. 258 (85.1) 21 (6.9) 24 (7.9) 1.78 h kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 182 12 hepatitis b is transmitted through hugging each other and shaking hands with an infected person. 28 (9.2) 228 (75.2) 47 (15.5) 1.66 h 13 hepatitis b transmitted through sneezing 151 (49.8) 151 (49.8) 36 (11.9) 1.12 m 14 hepatitis b spread through the air in an enclosed environment 65 (21.5) 144 (47.5) 94 (31.0) 1.26 m 15 following the infection control guidelines in the workplace prevented hepatitis b. 266 (87.8) 17 (5.6) 20 (6.6) 1.82 h 16 using (personal protective equipment) like gloves, masks, gown, and eye goggle prevented hepatitis b in the hospital. 273 (90.1) 17 (5.6) 13 (4.3) 1.84 h 17 recapping needles is one way to transmit the hepatitis b virus in the hospital. 263 (86.8) 20 (6.6) 20 (6.6) 1.80 h 18 signs and symptoms of acute hepatitis b within the first 6 months of exposure to it. 175 (57.8) 37 (12.2) 91 (30.0) 1.46 h 19 asymptomatic cause with chronic hepatitis b can transmit the disease to other 217 (71.6) 24 (7.9) 62 (20.5) 1.64 h 20 hepatitis b virus detected in the blood test 292 (96.4) 5 (1.7) 6 (2.0) 1.95 h 21 hepatitis b virus detected in semen test 113 (37.3) 93 (30.7) 97 (32.0) 1.07 m 22 hepatitis b virus detected in a saliva test 100 (33.0) 102 (33.7) 101 (33.3) 0.99 m 23 hemodialysis patients are at risk for hepatitis b virus 241 (79.5) 23 (7.6) 39 (12.9) 1.72 h 24 after all doses of vaccination for hepatitis b, the test for the immune system is very important. 253 (83.5) 15 (5.0) 35 (11.6) 1.79 h 25 hepatitis b virus can survive outside the body for at least 7 days. 92 (30.4) 58 (19.1) 153 (50.5) 1.11 m 26 during the cleaning of surgical instrument the hepatitis b virus kills by alcohol or iodine 142(46.9) 87(28.7) 74 (24.4) 0.82 m 27 the use of hookah is one of the causes of the spread of hepatitis b virus 99 (32.7) 92 (30.4) 112 (37.0) 1.02 m 28 alcohol consumption is the cause of getting hepatitis b. 154 (50.8) 64 (21.1) 85 (28.1) 1.30 m 29 addiction to drug one of the cause of hepatitis b 164 (54.1) 43 (14.2) 96 (31.7) 1.40 h 30 hepatitis b is transmitted from scissors and blade razors through salon and barbershops. 256 (84.5) 13 (4.3) 34 (11.2) 1.80 h kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 183 (table 3) showed that most (68.3 %) of the study sample had a moderate level of knowledge regarding the hepatitis b virus. table 3: level of hcp’s knowledge regarding hepatitis b (table 4) indicated that there was no significant relationship between levels of health care worker's knowledge with age, gender, marital status, years of employment, and training course concerning the hepatitis b virus at p-value greater than 0.05, except educational level at pvalue less than 0.05. table 4: relationship between of hcp’s knowledge regarding hepatitis b virus and some sociodemographic characteristics variables categories low no. (%) moderate no. (%) high no. (%) total no. (%) pvalue age (years) ≤ 30 1 (1.1) 59 (67.8) 27 (31.0) 87 (100) .524 31 35 1 (1.6) 42 (66.7) 20 (31.7) 63 (100) 36 40 2 (2.8) 46 (63.9) 24 (33.3) 72 (100) ≥ 41 2 (2.5) 60 (74.1) 19 (23.5) 81 (100) gender male 3 (2.0) 104 (69.3) 43 (28.7) 150(100) .926 female 3 (2.0) 103 (67.3) 47 (30.7) 153(100) marital status single 0 (0.0) 50 (68.5) 23 (31.5) 73(100) .443 married 6 (2.6) 153 (68.0) 66 (29.3) 225(100) divorced 0 (0.0) 4 (80.0) 1 (20.0) 5(100) educational level intermedia te school 0 (0.0) 6 (85.7) 1 (14.3) 7(100) .004 secondary school 0 (0.0) 21 (75.0) 7 (25.0) 28(100) institute graduate 3 (1.5) 142 (73.2) 49 (25.3) 194(100) collage and post graduate 3 (4.1) 38 (51.4) 33 (44.6) 74(100) years of employment ≤ 5 1 (1.6) 40 (64.5) 21 (33.8) 62(100) .552 6 10 2 (2.1) 65 (68.4) 28 (29.5) 95(100) 11 15 1 (1.8) 36 (64.3) 19 (33.9) 56(100) ≥ 16 2 (2.2) 66 (73.3) 22(24.4) 90(100) did you train yes 0 (0.0) 22 (55.0) 18 (45.0) 40(100) .057 frequency percent low 6 2.0 moderate 207 68.3 high 90 29.7 total 303 100.0 kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 184 concerning hepatitis? no 6 (2.3) 185 (70.3) 72 (27.4) 263(100) total 6 (2.0) 207 (68.3) 90 (29.7) 303(100) 4. discussion regarding the findings of first part of the data analysis which about socio demographic of the study participants, showed that the highest age of participants was (≤ 30) years old, more than half of the study sample were female three-quarters of the study samples were married, the most of them were graduated from the institute, less than half of the hcps are the years of employment between (6-10) years. the number of hcps who participate in training was 40 (13.2%). most of the hcps are completely vaccinated and they believe that they needed three doses of hepatitis b vaccines.the majority of the participants aware that hbv can affect kidneys, liver cancer, and liver function agree with the study was done in a district south, karachi [8]. about more than half provided the correct answer to the hbv is not transmitted through food and drink, the present finding disagrees with another study done in southern nigeria [9]. the respondents demonstrated that the (9.3%) provided the correct answer. the vaccine against hepatitis b infection has been available since 1982[10]. hepatitis b vaccine is 95% effective in preventing hbv infection and its long-term effects. although vaccination rates are found to be lower among healthcare providers, their risk level is considered to be higher vaccine coverage rates [11]. in the current study, although many hcps had a positive attitude toward hepatitis b infection and vaccination, only 191 (63%) of participants were completely vaccinated against hepatitis b, the result of the present study is less than another study carried out in the tertiary hospital in india were 71% [12]. the (86.8%) of hcps knew that recapping needles is one way the transmitted hbv, needle stick injuries may occur when hcps dispose of needles, collect and dispose of materials used during patient care procedures, administer injections, draw blood, or handle trash or dirty linens where needles have been inappropriately discarded [13]. the safest way to dispose of a used needle is immediately placing the needle in a sharps disposal container to reduce the risk of needle sticks, cuts, and punctures, in the present study found only (86.8%) were aware that recapping needles is one way to transmit hepatitis b virus in hospital, the present finding disagrees with a study done in northern vietnam [14] half (48.2%) of the participants reported they routinely recapped the used needles with two hands after injection, putting them at greater risk of needle stick injury. the numbers of participant attended training concerning hepatitis (13.2%) it disagrees with findings obtains from another study that mentioned the majority of the study sample was trained (80%) [15].the knowledge of the hcps on hbv detected in semen, or saliva test was moderate compared with the study was done by [16] has good knowledge of the hbv found in semen or saliva test among healthcare workers of bahir dar city administration. studies have shown that hbv can be transmitted through the sexual route [17][18], these findings agree with the present study with high knowledge modes of transmission of hbv. an important risk for blood-borne viral spread in some studies carried out around the world was razor sharing and shaving at barbershops have been identified. more so, razor sharing and shaving from barbershops have been identified as a risk factor for hbv the present study showed the participants had moderate knowledge about hepatitis b transmitted from scissors and blade razors through salon and barbershops, these results disagree with another study in kumasi, ghana showed that knowledge and occupational hazards of barbers in the transmission of hepatitis b and c was low [19]. the current study noted that the majority of 241(79.5) of hcps knew that hemodialysis patients are at risk for the hepatitis b virus which is convenient with the findings of a study conducted in libyan dialysis centers by [20]. where reported patients with maintenance hemodialysis were at high risk for hepatitis b virus infection than the general population, in some countries, this infection has been controlled in dialysis centers by adherence to hemodialysis-specific infection-control measures to prevent nosocomial transmission and to hepatitis b vaccination. nevertheless, hbv infection outbreaks are still seen when failures in infection control procedures occur. many people with kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 185 a hepatitis b virus infection do not know they are infected since they do not feel or look sick. however, they can still spread the virus to others [21], this report comes along with the current study revealed that three-quarters of the hcps correctly responded that hepatitis b virus transmitted the disease to another person even asymptomatic cause with chronic hepatitis b. incorrectly identified routes of transmission by the respondents include sharing the mouthpiece during a hookah the current finding is however at variance with another a study was done by [22] reported that sharing the mouthpiece during hookah group smoking was a probable source of transmission of pathogens such as viruses, bacteria, and fungi. for instance, a study reported a potential risk for transmission of communicable diseases such as hepatitis c when sharing the mouthpiece between users with gingivitis or any other type of lesion in the oral cavity makes them likely to transmit or be infected. the majority of the hcps knew about the transmission of hbv to the infant at the time of birth as a result of exposure to maternal cervical secretions and maternal blood that contain the virus, the current study agrees with the study done by [23] on the hepatitis b virus infection during pregnancy: transmission and prevention. the current study showed that most of the hcps had moderate knowledge of possible risk and mode of disease transmission. however knowledge about preventive aspect was found high, the study conducted in karachi reported similar findings of knowledge, attitude, and practice of hepatitis b and c, which showed that most of the hcps had enough knowledge of possible risk and mode of disease transmission [24]. whereas a statistically significant difference was found between the educational level and hcps knowledge regarding hepatitis b, this finding is, however, at variance with another study done in karachi (pakistan) where the respondents demonstrated a very low knowledge of hepatitis b. 5. conclusion most of the healthcare professionals in the study sample had a moderate level of knowledge regarding the hepatitis b virus. also, the current study demonstrated a significant association between the educational level and hcp's knowledge regarding hbv, at p value less than (0.05). on the other hand, there was no significant association between hcp's age, gender, marital status, years of employment, and training course concerning hepatitis b with the level of knowledge regarding hbv. the researcher recommended that the training course must be designed by the ministry of health/infection control department for theater hcps staff to provide appropriate performance hcps updating because of changing knowledge and practices. the theater healthcare professional's staff should be given more appropriate to attend symposia regarding infection control the member of hcps should train on hepatitis. reference [1] m. aniji, n. kavitha, s. balamuralitharan, “approximate solutions for hbv infection with stability analysis using lham during antiviral therapy,” bound value probl , pp. 80, 2020. 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[18] a. jimenez, n. el-din, m. el-hoseiny, m. el-daly, m. abdel-hamid, s. el aidi, “community transmission of hepatitis b virus in egypt: results from a case–control study in greater cairo,” international journal of epidemiology, 38(3), pp.757-765, 2009. [19] m. mutocheluh, k. kwarteng, “knowledge and occupational hazards of barbers in the transmission of hepatitis b and c was low in kumasi, ghana,” the pan african medical journal, pp. 20, 2015. [20] w. alashek, c. mcintyre, m. taal, “hepatitis b and c infection in haemodialysis patients in libya: prevalence, incidence and risk factors,” bmc infectious diseases, 12(1), pp.265, 2012. [21] cdc, “hepatitis b information faqs,” statistics, data and guidelines, 2020. [22] h. qasim, a. alarabi, k. alzoubi, “the effects of hookah/waterpipe smoking on general health and the cardiovascular system,” environ health prev med, 24, pp. 58, 2019. [23] b. navabakhsh, n. mehrabi, a. estakhri, m. mohamadnejad, h. poustchi, “hepatitis b virus infection during pregnancy: transmission and prevention,” middle east journal of digestive diseases, 3(2), pp. 92–102, 2011. [24] s. shah, n. nisar, m. qadri, “knowledge regarding hepatitis-b among epi vaccinators working in district south, karachi,” pakistan journal of medical sciences, 23(4), pp.538, 2007. 1. introduction 5. conclusion  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq 61 proceeding conference (not peer reviewed): 5th international conference on the health and medical science : toward gathering iraqi medical powers (ichms 2021) effect of cannabis seeds on some biomedical parameters in male rats salah omer hamabor hunar mustafa wassman medical laboratory department medical lab analysis college of health and medical technology cihan universitysulaimani sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani,iraq email: hunar.mustafa@sulicihan.edu.krd email:salah.hamabor@spu.edu.iq karwan anwar hassan department of biology college of educational science/ faculty education university of garmian kalar, iraq email:karwan.anwar@sulicihan.edu.krd article info abstract proceeding conference (not peer reviewed): 5th international conference on the health and medical science : toward gathering iraqi medical powers (ichms 2021) (cannot be used for academic title promotion or for postgraduate students) cannabis, sometimes known as hemp, is a plant that originated in central asia. cannabis seeds nutritional profile is astounding. cannabis seed, most digestible, balanced, natural, and complete supply of protein, amino acids, and necessary fats found anyplace in nature when it is in its pristine organic natural condition. cannabis seeds can be used in a variety of medical fields. each 100 gm of the seeds used in the study contains 26, 37 and 20 gm of protein, fat and carbohydrate respectively. the present study used two groups of male rats (control and treatment groups). rats were 11 weeks of average age. 10 mg/kg of body weight of powdered cannabis seeds were administrated orally to treatment group daily for 15 days. alkaline phosphatase, glutamic oxaloacetic transaminase and glutamic pyruvic transaminase (alp, gpt, and got), creatinine and uric acid was done for estimating the effect of cannabis seeds on renal and liver function. enzymes alkaline phosphatase, glutamic oxaloacetic transaminase and glutamic pyruvic transaminase (alp, gpt, and got) as well as creatinine, uric acid and very low-density lipoprotein (vldl) were not significantly (p<0.05) different in both groups. level of cholesterol, triglyceride and c-reactive protein were significantly (p<0.05) reduced. serum total protein, albumin and globulin keywords: cannabis seeds, renal function, liver function, anti-inflammatory effect. | 62 were significantly (p<0.05) elevated in treatment group comparing to control group. the aim of this study is to examine physiological impact of cannabis whole seeds. identifying the relationship(s) between liver and renal functions and cannabis seeds, as well as the antiinflammatory effect of cannabis seeds and possible of using cannabis seeds as herbal medicine for health care in male rats. copyright © 2019 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction approximately 70000 unique plant species had been used at the smallest amount as soon as in the records of conventional medication. world health organization (who) has suggested that about 80% of the populace used at the smallest amount one natural medication of their lifestyles for medical purposes. herbal medicine and plants were used for remedy of the many unique forms of sicknesses consisting of liver, kidney, coronary heart sicknesses, etc.… therefore, scientists around the world have studied unique sorts of herbal plant in phrases of chemical and physiological properties, indications, and their side effects. cannabis species is one among the herb plants that has been studied by many scientists in vitro round the world [1]. cannabis sativa, typically called hemp, could be a reasonably cannabis. it's one in every of the oldest cultivated plants, and determinative its specific origin is tough thanks to its long history of cultivation. cannabis is a green leafy plant with distinctive opposing, typically 7-fingered, lance-shaped leaves that's dioecian (male and feminine flowers in numerous plants[2]. cannabis sativa l. is a popular herbaceous plant from central asia that has been utilized in traditional medicine, it can be used as a drug (marijuana) or a non-drug (marijuana) (hemp). the former is often used for different purposes such as recreational and medical purposes, whilst the latter is critical to the fiber and food industry [1]. different preparations of cannabis sativa have been used to cure a multitude of illnesses as traditional medicine in asian, including diarrhea, inflammation, headache, nausea, hematochezia and alopecia. cannabis sativa has anti-inflammatory, analgesic, antipyretic, and antidiarrhea properties.[1, 3, 4]. due to a variety of factors, includes unlawful cultivation ,diversity of active components, and low quantity of certain of them in plant[5], cannabis phytochemical study has been restricted, as has broad medicinal usage of cannabis products. cannabinoids, such as tetrahydrocannabinol (thc) and cannabidiol (cbd), are psychoactive components of cannabis plants that may be found in the flower, stems, stalks, and leaves, but they are not present in seeds until they are transferred from the flower to the seed's outer shell[6]. liver and kidney are two active organs in the body. the functions of liver and kidney most evaluate while using any medicine and herbal (natural) medicines. estimation of normal kidney and liver can be done via their activity, functions and cells. any damage or injury in the cells have direct effects on kidney and liver functions. liver function can be estimated via the level of protein, albumin, globulin, cholesterol and triglyceride. one the other hand any necrosis or injury if occur in hepatic cells (liver cells) can be determining by liver enzymes in serum especially serum gpt, alp and got. as it is well known that liver is a site for detoxification, clearing blood from poisoning and drugs. kidney is another organ can be determining its functions using cholesterol and uric acid. any drug can be having direct effects on renal and liver functions or lead to cells damage. so that any herbal drugs should estimate its toxicity and its effect on liver, renal cells and functions. cannabinoids and the endocannabinoid system appear to be essential in the treatment of liver disorders and normal liver function. cirrhosis (liver scarring) and fatty liver disease are examples of this (fld)[7]. people with viral liver disease may benefit from cannabinoids to help them cope with traditional therapies like chemo[8]. following the legalization of cannabis | 63 in certain countries, such as canada and the united states, there is likely to be a surge in interest in medicinal cannabis, particularly for chronic refractory symptoms and palliative illnesses like those seen in ckd patients[9]. hempseed is usually referred to be one of the most nutritionally complete food sources due to its high nutritional characteristics. hempseed may be fed on whole (hulled seed) or deshelled (hempseed kernel), in addition to in processed meals like as oil, flour, and protein powder[10]. despite the fact that genotypes and environmental variables have revealed a wide range of hempseed compositions, it generally contains 25–35 percent lipids with a unique and precisely balanced fatty acids (fas) composition; 20–25 percent easily digestible proteins rich in important amino acids; and 20–30 percent carbohydrates, the majority of which is dietary fiber, mostly in the form of dietary fiber, hemp protein is made up mostly of globulin and albumin, which are distinguished by their high levels of arginine and glutaminic acid. the modulation of organ function and human metabolism was shown to be positive with these two types of hemp protein. hemp seed protein also contains a number of antioxidative bioactive peptides. hemp seeds, on the other hand, include antinutritional elements such as phytic acid and trypsin inhibitors[11]. oil makes around 30 to 35 percent of hempseed, with unsaturated fatty acids accounting for 90 percent of the total. essential fatty acids, linolic acid, omega-3 fatty acid, and monounsaturated fatty acid dominate hempseed oil. linolic acid is necessary as a precursor for the formation of dihomo-linolenic acid (dgla) and arachidonic acid, whereas -linolenic acid is required for omega-3 fatty acid assembly. these fatty acids have been studied extensively for their ability to protect against cardiovascular disorders, hempseed's outer shell contains the majority of the carbs, while dehulling eliminates three-quarters of the fiber content. statistics on the characteristics of hempseed fiber are currently lacking. hempseed is also high in polyphenols, which include hydroxycinnamic acid in particular [2]. few researches have looked at the impact of cannabis seeds in the diets of animals and humans on physiological, immunological, and oxidative state and health, so that the study aimed to find the effects of cannabis seeds on liver and renal function and also the possible of using cannabis seeds as herbal medicine for health care. 2. methods and materials two groups of male rats were designed to be a control group and treatment group. the average age of rats was 245  10 gm. each group were contained 5 male rats. the animals had been uncovered to a 12hours light-darkish cycle and treated constant with popular protocols. the animals had been kept in plastic cages and had been allowed adaptation duration of seven days in a good ventilated room with a temperature of 28±2c0. cannabis seeds were obtained from pk cannabel company in russia-moscow. seeds were crushed using special grinder to be in powder form. 10 mg/kg body weight of powdered cannabis seeds were suspended in 1 ml of distal water and gave to treatment group orally for 15 days used special gavage tube. the animals had been anesthetized using special jar containing cotton saturated with chloroform and diethylether in ratio 1:1 and blood sample were collected using cardiac puncture method[12]. sera were stored at -20 c0. biochemical tests were done using cobas c 311 (roche diagnostics, reagent were used originally from roche company, germany-2018) for both groups. tests were included liver function test: serum got, serum gpt and serum alp. renal function: creatinine (scr) and uric acid (sua). serum globulin, albumin, total protein, cholesterol, vldl and triglyceride (tg) levels also were estimated. creactive protein (crp) levels were done using titration method by using cobas c 311 (roche diagnostics, reagent were used originally from roche company, germany-2018). the reagents used for gpt were contain tris buffer, lalanine, albumin (bovine), ldh (microorganisms), stabilizers; preservative, 2-oxoglutarate, nadh in different concentrations according to the manufactory. alp reagent compost of 2-amino-2-methyl-1-propanol, magnesium acetate, zinc sulfate, n-(2-hydroxyethyl) -ethylenediamine tri-acetic acid, p-nitrophenyl phosphate. materials used in got kits were: tris buffer, l-aspartate, mdh (microorganism), ldh (microorganisms), albumin (bovine), nadh and 2-oxoglutarate. serum total protein kits contain sodium hydroxide, potassium sodium tartrate, potassium iodide, copper sulfate. reagent used for estimation of serum albumin was contain buffer; preservatives; surfactants, bcp, buffer; | 64 preservatives; surfactant and the materials used in kits for serum globulin materials were tris/hcl buffer, nacl, edta; preservative, latex particles coated with polyclonal anti-human β2-microglobulin antibody (rabbit). pipes buffer, mg2+, sodium cholate, 4-aminophenazone, phenol, fatty alcohol polyglycol ether, cholesterol esterase (pseudomonas spec.), cholesterol oxidase (e. coli), peroxidase (horseradish) were used in serum cholesterol reagent. materials used to estimate serum tg concentration were pipes buffer, mg2, sodium cholate, atp, 4-aminophenazone, 4-chlorophenol, lipoprotein lipase (pseudomonas spec.), glycerol kinase (bacillus stearothermophilus), glycerol phosphate oxidase (e. coli) and peroxidase (horseradish). for vldl the dilution buffer: potassium dihydrogen-phosphate, dipotassium hydrogen-phosphate, potassium chloride, sodium aside, magnesium sulfate heptahydrate, sodium phosphor-tungstate n-hydrate lipoprotein-lipase, cholesterol esterase, diaphorase, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, tetrazolium salt, glycerol dehydrogenase, cholesterol dehydrogenase used in reagent. crp reagent was contained hepes buffer, anti-human crp antibody (goat) and latex-conjugate. the statistically analyzed data was given as the mean sd of two groups, with the means compared using ibm spss 26 software. at p0.05, the differences were statistically significant [13]. 3. results the results show the impress of cannabis seeds on a number of biomedical or bio-chemical markers using male albino rats. table 1 showed the effect of cannabis seeds on serum total protein, serum albumin and serum globulin of male rats, though, treatment group showed alteration significantly (p<0.05). the serum gpt, got and alt in both groups showed no significant (p<0.05) difference when we compared with the control group as showed in table 2. effect of cannabis seeds on the level of serum creatinine and serum uric acid in control and treatment group was not significantly (p<0.05) different (table 3). the cholesterol and triglyceride levels showed significant (p<0.05) decrease in treatment group when compared with the control group while vldl showed no significantly (p<0.05) changed in treatment and control groups (table 4). the influence of cannabis seeds for creactive protein in male rats showed reduction in treated group significantly (p<0.05) (table 5). table 1: effects of cannabis seeds on the level of serum total protein, serum albumin and serum globulin in (gm/dl) in control and treatment group (mean  sd). groups total protein albumin globulin control 6.56 0.16 3.52 0.14 2.66 0.57 treatment 7.47 0.33* 4.49 0.40* 4.25 0.28 * * the levels are significantly higher (p0.05) in treatment group compare to control group. table 2: effects of cannabis seeds on the level of serum gpt, serum got and serum alt in (u/l) in control and treatment group (mean  sd). groups sgpt sgot salt control 37.03  3.32 117.73 11.57 244.33 60.01 treatment 39.9  8.73ns 120.05 30.55ns 237.5 44.20ns ns: no significant different between control and treatment groups. table 3: effects of cannabis seeds on the level of serum creatinine and serum uric acid in (mg/dl) in control and treatment group (mean  sd). groups creatinine uric acid control 0.33  0.005 2.36  0.25 | 65 treatment 0.37  0.031ns 2.38  0.35ns ns: no significant different between control and treatment groups. table 4: effects of cannabis seeds on the level of serum creatinine and serum uric acid in (mg/dl) in control and treatment group (mean  sd). groups cholesterol triglyceride vldl control 73.03  3.20 123.8  14.89 25  3 treatment 56.92  5.74* 71.85  10.40* 26  10.55ns * the concentrations are significantly lower (p0.05) in treatment group compare to control group. ns: no significant different between control and treatment groups. table 5: effects of cannabis seeds on the level of serum creactive protein (u/l) in control and treatment group (mean  sd). groups c-reactive protein control 0.93  0.13 treatment 0.17  0.08* * the concentrations are significantly lower (p0.05) in treated group when compare to the control group. 4. discussion the liver has plain effect at the activities for various organs withinside the frame system. due to its key characteristic in metabolism (xenobiotic) and its gateway function withinside the frame system, it's miles vulnerable to xenobiotic-brought on damage [14]. in metabolism, detoxification, and biotransformation, the liver plays a critical function. as a result, changes in liver biomarkers and function tests may be utilized the extent assesses about harm or destroy as a result of intake cannabis seeds prior to biopsy [15]. total protein in serum made up the summation of albumin and globulin, any change in the concentration of these fraction have effect on the concentration of total protein. the substantial (p<0.05) rise in albumin, globulin, and total protein concentrations suggested that the powdered cannabis seeds boosted protein synthesis and/or mobilization (table 1). masses of serum proteins, as well as provider proteins, enzymes, complement, and immunoglobulins, make up the globulin fraction. the majority of them are made by the liver, with the exception of immunoglobulins, which are made in plasma cells. more specifically, the observed rise in globulin level might be attributable to the cannabis seeds ability to generate antibodies. [16]. the greatest concentration of protein in the plasma is albumin. albumin accounts for more than half of the total protein in serum. within the intravascular compartment, about 30 to 40 percent of the body's total albumin pool is located. can carries a large number of molecules throughout the body. the distribution of bilirubin, hormones, metals, vitamins, and medicines is aided by albumin. it plays a vital role in metabolism of fat through fatty acids binding and keeping them in a soluble state within the plasma. it prevents the blood fluid from seeping into tissues [17]. part of the liver's general protein production is albumin. chronic liver illness, such as cirrhosis or nephrotic syndrome, causes albumin levels to drop [18]. as a result, the remarked rise of albumin suggests that seeds (cannabis) might assist calcium in the bloodstream control the flow of water from the bloodstream into human tissue and may have a hepatoprotective impact [19]. this is also confirmed by the ratio of albumin to globulin result also substantial rise in protein content [20]. some of tests assess how well the liver performs its daily functions of making protein and removing bilirubin, a blood waste. other tests measure the amount of enzymes released by liver cells in response to injury or disease. enzyme serum glutamic pyruvic transaminase (sgpt) is known to rise in the presence of liver illness and has been used to assess [21, 22]. serum | 66 glutamic oxaloacetic transaminase (sgot) is mostly found in gill cells, kidney cells, muscle cells, and liver parenchyma cells [23]. the mitochondrial and cytoplasmic forms of sgot exist as a one-of-a-kind isoenzyme bureaucracy that may be genetically unique. sgot is most prevalent in the coronary heart as compared to other body tissues such as the liver, striated muscle, and kidney. elevated mitochondrial sgot noticeable in widespread tissue necrosis throughout cardiac infarct and likewise in chronic liver illnesses like hepatic tissue degeneration and necrosis [14]. alkaline phosphatase is found in the cell membrane and endoplasmic reticulum, or the liver biliary ducts cell lining, bone and placental tissue [24]. no significant different between control and treatment male rats indicate the powdered cannabis seeds at 10 mg/kg body weight for 15 days are safe for liver, muscle and kidney cells (table 2). serum creatinine and uric acid levels are traditional indicator for renal function [25]. normally serum creatinine levels can also be used to gauge how fast the kidneys filter blood (glomerular filtration rate). because blood creatinine levels vary so much from person to person, the glomerular filtration rate may offer a more realistic picture of renal function[26]. serum creatinine is a popular measure for identifying changes in glomerular filtration rate (gfr) and chronic kidney disease (ckd) stage, with increased serum creatinine indicating renal disease and reduced renal function[27]. in the same way, ckd patients frequently have increased serum uric acid levels. it's a straightforward biochemical diagnostic for kidney function that's either impaired or pathological[27]. because renal clearance of serum uric acid is generally decreased after kidney injury or failure, renal function is the major confounder in studies investigating the connection between the serum uric acid and ckd progression[28]. the glomerular filtration rate is calculated using a formula that takes into consideration the serum creatinine counts as well as other variables including age and gender[29, 30]. taking into consideration in this study the rats were in the same average ages and were male. the result shows there are slight elevating in the level of creatinine and decreasing the level of uric acid, but the changes were not significant in both parameters. that means there are no effect on renal functions. (table 3). the result shows decreasing in the level of serum cholesterol and triglyceride (tg) significantly, but vldl was changed not significantly (p<0.05) in treatment group (table 4). both cholesterol and triglycerides (tg) serve important physiological functions in keeping the body healthy[31]. cholesterol and tg are two indicators that may be used to assess cardiovascular risks since high cholesterol and tg levels can cause health problems, particularly those connected to the heart[32]. many researches reveal that triglycerides are more and more turning into diagnosed as a hazard issue for cardiovascular disorder, emphasizing the pressing want for scientific trials to decide if reducing blood triglyceride tiers decreases disorder hazard. [33, 34]. vldl is produced in the liver and is in charge of transporting triglycerides to body cells, which are required for cellular activities. vldl is made up less of fat and more of protein when triglycerides are transported to cells, leaving cholesterol on the molecule. vldl's protein composition varies from that of chylomicrons in case the main protein structure is fullduration apo b (apo b100) rather than the truncated apo b48 version. vldls, like chylomicrons, are triglyceride-removing substrates for lipoprotein lipase. according to our findings, there is no influence on vldl's regular functioning[35]. decreasing cholesterol and triglycerides gives good clue that cannabis seeds can be used to decrease cardiovascular risks, but not significant change in the level of vldl may due to short duration of taking powdered cannabis seeds which was 15 days. c-reactive protein (crp) for treatment group was significantly decreased (p<0.05) (table 5). this may give us an idea that cannabis seeds act as anti-inflammation in the body. liver produces crp in response to a number of inflammatory cytokines[36]. crp levels rise quickly in reaction to trauma, inflammation, and infection, and then fall just as quickly after the problem is resolved[37]. as a result, the reduction in crp levels in the treatment group indicates that the cannabis seeds' anti-inflammatory properties are effective. 5. conclusion | 67 it might also additionally consequently be too hasty to end that the drug become in charge of liver or hepatorenal toxicity as discovered withinside the serum enzymes. more research is exceedingly vital which can be capable of recognize absolutely the various outcomes and mechanisms of cannabis on liver and renal functions. using 10 mg/ kg of body weight of cannabis whole seeds are safe for liver and kidney, orally intake for 15 days. cannabis seeds have incredible effects on decreasing cardiovascular risk. also have good roles in protein metabolism and synthesize as well as albumin and have role in strengthen the immune system via elevation of globulin level. crp is a marker used for general inflammations in the body. decreasing the level of crp, indicate the anti-inflammatory effect of cannabis seeds. 6. acknowledgment this study was supported by cihan university-sulaimani campus, as using their animal house and laboratory’s materials. special thanks for shorsh general teaching hospital for their helps and using biochemistry laboratory for making some of the research tests. 7. reference [1] c. m. andre, j.-f. hausman, and g. guerriero, "cannabis sativa: the plant of the thousand and one molecules," frontiers in plant science, vol. 7, p. 19, 2016. 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[37] c. bray, l. n. bell, h. liang, r. haykal, f. kaiksow, j. j. mazza, et al., "erythrocyte sedimentation rate and c-reactive protein measurements and their relevance in clinical medicine," wmj, vol. 115, pp. 317-321, 2016.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.42 grouping vehicles in vehicular social networks muhammed abaid mahdi software engineering dept. college of information technology university of babylon babylon, iraq wsci.muhammed.a@uobabylon.edu.iq saad talib hasson software engineering dept. college of information technology university of babylon babylon, iraq saad.aljebori@gmail.com abstract: as vehicles have become intelligent objects, creating social friendships among them is justifiable. internet of vehicles (iovs) and vehicular ad-hoc networks (vanets) are associated terms that are recently highlighted to improve the transportation systems. intelligent vehicles that can communicate with each other are the main component of vehicular networks (vns). indeed, they have resources for that intelligence: cpu, transceiver, sensors and memory. on the other side, social networks (sns) are also brought to light to mainly study the human relationships. in this context, gathering these vehicles in social groups is reasonable to share their information by bridging vn and sn in a multidisciplinary research direction called vehicular social networks (vsns).this paper will present a model to group vehicles in two types of social groups. casual groups and permanent or formal groups will be discussed to increase social ties among vehicles that have the same interests. the results will be analyzed to clarify the most important factors that affect such these relationships. keywords: casual groups, formal groups, iov, multidisciplinary, vanet, vsn. 1. introduction the transportation systems have been increasingly developed due to the advance technologies. iov and vanet have strongly contributed to improve the transportation systems. intelligent vehicles that can independently make decisions are the main reason for such development. each vehicle has ability to learn and make decision because of its components such as cpu, memory, sensors and transceiver. these components help vehicles to communicate and share their information with each other. however, the main difference between iov and vanet is that iov exploits the internet services to share the experiences of vehicles. not this only, iov needs a global id for each vehicle whereas vanet does not require such that id [1, 2]. from these viewpoints, considering vehicles as social object is reasonable as long as they possess such these intelligent characteristics. nonetheless, vehicular networks still suffer from some constraints that should be taken in account. indeed high mobility and unpredictable behavior make vns unstable networks and complex systems. on the other hand, social networks (sns) have also a positive effect in improving several fields such as business, healthcare, personal benefits and etc [3]. social objects such as human can share their experience through sns. sns can be divided into two main types; offline sn and online sn [4]. in offline sns, social objects can communicate through traditional offline social tools such as meetings. while in online sns they can contact with each other through online social tools such as facebook and twitter. according to the same criterion, vsns can be also divided into offline vsns and online vsns. as long as vanet does not require the internet services, it can be considered offline vsn. iov, on the other side, can be seen as online vsn while it requires the internet services. this paper will work on offline vsns to make vehicular social groups depending on their interests. nevertheless, online vsns are also a rich research field which needs to pay attention in the future works. the main idea behind this paper is how to create social groups of intelligent vehicles in order to share their information and experiences in offline. although collecting data in offline sns is a difficult task [3], offline vsns provide availability of data. in offline sns, collecting data needs to ask individuals either to fill forms or directly answer the questions whereas vsns do not need such these procedures. in fact wirelessly communication among vehicles facilitates the task of collecting data. this paper is organized in seven main sections including the introduction. the next section is related to the society impact of the project. literature review will be discussed in the third section. the fourth section highlights the grouping techniques in svns. the proposed model is stated in the fifth section. results will be analyzed in the sixth section. lastly conclusion will be summarized in the final section. 2. aims and nature of the project it is strongly believed that combining sns with vns will have an impact on improving the transportation systems. several applications may benefit from this combination. all vehicles that are interested in a common behavior can share their experience to make the best decision. vehicles that travel frequently to the same distention can share their knowledge with each other. avoiding obstacles, for example, can be achieved by this scenario. so grouping vehicles in social communities may help to obtain a smoothly road traffic. traffic jam, on the other hand, can be avoided by sharing vehicles’ information. not these only, entertainment applications can be applied in vsns. friends can share games and videos during their traveling through vsns. figure 1 shows the mailto:saad.aljebori@gmail.com main applications of svns. these applications are ranging from safety applications to comfort applications. besides, recommendation systems can be presented in vsns. furthermore, this paper contributes in growing scholarly knowledge of the efficient grouping of vehicles. it will grow the scholarly knowledge in using vsns to share information for improving the transportation systems. 3. literature review to the best of knowledge this paper is the first to investigate grouping vehicles as social objects. since the emergence of intelligent vehicles that have possibility to communicate with each other, vehicles have become ready to be social objects. several challenges have been emerged associating with this research direction. however, the main challenge is how to create the relationships between vehicles. in this section will discuss the concepts of grouping in social network and the principles of bridging sns and vns. investigating the related works that have been done so far will be a part of this section 3.1. grouping social objects in sns identifying social groups is a main challenge in sociology. a cohesive social group is a collection of social objects that are considered as nodes in graph. these nodes are connected in bi-directional links or edges that represent the relationships between nodes. there are many studies that have been proposed to address subgroups in social networks. these studies depend on methodologies such as the degree centrality and heuristic methods. besides, natural language processing can be used to identify subgroup of people in social networks. by analyzing conversations, nouns and phrase can be used to address characteristics of communities [5]. degree centrality (dc) is widely used in sns to compute the degree of each node. betweenness centrality (bc) is to measure number of shortest paths to others that a certain node has. closeness centrality (cc) is to indicate how long the shortest path for each node. equations (1-3) define these three metrics of centrality [5]. ( ) ( ) ( ) n indicates to the number of nodes in the graph, deg(i) refers to the number of neighbors of node i. ( ) ∑ ( ) ( ) δjk(i) refers to the number of shortest paths between two nodes ( j and k) passing through i. all shortest paths between them is referred by δjk. ( ) ∑ ( ) ( ) d(i,j) defines the distance between two nodes ( i and j). figure 2 shows a snapshot of graph representing sn, whereas table 1 illustrates these three centrality metrics for each node in figure 2. table 1 some centrality metrics of the nodes in fig 1 node dc bc cc a 2 0 0.1 b 2 0 0.1 c 3 6 0.125 d 3 6 0.125 e 2 0 0.1 f 2 0 0.1 on the other hand, author in [6] has suggested a profit aware grouping method. it depends on skills of individuals who can cooperate to accomplish sets of tasks. this grouping team can increase the total profit of the task that can be completed by the team. a new people grouping has been proposed in [7] basing on a global similarity of users taking in account their constraints and importance in the social network. grouping pedestrians has been presented in [8] depending on evolving track interaction network (etin). tracks of pedestrians are represented as nodes whereas their behavior as weighted edges. even though many researchers have been paying their attention toward grouping in social networks, it is still an open challenging research issue [5]. figure 1 applications of vsn figure 2 a snapshot of sn represented as a graph 3.2. bridging sns and vns this paper considers vehicles, like human who build social relationships, as social objects which are interested in a common interest to share their experiences. however, limited papers have been suggested to bridge sns and vns so far. in [9] the concepts have been presented for bridging both sns and vns. maglaras, l.a. and et al have discussed privacy and security issues of the new multidisciplinary research direction. authors in [10] have suggested another attempt. a novel voting method has been proposed to overcome the problems of cascading and oversampling. as they are widely known in sns, the techniques which have been used in sns are borrowed. a vote is given for each vehicle according to how close this vehicle to the event. authors in [11] have presented a new video social network over vanet. a service is provided for passengers who are interested to exchange their videos during traveling. in the similar event, a recommendation system has been proposed in [12] to give a recommendation for passengers who like joining their friends during trips. in [13], a study to investigate sns in wireless sensors networks (wsns) and vns has been presented. authors have used centrality metrics of sns in wsns to control their topology. the most related works are still limited attempts due to several challenges of this new multidisciplinary research field that requires to be clearly addressed,. therefore, more clarification is needed to highlight the new direction’s land-markers. 4. grouping vehicles in vsns grouping, in general, is associating term with clustering and classification which is also similar to pattern recognition task. it, in general, can be divided into two main types according to availability of prior knowledge. in classification, for example, groups’ nature is known in advance. therefore, it is just to assign a new member to appropriate group. this is why it is called supervised learning. the big issue is when there is no idea about the nature of groups. in this event, there is a need to unsupervised learning to identify the unknown groups [5]. clique analysis finds links that connect members in a clique that should have directly connected links to every node else in the clique. this way of grouping is directly related to the nature of relationships among members. on the other hand, clustering is less direct but has efficient of computation. it depends on similarity or distances. several distance measures can be used in this context such as euclidean, cosine, hamming distance measures [5]. however grouping vehicles in vsns has a different story. as it is previously mentioned vsns have constraints that should be considered. high mobility and unpredictable behavior are the main constraints of vsns. moreover, there is no stable topology for vns due to high mobility. on the other side, there are factors that affect grouping vehicles such as density of vehicles and range of communication. in the two following subsections, two ways for grouping vehicles in vsns will be discussed. the first one is related to the permanent groups of vehicles whereas the second is associated to the temporary groups of vehicles. 4.1 formal groups a group of social objects is simply defined as a set of members that have the similar interests. social objects may be people, organizations, vehicles etc. identifying groups in social networks is still challenge especially when there is no prior knowledge about these groups and members’ interests. in svns, vehicles that have similar interests can be gathered in a group. a big question mark is there, what are the similar interests of vehicles. according to these similar interests vehicles can be gathered in two main groups. these are permanent or formal groups and temporary or casual groups. the latter will be discussed in the next subsection while the former means grouping vehicles that have relationships over a long time. these relationships can be created either by authorization of drivers or automatically by vehicles themselves. people friends can help their vehicles to create relationships if they have similar interests. for example, staff of company can authorize their vehicles to be member of the same group. family members, people neighbors, schoolmates are examples of drivers who travel to the same place every day. they can help their vehicles to create relationships in a formal group. not that only, vehicles can automatically to create relationships with each other without drivers’ help. because these vehicles may park at the same place for many times, they can have the similar interests. for example two vehicles which always park at the same shop’s park may have the same interests, even if their drivers do not know each other. however, a threshold is needed to identify how many times vehicles see each other in the same place to create a relationship. in these two scenarios with drivers’ help or without, vehicles can be gathered in permanent groups or formal groups. 4.2 casual groups vehicles are temporally grouped according to temporary interests. the interests here are in some sense related to the behavior of vehicles. set of vehicles that have the same temporary behavior can be gathered in a one casual group. destination may be a temporary behavior so vehicles that have been traveling toward the same direction cab be in a casual group. speed is also can be considered as temporary interests. communication range should be also taken in account in casual grouping process. in this context, it can be said all vehicles that have the same direction and in the same communication range can be gathered in a casual group. it is similar in some sense to the relationships of people who are waiting at bus stop or in a line. they have also the same temporary interests that enable them to create a temporary relationship regardless of whether they know each other before or not. to understand these concepts, the below example which is taken from the proposed model is to explain principles of creating a casual group of vehicles. as it is shown in figure 3, the vehicles are grouped in the casual groups according to their direction and communication range. the color of vehicle indicates to its formal group. all vehicles that have the same direction and in the allowed range will be grouped in a single group no matter to what formal group they belong. nonetheless, in figure 3 the vehicles with color green and yellow are not grouped with the three-vehicle connected group and the two-vehicles connected group respectively, even if each one of them is in the range of the corresponding connected group. that is because they have opposite direction. the idea behind casual groups is not only to interact between vehicles in the same group. it is also help in efficiently sharing information of formal groups. as it is clear in figure 3 one casual group can contain vehicles from several formal groups. 4.3 affecting factors on grouping behavior of vehicles and their drivers are the main factors that affecting formal groups. drivers can play a role in creating formal groups. as it is discussed in subsection of formal groups, there are two ways to create permanent relationships of vehicles. indeed the permanent relationships can be created either by drivers’ authorization or by the frequently same behavior of vehicles. this is related to formal grouping scenario. nonetheless, the casual grouping scenario has a different story. density of vehicles, their directions, and communication range are the main factors which are considered in creating casual groups. regarding vehicles’ density, it is known that the number of vehicles is not fixed all the time. it is variable depending on the time. it is high at the peak time or during emergency period whereas it is much less during late night [14]. in addition, the density is not the same in urban, rural, and highway. in urban, density of vehicles is always higher than in rural and high way. so creating casual groups is mainly affected by density of vehicles. in fact, high density may increase the number of members of a group as will be seen in the result’s section. not density only can affect casual grouping, communication range has a significant impact on this way of grouping. in this context there are many wireless standard technologies which are designed for wireless networks. table 1 shows the most familiar wireless technologies to wirelessly achieve the communication process. each one has different characteristics to be suitable for different cases [15-17]. table 2 some wireless technologies however, since vns have certain characteristics such high mobility and high changing in topology, a suitable radio technology is needed to meet their requirements [18, 19]. in this context, usa has developed dedicated short range communication (dsrc) which is a standard short medium range communication for vehicle to vehicle (v2v) and vehicle to roadside unites (v2r) [20, 21]. they allocate frequencies spectrum 75 mhz at 5.9 mhz for dsrc. it has seven channels with 100 mhz wide for each channel. dsrc depends on wireless standard ieee 802.11a [22]. american society for testing and metrials (astm) has presented astm-dsrc that has mainly basen on 802.11 mac layer and ieee 802.11a physical layer. however, according to sourav bhoi and pabitra khilar, ieee 802.11a has a main issue due to its data rate (54 mbps). this is why ieee 802.11a has renamed to ieee 802.11p. table 3 illustrates the features of dsrc which is used in usa, japan and europe [20, 23]. on the other hand, ieee 1069/802.e is another wireless standard. the ieee 802.11a operates on physical layer management, the ieee 1609.1 operates on the application field, the ieee 1609.2 supplies a security mechanism, and the ieee 1609.3 operates on wave wireless technology data rate range data type bluetooth low data rate 1 mbs short distance 10m images or files wifi 54 mbs6 gbs 100 m video, audio or files wibree very low short distance small files zigbee 256 kbs 75 m small files figure 3 casual vehicular groups management and the ieee 1609.4 control the logical link control layer. as a result communication range can affect casual grouping process. the wide range can provide large casual groups of vehicles. this is related to the concept of giant component in graph theory. it means the largest group of connected nodes. giant component indicates to the connectivity of the entire network. since the connectivity is defined as the number of nodes that can be removed to obtain the totally connected nodes. besides, communication range is also can contribute to increase the number of links for each vehicle. table 3 dsrc used in usa, japan, and europe 5. proposed model the proposed model contains two main steps. the first step is to build formal groups whereas the second is related to create casual groups. 5.1. formal social grouping algorithm the formal social grouping algorithm (fsga) is proposed to incorporate the social behaviors of drivers. so, new parameters are considered in this algorithm such as drivers’ habits and historical behaviors of drivers. fsga builds a social profile for each vehicle including all social places which are visited by that vehicle. in this context, social behaviors of vehicles are collected by road side units (rsus) in historical data. rsus are deployed at each entrance and exit of park. the algorithm assumes that each social place such as university, school, super market, company etc. has at least one park. each vehicle will send a message to the corresponding rsu when it enters and exits a park. as a result historical data for each vehicle will be available that indicates to the social profile of that vehicle. depending on these social profiles the algorithm will gather vehicles that have a similar behavior in one formal group. to understand fsga the next definitions will hopefully give a good imagination of fsga’s work. according to the sfga, the number of formal groups is equal or less than the number of sps. 5.2. casual social grouping algorithm according to the previous discussion casual social grouping algorithm (csga) is designed for grouping vehicles in temporary groups. it mainly depends on temporary vehicles’ interests such as distention or direction and communication range. usa jap. eur. features astm jarip ecs communication half duplex half duplex half duplex frequency 5.9 mhz 5.8 mhz 5.8 mhz band 75mhz 80mhz 20 mhz channels 7 dl 7, ul 7 4 channel 10mhz 5mhz 5mhz data rate 3-27mbps dl/ul ¼mbps dl/ul dl500kbps ul256 kbps range 1000 m 30m 15-20m for each specific parameter such as communication range and density of vehicles the connectivity of the entire network is investigated. to achieve this task graphstream is available [24]. it is a java library for analysis graphs. it receives events from netlogo ver 5.3.1 which is a brilliant tool to simulate agent behavior [25, 26]. figure 4 illustrates this bi-directional way to test the proposed model. this cooperation between netlogo and graphstream provides a good understanding to both behavior of individuals (vehicles) as agents and the entire network as a graph. 6. results the proposed model is tested under some conditions. table 4 illustrates the most important parameters. on the other hand, the road traffic model consists of six streets. three of them are horizontal with length 2 km and the remaining three are vertical with length 1 km each one has four lanes two for either direction. there are nine traffic lights one at each intersection which is created by crossing of the one vertical street and another horizontal street. table 4 parameters of the proposed model at each run, the number of links is computed for each value of affecting parameters: density d and range of communication r. another result computed is the number of groups (casual groups). as it is seen from results how d and r have a significant effect on the number of groups. as it is previously mentioned giant component which represents the connectivity of the entire network can be affected by d and r. figure 5 (a-f) illustrate the effect of d on the grouping process. a num of links d=50 d. num of groups d=50 b. num of links d=100 e. num of groups d=100 c. num of links d=200 f. num of groups d=200 figure 5 the effect of d with fixed r=100 on the number of links and number of groups number of vehicles variable 50,100 and 200 communication range variable 15,50 and100 speed 10-60 km/h number of runs 10 for each scenario channel type wireless radio standard ieee 802.11p figure 3 the proposed model moreover, figure 6 (a,b and c) shows the effect of d with fixed r=100m on the giant components. a giant component d=50 b. giant component d=100 c. giant component d=200 figure 6 the effect of d with fixed r=100m on giant component. on the other side, results obtained from graphstream, which is used to analyze graphs obtained from netlogo, emphasize that there are significant effects of (n) and (r) on some metrics as shown in figure 7. it indicates to the graphs of casual groups when n= 200 vehicles and r=100m. from these graphs, it is obtained that connected components is 9, diameter of giant component is 10.0 density of giant component is 0.05646464646464647, and average clustering coefficient of giant component is 0.8040006860171921. 7. conclusion as vehicles are immigrating to the next generation, the transportation systems will be improved due to these advance technologies. nonetheless, vehicular social networks may be an amazing research direction for the next era. in fact, it is expected that bridging both vns and sns will be brought to light in the soon future. therefore, the techniques of both social and vehicular networks are going to be combined. they are a main basic of this new research field. since intelligent vehicles can interact with each other, collecting them in social groups is justifiable. the main project’s contribution is in growing scholarly knowledge of vsns. sharing information in social groups is more reliable in sense of trusting information. so an efficient grouping of vehicles has been proposed to share information among vehicular social groups. this work of grouping vehicles will hopefully be a milestone of sharing information among social vehicles. acknowledgments this work is supported by college of information technology/ university of babylon. references [1] m. keertikumar, m. shubham, and r. m. banakar, "evolution of iot in smart vehicles: an overview," in 2015 international conference on green computing and internet of things (icgciot), 2015, pp. 804-809. 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(30th march ). available: http://graphstream-project.org/ [25] w. shanshan and z. chunxiao, "netlogo based model for vanet behaviors dynamic research," in intelligent system design and engineering applications (isdea), 2013 third international conference on, 2013, pp. 990993: ieee. [26] s. t. hasson and z. y. hasan, "simulating road modeling approach’s in vanet environment using net logo," research journal of applied sciences, vol. 11, no. 10, pp. 1130-1136, 2016. biography muhammed a. mahdi got his master degree in computer science from college of science/ university of babylon. he is now a ph.d student at college of information technology/ university of babylon. he is interested in wireless networks, vehicular networks and social networks. saad talib hasson got his ph.d. modeling & computer simulation, feb. 2002, msc. in applied sciences, jan, 1989. bsc in in electrical and electronic engineering 1982. he is now a professor in college of information technology/ university of babylon. he is interested in modeling, computer simulation, wireless sensors networks and vanets applications. http://graphstream-project.org/  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.8 received: 05 june 2018 | accepted: 10 july 2018 assessment of knowledge, attitude and breast self-examination practice among female students in sulaimani polytechnic university sarko masood mohammed community health department technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani iraq sarko.mohammed@spu.edu.iq 49 abstract: breast cancer is the most common cancer affecting women all over the world. it is estimated to account for around 25% of all malignant in women, and incidence shows continuously increasing trend in many countries all over the world. the aim of the study is to determine level of knowledge, awareness, and bse practice among spu female students. a descriptive study was conducted a pretested questionnaire was used to determine knowledge, attitude and practices of female students in spu regarding breast cancer and bse. the face to face interview questionnaire was filled by systematic random sampling to 216 female students from 4 different colleges belongs to spu, after getting verbal consent to participate voluntary in the study. data were entered into epi-data version 3.1.1 and exported to analyse in spss version 17. descriptive analysis was performed and frequencies and percentages were reported. the mean age of participants was 20.7, the study result shows that the knowledge mean score of participants was 3.95 (sd ± 1.78).181(83.8%) have information of breast cancer, and 157(72.7%) have information on breast cancer sign,136(63.0%) have information on factor that increase change to get breast cancer,150(69.4%)have information on (bse),86(39.8%)have information how to do (bse),101(46.8%)have information on mammography .91(42.1%) practice of (bse), only 10 ( 4.6 %) female students has performing this examination regularly , percentage of students that did not done mammography was 193 (89.4%) . only 2 (0.9 %) performs mammography screening regularly, 18 (8.3 %) have a family member that get breast cancer. knowledge of female student about breast cancer was at unsatisfactory level. knowledge of female student about s.b.e was also at unsatisfactory level. poor practice was observed, regarding bse. knowledge regarding mammography was also poor. key words: breast cancer, knowledge, attitude, practices, breast selfexamination, mammography, college student. 1. introduction breast cancer consider one of the main types of cancer in women worldwide both in developed and developing countries, this increase occurs as a result of variation in healthy life style, increasing the level of life expectancy, and damaging in wildlife environment by urbanization, and adoption of western lifestyle especially by college students age group. although some risk reduction might be achieved with prevention, these strategies cannot eliminate the majority of breast cancers that develop in lowand middleincome countries where breast cancer is diagnosed in very late stages. therefore, in order to improve the rate of breast cancers survival, there should be a good prevention and screening programs for health education with early detection and early treatment [1]. in sulaimani city there is a lack of awareness program, proper knowledge regarding breast cancer which has a great role in detection of breast cancer in the late stages, with a lack of screening tests such as (bse), periodic clinical breast examination (cbe) and mammography among university female students. the previous last years has witnessed an increase in breast cancer number, with a lack of sufficient studied regarding this issue in sulaimani city. breast cancer can be defined as a malignant growth of cells and tissues that affect the breast. which may affect both producing and tubules ducts that carrying milks. breast cancer can be classified into two main types named tubule and ductal carcinoma. breast cancer known publically to has a high incidence rate in females; meanwhile it may affect males as well but lesser range than the females. the main causes or contributing factors that thoughts to lead to breast cancer are increasing age, family history, genetic factors, obesity, early menstruation, late menopause and null parity are all recognized as contributory factors [2]. the breast cancer survival rates vary in worldwide, ranging from 80% in developed countries, to around 40% in middle income countries and less than 40% in low income countries. the low survival rates in developing countries may be due to lack of proper prevention and health education programs, with a lack of early detection screening tests such as bse, cbe and mailto:sarko.mohammed@spu.edu.iq 50 mammography with a lack of adequate diagnosis and treatment facilities [3]. breast self-examination (bse) has been considered as a most applicable preventive measure that applied by the female herself for detecting an any changes in the breast structures, and it is one of the most commonly recommended strategies for breast cancer screening [4,5]. the main goal for both bse and clinical breast examination (cbe), is to early detection of any palpable nodules. an additional role of bse is to increase the level of awareness of females regarding normal breast composition [6,7]. the aims of this study were firstly, assessment of level of knowledge of spu female students regarding breast cancer, secondly, assessment of bse practices of spu female students, with evaluation of mammography screening test, and finally, to identify factors associated with better knowledge and practice of spu female. 2. literature review breast cancer is the most common cancer among women. it is becoming an issue of concern in women’s health. the center for disease control mentioned that the best defense against breast cancer morbidity and mortality is early detection of the disease [8]. the best way for reduction of morbidity and mortality from breast cancer will be achieved by providing preventive measures and awareness programs for women in the society, by grating up the level of knowledge that would assist them to change their lifestyle, attitude and behaviors by seeking the available screening methods for early detection of breast cancer. [9]. a study from india-puducherry report that low level of knowledge among students needs a quick action establish a health education and awareness programs targeting college women to provide breast cancer prevention education [10]. woman who shows better level of knowledge were participated previously in health education programs about bse and was likely to practice bse on routinely [11]. bse is one of the three screening tests that contributed in the early detection of breast cancer as recommended by the national cancer institute and american cancer society [9]. the screening cancers activities for early detection include examination, breast self-examination, clinical breast examination and mammography. the most cheaper and non-invasive and less painful one is bse, clinical breast examination is one of the primary modes of screening for breast cancer. its effectiveness is dependent upon the skills of health care providers and available facilities. mammography can reduce mortality rates for women aged 40 to 74 by 25% [12]. mortality rates from breast cancer have decreased by 25 to 30% with early detection, improving quality of screening activities, and enhanced treatment [12]. detected breast in cancer early stages has a higher chance of treatment [13]. arabic women currently face a significant risk of high mortality rate from breast cancer due to its late diagnosis "in the advanced stages of the disease [14]. in a study done in iraq found that almost 75% of the participants believed that the best way to control breast cancer was through early detection and other possible preventive measures. most participants (90.9%) had heard of bse, only 48.3% practiced bse [15]. in kirkuk university -iraq reported that 69.9% of participants have heard about bse, (42.6%) reported that they have practices bse routinely [16]. another study done in saudi arabia reported that the majority (89.2%) of the participants knew that bse is recommended to be done monthly [17]. (70.8%) respondents reporting that they do not know how to perform bse. however, women strongly agreed that bse is a method of screening for breast cancer. [18]. another study done in jenin reported that the majority of students of age 18-20 years (34%) had poor knowledge towards bse while the majority of age above 20 years (19.6%) had fair knowledge. the majority of poor knowledge level was among first year students then second year respectively (28.9% and 10.3%) while the good knowledge was among fourth year then third year respectively (8.2% and 4.1%) [19]. 3. methods and materials study location: sulaimani, is a one of the major cities of iraqi kurdistan region located in the north-east part of iraq close to the iranian border. study design: study designed to assess the level of knowledge of spu female students, systematic randomly selected samples of spu female students done; the study was a quantities study to assess knowledge, attitude and practices (kap) of spu female students regarding breast cancer and breast self-examination. location of the study: the descriptive study was done in different selected colleges in chwarchra technical college campus that belongs to sulaimani polytechnic university (spu). all of 4 four colleges were selected from chwarchra technical college campus to participate in this study. duration of the study: initially the research data collection was started from 1st february 2017. the kap study using the face to face questionnaire simultaneously and lasted until 28th april 2017. participants: eligibility criteria inclusion criteria: all female students studying in the selected colleges were eligible to take part in the kap study. exclusion criteria: all female employees and male students studying in the selected colleges were excluded. data collection: face to face administered questionnaire the kap study was done using a face to face administered questionnaire including demographic variables, socioeconomic variables, level of education, and years of education, 51 knowledge, attitude and practices of female students regarding breast cancer and breast self-examination. developing of the questionnaire: the face to face administered questionnaires used in the kap study, consist of 32 questions 6 of which were to assess the level of knowledge, 6to assess the attitude, 7 questions to assess the practices and the rest was sociodemographic data. data collection: all the data were collected in selected colleges the researcher visited all selected colleges. the data collection for the kap study was done by starting to fill the face to face administered questionnaire to female students after taking a verbal consent from participants for acceptance to voluntary participation in the study and giving a full explanation about the objective and the aims of the study. data processing: the questionnaires and has a specific location code that represents a specific college and each questionnaire had a unique id number which represent the participant number. questionnaires were sorted every day according to their location code and unique id number. they were also checked for any missing questions; they were double-checked and entered to the database daily. data entry: a database was developed in epidata version 3.1.1 and used for data entry. all questions were pre coded. file was exported to spss version 17.0 for data analysis. statistical methods: analysis of data was performed using statistical package for social science (spss) version 17.0. descriptive statistics such as means and ranges were computed. appropriate tests of significance were performed to determine the relationship between sociodemographic variables and the variables related to knowledge, attitude and practice regarding breast cancer and breast bse. chi square test was applied to find association between categorical variables. continues variables were checked using t-test. p values p≤ 0.05 were considered statistically significant. the total knowledge score was calculated by summing all knowledge questions. ethical considerations: the proposal of the study was submitted to scientific committee of the technical college of health, and official approval obtained for conducting the study. the study was undertaken in the chwarchra technical colleges campus that belong to spu, a formal permission was obtained from management of the college departments to conduct the study on female students the ethical principles of biomedical research were respected. participants consent and confidentiality: before asking participants to complete the questionnaire, they were given a full explanation of the aims and objectives of the study, and they were told that the participation was voluntary, verbal consent was obtained from all participants before administration of face to face administered questionnaire. the privacy and confidentiality of participants were assured by not collecting information on names and other personal identifiers in the questionnaire. 4. results the sample involved 4 technical colleges belong to spu selected inside sulaimani city. out of an intended sample of 216, 216 completed questionnaires were returned mounting to a response rate of 100%. two hundred sixteen 216 female students were agreed to participate voluntary in the study and they were face to face interviewed to fill the questionnaires. table (1) showed differencepercentage of participants in 4 different selected colleges belongs to (s.p.u). (technical college of health) participants were 23.1%, (technical college of administration) were 26.4%, (technical college of engineering) were 31%, (technical college of informatics) were 19.4% simultaneously table1. table 1. selected colleges and number of participants college name (n=4) # % technical college of health 50 23.1% technical college of administration 57 26.4% technical college of engineering 67 31.0% technical college of informatics 42 19.4% total 216 100.0% the mean age of participants was 20.75, maximum number of participants age group 43(19.9%) ≥ 18 years of age, while 165(76.4%) were 19-24 years old, about 71(32.9%) of participant students were from first stage, while 2nd and 3rd stages were about 52(24.1%) for each, marital status of maximum number of selected participants were single, 113(52.3) of participants’ residents were comes from urban while only 103(47.7%) were comes from rural areas. about 96(44.2%) of participants were having a poor economic status 90(41.5%) have fair economic status while only 28(12.9%) were good. 190(88%) of participant’s parents were educated while only 12% were illiterate table2. 52 table2. socio-demographic characteristics of participants total no. = 216 # # % age ≤ 18 43 19.9% 19-24 165 76.4% 25-29 7 3.2% ≥30 1 0.5% stage (year) 1st 71 32.9% 2nd 52 24.1% 3rd 52 24.1% 4th 41 19.0% marital status single 182 84.3% married 33 15.3% divorced 1 0.5% residence urban 113 52.3% rural 103 47.7% economic status poor 96 44.2% fair 90 41.5% good 28 12.9% very good 1 0.5% family education illiterate 26 12.0% educated 190 88.0% the knowledge score of participants were calculated when these knowledge questions were summed to obtain a total score, the total score ranged from 0 to 6 with a mean knowledge score of 3.95 (sd ± 1.78). table 6 shows comparison of the mean score with various characteristics of participants. factors which were significantly associated with higher knowledge score of bc. and bse, were age, marital status, college stage, and residence were statistically significant while parent’s education were not. the score was poor, fair, good 25.5%, 34.7%, 39.8% simultaneously table3. table3. association of mean score with various characteristics of the participants # mean score 95% ci mean differenc e p value overall score 216 3.95 3.80-4.25 _ _ age >18 years 43 3.9 3.65-4.18 0.4(0.11-0.78) 19-24 years 165 4.22 4.11-4.32 0.001 college stage 0.60(0.1 2-1.32) 1st stage 71 3.96 3.68-4.02 4th stage 41 4.35 4.3-4.55 0.001 marital status single 182 4.1 3.9-4.25 1.10(0.69-1.73) married 33 4.52 4.22-4.65 0.03 residenc e urban 113 4.48 4.30-4.97 1.08(0.55-1.82) 0.001 rural 103 4 3.84-4.31 parents education illiterate 26 4.6 3.9-4.7 0.12(0.60-0.95) educated 190 4.77 4.62-4.99 0.6 knowledge of students toward b.c. and sbe. 35(16.2%) have no information on breast cancer, while181 (83.8%) have information on breast cancer, only 77(35.6%) have information on breast cancer signs, while 157(72.7%) not have any information on breast cancer signs, about 77 (35.6%) have information on factors that may increase the chance to get breast cancer, while 136 (63%) not have any information about it. only 66 (30.6%) have information on (s.b.e), while 150 (69.4%) have information on (s.b.e).eighty six 86(39.8%) have information on how to do s.b.e, meanwhile 130(60.2%) don’t know how to do it. 115 (53.2%) never have information on mammography, 101(46.8%) have information on mammography table 4. 53 table 4. knowledge of participant regarding b.c. and breast self-examination. (n=216) knowledge # % do you have info. on bc. ? yes 25 11.6% no 181 83.8% do you have info on bc? signs? yes 77 35.6% no 157 72.7% info. on factors that increase the chance to get bc. yes 80 37.0% no 136 63.0% do you have info on bse? yes 66 30.6% no 150 69.4% do you have info. how to do bse? yes 130 60.2% no 86 39.8% do you have info on mammography? yes 115 53.2% no 101 46.8% attitude of students toward b.c. and bse. for evaluation of attitude of the of participant in relation to breast cancer, the majority of the applicants had a positive attitude to bse, weather they believes it is better to get information on breast cancer only127 (58.8%) has a correct answer, while 83(38.4%) has wrong answer. about 156(72.2%) believes that bse is necessary, and 59(27.3%) believes it is not necessary to do breast self-examination regularly. 114 (52.8%) believes it is better to encourage peoples around to do breast selfexamination, meanwhile 102(47.2%) not have interest to encourage people to do breast selfexamination. 137(61.7%) believes that it is better to do bse regularly only55 (24.8%) has a correct answer that the best time to do mammography is post cycle, while 161(74.5) have wrong answer. only93 (41.9%) believes that it is better to pass information to other peoples about breast cancer, meanwhile 123(55.4%) don’t think passing information to other people about b.c. and bse is necessary table5. table 5. attitude and family history of participant regarding bc. (n=216) attitude # % believes it is better to get info. on bc. no 83 38.4% yes 127 58.8% believes bse is necessary. no 59 27.3% yes 156 72.2% believes it is better to encourage peoples to do bse? no 102 47.2% yes 114 52.8% believes the best time for mammography is pre cycle 85 38.3% during cycle 76 34.2% post cycle 55 24.8% believes it’s good to do sbe regularly. no 79 35.6% yes 137 61.7% believes it is better to pass b.c info. to others? no 123 55.4% yes 93 41.9% practices of students in relation to bse. 125(57.9%) never practice bse, while 91(42.1%) practice bseregularly, 193(89.4%) never did mammography, 2(0.9%) didmammography once each year, 11(5.1%) doing mammography more than one time each year. 2(0.9%) perform mammography screening every two months, 7(3.2%) perform mammography screening every six months, while only 4(1.9%) perform mammography screening annually. only 91(42.1%) of participants were practices bse regularly,81(37.5%) of participants were performing bse by themselves, most of participants about 34(15.7%) performing bse post cycle, while 31(14.4%) practicing this examination pre cycle, about 50(23.1%) encouraging peoples around them to do bse, 193(89.4%) of participants have never doing mammography, only 5.1% of participants did examination more than one time, table 6. 54 table 6. practice and family history of participant regarding bc. (n=216) practice # % did you practice sbe regularly? no 125 57.9% yes 91 42.1% how do you perform this examination daily 10 4.6% weekly 16 7.4% monthly 51 23.6% annually 14 6.5% who performs breast examination for you? my self 81 37.5% professional 7 3.2% others 3 1.4% when did you perform sbe? pre cycle 31 14.4% during cycle 26 12.0% post cycle 34 15.7% did you encourage peoples around you to do sbe? no 41 19.0% yes 50 23.1% when did you do mammography? pre cycle 2 0.9% during cycle 5 2.3% post cycle 6 2.8% how many times you did mammography each year? never 193 89.4% once 2 0.9% more than one time 11 5.1% any member of your family gets bc? no 187 86.6% yes 18 8.3% i don’t know 1 0.5% do you have a family history of bc? no 164 75.9% yes 10 4.6% don’t know 42 19.4% 5. disscussion the present study was conducted in different selected colleges which are belongs to spu in sulaimani. the study assessed level of knowledge, attitude, and practices of female students regarding bc, and sbe. the knowledge, attitude and practices of female students were dissimilar among participants; many factors may lead to this difference like the stage in the college, age of participants, marital status, and residence. this study showed that age, marital status, place of residence and college stage were statistically significant factors of better knowledge while parent’s education were not. the present study showed that 181 (83.8%) have information on breast cancer, this result is consistence with a study done in niagara – india reported that about 90.5% (314/347) knew about breast cancer [20]. the present study showed that 77(35.6%) of participants has information on breast cancer signs, which is dissimilar to a study done in isfahaniran revealed that the average of the participants in awareness of breast cancer symptoms (71.57%) [21]. this difference may be due to a lack of awareness and education sessions in the colleges regarding breast cancer and bse. the results of this study showed that only 80(37%) have information about the main factors that may increase the chance to get b.c., which is in consistence with a study done in isfahan – iran reported that knowledge of participants about its risk factors (77.15%) [21]. in the present study136 (63%) of participants not have information about bse, this was inconsistence with a study done in egyptalexandria university reported that the level of awareness of breast self-examination was high among the college students [22]. this difference may refer to that the mentioned study was done in nursing college that students have a good medical background about breast cancer. the present study showed that 130(60.2%) have information about how to perform bse, it is unlike a study done in zagazig university, zagazig, egypt reported that the college students have deficient knowledge andlow perceptions regarding breast cancer and bse [23]. the present study results showed that 115(53.2%) of participants have information on mammography as a screening method for breast cancer, regarding the attitude of the participants towards bse, the study results showed that the majority of participants have a positive attitude regarding bc. bse and mammography, this was consistence with a study done in jenin in reported that the majority more than three quarters (75.3) of participants had positive attitude towards bse. no negative attitude has been reported [19]. this positive attitude may relate could be attributed to the mass and social media awareness programs about breast cancer. the finding showed that about 91(42.1%) of female students in spu performs practice s.b.e, this result is inconsistence with a study done in usa revealed that 75% of female university students were performs sbe [24]. this difference may be due a huge difference in the culture and also refers to low level of health education and low level of knowledge about this examination among spu female students. in current study 72.7% of female student have information about sign and symptom of breast cancer, this result was consistence with a study done among female school teacher in lagos the information about signs and symptoms of breast cancer about 53.3%, knew correctly that a mass was commonest recognized symptom of breast cancer [25]. poor perform breast self examination monthly is about 23.6% while it is comparable to the study done in pakistan, aga khan hospital karachi [26]. 75.9% had negative family history of breast cancer while a study done in qassim 55 region in saudi arabia report that 85.6% had negative family history of breast cancer [27]. in current study only 2.7% of student knew the appropriate time to do s.b.e is a few days after menes, these finding are similar studies investigating awareness and knowledge of breast cancer and practice s.b.e among women and university student in saudi arabia [28-29]. in the present study 69% of participant had unsatisfactory knowledge score about s.b.e and 58.9% of respondent had poor knowledge score a similar result was reported in iraq [30]. only 23.6% of student had satisfactory knowledge about frequency of s.b.e every month, 39.8% of student knew to how perform s.b.e which was much lower than recorded 66.9% in iraq [30]. seventy six percent 56% of nigerian female knew correction time of s.b.e performance [31]. more than 89.4% never did mammography; the finding of this study is consistent with a study done in korea [32]. 6. conclusion based on the study results we can conclude that there is low level of knowledge about breast cancer and bse among female students, there are a poor practices among spu college students in relation to bse. there is an urgent need to create awareness programs and sessions about breast cancer in order to great up the level of knowledge of female students. the importance of establishing education programs regarding breast selfexamination among female student in the university, so as to improve the practice sbe. furthermore, the importance of public awareness on the importance of breast selfexamination should be intensified using mass media and the health service personnel to promote breast selfexamination. female student should possess the accurate knowledge and appropriate attitude about breast cancer; it is recommended the university should be train female student about awareness of importance of mammography as a screening test to early detection of breast cancer. social media, tv channel can play an important role in dissemination of information about the bse with other screening test in the early detection of breast cancer. references [1] b. anderson, y. smith” guideline implementation for breast healthcare in low-income and middle income countries: overview of the breast health global initiative global summit 2007, vol.113(8):2221–2243. 2008. 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[32] s. lee, e. sim, factors affecting periodic screening behaviors for breast cancer among hospital nurses. korean j. women health nurse. vol.16(4): 390-398.2010. acknowledgement thanks to bokan ahmed, shnar ibrahim and rezana mustafa for their assistance in data collection. 2. literature review 3. methods and materials 4. results kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 125 impact of ramadan fasting on metabolic syndrome criteria: among treated hypertensive and diabetic females of halabja halgord ali m. farag nursing department, technical college of applied sciences, halabja research center, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, iraq – halgord.farag@spu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 7 issue 1june 2022 doi: 10.24017/science.2022.1.11 article history: received: 20/03/2022 accepted: 16/08/2022 the influence of ramadan fasting (rf) on patients with "metabolic syndrome" (mets) remains debatable. meanwhile, the majority of evidences demonstrated a beneficial effect on nearly most of the metabolic criteria that are reducing the risk of mets. hypoglycemia is a significant consequence of diabetes that has already been associated to an increased cardiovascular risk, and hypertension. however, there have also been reports of mixed results. therefore, the objective of this observational study was to detect the impact of “ramadan fasting” on metabolic criteria among treated hypertensive and diabetic patients. a total of 73 female mets patients aged 20 to 45 years old took part in this prospective study, were evaluated a week before ramadan fasting and, after ramadan month having hypertension and diabetics of more than 2 years. all attended halabja hospital and were treated with one daily medication based on the doctor’s prescription. to estimate the sample size, the sample random technique was employed, and the computed sample size was used. the eligibility criteria for female patients having diabetes and hypertension were based on the international diabetic federation (idf) definition criteria. fasting blood samples were taken, blood pressure was assessed, and bmi was computed, as well as fasting blood sugar and lipid profiles of all collected blood samples. there was a substantial weight loss, and wc decreased. this result has been reflected on bmi as well ( p ˂ 0.0001). during the month of fasting, both the systolic and diastolic blood pressures changed significantly. overall, ramadan fasting was found to decrease fasting glucose levels. fasting ramadan was found to have a significant drop in tc and tg levels in terms of lipid profile modifications. the levels of ldl-c in the blood did not differ significantly, after ramadan compared to baseline. however, we did notice a decrease in serum hdl-c levels, which was not accompanied by any significant alterations. ramadan has a synergistic effect. in people with a history of hypertension and hyperglycemia, fasting combined with conventional medical treatment results in significant improvements in weight, bmi, waist circumference, lipid profile, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, are all heart disease risk indicators. keywords: ramadan fasts, metabolic syndrome, blood pressure, type 2 diabetic mailto:halgord.farag@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 126 1. introduction diabetic and hypertension are the two most important criteria of the metabolic syndrome (mets), and resolute hazards calculate for cardio vascular disease (cvd). study shows that complications from diabetic patients develop vastly greater if blood pressure (bp) was high [1]. however, in exception to the role of bp, a study indicates that hyperglycemia in patients with irregular fasting, glucose is considered a crucial marker in estimating the risk of mortality [2]. other shows, in diabetic patients the risk of developing cvd are multiplied [3] and the predominance of hypertension in diabetic individual is high [4]. around, 80% of people with diabetes will die from hypertension [5]. globally, the incidence of adults with hypertension is high and was assessed to be 972 million in 2000 and is anticipated to extend in 2025 to about 60% in total of 1.56 billon [6]. besides, the prevalence of diabetes be high around the world, it is approximately 8.8% accounting for 415 million human being in 2015 and predicted to rise 10.4% by way of 2040 accounting for 642 million [7]. most of the patients with diabetes will develop hypertension. therefore, it is difficult to control bp in diabetic patients compared to non-diabetics, meanwhile, the venture of cvd is high in hypertensive patients with hyperglycemia than in patients that only have high blood pressure [8] there is a lack of scientific proof on the outbreak and risk factors of hyperglycemia and hypertension amongst kurdish muslim people with different behavior compared to nonmuslims. in both industrialized and poor countries, the combination of diabetes, hypertension, and other metabolic risk factors may have a substantial influence in determining the risk of death and morbidity. [9][10]. but there is no enough evidence why there is such a significant relationship between the two criteria. however, many factors might also contribute. all healthy adult muslims are required to fast from dawn to dusk throughout ramadan, with an exception for women in a period of the menstrual cycle and those who are suffering from any disease. during this month the majorities of kurdish muslims have devoured two well large, sized meals one directly before dawn and second after dusk. fasting may cause metabolic level changes. evidence for the consequence of ramadan fasting and physiological responses during fasting is still not fully understood. fasting, sleep disturbance, changes in dietary behavior, and lifestyle have a major important role in controlling metabolic criteria levels including diabetic and hypertension [11]. however, research on the impact of ramadan fasting on blood sugar level and hypertension have been controversial; one study import a considerable glucose levels in the fasting state are lower over time [12], while another found a modest rise [13], and a reduction in blood pressure in either “hypertensive and normotensive” people [14], additionally study on diabetic patients during ramadan were showed a significant increase in systolic bp but no difference in diastolic bp [12]. the aim of this study was to see how ramadan fasting affected metabolic parameters in females on hypertensive and diabetic treatment at halabja hospital. 2. methods and materials a group of 73 female patients with met s, aged (20-45) years were evaluated before and after the ramadan month (one week before the fasting month and were followed up a week after the month), having a disease (diabetic and hypertension) of more than two years. all attending the halabja hospital were treated with once-daily medication and continued their medications during ramadan (atenolol: 50mg, metformin 500 mg, and aspirin 100mg orally once a day) medication was taken before sunrise. in addition, they were regularly fasting during past years and have the intention to fast. the study was undertaken in halabja hospital from (17-4-2020) to (24-5-2020), include one week before ramadan month, patients were examined at the center of communicable and non-communicable disease. this center provides all required patients including; examination and drug supplements with a free for those people living in halabja and around. the sample size was calculated using a basic random sampling procedure. each individual is chosen totally by random in this situation, and every member of the population has an equal chance of being chosen. 2.1 inclusion and exclusion criteria kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 127 the (idf) defining criteria were used to determine eligibility for female participants with diabetes and hypertension between the ages of 20 and 45 who live in halabja (kurdistan region of iraq) [15]. this study excluded participants who were taking any medications other than antihypertensive and diabetic treatments (atenolol 50 mg, metformin 500 mg, and aspirin 100 mg orally once a day). after a medical evaluation, the candidates for the study were chosen. patients having renal disease, liver disease, pregnant and lactation women, type one diabetes, smoker, alcoholic, insulin user, and newly diagnosed with hypertension and type ii diabetes were excluded. moreover, patients who were unable to fast for at least 21 days during the trial period were eliminated from the study. 2.2 ethics ethical ratification for the study was commissioned through the ethical review board of; halabja hospital, center of communicable and non-communicable disease. respondents gave patients a survey questionnaire before and after ramadan after they signed a consent form. 2.3 data collection methods the questionnaire comprised a socio-demographic section, such as; gender, age, anthropometric measure, onset and duration of disease, and medical history were recorded (type and dose of anti-hypertensive and anti-diabetic agent used). clinical data section including systolic and diastolic blood pressure and laboratory investigation was performed to examine blood glucose level. hypertension was defined according to the idf guideline, which is sbp> 130 mm/hg and, or dbp > 85 mm/hg or using anti-hypertensive remedy [15]. after at least 10-20 minutes of rest, blood pressure was collected from the participant's left arm while seated with a standardized zero-mercury sphygmomanometer and stethoscope. the idf criteria were used to make the diagnosis of type 2 diabetes (more than 120). the presence of diabetes was specified by reviewing previous medical history of the patient and confirming that they were using antihyperglycemic medication. the first sample was collected a week prior to ramadan at 9 to 10 am, and the second sample was tested at least two days before ramadan ended. after 8 to 10 hours of fasting, blood glucose was measured using a glucose kit (randox-usa). bmi was calculated according to the ( ( )) ( ( ) , and waist circumference was measured by using steel tape at baseline and end of ramadan fasting. 2.4 statistical analysis the data was collected and analyzed by using spss version 22. (spss. chicago, il, usa). for the complete sample, descriptive statistics such as; standard deviation, mean, and percentages were determined. the differences in mean were investigated using the independent samples t-test and the paired sample t-test. in this study, a p value of less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. 3. results the mean size of fasting days was 26.5 days, with the range being 24 to 29, and the total number of fasting hours was 15 hours and 25 minutes. all of the women in this study missed four and a half days of fasting because they couldn't fast during their menstrual period. the study enrolled 82 volunteers, nine of whom were withdrawn from the final analysis, and four of whom failed to provide blood samples at the conclusion of the trial and five volunteers withdraw from the study due to acute medical conditions and did not complete fasting. the remaining 73 volunteer patients with a mean age of 37.6 ± 6.7 took part in this study. most of our patients were taking aspirin 100mg/day n=48 (67 %). the majority of type 2 diabetic patients who underwent ramadan fasting consumed oral antidiabetic drugs; 65 subjects were on oral antidiabetic metformin and 8 were on metformin for glucose-lowering therapy. in addition, all of the patients were taking an antihypertensive medication (calcium chanel blockers). the regularity of medicine taken was necessary in the inquiry to learn that n=49 (68%) of the patients took their meds every day, but n=24 (33%) of the individuals frequently missed their medications throughout the fasting month. (table 1). there was a substantial weight loss during the month of ramadan; it has changed from 86.4 ± 14.7 kg to 83.2 ± 14.7 kg with a percentage change of 3.1 ± 3.3 kg and p ˂ 0.0001. also , wc kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 128 decreased significantly compared to before ramadan; it has changed from 109.4 ± 8.7 cm to 106.6 ± 8.4 cm with a percentage change of 2.8 ± 2.7 cm and p ˂ 0.0001. this result has been reflected on bmi as well that showed a reduction from 34.5 ± 5 to 33.2 ± 4.9 with a percentage change of 1.3 ± 1.9 and p ˂ 0.0001. (table 2). the systolic blood pressure (143.04 ± 22.6 vs 124.6 ± 14.3), and diastolic blood pressure (88.9 ± 11.2 vs 77.8 ± 7.8) showed a significant change during fasting period. overall, fasting throughout ramadan was found to significantly reduce fasting blood sugar levels. it has improved from 127.1 ± 62.1 mg/dl to 103.2 ± 20.2 mg/dl, and p-value 0.0001, which has a significant change compared to before ramadan fast. (table 3). with regards to changes in lipid profile, fasting ramadan was found to a significant decrease in tc level by (183.9 ± 39.9 to 173.7 ± 36.5) mg/dl, and tg level by ( 170.9 ± 58.3 to 144.6 ± 41.1) mg/dl. there was no significant change in serum ldl-c after ramadan when comparing to the initial, however, we noticed a decline in serum hdl-cholesterol levels but this change was not paralleled by any significant changes. (table 3). 4. discussion incompatibles studies have been reported for bmi, wc, and weight loss in response to ramadan fasting. the most significant interpretation from this study is the impact that “ramadan fasting has over many parameters including body weight, wc, bmi, and many analyzes in the blood such as tc, tg, and hdl-c, nevertheless, the fact that after ramadan all encounters of the study matched in an improvement of their systolic and diastolic blood pressure. we found both bmi and wc significantly decreased after ramadan, this was following works [16], [9], in addition, there was a significant drop in the basal metabolic index (bmi), which is aligned with another study[18], [11]. decrease in body weight and bmi [20]. however, it is not clear the exact reason for the result, whether it was related to a decrease in hydration or fat mass or to other lifestyle conditions. the significant weight reduction during ramadan fasting is since participants went through almost a month of depriving themselves during the days starting from dawn and continuing to dusk. and different periods of fasting in different seasons (16 to 17 hours) are other important factors, which can affect the obtained findings[21]. the qualifications of eating configuration, lowcalorie intake, loss of midday meals when the body is metabolically active, exercise religious activity (prayer), behavioral changes, and improvement of psycho-physiological during ramadan fast status[22], might help improve and arrangement of lifestyle-related disorders like mets overweight and obesity [23]. again, bmi and wc, are significant changes, not just result of the decrease in food intake (less energy intake and more energy expenditure) but also the result may strongly have related to dehydration produced by exhaustion of body fluids and loss of water and fluid intake, not related to decreasing in body fat [24]. such changes could be showcased as a positive indication resulting from fasting the month. the result of the finding for bp is compatible with similar studies performed by other researchers, including a research paper from our team that found similar observations among hypertensive patients during ramadan fasting in halabja [25]. besides, the targeted group of patients in this study was females having troubles with their blood pressure and were taking drugs for controlling their symptoms. the outcome in this regard also demonstrated the usefulness of ramadan fasting along with the continuous taking of the drugs in improving the systolic and diastolic blood pressures for these encounters. also, the fasting indicated no negative contribution in worsening the health status of the patients when blood pressure matters. a mixed change in b.p among diabetic patients was reported by many researchers during ramadan fasting. this change may result of different reasons; first, individual are licensed to drink and eat after the dusk and before dawn, second, traditional high sugar intake and consumption of high-fat foods [26], third, longer fasting hours-high temperatureassociated with dehydration then increased blood viscosity [27], forth, changing in dietary pattern and behaviors-weak up for a meal at night and return to a sleep-some afternoon nap and less physical activity [28], finally, sleep imbalance, energy restriction, physiological kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 129 effects and decrease number of meals [29]. all reasons may be able to have posed an additional risk for bp control. our finding is in agreement with other studies in diabetic patients [30, 31, 32] , other shows, no significant changes [8, 34], no change in bp may be due to the fact that people are on diet and doing exercise, this retained homeostasis and bp didn't change. others believe that this discrepancy could also be thanks to a long hunger period during which glucose storage is exhausted and fat becomes a source of energy, thus, helping in weight loss, better glycemic control, help in decreasing bp and other lifestyle-related diseases[34]. besides, the mixed result for change in bp among diabetic patients that use metformin during ramadan has been reported. the beneficial effect of metformin has been appraised its antihyperglycemic efficacy and it can affect weight and bp. study shows that metformin significantly decreases bp in non-diabetic hypertensive obese [35], and improving insulin sensitivity by metformin during ramadan fasting decreases bp in untreated hypertensive nonobese [36]. in contrast to our result, use of metformin for diabetic control did not affect bp [37, 38]. interestingly, other finding shows, participants with long time use metformin had higher systolic blood pressure compared to a participant with shorter duration use of metformin, meanwhile other trial reached the same result[39]. improvement in glycemic control has also been reported in type 2 diabetics [40], and healthy adults [41]. overweight and obesity is a heterogeneous disease associated with the higher risk for the outreach of type ii dm [16, 17]. a “meta-analysis study shows that being overweight is involved with a development risk of diabetic retinopathy [44]. therefore, the greatest parts of researchers and physicians, find intermittent fasting is satisfactory for patients with well-controlled diabetes. conflicting results for fbs, lead to different decisions, especially in the management of type 2 diabetics. “expert muslim medical practitioners” believe that fasting during ramadan may make disease harmful, but, it is different in patients with type ii dm if fitting direction about meal and hypoglycemic medication is designated [22, 23]. in the result of our study, we found that the range of fbs is significantly changed during and after ramadan fasting. it is acceptable that living with type 2 diabetes did not inhibit patients from fasting with regular metformin medication and it can improve insulin sensitivity due to the long duration of fasting [36]. studies are reported a noticeable decline in glucose levels during ramadan fasting. however, many factors like environmental factors, regular drug intake, differences in dietary habits, seasons, prolonged hunger, disorder, physical activity, and sugar intakes, make our result to an agreement with some of the previous studies [47, 26, 27]. conflict report study shows a significant reduction in blood glucose towards the end of ramadan in adults, it may be related to increased “gluconeogenesis” [51]. when it comes to the changes in the levels of “lipid profile” variable during ramadan, we could observe a significant decrease in certain parameters and non-significant decreases in others. for tc and tg the change was minus directed and was significant. however, for the good hdl-c there was also a decrease in its levels which could not be attributed to a benefit of ramadan fasting. yet, the change in hdl-c, was not significant. besides the promising results observed from the current study, yet, the benefit of fasting for patients with metabolic syndrome is controversial [52]. although, in a systematic review that surveyed 28 studies performed upon various muslim societies from the middle east, asia, and africa, tahapary et. al. found the common characteristic among all studies were observing a decrease in fasting plasma glucose (fpg), hba1c, tg, tc, hdl, and ldl levels without any fatal hypoglycemic cases [53] kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 130 table 1: anthropometric data before ramadan. variables total (n=73) female p value age (years) 30-45 0 weight (kg) 86.4±14.7 0 bmi (kg/m2) 34.5±4.9 0 wc (cm) 109.4±8.7 0 table 2: effect of ramadan fasting on anthropometric measure variables no. before ramadan (mean ± sd) after ramadan (mean ± sd) changes 95%ci difference p value weight (kg) 73 86.4±14.7 83.2±14.7 3.1±3.8 (-) 2.24 0.001 bmi (kg/m2) 73 34.5±4.9 33.2±4.9 1.3±1.6 (-) 1-1.6 0.001 wc (cm) 73 109.4±8.7 106.6±8.4 2.8±2.7 (-) 2.1-3.4 0.001 the descriptive statistics of mean, and standard deviation were calculated for the entire sample. the differences between means were tested by paired sample ttest. p value less than 0.05 was considered as statistically significant table 3: effect of ramadan fasting on blood sugar, blood pressure and lipid profile variables no. before ramadan (mean ± sd) after ramadan (mean ± sd) changes 95%ci difference p value fbs 73 127.1±62.1 103.2±20.2 23.9±55.6 (-) 10.9-36.8 0.001 sbp(mmhg) 73 143±22.6 124.6±14.3 18.4±20.9 (-) 13.5-23.3 0.001 dbp(mmh) 73 88.9±11.2 77.8±7.8 11±9.6 (-) 8.7-13.2 0.001 tc (mg/dl) 73 184±39.9 173.7±36.5 10.3±33.6 (-) 2.4-18.1 0.011 tg (mg/dl) 73 170.9±58.3 144.6±41.1 26.3±65.6 (-) 11-41.7 0.001 hdl-c (mg/dl) 73 39.4±14.7 36.5±13.8 2.8±13.4 (-) 0.2-6 0.07 ldl-c (mg/dl) 73 129.4±43.7 123.7±36.1 5.6±38.4 (-) 3.3-14.6 0.2 the descriptive statistics of mean, and standard deviation were calculated for the entire sample. the differences 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[53] d. l. tahapary, c. astrella, m. kristanti, d. s. harbuwono, and p. soewondo, “the impact of ramadan fasting on metabolic profile among type 2 diabetes mellitus patients: a meta-analysis,” diabetes metab. syndr. clin. res. rev., vol. 14, no. 5, pp. 1559–1570, 2020.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.13 received: 09 june 2018 | accepted: 17 july 2018 maternal serum uric acid as an index of perinatal outcomes in severe preeclampsia rozhan yassin khalil awat saber muhammed obstetric & gynecology obstetric & gynecology college of medicine ministry of health university of sulaimani general directorate of health-sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq rozhan.khalil@unisul.edu.iq awatsaber@yahoo.com 80 abstract: preeclampsia is a multisystem disorder characterized by gestational hypertension after the 20th week of gestation with proteinuria, is common and dangerous adverse event of pregnancy. several studies reported relationship between uric acid concentrations and severity of disease in pregnant women. the objective of this study was to explore the relation between serum uric acid level and perinatal outcomes. a case–control study conducted in sulaimani maternity teaching hospital from january 2014 to july 2014. included 100 pregnant women in third trimester with signs and symptoms of labour, who had no comorbid diseases. grouped to 30 control without hypertension, 30 with pregnancy induced hypertension (pih) and 40 with severe preeclampsia based on clinical and laboratory evaluation. spss v21 was used for obtain mean, standard deviation, frequency and percentage. one way anova test used to obtain p value with consider <0.05 significant value. results show serum uric acid mean and standard deviation (±sd) for control, pih and severe preeclampsia groups were (5.83 ± 9.544), (4.35 ± 1.372) and (7.59 ± 0.508) respectively. the positive and significant (˂ 0.001) correlation coefficient was found between high serum uric acid level and oligohydramnios, low birth weight and low apgar score. the highest level of serum uric acid was recorded in preeclampsia group and the lowest level was in pih group. significant and adverse perinatal outcomes relation were noted in the patients with high serum uric acid (>7 mg/dl); decreased amniotic fluid index (afi), caused low birth weight and low apgar score. in conclusion that severity of illness in pregnant preeclampsia cases can be estimated by serum uric acid level and high serum uric acid indicate high risk cases. maternal serum uric acid is a useful index for estimate fetal health status and predict neonate outcomes. keywords: preeclampsia, uric acid, pregnancy induced hypertension (pih), maternal serum uric acid. 1. introduction preeclampsia is hypertension when systolic bp≥140mm hg and diastolic bp ≥ 90mmhg on at least two occasions 4 hours apart. preeclampsia is a multisystem disorder after the 20th week of gestation with proteinuria cause maternal and fetal morbidity and mortality [1], in lisonkova study they determined that preeclampsia identified in 3.1 per cent of all pregnancies [2]. berg and colleagues (2003) reported that almost 16 per cent of 3201 maternal deaths were from complications of pregnancy-related hypertension [3]. preeclampsia is associated with uricemia [4]. uric acid is minimally soluble and its concentration is maintained relatively low in healthy individuals (<6.0 mg/dl), increased uric acid in pregnant women is a marker of raised xanthine oxidase activity. this elevation of uric acid in women related to reduced glomerular filtration rate, increased tissue breakdown, decreased secretion and increased reabsorption [5]. in pregnant women, a high increase of uric acid influence on placental growth and development, resulting in compromised oxygen and nutrient delivery to the placenta [6]. elevated uric acid concentrations were first noted in preeclamptic women in the late 1800s. since that time, numerous studies have demonstrated a significant relation and we can use uric acid level as an indicator for severity of preeclampsia [7] and other studies showed a non-significant relationship between uric acid concentrations and severity of preeclampsia, they showed a lack of sensitivity and specificity to be used as diagnostic test [8-10]. still, most of the studies concluded that validity of using uricemia as a preeclampsia predictor [11] and corominas 2018 study suggest, combination usage of the uric acid and proteinuria [12]. the aim of this study to explore the relationship between serum uric acid level with perinatal outcomes and serum uric acid level can be used as an indicator of preeclampsia severity and fetus health status. 2. patients and methods observational study with case-control method conducted at sulaimani maternity teaching hospital during the period from january 2014 to july 2014. a total number of 100 primigravida pregnant women at labour ward in the third trimester were included with characteristics; primigravida, singleton pregnancy, gestational age (30 – 40 weeks) determined by lmp and early pregnancy ultrasound, vertex presentation and women in spontaneous labour and cases excluded if they had multiple pregnancies, diabetes mellitus, chronic hypertension, history of crystal arthropathy (gout), thyroid problem, renal disease, obesity, meconium stained liquor, induction of labour, instrumental delivery and malpresentation. after taking a detailed history, clinical examination and blood pressure measurement 81 from patients file they divided to three study groups: 30 of them with normal blood pressure and no proteinuria, while the other 30 with pregnancy-induced hypertension (bp >140/90 mmhg without proteinuria) and the remaining 40 with severe preeclampsia [bp>160/110 mmhg with proteinuria (urine protein ≥ 2+ by dipstick measurement)]. for measurement of serum uric acid, 3 ml sample of maternal peripheral blood is collected directly in the tube, centrifuged for 10 minutes then the serum is analyzed in multi-analyte biochemistry panel. data collected by direct interview and from patients file for patient’s history and tests, collected data analyzed by spss (statistical program for social science) software version 21, quantitative data were described as a mean and standard deviation and qualitative variables were described as frequency and percentage. anova test used to determine a relation between variables with p value < 0.05 considered statistically significant. 3. results a total participates of 100 pregnant women who were admitted to sulaimani maternity teaching hospital included in period from january 2014 to july 2014, who were in spontaneous labour, separated in to 3 groups; severe preeclampsia (pe) were 40 cases, pregnancyinduced hypertension (pih) 30 cases and control group were 30 pregnant women. the age of the women in 3 groups ranged between 18 to 40 years old, the mean ages were, for the preeclampsia (pe) 28.35 ± 6.070, pregnancy-induced hypertension (pih) 29.60 ± 6.42 and control groups 29.67 ± 5.561. regarding body mass index (bmi) in all groups ranged between (16-26) kg/m2, mean were pe 22.75 ± 2.035, pih 22.63 ± 1.938 and control 22.37 ± 1.991. the gestational ages for all groups ranged between (30-40) weeks, with mean pe 34.78 ± 2.675, for pih 35.30 ± 2.507 and for control 35.30 ± 2.781. there was no significant relationship between this groups as shown in (table 1). table 1: characteristics of the studied groups. studied variables studied groups p values pe mean ± sd pih mean ± sd control mean ± sd age (years) 28.35 ± 6.070 29.60 ± 6.42 29.67 ± 5.561 0.582 (ns) bmi 22.75 ± 2.035 22.63 ± 1.938 22.37 ± 1.991 0.725 (ns) ga (weeks) 34.78 ± 2.675 35.30 ± 2.507 35.30 ± 2.781 0.628 (ns) the mean ± sd of serum uric acid level was higher in the pe group (7.59 ± 0.508) while it was less in control group (5.83 ± 9.544) but it was lowest in the pih group (4.35 ± 1.372). however, there was a statistically significant relation between groups with p-value= 0.031 (table 2). table 2: mean and standard deviation of serum uric acid level among studied groups. groups sua mg/dl p value mean ± std. deviation pe 7.59 ± 0.508 0.031 pih 4.35 ± 1.372 control 5.83 ± 9.544 majority of cases 69% were had a normal level (2-7 mg/dl) of maternal serum uric acid (sua) and 76% had a normal range of amniotic fluid index (afi). most of neonate 57(57.6%) did not admit to ncu with one neonate death and from all 42 neonates in ncu only 7(16.7%) cases developed convolution. table 3: frequencies and percentages of different parameters. frequencies percentages serum uric acid (sua): 2-7 mg/dl >7 mg/dl total 69 31 100 69 31 100 amniotic fluid index (afi): oligohydramnios normal total 24 76 100 24 76 100 neonatal care unit (ncu): yes no total 42 57 99* 42.4 57.6 100 convulsion in ncu: yes no total 7 35 42 16.7 83.3 100 * one neonatal death (intrapartum) maternal serum uric acid (sua) level (2-7) mg/dl were found in 11(27.5%) cases, in all pih 30 (100 %) cases and in control 28 (93.3%) cases while was > 7 mg/dl sua found in 29 (72.5%) pe cases, only 2 (6.7%) cases in control and no cases in pih and there was a highly significant difference between less and more than 7 mg/dl sua between groups with p-value (<0.001) (table 3). amniotic fluid index (afi) volume adversely react with sua level, cases with normal afi (5-25 cm) were 64 (84.2%) cases with normal sua level but in abnormal level of sua were 12 (15.8%) cases, as so in abnormal afi (< 5 cm) volume were 5 (20.8%) cases with normal level of sua level but in abnormal level of sua level were 19 (79.2%) cases and there was highly a significant relationship with p-value (< 0.001) (table 4). vaginal delivery (vd) were higher in normal level of sua 47 (82.5%) cases but in abnormal level of sua were 10 (17.5%) cases however for caesarean 82 section(c/s) were approximately same for both 22 (51.2%) cases for normal and 21 cases (48.8%) cases for abnormal level of sua nevertheless there was a highly significant difference with a p-value < 0.001(table 4). most admitted 23 (54.8%) cases to neonatal care unit (ncu) were had a normal level of usa while 19 (45.2%) cases had abnormal level of sua and 46 (80.7%) cases not admitted were had normal level of sua while 11(19.3%) cases had abnormal level of sua with highly significant differences (p-value 0.006). ncu admitted cases were 42 cases, only 3 (13.1%) cases in the normal level of sua developed convulsion while 4 (21.1%) cases developed convulsion. there were nonsignificant differences with a p-value 0.129 (table 4). table 4: relationship between maternal serum uric acid levels with maternal and neonatal outcomes variables sua (mg/dl) p values 2-7 n (%) more than 7 n (%) studied groups: severe pe pih control 11(27.5%) 30(100%) 28(93.3%) 29(72.5%) 0(0.0%) 2(6.7%) ˂ 0.001 amniotic fluid index (afi): < 5 cm (abnormal) 5-25 cm (normal range) 5(20.8%) 64(84.2%) 19(79.2%) 12(15.8%) ˂ 0.001 mode of delivery: vaginal delivery (vd) caesarean section (c/s) 47(82.5%) 22(51.2%) 10(17.5%) 21(48.8%) <0.001 neonatal care unit (ncu): yes no 23(54.8%) 46(80.7%) 19(45.2%) 11(19.3%) 0.006 convulsion in ncu cases: 3(13.1%) 4(21.1%) 0.129 in the comparison of mean ± sd of apgar score at 1 st minute, apgar score at 5 th minute and birth weight between groups show that all were lowest in severe pe and highest in control group. there was a highly significant difference between the three groups in all outcomes (table 5). table 5: shows mean and standard deviation of perinatal outcome and studied groups. studied groups severe pe pih control p values apgar (1 st minutes) 5.38 ± 1.95 6.70 ± 1.02 7.10 ± 1.60 ˂ 0.001 apgar (5 th minutes) 6.78 ± 1.80 7.67 ± 1.64 7.97 ± 1.45 0.009 birth weight (kg) 1.99 ± 0.26 2.63 ± 0.51 2.90 ± 0.70 ˂ 0.001 high uric acid level lowing mean of afi, birth weight, apgar at 1st and in 5th minutes. mean of these birth outcomes were higher in the normal level of uric acid (27 mg/dl) than mean in an abnormal level of uric acid (>7 mg/dl) and differences were highly significant for all of the birth outcomes (table 6). table 6: shows relation of serum uric acid and perinatal outcomes sua mg/dl 2-7 mg/dl mean ± sd >7 mg/dl mean ± sd p values afi 9.2 ± 3.19 3.88 ± 2.50 ˂ 0.001 birth weight(kg) 2.69 ± 0.63 1.97 ± 0.27 ˂ 0.001 apgar 1 st min 6.85 ± 1.35 5.17 ± 2.01 ˂ 0.001 apgar 5 th min 7.70 ± 1.50 6.67 ± 1.91 0.002 4. discussion this study conducted on 100 pregnant women admitted to sulaimani maternity teaching hospital, by casecontrol method where divided to 3 groups; 40 cases with preeclampsia (pe), 30 cases with pregnancy induced hypertension (pih) and 30 cases control. to evaluate the level of maternal serum uric acid (sua) in preeclampsia and its effect on perinatal outcomes. the results of the current study demonstrate that mean of age (28.35) and gestation weeks (34.78) was lower in preeclampsia group than other groups we found same difference and near mean rate in enaruna 2014 study[13], preeclampsia group age was (28.83) and gestation weeks mean (36.19) but in the present study bmi mean was (22.75) slightly higher in pe group compare to other groups we found the same result in enaruna study but bmi mean was (26.42), this deference might relate to region of the study and all relation were non-significant in the current study and enaruna study. the results showed that mean of serum uric acid level and percentage of abnormal level of serum uric acid was higher in pe group compared with other groups with a statistically significant difference, this result was same with patel tjel (2014) study [14], ankitagawde (2014) study [15] and lim and frideman in 1998 study concluded that hyperuricemia associated with preeclampsia and uric acid level mirror to the severity of preeclampsia [10]. in normal pregnancy women rate of uric acid decrease up to 35% compare to non-pregnancy women [16], it produces an increase of glomerular filtration and reduces of reabsorption of uric acid by pregnant women kidney [17]. however, in the pre-eclampsia women there is impairment in the placenta caused by trophoblastic invasion and formation of the ischemic metabolite [18], this formation effect on peripheral vasoconstriction in glomeruli and glomerular endotheliosis in the result cause decrease of gfr and increase absorption of uric acid by proximal convoluted tubule that leads to elevated uric acid level in blood [19]. studies show this increase of the uric acid effects on decreasing estrogen and repressed the activity of the angiotensin system [20]. the results of this study shows that pregnant women with abnormal sua had less amount of amniotic fluid index (afi) with a significant correlation. studies concluded that oligohydramnios or deficiency of amniotic fluid volume is increasing neonatal and maternal morbidity and mortality [21, 22] and ladella 2017 who showed that afi greater than 5cm decrease stay in nicu period [23]. amniotic fluid volume can be 83 estimated by many techniques but common techniques are the four quadrants amniotic fluid index and the single largest vertical pocket [24]. however, many studies like bachhav 2014 study concluded that afi is a poor predictor for perinatal outcome still it is valuable screening test for predict fetus health status [25]. caesarean section was highest in high sua groups and vaginal delivery was highest in normal sua group with significant correlation, we found the same result in patel tejal (2014) [14], agrawal (2015) [26] and f. yassaee (2003) [27]. the koopmans (2009) study concluded that vaginal delivery mode in preeclampsia had better outcomes compare to caesarean section for both maternal and neonatal [28]. our results show that high uric acid pregnant women had a lower mean of apgar score for 1 st and 5 th minutes and birth weight compare to normal uric acid group with a significant relationship, this concludes that high uric acid had adverse effects on neonatal outcomes. these results agree with patel tejal (2014) study [14], singh (2014) study [29] and shah dm (1996) [30] concluded that high uric acid patients have 4.2 relative risk to adverse outcomes, shah dm suggested that uric acid can be used to predict neonatal morbidity and mortality outcome. our study concluded that severe preeclampsia cause adverse outcome to neonatal like low birth weight and low apgar score at 1st and 5th minutes with significant relation, we found same results in asma ul hosna (2008) and james m. roberts (2005) who reported patients with severe preeclampsia associated with higher incidence of neonatal adverse outcome [31,7]. in this study, neonatal care unit (ncu) admission in hyperuricemia neonates were lower than normal uric acid neonates with significant relation, we found the same result in singh (2014) study [29] and opposite result with acien (1990) show that hyperuricemia neonates more admitted to hospital but both studies were non-significant [32]. very few neonates in the current study developed convulsion with non-significant relation, might be related to the sampling method and our study more focused on other outcomes than convulsion. to determine this relation more studies with a bigger sample size and control of other cofounders. limitation of this study was a short time period that we cannot choose cohort study to follow children after birth for long period, also we had chosen few sample size, more analytic tests need to determine some outcomes with control of other factors for that we recommend separate studies for each neonatal outcomes. 5. conclusion our study concluded that severity of illness in pregnant preeclampsia cases can be estimated by serum uric acid level and high serum uric acid indicate high risk cases. maternal serum uric acid is a useful index for estimate 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[32] p. acien, g. lloret, and m. lloret, "perinatal morbidity and mortality in pregnancy hypertensive disorders: prognostic value of the clinical and laboratory findings," international journal of gynecology & obstetrics, vol. 32, pp. 229-235, 1990. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 114 glycolysis regulation to maintain blood glucose homeostasis karzan jalal salih dana khdr sabir pharmaceutical chemistry department department of medical laboratory sciences medical and applied science college college of medical and applied sciences charmo university charmo university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq karza.salih@charmouniversity.org dana.sabir@charmouniversity.org hayman jalal abdoul pharmaceutical chemistry department medical and applied science college charmo university sulaimani, iraq hayman.abdoul@charmouniversity.org article info abstract volume 7 issue 1june 2022 doi: 10.24017/scince.2022.1.10 article history: received: 20/4/2022 accepted: 04/7/2022 carbohydrates are the major energy source for the living cells that synthesized from carbon dioxide and water during photosynthesis process by green plants through absorption of sun light. in human, carbohydrates provide more than 55% of body energy which are mostly come from exogenous source. carbohydrates can also provide energy from endogenous source such as glycogenolysis process. to be used as source of energy, carbohydrates compounds should undergo series of enzymatic metabolic reactions in the cell. beside the energy productions, catabolism of carbohydrates provides different metabolites for synthesis of several biomolecules such as fatty acids, amino acids, dna, and rna. among the three main examples of monosaccharide (glucose, galactose, and mannose). glucose is considered as the central molecule in carbohydrate metabolism that all the major pathways of carbohydrate metabolism relate to glucose molecule such as glycolysis and glycogenesis process. glucose is also considered as an important component of cellular metabolism in preserving carbon homeostasis. liver plays a significant role in controlling and stabilizing blood glucose levels; therefore, it can be considered as glucostate monitor. in this article, we will review the major metabolic pathways of carbohydrate metabolism, their biochemical role in cellular energy production, and latest development in the understanding in these fields. also, we discussed about the factors that participate in regulation of blood glucose concentration. we believe understanding this process is essential for control carbohydrate-related human disorders. keywords: carbohydrates, glycolysis, glucose transporters (gluts), insulin, glucagon mailto:karza.salih@charmouniversity.org mailto:dana.sabir@charmouniversity.org mailto:hayman.abdoul@charmouniversity.org kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 115 1. introduction the monosaccharide is the central molecule in the metabolism of carbohydrate since it is related to all the major pathways of carbohydrate metabolism. glucose, as a major carbohydrate molecule, undergoes three major pathways to be metabolized, glycolysis [1], glycogenesis [2], and hexose monophosphate (hmp) shunt [3].these pathways are regulated inside the living organisms either enzymatically or through the actions of different hormones [4, 5]. the glycolytic pathway is carried out by most tissues by breaking down of glucose to provide energy in the form of atp, and also it offer several metabolites, which can later be used for other metabolic pathways [6]. glycolysis, also called embden-meyerhof pathway, is an extramitochondrial pathway in a cell in which one molecule of glucose is oxidized into two pyruvate molecules through several enzymatic reactions in the cytosol of the cell [7, 8]. in the present of oxygen, the pyruvate molecule enters mitochondrial matrix from the cytoplasm to form tricarboxylic acid (tca) cycle to be fully oxidized to co2 and water [9]. however, in the absence of oxygen (anaerobic condition), pyruvate is converted into lactate [10]. examples of anaerobic glycolysis such as exercise, overproduction of pyruvate, or under hypoxic conditions during disfunction or damaging of mitochondria. in terms of structure, carbohydrates are classified into three major classes, (1) simple carbohydrates, they include monosaccharides such as glucose, galactose, and mannose; and disaccharides such as lactose, and sucrose, (2) complex carbohydrates that consist of multiple sugar units linked to each other through glycosidic bonds. the well-known examples of the complex carbohydrates are glycogens in animal, starch in plants and cellulose, (3) carbohydrates that bound to other groups such as protein (glycoprotein) or lipids (glycolipids) [11]. carbohydrate digestions begin in the mouth through hydrolysis of poly and complex carbohydrate and into shorter molecules by the action of salivary and pancreatic α-amylase to di-, triand oligosaccharides. the next step of carbohydrate digestion takes place in the small intestine for further hydrolysis catalyzed by several digestive enzymes that located in the small intestinal brush-border membrane such as sucrase, maltase and lactase; to produce glucose, galactose, and fructose [12]. after the digestion process, these monosaccharides are absorbed into the blood stream to control blood sugar through several transporter proteins [13]. the pancreatic hormones including insulin and glucagon monitor the flow of glucose to and from the cells. insulin keeps the concentration of glucose in the blood at a normal level; once the blood sugar level is too high, insulin triggers the liver to uptake blood sugar and store glucose as glycogen molecule. however, the lack of insulin or the body’s inability to produce enough insulin to regulate the amount of glucose in the blood (diabetes mellitus) increase the glucose level of the blood. on the other hand, incase of low blood sugar levels, glucagon has an important role in maintaining blood glucose homeostasis by stimulating hepatic glucose production through breakdown of glycogen to glucose via glycogenolysis process which is then released into the blood. furthermore, glucagon stimulates gluconeogenesis process by promoting liver cells to make glucose from amino acids [14]. in this article we provide an updated review on the process of glucose metabolism including glycolysis, and glycogenolysis, and types of transporter proteins that participate in these processes. also, we describe those regulators that stimulates and inhibits these processes. 2. glucose transporters (gluts) and glycolysis process glycolysis is the process that six carbon atoms of one glucose molecule are oxidized to two molecule of pyruvate (three carbon atom each) via several enzymatic pathways. the process of glucose oxidation in the cells starts from its absorption from the blood into the cells through glucose transporters that are located in the plasma membrane of different tissues such as liver, kidney muscle and adipose tissues. however, due to solubility of glucose and present of lipids in the cellular membrane, making it difficult for glucose and other hexoses to diffuse from blood into the plasma membrane. from the middle of the last century, several researches kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 116 proposed several mechanisms of the passing of glucose molecule into the cellular membrane [15, 16]. several glucose transport proteins were found located on the cellular membrane, which are essential for glucose metabolism in diverse organisms [17]. in human, approximately 14 glucose transports gluts are found; among these glut 1-4 which have the fundamental roles in many physiological processes [18, 19]. furthermore, these different types of gluts are specialized based on the tissue that glucose is adsorbed into. glut1 is located in blood cells and blood brain barrier to uptake glucose from blood to these cells. however, mutations of glut1 may result in a syndrome known as de vivo disease which is consequently impaired transport of glucose into brain cells which leads to cerebral energy failure. [20-22]. glut2 is another type of glucose transporter proteins which is mostly found in liver, kidney, and pancreas β-cells, while its deficiency resulted in fanconi–bickel syndrome which is characterized by buildup of glycogen in the liver and kidney [23, 24]. glut3 is a glucose transporter of placenta, kidney and neurons [25]. glut4 on the other hand is the major glucose transporter protein in muscle and adipose tissue. glut4 is an insulin dependent glucose transporter, that depends on the present of insulin to regulate blood glucose , whereas the other types of gluts are not dependent on the present of insulin and they regulate glucose concentration based on high and low blood glucose concentration that contributes to obesity and [26]. blood glucose concentration level is maintained by both glycolysis and gluconeogenesis to around 5.5 mm [11]. once glucose is diffused into the cells, it is phosphorylated to glucose 6phosphate in an irreversible process with the action of the enzyme of hexokinase (hk) and glucokinase (gk). glucokinase is a type of glycosidase enzyme with high km value that is characterized by a low affinity for glucose that functions as the glucose sensor which is expressed at the highest levels hepatocytes and pancreatic β cells that regulate the glycolysis pathway [27]. the enzyme of hexokinase (hk) which has high affinity for glucose is present in most tissues such as muscle that catalyze various hexoses, for example, hk converts glucose molecule to glucose 6-phosphate [6, 28]. next, glucose 6-phosphate undergoes isomerization reaction in the presence of the enzyme phosphohexose isomerase and mg 2+ to give fructose 6-phosphate [29]. the synthesized fructose 6-phosphate is phosphorylated in the present of atp and the action of phosphofructokinase1 (pfk-1) to fructose 1,6-bisphosphate and an irreversible and a regulatory step in glycolysis (figure 1). the role of pfk-1 in the regulation of glycolysis has been reported for several types of cells in different animals [30, 31]. mutation in the gene encoded for pfk-1 causes a disease known as glycogen storage disease type vii that is an inherited disorder resulted in inability to break down glycogen in muscle cells, and consequently inability of the muscle to use glucose as an energy resource [32]. the six-carbon fructose 1,6-bisphosphate breakups into two molecules by the enzyme aldolase to generate glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate (ga3-p) and dihydroxyacetone phosphate (dhap). the enzyme phospho triose isomerase reversibly catalyzes the interconversion of glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate and dihydroxyacetone phosphate, depending on body demand. later, 1,3-bisphosphoglycerate, a product of the glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase enzyme, and nad + molecule is reduced to nadh. deficiency of this enzyme contributes to nadph supply and lipid accumulation [33]. the formation of cofactor nadh is reduced to nad + during the formation of lactate from pyruvate in the anaerobic condition [34]. the 1,3-bisphosphoglycerate converts to 3-phosphoglycerate with the synthesis of atp through the action of phosphoglycerate kinase. the phosphate group on the 3-phosphoglycerate through an isomerization reaction is switched to carbon number two of glycerate molecule and generating 2-phosphoglycerate by the enzyme phosphoglycerate mutase. additionally, 2-phosphoglycerate is converted to a high energy compound called phosphoenol pyruvate by the enzyme enolase. finally, the high energy phosphate from phosphoenol pyruvate is transferred to adp through an irreversible process by the enzyme pyruvate kinase, leading to the formation of atp and three carbon pyruvate molecules. there are many researches have shown the significant role of pyruvate metabolism in human diseases such as cancer, heart failure, and neurodegeneration [35]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 117 figure 1: glycolysis and glycogenolysis pathways. monosaccharide molecules uptake from blood into the cells via glucose transporter protein (glut), then in several enzymatic processes glucose in the cells convert to two pyruvate molecules. in the glycolysis pathway, among ten steps there are three irreversible steps (blue bold arrow) and the rest of the steps are reversable pathways. enzymes that catalyze the glycolysis are shown in red color except for fructose 1,6 bis phosphatase and glucose 6 phosphatase that are written with blue color which participate in glucose synthesis (gluconeogenesis). beside the glucose, metabolism of other monosaccharides (galactose and fructose) is described in the figure. pdh: pyruvate dehydrogenase, etc: electron transport chain, tca cycle: tri carboxylic acid cycle. hmp shunt: hexose mono phosphate shunt, galt: galactose 1phosphate uridyl transferase. oaa: oxaloacetate, mdh: malate dehydrogenase, pepck: phosphoenol pyruvate carboxy kinase. in case of aerobic condition pyruvate molecule moves from cytosol into mitochondria through a specialized transporter and converts in to two carbon molecule acetyl coa with the action of the enzyme pyruvate dehydrogenase (pdh), and in this oxidized reaction nad + is reduced to nadh. in case of absent or very little amount of oxygen such as those tissues that do not have mitochondria such as red blood cells or in cells that deprived from sufficient oxygen, the pyruvate molecule is reduced to lactic acid by the enzyme lactate dehydrogenase (ldh) [36], and the nadh molecule that is generated from the synthesized 1,3-bisphosphoglycerate is oxidized to nad + molecule (figure 2)[10]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 118 figure 2: aerobic and anaerobic condition. in the present of oxygen, pyruvate transfer from cytoplasm to mitochondrial through transporter protein, from there it oxidizes to acetyl coa and the reaction is catalyzed by pyruvate dehydrogenase, however, in the absence of oxygen (aerobic) pyruvate molecule reduces to lactate (lactic acid) molecule in the present of the enzyme lactate dehydrogenase. glut: glucose transporter, gk: gluco kinase, hk: hexo kinase, ldh: lactate dehydrogenase, pdh: pyruvate dehydrogenase, atp: adenosine tri phosphate. 3. regulation of glycolysis process there are four known enzymes that have shown to play a crucial role in the regulation of glycolysis process which are: glucokinase (gk), hexokinase (hk) [37, 38], phosphofructokinase-1 (pfk-1)[39, 40], and pyruvate kinase (pk) [41, 42]. all of these enzymes catalyze the glycolysis process irreversibly either allosterically or hormonally [43]. the enzyme hexokinase (hk), which is present in the cytoplasm of most tissues, is stimulated by a glucose molecule during glycolysis and is inhibited by glucose-6-phosphate if glycolysis is not required. it has shown that hk is the key for the first step in erythrocyte glycolysis, and its deficiency has been observed in patients with fanconi's syndrome [6, 28]. glucokinase (gk) is specific in liver cells located in the nucleus and is also simulated by glucose during high glucose level in the blood and consequently catalyze the glycolysis process. regulation of this enzyme is controlled by fructose-6 phosphate which stimulates binding of glucokinase (gk) to glucokinase regulatory protein (gckr) as a competitive inhibitor which causes the removal of the enzyme back into the nucleus [44]. both of these types of glycolysis regulation are known as allosteric regulation (figure 3a). hormonal regulation of glycolysis includes two hormones, glucagon, and insulin. insulin stimulates both gk and hk during high blood glucose level and they catalyze the glycolysis process, while glucagon inhibits these two enzymes during low blood glucose level and, consequently, decrease glycolysis process and promotes gluconeogenesis. moreover, insulin and glucagon regulate glycolysis process by phosphorylation and dephosphorylation of phospho fructokinase ii (pfk-ii) respectively, and it has been shown that pfk-ii is a central regulator of cardiac glycolysis [45]. pfk-ii can catalyze fructose 6-phosphate and convert it to fructose 2,6 bis phosphate, a reaction that is stimulated by insulin which dephosphorylates pfk-ii [38]. the synthesized fructose 2,6 bis phosphate is a highly regulator compound which stimulates the enzyme of phospho fructokinase i (pfk-i) and consequently glycolysis occurs. glucagon on the other hand, during low blood glucose level, starts to phosphorylate phospho fructokinase ii (pfk-ii) and inhibits the synthesis of fructose 2,6-phosphate as a result of inducing the gluconeogenesis process (figure 3b). kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 119 figure 3: regulation of glycolysis process. a) alosteric regulation: the glycolysis process is allosterically regulated by each of gk, hk and pfk-1. b) hormonal regulation: the glycolysis process is hormonally regulated by insulin and glucagon. gk: gluco kinase, hk: hexo kinase, pfk: phosphophructo kinase. red arrow: inhibition, green arrow: stimulation. 4. blood glucose homeostasis glucose homeostasis is a process of keeping blood glucose concentration at a steady-state level. carbohydrate compounds, plant polysaccharides such as starch and animal polysaccharides such as glycogen are the main source of glucose for the body. glucose can also be synthesized endogenously in the liver via several processes such as gluconeogenesis and glycogenolysis that have a significant role in providing energy for most of the tissues particularly the brain [46, 47]. the deficiency of blood sugar can lead to several problems in body function including loss of consciousness sweating, palpitations to cognitive dysfunction and seizures [48]. however, elevation of blood glucose concentrations can also result in several diseases such as blindness and renal failure. therefore, maintain the blood glucose concentrations within narrow range is important for the healthy status of the human being [49, 50]. in the feed state; glucose is taken up from the blood into the cell and phosphorylated mainly by glucokinase (gk) to glucose-6 phosphate via glycolysis process which initiates either several metabolic processes or can be used as a source of glycogenesis and gluconeogenesis [51]. the main aim of digestion of carbohydrates is to breakdown complex and all disaccharides into monosaccharides for absorption, and then energy production. the process of carbohydrate digestion starts in the mouth with the action of salivary enzyme α-amylase that acts briefly on breaking down α (1→4) glycosidic bonds in dietary components starch and glycogen. however, the enzyme cannot hydrolyze those sugars that contain α (1→6) bonds such as amylopectin. therefore, a mixture of small, branched, and unbranched oligosaccharides are produced in the mouth known as dextrin [52]. the carbohydrate digestion does not occur in the stomach due to present of gastric juice with a ph between 1 and 3 which deactivates αamylase activity. then, further digestion of dextrin by pancreatic enzyme (α-amylase) after it has been neutralized by pancreas secreted bicarbonate [53]. final step of digestion occurs at the intestinal mucosal cells; several enzymes known as brush border enzymes in the microvillus membrane like isomaltose that cleaves the α (1→6) bond of isomaltose, maltase which cleaves glycosidic bonds in maltose and maltotriose, sucrase which cleaves sucrose and lactase that cleaves lactose to produce glucose, galactose and fructose [54]. after all the forms of carbohydrates are digested and converted into the monosaccharides, they must be absorbed by the duodenum and upper jejunum. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 120 absorption of both glucose and galactose molecules occur through their diffusion via sodiumdependent glucose cotransporter 1 (sglt-1) molecule into enterocytes of the intestine, whereas the uptake of fructose requires a sodium-independent monosaccharide transporter (glut-5) for its absorption. later, all produced monosaccharides are transported from the intestinal mucosal cell into the blood circulation by another glucose transporter-2 (glut-2) (figure 4). once monosaccharides are transported into the blood, they pass through tissues like liver and muscle through transporter proteins. in the liver, the transported monosaccharide such as glucose can either undergoes glycolysis process to produce energy or it could be stored as glycogen to be used later through glycogenolysis process to control the concentration of blood sugar. in the muscle, the glucose is mostly used to get energy as atp, particularly during exercise [55]. figure 4: carbohydrate digestion and absorption. to begin the digestion process, the complex carbohydrates must break down into monosaccharides, which this small amount of carbohydrate digestion occurs in the mouth and most of the catalyzing process occurs in the small intestine with the action of the brush border enzymes. next, there is the absorption of the digested carbohydrate into the blood stream and, finally, into the tissues. increase of blood glucose level can lead to a condition which is known as diabetes mellitus. two types of diabetic mellitus are known insulin dependent diabetes mellitus or (type 1 diabetic mellitus) [56] and insulin independent diabetic mellitus or (type 2 diabetic mellitus) [57, 58]. insulin is a hormone that is secreted by the pancreatic islet beta cells. in high blood glucose level, insulin increases uptake of blood glucose by stimulating the translocation of the glucose transporter isoforms (gluts), particularly glut2 in the liver and glut4 in the muscles, from intracellular pools to the surface cellular membrane. the concentration of insulin secretion has a significant role in increasing the number of glucose transport (gluts) to be translocated into the cell membrane [59]. once gluts move into the cell membrane , the glucose in blood translocate into the tissues, consequently control the blood glucose level [60]. insulin in the liver and muscle promotes glycogenesis process to regulate blood glucose concentration through uptake of glucose via insulin sensitive glucose transporter (glut2), which can be later used via glycogenolysis during low blood glucose level [61]. in skeletal muscle, the process of glycogenolysis does not occur due to the absence of the enzyme of glucose 6-phosphatase, the enzyme that is responsible for converting glucose 6-phosphate to glucose. therefore, the glucose molecule which is adsorbed by insulin into the skeletal muscle is used as an energy source through glycolysis process. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 121 type 2 diabetes, is a polygenic disease that is related to insulin resistance condition and, consequently, raise blood glucose concentration. there are several risk factors that result in insulin resistance, such as dyslipidemia by increasing the concentration of lipids such as cholesterol and triglyceride in the blood, obesity, and visceral adiposity (accumulation of fat that wraps around the abdominal cavity) [62, 63]. furthermore, sedentary lifestyle is considered as a factor that resulted in the development of insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes, which is low physical activity that increases the complication of cardiovascular diseases and mortality [55, 64]. glucagon, on the other hand, is a polypeptide hormone that is secreted by the α cells of the pancreatic islets of langerhans. this hormone is secreted during hypoglycemia particularly during overnight or prolonged fasting that stimulate hepatic glucose production by promoting both glycogenolysis and gluconeogenesis process [65, 66]. it has been found that the majority of glycogen is stored in the skeletal muscles and hepatic tissue [2], and at the process of glycogenolysis the stored glycogen molecule in the liver not in muscle is degraded into glucose molecule and moved into blood through glut2 membrane protein. glucagon also has a great role by regulating glycolysis process and consequently offers energy requirements for the muscles [67]. glucagon is one of the regulator biomolecules that promote indirectly glycogen break down into glucose 1-phosphate and glucose molecule [68, 69]. in the first step of glycogenolysis, the glycogen molecule is degraded by breaking α (1→4) glycosidic bonds by the action of glycogen phosphorylase to produce one molecule of glucose 1-phosphate and the remaining part of glucose units in the glycogen molecule. the process is continuing till on each chain four glucosyl units remain before a branch point [70]. beside the glycogen phosphorylase enzyme, debranching enzymes also participate in glycogenolysis process by breakdown of α (1→6) glycosidic bonds that is located in the branched part of the sugar units remain one glucose molecule which is then cleaved by hydrolysis to yield free glucose. the produced glucose 1-phosphate is converted to glucose 6phosphate in the cytosol by phosphoglucomutase [71]. in the liver, glucose 6-phosphate is transported into the endoplasmic reticulum (er) and converted there to glucose by glucose 6phosphatase, and finally transported into the blood to maintain blood glucose level (figure 1). research has shown that the deficient activity of the enzyme glucose 6-phosphatase leads to a one of a type of glycogen storage disease (gsd) which is known as von gierke disease resulting in excessive growth of glycogen and fat in the liver, kidney, and intestinal mucosa [67]. recently, in human adipocytes, it has been shown that glucagon has a direct effect on glucose uptake and lipolysis process [72]. 5. conclusion carbohydrates are one of the major energy sources in the body. carbohydrates can be stored in the body as a glycogen molecule or it can be used to provide energy via several metabolic pathways such as glycolysis, glycogenolysis and hexomino phosphate shunt. digestion of carbohydrates occurs via several enzymatic processes into monosaccharides, followed by absorption of the monosaccharides into the blood via several glucose transporter proteins (gluts). glycolysis is one of the main metabolic pathways in the body that converts glucose molecules into two molecules of pyruvate in the cytoplasm. glycolysis is important to control blood glucose level and provide cellular energy. it consists of ten reversable enzymatic reaction processes except three of them are in the form of an irreversible process. the regulation of glucose metabolism is controlled by both allosterically and hormonally. both insulin and glucagon hormones are important to maintain glucose concentration in the blood. increased glucose level in the blood results in hyperglycemia and consequently diabetes mellites, while low blood concentration resulted in hypoglycemia, this can be controlled by the action glucagon hormone which participates in the 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[72] m. j. pereira et al., "direct effects of glucagon on glucose uptake and lipolysis in human adipocytes," mol cell endocrinol, vol. 503, p. 110696, mar 1 2020. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.3 diseases (cvd), and the main leading causes of mortality and morbidity with highest disability control rate of diabetic and hypertensive adult patients in association with demographic and healthy behaviour factors in garmiankurdistan region jamal kareem shakor1, bootan hasan ahmed2, dlzar omer qadir3, saleem saaed qader4, muaf abdulla karim5* 1department of nursingdarbandikhan technical institute, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimaniyah, iraq. jamal-84@hotmail.com 2, 3assistant lecturer, college of nursing, hawler medical university banemarane@gmail.com ; dlzdar@yahoo.com 4medical research centre, hawler medical university, erbil, iraq. saleem.qader@med.lu.se 5bsc nursing, msc nursing, phd nursing, ministry of health, general directorate of health-erbil, kurdistan region, iraq muafabdulla82@yahoo.com abstract: hypertension and diabetes mellitus (dm) are the two major inter-correlated risk factors of cardiovascular diseases, which considered as the major causes of morbidity and mortality. this study is set up to determine control rate, and the social demographic and health related behaviours risk factors in association with control rate in hypertensive and/or diabetes patients who are under treatment. cross sectional study was carried out in this study. data have been collected by well-trained paramedics through direct interviews using structured questionnaire with the participants. a conventional sampling which is one of the main types of non-probability method was used for collecting data. spss version 16 was used for analysing data. 338 patients were recruited into the study, 150(44.1%) of participants with hypertension, 88(25.9%) with diabetes and the rest 100(29.4%) with both diseases. patients who diagnosed with hypertension were more under control 83 (55.3%) in comparison with diabetic 23(26.1%) and patients who were diagnosed both conditions 18(18.0%). high control rate was observed in hypertension patients compared to diabetes and those diagnosed both conditions. cor morbidity was the main cause of uncontrolled rate. keywords: healthy behaviour, diabetic patient, hypertensive patient, demographic data. 1. introduction hypertension and diabetes mellitus (dm) are two major interrelated risk factors of cardiovascular adjusted life year (daly) rate in the national burden of disease globally (1), in addition, diabetes mellitus has a major impact on the cardiovascular system, with the main cause of death being directly related to cardiovascular disease (2,3). major cardiovascular complications associated with diabetes mellitus include stroke, coronary artery disease, ischemic heart disease, heart failure and myocardial infarction (4,5). the risk of these complications occurring increases with the presence of cardiovascular risk factors. another study in iran has shown approximately 15% of hypertensive patients are suffered from diabetes, and 75% of t2dm patients are complained also with hypertensive (6). while abbas, (2012) has done a survey in iraq, reported that hypertensive diabetic patients have constituted 89.6% of the adult diabetic. however, high prevalence of these two risk factors s are going to be a major public health problem in the area which cause cardio vascular diseases (cvd) and death (7). furthermore, some studies have indicated that high blood pressure, diabetic mellitus, obesity and smoking, are the main known risk factors, which report 75% of the leading causes of cvd (7,8). similarly, socioeconomic inequality (9), age, sex, education and physical inactivity are other known risk factors of cvd and non-communicable diseases (ncd). in iraqi survey, prevalence of ncd risk factors has been estimated more than forty percentage in 2006 (10), but this prevalence in iran is 78% for men and 80% for women (11). mailto:jamal-84@hotmail.com mailto:banemarane@gmail.com mailto:dlzdar@yahoo.com mailto:saleem.qader@med.lu.se mailto:muafabdulla82@yahoo.com kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.3 in two different studies in 5578 diabetic patients and 1079 diabetic patients in south iraq low and different mean of age have shown, 51.4 and 56.3 years (12,13). according to abbas and narjis, (2013) study of south iraq reported that the mean of bmi was high, 28.0 ± 5.4 kg/m2 in diabetic patient, and more than 70.6 % are overweight and prevalence of smoking in same studies has been estimated to be 12-25%. as well as women are more likely to be hypertensive or diabetic with men 14. socio demographic risk factors like early age of onset, obesity, gender are significant indicators of these conditions, diabetic and hypertension, and other ncd e.g. cvd. anti-hypertensive medicines have been used as high effective intervention in controlling of hypertension; as secondary prevention by which could decrease risk chronic heart disease (chd) (10). despite, medical treatment of hypertension is not always sufficient to achieve controlling blood pressure in canadian study, 86.4% of patients with hypertension have been treated with antihypertensive medications, while 44.9% of them could control hypertension without using medication (14). likewise, in iraq study has found that among hypertensive diabetic, 48.2% of them have controlled their blood pressure (12). furthermore, in a study in kurdistan region of iraq has shown, 95% of hypertensive patients have been controlled under using medicine, while control rate has not reported (11). this study is conducted in -kurdistan region among hypertensive and/or diabetes patients who are under treatment to determine control rate, and the social demographic and health related behaviours factors in associated with control. 2.materials and methods a hospital based cross sectional study was conducted in garmian, between 15.08.2013 to 31.12.2013. garmian is a kurdistan administrative area, with three districts (kalar, kifry and khanaqeen), with number of populations around 250000. this study was carried out in kalar general hospital and three primary health centres (shahid qasm, kifry and pebaz). 2.1. study population as a part of kurdistan health system strategy for management of chronic diseases, any newly diagnosed chronic disease e.g. cvd, hypertension, dm, asthma, and epilepsy will be referred to a specialist centre according to the geographical area of the patient. usually, they periodically (every month) receive their medications. in this hospital survey around 5000 patients have been recorded in kalar general hospital, 1000 patients in each kifry and shahid qasm health centre. demographic data such as name, age, sex, name and dose of the drugs have been recorded in the survey. hypertension, cvd and dm were formed the main diseases in those health centres. however, this study was concentrated only on dm and htn patients. 2.2. ethics approval the study has been accepted and approved by health preventive directorate at garmian health directorate, and both verbal/ written consents were taken from the patients. the participants were freely to participate in the study after a full explanation in their native kurdish language. 2.3. exclusions criterion patients with dm, ht, or both of them and equal to/or more than 18 years old were included in this study. 2.4. tool and measurements a structured questionnaire was used in this study. data have been collected by well-trained paramedics through direct face to face structured interview with the participants. the questionnaire included demographic data (age, sex, place of residence and education), socioeconomic and behavioural data (occupation, family income, own a house and/or a car, smoking (current or previous smoker), food consumption and physical inactivity and medical information. 2.5. physical measurement measurements of height, weight and blood pressure were taken for each subject. validated digital scales have been used for measuring body weight. 2.6. body mass index obesity was defined by body mass index (bmi). bmi estimated by dividing body weight (kg)/ the square of the body height in meters (m2). participants were defined as obese when bmi≥ 30 kg/m2, and overweight if bmi ≥ 25 kg m2. 2.7. blood pressure blood pressure had been measured by using a calibrated mercury sphygmomanometer and stethoscope. uncontrolled of all grades high blood pressure; mild, moderate and sever have been considered when the systolic blood pressure >140 mm/hg and diastolic >90 mm/hg. 2.8. laboratory tests a standardized digital glucometer has been used for measuring random blood sugar. uncontrolled blood sugar defined by random blood sugar >200 mg/dl. patients who suffered both conditions; hypertension and diabetic were considered as un-control, if any of those conditions was not controlled. cor-morbidity was recorded by self-reported disease to present with any other chronic condition other than diabetes and hypertension which already diagnosed by physician. duration of condition was defined by time of onset from diagnosed to the day of collecting of data. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=mansour%20aa%5bauth%5d http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=mansour%20aa%5bauth%5d kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.3 demographic variables freque ncy (%) age(y rs) mean (sd) n=33 8 duration of disease since diagnosis mean(sd) n=338 sex male 100(29. 5) 60.6± 10.6 6.2±7.2 female 238(70. 5) 57.3± 11.7 6.6±6 total 58.35 ±11.5 6.1±6.8 pvalue 0.017 0.793 family size below 5 member 182(53. 5) 5 and above 5 member 156(56. 5) marital status with spouse 259(76 ) without spouse 79(24) education literate 68(20) illiterate 270(80) occupation having job or retired 270(82) not having job 68(18) diagnosis hypertension 150(44) **** diabetic 88(26) diabetic and hypertension 100(30) 2.9. statistical analysis descriptive analysis of the study population was done and presented in the below tables. demographic, socio-demographic, and lifestyle data have been considered as independent variables. control rate across independent variables was found among composed diabetes and hypertension patients and the level of significance was tested by using chi-square. spss version 16 was used for analyzing data. 3. results three hundred thirty eight patients with diabetic and/or hypertension were recruited in the study, 150(44.1%) of participants with hypertension, 88(25.9%) with diabetes and the rest 100(29.4%) with both diseases. male patients were 100(29.5 %) while female patients were 238 (69.6%). the mean age was (58.3±11.5). participants were mostly illiterate (81.7%). living without spouse was (18.3%). 182(53.5) of participants were living in family size smaller than 5. majority having no jobs and not retired 270(79.4%), (table 1). table 1: demographic data of the participants; age, sex, disease history, diagnosis, education status, occupation and civil status. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.3 e chi squ 19.3 27.1 0.60 8.7 1.6 female group mean of bmi was significantly higher (29.8±5.2) (p-value= 0.003), but mean of blood pressure (150.3±20.5) (p-value: 0.23), and random blood sugar (286.8±348) (p-value= 0.20) was not significant compared to the male group. from another side, both risk factors were observed difference within sex, (table 2). table 2: bmi, bp and rbs among participants (mean± sd) . sex bmi mean (sd) n=337 bp (mmhg) mean (sd) n=338 rbs (mg/dl) mean (sd) n=338 male 28±4.3 147.0±19 .6 286.8±348 femal e 29.8±5.2 150.3±20 .5 249.9±122 total 29.2±5.0 149.4±20 .3 260.6±214.1 p value ttest 0.003 -2.977 .207 -1.265 .232 1.198 prevalence of previous smoking 36(35.3) and current smoking 20(19.6) were significantly high in male in compared to female, (p-value= 0.00) (p-value= 0.00) respectively. consuming high vegetable 91(89.2%) and physical exercise 189(17.6%) were high among male, in compare to female, but the only significant difference was observed in physical exercise ((p-value: 0.005), (table 3). table 3: the prevalence of habit parameters among participants high control rate in male, aged below 60 year, having spouse, literate, having job and retired, family size≥ 5 member, having own house and car. while significant difference was found only in literate (p-value=0.04) and living with spouse (p-value= 0.04) comparatively (table 4) table 4: distribution of conditional control versus demographic variable. sex cur rent smo ker n (%) previ ous smoke r n (%) consumi ng high fruit and vegetable n (%) physical exercise n (%) over weight and obesity (bmi≥ 25) n (%) mal e 20(1 9.6) 36(35. 3) 91(89.2) 189(17.6 ) 76(75.2) fem ale 11(4 .6) 27(11. 3) 205(86.1) 17(7.1) 192(81.4) tota l 31(9 .1) 63(18. 5) 296(87.1) 35(10.3) 268(79.5) p valu 0.00 0.00 0.43 0.005 0.2 kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.3 s r / n o variables tota l n control led n (%) uncontr olled n (%) p-value chi square 1 sex male 100 38.0(38) 62.0(62) .745 0.8 female 238 86(36.1) 152(63.9 ) 2 age below 60 years 187 71 (38) 116(62) 0.29 0.65 60 years and above 151 53(35.1) 98(64.9) 3 marital status with spouse 259 103(39. 6) 156(60.2 ) 0.042 without spouse 76 20(26.3) 56(73.7) 4 education illiterate 267 89 (33.3) 178(66.7 ) 0.047 4.42 literate 68 32(47.1) 36(52.9) 5 occupation don’t have job 270 98(36.3) 172(63.7 ) 1.00 0.001 having job or retired 61 23(37.1) 39(62.9) 6 family size below 5 member 182 64(35.2) 118(64.8 ) 0.49 0.49 5 and above 5 member 149 58(38.9) 91(61.1) 7 house ownership yes 265 101 (38.1) 164(61.9 ) 0.39 0.90 no 66 21(31.8) 45(68.2) 8 car ownership yes 108 43(39.8) 65(60.2) 0.47 0.60 no 223 79(35.4) 144(64.6 ) total 338 124(36. 7) 214(63.3 ) sr /n o variables tot al n controll ed n (%) uncontroll ed n (%) p val ue chi squ are 1 diagnosis hypertensio n 150 83 (55.3) 67(44.7) 0.0 0 41. 1 diabetic 88 23(26.1) 65(73.9) diabetic &hypertensi on 100 18(18.0) 82(82.0) 2 cor-morbidity present with dm or bp 133 55(41.4) 78(58.6) 0.0 0 22. 81 present with dm or bp with other ncd 105 51(48.6) 54(51.4) present with dm and bp 44 7(15.9) 37(84.1) present with dm and bp with other ndc 56 11(19.6) 45(80.4) 3 living with condition up to 5 years 207 80(38.6) 127(61.4) 0.2 43 1.5 5 years and over 128 41(32.0) 87(68.0) 5 availability of medicine at hospital available 175 59(33.7) 116(66.3) 0.1 0 1.9 sometime available 148 61(41.2) 87(58.8) 6 number of drug administered (18.0%). this difference was statistically significant at (p-value= 0.00). cor-morbidity was another significant indicator of this study (p-value: 0.00) in associated with controlling rate among diabetic and/or hypertension patients. a participant who diagnosed with diabetic and hypertension and did not have another chronic condition was reported less control rate 54(51.4). however, effect of medical condition like cor-morbidity, number and availability of drug, healthy behaviour on control rate have shown in table 4. body weight was significant indicator (p value=0.02) of control rate. overweight was reported less control rate 37(29.1) in comparatively with normal body weight and obese, (table 5). table 5: distribution of conditional control versus medical variable. overall control rate for all cases, diabetic and/or hypertension was 124 (36.7%). patient which diagnosed as hypertension was more likely under control 83 (55.3%) in compared to diabetic 23(26.1%) and patient who was diagnosed both condition 18 kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.3 one medicine 135 53(39.3) 82(60.7) 0.4 1 0.8 1 two medicine 192 66(34.4) 126(65.6) 6 body weight and obesity normal body weight 69 23(33.3) 46(66.7) 0.0 2 7.6 2 overweight 127 37(29.1) 90(70.9) obese 140 63(45.0) 77(55.0) 7 smoking habit yes 30 11(36.7) 19(63.3) 1.0 0 0.0 0 no 308 113(36.7 ) 195(63.3) 8 consuming high fruit and vegetable yes 295 105(35.6 ) 190(64.4) 0.3 1 1.1 9 no 43 19(44.2) 24(55.8) 9 doing physical exercise yes 34 16 (47.1) 18(52.9) 0.2 5 1.6 4 no 282 101(35.8 ) 181(64.2) diagnosis tot al control hypertensi on n (%) un control hyperte nsion n (%) p-value chi square hypertension 150 85 (56.7) 65(43.3) 0.19 1.80 hypertension with diabetes 98 47 (48) 51(52) total 248 132(53.2) 116(46.7 ) diagnosis tot al controlled diabetes n (%) un control diabetes n (%) p-value chi square diabetes 86 21(24.4) 65(75.6) diabetes with hypertension 95 20(21.1) 75(78.9) 0.59 0.29 total 181 41(22.6) 140(77.3 ) hypertension and diabetes have lowered control rate than patients with both conditions. hypertension patient 85 (56.7%) and also. diabetic patient 21(24.4) were more under control in compared to the patients diagnosed only diabetic. while these different rates were statistically not significant (p-value= 0.19), (p value= 0.29), (table 6). table 6: the control rate among hypertension, diabetes and both condition 4. discussion the current study was conducted on 338 patients who were diagnosed with diabetes and/or hypertension and receiving medications in north iraq kurdistan region. the study used the convinced sample technique. 150(44.1%) patients were reported to have hypertension, 88(25.9%) patients had diabetes, and moreover 100 (29.4%) patients were diagnosed with both conditions. this study has found that hypertensive patients were more likely under control 83 (55.3%) in compared to diabetic 23(26.1%) and patient who was diagnosed with both condition 18 (18.0%). similarly, two studies have shown that poor health related quality of life (hrqol) among hypertensive patients 39.7±1.7 was less in compare to diabetic patients 41.9±1.6 and patients having both conditions showed worst health quality of life (35.1) (15,18). another study have revealed that poor hrqol especially physical component summary (pcs) was observed in patients who had both hypertension and diabetes mellitus kurdistan (16). the mean sf-12 score was 39.0±1.64, mean of pcs was 36.6±1.9 and mean of mental component summary (mcs) of was 41.5±1.6. further demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of diabetic and/or hypertensive patient have been studied in this study. females shown to suffer more from htn and diabetes than males. most of the participants have no history of significant smoking and physical exercise (p-value: 0.005) were high significantly among male group. while the mean of bmi 29.8±5.2 was highly significant (p-value: 0.003) in the female group. females were suffering the conditions in early age compared to males (female mean age: 57.3±11.7 male mean age: 60.6±10.6, p value: 0.017). moreover, mean of age (58.35±11.5) in the current study was higher in compared to south iraq studies, 51.4 and 56.3 years (13, 6), and high bmi (29.2±5.0) was observed in our study compared with south iraqi study (28.0 ± 5.4 kg/m2) (13). a study has found that patients who were female, older, did not have a spouse and did not have jobs and/or retired were significantly and negatively associated with poor health related quality of life (16). similarly, two studies have revealed that poor hrqol was less observed in hypertension patients 39.7±1.7 compared with diabetic patient 41.9±1.6, whereas those who diagnosed both conditions were worst 35.1 (17,18). the smoking rate decrease in the current study; kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.3 prevalence of previous smoking was 63(18.5%) while current smoking is 31 (9.1%). the prevalence of current smoking is less compared with southern iraq studied 1225% (12,13). controlling the rate in diabetes and hypertension disease is variable in different population setting, and population characteristics may play an important role in determining the rate. in this study, patients who suffered both conditions, hypertension and diabetes, considered as a control if both conditions was controlled. in this constant, overall control rate in the current study for (htn and/or dm) patient were 124(36.7%). the control rate in patients who diagnosed both condition (htn&dm) 18(18.0%) were significantly (p-value: 0.00) less in comparison with hypertension 83 (55.3%) and diabetic patient 23(26.1%). the control rate of hypertensive patient in the current study was higher in compared with finding in ugandan study (35.9%) (14). while there is a an association between hrqol and hypertension as well as diabetes, this study has not introduced adherence of the given population to their prescribed medication (16) however, a study has found that hrqol including both pcs and mcs were associated with strong adherence to medicine and their treatment outcome the relation of hrqol with treatment(16). in contrast , as study has found that there was not a significant relation between hrqol and adherence to medication (15). co morbidity was highly significant (p-value: 0.00) associated with controlling rate. sex, age, and duration of living with condition were not statistically associated with controlling of condition. whereas previous studies has revealed that women patient are more likely with a high control rate (14, 19). literacy and living with spouse was significantly associated with controlling of the condition (hpn and/or dm). conclusions some significant risk factors like high bmi and low physical activity in female patients, and smoking in male were observed. bmi and mean age were higher compared to southern iraq. high control rate was observed in hypertension patients in compared with diabetes and those diagnosed both conditions. insufficient control was mainly due to the presence of co-morbid diseases. acknowledgment the authors would like to thanks the general garmian administrative of health for their effort and cooperation in this research. we also need to recognize the support of dr. hassan ramadan, the general health director in garmian, to this study. references 1. zadegan sn, sadri g, malek ah, baghaei m, mohammadi fn et al. (2003). isfahan healthy heart programme: a comprehensive integrated community-based programme for cardiovascular disease prevention and control. design, methods and initial experience. acta cardiol. 58: 309-20. 2. stanciu i, peralta mi, emanuele ma, emanuele nv (2002). clinical trial evidence for cardiovascular risk reduction in type 2 diabetes. j cardiovas nurs. 16: 24–43. 3. gill gv, woodward a, pradhan s, et al. (2003). intensified treatment of type 2 diabetes – positive effects on blood pressure, but not glycaemic control. qjm. 96: 833–6. 4. roper na, bilous rw, kelly wf, unwin nc, connolly vm (2001). excess mortality in a population with diabetes and the impact of material deprivation: longitudinal, population based study. bmj. 322: 1389–93. 5. wang l, wei t (2006). blood pressure control in patients with hypertension: a community-based study. clin exp hypertens. 28: 41–6. 6. alireza e, alipasha m, mehrshad a (2009). third national surveillance of risk factors of non communicable diseases (surfncd-2007) in iran: methods and results on prevalence of diabetes, hypertension, obesity, central obesity, and dyslipidemia, biomedical central, bmc public health. 9: 167. 7. ericka mc, carolina su, luis rb (2008). factors associated with hypertension prevalence, unawareness and treatment among costa rican elderly. bmc public health. 8: 275. 8. abdolmehdi b, nizal s, katayoun r, mojgan g, ali at, et al (2010). how effective are strategies for non-communicable disease prevention and control in a high risk population in a developing country? isfahan healthy heart programme. arch med sci. 6: 24-31. 9. ahmad rh, nicole b, anton k, sam h, regina g, dag r, et al (2012). socioeconomic inequalities in risk factors for non-communicable diseases in low-income and middle-income countries: results from the world health survey. bmc public health. 12: 912. 10. samim aa, sirwan ma (2010). compliance of hypertensive patients to management in duhok governorate using morisky-green test. duhok medical journal. 4: 33-37. 11. fereidoun a, arash g, amir am, farzad h, parvin m, et al. (2009). prevention of non communicable disease in a population innutrition transition: tehran lipid and glucose study phase. biomed central. 25: 10-5. 12. abbas am (2012). prevalence and control of hypertension in iraqi diabetic patients: a prospective cohort study. open cardiovasc med j. 6: 68–7. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=baghaei%20m%5bauthor%5d&amp;cauthor=true&amp;cauthor_uid=12948036 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=baghaei%20m%5bauthor%5d&amp;cauthor=true&amp;cauthor_uid=12948036 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=baghaei%20m%5bauthor%5d&amp;cauthor=true&amp;cauthor_uid=12948036 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=mansour%20aa%5bauth%5d kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.3 13. abbas am, narjis aa (2013). atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease among patients with type 2 diabetes in basrah, world j diabetes. 4: 82– 87. 14. musinguzi g, nuwaha f (2013). prevalence, awareness and control of hypertension in uganda. plose one. 8: 4. 15. upali wj, mark fh, jane t (2013). bettina c and deborah ab. gender differences in healthrelated quality of life of australian chronically-ill adults: patient and physician characteristics do matter, health and quality of life outcomes. 11: 102. 16. kareem js, saaed sq, hasan ba, abdulla mk (2015). assessment of health related to quality of life in hypertensive and diabetic mellitus patients in kurdistan/iraq. kufa journal for nursing sciences. 3: 1-11. 17. bramley tj, gerbino pp, nightengale bs, frech tf (2006). relationship of blood pressure control to adherence with antihypertensive monotherapy in 13 managed care organizations. j manag care pharm. 12: 239-45. 18. emma lc, margaret mc, claire mb, anthony pf, ivan jp (2013). unhealthy days and quality of life in irish patients with diabetes, plos one. 8: 1-12. 19. carma a, jing f, luis e, stephen p, hector gb., et al (2012). actions to control high blood pressure among hypertensive adults in texas counties along the mexico border. public health rep. 127: 173-85. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=mansour%20aa%5bauth%5d http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=mansour%20aa%5bauth%5d  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.45 analyzing of drill stem test (dst) result for dual porosity limestone reservoir zheno kareem ahmed petroleum and energy technical college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq zheno.ahmed@spu.edu.iq halkawt ismail m-amin accounting dukan technical institute sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani-iraq halkawt.amin@spu.edu.iq abstract: the aim of this paper is to discuss and evaluate the result of dst which was conducted in a limestone reservoir of an oil field at the depth interval 3764.29-3903.0 meter in well-1 to evaluate the dynamic characteristics of the reservoirs, for instance: skin effect, permeability, wellbore storage, reservoir boundary and average reservoir pressure. reservoir pressure profiles has been recorded for both buildup and draw down intervals. semi-log and log-log coordinates have been used to plot the pressure signature date of both buildup period and its derivative to improve diagnostic and horner plot. in addition, a dual porosity reservoir and infinite acting characteristic was discovered as a result of the well test data interpretation. wellbore storage, skin factor and transient flow effects have been detected in the dst analysis on the dual porosity behavior due to phase re distribution. using final buildup sections, the flow parameters of dual porosity reservoir were determined as the flow between fissure and matrix was (7.558 x 106) while, the storability ratio between fissure and matrix was calculated as 0.3 and permeability is 102 md for both matrix and the fissure together. however, negative value of skin factor mostly appears in double porosity limestone reservoirs, positive skin factor of the reservoir has been observed in this study. it can be considered that the positive skin factor can be resulted in either the formation was partially penetrated and /or wells were not cleaned up properly. keywords: dst, dual porosity, wellbore storage, average reservoir pressure, storability ratio, skin factor. 1. introduction well testing has always been introduced as the most exciting part of petroleum industry because it can aid engineers to have a direct contact with reservoirs. however, it is also an area where engineers can face major challenges [4]. it is revealed by [5] that when a well is tested, it is required to monitor the response of the reservoir in order to improve its production (or injection) conditions. the response, which allows us to draw conclusions about the condition of the reservoir, always depends on the characteristics and properties of the reservoir. the interpretation of various types of well tests is done by the engineers whose judgment is based on geological, petrophysical and reservoir engineering data. engineers use number of well testing methods including buildup, drawdown, injection test, falloff test, interference test, wireline formation test and drill steam (pressure transient) test to acquire a quantitative analysis of reservoir properties [8]. these tests are usually conducted by using special tool to create pressure disturbance in reservoir and then recording the pressure response at the wellbore, i.e., bottom hole flowing pressure (pwf), as a function of time [17]. moreover, it has been experienced by [1] and [4] that during well testing the main three components which are measured at different time are: a) wellbore storage effect that is detected at early times due to well completion operation, b) reservoir dynamic behaviors almost through middle time and c) boundary effect could be measured at late time and then by combining and evaluating these components, individual dynamic behaviors of reservoirs can be analyzed by using different types of plots and software analysis. therefore, it is mentioned by [11] and [13] that the main objectives of well testing are: i) reservoir evaluation: in order to make a decision about the optimal production of a reservoir or to determine whether it is worth to invest it or not, reservoirs’ deliverability and its’ size needs to be known. moreover, the reservoir conductivity (kh), the initial reservoir pressure, and the reservoir limits (or boundaries) are the most important measures to evaluate reservoir by applying well testing. ii) reservoir management: all through the life of a reservoir, the performance and well condition must continually be monitored. it is a good idea to monitor changes in average reservoir pressure because in this way more accurate predictions can be made for future reservoir‘s performance. iii) reservoir description: geological formations in terms of faults, barriers, reservoir heterogeneity and fluid fronts of hosting oil, gas and water can be identified with the help of stratigraphy. in this paper drill stem test has been introduced and the result of it applied to obtain the aims of well testing. drill stem test (dst) has been described by [3] and [18] as a tool of well testing to evaluate the dynamic characteristics of oil or gas reservoirs, for instance: skin effect, permeability, wellbore storage, reservoir boundary and average reservoir pressure. the impact of average reservoir pressure and wellbore storage is an aid to predict the flowing phase from the oil or gas bearing formation into the wellbore. a detailed description of dst tool is presented in the following section. mailto:zheno.ahmed@spu.edu.iq mailto:halkawt.amin@spu.edu.iq 2. literature review in this section a review of dst and some parameters which are analyzed by it are reviewed based on literature review. 2.1 description of dst tool this form of testing has been used for formation evaluation for many years. in a dst testing there is a special tool mounted on the end of the drill string as shown in figures1&2 sketched and real figures, respectively. this is normally used to test a newly drilled well, since it can only be carried out while a rig is over the hole but sometimes it can be used in productive zones in the development wells. as dst tools are designed for various operating environments they are of multiuse. it means that they can be redressed between runs, while permanent completion components are designed for specific installations and long life [11]. drill stem testing tools usually include two or more recording pressure gauges, one or two packers, and a set of flow valves [4]. a dst tool is attached to the end of the drill string and run into the mud-filled wellbore, the zone to be tested. the packers help to isolate the formation from the mud column in the annulus while the valves on the dst device allow engineers to have a sequence of flow periods followed by shut-in periods. by having pressure gage recorder on the dst device, pressure can be recorded during the flow and shut in period. it is also important to design the bottom hole assembly (bha) and dst string based on the criteria of burst load, collapse load and shear failure in order to have a proper and safe dst operating condition [3] and [18]. figure 1: sketched dst string and bha for dst operation [4]. figure 2: real dst string and bha for dst operation [6]. 2.2 the objectives of well testing by the drill stem a good dst yields a sample of the type of reservoir fluid present, it also indicates the flow rates, and it enables us to conduct a measurement of static and flowing bottom-hole pressure and a short term pressure transient test. with the help of dst we can determine the possibility of commercial production judging by the types of fluids recovered and the flow rates observed. we can also estimate the formation properties as well as the well bore damage analyzing the pressure data [3]. it also allows us to estimate the flow potential of a well with a regular completion that uses stimulation techniques to remove damage and increase effective wellbore size. the test also helps us estimate data such as formation permeability, skin factor and static reservoir pressure and is able to tell us the type of fluids the well will produce if it is completed in the tested formation [7]. 2.3 procedure for running a conventional drill stem test when the tester valve is open the formation fluid can flow into the drill pipe. during the flow period when liquid level does not reach the surface the dst test typically displays a decreasing flow rate and when the tester valve is closed for a buildup period, the wellbore storage coefficient decreases by as much as two orders of magnitude. pressure is recorded throughout the whole test but the pressure data recorded during the shut-in period can be particularly valuable for estimating formation characteristic such as permeability/thickness product and skin factor and for determining possible pressure depletion during the test [11] and [4]. 2.4 flow periods in dst test generally a dst test is made up of two flow periods and two shut-in periods. the initial flow period is a quite short production period, which does not last more than 10 minutes and the main aim here is to draw down the pressure slightly near the well bore permitting any mudfiltrate invaded zone to bleed back to or below static reservoir pressure [18]. it is the initial shut-in period when the pressure builds back to true static formation pressure. if it takes long enough and wellbore storage effects can end, some build up data for initial estimates of reservoir properties can be taken in that time [[12]. in the final flow period we can capture a large sample of formation fluid and draw down the pressure as far out into the formation as possible to see beyond any near wellbore damage. in the final shut-in period it is possible to obtain good pressure buildup data so that formation properties can be estimated. if we compare the final (or extrapolated) pressure from the second shut-in period to the initial shut-in pressure we can see if pressure depletion has occurred during the dst which indicates that the well has been tested in a small, non-commercial reservoir. the final shut in period can be as long as the second flow period (for high permeability formations) or even twice long (for low-permeability formations). figure 3 shows a typical pressure chart from an older mechanical gauge although show electronic gauges are more frequent these days. the data were recorded during a dual flow, dual shut-in dst [12] and [18]. figure 3: typical drill stem test (dst) pressure chart [5]. 2.4 measured parameters by dst tool there are number of parameters and reservoir characteristics which are analyzed in this paper need to be reviewed here: 1) wellbore storage effect: opening the well at surface, the first flow that will come out at well head is due to the expansion of wellbore fluid alone. when the reservoir fluid starts to contribute to the production the expansion continues until the sand face flow rate equals the surface flow rate (when expressed at the same conditions) [5]. 2) radius of investigation: sometimes it is necessary to investigate the area around the well or to determine the distance a pressure transient has reached. the distance, which is reached by the pressure disturbance or a transient during a given time, is called the radius of investigation, rinv [4]. 3) the skin effect: due to local heterogeneities pressure transmission does not take place uniformly throughout the reservoir. these heterogeneities do not affect the pressure change within the well, with the exception of those that take place in the immediate vicinity of the wellbore. however, it often happens that a zone develops around the well which is invaded by mud filtrate or cement during the drilling or completion of the well. if this zone has a lower permeability than the reservoir, it will act as a skin around the wellbore causing higher pressure drop [14]. 4) flow efficiency: flow efficiency is very often used to describe the wellbore damage. this is basically the ratio of the theoretical pressure drop with no skin present to the actual pressure drop measured during the test [6]. 5) partial penetration skin: wellbore damage is not the only reason for the development of skin effect. actually, if a well has limited entry, or it only partially penetrates the formation, it means that flow cannot enter the well during the whole production period and there will be a more significant pressure drop in the flow rate than in case of a well that fully penetrates the formation. that is when it can be expected about partial penetration skin effect. in case of partial penetration of a well into a producing formation an important factor is the ratio of vertical to horizontal permeability. furthermore, having shale streaks or tight layers in the tested interval result in the effective vertical permeability is small, and then the well will tend to behave as the formation thickness is equal to the completion thickness. on the other hand, if the vertical permeability is high, it means that the effect of partial penetration will be high and an extra pressure drop near the well can be occurred [14] and [15]. 6) dual porosity reservoirs double porosity models are applicable when the reservoir is heterogeneous and consist of rock matrix blocks with high storativity and low permeability, which is connected to the well by natural fissures of low storativity and high permeability as shown in figure 4 [2] and [7]. the reservoir fluid is mostly stored in the matrix blocks porosity, the fissure network storage accounts for only a small fraction of the reservoir storage [8].the matrix blocks cannot flow to the well directly, even though most of the hydrocarbon is stored in the matrix blocks, it has to enter the fissure system in order to be produced (bath 1998). therefore, this phenomenon has to be calculated with two responses pressure line in case of the pressure transients (dual porosity media). in reservoirs with distinct primary and secondary porosity the heterogeneity is noticeable in pressure transients. these pressure effects are known as double porosity or dual porosity behavior, and are quite common in naturally fractured reservoirs [17]. compared to the homogeneous model there are two extra variables in the dual porosity model. one of them is the storativity ratio (𝜔), which defines the contribution of the fissure system to the total storativity. usual values for this ratio (𝜔) are in the order of 10-1 for multiplelayer systems down to 10 -2 or 10 -3 for fissured ones, but the fissures provide only a fraction of the total storativity. 𝜔 = 𝜑𝑓 𝐶𝑡𝑓 𝜑𝑓 𝐶𝑡𝑓 + 𝜑𝑚 𝐶𝑡𝑚 the second variable is called interporosity flow coefficient (λ) which is the fluid exchange between the two media (the matrix and fractures) constituting a dual porosity system. λ = 𝑎 𝑘𝑚 𝑘𝑓 𝑟𝑤 2 where km is the permeability of the matrix, kf is the permeability of the natural fractures, and α is the parameter characteristic of the system geometry. figure 4: actual and idealized dualporosity reservoir model [12]. 3. method and materials in this work, windows based pan system 3.5 has been applied, this software facilitates the preparation and edition of well test data analysis, then plotting the data and editing sections of the plotted data. data of well can be analyzed and a final report can be created for the input data and results of the analysis. dst was carried out to obtain more precise information concerning the content of the formation, to take representative samples and finally to obtain the reservoir and well performance parameters (pressure, temperature, permeability, skin, boundary, etc.).the test started on 14th december in 2013 at 7.00 pm on a limestone reservoir on well-1 and finished on 29th december at 12.00 pm.as the data was recorded in field units, field units is also used in this paper. the general well information, well structure, test sequence and events and initial well test data are shown in the following tables: table 1: general well-1 information classification: appraisal well total depth: 3903 m md (tvd: 3903.0 m) ground elevation 566.15 m above sea level rotary kelly bushing elevation 1578.33 m(where rotary table height: 12.18 m) deviation 3728-3738 m inclination: 3.25o table 2: well-1 structure casing, cementing 36” 0-27m conductor pipe 26” 0-438.0m tope of cement: on surface 20” 0-1995.44 m tope of cement: on surface 16” liner 1938.15 -2515.0 m tope of cement: on surface 13 3/8” 0-3764.3 m tope of cement: 1600 m open hole: 121/4” 3764.3-3903.0 m table 3: test sequence and events type of test duration time pressure static recovery (psr) phase 17.12.2013 1850 18.12.2013 1745 initial flow period 18.12.2013 1745 18.12.2013 1945 initial build up 18.12.2013 1745 19.12.2013 0820 artificial lifting second flow period 19.12.2013 0820 20.20.2013 1825 clean up period 20.12.2013 182021.12.2013 1800 bottom hole sampling 21.12.2013 180023.12.2013 2145 capacity test 23.12.2013 2145 25.12.2013 1145 final build up 25.12.2013 1145 29.12.2013 11 45 table 4: initial well test data open interval 3764.29-3903.0 m md (tvd):3764.29-3903m formation, lithology barsarin formation -3764.0 3877.0 m. anhydrate and limestone inter beddings, locally with siltstone, claystone and shale strings. naokelekan formation 3877.0-3896.0 m. limestone with shale layers at the bottom. sargelu formation -3896.03903.0 m. limestone and shale layers. losses in this section 885 barrels expected formation pressure hydrostatic expected formation temperature 95.3 oc at 2743 m md mud type, weight kcl/phpa polymer mud / 9.7 ppg expected co2 max. 45000 ppm expected h2s max. 270000 ppm expected formation fluid: oil, water 3 1/2” bts-6 tubing: 12.95 ppf, bts6, id: 2.75”, capacity: 3.83 l/m 8 1/4 ” dc: 160.3 ppf, id: 2 13/16” 4.01 l/m dst cushion type: fresh clean water, sg= 1 packer setting depth: 3730.42 m md volume below the packer: 184.04 barrels tv depth: 3716.38 m md(tvd: 3716.38 m) cushion length: 2716.0 m cushion level: 1000.0 m cushion volume: 58.81 barrels cushion hydr. pressure at tv depth: 3843.8 psi formation pressure at tv 5257.64 psi depth: annular fluid hyd. pressure at tv depth: 6146.01 psi initial depression: 1413.8 psi figure 5 and table 4 illustrates the measured bottom hole pressure (pwf) and the liquid rate during the entire well test. the figure also shows the events that happened during the dst test, which seemingly was not a conventional procedure as in certain periods the operation was stopped due to the technical issues. after the initial buildup nitrogen was injected into the well to reduce the cushion so that the well could start to flow. in the cleaning period we can see that different choke sizes were used and immediately after this bottom hole samples were taken. this production period was followed by the capacity test in which the 32/64 "inch, 40/64" and 48/64 inch choke sizes were used and the pvt samples were taken from separator. the final buildup was conducted for four days. during the psr period the pressure change does not have a significant effect and the difference between the wellbore and the formation pressure was very high (approximately 900 psi). the production depression on 48/64” choke was around 825 psi. this significant depression was caused mainly by the skin effect. table 4: data including recorded pressure, time and flow rate from figure 5 during the well test. time (hour) pressure (psi) flow rate (stbl/day) 91.730 6274.86 0 113.66 5372.31 -1 115.76 5284.81 20 128.33 5323.72 0 162.63 5348.68 150 170.33 5259.58 670 171.56 5353.20 0 181.09 5204.18 470 183.00 4846.17 1150 186.05 4731.62 1570 189.31 5125.50 1280 191.18 5185.56 470 197.09 5325.48 150 203.10 4737.94 1820 205.59 4837.99 1280 207.69 4957.38 970 215.08 6264.69 300 237.73 5094.65 700 251.08 4698.63 1507 262.38 4628.05 1740 276.06 4544.02 1900 372.61 5367.76 0 figure 5: flow rate change, pressure change versus time of the test 4. results 4.1 buildup curves interpretation: the geological information of the tested interval revealed a fractured limestone reservoir. during the analysis the best results could be obtained by the dual porosity model. it showed transient flow conditions during the early and later production periods. the dual porosity shows a pseudo steady state model in most cases as it was supported by the literature and the industrial experience as well as the pressure curve evaluation. the calculations also confirm that the best model for flow model is dual porosity (pseudo steady state). it can be seen from the following figures that there are two buildup pressure sections, but because initial buildup was continuously affected by phase segregation as shown in figure 6, its data cannot totally be used for interpretation. despite being affected by figure 6: log –log plot for initial buildup -well-1 figure 7: loglog diagnostic plot for final buildup well-1 wellbore storage. the plots of final buildup pressure result can be interpreted. figure 7 shows a loglog diagnostic plot for the final buildup well-1. table 5: results of log -log diagnostic plot for final buildup for well-1 well bore storage 0.0016 bbl/day horizontal permeability, (kh) 107.5248 md wellbore storage coefficient, (cs) 22.6896 ‒ permeability thickness, (kh*heff) 45698.0323 md*ft skin factor 31.4917 ‒ dual porosity on a derivative plot mostly appears as two regions of radial flow with the same conductivity, kh, separated by a transition period called the dual porosity dip. however, in figure 7, it can clearly be understood that fracture radial flow is completely hidden by the wellbore storage effect at early time region. at the same time the transition to system flow and the matrix and fracture system radial flow can be seen clearly in the middle time region. due to the effect of dispersion on the late time regime in response of derivative pressure curve, two reservoir analysis models have been applied in this evaluation:  wellbore storage mode: constant wellbore storage & skin.  flow model: dual porosity (pseudosteady state).  reservoir boundary model: a constant pressure (aquifer) boundary. this flow model has a dual porosity configuration with a transient interporosity flow. for boundary model there is one constant pressure boundary. the distance l1 is measured from the well to the fault on the basis of being perpendicular to the boundary. table 5 shows the results obtained in figure 7(loglog diagnostic plot for final buildup well-1). in both log-log plot and semi-log plot, equivalent time has been applied for log -log and horner for semi-log as a time axis and full history, which takes into account the entire previous history of the production wells. figure 8 shows semi-log diagnostic plot for the final buildup well-1. the fracture and matrix radial flow can be seen as a straight line that describes radial flow of the fissure and matrix together. table 6 shows the result of calculations obtained from figure 8 semi-log diagnostic plot for the initial buildup well1. the pressure is considered to be extrapolated and the initial pressure of the reservoir is shown as well. table 6: results of semi-log diagnostic plot for final buildup horizontal permeability, (kh) 105.1993 md permeability thickness, (kh*heff) 44709.7122 md*ft calculated formation pressure, (pi) 5389.5798 psia radius of investigation, (rinv) > 254.4819 ft pressure loss due to total skin, (∆pspr) 659.7814 psi skin factor 30.6724 ‒ figure 8: semi-log diagnostic plot for the final buildup well-1 by using line fitting, as well as history matching, a reasonable match was achieved in log-log and semi-log plots in figure 9 and figure 10, respectively. the result of matching final buildup well-1 for the first reservoir model listed in table 7. the log-log curve, figure 9, shows that the measured and the calculated pressure fit together, except for the last few highly disturbed measuring points. figure 10 shows matched semi-log curves, and as it can obviously be realized that the calculated pressures excellently fit the measured pressure points. the entire measurement range fits together properly. figure 9: loglog diagnostic plot for the final buildup after fitting figure 10: semi-log after fitting for final pressures buildup well-1 table 7: results of final buildup of well-1 after fitting wellbore storage coefficient, (cs) 0.0012 bbl/ day horizontal permeability, (kh) 102.384 md permeability thickness, (kh*heff) 43513.2 md *ft calculated formation pressure, (pi) 5386.4216 psia storativity ratio, (ω) 0.3 ‒ interporosity flow coefficient 7*10-6 psi skin factor 29.6864 ‒ the second model that has applied in the calculation is:  wellbore storage mode: constant wellbore storage & skin,  flow model: dual porosity (pseudo steady state).  reservoir boundary model: infinite acting. although the last part of the derivative curve is not very clear, it can be estimated that the boundary model acts as infinite because the curve response for last section in derivative pressure curve is quite stable. figure 11 clearly show log -log diagnostic plot after matching for infinite acting reservoir model. table 8: results of the evaluation by infinite acting model wellbore storage coefficient, (cs) 0.0013 bbl/psi horizontal permeability, (kh) 102.404 md permeability thickness, (kh*heff) 43513.2 md*ft calculated formation pressure, (pi) 5389.0783 psia storativity ratio, (ω) 0.3 ‒ interporosity flow coefficient 7.558*10-6 ‒ skin factor 29.6793 ‒ figure 12 shows the line fitting and it can be seen that the calculated pressures excellently fit the measured pressure points for infinite acting reservoir model. in table 8 the result of the fitted lines for the infinitely acting boundary model is presented. no indications of the presence of boundary limit can be seen on either the figure 11: log-log plot or figure 12: semi-log plot. the radius of investigation was determined from the last measurement point of the buildup pressure test. it can be concluded that the boundary is not located within a radius of 2254ft. figure 11: log -log diagnostic plot after matching for infinite acting model of well-1 to sum up, it can be said that the final buildup pressure of well-1 was reliably evaluated. the most important parameters of the four kinds of evaluating methods are shown in table 9. table 9: result of evaluation for different model for well-1 parameter s log-log plot semilog plot dual porosity constant pres-sure boundary model dual porosity infinitel y acting model horizontal permeabilit y, (kh) md 107.5249 105.1 993 102.384 102.40 4 skin factor 31.491 30.67 24 29.6864 29.679 3 storativity ratio, (ω) 0.3 0.3 calculated formation pressure, (pi)psia 5389. 5798 5386.421 6 5389.0 783 interporosit y flow coefficient 7*10-6 7.558* 10-6 well bore storage(bbl/ psi) 0.0016 0.0012 0.0013 radius of investigatio n, (rinv) >2254 .4819 5. discussion: the measurement results of the last section of the buildup pressure are more reliable and more stable than the other buildup sections. as the final buildup fitting model results seem to be the best the results of this section should be used in the future. the results show that the system radial flow permeability, which contains both fissure and matrix, has a value of 102 md however; it is evaluated that 102 md more reliable value because it is calculated by both chosen models. as far as skin factor values are concerned, generally the dual porosity fractured limestone reservoirs are characterized by negative skin factor. the evaluation of the final build up test of well -1 presented a positive skin factor value and the one of the reasons for this is the partial penetration. it means that only a part of the formation is open to flow at the wellbore, so we have to calculate with flow convergence, which is responsible for the pressure loss. the other reason is the damage caused by mud while drilling, but this part of the skin disappeared while the well was being cleaned up. the storativity ratio, (ω) has the same value (0.3) in both (dual porosity, constant pressure boundary) and (dual porosity infinitely acting) models.it is a significant value. in naturally fractured reservoirs, φf is usually very small, due to it 𝜔 is commonly less than 0.1. the interporosity flow coefficient in both (dual porosity, constant pressure boundary) and (dual porosity infinitely acting) models showed up the values from 7*10-6 and 7.558*10-6 respectively. although there is a slight difference between the values we can say that they are approximately the same. for calculated formation pressure the results vary between 5386 psia to5389 psia. however, i find the 5389 figure 12: semi-log diagnostic plot after matching infinite acting model well-1 psia is more reliable value because it was achieved in both chosen models. 6. conclusion 1. using well test analysis software such as pan system would help in saving time, improving work, precise result and giving multi options for calculation and plotting techniques as well as simulation models to apply to the test interpretation. 2. to conduct a good well test it is essential to have a perfect well testing design, accurate installation, precise monitoring of the pressure measurement tools and flow rate recorders while running into the well, recording data during the entire well testing events, try to obtain a neat data output and minimize any gauge misleading data that might lead to wrong judgments by the evaluator. 3. the interpretation in most cases is a judgment of engineer to decide which model is suitable, figure on, petrophysical, geological, reservoir data and mathematical formulation is used to make a model for the reservoir characteristics, reservoir parameters and predication for future can be achieved with this model. 4. well bore storage has an excessive effect on obscuring reservoir characteristic during evaluation. it disguises the reservoir response until late time of the test and it has a major nuisance to well test interpretation. 5. although the first buildup and second buildup are interpreted, the only reliable and dependable reservoir parameters are obtained from final buildup. so that, calculated parameters in final buildup could be used for future predictions and calculations. 6. in well test evaluation of well-1, the boundary was not able to be clearly seen due to insufficient test end time to reveal the pressure response affected by reservoir boundary. 7. it was able for b tested well-1 with the result of the final build up evaluation to find the flow parameters of dual porosity reservoir in the vicinity of well. as the storativity ratio between the matrix and the fissures was 𝜔=0.3 while the (interporosity coefficient) which characterizes the flow between the fissures and the matrix was λ=7.558*10-6 . 8. due to a significant wellbore storage effect and the phase segregation effect during the evaluation of the pressure buildup curves, fissure radial flow which characterizes flow from the fissures to the well was latent. therefore, in all of the cases, the permeability of the fissures could not be determined correctly. 9. the permeability was valid for the matrix and the fissure together, the value around 102 md. 10. despite the fact that the double porosity limestone reservoirs usually have negative skin, for both of well tests, positive, medium magnitude skin factor could be determined. considering the literature review available, it is realized that the positive skin factors can be resulted of either the partial penetration skin effect or formation damage due to mud filtration. 11. based on analyzed skin factor workover need to be done to calculate this problem and increasing productivity index in the future. 7. reference [1] a.c. gringarten, “interpretation of tests in fissured and multilayered reservoirs with double-porosity behavior: theory and practice,” j. pet. tech., vol. 36 no. 4, pp. 549-564. apr. 1984. [2] a.c. gringarten, “how to recognize “doubleporosity” systems from well tests”. j. pet. tech., vol. 39 no. 6, pp. 631-633. jul. 1987. [3] a. i. mohammad, a.s.m. woobaidullah and i. badrul , “analysis of dst to predict oil sand: a case study of kailashtilla field” bangladesh j. sci. res. vol. 29 no. 1, pp. 19-29 june, 2016. [4] b. england, “introduction to well testing”, 1st ed. venezuela, usa: shlumberger wireline and testing, 1998, sec. (3-6). [5] c. robert and j. earlougher: “advances in well test analysis”. 2ed ed., new york, dallas, spe, 1977, ch. 8, pp. 90-120. [6] d. bourdett, “well test analysis: the use of advanced interpretation”, 1st ed. paris, france, elsevier science b. v., 2002, pp.90-150. [7] g. bourdarot, “well testing interpretation methods”, 2ed ed. paris, france spe, 1998, pp. 143170. [8] h. cinco, and f. samaniego, “transient pressure analysis for fractured wells”, j. pet. tech., vol. 33 no. 9, sep. 1981. [9] h.j. ramey jr: “advances in practical well-test analysis”, j. pet. tech., vol. 44 no. 6, jun. 1992. [10] w. hurst, “establishment of the skin effect and its impediment to fluid into a well bore,” pet. eng. pp. 6-16, oct. 1953. [11] j. lee, “well testing”. 1st ed. new york, dallas, spe, 1982. [12] j.e. warren, and p.j. root, “the behavior of naturally fractured reservoirs”, j. pet. tech. vol. 3 no. 3, pp. 245–255. june. 1963. [13] k. serra, a.c. reynolds, and, r. raghavan, “new pressure transient analysis methods for naturally fractured reservoirs” j pet techno, vol. 35, no. 12, pp. 2271-2283, may. 1983. [14] l.g. jones, and j.w. watts, “estimating skin effect in a partially completed damaged well,” j. pet. tech. vol. 23 no. 2, pp. 249-252, feb.1971. [15] m. muskat, “partially penetrating wells in isotropic formations”, potential distribution, physics, vol. 329 no. 2, pp. 12-20, j. 1932. [16] o. a. de swan, “analytical solutions for determining naturally fractured reservoir properties by well testing,” j. pet. tech., vol. 16 no. 3, pp. 117–122. jun, 1976. [17] r. n. horne, “modern well test analysis (a computer aided approach)”, 4th ed. palo alto, california: petro way, inc, 1990. [18] w. marshall black, “a review of drill-stem testing techniques and analysis”, j. pet. tech, vol. 8 no. 6, june 1956. 8. acknowledgments here, it is need to send our thankfulness to those martyrs who sacrificed with their blood for protecting kurdish nation and kurdistan and to the peshmarga forces that are defending kurdistan against terrorists. we also thank all of our friends to help us to adapt the data for interpretation and solving problems during data analyzing and using software. 9. biography 9.1 biography of the first author my name is zheno kareem ahmed; i have master degree and bachelor in petroleum engineering. i got bachelor in koya university in kurdistan and master of sciences in teesside university in the uk. i currently have assistance lecture position in petroleum and energy department in college of technical engineering in sulaimani polytechnic university-sulaimani-iraq: here is my google scholar account: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=ptwb 9vgaaaaj&view_op=list_works&gmla=ajsnf6rltlr6olldsghs0kejewt1j8tgvp54rfs5sepmbgo8i5qtt6gqj_c3cxm c60ckuvcbcatu0kh_k_gcvu4wj1hj5ctw 9.2 biography of the second author my name is halkawt ismail m-amin; i have master degree in banking and finance and bachelor in accounting. i got bachelor in sulaimani university in kurdistan and master of sciences in nearest university in cyprus. i currently have head of department position in bank administration department in dukan technical institute in sulaimani polytechnic university-sulaimaniiraq: here is my google scholar account: https://sites.google.com/a/spu.edu.iq/halkawt-amin/ https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=ptwb9vgaaaaj&view_op=list_works&gmla=ajsn-f6rltlr6olldsghs-0kejewt1j8tgvp54rfs5sepmbgo8i5qtt6gqj_c3cxmc60ckuvcbcatu0kh_k_gcvu4wj1hj5ctw https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=ptwb9vgaaaaj&view_op=list_works&gmla=ajsn-f6rltlr6olldsghs-0kejewt1j8tgvp54rfs5sepmbgo8i5qtt6gqj_c3cxmc60ckuvcbcatu0kh_k_gcvu4wj1hj5ctw https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=ptwb9vgaaaaj&view_op=list_works&gmla=ajsn-f6rltlr6olldsghs-0kejewt1j8tgvp54rfs5sepmbgo8i5qtt6gqj_c3cxmc60ckuvcbcatu0kh_k_gcvu4wj1hj5ctw https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=ptwb9vgaaaaj&view_op=list_works&gmla=ajsn-f6rltlr6olldsghs-0kejewt1j8tgvp54rfs5sepmbgo8i5qtt6gqj_c3cxmc60ckuvcbcatu0kh_k_gcvu4wj1hj5ctw https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=ptwb9vgaaaaj&view_op=list_works&gmla=ajsn-f6rltlr6olldsghs-0kejewt1j8tgvp54rfs5sepmbgo8i5qtt6gqj_c3cxmc60ckuvcbcatu0kh_k_gcvu4wj1hj5ctw https://sites.google.com/a/spu.edu.iq/halkawt-amin/  article info abstract volume 6 – issue 1june 2021 doi: 10.24017/science.2021.1.2 article history: received:04/04/2021 accepted:28/04/2021 speech recognition has gained much attention from researchers for almost last two decades. isolated words, connected words, and continuous speech are the main focused areas of speech recognition. researchers have adopted many techniques to solve speech recognition challenges under the umbrella of artificial intelligence (ai), pattern recognition and acoustic phonetic approaches. variation in pronunciation of words, individual accents, unwanted ambient noise, speech context, and quality of input devices are some of these challenges in speech recognition. many application programming interface (api)s are developed to overcome the issue of accuracy in a speech-to-text conversion such as microsoft speech api and google speech api. in this paper, the performance of microsoft speech api is analyzed against other speech apis mentioned in the literature on the special dataset (without background noise) prepared. a voice interactive speech to text (vist) audio player was developed for the analysis of microsoft speech api. vist audio player creates runtime subtitles of the audio files running on it; the player is responsible for speech to text conversion in real-time. microsoft speech api was incorporated in the application to validate and make the performance of api measurable. the experiments proved the microsoft speech api more accurate with respect to other apis in the context of the prepared dataset for the vist audio player. the accuracy rate according to the precision-recall is 96% for microsoft speech api, which is better than previous ones as mentioned in the literature. keywords: speech recognition, microsoft speech api, subtitles, speech to text, speech-to-text recognition, artificial intelligence. a voice interactive speech to text (vist), microsoft speech api. copyright © 2021 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction speech recognition is the conversion a speech signal to words sequence through a computer program or an algorithm [1]. human communication is mostly in the form of speech. with the performance analysis: ai-based vist audio player by microsoft speech api ribwar bakhtyar ibrahim database technology technical college of informatics sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq ribwar.ibrahim@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 2 help of speech recognition computer understands human voice commands [1]. the goal of speech recognition is to develop techniques that a human and machine may interact with each other and understand human voice commands [2]. the progress of automatic speech recognition starts from fifty years ago. in the duration of 19501960, the researcher had tried on human input voice signals, and most of the speech recognition system investigated used spectral resonance during the vowel region of each utterance which was extracted from the output signal analog filter bank of the logic circuit. in the 1970s, speech recognition research was achieved, the area of isolated and discrete utterance became a usable technology. velichko and zagorruyko in russia advanced the use of pattern recognition model ideas in speech recognition [3]. in the 1980s, the hidden markavo model (hmm) technique was introduced in the same way for speech recognition. in the 1990s, the focus of the researcher was on robust speech recognition. matsui et al[4] compared the vq-based method with the discrete/continuous hmm-based method, particularly from the viewpoint of robustness against utterance variations. a darpa program (2000): effective affordable reusable speech to text (ears) was developed as speech-to-text technology with the aim of achieving accuracy in speed to text conversion. the program was focusing on unconstrained human-human and natural speech from foreign conversational speech and broadcasts in multiple languages, to make machines do better work for detecting, extracting, and summarizing, and translating information [5]. in 2001, computer speech recognition had reached 80% of accuracy and not progressed to 2010. when google developed a voice search application for iphone, google added personalized recognition to voice search on android phones. google developed an application that produced the most accurate speech model and added voice search to chrome browser in mid-2011 [6]. there are a number of audio and video players are available in the market, which has different characteristics and features. if we want to watch a movie or scene or want to hear audio, and we have no speaker system or we do not know the language of the movies. then in that case subtitles of the movie are very helpful to understand the scene or movie. but the problem is that these subtitles are added with a movie scene by editing movie scene and it is embedded in every frame of the movie. also know that subtitles are not added to every movie or video, because it is a very time-consuming process. the challenges of converting an audio soundtrack to accurate text are multiple which might have different sound effects, voices, background music, unexpected vocabulary, and different accents switching between them, and punctuation. a clear audio from a single speaker can be slower while processing and the results might be unpredictable. transcribing through a re-speaker would be quicker over automatic soundtrack transcription. though a number of problems exists in speech recognition, this this paper focuses on the synchronization of audio speech with text displayed and to find the accuracy of microsoft speech api, under certain limitations or conditions. 1.2 types of speech recognition: there are different classes of speech recognition, such as: isolate words: in isolated word recognition, it accepts a single word at a time. this depends on listening or not listen to the state of the speaker, the speaker has to wait for a response from the machine [1]. connected words: it is similar to isolated words recognition system but allows separating words to run together with a minimal pause between these words [1]. continuous speech: this type of speech allows the user to speak continuously, but for computers, the detection of separation of words becomes difficult in this case [1]. 1.3 approaches to speech recognition: acoustic phonetics, pattern recognition, artificial intelligence are the three approaches to speech recognition. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 3 acoustic phonetic approach: generally, speech recognition deals with speech variability. in acoustic phonetic approach, the system tries to decode the speech signal in a sequential manner which is based on the observed acoustic features of the speech waveform and the known relations between an acoustic feature and phonetic symbols. pattern recognition approach: in pattern recognition approach, the speech pattern is used directly without explicit feature determination and segmentation. this method has two steps, first is step training of speech pattern and the second is pattern recognition [2]. artificial intelligence approach: the third approach is the artificial intelligence approach or knowledge base approach. it is a hybrid approach of the acoustic-phonetic approach and pattern recognition approach. some speech researchers developed a recognition system that used phonetic knowledge to develop classification rules for speech sounds [2]. 1.4 issues in speech to text recognition: software that is using speech recognition still has some big problems, which prevents it from being used exclusively. some of the speech recognition problems that are difficult to solve are variation in the pronunciation of words, individual accents, and unwanted ambient noises. the context of the words being spoken is also a problem, which leads to an incorrect word or incorrect spelling [3]. the quality of the input device creates problems in speech recognition. if the microphone is not sensitive enough or is highly sensitive, then it can create audio information that is difficult for the software to convert accurately. the main recognition issues are accuracy, user responsiveness, performance, reliability, and fault tolerance. this paper is focused on the analysis of speech recognition using microsoft speech api in software developed software vist audio player, this paper also checked synchronization of audio speech to the converted text displayed by the vist audio player in the form of subtitles. 1.5 vist audio player the vist (voice interactive subtitle) audio player is a desktop application that is used to play audio speech of different formats such as mp3, wave, etc. and is capable to display subtitles (text) of only wave format in the form of a label, human voice interactive commands control different operations in the player, for example, stop, play, pause, change volume and control playlist. speech-to-text conversion and speech recognition are the main parts of the vist audio player. the rest of the paper is organized as section 2 is composed of related work, section 3 discusses the methodology, section 4 shows the experiments, section 5 is based on the results and analysis, in section 6 conclusion, limitations and the future work are discussed. 2. related work in the literature review, published research papers and other material related to the research topic being studied, and data extracted from different research papers. a number of researches have been done since speech api is developed; most of the researches were done by the microsoft speech group itself. two factors affect the accuracy of speech recognition i.e. speech engine and language model. microsoft group introduced a new technology called whisper, which explains different approaches for accurate, efficient, and more usable speech recognition [9]. with the use of context-free grammar (cfg) and applying a set of rules, during normalization produce differentiate noise from speech and reduce the error rate up to 50% [9]. another paper focuses on the fast talker (rate of speaking words), the utterance of speech is stretching in such a way that it matches the acoustic model, it reduces the error rate up to 13% [7]. in another research article semantic language model, integrated development environment (ide) was used in the speech language model [8]. another interesting paper is discussing name recognition; name recognition is the same as command recognition. this idea was used in the vist audio player kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 4 developed, for input commands, and on matching input command with pre-defined text it performs appreciate operation in the vist audio player. in this pattern coronation model, the accuracy is 99%. there is another technique for accuracy is the training technique, experiment shows that this technique is fast and accurate and 5.75% word error rate [6]. the research paper was done by the microsoft research group is about voice search, this paper first describes the recombination process and then proposes a statistical language model that automatically converts listing into query form, which works as training for voice [10]. human being authentication by offline handwritten signature biometric research has been increasing, especially in the last decade. verification process of an offline handwritten signature is not trivial task [11] all the concepts discussed in the above papers have focused on the efficiency and accuracy of speech recognition. the researchers are trying to develop such a technique that increases the efficiency of speech recognition apis. 3. methodology the developed a desktop application “vist audio player”. this application is used for the audio speech translation into text form in real-time, and displays that text in the form of subtitles, just like a video player. as speech translation is a different and separate process from playback audio, this research analysis is trying to match these two processes (audio speech and text in the form of subtitles) means synchronize and find the accuracy of word recognition. in figure 3.1, a data flow diagram of the vist audio player is shown which helps in understanding the working of the software. using a microsoft api, this player was developed. in the first portion, this player was made voice interactive, which can understand human voice command. the voice recognition pattern method was used for voice recognition. the voice as input is matched with the pre-defined and stored text data in the form of strings. on the success of recognition, the specified action is taken as defined. microsoft api is also used for the second time for converting audio speech into text form. but this time it is based on word recognition, and events are developed for the detection of words as well as characters. on completion of the whole world, it correctly recognized words. as mentioned above, the audio playback and speech to text conversion are separate processes, there are two threads created for each process to run both the process parallel and synchronize speech to the text displayed. these treads can be stopped, started, and paused simultaneously. besides this, it is proved experimentally that it gives 96% of accurate results. 4. experiment in order to check the performance of developed software (vist audio player), and the performance of microsoft speech api under certain limitations, experimental work is done. twenty-five audio speech samples were checked using the player for the performance checking of vist audio player software, and for the efficiency of microsoft platform speech api the number of words of each audio file was counted in the first step; similarly, playback duration of these twenty-five samples was collected. here experimentally checked every audio file (from the selected list of twenty-five files) separately which displayed text on the player. through careful observation, the number of accurate words and incorrect words was detected. the accuracy of each audio file was measured in percentage. in the last step, we also find the average percent accuracy of twenty-five files. along with the accuracy checking, synchronization of audio speech was also checked. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 5 5. result and performance analysis table 5.1 shows the results of twenty-five audio sample files of wave format used in the experiment. this table contains numbers of the accurate word, a number of incorrect words and percent accuracy of each file separately and total average percent accuracy, which is 96%, and was found a better result as compare to other methodologies as mentions in the studied in the previous research works. generally, as mentioned in the above literature, in one place the efficiency of speech api or asr (automatic speech recognition) is shown 99%, but it must be remembered that it is in the case of a pre-defined pattern recognition model in real-time voice input as a microphone. here, speech api was used for pre-recorded audio files, which were directly converted into text form. from the studied literature it was found an average of 70 to 80% (in the case of pre-recorded files or real-time speech recognition). secondly, synchronization of audio speech to the displayed text in the form of labels is a big issue, which was working across threading, was solved in vist audio player, to a great extent. the average delay in most cases is zero or one or two seconds as we can see in table 5.1, but in some cases, it is three seconds. in the worst case, it is seven seconds. figure 1: flow diagram of the ai-based vist audio player d1user 1 selects from hdd 2 play file 3 stop file 4 pause file 1 select signle wave file 5 convert audio speech to text 6 text display as subtitle on label activate subtitle 7 add playlist 2 play file 4 pause file 3 stop file 8 next audio track 9 previous audio track 10 first audio track 11 last audio track 12 gets input command through vouce 13 match inputs command kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 6 table 1: results s. n o fi le n am e fi le f or m at pl ay ba ck d ur at io n t ot al w or ds in co rr ec t w or ds c or re ct w or ds n ot r et ri ev ed w or ds pr ec is io n r ec al l sy nc hr on iz at io n de la y 1 01.wav wave 1:06 158 6 152 0 96 100 0 sec 2 02.wav wave 1:45 255 7 248 0 97 100 0 sec 3 03.wav wave 0:34 66 4 62 0 94 100 1 sec 4 04.wav wave 1:08 143 2 141 0 99 100 1 sec 5 05.wav wave 0:34 76 9 67 0 88 100 0 sec 6 06.wav wave 1:15 168 12 156 0 93 100 0 sec 7 07.wav wave 0:40 116 7 109 0 94 100 1 sec 8 08.wav wave 1:49 187 6 181 0 97 100 2 sec 9 09.wav wave 0:31 67 2 65 0 97 100 0 sec 10 10.wav wave 1:05 147 4 143 0 97 100 0 sec 11 11.wav wave 1:28 181 13 168 0 93 100 0 sec 12 12.wav wave 0:55 98 5 93 0 95 100 0 sec 13 13.wav wave 1:52 207 10 197 0 95 100 3 sec 14 14.wav wave 1:25 191 9 182 0 95 100 3 sec 15 15.wav wave 1:52 251 12 239 0 95 100 3 sec 16 16.wav wave 1:52 337 36 301 0 89 100 7 sec 17 17.wav wave 1:21 232 5 227 0 98 100 0 sec 18 18.wav wave 0:54 93 1 92 0 99 100 0 sec 19 19.wav wave 0:37 64 3 61 0 95 100 0 sec 20 20.wav wave 0:27 52 0 52 0 100 100 2 sec 21 21.wav wave 0:38 91 2 89 0 98 100 0 sec 22 22.wav wave 0:20 53 1 52 0 98 100 0 sec 23 23.wav wave 0:51 134 2 132 0 99 100 0 sec 24 24.wav wave 1:03 126 3 123 0 98 100 0 sec 25 25.wav wave 1:32 190 5 185 0 97 100 3 sec 96% 100% the analysis is done using slandered precision and recall method, as result it gave 96% precision and 100% recall using the formula of precision and recall respectively. 𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃 = 𝐴𝐴 (𝐴𝐴 + 𝐶𝐶) ∗ 100% − −−→ (𝑃𝑃) 𝑅𝑅𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅 = 𝐴𝐴 (𝐴𝐴 + 𝐵𝐵) ∗ 100% − − − −→ (𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃) where, kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 7 a= no of relevant words that are retrieved b=no of relevant words not retrieved c= no of irreverent words retrieved 6. conclusion, limitations, and future work 6.1 conclusion vist audio player is a desktop application that is human voice command interactive player, which converts audio speech into english text format. this application is using microsoft speech api, for speech recognition and voice-to-text conversions. this paper mainly focuses on the performance analysis of speech api which was experimentally proved by using twentyfive audio samples of. wave format. the resultant accuracy was found 96% using vist audio player, which is a better result in the case of pre-recorded audio files against the previous techniques discussed in the literature. the vist software application is helpful for those peoples who cannot hear an audio speech due to some reasons such as external noise in the environment, or vist audio player software helps those peoples who want to communicate and control (such as play pause stop, etc.) with voice commands. 6.2 limitations there are a few limitations or restrictions in this research works. software that is using speech recognition still has some problems, which are difficult to solve such as variations in the pronunciation of words, individual assent and unwanted noise in large amount leads to inefficiency of applications using speech recognitions. context of the words is also a separate problem that leads to incorrect spelling and sometimes completely incorrect words, which are difficult to recognize. similarly, the quality of input devices or sensitivity or less sensitivity of microphone also fails speech recognitions. the main recognition issues are accuracy, which was solved here under certain conditions. the resultant accuracy is 96% if this software vist audio player is using recommended context and suggested pronunciation by microsoft. here five recommended contexts are used for the twenty-four files. another limitation is related to the application developed for analysis. the look makes the speech-to-text conversion in real life the process synchronization is done using threads. the main issue with real-time conversion is, it requires more processing time and matching pattern, due to more processing time the speech and converted text being displayed, it cannot be synchronized especially in case of rapid conversion and less processing speed or slow conversion and more processor speed. secondly for getting accurate result pattern matching is also necessary, which is difficult to provide for every word or speech. third, this software is inefficient in a speech-to-text conversion when other languages except english are used. similarly, in the case of music audio files, this software is also inefficient intext conversions. this software only supports “.wave” audio format for speech-to-text conversions. 6.3 future work in the future, the researchers are required to mainly focus on speech api, and it is possible to develop such a speech api, which is efficient with each respect. and this speech api having the capability to recognized every natural speech of humans, with this development automatic speech recognition will be used in a number of software applications. this will be a greater achievement in human voice interactive software applications, through which humans will be able to control different operations of different hardware or machinery. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 8 references [1] s. atma prakash, r. nath, and s. kumar. "a survey: speech recognition approaches and techniques", 2018 5th ieee uttar pradesh section international conference on electrical, electronics and computer engineering (upcon). ieee, 2018. [2] f. sadaoki. "50 years of progress in speech and speaker recognition research." ecti transactions on computer and information technology (ecti-cit) 1.2 (2005): 64-74. [3] v.m. velichko and n. g zagoruyko: automatic recognition of 200 word, int. j. manmachine studies.2 pp, 223,1970 [4] m. tomoko, and s. furui. "comparison of text-independent speaker recognition methods using vq-distortion and discrete/continuous hmm's." ieee transactions on speech and audio processing 2.3 (1994): 456-459. [5] h. miss, s. kaur, and v. chaudhary. "literature survey on automatic speech recognition system‖." international journal of emerging technology and advanced engineering (2014). [6] d. jasha, and a. acero. "joint discriminative front end and back end training for improved speech recognition accuracy" 2006 ieee international conference on acoustics speech and signal processing proceedings. vol. 1. ieee, 2006. [7] r. matthew, et al. "improvements on speech recognition for fast talkers." sixth european conference on speech communication and technology. 1999. [8] w. yongzhen, x. liu, and z. gao. "neural related work summarization with a joint context-driven attention mechanism." arxiv preprint arxiv:1901.09492 (2019). [9] h. xuedong, et al. "microsoft windows highly intelligent speech recognizer: whisper." 1995 international conference on acoustics, speech, and signal processing. vol. 1. ieee, 1995. [10] l. xiao, et al. "language modeling for voice search: a machine translation approach" 2008 ieee international conference on acoustics, speech and signal processing. ieee, 2008. [11] n. abbas, k. yasen, k. faraj, l. a razak, f. malallah, "offline handwritten signature recognition using histogram orientation gradient and support vector machine" journal of theoretical and applied information technology 2018. [12] h. yanzhang, et al. "streaming end-to-end speech recognition for mobile devices." icassp 2019-2019 ieee international conference on acoustics, speech and signal processing (icassp). ieee, 2019. http://jatit.org/volumes/ninetysix8.php http://jatit.org/volumes/ninetysix8.php 1. introduction 1.2 types of speech recognition: isolate words: in isolated word recognition, it accepts a single word at a time. this depends on listening or not listen to the state of the speaker, the speaker has to wait for a response from the machine [1]. connected words: it is similar to isolated words recognition system but allows separating words to run together with a minimal pause between these words [1]. continuous speech: this type of speech allows the user to speak continuously, but for computers, the detection of separation of words becomes difficult in this case [1]. 1.3 approaches to speech recognition: acoustic phonetic approach: generally, speech recognition deals with speech variability. in acoustic phonetic approach, the system tries to decode the speech signal in a sequential manner which is based on the observed acoustic features of the speech ... pattern recognition approach: artificial intelligence approach: the third approach is the artificial intelligence approach or knowledge base approach. it is a hybrid approach of the acoustic-phonetic approach and pattern recognition approach. some speech researchers developed a re... 1.4 issues in speech to text recognition: 1.5 vist audio player 2. related work 3. methodology 4. experiment 5. result and performance analysis 6. conclusion, limitations, and future work 6.1 conclusion 6.2 limitations 6.3 future work  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.16 received: 19 june 2018 | accepted: 18 july 2018 prevalence and knowledge about genital and other warts among students in sulaimani polytechnic university: a cross-sectional study burhan karadaghy niaz mustafa kamal nasih othman community health department anesthesia department kurdistan institute for strategic studies technical college of health technical college of health and scientific research sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq nasih.othman@kissr.edu.krd burhan.karadakhy@spu.edu.iq niaz.kamal@spu.edu.iq 96 abstract: genital warts and other warts are an epidermal manifestation attributed to the epidermotropic human papillomavirus (hpv) some of which have been linked directly to an increased neoplastic risk in men and women. according to our knowledge, research is scarce and little is known about this condition in sulaimani province. a cross-sectional study was carried out from 1st april to 30th may 2018 including 441 undergraduate students aged between 1830 years belonging to the health and non-health colleges of sulaimani polytechnic university. data were obtained on the knowledge about genital warts through self-administrated questionnaire from the students. data were analyzed using stata 11. the mean age of the participants was 21.3 years. hand warts were the commonest types among participants (31%). knowledge score ranged from 0 to 9, was not normally distributed with a median of zero (iqr 0-22), 89% of the students had very low knowledge score. knowledge score correlated with socio-demographic parameters were significantly higher in health students (p <0.001); outside sulaimani city (p= 0.01) and students aged 2130 (p <0.001). in general, it is highlighting the need for communication and education among students in order to overcome the lack of knowledge about genital warts and hpv infection. it also might reflect higher health consciousness among sulaimani university students. keywords: warts, genital, sulaimani, papillomavirus, knowledge. 1. introduction condylomata acuminate, or genital warts, are lesions or a small lumps that develop around genital area caused by human papillomavirus (hpv) infection which is usually causing a range of manifestation from asymptomatic, latent infection to the typical exophytic cauliflower-like of the genital epidermal layer which they are usually passed by sexual contact [1]. non-genital warts are more prevalent, is a benign and usually self-limited infection. common warts are most often seen on the hands and present as skin-colored papules. flat warts are most often seen on the backs of the hands and on the legs. they appear as slightly elevated, small plaques that are skincolored or light brown. plantar warts occur on the soles of the feet and look like very thick calluses [2]. among more than 200 different types of hpv discovered so far, with approximately 40 different subtypes are belonging to cause infection of the genital area, cause both benign and malignant lesions[3] the human papillomavirus (hpv) is prevalent sexually transmitted virus worldwide, and it is estimated that over 50% of sexually active men and women at a younger age have been infected with one or more genital hpv [4]. these can be subdivided into low risk, intermitted risk, and high risk, depending on the likelihood of generating intraepithelial dysplasia [5]. the only two types are about 90% hpv types 6 and 11 are likened to cause benign anogenital warts (gws) and recurrent respiratory papillomatosis (rrp) [6]. in addition, between 13-18 hpv strains which have a high risk for neoplastic conversion and the commonly detected types hpv-16 and hpv18 are strongly associated with cervical dysplasia and are therefore considered to be a high risk [7, 8]. hpv types 31, 33, 45, 51, 52, 56, 58, and 59 are typically thought to be of intermediate risk since they are often found in association with squamous neoplasms. furthermore, have been rarely linked to cervical scc [1]. both men and women are affecting by genital warts but the affecting is slightly higher in men compared to women [9]. the highest prevalence rate of genital warts infection is discovered among adults age group 18-28 years old [8]. the quadrivalent hpv vaccine, which is active against hpv 6, 11, 16 and 18, is significantly effective in preventing hpv and reduce genital warts in both male and female [10]. as the disease is more common among young age groups and their age carries high risk. the purpose of the study is to assess awareness and knowledge about genital warts infection among students at sulaimani polytechnic university, iraq, kurdistan. 2. methods and materials this cross-sectional study was conducted among students of the polytechnic university in sulaimani city from 1st april to 30th may 2018 on (441) undergraduate students aged between 18-30 years belonging to medical, engineering, management and computer information technology were studied in these colleges. the polytechnic university has a large campus comprised of four technical colleges. a convenient sample size of (441) 97 students was chosen because this is conservative and adequate when the proportion of participants is not known. the simple random sampling method was used to select one or two classes from each college. the sample was selected from the list of students in each selected class using systematic random sampling. a pre-tested questionnaire was used in this research. a pilot study was done prior to this investigation to validate the questionnaire. the questionnaire was divided into two main parts: part one includes the respondents’ sociodemographic profiles and part two involves questions to assess their knowledge on genital warts. privacy and confidentiality were respected and questionnaires were anonymized. the data was collected via a selfadministrative questionnaire with students. answering the questionnaire lasted 10-15 minutes after explaining the aim of the study and obtaining informed consent. apart from the interview time, there was no harm or inconvenience to the students. the study was approved by the ethics committee of the technical college of health. in addition, permission was taken from each college were the data was collected. data were entered into epidata (version 3.1) and analyzed by stata (version 11). demographic variables were described using frequencies and percentages. while for numeric variables median was used for those not normally distributed, mean and the standard deviation was used for those normally distributed variables. questions on knowledge were scored for determining the levels. a knowledge summary score was computed by assigning one point for each correct response and zero points for each wrong and ‘don’t know’ answers. points were summed to create a knowledge summary score. differences in knowledge across provider type were evaluated using a chi-square test where a p<0.05 was considered statistically significant. 3. results the selected sample was 450 students, of which 441students completed the questionnaire, giving a response rate of 98%. the mean age of the students was 21.3 years (sd 2.6) with the rage of 18-30 years. table 1 shows main characteristics of the participants. there were more female participants (58%) higher than male students (42%). majority of the participants were single (85%), and a higher proportion of the participants were from inside of sulaimani (60%). most (39%) of the participants were in their second year in the university. the number of non-health science participants was higher (65%) compared to health science (34%). of the (28.6%) participants had warts in past and (5.5%) have warts during the study. table 1: socio-demographic data of the study participants. variable frequency (n=441) percentage % age in year <20 196 44.8 21-25 198 45.2 >26 44 10 gender male 184 41.9 female 255 58.1 marital state single 375 85.4 married 59 13.4 divorce 5 1.2 residence inside sulaimani 265 60.1 outside sulaimani 176 39.9 education levels first year 97 22 second year 173 39.2 third year 97 22 fourth year 74 16.8 field of the study health sciences 150 34.1 non-health sciences 291 65.9 students had warts in past yes 126 28.6 no 315 71.4 students have warts during the study yes 24 5.5 no 416 94.5 figure 1 shows the prevalence of warts during the survey which was 5.5% among the participants of which 5% were hand warts and 0.5% was genital warts. past history of warts (ever having warts in the past) was positive in 28.6% of the participants (26.3 % had hand warts and 2.3% had warts in another area). figure1: prevalence types of warts among the participants. we analyzed types of warts by gender, residence, marital state and age (table 2). female students with different types of warts were higher (57.4%) compare to male students (42.6%), this difference was not statistically significant p=0.8. married and unmarried students have similar percentages (12.4% vs.15.5%) of having different types of warts. participants from inside city who 5% 0.5% 94.5% 26.3% 2.3% 71.4% 0 100 200 300 400 500 hand genital other no current history of warts past history of warts 98 have warts were (60.5%), while (39.5%) of participants from outside city have warts, this difference was statistically significant p=0.01. the prevalent of warts among students aged <20 and between 21-25 years who have warts were (41.9%, 48.8%) respectively which were higher than those aged 26 years and over (9.3%), this difference was not statistically significant p= 0.9. table 2: different types of warts by gender, residence, marital state and age. shows the knowledge of the participant's students about genital warts and hpv infection while exploring the general knowledge of students regarding warts 375 students reported that they had already heard of genital warts. of the participants, 56 were aware that hpv causes genital while higher numbers 206 was answered no and 173 were answered don’t know. of the 5 of participants have knowledge of hpv affected male, 22 affected female and 87 affected both genders. lower numbers 82 of the students were aware of hpv transmitted from infected person to healthy person out of 440 students. according to the mode of transmission, 6 students stated a cough and sneezing and, 10 selected shaking hand and hugging, and 97 of the participants have information that hpv is transmitted by sex with multi-partner, while the rest 327 stated don’t know. almost, 45 participants have known hpv have a vaccine while the rest answer no and don’t know. the other knowledge parameters were presented in the table. table 3: parameters of knowledge of the participants parameters frequency (n=441) have you heard about warts yes 375 no 66 have you heard about hpv yes 56 no 209 don't know 173 do you know that hpv causes genital warts yes 56 no 219 don’t know 165 type of gender can be affected by genital warts male 5 female 22 both 87 don’t know 327 genital warts transmitted from infected person to a healthy person yes 82 no 67 don’t know 291 mode of transmission of hpv a cough or sneezing 6 hacking and shaking the hand 10 genital skin to skin contact 97 don’t know 327 female with hpv infection can be transmitted to male yes 84 no 12 don’t know 345 male with hpv infection can be transmitted to the female yes 73 no 10 don’t know 357 can hpv causes cancer of cervical 17 anal 2 penile 18 female and male genital cancer 20 others genital 4 don’t know 378 is there any vaccination for hpv infection yes 45 no 57 don’t know 339 the most common source of information on warts was from television/internet and medical staffs (59%), followed by during the study (9%), television and internet (7%) respectively while (14%) were not heard about it (figure 2). parameters warts condition p value chisquare yes no gender 0.8 0.03 male 55(42.6%) 129(41.6%) female 74(57.4%) 181(58.4) marital state 0.4 0.7 married 16(12.4%) 113(87.6%) unmarried 48(15.5%) 262 (84.5%) residence 0.01 0.9 inside 78 (60.5%) 187(60%) outside 51(39.5%) 125(40%) age in year 0.9 0.6 <20 54(41.9%) 142(45.9%) 21-25 63(48.8%) 135(43.7%) >26 12 (9.3%) 32(10.4%) 99 figure 2: frequency distribution of information source about genital and other warts. the genital warts score ranged from 0-9 on a 100 scale with a median of zero and interquartile range of 0-22. the knowledge score was then categorized to 3 levels as shown in table 4. majority 384 (88.5%) of the students had very poor knowledge score. overall, only 16 (3.7%) of the students had good information about genital warts out of 434 students. table 4: distribution of knowledge levels of the participants. knowledge levels score % good (70%+) 16 3.7 fair (50-69%) 34 7.8 poor below 50% 384 88.5 total 434 100% table 5 shows the association between knowledge levels and socio-demographic data. the findings indicate that there was the statistically significant difference between a field of the study, residence, and age of the respondents. health science (10.7%) have higher knowledge compared to non-health science (0%) this difference was statistically significant p= <0.0001. outside residence participants have more information about genital warts (6.9%), while inside participants residence has poor (90%) this difference was statistically significant p =0.01. married students (8%) were more awareness than unmarried students (3%), this difference was not statistically significant p =0.1. respondents aged 21-25 (3.6%) and 26 over (14%) have more information compared to those aged 20 below (0.5%) this difference was statistically significant p=<0.0001. table 5: comparison of knowledge levels with socio-demographic variables variable good fair poor chi-square p value gender 0.8 0.6 male 5(2.8%) 15(8.3%) 161(88.9%) female 11(4.4%) 19(7.6%) 221(88%) field of the study 49.5 <0.0001 health science 16(10.7%) 22(14.8%) 111(74.5%) non-heaa lth science 0 (0%) 12(4.2%) 273(95.8%) residence 8.6 0.01 inside sulaimani 4(1.5%) 22(8.5%) 234(90%) outside sulaimani 12(6.9%) 12(6.9%) 150(86.2%) marital state 4.1 0.1 married 5 (8%) 6(9.5%) 52(82.5) unmarried 11(3%) 28(7.6%) 330(89.4%) age in year 22.1 <0.0001 <20 1(0.5%) 18(9.3%) 175(90.2%) 21-25 7(3.6%) 15(7.7%) 172(88.7%) >26 6(14%) 1(2.3%) 36(83.7%) 4. discussion this study was conducted to assess the knowledge of multidisciplinary students regarding genital warts and hpv infection in sulaimani polytechnic university. overall, the study revealed that hand warts (31%) are the most common type of warts among the student's generally, the result of the prevalent type in our study was similar (33%) to the result of indian study [11]. the students had very poor knowledge about genital warts and hpv infection (88.5%), which is in accordance with the studies which were done at the university of lagos in nigeria and united state [12, 13]. the majority of the students (375 out of 441) were heard about warts in general. it is also of great concern that, in this study, only a small group 56 of the students had heard about hpv infection, our findings are in contrast with this study [14]. according to our results, only 56 students out of 441 know that hpv causes genital wart. similarly, a study in nigeria reported that less 10% of students were aware of hpv infection causes the infection [12]. the study reveals that the main source of information about genital warts and hpv infection was through television, internet, and medical staffs, these findings were similar to studies in florida and malaysia [14-16]. television, radio, and internet were electronic mass media commonly utilized by young adults for their leisure and entertainment. with respect to awareness about hpv affecting which type of gender, only 87 students stated that hpv infected both men and women. similarly, a study in pakistan reported that both gender male and female were affected by hpv [17]. in addition, only 82 students have information that genital warts can be spread from an infected person to a healthy one. it is similar to the study which was done at students university in malaysia[16]. furthermore, when students where asked questions about the route of transmission, 6 of the students answered a cough and television 7% internet 7% medical staff 4% during study 9% television, internet and medical staff 59% no 14% 100 sneezing, 10 of them statted hugging and shaking hand and only 97 of the students who were aware of genital warts and hpv infection is sexually transmitted disease, while 327 of the student said they did not know how hpv is transmitted. likewise, an international comparison study supported our result[18]. in our study when the students were asked whether genital wart and hpv can cause cancers, the majority of them stated that they didn’t know about it. only 17 stated that hpv cause cervical, 2 and 18 students selected anal and penile respectively. is corresponding with a study which was performed among female students in taiwan[19] and on the contrary with a study in colombia, showed that the respondents have higher knowledge about the connection between hpv and cancer[20]. the present study reported that 339 students they don’t know about any vaccination for the infection and 57 students stated that there is no vaccine to prevent the infection. it could be due to the fact that they had no or very little knowledge about the vaccination. this finding is in accordance with previous pakistan study which has demonstrated that people generally do not know about hpv vaccine[17]. health science students have the major source of information about genital warts and hpv infection compare to non-health science. it is similar to the study in usa [13] which showed that health science students have more information about genital warts. the study finds that 154 students reported that hpv can transmit from male to female and vise versa. they think both male and female can spread the infection to each other [21]. we have noticed that the level of knowledge about hpv was significantly associated with the field of study p<0.0001, the age of the students p <0.0001 and residents of the students p=0.01. the students of the health science department were more aware of genital warts and hpv compare to nonhealth science. the knowledge level was better among the students with higher age. awareness of the condition was higher in older participants (14%) than younger (3.6%). the students who lived outside the city were having a higher knowledge than those who lived inside the city, this could be due to the availability of different entertainment places which make them busy with trivial things or could be due to their willingness to compete with the students inside the city. the findings are corresponding with the studies which were performed in malaysia and greece [22-24]. based on gender we found no difference in hpv awareness, similarly, the colombian study revealed the same result as there was no difference between hpv knowledge and gender[25]. a potential limitation that should be considered when interpreting this study is that the information obtained was collected using a self-administered questionnaire so there is a possibility that some respondents may have given incorrect information. in addition, we didn’t use a preestablished validated questionnaire nor any cognitive testing or focus groups to assess the impact of gw on individuals 5. conclusion in conclusion, the commonest type of non-genital warts is hand warts, the level of awareness and knowledge of genital warts and hpv infection among undergraduate students at the polytechnic university of sulaimani city was generally very low. the results of this study revealed a poor understanding among respondents about the health problems associated with hpv, its vaccination and modes of transmission. we believe that this study could serve as a useful guide to improve future implementations and policies to increase awareness of hpv infection among students. acknowledgment the authors would like to thank all colleges of sulaimani polytechnic university 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[19] h.-h. wang and s.-y. wu, "hpv vaccine knowledge and perceived risk of cervical cancer among female college students in taiwan," asian pacific journal of cancer prevention, vol. 14, pp. 7371-7374, 2013. [20] m. piñeros, g. hernández-suárez, l. orjuela, j. c. vargas, and g. pérez, "hpv knowledge and impact of genital warts on self esteem and sexual life in colombian patients," bmc public health, vol. 13, p. 272, 2013. [21] s. m. sherman, e. nailer, c. minshall, r. coombes, j. cooper, and c. w. redman, "awareness and knowledge of hpv and cervical cancer in female students: a survey (with a cautionary note)," j obstet gynaecol, vol. 36, pp. 76-80, 2016. [22] k. rajiah, m. k. maharajan, n. s. chin, and k. s. f. num, "awareness and acceptance of human papillomavirus vaccination among health sciences students in malaysia," virusdisease, vol. 26, pp. 297-303, 2015. 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[25] m. piñeros, g. hernández-suárez, l. orjuela, j. c. vargas, and g. pérez, "hpv knowledge and impact of genital warts on self esteem and sexual life in colombian patients," bmc public health, vol. 13, p. 272, 2013. 1. introduction 5. conclusion  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq characterization of vaginitis among women complaining of genital tract symptoms muhammed saed qadir medical laboratory department technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq muhammed.qadir@spu.edu.iq solaf jawhar ali nursing department technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq solaf.jawhar@spu.edu.iq hemin muheddin kareem nursing department technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq hemin.kareem@spu.edu.iq safa bakr karim anesthesia department technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq safa.bakr@spu.edu.iq hozan hallmat medical laboratory department technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq hozanhalmat22@gmail.com shakar aziz medical laboratory department technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq shakar.aziz123@gmail.com nawa latif medical laboratory department technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq nawah99@gmail.com nawal wrya medical laboratory department technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq nawalwrya@gmail.com aya ahmad medical laboratory department technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq ayaahmeed98@gmail.com shadya mhammad rasul medical laboratory department technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq mhammadshady@gmail.com article info abstract volume 5 – special issue: 4th international conference on the health and medical science : medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) doi: 10.24017/science.2020.ichms2020.17 vaginitis is the inflammation of the vagina as a result of a change in the balance of normal flora affecting women of reproductive age. it is one of the most frequent reasons that women visit clinics. the objective of this study was to determine the importance of laboratory diagnosis methods in the treatment of the disease and to study the symptoms and risk factors associated with vaginitis among mailto:muhammed.qadir@spu.edu.iq mailto:safa.bakr@spu.edu.iq mailto:solaf.jawhar@spu.edu.iq mailto:hozanhalmat22@gmail.com mailto:nawalwrya@gmail.com mailto:shakar.aziz123@gmail.com mailto:ayaahmeed98@gmail.com mailto:nawah99@gmail.com mailto:mhammadshady@gmail.com kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 153 article history: received: 05 october 2020 accepted: 11 october 2020 women with genital tract symptoms. vaginal swabs were collected from 50 women attending maternity hospital and chwarchra dormitory camps in sulaimani city. samples were examined microbiologically and causative agents were isolated. all relevant clinical information such as patient demographic profiles, socioeconomic variables, risk factors and symptoms have been collected by questionnaire based study. different species of microorganisms were isolated from vaginal samples including yeast and bacteria. culture analysis and gram stain had shown that bacterial vaginosis was 22%, while the rate of yeast infection was 16%. the higher percentage was 62% for the normal flora (lactobacillus). microscopic examination of patient’s vaginal swabs revealed that 63.6% of infectious group had high level of epithelial cells (>10), while the most patients with non-infectious vaginitis had (10) or less epithelial cell in the microscopic field. the presence of epithelial cell was significantly associated with infectious vaginitis (p-value 0.04). most patients were aged between 25-35 years. the result showed a significant association between infectious vaginosis with education level (p-value 0.02). the most common symptom present among patients with infectious vaginitis group was itching (38.5%) and smelly discharge (40%). the majority of women had history of previous infections in both infectious and non-infectious vaginitis groups. furthermore, there was different types of vaginitis including infectious vaginitis (bacterial and yeast infection) and non-infectious vaginitis. therefore, it is essential to perform laboratory examination for the patients to detect the causative agents of vaginitis, and ensure the most appropriate treatment can be administered. in addition, the treatment of vaginitis can be done by topical application of lidocaine 5% ointment (as a local anesthetic) nightly for seven weeks has been shown to decrease the pain of vaginitis in women. keywords: vaginitis, diagnosis, culture symptoms, microscope examination. copyright © 2020kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction many pathogens are responsible for different sexually or non-sexually transmitted diseases and may use the genital tract as the entry point. vaginitis is the inflammation of the vagina as a result of changing the balance of normal flora and is common in women of reproductive age. vaginitis has several causes, the most common of which is infections caused by yeast, bacteria and parasites. such infections are termed vaginosis. the most common types of vaginitis is bacterial vaginosis (40-50%), vaginal candidiasis (20-25%), and trichomoniasis (15-20%); yet in 7-72% of women with vaginitis, the specific cause remains undiagnosed. in the us, kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 154 approximately 30% of women in the united states with complaints of vaginal discharge or irritation remain undiagnosed, despite wide testing. the most common symptoms of vaginitis include change in odor, color or amount of vaginal discharge. this is often combined with other symptoms including vaginal irritation or itching, painful urination, pain during intercourse, and light vaginal bleeding or spotting. different methods are used to diagnose vaginitis according to the severity of infection, for example, clinical presentations, physical examination, ph level of the vagina, microscopy, and laboratory tests mainly based on microbial cultures. vaginal discharge often varies depending on the cause of the infection, for example, thick, cruddy discharge, itching and irritation are classic signs of yeast infection. however, none of these symptoms are specific for vulvovaginal candidiasis, and in the case of asymptomatic bacterial vaginosis, it difficult to rely on clinical symptoms. microscopic examination of vaginal secretion is a more reliable method to diagnose trichomoniasis, vulvovaginal candidiasis and bacterial vaginitis. however, this method is affected by the experience level of the examiner and the numbers of the pathogens that are present in the specimen[1]. vaginal cultures is the most effective method to diagnose vulvovaginal candidiasis, especially with recurrently symptomatic patients, although it does take longer to obtain results. candida can be identified via morphology and the isolation of yeast growing on differentiation media [2]. understanding the cause of the inflammation means the most appropriate treatment can be given. bacterial vaginitis is treated with antibiotics such as ceftriaxone (rocephin), clindamycin (cleocin), erythromycin, cefixime (suprax), doxycycline (doryx), metronidazole (flagyl), and azithromycin (zithramax). the antibiotic treatments can be administered in various forms including include intravaginal cream, oral antibiotics, and via injection. in the case of yeast infections, antifungal medications such as terconazole (terazol), fluconazole, clotrimazole (gyne-lotrimin), butoconazole (gynazole), miconazole (monistat), and nystatin are used. a trichomonas infection is treated with metronidazole (flagyl)[3]. the diagnosis of vaginal infection among women in maternity hospital is currently dependent on the clinical symptoms without performing any laboratory examinations. the aim of this study is to determine the importance of laboratory diagnosis methods in the treatment of the disease. furthermore, we aim to study the symptoms and risk factors associated with vaginitis among women with genital tract symptoms. in addition, the treatment of vaginitis can be done by topical application of lidocaine 5% ointment (as a local anesthetic) nightly for seven weeks has been shown to decrease the pain of vaginitis in women. another anesthetic (numbing) treatment which can be applied to the vulva is emla cream. it contains (emla cream) two active ingredients which are lidocaine 2.5% and prilocaine 2.5%, which are used to numb areas of the skin that would otherwise feel pain. 2. methods and materials the samples were collected in maternity hospital and chwarchra dormitory camps in sulaymaniyah city. the first step in evaluation of vaginitis was done by obtaining all relevant clinical information such as patient demographic profiles, socioeconomic variables, risk factors, symptoms and previous treatments. the data have been collected by a questionnaire based study. sample analysis was performed in the microbiology laboratory of maternity hospital in sulaymaniyah city. samples were taken from the vagina with the aid of a speculum and sterile cotton swabs. one sample were collected from each of the patients and transported immediately to the microbiology lab. the swab was inoculated for culture in different media including macconkey agar, mannitol salt agar, blood agar and chocolate agar (biomark laboratories, pune 411 04, india). next, the swab was used for the preparation of the wet mount and a thin smear on the microscopic slide for the direct examination. finally after 48 h incubation at 37°c, gram staining was performed for the identification of the vaginal infections. ethical clearance was obtained from the maternity teaching hospital and patients kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 155 were recruited after obtaining their informed consent. 3. results and discussion fifty patients with genital tract symptoms were included in this cross sectional study and all patients invited accepted to participate. the study extended from november 2019 to february 2020. different species of microorganisms were isolated from vaginal samples including yeast and bacteria, which are presented in figure 1. culture analysis and gram stain had shown that the rate of bacterial vaginosis was 22%, while the rate of yeast infection was 16%, with normal flora (lactobacillus) in 62% of cases. these results agreed with the findings reported by razzak et al. in iraq[4] and larsen and monif in usa[5]. the lactobacilli are considered as the first line of the immune system in vagina to attack potential pathogens. according to these results, the patients were categorized into two groups, infectious and noninfectious vaginitis. the infectious group includes patients with bacterial vaginosis (e. coli) and yeast infection with candida spp. (figure 1). the patients with normal flora mainly which was mainly lactobacillus spp were considered as non-infectious vaginitis. figure 1: vaginal culture and microscopic examination a. e. coli colonies on macconky agar after 24 h incubation at 37°c b. candida on blood agar after 48 incubation at 37°c c. gram-stained of yeast cultures was observed under light microscopy. the ages of women included in this study were from 20 to 79 years, with most patients (18) aged between 25-35 years (table 1). all patients that participated in this study were married and most of them were women of childbearing age. the prevalence of infection may be due to high sexual activity and the use of contraceptives among this age group, which might increase the possibility of genital tract infections [6]. in contrast only 11 of the patients were above 47 years of age. 45 patients inhabit to urban areas and just 5 are from rural areas. their literacy ranged from primary level (42%) to graduate level (40%), while 18% were illiterate. the majority of patients (84%) were unemployed. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 156 the result of this study had showed the significant association between infectious vaginosis with education level (p value 0.02). however, no significant association was observed with other demographic parameters such as occupation, residence and age groups between infectious and non-infectious groups. this result might reflect the small size of the study population. ranjit et al. found that patients with genital tract symptoms were frequently from populations with low socioeconomic status [7]. table 1: distribution of demographic data between infectious and non-infectious groups variables infectious vaginitis (19) noninfectious vaginitis (31) total p-value no (%) no (%) no age (mean±sd) 36±14 38±13 37.5±12.9 age groups less than 25 4 (50) 4 (50) 8 0.199 25-35 9 (50) 9 (50) 18 36-46 2 (15.4) 11 (84.6) 13 more than 47 4 (36.4) 7 (63.6) 11 education level illiterate 3 (100) 0 (0) 3 0.024 primary school 4 (26.7) 11 (73.3) 15 graduated 7 (63.6) 4 (36.4) 11 occupation house wife 17 (40.5) 25 (59.5) 42 0.808 student 2 (28.6) 5 (71.4) 7 worker 0 (0) 1 (100) 1 residency urban 16 (35.6) 29 (64.4) 45 0.335 rural 3 (60) 2 (40) 5 the evaluation of the possible risk factors which might be associated with vaginitis was one of the main objectives of this study. the study found that the majority of women had history of previous infections in both infectious and non-infectious vaginitis groups as shown in table 2. this may be due to improper medication or previously unrecognized complications. miscarriage was the second most common risk factor in this study, which is contrary to the results of a study carried out by giakoumelou et al. (2016)[8]. bacterial vaginosis has been associated with premature delivery and with miscarriage (tavo, 2013)[9]. other risk factors were observed in this study such as hormonal imbalance and diabetes. explanation regarding its basis includes that diabetes alters host defense (mascarenhas et al. 2012). finally, only four out of fifty women from infectious and non-infectious groups have sexually infected partners. all of the risk factors that were assessed in this study showed no significant contribution between the infectious and non-infectious groups; this is may be due to the small size of the population study. the limitation in sample size was due to the clinicians prescribing treatments to the patients based on clinical examination without performing any lab examinations. additionally, there can be a chance that viral vaginitis may have a role in the infection, but this could not be ascertained because diagnosis requires sophisticated techniques for isolation which were not available at the time of this study. finally, non-infectious vaginitis is another possible cause of genital tract symptoms. in this study the most common symptom present among patients with infectious vaginitis group was itching (38.5%) and smelly discharge (40%). on the other hand, 61.5% and 60% of patients with non-infectious vaginitis group had itching and smelly discharge respectively, as shown in table 2. however, statistically the association was not significant for both symptoms (0.9 and 0.7) respectively. vaginal discharge is one of the most common symptoms of vaginitis and itching is more common in bacterial and candidal vaginitis. redness around kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 157 vagina and pain during sex was found in 53.3% and 37.5% of infectious group respectively. among non-infectious group, 62.5% had pain during sex. this finding is agreement with the result of paladine & desai (2018) who reported that non-infectious vaginitis, atrophic vaginitis, is usually associated with pain during sex or urination. swelling of the vagina was observed in 56.5% of non-infectious group which might be caused by allergies, sexually transmitted infections (stis) and cysts which are not included in this study [10]. table 2: distribution of risk factors and symptoms between infectious and non-infectious microorganisms variables infectious vaginitis (19) no (%) noninfectious vaginitis (31) no (%) total p-value risk factors diabetes yes 1 (20) 4 (80) 5 0.637 no 27 (60) 18 (40) 45 the infection present in partner yes 3 (75) 1 (25) 4 0.147 no 16 (65.2) 30 (34.8) 46 history of fungal infection yes 13 (46.4) 15 (53.6) 28 0.166 no 6 (27.3) 16 (72.7) 22 miscarriage yes 11 (40.7) 16 (59.3) 27 0.665 no 8 (34.8) 15 (65.2) 23 hormonal imbalance yes 3 (30) 7 (70) 10 0.726 no 15 (38.5) 24 (61.5) 39 infection present before yes 16 (45.7) 19 (54.3) 35 0.310 no 3 (25) 9 (75) 12 use antibiotics yes 3 (75) 1 (25) 4 0.303 no 13 (40.6) 19 (59.4) 32 symptoms swelling yes 4 (44.4) 5 (56.5) 9 0.660 no 15 (36.6) 26 (63.4) 41 itching yes 10 (38.5) 16 (61.5) 26 0.944 no 9 (37.5) 15 (62.5) 24 burning yes 4 (28.6) 10 (71.4) 14 0.522 no 15(41.7) 21 (58.3) 36 pain intercourse yes 9(37.5) 15 (62.5) 24 0.944 no 10 (38.5) 16 (61.5) 26 redness yes 8 (53.3) 7 (46.7) 15 0.144 no 11 (31.4) 24 (68.6) 35 discharge yes 12 (40) 18 (60) 30 0.721 no 7 (35) 13 (65) 20 the microscopic examination of the wet-mount method was done for 42 patients. this method was used for detecting microorganisms, pus cells, rbc, and epithelial cells. microscopic examination of patient’s vaginal swabs revealed that 63.6% of infectious group had high level of epithelial cells ++ (>10), while the most patients with non-infectious vaginitis had + (10) or less epithelial cell in the microscopic field. the presence of epithelial cells was significantly associated with infectious vaginitis (p value 0.04). however, regarding the presence of the pus cells and rbcc, the variation was not significant as shown in table 3, where 90% and only 30 % of patients have blood. kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 158 the laboratory evaluation includes unstained wet mount was used for detecting microorganisms, pus cells, rbc, and epithelial cells. the presence of epithelial, pus and rbcc are indicators of infection conforming to literature [11]. no microorganisms were detect by this method accept one sample in which yeast was present. experience has shown that the biggest problem lays in the basic infectiological diagnostic procedures. diagnosis by either wet mount or culture depends on an experienced microscopist. wet mount microscopy for detection of vaginal pathogens is a rapid, inexpensive screening technique, but has low sensitivity [12]. table 3: the results of direct microscopic examinations of infectious and non-infectious groups. laboratory tests infectious vaginitis no (%) noninfectious vaginitis no (%) total no p-value cases 14 (33.3) 28 (66.7) 42 epithelial cells + 6 (23.1) 20 (76.9) 26 0.049 ++ 7 (63.6) 4 (36.4) 11 +++ 1 (25) 3 (75) 4 pus + 4 (44.4) 5 (55.6) 9 0.559 ++ 8 (34.8) 15 (65.2) 23 +++ 2 (20) 8 (80) 10 rbcs + 12 (42.9) 16 (57.1) 28 0.197 ++ 2 (15.4) 11 (84.6) 13 ++++ 0 (0) 1 (100) 1 4. conclusion and recommendation the diagnosis of vaginal infection among women in maternity hospital in sulaimani is basically dependent on clinical symptoms without performing any laboratory examinations. the treatment is usually includes both antibacterial antifungal agents. in this study different diagnosis methods were used to detect the causes of vaginitis such as direct microscopic examination, culturing and gram stain method. based on the present study results, there was different types of vaginitis including non-infectious vaginitis and infectious vaginitis (bacterial and yeast infection). therefore, it is essential to perform laboratory examination for the patients to detect the causative agents of vaginitis. vaginitis can be partially diagnosed with physical examination; however the microscopic examination and culture analysis are very important to detect the presence of the pathogens. the study recommends more laboratory diagnosis for early and accurate diagnosis such as vaginal ph, biochemical tests, whiff test. unfortunately, identification of the exact species of candida was not done in this study. therefore, isolation and identification tests of vaginal candida species such as germ tube test or pcr are recommended. reference [1] a. m. hasan, “review on : vaginitis . a problem to be solved !!,” j. pharm. chem. biol. sci., vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 104–110, 2016. [2] j. van schalkwyk et al., “vulvovaginitis: screening for and management of trichomoniasis, vulvovaginal candidiasis, and bacterial vaginosis,” j. obstet. gynaecol. canada, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 266–274, 2015, doi: 10.1016/s17012163(15)30316-9. [3] h. l. paladine and u. a. desai, “vaginitis: diagnosis and treatment,” am. fam. physician, vol. 97, no. 5, pp. 321–329, 2018. [4] m. s. a. razzak, a. h. al-charrakh, and b. h. al-greitty, “relationship between lactobacilli and opportunistic bacterial pathogens associated with vaginitis,” vol. 3, no. 4, 2011, doi: 10.4297/najms.2011.3185. [5] b. larsen and g. r. g. monif, “understanding the bacterial flora of the female genital tract,” clin. infect. dis. an off. publ. infect. dis. soc. am., vol. 32, no. 4, pp. e69-77, 2001, doi: 10.1086/318710. [6] a. bahram, b. hamid, and t. zohre, “prevalence of bacterial vaginosis and impact of genital hygiene practices in non-pregnant women in zanjan, iran,” oman med. j., vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 288–293, 2009, doi: kurdistan journal of applied research | 4th international conference on the health and medical science: medical researches improve life quality (ichms 2020) | 159 10.5001/omj.2009.58. [7] e. ranjit, b. r. raghubanshi, s. maskey, and p. parajuli, “prevalence of bacterial vaginosis and its association with risk factors among nonpregnant women: a hospital based study,” int. j. microbiol., vol. 2018, 2018, doi: 10.1155/2018/8349601. [8] s. giakoumelou, n. wheelhouse, k. cuschieri, g. entrican, s. e. m. howie, and a. w. horne, “the role of infection in miscarriage,” hum. reprod. update, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 116–133, 2016, doi: 10.1093/humupd/dmv041. [9] tavo v., “tavo v. prevalence of mycoplasma hominis and ureaplazma urealyticum among women of reproductive age in albania.,” med arch., vol. 67, no. 1, 2013. [10] g. a. lakshmi, k; aishwarya, j.r.; chitralekha, s; menezes, “review on infectious vaginitis research journal of pharmaceutical , biological and chemical sciences review on infectious vaginitis lakshmi k *, aishwarya jr , chitralekha s , and menezes ga july-september,” res. j. pharm. biol. chem. sci., vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 679–688, 2013. [11] c. edru, sylvie pd; nicolas, meda md, msc; mohamed, fofana md; georges, soula md, msc; jules, bazié andré md; jean paul, “etiologic_study_of_genitourinary_infections_in.11 (1).pdf,” sex. transm. dis., vol. 23, no. 2, p. p 151-156, 1996. [12] s. c. m. madhumati j patil, jyoti m nagamoti, “diagnosis of trichomonas vaginalis from vaginal specimens by wet mount microscopy, in pouch tv culture system, and pcr,” j glob infect dis, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 22–25, 2012. 1. introduction 4. conclusion and recommendation noninfectious vaginitis (31) infectious vaginitis (19) total p-value variables no no (%) no (%) 37.5±12.9 38±13 36±14 age (mean±sd) less than 25 8 4 (50) 4 (50) 25-35 18 9 (50) 9 (50) 0.199 age groups 36-46 13 11 (84.6) 2 (15.4) more than 47 11 7 (63.6) 4 (36.4) 3 0 (0) 3 (100) illiterate 15 11 (73.3) 4 (26.7) primary school education level 0.024 11 4 (36.4) 7 (63.6) graduated 42 25 (59.5) 17 (40.5) house wife 0.808 7 5 (71.4) 2 (28.6) student occupation 1 1 (100) 0 (0) worker 45 16 (35.6) urban 29 (64.4) 0.335 residency  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 2 | july 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.2.20 prevalence of hepatitis b, c, and d among thalassemia patients in sulaimani governorate salih ahmed hama university of sulaimani, college of science, biology dept, komar university for science & technology, mls dept, university of human development, college of science salih.hama@univsul.edu.iq; salih.hama@kust.edu.iq; salih.hama@uhd.edi.iq moaid ibrahim sawa college of pharmacy, hawler medical university dr_sawa@yahoo.com abstract: infectious diseases are the leading cause of mortality worldwide, with hepatitis viruses in particular making global impact on socioeconomic development and this infection remains a serious public health issue. this study was performed to investigate the prevalence of hepatitis b, c and d among multitransfused risk groups in sulaimani governorate, 120 major thalassemic patients were tested by serological and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (elisa) technique and recombinant immunoblot assay (riba) test was done as a confirmatory test for all hcv elisa positive patients. it was observed that the prevalence of hcv was higher (29.1%) comparing to hbv (22.5%) and hdv (3.3%). the prevalence of hcv-hbv coinfection was (5%), hcv-hbv-hdv coinfections were (0.83%). statistical analysis showed that the age was significantly effective on the prevalence of hbv (p = 0.009), parenteral medication users showed a significant relation with hbv and hcv prevalence (p = 0.03 and 0.041) respectively. the blood transfusion frequency was significantly related to hbv and hcv prevalence (p = 0.042 and 0.035) respectively. it was noticed that vaccination significantly related to hbv prevalence among thalassemic patients (p = 0.002). keywords: hcv, hbv, hdv, elisa, co-infection, thalassemia 1. introduction hepatitis is an inflammation of the liver and is a major public health problem worldwide; it can cause considerable morbidity and mortality among the human population from acute to chronic infections expressed as acute and chronic hepatitis, cirrhosis and hepatocarcinoma [1]. at least, five viral etiological agents alphabetically named a, b, c, d, and e have definitely been recognized, in addition to f and g which have also been described [2]. hepatitis b virus is a small enveloped virus, hepatotropic, with a partly double-stranded, circular dna genome [3, 4], a member of the hepadnaviridae family, which is a major cause of acute and chronic hepatitis, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma. more than 2000 million people have been infected with this virus; about 350 millions of whom remain infected chronically and become carriers of the virus [5, 6]. hepatitis c is a small, enveloped, positive stranded rna virus and is a member of flaviviridae family [7, 8, 9]. it can result in acute or chronic hepatitis, 170 million chronic carriers worldwide are present [10, 11]. it is highly mutable due to lacking proof-reading activity [12, 13]. hepatitis delta virus is a defective and negative sense single-stranded circular rna virus [14, 15]. it requires hepatitis b surface antigen (hbsag) for packaging and transmission, and always coexists with hepatitis b virus (hbv) in natural infections [16, 17]. it is roughly spherical, enveloped, without distinct nucleocapsid structure [18, 19]. hdv was shown to be associated with the most severe forms of acute and chronic hepatitis in many hbsag-positive patients and present worldwide in all age groups [20] with a high prevalence in different countries [11]. multitransfused thalassemia patients are a population at high risk for blood-borne viral infections, especially for hbv and hcv which can cause post transfusion hepatitis [21]. the reported frequency of infection varies significantly for different countries, due to different prevalence and sensitivity of the diagnostic methods [22]. it was proved that the blood transfusion is a common transmission pathway of blood-borne viral hepatitis among thalassemia patients who continuously receive blood due to their disease type [23]. this study was aimed to investigate the prevalence hbv, hcv, and hdv among thalassemia patients in sulaimani. 2. materials and methods fresh venous blood was collected from 120 major thalassemia patients in sulaimani governorate sulaimani governorate which is located in the iraqi kurdistan region from september 1, 2007, to august 1, 2008. serum was separated and distributed to three parts and stored in deep freeze (-80 o c). elisa technique was depended for detection of anti-hcv antibodies (bioelisa hcv, biokit, co. spain), hbs antigens (bioelisa hbsag, biokit, co. spain) and anti-hdv antibodies (bioelisa hdv, biokit, co. spain). for all elisa positive hcv samples riba test (ortho diagnostic, raritan, new york) was done as a confirmatory test and riba negative samples were canceled. all laboratory tests and examinations were done in post graduate research laboratories in biology department, central laboratory in sulaimani, hiwa hospital laboratory, and central laboratory for disease analysis in baghdad. the obtained results were statistically analyzed using spss version 13, depending on regression and both chisquare test and t-test. 3. results the total prevalence of hbv was (22.5%), hcv (29.1%), and hdv (3.3%) among thalassemia patients (table, 1). depending on the three age groups, the highest hbv prevalence was with patients their age above 5 years (32.3%), also hcv prevalence was highest among patients their age between 1-5 years (35.2%). hbv prevalence was (24.7%) among patients with frequent medication uses, whereas hcv prevalence was higher among the same group (32.3%) and concurrent infection with hbv-hcv was (5.7%) (fig. -1-). analyzing the results statistically showed that the age significantly related to the prevalence of hbv (p = 0.009), also parenteral medication uses showed a significant relation with hbv and hcv prevalence (p = 0.03 and 0.041) respectively. hbv prevalence was higher among thalassemia patients received blood once less than 1 month and was (35.1%), whereas hcv prevalence was higher among the same group and was (43.2%) and concurrent hbvhcv infection was (6%) among patients who received blood once more than 1 month. hbv prevalence was (24.27%) among patients with the previous history of surgical operations, while hcv prevalence was higher among the same group and was (32%). it was noticed that hbv prevalence was higher among non-vaccinated patients (31.5%) (fig. -2-). statistical analysis showed that blood transfusion significantly related to hbv and hcv prevalence (p = 0.042 and 0.035) respectively. it was noticed that vaccination significantly related to hbv prevalence among thalassemia patients (p = 0.002). table -1risk factors associated with hbv, hcv, hdv and concurrent infections among thalassemia patients in sulaimani governorate risk factors subject no. hbv hbv-hdv hcv hbv-hcv hbv-hcvhdv no (%) no (%) no (%) no (%) no (%) age (years) < 1 21 2 (9.5%) 0 (0.0%) 5 (23.8%) 1 (4.7%) 0 (0.0%) 1-5 34 4 (11.7%) 1 (2.9%) 12 (35.2%) 1 (2.9%) 0 (0.0%) > 5 65 21 (32.3%) 3 (4.6%) 18 (27.6%) 4 (6.1%) 1 (1.5%) parenteral medication yes 105 26 (24.7%) 4 (3.8%) 34 (32.3%) 6 (5.7%) 1 (0.09%) no 15 0 (0.0%) 0 (0.0%) 1 (6.6%) 0 (0.0%) 0 (0.0%) blood transfusion * < 1 month 37 13 (35.1%) 1 (2.7%) 16 (43.2%) 1 (2.7%) 0 (0.0%) > 1 month 83 14 (20.4%) 3 (3.6%) 19 (27.7%) 5 (6%) 1 (1.2%) past surgical operation yes 17 2 (11.7%) 0 (0.0%) 2 (11.7%) 0 (0.0%) 0 (0.0%) no 103 25 (24.27%) 4 (3.8%) 33 (32%) 6 (5.8%) 1 (0.09%) vaccination yes 44 3 (6.8%) 0 (0.0%) no 76 24 (31.5%) 4 (5.2%) total 120 27 (22.5%) 4 (3.3%) 35 (29.1%) 6 (5%) 1 (0.008%) * depending on major and intermediate thalassemia. 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 % p re v al en ce hbv hbv-hdv hcv hcv-hbv hcv-hbv-hdv risk factors figure-17prevalence of hbv, hcv, hdv and concurrent infection between them among thalassemic patients in sulaimani governorate in regard to some risk factors age (years) < 1 age (years) 1 to 5 age (years) > 5 parenteral medication yes parenteral medication no figure-1prevalence of hbv, hcv, and hdv among thalassemia patients in sulaimani governorate 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 % p re v a le n c e < 1 month > 1 month yes no yes no blood transfusion past surgical operation vaccination risk factors figure-18prevalence of hbv, hcv, hdv and concurrent infections between them among thalassemic patients in sulaimani governorate in regard to some risk factors hbv hbv-hdv hcv hcv-hbv hcv-hbv-hdv figure-2risk factors related to the hbv, hcv and hdv prevalence among thalassemia patients. 4. discussion multi-transfused thalassemia patients are a population at high risk for blood-borne viral infections. several factors could explain the high prevalence of hbv, hcv and sometimes hdv among thalassemic patients, including frequent blood transfusion [23]. the vast majority of the cases may be due to the sensitivity of blood screening before transfusion [24], as it was clarified by different investigators that advances in screening for detection of blood-borne viruses have greatly diminished the risk of infection with blood transfusion in developing countries [25]. moreover, parenteral medication may be another significant risk factor rather than transfusion [26]. it was observed that hcv prevalence was higher than hbv, which may be due to the availability of the hbv vaccine that can be effective in minimizing the prevalence of hbv infections, especially the current study confirmed the positive effects of vaccination. the current results were parallel to different previous studies [27, 28]. moreover; the current observations agreed with past studies who showed that the prevalence of hcv was higher than that of hbv [29, 30]. from other reports, it was concluded that the frequency of hcv markers was 46.8% [31] which was higher than the results observed in the current study. reports from italy found that about 15% of thalassemia patients had been exposed to hepatitis c and the prevalence of this virus was significantly high [32]. results of our study were in agreement with results obtained by others who recorded the higher prevalence of hcv than hbv among multitransfused thalassemia [33, 34], although others reported high hbv prevalence among multitransfused thalassemia patients [35, 36, 37]. studies concluded that in countries with a high human development index, the rate of new viral hepatitis infection in thalassemia patients has dropped markedly in recent years but this has not been the case in countries with a low-medium human development index. among the large majority of chronically-transfused patients living in underdeveloped or developing countries, hcv infection remains a significant problem for patients with thalassemia major [25]. in iran [38] it was observed that the prevalence of hcv infection in thalassemia patients has decreased significantly. the results observed in this study were similar to observations reported by other investigators in relatively recent years. costello with colleagues [39] observed that hcv is responsible for 8090% of post transfusion hepatitis in patients who received blood transfusion. in a study done in egypt [40]. it was found that hcv prevalence was higher than hbv prevalence with was parallel to the current results. similarly, in pakistan, it was found that hcv prevalence was higher than hbv among thalassemia patients [41]. moreover, they found that the older patients were at a higher risk for infections with these viruses with is parallel to the current conclusions. the current results were agreed with recent observations reported by khalil and co-workers in 2016 [42], who reported a higher prevalence of hcv than hbv among thalassemia patients. as it was clarified the prevalence of hbv was relatively low, otherwise the hdv cannot be found without hbv, so the lowest prevalence of hdv infections can be explained by lower hbv infections as well as discussed, the hbv vaccination also may be behind the lowest hdv infection. although there are no data about hdv infections in our hospitals and community, this is the first study on hdv in kurdistan. similar studies done among type ii diabetic patients in sulaimani city reported a lower prevalence of hcv infections [43]. 5. conclusions from the current study the following points were concluded: 1. thalassemic patients in sulaimani governorate are at a high risk for blood-borne viral hepatitis infections including hcv, hbv, and hdv. 2. the prevalence of hcv was higher in compare hbv and hdv. 3. the age (duration of blood transfusion), blood transfusion showed significant effects on the hcv and hbv seropositivity. 4. vaccination was significantly effective on hbv seropositivity. 6. references 1. y. a. johnsosn, j. graeme, m. alexander, a. alfredo, “viral hepatitis. gut supplement; pp. s47s62, 1991. 2. a. j. zuckerman. alphabet of hepatitis viruses. lancet; 347:558-9. 1996. 3. c. seeger; w. s. mason. hepatitis b virus biology. microbiol mol biol rev; 64:51-68. 2000. 4. d. ganem; a. m. 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(mcpherson ra, pincus mr, eds)”. henry's 22nd ed. philadelphia, pa: elsevier saunders, 2011. 40. m. d. khaled. prevalence of hepatitis b, hepatitis c and human immunodeficiency virus infections among thalassemia patients in nineveh governorate, iraq. egypt. j. exp. biol. (zool.), 10(1): 85–87. 2014. 41. u. saeed; y. waheed; m. ashraf; u. waheed; s. anjum and m. sohail. estimation of hepatitis b virus, hepatitis c virus, and different clinical parameters in the thalassemic population of capital twin cities
of pakistan. virology: research and treatment; 6: 11–16. 2015. 42. s. khalil; h. s. khan; p. akhtar. status of hepatitis b and c in beta thalassemia major patients. journal of islamabad medical & dental college (jimdc); 5 (2): 71-73. 2016. 43. s. a. hama. hepatitis c seropositivity and rna detection among type2 diabetic patients in sulaimani governorateiraqi kurdistan region. journal of zankoy sulaimani-a-.18-4; 1-8. 2016 kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq middle hepatic vein incorporation in live donor liver graft transplantation; implication and safety mahmoud ali abdi college of medicine, university of zakho, fellow at kurdistan board for medical specialization in digestive surgery, mbchb, fkbms, zheen international hospital, erbil, kurdistan region, iraq email: mahmoud.abdi@uoz.edu.krd tayeb sabir kareem department of surgery, hawler medical university, department of digestive surgery, kurdistan board for medical specialization, fibms, frcs, facs, rizgary teaching hospital, erbil, kurdistan region, iraq email: tayebsk@yahoo.com assad abidon hassoun department of digestive surgery, kurdistan board for medical specialization, general surgery & organ transplant surgeon, md, facs, cpmc san francisco, ca 94115, zheen international hospital, erbil, kurdistan region, iraq email: assadhassoun@yahoo.com article info abstract volume 6 – issue 1june 2021 doi: 10.24017/science.2021.1.14 article history: received 11/7/2021 accepted 28/7/2021 background: in this retrospective study, the middle hepatic vein (mhv)was used in live donor liver transplantation, and the venous outflow dynamics were studied immediately after transplant meanwhile we studied the impact of the graft function on donor functionality and overall donor safety. method: from october 2017 to october 2020, 40 adults to adults live donor liver transplants were performed at our center. postoperative doppler ultrasound was performed for recipients and donors immediately after surgery and then daily until discharge. results: mean donor age was (28.5 ± 6.9) year, male/ female 19/ 21, intensive care unit stay (1.2 ± 0.43), word stay (5.2 ± 1.4) days, portal vein velocity (43.5 ± 18.4 ml/sec), hepatic artery resistive index (0.6 ± 0.09) and triphasic/ continuous venous outflow 30/10, postoperative day one and at the discharge total serum bilirubin was (2.8 ± 1.8) and (2 ± 1.4), postoperative day one and at the discharge international normalization ratio was (1.7 ± 0.5) and (1.2 ± 0.2) respectively. mean recipient age was (48.5 ± 11.3), male/female 27/13, intensive care unit stay (4.75 ± 3.9), word stay (7.7 ± 3.7) days, portal vein velocity (63.96 ± 24.65 ml/sec), hepatic artery peak systolic velocity (74.76 ± 32.85) hepatic artery resistive keywords: ldlt, mhv, donor safety, doppler us, venous outflow, liver transplant mailto:mahmoud.abdi@uoz.edu.krd mailto:tayebsk@yahoo.com mailto:assadhassoun@yahoo.com kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |136 index (0.7 ± 0.15), and triphasic/continuous venous outflow 27/13. conclusion: middle hepatic vein incorporation in live donor liver graft is safe with a favorable outcome for recipient and donor, doppler us is an important tool for evaluation and follow up of donor and recipient for detection of vascular complications and assessment of venous outflow. in addition, early discharge of the donor is a reasonable option. copyright © 2021 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction live donor liver transplant (ldlt) is challenged with small for size syndrome, which is an impairment of liver graft function especially during the first post-operative week, that is related to either the graft size or the graft parenchymal quality or the recipient portal hypertension and other medical comorbidities such as hypertension [1-4] portal pressure shear injury, as well as decrease the impedance to the arterial inflow. [5-7] using the right liver lobe and because of higher parenchymal volume would mitigate these injuries but donor safety has always been questioned when mhv is incorporated. [8-10] doppler us can be used postoperatively for the detection of vascular complications in liver transplants. [11] in this retrospective study, the middle hepatic vein was used in live donor liver transplantation and the venous outflow dynamics was studied immediately after transplant meanwhile we studied the impact of the graft function on donor functionality and overall donor safety. 2. methods and materials 2.1. study design and patient selection from october 2017 to october 2020, 40 donor-related adult to adult ldlt was performed in our center. the data was collected retrospectively from the patient's recorded files that were stored in the hospital. the institutional review board approved this study. 2.2 donor evaluation only adult to adult right lobe ldlt was included in this study, the donors were evaluated for overall health status, abo incompatibility, cmv, ebv, liver size, parenchymal texture, steatosis, the anatomy of hepatic arteries and venous system, and the anatomy of the biliary tree by history, physical exam, lab tests, doppler us, quad phasic ct of the abdomen (figure 1) and mrcp. (a) (b) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |137 (c) figure1. quad phasic ct of liver, (a) arterial phase showing hepatic arteries, (b) portal vein phase showing portal veins, and (c) venous phase showing hepatic veins. 2.3. surgical procedure partial right hepatectomy including mhv was performed for donors after intraoperative cholangiogram (figure2) and doppler us to evaluate the biliary tree and hv anatomy respectively. on table reconstruction of hepatic veins was done using recipient portal vein segment and forming a single orifice. the right grafted lobe of the liver was transplanted to the recipient after reconstruction of hepatic veins. figure 2. intraoperative cholangiogram showing a biliary tree. 2.4. postoperative doppler us postoperative doppler us was performed for recipients and donors immediately after surgery then daily until discharge. the doppler us has been performed by an expert radiologist in liver transplant doppler us. the doppler us was performed in a supine or semi-setting position using a curvilinear transducer of low frequency (2-5 mhz), the ha and pv were examined kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |138 extrahepatically and across the anastomosis, the parameters of flow and velocity of pv and psv and ri of ha were recorded. the intrahepatic branches of ha were also examined for patency. the hv and ivc were examined and the parameters of hv flow and wave-trace were recorded. the us of abdomen and liver was performed to evaluate for liver parenchyma, fluid collection or ascites. the highest recorded value of pv velocity, psv, and ri of ha was chosen from recoded parameters of pv, ha through day zero postoperative until discharge. the hepatic vein flow and wave trace were categorized as a triphasic or continuous flow. 2.5. post-operative lab values as a part of the evaluation of the donor’s liver functionality post-donation, we calculated postoperative day one and at discharge tsb and inr. 2.6. statistical analysis descriptive analysis for data was performed using spss version 25, means with standard deviations and range were expressed for pv velocity, psv, and ri of ha, and hv velocity. post-operative day one (pod 1) and at discharge tsb and post-operative day one and the discharge inr for the donor. categorical variables were analyzed using the chi-square test or fisher's test if necessary. continuous and discrete variables were analyzed using a t-test. means were compared for triphasic versus continuous hepatic venous outflow wave signals using the one-way anova test. differences at p less than .05 were considered significant. 3. results the demographic characteristics, lab values, and doppler us parameters including pv velocity, ha psv, and ri and hv waveform for donors and recipients are summarized in (table 1 and table 2) respectively. mean donor's age was (28.5 ± 6.9) range (18-42) year, they were 19 males and 21 females, mean icu stay was (1.3 ± 0.9) range (1-4) days and mean word stay before discharge was (5.2 ± 1.4) range (3-9) days, their mean pv velocity was (43.5 ± 18.4 ml/sec) range (17-91.60 ml/sec) and mean ha ri was (0.6 ± 0.09) range (0.43-0.78). table 1. the demographic characteristics and doppler us parameters for donors donor n(40) age (year) 28.5 ± 6.9 range (18-42) gender (m/f) 19/21 icu stay (days) 1.2 ± 0.4 range (1-3) word stay(days) 5.2 ± 1.4 range (3-9) pv velocity (cm/sec) 43.5 ± 18.4 range (17-91.6) ha ri 0.6 ± 0.09 range (0.4-0.8) hv waveform (triphasic/ continuous) 30/10 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |139 tsb pod 1 at discharge 2.8 ± 1.8 range (0.4-8) 2 ± 1.4 range (0.2-5.7) inr pod 1 at discharge 1.7 ± 0.5 range (1-2.8) 1.2 ± 0.2 range (0.9-2.2) table 2. the demographic characteristics and doppler us parameters for recipients recipient n (40) age (year) 48.5 ± 11.3 range (19-67) gender (m/f) 27/13 icu stay (days) 4.75 ± 3.9 range (2-20) word stay(days) 7.7 ± 3.7 range (3-22) pv velocity (cm/sec) 63.96 ± 24.65 range (21-115) ha psv (cm/sec) 74.76 ± 32.85 range (32-153) ha ri 0.7 ± 0.15 range (0.41-1) hv waveform (triphasic/ continuous) 27/13 thirty of the donor had triphasic venous outflow wave signals and 10 of them had continuous venous outflow wave signals, their mean pod 1 tsb was (2.8 ± 1.8) range (0.40-8), mean discharge tsb was (2 ± 1.4) range (0.24-5.7), mean pod 1 inr was (1.7 ± 0.5) range (1.12.8) and mean discharge inr was (1.2 ± 0.23) range (0.9 -2.2) when compared means for (triphasic vs continuous) venous outflow waveform group, there was no statistically significant difference in icu stays and word stays between two groups (table 3). table 3. compered means for (triphasic vs continuous) venous outflow waveform donor groups hv waveform n (40) mean ± sd p-value icu stay (days) continuous 10 1.30 ± 0.95 0.92 triphasic 30 1.33 ± 0.85 word stay (days) continuous 10 4.7 ± 1.05 0.23 triphasic 30 5.3 ± 1.5 regarding donor functionality and donor safety. one donor has taken back to the or on a postoperative day two for bleeding washout, one donor readmission for two days for pain, one donor developed small-for-size syndrome and completely recovered after two months follow up and one donor developed bile leak that warranted an ercp stenting and sphincteroplasty. no donor mortality, and no intervention required for any donor within the period of the study. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |140 mean recipient's age was (48.5 ± 11.3) range (19-67) year, they were 27 males and 13 females, mean icu stay was (4.75 ± 3.9) range (2-20) days and mean word stay before discharge was (7.7 ± 3.7) range (3-22) days, their mean pv velocity was (63.96 ± 24.65 ml/sec) range (21-115 ml/sec), mean ha psv was (74.76 ± 32.85) range (32-153) and their mean ha ri was (0.7 ± 0.15) range (0.41-1). 27of of the recipient had triphasic venous outflow wave signals and 13 of them had continuous venous outflow wave signals, again when compared means for (triphasic vs continuous) venous outflow waveform group, there was no statistically significant difference in icu stays and word stays between the two groups (table 4). table 4. compered means for (triphasic vs continuous) venous outflow waveform recipient groups hv waveform n (40) mean ± sd p-value icu stay (days) continuous 13 5.5 ± 4.2 0.38 triphasic 27 4.4 ± 3.8 word stay (days) continuous 13 8 ± 4.6 0.74 triphasic 27 7.6 ± 3.2 regarding recipient morbidity and mortality. two recipients were taken back to or for bleeding washout, one in pod 4 and the other in pod 6. two recipients developed transient renal failure, one required crrt for 3 days and the other for 2 days. four recipients died, one died intraoperatively from cardiogenic shock and acute myocardial infarction. two of the recipients died from sepsis in pod 5 and pod 7 respectively, and one died from dic in pod1. 4. discussion donor safety, remnant liver volume for the donor, and graft volume for the recipient are the major concerns and dilemmas for living donor liver transplant however published studies showed favorable results and minor concerns. [8-10] lee jg et al. published a study from korea, they performed living donor liver transplant without mhv in the majority of their cases and showed that donor hepatectomy can be performed successfully with minor morbidity and easily controlled complications, the biliary complications were the most common major complication, they didn't find a statistical difference in laboratory results or complication between the donor with rlv less than 30% and those with rlv of more than 30%. [12] in this study, we had one donor with a major biliary leak. he was a young male donor the amount of bile leak was about 500 ml per day which was treated by an ercp, one donor developed small for size syndrome in form of persistent hyperbilirubinemia, ascites, and mild elevation of liver enzymes but no coagulopathy or encephalopathy. [1] the donor was female with borderline liver size and overweight with a bmi of 30, we selected her because she was the only available donor for the recipient and transplantation was urgent, she had one day icu stay and discharged at postoperative day10th, follow up showed complete recovery after two months with no major complications. although we didn't interpret the donor rlv in this study, however, we relayed on postoperative tsb and inr as a reflector for donor rlv and liver function, and we studied the doppler us parameters for the donor liver immediately postoperative until discharge for evaluation of donor rl venous outflow dynamics and detection of vascular complications. we found a significant decrease in both tsb and inr in discharge day compared to pod1 and one-month follow-up showed normalization of both tsb and inr. in addition, the doppler us parameters for the kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |141 donor rl showed favorable results. although there was an increase in pv and a decrease in hair, and one quarter (10/40) had continuous venous outflow wave signals, however, there were no signs of liver congestion or any vascular complications and these changes were transient, one month follow up showed normalization of all of these changes. when incorporating the middle hepatic vein in the right lobe liver graft will mitigate graft congestion especially in segment v and viii and will give a better graft function, however, it didn't make a statistical difference regarding the recipient icu and hospital stay, in dayangac m et al. study the recipient hospital stay was 21.7 ± 14.2 vs 21.6 ± 10.9 (days) and the donor hospital stay was 10.2 ± 3.2 vs 9.7 ± 2.6. in goja s et al. study the recipient icu stay was 5.8 ± 2.2 vs 5.9 ± 2.3 (days) and their hospital stay was 15.8 ± 6.5 vs 16.1 ± 7.2(days), and the donor hospital stay was 6 (5-22) vs 6 (5-17) days for a group with mhv vs without mhv respectively. {10,13} comparing these results with the current study, this study showed more favorable results, the recipient icu stay was 4.75 ± 3.9 (days) and their hospital stay was 12.5± 6.32 (days) and the donor hospital stay was 6 (4-9) days with mhv. immediate postoperative and then daily doppler us is a reliable tool for evaluation of recipient’s liver graft and donor rl venous outflow dynamics and vascular complications and it decreases the need for more invasive ct angiography as far as there are no concerns about liver functions and there is no persistent increase in pv velocity and ha ri. although there were 10 recipients with ha ri of more than 0.8 and three recipients with ha ri of less than 0.55 which normally ranges from (0.55 to 0.8).{11} however, these changes in pv velocity and ha ri were transient and normalized after follow-up. we usually discharge donors before the normalization of their rl function including tsb and inr as far as the donor has no other concerns and we follow them weekly until liver function becomes normal and it reached normal after one-month follow-up. these mostly explain the reasons behind our shorter hospital stays for recipients and donors. 5. conclusion middle hepatic vein incorporation in live donor liver graft is safe with a favorable outcome for recipient and donor, doppler us is one the important tool for evaluation and follow up of donor and recipient for detection of vascular complications and assessment of venous outflow. in addition, early discharge of the donor is a reasonable option. 6. ethical approval this study was approved by the ethics committee of the kurdistan board of medical specialization and was conducted in accordance with the provisions of the declaration of helsinki. 7. acknowledgments special thanks to senior radiologist dr. yousif badria for his outstanding cooperation and work on doppler ultrasound. 8. grants and financial support no funding was received from any sources. 9.competing interest no competing interest kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |142 10. authors contributions mahmoud abdi: data curation, writingoriginal draft preparation, software, formal analysis. tayeb kareem: supervision, validation. assad hassoun: supervision, conceptualization, methodology, writing review & editing. 11. limitations of this study • the sample size is small and we didn't include left lobe graft in this study • we didn't study the results of long-term follow-up for recipients. • the assessment of operative factors and intraoperative parameters has not been considered in this study and further studies need to be done to evaluate all those limitations. 12. alphabetic abbreviations bmi= body mass index cmv= cytomegalovirus ct= computed tomography crrt= continuous renal replacement therapy dic= disseminated intravascular coagulation ebv= epstein-barr virus ercp= endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography ha= hepatic artery hv= hepatic vein icu= intensive care unit inr= international moralization ratio ldlt= live donor liver transplant mhv= middle hepatic vein mrcp= magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography or= operation room pod= post-operative day psv= peak systolic velocity pv= portal vein ri= resistive index rl= remnant liver rlv= remnant liver volume tsb= total serum bilirubin us= ultrasound kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |143 references [1] f. dahm, p. georgiev, p. c.-a. j. of, and u. 2005, “small‐for‐size syndrome after partial liver transplantation: definition, mechanisms of disease and clinical implications,” wiley online libr., accessed: sep. 12, 2020. [online]. available: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.16006143.2005.01081.x. [2] c. h. n. tan, s. hwang, g. k. bonney, i. s. ganpathi, k. madhavan, and w. c. a. kow, “the influence of the middle hepatic vein and its impact on outcomes in right lobe living donor liver transplantation,” hpb, vol. 21, no. 5, pp. 547–556, 2019, doi: 10.1016/j.hpb.2018.09.003. [3] t. ito et al., “changes in portal venous pressure in the early phase after living-donor liver transplantation: pathogenesis and clinical implications,” transplantation, vol. 75, no. 8, pp. 1313–1317, 2003, doi: 10.1097/01.tp.0000063707.90525.10. [4] s. h. kim, e. c. lee, j. r. shim, and s. j. park, “right lobe living donors ages 55 years old and older in liver transplantation,” liver transplant., vol. 23, no. 10, pp. 1305–1311, 2017, doi: 10.1002/lt.24823. [5] s. k. g. lee et al., “anterior segment congestion of a right liver lobe graft in living-donor liver transplantation and strategy to prevent congestion,” j. hepatobiliary. pancreat. surg., vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 16–25, 2003, doi: 10.1007/s10534-002-0789-5. [6] m. appukuttan et al., “functional hepatic venous outflow and its correlation with early graft function in live donor liver transplantation,” hpb, vol. 18, p. e556, 2016, doi: 10.1016/j.hpb.2016.03.485. [7] h. r. yang et al., “living donor right hepatectomy with inclusion of the middle hepatic vein: outcome in 200 donors,” transplant. proc., vol. 44, no. 2, pp. 460–462, 2012, doi: 10.1016/j.transproceed.2012.01.060. [8] t. ikegami, s. onda, k. furukawa, k. haruki, y. shirai, and t. gocho, small-for-size graft, small-for-size syndrome and inflow modulation in living donor liver transplantation, vol. 27, no. 11. 2020. [9] x. z. jiang et al., “safety of donor in adult-to-adult living donor liver transplantation using right lobe graft,” transplant. proc., vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 150–152, 2007, doi: 10.1016/j.transproceed.2006.10.013. [10] m. dayangac et al., “use of middle hepatic vein in right lobe living donor liver transplantation,” transpl. int., vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 285–291, 2010, doi: 10.1111/j.1432-2277.2009.00978.x. [11] o. abdelaziz and h. attia, “2016 liver transplantation : global view doppler ultrasonography in living donor liver transplantation recipients : intraand post-operative vascular complications,” vol. 22, no. 27, pp. 6145–6172, 2016, doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i27.6145. [12] j. g. lee et al., “donor safety in living donor liver transplantation: the korean organ transplantation registry study,” liver transplant., vol. 23, no. 8, pp. 999–1006, 2017, doi: 10.1002/lt.24778. [13] s. goja, s. kumar yadav, and a. singh soin, “readdressing the middle hepatic vein in right lobe liver donation: triangle of safety,” liver transplant., vol. 24, no. 10, pp. 1363–1376, 2018, doi: 10.1002/lt.25289.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.48 intrusion detection and prevention systems in wireless networks ibrahim al-shourbaji computer network department, computer science and information system college, jazan university, 82822 6649 jazan, kingdom of saudi arabia ialshourbaji@jazanu.edu.sa samaher al-janabi department of computer science, faculty of science for women, university of babylon, hilla 00964, iraq samaher@uobabylon.edu.iq abstract:in society today, public and personal communication are often carried out through wireless technology. these technologies can be vulnerable to various types of attacks. attackers can access the signal to listen or to cause more damage on the wireless networks. intrusion detection and prevention system (idps) technology can be used to monitor and analyze the signal for any infiltration to prevent interception or other malicious intrusion. an overview description of idpss and their core functions, the primary types of intrusion detection mechanisms, and the limitations of idpss are discussed. this work perceives the requirements of developing new and sophisticated detection and prevention methods based on, and managed by, combining smart techniques including machine learning, data mining, and game theory along with risk analysis and assessment techniques. this assists wireless networks toremain secure and aids system administrators to effectively monitor their systems. keywords: wireless networks, intrusion-detection and prevention systems, technology, security, risk analysis 1. introduction today, wireless technology plays a significant role in every aspect of our lives, both personal and public. however, the growth in the use of wireless technology has brought new challenges and limitations to user's privacy [1, 2]. this is because wireless networks are vulnerable to a number of attacks and threats; examples include unauthorized access, denial of service (dos), and distributed denial of service (ddos) attacks. the intrusion problem in awireless network has become one of the leading causes of concern with the increaseduse of wireless networks [3, 4]. while the intrusion problem has existed for decades, the problem has been rising in intensity and vigor as more end-users use computers, the internet, the web, mobile, and ad hoc wireless networks[5]. wireless and mobile networks provide new challenges because of their nature to rely on network signals without exact or known boundaries. in addition, wireless systems are very competitive in regard to their performance, price, and convenience in connection [6]. however, there is a wide-spread, and connection convenience means that an attack can happen at multiple remote locations at any time [7]. therefore, the field of wireless network and communication security has become essential and needs to be protected from attacks. further, the integrity and availability of these systems must be protected to provide the necessary facilities to make them safe from unexpected attacks [8]. idpss can distinguish whether an activity is an attack attempt or normal system behavior. such examples of these activities include trying to identify incidents of possible attacks, logging information of the attackers, and alerting the system administrator or trying to prevent them from succeeding. therefore, by using idps, the wireless network activities can be controlled, possible attacks can be avoided, and the risk can be contained [9]. because of a growing number of intrusion events, security threats, and the ways that the hackers can use to accomplish their goals, the need arises to use smarter idpss. this paper focuses on providing an overview of idpss, their role in detecting and preventing attacks from succeeding, and their drawbacks in wireless networks. the remainder of this research paper is structured as follows: section 2 presents the attacks to thewireless network. section 3 provides a brief outline about intrusion detection and prevention systems (idpss) functions. section 4 provides the idpss limitations. section 5 provides a discussion of the paper. section 6 concludes the article and provides future recommendations of this research. 2. literature review there are several ways that attackers can infiltrate wireless networks. the first way is by targeting the various nodes, such as access points (ap) within the wireless network to get unauthorized access. the second way is using a wireless card or wi-fi detection technique such as war driving, which utilizes nets tumbler, or kismet [10]. these devices give attackers access to all the private information about the victim machine. such examples include user identification, encryption method and the channel they are using. with this information, the attackers then can access and exploit the victim machine [11]. there are two main types of attacks on wireless networks, (ddos) and (dos). in recent years, there has been a rise in these attacks. for instance, there was a wave of dos attacks on some big e-commerce and wireless information sites including yahoo!, e’trade, buy.com, and amazon.com [12]. according toanother recent report by neustar, the effects of ddos attacks on the business sector reach about £100,000 per hour [13]. these examples present and confirm the impact of these attacks on business sectors. due to this, the organizations must take security seriously and cannot ignore security strategies. another common type of attack is a wormhole attack that involves an attacker copying messages or packets by channeling them to another network. they then send them to another faster destination node, so the copied packets reach the attacker's destination node before the original packets. attackers do this using an invisible wormhole tunnel [14]. figure 1 shows a wormhole attack scenario. figure 1wormhole attack scenario. hackers can also attack a wireless network system through man-in-the-middle attack. this can be achieved by introducing an authorized access point (ap) into the wireless networks. the attackers get access to the ap information of an active ssid by creating unauthorized ap. in this way, attackers can intercept the communication. if a tcp connects a client to a server, then the attacker will be the man-inthe-middle attack. in such a case, the attacker splits the tcp into two separate connections, with the common node being that of the attacker. this means that the first connection is from the client to the attacker, and the second will be from attacker to the server. every response and request will take place between the client and server through the attacker. jamming is another type of attack that hackers can use to disallow legitimate users, marking them instead as unauthorized. because of this attack, the system becomes “jammed” with all the illegitimate traffic signals until it cannot process the signals further. the effect is that no one can access or efficiently use the system – legitimate or otherwise [15]. attackers may conduct “brute force dictionary” to determine the key or password that is in common with all shared wireless clients. in this approach, the attackers systematically try every possible key until the password is guessed and thenthe attacker can access the system. [16]medium access control (mac) address spoofing isanother way that attackers can launch wireless networks. most importantly, it is hard to detect mac address spoofing. sequence number (sn) tracking technique is mainly used to detect spoofing. this technique has a variety of disadvantages including that it cannot be used in systems with wireless cards that do not support standard 802.11 sequence number patterns.italso may increase the number of false positives, and therefore, considerattack activities as normal system behaviors [17]. during the last decade, several solutions were proposed to overcome misuse and anomaly problems. some researchers [18] proposed a hybrid detection approach to increase the capabilities of the current wireless intrusion detection and prevention system (widps) by amalgamating two intelligent methods of misuse and anomaly. in another effort, a hybrid ids has been proposed by incorporating the packet header anomaly detection and network traffic anomaly detection systems, which are ananomaly based idss with misuse-based ids snort [19]. the main goal behind their method is to identify known attacks by misuse while anomaly discovers unknown attacks. in another study, a hybrid method was proposed [20]. in this method, the authors integrate signature based (snort) with anomaly based (naïve bayes) to enhance system security from attacks. the results showed that good performance was attained by their proposed method. a two-stage classification system was developed [21]. the system uses self-organizing map (som) neural networks and k-means algorithmto correlate the related alerts and to further classify the alerts into classes of true and false alarms. the experiments showed that all superfluous and noisy alertswere effectively reduced, which often contribute to more than 50% of false alarms. a new intrusion detection method based on antibody concentration (nidmbac) was presented to reduce false alarm rate without affecting detection rate [22].the basic definitions of self, non-self, antigen, and detector ofthe intrusion detection domain were defined. based on the antigen intrusion intensity, the change of antibody number is recorded from the process of clone proliferation for detectors based on the antigen classified recognition. the authors presented a probabilistic calculation technique for the intrusion alarm production, which rests on the correlation between the antigen intrusion intensity and the antibody concentration. the proposed method achieved better performance compared to traditional techniques. a hybrid statistical approach using data mining and decision tree classification was proposed [23]. the authors focus on detection involving statistical analysis of both attack and normal traffics. because of their work, the statistical analysis can be manipulated to decrease misclassification of false positives and differentiate between attacks and false positives for the traffic data. other researchers have [24] proposed a network intrusion detection system based on acombinatorial algorithm (ca-nids). their proposed algorithmemploys additional databases to enable thesignature based system to act as an anomaly based systemto detectnew attacks and speed up network traffic during traffic analysis. the final results show that better accuracy was achieved by the proposed algorithm. from theabove-described research, it is clear that organizations need to employ idpss in their systems, and security should be part of an organization's overall security management and risk assessment plan. these systems can help them detect and prevent these attacks from succeeding. 3. idps functions the conventional way for securing a wireless network is to design or to use a security mechanism, such as authentication mechanisms, virtual private networks (vpn), and firewalls that create a protective barrier around the network. however, such security measures have inevitable vulnerabilities and are usually not sufficient to ensure that the systems are kept secure all the time. on the other hand, attackers always attempt to find ways to gain access to systems. this has resulted in the need for security technology that can monitor the systems, identify possible threats, and attempt to prevent them from succeeding [18]. idps can be used to complement the conventional security mechanisms. it provides four essential security functions.these functions include monitoring, analyzing, detecting, and preventing unusual and unauthorized activities [19]. idps aims at performing early detection of malicious activity to prevent more severedamage to the protected systems. intrusion detection system (ids) is a software or hardware that automatically detects intrusion into the system. an intrusion prevention system (ips) detects intrusions and can also attempt to stop possible intrusions from succeeding. in addition, ips can also compare signals to known signatures of previously detected intrusions on the current system as well as from a database of collected and published attack signatures. [20]. there are two general ways to detect intrusions based on signature, including signature-based and anomaly based detection. the signature-based approach can be easily compared to anti-virus software that analyzes and characterizes attack details to formulate signatures. once the signatures are characterized, they can then besearched for and available information on the computer systems, such as audit data logs, can be compared. conversely, anomaly detection notices unusual behavior on the network or in the system, compared to what is defined as “normal.” for this method, it is crucial to develop constructs for normal user, host, and network behavior through acompilation of normal data collected without intrusion. the event data that is monitored by the idss is compared to various activities to determine what is normal and what may be considered abnormal, and therefore cause for alarm. table 1 summarizes pros and cons of the detection methodologies. table 1: the advantages and disadvantages of the intrusion detection methodologies intrusion detection techniques advantages disadvantages signature based  effective method and high detection accuracy to detect known attack  low computational cost  high false alarm for unknown attacks or vulnerabilitie s  hard to keep knowledge base up to date anomaly based detection  effective to detect new vulnerabilities  less dependent on operating system (os)  timeconsuming to classify attacks  difficultto activate alerts in proper time digital forensics is the process of investigating to identify, trace, and analyze illegal and fraudulent occurrences and provide proof to enforce laws against such events. idps can be used to provide, record, and document the information needed to identify suspicious early activities and may even lead to prevention of more serious damage [21]. thus, an idps is not only very useful tool for collecting and interpreting digital evidences that may be used in a court of law, but also can draw the big picture of the activities of the system and can test the effectiveness of the controlenvironment by identifying policies and attributes that breach security and privacy. in addition, idpss provide valuable information about how the attack took place, what the intruder achieved, and which methods the intruders used to accomplish their goals even if an idps fails to prevent an intrusion. a person, organization, or business can benefit from this additional information to quickly respond to abnormal activities within the system or repair security measures and try to prevent them from succeeding in proper time. finally, it can be used to formulate continuous future security improvements. 4. limitations of intrusion detection systems (idps) one of the main limitations of idps, specifically those that use anomaly based approach, is that it creates false alarms need to be tackled [22].the false alarm leads to complacency among those monitoring the alarms. monitoring the alarms is also tiring because it is an ongoing activity. this reliance on human intervention is one of the main limitations of the wireless security systems. to be effective in detecting intrusions,idps systems should run in real time. if it is offline or after the event has occurred, idps will be useful only for audit, but it will not prevent an attack from happening. the real time idps needs to be able to stream data across the network from sensors to a central point where the data can be stored and analyzed. this method is the correlation server. the additional concurrent running of traffic network may significantly affect network performance. for this reason, sufficient bandwidth is required. however, such tools as air-defense guard may permit for set rate throttles on each sensor to bring transfer rates to the server to as low as 9.6 kbps [23]. another problem is that if the idps inaccurately classifies a normal system activity as an unusual one, the results can be very unfortunate since it will attempt to stop the activity or change it. some wireless intrusion detection systems such as, air defense guard and air-magnet distributed are only good at preventing the system against known attack pattern recognition file given to them. they mostly utilize a signature recognition that can easily be misused. this is their major flaw in that the system offers protection only for what is a known to be an attack. this implies that new patterns of attacks easily go undetected, which underlines the need to come up with an efficient mechanism that can keep all network security components with signature or rule based tables up to thedate of known attack signature [24]. the efficiency of ids is measured on how the detection method is capable of taking anaccurate decision as to whether an activity is an attack attempt or normal system behavior. there are three criteria to measure detection performance including detection rate, false negative rate, and false positive rate, which are given when detection results are reported. however, if the ids take along time to detect or response for an intrusion, then there will be enough time available for the attacker to accomplish his/her desired goals. 5. discussion in this age of technology of wireless networks, the best way to ensure security for the wireless network is by properly designing, installing, and securing the networks. the wireless network may require more careful management compared to wired networks because of its nature [25, 26]. even minor activities that appear to be unrelated to computer networks may have a grave impact on the wireless network. for example, the installation of a new machine or the relocation of a potted plant may affect the wireless radio frequency signal, which may result in poor connectivity or slow speed of transmissions. additionally, to overcome the issue of unauthorized intrusion, people responsible for the wireless network should frequently monitor and adjust wireless network settings, so that they can provide maximum performance to their clients. it is also of utmost importance to note that security requirement to provide safety measures for the wireless network is much different from that of wired networks. implementing ieee 802.11i/wpa2, and installing the latest wireless idps, and use of rogue access point (ap) discovery tools is one of the technical aspects of securing a wireless network. it is also a crucial step for making sure that the wireless network is safe from hackers. ideally, the idps system should be able to determine and prevent abnormal or authorized behaviors within the system in a real time [27]. otherwise, intruders can access information and resources available on the system until prevention and not at the moment of detection. another important issue that should be considered is to employ location anonymity as a part of seamless protection system to avoid detection of the access points and actual location identification. in this way, the wireless network will be protected by the idpss from unknown intrusion with limited human intervention and the system operation continuity would be ensured. risk management and assessment are the processes of classifying and evaluating risks by taking proper steps to minimize risk to an acceptable level and applying effective controls measures to preserve that level of risk for each information asset, vulnerability, and threat. these techniques not only assist the organizations to determine better the necessary security control and measures that need to be taken to minimize and contain the risk to an acceptable level, but also to make them capable and ready for meeting the needs of tomorrow. due to this, risk management and assessment are crucial in building a uniform and effective architecture for idpss, which can secure the whole system and aid system administrator to control the system efficiently. 6. conclusion and future recommendations wireless networks represent the next wave of networking because of their relevance in assisting an emerging mobile workforce in a growing informationoriented society. however, wireless networks also present many challenges in regard to application, software, hardware, network designers, and implementers. unauthorized access, dos, ddos, man in the middle, jamming, and medium access control (mac) address spoofing, are the primary concern challenges to wireless networks. attackers have the capacity to hear all conversations through trafficking networks, and therefore cause disrupted conditions by possible attacks. in this paper, an overview description of idpss and their core functions, primary types of intrusion detection mechanisms, and the limitations of idpsshave been discussed. for the false alarm, idps should have a better and more accurate ability to identify the intrusion with a low rate of false positives. future work and development trends seem to be converging to include more intelligence techniques toward a model that is based on and managed by machine learning, data mining, and game theory along with risk analysis and assessment techniques together to help reducing false alarm rates. this will assist wireless networks toremain secure and able to face attacks that are more sophisticated and will aid system administrator to understand their systems behavior better. in addition, it will make idpss smarter. some of the key issues that need more attention to overcome the limitations in wireless idpsareto design a proactive and real-time prevention attack. additionally, more attention should focus on seamless protection and anonymity location privacy. more research is needed to obtain new detection performance method and criteria to evaluate attack detection in awireless network to mitigate the delay time between detection and attack time that could be used by anadversary to damage the target system. 7. reference [1] h. bidgoli, handbook of information security, threats, vulnerabilities, prevention, 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[33] a.vindašius, “security state of wireless networks, “elektronikair elektrotechnika, pp. 19-22, 2015. p. s. kenkre,.,a. pai, l. colaco, “real time intrusion detection and prevention system”, in proceedings of the theory and applications (ficta) on frontiers of intelligent computing, pp. 405-411, 2015.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 2 | july 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.2.21 knowledge, attitude and practice of health care workers in sulaimani health facilities in relation to medical waste management sarko masood mohammed community health dept, technical college of health, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, iraq sarko.mohammed@spu.edu.iq nasih othman kurdistan institution for strategic studies and scientific research, sulaimani, iraq nasih.othman@kissr.edu.krd ali hattem hussain community health dept, technical college of health, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, iraq ali.hussain@spu.edu.iq kamal jalal rashid anesthesiology dept, technical college of health, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, iraq kamal.rashid@spu.edu.iq abstract: medical waste management is of crucial importance in health care facilities (hcf). in the present study, we assessed the knowledge, attitude and practices of medical waste management in an hcf of sulaimani city, kurdistan region of iraq. using a selfadministered questionnaire, we collected information on waste management practices from health care professionals (hcp) in 14 public and private hospitals and 10 primary health care centers of the city. based on answers, total knowledge score on a 10-point scale was established. a total of 406 hcps (of those, 261 women), average age 37.3 (sd ± 9.4) years participated. just 20.3% have been trained on medical waste management. the total knowledge score ranged from 0 to 9 with a mean of 4.7 (sd ± 1.8). factors which were significantly associated with the better knowledge score was male gender, having a high educational degree, being trained in waste management and has been in service for more than 5 years. 68% of hcps followed the color coding system, 91% always/frequently disposed used sharps/needles to safety boxes, 79% always or frequently recapped needles, 49% reported experiencing at least one needle prick injury during their work but only 37% of them had reported the injury to a supervisor and only 4% of those injured had filled an injury form. there is a low average level of knowledge and the unsafe risky practices are quite prevalent in hcfs. provision of appropriate training on dealing with medical waste is essential to promote safe practices among hcfs. keywords: medical waste management, health staff, recapped needles, training, kap, iraq 1. introduction the term “medical waste” is used to describe wastes generated by health facilities such as hospitals, primary health centers, research centers and clinical laboratories [1]. medical wastes are mixtures of municipal, pharmaceutical, laboratory, pathological, chemical, plastic and metal wastes [2]. the most dangerous aspect of the medical waste comes from the handling of waste, since waste handlers are exposed to needle prick injuries by contaminated needles and sharps, which may lead infections with human immunodeficiency virus, hepatitis b and c viruses, and this risk is highest in health facilities amongst health care workers [3]. medical waste is considered the second most hazardous waste globally and it is required to be treated and disposed by trained health care professionals (hcps). knowledge, attitude and practices of hcps are very important while managing this type of waste. therefore education of hcps, staff implicated in waste collection, patients, and attendant on medical waste are very important [4]. having proper knowledge among the hcps about the guidelines and regulations of medical waste handling can have great impact towards the safe disposal of medical waste, and can also help to protect the community from the adverse health and environmental impact of medical waste [5]. in addition to knowledge, proper and safe attitudes and practices in dealing with medical waste during handling and disposal are crucial. inadequate training of healthcare workers and negligence in implementation of legislations and rules will cause unsafe disposal of medical waste and could lead to serious impacts on the environment and community health [6]. hcfs are in need of continuing health education for management and support staff members in order to apply safe methods of medical waste handling and management [7-9] the aim of this study was to assess the knowledge, attitude and practices of hcps in hcfs of sulaimani city (kurdistan region, iraq) who are involved in medical waste production and management. the study also aimed to identify factors associated with better knowledge and practices of health staff in relation to medical waste management. 2. literature review one of the major key factors for proper medical waste management is the knowledge, attitude and behaviors of the health care workers in healthcare facilities in relation to medical waste [9]. health care personnel should have a proper level of knowledge, good attitude and practices while dealing with medical waste during handling and disposal [9]. due to inadequate training of healthcare workers and ignorance in implementation of legislations and rules, there is indiscriminate disposal of medical waste will have serious impacts on the environment and community health [9]. a study done in ghaza strip – palestine reports that private and public healthcare facilities still suffer from inappropriate management of medical waste; healthcare workers do not have information on the place of medical waste storage and methods used for management, there is a deficiency in providing training to improve their knowledge, attitude and practices and only half of those interviewed had participated in training courses about how to deal with medical waste management [10]. a study done in king abdulla hospital in jordan reported that despite government plans and efforts for implementation of medical waste management rules and legislations, it still does not meet the safety standards for healthcare workers inside public hospitals and outside . the study also reports that there are still many wrong practices that may lead to real problems regarding public health and environment safety [11]. in tabriz, iran, a study by taghipour and mosoferi revealed that medical wastes are poorly managed in healthcare facilities and there are no suitable health and environment safety measures available [12] it also reports that medical wastes are handled by poorly or non-educated workers without using any safety measures such as personal protective equipments [12]. a study conducted in morocco revealed that healthcare facilities are in need of continuous training courses for old and new employees, continuing health education for management and support staff members in order to apply safe methods of medical waste handling and management [13]. a study done in karantaka in india reported that across all participants, the knowledge regarding medical waste management was inadequate and they were unaware of medical waste management rules and regulations [9]. another recent indian study compared the medical waste knowledge, attitude and practices among health care personnel and showed that doctors, nurses and laboratory technicians had a better knowledge than the cleaning (sanitary) staff regarding biomedical waste management [14]. a regular training program can guarantee smooth running of medical waste managing in healthcare facilities [15].and should complementary to existing infrastructure and regulations for medical waste management. continuous training on different aspects of handing and management of medical waste must be carried out in healthcare facilities in order to develop healthcare staff awareness regarding medical waste and its risks [15]. medical waste handlers should be trained on segregation, handling, storage and disposal procedures [15] and should receive certificates of proficiency after successful completion of appropriate training [16]. medical waste management supervisors and infection control officers have to provide waste handlers with personal protective equipment’s such as proper gloves, masks, special shoes (puncture proof), in order to prevent needle stick injuries and various other injuries that waste handlers are exposed to [16]. all healthcare workers have to be trained in order to develop awareness before starting working in any healthcare facility [16]. refresher training course are needed for healthcare workers in order to update and refresh the knowledge of staff dealing directly with medical wastes [16]. training should include awareness rising about the potential hazards from waste, the purpose of immunization, safe waste-handling procedures, reporting of exposures and injuries, and the use of ppe [1] 3. methods and materials this was a cross sectional survey of the knowledge, attitude and behaviors of hcps in sulaimani city. the study locations were selected from a list provided by directory of health (doh) planning section containing 9 nine public hospital, 1 one dental center, and 52 primary health centers (phcs) and 18 private hospitals. all public hospitals and the dental center were included in the study. a total of ten from 52 phcs and 5 from 18 private hospitals were selected by random sample selection. a self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 430 hcp in selected health facilities. data collection was done during march and may 2015. all hcps working in the selected sulaimani city health facilities having a degree such as high school, nursing school, diploma and bachelor of science (bsc) were eligible to take part in the study. the self-administered questionnaires consisted of 34 questions to assess the level of knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors in relation to mwm as well as socio-demographic characteristics. a database was developed in epidata version 3.1.1 and used for data entry. all questions were pre-coded. analysis of data was performed using statistical package for social science (spss) version 17.0. individual questions were reported as frequencies and percentages and the total knowledge score was calculated by summing all knowledge questions. the mean of this score was compared for associations using t test. chisquared test was used to assess associations between categorical variables. the most appropriate way of identifying the categories of health-care waste is by sorting the waste into colorcoded plastic bags or containers [1]. 4. results the sample involved 14 public and private hospitals and 10 primary health centers randomly selected from 52 health care facilities inside suliamani city. out of an intended sample of 430, 406 completed questionnaires were returned mounting to a response rate of 94%. 66,5 per cent of respondents were from hospitals. table1. selected hcfs and number of participants hospitals (n=24) primary health centers shorish teaching hospital sarwary phc plastic surgery hospital ibrahim pasha phc shar hospital shahid rafiq hama jan phc shahid dr hemin teaching hospital chwarbakh phc peramerd dental center shahid dr sardar phc sulaimani maternity teaching hospital wloba phc sulaimani pediatric teaching hospital shahid jaza phc shahid dr.aso teaching hospital kareza wishk phc herem private hospital faiq haji ali phc hiwa teaching hospital shahid rebaz phc sulaimani teaching hospital roonaky private hospital tooy malik private hospital soma private hospital table2. characteristics of participants (n=406) # % gender female 261 64.3 male 145 35.7 age group 21-30 121 29.8 31-40 135 33.3 41 and over 150 36.9 qualification nursing school 140 35.1 institute 198 49.6 college 61 15.3 working years 1-5 years 110 27.1 6-10 years 64 15.8 >10 years 232 57.1 training course yes 82 20.3 no 322 79.7 training course period 1-7 days 55 67.1 >7 days 27 32.9 table 3. association of mean score with various characteristics of the participants # mean score 95% ci mean differnce p value overal score 406 4.66 4.27-4.71 gender male 144 5 4.69-5.30 0.5 (0.12-0.87) 0.01 female 261 4.49 4.27-4.72 service years 0-5 years 110 4.35 4.05-4.65 0.70 (0.161.24) 0.01 6-10 years 64 5.05 4.56-5.54 institute/ collge degree no 140 4.33 4.05-4.61 0.54 (0.160.91) 0.006 yes 259 4.86 4.63-5.1 training yes 82 5.62 5.24-6.0 1.22 (0.791.65) >0.001 no 322 4.4 4.21-4.60 training duration 1-7 days 55 5.67 5.21-6.14 0.15 (-0.670.99) 0.7 more than 7 days 27 5.52 4.78-6.23 knowledge of hcps on medical waste management over 66.2% of hcps have information on color coding system (table 3).only 16% of hcps had information on the amount of medical waste in relation to general waste in the hospital. about 40% knew how medical waste is managed in routine practice and over 28% knew who is responsible for mwm. while 96% of participants were aware that needle prick injury endangers health, only 73% had information on some specific consequences of needle prick injury. when these knowledge questions were summed to obtain a total score, the total score ranged from 0 to 9 with a mean knowledge score of 4.7 (sd 1.8). table 4 shows comparison of the mean score with various characteristics of participants. the mean score for people with a college/institute degree was 0.5 higher than the mean score of people with no degree and this difference was statistically significant. other factors which were significantly associated with higher knowledge of waste management were male gender, being training and being in service for more than 5 years. table 4. knowledge of participants on medical waste management knowledge question correct answer number (%) knows color coding of medical waste. 259 (66.2) knows the % of medical waste from total waste. 62 (15.9) knows the color of municipal waste bag. 286 (71.7) knows how medical waste is managed. 150 (38.9) knows who is responsible for medical waste management. 112 (28.5) knows where to put sharps and needles. 264 (66.6) knows where to put waste the needs autoclaving. 91 (24.3) knows needle prick injury is dangerous. 382 (96%) has information on consequences of needle prick injury. 290 (73.4) attitude of hcps towards medical waste management the results of participants’ opinions/attitudes on issues in relation to mwm revealed that over 96% of participants agreed with the importance of medical waste management (mwm), but 66% believed that mwm is done properly in their workplace and only 20% believed that the health facility has provided necessary training for hcp. table 5 table 5. attitudes of participants in relation to medical waste management attitude correct answer number (%) believes proper mw segregation and management is important 390 (96.1) believes mw segregation and management is a team work 330 (82.1) believes mw segregation management is a burden on hcp 91 (22.4) believes mwm is properly done in his/her workplace 265 (66.4) believes workplace has opened necessary courses on mwm 79 (19.9) feels ready to participate in training on mw management 287 (71.4) believes all health facilities must have a system for cleaning sewerage 380 (96.0) believes health authorities must be informed on breaches in relation to mwm 378 (95.9) practices of hcps in relation to medical waste the study showed that 68% of hcps followed the color coding system for segregation of medical waste. while 91% of hcps always/frequently disposed of used sharps and syringes to safety boxes, 9% of hcps never or only sometimes did so. recapping the used needles was a common practice in 79% of hcps who always or frequently did so while only 12% reported they never recapped used needles. in this relation 49% of participants reported that they had experienced at least one needle prick injury during their work but only 37% of them had reported the injury to a supervisor and only 4% of those injured had filled an injury form. table 6 table 6. practices of participants in relation to medical waste management practice correct answer number (%) disposes of needles and sharps to safety box. never 10 (2.5) sometimes 26 (6.6) frequently/always 359 (90.9) recaps needles after use. never 47 (11.9) sometimes 35 (8.9) frequently/always 213 (79.2) performs segregation of mw according to color coding system. 268 (67.5) experienced injury by used needle/sharps. never 204 (51.0) once/few times 156 (39.0) many times 40 (10.0) when injured by needle/sharps, informed person in charge. yes 70 (36.7) no 100 (52.3) don’t remember 21 (11.0) when injured by needle/sharps, filled accident form 8 (4.2) 5. discussion the present study was conducted in different selected public and private hcfs which are under authority of doh in sulaimani. the study assessed level of knowledge, attitude, and practices of hcps regarding mwm. the knowledge, attitude and practices of hcps were dissimilar among participants; many factors may lead to this difference like the level of education of hcps, working experience, participation in training courses and their practical involvement in the hospital waste handling and mwm. this study showed that gender, service years, qualification and participation in training were statistically significant factors of better knowledge while duration of training course was not. the current study showed that from a total of 406 hcps participated in the study, 261(64.3%) were females and 145(35.7%) were males with female to male ratio of 1:1.8. the present study showed that 66% of hcps have information on color coding system; this was similar to a study done in pondicherryindia reported that 50% of hcps had the knowledge of color coding and segregation of mwm [17], this result was also comparable to a study done in pakistan reporting that 86% hcps have information about waste color codes [18]. another similar study from west bengal revealed that 76% hcps knew about various types of colorcoding bags for collection of mw [19]. in the present study 15.9% of hcps have knowledge about the percentage of mw in whole waste. this was similar to a study done in delhi, india reporting that hcps with knowledge of approximate proportion of infectious waste generated in hcfs were found to be 36% [20]. another study from india reported that hcps knowledge about the proportion of infectious waste generated from a hospital was found only in 39.3% of respondents [21]. this may be due to low level of hcps knowledge and the absence of national guidelines in hcfs. the current study showed that gender, participation in training, qualification, and service years were significantly associated with better knowledge of waste management while training duration was not. regarding training course in relation to mwm (79.7%) of hcps had not participated in any training courses during their working periods and only (20.3%) hcps have participated in mwm training course. this result was similar to a study done in india revealed that around 16% hcps had received training on mwm [22] another study in puducherry-india reported that (74%) of hcps have not undergone training on medical waste management [17]. this result was inconsistent with a study done in turkey that reported that training of staff on medical waste was about 80% [23]. also another study revealed that majority (87%) of hcps had undergone training program on medical waste management [24]. the low participation in training highlights the need for strengthening training courses and involving all hcp in such trainings. this study also shows the need for such training programs to be conducted regularly and make it compulsory for all the hcps to attend either annually or at the beginning of their service. in the present study 96% of hcps knows that needle prick injury is dangerous. it is similar to a study done in bosnia and herzegovina reported that 70% of hcps were aware that needle prick injury carries risk for blood borne infection [25]. in the current study 96% of hcps believe that proper management of mw is important, 82% believes that mw management is a team work, it is similar to a study done in lucknow -india which revealed that majority of hcps has seen mwm process as a team work and all were responsible for safe disposal [17]. this is not consistent with a study done in india which revealed that 82% has seen that safe management of healthcare waste was the responsibility of the institution and not the hcps [26]. this difference may be due to education level, knowledge, and attitude of participants. in the present study 22% of hcps believe that mwm is a burden on hcps. this result was inconsistent with a study done in india revealed that attitude and practices towards bmw management majority 90% has seen that safe management of health care waste was an extra burden on work, however, 85% felt that safe management of bmw was not an issue at all [26]. in the current study 66% of hcps believes that mwm is properly done in the workplaces and 54% of hcps were satisfied about mwm process in their workplace. this result was similar to a study done in india reporting that 36% hcps were satisfied about waste disposal practiced in their hospital [20]. in the present study 71% of hcps were ready to participate in voluntary training courses regarding mwm, and this rate is comparable to a study in india (96%) where hcps would like to attend a training program on bmw management [27]. another study in dilhi-india revealed that 56% of all hcps would like to attend voluntarily programs to upgrade their knowledge on bmw [17]. however, a study from east anglia, uk revealed that 22% hcps don‘t mind to voluntary attend the training sessions [28]. the present study showed that 96% of hcps believes all health facilities must have a system for cleaning sewerage, 95% of hcps believes health authorities must be informed on breaches in relation to mwm, 95% hcps thought that it is important issue to report to doh if their workplace is not complying with standard mwm guidelines. this proportion is over what is reported by a study from delhi, india which reported that 52% hcps expressed their willingness on reporting to health authority of india about the institutions who is not complying the guidelines for mw management [17]. regarding practices of hcps, 91% disposes of needles and sharps to safety box frequently/always. this result was better than 53% reported from ethiopia [29]. this may due to that doh have provided all hcfs with adequate number of safety boxes to ensure the safe disposal of needles and sharps. the present study showed that 79% of hcps recap needles after use either frequently or always which is a risky practice exposing the person to needle prick injury. this is similar to a study done in puducherry, india reported that nearly 50% of hcps recap the needle [17]. it is also consistent with a study done in nagara, india reporting that practice of recapping the needles was observed to be 67% among all the categories of hcps [27]. this result was different from a study done in ethiopia showed that (73 %) do not practice recapping needles after injection [29]. in lebanon, a study revealed that 67% hcps were aware that needles should not be recapped after use [30]. in a study done in india, the practice of recapping of used needles was done by 25% [24]. in the current study the practice of recapping the used needles may be due to lack of awareness and continuation of an old habit, difference in academic background of hcps and lack of adequate number of needle cutters in the hcfs. this risky practice could be managed by providing all hcfs with needle cutters with enforcement rules for safe disposal of used needles and sharps in hcfs. in relation to experiencing injuries, in the current study 49% of hcps experienced injury by used needle/sharps either once or multiple times during their working time, which was consistent with a study from india reporting that 55% hcps had experienced needle prick injuries in their work life [31]. another study done in cairo revealed that 46 % of hcps had needle prick injury or sharp injury and 19% of health care worker had sharp or needle prick injury within the last year [32]. another study identified that 51% hcps were subject to injuries caused by a sharp tool in a 6-month period and that 80% of those injuries were inflicted by injectors [33]. in a study from karnataka, india experiencing of needle prick injury was less than the present study and only 21% of medical staff reported needle prick injuries [34]. this difference may due to lack of occupational health and safety section and guidelines in the hcfs. this risk could be minimized or avoided by opening regular training courses, and enforcement of all hcps to enroll in these courses. the present study showed that 52% of hcps when injured by needle/sharps did not report even verbally persons in charge which is not a safe practice and is in contrast to the study in which only 19.9% of the needle pricks injured respondents did not report to the hospital authority [35]. another study from india reported that 55% of hcps had reported the incident to the higher authority [21]. it is important to issue clear guidelines and procedures to hcfs and hcps to report any such injuries to the authorities and provide required treatment and support needed. 6. conclusion it is clear from this study that there is low level of knowledge about mwm and there are prevalent unsafe practices among hcps in relation to waste management and occupational safety. there is need for training and awareness programs about different components of medical waste management and occupational safety for hcps for waste collectors and cleaners who are engaged directly in the process of handling, collecting and disposing medical waste. clear mwm guidelines have to be adopted and enforced in hcfs to reduce risks on patients, hcps, and the community. guidelines and procedures should be put into place to record and report any breaches in relation to mwm and any occupational risks affecting hcps. 7. reference [1] a. prüss, e. giroult, p. rushbrook, “safe management of wastes from health-care activities,” world health organization, 2014. 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[34] h. fiedler, “national pcdd/pcdf release inventories under the stockholm convention on persistent organic pollutants,” chemosphere, vol. 67, pp. 96-108, 2007. [35] v. ferreira, m. ribau, “assessing the medical waste management practices and associated risk perceptions in algarve hospitals, portugal,” iniswa/apesb world congress, 2009. [36] c. ketlogetswe, mt. oladirang and j. foster, “improved combustion process in medical waste incinerators for rural application,” african journal of science and technology, vol. 5, pp. 67-72, 2004. acknowledgments i would also like to thank technical college of health research and the scientific committee for their support, grateful thanks to sulaimani directorate of health for their support. biography corresponding author sarkomasood mohammed, bsc, msc technical college of heath, sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq email:sarko.mohammed@spu.edu.iq mobile: +964 770 242 3636 mailto:sarko.mohammed@spu.edu.iq  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq effect of folic acid by injection and supplementary on growth and puberty of karadi male lambs. ismael othman karim chowman aladdin omar animal sciences animal sciences college of agricultural engineering sciences college of agricultural engineering sciences university of sulaimani university of sulaimani sulaymaniyah, iraq sulaymaniyah, iraq ismaelo.karem@gmail.com choman.omer@univsul.edu.iq article info abstract volume 6 – issue 1june 2021 doi: 10.24017/science.2021.1.5 article history: received 3/3/2021 accepted 24/4/2021 the present study is carried out to study the effect of folic acid (fa) by injection and supplementary on animal body weight gain, tests volume before slaughtering, testes volume after slaughtering, testosterone concentration in blood and fa concentration in blood. twenty-five (25) karadi male lambs five months aged and the average weight was 24.54 ±1.92 kg was used in this experiment. the animals weighted after three months of treatment to get animal increased live weight, the testes measured after one, two, and three months of treatment to calculate testes volume, testosterone, and fa concentration level in the blood were taken after one, two, and three months of treatment. the present study demonstrated that animal body weight, animal body weight gain, and total body weight gain significantly not increased (p>0.05). testicular length, and testicular circumference not increased (p>0.05) after 1st, 2nd, and 3rd months after treatment, and after slaughtering. however, testicular high increased (p<0.05) after each month of treatment and slaughtering. testosterone concentration in blood significantly not different (p>0.05) reported between treatments after 1st, 2nd, and 3rd months of treatment. fa concentration in blood significantly increased (p<0.05) when used 3 and 6 mg fa by injection compared to control after 1st and 2nd month of treatment. however, blood fa concentration increased (p<0.05) when used fa 6mg/ml as injection after 2nd month of treatment compared to control. while using fa by supplementation and injection significantly (p>0.05) on the diameter and circumference of seminiferous tubules, germ cells thickness, and lumen diameters. keywords: folic acid, karadi male lamb, tests volume, testosterone. copyright © 2021 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. mailto:ismaelo.karem@gmail.com mailto:choman.omer@univsul.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 38 1. introduction sheep and goats have spread throughout the world and were domesticated about 11,000 years ago in southwest asia [1]. sheep own a high capacity to adaptation in different environmental condition, which it has allowed to survive in the desert, semi-desert and cold mountain region, 20% of sheep population in the world are placed in the tropical and semi-tropical region, the main purpose of raising sheep is to meat production, and a less degree milk, wool, skin, and manure [2]. sheep have great adaptability with environments, short production cycle, fast growth rate, easy to manage, and low investment, feed requirement if compared to a large ruminant, they are a critical source of protein of the poor people, give extra income, and support survival for many farmers [3]. sheep are raised for four major products: meat, milk, wool/hair, and skin. meat is the major sheep product in many parts of the world especially the temperate region, this caused increasing meat production [4]. the meat of sheep has complex structure include water (73%), protein (21%), lipid (5%), carbohydrates, many vitamins and mineral present a smaller amount, the water, protein, and fat content can be affected by hereditary, feeding background, and age [5]. because of animal protein consist of all essential amino acids for human body needs efficiently, and recommended daily intake for an adult person at least 60 g of animal protein and 800-1000 mg calcium daily, so the milk of sheep is the best source of protein and calcium for human [6]. karadi sheep are recognized to be the largest among the local breeds that are raised in the mountainous region in kurdistan of iraq. the most important and favored strain of karradi sheep among sheep owners is hamdani sheep, because of high rate of twinning, large body frame, high production of milk, and fleece weight are heavy [7]. folic acid is a one vitamin of the vitamin b complex that involves one-carbone compound metabolism [8]. fa is a water-soluble plays an important role in the synthesis of dna, stability and integrity, and repair [9]. fa is important for the synthesis of dna, rna, and protein, hence it is essential for all tissues and essential for growth and cellular division with a high rate [10]. folate is the generic name for compounds family including fa, and its derivative such as 5mthf, 5-formyltetrahydrofolate (5-fthf or folinic acid), 5,10-methylen-thf, 10 formylthf, and unsubstituted thf folate[11]. in the structure of 5-methyltetrahydrofolate (5-mthf) participate in the remethylation of homocysteine to methionine, which precursor sadenosylmethionine (sam), the primary methyl group donor for most biological methylation reaction including dna methylation , after transferring methyl group, sam is changed to sadenosylhomocystiene (sah) [9]. fa participates in amino acid metabolism and purines and pyrimidines synthesis [12]. fa acts as an acceptor and donor of one carbone unit and involved in cell division [13]. a deficiency of fa causes impaired cell division, protein synthesis, and growing tissues [14]. the deficiency of fa in the diet of rats before breeding induces on reducing of the number of live births, average litter size and birth weight of the offspring, this directly related inability synthesis of protein normally because of rats deficiency to fa [12]. supplementing fa during pregnancy increases the weight of neonate and the muscle fiber morphologically changes with supplementation of their mothers' diet in the sheep [15]. fa effects on increasing body weight, relative weight of testis, plasma testosterone concentration, and epididymis in male new zealand white rabbits [16]. adding fa to the dietary of calve causes improving nutrient income, the performance of growth, and the efficiency of feed [17]. fa supplementary influences to increase hemoglobin and packed cell volume in the calf [14]. [10] used fa as supplementation for dairy calves and reported that fa as supplementation caused to increase the red blood cells, folate concentration, and increasing folate in serum and hepatic, as well as blood hemoglobin and packed cell volume increased but slightly decreased with age. so, our main aim of this study is to compare between injection and feed supplementation of fa and their effect on growing lams and their puberty. 2. methods and materials this study was carried out at the experimental farm of animal sciences department agricultural engineering sciences college, during spring (april to july) 2019. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 39 twenty-five (25) karadi male lambs five months aged and the average weight was 24.54±1.92 kg. the lambs weighted to get initial weight and they treated by fa for 3 three months to the experiment for three months. they divided into five treatment groups, 5 lambs in each treatment (r=5). the treatments included: (t1) control (without treatment), (t2, t3) supplemented 3, 6 mg fa as capsule/week, (t4, t5) intramuscularly injected 3, 6 mg/ml per week. before began the experiment, all lambs injected subcutaneously by profiverm 1% (1 ml for each lamb) to the internal and external parasites. the lambs fed barley 0.5% of their weight daily, increased gradually barley to reach adaptive 1.5% of lamb’s weight for one month to avoid digestive disorder, and fed ad-libtum on straw. the weight of animals weekly recorded to investigate the growth characteristic: feed intake ratio, feed conversation ratio, and daily gain weight. the blood collected 3 times during the experiment (after each month) and sent to the laboratory to determine rbc count, plasma biochemical parameters, differential wbc, h/l ratio, testosterone concentration, wbc count. tests parameter have externally measured monthly during the experiment. at the end of the experiment 15 animals (r=3) chosen in each group randomly and slaughtered to record the testis parameter: testicular length, width, high and circumference, and to measure length of the epididymis, testis histological parameters, and to measure the male reproductive tract. fa solution preparation for injection: 1. prepare 2n sodium hydroxide. 2. weight 30 mg or 60 mg fa progressively for (fa 3mg/ml or 6 mg/ml). 3. add drop drop sodium hydroxide on fa until it dissolves completely. 4. add 12 mg edta for fa injection 3mg/ml, and 24 mg edta for fa injection 6 mg/ml. 5. add 90 mg benzyl alcohol for fa injection 3mg/ml and 180 mg for fa injection 6 mg/ml, and stir for one or two hours. 6. adjust ph between (8 and 11). 7. complete volume with distil water to 10 ml. 8. filter the solution. data were analyzed statistically by complete random design (crd) using (ibm spss, stat. 23.0, 2018) software. moreover, the treatment deference’s were determined by using duncan test at (p≤0.05). 3. results and descussion the results of body weight (bw), body weight gain (bwg) after 1st, 2nd, and 3rd months of experiment, and total body weight gain (bwgt) are demonstrated in table (1). the table showed that there are no significant differences (p>0.05) observed in the bw, bwg, and bwgt. while bw, bwg, and bwgt in all treatments increased if compared to the control, but not significantly, except bw and bwg after one month of treatment 5 less than control. fa has a great role in dna synthesizing and cell division [18]. therefore, fa aspects that have a great role in animal weight and. but fa metabolism in brain effects neuropeptides and neurotransmitters and causes inhibiting the action them, (like gammaamino butyric acid), that responsible for controlling feed intake [19]. this reason may be the main factor that no different observed significantly in bw, bwg, and bwgt. our result agree with the result that experimented on gilts and reported that using fa 5 mg/kg diet and fa 15mg/kg diet from 9 to 21 weeks of age were not influenced on body weight and growth performance during overall growing period [20]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 40 table 1: effect of different fa treatments by supplementation and injection on animal weight and animal increased weight of local karadi male lambs (mean±se). treatments bw (kg) bwg 1 (kg) bwg 2 (kg) bwg 3 (kg) bwg t (kg) t1 (control) 29.46a ±0.94 2.65a ±0.12 2.80a ±0.46 2.15a ±0.17 7.60a ±0.42 t2 (3mg fa supple.) 31.26a ±1.17 2.90 a ±0.20 2.95a ±0.37 2.33a ±0.23 8.18a ±0.28 t3 (6mg fa supple.) 31.54a ±1.28 2.93a ±0.58 3.00a ±0.27 2.63a ±0.42 8.55a ±0.30 t4 (3mg/ml fa injec.) 30.30a ±1.49 2.94 a ±0.25 2.62a ±0.07 2.72a ±0.39 8.28a ±0.54 t5 (6mg/ml fa injec.) 29.32a ±1.20 2.38a ±0.131 2.58 a ±0.26 2.68a ±0.56 7.63a ±0.57 -small different letter indicated a not significant difference between treatments (p>0.05). the results of testicular dimension before and after slaughtering demonstrated in table (2), (3), (4), and (5) respectively. testicular high after first, 2nd, and 3rd month of treatment increased (p<0.05) significantly in t3 (4.82, 5.06, and 5.32 cm) compared to t1 (3.60, 3.94, and 4.10 cm). while testicular high in each t2, t4, and t5 increased if compared to t1 but not significantly. on the other hand testicular length, width, and circumference in t3 increased (p>0.05) compared to anther treatment but not significant detected. t2, t4, and t5 also increased compared to t1 but not significantly. then testicular high after slaughtering significantly increased in t3 (4.367 cm) compared to t1 (2.33 cm), but testicular length and width increased in t3 compared to t1but no significantly. in addition testicular length, width, and high increased in t2, t4, and t5 compared to t1 but not significantly. gonadotrophic hormones especially lh and fsh control testicular development, this hormone secretes and releases by the pituitary gland. however the main target of lh and fsh in the testis are sertoli and leydig cells, lh stimulates biosynthesize of androgen mainly testosterone from leydig cells. the development of the male reproduction organs are controlled by testosterone [21]. fa concentration is not correlate fsh, lh, and testosterone significantly [22]. therefore, no significant effect reported on testicular length, width, and circumference, and testes weight in our results. table 2: effect of different fa treatments by supplementation and injection on testes dimensions of local karadi male lambs after 1st month (mean±se). treatments testicular length (cm) testicular width (cm) testicular high (cm) testicular circumference (cm) t1 (control) 6.80 a±1.27 3.24 a±0.19 3.60 b±0.38 14.70 a±1.66 t2 (3mg fa supple.) 6.50 a±0.63 3.18 a±0.19 3.90 ab±0.30 15.94 a±1.11 t3 (6mg fa supple.) 8.70 a±1.85 3.72 a±0.16 4.83 a±0.32 17.50 a±0.67 t4 (3mg/ml fa injec.) 6.60 a±0.89 3.54 a±0.19 4.14 ab±0.48 16.14 a±1.07 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 41 t5 (6mg/ml fa injec.) 7.00 a±0.55 3.30 a±0.16 3.78 ab±0.33 15.70 a±1.19 -small different letters indicated a significant difference between treatments (p<0.05). table 3: effect of different fa treatments by supplementation and injection on testes dimensions of local karadi male lambs after 2nd month (mean±se). treatments testicular length (cm) testicular width (cm) testicular high (cm) testicular circumference (cm) t1 (control) 7.80 a±0.82 3.46 a±0.23 3.94 b±0.34 16.70 a±1.66 t2 (3mg fa supple.) 8.30 a±0.77 3.94 a±0.21 4.44 ab±0.28 18.50 a±1.43 t3 (6mg fa supple.) 9.10 a±0.53 3.98 a±0.17 5.06 a±0.46 19.60 a±0.93 t4 (3mg/ml fa injec.) 9.00 a±0.61 3.68 a±0.26 4.26 ab±0.31 17.60 a±1.29 t5 (6mg/ml fa injec.) 8.40 a±0.81 3.60 a±0.19 4.10 ab±0.29 17.90 a±1.78 -small different letters indicated a significant difference between treatments (p<0.05). table 4: effect of different fa treatments by supplementation and injection on testes dimensions of local karadi male lambs after 3rd month (mean±se). treatments testicular length (cm) testicular width (cm) testicular high (cm) testicular circumference (cm) t1 (control) 8.50 a±0.85 4.08 a±0.18 4.10 b±0.29 18.30 a±1.85 t2 (3mg fa supple.) 9.10 a±0.70 4.38 a±0.27 4.78 ab±0.32 20.70 a±1.30 t3 (6mg fa supple.) 10.00 a±0.35 4.68 a±0.36 5.32 a±0.41 21.50 a±0.67 t4 (3mg/ml fa injec.) 9.40 a±0.58 4.26 a±0.36 4.92 ab±0.43 20.20 a±1.31 t5 (6mg/ml fa injec.) 8.70 a±0.60 4.14 a±0.13 4.36 ab±0.26 19.90 a±1.17 -small different letters indicated a significant difference between treatments (p<0.05). kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 42 table 5: effect of different fa as supplementation and injection on testis size of local karadi male lambs after slaughtering (mean±se). treatments testis length (cm) testis width (cm) testis high (cm) t1 (control) 4.667 a±1.17 3.73 a±0.48 2.33b±0.33 t2 (3mg fa supple.) 5.700 a±1.15 4.23 a±0.42 3.63 ab±0.88 t3 (6mg fa supple.) 6.867 a±0.43 4.53 a±0.19 4.37 a±0.23 t4 (3mg/ml fa inject.) 5.933 a±0.47 4.30 a±0.46 3.87 ab±0.59 t5 (6mg/ml fa inject.) 5.067 a±0.58 4.27 a±0.52 3.47 ab±0.49 -small different letters indicated a significant difference between treatments (p<0.05). the results of table (6) showed that no significant difference (p>0.05) reported in testicular weight between treatments. testicular weight in t3 increased compared to other treatments but not significant increase reported, in addition testicular weight in t2, t4, and t5 increased compared to t1 but significantly no different detected. because there was not significant difference observed in testis size, therefore not significant difference observed in testicular weight after slaughtering. table 6: effect of different fa as supplementation and injection on testicular weight of local karadi male lambs after slaughtering (mean±se). treatments right testis weight (gm) left testis weight (gm) both testis weight (gm) t1 (control) 41.67a±17.64 43.333a±19.22 85.00a±36.88 t2 (3mg fa supple.) 50.00 a±20.21 51.67 a±21.67 101.67a±41.87 t3 (6mg fa supple.) 55.00a±20.82 51.67 a±19.22 106.67±40.04 t4 (3mg/ml fa inject.) 43.33 a±16.41 46.67 a±14.81 90.00a±31.22 t5 (6mg/ml fa inject.) 43.33a±16.41 48.33 a±16.41 91.67a±32.83 -small different letters indicated not significant difference between treatments (p>0.05). table (7): demonstrated that comparison between treatments in testosterone concentration in the blood significantly no difference (p>0.05) observed after 1st, 2nd, and 3rd months of experiment. testosterone concentration after third month of treatment increased when used fa 6 mg as supplementation, 3 mg/ml as injection but not significantly, also testosterone concentration increased when used folic acid 6 mg as injection after each month of treatments but not significantly. because fa is important for dna synthesize, transfer of rna and protein [23]. on the other hand, testosterone synthesis biologically from cholesterol. the metabolic steps needed for the conversion of cholesterols into the testosterone take place in leydig cells, and the adrenal cortex [24]. therefore, no significant change observed in blood testosterone concentration. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 43 table 7: effect of different fa as supplementary and injection on testosterone concentration in blood of local karadi male lambs (mean±se). testosterone concentration (ng/ml) treatments after one month after two months after three months t1 (control) 0.48a ±0.19 0.47a ±0.10 1.02a ±0.40 t2 (3mg fa supple.) 0.50a ±0.06 0.53a ±0.03 1.047a ±0.28 t3 (6mg fa supple.) 0.58a ±0.08 0.47a ±0.10 1.57a ±0.05 t4 (3mg/ml fa inject.) 0.55a ±0.13 0.76a ±0.14 1.70a ±0.64 t5 (6mg/ml fa inject.) 0.64a ±0.09 0.80a ±0.15 1.16a ±0.66 -small different letters indicated not significant difference between treatments (p>0.05). effect of different fa treatments by supplementation and injection on fa concentration in blood of local karadi male lambs are demonstrated in the table (8), blood fa concentration significantly (p<0.05) increased in t4 and t5 (5.703±0.45,5.637±0.68), compared to t1, t2, and t3 (2.533±0.41, 3.790±1.42, and 3.680b±1.79) after one-month treatment. while after two months of treatment there was a significant (p<0.05) difference observed in both t5 and t4 (7.560±1.15 and 7.477±0.59) if compared to t1, t2, and t3 (4.833±0.49, 6.67 ±2.14, and 5.560±0.23). t2 and t3 (6.67±2.14 and 5.560 ±0.23) also significantly increased compare to t1 (5.560±0.23) after 2nd and 3rd months of treatment. finally after three months of treatment t5 and t4 (9.273±1.28 and 9.263±0.47) significantly increased compare to t1, t2, and t3 (4.833±0.49, 6.67±2.14, and 5.560±0.23). t2 and t3 (6.297±1.55 and 5.915±2.94) respectively increased compared to t1 (3.66±0.17).the folate content in barley is 0.07-0.68 mg/kg dry matter [25]. microorganism degrades more than 97% of supplementary fa to escape the rumen and absorb by small intestine. however, folates perhaps degraded, converted, and changed in forestomach of ruminant [25]. therefore, fa by injection increase blood fa concentration, as well as fa supplementary increase blood fa concentration compare to the control. increased serum folate associated with taking a high dose of fa, this data collected from 13 studies on the effect of fa on serum folate concentration [26]. so our result suggests this investigation. table 8: effect of different fa treatments by supplementary and injection on fa concentration in blood of local karadi male lambs (mean±se). fa concentration (ng/l) treatments after one month after two months after three months t1 (control) 2.53b±0.41 4.50b±0.29 3.66b±0.17 t2 (3mg fa supple.) 3.79ab±1.42 6.55ab ±2.14 6.30ab±1.55 t3 (6mg fa supple.) 3.68ab±1.04 5.56ab ±0.23 5.92ab±2.94 t4 (3mg/ml fa inject.) 5.70a±0.45 7.48ab±0.59 9.26a±0.47 t5 (6mg/ml fa inject.) 5.64a±0.68 8.36a±0.73 9.27a±1.28 -small different letters indicated a significant difference between treatments (p<0.05). the result of table (9) showed that diameter of seminiferous tubules, seminiferous tubules circumference, germ cell thickness, and lumen diameter not significant (p>0.05) different detected by different folic acid treatments as supplementation and injection. the normal spermatogenesis is testosterone dependent [26]. the main androgens are essential for the development and maintenance of specific reproductive tissue testes, epididymis, prostate, seminal vesicle, and penis [24]. in our research testosterone level, not increased significantly, therefore not significant change observed in seminiferous tubules. on the other hand, we used only barley as diet that another reason. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 44 table 9: the effect of different folic acid treatments by supplementary and injection on seminiferous tubules of local karadi male lambs (mean±se). treatments seminiferous diameter (mm×1010) seminiferous circumference (p<0.05) germ cell thickness (p<0.05) lumen diameter (p<0.05) t1 (control) 1.26a ±0.25 3.97a ±1.08 0.25 a ±0.08 0.45 a ±0.13 t2 (3mg fa supple.) 1.36a ±0.31 4.00a ±0.82 0.29 a ±0.07 0.49 a ±020 t3 (6mg fa supple.) 1.44a ±0.11 4.42a ±0.43 0.29 a ±0.03 0.72 a ±0.08 t4 (3mg/ml fa inject.) 1.54a ±0.31 4.64a ±0.97 0.35 a ±0.05 0.62 a ±0.17 t5 (6mg/ml fa inject.) 1.14a ±0.23 3.45a ±0.58 0.25 a ±0.02 0.49 a ±0.14 -small different letters indicated no significant difference between treatments (p>0.05). 4. conclusion in conclusion, bw, bwg, and bwgt significantly not difference observed between treatments by using fa as supplementation and injection. testicular size before slaughtering significantly not different reported in testicular length, testicular width, and testicular circumference; however, testicular high significantly increased when used fa 3mg as supplementation compared to control after each period of treatments. after slaughtering both testicular size (testis length, testis width, and testis high) and testes weight also significantly not different reported. testosterone concentration after each month of treatment significantly not changed. fa concentration in blood significantly (p<0.05) increased when used fa by injection compared to control after 1st and 3rd month of treatment, but after second month of treatment fa concentration in blood increased significantly compare to control when used fa 5 mg/ml as injection. while fa as supplementation significantly not effected on fa concentration in blood after each period of treatment. finally, fa by injection and supplementation significantly not affected on seminiferous diameter, seminiferous circumference, germ cell thickness, and lumen diameters after each month of treatments. reference [1] e. gootwine, “genetics and breeding of sheep and goats,” animal agriculture, pp. 183–198, 2020. [2] j. de combellas, “production and reproduction parameters of tropical sheep breeds in improved production systems,” trop anim prod, vol. 5, p. 3, 1980, accessed: jan. 02, 2021. [3] e. tadesse, t. negesse, and g. abebe, “sheep production and marketing system in southern ethiopia: the case of awassazuria district,” tropical animal health and production, vol. 47, no. 7, pp. 1417–1425, may 2015. [4] s. t. morris, “economics of sheep production,” small ruminant research, vol. 86, no. 1, pp. 59–62, oct. 2009. [5] e. n. ponnampalam, b. holman, and n. scollan, “sheep: meat,” encyclopedia of food and health, pp. 750– 757, 2016. [6] a. mohapatra, a. k. shinde, and r. singh, “sheep milk: a pertinent functional food,” small ruminant research, vol. 181, pp. 6–11, dec. 2019. [7] k. o.aziz, “a study on fleece characterization of hamadani sheep in erbil plain,” mesopotamia journal of agriculture, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 3–12, mar. 2005. [8] a. i. zugno et al., “effect of folic acid on oxidative stress and behavioral changes in the animal model of schizophrenia induced by ketamine,” j. psychiatr. res., vol. 81, pp. 23–35, 2016. [9] a. ly et al., “maternal folic acid supplementation modulates dna methylation and gene expression in the rat offspring in a gestation period-dependent and organ-specific manner,” the journal of nutritional biochemistry, vol. 33, pp. 103–110, jul. 2016. [10] u. laval and a. canada, “effects of a parenteral supplement of folic acid and its interaction with level of feed intake on hepatic tissues and growth performance of young dairy heifers,” pp. 1657–1666, 1990. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 45 [11] f. scaglione and g. panzavolta, “folate, folic acid and 5-methyltetrahydrofolate are not the same thing,” xenobiotica; the fate of foreign compounds in biological systems, vol. 44, no. 5, pp. 480–8, 2014. [12] i. f. tagbo and d. c. hill, “effect of folic acid deficiency on pregnant rats and their offspring,” canadian journal of physiology and pharmacology, vol. 55, no. 3, pp. 427–433, jun. 1977. [13] h. q. li et al., “effects of rumen-protected folic acid addition in maternal and post-weaning diets on growth performance, total tract digestibility, ruminal fermentation and blood metabolites in lambs,” animal feed science and technology, vol. 260, p. 114364, feb. 2020. [14] e. s. p. b. v and a. canada, “dietary supplements of folic acid : blood and growth responses of white veal calves,” vol. 34, no. 402, pp. 71–82, 1993. [15] b. wang et al., “sciencedirect maternal folic acid supplementation modulates the growth performance , muscle development and immunity of hu sheep offspring of different litter size ☆,” j. nutr. biochem., vol. 70, pp. 194–201, 2019. [16] m. i. yousef, f. m. el-demerdash, k. i. kamil, and f. a. m. elaswad, “ameliorating effect of folic acid on chromium ( vi ) -induced changes in reproductive performance and seminal plasma biochemistry in male rabbits,” vol. 21, pp. 322–328, 2006. [17] g. w. zhang et al., “effects of folic acid and sodium selenite on growth performance, nutrient digestion, ruminal fermentation and urinary excretion of purine derivatives in holstein dairy calves,” livestock science, vol. 231, p. 103884, jan. 2020. [18] a. preynat et al., “effects of supplementary folic acid and vitamin b12 on hepatic metabolism of dairy cows according to methionine supply,” j. dairy sci., vol. 93, no. 5, pp. 2130–2142, 2010. [19] y. yao et al., “effect of dietary folic acid supplementation on growth performance and hepatic protein metabolism in early-weaned intrauterine growth retardation piglets,” j. integr. agric., vol. 12, no. 5, pp. 862– 868, 2013. [20] j. j. matte, c. l. girard, and g. f. tremblay, “effect of long-term addition of folic acid on folate status, growth performance, puberty attainment, and reproductive capacity of gilts1,” journal of animal science, vol. 71, no. 1, pp. 151–157, jan. 1993. [21] c. a. p. matos and d. l. thomas, “physiology and genetics of testicular size in sheep: a review,” livestock production science, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 1–30, aug. 1992. [22] t.-l. yin et al., “folic acid supplementation as adjunctive treatment premature ejaculation,” medical hypotheses, vol. 76, no. 3, pp. 414–416, mar. 2011. [23] i. m. w. ebisch, f. h. pierik, f. h. de jong, c. m. g. thomas, and r. p. m. steegerstheunissen, “does folic acid and zinc sulphate intervention affect endocrine parameters and sperm characteristics in men?,” international journal of andrology, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 339–345, apr. 2006. [24] f. f. g. rommerts, “testosterone: an overview of biosynthesis, transport, metabolism and nongenomic actions,” testosterone, pp. 1–31, 1998, doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-72185-4_1. [25] v. ragaller, l. hüther, and p. lebzien, “folic acid in ruminant nutrition: a review,” british journal of nutrition, vol. 101, no. 2, pp. 153–164, sep. 2008. [26] n. wald, m. law, j. morris, and d. wald, “quantifying the effect of folic acid,” the lancet, vol. 358, no. 9298, pp. 2069–2073, dec. 2001, doi: 10.1016/s0140-6736(01)07104-5. .  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq| email: kjar@spu.edu.iq assessment of documentation on current patient’s medical records at accident and emergency hospital of sulaimani-iraq delan jamal qader faruk hasan faraj department of adult nursing department of surgery college of nursing college of medicine university of sulaimani university of sulaimani sulaymaniyah , iraq sulaymaniyah, iraq delan.qader@univsul.edu.iq faruk.faraj@univsul.edu.iq volume 4 issue 2 december 2019 doi: 10.24017/science.2019.2.2 received: 17 august 2019 accepted: 10 september 2019 abstract the patient record is an essential patient data were the nursing documentation part is fundamental. .competent nursing care is based on correct and complete records, and keeping record is an essential skill that needs to be developed by each and every health staff. the present study was conducted in order to assess the documentation on current medical patient’s records in the accident and emergency hospital/sulaimani city. a quantitative descriptive design. research was accomplished, based on retrospective data made available by the accident and emergency hospital. non-probability (purposive sample) of 201 patient files were selected from 1,194 patient files during 6 months between jun to december 2016.the present study showed that the face sheet was completely recorded about %95 which means satisfactory, other items which were recorded by physician such as chief complaint and history of present illness, radiology, laboratory, medication intervention report, consent forms, physical examination, and consultant report were unsatisfactorily recorded. last items which were recorded by the nurse who working in accident and emergency hospital medication and administration record and a graphic sheet of vital signs were unsatisfactorily recorded. deficiency in documentation system and most of the provided medical and nursing care remains undocumented given numerous deficiencies in the documentation system. it is recommended the components of the nursing record tool can be utilized once a paperless system is implemented as planned in the hospital. mailto:delan.qader@univsul.edu.iq mailto:faruk.faraj@univsul.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 16 keywords: assessment, documentation, medical record, accident and emergency hospital, current medical records. 1. introduction according to the work of werley and lang1985, the three important categories for the nursing record are demographic, services and nursing care [1].the sweden well-being, integrity, prevention and security (vips) model by ehnfors et.al in 1991 and it has been updated in 2015[2], proposed a structured nursing record in an easily and adequate method (fig. 1). the purpose of the model is to guide the nurse in the sequences of assessment, problem identification, aim, planning of interventions, implementation and evaluation of results and thereby to make nursing documentation structured, adequate and easy to use in clinical care [3, 4]. in the vips model, 14 keywords are used for classifying patient related information collected by the nurses into categories e.g., communication, nutrition and psychosocial status. ten keywords classify nursing interventions into categories such as information, support and environment. figure 1:illustration of the vips model for nursing documentation [4] medical audit is defined as the process were the medical staff collectively review assess and evaluate the structure, process, and outcome[5].the medical record is an actual effectual image of medical care hence it is the mere image of the quality of the nursing performance [6]. as a retrospective type of auditing where the medical record is evaluated after the discharge of the patient[6, 7]. nursing record assessment or evaluation revealed that there are differences in nursing documentation among nurses in several aspects of medical records. auditing of this record and their conclusion and recommendation improves better quality and achievement [8kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 17 11].besides that, documenting the nursing note contributes to evaluating patient's goals attainment as a result of nursing care, determining care, which is provided by the current progress toward the expected outcome, communication among caregiver opportunity, for reimbursement purposes, legal protection and enhancing nursing knowledge [12] . to the best of our knowledge, no previous study was conducted in sulaimani province. for this purpose, this study aimed to assess of documentation on current patient’s medical records at accident and emergency hospital of sulaimani in kurdistan region of iraq. 2. methods and materials 2.1. study design and setting a quantitative descriptive research was accomplished, based on retrospective data available by the accident and emergency hospital. this hospital was built in 2005. accident and emergency hospital is one of the vital areas of the sulaimani city/iraq for the injured patient that deals with critical cases and care which is highly in need for qualified and well-trained nurses to manage, diagnosis problem and intervene their works effectively, particularly during emergency situation. an audit instrument in use at the accident and emergency hospital was adapted by ensuring that it was specific to the study objectives. a form is useful for auditing the actual nursing record and care in this hospital. 2.2. study sample non-probability (purposive sample) of 201 patient files were selected from 1,194 patient files during 6 months between jun to december 2016. patient care was evaluated by auditing the patient chart records who were hospitalized in accident and emergency hospital sulaimani /iraq. 2.3. study instruments for the purpose of the present study, the researcher constructs the study instrument to evaluate patient’s files in the accident and emergency hospital: it was based on extensive review of related literature and studies. the study instruments consist of twelve parts which include total of (53) items, which are distributed according the following: (face sheet, consultant report, medical history and history of present illness, laboratory report, radiology report, medication administration record, flow sheet, discharge and summery not, graphic sheet and consultant form). the nursing care quality control advisory council measurement (ncqcac) [10] has been used to assess the level of satisfaction of the auditing patient's chart of each patient's file. the ncqcac measurement classified the patient's chart according to the extent to which information has been recorded (table 1). table 1: satisfaction levels according to criteria used in quality assessment by the (ncqcac) of a university hospital [13] satisfaction level assessment criteria complete incomplete not completed incorrect satisfactory above 80% below 15% below5% 0 % unsatisfactory below 80% above 15% above 5% above 0% 2.4. data collection the researcher entered the patient file information to spss data sheet. all data regarding patient information, (face sheet (demographic data), consultant report, medical history, laboratory report, radiology report, medication administration record, intervention, flowsheet of physical examination, discharge and summary note, graphic sheet and consent formwas include the study. 2.5. data analysis the data were analyzed with the statistical package for the social sciences (spss) version (22.0) were used in order to achieve the objectives of the study. information related to each section of the patient file records was present distinctively in the following tables. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 18 2.6. ethical considerations as soon as approval was issued for the objective of the study, official permission was obtained from the college of medicine, sulaimani-iraq. another approach was issued from the health directorate of sulaimani. also, official permission was retrieved from the emergency and accidental hospital administration .it is a condition of registration to abide by accident and emergency hospital guidance, which include requirements to respect patient confidentiality by omitting patient name. 3. results the overall demographic data record was at satisfactory level according to (ncqcac). in this section, medical diagnosis item was the lowest recorded data in the patient chart which was 72.1 % (table 2). table 2: documented face sheet information the overall data of the chief complaint and history of present illness was recorded to not satisfactory level. social history, family history, and surgical history were the main low recorded items by 48.8%, 42.3% and 38.2% respectively (table 3). regarding to (table 4) each items was unsatisfactorily recorded. table 3: chief complaint and medical history part table 4: distribution of filling laboratory, radiology report, and medication intervention and consent form record parts. 1. face sheet (demographic data) complete record no record f % f % name 201 100 0 0 age 201 100 0 0 sex 200 99.5 1 0.5 occupation 200 99.5 1 0.5 place 200 99.5 1 0.5 tel no. 200 99.5 1 0.5 admission unit 185 92 16 8 dr. responsible 185 92 16 8 medical diagnosis 145 72.1 56 27.9 overall 1717 95 92 5 satisfactory 2. chief complaint and history present illness complete record no record f % f % chief complaint 170 84.6 31 15.4 duration 129 64.2 72 35.8 social history (tobacco ,alcohol ,drugs) 98 48.8 103 51.2 family history 85 42.3 116 57.7 surgical history 117 58.2 84 41.8 medical history 121 60.2 80 39.8 overall 550 54.7 455 45.3 unsatisfactory items complete record no record f % f % u ns at is f t laboratory report 0 0 201 100.0 3. radiology reportx-ray 19 9.5 182 90.5 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 19 the overall physical assessment documentation's level was unsatisfactorily recorded. in all items, airway 57.7%, breathing 51.7% and consciousness 56.7% were completely recorded (table 5). table 5: distribution of flow sheet on physical assessment documentation the overall medication administration record (mar) was unsatisfactorily recorded. the main items of mar including route (86.1%), date (40.3%) and time (39.8%) of drugs were no recorded (table 6). table 6: distribution of filling medication admiration sheet the overall graphic sheet of vital signs was not recorded satisfactorily. in graphic sheet ,it was showed that three-quarter of items no recorded by date 79.6%,time 77.1%, respiration rate 77.1%, saturation 75.1%, o2 flow rate78.6%,blood pressure 78.1%,heart rate 77.6%,body temperature78.1%,and gcs 81.1% ,also just 4 %of sample recorded pain scales and total sample not recorded nursing note (table 7). medication intervention record 0 0 201 100.0 4. consent forms 34 16.9 167 83.1 5. physical assessment complete record incomplete record no record f % f % f % airway 116 57.7 0 0 85 42.3 breathing 104 51.7 0 0 97 48.3 cardiovascular 11 5.5 7 3.5 183 91.0 consciousness 114 56.7 0 0 87 43.3 skin 92 45.8 1 0.5 108 53.7 gastrointestinal 31 15.4 21 10.4 149 74.1 injury 27 13.4 9 4.5 165 82.1 burns 11 5.5 1 0.5 189 94.0 musculoskeletal 10 5.0 5 2.5 186 92.5 wound description 7 3.5 1 0.5 193 96.0 neurology 9 4.5 15 7.5 177 88.1 overall 532 24 60 2 1639 74 unsatisfactory 6. medication administration record (mar) complete record no record f % f % name of drugs 201 100 0 0 route 27 13.4 173 86.1 dose 155 77.1 46 22.9 date 120 59.7 81 40.3 time 121 60.2 80 39.8 signature (nurses) 175 87.1 26 12.9 overall 799 66.4 406 33.6 unsatisfactory kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 20 table7: distribution of filling graphic sheet of vital signs 4. discussion to assess current patient’s medical records, this study has chosen patients file in accident and emergency hospital which prepared as a checklist according to items in retrospective patients file. this included a total of 201 patient’s medical records allowed in different units of the accident and emergency hospital. the complex task of nursing documentation was reported to be guided by an appropriate framework to tackle patients care issues, the nursing process, and a high quality nursing care [14]. our study conducted to assess the satisfactory level of patient's medical records and the adherence of medical staff to document patient's information is accurate and proper manner, the data which, were used in this study can be verified for its completeness, but we believe that this study provides sufficient evidence about the quality of documentation in accident emergency hospital which, could be generalized to other hospitals in the city. our assumption in the current study was that any activity that not recorded or documented assumed to have not been done and neglected. regarding face sheet, it was completely recorded about %95 by non-medical staff. this means the recorded data was satisfactory. other items as shown in others tables were recorded by the physician (chief complaint and history of present illness, radiology, laboratory, medication intervention report, consent forms, flow sheet(physical examination ), and consultant report were unsatisfactorily recorded.. last items which were recorded by the nurse who works in accident and emergency hospital (medication and administration record and a graphic sheet of vital signs) in table (6) and (7) were unsatisfactorily. our result is in consistent to the studies done by coffin [15, 16]which indicate incomplete nursing documentation in emergency hospital [17]. in contrast to the current study ,in jamaica study [18]stated that nursing records was perfect in the majority of record .they also declared quarter defect in nursing diagnosis. in kufa-iraq the study was done by jebus and mohammed[19] reported that the overall evaluation of vital signs documentation was moderate. these data disagreed with our results. regarding nursing note documentation less accurate, it shows the same as this study found. the current study, consistent with reports from other sub-saharan african countries study which showed deficiency in the nursing record. it was shown that 46% of the inpatient nursing care in eastern ghana were unsatisfactorily recorded and notes about 63% of patients after the first time of admission [20]. therefore, it was not straight forward to compare with other similar studies from the ethiopian context due to the lack of limited data of available literature. in this study, it was surprisingly observed that the nursing documentation practice was higher than that obtained in study from european hospitals where it was just 28% [21]. 7. the graphic sheet of vital signs complete record no record f % f % date 41 20.4 160 79.6 time 46 22.9 155 77.1 respiration rate 46 22.9 155 77.1 saturation 50 24.9 151 75.1 o2 flow rate 43 21.4 158 78.6 blood pressure 44 21.9 157 78.1 heart rate 45 22.4 156 77.6 body temperature 44 21.9 157 78.1 conscious (gcs) 38 18.9 163 81.1 pain scale 8 4.0 193 96.0 nursing note 0 0 201 100.0 overall 405 18.3 1806 81.7 unsatisfactory kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 21 in spite of, the present study in basrah/iraq, was done by al-bassam[22] about misconduct in medical records documentation of patients admitted to surgical department at basrah general hospital, shows that the documentation varies from item to other, for information related to patient identity: name, address, occupation presented completely in 70%, 19.2%, and 60.9% respectively. regarding medical history, the chief complaint was written in medical term in 39.2% while the duration of illness was documented in 57.2%, whereas present illness, review of system, past, social, family and drugs histories were completely presented in 17.6%, 1.6%, 19.6%, 3.6%, 2%, 20.8% respectively. also, 38.8 % for general examination, 66% for systemic examination, 32.4% for vital signs, 94.8 % for preoperative and operative anesthetic notes, and 46.8% for operative surgeon notes were not presented at all. the investigations & treatment present in 71.6% and 56.8% respectively while the diagnosis was not mentioned in 87.4%. regarding follow up, nursing notes, consent was not present in approximately 30% of data. the admission sheet was not present in 2.8% while discharging summary report was not present in 97.2%. for diet, height, weight, the fluid chart was not recorded at all, these data which completely agree with the result of this study.. another study in south africa was done [23] recorded that vital sign documentation, completion of recordings was 81% heart rate, 88% respiratory rate, 98% blood pressure, 92% temperature and 41% gcs. these data were completely disagreed with our result which were showed (22.9% respiratory rate, 21.9% blood pressure, 22.4% heart rate, 21.9% body temperature, 18.9 gcs). in both studies, it might be due to an insufficient number of nurses/bed ratio or qualified nurses and inadequate financial income in sulaimani city/iraq. documentation of vital signs can be improved the quality and safety of patient care, therefore we should develop a system for recording vital signs observations at the beside to yield an early warning score and saving data. another study was done in jamaica, the study reported the results recorded for three hospitals. the results noted as follow: 81.6% for the patient’s chief complaint, 78.8% for history of present illness, 79.2% for past health, and only 11.0% for family health. in addition, adequate assessment data were less than 1/3 recorded by the audited. the audit also observed 90% of records which had a physical assessment were completed during twenty four hours of entries and admission timed, signed, and dated by a nurse. patient teaching and discharge planning carried out within seventy two hours of admission were recorded to be 5% and 13.5% respectively. these findings disagreed with our result in the same items except in physical assessment is very low (24%) and missing patient teaching. there is a strong evidence between patient mortality rate and quality of nursing documentation [24, 25]. lack of interest about the significant of medical record bedsides deficiency of computerized system of medical record contributes to weak medical record [20] basically the nurses understands the importance of documentation but practically there is deficiency in achieving adequate nursing record [26].improper documentation will confuse the subsequent medical care by nurses or medical staff subsequently failure leads to poor health care, outcome and increases patient dissatisfaction[27].nurses are contextualized ,so there is a consensus that “nurses bear a large burden on both managing and implementing the interdisciplinary team’s plan for the patient” [28]. nurses may ignore complete nursing record to insure better nursing care for the patient, therefore nurses spend adequate time to perform their job deficiently rather than spending time on comprehensive medical record [29] 5. conclusion this retrospective study is to assess the documentations of patient records. it is conclude that the standard of nursing care documentation is under expectation; the documentation of patient medical records in accident and emergency hospital is unsatisfactory in general, as the majority of the patient records items were undocumented and below than the standard. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 22 6. recommendation the importance of patient identification should be emphasized and continuous professional development should focus on documentation. clinical audits should be implemented and rigorous control of the correct procedures pertaining to patient identification should be executed. the components of the nursing record tool can be utilized once a paperless system is implemented as planned in the hospital. refrences [1] h. h. werley, and n. m. lang, identification of the nursing minimum data set: churchill livingstone, 1988. 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[14] b. yildirim, and s. ozkahraman, “critical thinking in nursing process and education,” international journal of humanities and social science, vol. 1, no. 13, pp. 257-262, 2011. [15] e. g. c. silva, v. c. d. oliveira, g. b. c. neves, and t. m. r. guimarães, “nurses' knowledge about nursing care systematization: from theory to practice,” revista da escola de enfermagem da usp, vol. 45, no. 6, pp. 1380-1386, 2011. [16] v. g. setz, and m. d'innocenzo, “evaluation of the quality of nursing documentation though the review of patient medical records,” acta paulista de enfermagem, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 313-317, 2009. [17] m. d'innocenzo, and n. p. adami, “análise da qualidade dos registros de enfermagem nos prontuários de pacientes de hospitais de ensino e universitários,” acta paul. enferm, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 383-391, 2004. [18] c. blake‐mowatt, j. lindo, and j. bennett, “evaluation of registered nurses' knowledge and practice of documentation at a j amaican hospital,” international nursing review, vol. 60, no. 3, pp. 328-334, 2013. [19] h. g. jebur, and w. mohammed, “evaluation of nursing staffs' documentation standard related to nursing procedures at medical wards in al-najaf al-ashraf governorate,” kufa journal for nursing sciences| .vol. 6, no. 3, 2017 ,مجلةالكوفةللعلومالتمریضیة [20] j. a. asamani, f. d. amenorpe, f. babanawo, and a. m. a. ofei, “nursing documentation of inpatient care in eastern ghana,” british journal of nursing, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 48-54, 2014. [21] j. e. ball, p. griffiths, a. m. rafferty, r. lindqvist, t. murrells, and c. tishelman, “a cross‐sectional study of ‘care left undone’on nursing shifts in hospitals,” journal of advanced nursing, vol. 72, no. 9, pp. 2086-2097, 2016. [22] s. m. al-bassam, “misconduct in medical records documentation of patients admitted to surgical department at basrah general hospital. a cross sectional study of 250 medical records,” basrah journal of surgery, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 8-16, 2016. [23] c. m. keene, v. y. kong, d. l. clarke, and p. brysiewicz, “the effect of the quality of vital sign recording on clinical decision making in a regional acute care trauma ward,” chinese journal of traumatology, vol. 20, no. 5, pp. 283-287, 2017. [24] j. lindo, r. stennett, k. stephenson‐wilson, k. a. barrett, d. bunnaman, p. anderson‐johnson, v. waugh‐brown, and y. wint, “an audit of nursing documentation at three public hospitals in jamaica,” journal of nursing scholarship, vol. 48, no. 5, pp. 499-507, 2016. [25] s. a. collins, k. cato, d. albers, k. scott, p. d. stetson, s. bakken, and d. k. vawdrey, “relationship between nursing documentation and patients’ mortality,” american journal of critical care, vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 306-313, 2013. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 23 [26] m. flink, s. b. glas, f. airosa, g. öhlén, p. barach, h. hansagi, m. brommels, and m. olsson, “patientcentered handovers between hospital and primary health care: an assessment of medical records,” international journal of medical informatics, vol. 84, no. 5, pp. 355-362, 2015. [27] s. austin, “stay out of court with proper documentation,” nursing2018, vol. 41, no. 4, pp. 24-29, 2011. [28] g. m. keenan, e. yakel, d. tschannen, and m. mandeville, “documentation and the nurse care planning process,” 2008. [29] p. domingues, p. sampaio, and p. arezes, "beyond" audit" definition: a framework proposal for integrated management systems." table 2: documented face sheet information  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 127 hepatoprotective effects of nasturtium officinale and allium polyanthum extracts on ccl4induced hepatic damage in albino rats zana hassan ibrahim shkar rzgar k. rostam department of medical laboratory science department of biology college of science college of science university of raparin university of sulaimany ranya, iraq sulaimany, iraq zana@uor.edu.krd shkar.rostam@univsul.edu.iq rebaz rebwar mala soran qadir abdul department of medical laboratory science department of medical laboratory science college of science college of science university of raparin university of raparin ranya, iraq ranya, iraq rebaz.rebwar@uor.edu.krd soran.qadr@uor.edu.krd article info abstract volume 6 – issue 2– december 2021 doi: 10.24017/science.2021.2.12 article history: received 10/10/2021 accepted 24/1/2022 the present study was designed to explore and distinguish the potential hepatoprotective properties of nasturtium officinale and allium polyanthum plant extracts in liver injury model using ccl4 at animal model. we use five groups of six rat replicants were separated from thirty (30) healthy male albino rats randomly: normal control (nc), positive control (pos-c), nasturtium officinale extract (noe), allium polyanthum extract (ape), and noe + ape. the animals had free access of feeding (standard rat diet) and drinking (distilled water). except for nc rats, all other groups were exposed to carbone tetrachloride (ccl4) at every 72 hours for 3 weeks to induce hepatic damage. corresponding treatments were established to the respective groups during study period. levels of aspartate aminotransferase (ast), alanine aminotransferase (alt), alkaline phosphatase (alp), total serum bilirubin (tsb), total protein (tp), albumin (alb) and malondialdehyde (mda) were measured in serum when the study have ended. histopathological analysis of the liver sections was also determined. our results illustrate that, ccl4-treated rats were showed significant increases (p < 0.05) in serum enzyme activities (ast, alt, & alp), tsb and mda levels; reflecting hepatocellular damage caused by ccl4 as a comparison with nc group rats, whereas the values of serum tp with alb keywords: carbon tetrachloride, ccl4 hepatotoxicity, hepatic damage, rat, nasturtium officinale and allium polyanthum. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 128 were decreased. furthermore, the histological examination of liver tissues showed that ccl4 triggered several histological variations at the tissue level. treatments of noe and/or ape along with ccl4 for 3 weeks were significantly improved the ccl4-caused variations in the respective blood-biochemical parameters and histological study of the liver by comparing with pos-c rats indicating the protection of hepatic cells. in conclusion, treatments with noe and ape either in separate or in combination have shown significant improvement in ccl4-induced hepatopathy in experimental rats as evidenced by observed results in serum and hepatic histopathological examinations. copyright © 2021 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction liver is a largest solid organ in body. despite it’s vital role in body metabolites, it play pivotal role in maintenance and regulating body homeostasis [1]. in addition with numerous performance of metabolic functions [2]; liver organ is the major site of detoxification and also regarded as the primary target organ to all the consumed and administered chemicals or drugs, therefore, excess exposure to chemical toxins could induce hepatocellular injury and this may affect the life quality and health status [3]. diseases cause liver failure, are remarkably lethal and liver complications still remains as a serious health problem globally [4] even after a conspicuous progression in the field of hepatology in latest years [5]. hepatic illnesses are arises from hazardous chemicals, continual consumptions of alcohol, chronical-infections and/or autoimmune diseases [6]. these factors will cause damage to the liver organ. as a result of that; by production of highly reactive agents like reactive oxygen species (ros), gradual development of fat deposition started within hepatocytes to severe hepatitis, cirrhosis of liver, and finally hepatocellular carcinoma (hcc) [7, 8]. a group of chemical compounds have been experimentally implicated in semblance of liver damage including carbon tetrachloride (ccl4) which is mostly commonly used [9].ccl4 is a powerful and classic toxic agent that is commonly used in animal models for a rapid generation of patho-physiological liver injury that could representing as of human [3, 10]. the fundamental mechanism by which ccl4 can cause hepatotoxicity is the creation of extremely reactive intermediates by the action of the hepatic microsomal enzyme system [6] and this strictly resembling the human liver sickness in both morphological and biochemical features of the hepatic cell lesions [11 ] . despite that, ccl4 could also disrupts the antioxidant enzyme-system of the liver [9] which lead to incapacitate to perform of it’s natural function for deactivation of ros in cells [12] . at this time, a limited hepatoprotective medications are obtainable for the management of liver diseases [5]. hence, the dealing with hepatopathy is remained as a challenge to the current health science yet. several earlier studies were reported that plant-derived natural substances possess strong antioxidants such as phenol compounds and flavonoids and can interestingly act in ccl4-caused liver damage because they could share free radical scavenging properties [13] and described to exert anti-inflammatory activity [14]. so, the use of phytochemicals in management of chronic liver diseases is focus point because of the conventional drug’s high cost, undesirable drug side effects, and their inefficacy [2]. belonging to this context, this study was intended to establish a liver damage model and assess the potential hepato-protective actions of nasturtium officinale (watercress) and allium polyanthum pre-treatment plant extracts in ccl4-caused hepatopathy at rat model. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 129 2. methods and materials 2.1. collection of plant samples: nasturtium officinale and allium polyanthum whole plants were collected around ranya district/ kurdistan region/ north of iraq; in the month of february and march 2021. the whole plants were dried at room temperature away from direct sunlight exposure, pulverized and supplied as pulverized dried material for the study. 2.2. preparation of plant extracts: the dry powders of nasturtium officinale and allium polyanthum plants were separately extracted with ethanol 95% solvent by using a soxhlet extractor. after exhaustive extraction processes (10 cycles, 100 gm/250 ml of solvent), the extracts of each plant were filtered by using filter paper and then concentrated completely by simple distillation process. the yields were ~10.81 gm and 13.9 gm respectively. the extracts were separately stored in airtight-dark containers at refrigerator until use. 2.3. laboratory animals: thirty (30) male gender wistar albino rats (rattus norvegicus) of 150-180 gm body weight in a good physical shape were used at the present study. males were preferred to avoid the physiological changes due to the oestrus cycle of female genders which repeats at every 4-6 days [15]. the experiment was achieved between apr-2021 and may-2021 at the department of medical laboratory science (animal house) /faculty of science / university of raparin. the rats were maintained in plastic cages bedded with dry wooden chips and were kept at a controlled standard environment (temperature of 22 ± 4 cº with12:12-hour photoperiod) and were had freely access of feeding (usual rodent diet) and drinking (distilled water). 2.4. evaluation of acute toxicity: for investigating the acute toxicity study of the two plant extracts in experimental rats; twelve (12) hour fasted animals (n=12) were randomly selected and divided into two equal groups (n=6). noe and ape in the dose of 300 milligram for each kilogram of rat bw were orally administered correspondingly, then administered rats continuously examined for three (3) upcoming hours; and finally, overnight mortality if any was recorded [16]. 2.5. ccl4-induced hepatotoxicity: for induction of liver injury, a combination of ccl4 with sterile olive oil at 1:1 (v/v) was injected to the experimental rats through intraperitoneal route (1 ml of mixture for a kg of rats body weight) until the study was ended (21 days) at every 72 hours [5]. 2.6. experimental plan: animals were indiscriminately separated for 5 groups (n = 6) and were treated as followings. group i: normal control (nc): received standard rat diet and distilled water for 3 weeks. group ii: positive control (pos-c): received ccl4 (1 ml/kg bw., i.p.) at every 72 hours for 3 weeks. group iii: (noe) received noe (300 mg/kg bw. 6 days/week) by oral gavage for 3 weeks and simultaneously administered with ccl4 (1 ml/kg bw i.p.) at every 72 hours. group iv: (ape) received ape (300 mg/kg bw., 6 days/week) by oral gavage for 3 weeks and simultaneously administered with ccl4 (1 ml/kg bw., i.p.) at every 72 hours. group v: (noe + ape) received mixture of ape + ape (1:1, 300 mg/kg bw., 6 days/week) by oral gavage for 3 weeks and simultaneously administered with ccl4 (1ml/kg bw., i.p.) at every 72 hours. the pos-c group rats were served as model group and received an equivalent volume of distilled water through oral gavage for 3 weeks. once the study was finished (48 hours following the last injection of the drug-dosage); animals were separated from diet for the night, anesthetized by ethyl-ether then cardiac-puncturing technique was used for blood collection, allowed to coagulate in evacuated gel tubes at room temperature. serum fractions were obtained by centrifugation (2500 rpm for 15 minutes) and were used in the assessment of liver function status. liver organs were also excised, cleansed by normal saline and putted in formaldehyde (10%) for hepato-histological examinations. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 130 2.7. measurement of serum liver function markers: the serum biochemical markers of hepatic function such as aspartate aminotransferase (ast), alanine aminotransferase (alt), alkaline phosphatase (alp), total serum bilirubin (tsb), total protein (tp) and albumin (alb) concentrations were measured by using fully automated chemistry analyzer (cobas c-111). serum malondialdehyde (mda) concentration was calculated by spectrophotometer with a tba solution as the procedure previously described by study [15]. 2.8. histological study: the histopathological examination conducted as described by [17] procedure. the whole liver organ from rats of different groups were washed by normal saline, then the desired sections of the liver samples were fixed at 10% formaldehyde and further followed for hepatopathological findings. 2.9. statistical data analysis: a computer program (spss software, version 24.0) was applied for analysis of the corresponding data from present study. results were showed as mean ± standard error (mean ± se). the statistical differences were determined by duncan's test through analysis of variance (one-way anova) and the statistical probability is p<0.05. 3. results the hepatoprotective effects of ethanolic extracts of nasturtium officinale and allium polyanthum plants on serum transaminase enzymes (ast and alt), alp, tsb, tp, alb and mda levels in ccl4-intoxicated rats were summarized at table 1. compared to the control group; the rats from pos-c group were subjected to ccl4 treatment alone were showed a severe abnormal functioning of hepatic cells, this demonstrated by significant elevations (p < 0.05) in serum markers of ast, alt and alp enzymes as well as tsb and mda while the levels of serum tp and alb were markedly decreased. the difference in serum alb level was not significant. administration of ccl4 alone were also caused a noticeable histological change in the hepatic tissues of experimental rats including mild to moderate chronic inflammatory cells infiltration (predominantly lymphocytes), vascular congestion, mild to moderate focal fatty change and focal aggregate of atypical cells with hyperchromatic large nuclei as it compared to nc rats. oral-gavage pre-treatments of noe and ape either in separate or in combination mode were significantly (p < 0.05) restored the level of raised marker enzymes of serum, levels of tsb and mda close to the normal level when compared with pos-c rats. (table 1 and figure 1). table 1: effects of plant extracts (noe and ape) on various biochemical parameters in rats were subjected to hepatotoxicity by carbone tetra chloride injection. parameters nc ccl4-induced hepatic damage groups pos-c plant extracts (300mg/kg bw) noe ape noe + ape ast (iu/l) 104.33±5.71 a 683.90±91.96 b 164.40±7.90 a 155.11±9.63 a 148.33±14.41 a alt (iu/l) 47.83±1.62 a 124.41±49.51 b 34.60±2.30 a 31.11±2.99 a 39.35±3.04 a alp (iu/l) 152.83±9.45 a 219.50±7.98 b 174.00±13.51 a 174.50±14.96 a 182.17±13.29 a tsb (mg/dl) 0.166±0.03 a 0.750±0.13 b 0.065±0.006 a 0.096±0.033 a 0.103±0.022 a tp (mg/dl) 5.801±0.11 b 4.463±0.47 a 6.330±0.21 b 5.990±0.32 b 5.905±0.45 b alb (mg/dl) 3.390±0.04 ab 2.956±0.31 a 4.06±0.20 b 3.84±0.24 b 3.93±0.27 b mda (μmol/l) 1.671±0.06 a 3.513±0.08 c 2.483±0.24 b 2.060±0.25 ab 2.353±0.23 b the same letters indicate that differences were insignificant, while the different letters be a sign of significant differences. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 131 figure 1: effects of noe and ape on serum levels of (a) ast, (b) alt, (c) alp, (d) tsb, (e) alb, (f) tp and (g) mda in cci4-induced hepatic damage rats. figure 1: effects of noe and ape on serum levels of (a) ast, (b) alt, (c) alp, (d) tsb, (e) alb, (f) tp and (g) mda in cci4-induced hepatic damage rats. in histopathological study; the treatments of noe and ape revealed significant hepatocellular protection against ccl4-intoxication, which is noticeable by the existence of further or fewer normal hepatocytes and reduced inflammatory infiltration and necrosis comparing with ccl4injected group (figure 2). kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 132 figure 2: effects of noe and ape in rat liver histology against carbone tetrachloride hepatic injurymodel at male albino rats. (a) nc: normal histological arrangement of hepatocytes and central hepatic venule with portal tracts ; (b, c, d, e & f) pos-c rats (model group): showing mild to moderate chronic inflammatory cells infiltration (predominantly lymphocytes), vascular congestion ,mild focal fatty change and focal aggregate of atypical cells with hyperchromatic large nuclei; (g) noe: mild chronic inflammatory cells infiltration; (h) ape: mild chronic inflammatory cells infiltration with no atypical cells; (i) noe+ape: mild chronic inflammatory cells infiltration with no atypical cells. 4. discussion carbon tetrachloride (ccl4) is broadly used in investigational study of acute liver disease model at experimental laboratory animals [13] and its involvement in building of liver dysfunction has been examined for lots of years ]18 [, ccl4 thought to trigger the oxidative stress as a consequence of free radical production and lipid peroxidation at liver [10] in which the normal balance between pro-oxidant and antioxidant system of the cells have been interrupted .[19 ] data from the current study were clearly showed that intraperitoneal administration of ccl4 in pos-c rats were caused a significant hepatic injury as it confirmed by a sharp increase in liverfunction marker enzymes and alp, moreover; the tsb with serum mda concentrations were also significantly increased with a slight depletion of tp and alb levels (table 1). these findings were noticeably going parallel with the data from previous studies including [4,20,22]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 133 based on the histopathological investigations in the rats were received current hepato-toxicant were also showed mild to moderate chronic inflammatory cells infiltration (predominantly lymphocytes), vascular congestion, mild focal fatty change with focal aggregate of atypical cells with hyperchromatic large nuclei. the same results were observed by [1] study after four weeks of ccl4 administration. serum transaminase enzymes are typically representing as the markers of hepatic cellular injury and abnormal functioning [23] , because these enzymes are situated in liver cells and were drip out into the circulation during hepatic cell membrane damage [15]. study by [24] also argued that when hepatic cells were metabolize ccl4, cellular transe-nzyme contents were directly leaked into the blood stream by hepatic tissues, and this caused a substantial increases in the amount of these serum maker enzymes at blood. the principal mechanisms by which ccl4 can trigger hepatic functional abnormality is the invention of reactive-free radicals when metabolized [25] these free radicals are chemically unstable; directly could initiate damage to several important cellular-bio-macromolecules such as proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids [13], they able to enhance lipid peroxidation on the hepatocyte plasma membrane, altering the enzyme actions and finally encouraging liver tissue damage [1] and study by [14] confirmed that oxidative stress and lipid peroxidation are strongly interrelated. the obtained results in serum transaminase enzymes and mda by this study were consistent with earlier studies and strongly support that ccl4 intoxication caused oxidative stress in pos-c model rats. accordingly, elimination or inhibition of the reactive radical generations and rebalancing of the disturbed antioxidant status have been targeted in the health managements of hepatic damage [18, 26]. based on the acquired results by present study; it could be revealed that treatments of noe and ape either in separate or as co-treatments were suggestively restored or prevented the ccl4-induced hepatic cell injuries toward normalization nearly as manifested by marked decreases in the concentration of liver-marker enzyme activities, restoration in the levels of serum tsb, tp, alb as well as mda in the respective groups as compared to untreated ccl4 group. the histological features of treatment groups were not fully enhanced by this study but expanse of histopathological injuries were showed that the focal aggregation of atypical cells with hyperchromatic large nuclei reduced at pretreatment groups and this could provide supportive evidence for biochemical analysis. these findings suggest that both noe and ape may effectively protect hepatocytes from carbon tetrachloride intoxication and this could define their health promoting features. the use of medicinal plants were previously suggested by a lot of studies [27]. some phytochemicals have been proven to prevent inflammation through decrease in the production of pro-inflammatory factors by macrophages or blocking inflammatory pathways down stream and or help for the syntheses of antioxidant enzyme systems of the body and detoxification pathway at the transcriptional level [14]. previous studies [23, 28] were demonstrated that hepatoprotective activity of compounds verified either by decreasing the harmful effects of hepatotoxic compound or by maintaining the normal hepatic physiology and reversing the histological damage induced by ccl4. plants are rich in secondary metabolites; such as phenolic compounds, which can act as antioxidants, based on the presence of redox properties [13]. different studies have clarified that plant extracts have antioxidant properties and were dependable for fight against ccl4 hepatotoxicity [8]. the principal mechanisms by which noe and ape displayed their protective action on ccl4induced alternations at liver tissues could be attributed to the presence of potential antioxidants at the composition of these two respective plant extracts [2] or by repairing the liver cell membrane and mitochondrial damage and or may be due to their capabilities in blockage of toxicant bioactivation during metabolism and reducing oxidative stress through chelating of available free radicals [6] which was inveterate by the observed results from the current study. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 134 5. conclusion the present findings could imply supportive evidence that pretreatments of noe and ape either in separate or in combinations could protect or reinstate the liver from damage at rat ccl4-treated model compared with the ccl4 alone treated group; 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[28] k. mani senthilkumar, b. rajkapoor, and s. kavimani, “protective effect of enicostemma littorale. against ccl4-induced hepatic damage in rats,” pharmaceutical biology, vol. 43, no. 5, pp. 485-487, 2005.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq correlation of anti-müllerian hormone with polycystic ovarian disease and its relation with age sara omer muhammed chro najmaddin fattah obstetrics and gynecology obstetrics and gynecology sulaimani maternity teaching hospital sulaimani maternity teaching hospital school of medicine/ university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq sararashan87@yahoo.com chrofattah@yahoo.co.uk volume 4 – special issue: 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) doi: 10.24017/science.2019 .ichms.5 received: 12 june 2019 accepted: 5 july 2019 abstract polycystic ovarian disease (pcod) is common endocrine disorder of reproductive-aged women. serum anti-müllerian hormone (amh) increases in pcod women due to increased follicle numbers. objectives: the aim was to evaluate ovarian reserve by measuring level of amh among pcod women. prospective cohort study was performed on 62 ladies who aged 25 to 40 years and diagnosed by rotterdam criteria as pcod in sulaimani maternity teaching hospital/outpatient gynecological clinic during may 2018 to may 2019. consents were obtained from patients for their inclusion. inclusion criteria were age of 25-40 years and diagnosis of pcod. the patients’ ages, body mass index (bmi) and level of amh were recorded. sample size estimation was performed by "gpower 3.1" and "ibm spss statistics version 25" was used for analysis of data. p-value of (≤0.05) was considered significant. the mean±sd (standard deviation) of age of women were 31.7±5 years. the majority of participants were housewives from inside of sulaimani city and most of them were diagnosed to have pcod through clinical features and results of ultrasonography. the mean±sd of bmi and amh were 26.2±2.8 kg/m2 (ranged from 21.3 to 33.2 kg/m2) and 4.76±3.51 ng/ml (ranged from 0.1-14.6 ng/ml) respectively. there was significant association between age of the participants and amh and the association of bmi and amh was not significant. the level of amh is decreased with aging and it is higher among pcod women due to increased follicle numbers. the level of amh was not associated with bmi. keywords: anti-müllerian hormone (amh), infertility, polycystic ovarian disease (pcod). mailto:sararashan87@yahoo.com mailto:chrofattah@yahoo.co.uk kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 51 1. introduction polycystic ovarian disease (pcod) is a common endocrine disorder of reproductive-aged women and it accounts for 10-20% of women in such ages [1]. moreover, it is a common cause of infertility and it is usually diagnosed at fertility clinics [2]. it is a condition of chronic anovulation and hyperandrogenism, and it is associated with menstrual disruption, obesity, insulin resistance and lipid abnormalities [3]. women with pcod, especially those with hyperandrogenism and/or obesity, have metabolic disturbances more frequently; therefore, this make them to be more prone to metabolic syndromes and their anti-müllerian hormone (amh) will be elevated [4]. the diagnosis of pcod can be made by rotterdam criteria if woman had at least two of the following three criteria: clinical or biochemical hyperandrogenism, oligo-ovulation or anovulation, and polycystic ovarian morphology on ultrasonography which is defined as the presence of more than 12 follicles of two to nine millimeters in diameter each, or ovarian volume of greater than 10 cubic centimeters [5]. serum amh is used as a marker for the diagnosis of pcod [6]. amh is a member of the transforming growth factor beta (tgf-beta) protein superfamily and exclusively produced by the gonads [2]. serum amh concentration increases in pcod due to the increased numbers of follicles in pcod and it reflects the size of the pool of these follicles [6]. the amh level is associated with arrested follicular pool and serves as marker of follicle counts [6]. moreover, it has the properties of follicle stimulating hormone (fsh) inhibition; therefore, it counteracts the action of gonadotrophin [7]. in addition, amh participates in the process of folliculogenesis and it is glycoprotein produced and secreted by the granulosa cells of the early primordial follicles [2]. thereafter, the secretion of amh increases and reaches the peak concentration in small antral follicles before it subsides in the granulosa cells of the preovulatory follicles [2]. studies showed that serum amh levels in women with pcod are two to three times higher than women with normal ovaries [7]. although serum amh level is high in women with pcod, its reference range is variable [1]. moreover, serum amh level does not change during the menstrual cycle and it is not affected by oral contraceptive use; thence, blood sample can be taken at any time of the month [7]. the follicles' number decrease with advance in age in both patients with pcod and normal ovulatory women; therefore, as patients with pcod have greater initial pool of follicles, their ovarian reserve is unlikely to undergo rapid depletion [7]. in the current study, we tried to evaluate ovarian reserve by measuring amh level among women with pcod who aged from 25 to 40 years old. 2. methods and materials we performed a prospective cohort study on 62 ladies who were aged 25-40 years and diagnosed by rotterdam criteria as pcod in the sulaimani maternity teaching hospital/outpatient gynecological clinic during may 2018 to may 2019. concurrently, the women were randomly selected by using simple random sampling method. research ethical committee of kurdistan board of medical specialties (kbms) approved the study proposal and a formal acceptance letter was obtained from sulaimani maternity teaching hospital before starting the study. in addition, written informed consent has also been taken from the patients for their inclusion in this study. the inclusion criteria were women who were aged 25-40 years old and diagnosed by rotterdam criteria as pcod. serum anti-müllerian hormone (amh) was used as a marker for the assessment of pcod; blood samples were taken and sent for laboratory. in addition, the researchers had borne the cost of the test. the ages, bmi, residencies, and occupations of the participants were also recorded. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 52 sample size estimation was performed by using "gpower 3.1" program and it yielded 60 samples when the effect size of 0.5, p-value of ≤0.05, and study power of >95% were selected. therefore, the sample size of 62 participants was collected. furthermore, the "ibm spss statistics version 25" was used for the analysis of the data and both descriptive and inferential statistics were used. moreover, p-values of (≤0.05, and <0.001) were considered as statistically significant, and highly significant associations, consecutively. in addition, pearson chi-square was used to find out the significancy of association between independent and dependent variable pairs, and pearson r correlation was used to calculate the direction of the correlation between the two variables. 3. results the mean±sd (standard deviation) of the age of participants were 31.7±5 years (ranged from 25-40 years). most of the participants were diagnosed to have pcod through clinical features and results of ultrasonography (table 1). table (1): the frequencies of diagnostic methods among age groups diagnostic methods age groups (year) (%) total (%) 25-30 31-35 36-40 clinical yes 27 (43.5) 17 (27.4) 18 (29) 62 (100%) biochemical yes 15 (24.2) 8 (12.9) 8 (12.9) 31 (50%) no 12 (19.4) 9 (14.5) 10 (16.1) 31 (50) ultrasonography yes 24 (38.7) 16 (25.8) 17 (27.4) 57 (91.9) no 3 (4.8) 1 (1.6) 1 (1.6) 5 (8.1) the majority of the participants were from inside of the sulaimani city and housewives (table 2). table (2): the distribution of demographic features among participants’ age groups demographic features age groups (year) (%) total (%) 25-30 31-35 36-40 residencies inside city 22 (35.5) 12 (19.4) 11 (17.7) 45 (72.6) outside city 5 (8.1) 5 (8.1) 7 (11.3) 17 (27.4) occupation teacher 5 (8.1) 2 (3.2) 5 (8.1) 12 (19.4) student 4 (6.5) 0 (0) 0 (0) 4 (6.5) housewife 10 (16.1) 9 (14.5) 9 (14.5) 28 (45.2) nurse 1 (1.6) 1 (1.6) 2 (3.2) 4 (6.5) lawyer 2 (3.2) 1 (1.6) 1 (1.6) 4 (6.5) employee 3 (4.8) 3 (4.8) 1 (1.6) 7 (11.3) engineer 2 (3.2) 0 (0) 0 (0) 2 (3.2) hairdresser 0 (0) 1 (1.6) 0 (0) 1 (1.6) the mean±sd of bmi was 26.2±2.8 kg/m2 (ranged from 21.3 to 33.2 kg/m2). while the mean±sd of the amh were 4.76±3.51 ng/ml (ranged from 0.1-14.6 ng/ml). there was statistically highly significant association between age of the participants and amh, and the direction of the association was negative i.e. amh decreased when the age of the women increased (table 3). kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 53 table (3): the association of age of the participants with amh age groups (year) amh (ng/ml) total (%) p-value (pearson’s r correlation) low (<0.7) (%) normal (0.7-3) (%) high (>3) (%) 25 30 0 (0) 5 (8.1) 22 (35.5) 27 (43.6) < 0.001 (-0.597) 31 35 0 (0) 3 (4.8) 14 (22.6) 17 (27.4) 36 40 4 (6.5) 12 (19.6) 2 (3.2) 18 (29) total 4 (6.5) 20 (32.3) 38 (61.3) 62 (100) there was statistically insignificant association between bmi of the participants and amh (table 4). table (4): the association of bmi with amh bmi (kg/m2) amh (ng/ml) total (%) p-value (pearson’s r correlation) low (<0.7) (%) normal (0.7-3) (%) high (>3) (%) normal (18.524.9) 2 (3.2) 4 (6.5) 15 (24.2) 21 (33.9) 0.144 (0.046) overdose (2529.9) 2 (3.2) 15 (24.2) 16 (25.8) 33 (53.2) obese (>30) 0 (0) 1 (1.6) 7 (11.3) 8 (12.9) total 4 (6.5) 20 (32.3) 38 (61.3) 62 (100) 4. discussion as we mentioned in our inclusion criteria, all of the patients were afflicted with pcod. in addition, the methods of diagnosis were as follows: clinical diagnosis (100%), diagnosis on the bases of ultrasonography findings (91.9%), and biochemistry findings (50%) as shown in (table 1). all the methods were used together to diagnose women with pcod. furthermore, these diagnostic methods were used according to the three criteria of rotterdam [5]. the ages of the women were ranged from 25 to 40 years (mean±sd = 31.7±5), and most of them were housewives from inside the city of sulaimani (table 2). during the reproductiveaged period, amh in women is secreted by granulose cells of small antral follicles of the ovaries [2]. furthermore, it is not detected until the age of puberty and it reaches the highest level at the age of 24.5 years; therefore, amh is age related [8]. the quality and number of oocytes will decline with advance in age; herein, the level of amh will decline to the lowest during menopause and later is not detected at all [6]. thence, it can be used as a good predictor of ovarian reserve and antral follicle count [9]. although the ages of the patients in the current study were during their reproductive period, the level of amh was declined with the advancement of the ages in this period too and their association was statistically highly significant (table 3). moreover, the same finding was found in the literature we searched such as the systematic review performed by homburg et al. at 2014 in london [2], the study of köninger et al. at 2018 in germany [6], the study of barbakadze et al. at 2014 in georgia [8], and the study of shi et al. at 2018 in china [9]. the mean±sd of bmi was 26.2±2.8 kg/m2 (range; 21.3 to 33.2 kg/m2) and the mean±sd of amh level was 4.76±3.51 ng/ml (range; 0.1 to 14.6 ng/ml). in addition, the results of current study showed no significant association between bmi and amh (table 4). this association was also statistically insignificant between overweight and obesity with the level of amh in the literature we searched, i.e. the level of amh was stable despite the trial of reduction in the body weights of pcod women as shown by the study of moini et al. [10] at 2018 in tehran, iran. we may explain the findings by the fact that the level of amh is related to the number of follicles which are greater in number in patients with pcod and the follicle numbers are kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 54 not changed; increased or decreased, due to body weight as shown by the study of köninger et al. [6] at 2018 in germany. moreover, the study of de kat et al. [4] at 2015 in netherlands mentioned that body weight may be increased due to metabolic disturbances that happen in women with pcod. although all of the patients in this study were afflicted with pcod, amh level was above normal level in 61.3% of patients (tables 3 and 4). furthermore, the study of tian et al. [11] at 2014 in china found about the same results although they were also included women without pcod in their study. interpretatively, this may be due to the fact that the numbers of follicles are increased in patients with pcod although their numbers decrease with aging as normal women as it was shown by the study of köninger et al. [6] at 2018 in germany. as we mentioned in our inclusion criteria, all of the patients were afflicted with pcod. in addition, the methods of diagnosis were as follows: clinical diagnosis (100%), diagnosis on the bases of ultrasonography findings (91.9%), and biochemistry findings (50%) as shown in (table 1). all the methods were used together to diagnose women with pcod. furthermore, these diagnostic methods were used according to the three criteria of rotterdam [5]. the ages of the women were ranged from 25 to 40 years (mean±sd = 31.7±5), and most of them were housewives from inside the city of sulaimani (table 2). during the reproductiveaged period, amh in women is secreted by granulose cells of small antral follicles of the ovaries [2]. furthermore, it is not detected until the age of puberty and it reaches the highest level at the age of 24.5 years; therefore, amh is age related [8]. the quality and number of oocytes will decline with advance in age; herein, the level of amh will decline to the lowest during menopause and later is not detected at all [6]. thence, it can be used as a good predictor of ovarian reserve and antral follicle count [9]. although the ages of the patients in the current study were during their reproductive period, the level of amh was declined with the advancement of the ages in this period too and their association was statistically highly significant (table 3). moreover, the same finding was found in the literature we searched such as the systematic review performed by homburg et al. at 2014 in london [2], the study of köninger et al. at 2018 in germany [6], the study of barbakadze et al. at 2014 in georgia [8], and the study of shi et al. at 2018 in china [9]. the mean±sd of bmi was 26.2±2.8 kg/m2 (range; 21.3 to 33.2 kg/m2) and the mean±sd of amh level was 4.76±3.51 ng/ml (range; 0.1 to 14.6 ng/ml). in addition, the results of current study showed no significant association between bmi and amh (table 4). this association was also statistically insignificant between overweight and obesity with the level of amh in the literature we searched, i.e. the level of amh was stable despite the trial of reduction in the body weights of pcod women as shown by the study of moini et al. [10] at 2018 in tehran, iran. we may explain the findings by the fact that the level of amh is related to the number of follicles which are greater in number in patients with pcod and the follicle numbers are not changed; increased or decreased, due to body weight as shown by the study of köninger et al. [6] at 2018 in germany. moreover, the study of de kat et al. [4] at 2015 in netherlands mentioned that body weight may be increased due to metabolic disturbances that happen in women with pcod. although all of the patients in this study were afflicted with pcod, amh level was above normal level in 61.3% of patients (tables 3 and 4). furthermore, the study of tian et al. [11] at 2014 in china found about the same results although they were also included women without pcod in their study. interpretatively, this may be due to the fact that the numbers of follicles are increased in patients with pcod although their numbers decrease with aging as normal women as it was shown by the study of köninger et al. [6] at 2018 in germany. 5. conclusion the level of amh is age-related and it is higher among women with pcod due to the increased numbers of follicles in women with this condition. although its level is larger in pcod women, its level will decrease with advancement of ages. there was no significant statistical association between the bmi and the level of amh. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 55 reference [1] t. wongwananuruk, n. panichyawat , s. indhavivadhana, m. rattanachaiyanont, s. angsuwathana, k. techatraisak, et al. “accuracy of antimüllerian hormone and total follicles count to diagnose polycystic ovarysyndrome in repro ductive women,” taiwan j obstet gynecol., vol. 57, no.. 4, pp. 499-506, 2018. [2] r. homburg, g. crawford. “the role of amh in anovulation associated with pcos: a hypothesis,” hum reprod., vol. 29, no. 6, pp. 1117-1121, 2014. [3] n. n. jahromi, m. h. dabbaghmanesh, p. bakhshaie, m. e. parsanezhad, z. anvar, m. alborzi, et al. “assessment of oxytocin level, glucose metabolism components and cutoff values for oxytocin and anti-mullerian hormone in infertile pcos women,” taiwan j obstet gynecol., vol. 57, no. 4, pp. 555-559, 2018. [4] a. c. de kat, f. j. broekmans, j. s. laven, y. t. van der schouw. “anti-müllerian hormone as a marker of ovarian reserve in relation to cardio-metabolic health: a narrative review,” maturitas, vol. 80, no. 3, pp. 251257, 2015. [5] h. aydoğmuş, s. kelekçi, f. elmalı, s. aydoğmuş. “can we use serum anti-mullerian hormone to differentiate the diagnosis between polycystic ovary syndrome patients and healthy women with polycystic ovarian morphology and regular menstrual cycles,” saudi med j., vol. 39, no. 10, pp. 1011-1016, 2018. [6] a. köninger, a. kampmeier, b. schmidt, m. frank, t. strowitzki, r. kimmig, et al. “trends in antimüllerian hormone concentrations across different stages of pregnancy in women with polycystic ovary syndrome,” reprod biomed online, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 367-374, 2018. [7] c. y. yue, l. k. y. lu, m. li, q. l. zhang, c. m. ying. “threshold value of anti-mullerian hormone for the diagnosis of polycystic ovary syndrome in chinese women,” plos one, vol. 13, no. 8, pp. e0203129, 2018. [8] l. barbakadze, j. kristasashvili. “antimullerian hormone in cases of different reproductive pathologies,” georgian med news, vol. 232-233, pp. 16-21, 2014. [9] x. shi, d. peng, y. liu, x. miao, h. ye, j. zhang. “advantages of serum anti-müllerian hormone as a marker for polycystic ovarian syndrome,” lab med., vol. 00, pp. 1-7, 2018. [10] a. moini, a. arabipoor, m. hemat, j. ahmadi, r. salman-yazdi, z. zolfaghari. “the effect of weight loss program on serum anti-müllerian hormone level in obese and overweight infertile women with polycystic ovary syndrome,” gynecol endocrinol, vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 119-123, 2019. [11] x. tian, x. ruan, a. o. mueck, d. wallwiener, j. wang, s. liu, d. yin, y. lu, y. zhang, h. wu. “serum anti-mullerian hormone and insulin resistance in the main phenotypes of non-obese polycystic ovarian syndrome women in china,” gynecol endocrinol., vol. 30, no. 11, pp. 836-839, 2014. 1. introduction 5. conclusion [1] t. wongwananuruk, n. panichyawat , s. indhavivadhana, m. rattanachaiyanont, s. angsuwathana, k. techatraisak, et al. “accuracy of anti-müllerian hormone and total follicles count to diagnose polycystic ovarysyndrome in reproductive women,” taiwan ... [2] r. homburg, g. crawford. “the role of amh in anovulation associated with pcos: a hypothesis,” hum reprod., vol. 29, no. 6, pp. 1117-1121, 2014. [3] n. n. jahromi, m. h. dabbaghmanesh, p. bakhshaie, m. e. parsanezhad, z. anvar, m. alborzi, et al. “assessment of oxytocin level, glucose metabolism components and cutoff values for oxytocin and anti-mullerian hormone in infertile pcos women,” tai... [6] a. köninger, a. kampmeier, b. schmidt, m. frank, t. strowitzki, r. kimmig, et al. “trends in anti-müllerian hormone concentrations across different stages of pregnancy in women with polycystic ovary syndrome,” reprod biomed online, vol. 37, no. 3...  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu anti-obesity effects of arum maculatum, nasturtium officinale plant extracts and exercise in high fat diet-induced obese rats zana hassan ibrahim department of medical laboratory science college of science university of raparin ranya, iraq zana@uor.edu.krd article info abstract volume 6 – issue 2– december 2021 doi: 10.24017/science.2021.2.18 article history: received 10/10/2021 accepted 1/2/2022 the aim: to investigate and distinguish the anti-obesity activities of arum maculatum, nasturtium officinale plant extracts and exercise against high-fat diet induced obesity at rat model. methods: thirty healthy male albino rats were randomly separated into 5 groups (n=6): normal control (nc), high-fat diet control (hfd-c), arum maculatum extract (ame), nasturtium officinale extract (noe) and exercise. the nc group fed with normal diet (nd) and all other groups a high fat diet (hfd) to induce obesity and hyperlipidemia for 8 weeks. corresponding treatments were established to the respective groups during study period. rat body weights (bw) and food intake were obtained weekly. glucose, total cholesterol (tc), triglycerides (tg), low, very low and highdensity lipoprotein cholesterols (ldl-c, vldl-c and hdl-c), malondialdehyde (mda) with aspartate aminotransferase (ast) and alanine aminotransferase (alt) were estimated in serum at the end of the study. results: the hfd-c rats were associated with a significant increase (p<0.05) in bw gain with the elevations in serum glucose, lipid profiles (tc, tg, ldl-c &vldl-c), liver function tests (ast & alt) and mda in comparison with nc rats although the level of serum hdl-c decreased. furthermore, treatments of ame, noe and exercise along with hfd significantly (p<0.05) reduced hfd-induced changes in bw gain and the levels of serum biochemical parameters as compared to rats fed hfd. the most significant effect on reducing weight gain at model rats were recorded by noe treatment, while the attenuated effects ame on bw gain and ast, exercise on bw gain, tg, vldl, mda and ast were not significant (p>0.05). conclusions: consumption of hfd for 8 weeks caused hfd-c rats obese, hyperglycemic and hyperlipidemic with hepatic cellular injury when compared to the nc rats. ame, noe and exercise treatments were suppressed the development of obesity as well as attenuated hfd induced changes in serum keywords: obesity, high fat diet, rat model, plant extracts, arum maculatum, nasturtium officinale and exercise. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 191 biochemical parameters of the respective groups when compared to the hfd-c group. copyright © 2021 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction world health organization (who) defined obesity as abnormal body buildup of fat due to disturbance in balance between energy consumption and expenditure [1, 2]. it considered as a serious public health issue around the globe that affecting both developed and under developing nations [3]. occurrence of obesity is linked with the combination of several factors including genetic, nutritional, and environmental, a 2016 who survey stated that 1.9 billion adults were overweight worldwide, over 600 million of which are obese [4], more than 2.8 million individuals were die annually because of being overweight or obese [5]. various health risks including metabolic syndrome diseases, some cardiovascular diseases and certain cancers has been confirmed to be associated with obesity [6]. the basic mechanisms for overcome or managing the obesity includes, food regimes, exercise and pharmaceuticals, the herbal medicines have great attention because of its natural source, low price and insignificant side effects [5]. therapies for obesity through conventional drugs were linked with negative side effects and weight gain is rebound once the drug intake is ignored. consequently, development of a safe and effective drug still in progress by researches to treat obesity [7]. in history, plant raw materials have served for construction of drugs, active compounds of several plants are extracted and used to treat numerous diseases [8]. in this context, the influence of arum maculatum, nasturtium officinale plant extracts and exercise on obesity were assessed at the present study. 2. methods and materials 2.1. plant material arum maculatum and nasturtium officinale fresh plants were collected around ranya district in the month of march 2021. the whole plants were dried at room temperature away from sunlight, pulverized and supplied as a plant sample powders. 2.2. preparation of plant extracts plant powders of arum maculatum and nasturtium officinale were separately extracted by hexane, ethyl acetate and ethanol 95% based on their polarity using a soxhlet extractor. after exhaustive extractions (10 cycles, 100 gm/250 ml solvent), the extracts of each plant from different solvents were filtered, concentrated completely by simple distillation process and mixed. the yields were ~11.6 and 8.9 gm respectively. the extracts were separately stored in airtight containers at refrigerator until use. 2.3. laboratory animals thirty male albino rats (rattus norvegicus) of about 7-8 weeks of age and 195-210 gm bw were used. the experiment was achieved between apr-2021 and jun-2021 in the animal house of medical laboratory science department /faculty of science /raparin university. the rats were kept in plastic cages bedded with wooden chips, maintained at a controlled temperature of 24 ± 2 cº with12-h light/dark cycles and fed according to study design with free access to water. 2.4. toxicity investigations investigations of toxicity for the two plant extracts were performed on 12 randomly selected animals. rats were fasted overnight and divided into two equal groups, ame and noe (300 mg/kg bw) were orally administered respectively. the animals were examined continuously for 3 hours; lastly, overnight death if any was verified [3]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 192 2.5. induction of obesity obesity was achieved through administration of hfd that prepared as described by study [9] and were supplied as a free access and basic diet for the respective experimental rats. this diet offers energy as fat 12%; whereas the nd provides 4% as fat [10]. 2.6. swimming exercise protocol exercise protocol based on swimming as used by [11]. the rats of the exercised group were subjected to swimming in a plastic tank filled with tap water and drained after each swim. the water temperature is kept at 32 ± 2 cº. a gradual progression for swimming was applied starting from 10 minutes, and then regularly protracted to 20, 30, 40, 50 minutes/day and the swimming exercise lasted 60 minutes on the sixth day, then swimming protocol began daily (1 hour, 6 days/ week) [12, 13], for 8 weeks. after completion of each swim, rats are air-dried and returned to their cages. 2.7. study design after 1 week of acclimatization, rats were randomly separated into five groups (n = 6). group i (nc): fed nd for 8 weeks. group ii (hfd-c): fed hfd for 8 weeks. group iii (hfd + ame): fed hfd + received ame (300 mg/kg b.w., 6 days/week) with oral gavage for 8 weeks. group iv (hfd + noe): fed hfd + received noe (300 mg/kg b.w., 6 days/week) with oral gavage for 8 weeks. group v: (hfd + exercise): fed hfd + exercised (1 hour, 6 days/ week) for 8 weeks. except for nc, all other groups were fed with hfd along the study period. the hfd-c rats were regarded as a model group and treated with an equivalent volume of dw by oral gavage, food consumption and bw were recorded every week regularly along the study period. after the study was finished, overnight fasted animals were anesthetized by ethyl ether and blood samples were obtained through cardiac puncture. serum was prepared by centrifugation (2500 rpm for 15 minutes) and examined for biochemical parameters. 2.8. measurement of biochemical parameters the levels of serum glucose, tc, tg, hdl-c with ast and alt concentrations were estimated by using full-auto analyzer (cobas c-111). serum mda was measured photometrically with a tba solution as described by [14] and the ldl and vldl values were determined by applying the formula as follow: ldl-cholesterol (mg/dl) = total cholesterol (hdl +triglyceride/5) [4]. 2.9. statistical analysis the values of investigated parameters were analyzed by computer program (spss software version 26) and given as mean ± standard error (mean ± se). the differences between means were evaluated by duncan's test through analysis of variance (anova) and the differences were regarded as significant if p<0.05. 3. results 3.1. effects of ame, noe and exercise on body weight gain and food intake at the start of this work; mean bw of all experimental groups were approximately similar. administration of hfd were associated with a significant increase (p < 0.05) in bw of hfdc rats as compared to the nc animals, the percentages of bw gain were 83.243% and 70.531% respectively. (table 1, fig. 1 & 2). after 8 weeks of the treatments, the bw of noe rats fed hfd had gained (62.279%) a significant (p < 0.05) less bw than the hfd-c rats. although treatments of ame and exercise showed lower bw gain, but the results were statistically not differed (p > 0.05). (table 1, fig. 1 and 2). the food intakes were not significantly changed between nc and hfd-c groups. slight changes were detected between the hfd-c and the treatment groups (ame, noe and exercise) but the differences were insignificant (p > 0.05) too. (table 1). kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 193 table 1: effects of ame, noe and exercise on bw gain and food consumption in high fat-fed rats for 8 weeks. parameters nc high-fat diet-induced obese groups hfd-c exercise plant extracts (300mg/kg bw) ame noe initial body wt. (gm) 195.63 ± 4.53a 198.25 ± 7.20a 203.36 ± 5.13a 204.50 ± 6.11a 201.11 ± 3.42a final body wt. (gm) 333.61 ± 4.95ab 363.28 ± 7.94c 352.32 ± 8.68bc 347.26 ± 2.86bc 326.36 ± 5.21a body wt. gain (%) 70.531 83.243 73.249 69.809 62.279 food intake (g/week) 129.32 ± 4.28a 129.47 ± 7.77a 135.59 ± 7.35a 123.81 ± 5.09a 120.29 ± 4.25a the same letters specify no significant differences; whereas the different letters is a sign of significant. figure 1: effects of ame, noe and exercise on body weight gain in high fat-fed rats for 8 weeks. figure 2: effects of ame, noe and exercise on bw gain/week in hfd-fed rats for 8 weeks. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 194 3.2. effects of ame, noe and exercise on serum biochemical parameters the effects of ame, noe and exercise on biochemical parameters in hfd-fed rats are illustrated at table 2. rats fed on a hfd were showed a significant hyperglycemia, hyperlipidemia with oxidative stress. serum glucose, tc, tg, ldl, vldl and mda levels were significantly increased (p <0.05) while serum hdl level in hfd-c rats were decreased compared with rats fed a nd but did not reach statistically significant (p > 0.05) (fig 3). table 2: effects of ame, noe and exercise on biochemical parameters in high fat administrated rats for 8 weeks. parameters nc high-fat diet-induced obese groups hfd-c exercise plant extracts (300mg/kg bw) ame noe glucose (mg/dl) 92.65 ± 5.71a 147.03 ± 8.52b 113.55 ± 11.2 a 117.33± 10.53 a 102.40± 7.82 a tc (mg/dl) 49.66 ± 2.52 a 72.66 ± 5.02 b 49.29 ± 3.09 a 50.68 ± 2.83 a 45.66 ± 2.98 a tg (mg/dl) 38.50 ± 3.59b 75.20 ± 1.88 c 70.28 ± 4.92 c 28.88 ± 2.53 a 24.26 ± 2.15 a hdl-c (mg/dl) 24.30 ± 1.82ab 21.31 ± 3.66 a 29.75 ± 2.54 c 28.79 ± 1.66 c 22.50 ± 0.99 bc ldl-c (mg/dl) 7.70 ± 0.71 a 36.30 ± 3.66 c 5.47 ± 1.09 a 16.11 ± 1.87 b 18.30 ± 3.24 b vldl-c (mg/dl) 7.73 ± 0.88 b 15.04 ± 0.37 c 14.05 ± 0.98 c 5.77 ± 0.50 ab 4.85 ± 0.43 a mda (μmol/l) 1.695 ± 0.04a 3.411 ± 0.08 c 3.020 ± 0.12 bc 2.816 ± 0.17 b 2.060 ± 0.25 a ast (iu/l) 86.53 ± 6.38 a 112.41 ± 4.49 bc 127.58 ± 4.88 c 98.78± 11.06 ab 79.16 ± 6.41 a alt (iu/l) 23.56 ± 0.98 a 54.31 ± 1.98 d 36.56 ± 1.37 b 37.16 ± 2.99 b 45.20 ± 0.98 c same letters mean the differences are insignificant; while the different letters mean significant. comparing with the hfd-c group, all treatment groups were markedly restored the hfdinduced increases in serum lipid parameters, glucose and mda, whereas serum hdl level was increased. the lowering effects of exercise treatment on tg, vldl and mda levels did not show a statistical difference (p > 0.05). (fig. 3). kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 195 figure 3: effects of ame, noe and exercise on levels of serum (a) glucose, (b) tc, (c) tg, (d) ldl, (e) hdl, (f) vldl and (g) mda in hfd-fed rats for 8 weeks. significant (p < 0.05) elevations were observed in serum ast and alt levels of model group as compared to nc group. the treatments were significantly (p <0.05) dropped the alt level, meanwhile significant (p < 0.05) decrease at serum ast level were just showed by noe group; compared to that in the model group (fig 4). g kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 196 figure 4: effects of ame, noe and exercise on serum levels of (a) ast and (b) alt in rats fed on hfd for 8 weeks. 4. discussion diet-induced obesity studies in rodents are regarded as predominant model that reflecting the human obesity. therefore, the first objective of current work was to create an obesity model at male wistar rats, the next and the main objective is to examine the effects of ame, noe and exercise on diet-induced obese rats to determine which of these treatments are able to reverse the increases in bw and hyperlipidemia exerted by hfd. in the present study hfd-c rats revealed a significant increase in the bw gain, serum glucose, tc, tg, ldl-c and vldl-c as compared with rats from nc without significant changes in the amount of food intakes while hdl reduces. these results clearly support the claim that administration of fat-rich diet could cause a marked weight gain, hyperglycemia and dyslipidemia. these findings were in accordance with the [7, 15, 16] studies. different possible mechanisms could stand behind the observed results. [17] argued that consumption of a hfd could facilitate a positive energy balance, leading to the development of obesity and hyperlipidemia because dietary fat is calorically dense. besides, ingestion of fat promotes fat storage instead of fat oxidation or energy usage [18]. furthermore, the energy intake was markedly higher in rats fed on hfd however the food intakes were approximately the same for all groups because of the higher fat content [19]. hyperglycemia due to consumption of a hfd is because it lowers glucose uptake as well as inhibit liver to secrete glucose; as a result, leading to insulin resistance [3] and/or glucose intolerance [7]. the liver is chiefly act in lipid metabolism. it adjusts tissue fat deposition and levels of lipid in blood [20]. ast and alt tests are good indicators for hepatic functional status [7]. during diet induced obesity, the elevations at serum alt and ast of high fat-fed rats by this work could verify the alterations in normal hepatic function. the same results were documented by [4]. study [21] also confirmed that hyperlipidic food result in hepatic consequences in rats. serum mda is an indication of lipid peroxidation [14], the close relationship between oxidative stress and extra fat feeding is well recognized [22]. current study revealed that hfd-c rats faced an intensive oxidative stress, on the basis of serum mda compared with nc rats. several previous studies clarified that obesity is associated free-radical invention and/or weakened cellular antioxidant defense systems [23, 24]. it is well known that different strategies could be used in the prevention of obesity including lifestyle changes, behaviour therapy, pharmacotherapy and surgical operations [16]. phytochemicals presently have a great prospect for the building up of future therapeutics [25], as they had patent role in defending against metabolic diseases in both animal and human [4]. this study aimed two of edible plants from iraqi kurdistan in the prevention of obesity as well as swimming exercise. data of the present study clearly displayed that rat fed hfd and simultaneously treated with ame, noe and exercise separately were recorded a significant less bw gain, improved sugar and lipid profiles comparative to untreated hfd-fed rats (table 1 and 2). controlling the hfd-induced bw gain at this study since food intakes were approximately the same among kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 197 the groups may be suggested that ame and noe treatments diminished dietary fat absorption at intestine by suppressing the actions of pancreatic lipase enzyme [3]. in addition, it is known that the ingested fat in intestine is taken after it converted to chylomicrons by the help of lipase enzyme [26], moreover [6] stated that the blockage of triglyceride absorption plays a central role in weight loss, furthermore the loss of bw does not depend on food or energy intake when same quality and quantity of food was received by rats [17]. exercise is helpful for the suppression of diet-induced obesity [27] as it confirmed by the results of current study. the mechanism by which exercise treatment reduced weight gain is through metabolic modulation or increased energy expenditure. results of the current study on biochemical parameters suggested that our treatments could lessening the hyperglycemia, hyperlipidemia and hepatic misfunctioning exerted by hfd feeding. the reduction of dyslipidemia can be attributed to stoppage of irregular fat deposition in adipocytes and other obesity-related abnormalities [2]. two more possible mechanisms behind the hypolipidemic effects as described by [5] there might be a reduction in cholesterol uptakes from the intestine or disrupt the cholesterol manufacture. [1] proved that polyphenols could negatively effect on adipocyte differentiation, lipogenesis, lipid absorption as well as induce fatty acid oxidation. decreased blood glucose and improved insulin sensitivity by plant extracts and exercise in obese rats as explained by [28] was probably by maintaining a balanced cell energy modulation or falling free fatty acids. achievement of treatments against obesity could be derived from sugar and lipid lowering actions, heightened lipolysis, as well as, diminished lipogenesis or enhanced fatty acid oxidation [29]. these mechanism actions also applicable to results of this study due to the existence of bioactive metabolites within the plants. in preventive study the administration of both plant extracts orally and swimming exercise on obese rats potentially effective in ameliorating the diet induced elevations of serum alt, ast and mda levels. although the effects of ame and exercise were not significant, results indirectly suggest that the respective treatments could reverts the hepatic cell damages caused by obesity. the particular mechanism is unclear but it may belong to their known antioxidant effects [21] or phytochemical contents of the plants [4]. in current study exercised rats were unable to lower the levels of lipid peroxidation when compared to control group. addition to numerous health benefits of exercise, strong evidence signifying that high-intensity exercise led to oxidative stress and significant elevation in level of mda in both animals and human [30]. 5. conclusion the ame, noe and exercise can be used a potential therapeutic agent or dietary supplement against obesity and its correlated physiological consequences. reference [1] n. boqué, j. campión, r. de la iglesia, a. l. de la garza, f. i. milagro, b. san román, ó. bañuelos, and j. a. martínez, “screening of polyphenolic plant extracts for anti‐obesity properties in wistar rats,” journal of the science of food and agriculture, vol. 93, no. 5, pp. 1226-1232, 2013. 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[30] h. pepe, “the effects of gender and exercise on malondialdehyde, nitric oxide and total glutathione levels in rat liver,” african journal of pharmacy and pharmacology, vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 515-521, 2011.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – october 2021| 1 influence of light intensity on tobacco responses to drought stress brwa mohammad ali rasool agricultural project management department halabja technical college of applied science sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq brwa.rasool@spu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 6 issue 2 december 2021 doi: 10.24017/science.2021.2.2 article history: received 1/2/2021 accepted 22/9/2021 the influence of high irradiance, drought stress and their cross-talk interaction were explored in tobacco plants (nicotiana tobaccum). plants grown under low light (250 μmol m-2 s-1) irradiance (ll) and high (1600 μmol m-2 s-1) irradiance (hl) then exposed to water deficient condition for 7 or 14 days. the detached leaves of hl-treated plants showed less water loss compared to ll plants. the hl-treated and 7 days drought-stressed plants had higher fresh and dry weights, as well as water content than the ll and droughtstressed leaves. the survival rate in 21 days drought-stressed plants after 3 days of re-watering was 50% in hl-grown and 0% in ll-grown plants. a transcriptome profiling analysis of the tobacco responses to light intensity highlights the increased abundance of a large group of drought-related transcripts including droughtresponsive element binding factors (drebs), c-repeat/drought-responsive binding factor 1 (cbf1), glycine-rich rna binding proteins (grps), wrky33 and mycs transcription factors, as well as zeaxanthin epoxidase, which play as a regulator of plant responses to water deficient condition. these findings identify light-dependent changes in the cell redox state that limit water loss and enhance plant responses to drought stress. keywords: high light stress, drought stress, light memory, crosstolerance, redox regulation copyright © 2021 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. mailto:brwa.rasool@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – october 2021| 2 1. introduction abiotic stresses are physical or chemical environmental factors posing a severe threat to crop yield loss. these include; low or high light intensity or temperature and water deficient condition [1, 2] although light and water are key components of photosynthesis, excess light and water deficient can cause photooxidation and photoinhibition of chlorophyll via generation of reactive oxygen species (ros). as a result, the efficiency of photosynthesis is reduced [3, 4]. drought is a major environmental limiting factor and unpredictable constraint that negatively influence photosynthesis and plant production [5, 6]. drought can interrupt various plant activities including the carbon assimilation rate, increase oxidative damage, decrease turgor and changes in leaf gas exchange. as a result, yield is severely reduced [6, 7, 8]. routinely plants expose to combined abiotic stresses [9, 10]. for example, under water deficient condition plants may expose to high light intensity or high temperature at the same time [10]. plants experienced one type of stress can be tolerant to another type of stresses. this is known as cross-tolerance to the different abiotic stresses [11, 12]. the phenomenon of cross-tolerance is happening as a result of interactive activation of resistance pathways that induce plant tolerance to different types of stresses [13]. such activations include cell signalling pathways, regulation in hormonal production and signalling, synthesis of secondary metabolites, as well as increasing in antioxidant and detoxification activity [14, 15, 16]. cross-tolerance enhances ros production, which are messengers of stress signals and regulate plant defence responses to various stresses [17]. the photosynthetic electron transport chain makes chloroplast one of the main sites of ros synthesis [18, 19]. accumulated ros in chloroplast enhance stomatal closure via increasing ros concentration in the guard cells. as a result, transpiration is reduced and leaf water content is increased leading to improved drought resistance [19, 20]. the generated ros in chloroplast transform signal of stresses to the nucleus which activate defense genes and modify plant responses to different stresses [21]. plants treated with hl were found to have increased expression of ros scavenging related genes, as well as synthesis and signaling of jasmonic acid (ja), abscisic acid (aba), salicylic acid (sa) and auxin [22, 23]. recent studies showed that plants pre-treated with high light (hl) retain a “memory” of the hl stress that persists when plants are returned to low light (ll) conditions. the activated signaling pathways by hl memory can enhance abiotic and biotic plant defence responses [16]. this study will assess the role of pre-treatment with hl on responses of tobacco plants to water deficient condition. in addition, the light-dependent changes in leaf transcriptome were determined. 2. methods and materials 2.1 seeds and the conditions of plant growth the terracult gmbh compost [ph (5-6), ec< 1 ms/cm, nitrogen 110 mg/l, phosphate 130 mg/l, potassium 140 mg/l) was used to grow wild type tobacco (nicotiana tabacum l.) seeds in the controlled environment chambers. the photoperiod was 8 h under (250 μmol m-2 s-1) of light irradiance at 20°c and 60% of relative humidity [24]. 2.2 high light (hl) treatments light emitting diode (led) lights were used for both ll and hl treatments. the led lights were manufactured in the united kingdom by a phytolux led grow light technology. in low light (ll) growth condition tobacco plants was exposed to (250 μmol m-2 s-1) for 4 weeks. in high light (hl) growth condition tobacco plants had been exposed for 2 weeks to (250 μmol m-2 s-1) then treated with (1600 μmol m-2 s-1) for one week and returned to (250 μmol m-2 s-1) for another week [24]. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2018.01771/full#b194 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2018.01771/full#b196 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – october 2021| 3 2.3 drought treatments the ll and hl experienced tobacco plants at week four were used to study responses to drought stress. before withholding the water, all plants were well irrigated with an equal amount of water. half of ll and hl grown plants were exposed to withholding the water supply for the period of 7 or 14 days. the second half was maintained under the condition of well-watered. for recovery test, some plants were maintained for 21 days under drought condition then to recover drought conditions and evaluate the survival rates the plants were re-watered for 3 days. 2.4 measurement of water loss in detached leaves (%) the ll and hl experienced tobacco leaves at 4-week-old were used for the measurement of water loss. the detached leaves were weighed directly after harvest and periodically every 15 minutes using electronic balance. the water loss percentage was found by dividing the decreased fresh weight by the previous fresh weight, multiply by 100. detached leaves were incubated under stable environmental conditions at room temperature at the time of measurements. the measurement was performed three times, using different plants and three plant replicates were used at each time [25]. 2.5 assessment of biomass (fresh and dry weights) of shoot and root (g fw) and (g dw) the ll and hl experienced tobacco shoot and root fresh weights (fw) were measured using electronic balance. for dry weight (dw), the shoot and root were dried at 70°c for 3 days in an oven and the dried tissues were weighed. 10 plant replicates were used per each measurement [25]. 2.6 root length (cm) the length of roots was determined using measuring tape. this measurement was taken from 10 plants per treatment. 2.7 assessment of leaf relative water content (rwc)(%) mature leaves from ll and hl tobacco plants were harvested before drought and after 7 or 14 days of drought treatment. immediately the collected leaves were weighed to record the fw. then the distilled water was used to saturate the leaves with water for 24 h, then the excess water was removed with tissue and leaves were weighed to measure leaves turgid weight (tw). the dw was obtained by drying the leaves at 70°c for 3 days and then weighed. the measurement was repeated three times with three plant replicates. the rcw was calculated according to [25] as: rwc = (fw dw) / (tw dw) x 100 2.8 assessment of relative water content in the soil (%) the soil dw was subtracted from the weight of moist soil and divided by the soil dw in order to measure the soil relative water contents. the soil was dried at 90°c for 3 days using an oven to obtain the soil dw [25]. this measurement was taken from 3 plants per treatment. 2.9 survival rate (%) the survival rate of 21 days drought-stressed plants was determined 3 days after re-watering to recover drought conditions. the survival rate was evaluated in 10 plants per treatment. 2.10 pigment analysis (µg g fw-1) mature leaves from ll and hl tobacco plants were harvested at week four to estimate chlorophyll and carotenoids contents of the leaves. liquid nitrogen was used to ground 100 mg of the leaf samples and the ground sample was homogenised in 10 ml 95% ice-cold ethanol. the extracts were separated using centrifuge at (14000 g) at (4°c) for 10 min. the photosynthetic pigments was estimated in the supernatant fractions by spectrophotometry according to the method of [26]. pigments were estimated in three independent plants per each treatment. 2.11 light response curves (lrcs) (µmol m-2 s-1 ) the lrcs for photosynthesis of ll and hl tobacco leaves were measured using infrared gas analyser (li-cor). during the measurement in the li-cor leaf chamber, the co2 concentration was (400 μmol mol-1) at 20°c. the co2 assimilations were measured at (0, 20, kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – october 2021| 4 50, 200, 400, 800 and 1600 μmol m-2 s-1) photosynthetically active radiation (par) levels. at each par he leaves were acclimatized for 15 min. this measurement was taken from 5 plants per treatment [27]. 2.12 co2 response curves (µmol m-2 s-1) the co2 response curves for photosynthesis of ll and hl tobacco leaves were measured using infrared gas analyser (li-cor). during the measurement in the li-cor leaf chamber the par was (250 μmol m-2 s-1) at 20°c. the co2 assimilations were taken at (0, 200, 400, 600, 800 and 1000 μmol mol-1) co2 concentrations. at each co2 concentration the leaves were acclimatized for 15 min [27]. this measurement was taken from 5 plants per treatment. 2.13 rna extraction and microarray analysis microarray analysis was conducted to investigate the genes that different in abundance between ll and hl grown tobacco leaves. for each treatment three independent biological replicates were analysed. the total rna was purified from leaf samples using plant mini kit provided by qiagen® rneasy. the microarray analysis was performed at james hutton institute, dundee, uk, according to the protocol described in [24]. 2.14 statistical analysis the statistical analysis was performed using randomized complete design (two‐way anova-rcd). the mean was compared by duncan’s multiple range test with a p-value of < 0.05. the software ibm spss statistics was used for the analysis. the mean of data ± standard error of the mean (sem) was represented. 3. results 3.1 shoot phenotypes of ll and hl tobacco plants well-watered or subjected to water deficient conditions the tobacco plants under both ll and hl conditions had similar shoot phenotypes, a part of the pale yellow color of hl leaves (figure 1a). however, plant treatment with withholding water for 7 or 14 days resulted in appearance of wilting symptoms (figure 1a). the wilting symptoms were more sever in 14 days drought-stressed plants. seven days of hl treatment led to about 30% reduction in the leaves chlorophyll content relative to ll leaves (figure 1b). in contrast, non-significant difference was observed in carotenoid content of the leaves under both light regimes (figure 1b). a kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – october 2021| 5 figure 1: shoot phenotype of ll and hl tobacco plants well-watered or subjected to drought. (a) representative photographs. (b) photosynthetic pigments in ll and hl tobacco leaves. data are means of three replicates ± sem. the letters show statistical differences among the means. data of lrcs and co2 response curves illustrated that the slope of lrcs and co2 curves were slightly decreased due to hl pre-treatment (figure 2a,b). the significant decrease in the slope of both curves was only recorded between (200-400 μmol m-2 s-1; (figure 2a,b). -3 1 5 9 13 17 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 c o 2 a ss im il a ti o n ( µ m o l m -2 s1 ) par (µmol m-2 s-1 ) ll hl a 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 chlorophyll carotenoid p ig m e n t ( µ g g f w -1 ) ll hl a a a b b kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – october 2021| 6 figure 2: light responsive curves (a) and co2 responsive curves (b) for photosynthesis in ll and hl tobacco plants. data are means of five replicates ± sem. before drought treatment, the ll-grown plants had significantly smaller biomass accumulation than the plants grown under hl growth conditions for one week (figure 3a, b). hl-treated and 7 days drought-stressed plants had higher fresh and dry weights than the llgrown plants (figure 3a, b). similarly, plants treated with hl and well-watered for 7 days had higher dry weight than the ll plants (figure 3b). the fresh and dry weights in both ll and hl-grown plants were significantly decreased due to the progression of drought stress to 14 days (figure 3a, b) relative to well-watered plants. -3 -1 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 c o 2 a ss im il a ti o n ( µ m o l m -2 s1 ) ci (μmol mol-1) ll hl b 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 before drought wellwatered drought wellwatered drought 7 days of drought 14 days of drought b io m a ss ( g f w ) ll hl a b b ab a b b b a a a kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – october 2021| 7 figure 3: biomass of ll and hl tobacco plants well-watered or subjected to drought. (a) fresh weight. (b) dry weight. data are means of ten replicates ± sem. the letters show statistical differences among the means. the root length (figure 4a, b) and root biomass (figure 5a, b) of hl treated plants were significantly increased compared to plants treated with ll under both water regimes. a 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 before drought wellwatered drought wellwatered drought 7 days of drought 14 days of drought b io m a ss ( g d w ) ll hl b a a a a b b b b c d kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – october 2021| 8 figure 4: representative photographs and root system of ll and hl tobacco plants well-watered or subjected to drought. (a) representative photographs of root system. (b) root length. data are means of ten replicates ± sem. the letters show statistical differences among the means. 0 5 10 15 20 25 before drought wellwatered drought wellwatered drought 7 days of drought 14 days of drought r o o t le n g th ( c m ) ll hlb a a a a b b b b d c 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 before drought wellwatered drought wellwatered drought 7 days of drought 14 days of drought r o o t b io m a ss ( g f w ) ll hl a a a a a b b b b c d 0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12 0.14 before drought wellwatered drought wellwatered drought 7 days of drought 14 days of drought r o o t b io m a ss ( g d w ) ll hl b a a a a a b b b b b kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – october 2021| 9 figure 5: root biomass of ll and hl tobacco plants well-watered or subjected to drought. (a) root fresh weight. (b) root dry weight. data are means of ten replicates ± sem. the letters show statistical differences among the means. 3.2 high light grown tobacco plants showed less water loss and higher survival rate the detached leaves of hl-treated plants showed less water loss relative to ll leaves (figure 6a). with the exception of the hl-grown and 7 days drought-stressed plants, the leaves had non-significant differences in water content under all conditions (figure 6b). the leaves of hl-grown and 7 days drought-stressed plants had higher leaf water content relative to ll and 7 days drought-stressed plants (figure 6b). water withholding for 7 and 14 days significantly decreased the soil water content compared with well-watered growth conditions (figure 6c). this reduction in relative soil water content was more marked under 14 days drought conditions (figure 6c). moreover, the soil of hl-grown and 7 days drought-treated plants had lower water content than the soil of ll-grown and 7 days drought-treated plants (figure 6c). 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 0 15 30 45 60 75 90 105 120 135 165 195 225 255 285 w a te r l o ss ( % ) time (min) ll hla 0 20 40 60 80 100 before drought wellwatered drought wellwatered drought 7 days of drought 14 days of drought r e la ti v e l e a f w a te r c o n te n t (% ) ll hl b a a a a a a b b b a kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – october 2021| 10 figure 6: water loss (a), water content in the leaves (b) and the soil (c) of ll and hl tobacco plants well-watered or subjected to drought. (a) data are means of three replicates ± sem. the letters show statistical differences among the means. in order to evaluate the survival rate in drought stressed-plants, some plants were maintained for 21 days under drought condition then to recover drought conditions the plants were rewatered for 3 days. about 50% of hl-grown plants survived, whereas none of ll plants survived after re-watering (figure 7a, b). 0 20 40 60 80 100 before drought wellwatered drought wellwatered drought 7 days of drought 14 days of drought r e la ti v e s o il w a te r c o n te n t (% ) ll hl c a a a a a a b b b c 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 drought drought ll hl s u r v iv a l r a te ( % ) a n.s. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – october 2021| 11 figure 7: morphological characterizations of survived ll and hl tobacco plants subjected to water deficient conditions for 21 days then re-watered for 3 days. (a) survival rate of tobacco plants (b) representative photographs of survived plants. data are means of ten replicates ± sem. n.s., not survived. 3.3 the hl treatment distinctly altered the profile of transcripts in tobacco leaves an analysis of the leaf transcript profiles was performed to determine the light-dependent modifications in transcriptome of ll and hl grown leaves. analysis of variance indicated that hl changed the abundance of 2502 transcripts of which 1729 were more and 773 were less abundant relative to ll grown leaves (figure 8). b kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – october 2021| 12 figure 8: hierarchical clustering of differentially expressed genes in the leaves of ll and hl tobacco plants. the genes that differentially expressed under hl relative to ll were tested by using two-way anova (p < 0.05). the genespring was used for the analysis of variance with (benjamini-hochberg) as multiple testing corrections. gene ontology (go) was used in order to classify the genes into the functional groups in the website of agrigo (http://bioinfo.cau.edu.cn/agrigo/). 0.1 1.0 5.0 ll hl http://bioinfo.cau.edu.cn/agrigo/ kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – october 2021| 13 functional classification analysis of the transcripts showed that the metabolic related transcripts were more abundant in hl treated leaves (figure 9). transcripts related to stimulus responses, stress responses, chloroplast, dna binding, transcription factor and metabolism were significantly differentially abundant under growth irradiances (figure 9). the transcript groups associated with stimulus responses, stress responses, chloroplast, dna binding and transcription factor were more abundant in the leaves pre-treated with hl for one week (figure 9). transcripts encoding photosynthesis, signal transduction, transporter activity and cell wall were other functional groups that their abundance increased in response to hl treatment (figure 9). conversely, the functional analysis showed a de-repression in the abundant of transcripts related to stimulus responses, metabolism, dna binding, transcription factor and transporter activity in hl leaves compared to ll (figure 9). figure 9: functional classifications of differentially abundant transcripts in response to hl relative to ll. (a) venn diagram of the total numbers of differentially abundant transcripts. (b) venn diagram of more abundant transcripts. (c) venn diagram of less abundant transcripts. the table lists show the transcripts that differentially abundant and the size of each functional group (number of genes). the genes that differentially expressed under hl relative to ll were tested by using two-way anova (p < 0.05). the genespring was used for the analysis of variance with (benjamini-hochberg) as multiple testing corrections. gene ontology (go) was used in order to classify the genes into the functional groups in website of agrigo (http://bioinfo.cau.edu.cn/agrigo/). no biological process legend significant transcripts (a) up regulated (b) down regulated (c) 1 response to stimulus 522 362 160 2 stress responses 327 285 42 3 chloroplast 244 203 41 4 dna binding 249 170 79 5 transcription factor 235 162 73 6 photosynthesis 76 76 0 7 metabolism 174 54 120 8 carbohydrate metabolic process 55 40 15 9 signal transduction 46 39 7 10 lipid metabolic process 49 22 27 11 transporter activity 81 21 60 12 cell wall 28 19 9 13 not assigned 416 276 140 a b c http://bioinfo.cau.edu.cn/agrigo/ kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – october 2021| 14 amongst the stress responses transcripts that represented in more abundant under hl conditions, 27 transcripts were related to water stress condition (table 1). for example, transcripts encoding drought-responsive element binding factors (dreb and dreb2a) were induced due to hl treatment (table 1). the drebs involve in the activation of drought associated genes [28, 29]. moreover, the leaves treated with hl accumulated transcripts encoding c-repeat/droughtresponsive binding factor 1 (cbf1), which encodes the dreb1 subfamily and play pivotal role in plant tolerance to water deficient condition (table 1) [30, 31]. the level of transcripts encoding the glycine-rich rna binding protein (grps) was induced by hl treatment (table 1). the grp1 and grp2 induce drought tolerance through enhancing stomatal closure and reducing water loss [32, 33]. the abundance of transcripts encoding wrky33 and mycs transcription factors were induced due to hl treatment (table 1). the wrky33 and mycs play crucial role in the induction of drought defence responses via ja and aba signalling [34, 35, 36]. the hl-treated leaves accumulated transcripts encoding zeaxanthin epoxidase (zep; table 1). the zep is the catalyzing enzyme of xanthophyll cycle and aba biosynthesis. both processes are required for plant acclimations to high irradiance stress and water deficient conditions [37]. detoxification enzyme-encoding transcripts such as glutathione s-transferases (gsts) were induced due to hl pre-treatment (table 1). gsts are detoxification enzyme against ros and strengthen the ability of ros scavengers in ascorbate-glutathione cycle and regulate various stress responses [38, 39]. table 1: drought responsive-related transcripts that present in higher abundance in hl grown tobacco leaves relative to ll. the genes that differentially expressed under hl relative to ll were characterized by using two-way anova (p < 0.05). the genespring was used for the analysis of variance with (benjamini-hochberg) as multiple testing corrections. gene ontology (go) was used in order to classify the genes into the functional groups in website of agrigo (http://bioinfo.cau.edu.cn/agrigo/). accession fold change gene description eb440199 4.96 drought-responsive element binding factor (dreb) fg167555 4.94 c-repeat/drought-responsive binding factor 1 ( cbf1) fg139571 3.36 glycine-rich rna binding protein 1 (grp1) ab063573 3.18 wrky33 transcription factor ab022693 2.54 putative gem-like protein 8 eh622305 2.42 glutathione s-transferase x64399 2.41 glutathione s-transferase (tau 19) eb450385 2.31 glycine-rich rna binding protein 2 (grp2) eh617190 2.23 late embryogenesis abundant protein (lea5) cv021352 2.22 senescence associated gene 21 (sag21) ab020590 2.18 mitogen associate protein kinase 3 (mpk3) hm466974 2.15 myc2 transcription factor bp132352 2.12 alpha-glucan, water dikinase eh616548 2.10 drought-responsive binding factor 2a ( dreb2a) ab063575 2.07 wrky domain transcription factor dv999707 1.99 zeaxanthin epoxidase eh623737 1.69 homeobox transcription factor cv016057 1.62 stress-responsive protein putative af112863 1.62 syntaxin 125 eb439278 1.56 responsive to aba 18 ( rab18) eh617567 1.52 senescence associated gene 21 fg136072 1.44 alpha-glucan phosphorylase 2 af053077 1.42 zinc-finger protein (zfp) transcription factor http://bioinfo.cau.edu.cn/agrigo/ kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – october 2021| 15 4. discussion plants are routinely subjected to combinatory abiotic stresses [9, 10] and plant treatment with one type of abiotic stress can induce plant resistance to different types of unfavorable conditions [11, 12, 16]. this occurs because of activation in resistance pathway that was not specific to one type of stress, which is known as cross-tolerance to environmental stresses [13]. cross-tolerance occurs as a result of activation signalling pathways, changes in the level and signalling of hormone, synthesis low molecular weight secondary metabolites, as well as increasing in antioxidant and detoxification activity [14, 15]. over each day and across the season plants are exposed to various light intensities. plant exposures to high irradiance stress trigger plant responses to other type of stresses because of triggering both local and systemic signals and the innate immune responses against both biotic and abiotic stresses [16, 17, 40]. the leaves of tobacco plants that experienced hl contained lower chlorophyll level in comparison to ll leaves (figure 1b). this finding was in agreement with studies on other plants [41, 42, 43, 44]. this is because hl stress tends to inhibit chloroplasts biosynthesis and increases its degradation [45]. however, lrcs and co2 curves were slightly decreased due to hl pre-treatment (figure 2a, b). in responding to prevailing light availability, leaves can alter their structure and make adjustments in development and metabolism in which result in acclimation of photosynthesis [46]. plants grow under hl condition can perform high rates of photosynthesis even with less chlorophyll in their leaves in comparison to ll leaves [24]. the higher accumulation of biomass under hl condition (figure 3a, b) was because of an increase in the number and total area of the leaves [24, 47, 48]. in agreement with previous studies [49, 50], plants grown under ll accumulated less root biomass than hlgrown plants under both water regimes (figure 5a, b). detached leaves of hl plants showed less water loss than the ll leaves (figure 6a). the memory of 7 days of hl treatment, which remains when the plants were returned to ll condition, caused structural leaf modification that was less favorable to water loss [16]. this conclusion is further supported by the data presented in (table 1) in which hl-grown leaves accumulated transcripts encoding the glycine-rich rna binding protein (grps) that enhance drought stress tolerance via the stomatal closure in the guard cells [32, 33]. with the exception of the hl-grown and 7 days drought-stressed plants, the leaves contain similar amount of water under all conditions (figure 6b). the leaves of hl and 7 days drought-stressed plants contain higher amount of water than the ll and 7 days droughtstressed plants (figure 6b). the memory of excess light that triggered by short term exposure to hl remains for several days in the plant [16]. this “light memory” can elevate production of ros and activate signalling pathways which improve plant responses to water deficient condition [51, 52]. in addition, the generated ros in the chloroplast transmitted retrograde signalling to the nucleus [53] and triggered responses pathways that significantly decreased water loss in the leaves of hl treated plants (figure 6a) and increased the accumulation of transcripts encoding the glycine-rich rna binding protein (grps) that enhance the stomatal closure (table 1) [32, 33]. as a result, the hl plants had higher amount of water in their leaves than the ll plants after 7 days of drought treatment (figure 6b). in addition, water deficient condition results in the increased water uptake and stomatal closure in order to compensate the lost water by transpiration [5, 54, 55, 56, 57]. hence, the higher water content in hl and 7 days drought-treated leaves is probably linked to enhanced water uptake (figure 6c) or/and stomatal closure (figure 6a). therefore, it is possible that the higher water content in hl and 7 days drought-treated leaves was due to the interaction between high irradiance and water deficient effects. the survival rate in 21 days drought stressed-plants that retc139820 1.40 nam-like protein 10 eh615107 1.24 early responsive to dehydration 15 (erd15) eb427789 1.07 aldehyde dehydrogenase 7b4 ( aldh7b4) eb431441 1.04 glutathione transferase javascript:; kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – october 2021| 16 watered for 3 days was 50% in hl-grown plants, whereas none of ll plants survived after rewatering (figure 7a, b). this increase in the survival rate of drought-stressed and hl-treated plants is consistent with data presented in (figure 6a) in which the leaves of plants that had experienced hl had less water loss, more relative water content in the leaves (figure 6b) and accumulated transcripts encoding the glycine-rich rna binding protein (grps) that enhance the stomatal closure (table 1) [32, 33]. the transcript profile of the leaves showed that the abundance of many transcripts related with drought resistance were increased by hl pre-treatment (table 1). for instance, the transcripts encoding drought-responsive element binding factors (dreb and dreb2a) were induced due to hl treatment (table 1). several genes that modify responses to water deficient condition are activated by drebs transcription factors [28, 29]. the increased survival rate in hl and drought treated plants, which accumulated drebs transcripts, is consistent with literature evidence in which transgenic tobacco plants had better survival rate under drought condition via over-expressing of the ahdreb1 gene, compared to the wild type plants [29, 30, 31, 58, 59, 60]. similarly, the transgenic rice plants overexpressing dreb1a and dreb1b showed enhanced drought resistance, fast stomatal closure and less water loss [61, 62]. furthermore, the abundance of transcripts encoding mycs transcription factors were induced due to hl treatment (table 1). the mycs activate aba biosynthesis related genes [63], involve in the regulation of aba-induced expressed genes under water deficient condition [64], positively regulate oxidative stress tolerance [65], organize the cross-talk during plant exposure to different type of stresses [66] and they are a key regulator in ja synthesis and signalling [36, 67]. the hl-treated leaves accumulated transcripts encoding zeaxanthin epoxidase (zep; table 1). previous studies concerning the effects of zep on plant resistance to water deficient condition have reported that arabidopsis plants overexpressing the atzep gene exhibited more vigorous growth, as well as much higher abundance of stress-related transcripts and smaller stomatal aperture than non-transgenic arabidopsis plants under water stress condition [68]. similarly, transgenic tobacco plants accumulated mszep via the mszep over expression improved plant performance under water stress condition through the regulation in aba levels and signalling, as well as an activation of various drought related genes [69]. hence, the better survival rate observed in hl and drought-stressed plants is due to plant acclimation state to high light intensity that alters responses to drought conditions. in addition, plants exposed to high irradiance induce various resistance mechanisms and set of signalling pathways that were not persist in the plants that only had experienced low irradiance. 5. conclusion the data of this study show that short term exposure to high irradiance created a memory of light stress that remains after returning the plant to ll and creates a regulation that made the plants more resistance to water deficient condition. furthermore, the pre-treatment with hl caused physiological and transcriptomic changes that resulted in the activation of the innate immune defences and improved plant performance under water deficient conditions. moreover, data are presented showing that cross-tolerance between high light and drought stress activated different stress-related pathways that cross the boundaries of high light and drought stresses. these findings offer a new understanding about the role of short term exposure to hl on tobacco plant performance under drought conditions. as a future prospect, the new knowledge found in this study should be translated into other crops in order to select the more tolerant 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[69] z. zhang et al., "mszep, a novel zeaxanthin epoxidase gene from alfalfa (medicago sativa), confers drought and salt tolerance in transgenic tobacco," (in eng), plant cell rep, vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 439-53, feb 2016, doi: 10.1007/s00299-015-1895-5.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 2 | july 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.2.23 microalbuminuria in patients with diabetes mellitus: prevalence and associated risk factors title of your mahfoodh a sulaiman,mbchb, hd family health center, doh, wasit, iraq email@univ.com zhian s ramzi family & community medicine coloege of medicine, sulaimani university, sulaimani, iraq zhiansalah2001@yahoo.com abstract: microalbuminuria is the most leading cause for cardiovascular disease, diabetic nephropathy, end stage renal diseases, and death among diabetic patients. the study carried out to find out the prevalence of microalbuminuria in a sample of sulaimani diabetics and to determine its relation to different associated risk factors. the first part of study was a cross-sectional study conducted through examination of records of diabetic patients registered in sulaimani diabetic center from june 2010 to may 2012. the second part was a casecontrol study that conducted in the same center, including 50 cases of diabetics with positive microalbuminuria, and 50 controls with negative one, that were registered in the same center and matched by age and gender. a specially designed questionnaire was used by researcher to collect information from the records. spss version 21.0 was used for data analysis. males accounts for half of cases and controls, highest proportion of sample was found among age group (6069) years about 34%. the prevalence of microalbuminuria was 29%. the study showed a statistical significant association of microalbuminuria with obesity, smoking, hypertension, retinopathy, ischemic heart disease, poor glycemic control, and dyslipidemia. in conclusion moderate prevalence of microalbuminuria was found among diabetic patients, the prevalence was more common in poor glycemic control, and hypertensive diabetics. there was significant relation between microalbuminuria and diabetic nephropathy. keywords: microalbuminuria, diabetes mellitus, sulaimani, prevalence. 1. introduction increased level of microalbuminuria (mau) is associated with increased risk of progressive kidney disease leading toward end stage renal disease (esrd) [1]. mau is a predictor of progressive renal damage, myocardial infarction and cardiovascular death (cv) [2]. the presence of mau precedes the development of overt diabetic nephropathy (dn) by the american diabetes association (ada)recommended that 20–40% of type ⅱ diabetic patients with mau without specific interventions, progress to overt nephropathy and 30-50% of type ⅰ diabetic patients [3]. microalbuminuria represents the earliest clinical evidence of dn. screening and intervention programs should be implemented early. according to the ada (2009) suggestions for screening and treatment of nephropathy, urine albumin excretion should be tested annually starting at diagnosis in all type ⅰ and type ⅱ diabetic patients [4]. in addition, treatment aimed to reduce albuminuria levels have been shown to reduce the risk for cv events [5], as well as kidney disease progression [6]. several modifiable risk factors have been recognized for the development of mau and for progression to dn, such as hyperglycemia, dyslipidemia, hypertension, smoking, obesity, dietary factors, sedentary life style, heavy alcohol intake and genetic susceptibility [7]. mau is a potentially useful marker of an increased of macrovascular disease. nevertheless, progressively increasing albuminuria, or albuminuria accompanied by hypertension, is most likely to be due to early dn [8]. there were few studies regarding the prevalence of mau and its associated risk factors in diabetic patients in iraq. so this study was conducted to find out prevalence of mau and their associated risk factors among type ⅰ and type ⅱ diabetic outpatients to those were attending the sulaimani center of diabetes mellitus and endocrine (scdmed) 2. methods and materials the study composed of two parts. the first part was a cross-sectional study conducted by examining the records of diabetic patients of both type ⅰ and ⅱ that were registered in the sulaimani center of diabetes mellitus and endocrine diseases (scdmed) during study period from june 2010 to may 2012 to find out those with positive mau. the second part of study was a case-control study conducted during study period on patients registered in the center during that time. a sample of 100 participants was enrolled in this study, 50 cases of diabetic patients of both types, 25 male and 25 female, the controls composed of 50 diabetic patients of both types of dm with negative mau. cases and controls were matched by gender and age (± 3 years). collection of data was performed by direct interviews and reviewing of hospital registries in a specially designed questionnaire. the study was approved by research ethics committee of college of medicine. a verbal informed consent was obtained from both cases and controls before being interviewed. an official permission was obtained from the directorate of health of sulaimani and the administration of scdmed to carry out the study. the questionnaire included data on the age, gender, residency, occupation, type of diabetes, duration of diabetes, family history of diabetes, smoking status, alcohol intake, measurements of height and weight. the results of, glycated hemoglobin (hba1c), mau, serum cholesterol, and serum triglyceride (tg) were taken from laboratory of the center, and from the records; which were done to each diabetic patient routinely on subsequent visit to the scdmed. all diabetic patients registered in scdmed, with positive mau, who fulfilled the criteria of who, american diabetic association (ada) by using the random urine test was using the dca vantage analyzer(siemens), the results of mau test are measured as milligram(mg) of protein leakage equal to that over 24 hours. generally, less than 30mg is regarded as normal, 30-300 mg indicate early kidney disease and more than 300 mg indicates advanced kidney disease (macroalbuminuria) [9]. hba1c test for assessing glycaemic control in people with diabetes, hba1c results were categorized as two groups as; ≤ 6.5 as normal and > 6.5 as poor glycemic control [10]. participants were asked about quantity, was evaluated by pack-year (high exposure > 33 pack-year and low exposure < 33 pack-year) [11]. data analysis was performed using statistical package for social sciences (spss, version 21), chi-square (χ2) test was used to compare between the proportions and t test to compare means. p ≤0.05 was considered statistically significant. 3. results the total number of diabetic patients of (both types i and ⅱ); that were registered in the center during study period were (3158). all the records (3158) were examined for the mau and the numbers of positive mau were (916) giving a prevalence of mau of 29% in both types of d.m (60% were among type ⅱ and 40% were among type ⅰ). table 1. age group of mau cases and controls age groups cases controls total no. % no. % 39-40 1 2 2 4 3 40-49 8 16 7 14 15 50-59 11 22 12 24 23 60-69 17 34 17 34 34 70-80 13 26 12 24 25 total 50 100 50 100 100 a total of 100 participants were involved in this study, (50 cases, and 50 controls); cases with mau have a mean ± sd age of 60.5011.30± years (ranged from 30 to 80 years) and the controls have a mean ± sd age of 60.44± 11.13 years (ranged from 30 to 80 years). in both cases and controls males constituted 50% of the sample. sixty percent of cases were in the 7th to 8th decades of life with the highest rate in those in the 7th decade (table 1). obesity was reported by 77.1% of cases in comparison with 22.8% of controls and the difference was highly significant (p< 0.001). smoking was significantly higher among cases were about 78.6%, while in controls were 21.4% only (p<0.001). hypertension was significantly more prevalent in cases with mau about 73.7% than controls about 26.3%, and the difference was highly significant (p<0.001). diabetic retinopathy was more prevalent in cases with positive mau about 96.4% compared to 3.6% in controls, and the difference was highly significant (p<0.001). in cases with mau 75.9% of the patients had ihd, compared to 24.1% in control group and the difference was significant (p<0.001). there was no significant association between duration of d.m (p=0.579) and family history of d.m (p=0.274) among cases and controls in this study (table 2). table 2. some associated risk factors of mau. variable cases no. (%) controls no. (%) p values bmi (kg/m 2 ) normal overweight obese duration of d.m(year) ≤ 10 >10 smoking no yes family history of d.m no yes hypertension no yes retinopathy no yes ihd no yes 12( (31.6) 11 (40.7) 27 (77.1) 23 (50) 27 (50) 28 (38.9) 22 (78.6) 25 (46.3) 25 (54.3) 22 (35.5) 28 (73.7) 23 (31.9) 27 (96.4) 28 (39.4) 22 (75.9) 26 (68.4) 16 (59.3) 8 (22.9) 23 (50) 27 (50) 44 (61.1) 6 (21.4) 29 (53.7) 21 (45.7) 40 (64.5) 10 (26.3) 49 (68.1) 1 (3.6) 43 (60.6) 7 (24.1) <0.001 0.579 <0.001 0.274 <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 total 50 50 100 all cases of mau had poor glycemic control compared to only 19.4% of control, so the difference was statistically highly significant (p<0.001). approximately 80% of the cases had high tc (≥ 200 mg/dl), compared to around fifth of control group and the difference was highly significant (p<0.001). in 72.4% of cases with mau had high tg (≥ 150 mg/dl), while only 27.6% of control had high tg and the difference was statistically significant (p<0.004) (table 3). table 3. hba1c, tc, and tg by cases and controls. variable cases no. % controls no. % p values hba1c (%) ≤6.5 >6.5 tc(mg/dl) <200 ≥200 tg(mg/dl) <150 ≥150 0 0.0 50 80.6 19 31.1 31 79.5 29 40.8 21 72.4 38 100.0 12 19.4 42 68.9 8 20.5 42 59.2 8 27.6 <0.001 <0.001 0.004 total 50 50 100 the mean level of hba1c in cases (11.482 ± 2.08) was significantly higher than the mean hba1c among controls (6.478 ± 0.76); and the difference found statistically highly significant (p<0.001). similarly, the mean level of tc in cases (217.48 ± 39.002) was significantly higher than the mean of tc among controls (186.02 ± 33.54); and the difference was highly significant (p<0.001). the mean level of tg in cases (200.84 ± 89.76) was significantly higher than the mean of tg among controls (144.92 ± 53.05); the difference statistically was highly significant (p<0.001), as shown in table 4. table 4: comparison of the mean levels of some biochemical parameters by cases and controls parame ters controls mean ± s.d cases mean ± s.d ttest p values hba1c mau tc tg 6.48 ± 0.76 15.66 ± 6.03 186.02 ± 33.54 144.92 ± 53.05 11.48 ± 2.08 122.5 ± 86.74 217.5 ± 39.002 200.8 ± 89.76 15.89 8.69 4.32 3.79 <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 4. discussion the prevalence of mau of was found to be 29%, which is higher when compared with other studies done in egypt (12%) [12], thailand (19%) [13], usa (19%) [14], france (9%) [15], and sweden (13%) [16]. while higher prevalence of 36.3% was reported by an indian study [17]. this variation in the prevalence of mau rate can be attributed to several factors such as: differences in populations, variability in the sample size, difference in the degree of glycemic control, the definition of mau, the methods of measurement of mau and urine collection, and the stage of the disease and ethnicity [18]. in present study obesity had highly significant association with mau, which is in agreement with moroccan study (habbal et al) [19], while there was no relation between positive mau and obesity in an indian study [20]. no significant association was found with duration of dm, while other studies confirmed that the duration of diabetes is of the most important risk factors for the development of diabetic nephropathy [21]. in the current study, significant association was found with high blood pressure, which was in agreement with other studies [17, 22] which showed that high blood pressure increased the risk of developing of nephropathy therefore, hypertension can cause mau and can accelerate the progression of diabetic nephropathy [23]. the results shows highly significant correlation between smoking and positive mau which is consistent with other studies [24-25] and another study indicated that smoking status is not only a predictor of nephropathy but also an important predictor of the change in dna oxidation in type ⅱ diabetic patients with mau [26]. this study showed that mau significantly increases the risk for development and progression of diabetic retinopathy in diabetic patients; even after adjustment for duration of diabetes, one of the most important predictors of diabetic retinopathy, and other comorbid conditions. diabetic retinopathy and nephropathy seem to progress in a parallel manner. this may be because diabetic retinopathy shares similar pathophysiologic features with diabetic nephropathy through alterations in the microvasculature of retina and kidney [27]. the significant relation between the prevalence of mau and with hba1c levels in current study was consistent with the findings from a study in iran [28]. the level of glycemic control is most likely the dominant factor in the occurrence of mau each 1% increase in hba1c was associated with an 11% greater chance of developing mau [29], tc and tg had highly significant relation with mau, this fact was approved by other studies were mau has been considered a marker of endothelial damage and is associated with higher prevalence of diabetes, hypertension, metabolic syndrome, renal dysfunction, and with an increased risk for cardiovascular diseases [30-31]. 4. conclusion microalbuminuria was common in this study, nearly present in third of diabetic cases and was highest among type ii dm and was significantly associated with poor glycemic control, hypertension, retinopathy, obesity and dyslipidemia. 5. reference [1] a. kassab, t. ajmi, m. issaoui, l. chaeib, a. miled, m. hammami, “homocysteine enhances ldl fatty acid peroxidation, promoting microalbuminuria in type 2 diabetes,” annals of clinical biochemistry, vol. 45, pp. 476–80, 2008. [2] yw. ho, kf. chau, cb. leung, “hong kong registry report 2004, hong kong journal of nephrology, vol. 7, pp. 38–46, 2005. [3] american diabetes association, “nephropathy in diabetes (position statement),” diabetes care, vol. 27, pp. 79–83, 2004. [4] american diabetes association, “standards of medical care in diabetes – 2009 (position statement),” diabetes care, vol. 32, pp. s13–61, 2009. [5] fw. asselbergs, gf. diercks, hl. hillege, “effects of fosinopril and pravastatin on cardiovascular events in subjects with microalbuminuria,” circulation, vol. 110, pp. 2809–16, 2004. [6] hh. parving, h. lehnert, j. brochner-mortensen, r. gomis, s. andersen, p. arner, “the effect of irbesartan on the development of diabetic nephropathy in patients with type 2 diabetes,’ new england journal of medicine, vol. 345, pp. 870–8. 2001. [7] microalbuminuria collaborative study group, “effect of captopril on progression to clinical proteinuria with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus andmicroalbuminuria,” journal of the american medical association, vol. 271, pp. 275–9, 1994. [8] bm. frier, m. fisher, “diabetes mellitus. in: niki r. colledge, brian r. walker, and stuart h. ralston. davidson's principles and practice of medicine,” 21st edition. edinburgh: churchill livingtone elsvier, vol. 39, pp. 1360, 2010. [9] american diabetic association, “clinical practice recommendations,” diabetes care, vol. 31, suppl 1, 2008. [10] world health organization, “definition, diagnosis and classification of diabetes mellitus and its complications part 1: diagnosis and classification of diabetes mellitus. who/ncd/ncs/99.2 ed, geneva, world health organization, 1999. [11] ld. silva, th. ginter, t. forbush, n. nokes, b. fay, t. mikuls, et al., “extraction and quantification of pack-year and classification of smoker information in semi-structured medical,” records appearing in proceedings of the 28th international conference on machine learning, bellevue, wa, usa., pp. 2-4, 2011. [12] my. ahmedani, mzi. hydrie, a. iqbal, a. gul, wb. mirza, a. basit, “prevalence of microalbuminuria in type 2 diabetic patients in karachi-pakistan. a multicenter study,” journal of the pakistan medical association, vol. 55, pp. 382–62005. [13] a. al-kassab, w. herman, t. thompson, “albuminuria is an uncommon complication of diabetes in egypt,” diabetes, vol. 46, pp. 326 a, 1997. [14] thi multicenter research group on diabetes, “vascular complications in niddm in thailand,” diabetes res clin part, vol. 25, pp. 61-9, 1994. [15] r. klein, be. klein, se. moss, md. davis, dl. demets, kj. cruickshanks, et al., “the wisconsin epidemiologic study of diabetic retinopathy-ⅲ prevalence and risk of diabetic retinopathy when age at diagnosis is 30 years or more, arch ophthalmol, vol. 102, pp. 527-32, 1984. [16] c. delcourt, f. vauzelle-kervroeddn, g. cathelineau, l. papoz, “low prevalence of longterm complication in niddm in france: a multicenter study,” j diabetes complications, vol. 12, pp. 88-95, 1998. [17] a. varghese, r. deepa, m. rema, v. mohan, “prevalence of microalbuminuria in type 2 diabetes mellitus at a diabetes center in southern india,” postgraduate medical journal, vol. 77, pp. 399–402, 2001. [18] dj. newman, mb. mattock, ab. dawnay, s. kerry, a. mcguire, m. yaggob, et al., “systematic reviews on urine albumin testing for early detection of diabetic complication,” health technology assessment, vol. 9, pp. 163, 2005. [19] r, habbal, ar. sekhri, m. volpe, isearch investigators, “prevalence of microalbuminuria in hypertensive patients and its associated cardiovascular risk in clinical cardiology: moroccan results of the global i-sear ch survey – a sub-analysis of a survey with 21050 patients in 26 countries worldwide,” cardiovascular j afr, vol. 21, pp. 200-205, 2010. [20] n. k. chowta, p. pant, m. n. chowta, deep dutta, subhadib c, satinath m, et al., “indian j nephrol,” vol. 19, pp. 53-56, 2009. [21] m. yvonne, o'. meara, r. hugh, b. brady, m. barry, et al., “diabetic nephropathy. in : braunwald e, fausi as, kasper dl, eds,” harrison's principles of internal medicine, new york: mcgraw-hill, pp. 1590-1. 2001. [22] m. svensson, g. sundkvist, hj. arnqvist, e. bjork, g. blohme, j. bolinder, et al., “signs of nephropathy may occur early in young adults with diabetes despite modern diabetes management: results from the nationwide population-based diabetes incidence study in sweden (diss),’ diabetes care, vol. 26, pp. 2903–9, 2003. [23] m, afkhami-ardekani, m. modarnesi, e., “amirichaghmaghi. prevalence of microalbuminuria and its risk factors in type 2 diabetic patients,” indian journal of nephrology, vol. 18, pp. 112, 2008 [24.] g, biesenbach, p. grafinger, o. janko, j. zazgornik, m. regalado, s. yang, et al., “influence of cigarette-smoking on the progression of clinical diabetic nephropathy in type 2 diabetic patients,” clin nephrol, vol. 48, pp. 146–150, 1997. [25] g. gambaro, g. bax, m. fusaro, m. normanno, sm. manani, m. zanella, et al., “cigarette smoking is a risk factor for nephropathy and its progression in type 2 diabetes mellitus,” diabetes nutr metab,; vol. 14, pp. 337–342, 2001. [26] e. ritz, h. ogata, sr. orth, a. stefanski, rw. schrier, e. richard, et al., “smoking: a factor promoting onset and progression of diabetic nephropathy,” diabetesmetab, vol. 26, pp. 54– 63, 2000. [27] r. klein, be. klein, se. moss, lp. aielo, mt. chahil, js. wong, et al., “epidemiology of proliferative diabetic retinopathy,” diabetes care, vol. 15, pp. 1875–1891, 1992. [28] m. shekiba, m. afkhami-ardekani, am. orafa, “the prevalence of micro and macroalbuminuria in diabetic patients referring to diabetes research center,” journal of shahid sadoughi university of medical sciences and health services, vol. 10, pp. 20–4, 2003. [29] jh. warram, je. manson, as. krolewski, “glycosy-lated hemoglobin and the risk of retinopathy in insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus,” new england journal of medicine, vol. 332, pp. 1305–6, 1995. [30] mt. pruijm, g. madeleine, wf. riesen, m. burnier, p. bovet, l. bankir, et al., “prevalence of microalbuminuria in the general population of seychelles and strong association with diabetes and hypertension independent of renal markers,” j hypertens, vol. 26, pp. 871-7, 2008. [31] d. de zeeuw, hh. parving, rh. henning, ro. gans, de. grobbee, wm. janssen, et al., “microalbuminuria as an early marker for cardiovascular disease,” j am soc nephrol, vol. 17, pp. 2100-5, 2006.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.51 traffic accidents analysis on dry and wet road bends surfaces in greater manchester-uk karzan s. ismael noorance a. razzaq lecturer at city planning engineering department technical college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq karzan.saleem@spu.edu.iq lecturer at civil engineering department university of al-muthanna, iraq phd researcher, transport engineering and planning group, university of salford, uk n.a.r.al-mukaram@edu.salford.ac.uk abstract: road accidents becomes global health and safety issues because of the gradual increase in the number of injuries and fatalities. in the uk, road accidents due to weather conditions has been one of the traffic safety challenges for researchers as well as drivers particularly in greater manchester. this is because of its influence on driver behaviour approaching traffic lights on the road bends. hence, to better understand driver behaviour, this paper presents various driving behaviour on wet and dry road conditions. data were obtained from police reports of road accidents at hazardous locations in greater manchester between 2011 and 2015. the reported data covers information regarding: accidents, vehicle, and casualties. the obtained data was used to examine how road surface is associated with road accidents by using chi-square statistical test. the analysis showed that road surface significantly contributed to accidents at bend roads. moreover, drivers’ behaviour was investigated as they can be expected to have a significant impact on accident occurrence. finally, the main goal is that these results might reflect the safety issue at bend roads. keywords: road accidents, driver behaviour, weather conditions, hazardous locations (bends). 1. introduction in urban areas, road traffic safety has been considered as a serious problem for society in its own right and in turn affects the capacity and efficiency of the road network. according to the world health organization [20], about 1.25 million people are killed on the roads and 50% of those are vulnerable road users. in addition, these accidents cost european countries between 2% and 5% of their gross domestic product (gdp). consequently, many studies have been carried out to investigate the effect of different contributory factors on the frequency of road accidents. hazard locations such as bend roads have been considered as critical areas because of its geometrical design as well as surface friction. bend in the road can be defined as sharp curve section that a driver has to complete his/her turning at the end of the section. however, frequent accidents tend to be higher at these sections than at the normal straight roads [18]. this is true not only because of losing control and braking action but also because some drivers did not see a traffic queue or a stationary vehicle and could not stop in time and the collision was occurred. in addition, a vehicle can be hit by an oncoming vehicle because either pulling out of side roads, or traversing to the wrong side particularly on blind bends. moreover, nambuusi et al. [13] concerned that the risk of rear accident at curved roads was approximately two times higher than at straight roads; and the risk could be lower during the night compared to daytime. furthermore, the analysis confirmed that the accident risk could be increased as the speed limit increases particularly at sections provided with traffic light signals. on the other hand, studies were carried out by edwards [5], fu [6], kilpeläinen and summala [10] who illustrated that adverse climatic conditions may affect driving behaviour and road safety. for example, road accidents are more likely to occur on wet and slippery roads than dry road surfaces. this mainly can be defined as skid resistance resulting in friction force that required for stability and control of vehicle travelling on the carriageway. the friction between the tyre and road decreased at wet surfaces, however that depends on the tyre tread design, surface texture and depth of water. therefore, this paper is focused on road safety arising from traffic accidents at road bends taking into consideration the climatic conditions. greater manchester was taken as a case study to find out the contributory factors affecting road safety. 2. related work adverse climate is one of the environmental factors that is recognized to influence driver performance on the road, particularly in the case where visibility is poor the friction on the road is reduced. on the other hand, other factors such as speeding and faults in traffic signal operations have major impacts on road safety. many literatures have looked at driving behaviour on both dry and wet road conditions. fu [6] demonstrated that the probability of accident occurrence can be increased as the humidity level and rainfall increased. additionally, the research of human behaviour in traffic psychology deals with the topic of road surface conditions. research states that speeding is one of the adverse driving behaviour which is affected by weather conditions. according to kilpeläinen and summala [10] adverse weather and road conditions, such as rain, snowfall and changing temperature, are significant contributors to a high risk of traffic accidents occurring. in addition, it has been reported that in north-western usa the maximum rainfall is a major factor contributed to higher accident percentages. the risk of accidents can be controlled at several levels. this is demonstrated by driver compensating associated with wet roads by adapting their driving behaviour; for instance, with longer headways, lower speeds, and avoidance of overtaking on two lane roads. therefore, it would appear that the accident risk in wet conditions is higher than that in dry conditions. nevertheless, generally, in the last few decades, positive trends have been seen in some countries, such as finland. figure 1 shows that the rate of accidents per vehicle kilometer in finland has dropped gradually since 1979. in the 1980s, the investigations were begun into the control of road surface conditions and apply some speed interventions. clearly, in the winter season the number of fatal accidents was higher compared to the summer and dry road conditions [16]. following this, speed limits were introduced resulting in the number of fatal accidents being similar for both seasons, as shown in figure 1.1 below. figure ‎1: risk of fatal accidents on public roads in finland from 1979 to1999 [16]. 2.1 accidents on wet road conditions in exploring the problem in west virginia, the proportion of accidents on wet-pavement is 2.2 times the number of accidents on dry-pavement [3]. according to the institute of road safety research, the occurrence of accidents has been influenced by many factors [11]. for example, poor drainage system on road pavement may reduce the level of safety on the road. other factors can be summarized as: the quality of the road surface, vehicle speed, and tyre type. in addition, summala [17] confirmed that the efficiency of braking and controlling the vehicle on wet surfaces become worse than that on the dry surfaces. greibe [7] stated that it is necessary to study the differential friction during the analysis of the pavement friction. differential friction is a term used to explain the situation where the wheel paths on which a traveling vehicle have dissimilar friction coefficients. it has been noted that it cannot be a result of hydrodynamics, but it is due to smoothing of the surface by water which reduces the friction. in new delhi, a case study of the influence of rainfall on road crashes concluded that approximately 16.7% of the total took place on a wet road [12]. according to hatherly and young [8] the larger dangers in wet weather are slipperiness of road surface and poor visibility. based on accident data for 2014 in the uk, there were 146,322 injuries caused by 44,081 accidents on wet roads [4]. 2.2 driver behaviour on slippery road conditions identify slippery road and poor visibility of drivers are the major reasons causing an increase in the risk of accidents. rämä [16] stated that the average speeds on a slippery road surface lower than in a good road surface conditions which are roughly 4 km per hour in terms of speed. also, it was noticed that the headways are generally not influenced by wet road condition. it could be argued that the number of reasons can cause unsatisfactory adaptation of driver behaviour. there is safe driving behaviour resulting from a good relationship of three components: vehicle, driver and the road environment. the extreme changes in road surface conditions lead to more surprises to the drivers as well as his/her vehicle. increasing friction between tyres and road surface are required in winter than in good weather conditions in order to provide effective reaction for sudden stopping. however, it is difficult because of many reasons. firstly, drivers are not only concerned with safety; but they have several aims during their journeys. secondly, the indicating of information for slipperiness is rarely. thirdly, incorrect behaviour does not give sufficient feedback on the risk of low friction. most earlier studies conducted by keay and simmonds [9] concerning to control movement of vehicles on the lower friction and poor road conditions. the driver could make a decision on necessary action such as increasing headway or decreasing speed while this is particularly difficult through the reduction of friction during the trip. this might be happened because of changing in temperature. 2.3 the effect of skid resistance on road safety skidding is one of the major causes of accidents on wet road surfaces [11]. the resistance between two surfaces to move is defined as friction. friction could occur on a road during a vehicle trip at the wheel-road interface, to enable the driver to steer, accelerate and brake in order to stay on the road. it is noticed that road surface conditions, tyres, road surface characteristic and speed limit are relevant factors upon which friction is dependent. according to pardillo mayora and jurado piña [15] the crash rates show a declined trend when skid resistance values are increased for both wet and dry roads. 3. data collection and extraction methods for the purpose of this study, road accidents on the bend roads were taken from the police reports in greater manchester. the data was reported using number codes in stats19 forms including details of 1074 accidents, 1931 vehicles, and 1717 causalities. next, the data was exported to microsoft excel sheets for analysis to find out the contributory factors affecting these accidents on different road surface conditions. the analysis process includes different statistical functions such as frequency, vlookup, countifs and sumifs in order to obtain the required information. finally, the summarised results will be presented in graphs and tables in the following sections. further methodological issues, an extra vital statistical provisions should be taken seriously such as chi-square test in order to ensure a valid analysis leading to reliable results and findings. 4. results and discussion 4.1 frequency of accidents versus road surfaces at hazard location: figure 2 shows the number of accidents. data was reported for the last five years in different road surface conditions (dry and wet). figure 2: the distribution of accidents according to road surface conditions at hazard locations. also, it can be noticed that the number of accidents on dry roads was greater than the number on wet roads in the period between 2011 and 2015. the data indicate more crashes in dry conditions and more awareness of the drivers in dangerous wet conditions. in total the analysis considers about 1,074 accidents about 41% of which occurred on wet roads. 4.2 the number of road accidents by severity at hazard location at bend roads: the total number of accidents in greater manchester involving hazard locations, such as going ahead left hand bends and going ahead right hand bends, are reported for the period 2011-2015. figure 3 displays the levels of severity over the period. it can be shown in figure 3 that the total number of accidents was gradually reduced. in 2011, the number of accidents was 274, then in 2012 declined to 231 accidents, and finally it decreased to 188 by 2015 (i.e. approximately 45% decrease in the total number of accidents over the 5 years). the main responsible for this reduction is the safety improvement, which can be seen by the local authority schemes over the last five years. in addition, because these types of road accidents are commonly occurred across the united kingdom, it is necessary to improve safety measures and promote improvement in driver behaviour. although, improvements in accident statistics can be seen each year, the problem is still huge and needs to further investigation [14]. figure 3: reported accidents at bends in gm based on severities (2011-2015). many studies found that slippery road surfaces might increase the risk of fatal injury crashes. however, several studies introduced the relationship between injury severity and weather conditions. the findings were shown that during rainfall slight injuries were relatively more frequent than serious injuries. according to keay and simmonds [9], the relative increase in the slight crashes can be due to reduce friction between the tyres and road surface. following other studies, it was found that the risk of injury is higher in all cases (wet and dry conditions) suggesting that the presence of rainfall consistently represents a driving hazard. furthermore, drivers usually maintain lower speed during rainfall. as shown in figure 3 above, the number of slightly injuries is greater than fatalities and serious injuries for both dry and wet road surfaces and number of fatalities is approximately 40% on the wet roads from the total fatalities. a significant relationship between road surface and severity was shown in figure 4 and table 1 using chisquare test. the null hypothesis (h0) was assumed that there is no association between the road surface conditions (wet-dry) and levels of severity in terms of number of accidents. the total chi-square value equals the summation of values in the table. the total calculated chi-square value x 2 = 0.69. this value should be compared with the critical value from chi-square table. the tabulated critical value is chosen according to the used which is equal to 1. the critical value is equal to 3.84 at the 5% level of confidence and degree of freedom equal to 1. it can be seen that the calculated chi-square (x 2 ) value is by far smaller than the value of x 2 from the table (3.84). then, the null hypothesis is accepted at 5% confidence level which highlights that there is no significant association between road surface conditions and severities. however, the total accidents on wet roads is around 40% of the total reported accidents which means the risk of involving in an accident is increasing as the pavement surface becomes wet. 148 123 122 125 115 633 111 97 76 93 64 441 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 total n u m b e r o f a c c id e n ts year dry road surface wet road surface 9 3 4 7 6 43 44 25 52 44 222 184 179 162 138 274 231 208 221 188 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 n u m b e r o f a c c id e n ts year fatal serious slight total table 1: the relationship between road surface and severity of accidents. severity dry road surfaces wet road surfaces total observed fatal and serious observed expected observed expected 229 141 134.96 88 94.04 x 2 = 0.22 x 2 = 0.32 0.54 slight observed expected observed expected 845 492 498.04 353 346.96 x 2 = 0.06 x 2 = 0.09 0.15 total observed 633 441 1074 total chi square values x 2 = 0.28 x 2 = 0.41 0.69 figure 4: road surface conditions versus severity of road accidents at bends 4.3 the relationship between road surface conditions and lighting conditions at bend roads: figure 5 illustrates the number of accidents on the dry road surfaces and in lighting conditions. on the dry roads, the proportion of accidents in daylights is higher than the proportion of accidents in dark conditions. nevertheless, only 40% of the accidents on wet surfaces was occurred in dark conditions. this is an indication of risk of driving in wet weather condition at dark times. figure 5: road surface conditions versus lighting conditions at bend roads. it can be concluded therefore that, the situation on wet roads gets worse at daylight than at night because of heavy traffic flow. this finding coincides with the literature reviews of assum et al. [1] and bassani et al. [2]. the association between road surface conditions and lighting conditions was discovered by applying the chi-square test as shown in table 2 below. following the previous procedures of contingency tables in order to highlight any possible association between the aforementioned factors and number of accidents. the null hypothesis (h0) was assumed that there is no association between the road surface conditions (wetdry) and lighting conditions (daylight-darkness) in terms of number of accidents. the calculated chi-square x 2 = 15. testing at 5% level, the critical region is x 2 > x 2 0.05 = 3.84. then, the null hypothesis is rejected at 5% confidence level which highlights that there is a significant association between road surface conditions and lighting conditions. table 2: the relationship between road surface and lighting conditions at bend roads. lighting conditions dry road surfaces wet road surfaces total observe daylight observed expected observed expected 710 449 418.46 261 291.54 x 2 = 2.16 x 2 = 3.10 5.26 darkness observed expected observed expected 364 184 212.54 180 149.46 x 2 = 3.70 x 2 = 6.04 9.74 total observed 633 441 1074 total chi square values x 2 = 5.86 x 2 = 9.14 15 4.4 the relationship between road surface conditions and road speed limit at bend roads: based on many literature reviews, it is expected that the number of accidents increases as speeds increase. this expectation does not seem to be valid in the following results. in contrast, it can be seen that, few frequencies of accidents occurred on high speed limit roads (> 30 mph) in both dry and wet road surfaces in comparison 141 88 229 492 353 845 633 441 1074 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 dry wet total n u m b e r o f a cc id e n ts road surface conditions fatal and serious injuries slight injuries total 449 261 710 184 180 364 633 441 1074 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 dry wet total n u m b e r o f a cc id e n ts road surface daylight darkness total with low speed roads (< 30 mph) as seen in figure 6. this can be attributed, according to many studies, either to the increase in awareness of drivers as the speed increases, or due to the collected data including many low speed roads than high speed roads. moreover, drivers are more careful when approaching the sharp bends. there is also can be seen that in the low speeds more drivers are involved in accidents as 921 accidents in low speed roads compared to 221 accidents in high speed roads. figure 6: road surface conditions versus speed limit at bend roads. table 3 aims not only to present the observed accidents but also to find out whether the road surface is associated with high accident rates. assume the null hypothesis h0 that there is no association between the road surface conditions (wet-dry) and speed limit roads (low-high) in terms of number of accidents. for h0, the calculated chi-square x 2 = 2.07. testing at 5% level, the critical region is x 2 > x 2 0.05 = 3.84. hence the calculated x 2 < 3.84, the h0 is accepted and clearly the observed rates do not differ significantly at the 5% level, such that there is no association between surface conditions and road speed limit. table 3: the relationship between road surface and road speed limits. speed limits dry road surfaces wet road surfaces total observe low speed roads ≤30 mph observed expected observed expected 838 504 493.91 334 344.09 x 2 = 0.19 x 2 = 0.27 0.46 high speed roads >30 mph observed expected observed expected 236 129 139.09 107 96.91 x 2 = 0.66 x 2 = 0.95 1.62 total observed 633 441 1074 total chi square values x 2 = 0.85 x 2 = 1.22 2.07 4.5 the relationship between lighting conditions and speed limits: another significant relationship between the lighting conditions and the speed limits was investigated in this study. as shown in figure 7, by comparing the accidents reported in lighting conditions we can state that in low speed roads the proportion of accidents occurred in dark conditions is approximately 35% and the same proportion for high speed roads is 29.66%. figure ‎7: lighting conditions versus speed limit at bend roads. apparently, these accidents proportions have a difference of 5.34% which roughly shows that in low speed roads it is more likely for an accident to occur during the night. however, the chi-square test concludes that there is no significant effect at 5% level of confidence (calculated x 2 < 3.84) as shown in table 4. table 4: the relationship between lighting conditions and speed limits in bend roads. speed limits daylight darkness total observe low speed roads ≤30 mph observed expected observed expected 838 544 553.98 294 284.02 x 2 = 0.18 x 2 = 0.35 0.53 high speed roads >30 mph observed expected observed expected 236 166 156.02 70 79.98 x 2 = 0.64 x 2 = 1.23 1.87 total observed 710 364 1074 total chi square values x 2 = 0.82 x 2 = 1.58 2.40 4.6 the relationship between road surface conditions and skidding at bend roads: for emergency situations such as stopping or sudden braking, road-tyre friction is a crucial aspect. research have statistically found a substantial negative relationship between wet surfaces and accident rates in term of skid resistance values. from the reported vehicle accidents sheets, the effect of skid resistance and road surface conditions on the observed number of vehicles involving in accidents can be shown in figure 8. it can be noticed that the 25% of vehicle accidents on wet surfaces were due to the skidding issue. 504 334 838 129 107 236 633 441 1074 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 dry wet total n u m b e r o f a cc id e n ts road surface ≤30 mph >30 mph total 544 294 838 166 70 236 710 364 1074 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 daylight darkness total n u m b e r o f a cc id e n ts lighting conditions low speed roads high speed roads total observed speed figure ‎8: number of vehicles involving in accidents due to skid resistance factor under wet and dry road conditions. now,‎the‎question‎‘is‎there‎any‎significant‎association‎ between the skidding and road surface‎conditions?’.‎to‎ find out the answer, the chi-square test has been applied as shown in table 5 below. at 5% level of confidence, the result showed that there is a significant association between road surface conditions and skidding at curved locations. table 5: the relationship between road surface conditions and skidding on bend roads. skidding dry road surface wet road surface total observe no skidding and overturning observed expected observed expected 1561 972 923.18 589 637.82 x 2 = 2.58 x 2 = 3.74 6.32 skidded and overturned observed expected observed expected 370 170 218.82 200 151.18 x 2 = 10.89 x 2 = 15.76 26.65 total observed 1142 789 1931 total chi square values x 2 = 13.47 x 2 = 19.50 32.97 4.7 other accidents’ contributory factors at bend roads: overall, traffic accident is a major problem to the society. despite the fact that these accidents increase the risk of fatality and injuries, it is necessary to investigate in depth what other factors can associate with these accidents. based on real data, a comparison study was carried out by wetteland and lundebye [19] who stated that human error was a major factor in 73% of crashes in the uk. this percent was 6% more than that of the us as shown in figure 9. therefore, further analysis of accidents data including human behaviour factor was conducted in order to understand how did these accidents happened under adverse weather conditions on bend roads. figure ‎9: percentages of accident contributing factors based on the uk and us studies the reported accidents in bend roads revealed that only 3% of these accidents were caused by road environments and vehicle errors such as defective traffic signals. this low trend can be explained the high levels of road safety including road maintenance and improvement in accident prevention schemes. table 6 shows that all observations and proportions of human or driver errors on wet and dry surface at bend locations over the 5 years between 2011 and 2015 at greater manchester. table 6: human errors at bend locations. human errors road surface conditions dry wet f f% f f% failed to look properly 179 0.22 90 0.18 careless/ reckless/ in a hurry/ nervous/ uncertain/ panic 138 0.17 69 0.14 poor turning or manouver 138 0.17 72 0.15 loss of control 132 0.16 123 0.25 failed to judge other vehicle path or vehicle speed 99 0.12 43 0.09 aggressive driving 59 0.07 33 0.07 inexperienced driver 42 0.05 35 0.07 sudden braking 22 0.03 17 0.03 following too close 7 0.01 4 0.01 failed to signal/misleading signal 5 0.01 4 0.01 driving too slow for conditions or slow vehicle. 1 0.00 0 0.00 total 822 1.00 477 1.00 the results demonstration that the majority of accidents on bend roads was loss of control (25%) on wet surfaces, following by failed to look properly (22%) on dry surfaces. we also got similar percentages for poor turning and driver aggressive behaviour on both surfaces such as nervous, careless and in a hurry behaviour. 972 589 1561 170 200 370 1142 789 1931 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 dry wet total n u m b e r o f a cc id e n ts road surface no skidding & overturning skidded & overturned total 73% 67% 21% 24% 6% 9% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% uk us p ro p o rt io n o f a cc id e n ts f a ct o rs % road users road environment vehicle faults 5. conclusion this paper described the analysis of accidents data in greater manchester reported by police involving hazardous locations from 2011 to 2015. this is in order to understand the common accidents and contributory factors. the data was obtained from stats19 forms including accident, vehicles and causalities information. the analysis was focused on the association between road surface and some important variables such as lighting conditions, speed limits and severity of accidents, were investigated by chi-square test. the conclusions drawn from this study can be summarised as following:  there is no significant association between road surface and number of casualities under different weather conditions. however, the analysis highlighted that the number of accidents on wet surfaces is around 40% of the total fatal, serious, and slight injury accidents.  the risk of accidents during daytime are greater than night. this is affected by traffic volume at peak hours and also driving attitude.  speeding is a major contributory factors in accident occurrence. the situation may result in accident with the oncoming vehicle while lane changing or braking suddenly to avoid collision.  skid resistance is an importatnt aspect for stopping conditions particularly at wet surfaces. this is because the fact that the friction decreses when the pavement becomes wetted. the analysis showed a substational assocation between the occurrence of accidents and the surface conditions.  despit the fact that many contributory factors on accidents were known and recognised, there is still a need to investigate the driver behaviour factor. from data obtained, the analysis showed that more than 95% of these accidents were caused by road users’ errors such as failing to look properly, aggressive driving, poor manouver and losing control. while the rest were occurred either because of vehicles faults or road environments.  from the obtained accident data the analysis considers 1074 accidents on bends over the period from 2011 to 2015. about 41% of these accidents were occurred on wet roads. this percent is very worrying and can indicate a problem in safety issue. therefore, furthur research are required to identify more effective solutions. for example, effect of temperature on skid resistance contributed to traffic accidents at bends roads, and driver behaviour approaching bend roads. 6. reference [1] t. assum, bjørnskau et al. "risk compensation—the case of road lighting." accident analysis & prevention 31(5): 545-553, 1999. [2] m. bassani, catani et al. "night-time and daytime operating speed distribution in urban arterials." transportation research part f: traffic psychology and behaviour, 2016. [3] m. e. campbell, "the wet-pavement accident problem: breaking through. traffic quarterly." 25, 1971. [4] department for transport. "reported road casualties great britain: annual report", 2014. [5] j. b. edwards, "weather-related road accidents in england and wales: a spatial analysis." journal of transport geography 4(3): 201-212, 1996. [6] t. fu, "effects of adverse winter weather conditions on highway traffic and driver behaviors.", 2013. [7] p. greibe, "braking distance, friction and behaviour." findings, analyses and recomendations based on braking trials. [brzdná dráha, trenie a správanie sa. zistenia, analýzy a odporúčania založené‎ na‎ brzných‎ skúškach].‎ lyngby: trafitec, 2007. [8] l. w. hatherly and a. e. young. "the location and treatment of urban skidding hazard sites." transportation research record 623: 21-28, 1977. [9] k. keay and i. simmonds. "road accidents and rainfall in a large australian city." accident analysis & prevention 38(3): 445-454, 2006. [10] m. kilpeläinen and h. summala. "effects of weather and weather forecasts on driver behaviour." transportation research part f: traffic psychology and behaviour 10(4): 288299, 2007. [11] m. p. m. mathijssen and r. maas. "wet-weather accidents. what can road authorities do about them? ", 1979. [12] p. mondal, sharma et al. "are road accidents affected by rainfall? a case study from a large indian metropolitan city." british journal of applied science & technology 1(2): 16, 2011. [13] b. nambuusi, et al. "a review of accident prediction models for road intersections.", 2008. [14] s. newstead, c. m. delaney, a. l. watson "quality criteria for the safety assessment of cars based on real word crashes. ", 241, 2006. [15] j. m. pardillo mayora and r. jurado piña. "an assessment of the skid resistance effect on traffic safety under wet-pavement conditions." accident analysis & prevention 41(4): 881-886, 2009. [16] p. rämä, "effects of weather-controlled variable message signing on driver behaviour.", technical research centre of finland, 2001. [17] h. summala, "brake reaction times and driver behavior analysis." transportation human factors 2(3): 217-226, 2000. [18] y. b. wah, et al. "decision tree model for count data.", proceedings of the world congress on engineering, 2012. [19] t. wetteland and s. lundebye. "financing of road safety actions: third african road safety congress." pretoria, south africa, world bank washington dc, usa, 1997. [20] world health organization. "global status report on road safety". printed in italy, 2015. acknowledgments this paper was written by the authors as part of phd and msc theses for the university of salford in the uk. this paper includes road traffic accidents database reported by the police using stats19 forms in greater manchester – uk for the years from 2011 to 2015. the authors would express their deep gratitude and sincere thanks to the supervisor senior lecturer mr. ralph henson, for his invaluable advice, active encouragement, and guidance throughout this study. biography karzan s. ismael: i received bsc in engineering urban planning from sulaimani polytechnic university in 2012; msc. in transport engineering and planning at the university of salford /united kingdom in 2016. currently, i am working as lecturer at sulaimani polytechnic university/ engineering city planning department. noorance a. razzaq: i graduated from baghdad university with the bsc in civil engineering in 2001 followed by the msc in transportation engineering in 2005. i have worked as lecturer in the civil engineering department at the university of al-muthanna since 2006. currently, i am a phd candidate at the university of salford and sponsored by the iraqi ministry of higher education and scientific research since 2014.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 166 investigation of the properties of high-density polyethylene pipes used in kurdistan for piping system of potable water sarkawt rostam department of mechanical engineering/ production college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sarkawt.rostam@spu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 6 – issue 2– december 2021 doi: 10.24017/science.2021.2.16 article history: received 8/11/2021 accepted 26/1/2022 high-density polyethylene (hdpe) pipes are recently used in the water distribution network in kurdistan to replace the old pipes. in this investigation, two types of hdpe pipes (namely a and b) available in the local market have been studied and their properties were compared. mechanical properties through tensile tests have been investigated and valuable data were collected that could provide a guideline reference for the designers and end-users utilizing these pipes for water supply networks. furthermore, the hdpe samples were analyzed by differential scanning calorimetry (dsc). results showed that the ultimate tensile strength recorded for pipe b was greater than pipe a by 8%. besides, both the elongation at break and strain at break for pipe a was outperformed by almost 6%. on the other hand, the tests showed that the transition from elasticity behavior to ductility behavior for pipe b occurs earlier in comparison to pipe a. it was noted from the gathered information that the two tested pipes were within the standards with variations in their characteristics. keywords: polyethylene pipes, mechanical properties, differential scanning calorimetry, oxidation induction time, glass transition temperature. copyright © 2021kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction high-density polyethylene pipes are extremely used for water, gas, and sewage systems and are of yearly increased demand. recently, pe pipes are widely used in piping water [1] and gas systems due to their superior properties of low cost, excellent mechanical and chemical properties [2-4], long-term resistance to environmental effects, and ease of installation as well as lower weight, high resistance to corrosion and ease of joining. conversely, the repair and technical efforts are of high costs. so, it is necessary to study the reliability of these pipe systems [5-8]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 167 the lifetime of plastic pipes used in water and gas supply is estimated to be of 50 years. for this long time of usage, various tests to prove the usability and reliability of these pipes are crucial to avoid high costs of failure during installation and repair during the service [9]. tensile behavior of recycled hdpe was studied by ries et al. [10]. the tests were conducted at room temperature for different strain rates. three stress-strain curves were used to identify the material parameters that can be used in engineering problems. the results show a significant effect of strain rate on ductility, modulus of elasticity, and tensile strength of hdpe. tensile and oxidation induction time tests were conducted by castagnetti et al. [11] to show the effect of chlorinated and non-chlorinated water on hdpe pipes used in urban networks for water conveyance. the tests show that the mechanical properties were not affected by the chlorine oxide for the duration of exposure up to 2000 hrs. draghicescu et al. [12] presented results of tensile tests for hdpe pipelines used for water supply networks to characterize their mechanical properties. it is shown that an increase of young’s modulus and stiffness depends on the pipe’s diameter. wu et al. [13] studied the mechanical behavior through the uniaxial tensile test of buried pe pipe under load subsidence. they proposed that the results could be used as a reference for safety and maintenance strategy for the used pipes during service. a predictive model to predict the lifetime of pe pipes was proposed by wang et al. [14] using the oxidative induction time (oit) test. the results showed that the internal pressure has a direct impact on the pe pipes. wu et al. [15] developed a finite element model to analyze the factors affecting the strength of pe pipes. their results showed that both the strain rate and transition section length have a significant effect on the pipe’s strength. kratochvilla el al. [16] use a cracked round bar to characterize two types of pe pipes namely pe 100 and pe 100-rc (resistance to crack). the results were evaluated by comparing them to other tests such as notched pipe, creep, and charpy impact tests. mechanical properties of polyethylene-layered silicate nanocomposites studied by alexandre et al. [17]. the study showed that the tensile and shear properties (including young’s modulus, shear modulus, and strain behavior) were improved by the addition of hydrogen. in addition to mechanical properties, frank et al. [5] investigate the morphology, stabilization, and structure of materials used in pe pipes. the focus was on the remaining lifetime of the pipes used in gas and water distribution systems. to assess the reliability levels of hdpe pipes, khelif et al. [6] present a probabilistic characterization of this pipe and its lifetime. their analysis showed that the influence of the operating temperature of the used pipes on the pipe safety was larger than the gas pressure fluctuations. expanding the findings from previous works on the mechanical properties of pe pipes leads to practical recommendations and guides for dealing with such pipes in field conditions. in this paper, mechanical properties through tensile test and response to heat through thermal oxidation resistance using dsc for hdpe pipes were investigated experimentally. the aim of this investigation is to gather data about the hdpe pipes available in local markets and used in the area for potable water distribution networks. this is to ensure reliable and safe use of the pipes within the granted period given by the manufacturers as their repair and maintenance are of high costs. the outcomes from this investigation supply the designer, as well as the users with valuable data about hdpe pipes used in water distribution networks, were the research covered the outputs of tensile tests for different samples taken from the two investigated types of hdpe pipes such as tensile strength and its corresponding strain, elongation at break, and elongation at yield and they were compared within the iso standard of pe pipes used for the piping system of potable water. in addition, the research covered the values of glass transition temperature and time, and oxidation induction time from the dsc test. 2. methods and materials 2.1. materials the high-density polyethylene black with blue strip pipes has been used in the tests. they were provided by the local market for two manufacturers providing the market with pe pipes kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 168 and used in the piping system of potable water. through this paper, the two manufacturers are named “a” and “b”. the pipes specifications are listed in table 1. as is clear from the table that the type of pipes used is pe 100 from manufacturer “a” while manufacturer “b” uses the type which has resistance to crack and is called pe 100-rc. other specifications are the same as explained in the table. table 1: specifications of pe pipes specifications manufacturer a manufacturer b type pe 100 pe 100-rc outside diameter x wall thickness 110 x 10 (mm) 110 x 10 (mm) nominal pressure (pn) 16 bars 16 bars standard dimension ratio (sdr) 11 11 standard iso 4427 iso 4427 color black with blue strips black with blue strips usage potable water supply potable water supply 2.2. sample preparation for tensile test pieces of 220 mm length were prepared from pipes of 110 mm diameter and 10 mm wall thickness. from the prepared pieces, pe testing samples with a cross-sectional area of 10 x 10 mm were cut according to iso 6259-3 using a computerized numerical (cnc) milling machine (figure 1). figure 1: cnc milling machine for sample preparation figure 2 and table 2 show the dimensions of the testing sample. figure 2: pe test pieces according to iso 6259-3 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 169 table 2: dimensions of test specimens according to iso 6259-3 symbol description dimension, mm a overall length (minimum) 150 b width of ends 20 ± 0.2 c length of narrow, parallel-sided portion 60 ± 0.5 d width of narrow, parallel-sided portion 10 ± 0.2 e radius 60 f gauge length 50 ± 0.5 g initial distance between grips 115 ± 0.5 2.3. mechanical test the tensile samples of high-density pe pipes were tested using universal machine test (testometric50 kn, figure 3) according to iso 6259. three samples from each manufacturer (a and b) were taken from the pipes and cut by a cnc milling machine into the shape as shown previously in figure 2. the samples were designated as pe-a1, pe-a2, pe-a3, pe-b1, pe-b2, and pe-b3. force, stress, strain, and elongation at different stages were being measured. figure 3: universal machine test 2.4. differential scanning calorimetry test the response of pe pipes to heat was investigated through differential scanning calorimetry (dsc). in this work, the device of dsc 200-f3 type has been used (figure 4). it contains two pans in its measurement chamber. the first pan is filled with punched samples of pe pipes for both a and b manufacturers in separate tests and the other pan, which is called the reference pan remains empty. the change of the temperature rate within the time of experimentation is monitored through a connected computer to the dsc device. the oxidation induction time (oit), glass transition, and other related indicators for each pipe were measured. the input parameters for experiments are shown in table 3. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 170 figure 4: differential scanning calorimetry table 3: input parameters to dsc 200-f3 parameter value material pe pe sample mass 15 mg reference mass 0 mg crucible mass 23 mg kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 171 purge 1 oxygen purge 2 nitrogen protective purge nitrogen start temperature 30˚c end temperature 200˚c emergency reset temperature 210˚c heating rate 20 k/min nitrogen flow rate 50 ml/min oxygen flow rate 50 ml/min 3. result and discussion 3.1. tensile test results samples of high-density pe-100 pipes from two different manufacturers have been tested using a universal machine test. the conditions of the conducted experiments are pretension of 10 n, gauge length of 50 mm, sample length of 220 mm, and a test speed of 50 mm/min. figures 5 and 6 show the stress-strain curve for the two types of pe pipes under investigation. as it appears from the curves that the pe specimen reaches the upper yield point which gives ultimate tensile stress and then an elastic extension can be shown until it reaches its breakpoint giving maximum strain at break. the tensile test is usually used to show the mechanical behavior of thermoplastics. the results from such a test are used to find out the ultimate strength, applied load at peak, yield strength, strain, elongation at yield, elongation at lop, and elongation at break. the test conditions are highly affecting the behavior of the thermoplastics so the results from the tensile test can provide a behavior index during the usage of the pipes. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 172 figure 5: stress-strain diagram for sample pe-a1 figure 6: stress-strain diagram for sample pe-b2 table 4 summarizes the results of tensile strength and the corresponding strain. it is clear from the table that the pipe from manufacturer “b” gives higher strength in comparison to the one from manufacturer “a” by almost 8%. table 4: ultimate tensile strength and corresponding strain from the tensile test sample ultimate tensile strength (mpa) strain % pe-a1 24.59 20 pe-b2 26.75 18 the relationship between force and elongation for the pe tested samples of manufacturer a is shown in figure 7 and for a manufacturer b is shown in figure 8. both figures show that the maximum applied load is between 2379 2459 n for pe-a samples and 2524 2675 n for pe-b. these values are corresponding to elongation at break as follows: from 200.855 – 314.07 mm and from 201.810 – 306.806 mm for pe-a and pe-b samples respectively. 0 5 10 15 20 25 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 s tr e ss , m p a strain, % 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 s tr e ss , m p a strain, % kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 173 (a)pe-a1 (b)pe-a2 (c)pe-a3 figure 7: force-elongation relationship for samples pe-a 0 250 500 750 1000 1250 1500 1750 2000 2250 2500 0 25 50 75 100 125 150 175 200 225 f o rc e , n elongation, mm 0 250 500 750 1000 1250 1500 1750 2000 2250 2500 0 25 50 75 100 125 150 175 200 225 250 f o rc e , n elongation, mm 0 250 500 750 1000 1250 1500 1750 2000 2250 2500 0 25 50 75 100 125 150 175 200 225 250 275 300 325 f o rc e , n elongation, mm kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 174 0 250 500 750 1000 1250 1500 1750 2000 2250 2500 2750 0 25 50 75 100 125 150 175 200 225 f o rc e , n elongation, mm (a)pe-b1 (b)pe-b2 (c)pe-b3 figure 8: force-elongation relationship for samples pe-b 0 250 500 750 1000 1250 1500 1750 2000 2250 2500 2750 0 25 50 75 100 125 150 175 200 225 f o rc e , n elongation, mm 0 250 500 750 1000 1250 1500 1750 2000 2250 2500 2750 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 f o rc e , n elongation, mm kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 175 to calculate the elongation at break as a percentage value, the following formula is used: 𝜀 = 𝑙− 𝑙𝑜 𝑙𝑜 x 100% (1) where: ε = elongation at break as a percentage value, l = gauge length at break, mm lo = initial gauge length, mm. by applying the above formula and using the values of elongation at break in mm from figures 7 and 8 above, table 5 can be drawn. the last two columns of the table showed that the elongation at break for all tested specimens is within the standard value of iso 4427-2 (≥ 350%). table 5: results of elongation at break for the tested samples sample elongation at break mm elongation at break % elongation at break, % according to iso 4427-2 pe-a1 200.855 401.710 ≥ 350 % pe-a2 246.916 493.832 pe-a3 314.070 628.140 pe-b1 201.810 403.620 pe-b2 210.320 420.640 pe-b3 306.806 613.806 as a summary of the results recorded from the tensile test, table 6 was prepared as a guide table for designers and end-users of the investigated pipes. the table shows that the values of elongation at break, elongation at yield, and strain at break for the pe-a group outperform while the values of force at peak and elongation at lop for the pe-b group outperform. therefore, the designer has the right to choose the preferred pe pipe (a or b manufacturer) depending on the requirements during the pipe installation in water networks. table 6: results from tensile tests s a m p le d ia m e te r m m t h ic k n e ss m m w id th m m a r e a m m 2 f o r c e a t p e a k n e lo n g a ti o n a t b r e a k m m e lo n g a ti o n a t y ie ld m m e lo n g a ti o n a t l .o .p . m m s tr a in a t b r e a k % pe-a1 110 10 10 100 2459 200.855 8.735 0.865 401.586 pe-a2 110 10 10 100 2429 246.916 8.276 0.686 493.792 pe-a3 110 10 10 100 2379 314.070 8.350 0.590 628.014 average 2422.33 253.94 8.453 0.713 507.79 pe-b1 110 10 10 100 2524 201.810 7.860 0.730 403.539 pe-b2 110 10 10 100 2675 210.320 8.500 0.800 420.640 pe-b3 110 10 10 100 2535 306.806 7.686 0.656 613.563 average 2578 239.64 8.015 0.728 479.24 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 176 3.2. dsc test results figure 912 shows the glass transition for polymer under investigation where the mechanical properties of pe-100 change from elastic material to brittle material. figures 9 and 10 show the glass transition temperature (tg) for pe-a and pe-b samples respectively. while figure 11 and 12 shows the time required for this transition. to get a clear view of the tg values for the investigated samples from both manufacturers a and b, figure 13 has been drawn. the figure illustrates that from the onset to the end, the transition of pe-a (126.8˚c – 137.1˚c) is above that for pe-b (119.1˚c133.6˚c). regarding the transition time, this time for the pipe of manufacturer a starts from 146.8 min and ends at 163.7 min while for manufacturer b starts at 119.3 min and ends at 128.2 min. this explains that the transition from elasticity behavior to ductility behavior for pipe b occurs earlier in comparison to pipe a. figure 9: glass transition temperatures for pe-a samples figure 10: glass transition temperatures for pe-b samples kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 177 figure 11: glass transition time for pe-a samples figure 12: glass transition time for pe-b samples kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 178 figure 13: glass transition temperatures for pe-a and pe-b at different stages during the service, water leakage and consumption reaction may occur which causes depletion of antioxidants. therefore, to protect the pipes from thermal oxidation, the oit test was conducted to monitor this case. the level of the remaining antioxidants in the pipe is measured through oit testing. the exothermic reaction or as called the onset to oxidation will be recorded as a oit (in minutes) during the test. from the oit figures this value was determined by drawing a tangent to the exotherm at its maximum point [9]. figures 14 and 15 show the oit for pe-a (136.3 min) and pe-b (102.7 min) respectively. according to iso 4427-2, this time for test temperature of 200˚c is ≥ 20 min. so, both pipes are within the standards. figure 14: oxidation induction time for pe-a samples 118 120 122 124 126 128 130 132 134 136 138 140 onset mid inflection end g la ss t ra n si ti o n t e m p e ra tu re , t g ( ˚c ) glass transition stages pe-a pe-b kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 179 figure 15: oxidation induction time for pe-b samples 4. conclusion mechanical properties and response to the heat of pe pipes utilized in potable water distribution networks in kurdistan have been investigated experimentally. both tensile test and dsc were used. two sets of samples from two pe pipe manufacturers were tested. the concluded points are summarized as follows: 1. the ultimate tensile strength value was 26.75 mpa for the pipe from manufacturer b corresponding to 18% strain. while the value of strength decreased to 24.59 mpa for manufacturer a with 20% corresponding strain. 2. the maximum elongation at break was 628.14% for the pipe of manufacturer a. 3. the maximum percentage for strain at break was 507.79% for the pipe of manufacturer a. 4. the glass transition of pipe a was above the value of pipe b, where the recorded maximum temperature was 126.8˚c at onset and 137.1˚c at the end. 5. the range of oxidation induction time was from 136.3 min to 102.7 min for pipes a and b respectively. acknowledgments the experimental test of this work was conducted at sulaimani civil construction laboratory. the author extends special thanks to engr. aryan wahid for his help with the testing. reference [1] d. brocca, e. arvin, and h. mosbæk, “identification of organic compounds migrating from polyethylene pipelines into drinking water,” water res., vol. 36, no. 15, pp. 3675–3680, sep. 2002. 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[17] m. alexandre, p. dubois, t. sun, j. m. garces, and r. jérôme, “polyethylene-layered silicate nanocomposites prepared by the polymerization-filling technique: synthesis and mechanical properties,” polymer (guildf)., vol. 43, no. 8, pp. 2123–2132, apr. 2002.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 136 common risk factors of myocardial infarction and some socio demographic characteristics in sulaimani city bayan omar sharif samir y. lafi health development and training center adult nursing department ministry of health college of nursing sulaimani, iraq university of raparin omerbayan82@gmail.com rania, iraq prof.dr.samir@uor.edu.krd article info abstract volume 6 – issue 2– december 2021 doi: 10.24017/science.2021.2.13 article history: received 10/10/2021 accepted 25/1/2022 coronary artery disease (chd) is referred to as a pathologic process influencing the coronary arteries and leading to atherosclerosis. myocardial infarction (mi) is one of the diagnostic conditions for chd. although chd over the last decades in western countries coronary heart disease mortality has declined gradually but still is one of the vital causes of morbidity and death. coronary heart disease is affected by socioeconomic factors. these risk factors in sulaimani city of iraq remain uncertain. the current study’s main aims were to explore the potential association between several predisposing factors of a heart attack in sulaimani, iraq, with some sociodemographic characteristics of the participants. 165 patients have been admitted to the cardiac specialty hospital, (coronary care unit), and they were definitely diagnosed as having mi participated in the current study between 2015 and 2016; in sulaimani, iraq. the study was attentive on exploring the socioeconomic status, lifestyle, family history of heart attack, and classical predisposing factors such as (hypertension, diabetes mellitus, smoking cigarette, and dyslipidemia). the finding: ≥61 years was the most frequently affected by myocardial infarction. sedentary lifestyle, hypertension obesity, and overweight were accounted the subjects. (98.2%) of the selected patients no eating fish. (56.4%, 58.8%) of them were not eating daily fruit and vegetable respectively. smoking was a significant correlation with age, gender, level of education, and marital status. conclusions: in sulaimani city of iraq the strong predictors of heart attack were included: sedentary lifestyle, high body mass index, positive family history, unhealthy diet, smoking cigarettes, high blood pressure, dyslipidemia, and diabetes mellitus. keywords: risk factors, myocardial infarction, socioeconomic status, coronary heart disease, sulaimani city-iraq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 137 copyright © 2021 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction death rates from coronary heart disease have decreased in recent decades; morbidity and mortality are still due to coronary artery disease worldwide. myocardial infarction (mi) or heart attack, which is one of the most coronary artery problems that lead to deaths could be referred back to different conditions of failing circulation of the heart [1]. the reason of nearly ninety percent of mi results from a thrombus that obstructs the atherosclerotic coronary artery, resulting in interruption of the blood supply and damage of the heart muscle [2,3]. some factors or diseases that contribute as the predisposing risk factors for occurring heart attack include type one or two diabetes mellitus, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, particularly high amount of low-density lipoprotein (ldl), low amount of high-density lipoprotein (hdl), high triglycerides (tg), stress and depression, overweight or obesity, smoking cigarette and sedentary lifestyle [4,6]. after the year 2020, the major source of death and disability will be due to coronary heart disease predominantly with mi in low middle-income countries, accounting for all deaths [7]. the maximum age-adjusted death from coronary heart disease is in asian countries and had, followed by west asian, southeast asian, and south asian countries [8]. the most susceptible population to mi is asian people [9]. a rapid transformation of the societies has occurred from nomadic or rural lifestyles to urban lifestyles over the last six or seven decades in classified countries of the middle east region which consists of mainly high, middle, and low-income countries [10]. socioeconomic determinants of health are answerable for determining nearly half of the health of a population, and they also powerfully affect health behaviors, the second greatest contributor to health and permanency [11]. non-communicable diseases have a multifactorial cause and account for more than fifty percent of the deaths internationally [12]. however, to date, no studies have been conducted on the risk factors of mi in sulaimani of iraq; therefore, the current study has intended to assess the common risk factors of a heart attack such as smoking, physical inactivity, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, unhealthy diets, and family history. 2. methods and materials data were collected from those patients who were diagnosed with mi by the cardiologists and admitted to cardiac specialty hospital in sulaimani city/ kurdistan region of iraq, which is the main health agency dealing with cardiac diseases in sulaimani city, during the period of 25th november 2015 to 23rd october 2016. all patients expressed their consent before participation in the study. the excluded criterion for the current study was associated with hepatic and renal failure, human immunodeficiency virus (hiv), and cancer because they are far from our main topic and need to go deeper with them. the questionnaire was implemented for assessing smoking habits, heart attack, physical exercise, type 2 diabetes, dietary and working conditions. the questionnaire was composed of 21 variables which were divided into two parts, the first one was socio and clinical demographic and lifestyle factors which include 17 items, while the second part was the common risk factors of mi which include 4 items. identifying personal and family history of mi, the socioeconomic status such as (monthly income and level of education), lifestyle habits such as (cigarette smoking and daily physical activity), nutritional pattern, diabetes mellitus. weight by kilograms, per standing height by meters squared is the measurement of body mass index which was calculated as with weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared. the result of waist-hip ratio (whr) was done by calculating waist measurement divided by the hip measurement. the panel of 29 experts from several specialists such as internists, cardiologists, satiation, and specialist nurse inside and outside of iraq such as (iran, jordon, saudi arabia, and egypt) were included for the kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 138 validity of the questionnaire. the reliability of the questionnaire was checked and the pilot study was determined through the use of test-retest approach which was assessed as (r= 0. 98), also, the data were collected via interview and discussion technique, and then the data were organized and coded into computer files, statistically analyzed. statistical analysis all participants participated in the study except five of them who refused the participation. the normality of distribution such as kolmogorov–smirnov test was achieved for all variables in the pre-analysis or examination process. pearson and spearman’s correlation was used to examine relationships between variables. all data are expressed as means ± sd. data analysis was undertaken using the ibm spss (version 21), p-value less than 0.05 as a statistical significance was accepted. table 1: socio–demographic and lifestyle factors distribution of myocardial infarction of 165 patients aged 31–90 age frequency (percentage %) gender n (%) 31-40 41-50 51-60 61-70 71-80 81-90 male female 6 (3.6%) 35 (21.2%) 41 (24.8%) 54 (32.7%) 23 (13.9%) 6 (3.6 %) 123 (74.5%) 42 (25.5%) education n (%) occupation n (%) marital status n (%) primary school high school college or university employed unemployed married single/ widow/ divorced 133 (80.6%) 16 (9.7%) 16 (9.7%) 38 (23%) 127 (77%) 130 (78.7%) 35 (21.2%) residential area n (%) smoking n (%) life style n (%) urban rural never ex &passive smoker current smokers sedentary physical activity 120 (72.7%) 45 (27.3%) 50 (30.3%) 57 (34.5%) 58 (35.2%) 135 (81.8%) 30 (18.2%) bmi n (%) whr n (%) dyslipidemia hypertension diabetes normal wt. over wt.& obesity average at risk 41 (24.8%) 124 (75.2%) 109 (66.4%) 56 (33.9%) 65 (39.4%) 101 (61.2%) 33 (20%) previous heart attack visit physician regularly taking drugs regularly monthly income sufficient b. sufficient insufficient 28 (17%) 43 (26.1%) 96 (58.2%) 16 (9.7%) 58 (35.1%) 91 (55.2%) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 139 3. results the male participants included in this study were 123 patients (74.5%) while 42 (25.5%) were females. (27.3%) is the total number of the patients were from the rural areas while others (72.7%) were from the urban areas. the patients with mi in the present study were in the older age group [≥61 y: 83n (50.2%)] was higher than in middle-aged [41-60 y: 76n (46%)] and young [30-40 y: 6n (3.3%)] groups. lifestyle factors and socio-demographic are summarized in table1. the occurrence of all predisposing factors was much more in a low level of occupation and education with sedentary married patients. myocardial infarction was lower among the participants from the rural zones (27.3%) than among those from the urban areas (72.7%). current, passive, and exsmoking was predominance in the mi patients (69.7%). the prevalence of bmi > 25 was 75.15% as compared to the normal weight class (24.8%). sixty-one percent of the selected mi cases had hypertension. the prevalence of dyslipidemia and diabetes was (39.4%, 20%), respectively. a sedentary lifestyle (81.8%) was predominantly among mi patients. the prevalence of insufficient monthly income was (55.2%) as compared to sufficient (9.7%). as it is shown in table 1, the patients who visited physicians regularly and took medication regularly were (26.1%,58.2%), respectively. the subjects with a positive family history of hypertension (54.5%), heart attack (39.2%), diabetes (28.4), and dyslipidemia (7.2%) are shown in table 2. table 3 illustrates the dietary pattern of the patients. (98.2%) of the selected patients do not eat fish. also, (56.4%, 58.8%) of patients do not eat daily fruit and vegetable, respectively. table 2: participants’ first and second degree of family history family history class n (%) dyslipidemia no 153 (92) first degree 11 (6.6) second degree 1 (0.6) heart attack no 101 (61.2 first degree 57 (35) second degree 7 (4.2) hypertension no 75 (45.4) first degree 83 (50.3) second degree 7 (4.2) diabetes no 118 (72) first degree 40 (24.2) second degree 7 (4.2) table 3: dietary pattern of the study sample variables class n (%) daily intake of fruit never 93 (56.4) sometime 72 (43.6) always 0 (0.0) daily intake of vegetable never 97 (58.8) sometime 38 (41.2) always 0 (0.0) daily sweet foods like cakes, biscuits, and chocolate never 86 (52.1) sometime 73 (44.2) always 6 (3.7) daily sugar use with tea or with other hot drinks never 35 (21) sometime 71 (43) always 59 (36) eating fish never 162 (98.2) sometime 3 (1.8) always 0 (0.0) eating red meat never 100 (60.6) sometime 61 (37) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 140 always 4 (2.4) table 4: correlation coefficient between risk factor of myocardial infarction and socio-demographic data risk factors age gender educational level marital status occupation monthly income smoking cigarette 0.343** 0.382** -0.231* 0.172* 0.123 -0.133 physical exercise -0.04 -0.203** 0.097 -0.158* -0.115 -0.058 daily fruit 0.086 0.019 -0.025 -0.073 -0.041 0.017 daily vegetable 0.158* 0.076 -0.024 0.234* 0.078 -0.07 daily sweet foods 0.259** -0.168* 0.114 -0.09 -0.058 0.056 daily sugar use with hot drinks -0.159* -0.183* 0.025 -0.137 -0.069 0.126 eating fish -0.095 -0.08 0.127 -0.058 -0.141 0.119 eating red meat -.177* -.164* 0.065 0.009 0.004 0.173* ** correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2tailed). * correlation is significant at the 0.05level (2 tailed). 4. discussion the results of some studies reported that the incidence of myocardial infarction and mortality is differing among sets distinct in terms of educational level and profession and public station [13]. myocardial infarction is considered as the main cause of death in asia and each country in the asia region and it has a different rate of death caused by it, which is correlated to the prevalence of risk factors among their people [14]. it seems to be due to the specific political and social conditions of iraq, such as war and economic deprivation in recent years, few studies have been conducted on health and medicine. however, a combination of modifiable and non-modifiable predisposing factors that are related to a heart attack in the iraqi residents is not well studied. the main objective of the present investigation, therefore, was to collect data on risk factors and modifiers of effect that contribute to the occurrence of mi in sulaimani city. the current study found that the influencing factors such as high blood pressure (hypertension), sedentary lifestyle or physical inactivity, and overweight are increased in the region of study. patients with mi from the rural and urban areas of sulaimani city of iraq, were fairly old (≥61 years). a higher prevalence of mi in male patients compared to females. the healthy dietary pattern of this study population was poor. healthy living and lifestyle are believed as a very significant point for increasing knowledge and education in every society [15]. (80.6%) of the participants in the present study was graduated from primary school while only (19.4%) of them were graduated from secondary school and university. patients with a lower educational level commonly have a higher risk of clinical outline according to reports of several studies [16,17]. providing a relevant prognostic factor in patients with mi could be provided by evaluating educational level according to recommendations of some studies [17, 18, 19]. this result is agreeing with outcomes from other studies [18, 20]. in a recent study level education and long-term mortality rate in clients with mi, investigators found an opposite and independent relationship between the level of education and long-term death in mi clients [18]. furthermore, people in occupations with a high education level have low relation with mi risks [21]. on the other hand, the present data showed that employed patients with sufficient monthly income had a lower incidence of mi (23%, 9.7%) respectively. it seems that people with higher education tend to obtain jobs with a more satisfactory psychosocial situation [22]. indeed, smoking, hypertension, and obesity have also been significantly associated with psychosocial work factors [23]. in the present study, approximately (70%) of patients were current, passive, and ex-smokers. a study conducted by (elkhader, et al., 2016) in sudan heart center khartoum is agreeing with this result and showed a positive correlation between smoking and the development of mi [24]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 141 additionally, the level of education was negatively correlated with smoking (table 4). therefore, it is possible that low-educated patients had little knowledge in this regard. the prevalence of bmi > 25 was (75.15%) as compared to the normal weight class (24.8%). obese clients are much more expected to die from heart disease within ten years period following the index of heart attack [25]. the prevalence of hypertension, dyslipidemia, and diabetes was (61%, 39.4%, and 20%) respectively. our finding for hypertension and dyslipidemia was higher than (iqbal et al.,2015) in pakistan, who documented that hypertension accounted for nearly (37%) and more than a quarter for hypercholesterolemia [9]. nevertheless, the present outcome is similar to the result of their study for diabetes mellitus (19.4%) in the rural and urban focuses. the major modifiable risk factor for mi, heart failure, and stroke is hypertension. smoking, overweight and obesity, and physical inactivity are those factors that increase the chance of developing high blood pressure [26]. among modifiable risk factors of mi, the current study found that hypertension (61%) developed as the most significant one for the beginning of heart attack more than dyslipidemia and diabetes. this outcome is agreeing with the study done by (mansour, 2012) in basrah (southern iraq), (89.6%) which was done by (abdel-aal, et al.,2008) in jordan and (alwakeel, et al.,2008) among 1952 saudi clients with type 2 diabetic (dm), hypertension and nearly majority of their male and female patients have hypertension (78.1%) [26-28]. we also found that sedentary lifestyles (81.8%) were predominantly among mi patients. nearly a quarter of the global problem of heart attack is due to a sedentary lifestyle during well healthy aging [29] as well as 6% of mortality that occur worldwide [30]. overall socioeconomic status may be related to physical activity [31]. the increasing migration rate of villagers to sulaimani city may have had an effect on increasing the sedentary lifestyle because villagers due to rural lifestyle have to do daily physical activities while they have less daily activity in the city [32]. fadheel and hussein (2017) reported a 65.4% occurrence degree of physical inactivity among women clients with coronary heart disease in al-diwaniya city, iraq [25]. more often lower socioeconomic position is realized in person with unhealthy foods, a period built on influences such as type of occupation, economic status, and level of education [33]. intake of fruit, vegetables, and fish provide useful indicators of the risk of mi, and a lower intake of these food sources is positively associated with acute mi compared to those with a healthy eating pattern [34]. given that most of the subjects in the current study had a low level of income, education, and occupation and, they were expected to have an unhealthy dietary pattern. as shown in table 3, most subjects did not have the habit of consuming vegetables, fruits, and fish. many patients also used sugar daily with a variety of beverages. coronary heart disease as mi is known to aggregate in families [35]. this can largely be explained by the grouping of classical predisposing factors, such as heart attack, lipid disorders, dm, and patients with high blood pressure within families. in our study, we found a family history of hypertension, heart attack, and diabetic mellitus in (54.5%, 39.2%, and 28.4%) of the patients (firstand second-degree relatives), respectively. thus, the possibility of developing mi is high as suggested by the previous studies [36,37]. the protective effect of marital status on coronary heart disease has been well recognized in numerous studies among universal residents [37]. in the current study marital status was negatively correlated with exercise and was positively correlated with smoking and/or daily sweet foods (table 4). the researchers return this to the risk of coronary heart disease over the lifetime is influenced by many personal, social, and behavioral factors, in our society the old person does not do regular exercise. therefore, it seems that our patients have a low quality of marital status. also, the present study found that male patients were more than females (74.5, 25.5%) respectively; which agrees with the previous study; these differences can be explained by the cardio-protective effect of endogenous estrogen [9]. the present study is not without limitations. one of the most important restrictions of the current research was the small example or sample size. therefore, further experiments with a large sample size are needed. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 142 5. conclusion in conclusion, our results show that low level of occupation, education and monthly income, sedentary lifestyle, hypertension, unhealthy dietary pattern, high bmi, were the strong interpreters of myocardial infarction in sulaimani city, iraq. physical exercise is negatively correlated with age, gender, occupation, monthly income, and marital status; but it was positively correlated with educational level and daily consumption of fruit and vegetable are positively correlated with age and gender and negatively correlated with educational level. these results could have consequences for nurses’ suggestions and plans to improve the 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[35] s. pohjola-sintonen, a. rissanen, p. liskola, k. luomanmäki, “family history as a risk factor of coronary heart disease in patients under 60 years of age,” european heart journal, 19(2), pp. 235-9, 1998. [36] as. khan, m. isik, t. set, z. akturk, u. avsar, “a 5-year trend of myocardial infarction, hypertension, stroke and diabetes mellitus in gender and different age groups in erzurum, turkey,” journal of taibah university medical sciences, 9(3), pp. 198-205, 2014. [37] ms. rendall, mm. weden, mm. favreault, h. waldron, “the protective effect of marriage for survival: a review and update,” demography, 48(2), pp. 481-506, 2011.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.43 effect of reinforcement material on impact properties of epoxy basim m. fadhil manufacturing engineering dept. koya university koya,iraq basim.fadhil@koyauniversity.org payman sahbah ahmed manufacturing engineering dept. koya university koya,iraq payman.suhbat@koyauniversity.org ava ali kamal mechanical and energy engineering dept. erbil polytechnic university erbil, iraq avaalikamall@gmail.com abstract: impact characteristics of epoxy matrix composites is investigated by impact machine. four different types of reinforcement are used in the experimental works: type one: 1.9wt% steel fiber, 1.9wt% carbon fiber,1.9 wt% carbon nanotube, 1.9 wt% woven carbon fiber. this work shows that reinforcing epoxy with (1.9 wt% of woven carbon fiber) improves the impact properties where energy, force and deformation values of impact test for this composite were 18.4j, 3580.59 n and 18 mm respectively while for epoxy were 2.927 j, 921.849 n and 18.413 mm respectively. keywords: epoxy, nanotube, carbon fiber, steel fiber 1. introduction there is a huge range of engineering applications of fiber-reinforced laminated composite materials such as: transport, aerospace, fabrication according light weight, strength and high specific stiffness. nevertheless, those composites are critical to impact damage and deterioration, especially in case of out-of-plane impact, that might be make deterioration incident at and low impact kinetic energies [1-2]. many researches investigates impact by drop weight of fiber-reinforced composites. basim m. f. et. al. has used (0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, and 1) wt.% multi-walled carbon nanotubes (mwcnts) as reinforcement in epoxy resin. tensile and drop weight impact test are used to evaluate the mechanical properties of the composites. results shows that adding 0.2 wt.% of mwcnts enhance and increase the tensile properties and adding 0.6 wt.% of mwcnts enhance the impact properties [3]. impact characteristics of epoxy matrix composites have been studied by payman s. a. et. al. [4], a drop weight impact machine with spherical steel nose with different values of kinetic energies has been used . woven glass + carbon ,woven glass, unidirectional carbon were uesd. this study concludes that the impact properties of epoxy improved with glass, unidirectional and woven carbon. arturas et. al. investigated the impact response of woven carbon/epoxy and e-glass / epoxy composite systems on vehicle body structures [1]. it has been found that elastic of e-glass / epoxy composite materials was more than 1.5 times of that carbon epoxy composite which describes the formation of smaller areas of deterioration. g. agarwal et. al investigate the effect of fiber percentages of bidirectional and short carbon fiber reinforced epoxy on physical, mechanical and thermomechanical properties respectively. the five different fiber percent sages, i.e., 10wt. %, 20wt. %, 30wt. %, 40wt. % and 50wt. % were taken for evaluating the above mentioned properties. the impact strength is determined to represent the behavior of composite structures with that of fiber percentages. the results show that with the increase in fiber percentages the mechanical properties of bidirectional carbon fiber reinforced epoxy composites increase as compared to short carbon fiber reinforced epoxy composites [5]. hossein rahmaniet al. [6] investigates the influence of resin types, number of laminates, and fiber directions, on mechanical properties of laminated composites. to study the fiber orientation effect, angles of 0⁰, 35⁰, 45⁰, and 90⁰ have been selected. it has been found that the impact strengths were entirely dependent on the fiber directions and by the number of laminates. the results indicated that the mechanical properties of composites made with five ply were generally slightly greater than three-ply composites. it may be due to the bond line defects, which adversely influence the mechanical properties. scanning micrographs of the composites showed that the epoxy matrix material was fully adhered to the fibers, indicating a strong interface. it can be concluded that the order of increasing limits in the mechanical properties of the composites is fiber orientation greater than number of laminates greater than resin type. raghad hussein mohammed [7] investigated the impact characteristics of some epoxy composites materials. those composites were reinforced with chopped carbon fibers, glass fibers (woven) and hybrid carbon fibers (chopped) with volume fraction (30) % for each type. it has been found that the hybrid composite (c+g/epoxy) have the higher mechanical properties than others. the impact strength for (c/epoxy) composites are lower than the strength of (c+g/epoxy) composite due to the brittle characteristics of carbon fibers. sunith babu l and h. k. shivan [8] investigated the impact property of carbon fiber and e-glass/epoxy composite, this study conducted with impact of steel impactor at low kinetic energy. all experiments were performed by using a drop weight impact tester and presented for cross-ply laminates [0 90] combination. all experimental tests showed that an increased deflection for glass composites, that lead to a higher extent of coposite damage compared to the carbon fiber one, laminates composite plates with delamination as one important energy absorption mechanism. from the above result carbon fiber reinforced composites has more strength than glass fiber reinforced composites. payman s. a. [9] studied the effect of impactor design on the impact properties of epoxy composites reinforced with unidirectional glass, unidirectional carbon, woven glass and hybrid woven (glass + carbon) fibers. this research shows that changing the impactor design have no effect on impact properties of woven reinforced composites while it has a significant effect on unidirectional fiber reinforced composites, and glass fiber reinforced composites have a better impact property than carbon reinforced composites. a drop weight impact tester was used in this work to study the impact characteristics of composites (epoxy matrix) by spherical steel impactor. four kinds of reinforcement have been used in the this study: steel fiber, carbon fiber, carbon nanotube and woven carbon fiber. 2. experimental work in this study hand lay –up molding method is used in preparing specimens of composites . the specimens were made using rubber mold fig. 1. the specimens was prepared with reinforcement weight fraction of (1.9% wt) for samples(table 1). the epoxy ratio to hardener is (73% to 27%), 4gm from epoxy resin was mixed with 1.47 gm of hardener. three weeks the molds were left for to be cured at room temperature. figure 1samples and molds table 1: samples description no. matrix specimen symbol fraction of matrix weight wtm% specimen dimension mm reinforcement weight fraction of reinforcement wtf% 1 epoxy epoxy 100 100x150 none 0 2 1.9 cf 98.1 100x150 1.9 carbon fiber 1.9 3 1.9 nc 98.1 100x150 1.9 nanocarbon 1.9 4 1.9 wc 98.1 100x150 1.9 woven carbon fiber 1.9 5 1.9 sf 98.1 100x150 1.9 steel fiber 1.9 figure 2 impact tester machine to characterization the damage mechanism, all experiments were conducted when composite deformed with low velocity impact. all tests have been carried out at room temperature on the four composite materials using a drop weight (steel hemispherical impactor diameter = 20 mm – impactor weight = 2.8 kg), with impact velocity of ˜3.58 m/sec. an instron 9350 impact tester has been used in this work (see figure 2). the dimensions of the composites are is 100 mm by 150 mm. all recorded data are: energy, velocity, displacement, impactor force history. 3. results and discussion the relationships of force-time, energy-time, forcedeformation, and energy-deformation were obtained as follows:  force – time and force – deformation behaviors the impact force-time curves show the duration of the contact between impactor and specimen surface, the maximum force reached and the appearance of damage (see fig. 3). the force-deformation curves give the specimen’s stiffness (slope of the curve), the maximum deformation and some information about damage onset (see fig. 4). the first type of damage is matrix cracking, which does not significantly change the overall stiffness of laminates. however, matrix cracks tips may act as onset sites for delamination and fiber breakage which do change the local stiffness of laminates [10]. in addition, the specimen can absorb the impact energy by other means including indentation (representative of local matrix crushing and local fiber breakage), delamination, splitting or fibers peeling on the non-impacted side [11]. for all composites the onset of the first damage can be observed before 2 ms, except for epoxy its start after 2ms. figure 3 force – time relationship and damaged samples of the composites there is an oscillating change in the force with time in all samples. for (1.9cf) composites there is an oscillating increase until the maximum force reached followed by an oscillating decrease at around 4 ms and the force value keep low until the end of the test reaching to the maximum deformation of 20.5 mm. this increase in the force is due to carbon fiber which make crack growth suppressed due to the arrangement of fibers in bidirectional way. for (1.9nc) composites there is a sharp increase in the force at around 2ms followed by a sharp decrease at around 2.5ms, the force keeps in decreasing in an oscillating manner until the end of the test where the crack reaches to critical value which make it grow spontaneously through the composite, reaching to the maximum deformation of 22.6 mm. for (1.9wc) composites there is a sharp increase in the force at around 2ms and the form of failure is limited to the matrix and the woven fibers are not affected at all due to high strength of the carbon in addition to the woven arrangement of the fiber which resist the crack and failure, then there is a sharp decrease at around 5msreaching to the maximum deformation of 18 mm. for (1.9sf) composites there is a sharp increase in the force at around 2ms and decrease in the force around 2.5ms, the force keeps in decreasing in an oscillating manner until the end of the test where the crack reaches to critical value which make it grow spontaneously through the composite, reaching to the maximum deformation of 22.8 mm. this increase in the force is due to steel fiber which make crack growth suppressed due to the arrangement of fibers in bidirectional way. figure 4 force– deformation relationship of the composites for epoxy the force reaches its maximum value at around2.5ms. after 2.5 ms the force keeps in decreasing in an oscillating manner until the end of the test. maximum force value can be found in (1.9wf) with 3580.597n because of the combined effect of high strength and the woven arrangement of carbon fiber, followed by cf, nc, sf, and epoxy. maximum deformation value can be found in 1.9sf with 22.84% mm because of the metallic behavior of steel fiber which lead to more deformation before fracture, followed by nc, cf, epoxy, and wc give the minimum value of deformation of 18%.  impact energy – time and energy deformation behaviors the impact energy-time curves show the duration of the contact between impactor and specimen surface, the maximum energy reached, where it can be seen that energy keep in increasing until it reaches its maximum value for all composites (see fig. 5). the energydeformation curves give the specimen’s toughness and the maximum deformation (see fig. 6). for 1.9cf the impact energy is high due to the high strength and the bidirectional arrangement of fibers which resist crack growth, while the presence nanocarbon reinforcement showed low impact energy absorption and failure compared with others due to sensitivity to impact damage because of the brittle properties besides conglomerate which are considered as a shortcoming in the composite construction. for 1.9wc composites there is a high increase in the energy due to high strength of the carbon in addition to the woven arrangement of the fiber which resist the crack and failure. due to metallic fibers which possesses of plastic deformation characteristic, make fibers as a crack obstructer, in the case of 1.9sf composites.maximum energy value can be found in 1.9wc with 18.4j, followed by cf,sf, nc, and epoxy give the minimum value of deformation of 2.927j. figure 5 energy – time relationship of the composites figure 6 energy – deformation relationship of the composites 3. conclusion this work showed that: for 1.9cf the impact properties is high due to the high strength and the bidirectional arrangement of fibers which resist crack growth, while the presence nanocarbon reinforcement showed low impact properties and failure compared with others, this because the sensitivity to impact damage due to of the brittleness. for 1.9wc composites there is a high increase in the impact properties due to high strength of the carbon in addition to the woven arrangement of the fiber which resist the crack and failure. the presences of metallic fibers makes them play an important role as a crack stopper due to the plastic deformation in the case of 1.9sf composites. maximum force value can be found in (1.9wf) with 3580.597n, followed by cf, nc, sf, and epoxy. maximum deformation value can be found in 1.9sf with 22.84% mm, followed by nc, cf, epoxy, and wc give the minimum value of deformation of 18%. maximum energy value can be found in 1.9wc with 18.4j, followed by cf, sf, nc, and epoxy give the minimum value of deformation of 2.927j. -20 0 20 1.5 3.5 5.5 7.5 9.5e n e rg y j time ms 1.9cf 4. reference [1] a. keršys, n. keršiene, a. žiliukas, “experimental research of the impact response of e-glass epoxy and carbon / epoxy composite systems”, materials science (medžiagotyra), issn 1392– 1320, vol. 16, no. 4, 2010. [2] f.c. campbell, “structural composite materials”, asm international. www.asminternational.org, 2010. [3] b. m. fadhil, p. s. ahmed, a. a. kamal, “improving mechanical properties of epoxy by adding multi-wall carbon nanotube”, journal of theoretical and applied mechanics, vol. 54, no. 2, 2016, pp. 551-560, 2016. [4] p. s. ahmed, b. m. fadhil, a. a. kamal, “effect of unidirectional and woven fibers on impact properties of epoxy”, research journal of applied sciences, engineering and technology, vol. 12, issue 2, pp. 197-205, 2016. [5] g. agarwal, a. patnaik, r. k. sharma, “mechanical and thermo–mechanical properties of bi-directional and short carbon fiber reinforced epoxy composites”, journal of engineering science and technology, vol. 9, no. 5, 590 – 604, 2014. [6] h. rahmani, s. h. m. najafi and a. ashori, “mechanical performance of epoxy/carbon fiber laminated composites”, journal of reinforced plastics and composites, vol. 33, no.8, pp.733– 740, 2014. [7] r. h.. mohammed, “study the effect of glass fibers on mechanical properties of epoxy composites”, eng. & tech. journal .vol.31, part (b), no. 5, 2013. [8] l. s. babu and h. k. shivan, “impact analysis of laminated composite on glass fiber and carbon fiber”, international journal of emerging technology and advanced engineering website: www.ijetae.com, issn 2250-2459, iso 9001:2008 certified journal, vol. 4, issue 6, june 2014. [9] p. s. ahmed, “effect of impactor design on unidirectional and woven fiber reinforced composites”, sulaimani journal for engineering sciences, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 21-29, 2016. [10] n.l. hancox, “an overview of the impact behavior of fibre-reinforced composites in impact behavior of fiber-reinforced composite materials and structures”, edited by reid s.r. and zhou g., crc press, woodhead pub. ltd, 2000. [11] b. vieille, v. m. casado, c. bouvet, “comparative study on the impact behavior and damage tolerance of woven carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastic– and thermosetting– composites”, european conference on composite materials, venice, italy pp. 24-28, june 2012. http://www.asminternational.org/ http://www.ijetae.com/  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq deterioration in physical engine oil properties after different trip length dana kareem hameed department of electricity sulaimani polytechnic university sulaymaniyah, iraq dana.kareem@spu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 6 – issue 1june 2021 doi: 10.24017/science.2021.1.2 article history: received 1/2/2021 accepted 8/4/2021 fresh engine oils or engine lubricants lose some of their properties during service, engine lubricant deterioration leads to change in oil properties, which ultimately have effect on engine overall performance. therefore, it is very crucial to specify used engine lubricants at various conditions to check the performance and ability of used oils, which in turn protects engine parts and designs new formulations to produce better type of engine oil or improve the existing oil. in this study, most significant parameters such as kinematic viscosity, flash and fire points were chosen to find out physical properties deterioration in engine oil properties. the oil samples were multigrade fully synthetic with sae gradation 10w-30 grand eco drive is used in 5 different passenger cars. having information about these properties are crucial chemical and physical behaviors of engine oils and for keeping its lifecycle. the results of the study show that after using it for more than 10,000 km, 10w-30 delta nl motor oil brand (special synthetic with api sl) oil properties such as viscosity at cold ignition, 40 °c and 100 °c dropped 22.92%, 23.61% and 26.13% respectively. in addition, both flash point and fire point decreased 15.6% and 14.22%%, respectively, from the base properties. according to the test results this type of engine oil can be used for 10,000 km. keywords: kinematic viscosity, oil quality, flash point, lubricating system, fire point, late oil draining, brand oil. copyright © 2021 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction engine oil is a type of liquid used in internal combustion engines (ice) for lubrication in different types of vehicles and passenger cars. for many purposes lubricants which is used in engines, but main functions of motor lubricant are to decrease friction between moving parts by separating and reducing wear to protect them. additionally, fresh engine oils used to clean the engines from varnish and sludges that produced by dispersants. it also cools the engines by kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 14 carrying heat away from hotter spots generated by friction and burning of air fuel mixture inside the engine to the sump. other functions of oil are; improving sealing of piston rings and neutralizes acids that initiate with oxidation of the oils and from fuel when mixed with lubricants [1]. the rate of degradation depends on duration of oil usage, cycle time and vehicle engine conditions[2][3]. a few necessary characteristics of engine oils involve reducing the high boiling point, friction, ideal kinematic viscosity, resistance to oxidation, thermal stability and corrosion delays [4]. for protecting moving parts from wear and tear, every engine lubricant forms a thin layer on the surface of the moving parts and internal engine body. the boundary lubricating film on the surface parts prevent any contacts between sliding surfaces [5]. temperature has direct influence on the lubricants, oxidation of the lubricants occurs when temperature increases. when the rate of oxidation in the oil rise, degrades the lubricants quality and makes several consecutive problems for lubrication system such as slugs, resins and corrosive acids formed with rising in oil temperature [6]. sealing is used in some parts of the engine to prevent engine oil from leak, so the lubricants need to have the characteristic to protect the seals from damage while lubricated by the engine oil during operation. all lubricants contain special additives or anti-corrosion to protect engine from corrosion, which is another function of the lubricants [7]. the society of automotive engineers (sae) reported that there are many levels of properties and different sorts of lubricants. for instance, lubricants with synthetic grade are the excellent kind and can be produced from non–petroleum or petroleum compounds of the chemical elements [8]. different standard tests are used to analyze lubricant condition in an engine oil system after remaining it for different length trips or before using, such as follows; 1.1 kinematic viscosity viscosity is a unit of measurement of a fluid's resistance to flow at a certain temperature. the most basic parameters for evaluating conditions of internal combustion engine’s oil are the viscosity [9][10][11]. every vehicle manufacturer advises their customers to choose the correct engines oil viscosity to their engines by using the engine’s specific owner’s manual. moreover, every engine oil must keep its properties under different engine working conditions. for example, when engine running under load with high engine temperature or at low temperature at starting or at cold weather, minimal changes occur in oil viscosity and other lubricant properties during engine running. to choose the oil viscosity, sae oil grade can be used, and it is the same across the globe [12]. the sae has set up a viscosity arrangement for internal combustion lubricant to label the lubricant viscosity. according to the sae, for example 10w30 internal combustion engine lubricant, the w in viscosity grade means the lubricant is suitable for using in winter, number ‘10’ which comes before w is the first level in the sae oil grade represents the oil flow rate at cold engine condition (at cold start), the higher the first number the lower flow rate at cold engine condition. the number ‘30’ which comes after w represents the lowest kinematic viscosity requirement at optimal operating temperature condition for protecting engine from damage [13]. according to [14], for the gasoline engines the highest tolerance permissible decrease in viscosity up to 30% is acceptable. further, in the study of [15], the maximum acceptable change for engine oil viscosity is 25%. a decrease in viscosity occurs due to an increase of fuel in the oil content, while increasing viscosity usually occurs due to contamination, oxidation or nitration [16]. oil viscosity directly affected by the change in temperature. [3], studied the relationship between temperature and viscosity, they used japanmade totachi international oil sae 0w-20 in 10 different used engines. the results show that for fresh oil the viscosity decreased to 8.0 cst at 100 ℃. also, for an engine oil used at cold ignition its viscosity reduced from 36.8 to 5.86 cst at 100 ℃ after 10,000 km. in the work of [17], three different engine lubrication oil (10w-30) were used. in the test, they rotated the viscometer according to the astm d445. according to their results, viscosity has an inverse relationship with the temperature. thus, the viscosity of engine lubrication increases with any decrease in the temperature. another research was conducted by kaleli and yavasliol,[16], which two different types of engines were used. lubrication engine oil with sae 20w-50 was kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 15 used to determine the oil condition after using it. the findings in the lubricants claimed that after 15,000 km, the kinematic viscosity of the lubricants decreased from 160.16 cst to 103.02 cst at 40 ℃, and the viscosity of the engine lubricants lowered from 18.09 cst to 13.24 cst at 100 ℃. lubricants have the influence on the rates of the wear and the rate of wear inside the engine increases at the cold start. using the wrong oil viscosity is one of the factors that damages the engines. for instance, when the engine starts, if a wrong oil with high viscosity is used in the engines which needs low viscosity oil grade instead, then during starting, the ability of the oil pump decreases and unable to push the required amount of the engine oil to the above moving parts of the engine. if the oil reaches the upper engine parts too late, then the rate wear arises [3]. 1.2 flash point and fire point flash and fire points are two other factors for determining the engine lubricants property. according to the astm d92, flash point of the engine oils is the lowest temperature at which the vapors of the engine’s lubricant start to ignite or to catch fire when it is exposed to a naked fire or spark source under the conditions of certain laboratories of the test [18]. the reason for decreasing the flash point of any engine lubricants is the penetration of fuel and accumulation of volatile products in the engine oil [19]. there are two methods in the laboratory to specify the flash and fire points of the engine lubricants. pensky-martens closed cup is one of the methods which is used to determine or calculate both flash and fire points. this method is used in those types of fuels, which have low rates of inflammability, in the pensky-martens method a closed container is used to analyze the flash and fire points of the fuel or lubricant during the test [20]. open cleveland method or open flash point is another method, which is used to calculate flash and fire points. this method is used with those types of fuels or lubricants that have a high rate of inflammability (above 100 ℃), in this method an open container is used to determine the flash point and fire point during the test [20]. after flash point temperature, if heating to the lubricant continues to increase, then the kinetic energy of the lubricant helps the vapors to be released fast enough to produce a fire for a minimum of 5 s. this temperature of the fuel or lubricants is called the fire point. typically, for every lubricant the flash point temperature is lower from the temperature of the fire point. according to the researchers [16], after 10,000 km the flash point of the lubricant that used (20w-50 engine oil type) decreased from 204 °c to 128 °c. 2. methods and materials in this study, passenger car 10w-30 delta nl motor oil brand (special synthetic with api sl) synthetic grand eco drive, which designed for high-tech four cycle gasoline and diesel engines, was used in nissan sunny with the same engine sizes and different production years. the characteristics of the fresh oil used by this work are shown in table 1 and physical characteristics are presented table 2. table 1: shows sae 10w-30 delta nl motor oil brand (special synthetic with api sl) performance grade properties performance grade properties api sl fully synthetic acea a3/b3 low fuel consumption fast cold start strong resistance against oxidation kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 16 table 2: shows sae 10w-30 delta nl motor oil brand physical characteristics properties units kinematic viscosity at 40 ℃ 69.90 cst kinematic viscosity at 100 ℃ 11.10 cst flash point 218 ℃ density at 15 ℃ 0.865 kg/l pour point -30 ℃ sulphate ash % 1.02 the 10w-30 delta nl motor oil brand (special synthetic with api sl) synthetic grand eco drive samples were taken directly from the passenger car sumps and all kept in clean closed bottles and stored in room temperature condition until the day of analysis. the samples were collected in darbandikhan car services, sulaymaniyah, iraq. the kinematic viscosity for the engine oil samples measured after they have been filtered, the used filter was stainless steel which its mesh size was 50 microns. this is to avoid any error occurs with the presence of impurities such as agglomerated or tiny particles that were produced by the friction between moving and non-moving engine parts. in the scope of this work, kv1000 kinematic viscosity bath (conformed to astm d445) with a variable limit control was used to determine kinematic viscosity of the taken engine oil samples. koehler viscometer was used in this study, the koehler viscometer was manufactured according to the astm d446 and calibrated against fully traceable iso 17025 certified standards. to analyze the flash and the fire points of the used lubricant samples, an open cleveland method was used, ncl 120, normes: astm d92, iso 2592, ip 36 was used for finding the flash point and fire point of 10w-30 delta nl oil samples. to show the flash and fire point temperature, a thermometer was used with a 300 ℃ measuring range. the experimental works conducted at petroleum laboratories of kurdistan institute. kurdistan institute located in sulaymaniyah province-iraq. table 3 in this study shows information about the 10w-30 delta nl motor oil brand (special synthetic with api sl) synthetic grand eco drive samples and the vehicles utilized by this work. table 3: shows information about used vehicles and the rate of oil trip length in this study model made engine engine no. production year vehicle odometer trip length (km) sunny nissan 1.5 1 2018 12357-13432 1075 13432-23479 10047 2 2017 26150-28174 2024 28174-37205 9031 3 2019 8342-11376 3034 11376-19392 8016 4 2017 23547-27613 4066 27613-34645 7032 5 2016 38275-43403 5128 43403-49519 6116 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 17 3. results the results of the current study for delta nl motor oil brand (special synthetic with api sl), the kinematic viscosity, flash point and fire point of the used oil for different types of passenger vehicle engines are shown in table 4. the values of the findings were modelled by using a general liner function formula. the general formula is presented below: 𝑌(𝑥) = 𝐾𝑥 + 𝑞 (1) figure 1 shows the valued formula for counting the kinematic viscosity of used delta nl motor oil brand (special synthetic with api sl) in different gasoline engines at 100 ℃: 𝑣(𝑠) = −0.2555 . 𝑠 + 11.015 [𝑐𝑆𝑐; 𝐾𝑚] (2) figure 2 shows the valued formula for counting the kinematic viscosity of used delta nl motor oil brand (special synthetic with api sl) in different gasoline engines at 40 ℃: 𝑣(𝑠) = −1.7055 . 𝑠 + 71.196 [𝑐𝑆𝑐; 𝐾𝑚] (3) figure 3 shows the valued formula for counting the kinematic viscosity of used delta nl motor oil brand (special synthetic with api sl) in different gasoline engines at cold ignition: 𝑣(𝑠) = −1.7268 . 𝑠 + 79756 [𝑐𝑆𝑐; 𝐾𝑚] (4) where v is kinematic viscosity and s is trip length. according to the test results, kinematic viscosity decreased at different temperature (100 °c, 40 °c, and cold ignition) with increasing the distance of the trip length as presented in figure 1, figure 2, and figure 3. test of the kinematic viscosity was repeated two times and the average of the test results were taken. further, according to the test results in, figure 4 and figure 5, both flash point and fire point for the engine oil decreased with increasing. this difference is significant if compared with fresh lubricating oil. moreover, with increasing in the trip length of the vehicles, the rate of volatile impurities rises. additionally, in order to obtain an accurate result for the flash point and fire points the tests have been repeated three times and the average was recorded. to get the oil of a vehicle engine with passing 10 thousand kilometres, we nearly need six months. for this reason, to make the project faster i have taken five vehicle engines as samples of the study which their production years are very close to each other. table 4: shows information about kinematic viscosity, flash point, fire point of the used engine oil samples oil condition engine no. trip length (km) viscosity at cold ignition viscosity (cst) 40℃ viscosity (cst) 100℃ flash point ℃ fire point ℃ pure oil 0 77.45 69.9 11.10 218 232 used oil 1 1075 76.3 67.7 10.6 212 229 2 2024 74.5 66.1 10.2 207 225 3 3034 73.1 64.9 9.7 201 223 4 4066 71.8 62.3 9.6 199 219 5 5128 69.3 60.9 9.3 197 217 5 6116 67.4 58.6 9.1 194 213 4 7032 66.2 57 8.9 193 212 3 8016 64.7 55.7 8.9 190 207 2 9031 62.9 54.1 8.7 186 202 1 10047 59.7 53.4 8.2 184 199 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 18 figure 1: change in kinematic viscosity at 100 °c figure 2: change in kinematic viscosity at 40 °c figure 3: change in kinematic viscosity at cold ignition kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 19 figure 4: change in flash point figure 5: change in fire point 4. discussion there are different types of oil with different qualities of engine lubricants used in internal combustion engines. according to the sae international standards of oils, the viscosity of oils can be separated, at cold weather or at engine starts, thick oil with high viscosity transferred from the sump by the oil pump will experience hardship if compared to the thin oils with low viscosity. as presented in figure 1 the viscosity of the used engine lubricant at 100 °c decreased from 11.1 cst to 8.2 cst when the trip length of the vehicle increased, and the percentage by which the viscosity is decreased is 26.13%. according to figure 2, with increasing the trip length, the viscosity of the used engine oil at 40 °c lowered from 69.9 cst to 53.4 cst, the rate of the lowering is 23.61%. also, the viscosity at cold ignition shown in figure 3. according to the results, the viscosity decreased from 77.45 cst to 59.7 cst, it was decreased by the percentage of 22.92%. another method to determine the rate of decrease in properties of the engine oil is flash point or fire point. in the lab an electrical heater was used to increase the temperature of 50 ml of the lubricating oil in a special cup, a special thermometer fitted with the heating tool to measure temperature increase. in the front panel of the ncl 120 there are an energy regulator to regulate the rate of heating. additionally, a flame source on the ncl 120 was used to ignite the appeared vapor on the special cup with increasing the temperature of the used engine oil, a flame source was moved every 2 °c of rising temperature on the thermometer, according to the results in table 4, the flash point of used oil lowered continuously form 1000 km to 10,000 km, the flash point of an used oil was 218 °c as shown in table 2 decreased to 184 °c, as shown in figure 4, which means the rate of the decrease in flash point is 15.6% comparing to its properties. presence of contaminants in the used engine oil causes reduction or decrease in flash point. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 20 with increasing the trip length, fire point decreased as shown in table 4, fire point is another property that can be used to determine the rate of engine oil deterioration. increasing impurities inside the used engine oil reduces the fire point, the fire point of the oil before using was 232 °c as shown in table 4. the fire point of the used oil after 10,000 km decreased to 199 °c, as shown in figure 5, the rate of the decrease was 14.22%. 5. conclusion 10w-30 delta nl motor oil brand (special synthetic with api sl) was used in five different engines, the rate of deterioration in the engine oil properties was analyzed. the study focused on the change in most important of engine oil properties, these properties are viscosity, flash point and fire point, these properties decreased in every engine with increasing in trip length. according to the test results in the experimental work, used engine oil properties degraded with increase in trip length, the test results for both flash point and fire point show that after 10,000 km the flash point decreased 15.6% of its quality. also, the fire point of the used oil decreased 14.22% of its quality. the viscosity at 100 °c, 40 °c and cold ignition decreased 26.13%, 23.61%, and 22.92%, respectively. it is very important to have information about engine oils used in car services in kurdistan to help drivers choose the best type of engine oil for their cars and to protect engines from any damages produced by bad quality of engine oils. reference [1] a. tripathi and r. vinu, “characterization of thermal stability of synthetic and semi-synthetic engine oils,” lubricants, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 54–79, mar. 2015. [2] h. kaleli and i. yavasliol, “oil ageing drain period in a petrol engine,” ind. lubr. tribol., vol. 49, no. 3, pp. 120–126, 1997. [3] d. hameed and k. ali, “analysis of 0w-20 totachi brand oil to determine the rate of oil deterioration,” ukh j. sci. eng., vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 139–146, dec. 2020. [4] t. v. liston, “engine lubricant additives: what they are and how they function?,” lubr. eng., vol. 48, no. 5, pp. 389–397, 1992. [5] s. m. hsu, r. munro, and m. c. shen, “wear in boundary lubrication,” proc. inst. mech. eng. part j j. eng. tribol., vol. 216, no. 6, pp. 427–441, 2002. [6] f. owrang, h. mattsson, j. olsson, and j. pedersen, “investigation of oxidation of a mineral and a synthetic engine oil,” thermochim. acta, vol. 413, no. 1–2, pp. 241–248, 2004. [7] p. m. crnkovic, c. r. m. leiva, a. m. dos santos, and f. e. milioli, “kinetic study of the oxidative degradation of brazilian fuel oils,” energy fuels, vol. 21, no. 6, pp. 3415–3419, 2007. [8] k. t. sutar and p. u. singare, “study of antioxidant activity of hindered phenols in bulk oil and thin film oxidation conditions in lubricants,” rasayan j. chem., vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 465–474, 2018. [9] b. jakoby, m. scherer, m. buskies, and h. eisenschmid, “an automotive engine oil viscosity sensor,” ieee sens. j., vol. 3, no. 5, pp. 562–568, 2003. [10] v. kumbár, p. dostál, and j. votava, “kinematic viscosity and shear stress of used engine oil,” j. agric. sci. technol. a 3, vol. 3, no. december 2013, pp. 982–988, 2013. [11] v. kumbár and a. sabaliauskas, “low-temperature behaviour of the engine oil,” acta univ. agric. silvic. mendelianae brun., vol. lxi, no. 6, pp. 1763–1767, 2013. [12] t. mang and w. dresel, lubricants and lubrication. john wiley & sons, 2007. [13] g. pereira et al., “chemical and mechanical analysis of tribofilms from fully formulated oils part 1 – films on 52100 steel,” tribology, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 48–61, 2007. [14] v. kumbár and j. votava, “excessive additive effect on engine oil viscosity,” acta univ. agric. silvic. mendelianae brun., vol. 62, no. 5, pp. 1015–1020, 2014. [15] j. p. coates and l. c. setti, “infrared spectroscopic methods for the study of lubricant oxidation products,” asle trans., vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 394–401, 1986. [16] h. kaleli and i. yavasliol, “oil ageing ‐ drain period in a petrol engine,” ind. lubr. tribol., vol. 49, no. 3, pp. 120–126, jun. 1997. [17] a. n. farhana and m. z. bahak, “engine oil resistance,” j. tribol., vol. 4, no. 2015, pp. 10–20, 2015. [18] g. l. n. rao, a. s. ramadhas, n. nallusamy, and p. sakthivel, “relationships among the physical properties of biodiesel and engine fuel system design requirement,” int. j. energy environ., vol. 1, no. 5, pp. 919–926, 2010. [19] k. s. shri, k. k. mohan, h. m. sakeer, p. d. deepa, and k. saravanan, “studies on reuse of re-refined used automotive lubricating oil,” res. j. eng. sci., vol. 3, no. 6, pp. 8–14, 2014. [20] d. ljubas, h. krpan, and i. matanović, “influence of engine oils dilution by fuels on their viscosity, flash point and fire point,” nafta, vol. 61, no. 2, pp. 73–79, 2010.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.32 design and implementation an e-hospital system at kurdistan mohamed jasim ahmed department of information systems engineering. erbil technical engineering college erbil polytechnic university erbil, iraq mja.ise@yahoo.com subhi r. m. zeebaree department of computers and communications engineering engineering college nawroz university duhok, iraq subhizebari.akre@gmail.com abstract: the utilization of information and communication technologies (ict) have developed quickly. traditional healthcare (th) which designates paper-predicated system is expeditious giving way to ehealth system in most developed countries. virtually all hospitals in the kurdistan region (kr) are utilizing th. this paper deals with designing and implementing a web based electronic hospital system (wbehs) in shorsh general hospital (sgh) in slemani city. the system solves traditional style quandaries by transmuting the traditional paper-based healthcare system into a fully electronic system containing multi modules such as (physician, x-ray, pharmacy, laboratories, ultrasound). the staff of sgh participated in the implementation and obtaining the results which have been evaluated by utilizing system usability scale (sus). the overall evaluation score of the questionnaire was (79. 459%) which can be considered as a good result. keywords: e-health. e-hospital. e-government. electronic medical records. web based application. kurdistan. 1. introduction due to millennium development goals (mdgs) set by world leaders more than decade ago have made an astronomically immense influence on billions of people's live. by preparing for sustainable development, no doubt that more administrations are faced with a set of complex challenges. ecumenical challenges including poverty, inequality, peace and security, are such that no single ministry can efficaciously deal with them on their own. efficacious collaboration among agencies across all levels of government is essential, as it is with nongovernmental actors, to ascertain good governance and good development outcomes. collaborative governance is crucial to amend people’s lives. essential accommodations that meet citizen needs, provide opportunities for economic growth, as well as facilitate citizen engagement. the key of transforming public administration into an instrument of sustainable development is e-government and innovation. through innovation and e-government, public administrations around the world can be more efficient, offer healthier services and respond to demands for transparency and accountability [1]. this paper is concerned with implementation of e-health system in sgh. e-health is one of the most important sectors of e-government scope. the notion of e-health is very comprehensive, ranging from it and new technologies to health [2]. it characterizes not only an advanced technical tool, but also an attitude, a way of thinking and global thinking, to improve health care locally, regionally, and worldwide by using information and communication technology. moreover, it is a developing field in the intersection of medical informatics, public health and business, referring to health services and information delivered or enhanced through the internet and related technologies [3]. the "e" in e-health does not only stand for "electronic," but implies a number of other "e's," which together perhaps best characterize what e-health is all about (or what it should be) which are: efficiency, enhancing quality of care, evidence based, empowerment of consumers and patients, enabling information exchange, extending the scope of health care, and ethics, equity [4]. the main factors in e-health comparing to the traditional health sectors, e-health require harmonization with new players whose cultures, objectives and traditions are different such as: united nations agencies, government authorities, academic and research institutions, health professionals, consumers, patients and their associations, non-governmental organizations, the private sector, including foundations and industries related to health and icts [5]. the problem statement of this paper is to change the traditional paper based healthcare system in kr into a fully electronic system. hence, reducing the gap between health sector in kr and developed countries that use ehealth system. a successful implementation of a new system is more than just the technical installation; the system also needs to support work routines and practices well enough to succeed and replace old procedures. this requires flexibility from both the system and its users, where both parties need to familiarize mutually to each other. the proposed system in this paper has been designed depending on academic methodology to be depended for all kr hospitals in future. hence this system will contribute to support strongly the health sector at kurdistan. 2. literature review b. o. oguntunde et al, developed a framework for a multi-tier internet service architecture for doctors’ directory, that offers a relaxed and suitable technique for patients to access data and get appointment with doctors in various regions. the system additionally provided data about hospitals, doctors, their locations and mailto:mja.ise@yahoo.com availability. the system consisted of three modules (doctors, registration and login). they designed the system utilizing a 3-tier internet service architecture consisted of a client tier (web browser), an application tier built on apache and php, and a database tier on mysql [6]. gheyath m et al. proposed a tiered architecture performance analysis of web-based healthcare systems in which the prototypes were integrated in one homepage and connected by the hyperlink recommendation method. the tiered architectures namely single, two, and three have a consequential role in web-based healthcare (wbh) system, and each of them can be used for different purposes in the hospital/clinic [7]. conceicao granja et al. proposed a development of a hospital-patient web-based communication tool for north norwegian university hospital in which enable the hospital to pre-operative planning. they planned to reduce the number of elective surgery cancellations that caused by the lack of information that existed but was not available when required for surgery planning [8]. rasha t. hameed et al, addressed a design of ehealthcare management system in iraq. they recommended a model of designing flexible e-healthcare management system based on cloud computing and service oriented architecture (soa). they discussed the major problems and disadvantages of paper based system in iraq hospitals, and produced their system as the relevant solution for the problems [9]. the shortcoming of systems with references [6], [7], [8], and [9] comparing with the proposed wbehs is that the mentioned systems suffers from the lack of new and latest tools that makes the application flexible and easy to use. also, it did not implement really it just a theoretical suggested system, and the test and evaluation was not real test it organized using simulation tools. while the proposed the flexible and user friendly wbehs designed with most recent tools, implemented and evaluated actually in sgh at sulaimani city kr. 3. methods and materials the wbehs is designed in accordance with the requirements of sgh structure. a database and various web application implements utilized for the implementation of the proposed system. web server offers interface to users who access the system over the web, and the database is used as storage of information entered by the users. the application cannot achieve its purposes without the database. however, the database alone is not adequate. various tools of programming languages, web services, and databases are applied to the system, such as: html5, css, javascript, jquery, bootstrap, php, laravel, mysql, datatables, ajax and google recaptcha. 3.1 the architecture of the wbehs the main three layers of the wbehs shown in fig. 1:  presentation layer (view layer): the technologies usually involved in this layer on the web development context are mainly: html5, css, javascript (includes: ajax and jquery), and bootstrap.  business logic layer: this layer of deals with the logic of the program, characterized by the server-side written in php language and communicates with presentation layer via html forms and javascript queries.  data layer: this layer is responsible of saving all coming data to mysql database via logic layer. figure 1 main architecture of the wbehs 3.2 the mechanism of wbehs design the mechanism of the proposed system involves: webpage effects such as (hover, color, focus, resize, animation), processing which includes (php, javascript and ajax requirements), saving and retrieving data (php and sql), system functional requirements which includes (system’s administrator, staff, and patients), nonfunctional requirements which includes (usability, security, reliability, accessibility, and extensibility), software requirements (microsoft windows 10 operating system, mysql database (phpmyadmin), laravel framework, xampp server, datatables, bootstrap, web browser and internet service. the hardware requirements which includes (serverside: cpu: core(tm) i5-4200u 2.30 ghz, architecture: 64 bits, ram: 4gb, hdd: 500gb, and client-side: can be the same as the server side or lower performance. the minimum requirement of the external clients devices is the ability of browsing the web, and internal network. the internal client-side: are the users of modules (physician, pharmacy, lab, x-ray, reception, etc.) there will be (within sgh) connected with internal network through a switch. while the external clients are connected to the system through internet service. 3.3 the proposed system services and algorithms the proposed wbehs involves a number of services provided by related modules as shown in fig. 2. figure 2 the proposed system services the depended modules in the proposed system are: super admin module, pharmacy admin module, reception module, physician module, x-ray module, ultrasound module, and laboratories module as shown in fig. 3. figure 3 modules dataflow 4. results the implementation and evaluation of the proposed system have been applied in sgh in sulaymaniyah city. the web-based application consists of several modules and pages, because of the multiplicity of main-pages, subpages and other details, consequently samples of the modules will be elucidated. figure 4 the homepage of the proposed system the homepage can be accessed by both registered and unregistered persons. the patient or any person who visits the site can contact and send his/her notice the hospital through contact section. google recaptcha is used as a protection for the contact form. as shown in fig. 5. figure 5 contact page if the patient had been registered so he can directly login to his account by email a password, otherwise he must register through the registration section as shown in fig. 6. figure 6 patient registration page through login form shown in fig. 7, each user can access his/her account. after successful login, the user will redirect be the to his module automatically according to his specialization. figure 7 login form the login form contains a (forgot your password ?!) link which redirect the user to the (change password form) as shown in fig. 8. the user must have a real email that exists in the database to be able to receive a temporary link to the (reset password form). as a security step, this link will be available for a certain period (one hour depended as a default setting), and this period can be changed by the admin. figure 8 change password forms and links the system supports multiple modules (reception, patient, physician, lab, x-ray, ultrasound, pharmacy and admin) modules. each module is authorized and can be accessed only by users who have the authorization. the modules provide facilities and services to the patient needs according to the physician instructions. the main activities of patient module are; get appointment, cancel appointment, previous diagnosis, edit profile and logout as shown in fig. 9. figure 9 patient module main page the physician main page holds a number of hyperlinks; each link helps the physicians to transfer to other web pages to perform a particular task(s); which are (daily appointments, appointments in period, cancel appointments) as shown in fig. 10. figure 10 physician module (daily appointments) the diagnosis process of a specific patient starts with selecting the patient record directly or by searching the id of the patient in the search field as shown in fig. 11. figure 11 physician module (medical prescription) the doctor can exchange messages (required tests and results) with lab, ultrasound, pharmacy and x-ray modules. figure 12 physician module (test requesting from lab) the labs that supported by the system are: biochemistry lab, parasite stool and urine lab, hematology lab, bacteriology lab, bacteria lab, bacteria fluid lab, and virus lab as shown in fig. 13. figure 13 lab module (inserting tests results) all available labs tests can be added, edited and deleted dynamically through the edit tests page as shown in fig. 14. figure 14 lab module (edit tests) the reception and information desk module in ehealthcare system has more roles than the traditional healthcare. he registers patients, reserve appointment for those patients willing to see specialist-physicians also print id card for patients as shown in figures. (15,16,17). figure 15 reception module (patient registration form) figure 16 reception module (appointment scheduling) figure 17 reception module (id card printing) 4.1 evaluation of the proposed system the evaluation procedure is very important to assess the implemented system. the questionnaire form is one of the depended styles to evaluate such systems. one of these efficient tools is the sus that provides a quick and reliable way for measuring the usability. the sus scores are in a 100.00 scale, which refers to the higher level of effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in the use of the system. the sus is composed of ten statements as shown in appendix (e), each statement has a five-point scale that ranges from strongly disagree to strongly agree. there are five positive statements and five negative statements, which alternate. these questions prepare average user satisfaction or dissatisfaction on a five-point scale. the odd-questions are positively worded and the even-questions are negatively worded [10]. the proposed system has been implemented practically in sgh. the testing period was about (44 days) from (01/04/2017) to (14/05/2017). the test period included training for (37) of hospital’s staff (system's users). this helped to prepare special staff for the testing, the same users participated with the testing and evaluation processes. after finalizing the sus questionnaire, the acquired sus scores of the proposed system user’s samples are processed as follow: for odd items: one subtracted from the user response. for evennumbered items: the user responses subtracted from 5. the converted responses add up for each user and multiplied that total by 2.5. this converts the range of possible values from 0 to 100 instead of from 0 to 40. table 1: sus scores by wbehs participants users q 1 q 2 q 3 q 4 q 5 q 6 q 7 q 8 q 9 q 10 score 1 5 1 5 1 4 2 3 2 5 2 85.0 2 5 1 4 1 4 2 4 2 5 1 87.5 3 5 1 4 1 5 4 4 2 5 1 85.0 4 5 1 5 1 3 3 4 2 5 1 85.0 5 4 2 3 3 4 2 5 2 3 3 67.5 6 5 1 4 1 5 3 2 2 5 1 82.5 7 5 1 5 1 4 3 5 2 5 3 85.0 8 5 1 4 1 5 3 3 2 5 3 80.0 9 5 1 5 1 4 2 5 1 5 2 92.5 10 5 1 5 1 2 4 2 1 2 4 62.5 11 4 2 5 3 4 2 3 2 4 2 72.5 12 4 2 3 3 4 2 4 3 4 1 70.0 13 5 1 4 2 5 2 5 1 4 2 87.5 14 4 1 5 2 4 1 5 2 4 3 82.5 15 5 3 4 2 5 1 3 2 5 1 82.5 16 5 1 4 2 3 2 5 2 5 1 85.0 17 5 2 4 1 3 2 5 2 5 2 82.5 18 4 1 5 2 4 2 4 1 4 2 82.5 19 3 2 4 3 3 4 3 2 3 3 55.0 20 4 1 4 2 5 2 4 1 4 3 80.0 21 5 2 3 2 4 3 5 2 4 5 67.5 22 4 1 3 3 5 1 4 2 4 1 80.0 23 5 1 4 2 3 4 4 2 3 2 70.0 24 4 1 2 1 4 2 4 1 5 3 77.5 25 5 1 5 3 4 3 3 2 4 2 75.0 26 4 1 4 1 5 1 4 1 3 1 87.5 27 5 2 4 2 5 3 4 3 3 3 70.0 28 4 1 5 2 5 1 4 2 5 1 90.0 29 4 2 5 1 4 2 4 3 4 1 80.0 30 4 1 4 4 3 2 2 3 4 4 57.5 31 5 2 5 1 4 1 4 2 4 3 82.5 32 5 2 5 2 5 3 3 1 5 2 82.5 33 4 1 3 1 5 3 5 2 4 2 80.0 34 4 1 5 2 3 1 5 1 4 1 87.5 35 4 1 4 1 5 1 3 1 5 2 87.5 36 5 2 3 2 5 3 5 1 5 1 85.0 37 4 1 5 1 4 1 4 2 4 1 87.5 the overall score 79.459 table 1 shows that the slightest sus score is (55.0) and the maximum score is (92.5). however, according to the mean of sus scores, it can be determined that the provided system is generally seeming to be adequate depending on the sus overall score which is (79.459). fig. 18 characterizes the main survey results of (37) users participated in the wbehs testing and evaluation. this graph produces more understanding about the system usability test and evaluation, which represent the user’s opinions on usability issues of the system. it is clear from the plot that high scores have been presented at the positive questions while the negative ones produced lower values. figure 18 mean survey results depending on the previous results obtained from the evaluation process, important facts concluded: the positive odd questions scores are ranging from (3.9) to (4.3) while the negative even questions score are ranging from (1.3) to (2.1) and this considered as a good result. 4.2 comparison the wbehs with previous works the comparison can be done from tow views: firstly, the software: the proposed system has been built with the latest tools that can't be found in the previous works. for example, (laravel framework, bootstrap, google recaptcha) all these tools didn't used in the previous works. as well as more new features and flexibility. secondly, the implementation and evaluation: the proposed system has been implemented in sgh and evaluated by sus, while the previous works tested and evaluated in the lab without real implementation. 4.3 problems faced this work the barriers that faced this work can be listed as: 1) economic problems: the economic crises have had a negative impact on all life facilities, and this led to delay in the implementation of the project because of the lack of the appropriate budget to purchase equipment and supplies for the project. 2) the people: engaging doctors and other healthcare professionals in the new technologies are essential. unfortunately, not everyone is on board with the idea of implementing and using e-health system. some older doctors who do not have enough experience in using modern technology and computers prefer the traditional paper based method. 3) coordination: there is no doubt that the program or system must be in line with the existing reality, with another intention that it should be applicable. this faces a big problem. while the number of patients diagnosed by the doctor exceeds 120 patients per day. and this number is unacceptable. so, it is the biggest problems that exhaust the staff, especially doctors. therefore, this problem requires a radical solution by the ministry of health or other authorities. 5. conclusion an efficient wbehs has been proposed, designed and implemented really in sgh. the proposed system improved to be the best alternative of the paper based system confirms the potential of this technology to aid patient care, increased administration efficiency, as well as better quality, safety and coordination of care. it correspondingly provides the reduction of important factors such as: consume-time, effort, cost (more economic). profession statistics can be provided very simply and within little time for (daily, monthly and yearly) periods. these statistics are great steps toward egovernment. the proposed system has been tested really for (44) days at sgh, (37) trainers participated with the testing who are (hospital staff and patients). the sus questioner has been used to evaluate the proposed system. the overall evaluation score of the questionnaire was (79. 459%) which can be considered as a good result. 6. reference [1] nations, u. (2014) united nations egovernment survey 2014, united nations. [2] claudio di carlo, e. s. (2012) “e-health in italy: current state and future prospects of statistical information”, ministry of economic development department of communications, pp. 1-22. [3] "ehealth strategy for ireland | department of health", health.gov.ie, 2017. [online]. available: http://health.gov.ie/blog/publications/ehealthstrategy-for-ireland/. [accessed: 06jun2017]. [4] a. sunyaev, health-care telematics in germany, 1st ed. 65189 weisbaden: westdeutscher verlag gmbh, 2011, pp. 40-45. [5] ean-claude healy, "implementing e-health in developing countries guidance and principles", international telecommunication union (itu), geneva, 8002. [6] o. b.o and o. m.o, "a framework for a multi-tier internet service architecture for doctors” directory", international journal of computers & technology, 2013, pp. 184-191. [7] g. mustafa, k. faraj and s. zeebaree, “hand writing code-php or wire shark ready application over tier architecture with windows servers operating systems or linux server operating systems” icse international journal of computer sciences and engineering, vol. 4, no. 6, pp. 142-149, 2016. [8] c. granja, k. dyb, s. roald bolle and g. hartvigsen, "on the development of a hospitalpatient web-based communication tool: a case study from norway", ios press, 2015. [9] r. hameed, o. mohamad, o. hamid and n. tapus, "design of e-healthcare management system based on cloud and service oriented architecture", in the 5th ieee international conference on e-health and bioengineering q1 q2 q3 q4 q5 q6 q7 q8 q9 q1 0 score 4.3 1.3 4.0 1.8 4.1 2.1 3.9 1.7 4.0 2.1 0.000 1.000 2.000 3.000 4.000 5.000 ehb, grigore t. popa university of medicine and pharmacy, iasi, romania, 2015, pp. 19-21. [10] a. bangor, p. kortum and j. miller, "determining what individual sus scores mean: adding an adjective rating scale", jus journal of usability studies, 2009, pp. 114-123. biography dr. subhi rafeeq mohammed zeebaree is an assistant professor in computer engineering. he is the head of computer and communications dept. at nawroz university. he got his bsc, msc and phd degrees from university of technology-baghdad-iraq at 1990, 1995 and 2006 respectively. he is an assistant professor since 2012. he started teaching and supervising post-graduate courses (phd and msc) since 2007 and until now. nineteen of his msc students completed their studding and got msc degree. now there are number of phd and msc students under his supervising inside and outside of iraq. he has joint phd supervisions with utm (malaysia), politecnico di torino university (italy), and emu (cyprus). he was head of it dept. at akre technical college (i.e. technical college of informatics-akre) for three years at duhok polytechnic university (dpu). he was the chairman of scientific and research advices committee of dpu for five years. mohamed jasim ahmed received the b.e. degree in electronic and control engineering from northern technical university, kirkuk in (2003). he is currently working on his msc thesis entitled (design and actual implementation of ehospital system of shorsh general hospital at kurdistan) in information system engineering at erbil polytechnic university, erbil, at 2015-2017. his research interests include design and real implementation of e-hospital system, programing language, questionnaire tools and analysis. he is a programmer and a web programing developer.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 133 effect of cannabis seeds on some biomedical parameters in male rats salah omer hamabor hunar mustafa wassman medical laboratory department medical laboratory analaysis college of health and medical technology cihan universitysulaimaniya sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimaniya, iraq sulaimaniya, iraq email: hunar.mustafa@sulicihan.edu.krd email:salah.hamabor@spu.edu.iq karwan anwar hassan medical laboratory analaysis cihan university-sulaimaniya sulaimaniya, iraq email: karwan.anwar@sulicihan.edu.krd article info abstract volume 7 issue 1june 2022 doi: 10.24017/science.2022.1.12 article history: received: 19/02/2022 accepted: 19/09/2022 cannabis, sometimes known as hemp, is a plant that originated in central asia. cannabis seeds nutritional profile is astounding. it is most digestible, balanced, natural, and complete supply of protein or amino acids. cannabis seeds can be used in a variety of medical fields. each 100 gm of the seeds used in the study contains 20, 26 and 37 gm of carbohydrate, protein and fat respectively. the present study used two groups of male rats (control and treatment groups). rats were 11 weeks of average age. 10 mg/kg of body weight of powdered cannabis seeds were administrated orally to treatment group daily for 15 days. alkaline phosphatase, glutamic oxaloacetic transaminase and glutamic pyruvic transaminase (alp, got, and gpt), creatinine and uric acid were performed for estimating the effect of cannabis seeds on renal and liver function. enzymes alkaline phosphatase, glutamic oxaloacetic transaminase and glutamic pyruvic transaminase (alp, gpt, and got) as well as creatinine, uric acid and very low-density lipoprotein (vldl) were not significantly (p<0.05) different in both groups. level of cholesterol, triglyceride and c-reactive protein were significantly (p<0.05) reduced. serum total protein, albumin and globulin were significantly (p<0.05) elevated in treatment group in comparison to control group. in conclusion, this study found the effect of cannabis seeds on decreasing cardiovascular risk. it was found that keywords: cannabis seeds, renal function, liver function, anti-inflammatory effect. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 134 cannabis have good roles in protein metabolism, as well as albumin. the study has showed the role of cannabis in strengthen the immune system via elevation of globulin level. moreover, cannabis seed has antiinflammatory property through decreasing the level of crp. 1. introduction approximately 70000 unique plant species had been used in conventional medication. world health organization (who) has suggested that about 80% of the populace using the smallest amount one natural medication for their lifestyle’s medical purposes. herbal medicine and plants were used as remedy for many unique forms of sicknesses such as liver, kidney, coronary heart sicknesses, therefore, scientists around the world have studied unique sorts of herbal plant in phrases of chemical and physiological properties, indications, and their side effects. cannabis species is among the herb plants that has been studied by many scientists in vitro round the world [1]. cannabis sativa typically called hemp, its one in every of the oldest cultivated plants, and determinative its specific origin of its long history of cultivation. cannabis is a green leafy plant with distinctive opposing, typically 7-fingered, lance-shaped leaves of dioecian (male and feminine flowers in numerous plants) [2]. cannabis sativa l. is a popular herbaceous plant from central asia that has been utilized in traditional medicine, it can be used as a drug (marijuana) or a non-drug (marijuana) (hemp). the former is often used for different purposes such as recreational and medical purposes, whilst the latter is critical to the fiber and food industry [1]. different preparations of cannabis sativa have been used as a traditional medicine in asia to cure illnesses, including diarrhea, inflammation, headache, nausea, hematochezia and alopecia. cannabis sativa has anti-inflammatory, analgesic, antipyretic, and antidiarrhea properties [1, 3, 4]. due to a variety of factors, includes unlawful cultivation, diversity of active components, and low quantity of certain of them in plant [5]. cannabis phytochemical study has been restricted, as it has broad medicinal usage of cannabis products. cannabinoids, such as tetrahydrocannabinol (thc) and cannabidiol (cbd), are psychoactive components of cannabis plants that may be found in the flower, stems, stalks, and leaves, but they are not present in seeds until they are transferred from the flower to the seed's outer shell [6]. liver and kidney are two active organs in the body. the functions of liver and kidneys functions can be evaluated while using medicine or herbal medicines. estimation of normal kidney and liver can be performed via their activity and estimation of their enzymes. damage or injury in the cells have direct effects on kidney and liver functions. liver function can be estimated via the level of protein, albumin, globulin, cholesterol and triglyceride. as well as necrosis or injury of the hepatic cells can be determining by liver enzymes in serum such as gpt, alp and got. it is well known that liver is a site for detoxification, clearing blood from poisoning and drugs. kidney is another organ can be determining its functions using cholesterol and uric acid. any medications that have direct effects on renal and the liver functions or lead to cells damage. so that any herbal drugs should estimate its toxicity and its effect on liver, renal cells and functions. cannabinoids and the endocannabinoid system appear to be essential in the treatment of liver disorders and normal liver function. cirrhosis (liver scarring) and fatty liver disease are examples of this (fld)[7]. people with viral liver disease may benefit from cannabinoids to help them cope with traditional therapies like chemotherapy [8]. following the legalization of cannabis in certain countries, such as canada and the united states, there is likely to be a surge in interest in medicinal cannabis, particularly for chronic refractory symptoms and palliative illnesses like those seen in chronic kidney disease (ckd) patients [9]. hempseed is usually referred to be one of the most nutritionally complete food sources due to its high nutritional characteristics. hempseed may be fed on whole (hulled seed) or deshelled (hempseed kernel), in addition to in processed meals like as oil, flour, and protein powder kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 135 [10]. despite the fact that genotypes and environmental variables have revealed a wide range of hempseed compositions, it generally contains 25–35 percent lipids with a unique and precisely balanced fatty acids (fas) composition; 20–25 percent easily digestible proteins rich in important amino acids; and 20–30 percent carbohydrates, the majority of which is dietary fiber, mostly in the form of dietary fiber. hemp protein is made up mostly of globulin and albumin, which are distinguished by their high levels of arginine and glutaminic acid. the modulation of organ function and human metabolism was shown to be positive with these two types of hemp protein. hemp seed protein also contains a number of antioxidative bioactive peptides and phytic acid and trypsin inhibitors [11]. oil makes around 30 to 35 percent of hempseed, with unsaturated fatty acids accounting for 90 percent of the total essential fatty acids, linolic acid, omega-3 fatty acid, and monounsaturated fatty acid dominate hempseed oil. linolic acid is necessary as a precursor for the formation of dihomo-linolenic acid (dgla) and arachidonic acid, whereas -linolenic acid is required for omega-3 fatty acid assembly. these fatty acids have been studied extensively for their ability to protect against cardiovascular disorders, hempseed's outer shell contains the majority of the carbs, while dehulling eliminates three-quarters of the fiber content. statistics on the characteristics of hempseed fiber are currently lacking. hempseed is also high in polyphenols, which include hydroxycinnamic acid in particular [2]. few researches have looked at the impact of cannabis seeds in the diets of animals and humans on physiological, immunological, and oxidative state and health, so that the study aimed to find the effects of cannabis seeds on liver and renal function and also the possible of using cannabis seeds as herbal medicine for health care. the aim of this study is to examine physiological impact of cannabis whole seeds. identifying the relationship(s) between liver and renal functions and cannabis seeds, as well as the antiinflammatory effect of cannabis seeds and possible of using cannabis seeds as herbal medicine for health care in male rats. 2. methods and materials two groups of male rats were designed including control group and the treatment group with their average weight was 245  10 gm and each group were contained 5 male rats. the animals were uncovered for period 12 hours under light-darkish cycle and treated constant with popular protocols. the animals were kept in plastic cages and allowed adaptation duration of seven days in a good ventilated room with a temperature of 28±2c o . cannabis seeds were obtained from pk cannabel company in russia-moscow. the seed of cannabis were crushed into a powder form using special grinder. 10 mg/kg body weight of powdered cannabis seeds were suspended in 1 ml of distal water and drenched by gavage tube to the treatment group orally for 15 days. the control group were received only distilled water for 15 days. the animals were anesthetized using special jar containing cotton saturated with chloroform and diethyl-ether in ratio 1:1. the blood were collected via cardiac puncture, centrifuged at 3000 rpm, the serum were collected and stored at -20 c o [12]. biochemical tests were performed using cobas c 311 (roche diagnostics, reagent were used originally from roche company, germany-2018) for both groups. tests were included liver function test: serum got, serum gpt and serum alp. renal function test including creatinine (scr) and uric acid (sua). serum globulin, albumin, total protein, cholesterol, very low-density lipoprotein (vldl) and triglyceride (tg) levels were also estimated. creactive protein (crp) levels were determined using titration method by using cobas c 311 (roche diagnostics, reagent were used originally from roche company, germany-2018). the reagents used for gpt contained tris buffer, l-alanine, albumin (bovine), ldh (microorganisms), stabilizers; preservative, 2-oxoglutarate, nadh in different concentrations according to the manufactory. alp reagent composted of 2-amino-2-methyl-1-propanol, magnesium acetate, zinc sulfate, n-(2-hydroxyethyl) -ethylenediamine tri-acetic acid, p-nitrophenyl phosphate. materials used in got kits were: tris buffer, l-aspartate, mdh (microorganism), ldh (microorganisms), albumin (bovine), nadh and 2-oxoglutarate. serum total protein kits contained sodium hydroxide, potassium sodium tartrate, potassium iodide, copper sulfate. reagent used for kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 136 estimation of serum albumin was contain buffer; preservatives; surfactants, bcp, buffer; preservatives; surfactant and the materials used in kits for serum globulin materials were tris/hcl buffer, nacl, edta; preservative, latex particles coated with polyclonal anti-human β2-microglobulin antibody (rabbit). pipes buffer, mg2+, sodium cholate, 4-aminophenazone, phenol, fatty alcohol polyglycol ether, cholesterol esterase (pseudomonas spec.), cholesterol oxidase (e. coli), peroxidase (horseradish) were used in serum cholesterol reagent. materials used to estimate serum tg concentration were pipes buffer, mg2, sodium cholate, atp, 4-aminophenazone, 4-chlorophenol, lipoprotein lipase (pseudomonas spec.), glycerol kinase (bacillus stearothermophilus), glycerol phosphate oxidase (e. coli) and peroxidase (horseradish). for vldl the dilution buffer: potassium dihydrogen-phosphate, dipotassium hydrogen-phosphate, potassium chloride, sodium aside, magnesium sulfate heptahydrate, sodium phosphor-tungstate n-hydrate lipoprotein-lipase, cholesterol esterase, diaphorase, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, tetrazolium salt, glycerol dehydrogenase, cholesterol dehydrogenase used in reagent. crp reagent was contained hepes buffer, anti-human crp antibody (goat) and latex-conjugate. the statistically analyzed data was given as the mean sd of two groups, with the means compared using ibm spss 26 software. at p0.05, the differences were statistically significant [13]. 3. results using male albino rats as test subjects, the results demonstrated the effect of cannabis seeds on a range of biochemical or medical markers. table 1 showed the effect of cannabis seeds on serum total protein, serum albumin and serum globulin in the treatment group were showed significant alteration in the serum biomarkers (p<0.05). the serum gpt, got and alt in control and the treatment group were showed no significant difference (p<0.05) as showed in table 2. effect of cannabis seeds on the level of serum creatinine and serum uric acid in control and treatment group was not significantly (p<0.05) different (table 3). the cholesterol and triglyceride levels showed significant (p<0.05) decrease in treatment group when compared with the control group while vldl showed no significantly (p<0.05) changed in treatment and control groups (table 4). the influence of cannabis seeds for creactive protein in male rats showed reduction in treated group significantly (p<0.05) (table 5). table 1: effects of cannabis seeds on the level of serum total protein, serum albumin and serum globulin in (gm/dl) in control and treatment group (mean  sd). groups total protein albumin globulin control 6.56 0.16 3.52 0.14 2.66 0.57 treatment 7.47 0.33* 4.49 0.40* 4.25 0.28 * * the levels are significantly higher (p0.05) in treatment group compare to control group. table 2: effects of cannabis seeds on the level of serum gpt, got and alt in (u/l) in control and treatment group (mean  sd). groups sgpt sgot salt control 37.03  3.32 117.73 11.57 244.33 60.01 treatment 39.9  8.73 ns 120.05 30.55 ns 237.5 44.20 ns ns: no significant different between control and treatment groups. table 3: effects of cannabis seeds on the level of serum creatinine and serum uric acid in (mg/dl) in control and treatment group (mean  sd). groups creatinine uric acid control 0.33  0.005 2.36  0.25 treatment 0.37  0.031 ns 2.38  0.35ns ns: no significant different between control and treatment groups. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 137 table 4: effects of cannabis seeds on the level of serum creatinine and serum uric acid in (mg/dl) in control and treatment group (mean  sd). groups cholesterol triglyceride vldl control 73.03  3.20 123.8  14.89 25  3 treatment 56.92  5.74* 71.85  10.40* 26  10.55ns * the concentrations are significantly lower (p0.05) in treatment group compared to control group. ns: no significant different between control and treatment groups. table 5: effects of cannabis seeds on the level of serum creactive protein (u/l) in control and treatment group (mean  sd). groups c-reactive protein control 0.93  0.13 treatment 0.17  0.08* * the concentrations are significantly lower (p0.05) in treated group when compare to the control group. 4. discussion the liver has important effect on the function of various organs with inside the frame system. due to its key characteristic in metabolism (xenobiotic) and its gateway function withinside the frame system, it's miles vulnerable to xenobiotic-brought on damage [14]. the liver is essential for metabolism, detoxification, and biotransformation. in order to measure the degree of injury or destruction caused by ingesting cannabis seeds prior to biopsy, changes in liver biomarkers and function tests may be used [15]. albumin and globulin combine to make up total protein in serum; therefore, changes in the concentration of either of these fractions will affect total protein levels. a significant change in albumin, globulin, and total protein concentrations suggested that the powdered cannabis seeds stimulated protein synthesis and/or mobilization. masses of serum proteins, as well as provider proteins, enzymes, complement, and immunoglobulins, make up the globulin fraction. the majority of them are made by the liver, with the exception of immunoglobulins, which are produced by the plasma cells. more specifically, the observed rise in globulin level might be attributable to the cannabis seeds ability to generate antibodies [16]. the greatest concentration of protein in the plasma is albumin which accounts more than half of the total protein in serum. about 30 to 40 percent of the total body's albumin is pooled within the intravascular tissue and it carries a large number of molecules throughout the body. the distribution of bilirubin, hormones, metals, vitamins, and medicines are aided by the albumin. it plays a vital role in metabolism of fat through fatty acids binding and keeping them in a soluble state within the plasma. it prevents the blood fluid from seeping into tissues [17]. chronic liver illness, such as cirrhosis or nephrotic syndrome, causes decrease in the level of the albumin [18]. as a result, the remarkable rise of albumin may suggested that the seeds (cannabis) might assist to control the flow of water from the bloodstream into human tissue and may have a hepatoprotective impact [19]. this is also confirmed by the ratio of albumin to globulin which results in substantial rise in protein content [20]. some of tests assess how well the liver performs its daily functions of making protein and removing bilirubin, a blood waste. other tests measure the amount of enzymes released by liver cells in response to injury or disease. enzyme serum glutamic pyruvic transaminase (sgpt) is known to rise in the presence of liver illness and has been used to assess the effect of cannabis on hepatocytes [21, 22]. serum glutamic oxaloacetic transaminase (sgot) is mostly found in gill cells, kidney cells, muscle cells, and liver parenchyma cells [23]. sgot is most prevalent in the coronary heart diseases as compared to other body tissues such as the liver, striated muscle, and kidney. elevated mitochondrial sgot noticeable in widespread tissue necrosis throughout cardiac infarction and likewise in kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 138 chronic liver illnesses like hepatic tissue degeneration and necrosis [14]. alkaline phosphatase is found in the cell membrane and endoplasmic reticulum, or the liver biliary ducts cell lining, bone and placental tissue [24]. based on the tests on liver enzymes, no significant differences were found at a dose of 10 mg/kg body weight between the treatment and control group, this could indicate that using cannabis seeds at a dose of 10mg/kg body weight for 15 days are safe for liver. serum creatinine and uric acid levels are traditional indicator for renal function [25]. normally serum creatinine levels can also be used to gauge how fast the kidneys filter blood (glomerular filtration rate). because blood creatinine levels vary so much from person to person, the glomerular filtration rate may offer a more realistic picture of renal function [26]. serum creatinine is a popular measure for identifying changes in glomerular filtration rate (gfr) and chronic kidney disease (ckd) stage, with increased serum creatinine indicating renal disease and reduced renal function [27]. in the same way, patients with ckd frequently have increased serum uric acid levels. it's a straightforward biochemical diagnostic for kidney function that's either impaired or pathological [27]. because renal clearance of serum uric acid is generally decreased after kidney injury or failure therefore renal function is the major confounder in studies investigating the connection between the serum uric acid and ckd progression [28]. the glomerular filtration rate is calculated using a specific formula that takes into consideration the serum creatinine counts as well as other variables including age and gender into consideration [29, 30]. for that reason, in the current study the same gender and age of rats were used. the result shows that there are no significant increase in the level of creatinine and uric acid, this indicating no significant effect were found on renal functions. on the other hand result showed decreasing in the level of serum cholesterol and triglyceride (tg) significantly, but vldl was not changed significantly (p<0.05) in treatment group (table 4). both cholesterol and triglycerides (tg) serve important physiological functions in keeping the healthy status of the body [31]. cholesterol and tg are two indicators that may be used to assess cardiovascular risks since high cholesterol and tg levels can cause health problems, particularly those connected to the heart [32]. many researches reveal that elevation of triglycerides are diagnosed as a hazard issue for cardiovascular disorder, emphasizing the pressing want for scientific trials to decide whether reducing blood triglyceride could decreases disorder hazard. [33, 34]. vldl is produced in the liver and is in charge of transporting triglycerides to body cells, which are required for cellular activities. vldl is made up less of fat and more of protein when triglycerides are transported to cells, leaving cholesterol on the molecule. vldl's protein composition varies from that of chylomicrons in case the main protein structure is full-duration apo b (apo b100) rather than the truncated apo b48 version. vldls, like chylomicrons, are triglyceride-removing substrates for lipoprotein lipase. according to our findings, there is no influence on vldl's regular functioning [35]. decreasing cholesterol and triglycerides level were provided an indicative clue on using cannabis to decrease cardiovascular risks, however no significant change in the level of vldl were recorded on using cannabis seed powdered for a duration of 15 days. c-reactive protein (crp) in the treatment group was significantly decreased (p<0.05). this could indicate that cannabis seeds act as anti-inflammation agent in the body. liver produces crp in response to a number of inflammatory cytokines [36]. crp levels rise quickly in reaction to trauma, inflammation, and infection, and then lowered quickly after solving the problem [37]. as a result, the reduction in crp levels in the treatment group indicates that the cannabis seeds' anti-inflammatory properties are effective. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 139 5. conclusion using cannabis whole seeds at dose of 10 mg/kg body weight orally for 15 days are safe for the liver and kidney. cannabis seeds have incredible effects on decreasing cardiovascular risk. also have good roles in protein metabolism and synthesize as well as albumin and have role in strengthen the immune system via elevation of globulin level. moreover, cannabis seed has anti-inflammatory property through decreasing the level of crp. 6. acknowledgment this study was supported by cihan university-sulaimani campus, as using their animal house and laboratory’s materials. special thanks for shorsh general teaching hospital for their helps and using biochemistry laboratory for making some of the research tests. reference [1] c. m. andre, j.-f. hausman, and g. guerriero, "cannabis sativa: the plant of the thousand and one molecules," frontiers in plant science, vol. 7, p. 19, 2016. 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[33] s. s. carr, a. j. hooper, d. r. sullivan, and j. r. burnett, "non-hdl-cholesterol and apolipoprotein b compared with ldl-cholesterol in atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease risk assessment," pathology, vol. 51, pp. 148-154, 2019. [34] e. ruiz-gastélum, a. díaz-aragón, and h. álvarez-lópez, "triglycerides: are they or are they not a cardiovascular risk factor?," cardiovascular and metabolic science, vol. 32, pp. 231-235, 2021. [35] a. m. umpleby, f. shojaee-moradie, b. fielding, x. li, a. marino, n. alsini, et al., "impact of liver fat on the differential partitioning of hepatic triacylglycerol into vldl subclasses on high and low sugar diets," clinical science, vol. 131, pp. 2561-2573, 2017. [36] t. polepalle, s. moogala, s. boggarapu, d. s. pesala, and f. b. palagi, "acute phase proteins and their role in periodontitis: a review," journal of clinical and diagnostic research: jcdr, vol. 9, p. ze01, 2015. [37] c. bray, l. n. bell, h. liang, r. haykal, f. kaiksow, j. j. mazza, et al., "erythrocyte sedimentation rate and c-reactive protein measurements and their relevance in clinical medicine," wmj, vol. 115, pp. 317321, 2016.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 64 fresh and mechanical characteristics of eco-efficient gpc incorporating nano-silica: an overview hiwa hamid sharif hemn unis ahmed civil engineering department civil engineering department college of engineering college of engineering university of halabja university of sulaimani halabja, iraq sulaimaniyah, iraq hiwa.sharif@uoh.edu.iq hemn.ahmed@univsul.edu.iq rabar h. faraj arass omer mawlod civil engineering department civil engineering department college of engineering college of engineering university of halabja university of raparin halabja, kurdistan region, iraq sulaimaniyah, iraq rabar.faraj@uoh.edu.iq arass.omar@uor.edu.krd article info abstract volume 6 – issue 2 december 2021 doi: 10.24017/science.2021.2.6 article history: received 2/9/2021 accepted 21/11/2021 geopolymer concrete is an inorganic concrete that uses industrial or agro byproduct ashes as the main binder instead of ordinary portland cement; this leads to the geopolymer concrete being an eco-efficient and environmentally friendly construction material. nanotechnology is one of the most active research areas with novel science and useful applications that have gradually gained attention, especially during the last two decades. recently efforts have been made to incorporate nanoparticles in construction materials to enhance properties and produce concrete with improved performances. progress in improving geopolymer concrete (gpc) is fast becoming a viable substitute for traditional cement-based concrete. that is because gpc is considered an eco-efficient and green concrete that consumes many waste materials. to improve the performance of gpc, several methods have been investigated, including the using of nanomaterials to enhance its chemical reactivity and provide fine particles to fill its nanopores and voids. in this paper, an overview was carried out to show the impact of nanosilica (ns) inclusions on the fresh and mechanical characteristics of gpc. based on the analyzed data, incorporating ns affects the fresh properties adversely while improving the mechanical performance up to an appropriate dosage of the ns. keywords: geopolymer concrete; nano silica; workability; flexural strength; splitting tensile strength; compressive strength copyright © 2021 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 65 1. introduction concrete is the most widely used construction material in the world [1], usually portland cement is used to bind the ingredients of the concrete composites. however, the production of portland cement is partly responsible for the greenhouse effect and significantly contributes to global warming [2]. the manufacturing process of cement emits nearly 1 ton of carbon dioxide (co2) for every ton of cement, which occupies around 7% of the total global green gas emissions [3]. therefore, to decrease the environmental impact of portland cement, a lot of research has been done to develop new materials to be an alternative to portland cement [4]. among them, geopolymer technology was developed first by davidovits in france, 1970 [5]. it is supposed that geopolymer composites are the third group of primary construction materials in human written history after lime and cement [6]. the drawback of gpc concerning global warming is around 70% lower than portland cement concrete; this is because of the high consumption of industrial and agro byproduct materials inside the gpc mixtures, such as ground granulated blast furnace slag (ggbfs), rice husk ash (rha), fly ash (fa), and palm oil fuel ash (pofa) [7]. the composition of the geopolymer concrete composite is consists of source binder materials, aggregates, and high alkalinity liquids. source binder materials like ground granulated blast furnace slag (ggbfs), fly ash (fa), palm oil fuel ash (pofa), and rice husk ash (rha) [8]. aggregates are coarse and fine aggregate made from river naturally or crushed stone with required properties and gradations [9]. alkali activators are mixtures of potassium silicate and potassium hydroxide, or sodium silicate and sodium hydroxide [9]. the polymerization of these materials produces solid concrete that is nearly identical to normal concrete [10]. the polymerization mechanism could be briefly explained as follows; in the first stage, dissolution of the silicate and aluminum elements of the binder inside the high alkalinity aqueous solution produces ions of silicon and aluminum oxide. in the second stage, a mixture of silicate, aluminate, and aluminosilicate species, which through a contemporaneous operation of poly-condensation-gelation further condensation, finally produces an amorphous gel [11]. the performance of geopolymer composites can be influenced by various factors, including the type and content of source binder materials, sodium silicate to sodium hydroxide ratio, the molarity of naoh, excess water, mix proportions, and the technique of curing [9, 12]. in the last two decades, scientists and researchers studied nanotechnology and nanoscience in the various sectors of life, mainly due to the progress of convenient techniques of characteristics and reactions control in the nanoscale [13]. therefore, nanoparticles (nps) were introduced with conventional concrete and geopolymer matrices to enhance durability issues, mechanical properties, and physical structure of the geopolymer mixture [14, 15]. the effect of adding ns to geopolymer composites on their fresh and mechanical properties was examined in this paper. as a result, the impact of ns content on the mechanical properties and workability of the geopolymer composite were discussed in the most recent and previously published publications. 2. nanomaterials in gpc nanotechnology enables researchers to monitor and reorganize the material at the atomic and molecular scale of 1 to 100 nm and define new properties at the level of atoms and molecules [15, 16]. the mechanical characteristics, chemical reactivity, surface energy, morphology, the conductivity of electrons, and optical absorption of composites were considerable changes in switching off one material from macro size to the nanoparticle scale [17]. in the civil engineering field, nanomaterials stand out as new materials, and nanotechnology has been used in many applications and products. the utilization of nanomaterials in traditional cement-based concrete has been broadly studied in the literature [15, 13]. in the same context, several investigations have been carried out to study the influences of nanomaterial's inclusion on the mechanical performance and chemical durability of gpc composites [18,19], structural performance [20], fresh and microstructural properties [21], kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 66 physio-mechanical properties [22], permeability [23] and fire resistance [24]. moreover, in the literature, a variety of nano-materials like ns [18-27], nano-alumina [28], nano-titanium oxide [29], nano-clay [30], nano-metakaolin [31] and carbon nanotubes [32] were used in gpc. among them, the most widely used nanomaterial is the ns due to its chemical composition that has the nano-filing effect and pozzolanic reactivity [33, 34]. nano-silica has mostly been employed in portland cement-based concrete to boost internal structure, durability, and mechanical properties because of its ability to increase cement hydration and pozzolanic activity through nucleation. another reason to substitute cement with nano-silica-rich materials in concrete was to minimize the impact of the co2 footprint of concrete on the air [3]. because of the filling effect of pores and voids among cement particles by nanomaterials, free water's motionlessness occurs when the nanomaterials are introduced to the cement granulations, known as the filler effect. furthermore, through the pozzolanic reaction, nanomaterials participate in the assembly of new calcium silicate hydrate (c-s-h) gels and consequently enhance the bond strength characteristics of the mix by improving the interfacial transition zone between the binder pastes and aggregates [35]. when the curing condition of the gpc is ambient curing resulting poor compressive strength and gets strength slowly [36]. however, it has an excellent compressive strength in heat-cured conditions, which restricts the application of gpc to precast structural members [37]. so, one of the methods tried to tackle this problem is using nanomaterials to accelerate the chemical reactions inside the gpc to obtain sufficient strength in the ambient curing [20, 38]. 3. fresh properties of gpc the term workability in the science of concrete technology refers to the behavior of concrete in the fresh state, and it is defined as the useful internal work required to generate full compaction of the concrete [46]. it is familiar that the mechanical, physical, internal structure, and durability of concrete are strongly affected by the fresh concrete's characteristics. water to cement ratio, aggregate form, size, gradation, surface texture, presence of mineral and chemical admixtures, climate condition, and cement content all affect the concrete workability [39]. to evaluate the workability, slump cone [41], slump flow [42], vebe [43], compacting factor [44], and flow table [45] tests are widely utilized. as shown in fig.1 and fig.2, several investigations have been performed to demonstrate the impact of ns content on the fresh characteristics of gpc mixtures. a study has been conducted by mustakim et al. [21] to determine the impact of ns content on the fresh, internal structure and mechanical characteristics of slag/fly ash-based gpc. they used different dosages of ns range from 0 to 2.5%. their results revealed that the gpc's workability was increased by 27%, 26%, 31%, 30%, and 27%, at 0.5%, 1%, 1.5%, 2%, and 2.5% ns content, respectively, that may be due to sliding the concrete particle on each other as the particles of ns are the sphere in shape [21]. another study displayed the influence of ns inclusions on the workability of fly ash-based gpc. according to their results, the inclusion of 6% of ns caused an improvement in the slump value by 8% compared to the control geopolymer concrete mixture [20]. in addition, a study has been carried out to show the effect of ns addition on the strength of natural pozzolana-based gpc. they observed that the workability was risen with the increment of ns content up to 2.5%, and beyond that slump reduction was observed. the increase in the workability may be argued to the colloidal nature of ns, while, fall in the slump at higher ns dosage could be related to an increase in the water demand of nanoparticles that have a greater specific surface area due to the nature of their nanoscales [25]. simultaneously, the permeability of slag-based gpc was examined under the influence of micro and nano-silica. results indicated that addition of 0.5, 1, 3 and 5% ns lowered the slump value by 9%, 27%, 50% and 82%, respectively. this reduction in a slump can be attributed to the fact that ns particles are smaller than the binder of the gpc particles; therefore, a high amount of water is required due to the high surface area. consequently, the workability of the gpc mixtures decreased [23]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 67 in addition, studies have been carried out to show how the presence of ns affects the fire resistance and mechanical qualities of recycled aggregate fly ash-based gpc. they discovered that adding ns to the gpc mixture significantly reduces its workability, especially at high dosage replacement. the maximum reduction in the slump flow of the gpc was 16% at 3% of ns content compared to the benchmark gpc mixture without any ns content [24]. another investigation on the effects of ns and regular portland cement content on the characteristics of fly ash-based gpc was undertaken in the same context. the mean slump flows value of 0%, 1%, 2% and 3% ns content were 697, 621, 645 and 568 mm, respectively. the decrease in the slump flow value was more noticeable at large ns dosages. this outcome was argued to be the high surface area of ns that contained many unsaturated bonds of si-o (silicon-oxygen), which absorbed some part of water content from alkali liquid solutions leading to the formation of si-oh and as a consequence, a stiffer gpc mixture was produced [26]. figure 1: variation of the slump cone of gpc incorporating ns figure 2: variation of the slump flow of gpc incorporating ns kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 68 4. mechanical properties of gpc 4.1 compressive strength one of the most important mechanical properties of concrete structures is the compressive strength, and it usually gives a general performance about the quality of the concrete [46]. compressive strength tests are conducted by following the standard test methods of astm c39 [47], or bs en 12390-3 [48] to determine the compressive strength of the concrete specimens. table 1 shows the impact of incorporating ns on gpc compressive strength after three, seven, and twenty-eight days of curing. overall, the data suggest that adding ns to gpc improves compressive strength up to a certain quantity of ns dosages. an investigation has been carried out by mustakim et al. [21] on the fresh, internal structural, and also mechanical characteristics of fa/ggbfs-based gpc with ns at various volume fractions. they discovered that all nano-silica-containing combinations had higher compressive strength than virgin mixtures without ns. after curing at 28 days' room temperature, the highest compressive strength was reported at a dosage of 1.5% ns, which increased compressive strength by 11% above the normal mix. the increase in strength can be attributed to the filling of nanopores inside the gpc by silica nanoparticles that make the matrix denser and more compact. in addition, due to chemical characteristics of the ns, which is rich in silica, accelerate the geopolymer reactions and make the geopolymer binder stronger, which eventually enhances the specimens' strength. moreover, they prefer 1.5% of ns would be the optimum content for compressive strength improvement, beyond that dosage, it slightly reduced in the compressive strength according to overflowing availability in the matrix of unreacted ns particles, and the excess number of ns causes agglomerations between the ns particles that may have prevented silica dissolution, as a result of which voids form and, as a result, a reduction in the gpc's compressive strength [21]. the same findings have been made by [19, 24, 27], who discovered that adding ns to gpc increases its compressive strength up to a specific dosage of ns. furthermore, based on the experimental finding of nuaklong et al. [26], the incorporation of ns improves the compressive strength of the gpc up to 2% of ns, and over that dosage decrease in the compressive strength was reported. similar to that, khater [22] examined the impact of various dosages of ns on physiomechanical characteristics of gpc. dosages from 0 to 8% were used. it was reported that the optimum dosage was 3% in terms of compressive strength, which was 36 mpa, while the correspondence compressive strength was 25 mpa. this optimum dosage (3%) of ns was also reported by behfarnia and rostami [23] and mahboubi et al. [30] in their studies. they investigated the permeability and durability properties of gpc with the inclusion of different ns contents. however, rabiaa et al. [31] observed that 4% of ns was optimum content among 0 to 8% of ns dosages. according to behfarnia and rostami [23], adding 3% of ns enhanced the 28-day compressive strength by 12%. meanwhile, there was a decline in compressive strength beyond this dosage. this result may support the fact that ns takes part in the pozzolanic reaction to make more calcium silicate hydrate (c-s-h) gel and fill the pores inside the matrix in the range of nano-level. at the same time, the reduction in strength was related to agglomerations of ns particles in the geopolymer concrete mixture, followed by the formation of voids in the concrete matrix [23]. another study was conducted on the impact of ns on the microstructure and strength of natural pozzolan-based gpc; they used 0, 1, 2.5, 5, and 7.5% of ns. they discovered that adding ns to gpc enhanced its compressive strength, and the highest value (about 18%) being for the specimens with 5% of ns dosage, whereas the minimum values were measured in the reference gpc mixture without the presence of ns [25]. similarly, the addition of ns particles improves the structural performance of the gpc [20]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 69 table 1: variation of the compressive strength of gpc incorporating different dosages of ns authors ns% compressive strength (mpa) authors ns% compressive strength (mpa) 3 day 7 day 28 day 3 day 7 day 28 day mustaki m et al., 2020 [21] 0 8.95 32.9 56 khater h m, 2016 [22] 0 20.2 25.1 0.5 10.9 28.8 60.3 1 21.9 25.7 1 9.7 28.7 57.2 3 28.4 36 1.5 12.6 33.9 62.8 5 26.9 30 2 13.8 34.8 58.9 7 19.3 25.1 2.5 12.4 33.9 55.4 8 18.2 24 çevik et al., 2018 [18] 0 51.63 emad et al., 2018 [27] 0 43.2 62 3 48.4 2 51.9 77.7 mahboub i et al., 2019 [30] 0 18.9 30.9 naskara and chakrabor ty, 2016 [55] 0 21.6 24.6 1 22.8 37.8 0.2 17.1 19.24 2 24.6 44.5 0.75 14.9 14.5 3 25.6 45.9 3 20.3 18.2 rabiaa et al., 2020 [31] 0 29 38 behfarnia and rostami, 2017 [23] 0 56.3 2 31 42 0.5 57.5 4 36 48 1 60 6 34 45 3 63 8 32 43 5 52 nuaklong et al., 2020 [24] 0 18.9 37.4 patel et al., 2015 [19] 0 39 1 21.4 38.2 0.5 40 2 19.1 36.5 1 41.2 3 18.6 34.2 1.5 42.4 nuaklong et al., 2018 [26] 0 32.9 ibrahim et al, 2018 [25] 0 33 37.3 34.8 1 39.6 1 28.5 38.2 34.2 2 42.6 2.5 28 39.4 37.4 3 31.6 5 27.3 44.4 42.1 adak et al., 2016 [20] 0 23.3 29.7 35.11 7.5 20.7 37.8 40.9 6 21.7 35.8 46.43 4.2 splitting tensile strength (sts) concrete's splitting tensile strength is another significant mechanical property, and it can be measured indirectly by applying the standards test method of astm c496 [49] or bs en kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 70 12390-6 [50]. 150*300 mm or 100*200 mm cylinder specimens are used to evaluate the splitting tensile strength to which loads are applied to axial lines opposite to each other. a constant compression stress loads range from 0.7 to 0.3 mpa is applied [46]. the load is increased until failure along the vertical diameter takes place [40, 51]. table 2 demonstrates some literature studies that have been conducted to illustrate the effects of adding ns on the gpc's splitting tensile strength. an investigation on the gpc's durability behavior has been studied with the addition of the various ns dosages (0-3 percent). they noticed that with the increment of ns dosages, the splitting tensile strength of the gpc was increased. for instance, tensile strength at the age of 28 days was increased by 18%, 30%, and 33% at 1, 2, and 3% dosage of ns content, respectively, compared to the control mixture [30]. nuaklong et al. [26] investigated the influence of ns inclusion on the characteristics of a recycled aggregate fly ash-based geopolymer concrete composite. they found that the splitting tensile strength of the gpc without ns was 2.7 mpa, and the most excellent tensile strength value was achieved at 1% of ns content that is 3.0 mpa; this value was decreased slightly with adding extra content of ns [26]. the improvement of the splitting tensile strength at an optimum range of ns and decline in the tensile strength beyond that optimum dosage will argue the same as discussed in the compression strength section. other studies with different dosages of ns do agree with these findings [27, 20]. a study was carried out to show the impact of ns and nano metakaolin on the properties of gpc [31]. they used 0, 2, 4, 6, and 8% of these ns, and they observed that with the addition of ns splitting, tensile strength was improved up to an optimum dosage of the ns. at 4% ns content, the maximum splitting tensile strength was observed, about 21% higher than the control mixture. while, in the event of nano metakaolin, 6% was recorded as an optimum content to give the highest splitting tensile strength (3.9 mpa) in comparison to a reference gpc mixture (2.7 mpa) that did not contain any nps dosage [31]. in contrast, fewer researchers [18, 24] declared that the use of ns slightly decreases the gpc's splitting tensile strength. for example, nuaklong et al. [24] discovered that the tensile strength of the gpc mixture with 1, 2, and 3% ns concentration is somewhat reduced compared to equivalent concrete mixtures without nps. this result may be argued to the distribution of the ns and making weak zones by agglomeration among ns inside the concrete mixes, or the tensile failure may occur inside the weak aggregate particles instead of the interfacial transition zone between the strong binder pastes and the aggregate particles [24]. table 2: variation of the splitting tensile strength of gpc incorporating different dosages of ns at 28 days authors ns% splitting tensile strength (mpa) authors ns% splitting tensile strength (mpa) çevik et al., 2018 [18] 0 4.75 adak et al., 2016 [20] 0 3.39 3 4.5 6 4.33 nuaklong et al., 2020 [24] 0 2.8 mahboubi et al., 2019 [30] 0 3.7 1 2.7 1 4.5 2 2.6 2 5.3 3 2.6 3 5.5 nuaklong et al., 2018 [26] 0 2.7 rabiaa et al., 2020 [31] 0 2.7 1 3 2 2.94 2 2.8 4 3.4 3 2.6 6 3.1 emad et al., 2018 [27] 0 5 8 3 2 6.27 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 71 4.3 flexural strength (fs) as illustrated in fig. 6, several investigations have been undertaken to find out the role of ns inclusion on the flexural strength of geopolymer composites. similar to the splitting tensile strength, the flexural strength tests of astm c78 [52], astm c293 [53], and or bs en 12390-5 [54] are provided to investigate the indirect tensile strength behavior of the concrete composites. the maximum bending stress applied to the concrete before it failed is used to determine its flexural strength. nano-silica added to geopolymer composites only slightly enhanced flexural strength. the majority of studies found that adding ns to geopolymer composites improved their flexural strength. for instance, research work has been conducted by rabiaa et al. [31] to show the influence of ns and nano metakaolin on gpc characteristics. they noticed that increasing the nano metakaolin content enhanced flexural strength up to 6% of the nano metakaolin dosage; then, flexural strength declined significantly. the flexural strength was 4.6, 5, 5.3, 5.7, and 5.5 mpa at 0, 2, 4, 6, and 8% of nano metakaolin dosage, respectively; the highest flexural strength was measured at 6% of nano metakaolin dosage. in the same context, with the increment of ns dosage, flexural strength was increased up to 4% of ns; after that reduction in the flexural strength was recorded, the maximum flexural strength was about 23% greater than with the relative gpc mixture without any ns content [31]. in addition, emad et al. [27] investigated the impact of ns on the mechanical properties of slag-based gpc. compared to a control slag-based geopolymer concrete mixture without any ns dosage, the flexural strength of the slag-based gpc increased by 22% at the age of 28 days, including 2% of ns dosage. furthermore, they also noticed that ns addition did not influence the shape of the crack patterns, and the plane of failure of the slag-based gpc specimens nearly falls at the middle of the specimens. this may be argued to the more homogeneity of the slag-based gpc [27]. similar results of improving flexural strength of gpc can also be observed in other studies even though a different dosage of ns was used [26]. in contrast, fewer researchers [18, 24] have found that adding ns to the gpc reduces its flexural strength. for example, nuaklong et al. [24] found that the flexural strength of gpc mixtures with 1, 2, and 3% ns content was lowered compared to non-ns concrete compositions. nano-silica dosages of 1, 2, and 3%, for example, increased flexural strength by 28 percent, 32 percent, and 34 percent, at the age of 28 days, respectively. this finding can be discussed in the same way as the splitting tensile strength section was explained, and in addition, the incorporation of ns made the gpc more brittle due to strengthening the interfacial transition zone between the aggregates and the binder paste [24]. table 3: variation of the flexural strength of gpc incorporating different dosages of ns at 28 days authors ns% flexural strength (mpa) çevik et al., 2018 [18] 0 4.8 3 4.5 nuaklong et al., 2020 [24] 0 5.3 1 3.8 2 3.6 3 3.5 nuaklong et al., 2018 [26] 0 3.6 1 4.3 2 3.8 3 3.6 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 72 emad et al., 2018 [27] 0 6.2 2 7.84 rabiaa et al., 2020 [31] 0 4.6 2 5 4 6 6 5.8 8 5.6 5. conclusion the thorough literature analysis of the impact of ns addition on the resh and mechanical properties of gpc shows that the addition of the most commonly employed nanomaterial inclusion of ns to the gpc can: a. fill the pores and voids into the nanoscale, accelerate the chemical reactions among the ingredients of the gpc mixture, participate in the pozzolanic reactions, and the interfacial transition zones between the aggregate and binder pastes are improved. b. improve the workability of the gpc mixture up to an appropriate dosage of ns content, and then, reduction in the slump flow was recorded. c. improve the gpc's compressive strength up to an optimum dosage of the ns content. d. improve the gpc's splitting tensile strength up to an optimum dosage of the ns content. e. improve the flexural strength of the gpc up to an optimum dosage of the ns content. f. produce an eco-friendly and sustainable gpc. reference [1] abdullah, wrya a., hemn unis ahmed, younis m. alshkane, darko b. rahman, ashkan o. ali, and shko s. abubakr. 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"mechanical properties of cement mortar by using polyethylene terephthalate fibers." in 5th national and 1st international conference on modern materials and structures in civil engineering, iran (islamic republic of iran). 2016. [52] standard test method for flexural strength of concrete (using simple beam with third-point loading), astm c78-16. [53] standard test method for flexural strength of concrete (using simple beam with center-point loading), astm c293-16 [54] the european standard bs en12390-5, testing on hardned concrete: part-5: flexural strength of test specimens, 2009. [55] naskar, sudipta, and arun kumar chakraborty. "effect of nano materials in geopolymer concrete." perspectives in science 8 (2016): 273-275. 85 kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.14 received: 02 may 2018 | accepted: 14 june 2018 effect of low dose aspirin in low risk pregnant ladies with abnormal uterine artery doppler results, and the evaluation of maternal and fetal outcomes: a randomized clinical trial parzhin jalal ali chro najmaddin fattah obstetrics and gynecology department obstetrics and gynecology department sulaimani maternity teaching hospital school of medicine/university of sulaimani sulaimani/iraq sulaymaniyah/iraq parzheen.jalal@gmail.com chrofattah@yahoo.co.uk abstract: this study aimed to identify the effect of low dose aspirin administration in low risk pregnant ladies who have abnormal uterine artery doppler results. patients and methods: a randomized clinical trial was performed on 50 pregnant ladies (≥16 weeks of gestation) in sulaymaniyah maternity teaching hospital during january 2017 to january 2018. the participants were randomly enrolled into two groups; the participants in the first group were given 100 mg of aspirin tablet each but the other group was given nothing. results: preeclampsia was significantly (p-value of <0.001) less in the aspirin group as compared to the other group (16% and 40% respectively). the pulsatility index (pi) was not significantly different in both the groups (p-value = 0.69), but resistance index (ri) was significantly lower in the aspirin group (p-value of <0.001). conclusion: doppler study of the uterine artery at 16 weeks or higher in low risk pregnant women appears to be useful as a screening test and low dose of aspirin therapy at early stage of pregnancy will decrease the incidence of preeclampsia. keywords: aspirin, doppler ultrasonography, low risk pregnancy, preeclampsia, pulsatility index (pi), resistance index (ri). 1. introduction platelet lifespan was assessed by a non-radio isotopic method that involves measuring the serum concentration of thromboxane b2 (txb2). furthermore, this compound is the stable metabolite of thromboxane a2 (txa2), and is produced maximally by platelets during clotting. aspirin irreversibly acetylates the platelet cycle-oxygenase enzyme and this prevents thromboxane production [1]. this property of low-dose aspirin has been the rationale for its use as a therapy to decrease the occurrence of preeclampsia in at-risk women. furthermore, platelets have a very short lifespan and this may have been even shorter during pregnancies. in individuals with normal platelet lifespan, one low-dose aspirin tablet (75 mg) eliminated 50% of platelet function within 24 hours and 90% inhibition was achieved after the administration of a second low-dose aspirin tablet [2]. preeclampsia, that complicating 2-8% of all pregnancies, is a major cause of maternal morbidity [3]. moreover, it is a serious systemic condition and accounts for more than 50000 maternal deaths annually worldwide [4]. the origin of the disease is thought to be complex interaction of pregnancy including specific immunological and vascular adaptation, constitutional factor as well as dysfunctional trophoblastic development, and impaired placentation which is thought to occur between eight and 18 weeks of gestation [5]. preeclampsia is caused by the defect of fetal-maternal circulation which is associated with impaired trophoblastic invasion that leads to lack of adequate response of mother vessels to implantation [6]. uterine artery doppler screening is a screening program for prediction of preeclampsia. color flow mapping is used to identify vessels, either transabdominally at the apparent crossover with the external iliac artery, or transvaginally lateral to the uterine cervix at the level of the internal cervical os [7]. in addition, uterine artery impedance is affected by heart rate, antihypertensive drugs, menstrual cycle, and chronic hyperandrogenism in the polycystic ovarian syndrome. resistance to blood flow within the uteroplacental circulation is transmitted upstream to the uterine arteries and can be measured as an increased pulsatility index (pi) or resistance index (ri). uterine artery pi and ri values decrease with increasing gestational age, a change that is thought to be secondary to decrease in impedance in uterine vessels following trophoblastic invasion [8-9]. lowdose acetylsalicylic acid therapy inhibits thromboxane more than prostacyclin production, and thereby protects against vasoconstriction and pathologic blood coagulation in the placenta [10]. moreover, groups have investigated low-dose aspirin as a therapeutic intervention for preeclampsia, but the value of this treatment remains controversial. while some randomized controlled trials have shown no, or minimal, benefit from this intervention [11-13], recent meta-analyses have suggested that, provided treatment 86 is started at an early gestational age (< 16 weeks), there is a reduction in early-onset preeclampsia and that is associated with a reduction in the prevalence of perinatal death and morbidity [13]. low dose aspirin has shown benefits in very high risk population by reducing the incidence of preeclampsia for about 70% and intrauterine growth restriction by 50% [14]. aspirin does not, however, appear efficacious among low or moderate risk populations [15-16], although most patients who develop preeclampsia or intrauterine growth restriction are either nulliparous or multiparous without any relevant history. it is therefore essential to find a way to screen women who could benefit from preventive treatments. the uteroplacental artery doppler flow velocity waveform (uad) performed between 20 and 24 weeks of gestation has a good predictive value for intrauterine growth restriction and preeclampsia in general population, especially among nulliparous. it also has the advantage of being simple to perform, reproducible and non-invasive [17]. furthermore, three trials have tested aspirin administration against a placebo for women with abnormal uterine artery doppler results and two observed beneficial effects [18]. in this study, we want to know the effect of low dose aspirin on low risk pregnant women at the gestational age of 16 weeks or higher and who are with abnormal uterine artery doppler results. in addition, we also want to evaluate the maternal and fetal outcomes including prevention of intrauterine growth restriction and development of preeclampsia until 36 weeks of gestation. 2. patients and methods we performed a randomized clinical trial on 50 pregnant ladies and divided them into two groups; 25 women in each group. the first group was using 100 mg tablet of aspirin and the second group was using nothing. moreover, the study was performed in the sulaymaniyah maternity teaching hospital during january 2017 to january 2018. therefore, ethical approval was obtained from the scientific committee of the sulaymaniyah maternity teaching hospital. the inclusion criteria were all singleton prime and multigravida healthy low risk pregnant women with abnormal uterine artery doppler results at or after 16 weeks of gestation. moreover, the age of the participants ranged between 18 and 35 years old. furthermore, the exclusion criteria were twin pregnancy, pregnancy complicated by medical disease, past and current poor obstetrics history, past and current history of hypertension, gestational diabetes and other medical diseases. patients were selected based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria. furthermore, the objectives and implementation of the study was explained to all the participants and their written consents were obtained. then, the demographic features including maternal and gestational ages, parity and gravidity were recorded. gestational age was calculated based on the last menstrual period (lmp) and/or early ultrasound for all prime parous and multiparous women in addition to the routine prenatal ultrasound for the evaluation of the pregnancies. moreover, abdominal ultrasound was performed to evaluate uterine artery by using a sagittal view of the uterine cervical canal, including the internal os, and its location was identified. then, the transducer was moved slowly from one side to the other side and simultaneously color doppler was also used to identify the uterine artery on each side parallel to the surface of the cervix at the level of the internal os. pregnant women with abnormal findings in the uterine artery doppler were randomly enrolled into one of the two groups; patients in the first group were treated by 100 mg daily dose of aspirin till 36 weeks of gestation but the other group did not receive any drug. moreover, all the routine prenatal examinations including checking blood pressure and protein urea were examined in all the participants at or beyond 16 weeks of gestation. we used ibm spss statistics version 20 to calculate our data. moreover, a p-value of ≤0.05 was considered statistically significant, and a p-value of <0.001 as statistically very highly significant. 1. results the demographic characteristics of study population were summarized in (table1). table 1: demographic features of the participants with no significant difference between the groups variables aspirin group non-aspirin group pvalue age in year (mean ± sd) 28.2 ± 4.4 26.8 ± 3.8 0.73 bmi in kg/m 2 (mean ± sd) 23.8 ± 1.8 23.9 ± 1.2 0.63 primiparity (%) 7 (28%) 13 (52%) 0.25 multiparty (%) 18 (72%) 12 (48%) 0.25 number of pregnancy (mean ± sd) 2.4 ± 1.2 2 ± 1.2 0.26 systolic blood pressure in mmhg (mean ± sd) 122 ± 25.2 125.2 ± 26.2 0.29 diastolic blood pressure in mmhg (mean ± sd) 69.2 ± 12.6 79.2 ± 18 0.28 gestational age in week (mean ± sd) 38 ± 1.4 38.3 ± 1.3 0.71 bmi = body mass index; sd = standard deviation table 2: the outcomes of pregnancy in both groups. pregnancy outcomes aspirin group non-aspirin group pvalues mild pet 3 (12%) 7 (28%) <0.001 moderate pet 0 (0%) 1 (4%) <0.001 severe pet 1 (4%) 2 (8%) <0.001 iugr (pet) 1 (4%) 2 (8%) <0.001 iugr (normal) 0 (0%) 0 (%) <0.001 reduced liquor 1 (4%) 0 (0%) <0.001 fetal demise 0 (0%) 0 (0%) ─ iugr = intra-uterine growth retardation; pet = preeclampsia 87 table 3: the ultrasound outcome in both groups. ultrasound outcomes aspirin group (mean ± sd) non-aspirin group (mean ± sd) p-values pi (pet) 2.78 ± 0.32 2.9 ± 0.62 0.69 pi (normal) 1.39 ± 0.09 1.40 ± 0.14 0.69 ri (pet) 0.68 ± 0.01 0.69 ± 0.04 <0.001 ri (normal) 0.49 ± 0.04 0.52 ± 0.04 <0.001 pet = preeclampsia; pi = pulsatility index; ri = resistance index; sd = standard deviation. table 4: the fetal outcomes of both groups. fetal outcomes aspirin group non-aspirin group p-values infants' body weight (kg) (mean ± sd) (pet) 2.23 ± 1 2.3 ± 0.85 <0.001 infants' body weight (kg) (mean ± sd) (normal) 3.4 ± 0.42 3.4 ± 0.37 <0.001 fetal demise 0 (0%) 0 (0%) <0.001 apgar score (frequency) normal (10) 22 (88%) 20 (80%) <0.001 low 6 0 (0%) 1 (4%) 7 2 (8%) 2 (8%) 8 1 (4%) 2 (8%) admission to ncu for > 6 hours (frequency) 1 (4%) 2 (8%) <0.001 kg = kilogram; ncu = neonatal care unit; pet = preeclampsia; sd = standard deviation table 5: the labor outcomes of both groups. labor outcomes aspirin group non-aspirin group p-values nvd 12 (48%) 9 (36%) <0.001 c/s 13 (52%) 16 (64%) <0.001 c/s = cesarean section; nvd = normal vaginal delivery 2. discussion preeclampsia is a serious disease for the health of the mothers and their babies, and low dose of aspirin during pregnancy may prevent it. there is no evidence of an increased incidence of low birth weight, intrauterine growth restriction (iugr) or prematurity following low dose aspirin exposure in utero. moreover, a meta-analysis suggested that initiation of treatment with low dose aspirin before 16 weeks of gestation in women at risk of preeclampsia may have a protective effect on the incidence of iugr, preterm delivery and perinatal death [19]. furthermore, no studies that investigated the incidence of low birth weight, iugr or prematurity were studied maternal aspirin use at or after 16 weeks of gestation without any current or previous risk factors. therefore, we performed a randomized clinical trial on pregnant women with low risk factors. a study showed that early initiation of aspirin (at 16 weeks of gestation) has a more pronounced effect on reducing preeclampsia and iugr as compared with studies that initiated aspirin at a later time during pregnancy [20]. the administration of 100 mg per day from aspirin during 16-36 weeks of gestation in our study was associated with significantly lower incidence of preeclampsia (table 2). in addition, there were significant differences between the groups regarding other pregnancy complication, or adverse fetal or neonatal outcome (table 2 and 4). the current study failed to observe medium to large effects of aspirin on trophoblastic flow resistance in women with evidence of defective invasion at first trimester of pregnancy as determined by an abnormal uterine artery doppler pi and ri (table 3). in our study, we could identify women at risk for the development of preeclampsia by detecting abnormal uterine artery doppler indices (high ri or the presence of diastolic notch either bilateral or unilateral) between 16-24 weeks of gestation. in addition, we also found a significant reduction in the occurrence of preeclampsia by giving low dose of aspirin (table 3). the current results showed significant impact of low dose aspirin therapy on iugr (table 2) and the birth weight (table 4). a multicenter randomized controlled trial showed that there was no justification for screening with uterine artery doppler in a low risk population [21]. furthermore, a study on low risk women at 11-14 weeks of gestation demonstrated bilateral notching in 55% and they concluded that it is unlikely for uterine artery doppler to be useful for the screening of pregnancy complications [22]. however, if we only selected high risk pregnant women, the results may be different, but when we compared our results with that in the literature, we found considerable disparities. the latter may be attributed to many factors like the time of recruitment of the patients (at 16 weeks of gestation or higher) and the low risk level of the pregnant women. among five randomized trials [7, 9-10, 15-16] that evaluated the use of aspirin therapy in high risk patients, four of them [7, 9, 10, 16] showed a tendency toward beneficial effects although the sample size was small in three of them [7, 9, 16]. moreover, a meta-analysis of aspirin therapy on preventing preeclampsia following uterine artery doppler study in the second trimester also showed beneficial results [23]. vainio et al. studied uterine artery by doppler study as early as 12-14 weeks of 88 gestation and they found that it is a useful method to depend on [24]. furthermore, harrington et al. in two studies [25-26] showed that there were differences in uterine and umbilical artery doppler blood flow indices at 12-16 weeks of gestation, and bilateral notching was associated with a 22-fold increase in the odds of developing preeclampsia. the problems with most doppler screening study is its low positive predictive values and as gestational age advances, the specificity and positive predictive value increases significantly, but the sensitivity decreases [27]. in our study, we preferred to postpone the study of the uterine artery to at or after 16 weeks of gestation because we believed that placental implantations will be completed by 14-18 weeks of gestation as shown in other studies [28-29]. thus, the expected changes in the uterine artery (from high resistant to a low resistant) would occur within this period and not before. by this, we can have a better selection of the patients and an increase in the specificity of the screening test. 3. conclusion doppler study of the uterine artery at 16 weeks of gestation or higher in low risk pregnant women appears to be useful as a screening test for preeclampsia and iugr. additionally, commencing low dose aspirin therapy for such patients in their early stage of pregnancy will decrease the incidence of severe preeclampsia and also delays its onset. the impact of aspirin therapy on reducing or eliminating the possibility of iugr is questionable, therefore, this test and aspirin therapy combination should now be considered in clinical practice for low risk pregnant women too. references [1] p. patrignani, p. filabozzi, c. patrono. 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[9] j. lefebvre, s. demers, e. bujold et al. “comparison of two different sites of measurement for transabdominal uterine artery doppler velocimetry at 11–13 weeks,” ultrasound in obstetrics and gynecology, vol. 40, no. 3, pp. 288–292, 2012. [10] b. m. sibai, r. mirro, c.m. chesney, c. leffler. "low-dose aspirin in pregnancy," obstetrics & gynecology. vol. 74, pp. 551–557, 1989. [11] italian study of aspirin in pregnancy. "low-dose aspirin in prevention and treatment of intrauterine growth retardation and pregnancy-induced hypertension," lancet. vol. 341, pp. 396–400, 1993. [12] s. caritis, b. sibai, j. hauth et al. "low-dose aspirin to prevent preeclampsia in women at high risk," n engl j med, vol. 338, pp. 701–705, 1998. [13] c. k. h. yu, a. t. papageorghiou, m. parra, r. palma dias, k. h. nicolaides. 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[29] t. y. khong, f. de wolf, w. b robertson, i. brosens. "inadequate maternal vascular response to placentation in pregnancies complicated by pre-eclampsia and by small-for-gestational age infants," br j obstet gynaecol. vol. 93, pp. 1049-1059, 1986.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 1 | june 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.1.2 biochar and nitrogen fertilizers effects on growth and flowering of garland chrysanthemum (chrysanthemum coronarium l.) plant abstract: this experiment was conducted to study the effect two types of biochar and nitrogen fertilizers amendment, with different rates on morphological attributed of garland chrysanthemum plant. two different types of biochar (bt) eucalyptus biochar (eb), and salix biochar (sb), four biochar ratesbr (at 0, 1, 2 and 3%), and three rates of nitrogen fertilizernr (0, 140 and 280 mg kg -1 ) with three replications on plant growth were used in this research. the (chrysanthemum coronarium l.) was used as a test plant to study some morphological characters including: plant height (ph) cm, fresh weight per plant (fwp) g, number of leaves per plant (nlp), stem diameter (sd) cm, flower diameter (fd), number of flower per plant (nfp) and number of flower bud per plant (nfbp) cm. the double barrel design was used for making biochar by pyrolysis system. the experiment was conducted in the plastic house condition. the results showed that biochar applications at a rate of 3%, significantly increase ph, fwp, nlp, sd, fd, and nfbp, while nfp increased only at 2% biochar application and decrease at the 3% rate. the application of 280 mg kg -1 of nitrogen significantly increased all of the parameters. the plant grown in the soils amended with the eb were higher than grown in the soils of the sb. in addition, the best value in the study was observed were biochar combined with nitrogen fertilizers. keywords: biochar, pyrolysis system, garland chrysanthemum, nitrogen fertilizer, infertile soil. 1. introduction soilless media is used for the growth of most of the potted ornamental plants and peat is one of the soilless media component that traditionally used with a higher range [1]. due to economic and environmental issue, recently farmers try to find an alternative to peat, vermiculite, perlite, and sand and among those products peat was largely applied in the production of ornamental potted plants [2, 3]. most of the media blends that are available in the markets have inaccurate properties such as acidity (ph), the content of soluble salt, less nutrient amount and low cation exchange capacity (cec) and these properties reduce the performance of the plant [4, 5]. due to the above mentioned problems and in order to increase the production of ornamental plants an organic enhancement is required for biochar. biochar is basically charcoal used for agricultural purposes, which produced from thermo-chemical decomposition of organic matter changed to solid which is carbon-rich solid with little or without o2 conditions at temperatures between 300 and 1000°c by pyrolysis system, and contains some macro and micro-nutrients [6]. carbon from biochar can be stabilized in the soil for extensive times, probably hundreds of years [7, 8]. particle size distribution of biochar are differences based on the methodology and temperature of the production. when the temperature is high a quick pyrolysis occur and leads the production of fine-textured biochar with a short burn time while, slow pyrolysis with extended burn period cause the production of a coarse-textured biochar [9]. therefore, biochar applications to soil have been shown to sequester c [7, 10, 11] , increase plant growth in a variety of soils by improving soil chemical characteristics (e.g., nutrient retention, nutrient availability); physical characteristics (e.g, bulk density, porosity, cation exchange capacity cec, and water holding capacity), and biological properties [12, 13]. several studies reported that the total carbon [14], total nitrogen, available phosphorus, and exchangeable cations (ca, mg, na, and k) increases with the addition of biochar to soil [15] , and the soil ph value and some macro-and micronutrient increasing in the soil after the application of biochar with compost [16]. however, biochar has been reported to both rises [13] and decreases [17] plant growth and yield but there have been few studies recording the effect of biochar on ornamental growth. the origin of annual herbaceous weed chrysanthemum coronarium l. returns back to, japan, china and philippines [18, 19, 20, 21]. this plant have a big white and yellow crown, and the ability of the plant to adapt to local growing conditions make it easy to produce and spread and it is the most common flower growing in gardens and parks. ‘coronarium’, is a variety of ornamental plant chrysanthemum which commonly known as garland chrysanthemum or crown daisy chrysanthemum. it is reported that the c. coronarium ornamental plant and its other species are used as an edible food in asian countries like china and japan, in addition it has biological characteristic such as antioxidant activity, antibacterial, and antifungal characteristic [22]. mariwan a. ali ornamental plant dept, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, iraq mariwan.ali@spu.edu.iq ardalan j. mjeed ornamental plant dept. sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq ardalan.majeed@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 1 | june 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.1.2 the aim of this research was to illustrate the influence of two types of biochar and nitrogen fertilizers amendment, with different rates on morphological attributed of garland chrysanthemum plant. 2. materials and methods the present research was carried out during growing season 2015-2016 under plastic house condition in the ornamental plant department, technical institute of bakrajo, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, kurdistan region/iraq. the effects of two types of biochar and nitrogen applications on chrysanthemum plant growth were tested by using four different biochar rate (0, 1, 2, and 3 % biochar (w/w)), three different nitrogen rates (0,140 and 280 mg kg -1 nurea) with three replications. nitrogen fertilizers was added as urea in two split application to each pots, which were 20 days after planting. the feedstock material used for the biochar production was (eucalyptus camaldulensis and salix babylonia) by pyrolysis system. while it was not statistically tested, there were differences for the measured chemical and physical properties among the different biochars. the two types of biochar were alkaline, this is due to the formation of ash during the pyrolysis process, which typically consists of ca, mg, k and na carbonates [23]. the amount of total carbon and p was very high in the eb than sb, and the eb contained high amounts of, k, mn, cu, and zn compared with the sb (table1). table 1: the concentration of macro-micronutrient and ph of (eucalyptus (eb), and salix (sb)) biochar. biochar type p c k ca mg na zn mn cu ph mg/kg -1 % mg kg -1 mg kg -1 eb 138.34 56 1299.53 6345.09 567.23 179.76 8.34 18.23 0.78 9.12 sb 111.23 42 1385.15 4217.89 344.78 90.48 5.66 17.62 0.41 9.21 2.1. double barrel design for making biochar the double barrel design consists of a barrel in which biomass is placed, then as lightly larger barrel is placed over an inner barrel, and a cover (or lid) is placed on top, and it’s a small scale. the lid has a chimney that helps control fair flow and gives heat more time to break down volatiles, resulting in a cleaner burn. the bottom section where the smaller barrel and the larger external barrel contact each other creates a seal to prevent oxygen entering but also acts as a pressure valve to allow gases to escape. flammable gases and aerosols combust near the base of the inside barrel that further fuels the fire. this breaks down environmentally harmful gases such as methane (ch) and carbon monoxide (co). 2.2. soil and biochar analysis the soil used in the study represent the dominant soil type of the region with low organic matter content, low alkaline ph, low available zn and p content, plant available k was also not at an adequate level and high available ca and mg content ( table 2). therefore, biochar applications had potentials to improve soil fertility by improving the availability of especially nitrogen, phosphorous, and zinc, and the other micronutrients. the acidity (ph) and (ec) of soil and biochar were measured in h2o suspension by using a glass electrode calomel electrode system [24]. the walkley-black method was used for determining organic matter (o.m) in soil samples [25]. the total organic carbon content of biochar was determined by dry ash method with 600°c with 3 hours muffle furnace ignition [25].uv-vis spectrophotometer was used to determine the concentration of phosphorus in soil by using a solution of 0.5 n sodium bicarbonate nahco3 at ph 8.5 [26]. table 2: the properties of the soil that used in this research: parameters value ph 7.65 ec (mmhos/cm) 2.0 caco3 (%) 24.5 o.m. (%) 2.30 ca (mgkg -1 ) 4521 mg (mgkg -1 ) 223.2 na (mgkg -1 ) 48.1 k (mgkg -1 ) 203 p (mgkg -1 ) 4.07 fe (mgkg -1 ) 9.22 zn (mgkg -1 ) 1.43 cu (mgkg -1 ) 2.60 mn (mgkg -1 ) 27.2 the dtpa-tea extraction method that was developed by [27] for extracting metal micronutrients in neutral and calcareous soils were used for measuring plant available (mn, cu, fe, and zn) and for macronutrient another solution was prepared after extracting the soil samples by ammonium acetate (1n nh4oac) at ph 7.0 [28] for assayed (ca, mg, k and na) by using perkin elmer 3110 atomic absorption spectrophotometer (aas). the total lime (caco3 %) in soil was evaluated by using scheibler calcimeter method [29]. 2.3. plant characteristics all of the green part of the plants was harvested three months after planting to determine the morphological characteristic such as, plant height (ph) cm, fresh weight per plant (fwp) g, number of leaves per plant (nlp), stem diameter (sd) cm, flower diameter (fd), number of flower per plant (nfp) and number of flower bud per plant (nfbp) cm. finally, the plants were removed from the soil with attention then washed with normal water. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 1 | june 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.1.2 2.4. statistical analysis experiment was performed by randomized complete block design (rcbd) with three replications was used in this study to test main and interaction effects. the data sets were analyzed with (ibm spss advanced statistics version 20.0.0). for direct comparison of treatments, duncan’s’ multiple comparison tests were used. analysis of variance (anova) was used for testing the main effect, the interaction of all variables; biochar type, biochar rates and nitrogen rates for all treatments at statistical significance level (p ≤ 0.05). the figures were designed using graph pad prism version 6.0 software. 3. results and discussion the results of analysis of variance (anova) for the different biochar types, biochar rates, nitrogen rates, and their interactions with some measured morphological characters of garland chrysanthemum plant are given in (table 3). the main effects of all treatments were significant for the all morphological attributed measured for garland chrysanthemum plant except for nlp, and it was non-significantly affected by biochar types. the effects of the interaction of biochar type and the rate for the ph, fd, and the interaction effect of biochar type and nitrogen rate for the fd, and the interaction effect of biochar rates and nitrogen rate for the ph, nfbp, and the interaction effect among the biochar type and the rate, and the nitrogen rate for the ph, nlp, and nfp of the garland were not significant. increasing the nitrogen rate increased all the morphological attributes of the garland chrysanthemum plant (table 4). application of n together with the biochar positively affected plant growth [13, 30]. the results further confirm that biochar as soil improvement can sufficiently use the nutrient amounts by carrying ammonium ions in the soils and preventing the nitrification of nitrogen [31]. the results of the previous study are in agreement with [32], observed morphological attributes such as the height of the plant, the leaves number, the flower number for each plant and the yield of the flower for each hectare when applied with the organic material at the rate of 10 t ha -1 and suggesting an amount of npk in china aster. this result in the study agreed with [33], which reported that application of nitrogen 200 kg ha was significantly raised the height of the plant and the branches number of each plant in marigold. increasing the biochar rate also increased the all morphological attributes in the garland chrysanthemum plant (table 5). the biochar applications increased nfbp significantly compared to the control (0% biochar). the nfp was highest at the 2% application but decreased at the highest biochar application rate (3%). based on estimated marginal mean value, the effect of biochar types for morphological attributes of garland chrysanthemum plant were compared together are given in (table 6). in our experiments, all morphological attributed of the garland chrysanthemum plant grown in the soils amended with the eb were higher than grown in the soils of the sb. similarly, the maximum diameter of the flower with the application of bio fertilizers along with recommended dose of npk was reported by [34] in annual chrysanthemum. the amount of nutrients and c % of eb higher than sb due to high lignin content in biomass of eb (table 1.) the biomass characteristic of the feedstock was essential due to its effect on the outcome pyrolysis products [35]. table 3: the anova results of the treatments and their interactions for the measured morphological attributes of garland chrysanthemum plant. parameters plant height (cm) fresh weight per plant (g) no. of leaves per plant stem diameter (cm) flower diameter (cm) no. of flowers per plant no. of flower buds per plant source df f-value sig. f-value sig. f-value sig. f-value sig. f-value sig. f-value sig. f-value sig. biochar type (bt) 1 8.064 0.007 9.486 0.003 2.195 0.145 9.286 0.004 71.262 0.000 50.043 0.000 6.933 0.011 biochar rates (br) 3 119.896 0.000 48.817 0.000 34.143 0.000 65.455 0.000 62.336 0.000 21.903 0.000 9.657 0.000 nitrogen rates (nr) 2 90.330 0.000 80.993 0.000 54.172 0.000 93.830 0.000 21.128 0.000 48.868 0.000 24.664 0.000 bt * br 3 1.701 0.179 2.960 0.041 9.714 0.000 6.654 0.001 1.254 0.301 4.240 0.010 5.509 0.002 bt * nr 2 3.184 0.050 6.078 0.004 5.608 0.006 12.254 0.000 2.416 0.100 11.843 0.000 4.660 0.014 br* nr 6 1.875 0.090 13.862 0.000 3.695 0.004 11.387 0.000 3.519 0.006 3.271 0.009 1.939 0.093 bt * br * nr 6 1.223 0.149 10.792 0.000 1.329 0.263 6.110 0.000 2.232 0.056 1.771 0.125 2.392 0.042 the raised amount of ash which is an inorganic element of the feedstock outcomes caused reduction the content of c in the out coming biochar [36]. the raised amount of holocellulose: the ratio of the lignin that contented in the biomass caused increasing the product of volatiles and caused reduction in the char product [35].in addition high lignin content in the feedstock biomass increases the yield of biochar [37]. in a few studies, biochar used for ornamental plant growth. many overviews have presented verification to improve soil productivity by biochar [12]. table 4: the effect of the nitrogen rates on some measured morphological attributes of garland chrysanthemum plant. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 1 | june 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.1.2 nitrogen rate (mg/kg -1 ) plant height (cm) fresh weight per plant (g) no. of leaves per plant stem diameter (cm) flower diameter (cm) no. of flowers per plant no. of flower buds per plant 0 83.916c 59.458c 146.292b 1.330c 4.736c 4.464c 14.132c 140 100.458b 78.042b 230.458a 2.216b 5.363b 7.124b 18.492b 280 108.00a 84.333a 226.750a 2.666a 5.670a 9.000a 24.681a *means in the same column followed by the same symbol are not significantly different at p ≤ 0.05 level based on duncan test. table 5: the effect of the biochar rates on some measured morphological attributes of garland chrysanthemum plant. biochar rate (%) plant height (cm) fresh weight per plant (g) no. of leaves per plant stem diameter (cm) flower diameter (cm) no. of flowers per plant no. of flower buds per plant 0 75.278d 57.444c 137.500c 1.316d 3.893c 4.720c 13.560b 1 95.277c 74.277b 209.111b 1.811c 5.425b 7.173b 20.280a 2 107.166b 82.390a 224.944ab 2.311b 5.682ab 9.000a 22.397a 3 112.111a 81.667a 233.111a 2.844a 6.020a 6.563b 20.171a *means in the same column followed by the same symbol are not significantly different at p ≤ 0.05 level based on duncan test. table 6: the effect of the biochar types on some measured morphologic attributes of garland chrysanthemum plant. biochar types plant height (cm) fresh weight per plant (g) no. of leaves per plant stem diameter (cm) flower diameter (cm) no. of flowers per plant no. of flower buds per plant eucalyptus (eb) 99.583a 76.500a 206.694a 2.194a 5.757a 8.194a 20.722a salix (sb) 95.333b 71.389b 195.639b 1.947b 4.753b 5.528b 17.474b *values represent based on estimated marginal mean. duncan’s multiple comparison tests indicated that the all morphological attributed of the garland chrysanthemum plants grown in the soils amended with eb with the different application of nitrogen better than sb. in the unfertilized treatment, the ph had statistically increased by increasing the biochar rate and gets the high value at 3% (105.333) cm followed at 2% (92.333) cm and 1% (82.333)cm over 0 % of biochar rate, although maximum increases (122.667)cm on ph was obtained in the fertilized treatment with n-280 mg kg -1 at 3% of biochar followed at 2% ( 118.333)cm and %1(109.667) over the 0% (84.000) cm (fig1 a). the fwp in the unfertilized treatments was increased at 2% (70.000) gm and decline (59.667) gm was observed at 3% rate then increases (63.000) gm at 1% and decreases (43.333) gm at 0% of biochar, while in the fertilized treatment with n-140 mg kg -1 the fwp statistically was increased at 3% (109.333) gm followed at 2% (89.000) gm and at 1% (77.667) gm over the 0% of biochar (58.667) gm (fig1 b). in the fertilized treatment n-140 mg kg -1 statistically the nlp increased by increasing the biochar rate ( 351.000, 292.000, and 228.333) respectively over the control (142.667), in addition the nlp statistically increases by increasing the biochar rate in the unfertilized treatment (192.000, 166.000, and 128.667) over the control (93.667) (fig1 c). when the soil fertilized with n-280 mg kg -1 the sd significantly increases at 3% rate (5.100) cm over the 0% rate (1.533) cm, and statistically there were no differences between 1, and 2% rates (2.900) cm, however in the unfertilized treatment the sd rising by increases of biochar rate, but statically there was similar effect between 1, 2, and 3% rate was sawed (1.633) cm over the control (1.066) cm (fig1 d). the fd statistically there was no differences occur by increasing biochar rate (6.770) cm at 1%, 2%, and 3% in the fertilized treatment with n-280 mg kg -1 but higher than control or 0% biochar (5.233)cm, in the unfertilized treatment the fd statically increased by increasing biochar rate but there were no differences observed between 2%, and3% rate (6.170)cm followed at 1% (5.300)cm over the 0% biochar (3.370)cm (fig1 e).the nfp increased by increasing biochar rate in unfertilized treatment but statically there was similar effect between 1%, 2, and 3% rate was sawed (5.000) but higher than control (4.000), also in the fertilized treatment with n-280 mg kg -1 the nfp there was no liner relationship observed by utilized biochar rates, at 2% rate the nfp was (15.000) and decline (10.333) was observed at 3% then increases (12.333) at 1% and decreases (6.667) at 0% rate (fig1 f). finally the nfbp was higher (38.000) at 3% of biochar in fertilized treatment n-280 mg kg -1 and followed (30.000) at 1% rate then decreases (26.000) at 2% rate over the control (20.667), also the maximum nfbp was showed (16.000) at 1% rate in unfertilized treatment over the control (4.333) (fig1 g). volume xx, issue xx, month 2017 p-issn: 2411-7684 – e-issn: 2411-7706 doi: p la n t h e ig h t ( c m ) 0 1 % 2 % 3 % 0 5 0 1 0 0 1 5 0 n 2 8 0 m g k g 1 u n f e r t i l i z e d e u c a l y p t u s b i o c h a r + % b i o c h a r a a b d c b c d f lo w e r d ia m e t e r ( c m ) 0 1 % 2 % 3 % 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 n 2 8 0 m g k g 1 u n f e r t i l i z e d a a e u c a l y p t u s b i o c h a r + % b i o c h a r a a a b c b f r e s h w e ig h t p e r p la n t ( g ) 0 1 % 2 % 3 % 0 5 0 1 0 0 1 5 0 n 1 4 0 m g k g 1 e u c a l y p t u s b i o c h a r + % b i o c h a r u n f e r t i l i z e d a a b d c b c d n o . o f f lo w e r p e r p la n t 0 1 % 2 % 3 % 0 5 1 0 1 5 2 0 n 2 8 0 m g k g 1 u n f e r t i l i z e d a e u c a l y p t u s b i o c h a r + % b i o c h a r aa c a b d b n o . o f l e a v e s p e r p la n t 0 1 % 2 % 3 % 0 1 0 0 2 0 0 3 0 0 4 0 0 5 0 0 n 1 4 0 m g k g 1 u n f e r t i l i z e d e u c a l y p t u s b i o c h a r + % b i o c h a r a a d c d b c b n o . o f f lo w e r b u d p e r p la n t 0 1 % 2 % 3 % 0 1 0 2 0 3 0 4 0 5 0 n 2 8 0 m g k g 1 u n f e r t i l i z e d a e u c a l y p t u s b i o c h a r + % b i o c h a r a d d b c b c s t e m d ia m e t e r ( c m ) 0 1 % 2 % 3 % 0 2 4 6 n 2 8 0 m g k g 1 u n f e r t i l i z e d e u c a l y p t u s b i o c h a r + % b i o c h a r a a a b a c b b c d a b g f e figure 1. plant growth measurements (mean ± se) of garland chrysanthemum. measurements contain plant height (ph) cm, fresh weight per plant (fwp) g, number of leaves per plant (nlp), stem diameter (sd) cm, flower diameter (fd), number of flower per plant (nfp) and number of flower bud per plant (nfbp) cm. that figure illustrated the best interaction between biochar rates (0, 1, 2, and 3%), two types of biochar (eb, and sb), and three nitrogen rates (0, 140, and 280 mg kg -1 ), compare with non-fertilized treatment (unfertilized). the abbreviation (a) means the greatest effect on plant morphological attributed. volume xx, issue xx, month 2017 p-issn: 2411-7684 – e-issn: 2411-7706 doi: 4. conclusion this study has highlighted the importance of balanced application different rate of nitrogen fertilizers with four rates of two types of biochar in garland chrysanthemum plant. during the experiment, we observed that eucalyptus biochar had the greatest effect on vegetative plant growth, and generally 3% of biochar significantly was increased the morphological attributed of the plant over the control. based on these results, it was observed that nitrogen rate 280 mg kg -1 had major effects and increases (ph, fwp, nlp, sd, fd, nfp, and nfbp). finally, based on 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[28] p. a. helmke, d. l. sparks, “lithium, sodium, potassium, rubidium, and calcium,” in sparks, d.l., (eds.) methods of soil analysis, part 3, chemical methods, sssa. series number 5, madison, wi, p, 551–574, 1996. [29] r.h. loeppert, d.l. suarez, “carbonate and gypsum,” in d.l. sparks (eds.) method of soil analysis: chemical methods. part 3. sssa. madison, wi, p, 437–475, 1996. [30] k. y. chan, l. van zwieten, i. meszaros, a. downie, and s. joseph, “agronomic values of greenwaste biochar as a soil amendment,” australian journal of soil research, 45 (8), 629634, 2007. [31] k. spokas, w. koskinen, j. baker, and d. reicosky, “impacts of woodchip biochar additions on greenhouse gas production and sorption/degradation of two herbicides in a minnesota 25 soil,” chemosphere, 77, 574–581, 2009. [32] nethra, “effect of organic and inorganic fertilizers on growth, yield and post-harvest life of china aster,” m. sc. (agri), thesis, univ. agric. sci., dharwad, 1999. [33] s. agarwal, n. agarwal, a. dixit, and r. n. yadav, “effect of n and ko on african marigold in chattisgarh region,” j. orna. hort., 5 (1), 86, 2002. [34] n. meshram, s. badge, s. a. bhongle, and s. d. khiratkar, “effect of bio-inoculants with graded doses of npk on flowering, yield attributes and economics of annual chrysanthemum,” journal of soils crops, 18 (1), 217-220, 2008. [35] e. m. hodgson, d. j. nowakowski, i. shield, a. riche, a. v. bridgwater, j. c. cliftonbrown, and i. s. donnisona, “variation in miscanthus chemical composition and implications for conversion by pyrolysis and thermo-chemical bio-refining for fuels and chemicals,” bioresource technology, 102 (3), 34113418, 2011. [36] j. w. gaskin, c. steiner, k. harris, k. c. das, and b. bibens, “effect of low temperature pyrolysis conditions on biochar for agricultural use,” transactions of the asabe, 51(6), 2061-2069, 2008. [37] j. e. amonette, s. joseph, “characteristics of biochar: microchemical properties,” in biochar for environmental management: science and technology (eds.).lehmann, j. and s. joseph. london, earth scan publications, pp: 33-52, 2009. acknowledgment the authors wish to express their deep thanks to to prof. dr. hüseyin dikici and research assist. ömer faruk demir for all of their assistance with the analysis in soil laboratory, university of kahramanmaras sutcu imam. i would like to thank my dear friends, especially assist. lec. yaseen n hassan assist. lec. rebin a qadir and for his kindness, help, and he supported me during my experiments. authors mariwan a. ali received his bsc in agriculture/ horticulture department from sulaimani university/ iraq in 1978; msc in agriculture / horticulture department, specialization ornamental plants and landscaping from sulaimani university/iraq in 2001. he is also head of ornamental plant department in bakrajo technical institute from sulaimani polytechnic university (spu) /iraq. ardalan j. mjeed received the bsc degree in agriculture / soil and water department from salahaddin university/ erbil / iraq in 2007; msc in bioengineering and sciences department, specialization soil and plant nutrition from kahramanmaras sutcu imam university / turki in 2014. he is also rapporteur of the department of ornamental plants in bakrajo technical institute from sulaimani polytechnic university (spu) /iraq.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 21 improving shared space to reduce traffic risk: analytic study of mawlawi street in sulaimani, iraq shava shirwan ibrahim agha sherko karim kader maruf engineering and projects department engineering and projects department presidency, sulaimani polytechnics university sulaimani, iraq presidency, sulaimani polytechnics university sulaimani, iraq shava.agha@spu.edu.iq sherko.kader@spu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 7 – issue 1june 2022 doi: 10.24017/science.2022.1.3 article history: received 29/11/2021 accepted 19/4/2022 in the traffic street design field, the shared space concept can help create appealing and attractive streets that solve people's problems, such as overcrowding, traffic jams, and congestion. this paper involves depicting the importance of the shared design based on the social model to reflect the people's movement in the street. the data were collected through monitoring and interviewing people who move down the city of sulaimani. the approach involves tackling different circumstances in overcrowded areas and a free flow of pedestrians in the city. the information collected is essential in making planning recommendations to improve the experience and the social wellbeing of the street pedestrians. then in the conclusion reviews the influences in this research and shows clearly the influences and recommendations for the shared spaces to draw more a flexibility street for pedestrians. keywords: shared space, traffic risk, safety, traffic furniture, pathway, sulaimani city, mwlawi street. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 22 1. introduction globally, there has been a trend increase of the shared traffic design among different countries specifically to solve openness, community issues, security, and blockage challenges. the originality of the ideas was from holland; however, it has been tailored for case specifications in most parts of western europe. the concept application of the idea is most suitable for the extension between rural and urban areas at different transport modes. despite the manipulations of some of the features, the shared space concept tends to have some common features such as no boundaries, traffic signs, or conventions controls that allow less decisionmaking dependency and freedom for multi-modal personal in the built environment. when walking or driving, both pedestrians and drivers will now not rely on the traffic lights, signals, and designated crosswalks, but they will be aided by the environment and communication with order users of the roads. clients easily understand this immediately when they enter the shared space environment and use hand caution and eye contact while crossing. significantly the concept has enabled improved safety of the pedestrian as well as the limit vehicle's speed. furthermore, the indicated zone has revealed a decreased blockage and traveled time due to the shared space usage. however, there is little knowledge to support this claim. also, the shared space designs have been revealed to be crucial in influencing an increase in the public intersections in corridors, crossing points, and district with the aid of the improved visual elements in the road. this depicts an area with a developed and strengthened financial market due to the increase of pedestrians and bicycle users on the roads [1]. 2. literature review many journals, reports, and books have been used to gather the literature review. numerous concepts and theories have been argued about in this part which turns around the life and work practices and relates to past studies. 2.1 shared space: shared design is typically an urban design with integration of urban engineering to minimize the segregation of the users of the roads such as vehicles, pedestrians, and street clients. it involves eradicating traditional street elements such as traffic lights, signs, street markings, curbs, and pedestrian barriers. typically, it makes the streets 'naked' due to the elimination of street furniture. understandably, shared space is not just about a design but also to relieve the streets from the fleets of cars that help improve the movement roles of cars with the social being. streets sharing have been used as a de facto mode of transport worldwide for a long time and are still important today. most engineers have thought of isolation of the vehicles and other street users for the public for a long time. with the progress of the security of the street, figure 1: shared space for pedestrians, cars and bikes [3] 2.2 historical background: as most designers consider their work, the shared space concept is not a new idea, but it has existed over time. most cities have informally been utilizing the concept of shared lanes for a long time worldwide. for instance, in ancient times, the european towns had features of the shared space, wherein the roads pedestrians were given the established priority and the vehicles presented gradually. the typically crowded and narrow streets are used to prevent the high speeding of the vehicles and mobilize the free pedestrian movement. the developing nation’s cities also reveal the shared space features with moderate utilization of the merchandised vehicles, city lanes expansion, and distinctive security culture [4]. from the 1950s, the idea that different street clients must be isolated has been expansively acknowledged globally. though this idea started being used as a standard over 50 years, its mobilization and use can be traced back to the recent time of motorization. 2.3 flow of users across the street: a crucial issue of the several shared design plans showered that there is high consideration of kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 23 the urgency of personal at the pedestrian check in the space to enable the users' flow. the plans require that the flow of the aid client can be maintained with a person standing that will prevent congestion and misunderstandings. for instance, in the liverpool mpr plot, there was a significant improvement in the informal crossing of the pedestrians. also, in some of the parts, the pedestrian movement was absent due to the used signals by the designers. this shows the improvements proof by the mixed priority route course plans, increasing the popularity of ye informal crossing movements, and the number of pedestrians in the signaled intersections either remain constant or increase. the noteworthy centre zone shows a variation of the pedestrians crossing at a particular point as some were increased, others significantly decreased [5]. 2.4 street furniture: the shared space design involves the reasoning that ‘less furniture is more’ that reduces road markings, signs, barriers, and signals as the credentials for people and traffic's effective and secure movement [6]. the street elements such as signs moved the roads to be less secure contrary to the intended purpose. understandably the many rules based on the signs significantly lead to the loss of the human capacity of being attentive, which is socially dependable conduct. as the use of drugs increases, the decline of personal responsibility becomes [7].the orderly evacuation of the civilization in town depends primarily on urban traffic planning [8]. therefore, urban traffic planning aims to control human conduct and make people behave a sense of social conduct as they utilize the roads as it energizes their conduct and responsibility in the streets. the earlier control of conduct by the engineers and authority tends to increase the misconduct of the individuals and foster dangerous and impolite behavior of the road users. in this case, mostly the pedestrians will look for the constricted focus where they will take advantage when the driver halts a street user. this resulted in the idea of avoiding pedestrians from crossing the road at each event. therefore, the introduction for the shared space served to evacuate the activity lights, signs, guardrails, street markings, and keeps through which all have shown negative consequences behavior and the road security [9]. 2.4.1 signs: the shared space idea considers removing signs to be one of its fundamental elements in designing the roads. it is argued that the presence of signs depicts that an engineer has not completed their construction work, and it is a disappointment [10]. currently, the street has a lot of signs; however, 70% of them have been disregarded by the road users [7]. too many signs in a road depict many stories to the users since it tasks the users to go ahead as fast as they can and not consider the importance of the surrounding environment. this is an unlawful message and may reduce the road's safety and thus many significant accidents [10]. the road signs have lost their original meaning, which is less significant as the specialist just erects them to avoid the obligation. however, the point of view is not radical, and a traffic engineer such as american traffic engineers have caution and highlight the dangers of having the roads signs [11]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 24 figure 2: the most advanced sign on street [12] 2.4.2 traffic lights: traffic rights removal is one of the fundamentals of the shared space requirement. though some people argue that it is unreasonable to remove traffic lights, its removal is accompanied by some significant advantages. typically, eliminating traffic lights is a crucial way to increase the safety of the street. the rationale might argue that traffic lights improve safety has been a misconception. the uk office of transport believes in eliminating the traffic lights to increase the safety of the road and street users [13]. traffic lights promote unsafe behavior. for instance, green lights typically trigger sense privilege, and therefore, the pedestrians tend to cross the road confidently, and the drive may cause controversies that lead to fatal accidents and injuries. the controversy and the space conflicts between the pedestrian and the driver usually do not end well additionally, the traffic lights arrangement may affect the driver's eye concentration. in some cases, the driver may see the illusion showing the absence of the pedestrians and other cars; therefore, increasing the danger of the crossing points. having traffic lights also creates significant blockages, pointless delays, and contaminations. no one uses green, but one must wait, which leads to time wastage and goes against the human senses. some individuals may feel there is no good reason for stopping based on the light when the road is safe to cross; the driver will utilize their gadgets as they gradually enter the crossing point if the driver has lights blackouts. engineers believe that introduction of the traffic lights requires extra personnel to assist the people in crossing the roads as modder man argues that treating individuals like a moron will continue to carry on like that [11]. figure 3: traffic lights to make the street safer [14] kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 25 2.4.3 pedestrian barrier: pedestrian barriers are fundamental tools for traffic engineers, and they include walls, guardrails, and railings typically used in the roads for security reasons. but similarly to traffic lights, these barriers go against human cognition and indeed cause dangers to the street for some significant reasons. studies typically show the treatment of people like creatures, and the fencing of the road is like the confinement of the individuals into a restricted area like cattle. therefore, using alternative means such as convoluted temporary paths may be smart choices for these security barriers that increase the unsafe ways [11]. moreover, the barriers involve limitations of the users to use crossing focuses; this means that the message is concerned to the drivers that they will only focus on the individual are hence will start speeding up. speeding up without considering the surrounding environment can lead to fatalities. barriers are also normally unsafe for cyclists since they find themselves stuck between the vehicles and the barriers. the irrational barriers, pedestrians' noncomfortability, and the careless drivers are significant ways of encouraging accidents. figure 4: pedestrian barriers [14] 2.4.4 road marking: road marking is another traffic zone feature that needs to be eliminated in the usage in the street since its uses trigger unsafe ways. for instance, wiltshire province board, uk, has considered eliminating the road's centerline [15]. the removal significantly decreased speeds by 5%, and the collision declined by 35% in the province from 17 to 11 [16]. the absence of the marked roads aids 40% of the drivers when they are confronting the incoming vehicles than those drivers using the lines as they cannot moderate the incoming vehicles [17]. also, the markings in the road increase the collisions rate due to the constant misunderstandings between the users. figure 5: road marking to aware the pedestrian [18] kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 26 2.4.5 kerbs: to construct a shared space on the roads, it is important to consider removing the kerbs. kerbs are typically the raised parts in the roads, and it has been in use in the roads for a long time allow pedestrian to be less demanding use of the carriageway's mud and soil [6]. sometimes, it shows the division between the different street clients. using guardrails as kerbs, for instance, to disconnect individuals make an individual own the space they occupy, and they will argue that they own it, which allows the drivers to gain the freedom to speed off. the use of barriers sends an illusion message to the drivers that they can disregard the attention on details in the road and mostly the individual they are transporting. by gaining such behaviors, the drivers will risk using the roads. shared space solves such challenges by ensuring individuals behave humanly, rather than utilizing caution signs, prohibition, and confinements to control the people on the road [11]. importantly, the use of traffic calming signs and devices should be avoided. however, it is important to consider socially supporting ways that enable people to behave with enhanced humanity. however, better ways that are non-versatile should be adopted. removal of such components helps enhance the streets users in socialism and build relationships, which is the critical success of the shared spaces [19]. a: b: figure 6: street kerbs for making different level [18] 2.5 proportion of pedestrians moving freely: the primary aim of most shared spaces is to mobilize and empower pedestrian development. most routine formats use the kerbs and the pedestrian barriers in controlling the movement of pedestrians; such control of movement normally displays physical and mental abstractions of the street users. therefore, reducing such a barrier is believed to have brought pedestrian liberation into life, as demonstrated in some of the few case studies. within the sampling area of station street in tidworth, some pedestrians are utilizing the desired lines to cross. the qualitative research depicts that the development opportunity was popular among pedestrians, including old people with mobility challenges enjoying removed kerbs. the following shows how pedestrians are flexible in development as they are affected by traffic speed and flow. some considerations were made for the research that includes actual speed and flow of traffic and the pedestrian wit preference to use the road crossing than the designated passengers’ ways; the study excluded the transport vehicles:  traffic with less than 30mph was over 50 vehicles in an hour.  traffic with speeds less than 25mph, were over 100 vehicles per hour  traffic flow with less than 20mph was more than 200 vehicles per hour in a place where the requirement was met, it is evident that the pedestrian ends to move in unexpected ways. the york data revelation does not counterattack the shared space methods and cannot show the accruing benefits when all the conditions for the free space are accomplished [5]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 27 2.6 space available to pedestrians: there is no guarantee that the pedestrian will utilize all the access roads. the road's readiness to be involved and the vehicular traffic impacts determine the use by the pedestrians. in other words, the pedestrian will only use the available space. the case studies surveys show differences and increments in the physical space accessible by a pedestrian. though kerbs normally create space for pedestrians to use, there is a challenge in keeping up the width of the carriageway. case studies show that pedestrians like the idea of adding more spaces. this can be achieved through extensions of the footway width despite the challenge of vehicle moving contemplations. additionally, the level surface planning facilitates the overcoming of the challenges of the movement and makes the street width aggregated, hence avoiding carriageway designation for the vehicle. the effective changes will be in line with traffic speed and flow. figure 7: space for pedestrians [20] 2.7 the benefits of shared spaces: there are three type shared spaces benefits that are: 2.7.1safe and security: people face variety of dangers within the urban environment crimes, road brutality, acts of terrorism, quick moving vehicles, common disasters/phenomena, and inconspicuous issues such as airs prolusion and water defilement. in a few parts of the world, the dangers of normal disasters-earthquakes, surges, volcanic ejectionsare ordinary concerns to be tended to within the plan of buildings and settlements. to a few degree building procedures and innovation permit such issues to be overseen and the resultant dangers diminished. other threats – genuine or envisionedapparently proceed to extend. this area bargains mainly with crime, safety and security and essentially their relationship to the public realm. road/pedestrian security. security relates to the protection of oneself once family and companions and individual and communal property. need of security, discernments of lack of security and fear of victimization are dangers both to the user of the open domain and to the creation of superior places. making a sense of security and safety is, in this way, a fundamental requirement of effective urban design [21]. 2.7.2 fear and victimization: the event that individuals select not to use a specific place or environment since, at best they feel awkward there and at most exceedingly bad they are afraid and feel risky, the open domain is ruined. such evasion could be a result of fear of certain situations as well as fears as specific occurrences. many people, for example, are uncertain approximately or dreadful of certain parts of shared spaces, such as pedestrian’s subways, dull rear ways and ranges that are left or swarmed with the off-base kind of individuals. fear of victimization (instead of real levels of crime) is regularly the driver of moves to kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 28 private’s portion of the public realm, isolating communities within the process [22]. this privatization ordinarily deciphers in to specific control of certain psychological militants or spaces through the use of diverse implies of isolation and segregation, such as physical remove, dividers, doors and fence or other, less visible obstructions to shut out and prohibit the exterior world and its seen dangers and challenges additionally by implies of dynamic policing methodologies and surveillance cameras. 2.7.3 crime: contemplations of security are related to concerns almost crime. crime is around guilty parties and offenses security approximately casualties and fear of victimization. in open space it is frequently disorderly instead of necessarily criminal behavior that's complicated. consequently, it is critical to recognize between criminal and messy behavior. common issues in open space are jumbled conduct and incivilities:  disorderly conduct: characterizes clutter as a (condition coming about performance which consisting on area, while nearby conventions hostile in infringement of anticipation on behalf of regularity with peacetime in a public) thus, clutter by and large alludes moreover to disorderly conduct [23].  incivilities: inciting uneasiness and dread, characterize incivilities as (low level breaches of community measures that flag a disintegration of customarily acknowledged standards and values) [21].  research aim: the most point of this study is arrangement in inventive traffic extend with another process of open space wherever traffic now not ruled the surroundings or maybe, adjusted the situation out by extra capacities. also examine the pedestrian and shop owners of mawlawi road and diagram the challenges and issues for improving planning of open space for which pedestrian and his environment were taken as the basis. research aim: the most point of this study is arrangement in inventive traffic extend with another process of open space wherever traffic now not ruled the surroundings or maybe, adjusted the situation out by extra capacities. also examine the pedestrian and shop owners of mawlawi road and diagram the challenges and issues for improving planning of open space for which pedestrian and his environment were taken as the basis. 3. case study and rsearch methods 3.1 case study (mawlawi street): the raped financial development of iraq after the war in 2003 made the citizens more dependent on private cars coming about in challenges and risky environment for walking. mawlawi street is full of activity and popular commercial area found in the city center of sulaimani in iraq. it can be considered as the most considered that interfaces the city center and historical area to the public park and salm street. the width of mawlawi street is 15m and it is nearly 1 km long. moreover, it is the entry of the city center and chronicled locale in sulaimani. there are distinctive sorts of activities on both sides of the road, including hotels, green groceries, retail shops, food courts, book shops as well as informal activities such as sellers and vendors. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 29 figure 8: mapping of sulaimani with different quatter [24] the lack of proficient public transportation has made individuals more dependent on private cars. moreover, after 2003 most of the private houses around mawlawi street were bought by traders who have presently demolished the houses and changed over them to commercial buildings. in this way, lack of residential function around the road decreased security, particularly at night time. more imperatively, the unpleasant quality of the built environment in such historical street has made the road inactive at all times of day including the evening. in spite of being the most and busiest commercial way, the road is presently awkward for strolling affecting pedestrians and guests not utilize the road for walking, fun and pleasure during their free time. subsequently, the main essential point is to progress the safety level of this commercial street by concentering primarily on the design and arrangement of streetscape components [25]. [27] figure 9: mawlawi street [26] kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 30 figure 10: main gate of mawlawi street figure 11: traditional shops on mawlawi street a b figure 12: traditional sweet shop of the sulaimani city in mawlawi street kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 31 a b figure 13: some green pots on the mawlawi street’s pathway (a & b) the lack of greenery on this place enhances the government to put some greenery pots for revivals the street. which is helpful for cleaning the area from the air pollution because of having many cars. a b figure 14: pedestrian crossing areas (a & b) the lack of the signs and unobvious street paint of the area made the pedestrian confuse where to cross the street; in the same time, it is difficult for drivers where to stop for pedestrian to cross the street. a b c kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 32 figure 15: the materials of the street became old which is unsafe for cars figure 16: the lack of benches made the pedestrian to sit on the greenery pot’s edge for relaxing 3.2 research method: in order to advance shared spaces, it is critical to decide those basic physical factors that impact the pedestrian. this study employed the mixed-method approach counting quantitative and qualitative information. qualitative survey considered of direct perception and interview, though quantitative information’s were collected through questionnaire. the interview result was arranged within 30 shop owners who are working in the right place (mawlawi street). they were inquired issues approximately the quality, chance, security with risk of the area, street qualities plus going through surroundings area. these principles are vital since situation overseen within a fewer unmistakable. however, vital highlights by street that got occupied beneath thought while checking with the pedestrian situation. in the interim, photos were taken all through the perception to supply a visual portrayal and to contextualize the watched streetscape features. 4. result and discution 4.1 questioner: this research involves qualitative collections using questionnaires. mawlawi street was selected based on the interest of an individual. all ages were considered for the study, and the recording of the data was in each category of the age that were developed that include (15-25) years, (25-45) years and (45-65) years individuals the majority. the 4 answered questions to reflect and appear below; for the individuals of (15-25) years, around 57% of them believed that they feel pleasant and typically walk on the pathway safely depicted in pie chart in figure 17. nevertheless, the other ages depict diverse results. they specifically argue that they are not happy and specify that the condition is worse at night due to the absence of light. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 33 figure 17: feeling safe while walking on pathway the pie chart in figure 18 shows that %64 of the people ages between (25-45) years are felling safe while crossing the street, while the two groups of ages (15-25) years and (45-65) years feeling less safe while crossing the street about %22 and %14 respectively. in addition, lack of parking and traffic lights made the street un safe while pedestrian crossing because the private cars park their car anywhere, they want. figure 18: feeling safe while crossing the street nearly %52 of different ages of citizens focused on obstacle and barrier, the main reason for the pedestrian to walk on the pathways and crossing the street pie chart in figure 19, and this answer should be considered while trying to make the shared space for pedestrians. age(15-25), 6.2, 57% age(25-45), 3.2, 30% age(45-65), 1.4, 13% do you feel safe while walking on pathway age(15-25), 2.2, 22% age(25-45), 6.4, 64% age(45-65), 1.4, 14% , 0, 0% do you feel safe while crossing the street kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 34 figure 19: obstacle and barriers on the street the pie chart in figure 20 explains the situation of mawlawi street within the citizen’s replay showed that the materials are not useful for those who aged between (45-65) years old and disables. figure 20: the materials of pathway 4.2 swot analysis: there are some points illustrate the strength, weakness and threat of mawlawi street; strengths: by shops owners and pedestrian named as a best place for increasing economies of the city, it is a good place which attracts tourists for seeing traditional shops and antics as an old town of sulaimani city. moreover, in some occasions like the month of ramadan feast each single night the street will close for cars and used only for pedestrian for gathering, shopping and some entertainments. weakness: lack of the parking is the most problem of the street, also the bus as a general transport will not go on this street for serving citizens the taxies can be used for the people but it is expensive comparing to the buses. in addition, lighting is one of the reasons for stopping the crime and makes the street safer all the street depends on the shops light at night to make the place brighter. age(15-25), 5.2, 52% age(25-45), 1.4, 14% age(45-65), 3.4, 34% , 0, 0% obstacle and barriers on street age(15-25), 2.5, 25% age(25-45), 5.2, 52% age(45-65), 2.3, 23% , 0, 0% does the materials of pathway are easy to walk on it kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 35 although, lack of greenery and benches which is very important for this street because most of the pedestrian are in need of an open area for relaxing, also the greenery one of the reason for cleaning the air pollution which was caused by the cars. threat: air pollution has risk on pedestrian’s health because of majority of cars on the street, also unsafe crossing the place in need for labels and signs on the path way also crossing zebra line on the street to be much clear for the citizens. 5. conclusion the point of this paper is the safety of traffic development from the public realm and the move towards shared space has imperative suggestions for the preparing and proficient advancement of all the different disciplines included. integration of engineering with urban design implies a broadening of mindfulness and information among experts and professionals who, until recently, have shared only a sketchy understanding of each other’s roles. shared space raises the potential for a fundamentally different vision for the streets of towns and cities for the future. with adequate proficient support and political assurance, it seems hold the key to turning around the long-lamented decay within the quality of roads, both in britain and over the rest of the world, where cars and traffic are likely to remain an inescapable component of our social and financial structures. if the finding from the expanding number of shared space plans proceeds to illustrate the positive results from treating drivers as intelligent citizens, administered by the same social conventions that support civility in other public places, there's a hope that the segregated world of post-war urban planning will not got to scourge the coherence and quality of the built environment. this considers appeared that there was a strong relationship between the physical components of street and pedestrian concept. based on the shared space concept, various practical settings and arrangements can be utilized to enhance the pedestrian social being and the cities interior. mawlawi street is an example of a town that can be improved through connecting such arrangements to empower the safety of the pedestrians by offering them space that can move freely. it should involve the provision of attractive spaces such as open spaces, green zone, and building elevation designs such that it attracts the users of the roads is a crucial solution to the selected street. additionally, making the spaces easily get by the pedestrians with diverse special needs is one of the important considerations that some urban designers have considered so that they will improve the wellbeing of these individuals. also, the spaces can be modified by adding trees, and different kinds of green plants can improve the experience in the streets. the result illustrates that the level of pedestrian in mawlawi street was in low level due to the poor qualities of the walkway foundation, poor quality of the street furniture’s conveniences and poor quality of the road framework. therefore, the arrangement and plan of the physical components have a significant role to make improve pedestrian movement and reduce the crime in the street. at last, mawlawi street can be more walkable through designing physical components, in done probably. this paper concentered on the connection of the physical components of the street and pedestrian, whereas land use as the other aspect can play a major part to advance development in a shared space. reference [1] c. frosch, d. martinelli, and a. unnikrishnan, "evaluation of shared space to reduce traffic congestion," journal of advanced transportation, vol. 2019, 2019. [2] s. space, "room for everyone: a new vision for public spaces," the netherlands: leeuwarden, 2005. [3] s. zimmerman. "shared spaces: can redefining street design provide an equitable space for cars, bikes and pedestrians?" http://njbikeped.org/shared-spaces-can-redefining-street-design-provide-equitable-spacecars-bikes-pedestrians/ (accessed 7/12/2021. [4] j. adams, "where and when is shared space safe," presentation for prian public realm course, bedford, vol. 22, 2008. [5] dft shared space project, 2009. [online]. available: http://www.bv.transports.gouv.qc.ca/mono/1018971.pdf. accessed: 7/12/2021. http://njbikeped.org/shared-spaces-can-redefining-street-design-provide-equitable-space-cars-bikes-pedestrians/ http://njbikeped.org/shared-spaces-can-redefining-street-design-provide-equitable-space-cars-bikes-pedestrians/ http://www.bv.transports.gouv.qc.ca/mono/1018971.pdf kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 36 [6] b. hamilton-baillie, "shared space: reconciling people, places and traffic," built environment, vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 161-181, 2008. [7] m. schulz, "european cities do away with traffic signs," spiegel magazine, september, vol. 16, 2006. [8] a. gillies, "is the road there to share? shared space in an australian context," university of new south wales, bachelor of planning, 2009. [9] m. schulz, "controlled chaos: european cities do away with traffic signs," spiegel online international, vol. 16, 2006. [10] t. mcnichol, "roads gone wild," wired magazine, vol. 12, no. 12, pp. 108-112, 2004. [11] t. vanderbilt, traffic: why we drive the way we do (and what it says about us). vintage, 2009. [12] pinterest. "world's smartest street sign can point you to almost anything." https://www.pinterest.com/emas81710597/igcse-street-signs/ (accessed 7/12/2021. [13] a. alessandrini, implementing automated road transport systems in urban settings. elsevier, 2018. [14] s. photos. "city of london pictures." https://www.istockphoto.com/photos/city-of-london (accessed 7/12/2021. [15] b. hamilton-baillie and p. jones, "improving traffic behaviour and safety through urban design," in proceedings of the institution of civil engineers-civil engineering, 2005, vol. 158, no. 5: thomas telford ltd, pp. 39-47. [16] b. news. "fifth avenue tops shops rich list." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3954649.stm#top (accessed 7/12/2021. [17] m. winnet, s. farmer, j. anderson and r. lockwood, "an evaluation of the effect of removing white centre lines'," 2014. [18] dearmstime. "look right sign london street stock photos." https://www.dreamstime.com/photosimages/look-right-sign-london-street.html (accessed 7/12/2021. [19] n. engineer. "debate traffic calming – this week we ask: should engineers continue to use traffic calming devices as a traffic management tool?" https://www.newcivilengineer.com/archive/debate-traffic-calmingthis-week-we-ask-should-engineers-continue-to-use-traffic-calming-devices-as-a-traffic-management-tool25-10-2001/ (accessed 7/12//2021. [20] n. c. a. s. bude. "no cars allowed: the 10 best pedestrian streets around the world." https://www.afar.com/magazine/the-10-best-pedestrian-streets-around-the-world (accessed 7/12/2021. [21] m. carmona, s. tiesdell, t. heath, and t. oc, "the dimension of urban design. public places urban spaces," ed: taylor & francis ltd, new york, usa, 2010. [22] a. minton, "what kind of world are we building," the privatisation of public space, 2006. [23] g. l. kelling, "aquiring a taste for order: the community and police," crime & delinquency, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 90-102, 1987. [24] d. baban and p. askari, "future sustainable energy solutions for sulaymaniyah: minor field study," ed, 2019. [25] h. taha, "urban growth in the city of sulaymaniyah," university of koya, 2007. [26] g. map. "mawlawi st, sulaymaniyah." https://www.google.com/maps/place/mawlawi+st,+sulaymaniyah/@35.5563984,45.4369846,17z/data=!3m 1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x40002c18d145187d:0x9afb9045be8ab82b!8m2!3d35.5563984!4d45.4391733?hl=en (accessed 7/12/2021. https://www.pinterest.com/emas81710597/igcse-street-signs/ https://www.istockphoto.com/photos/city-of-london http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3954649.stm#top https://www.dreamstime.com/photos-images/look-right-sign-london-street.html https://www.dreamstime.com/photos-images/look-right-sign-london-street.html https://www.newcivilengineer.com/archive/debate-traffic-calming-this-week-we-ask-should-engineers-continue-to-use-traffic-calming-devices-as-a-traffic-management-tool-25-10-2001/ https://www.newcivilengineer.com/archive/debate-traffic-calming-this-week-we-ask-should-engineers-continue-to-use-traffic-calming-devices-as-a-traffic-management-tool-25-10-2001/ https://www.newcivilengineer.com/archive/debate-traffic-calming-this-week-we-ask-should-engineers-continue-to-use-traffic-calming-devices-as-a-traffic-management-tool-25-10-2001/ https://www.afar.com/magazine/the-10-best-pedestrian-streets-around-the-world https://www.google.com/maps/place/mawlawi+st,+sulaymaniyah/@35.5563984,45.4369846,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x40002c18d145187d:0x9afb9045be8ab82b!8m2!3d35.5563984!4d45.4391733?hl=en https://www.google.com/maps/place/mawlawi+st,+sulaymaniyah/@35.5563984,45.4369846,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x40002c18d145187d:0x9afb9045be8ab82b!8m2!3d35.5563984!4d45.4391733?hl=en kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 64 design through landscape architecture for residential common spaces in japan sherko karim kader maruf shava shirwan ibrahim agha engineering and projects department engineering and projects department presidency, sulaimani polytechnics university sulaimani, iraq presidency, sulaimani polytechnics university sulaimani, iraq sherko.kader@spu.edu.iq shava.agha@spu.edu.iq sham mustafa qadir banaz muhealdeen architecture department-college of engineering architecture department-college of engineering university of sulaimani sham.qadir@univsul.edu.iq university of sulaimani banaz.muhealdeens@univsul.edu.iq article info abstract volume 7 issue 1june 2022 doi: 10.24017/science.2022.1.6 article history: received: 06/04/2022 accepted: 28/05/2022 landscape architecture focuses on studying and designing indoor and outdoor environments. it entails the elements of architecture, art, engineering, and other sociological factors. accordingly, the landscape architects design the spaces buildings that give life to the structures. landscape architecture is visible in parks, streets, shared paths, plazas. shopping malls, apartment compounds, transport networks, and gardens are also examples of landscape architecture. furthermore, the works of landscape architecture are also visible in museums, memorials, cemeteries, universities, and other schools. modern architects have designed different permanent structures that will stand for a long period of time. notwithstanding the preceding, the discourse on what qualifies as landscape architecture and what does not is yet to be settled. this discussion elucidates the process of research through design in landscape architecture, the literature regarding the field, and conducts a case study of specific landscape architecture to elicit applicability of the enumerated concepts. moreover, the discourse also reveals the research method utilized in the case study and the results as well and discussion. indeed, the landscape design illustrated the necessaries throughout the past this point is due to its role in relation to the appearance of urban and rural landscapes. keywords: landscape, architecture, indoor and outdoor environment, structural development. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 65 1. introduction undoubtedly, landscape architecture plays an important role in modern-day civilization and structural development. the spatial design is an important aspect of landscape architecture as it generates solutions for project sites in urban and rural areas. these projects may vary from squares, gardens, and parks that are situated in a specific location. notably, the crux of landscape architecture is based on planning and designing and thus the methods and process of researching the design are determinants of the architectural magnificence. this position necessitates the reliance on spatial design as a method of researching the specific designs that would be used accordingly. spatial designing is also referred to as the “research by design”.[1] to understand what the research by design means, the process must be viewed as a strategy used to identify the appropriate landscape architecture. this process involves working in an optimal condition that facilitates the achievement of the goal. notably, the architect creates different designs, that are considered when establishing the most effective and efficient design to implement. research questions related to the potential shape of rural and urban landscapes are answered through the design exploration process. moreover, the changes in the current environment are designed using ecological and social processes. this position ensures that the infrastructure developed does not hinder specific social or ecological processes. it is also noteworthy that landscape architecture considers aspects such as culture, which are covered under the social umbrella. 2. litreture review it is equally vital to assess the scholarly and literal authorities’ and their positions on the research by design process in landscape architecture. the term design bears meaning both as a verb and noun. as a verb, it means the procedure followed to develop future objects and environments through representations and drawings. the interpretation of design as a verb can be used in landscape architecture to be the development of landscapes at disparate scales that are based on the four-dimensional functionality and form. the design ought to be viewed as an analytic process that informs knowledge necessary to meet the answers to research questions. [2] nonetheless, the term design must not always be viewed as an inquiry as the design processes may be conducted for other purposes. the design process can be conducted based on four main worldviews. these examples ensure that knowledge is acquired satisfactorily and used to inform the specific landscape architecture. accordingly, they include social constructivism, positivism, pragmatism, and advocacy. social constructivism is used where the information acquired is based on some reasoning guided by the political or social context. [3] consequently, qualitative research methods must be used in this regard including the evaluation of materials published in regards to social behavior and culture. positivism is the paradigm where knowledge is gained by experimenting and making observations through quantitative and empirical methods. quantitative authority is relied on in the design process and the findings are based on empirical results. pragmatism is the worldview where the information is gathered through combining various methods such as observation, experimentation, modeling, and others. this process utilizes qualitative and quantitative methods to gather information regarding a specific design and its impacts. finally, the paradigm of advocacy focuses on gaining information related to the politics of a specific locality and the political agendas intended to benefit the general public.[3] this method embraces the quantitative and qualitative methods to extract knowledge and information. it is equally essential to elicit the various ways in which the research through the design process can manifest. primarily, the design and research can be related to each other through several mechanisms. this correlation exists through research for design, research on design, research through design, and research about design. in particular, these relations must be inquired when establishing the proper type of design to be implemented. [3] the correlations can also be combined to produce a spectacular spatial design for landscape architecture. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 66 research on design is conducted where the study conducted inquires and focuses on the organized operational designs. specific concepts are interrogated to determine the future design. they include precedents, principles, foundation types, and other[3] concepts. the research for design is conducted where the information sought is for the design’s validation. precisely, knowledge acquired in the process is used as the design’s input. overall, the research for design is the most common correlation between research and design. the research through design also suffices as another relationship of design and research. this strategy employs different designs to determine the final design and outlay. consequently, the process is responsible for exploring and identifying the possibilities that can be used in future designs from other designs. the final relationship between research and design is research about design that focuses on understanding the processes of design by conducting interviews, observations, and their aspects. [4] to understand the correlation that can be used in a research process, assert that the purpose and conduct of the research must be considered. research is basically conducted to acquire knowledge from new sources or existing facts. deductive reasoning ranks is utilized to establish a hypothesis, which is proven by conducting experiments or adducing evidence in this regard. contrastingly, the inductive reasoning observes various occurrences and seeks to explain them by developing and analysis to these occurrences and making a hypothesis that is evidentially based at the end of the process. the aim of the design must also be contemplated to determine the success of the landscape architecture. all designs are conducted for the purpose of invention aimed at establishing solutions in the spatial development and planning. in the design process, the hypothesis is extremely dynamic and must be adjusted time and time again based on the observations established from the research process. this method of conducting the design is referred to as abduction. [5] after the abduction process has been conducted accordingly, the final solution is determined by weighing the probabilities and possibilities and how they can solve problems experienced in the spatial planning and design. the design process must be perceived as a way of inventing and discovery. it involves three key processes namely the analytical stage, synthesis stage, and evaluation stage, which cannot be viewed separately as they are all interconnected. in the analysis step, the information is collected and interpreted to enhance how the possibilities are identified, understood, and designed. further, the synthesis step is also conducted to ensure that the resolutions are introduced, notwithstanding their temporary nature. this process acts as the incubation process that furthers the idea and ensures greater accuracy, specificity, coherence, and completeness is attained. the research and design process can reveal disparate types of information and knowledge. these types of knowledge are classified according to the idea, form, and project. consequently, the idea-based knowledge type is subdivided into the conceptual and strategic dimensions. the former involves assessing the situation and creating future plans. in other words, the problem is structured according to the proposed solutions. [6] the form-based type of knowledge manifests in visual or material forms. visually, ideas are fabricated, developed, proposed, and translated by the architects. material information is gained through assessing, exploring, and realizing the landscaping qualities with regards to the technical constructions that will be implemented in the spatial designs. remarkably, the project-based knowledge is comprised of the integrated and situational knowledge. the integrated knowledge is obtained where the contradictory interests are synthesized and conflicting agendas limited by applying different operation methods. conversely, the situational knowledge is obtained through the engagement in deliberations regarding the political, legal, cultural, economic, functional, and ecological contexts. [3] kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 67 2.1 landscape urbanism: another form of emergent urbanism is a self-aware design-led approach in which the design object is landscape rather than structures. the argument is that 'landscape' is a better foundation for urban planning than 'architecture' (though one could argue that the initial premise is itself dubious). 'landscape is the lens whereby the current region is depicted and the medium via which it is built, substituting architecture as the edifice block of contemporaneous urbanism. as it is more limited visual-aesthetic meanings, 'landscape' is the main focus in this section, despite its narrower definition than landscape. landscaping is routinely an addition in municipal design, something to be included (if money permit) after the key choices have been made, to hide and conceal low-quality architecture-buildings or to give the impression of extra space. figure 1: soft landscape can bring colour and joy to urban landscape if a finished building requires landscaping, the act of paisley-wrapping the pig has already failed as a design. while well-designed landscaping enhances the development's quality, graphic interest, and colour, badly-designed landscaping shifts from otherwise well-planned structures. landscape plan includes four important drivers, according to neal and hopkins:  operating on the land – art.  functioning with the land – ecology  operating through the land – society  working for the land – sustainability the diagram depicts three different urban forms, each with the same density (75 dwellings per hectare) but different public and private space arrangements. (a) at the base of high-rise development, there is open space.  there are no private gardens, and the inhabitant's direct access to amenities is limited.  there is no direct connection between the structure and the adjacent streets.  a large open space area necessitates administration and upkeep. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 68 figure 2: high-rise density [7] (b) houses with 2-3 stories in a street layout  there are gardens at the front and back of the house.  the public space is defined by continuous street frontages.  streets create a distinct pattern of public space.  the opportunity for social spaces is reduced due to the high site covering. figure 3 low-rise density [7] c) urban boundary block  the surrounding structures might be of various heights and configurations.  a landscape open space is surrounded by buildings.  a community-based facility can be housed in an open space.  commercial and public facilities can be scattered across the bottom floor, keeping the street frontage alive.  there is space available for use (including rear gardens, communal areas, park, etc.) [7] kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 69 figure 4: medium-rise density [7] 2.2 designing play principles: play spaces that are well-designed have a significant impact on children's lives by stimulating physical activity, socialization, and learning via play. they are also adult-oriented spaces that serve as gathering spots and places to unwind. a successful play space is a place in and of itself, constructed specifically for its location to deliver as much play value as possible. a place space should be: 1. created to complement its surroundings. 2. located in the finest possible location for natural play by children. 3. close to nature. 4. designed to allow youngsters to play in a variety of ways. 5. designed to encourage children with disabilities and youngsters with normal bodies to play together. 6. as a result of a successful community participation approach, the community loves it. 7. a place where kids of all ages can play together. 8. designed to encourage children to stretch and challenge themselves. 9. made of environmentally friendly materials. 10. designed to be adaptable, with the ability to grow and change. [7] figure 5: play spaces for children [7] 2.3 types of japanese landscape garden: landscape gardening has a long history in japan, dating back to 600 ad. karesansui, roji, and kaiy-shiki-teen are three different types of gardens. each of these gardens has a distinct appearance and serves a distinct purpose. when visiting a japanese landscape garden, you kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 70 must adopt a different mindset and imagine that one is entering another planet in search of peace. 2.3.1 karesansui garden (karesansui garden) set aside your pet rocks and begin cultivating a japanese rock garden. the japanese rock garden karesansui (english: dry mountains and water) is also described as a 'dry landscape.' this garden-style embodies all of the traits of japanese aesthetics: minimalism, elegance, and simplicity. all credit goes to musö soseki, a buddhist monk who popularized this garden style in the 14th century. this garden is packed with rocks, sand, and beautiful gravel, as the name implies. entering a japanese rock garden, on the other hand, will leave someone befuddled by the precisely arranged stones and sculptured raked gravels. figure 6: karesansui garden common sight [8] the typical japanese rock garden is contained and limited to a limited palette of greys. the zen garden's main feature is the rocks and gravel. no, the stones are not meant to be thrown at each other to vent your anger. the sand is also not suitable for making sandcastles like you would at the beach. it is important to remember that this is a sacred space where you can practice calm meditation. the rocks are interpreted as rock or island formations, and the sand is interpreted as the sea. the crevices between the stones exude a sense of renewal and tranquility. tending monks generally scrape water ripples into the gravel. raking gravel is a different concept than you might have imagined. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 71 figure 7: the length of the garden by span of ripple rake mark patterns [8] you will be astonished at how much time and effort the buddhist monks devote to raking. it is almost as if you are staring at a one-of-a-kind work of art. in addition, in a traditional zen garden, there is usually no live element. you might notice grass, but flowers are very impossible to come across in this garden. this japanese rock garden's ultimate purpose is to produce a small-scale cliff-top perspective of a seaside scene. as a result, you are expected to appreciate the garden from the outside. (if you do not, you will be wasting your time raking the sand.) [8] 2.3.2 kaiyū-shiki-teen garden: if you travel back in time to japan in the 15th century, you will notice kaiy-shiki-teen gardens at the homes of most aristocrats and warlords. the 'strolling garden' or 'promenade landscape' garden is the best translation. this garden style was designed to match the new sukiya-zukri architectural style, which is based on the japanese tea house concept. as a result, it has many of the characteristics of a roji garden but does not strictly adhere to the roji garden's rigorous standards. the well-known suizenji park, which is a form of kaiyshiki-teen garden, is the greatest site to enjoy a beautiful view of mount fuji. figure 8: kumamoto, suizenji park, japan [8] suizenji park appears to be larger than it is due to the use of the mountain as a scenic backdrop. it is what a kaiy-shiki-teen garden aspires to be. you will find yourself wandering kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 72 along a clockwise trail around a lake, passing from one stage to the next, to take in the complete view of mount fuji. furthermore, your view will be continually impeded by bushes or fences, forcing you to walk to the greatest mount fuji viewing spot. this is a technique known as 'miegakure,' or 'cover and reveal,' in which heavy foliage, buildings, or walkways hide a particular view until you reach the appropriate viewing spot. so, if you cannot see mount fuji clearly, do not panic; it is supposed to be 'hidden' until you find the right place. the drawback is that the ostensibly excellent location is almost certainly overrun with tourists. if you ever decide to try your hand at japanese landscape design, be aware that it is a timeconsuming procedure. because nature is fluid and ever-changing, most japanese landscape designs are never completed. [8] research aim: establishing the aim or goal of the research is essential to understand the process of landscape architecture. spatial planning and design are an inevitable field in the contemporary world. the research revealed was conducted to understand how spatial design is actually conducted. this process involves interrogating the research through design process, where design is viewed as a process rather than a destination. remarkably, the research also reveals the varying perceptions of obtaining information to use in the design process. the research was also keen on revealing the how the research through design works. all in all, the research aims were fulfilled through the qualitative research methods employed for the research and the case study elicited regarding the project of setting up of residential spaces in japa 3. case study and research method 3.1 case study (kurobe-city, toyama, japan): understanding the research through the design process requires a specific case study that reveals different research and design concepts utilized in a project. in this case, the case study takes an in-depth look into the passive residential districts’ projects in japan where a landscape design and building architect were selected to design the project. notably, the landscape design is projected for residential common spaces in japan and will run until completion in 2025. [9] further, the design of the residential space was to be conducted using a thermal simulation tool. figure 9: alluvial_fan,_kurobe.jpg (1280×960) (wikimedia.org) retrieved december 2021 [10] in this process, various research through design mechanisms and concepts must be utilized. the design concept is to be established on the rice paddies, which are the target area. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/alluvial_fan%2c_kurobe.jpg kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 73 furthermore, this spatial design of the houses considered several ecological aspects including the consideration of wind direction. solar radiation is also maximized when setting the distance between houses. finally, the landscape design concept also considered providing tree shades on other sides of the houses that create a comfortable outdoor area. [9] indeed, the process of analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating is evident in the project’s design. the relationship between the landscape architect and the simulation engineer was used. further, the landscape architecture’s numerical analysis was done twice during the basic stage and during the execution stage respectively. the landscape concept was applied at the basic design stage with regards to a thermal environment. some trees were planted and ground surface materials were also produced in this regard. additionally, this phase involved the sharing of basic knowledge regarding thermal environments. simulation tests were also conducted for different seasons. the surface temperature was also recorded as well as the solar radiation on doors and windows was also interrogated. the execution stage required a numerical analysis to ensure determine the landscape use in the residential area. it simulated the presence of fully grown trees, which was used to make changes to the planted trees. moreover, the landscape architecture also changed the sitting area and walking area layouts. simulation results were undertaken during summer to check the surface temperature, solar radiation, and mrt distribution. [9] the two analyses done at the basic phase and execution phase revealed a lot of information about the incorporated design of the project. figure 10: main simulation area in basic design phase [9] 3.2 research method: the preceding reveals detailed insights about the common space landscape residential designs proposed in japan residential districts. this information was obtained through the qualitative research method. in particular, the case study is an analysis of journal materials that provide an in-depth analysis of the landscape architecture in the japanese common spaces. other methods of conducting the research were also utilized including reliance on credible information from books published on the case study the justification for this methodology is important in establishing why it was relied for the case study. first, the geographical barriers of the research hindered actual observation of the project. it is also noteworthy that the information elucidated in the case study has been kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 74 garnered over time and thus the best source for such information was in the records of credible sources. additionally, the quantitative research methodologies would necessitate a high cost of travelling and facilitating the study as it involves activities such as surveys, observation. the final justification for the qualitative research methodology is the time effectiveness of the process in comparison to the other ways of conducting research. 4. result and discution the case study reveals several aspects regarding the research through design process in landscape architecture. the project has been conducted over some time and is expected to run until 2025. [9] consequently, several phases have been accomplished in regards to design processes. the first result of the case study is the identification of a design concept by the landscaping architect. notably, the landscape architecture concept in this case is the residential spaces integrated to a thermal regulatory tool. after identifying the concept, several efforts have been undertaken to actually develop the infrastructure. this position is evident in the basic phase and execution phases. subsequently, some steps were modified in the basic step such as planting of trees and identifying the direction in which the houses would face as well as the distance between the houses. [9] it should be noted that the findings of the basic stage and the execution stage are different and thus modifications were made to the design at the execution stage. the main adjustments were related to the trees and other features that had to be changed to fit the developmental progress. a keen analysis of the case study reveals several aspects regarding research by design utilized in spatial design. the initial aspect is the identification of a landscape design concept. this process may often involve combination of researches on design and about designs. for instance, the case study reveals that some research was conducted in the basic and execution stage regarding the radiation impacts on windows and surface temperature. [9] such information represents research about the design, that is necessary in the spatial design process. furthermore, the case study reveals that the design concept also considered the ecological factors, such as wind direction and solar radiation levels. this element suffices as the research for design as the information obtained was used to validate the direction of the proposed houses. overall, the case study also revels the paradigmatic worldview used in conducting the research through design. pragmatism is evident in the case study as various methods are used to achieve the goal. these methods include experiments and observations such as planting trees and later removing them due to new modifications. furthermore, other aspects such as the solar radiation levels were conducted through observation of the temperature levels recorded by state-of-the-art equipment. these observations were integrated with other research processes such as the use of numerical analyses in the basic and execution stages. 5. conclution in conclusion, the landscaping architecture has proved to be important throughout history. this position is attributed to the role it plays in regards to the outlook of the landscapes in rural and urban areas. notably, the architects involved in landscape planning design most of the parks, gardens, social spaces, pathways, roads, and other infrastructural designs. it is important to inquire on the process undertaken by these individuals when determining the designs to use. the primary strategy used in spatial planning is referred to as the research through design process. it involves interrogating the relationship between research and design to establish the specific design outcome. in particular, the distinct categories include research through design, research about design, research on design, and the research for design. the research through design also incorporates some views towards information used for design. notably, these views include the positivist, social constructionist, advocacy, and pragmatism. furthermore, the discourse utilized varying qualitative research methods such as reliance on journal articles and books as well as other peer-reviewed materials in this regard. the study proceeded to kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 75 conduct a case study of the process of landscape design in a project for residential living spaces in japan that is set to run until 2025. this case study is essential to establish the research through design in a real situation. reference [1] s. nijhuis and j. de vries, "design as research in landscape architecture," landscape journal, vol. 38, no. 1-2, pp. 87-103, 2019. [2] a. van den brink and d. bruns, "strategies for enhancing landscape architecture research," landscape research, vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 7-20, 2014. [3] s. lenzholzer, i. duchhart, and j. koh, "‘research through designing’in landscape architecture," landscape and urban planning, vol. 113, pp. 120-127, 2013. [4] k. d. moore and l. geboy, "the question of evidence: current worldviews in environmental design research and practice," arq: architectural research quarterly, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 105-114, 2010. [5] r. a. partridge, the value of a research through design approach to explore healthcare service provision. sheffield hallam university (united kingdom), 2018. [6] c. gullström, "presence design: mediated spaces extending architecture," kth, 2010. [7] m. carmona, s. tiesdell, t. heath, and t. oc, "the dimension of urban design. public places urban spaces," ed: taylor & francis ltd, new york, usa, 2010. [8] t. delaney and v. minnelli, "japanese garden." [9] e. kumakura, a. murakami, and k. nakaohkubo, "a case study of landscape design for residential common space using a thermal environmental simulation tool." [10] alluvial_fan,_kurobe.jpg (1280×960) (wikimedia.org) retrieved december 2021 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/alluvial_fan%2c_kurobe.jpg  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.46 stratospheric winds and rain effect on haps backhaul link performance http://doi.org/10.24017/science.2017.3.46 lway faisal abdulrazak computer science department, cihan university sulaimaniya campus, sulaimani, iraq lwayfaisal_abdulrazak@yahoo.com abstrat: today, fourth generation of mobile communication turn out to be in active mode for several countries and one of the most promisingtechnologies used for a backhaul service is high altitude platform stations (haps). while haps still suffers from environment effects in stratospheric layer like rain and winds.in this research paper, a study of the effect of the positional instability of haps (aircraft category) on the link level performance of an international mobile telecommunications advanced (imt-advanced) served by haps is presented. the analysis is performed in three different climatic conditions of malaysia, which is a tropical country. then two types of radio links have been analyzed – firstly, the end user link which connects aerial station and end user and then, backhaul link that establishes communication between haps and ground transmission gateway (gtg). a problem of fluctuations in the signal level and degrading the performance level had been solved by analyze the behavior of winds in stratospheric layer. finally, the effect of instability was given in received signal level variation and link availability or percentage outage of the link. obtained results showed that the link availability of the backhaul link meets the itu-r recommendations. lately, it can be said that the results of the service obtained can be used to design the communication network with a higher level of user satisfaction. keywords: haps, imt-advanced, broadcasting, platform instability. 1. introduction rapid development in wireless communication services lead to boost up the development terrestrial and satellite communication. high bandwidth, high signal to interference level, flexibility, small loss due to free space, wide coverage, broadband capability, and ability to relocation in emergency situations, low maintenance cost are the most important factors for excellent link establishment [1]. therefore we can say that serial stratospheric haps could resolve all the requirements of an excellent link establishment for fourth generation network. this type of haps placed in 17 to 22 km height in the air [2]. some problems may appear during haps deployments like fixing antennas, leaking of airship technology and haps remote control. it is important to mention that haps hasan advantage of good handover and nice cell size which are advantages over low earth orbit and geostationary satellite orbit [3]. the infrastructure of haps will be examined with respect to the terrestrial wireless access and integrated satellite system to create a powerful system relay on advantages of both systems [4]. integrated haps shows a very good coverage with a satisfying bandwidth comparing to fiber networks, even though using haps has facilitate many rural and suburban areas with an excellent wireless services using antenna shift phase array. a case study has been carried on haps with cellular network was carried on [5]. stratospheric winds are still mystery for researchers to emphasize on whether haps can provide wireless service reliably without short term interference or not during the problem of instability. accordingly a good research material has been done to evaluate the effect of instability on wireless link in [6]. the main problem of this research, which due to rotation and rapid burst of stratospheric wind the platform might not provide acceptable or stable services to the system. this could cause platform positional instability which hampers system level performance. this instability also made the job of designing antenna for haps much more complicated. the flat of perpendicular movement of haps could be analyzed and covered in term of carrier to interference level as in [7]. productivity of haps can be determined according to the directivity of the antenna array, however, the antennas should be directly connected to the earth station with a minimum frozenly zoon [8]. so, rotation and horizontal and vertical displacements are the main area of concern.as in the stratospheric region wind is a strong reason for deviation of the aerial platform, this was taken into account, along with rotational movement, in the study to find out the issues on whether the platform can provide reliable services without temporal outages. then, the impacts of platform positional instability of haps on imt-advanced terminal and on backhaul link at 28/31 ghz band were analyzed for different scenarios, different geographical locations and also for different positions of both aerial station and ground receivers [9]. this paper organized starting with introduction then, overview operations, functionality were presented in the second section. third section describes the results and findings. then, conclusion is well handled. 2. placement issues and spectrum allocation: the high altitude of platforms proposed in this study (17~22km) has enabled a wide cell coverage. since wind velocity is calculated by [9] it is very obvious that the altitude 17 to 22 km suffers from a medium wind velocity as in figure 1. while the velocity of winds increasing with 25 km and above, it is clear that wind between 17 to 25 km is stable [10]. figure 1: wind speed correspondence to the haps attitude [9]. stability in platform is an elective matter within a range of possibilities and conditions, this paper set boundaries for a very interesting quasi-stationary link. designing tested for simulation scenarios has followed the itu recommendations regarding haps. however, by considering a 0 access as a reference point for the aircraft over specific area, aircraft is allowed to have a smooth movement between -200 m and + 200m horizontally, while the height is varying between -700m and +700m vertically [11]. it is compulsory to have a fulltime of services continuously during the simulation, to have the most accurate situations. regarding the matter of stabilities, navigator is playing a very important role in keeping the vertical and horizontal locations within the acceptable level vertically and horizontally. it is significant to mention that fighting altitude considered for this research paper is 20 kilometers. other critical considerations for this research are the aerodynamics and thermal dynamic effect on aircraft, however, air volume and temperature could reduce the link performance from space to earth and vice versa [2]. as a solution for aircraft energy, dual power provider technology was considered, mixing fuel and solar energy has eliminate the needs of carrying heavy fuel weight during the platform journey. regarding operating frequency it was mentioned in [12] that best frequency allocation is 28 ghz for uplink and 31ghz for downlink. 3. system performance in [4] and [13] focus was given the effect of aircraft mobility because of winds in stratospheric layer on telecommunication link degradation. whereas 20mbps bandwidth has been implemented for a three cells scenarios under full mobility considerations were taken into this research by study and analysis. other study as in [14] covers a high resolution doppler imager (hrdi) for different types of wind speed, they come up with a nice recommendations for future haps deployments. however, researchers in [15] mentioned that lower mesospheric temperature happened in between 10 kilometers to 115 kilometers. accordingly, measurements happen every 60 seconds, the standard deviation was calculated for all observed points correlated with time response within the altitude of 20 kilometers using the navigation device. antenna specification was considered carefully to reconfigure the platform performance according to the varying position vertically and horizontally. it was recommended by [16] that for haps it is better to use high frequency, in order to have free interference and wide range of frequency use, high antennas gain, reduce size and low power to decrease the overall payload. most recommended antennas for above mentioned specifications could be multibeam horn antenna (mbha) and digital beam forming antenna (dbfa) as in table 1 [18-19]. table 1: main specifications of the multibeam antenna prototypes [14]. parameter mbh antenna digital beam forming antenna operating frequency range tx 47.2-47.5 ghz rx 47.9-48.2 ghz tx 27.5-28.35 ghz rx 31.0-31.3 ghz model seven corrugated horns 16 (4x4) patch array effeciency >300 mhz 4 mhz effective isotropic radiation power 6.3 dbw or more 11~15 dbw gain to temperature <-15.4 db/k -13 ~ -17 db/k bit rate 56 mb/s 4 mb/s equipment weight 155 kg or less 70 kg as shown in table 1; digital beam forming antenna has much wider bandwidth more stability and easier deployment than multibeam horn. dbf antennas has meet the most suitable specifications for next generations of mobile users, however, by focusing the beam towards objectives and mulling beams in the directions of interferers 4. end user or gateway reception modeling in case of end user, received power of user (imtadvanced) terminal is computed at different user locations in the ground for different aircraft positions. on the other hand, for backhaul link, received power of gateway is determined at different aircraft position and also for different polarization, namely circular, horizontal and vertical, of the transmitting haps antenna. for these, the free space loss is calculated using the following formula [17], ls = 32.45 + 20 log d (in km) + 20 log f (in mhz) (1) here, ls = free space loss in db d = separation between receiver and transmitter in km f = operating frequency in mhz. then, the received power at receiver is calculated by [16], pr = pt + gt + gr – ls –a (2) pr = eirp + gr – ls a (3) here, eirp = effective isotropic radiated power in dbm. pr = power at receiver in dbm, pt = transmitted power in dbm, gt = gain at tranmitter, gr = gain at receiver db, a = attenuation due to rain in db, carrier to noise ratio (cnr) is calculated for each received power for both end user link and backhaul link. noise is calculated using [17] n = k * t * b * f (4) here, n = noise k = boltzmann’s constant t = temperature in kelvin b = channel bandwidth f = receiver noise figure. availability of the link in computed in percentage of time based on the cnr for backhaul link. it shows how much time the link will be unavailable in a total calendar year. 5. end-user link the haps network architecture is described using figure 2 and figure 3. in figure 2, four positions of the haps circular corridor have been highlighted – a, b, c, and d. the black numbers indicate the ground distances from center of the haps rotation circle in ground to a particular position where the user might be situated. the blue numbers refer to the aerial distance between the haps and the particular user location. figure 3 delineates the situation of user receiving different signal strength at different location of haps. figure 2: haps movement for user at different locations. figure 3: haps movement for user at specific location at first the different values of cnr, that the receiver will get, at different positions has been determined for a single instance of haps position. the summarized result is shown in figure 4. figure 4: comparison of cnr when receiver at different ground positions. here, it can be noted that when the receiver is at 00 km, which means at center of the haps circle in ground, there is no fluctuation in the received signal for all the flight positions from a to d. it has a constant value of around 26 db. then, when receiver is at 10 km from center, it experiences the most fluctuations of about 3 db due to circular rotation of haps. at flight position a, it has best value of 27 db and at flight position c it faces lowest cnr o 24 db. after that, in case of receiver at 100 km, the total fluctuation of cnr among different flight positions decreases to 2 db. but there is a significant decrease of the total signal strength, which is now about 13 db. then, for 200 km, the total fluctuation of cnr among different flight positions is now less than 1 db. subsequently, the total signal strength went down to around 7 db. lastly, it should be noted that, the difference in cnr between the center of the circle and edge of the circle (at 200 km from center) in all flight positions is approximately 20 db. the effect of horizontal and vertical fluctuation of haps is summarized in figure 5, figure 6, figure 7 and figure 8. to describe the phenomena properly 4 ground distances have been chosen, namely 00 km, 10 km, 100 km and 200 km respectively. in figure 5, the effect is analyzed when the receiver is at 00 km ground distance, which means at the center of the haps rotational circle in ground. as the receiver is at center, there is no fluctuation in received signal for change in altitude or radius. here, fluctuation in altitude generates more cnr variation then variation in flight path radius. but, both of these values are well below 1 db. figure 5: altitude and radius fluctuation when receiver at 00 km in case of figure 6 the receiver is at 10 km ground distance that means 10 km from center of the circle at ground. throughout the circulation, altitude variation produce cnr difference of around 3.5 dblower value in position c and higher value in position a. radius fluctuation is not significant in position a, but reaches the same value of 3.5 db in position c. so, at 10 km ground distance, the receiver will face significant cnr variation in received signal. figure 6: altitude and radius fluctuation when receiver at 10 km. figure 7 describes the situation when receiver is at 100 km ground distance, which means 100 km from the center of the circular corridor at ground. it is clear that, at this distance the altitude and radius fluctuation don’t have significant impact on cnr. the highest variation in cnr is approximately 1.5 db from position a to c. figure 7: altitude and radius fluctuation when receiver at 100 km. then, figure 8 demonstrates the effects when receiver is at 200 km ground distance, which means at the edge of coverage area. here, the effect is almost similar as for 100 km. the only difference is that the overall cnr fluctuation is less than 1 db. figure 5.7: altitude and radius fluctuation when receiver at 200 km. from the above results, a number of points can be extracted. firstly, the radius and altitude fluctuation creates significant cnr variation if the receiver is closer to the center of haps circular corridor in ground, except the center itself. then, when the receiver is located at long distances from center the effect of fluctuation don’t have significant impact on the received signal, only the rotational effect remains. lastly, when the receiver is close to the center, altitude fluctuation has higher impact than radius fluctuation in variation of cnr. 6. backhaul link the link availability of backhaul link is determined according to the parameters of 3 different places. the calculated network structure for backhaul link is shown in figure 9. here, the gtg is located at 35.35 km ground distance from center. figure 9: haps movement for backhaul link. figure 10 shows the link availability of first site for 3 different flight positions – a, b and c using circular polarized antenna. it is evident that, here the link can provide 99.9% of availability as it is well over the 0 db cnr value. so, the percentage of outage here is 0.1%, which means the link will be unavailable for 525.6 minute in a total calendar year. now, the highest cnr variation is 8 db which occurs between position a and c. position b gives a value in between these two. figure 10: site 1 backhaul result for different flight position (circular pol.) then, figure 11 shows backhaul link availability for 3 different polarization computed in flight position a. here also, all the polarization can provide minimum availability of 99.9%. vertical polarization gives the best cnr, horizontal polarization gives the lowest cnr and circular polarization gives a value between these two. there is a difference of 10 db between received signal of horizontal and vertical polarization at 99.9% availability. figure 11: site1backhaul result for different polarization (pos. a) site 2 will give a measure of best possible performance of the link. in, figure 12, the link availability is shown for 3 different flight positions – a, b and c using circular polarized antenna. it is clear that here the link can provide 99.91% of availability as it is well over the threshold cnr value. so, the percentage of outage here is 0.09%, which means the link will be unavailable for 473.04 minute in a total calendar year. now, the highest cnr variation is 7 db which occurs between position a and c. figure 12: site 2 backhaul result for different flight position (circular pol.) now, figure 13 shows backhaul link availability for 3 different polarization computed in flight position a. here, all the polarization can provide minimum availability of 99.92%. so, the percentage outage in this case is 0.08%, where thee link will be unavailable 420.48 minute in a year. in these case also, vertical polarization gives the best cnr, horizontal polarization gives the lowest cnr and circular polarization gives a value between these two. there is a difference of 9 db between received signal of horizontal and vertical polarization at 99.92% availability. figure 13: site 2 backhaul result for different polarization (pos. a) site 3 is the place which experiences most rainfall. it will give a measure of worst possible performance of the link. in, figure 14, the link availability of site 3 is shown for 3 different flight positions – a, b and c using circular polarized antenna. it is shown that here the link can provide 99.8% of availability as it is well over the 0 db cnr value. so, the percentage of outage here is 0.2%, which means the link will be unavailable for 1051.2 minute in a total calendar year. here, the highest cnr variation is 7 db which occurs between position a and c. figure 14: site 3 backhaul result for different flight position (circular pol.) now, figure 15 shows backhaul link availability for 3 different polarization computed in flight position a. here, all the polarization can provide minimum availability of 99.8%. so, the percentage outage in this case is 0.2%, where thee link will be unavailable 1051.2 minute in a year. in these case also, vertical polarization gives the best cnr, horizontal polarization gives the lowest cnr and circular polarization gives a value between these two. there is a difference of 9 db between received signal of horizontal and vertical polarization at 99.8% availability. figure 15: site 3 backhaul result for different polarization (pos. a) as site 2 and 3 are the places where two most diverse rainfalls are experienced, so it can be said that, in this scenario link availability between 99.8% and 99.92% can be provided. this also indicates that, the duration of backhaul link unavailability will be between 473.04 minute and 1051.2 minute. this clearly satisfies the itu-r recommendation of minimum 99.4% [3]. in case of antenna polarization, vertical polarization always gave better result than other two. so, polarization diversity can be used for better performance. if the atmosphere normal, then either horizontal or circular polarization can be used. then in case of heavy rain or other natural disturbances, it can be switched to vertical polarization. 7. conclusion the cnr variation from center to the edge of servicing area is around 20 db for imt-advanced end user. moreover, if a user is located at a fixed position it can suffer from maximum 3 db variation in the received signal due to the rotation and fluctuation. furthermore, users close to the center suffer more variation in signal than users located at long distances and altitude fluctuation degrades the signal more than radius fluctuation. the backuhaul link also suffers from a number other effects besides the above stated ones, such as rain attenuation. in this case, signal levels were determined in three different places with different rainfall statistics – site 1, 2 and 3. it is observed that even in the worst case condition (in site 3) the link can provide 99.8% link availability, which means the link may be down for around 1051 minute in a total year. this statistics is higher than that of 99.4%, which is proposed by itu-r. on the other hand, in best case condition, (in site 1) calculation showed that, even 99.91% of link availability can be achieved. last but no least, research on different antenna polarization reveled that, vertical polarization, which gave the best performance, can be used with either circular or horizontal polarization in polarization diversity to obtain optimum system performance. lastly, it can be said that, the result of the service obtained can be used to design the communication network with higher level of user satisfaction. these findings might also be useful for the design team of haps to come up with more robust aerial stations and better ways of stabilizing mechanism. 8. reference [1] l.f. abdulrazak, t.a.rahman, s.k. abdul rahim and m. yousif, " study haps interference power to noise level ratio of fixed services and related separation distance, " information sciences signal processing and their applications (is spa), 2010, pp. 690-693. 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[12] itu-r study groups. propagation data and prediction methods required for the design of terrestrial line-of-sight systems. rec. itu-r p.53011. 2005. [13] b. ku, d. ahn, d. baek, k. park, s. lee, " degradation analysis of user terminal eirpand g/t due to station-keeping variation ofstratospheric platform", etri journal. march 2000. 22(1): 12-19. [14] v. sgardoni, a. r. nix, "raptor code-aware link adaptation for spectrally efficient unicast video streaming over mobile broadband networks", ieee transactions on mobile computing, vol: 14, n(2), pp: 401-415, feb. 2015. [15] itu-r study groups. preferred characteristics of systems in the fixed service using high altitude platforms operating in the bands 47.2-47.5 ghz and 47.9-48.2 ghz. rec. itu-r f.1500, 2000. [16] r. miura, m.suzuki, "preliminary flight test program ontelecom and broadcasting using high altitude platform stations", wireless pers. communication, an int’l. j. kluwer academic publishers. vol:24, n (2): pp: 341–361, jan 2003. [17] b. el-jabu, r. steele, "cellular communications using aerial platforms", ieee transaction on vehicular technology, vol. 50, no. 3, pp. 686-700, may 2001. [18] m. oodo, r. miura, y. hase, t. inaba, t. sakamoto, m. suzuki, "measurement results of digital beamforming array antenna on-board stratospheric platform in the band 31/28 ghz", the 5th international symposium on wireless personal multimedia communications. 2002. vol. 2, pp. 435439. [19] rappaport, t.s. wireless communications: principles and practice. 2nd edition. pearson education. 2002. biography lway f. abdulrazakwas born in iraq in 1982. he received the b.sc in electrical and telecommunication eng. from omer almokhtaruniversity, libya in 2005 with 2nd honor degree; and he received his msc and phd degree in electrical electronics and telecommunication engineering from universiti teknologi malaysia, malaysia, in 2007 and 20011, respectively. currently he is a lecturer at cihan university sulaimanyia campus, iraq. his research interests include imt-advanced, digital signal processing, radio propagation and wireless interference analysis. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/searchresult.jsp?searchwithin=%22authors%22:.qt.m.%20oodo.qt.&newsearch=true http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/searchresult.jsp?searchwithin=%22authors%22:.qt.r.%20miura.qt.&newsearch=true http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/searchresult.jsp?searchwithin=%22authors%22:.qt.y.%20hase.qt.&newsearch=true http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/searchresult.jsp?searchwithin=%22authors%22:.qt.t.%20inaba.qt.&newsearch=true http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/searchresult.jsp?searchwithin=%22authors%22:.qt.t.%20sakamoto.qt.&newsearch=true http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/searchresult.jsp?searchwithin=%22authors%22:.qt.t.%20sakamoto.qt.&newsearch=true http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/searchresult.jsp?searchwithin=%22authors%22:.qt.m.%20suzuki.qt.&newsearch=true  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.3 evaluation of data mining features, features taxonomies and their applications http://dx.doi.org/10.24017/science.2017.3.3 shirin noekhah faculty of computing, universiti teknologi of malaysia, utm, 81300, johor, malaysia nshirin2@live.utm.my naomie binti salim faculty of computing, universiti teknologi of malaysia, utm, 81300, johor, malaysia naomie@utm.my nor hawaniah zakaria faculty of computing, universiti teknologi of malaysia, utm, 81300, johor, malaysia hawaniah@utm.my abstract: the world wide web has brought an enormous improvement in the lives of people, during the last couple of decades. e-commerce is a new area arisen during this evolutionary period and has changed the traditional trading approaches for selling products and services. it uses different techniques to discover a market trend and analyze the competitor’s activities by exploiting reviews’ information. on the other hand, potential customers, also, use the online opinion to make their purchase decision. opinion mining and sentiment analysis are the most critical and fundamental domains of data mining which can be useful for variety its sub-domains such as opinion summarization, recommendation system and opinion spam detection. opinion mining and all its subbranches can be performed efficiently when there is a comprehensive understanding of the most effective features applied in those domains. to achieve the best results, we need to use the most proper set of features for different case studies in order to classification or clustering. to the best of our knowledge, there is no extensive study and taxonomy of variety range of features and their applications in opinion mining. in this paper, we do comprehensive investigation on various types of features exploited in variety subbranches of opinion mining domain. we present the most frequent features’ sets including structural, linguistic and relation-based features as a complete reference for further opinion mining research. the results proved that using multiple types of features improve the accuracy of opinion mining applications. keywords: opinion mining, feature selection, opinion spam, recommendation system, meta-data and contentbased features 1. introduction by rapidly growing of the e-commerce and social media, companies and businesses provide the facilities for their customers to express their experience and opinion toward their products or services. this positive or negative opinion has an effective influence on fame or defame of that business. it can raise or drop the sale rate of the companies which effect on the reputation of them [1, 2]. as the opinion reflects the experiment, thought, motivation and emotion of people, we can extract the meaningful information from their reviews. in opinion mining unlike the other domains of data mining, the main focus is on opinion analysis and how the people express their opinion rather than the subject of opinion [3, 4]. the opinion can be explained in three different ways based on the requested format of the websites: pros and cons (e.g., clnet.com), pros, cons and detailed review (e.g., epinions.com), and free format (e.g., amazon.com) [6]. extracted opinion can be used by academic research, business and potential customers (before purchasing products) to benefit from this valuable information [5]. businesses usually want to know about the market trend and its need, and, also, about their competitors. on the other hand, research studies need opinion analysis to develop their opinion mining and data analysis applications. in this case traditional methods such as human evaluators or manual analysis cannot be applied to extract the information of customers’ opinion or market feedbacks since they are time-consuming and less accurate ways. instead, researchers benefit abundance of valuable information scattered through the world wide web by exploiting opinion mining techniques and applications, automatically to extract the desired information. the information is extracted from different set of features. these features are categorized as content-based features (e.g., word sentiment, pos tags, text similarity, etc.) or meta-data features (e.g., date/time, helpful feedback, number of reviews for product, etc.). metadata features refer to those features which represent the behavioural information of entities (i.e. review, reviewers, group of review and product), while contentbased features present the textual information about them. they express different characteristics of different entities. features are critical part of any supervised and unsupervised techniques. while variety range of metadata and content-based features have been exploited in different mining applications, limited combination of them have been used in data mining. so, many techniques miss the opportunity of having more accurate results by selecting and applying the effective combination of features. in this study, we not only evaluate different set of features, but also, we present the most popular and useful features which can be applied in different domains. these detailed features’ investigation can be used as a reference for future research which works on different domains of data mining. we propose an iterative algorithm which combines the most important features in data mining techniques based on the graphbased structure. in addition, we propose four new features which can be applied for different set on entities in data mining applications. 2. data mining and sentiment analysis people usually express their opinion through the opinionated websites. reviews scattered through opinionated websites such as amazon.com, epinion.com, tripadvisor.com, and sellerranking.com have changed the method of our purchasing and made it to be more effective. opinion mining focuses on new variety types of application in different domains (e.g., politic, ecommerce, health, etc.). opinion mining as a subbranch of data mining contains the techniques which can be applied to find the patterns or analysis of the data [53, 54, 55]. there are 7 steps in terms of knowledge extraction from the corpus include determining the type of knowledge need to be extracted, defining the desired group of data, pre-processing step, cleaning the dataset, data mining, pattern recognition and extraction, and applying discovered knowledge. in opinion mining the main focus is on sentiment extraction and its analysis. sentiment analysis can be used in different data mining application such as opinion mining, opinion summarization, opinion searching, recommendation system and opinion spam detection. opinion mining [11, 44] can be used for sentiment identification, and also, for feature-based opinion mining. it can be considered in document level, sentence level and feature level. to determine the polarity in these levels, researchers use corpus-based and dictionary-based approaches. in corpus-based approach the co-occurrence of the words identify the polarity, while in dictionary-based approach, the synonyms and antonyms of the words based on seed words and using some dictionaries such as wordnet determine the sentiment. the first research on the problem of opinion mining was conducted by turney (2002). they proposed an unsupervised learning algorithm to classify reviews into thumbs up and thumbs down [52]. the main problem of his method was misclassifying of some terms which their orientation was changed based on the context. there are some problems in opinion mining analysis such as domain dependency and conflicting opinion words. it is a difficult task to know the orientation of an opinion word by only considering it and the features that it describes without considering the whole context because of domain dependency issue. conflicting of opinion words in a context, also, causes an inaccurate opinion analysis. we can use conjunction and disjunction, automatically derived morphological relationship, manual syntactic dependency rule templates and wordnet synonyms, antonyms, is-a relationship, negation modifiers and morphological relation to assign orientation to opinion word. the first systematic work for opinion mining and summarization has been done by hu and liu (2004). unlike the traditional text summarization techniques which only summarize the sentences of the reviews, they proposed a feature-based summarization system (fbs) which summarizes the reviews of customers by considering their opinion and the features that they express their opinion in sentence level [43]. the results proved that using compactness and redundancy pruning on frequent extracted features and also considering infrequent features rather than only focus on frequent features improves the precision and recall of the proposed method. but the only considered adjective as opinion word and only focus on explicit opinion. there variety domain of studies in opinion mining. some of them focus on opinion holder (the writer of opinion which can be an individual or an organization) analysis, some extract and summarize the features of reviews and other techniques analysis the sentiment of reviews and its strength. as an example, a review about a product has variety types of features related to that object (e.g., camera, printer, etc.), its components (e.g., battery, hard disk, etc.), and attributes (e.g., battery life, disk capacity, etc.) and the opinion which describe the sentiment of each part. opinion can be expressed implicitly (only implies the opinion with no subject) or explicitly (directly mentions the polarity of the opinion) about different types of entities. review, reviewer and the target are three main entities which form opinionated documents. researchers prove that each pair of these entities has power low relationship with each other. usually most of the reviewers write a small number of reviews for products and a few numbers of reviewers write many reviews. this fact is also applied for the relation between number of products and reviews from reviewers, which means that a small number of products can take a large number of reviews and vice versa. similar concept can be found for the pair of number of feedbacks and reviews [42]. 3. features of opinionated documents’ entities features can be evaluated based on the entity which they describe. based on this concept, we have review-, reviewer-, group of reviewer-, and targetcentric features. review centric features extracted from the information of the review. it can be considered either as review text features (e.g., sentiment, number of words, etc.) or review meta-data (e.g., rate, date/time, feedback, etc.). some of review-centric features are domain dependent which reduce the generalization of the data mining techniques. reviewer-centric features are those features which imply on behaviour and characteristic of reviewer along with holistic investigation on all reviews written by reviewer. the main problem is that some of reviewer-centric features are not available in some opinionated websites, so they cannot be applied generally in data mining of variety opinionated sources. group of reviewer-centric features are those features which reveal the relationship of those reviewers who work together to express their opinion or change the sentiment trend of the opinionated document. these types of features are only available in a case which there is the motivation for reviewers to work in a group. finally, the target-centric features are those features which describe different aspects of a targeted entity which reviewer describe it. similar to reviewer-centric features, this type of features are not made available for further analysis by the companies. so, it causes reducing the generality of the methods which consider it. some techniques prefer to focus on reviewer-centric features rather than review-centric features because they are easier to extract and trace. due to the limitation of each category of features, the best way is exploiting the combination of the most effective ones, since much useful information can be collected from reviews, products, reviewer’s shared profile and activity patterns. the efficient data mining techniques are those which consider all entities with their relations and their associated features to produce more accurate results. in section 4.2, we describe our proposed algorithm and how it aggregate the features efficiently. in this study, we make an investigation about three groups of features including content-based features, meta-data features, relational-based features and their sub-categories. in opinionated websites different types of features exist that based on the need of different applications variety set of these features or the combination of them are exploited. in these websites, each product has its own profile along with the set of reviews written by different reviewers. some websites even provides the profile for each reviewer which includes his reviews, location, helpful rate, etc. each reviewer can post multiple reviews [10]. each review has textual content features along with meta-data features. the features can be categorized as illustrated in figure 1. figure1 data mining feature’s taxonomy in this study, we make an investigation on variety range of features exploited in different areas of data mining including opinion spam detection, opinion summarization, sentiment analysis and recommendation system. features have been categorized based on the concept(s) which they describe for different entities. in table 1-5, we present different set of features along with their definition, their domains which they are applied and also the references of the techniques which use that specific feature. it should be noted that some of the features are self-explanatory, so they do not need the description. 3.1. content-based features review text contains a variety set of features which can reveal valuable information about the reviewer opinion about different subjects, features, and its strength. these features imply on either linguistic concept or semantic one. in order to extract the features’ values, we exploit different text mining algorithms and natural language processing (nlp) techniques according to the nature of those features. the content-based features’ values are collected from review’s body and used to evaluate the linguistic and semantic patterns of the review content [11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16]. some set of techniques in data mining use a very shallow set of textual features extracted or calculated easily from the review content. this approach causes the accuracy of the proposed technique to be reduced. 3.1.1. sentiment-driven features during the last decade, opinion mining becomes a very important concept in data mining domain as the governments, private sections and individuals usually need to know about the overall sentiment of viewpoint about desired phenomena. to achieve this goal, many powerful techniques have been proposed and many investigations have been performed in this area. the common target for all of them is to know about the sentiment of the words express by people about different features or topic. in this case, sentiment analysis and extraction of its related features have been become important tasks. sentiment or polarity of reviews or user generated content is one of the main characteristics which people consider when they want to make decision. this concept refers to the feeling, experiments and idea of reviewer about a product or service. it can be express for detailed features or for whole product or service. in opinionated websites, the idea can be represented through semantic expression or by using stars or rates which imply on three types of polarity including positive, neutral and negative. as we can see in table 1, this polarity can be extracted by exploiting different set of features. sentiment analysis is a main part of any opinion mining applications. in recommendation systems, first, researchers should know about the customers’ preference (positive/negative opinion) about the products and then the system can make the best suggestion. on the other hand, in text and feature summarization, the method extracts the sentiment of each feature and then makes the summarization based on the polarity of opinionated words. sentiment classifiers performs their analysis in document, sentence of feature level which cause different set features from table 1 can be used to satisfy the classifiers need. in addition, as some of the opinionated websites do not provide rating or some reviewers (esp. spammers) give mismatched rate compared to review content, some sentiment analysis and classification techniques can evaluate the sentiment of the review and assign the rate to each review based on its content [15]. there are many tools and algorithms (e.g., ntusd (ntu sentiment dictionary) [56]) exploited to identify the polarity of opinion reviews. table 1: sentiment-driven features no name of feature description domain of study reference 1 review sentiment selfexplanatory om, sd, rs, ts [10, 13, 16, 17, 18, 19] 2 polarity of emotion words positive/ne gative of adjective, adverb or verbs om, sd, rs, ts [10, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25] 3 status of review bad/good review is after a good/bad review sd, om [10, 17] 4 review group agreement whether the review has the same polarity with surrounding reviews sd, om authors 5 polarity of features selfexplanatory om, rs, ts [26] 6 number of reviews in time window number of positive/ne gative reviews in tw om, sd, rs, ts [27] 7 opinion strength opinion severity for its polarity om, sd, rs, ts [28] 8 sentimentrate difference difference of sentence sentiment and rate sd authors *rs= recommendation system, om= opinion mining, ts= text summarization, sd= spam detection. 3.1.2. syntactic and semantic-driven features semantic of the word or review presents the meaning or concept which describes it. this set of features has been exploited by researchers to generate a semantic language model in terms of similarity evaluation. they found that not only duplicated reviews can be similar with each other, but also those reviews which semantically are similar through synonym words also can be considered as duplicated reviews. on the other hand, syntactic of the word refers to the grammatical role of that word within a sentence of review. the first work of using semantic classification of reviews in opinion mining has been performed by dave et al. (2003). they applied information retrieval techniques along with feature scoring method in order to classifying the opinion of features and documents. they used machine learning approach and rainbow text classification tool [46], svmlight package and naïve bayes classifier along with laplace smoothing [44]. most of the techniques applied in document representation rely on bag-of-word model (bow) which is commonly known as a vector space model (vsm). documents are represented as a linear vector which describes the co-occurrence of words in textual corpus. in vsm, many semantic relations among concepts and their significant information will be lost which cause reducing the accuracy of technique. the other problem with vsm is that if the document is long, it is very difficult to represent it as a vector model due to its large size. the details of syntactic and semanticdriven features and the clues which can be extracted from the review content are explained in table 2. table 2: syntactic and semantic-driven features no name of feature description domain of study reference 1 number of words, sentences (length of review) selfexplanatory om, sd, ts [10, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34] 2 number of noun, adjective, etc. selfexplanatory om, sd, rs, ts [26, 32, 35] 3 rate of brand/ product name percentage or rate of repetition of brand/produ ct name om, sd, rs, ts [10, 17, 20, 21] 4 review content similarity content similarity of current review with other reviews sd [10, 11, 15, 17, 20, 23, 24, 25, 27, 30, 31, 32, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40] 5 text generality whether the review is general or not om, sd [38] 6 n-gram feature n-gram noun phrases (unigram/bi gram) the combination order of terms om, sd, rs, ts [10, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 26, 27, 29 , 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41] 7 percentage of capital word selfexplanatory om, sd [10, 15, 17, 20, 42] 8 percentage of numerals word selfexplanatory om, sd [10, 16, 17, 19] 9 distributio n of pos selfexplanatory om, sd, rs, ts [18, 29, 31, 32, 35, 43, 44] 10 term frequencyinverse document frequency (tf-idf) and bagof-words numerical concept which refers to how much a word is frequent within the document om, sd, rs, ts [15, 16, 19, 30, 33, 35, 36, 45] 11 subjectivit y/objectivi ty of review whether the review is objective or subjective om, sd, ts [15, 20] 12 pronoun first/second / third person sd, om [15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 35] 13 ratio of grammatic al words ratio of question, exclamation , punctuation and html tags om, sd, ts [15, 16, 19, 20, 26] for future extraction, we need to have a mechanism which can pars the document according to the positions and roles of its phrases. pos tagging is that mechanism which identifies the syntactic or morphological role (noun, adjective, pronoun, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction and interjection, etc.) of the specific phrase and its linguistic construction in the sentence. pos tagging is one of the most important pre-processing steps during data analysis, as it can help us to determine the grammatical structure of the document. evaluating of adjectives, adverbs and pronouns, by using pos tagging, can reveal variety sets of emotion and opinion hidden in the review’s sentences. it can help the researchers to identify the implicit and explicit opinion expressed through the reviews. pos tagging has a wide range of usage in data mining. a simple pre-processing task involves dividing text into meaningful segment according to boundary detection. in most cases, a period (.), an exclamation mark (!) or a question mark (?) are the usual signals that indicate a sentence boundary. this step is applied in text processing approaches such as information extraction, text summarization, semantic role labelling, machine translation, syntactic parsing and plagiarism detection. nlprocessor can be used to produce pos tags and syntactic chunking. the output of nlprocessor is a xml file which shows the reviews along with their pos tags [43]. punctuation and writing style are the other indicators applied in many data mining applications especially for sentiment analysis. alongside of writing style, the syntactic expressions used by the reviewer can be analyzed to determine the writing logic of that review. 1st, 2nd and 3rd person pronouns are three indicators which some of the researchers use in different opinion mining applications. these pronouns widely used in opinion mining to evaluate the opinion of the reviewer or other people who deal with that product or service. on the other hand, in opinion spam detection, this feature can be used to distinguish between spammer and nonspammer. for example, some researchers like [22, 35, 39] believe that spammers try to use 2nd and 3rd person pronouns to remove the responsibility of telling lie from themselves or due to insufficient personal experience about that case, which both cases cause the psychological distancing. while, other researchers such as [18, 29] believe that 1st person pronoun is more prevalence in spam reviews as the spammers try to increase the credibility of their reviews and show that they had such experience. unlike the psychological deception and lying which researchers [22, 34] believe that the liars do not use first person pronoun to avoid having the ownership of that lie, in opinion spam the spammer tries to make the review more convincing and put more impression by using first person pronoun. in this case, spam reviews nature is different with normal lying [34]. domain dependency is the main weakness of those data mining techniques which consider the set of semantic and synthetic features. these techniques can be exploited only for specific domain of study. in this case, more robust techniques are needed which can be used in cross-domain data mining. while content-based features cannot provide all required information for data mining activities, but they present strong clues, which can help us for to develop variety set of applications in different sub-domains of data mining. 3.2. meta-data features apart from content-based features, meta-data features are those features which describe the additional information about review, reviewer and his/her behaviours which cannot be extracted from text of review. the main sub-categories of meta-data features are rating, date/time, helpfulness and position. 3.2.1. rating-driven features rating is one of the most popular features widely used by variety sets of data mining techniques. this feature can influence on the popularity trend of a product. the review content should be match with its corresponded rating, so, some techniques are developed to evaluate this type of matching. as this concept can reduce the accuracy of opinion mining techniques, detecting and filtering these irrelevant reviews (e.g., advertisement reviews or non-opinion reviews) can improve the results of those techniques. these types of reviews play a critical role especially in spamming activities, when the spammers try to change the trend of product average rating without spending their time to write the detailed reviews. in opinionated websites rating is presented in different formats including star (from 1 star to 5 star), number (from 1 to 5)or binary value (thumbs up or thumbs down). these different forms of rating usually are normalized in the range of [0,1]. the details of variety sets of rating-driven features are presented in table 3. table 3: rating-driven features no name of feature description domain of study reference 1 review rating rating of the review om, sd, rs [10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 23, 26, 27, 46, 47, 48, 49] 2 rate deviation deviation from average rating sd [10, 11, 15, 17, 20, 23, 25, 26, 27, 31, 34, 36, 37, 50, 51] 3 similar rating reviews number of similar rates which a reviewer gives to a product(s) sd authors 4 extremity of rating extremity of rating sd, rs, ts, om [15, 34, 37, 38] 5 burst review rate rate of reviews posted in burstiness intervals sd, rs, om [27, 38] 6 feedback number number of feedbacks which are assigned to the specific review sd, om [10,17] 7 helpful feedback number selfexplanatory sd, om [10, 14, 17, 23, 27, 32] rating feature is important for review, reviewer and product. by evaluating the product average rating, we know about product popularity. rating deviation of a review can give important signal about the truthfulness of that review. finally, analysing the rating patterns (number of positive/negative rating, similarity in rating and rating for specific product’s category) of a reviewer reveals the important characteristic about the reviewer’s behaviors. review feedback is feature which some opinionated websites provide for their users to give their opinion about the usefulness of the reviews content. feedback can be present by assign a binary value into the review to show that whether the review is helpful or not. this factor shows the level of satisfactory of the readers who find that review is useful, informative and effective. helpfulness can be considered as a factor which increases the credibility of review. on the other hand, if the reviews of reviewer gain more helpful rates, that reviewer with be more reliable. this point should be considered that similar to rate spamming, helpfulness can be effected by spammers. 3.2.2. time-driven features the time-related features are based on the posting date and time of the review. in data mining applications, we can use different fixed time units such as hour, day, week, month and year, or the customized time unit (e.g., three-weeks time interval). table 4 explains different types of time-driven features along with their application in different domains of data mining. table 4: time-driven features no name of feature description domain of study reference 1 date/time of review selfexplanatory sd, rs, ts, om [11, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20, 31, 34, 41, 42, 51] 2 time window time interval sd, rs, ts, om [11, 23, 27, 39, 40, 46, 49] 3 time window review the number of reviews in time interval sd, rs, om [34, 38] 4 max. number of reviews per day selfexplanatory om, sd [15, 25, 37] 5 burstiness window number of days between first and last review in density time intervals om, sd, rs [15, 25, 27, 36] 6 early deviation first review rate deviation from average rating sd, om [27, 31, 49] 7 burst review rate number of reviews which appears in products burstiness sd, rs, ts, om [36, 38] 8 early time frame spammer’s review early to increase the impact sd [15, 34, 37] 9 arrivingwriting time time between registration and writing of reviewer sd, rs authors 10 review rank (position) order among all reviews sd [10, 15, 16, 19, 17, 42] 11 first position review whether review is in first position or not sd [10, 16, 17, 19, 20, 23] review distribution can be analyzed in different scales of time windows. time window is the time interval between any two consecutive temporal points. variety types of information required of different data mining applications (e.g., product’s popularity trend analysis, recommendation system and popular features’ summarization) can be extracted through review prevalence evaluation. in some intervals the number of reviews for specific products increases dramatically. this burstiness (large amount of reviews within a short time interval) happens due to different reasons including releasing of product, promotion time or posting fake reviews by product’s owner to change the popularity trend of his product or competitor’s product. if the number of reviews in a specific time interval becomes greater than the threshold, this time interval can be considered as burstiness time interval. to investigate the burstiness, we need to standardize the format of the review posting date. some websites such as amazon.com, copy all the reviews of one version product for all the version of same product (i.e., the main difference between them is only the color). identifying this duplication can improve the opinion analysis results. we can perform this task by assessing the posting date of the reviews. duplicated reviews, also, can be happened due to spamming activities which spammers try to post a huge number of reviews in same day to change the rating trend of product. so, it is a complicated task to distinguish whether this duplication is due to website’s policy or because of spamming activities. time interval between two reviews of a reviewer or product can be an important signal for those techniques which track the reviewer’s behavior (e.g., the activeness of reviewer). early time frame refers to what extent the reviewer write review early. this feature is importance since the top positions of reviews (i.e., early posted reviews after product is lunched) can influence on product’s popularity. if the launched date of product was not specified for the website, we consider the date of first review as launched date of that product. reviewing activity of reviewers refers to the time period between first and last reviews of reviewers. reviewers who write reviews after a reasonable time are less like to be spammers than those who create an account and post some reviews and after that never use that account. so, time-driven features are very important features in data mining domains and more specifically, in spam detection field. 3.3. relational-based features there are some groups of features which are mostly significant for opinion spam detection or opinion mining. as mentioned before, the entities have relationships with each other. considering these types of relationships can improve the accuracy of data mining techniques. for example, the number of reviews which a reviewer writes for a group of products reveals the relationship between reviewer, reviews and product. the relational-based features are illustrated in table 5. table 5: relational-based features no name of feature description domain of study reference 1 singleton review whether the review is reviewer’s sole review or not om, sd [15] 2 ratio of singleton reviews number of singleton reviews among all product’s reviews om, sd [38, 46, 48] 3 proportion of positive singleton number of positive singleton reviews among all the reviews om, sd, ts [48] 4 only review whether this review is the only product’s review om, sd [10, 17] 5 group rating deviation reviews’ rating deviation of a group of reviewers om, sd [31, 49] 6 group content similarity reviews’ content similarity of group of reviewers. om, sd [31, 49] 7 group early time frame first group of reviewers [31, 49] in spamming activities, reviewers are either singleton reviewer or multi-reviews reviewers. if a reviewer writes only one review, we call that reviewer as singleton reviewer and that review as singleton review. multiplereviews reviewers can change the market trend for a specific product or group of products, so, this concept should be considered in data mining applications. these two types of reviewers have different behaviors which cause simple methods cannot detect their activities accurately. those reviewers who write multiple reviews for a single product with more likelihood will be review spammers. proportion of positive singleton reviews is a good indicator to investigate this probability. spammers usually try to post the reviews as a singleton review by posting different reviews under different userid. in this case, the methods which develop to detect multi-reviews reviewer cannot catch them. usually spammers hired by companies try to write bulk of reviews in short period of time by using different user id due to prevent to be detected by existing detection methods. as we can see in table 5, singleton reviewers have different characteristics which make them difficult to be detected. on the other hand, sometimes reviewers work within a group to increase the influence of their reviewing. this group activity reveals a set of significant features which can be exploited in variety domains of data mining, especially in opinion spam detection and group of spammer detection. in group of spammer, the rating behavour, review content and review posting time are similar. mostly, the group average rating is deviated from targeted product’s average rating. all these signals help us to improve our prediction results. the evaluation of existing techniques and the set of features they have exploited prove that considering those features which can be extracted from the relationships among entities can improve the accuracy and generality of any proposed techniques. but, we should know which combination of features is the most useful and informative sets, and can be applicable in our research. in next section, we present our proposed graph-based model which considered these relationships among entities. 4. result and discussion different entities in opinion mining have their own characteristic explained through variety set of features. however, considering these individual sets of features cannot reveal all characteristics and hidden relationships existed among entities. opinion mining entities can have influence on each other through reviewing activities (as mentioned in section 3.3). 4.1. feature prevalence in data mining applications in this section, we make an investigation on the existing sub-categories of data mining techniques. as it can be analyzed from table 1-5, different domains of data mining use variety sets of features. this evaluation can help the researchers to know which set of features are popular to be applied in desired domain and to what extent they are important. the results of this analysis are illustrated in figure 2. figure2 prevalence of data mining features in different domains as illustrated in figure 2, opinion mining techniques mostly use syntactic and semantic features related to the review content. recommendation systems find that syntactic features along with sentiment analysis features give the best result for their methods. the usage of all four categories in text summarization is near to equal, but they use few numbers of features from each category. an interesting result, which can be extracted from the above diagram, is that opinion spam detection techniques use all four categories along with high number of features from each category. the most common category in opinion spam detection domain is syntactic features, as the professional reviewers write the reviews in such a way that cannot be detected easily. in this case, opinion spam detection techniques need more complicated features to capture the spamming clues. another result from figure 2 is that relational-based features mostly used by opinion mining and opinion spam detection techniques as they present the more useful and important information about entities, which work together to generate the opinionated document, for those two types of techniques. 4.2. multi-iterative graph-based structure for data feature extraction the graph structure is represented as a tripartite network. in this structure, review and product are connected through the “belonged relationship” link. review and reviewer are connected through the “posted relationship” link. reviewer and product are connected through the “reviewed relationship” link. the proposed model combines the multi-iterative algorithm and graph entities representation structure to perform feature extraction for data mining. it focuses on finding inter-relation and intra-relations among entities, their joint and disjoint features, and how they can connect with each other in terms of having effective feature selection process. the main advantage of this structure is that it monitors behaviors of the entities and produce more accurate feature values for different data mining application. all entities will be evaluated simultaneously and produce new set of relational-based features iteratively. the graph-based model is flexible and scalable linearly so it can be generalized in other domains of data mining. the proposed model is presented in figure 3. figure3 multi-iterative graph-based model for opinion feature extraction in figure 3, the red curve represents the concept of iteration. multi-iterative feature extraction algorithm is introduced to capture the relations of entities which reveal during iteration phase. for example, when we evaluate the features of reviewer individually, we do not have any knowledge about the features of reviews which he has posted. after we evaluate whole graph structure, we will be informed about their relations. multi-iterative algorithm adjusts the value of relational-based features after some iterations (in our study, we consider after the changing rate of the features’ value becomes less than the threshold < 0.01). variety types of features, relations and their possible assigned values cause the graph size become exponential, and hardly can be controlled. in this situation, previous study found that general mrf model becomes useless for such a large network. so, we propose an iterative algorithm. we integrate the pieces of information extracted from the proposed graph structure. then, we have an iterative algorithm which updates entities’ features value iteratively based on their neighbours entities’ features, the results from last iteration and using the interand intra-relationships among them. each entity has a set of features which in our method their values become normalize and the score is assigned to them. these features of each entity are integrated with each other through a linear combination. in our proposed algorithm, we have two main steps include initializing and iterative computation. in initialize step of iterative algorithm, the entities will be initialized by using the value of extracted features. in iterative step, we use the previous calculated score to update the current feature score of the entity. finally, we utilize final value, after convergence of algorithm, to determine the 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[56] lw. ku, hw. ho, hh. chen, opinion mining and relationship discovery using copeopi opinion analysis system, journal of the association for information science and technology, 2009. acknowledgments this work is supported by ministry of higher education (mohe) and research management centre (rmc) at the universiti teknologi malaysia (utm) under research university grant category (r.j130000.7828.4f719).  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.2 abstract: office automation is an initiative used to digitally deliver services to citizens, private and public sectors. it is used to digitally collect, store, create, and manipulate office information as a need of accomplishing basic tasks. azya office automation has been implemented as a pilot project in kurdistan institution for strategic studies and scientific research (kissr) since 2013. the efficiency of governance in kurdistan institution for strategic studies and scientific research has been improved, thanks to its implementation. the aims of this research paper is to evaluate user satisfaction of this software and identify its significant predictors using egovsat model. the user satisfaction of this model encompasses five main parts, which are utility, reliability, efficiency, customization, and flexibility. for that purpose, a detailed survey is conducted to measure the level of user satisfaction. a total of sixteen questions have distributed among forty one users of the software in kissr. in order to evaluate the software, three measurement have been used which are reliability test, regression analysis and correlation analysis. the results indicate that the software is successful to a decent extent based on user satisfaction feedbacks obtained by using egovsat model. keywords: office automation, e-organization, user satisfaction, egovsat model 1. introduction e-government is a strategy to improve the quality, efficiency, transparency and effectiveness in their services. specifically, office automation is able to facilitate towards the achievement of the economic and social development goals, business and civil society at local, state, national and international levels. in kurdistan region of iraq, the initiative has to some extend increase the efficiency of the government in providing better services to its citizens. nonetheless, low uptake versus high investment deemed the introduction of e-government a strategy that has yet to be optimized. meanwhile, kurdistan region has a strategy for automating the public sectors so as to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, quality, and transparency in their services [1]. though the both iraqi and kurdistan region governments have increased efforts for using and adopting e-government services among employees, the adoption rate might remain low. barriers and perceived benefits may influence the adoption rate which include factors such as content, design, social status, language, differences in competence and skills, differences in network access, differences in motivation, and other factors. however, research studies have shown that a strategic way to increase participation is by placing the user needs at the center of the development of electronic public services. the level of user satisfaction is an important indicator to further usage and adoption on a large scale basis. thus, this research paper evaluates and identify and evaluate the key factors in influencing employee (user) satisfaction towards e-government services in kurdistan institution for strategic studies and scientific research (kissr) by using the egovsat model. 2. azya office automation azya office automation is a government-to-government (g2g) service provided by a local company used to digitally store, create, manipulate, and collect office information needed in order to accomplish basic tasks [2]. it gives services to the organizations of a government in a way that it fastens the workflow of the administrative and managerial processes .in general, azya office automation has three roles. firstly, azya office automation can accomplish the managerial and administrative tasks in kurdistan institution faster than before. secondly, the need for a large staff can be eliminated in kurdistan institution. thirdly, it needs less storage to store data. evaluating e-government services in kurdistan institution for strategic studies and scientific research using the egovsat model aram m. ahmed 1 , bryar a. hassan 2 , dr. soran a. saeed 3 , and awin a. saeed 4 1 kurdistan institution for strategic studies and scientific research, department of information technology, building no. 10, alley 60, gullabax 335 , shorsh st., opposite shoresh hospital sulaimani, kurdistan region, iraq aramahmed@kissr.edu.krd 2 kurdistan institution for strategic studies and scientific research, department of information technology, building no. 10, alley 60, gullabax 335, shorsh st., opposite shoresh hospital sulaimani, kurdistan region, iraq bryar.hassan@kissr.edu.krd 3 sulaimani polytechnic university, technical college of engineering, qirga,wrme st. , mardin 327 , alley 76 soran.saeed@spu.edu.iq 4 gorannet company for internet and broadband services, salim street, faruq holding, flat no. 2b aween.saeed@gorannet.net mailto:aramahmed@kissr.edu.krd mailto:bryar.hassan@kissr.edu.krd mailto:soran.saeed@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.2 lastly, multiple employees of kurdistan institution can simultaneously edit and update data. a short description features of azya office automation is shown in table 1. table 1: features of azya office automation feature value multiple platform ms windows multi-browser internet explorer word processor support yes multi-device accessibility pc form generator yes report generator yes language support kurdish integration with any solution yes database ms. sql server programming language asp.net web based support yes furthermore, azya office automation is a web-based initiative used by only the employees of kurdistan institution to run the managerial and administrative need of kurdistan institution. in that case, the employees act as the citizens. figure 1 shows the main web based interface of azya office automaiton. figure 1 main interface of azya office automation [3] technically, azya office automation works work as an online web based application. a client-server network architecture is used as a communication model to connect the clients to the system, it supports infinite number of users and groups with allocation of user roles and privileges. figure 2 shows a general technical view of azya office automation. figure 2 technical view of azya office automation managerially, azya office automation works as focal application where users are connected to each other and can use the system based on the privilege that they have. it has import and export systems to be connected with the other systems. it also has arching system. refer to figure 3. figure 3 managerial view of azya office automation 3. kurdistan institution for strategic studies and scientific research (kissr) kurdistan institution for strategic studies and scientific research (kissr) is one of the ministry of higher education and scientific research krg’s public institution located in the city of sulaymaniyah in kurdistan region – iraq [4]. it is one of the important scientific and cultural institution in kurdistan region as well as iraq which is specialized for scientific research and strategy studies. the aim of kurdistan institution for strategic studies and scientific research (kissr) are to conduct researches in the fields of pure sciences, engineering, medical sciences, and strategic studies. according to the national development report of kurdistan regional government [1], the vision of implementing egovernment and e-organization is focusing to improve the services of public sector effectively and efficiently. kurdistan institution is the first governmental organization in kurdistan region and iraq that has used azya office automation since the late of 2013 to automate managerial and administrative processes. this implies that azya office automation is an applicable system in egovernment system. 4. related work e-government adoption is affected by the elements that provide perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, by user characteristics such as sense of perceived risk, feeling of perceived control, and also by user satisfaction with the quality of its services [12]. e-government adoption requires that users show higher levels of satisfaction with the online service provided by the government. also, a higher level of user satisfaction will increase the rate of egovernment adoption [4]. in the previous research works, kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.2 various techniques, such as technology acceptance model (tam), mclean and delone model, servqual and egovsat model, or an integrated model are used to measure user satisfaction [6,7,13,14]. the measurement of user satisfaction can have a meaningful and objective feedback on user’s expectation and preference. furthermore, e-government performance will be evaluated in relation to set of satisfaction dimensions that indicate the strong and the weak factors affecting user satisfaction of e-government service [8]. because the egovsat model has performance dimensions (constructs) [6], it is proposed for evaluating the performance of a web-based e-government system with a citizen-centric or user-centric approach to focus on the process and the outcome of the interaction [4,5]. 5. research model the egovsat is a model proposed for evaluating the performance of a web-based e-government system with a citizen-centric or user-centric approach to focus on the process as well as the outcome of the interaction [4,5]. according to [6], the egovsat model has five performance dimensions (constructs) for user satisfaction, which are utility, efficiency, reliability, flexibility, and customization. also, each contract includes some emotional dimensions (items). the total number of items for all the five constructs are sixteen items. in addition, each construct is used to examine a specific feature of egovernment service. utility construct is used to examine whether the web-based office automation is usable or not. reliability construct is to examine whether the webbased office automation functions well or not with regard to technology and the content accuracy. the efficiency is to examine the organization and accessibility of the features and information available in the web-based office automation. for the customization construct, it is to examine the customizability offered to the users in both information content and access methods. flexibility construct refers to whether the web-based office automation provides choice of state a need and provides dynamic information. the model is presented in figure 4. figure 4 the egovsat model incidentally, high level of user satisfaction for the services of e-government is an important key to measure the adoption of the services provided by government. a higher level of user satisfaction will increase the rate of egovernment adoption [7]. meanwhile, user satisfaction is considered as a performance measurement of egovernment services and can be measured by various techniques. for examples, mclean and delone model, technology acceptance model (tam), servqual, and egovsat model can be used to measure user satisfaction. furthermore, by measuring user satisfaction it will have an immediate, meaningful and objective feedback about user’s preference and expectation. on the other hand, e-government performance will be evaluated in relation to set of satisfaction dimensions that indicate the strong and the weak factors affecting user satisfaction of e-government service [8]. thus, the egovsat model is used in this study with the aim of providing a scale by which government to citizen web based initiatives can be evaluated in terms of satisfaction derived by users (employees) [4]. 6. research methodology in this research paper, a survey is employed to collect data from the users of azya office automation. a. data collection in this study, questionnaires have distributed to all the users of azya office automation in kurdistan institution for strategic studies and scientific research. this questionnaire based on the constructs and their items of the egovsat model. a relevant data were collected via the questionnaire and analyzed using statistical software package for social sciences (spss). b. methodology in the constructs, each item is measured on ten points (10 = strongly agree to 1 = strongly disagree) kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.2 7. data analysis the data is analyzed using statistical methods, users’ profile data, reliability analysis, correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis. a. user data profile the users’ profile of azya office automation of the surveyed respondents is presented in table 2. the total number of the users is forty one users. the gender distribution is 53.66% male and 46.34% female. further, 53.66% are from scientific education background; whereas 46.34% are from humanities education background. the age of users are varied. 7.32% are 22-29 years old; 53.66% are 30-39 years old; 24.39% are 40-49 years old; 12.2% are 50-59 years old; and 2.44% are above 60 years old. their educational level is also varied from post doctorate to baccalaureate degrees. at the same time, each of them have different background in computer skills. more than half of them have intermediate level in using computer. table 2 presents the user profiles of azya office automation. table 2: user data profile frequency percent education science 22 53.66 humanities 19 46.34 gender male 22 53.66 female 19 46.34 age 22-29 3 7.32 30-39 22 53.66 40-49 10 24.39 50-59 5 12.2 above 60 1 2.44 education level post doctorate 1 2.44 doctorate 4 9.76 master 6 14.63 higher diploma 0 0 bachelor 18 43.9 diploma 4 12.2 baccalaureate 7 17.07 computer skills none 0 0 basic 1 2.44 intermediate 23 56.1 advance 9 21.95 expert 8 19.51 b. reliability analysis cronbach's alpha is a measure of internal consistency, that is, how closely related a set of items are as a group [15]. it also is as a coefficient of reliability or consistency to be a measure of scale reliability. cronbach's alpha can be written as a function of the number of test items and the average inter-correlation among the items. equation (1) shows the formula of standardized cronbach's alpha. cnv cn ).1( .   (1) here n is equal to the number of items, c-bar is the average inter-item covariance among the items and v-bar equals the average variance. in the equation (1), if the number of items are increased, cronbach's alpha will be increased. additionally, if the average inter-item correlation is low, alpha will be low. as the average inter-item correlation increases, cronbach's alpha increases as well (holding the number of items constant). in this study, cronbach’s alpha can be used to evaluate the reliability of the items [9]. a cronbach’s score which is considered as reliable is 0.7 or higher. table 3 shows the result of reliability statistics for all the five constructs. the score ranges is between 0.925 and 0.669. the utility contract score the highest, whereas the flexibility construct score the lowest. the test of reliability analysis predicts that only three constructs are considered as reliable as well as suitable for further analysis, which are utility, efficiency, and customization. nonetheless, reliability and flexibility constructs are marginally reliable. the detailed result is shown in table 3. table 3: result for reliability analysis construct no. of items crohbach’s alpha utility 5 0.925 reliability 2 0.695 efficiency 4 0.848 customization 2 0.895 flexibility 3 0.669 c. correlation analysis pearson’s correlation coefficient (r), the square root of r2, is a measure of association between two interval-ratio variables. equation (2) represents the way of calculating correlation analysis between two items, such as x and y [16]. ).(.*).(. ),(cov ydsxds yx r  (2) according the equation (1) of correlation analysis, the measure is symmetrical and there is no specification of independent or dependent variables. additionally, the range of r is from –1.0 to +1.0. the sign () indicates direction. the closer the number is to 1.0 the stronger the association between x and y. in this study, correlation analysis is basically used to determine the strength as well as the direction between the constructs. the purpose of correlation analysis is to test hypotheses of the egovsat model. this is conducted by finding the correlation ratio between the predicator variables. as discussed previously, the sixteen questions are the predictor variables. (the questions are named as q11 until q53). the result of correlation analysis is shown in table 4. where each predictor variable is compared with all the other predictor variables and the correlation ratio between them are found accordingly. for example, the correlation between a predictor variable and itself is one because they are fully correlated and so on. table 4: result of correlation analysis kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.2 d. multiple regression analysis ordinary least squares linear regression is the most widely used type of regression for predicting the value of one dependent variable from the value of one independent variable. it is also widely used for predicting the value of one dependent variable from the values of two or more independent variables. when there are two or more independent variables, it is called multiple regression. the elements of multiple regression equation is shown in the equation (3) [17]. 332211 xbxbxbay  (3) where: y is the value of the dependent variable (y), what is being predicted or explained a (alpha) is the constant or intercept b1 is the slope (beta coefficient) for x1 x1 first independent variable that is explaining the variance in y b2 is the slope (beta coefficient) for x2 x2 second independent variable that is explaining the variance in y b3 is the slope (beta coefficient) for x3 x3 third independent variable that is explaining the variance in y s.e.b1 standard error of coefficient b1 s.e.b2 standard error of coefficient b2 s.e.b3 standard error of coefficient b3 r2 the proportion of the variance in the values of the dependent variable (y) explained by all the independent variables (xs) in the equation together f whether the equation as a whole is statistically significant in explaining y for further investigation of the relationship between the user satisfactions (egovsat) and the constructs (utility, reliability, efficiency, customization, and flexibility). these constructs are represented as independent variables, whereas the egovsat is represented as dependent variables. the egovsat is measured by taking the means of system quality, overall satisfaction, and information quality as well as overall satisfaction. a cronbach alpha score of 0.695 was obtained which indicates the accuracy of the measuring instruments for this construct multi co-linearity because there was no considerable correlations (r>.9) among the variables as shown in table 5. table 5: regression on egovsat model unstandardized coefficients stand ardize d coeffi cients t sig. b std. error beta 1 (constant) 5.245 .728 7.199 .000 utility .420 .119 .576 3.563 .001 efficiency .398 .138 .525 2.878 .007 customizat ion -.544 .152 -.724 -3.581 .001 a. dependent variable: reliability r squared=0.509, adjusted r squared=.454, f value=9.329**, n=40 ***significant at p=.000 8. result in the previous section, three statistical approaches which are reliability analysis, correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis have been applied to evaluate the questionnaire. firstly, as it is clearly shown in table 6, the test of crohbach’s alpha shows that only three constructs which are utility, efficiency, and customization, have scored more than the threshold (0.7) and are considered to be reliable. however, reliability and flexibility constructs fell below the threshold (0.7) and are considered to be marginally reliable. table 6: result of crohbach’s alpha construct result & threshold comparison result of crohbach’s alpha utility 0.925 > 0.7 fully reliable reliability 0.695 < 0.7 marginally reliable efficiency 0.848 > 0.7 fully reliable customization 0.895 > 0.7 fully reliable flexibility 0.669 < 0.7 marginally reliable secondly, the aim of applying correlation analysis is to test hypotheses of the egovsat model. figure 5 shows that all the predictor factors in relation with the user satisfaction of azya office automation are significant and positive. that means, all of the predictor variables are correlated to each other to some extent. the closer predictor variable to 1.0, the stronger the association between the predictor variables. as it is clearly show in graph x, the predictors are very close to each other in the range of 0 to 0.8 in x axis and -0.2 to 1 in y axis. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.2 figure 4 correlation analysis result thirdly, the linear combination of factors was significantly related to user satisfaction on e-government services accounting for approximately 48 percent of the variance. all the predictors are significant at the 95 percent confidence level and exhibit a positive relationship with egovsat. nonetheless, predictors that will have a higher magnitude in bringing about change (standard deviations) in egovsat are utility, flexibility, customization and efficiency consecutively. 9. discussion even though the result is given based on the measurements of egovsat model for user satisfaction, the result might be varied or the same if mclean and delone model, technology acceptance model (tam), or servqual is applied. more than one model can be a better practice to be applied to achieve more accurate result. moreover, the number of users used in the survey is forty one users. more users can be taken if they exist. also, the type of survey is just question and answer with a giving score from one to ten by the users. alternatively, the system can be evaluated by giving some specific tasks to do them in a specific time and consequently score their results. the data of the survey is analyzed using three statistical approaches, which are reliability analysis, correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis. this can be analyzed using some more statistical approaches to get more accurate results. depending on the score giving importance of predictors may change according to that user’s usage , but from this model we obtained that reliability , utility , efficiency , customization and flexibility in egovsat model improvements have a great importance to user satisfaction. as an alternative of these models, an automated tool can be applied to evaluate such kind of e-government services. nevertheless, there is not any automated tool to test and validate all of the constructs of egovsat model. 10. conclusion in this study, the egovsat model is used in this study with the aim of providing a scale by which government to citizen web based initiatives can be evaluated in terms of satisfaction derived by users. as the source of data, a survey is used to collect data from the users of azya office automation based on the constructs and their items of the egovsat model. then, the data is analyzed using statistical methods, users’ profile data, reliability analysis, correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis. thus, user satisfaction is one of the vital indicator to give a general idea as to how well the government has transformed its services according to its needs. the level of satisfaction will also be an important indicator to further usage and adoption on a large scale basis. the egovsat model presented in this paper has identified significant predictors in influencing employee (user) satisfaction. acknowledgement this study has been done in kurdistan institution for strategic studies and scientific research (kissr) and sulaimani polytechnic university (spu). the authors wish to express their deep thanks to professor dr. polla khanaqa, the head of the kissr; assist. professor dr. alan f. ali, the president of spu for their kind support in conducting this study. references [1] ministry of planning, "kurdistan region of iraq 2020: a vision for the future" [online]. available:www.ekrg.org/files/pdf/krg_2020_last_ english.pdf [accessed: aug. 19, 2016]. 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[8] n. m. yaghoubi, a. haghi, and s. asl, "egovernment and citizen satisfaction in iran: empirical study on ict offices," world applied sciences journal, vol. 12, pp. 1084-1092, 2011. -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 q12 q14 q21 q31 q33 q41 q51 q53 kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 1 | issue 2 | december 2016 | doi: 10.24017/science.2016.1.2.2 [9] l. carter and f. belanger, "citizen adoption of electronic government initiatives," in system sciences, 2004. proceedings of the 37th annual hawaii international conference on, 2004, p. 10 pp. [10] n. zlatareva and a. preece, "state of the art in automated validation of knowledge-based systems," expert systems with applications, vol. 7, pp. 151167, 1994. [11] bau, jason, et al. "state of the art: automated black-box web application vulnerability testing." 2010 ieee symposium on security and privacy. ieee, 2010. [12] j. bau, e. bursztein, d. gupta, and j. mitchell, "state of the art: automated black-box web application vulnerability testing," in security and privacy (sp), 2010 ieee symposium on, 2010, pp. 332-345. [13] t. a. horan, t. abhichandani, and r. rayalu, "assessing user satisfaction of e-government services: development and testing of quality-in-use satisfaction with advanced traveler information systems (atis)," in system sciences, 2006. hicss'06. proceedings of the 39th annual hawaii international conference on, 2006, pp. 83b-83b. [14] r. danila and a. abdullah, "user's satisfaction on e-government services: an integrated model," procedia-social and behavioral sciences, vol. 164, pp. 575-582, 2014. [15] d. g. bonett and t. a. wright, "cronbach's alpha reliability: interval estimation, hypothesis testing, and sample size planning," journal of organizational behavior, vol. 36, pp. 3-15, 2015. [16] m.-t. puth, m. neuhäuser, and g. d. ruxton, "effective use of pearson's product–moment correlation coefficient," animal behaviour, vol. 93, pp. 183-189, 2014. [17] j. cohen, p. cohen, s. g. west, and l. s. aiken, applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences: routledge, 2013. authors aram m. ahmed received his bsc in software engineering from koya university/iraq in 2010; msc in computer network technology at northumbria university/united kingdom in 2013. currently, he is a phd candidate in computer science at kissr and sulaimani polytechnic university. bryar hassan received msc software engineering in 2013 from the university of southampton, uk. he is currently a lecturer/researcher and phd candidate in kurdistan institution for strategic studies and scientific research as we as the director of information technology department in kurdistan institution. his research interests are in semantic web, web 3.0, information systems, and e-government. dr. soran saeed received the phd in computer science from university of greenwich university london, uk in 2006. he is assistant professor of computer science and his current position is the vice president for scientific affairs and higher education at sulaimani polytechnic university (spu). he is also head the board of ecourt system at sulaimani court developing by aktors company from estonia. awin a. saeed msc candidate in information technology from sulaimani polytechnic university and kurdistan institution for strategic studies and scientific research. she works as a visiting assistant researcher at computer science institute, sulaimani polytechnic university (spu) as well as technical support from gorannet company for internet and broadband services. her research interests are computer networks, information system, and e-government services.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.9 received: 25 may 2018 | accepted: 03 july 2018 total colectomy with subtotal proctocolectomy of high risk colorectal cancer patients fadhil ahmed mohialdeen community health department technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq fadhil.ahmed@spu.edu.iq | fadhilahmed@hotmail.com 56 abstract: lynch syndrome is known by an early incidence colorectal cancer and comparatively common synchronous and metachronous neoplastic polyps or cancer or both. the aim of the current study to explore the beneficial of prophylactic colectomy in high risk patients with colorectal cancer. the medical records of 42 colorectal patients whom underwent surgery between 2006 and 2017 of the above hospitals diagnosed as colorectal cancer diseases were retrospectively reviewed. a structured interview questionnaire was used. the questionnaire was including information on sociodemographic data such as; age, gender, address, occupation and marital status. in addition, data on the presentation of the disease was obtained and data on complications and post-operative outcomes were also recorded. 42 patients were studied and the mean age ±sd of their age were 49.5± (10.2), 52.4% were male and 47.6% were female.76.1 % of the patients present with a bleeding per-rectum,71.4, 66.6, 61.9 present with abdominal pain, change in bowel habit and abdominal pain respectively. abdominal mass and rectal mass were 11.9 and 9.5, the most common site of cancer was sigmoid, rectum and caecum 26.19, 14.3 and 11.9 respectively. the post-operative outcome was very less among patients, wound infection, seroma, incisional hernia and chest infection (7%, 7%, 4% and 4% respectively. we concluded from the current study that colorectal cancer with the technique of prophylactic total colectomy with or without subtotal proctectomy that increase the survival, decrease the morbidity and make the endoscopic follow –up easier and more comfortable to the patients for short and long follow-up interval. keywords: colorectal cancer, total colectomy, subtotal proctectomy. 1. introduction and literature review lynch syndrome is a common inherited colorectal cancer liable syndrome and responsible for approximately 3 % of malignant colorectal cancers. detailed family history and clinical evaluation are mandatory in finding peoples whom further assessment needed, through genetic counseling. finding the related germline mutations in mismatch repair genes in dna will lead to more accurate assessment of colorectal and extra-colonic cancer risk [1]. lynch syndrome is related to incidence of colorectal cancer in a younger age group and comparatively common synchronous and metachronous neoplastic polyps or cancer or both [2]. peoples might have an incidence of 80 % higher colorectal cancer through their life [3]. lynch syndrome is one of a well-known of autosomal dominant syndrome, that the family members being first degree relatives of an involve patient get a 50 % possibility of caring the mutated gene [4]. moreover, the originator lesions have a tendency towards been flat rather been pedunculated which is usually located in the right proximal colon which is more difficult throughout colonoscopy [5]. this fact leads to the new growth of colorectal cancers in between planned follow-up up colonoscopy. hence, most guiding principles recommend inspection colonoscopy every one to two years [6]. lynch syndrome patients usually diagnose with a colorectal cancer between the age of 44–61 years [7, 8]. but, the incidence of colorectal cancer in younger age groups less than 20 years is rare, that the first screening colonoscopy should be done between the age 20–25 years and in families who have a member with a colorectal cancer due to lynch syndrome the first colonoscopy for screening should be done 10 years earlier than the affected family members [4]. screening colonoscopy should be performed every two years up to the age 40, later on annually in the following years, colonic resection as a prophylactic prouder to prevent future risk of colorectal cancer in highly risk patient should be done with evaluating the risk and benefit of the operation [9]. prophylactic colectomy might be considered in rare circumstances and this should be discussed between the surgeon and the patient. one of the common criteria is amsterdam i criteria which is designed to find families with a high risk of developing of colorectal cancer [10]. another criteria is amsterdam ii , which is a revision of amsterdam i criterial in 1999 in an attempt for increasing its sensitivity and extra colonic cancer [11]. another guideline that involve some histological characters of hnpcc is the bethesda’s guidelines that guide for instability or liability of microsatellite as shown in (table 1). change from clinical diagnosis to genetic diagnosis begins 1993 as a mutation in mismatch repair gene [ 12, 7]. mutations in epcam or mmr genes (pms2, msh6, msh2, and 57 mlh1) is causative factor of developing colorectal cancer in lynch syndrome [13]. and this will be raised for those people who have increased family history or personal of colorectal neoplasia. there are high risk incidence association of extra-colonic cancer with lynch syndrome such as; urinary epithelial (4– 5%), endometrial (40–60 %), hepato-pancreatic-biliary (2 to 7%), gastric (7 to 19 %), ovarian (9 to 13%), small bowel (1 to 4%), and cns cancers (1-3%) [3, 8,14]. there are limited studies evaluating the value of prophylactic of colectomy in lynch syndrome. therefore, the aim of this study is to evaluate the value of prophylactic colectomy in high risk patients with lynch syndrome. table 1 : bethesda guidelines [7] original revised -individuals with cancer in families that meet the amsterdam criteria -patients with two hnpccrelated cancers, including synchronous and metachronous colorectal cancer or associated extracolonic cancers -patients with colorectal cancer and a first-degree relative with colorectal cancer and/or hnpcc-related extracolonic cancer and/ or a colorectal adenoma with one of the cancers diagnosed before age 45 years, and the adenoma diagnosed before age 40 years -patients with right-sided colorectal cancer having an undifferentiated pattern on histopathologic diagnosis before age 45 years -patients with signet-ring cell type colorectal cancer diagnosed before age 45 -patients with adenomas diagnosed before age 40 -colorectal cancer (crc) diagnosed in a patient <50 -presence of synchronous, metachronous colorectal or other hnpcc-associated tumors regardless of age -crc with the msi-h-like histology diagnosed in a patient less than 60 -crc diagnosed in a patient with one or more 1st degree relatives with an hnpcc related tumor, with one of the cancers being diagnosed under age 50 -crc in a patient with two or more 1st or 2nd degree relatives with hnpccrelated tumors, regardless of age 2. methods and materials the current study was carried out at three hospitals in sulaimani city, international hospital, shar hospital and shorish hospital. in the current study, analysis of the data of 42 patients newly diagnosed to have colorectal carcinoma who were treated at gastroenterology and hepatology teaching hospital–medical city from november 2006 to february 2017. the data were collected by a special form as below and the patients were admitted and treated at the surgical department where investigations carried out to prove the finding and determine the site and the extent of the disease include biochemical, endoscopy ( upper and lower) and imaging as u/s ,ct, mri and barium enema . preoperative bowel preparation (mechanical using rectal enemas, oral polyethelinglycol solution (coloclean), antibiotics or both) was done for most of the patients presentating as an elective situation two days before surgery but not in case of emergency operations, fluid diet 72 hours prior to surgery. prophylactic antibiotics (ceftriaxone 1 g plus metronidazole 500 mg intravenously) were given at induction of anaesthesia and continued for two days if no clinical feature of sepsis were present. we retrospectively reviewed the medical record of 42 patients whom underwent a surgery between 2006 and 2017. the surgical procedure (total colectomy with subtotal proctectomy) was done for the patients. a written consent has been taken from patients, a structured questionnaire was applied to collect information regarding the patient’s backgrounds and socio-demographical characteristics. as a general principle for management for malignancy that the surgeon should obey the oncologic surgical rules as well as in colorectal cancer surgery for lynch syndrome patients. whether, the operation done through a laparoscopy or through traditional open technique, the surgeon should explore whole abdominal and pelvic cavity. for any second day involvement, a metastasis from colorectal cancer including liver, omentum, peritoneum, ovaries in pelvic peritoneum as well as the presents of malignant ascetic fluid. oncologic rules are to obey non-touch technique tying the feeding vessels near the main vessels that supply the disease segment of the colon, a safety margin both proximal and distal to the lesion and mesenteric removal with the draining lymphnodes and removal of any nearby involved if resection possible and looking for any synchronous liver metastasis whether it is possible to be resected in the same session or later on in a next look surgery take in to consideration time factors and morbidity , burden on the patients whether is the simple or a major resection , no matter the method of colonic anastomosis whether done by a stapler or by a hand sewn technique. data analysis data was collected and coded. the collected data were reviewed and analyzed using the statistical package for social sciences (spss version 22). descriptive statistics such as frequency and percentage was calculated. measures of central tendency and dispersion around the mean were used to describe continuous variables. p value was obtained for the continuous variable using independent t test and was considered significant if it was less than 0.05. 3. results table 2 characteristic of the patients with colorectal cancer. patients characteristic total colectomy ± subtotal proctectomy number of patients 42 mean ±sd age (years) 49.5± (10.2) gender male female 22 (52.4%) 20 (47.6%) address inside city outside city 34 (80.9%) 8 (19.1%) marital status married unmarried 38 (90.5%) 4 (9.5%) previous surgery colorectal cancer 8 (19.04%) the current study included 42 patients with high risk colorectal cancer with total colectomy with or without 58 subtotal proctectomy. the mean ± sd of their age was 49.5± (10.2). 52.4% of the studied group were male and 47.6% were female. most of our patients were from inside city 80.9% while a small of them were from outside 19.1%. 19.04 had a history of previous surgery of colorectal cancer (table1). figure 1: mode of presentation of colorectal cancer patients figure 1 describes the mode of presentation of colorectal cancer. the highest percentage of our patients were presented with bleeding per-rectum, abdominal pain, change in bowel habit and weight loss (76.1, 71.4, 66.6 and 61.9) respectively. whereas the lowest percentage were presented with anaemia, intestinal obstruction, abdominal mass and rectal mass (38.1, 23.8, 11.9 and 9.5) respectively. figure 2: sites of colorectal cancer. figure 2 shows the sites of colorectal cancer. the highest percentage of cancer site were in recto-sigmoid, sigmoid, caecum, upper rectum and middle rectum (26.19, 14.3, 14.3 11.9 and 11.9) respectively. whereas the lowest percentages of cancer site were in descending colon, transverse colon, splenic flexure and ascending colon (2.4,2.4, 4.8, and 4.8 respectively. table 2: distribution of preoperative colonoscopic finding of colorectal cancer patients. preoperative colonoscopic finding total colectomy ±subtotal proctectomy synchronous polyp 15(35.71) failure to pass 6(14.29) ordinary with primary cancer 21 (50.0) table 2 shows the distribution of preoperative colonoscopic finding of colorectal cancer patients, most of our patients were had synchronous polyp 35.17% and the other were had a failure to pass (14.29%). 50.0% of our patients were had a primary cancer with ordinary colonoscopy. table 3: post-operative short and long term outcome. short and long term morbidity total colectomy ±subtotal proctectomy patients comfortability 34 (80.95) discharge from hospital (early recovery)/ days median = 2 post-operative pain and analgesia dose median = 2 dose early bowel motion / days median = 2 frequency of bowel motion / day median = 4 post-operative follow-up colonoscopy(proctoscopy) /year/outpatient median = 1 polyps formation \ 5years median =2 time of operation median = 3hrs table 3 shows post-operative short and long term morbidity, most of our patients were comfortable post operation 80.9 %. most of patients were discharge early from hospital with median of 2 days. the median of post-operative analgesic dose was 2, and the frequency of bowel motion was 4 motions per day. the median of 2 polyp formation were seen in our patients per 5 years, and the median of operation duration 3hrs. table 4: distribution of postoperative morbidity of colorectal cancer patients. table 4 shows the distribution of postoperative morbidity of colorectal cancer patients, overall the postoperative complications were very low. however, a small percentage of complication were observed among patient’s seroma, wound infection chest infection and inscional hernia (7%, 7%, 4% and 4% respectively). 4. discussion colorectal cancer still the commonest worldwide cancer in the gastrointestinal tract [15,16,17]. the ratio between male and female (m: f) is seen to be equal [18]. in this study, the (m: f) ratio is (1.1:1). in study by i. palibrk et al the (m: f) ratio was 1.2:1 [19]. the commonest presenting symptom was bleeding per rectum in 76.1 % followed by change in bowel habit in 66.6% of our 11.9 11.9 26.19 14.3 4.8 4.8 2.4 4.8 2.4 14.3 2.4 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 site of colorectal morbidity total colectomy ± subtotal proctectomy chest infection 2(0.04) wound infection 3(0.07) seroma 3(0.07) ileus 0 (0.0) incisional hernia 2(0.04) 59 patients, while the results of 2008, waseem et al, bleeding per rectum in 63% followed by change in bowel habit in 55% [20]. other study done in iraq had showed 43.9% bleeding per rectum and 57.5% change in bowel habit [18,19]. other symptoms were including pain, anemia, weight loss, abdominal mass and others. multiple symptoms presented in 80% of our patients and it was single only in 20%. most tumor were involving the distal part of the colon mainly the rectum, sigmoid and rectosegmoid junction (54%), nearly this is higher than many studies done worldwide like mccoy and parks (u.k 1984) who reported 0.9% [20] and smith et al(usa1989) who reported 4.8% [20]. while in iraq 2008 waseem had reported 17.5% [21, 22]. in our study the right colon in 22%, shyamal kumar halder et al, found that the right colon is more commonly affected (33.3%) than left colon if we consider colonic cancer in isolation. if growths involving rectum, then rectum becomes the commonest site of affection in either age group [23]. pre-existing factors were found only in 15 patients that have been analyzed, from these cases; polyps and villous adenoma presented with carcinoma account for (35.71%). jarvinen et al found that ulcerative colitis represents 1.7% and fap 0.6 %, also it is the same finding of other study done in iraq 2001 [24]. the measures required to foster early detection of cases through proper methods for diagnosis are very vital. when there is suspicion of colorectal cancer, the most appropriate diagnostic tool is colonic-endoscopy for screening the whole as well as can perform biopsy of colonic lesion. the pitfalls of colonoscopy are an occasional incomplete examination of right colon 5-10% of cases, so completion barium enema some time is necessary [20], while mc coy and parks findings were 32% at rectum and sigmoid with 45% at splenic flexure and descending colon [20]. so, the tumors are more predominantly at the left side with recto-sigmoid predilection. in the present study, the post-operative complication was 23.8%, it is the same results of other study in iraq [21]. ashok kumar et al had post-operative complications in (51.8%) [25]. the reason of surveillance in patients with hnpcc is to identify and get rid of precancerous growing polyps prior to development into malignant lesion. therapeutic colon endoscopy and polyp removal in hnpcc syndrome patients undoubtedly decrease the occurrence and fatality from colorectal cancer [26,27,28]. the usefulness of surveillance was evaluated in an attempt involving 40 families with lynch syndrome over an eleven-year period. in a study found that screening colonic endoscopy for colorectal cancer at three-year interval period decrease the occurrence of colorectal cancer threat by 62 %, prevents colorectal cancer mortality, and cancer mortality by about 65 % in those family members [26]. in our study the prophylactic colectomy before detection of precancerous polyps or genetic determination of carrying the causative gene was reducing the risk of development of colorectal cancer in those cases that were not undergone colonoscopic surveillance at regular intervals. our study shows the benefit of prophylactic colectomy in preventing the development of metachronous colorectal cancer while there are limited studies showing a survival advantages for total abdominal colectomy with illeorectal anastomosis, compared with segmental colectomy, the metachronous cancer risk in the remaining colon and mathematical assessment models favour the prophylactic colectomy. this approach showed increasing the life expectancy of 2.3 years by markov decision model compared to segmental colectomy at 27 years of age [29]. a study was demonstrated the incidence of metachronous colon cancer in lynch syndrome after selective segmental colonic resection were 11– 45% in a follwup interval at 813 years [30, 31, 32, 33]. another study shows a higher incidence of new colonic cancer development after segmental colectomy to be as high as 72% at 40 years. another study shows that patients having amsterdam criteria have the chance of developing adenomas as high as 32% after segmental colonic resection [32] while in total abdominal colectomy with ilio-rectal anastomosis, whole or most the risky mucosa will be removed which by prevent the development of precancerous polyps but the remaining rectum should be screened annually as a clinic arrangement and rectal evacuation by an enema which decrease the incidence of metachronous rectal cancer during ongoing life as the risks shown in some studies to be between 312% at 10 –12 years follow-up [4, 29, 34]. quality of life and functional outcomes are matters of consideration in patients with total abdominal colectomy with illeorectal anastomosis (tac-ira) as an alternative of a segmental colonic resection for cancer of colon in patients with lynch syndrome. removing the whole colon, a patient can be anticipated to have increased frequency and looser bowel motions than, when a selected right colectomy or sigmoid colectomy. the quality of life in patients with total abdominal colectomy with illeorectal anastomosis (tac-ira) compared to that after a more restricted segmental resection, there is a little data on those patients. a recent revision from the netherlands particularly looking at this topic compared the quality of life of 43 lynch syndrome patients who undergone a total abdominal colectomy with illeorectal anastomosis (tac-ira) with that of 51 lynch syndrome patients who were treated with a restricted colonic excision, considering the life quality and bowel function questionnaires [27]. life quality as calculated by the short form-36 survey showed no significant difference. analysis of the bowel functional result questionnaire discovered that, after total colonic resection, patients have an extensively elevated bowel motion frequency (p<0.01) and a considerably superior score on stoolrelated aspects (p=0.06) and social impact (p=0.03). the authors concluded that even though functional outcomes are poorer after subtotal or total colonic resection than after segmental colonic resection, generally, life quality does not vary in the two different surgical approaches in lynch syndrome. comparable outcome was also established in a smaller group study from the cleveland clinic presenting that frequent bowel motion was higher for patients with total resection of colon compared to segmental colonic resection (four bowel motion versus two bowel motions daily), but this was not associated with any change in continence for feces or flatus or on the whole quality of life [22]. regarding the perioperative and postoperative morbidity and mortality, total abdominal colectomy with illeorectal anastomosis 60 (tac-ira) has been revealed to be a safe process with suitable outcomes even in the old aging patients [29,35]. a comparative study of perioperative morbidity and mortality of selective partial colonic resections with wider and extensive colectomy with ileo-sigmoid anastomosis or illeorectal anastomosis establish that mortality and morbidity (grade ii/iii) did not vary considerably between the two groups. on the other hand, the frequency of paralytic ileus postoperatively was greater in patients operated with more total resections [29]. philosophy of the surgical approach, total abdominal colectomy with illeorectal anastomosis (tac-ira) must be considered in medically well patients with lynch syndrome who is high risk to develop colorectal cancer [34]. this suggestion is depending on retrospective data and statistical analysis demonstrating the raised threat of metachronous colorectal cancer in these patients. in spite of these broadly accepted guidelines, the majority lynch syndrome colorectal cancer in the usa is managed by local colonic resections [4, 29]. this divergence is mostly due to the deficit of a preoperative identification of lynch syndrome or hereditary non-polyposis colorectal cancer (hnpcc). regardless of the relative predominance of proximal colonic lesions in lynch syndrome, cancer of the rectum is frequent; around 20 to 30 % of patients with lynch syndrome will develop rectal cancer, including 15 to 24 % with rectal cancer as their index cancer [34, 36, 37, 38]. rectal cancer associated with a higher risk with family history of rectal cancer of a first-degree relative [34]. the management of rectal cancer in lynch syndrome is controversial; surgical procedures may be in the form of anterior resection of the rectum or low anterior resection or abdominoperineal proctosigmoidectomy, the choice of the procedure depends on whether the anal sphincter involved by the cancer or not or a more radical surgical resection, removing all of the colonic mucosa at risk in the form of a total proctocolectomy with terminal ileostomy or restorative ileal pouch-anal anastomosis. segmental rectal resection alone with colorectal anastomosis achieves lower frequent bowel motions and normal anal sphincter continence and lower leakage than following an ileal pouch anal anastomosis [29]. total proctocolectomy with ileal pouch anal anastomosis is a technically demanding surgery, need a specialized expert surgical team and carry important perioperative complications. proctectomy leaves the whole colon at threat for the growth of metachronous colon cancer and demands a very hard yearly observation. retrospective studies have established that in lynch syndrome or hnpcc, the incidence of metachronous colon cancer following proctectomy is 15 to 54 % of patients [29, 39,40, 41, 42]. in a study from the cleveland clinic, 33 cases with hnpcc and an initial diagnosis of rectal cancer were managed with a rectal resection and regular colonoscopic follow up was done, five cases (15.2%) got metachronous adenocarcinoma at a median period of 6 years (range 3.5–16) following rectal resection, including three at advanced stage. in addition, another 36 % of cases got high-risk adenomas that were diagnosed through screening. data from the colon cancer family registries found an elevated risk over time, with the risk of developing metachronous colon cancer being 19% at 10 years, 47% at 20 years, and 69% at 30 years after rectal resection [43]. the high incidence of metachronous cancer in lynch syndrome or hnpcc; a total proctocolectomy with ileal pouch anal anastomosis must be fully discussed with patients diagnosed with rectal cancer. radical excision for rectal cancer in lynch syndrome is a controversial topic, and numerous factors involved in the decision making including the age of the patient, associated medical comorbidities, stage of rectal cancer, preoperative anal sphincter continent and patient’s agreement with meticulous follow up schedules must be taken into consideration [44]. 5. conclusion this study was the first study in kurdistan region/iraq, describing the high-risk patients with colorectal cancer with the technique of prophylactic total colectomy with or without subtotal proctectomy that increase the survival, decrease the morbidity and make the endoscopic follow –up easier and more comfortable to the patients for short and long term follow-up interval. reference [1] b. k. edwards et al., “annual report to the nation on the status of cancer, 1975-2010, featuring prevalence of comorbidity and impact on survival among persons with lung, colorectal, breast, or prostate cancer,” cancer, vol. 120, no. 9. pp. 1290–1314, 2014. 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[44] m. st. fazio vw, kiran rp, remzi fh, coffey jc, heneghan hm, kirat ht, manilich e, shen b, “ileal pouch anal anastomosis: analysis of outcome and quality of life in 3707 patients.,” ann. surg., vol. 257, no. 4, pp. 679–85, 2013. 403 forbidden<br>  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq utilizing statistical tests for comparing machine learning algorithms hozan khalid hamarashid information technology department computer science institute sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq hozan.khalid@spu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 6 – issue 1june 2021 doi: science.2021.1.8 article history: received 1/6/2021 accepted 28/6/2021 the mean result of machine learning models is determined by utilizing k-fold cross-validation. the algorithm with the best average performance should surpass those with the poorest. but what if the difference in average outcomes is the consequence of a statistical anomaly? to conduct whether or not the mean result differences between two algorithms is genuine then statistical hypothesis test is utilized. using statistical hypothesis testing, this study will demonstrate how to compare machine learning algorithms. the output of several machine learning algorithms or simulation pipelines is compared during model selection. the model that performs the best based on your performance measure becomes the last model, which can be utilized to make predictions on new data. with classification and regression prediction models it can be conducted by utilizing traditional machine learning and deep learning methods. the difficulty is to identify whether or not the difference between two models is accurate. keywords: machine learning, machine learning assessment, statistical tests, machine learning algorithm, machine learning comparison. copyright © 2021 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction data may be understood by using a determined structure for the result and then utilizing statistical techniques to validate or invalidate the estimation. the estimation is called hypothesis, mailto:hozan.khalid@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 70 and the validation that conducted by using statistical tests are called statistical hypothesis tests. if it is wanted to build statements on the data distribution or the grouped results are different in applied machine learning, statistical hypothesis testing has to be performed. [1][2]. data is uninteresting on its own. what interests the most is how data is interpreted. when the time is started to request the inquiry about the data and comprehend the discovery, then statistical methodologies will be utilized that provide a certainty or probability regarding the replies. this sort of procedure is called testing for significance or hypothesis test [3]. the theory term might bring up the concept of scientific investigations in which a hypothesis is tested. this is a good step in the right direction. hypothesis test, statistically, computes a number for a given estimation. the test results enable the researcher to see whether the estimation is valid or whether it is falsified. particularly, two examples that are widely utilized in machine learning are as follows: • an assumption test conducted for the data that followed a normal distribution. • an assumption test conducted that two samples are picked from the same population distribution. the null hypothesis, commonly known as hypothesis 0, is a statistical test assumption (h0 for short). the default assumption, often known as the "nothing has changed" assumption, is extensively employed. because all available information indicates that the evidence shows that the h0 may be rejected, the first hypothesis, often known as hypothesis 1 or h1, is a violation of the test's premise. h1 is essentially only a shorthand for some other hypothesis. hypothesis 0 (h0): the test assumption is correct and is rejected at a significant level. hypothesis 1 (h1): at a given level of significance, the test's assumption fails and is rejected. before it may reject or fail to reject the null hypothesis, the test findings have to be evaluated [3]. disregarding to the level of significance, testing of hypothesis results might contain errors. by estimating a determined structure for the result and then utilizing statistical techniques to validate or invalidate the estimation, data may be understood. the assumption is called hypothesis, and the statistical tests utilized to validate it is called statistical hypothesis tests. whenever it is needed to investigate data distribution or when the results of the groups are different [2-4]. 1.1 p-value interpretation what is the significance of the p-value? it is possible to establish if a result is significant statistically by calculating p-value. it may, for instance, conduct a test for normality on a sample data and discover that the data sample seldom different from a gaussian distribution, rejecting the null hypothesis [5]. the hypothesis test in statistics returns the p-value as a result. this is a statistic that may be used to evaluate or quantify the test's results and decide whether or not the null hypothesis should be rejected. this is accomplished by comparing the p-value to a significance level, which is a predetermined value [5]. alpha is widely utilized to indicate the degree of significance. the most often used alpha value is 0.05. a smaller value of alpha, for instance 0.01 percent, implies a more robust null hypothesis interpretation [6]. previously obtained the value of alpha will be compared to the p-value. the statistical significance of the result is obtained when the alpha is greater than the p-value. this implies that there has been a change: the default hypothesis is now ruled out [7] [8]. the null hypothesis is not rejected if the alpha is smaller than the p-value which means it is not a significant result. the null hypothesis must be rejected if the alpha is equal to the p-value which means it is a significant result [9]. for instance, if a test was run to see whether a sample of data was normal and the pvalue was 0.07, the following might be told: the test failed to reject the null hypothesis at a 0.05 significance level, suggesting that the data sample was normal. you may generate a confidence level for the hypothesis based on the observed sample data by subtracting 1 from the significance level [10]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 71 2. methodology one approach is to score and divide the data using the same k-fold cross-validation split for example, in each case, utilizing the same number of seed randomly. this will provide a sample of ten ratings for 10-fold cross validation. the values might be compared by utilizing paired statistical hypothesis test since each algorithm utilized the identical treatment which means rows of data to calculate every value. the paired student's t-test might be utilized. thus, utilizing the paired student t-test in this place of activity is that each model evaluation might not independent due to with the exception of the hold-out test fold, which uses a new row of data each time, to train the data several times in reality the same rows of data are utilized. the paired student t-test is biased in the perspective of optimistically due to the lack of evaluation flexibility. to account for the lack of flexibility, this statistical test may be adjusted. furthermore, the number of folds and repetitions in the technique may be changed to produce a decent sample of model output that can be used to a broad variety of problems and methods. 52-fold cross-validation is a two-fold cross-validation method with five repetitions. 2.1 machine learning xtend 5x2 method the paired t-test 5x2cv() function in sebastian raschka's mlxtend package offers an implementation. to utilize the evaluation, first import the dataset, then choose the two methods for comparison. the data and methods might then be utilized with the paired t-test 5x2cv() function, which will provide the t-test and p-value showing when the performance difference between the methods is significant. to comprehend the p-value, the alpha value, which is the intended degree of significance, must be employed. when the same mean for performance is obtained for the methods, the null hypothesis is rejected if the given alpha if greater than or equal to the p-value, suggesting that the difference is most likely true. the null hypothesis of that methods that have the same mean of performance is not rejected if the p-value is larger than alpha, and any observed variance in mean accuracies is most likely attributable to chance. the lower the alpha value, the better, and 0.05 is commonly utilized. # algorithms comparison ttest, pvalue = paired_t_test_5x2cv(first_estimator=first_model, second_estimator=second_model, x=x, y=y) # results interpretation if pvalue <= 0.05: print('mean performance differences might be real') else: print('algorithms may perform in the same way') kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 72 3. classifier algorithms comparison now, on a binary classification problem, the results of the two machine learning algorithms can be compared, and see whether there is a statistically significant difference. to begin, the make classification() method will be utilized to build synthetic dataset with a 1,000 samples and 20 input variables. the following example makes a dataset and explains its structure. the dataset is built, and the rows and columns number is calculated, validating the assumptions. this data may be used to compare two different algorithms. a comparison of the output of the two linear algorithms will be performed on the created dataset. to be particular, a logistic regression lr method and a linear discriminant analysis lda methodology. the most recommended approach is repeated stratified k-fold cross-validation with 10 folds and three repetitions. this approach will be used to evaluate each algorithm and calculate the average classification accuracy. the whole example is shown below. when the example is performed, the mean classification accuracy for each method is presented first. when the mean ratings are examined, it is clear that lda beats logistic regression: logistic regression scores 89.2 percent, whereas lda scores 89.3 percent. # build dataset and definition x, y = build_classification(m_sample=1000, m_feature=10, m_informative=10, m_redundant=0, random_state=1) # summary print(x.shape, y.shape) (1000, 10) (1000,) # lr and lda binary classification comparison x, y = make_classification(m_sample=1000, m_feature=10, m_informative=10, m_redundant=0, random_state=1) # first model assessment first_model = logisticregression() cv1 = repeatedstratifiedkfold(n_splits=10, n_repeats=3, random_state=1) first_score = cross_val_score(first_model, x, y, scoring='accuracy', cv=cv1, n_jobs=-1) print('logisticregression mean accuracy: %.3f (%.3f)' % (mean(first_score), std(first_score))) # second model assessment second_model = lineardiscriminantanalysis() cv2 = repeatedstratifiedkfold(n_splits=10, n_repeats=3, random_state=1) second_score = cross_val_score(second_model, x, y, scoring='accuracy', cv=cv2, n_jobs=-1) print('lineardiscriminantanalysis mean accuracy: %.3f (%.3f)' % (mean(second_score), std(second_score))) # consequences plot pyplot.boxplot([first_score, second_score], labels=['lr', 'lda'], showmeans=true) pyplot.show() kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 73 because of nature of the stochastic or assessment technique of the algorithm, as well as changes in numerical precision. you can find that the outcomes are different if you repeat the example and compare the average results. if you simply looked at the averages, they seemed to be fairly excellent. as can be seen, lda beats logistic regression: logistic regression scores 89.2 percent, whereas lda scores 89.3 percent. to evaluate if the observed findings are statistically significant, a hypothesis test may now be used. it will begin by reviewing the algorithms and utilizing the 52 procedure to compute the pvalue and t-test value. the outcomes might vary due to the nature of stochastic of the algorithm or assessment approach, as well as numerical precision variations. consider re-enacting the scenario and comparing the mean of results. thus, the p-value is roughly 0.3, which is much more than 0.05. as a consequence, it is incapable to reject the null hypothesis, meaning that any discernible difference between the algorithms is most likely unreal. it could just as well apply lr or lda, and the results could be the same. this demonstrates that choosing a model just on the basis of average of performance night not be adequate. as a consequence, figure 1 shows means and accuracy of lr and lda algorithms: lr mean accuracy: 0.892 (0.036) lda mean accuracy: 0.893 (0.033) lr mean accuracy: 0.892 (0.036) lda mean accuracy: 0.893 (0.033) p-value: 0.328, t-statistic: 1.085 'algorithms may perform in the same way' # check to see if the difference in algorithms is real. ttest, pvalue = paired_ttest_5x2cv(first_estimator=first_model, second_estimator=second_model, x=x, y=y, scoring='accuracy', random_seed=1) # summarize print('p-value: %.3f, t-statistic: %.3f' % (pvalue, ttest)) # check to see if the difference in algorithms is real. ttest, pvalue = paired_ttest_5x2cv(first_estimator=first_model, second_estimator=second_model, x=x, y=y, scoring='accuracy', random_seed=1) # summary print('p-value: %.3f, t-statistic: %.3f' % (pvalue, ttest)) lr mean accuracy: 0.894 (0.012) lda mean accuracy: 0.890 (0.013) p-value: 0.328, t-statistic: 1.085 'algorithms may perform in the same way' kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 74 figure 1: shows means and accuracy of lr and lda 4. conclusion this study demonstrates the use of statistical hypothesis tests to evaluate machine learning algorithms. furthermore, it instructs researchers on how to choose models based on model performance averages, which might be misleading. an appropriate methodology for comparing machine learning algorithms is five rounds of two folds of cross-validation using a adapted student t-test. using mlxtend machine learning and a statistical hypothesis test, compare algorithms. reference [1] w. daniel, c. cross. 2013, “biostatistics: basic concepts and methodology for the health sciences”, 10th edition international student version, chapter 6, isbn: 978-1-118-65291-6, 2013. [2] h. k. hamarashid, s. a. saeed, and t. a. rashid, “next word prediction based on the ngram model for kurdish sorani and kurmanji”. neural computing and applications, 33(9), 4547-4566. 2021 [3] f. emmert-streib and m. dehmer. “understanding statistical hypothesis testing: the logic of statistical inference”, https://doi.org/10.3390/make1030054, 2019. [4] s. hartshorn. “hypothesis testing: a visual introduction to statistical significance. usa, asin : b019n212ne. 2015. [5] l. surhone, m. timpledon, and s. marseken. “p-value”, isbn 6130502370, 9786130502379, vdm publishing. 2010. [6] s. mcleod. “what a p-value tells you about statistical significance, 2019, [online] available at: https://www.simplypsychology.org/p-value.html. accessed on (02/04/2021). [7] t. dahiru. “p value, a true test of statistical significance? a cautionary note. annals of ibadan postgraduate medicine”, 6(1), 21–26. https://doi.org/10.4314/aipm.v6i1.64038, 2008. [8] v. johnson. “revised standards for statistical evidence”. proc natl acad sci 110(48):19313–19317, 2013. [9] r. nuzzo. “statistical errors: p values, the ‘gold standard’of statistical validity, are not as reliable as many scientists assume”. nature 506:150–152. 2014. [10] r. wasserstein, n. lazar. “the asa’s statement on p-values: context, process, and purpose”. am stat 70(2):129–133. 2016. 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 mean accuracy mean accuracy lr ld a lr vs lda series3 series2 series1 https://doi.org/10.3390/make1030054 https://doi.org/10.4314/aipm.v6i1.64038 kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq effects of prosopis farcta root extract in the vascular reactivity of isolated goat coronary artery rezhna adil rasheed medical laboratory technology department koya technical institute erbil polytechnic university koya, erbil, iraq rezhna.rashid@epu.edu.iq ismail salih ibrahim kakey department of biology faculty of science and health koya university koya, erbil, iraq esmail.kakey@koyauniversity.org volume 4 – special issue: 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) doi: 10.24017/science.2019 .ichms.1 received: 3 june 2019 accepted: 8 july 2019 abstract prosopis species is a medicinal plant, well-known for its beneficial effects in treating various smooth muscles disorders, and its phytochemical analysis revealed the presence of different bioactive compounds in different parts of the plant, most of which show a great role in reducing cardiovascular risks. in the present study, the cardiovascular effect of prosopis farcta root extract (pfre) was investigated in vitro for possible mechanisms of the extract effect in the vascular reactivity of isolated goat coronary artery (ca) using organ bath and powelab data acquisition system. the results of the recording and analyzing of the effect of the pfre in isolated ca, showed the negative inotropic activity of the extract in ca rings with intact-endothelium, while in ca ring with hyperglycemic-induced endothelium dysfunction the extract tended to vasodilate the ca ring nonsignificantly, and the extract induced dose-dependent vasodilation in ca rings pre-constricted with high concentration of (30 mm)kcl and showed no effects on contractions induced by (1x10-3-1x10-5) phenylephrine pe, which is an indicator for its blockade activity on l-type voltage-dependent ca+2 channel and non-interfering of the extract with the receptor-operated ca+2 channel. the mechanical recording of the ca ring activities, revealed different potassium (k+) channels including selective calcium-activated potassium channel, atp-sensitive potassium channel, and different endothelium-derived relaxing factors (edrf) including nitric oxide and prostacyclin (pgi2 ) seems to have no role in the relaxation effects of the extract, while the endothelium derivedhyperpolarizing factor (edhf); epoxy eicosatrienoic acid (eet) showed significant participation in the vasodilation effects of the extract. on the other hand, the extract tended to relax the ca rings through its antagonizing of ca+2, reducing mailto:rezhna.rashid@epu.edu.iq mailto:esmail.kakey@koyauniversity.org kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 2 and inhibiting ca+2 influx and release from internal stores and interfering with the voltage-operated ca+2 channels through its alkaloid and flavonoid active compounds which suggested to be the most predicted mechanisms for the maintenance of vasodilating tone and coronary circulation of the pfre in coronary artery. keywords: prosopis farcta, vascular reactivity, k+ channels, ca+2 channels, endothelium-derived relaxing factors, endothelium derived-hyperpolarizing factor 1. introduction from the global burden of disease study's survey, it is apparent that the cvds mainly the heart disease and stroke will result in an increasing number of death all over the world and regardless of progression in biology and medicine and efforts in translational scientific for improving the diagnosis and therapeutic strategies over the past 20 years, cvds remain to be a main global health problem [1], so increasing the number of patients suffering from the cvds is a key indicator for the invention of the innovative strategies to be most effective with lesser side effects in the treating and preventing the cvds [2]. nowadays, the modern costly curative synthetic remedies associated with multiple side effects resulting in patient non-compliance, therefore there is a need to explore some alternative remedies especially from plants and herbal based formulations as are less cost-effective and possess minimal side effects [3]. for controlling and treating various diseases because of their remarkable pharmacological actions with no or rare side effects when used at a specific dose [4], and in general many secondary metabolites from plants [5] including alkaloids, flavonoid, tannins, phenolic compounds, steroids, resins, fatty acids, and gums regarded as an important bioactive compounds of the plant extracts that are capable of producing significant physiologic effects in the body [6]. prosopis farcta regarded to be one of the important local plants with a great value for medicinal purposes [7], leaves and bean extracts of this plant gained the commonest use in traditional medicine [8]. from surveying literature it was revealed the use of p. farcta for treating many neurological diseases and disorders [9, 10], and it has anti-inflammatory effects, gastric ulcers treatment, fetus abortion, dysentery, arthritis, heart pains, and asthma [11]. extracts of p. farcta tended to be with famous use for treating diabetes and its complication, as it is widely used by the general for healing lesions in iran particularly in sistan-baluchistan zone especially healing processes of diabetic wounds through speeding up the inflammation, cell proliferation and hypoglycemia [12] and without any academic confirmation, its extract used to treat diabetes by the tribal people in jordan [13] and this hypoglycemic activity may due to the containing of a large proportion of unsaturated fatty acids with linoleic, oleic acids as well as β-sitosterols [14] and flavonoids which inhibit the activity of camp phosphodiesterase, accompanied by an insulin secretion which in turn subsequently reduces glucose level [15]. phytochemical investigations have been demonstrated that the flavonoids are the main active constituent of p. farcta [16, 17]. quercetin (flavonoids), tryptamine, apigenin 5hydroxytryptamine (alkaloids), l-arabinose, and lectin regarded to be the most active compounds that exist in different parts of prosopis plant [16, 18], and the vicenin-2, apigenin c-glycoside, iso-orientin, vitexin, luteolin 7-o-glucoside, isovitexin, quercetin 3-o-glucoside, kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 3 rutin, kaempferol 3-o-rutonoside, caffeic acid derivative, and luteolin are strong antioxidant phenolics of the plant [16], and this antioxidant activity of p. farcta played a significant role in improving the serum lipid parameters in hypercholesterolemic rabbits [19]. the flavonoids in p. farcta act as a strong antioxidant and decreased total cholesterol, triglyceride, malondialdehyde, and increased hdl-c in a tetrachloride induced hepatotoxicity rats [20] with no change in hdl in acetaminophen-induced hepatotoxicity in wister rats [21]. for this, p. farcta has long been used as a traditional remedy for angina pectoris [22] and as a therapeutic agent in treating cardiovascular disorders [23] and reducing cardiac or chest pain and for managing cardiovascular disorder in iran [19]. different parts from different species of this plant contains an enormous concentration of quercetin which acts as an excellent scavenger for collecting and removing free radicals [24], protect cellular damage against any oxidative stress including reactive oxygen species (ros) [25] and regenerate the injured pancreatic islets in diabetic models and probably increases insulin release in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats [26]. in a recent study, revealed the potential ability of prosopis farcta in treating colon cancer through synthesizing gold nanoparticle (au-nps) that capable to destroy colon cancer lines and thus regarded to be a suitable candidate for cancer treatment[27]. since a toxicological point of view, is that it is important to remark the capability of some species of prosopis to accumulate heavy metals like chromium, lead, arsenic, cadmium, manganese, molybdenum, and zinc [28]. the present study was conducted to investigate the efficacy of prosopis farcta root extracts in coronary artery vascular reactivity and find out the possible mechanisms of the extract in interfering with different potassium and calcium channels and the edrfs and edhf in coronary arteries. 2. methods and materials prosopis farcta root collection and extraction syrian mesquite (prosopis farcta) root collected from koya district / erbil city/ kurdistan region of iraq (gps coordinates: 36°04'41.55'' n, 44°27'38.99'' e), with an average elevation of about 563 m above sea level in december 2015. a voucher (7701) was deposited after authentication by botanists in the biology department, college of education, salahaddin university herbarium (esuh)/ kurdistan region of iraq. the root samples of prosopis farcta were cleared from the clay and cleaned through washing with tap water and then shade dried at room temperature (23-25 °c) for 25 days. the dried root is insulated from bark of the root and the remained root cut into small pieces, pulverized mechanically to a coarse powder and grounded using electrical mill into fine powder and the powder sieved through a stainless steel mesh of 200 mm diameter size to ensure its uniformity then stored in a cloth bags at 5o c until extraction. preparation of the plant root extract the powdered root material (1kgm) of prosopis farcta extensively degreased at room temperature using petroleum ether then re-extracted through inundation in a measured volume of ethyl acetate solvent (5g of plant root sample in 50ml of ethyl acetate) for 1 day in a container kept away from light and putting the mixture on the magnetic stirrer for one hour. the extract was filtered before repeating the process three times to obtain more extracts, each time with fresh ethyl acetate solvent. the filtrates were collected, combined then concentrated and the solvent was removed through using a rotary evaporator at 40°c and 150 rpm then stored at 4 °c till using it in our physiological studies. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 4 phytochemical screening the prosopis farcta root extract was preliminarily screened for the qualitative presence of various classes including alkaloids and flavonoid phytochemical compounds using chemical tests for identification of these compounds following methods describes by[29]. test for flavonoids 5 ml of the extract is mixed with 3ml of 1% aluminum chloride, appearance of yellow color is an indicator of the presence of flavonoid. test for alkaloids 10 ml of aqueous hcl stirred well with 2 ml of the extract on a steam bath and filtered while it was hot. few drops of (potassium bismuth iodide) which represent the dragendorff’s reagent added to bout 2m of the filtrate animal hearts and isolation of coronary artery rings male and female domestic goat (capra hircus) hearts were collected from koya slaughterhouse within 20-30 min of slaughter in an ice-cold, aerated modified kreb′s henseleit solution of the following compositions in mm: 118 nacl, 4.7 kcl, 2.5 cacl2.2h2o, 1.2 mgso4.7h2o, 11.9 nahco3, 1.2 kh2po4 and 11.1 d (+) glucose and were carried immediately to the science and health research center (shrc) laboratories / faculty of science and health / koya university, from december 2016 to november 2017. the left anterior descending coronary artery (ca) was isolated within 10 min from about (34) goat hearts, following the procedure of [30] with some modifications to take care during isolation of the tissue to avoid any damage of endothelium, then the artery transferred to a petridish filled with ice-cold modified kreb′s henseleit solution, aerated with carbogen (95% oxygen (o2) and 5% carbon dioxide (co2)) and was cleaned of fat and connective tissues, the coronary artery tissue was then cut into 4–5 rings of about 3 mm length and 1.5–2 mm external diameter [31]. vascular reactivity setup the viability of the isolated ca segments was confirmed through contracting the tissue with kcl and relaxing it by acetylcholine (ach). the prepared ca rings individually suspended between two stainless steel angular hooks and mounted in an organ bath (automatic organ bathpanlab harvard apparatus-usa, ad instrument powerlab 8/35-australia) containing 10 ml of oxygenated krebs solution (95% o2 and 5% co2) maintained at 37 c˚ (ph 7.4). passive tension of 1.5 gram was applied to ca rings and the change of the tension measured isometrically by force transducer. the rings were allowed to equilibrate for about 90 min during which the krebs solution changed every 15 min and the tension was continuously readjusted to the optimum force before starting the experiments. following equilibration, for the coronary artery smooth muscle and endothelial integrity respectively, the rings were stimulated to sub-maximal contraction with (30 mm kcl) [32]. once reached the plateau, coronary artery rings relaxed by (1x10-5 m) acetylcholine (ach). endothelium regarded to be intact when ach caused ≥ 75 % relaxation from the maximal contraction of coronary artery rings caused by 30 mm kcl (data not shown in the study), while the lack of relaxation indicates non-functional endothelium. then the ca rings were washed and re-stabilized at the optimum tension for at least 45 min before applying other effective vasoactive agents. experimental design the effect of prosopis farcta root extract (pfre) firstly was determined on the resting baseline of ca rings for its vasoconstriction activity. later the plant root extract tested for its interfering ability with contractions induced by 30 mm kcl and different doses of phenylephrine (1x10-31x10-5) respectively; the tissue has shown no response to pe , that an indicator of the noninvolvement of receptor-operated ca+2 channels. the extract relaxant effect on the prekurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 5 contraction induced by kcl, represents the involvement of l-type voltage-dependent ca+2channel, the tissue incubated for 30 min with different concentrations of pfre, ranging from (0.0001, 0.001, 0.01, 0.1, 1.0, and 10 mg/ml) then subjected to kcl for maximum contraction and relaxed with different doses of snp (1x10-7 -1x10-4m). to investigate the role of endothelium in vascular response to snp and pfre, cumulative doses of snp (1x10-7 -1x10-4m) and different concentrations of pfre were applied to the ca rings with an intact endothelium and ca with hyperglycemic induced endothelium dysfunction (hyperglycemic krebs solution is the solution contains raised concentration of glucose and prepared according to [33] by equimolar substitution of glucose (44 mm) for nacl. test of the involvement of different ca potassium channels in the relaxatory effects of pfre were investigated through incubating the ca rings with an intact endothelium for 20 minutes with a selective calcium-activated potassium channel blocker; tea (1mm), atp sensitive potassium channel blocker, glibenclamide (30 µm) and non-selective potassium channel blocker, bacl2 (1mm) before the cumulative doses of snp (1x10-7 -1x10-4 m) were applied, in another set of the experiment to determine effects of pfre on potassium channel involved in vascular response to snp, ca were pre-incubated with pfre for 30 min before applying the cumulative doses of snp in the presence of the above blockers separately. the role of endothelium-derived relaxing factors (edrf); nitric oxide (no) and prostacyclin (pgi2) and endothelium-derived hyperpolarizing factors (edhf); epoxy eicosatrienoic acid (eet) in the relaxatory effects of pfre also were tested through pre-incubating an intact endothelial ca rings for 20 min with no synthesis inhibitor (l-name), non-selective cox inhibitor (indomethacin) and non-selective p450 cytochrome inhibitor (clotrimazole) before cumulative doses of snp (1x10-7-1x10-4m) were applied, while to test the effect of the pfre on the above enzyme involvement in vascular response to snp, ca rings with intact endothelium were pre-incubated with pfre for 30 min before applying cumulative doses of snp in the presence of the above inhibitors separately. also, the role of calcium (ca+2) ion in the relaxatory effects of pfre also investigated in different sets of experiments. firstly, the involvement of l-type ca+2 channel in the relaxatory response of ca was investigated both in the presence and absence of pfre, the intact endothelium ca rings were incubated with nifedipine (10µm) before applying of cumulative doses of snp. then the role of low extracellular ca+2 in relaxatory effects of pfre, coronary artery ring exposed to reduced or low extracellular ca+2 kreb’s solution was investigated through incubating coronary artery rings in low ca+2 kreb’s solution (0.63 mm, i.e 1⁄4 of ca+2) for 30 min before applying the cumulative doses of snp [32], the results considered as a control group. then in another set of experiment tissues incubated for 20 min with pfre after 30 min incubation in reduced ca+2 kreb’s solution. lastly the pfre interference with the influx of ca+2 through voltage-dependent calcium channels (vdcc), ca rings were subjected to ca+2 free kreb’s solution (normal krebs solution component except that cacl2 was excluded and substituted for edta (0.1 mm)was investigated to eliminate extracellular calcium and ensure the retaining of intracellular ca+2) following procedure of [34]. coronary artery rings after equilibration incubated for 60 min in ca+2 free kreb’s solution, then two cumulative concentration-response curves for cacl2 (1x10-5 -1x10-2 m) were recorded. the first curve was without incubating of ca with pfre and regarded as a control group while the second one was incubation of the ca rings with pfre for 20 min. the statistical analysis was performed to compare between the control and studied drugs through using two-way analysis of variance (anova) supported by sidak’ post hoc test which used for comparing the same doses of different groups. data are expressed as mean±se of means (sem) of the number of coronary artery rings used in all studied groups. results were kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 6 analyzed using an independent student’s t-test for comparing potency difference (pic50) between the studied groups. 3. results phytochemical screening the qualitative phytochemical study carried out on the root extract of prosopis farcta and the results revealed the presence of some bioactive phytochemicals including flavonoid alkaloid compounds. effects of pfre on coronary artery isolated and pre-contracted coronary artery rings with 30 mm kcl subjected to incubation for 30 minutes with different concentrations of pfre (0.0001, 0.001, 0.01, 0.1, and 1.0, 10 mg/ml), as shown in table (1), (0.1 mg/ml) of the extract showed the highest percentage of relaxation with emax=89.04±9.638% and the potency pic50=4.364±0.160, respectively (fig. 1) figure 1: concentration-relaxation curve for pfre in isolated intact coronary artery rings table 1: shows maximum relaxation response (emax) and the potency from the coronary artery to kcl in the presence of different concentrations og pfre concentrations (mg/ml) emax (%) pic50 ic50 (95% cl) of ic50 0.0001 73.72±4.757 4.565±0.134 2.723x10-5 4.836 to 4.293 0.001 78.22±11.726 4.392±0.23 4.056 x10-5 4.855 to 3.929 0.01 84.01±7.983 4.476±0.159 3.346 x10-5 4.793 to 4.158 0.1 89.04±9.638 4.364±0.160 4.327 x10-5 4.686 to 4.042 1.0 81.72±5.421 4.827±0.186 1.488 x10-5 5.202 to 4.452 10.0 62.66±5.885 4.497±0.168 3.184 x10-5 4.84 to 4.154 the ability of the extract to relax the contraction induced by kcl represents the involvement of l-type voltage-dependent ca+2channel at the same time the tissue not shown any response to pe (data not shown in the study), indicating non-involvement of receptor-operated ca+2 channels in the response of the tissue. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 7 to detect the involvement of coronary artery endothelium in the relaxation response to snp, cumulative doses of snp (1x10-7-3x10-4m) were applied to both the intact and hyperglycemicinduced coronary artery endothelium dysfunction pre-contracted with 30 mm kcl. results showed that incubation of coronary artery rings with hyperglycemic krebs solution for 3hrs remarkably but non-significantly decreased the efficacy of snp to relax the coronary artery rings (emax: 112.54±10.662, intact vs emax: 82.95±13.781dysfunction) (fig. 2a), with no potency difference between them (pic50: 4.552±0.252, intact vs 4.491±0.512, dysfunction) respectively (fig. 2b). figure 2: coronary artery responsiveness to snp (a) hyperglycemic-induced endothelium dysfunction effects on coronary artery response to snp (b) graph shows the potency difference between intact and hyperglycemic-induced endothelium dysfunction coronary artery. the number of coronary artery rings used in the study is in parentheses. ed+: endothelium intact coronary artery, ed-: coronary artery with hyperglycemic induced endothelium dysfunction to assess the role of pfre in relaxation responsiveness of coronary artery rings to snp, ca rings with intact and hyperglycemic-induced endothelium dysfunction separately pre-incubated with pfre (0.1 mg/ml), and induced for maximal contraction with 30mm kcl. pfre shifted the relaxation curve to the right and significantly (p< 0.01) attenuated the maximum relaxation response in intact coronary artery rings in compare with the control group (emax: 89.04±9.638%, pfre vs 112.54±10.66, control) and pic50 (4.364±0.160, pfre vs 4.373 ± 0.117 control) respectively (fig.3a), while in ca rings with endothelium dysfunction, pfre nonsignificantly increased the maximum relaxation response of the tissue to snp in comparison to ca rings with endothelium dysfunction (emax: 82.95±10.662%, edcontrol vs 94.37±2.386%, pfre) with increase in potency (pic50: 4.491±0.512, edcontrol vs; 5.061 ±0.14, pfre) respectively (fig.3b). fig. 3c accentuate the difference in relaxation effects of pfre in coronary artery rings to snp both in intact and hyperglycemic induced endothelium dysfunction, (emax:94.37±6.646%), pic50 (5.061±0.14) in comparison to coronary artery rings with intact endothelium (emax: 89.04±9.638%) and pic50 (4.364±0.160), with significant (p<0.01) potency difference between them (fig. 3d). a b kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 8 figure 3: pfre (0.1 mg/ml) effects on ca responsiveness to snp. (a) the effect of pfre on ca with intact endothelium. (b) the effect of pfre on ca with hyperglycemic induced endothelium dysfunction. (c) difference in the effect of pfre on both intact and induced dysfunction ca. (d) the graph shows the potency difference between intact and denuded endothelium studied ca. * symbolize statistical differences at p< 0.05, ** symbolize statistical differences at p< 0.01, *** symbolize statistical differences at p< 0.001, **** symbolize statistical differences at p< 0.0001,number of used coronary artery ring in the study is in parentheses. role of potassium channels in coronary artery vascular responsiveness to pfre experiments with potassium channel blockers conducted on the ca with an intact endothelium through pre-incubation of ca ring with selective calcium-activated potassium channel blocker tea (1 mm), atp-sensitive potassium channel blocker glibenclamide (10 µm), and non– selective potassium channel blocker bacl2 (1 mm). in tea treated groups, results in table (2) show the significant (p< 0.001) reduction in relaxation response of the ca artery to snp (emax:78.3±7.399%) and pic50 (4.399±0.15) respectively in comparison to control groups (emax: 112.52±10.661%) and pic50 (4.552±0.252) respectively, while in pfre treated groups preincubated with tea, the relaxation response of the tissue non-significantly increased to about (emax: 89.04± 9.638%) with no change in pic50 (4.332±0.164) respectively (fig.4a) in compare to tea treated control group. blocking atp-sensitive potassium channels with glibenclamide (30 µm), significantly (p< 0.01) shifted the drc to the right, while it tended to reduce the maximum relaxation response of the tissue to snp (emax: 69.33±4.671%) when compared to control groups (emax: 112.52±10.661%), with no significant increase in potency of glibenclamide treated groups in comparison to control one (pic50: 4.682±0.16 vs 4.552±0.252) respectively as shown in table (2), meanwhile, pfre treatment of coronary artery rings preincubated with glibenclamide resulted in no significant increase in relaxation response (emax : 69.33±4.671%) for glib and (emax: 99.03±7.649%) of glib and pfre respectively with no significant decrease in potency of glib and pfre treated groups in compare to glib treated control one (pic50: 4.551±0.143 vs 4.682±0.160) respectively (fig. 4b). pre-incubation of a b c d kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 9 constricted coronary artery rings by kcl with bacl2 (1 mm), non-significantly and slightly reduced the percentage of relaxation induced by snp to (emax: 108.46±9.808%) and from (emax: 112.52±10.661%) of untreated control group and with no significant change in the potency (pic50: 4.532±0.167, bacl2; vs pic50: 4.552±0.252, control). incubation of the coronary artery ring with bacl2 and pfre for 20 min, shifted the drc to the right and accentuated nonsignificant reduction in maximum relaxation of the tissue to snp with (emax: 75.19±6.22%) as shown in table (2) in comparison to bacl2 treated groups with no significant change in pic50 (fig. 4c) figure 4: cumulative-concentration relaxant effects of snp on ca rings pre-treated with different k+ channel blockers. (a) the effect of pfre (0.1mg/ml) on ca pre-incubated with tea (1mm), the inserted graph shows potency difference between ca (0.1mg/ml) on ca pre-incubated with glib (30µm), the inserted graph shows potency difference between ca rings treated with glib and glib with pfre together. (c) the effect of pfre (0.1mg/ml) on ca pre-incubated with bacl2 (1mm), the a b c kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 10 inserted graph shows potency difference between ca rings treated with bacl2 and bacl2 with pfre together * symbolize statistical differences at p< 0.05, ** symbolize statistical differences at p< 0.01, *** symbolize statistical differences at p< 0.001, number of used coronary artery ring in the study is in parentheses. role of edrf and edhf in coronary vascular relaxatory responsiveness to pfre from the data in table (2), it is obvious that maximum relaxation response of the coronary artery rings with (emax: 112.52±10.661% and pic50: 4.552±0.252) slightly and non-significantly reduced to (emax: 107.544±5.988 % and pic50: 4.815±0.165) when pre-incubated with the nonselective inhibitor of the cox enzyme; indomethacin (30µm). in another experiment, treatment of indomethacin pre-incubated ca rings with pfre, shifted the relaxation response curve of snp to the left and magnified the relaxation of the coronary arteries non-significantly with (emax: 120.477±2.569 %) and caused no significant change in (pic50: 4.974±0.097) (fig. 5a). irreversible inhibition of the coronary artery enos with l-name (300µm) shifted the response curve to the left and non-significantly reduced the maximum relaxation of the tissue with (emax: 96.73±0.112% and pic50: 5.244±0.110) respectively in compare to untreated control ca rings , while treating these rings with pfre (0.1 mg/ml) in the presence of the inhibitor, tended to reduce the relaxation response of the tissue to about (emax: 86.33±0.262%) with no significant change in pic50 (fig. 5b). incubating ca rings with non-selective inhibitor of cytochrome p450; clotrimazole (30µm) induced no change in maximum relaxation response of the studied ca rings (emax: 112.356 ±15.644 % and pic50: 4.592±0.305) in comparison to untreated control groups (emax: 112.52±10.661% and pic50: 4.552±0.252), while treating ca rings pre-incubated with the above inhibitor with pfre, the extract tended to shift the relaxation response curve to the left and significantly (p<0.01) potentiated the relaxation of the tissue (emax: 124.24±6.583 %) and increased the potency (pic50: 4.873±0.163) (fig. 5c). kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 11 figure 5: cumulative-concentration relaxant effects of snp on ca rings pre-treated with different endothelium enzyme inhibitors (a) the effect of pfre (0.1mg/ml) on ca pre-incubated with indomethacin (1mm), the inserted graph shows potency difference between ca rings treated with indomethacin and indomethacin with pfre together(b) the effect of pfre (0.1mg/ml) on ca preincubated with l-name (30µm), the inserted graph shows potency difference between ca rings treated with l-name and l-name with pfre together (c) the effect of pfre (0.1mg/ml) on ca preincubated with clotrimazole (1mm), the inserted graph shows potency difference between ca rings treated with clotrimazole and clotrimazole with pfre together * symbolize statistical differences at p< 0.05, ** symbolize statistical differences at p< 0.01, number of used coronary artery ring in the study is in parentheses. a b c kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 12 table 2: shows the potency and maximum relaxation response (emax) from the pfre treated and untreated coronary artery to kcl from the data shown in table (3), it is apparent that there is a clear trend of significant (p<0.01) decreasing in maximum relaxation response of ca rings to snp bathed in low ca+2 krebs solution (lcks) (emax: 75.15±7.8.5% and pic50: 4.607±0.207) in comparison to the ca rings in normal krebs solution (emax: 112.52±10.661% and pic50: 4.552±0.252) (fig. 6a),, while treating ca rings with 0.1 mg/ml pfre in lcks, significantly (p<0,05) reduced the maximum vascular relaxation to about (emax: 60.11±16.197% and pic50: 4.332±0.164) in (fig. 6b), figure 6: comparative effects of cumulative-concentration relaxant effects of snp in ca rings incubated in (a) normal and low ca+2 krebs solution (b) pfre treated in low ca+2 krebs solution. the inserted graph shows potency difference between ca rings treated with nifedipine and nifedipine with pfre together * symbolize statistical differences at p< 0.05, ** symbolize statistical differences at p< 0.01, the number of used coronary artery rings in the study is in parentheses drugs untreated coronary artery pfre treated coronary artery emax (%) pic50 emax (%) pic50 control 112.52±10.661 4.552±0.252 89.04±9.638** 4.364±0.160 tea 78.3±7.399*** 4.399±0.15 89.96±10.36 4.332±0.164 glibenclamide 69.33±4.671** 4.682±0.160 99.03±7.649 4.551±0.143 bacl2 109.72 ±13.255 4.516±0.215 75.19±6.221 4.408±0.127 l-name 96.73±0.112 5.244±0.110 86.33±0.262 5.3±0.109 clotrimazole 112.356±15.643 4.592±0.305 124.24±6.583 4.873±0.163** indomethacin 107.544 ±5.988 4.815±0.165 120.477±2.569 4.974±0.097 nefidipine 120.86±7.4 5.028 ±0.284 79.771±8.651 6.155 ±0.159** a b kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 13 table 3: shows the potency and maximum relaxation response (emax) from the pfre treated and untreated coronary artery to kcl bathed in normal and low ca+2 krebs solution the possible role of l-type ca+2 channels in the relaxation response of ca muscles to snp investigated through incubation of the ca rings with, nifedipine (30µm). the results in table (2) showed a leftward shift of the curve and non-significant increase in the magnitude of the relaxation of ca rings pre-incubated with nifedipine in comparison to the untreated control rings (emax: 120.86 ±7.4%, nifedipine vs 112.52±10.661% control) with increase in potency (pic50: 5.028±0.284, vs; 4.552±0.252, control) respectively (fig.7a) and pfre treatment in the presence of the above blocker shifted the curve to the left and significantly p< 0.001 reduced the relaxation response of tissue to snp with (emax: 79.771 ±8.651%) while the potency significantly p< 0.01 increased in compare to nifedipine treated control groups (pic50: 6.155±0.59 pfre, vs; 5.028±0.284, nifedipine) (fig.7b) figure 7: cumulative-concentration relaxant effects of snp in ca rings pre-treated with l-type ca+2channel blocker nifedipine. (a) the effect of nifedipine (30µm) on ca precontracted with 30mm kcl. (b) the effect of pfre (0.1mg/ml) on ca pre-incubated with nifedipine (30µm), the inserted graph shows the potency difference between ca rings treated with nifedipine and nifedipine with pfre together. * symbolize statistical differences at p< 0.05, ** symbolize statistical differences at p< 0.01, *** symbolize statistical differences at p< 0.001, the number of used coronary artery ring in the study is in parentheses. figure (8) shows that in ca+2-free krebs solution, cacl2 induced concentration-dependent contraction of ca rings with (emax: 119.67±13.52% and pec50: -2.932±0.307), while incubating these ca rings with pfre, shifted the concentration-response curve to the right and accentuated non significant decline in the magnitude of the contraction with (emax: 91.28±3.99% and pec50: -3.113±0.162), data shown in table (4). drugs normal krebs solution low ca+2 krebs solution emax (%) pic50 emax (%) pic50 control 112.52±10.661 4.552±0.252 75.15±7.805 4.607±0.207** pfre 78.3±7.399 4.399±0.15 60.11±16.197 4.332±0.164* a b kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 14 figure 8: cumulative-concentration response curve of (a) pfre effect on cacl2-induced contraction in ca+2free krebs solution. (b) the graph shows the potency difference between ca rings in ca+2free krebs solution and ca rings in ca+2free krebs solution incubated with pfre (0.1 mg/ml), the number of used coronary artery ring in the study is in parentheses. table 4: shows the potency and maximum relaxation response (emax) from the pfre treated and untreated coronary artery to kcl bathed in free ca+2 kreb’s solution 4. discussion findings of the present study showed pfre appear to be devoid any vasoconstriction agent because it did not show any contraction activity on the resting baseline of bathed coronary artery in normal physiological krebs solution, and the results reveal the negative inotropic effects of the plant root extract and the vasorelaxant activity of pfre at concentrations ranging from (0.0001, 0.001, 0.01, 0.1 mg/ml), while concentrations (1.0 and 10 mg/ml) showed less relaxation effects in isolated coronary artery rings of the goat however, it is of possibility to speculate that maintaining the coronary circulation and vasodilatory activity of pfre may due to its phenolic compounds [35], and also reported that most of the plant’s physiological activities brought about through its alkaloid content [36], the unanticipated finding of this study was that the extract induced significant concentrationdependent relaxation in intact endothelium arteries in comparison to that of control untreated arteries, so it can be argued that the vasodilatory effect of the plant is endothelium-dependent. this strange result is supported by some earlier studies on mice aorta [22] and rat aorta [37], meanwhile the results somewhat conflicts previous study which revealed that the liquid prosopis farcta pod extract inhibited the contraction effect of phenylephrine on the healthy rat's aorta but is endothelium-independent [22]and mice aorta [38], the root extract of the plant also able to increase the expansion rate of rat aorta [12]. the affirmation of the relaxing effect of pfre in coronary artery may implicate important implementation of the plant in patients with myocardial and coronary artery disease, that’s why p. farcta has long been used as a traditional remedy for angina pectoris [22], reducing cardiac or chest pain and for managing cardiovascular disorder in iran [19], as a therapeutic agent in treating cardiovascular disorders [23] and as redrugs free ca+2 krebs solution pfre + free ca+2 krebs solution emax (%) pec50 emax (%) pec50 control 119.67±13.52 -2.932±0.307 91.28 ±3.99 -3.113±0.162 kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 15 emerging health aiding plant for cardiovascular diseases [39] . however, the result somewhat conflicts the earlier finding of [22] vascular contractions implicate the control of k+ channels, the opening of k+ channels in vsmcs results from the outward current of k+ and membrane hyperpolarization which in turn results in a reduction in ca+2 entry as a result from the closure of vdcc, and vasodilation [40]. in contrast, closure of k+ channels leads to membrane depolarization and vascular contraction. pre-incubation of the coronary artery with kca channels blocker; tea significantly reduced the emax and pic50 of the artery, this may due to the fact that blocking of most kca channels with tea resulted in coronary artery cell membrane depolarization which in turn increase the driving force of outward k+ current and cell contraction [31] this in agreement with the findings of [41] in which blocking of kca potentiated the contraction altitude induced by hu-ii in rat aorta, so it is of great importance to note that kca blocking results in augmentation of vascular basal tone and contractile response to phenylephrine in rat aorta [42] however, seemingly, kca not to involved in relaxing effect of pfre, because treatment of ca with pfre in the presence of tea, resulted in slight but non-significant increase in relaxation response of tissue which is in accordance to that of [40] who demonstrated that kca channels may not involve in vasodilation activity of pfre. the katp channels regarded as the type of k+ channel that its activity reduced with the increase of atp at the intracellular side of the plasma membrane, so decreasing the atp level through reducing or inhibiting glycolysis, sufficient for the coronary artery katp channels to open and dilate the tissue. thereby, these channels considered to be an important link between blood flow and metabolism through vascular tone regulation, not at least in the coronary artery [43]. katp channels have been demonstrated in vascular smooth muscles [43] and act as an important modulator of vascular relaxation and in turn activated by ampk, which also involved in activation of bkca [37]. in the present finding, blocking katp with glibenclamide resulted in significant attenuation in the maximum relaxation response of the artery in comparison to the untreated control arteries, this is consistent with some previous studies that revealed the activating katp channels in rat coronary artery act as eminent dilating mechanism [44], also from an earlier study on cultured macrophage, it was revealed that glibenclamide tended to inhibit induction of inos [45]; meanwhile in the current study, incubation of the coronary artery with glibenclamide before the pfre did not abolish the relaxation effect of the extract, this in accordance with that of [44] on rat coronary artery. barium chloride as a non-specific selective blocker of variety potassium channels, their blocking activity somewhat depends on its external concentration[41]. in the present study, the predominance of these channels in endothelial cells and their critical roles in modulating vascular relaxation made them be used as a pharmacologic target for studying the signaling pathways of different vasodilating agents [41]. the current findings represent the failing of bacl2 to antagonize the coronary vasodilator response to snp, which consistent with that of [32], while applying the extract to the coronary artery in the presence of the blocker, potentiates the blocking action of bacl2 and non-significantly reduced maximum relaxation of the tissue to snp with no significant change in their potency. as the pfre reduced the artery response snp, in the presence of blocker, it was suggested that this extract may interact with k+ influx or modulate ca+2 influxes, because blocking k+ channels conductance induce cell membrane depolarization and results in increasing the influx of transmembrane ca+2 and eliciting the contraction response of the artery. it is well known that vascular endothelium plays an important role in the regulation of vascular tone through the synthesis and release of edrf include no and pgi2 and edhf. prostacyclin is an edrf synthesize from both vascular smooth muscle cells and endothelium. it is a lipid compound that is enzymatically derived from fatty acids and discovered first earlier than no. in the current study, it was decided to find out the effects of prostacyclin in the relaxation response of coronary artery to snp and the results showed no significant attenuation in the kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 16 relaxation response of coronary artery rings pre-incubated with a non-selective inhibitor of cox enzyme; indomethacin. this is in accordance to results of [46] revealing non-contribution of the prostacyclin in coronary artery vasorelaxation, however, treating coronary arteries with pfre in the presence of indomethacin resulted in non-significant potentiation of the tissue relaxation. this supports the previous study of [38] suggesting that the relaxant effect of the extract is not endothelium-derived prostacyclin dependent. meanwhile, our finding somewhat conflicts the result of [40] in that the inhibition of cox enzyme and dysfunction of the endothelium not reduced the relaxation response significantly. it is of great importance to note that there are many vasodilators that are responsible for vascular relaxation; some include an increase in no production as an edrf, while others require an intact endothelium such as acetylcholine. it is well-known that l-name is a novel irreversible inhibitor for the synthesis of no from endothelial cells which act through inhibition of the endothelial nitric oxide synthase enzyme. in the present investigation, there was no significant change in emax and pic50 for coronary artery rings pretreated with l-name. however, treating these rings with pfre in the presence of the inhibitor induced non-significant attenuation in the tissue relaxation, this implies non-involvement of the endothelium-derived no synthesis in the relaxation effects of the extract. this supports the previous study of [40] and [38] who revealed non-involvement of the endothelium no in the vasodilatory effect of some plant extracts. to the contrary, [22] revealed the involvement of endothelial no in the relaxation effects of prosopis farcta extract on rat’s aorta. regulation of vascular tone through endothelium-derived hyperpolarizing factors involves the cytochrome p450 synthesis of epoxyeicosatrienoic acids (eets). from previous studies, it was reported that eet generation has contributions in endothelium and cardiovascular function [47]. selective inhibition of coronary artery rings with specific cytochrome p450 inhibitor; clotrimazole in the present study not showed any significant change in vascular activity, it seems to be due to the fact that overproduction of no by snp may involve the suppression of cyp450 activity [48], meanwhile the strange evidence of the study was that pfre showed significant potentiation of relaxation in coronary artery rings incubated with clotrimazole. because clotrimazole selectively inhibit cyp450 activity, so it is of possible plausible to interfere with coronary vsmc and endothelial activity. some previous studies reported the ability of clotrimazole to interfere with both ca+2 and ca+2-dependent k+ channels [49] and ikca channels activity [41]. because most of arterial kca channels are activated as a result of an increase in intracellular calcium concentration [ca+2]i and cell membrane depolarization which results in cell contraction, thus the possibility of interfering the pfre with this type of channel and ca+2 is investigated through either incubating the tissue in low ca+2 physiological saline solution to reduce [ca+2]i or blocking some ca+2 channels with nifedipine. our findings depict the significant attenuation in maximal vasorelaxation induced by snp, resulted from lowering the opening probability of kca channels which is consistent with an earlier study of [32] suggesting the opening of large conductance kca channels and adequate [ca+2]i resultant hyperpolarization of vascular cell membrane involved in snp induced vasorelaxation in goat coronary artery. in the present study, lowering [ca+2]i through incubation of ca rings in low pss markedly antagonized the relaxant effect of snp in the tissue, which is consistent with the study of [32]. similarly, pfre appears to interfere with ca+2 for its vasodilation in ca rings. so for the ca rings incubated in low ca+2 krebs, pfre markedly induced significant reduction in tissue relaxation response to snp; suggesting the decrease in extracellular ca+2 diminishes the effect of the relaxation effects of pfre. it is well known that calcium level control vascular smooth muscle cell contraction [2], and this contraction is regulated by both the intracellular ca+2 and contractile element’s sensitivity and the agonist-induced contraction results from an increase in [ca+2]i through the release of kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 17 ca+2from sr stores which is of critical importance during agonist-stimulated contraction coupling [50] and the ca+2 source seems to vary depending on the agonist-induced contraction species and vessels. the unique characteristic of smooth muscle, even when extracellular ca+2 depleted to zero, it is able for the pharmaco-mechanical coupling depending upon inducing the release of intracellular stores [51]. epicardial coronary arteries regarded to be the major therapeutic target in general for different calcium antagonists [52]. it is well known that calcium level control vascular smooth muscle cell contraction [2], and this contraction is regulated by both the intracellular ca+2 and contractile element’s sensitivity and the agonist-induced contraction results from an increase in [ca+2]i through the release of ca+2from sr stores which is of critical importance during agonist-stimulated contraction coupling [50] and the ca+2 source seems to vary depending on the agonist-induced contraction species and vessels. the unique characteristic of smooth muscle, even when extracellular ca+2 depleted to zero, it is able for the pharmaco-mechanical coupling depending upon inducing the release of intracellular stores [51]. epicardial coronary arteries regarded to be the major therapeutic target in general for different calcium antagonists [52]. in the present finding, depletion of intracellular ca+2 level through blocking of l-type ca+2 channel with nifedipine, non-significantly potentiated the relaxation response of ca to snp, this may due to the fact, the no donor snp induce relaxation through inhibition of sr ca+2 release [50]. meanwhile, this vasorelaxation of snp in the presence of pfre significantly decreased, suggesting that the extract may induce relaxation through reducing and inhibiting ca+2 influx and release of it from internal stores, consistent with the results of [40] the ability of the extract to relax the contractions induced by kcl is an indicator for its blockade activity on l-type voltage-dependent ca+2 channel [34]. however, there may be different mechanisms by which plant or herbal extracts could modulate contraction or relaxation. for vasodilation facilitating and vascular system remodeling, herbal plants try to block the contractile and structural protein or may through myosin light chain protein phosphorylation [40]. pfre non-significantly shifted cacl2-curve to right in of ca bathed in ca+2-free krebs solution, seemingly the extract tend to induce relaxation of cacl2 induced contraction in ca rings through antagonizing mechanism of ca+2, and interfering of the plant extract with the voltage-operated ca+2 channels similar to [30, 53] and often connected with the alkaloid active compound ability to control calcium channels, as the synthetic substances/drugs do [36]. 5. conclusion in conclusion, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to report about the in vitro effects of prosopis farcta root extract in coronary artery vascular reactivity. results of the study show devoid of vasoconstriction activity and negative inotropic effects of pfre in coronary vascular tissues while tend to exhibit the vasodilating effects through edhfs and its antagonizing of ca+2, through reducing and inhibiting ca+2 influx and release from internal stores and blocking of the voltage-operated ca+2 channels which are suggested to be the most predicted mechanisms for the endothelium-dependence maintenance of vasodilating tone and coronary circulation of the pfre in coronary artery. references [1] x. xiong, f. borrelli, a. de sá ferreira, t. ashfaq, and b. feng, "herbal medicines for cardiovascular diseases," evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine, vol. 2014, 2014. 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[53] g. a. figtree, h. griffiths, y.-q. lu, c. m. webb, k. macleod, and p. collins, "plant-derived estrogens relax coronary arteries in vitro by a calcium antagonistic mechanism," journal of the american college of cardiology, vol. 35, pp. 1977-1985, 2000.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.49 corrosion behavior of recycling alalloy based metal matrix composites reinforced by nano particles fadhil abbas hashim materials engineering university of technology baghdad, iraq hashembsb@yahoo.com niveen jamal abdulkader materials engineering university of technology baghdad, iraq niveen.alwandawy@yahoo.com nibras saeed jasim materials engineering university of technology baghdad, iraq nibras_saeed@yahoo.com abstract: the present work aims to preparation and investigation of the corrosion behavior of recycling al alloy based metal matrix composite reinforced with nano sic with weight percentage (2%, 4%, 6%, and 8%) and particle size 52 nm were evaluated. the composites were fabricated using liquid metallurgy (stir casting process). the corrosion rates of composites were calculated using potentiostatic measurements in 3.5% nacl solution.. the results showed that al/sic nanocomposites have higher corrosion resistance than aluminum matrix. the corrosion resistance was found to be increased by increasing of the weight percentage of the nanoparticles the al/8% nano (sic)p composites exhibited the highest corrosion resistance among all the investigated nanocomposites. the microstructure indicate that the strong interfacial bonding between the matrix alloy and reinforcement. keywords: recycling al, nano sic particles, metal matrix composite, stir casting, corrosion resistance & potentiostatic measurements. 1. introduction aluminum-based metal matrix composites (mmcs) become attractive for the automotive and aerospace industries when a light weight and near-net-shape component is desired. aluminum-based mmcs are well known for their high wear resistance, improved elevated temperatures tensile and fatigue strengths[1]. the mechanical and tribological characteristics of mmcs have been extensively studied [2], while corrosion characteristics are of increasing importance as mmcs become candidates for use in specific components subjected to corrosive media. generally, the corrosion resistance of aluminum-based mmcs is less than the monolithic alloys, due to several reasons such as the crevices at the matrix/ reinforcement interface ,manufacturing defects, internal stress, microstructural differences and galvanic effects due to coupling of the matrix and reinforcement [3]. the composites were produced by stir casting are easier to produce and are compatible with further processing such as machining, welding and deformation [4]. aluminum matrix composites, an epitome of metal matrix composites have been given much attention by researchers due to the light weight, high strength, ductility, low melting point and corrosion resistance offered by aluminum alloys [5]. as a result, they have been used extensively in aerospace, automotive, recreational and marine industries. the application of these materials in the marine industries exposes the materials to chloride ions which could attack and deplete the materials [6]. metal matrix composites (mmcs) reinforced with nanoparticles, also called metal matrix nano-composites (mmncs), are being investigated world wide in recent years, owing to their promising properties suitable for a large number of functional and structural applications. the reduced size of the reinforcement phase down to the nano-scale is such that interaction of particles with dislocations becomes of significant importance and, when added to other strengthening effects typically found in conventional mmcs, results in a remarkable improvement of mechanical properties [7]. 2. literature review several studies have indicated that the corrosion resistance of particle-reinforced composites depends on the composition of the base alloy, reinforcing particles, and corrosive environment. other factors include the fabrication routes for the composites, volume fraction of the reinforcing particles, and the temperature of the corrosive medium. greetha mable pinto et al. [8] investigated the corrosion behavior of sic particulate reinforced in aluminum metal matrix composites. the results obtained from tafel extrapolation technique and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy were in good agreement. the results showed an increase in the corrosion rate with increases in temperature as well as the increase in the concentration of the corrosion media. m. zakaria [9] studied the corrosion behavior and the microstructure of al/ sic metal matrix composite with volume fraction up to 15 vol% and various particle size 3, 6 and 11µm that fabricated by powder metallurgy. it was found that corrosion rate at room temperature for al/sic composite better than pure aluminum in 3.5 wt % nacl aqueous solution. increasing the volume fraction of sic resulted in increasing the corrosion resistance of the composite, while reducing the particle size of sic enhanced the corrosion resistance of sic composite. the corrosion rate decreased with the long duration exposure. b.babu, et al., [10] studied the corrosion behavior of aluminium alloy/10 % silicon carbide reinforced particulate composite in severe environments have been evaluated, the media are 5 weight percent nacl solution.· the weight loss, the percentage weight loss, and the corrosion rate expressed in mmpy all agree with the physical appearance of the specimens after the exposure time of the test. kenneth k. alaneme, et al, [11] investigated the influence of corn cob ash on the cormailto:hashembsb@yahoo.com mailto:niveen.alwandawy@yahoo.com mailto:nibras_saeed@yahoo.com rosion and wear performance of al-mg-si hybrid composites reinforced with varied weight ratios of silicon carbide and corn cob ash. the results show that hybrid composites exhibited excellent corrosion resistance in a 3.5% nacl environment. many researchers have tried to investigate the corrosion properties of composites and to find the effect of micro particulates and volume fractions on corrosion test parameters on aluminum metal matrix composites. the aim of present work: is to produce a metal matrix composite material by using a recycling aluminum alloys reinforced with nano materials with varying weight percentage in order to enhance the corrosion resistance of the composite in 3.5 wt.% nacl solution. 3. methods and materials materials for the production of metal matrix composite, the materials used are an al wire and al a 2024 (as a matrix material) that reinforced with (2 %, 4%, 6%, and 8%) weight percentage of 52 nm diameter sic particles. this metal matrix composite was prepared using a liquid metallurgy (stir casting process). the chemical composition of al wire and al 2024 are shown in table (i& ii). table i: the chemical composition of al wire. al % mn % fe % mg % si % cu % element b a la n c e 0 .0 5 3 2 0 .4 1 2 1 .0 2 0 .7 7 0 .2 7 5 composition % table ii: the chemical composition of aa2024. al % mn % fe % mg % si % cu % element b a la n c e 0 .0 2 5 9 0 .1 9 3 2 .2 9 0 .0 9 0 7 1 .3 8 composition % composite preparation: a composite materials are produced using a stir casting process [12], al wire and al 2024 alloy were melted in a graphite crucible and mixed with nano sic particles using a stirrer. the melt was degassed using hexachlorethane to get rid of impurities and gases. the stirrer speed lowered vertically up to 3 cm from the bottom of the crucible. the speed of the stirrer was gradually raised to 800 rpm. at 650 c° the sic nano particles were introduced into the molten. the nano particles were packaged in aluminum foil. after the addition of silicon carbide powder, stirring was continued for 10 min to get better distribution. the melt was kept in the crucible for one minute without stirring. the slag were removed and the melt poured in the graphite mold as shown in figure (1). figure 1 graphite mold polarization measurements all experiments were carried out in (500) ml of test solution by using a three electrodes cell with saturated calomel electrode (sce) as a reference, platinum electrode as counter electrode and the cylindrical specimens of the alloy with active flat disc of (0.78) cm2 as the working electrode. all the values of potential are therefore referred to the sce. finely polished composite and base alloy specimens were exposed to corrosion medium and allowed to establish a steady stat open circuit potentially, followed by polarization measurements at a scan rate of (3) mv/s for tafel plots. fig. (2) shows the experimental set up for electrochemical measurement. figure. 2 experimental set up for electrochemical measurement. the values of corrosion current density (icorr) were obtained from the point of intersection of both linear parts of the anodic and cathodic polarization curves with the stationary corrosion potential (ecorr). corrosion rate can be calculate by using the following equation [13]: 𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 = 3.27×10−3 𝜌 × 𝑖𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑟 × 𝐸𝑊 (1) where , i corr (in a/cm 2) is the corrosion current density ew in (gm) is the equivalent weight of the corroding species, and  in (g/ cm3) is the density of the corroding species. 4. results & discussion particle size analysis: nano silicon carbide particle size was analyzed using a laser diffraction particle size distribution analyzer (90) plus particle sizing software ver. the results show that the mean particle size of nano silicon carbide powder was determined to be 52.8nm with particle analyzer as shown in fig. (3). figure 3 particle size distribution of nano silicon carbide microstructure analysis the microstructure was studied by an optical microscope in order to examine the microstructure and the formed phases using metallographic microscope. the samples are etched using keller's solution that contain 3ml hf, 6ml hno3 and rest of h2o. the microstructure shown in figure (4) better dispersion of reinforcement in the matrix. as the weight percentage of nano sic increases in the matrix, the reinforcement particles increases and the inter particle space decreases. there is no indication of agglomeration of reinforcement in the matrix. the microstructure is dendritic, the primary dendrites are fragmented because of mechanical stirring that explains the improvement in the possibility of incorporating and entrapping nano-sized particles within the interdendritic interface developing during the solidification of the dispersed alloys. figure 4 microstructure of nano silicon carbide particles at different weight percent of nano silicon carbide particulates in recycled al alloymatrix(x40). a) 0% wt. b) 2% wt. c) 4% wt. d) 6% wt. e) 8% wt. corrosion behavior in 3.5% nacl solution the corrosion parameters of recycled aluminum alloy and its composites in 3.5% solution nacl are given in table (iii) . it can be clearly observed that corrosion rate of unreinforced alloy is higher than in the case of composites due to nano sic is hardly affected by salt medium and not affect the corrosion mechanism of the composite. table (iii) corrosion parameters of recycled aluminum alloy and its composites in (3.5% nacl) solution composite recycled al/nano sic (3.5% nacl) solution icorr (a/cm2) ecorr (mv) corrosion rate (mm/y) 0% 47.46 -1150.3 0. 4746 2% 28.69 -1103.4 0.2869 4% 20.27 -1088.7 0.2027 6% 9.25 -1092.1 0.0925 8% 5.63 -1008.4 0.0563 it can be observed from the polarization curves figures (5) to (9) and table (iii) that the corrosion current density (icorr) values and the corrosion rate decreases with increase in nano sic content in the composites. the addition of hard particles into the alloy can increase the corrosion resistance by the physical properties of reinforcement. uniform dispersion of reinforcement particles in an aluminium alloy which shows the better corrosion resistance. increasing the weight percentages of the reinforcement particles (nano sic) increasing the corrosion resistance of the composite [14]. from table iii, it has been found that the recycled al/ 8%nano sic composites show better corrosion resistance when compared with the base al and sic nanoparticulates are ceramic materials and they remain inert.. figure 5 polarization curves for recycled aluminum alloy in (3.5% nacl) solution figure 6 polarization curves for recycled aluminum alloy/2% nano sic composite in (3.5% nacl) solution figure 7 polarization curves for recycled aluminum alloy/4% nano sic composite in (3.5% nacl) solution figure 8 polarization curves for recycled aluminum alloy/6% nano sic composite in (3.5% nacl) solution figure 9 polarization curves for recycled aluminum alloy/8% nano sic composite in (3.5% nacl) solution 5. conclusion according to the results obtained from the current investigation, the following conclusions can be pointed out:  the recycled al/ nano sic composites exhibited higher corrosion resistance in (3.5%nacl solution) than the base alloy.  corrosion current density values (icorr) decrese with increase in nano sic content in the composites for (3.5% nacl solution).  the al composite reinforced with 8% nano sic exhibited higher corrosion resistance due to sic nanoparticulates are ceramic materials and they remain inert.  the microstructure of recycled aluminum alloy reinforced with nano sic particles seem to be distributed uniformly and strong interfacial bonding between the matrix alloy and reinforcement. thus, increased nanoparticles with weight percentage increases the corrosion resistance of the composite 6. reference [1] c. n. chawla, "metal-matrix composites in ground transportation". jom, 58, 67–70, 2006. [2] a.i, h. saebnouri, e.; sadrnezhaad, s.k.; ghanbari, m.; shahrabi, t. "processing and surface properties of al–aln composites produced from nanostructured milled powders." j. alloy. compd., 490, 624–630,2010. [3] z. zhang.; d.l. chen, "contribution of orowan strengthening effect in particulate-reinforced metal matrix nanocomposites.", mat. sci. eng. a, 483–484, 148–152, 2008. [4] z. zhang.; d.l. chen, "consideration of orowan strengthening effect in particulate-reinforced metal matrix nanocomposites": a model for predicting their yield strength. scripta mater., 54, 1321–1326, 2006. [5] p. luo, m. donald, d.t.; w. xu,; palanisamy, s.; dargusch, m.s.; xia. k. "a modified hall–petch relationship in ultrafine-grained titanium recycled from chips by equal channel angular pressing",. scripta mater., 66, 785–788, 2012. 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[9] h. m. zakaria, “microstructural and corrosion behavior of al/sic metal matrix composites”, ain shams engineering journal, volume 5, issue 3, september 2014, p.p 831-838 [10] b.babu,s.k.karthikeyan,v.adithya,“experimental investigation and analysis of corrosion and hardness using aluminium composites”, international journal of latest trends in engineering and technology, (ijltet), issn: 2278-621x, vol. 4 issue 4 november 2014. [11] k. k. alaneme, a. f. babajide, a. j. omotoyinbo, joseph o. borode, m. o. bodunrin, “corrosion and wear behavior of stir-cast aluminium-based hybrid composites reinforced with silicon carbide and corn cob ash”, african corrosion journal, official publication of the corrosion institute of southern africa, vol.1, no.2, 2015. [12] m. k. aravindan & k. balamurugan, “tribology and corrosion behavior of al 6063/sic metal matrix composits”, international journal of advanced engineering technology, e-issn 0976-3945, vol. vii/issue ii/april-june, 2016. [13] p.r. roberge, "corrosion engineering: principles and practice", new york: mcgraw-hill., 2008. [14] p.s. s. r. kumar, d.s. robinson smart, s. j.alexis, “corrosion behaviour of aluminium metal matrix reinforced with multi-wall carbon nanotube”, journal of asian ceramic societies 5 (2017). acknowledgments we would like to express our thanks to dr. hussain mohammed yousif/ state company for steel industries for their support which assists to perform this work. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/20904479 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/20904479 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/20904479/5/3  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq volume 4 – special issue: 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) doi: 10.24017/science.2019 .ichms.14 received: 10 june 2019 accepted: 2 july 2019 abstract the aims of this study are to estimate the cost effectiveness of ophthalmic procedures that were performed after expansion at shahid aso eye hospital, to analyse how much cost the expansion and rebuilding this hospital can save to the local community and to estimate the expansion of ophthalmic surgical coverage after rebuilding of shahid aso eye hospital. data collected was based on the retrospective data documented in shahid aso eye hospital before its expansion, and after its rebuilding to a new specialized hospital from a small department, in addition to that the survey of new ophthalmic branches in different districts of sulaimani governorate was incorporated into this study. number of operations performed, number of doctors trained and increase in surgical coverage were calculated. the results showed that there is an increase in the cost per qualityadjusted life year (qaly) gained with ophthalmic surgeries and daly. furthermore, there is an increase in the surgical coverage in all the districts of sulaimani governorate. in addition, there is an additional benefit of reviving estimated lost money of about 2000, 000-4000, 000 $ usa dollars to the local market. in the conclusion, expansion of shahid aso hospital was beneficial for community from both health point of view and economically for the local market. the history of a hospital and challenge of expansion: costeffectiveness and surgical coverage abdulrahman hama amin hussein sanoor kadir mahmood shahid aso eye hospital shahid aso eye hospital sulaimani general health directorate sulaimani general health directorate sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq abdulrahman02ali@gmail.com sinorkadir@gmail.com salah qadir mahmood sakar abdulkarim nidhamaddin radiation department shahid aso eye hospital sulaimani technical institute sulaimani general health directorate sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq sakardr@yahoo.com salahdeanoffice@hotmail.com kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 139 keywords: ophthalmic surgery, daly, qaly, cost effectiveness, shahid aso eye hospital. 1. introduction ophthalmic diseases are one of the common health problems in kurdistan region of iraq. however, it is difficult to estimate their burden on life and economy of the population, as there are not enough systematic data about these diseases. in general, iraq and kurdistan health system lack the infrastructure for the adequate collection and documentation of the data both logistically and human resource wise. who estimates that likely there are 29 thousand blind and 87 thousand visually impaired people in ik. there are cases of allergy, visual impairment, and cataract. most common causes of blindness in kurdistan region of iraq are cataract, diabetic retinopathy, trauma and glaucoma. cataract alone accounts for almost 60 % of all blindness and visual impairment. eye service captured least attention in planning, development and resource allocation. but this condition changed dramatically with the opening of shahid aso eye hospital [1,2,3]. in a report prepared by a group of ophthalmologists from sweden visiting kurdistan region of iraq, it has been stated that “over the past several years, many government authorities, ophthalmologists and the public in general have expressed their unhappiness with the practice offered by the ophthalmic care services. the available resources in terms of personnel, infrastructure, and funds to deal with eye problems are not adequate. despite the shortages of the ophthalmic resources everywhere in kurdistan region of iraq, still the available resources are not utilized optimally. moreover, there are huge “interregional discrepancies in the distribution of available resources” [1,2]. this report was written in 2005 before opening of shahid aso hospital and as it, with the rebuilding of the hospital and expansion of it. resources have been allocated to increase the services that the hospital provides, it is also developed in two several departments each focusing on different aspects and anatomical parts of the eye. in parallel to that the number of the personnel, trained ophthalmologist and subspecialties were increased. in a way that ophthalmic services expanded in to rural and suburban hospitals, in connection with the shahid aso eye hospital. cataract coverage increased as a result of these expansions. ophthalmologists trained and deployed to several hospitals outside city center. all these benefits, in addition to daly and qaly that could be gained at the personal levels, the life of patients, are all considered as beneficial effects of the expansion of the hospital [1,2,3,4]. 2. methods and materials in the retrospective review data at shahid aso eye hospital retrieved and reviewed for the total number of operation that was increased in each year, in addition to the different types of investigation and services that were provided. the number of the personnel trained at different levels of ophthalmic work, like nurses, paramedics and doctors [3]. for analysis, the situation of the ophthalmic services in kurdistan region of iraq in 2005 was documented by an ophthalmologist from sweden was taken as a base line standard and comparison point. there are increase in ophthalmic services in different rural and suburbs of sulaimani city in spite of all of the measurable benefits of this facility. qaly and daly at the personal level and amount of economic saving to the community were calculated. data was collected and analyzed. ethical consideration regulated by the ministry of higher education and ministry of health regarding the use of medical data was observed during the conduction of this study. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 140 a brief history of ophthalmic services in sulaimani city sulaimani ophthalmology services were underdeveloped and was a part of the major hospital of the city including just five trained comprehensive ophthalmologists and the limited number of paramedics. work load of the department was on average 100-200 cases, several private clinics with limited resources were present in the city. unfortunately, the available resources were scarce because of the effect of subsequent political conflicts and economic sanctions that dramatically collapsed iraq health system including kurdistan region. this service was expanded and relocated into chwar bakh hospital which is still as a part of hospital with limited space and capacities. in 2010, a new hospital was built with full ophthalmic services and equipment including: operation room, phaco machine, glaucoma services, pediatric services and cornea services [3]. in 2005, the hospital was a part of general medical hospital, this was expanded to many branches and departments linked to shahid aso eye hospital as an interconnected single corpus of ophthalmic services throughout the region. 3. results a one glance if we look at the expansion of the hospital from the base line services in 2005, it can be seen that the ophthalmic services expanded dramatically, from just one department inside the major hospital in city center of sulaimani to many departments within major hospitals and even to suburban areas in 2016 and the number of personnel in the ophthalmic services has increased dramatically in 2016 (table 1). table 1: increase in workforce type of professional in 2005 in 2016 trained ophthalmologists 4 55 nurses and paramedics 2 150 in general, the number of rural services has increased in 2016: effect on ophthalmic work force was dramatic: it can be seen in the number of ophthalmic personnel and surgical units that increased and developed, from this small department into many departments within major hospitals of the different districts such as in rania, kalar and halabja and there are operation rooms established with advanced equipment like phaco machine. furthermore, there are three ophthalmologists in average in the mentioned districts. in warmawa, darbandekhan, pera magrwn and dukan, there are ophthalmologists working in the outpatient services linked to shahid aso eye hospital. all these developments occurred after the expansion of shahid aso eye hospital (table 2). major hospital ophthlmology departemnt out clinic services kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 141 figure 1: diagram of ophthalmic services in sulaimani city table 2: expansion of rural ophthalmic services rural service units 2005 2016 rural service with surgical unit 0 4 rural service units 2 10 ophthalmic doctors 3 20 ophthalmic medics and para/medics 5 35 expansion of hospital and expansion on private sector in iraq and kurdistan region, the private sector works in parallel with public sector, most of the medical professionals are working too in private sector. there are three private surgical ophthalmic departments, within private hospitals in the city. in average, they perform about 200 ophthalmic surgeries in sulaimani city. these developments occurred after expansion of shahid aso eye hospital. but if we go back to 2005, the number of operation was 2495 and it increased in 2015 to 3715 operations. then from 2015 the crises started and the hospital faced shortage in resource allocation. this affected the number of surgeries and services provided by the hospital (table 3). table 3: increase in number of operation year number of operation major number of minor operation total 2004 900 300 1200 2005 1962 533 2495 2013 4538 478 5016 2016 1918 363 2281 shahid aso eye hospital: cornea, glaucoma, anterior segments, retina and pediatrics diabetic centre eye clinic rural and sub urban clinics higher education and research suburban surgical units kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 142 effect on cataract surgical coverage the definition of cataract surgical coverage (csc) is the proportion of patients with “operable” cataract, who has already had surgical operation. it has been estimated by world health report 10 that approximately 20 million people are bilaterally blind from cataract related age. (who) it is an indicator to measure cataract intervention programs. for eyes with mature cataract, the cataract surgical coverage has been increases to about 80% [5]. cataract surgical rate which is calculated as a number of eyes operated on per population, csr is increased to (0.016). the definition of csc is the number of people in a defined population with operated cataract as a proportion of those having operable plus operated cataract [3,5]. cost effectiveness of this expansion the importance of cost effectiveness analysis (cea) is to provide information that is crucial policy makers for determining which type health interventions has the best financial value. the quality and length of life can be estimated by cea. specifically, additional years lived in a good health/ without morbidity, due to a specific health intervention and express this in terms of cost per daly averted or qaly gained [5]. these measures are used in ophthalmic intervention, too. for example, average cost per qaly gained after cataract surgery is different from one country to another, average cost per qaly gained after cataract surgery in india is about 4-36 $ usa dollars and in united states is about 254-838$ [5,6]. simply, the calculation of qalys is performed by multiplying the period of time that spent in a health state by the hrqol weight. therefore, the two key elements of hrqol and survival are incorporated [6]. daly is the abbreviation for disability adjusted life years, is the measurement of burden of diseases including ophthalmic problems. one lost year of healthy life is considered as one daly. therefore, the sum of population dalys can be considered as the measurement of gap between the current health status and an ideal health condition where the entire population lives to advanced age and is free of disease and disability [7,8]. these two measures are used to analyze socio-economic effect of any medical services worldwide. however, it is very difficult to measure qaly and daly here, but if we calculate qaly just for cataract surgery it can be seen that, qaly in sulaimani city of kurdistan region of iraq as part of middle east and developing countries is between 9-250 $ usa dollars, but daly for most of the developing countries is about 90 $ usa, based on the level of income of similar countries, iraq has the similar daly number. in general, if we estimate the amount of the money that this population who had cataract surgery would have used in getting these services from neighbor countries and we can conclude that about 2000000 $ usa have been saved to the local market. number of operation in year 2016 *estimated cost of this surgeries in neighbor countries 2000*2000=4000000 $ usa in addition to the burden of the travel on the families and politics of the travel, that would have been affected the families in a negative way. the establishing processes that allow population with geographic and financial barriers to access is essential to prevent visual disability. diabetic retinopathy globally, recent records revealed that around 382 million people are suffering from diabetes [1]. the most frequently occurring microvascular complication of diabetes is diabetic retinopathy and it affects approximately around 28% of patients with known diabetes and 11% of those is newly identified. furthermore, it can affect nearly all patients with a sufficient duration of the disease ([8,9]. due to asymptomatically pathophysiological changes in the eye kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 143 continue in the background; therefore, it is crucial that the diabetic patients to have a health check-up on a regular basis [10,11]. one of the duties of shahid aso center is establishing guidelines for screening diabetic retinopathy, in addition, in collaboration with shahid aso eye hospital in diabetic clinic in sulaimani, an eye clinic for documented diabetic patient have been opened and screens for any diabetic problems that may arise in those patients and gives advices about diabetic retinopathy and glycemic control. the resources for this purpose supplied by shahid aso eye hospital as a mother institution, these include doctors, nurses, training and guidelines. even in those patients who develop sever diabetic retinopathy, the hospital depends on the available budget to provide injection for this purpose, this can save costs to local community. in past, people had to go to neighboring countries such as iran and turkey to receive the same treatment with a higher cost. this is in addition to the social costs that they had to afford while they were there. they had to support the person who was with them during the receiving local treatment. part of the outcome of the hospital work is to support and supervise provision of care in the city of sulaimani and its surrounding district in both private and public sectors. the same type of treatment and screening are present in local districts. low vision and children eye care however, vision screening is part of iraq school health services, but structured department was not present within the hospital for this purpose, with establishing of this new hospital, space and capacity for this purpose has expanded, in a way that this department are connected to the screening programs for low vision in the schools and manage patients who are referred by public screening program, to provide more advanced treatment for them. however, the exact amount of reduction of amblyopia [3.4]. decreased through this program cannot be estimated, but through the feedback of the center, approximately 25 children are assessed and diagnosed on daily bases. communication of hospital with the local community is maintained through media, tv and programs that are attended by physician from hospital to give awareness to the public about different eye problems, in addition there are social media pages that allow direct communication with the local community to give information about the services that shahid aso eye hospital can provide. 4. discussion globally, there are 37 and 124 million people with blind and living with a low vision respectively that recorded by who in 2002, in which 90% of them lives in the developing countries and the only patients who seek and have the ability to pay for the quality of eye care [10]. unfortunately, in many countries of the world especially underdeveloped countries such as iraq including kurdistan region, ophthalmic services derive less attention in term for the plan for improvement and resource allocation [12,13]. in the developing countries, there is a stable but in reality, there is equal health eye care services available especially for those patients who have lower income, which leads to cause exclusion, marginalization for both patients who suffer from optic problems and eye care providers. kurdistan region is not exclusion, too. in past, patient choices included an unaffordable private sector in the neighboring countries health care market or an inherently inefficient public system. building of eye care hospital as shahid aso eye hospital is a great achievement, it has important role in increasing productivity and greater equity due to an increased number of poor patients served. cumulative result shows that, there are an increased coverage of surgeries for cataract, increase in the number of people that visited the clinic throughout the period since its establishment [11,12]. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 144 5. conclusion it can be concluded that shahid aso eye hospital was unique, in its cost effectiveness in delivery of care to most vulnerable people, in addition to increases trained ophthalmic personnel and surgical cataract coverage. it adds value to local market, and saves unnecessary costs that patients had to afford to go to neighboring countries for receiving of the treatment. figure 1: diagram of shahid aso eye hospital shahid aso eye hospital manager assistant manager administration finance general investigations – laboratory – x-ray mri ct scan ecg eye examination out patient clinic. operation theater in patient department examination clinics pharmacy refraction major minor glaucoma -v. f -pharmacy -men bed -women bed retina -oct -fa -lasers cornea -topog. u/s biometry pediatrics squint refraction kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 145 reference [1] c. celiker. the current status of ophthalmic services in kurdistan iraq. the current status of ophthalmic services in kurdistan iraq. 2006 p. 11–39. [2] world report on vision [internet]. world health organization. world health organization; 2018 [cited 2019jul12]. available from: https://www.who.int/blindness/vision-report/en/ [3] shahid aso eye hospital documents. [4] fi. al-shakarchi. blindness in iraq: leading causes, target patients, and barriers to treatment [internet]. middle east african journal of ophthalmology. medknow publications; 2011 [cited 2019jul12]. available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc3162730/ [5] j. ramke , ce.gilbert ,ac. lee, p. ackland , h. limburg , a. foster . effective cataract surgical coverage: an indicator for measuring quality-of-care in the context of universal health coverage. plos one. 2017;12(3):e0172342. published 2017 mar 1. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0172342. [6] vc. lansigh, mg. carter. global cost effectiveness of cataract surgery. ophthalmology. 2007sep;114(9):1670– 8. [7] a. agrawal & dhiva kumar cost effectiveness of cataract surgery,current opinion in ophthalmology. 22(1):15–18, jan 2011, doi: 10.1097/icu.0b013e3283414f64. [8] e desapriya;g scime;i pike;p joshi;s subzwari cost effectiveness of cataract surgery, british journal of ophthalmology. 92(5):722, may 2008doi: 10.1136/bjo.2007.131821 [9] pasquel fj, hendrick am, ryan m, cason e, ali mk, narayan km. cost-effectiveness of different diabetic retinopathy screening modalities. j diabetes sci technol. 2015;10(2):301–307. published 2015 dec 29. doi:10.1177/1932296815624109 [10] baltussen r, sylla m. cost-effectiveness analysis of cataract surgery: a global ... [internet]. [cited 2019jul12]. available from: https://www.who.int/blindness/cost_cataract.pdf. [11] dalys and qalys in developing countries [internet]. health affairs. [cited 2019jul12]. available from: https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.26.4.1197-a. [12] universal eye health: a global action plan 2014-2019. geneva, switzerland: world health organization; 2013., https://www.who.int/blindness/actionplan/en/. [13] r. rahmathullah transforming eye clinics and hospitals to sustainability – the international eye foundation's social enterprise model [internet]. touchophthalmology. 2011 [cited 2019jul12]. available from: https://www.touchophthalmology.com/2011/02/08/transforming-eye-clinics-and-hospitals-to-sustainability-theinternational-eye-foundations-social-enterprise-model/doi: http://doi.org/10.17925/eor.2009.02.01.8 https://www.who.int/blindness/vision-report/en/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc3162730/ https://www.who.int/blindness/cost_cataract.pdf https://www.who.int/blindness/actionplan/en/ https://www.touchophthalmology.com/authors/raheem-rahmathullah/ http://doi.org/10.17925/eor.2009.02.01.8 1. introduction [7] a. agrawal & dhiva kumar cost effectiveness of cataract surgery,current opinion in ophthalmology. 22(1):15–18, jan 2011, doi: 10.1097/icu.0b013e3283414f64.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 86 computer aided diagnostic system for blood cells in smear images using texture features and supervised machine learning shakhawan hares wady 1 applied computer science college of medicals and applied sciences charmo university 2 department of information technology university college of goizha sulaimani, iraq shakhawan.hares@charmouniversity.org article info abstract volume 7 issue 1june 2022 doi: 10.24017/science.2022.1.8 article history: received: 22/4/2022 accepted: 14/6/2022 leukemia is a type of blood cancer that affects white blood cells (wbcs) and causes bone marrow destruction. a complete blood count (cbc) and bone marrow aspiration are the most frequent tests used to detect acute lymphoblastic leukemia (all). if not identified early enough, the condition can be fatal. in this context, an intelligent framework is designed to detect hematological disorders like leukemia (blood cancer). the feature extraction was performed using center symmetric local binary pattern (cslbp), gabor wavelet transform (gwt), and local gradient increasing pattern (lgip). the framework combined the extracted features and then fed them into machine learning classifiers, including decision tree (dt), ensemble, k-nearest neighbor (knn), naïve bayes (nb), and random forest (rf)). the all-idb2 database was utilized as the training set to create a balanced database with 260 blood smear images. consequently, a recommended model was established using numerous individual and combined feature extraction methodologies to generate the optimum feature set. the investigational consequences demonstrate that the developed feature fusion strategy surpassed previous techniques, with 97.49 ± 1.02% accuracy utilizing the ensemble classifier. keywords: leukemia diagnosis, blood smear, feature extraction, machine learning. mailto:shakhawan.hares@charmouniversity.org kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 87 1. introduction hematology analyzes blood and blood-forming structures, such as the identification, therapy, and cure of blood infection, myeloid tissue cells, cellular immunity disorders, fibrinolytic, and nutritive subsystems. medical experts perform and evaluate various diagnostic procedures to support disease diagnostic and therapeutic specialists. they deal with blood and myeloid tissue to provide comprehensive diagnostic care to patients [1]. the volume and anatomical structure produced at any given time are determined by the needs of your body. estimating how myeloid tissue cells respond to a medical situation may be more significant in some circumstances than establishing the patient's hematological condition. medical professionals frequently analyze blood smear samples for abnormalities; if diseases are diagnosed, they perform a myeloid tissue biopsy and deliver a diagnosis within a brief time. as demonstrated in figure 1a, the fundamental function of myeloid tissue is to create red blood cells (rbcs), platelets, and white blood cells (wbcs) [2]. typically, rbcs are the cells grown the most and have the highest proportion (figure 1b). the complete blood count (cbc) is a hematological diagnostic procedure that produces data that can be utilized to identify a disorder. the cbc assesses the formation of all cell components, measures the patient's oxygen-carrying abilities via rbc counts, and checks the immune system via differential wbc counts. this examination facilitates the identification of anemia, various cancers, diseases, and a diversity of other disorders, along with the tracking of medication health consequences [3]. figure 1: blood smear components. (a) growth of blood cells in the myeloid tissue, (b) normal blood, and (c) blood during leukemia [4]. a variety of diseases can impact the approximate quantity of wbcs and their appearance on a blood film. this is evident in viral infections that increase wbcs, whereas the much more severe symptoms (as depicted in figure 1c) are almost probably leukemias [1]. allleukemia cells are a kind of blood or myeloid tissue malignancy in which the body generates malignant wbcs. due to this irregular blood cellular division, the blood, lymphatics, and kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 88 myeloid tissue are all affected, exposing the immunological system to risk [5]. they can also impede rbcs and platelet formation in the stem cells. additionally, those malignant wbcs can enter the bloodstream and lead to damage to specific organs in the body including the brain, kidney, spleen, liver, and other organs, leading to the growth of further severe malignancies. leukemia is classified as acute or chronic depending on how quickly it grows or worsens. acute leukemia appears rapidly and spreads immediately. depending on the level of infected cell, all-leukemia cells can be categorized as acute lymphoblastic or myelogenous leukemia [6]–[8]. this research concentrates on all although it is expected to have a greater chance of survival than other varieties. leukemia can only be diagnosed with a comprehensive examination of stained blood smears. manual sample collection in anomalies in slide preparation, leading in non-standardized, unreliable, and inconsistent evaluations due to its complicated structure of wbcs. as a consequence, an expense and reliable computerized framework is required vital to satisfy the need for truthful analysis and identification without being influenced by the knowledge, weariness, or operational exhaustion of medical experts. as a basis, numerous computer aided diagnosis (cad) techniques for assessing blast cells in blood images have been developed. this work provides a methodology for leukemia classification and examines the effect of various feature methods on the classification process. the key contribution of this study is to fuse the features extracted from blood seamer images in order to improve the overall accuracy and thereby reduce the misclassification error rate. the rest of the article is structured in the following manner. section 2 presents a review of related research. section 3 comprises an overview of the cad system architecture, a description of the all-idb database, image preprocessing, feature extraction, feature fusion and classification, and performance measurements. section 4 summarizes the experimental results were obtained by comparing numerous feature extraction to current methods. lastly, section 5 addresses the conclusion of the study. 2. literature review in medical image computing and processing, particularly in the area of all, machine learning (ml) and image processing approaches have delivered exceptional achievements [9]. various procedures are widely used to determine microscopic smears for the diagnosis of allleukemia cells. for the efficient recognition of these disease-causing disorders, a range of methodologies have been extensively utilized. the mechanisms presented comprise cnns, supervised learning, feature extraction, and feature selection [10]. a brief review of some significant achievements from previous studies was provided. the study [11] intended to build an improved classification algorithm based on peripheral blood smear images that could categorize all-leukemia cells subtypes. cytoplasmic vacuoles and the uniformity of the nuclear envelope of all-leukemia cells were the only geometrical features used in this study. support vector machine (svm), knn, and artificial neural network (ann) with various measurement functions were considered and fine-tuned using the all-idb2 database. utilizing pre-trained alexnet and fine-tuning, the authors in [5] developed a deep cnn learning algorithm for the classify of all-leukemia cells and its subtypes based on the allidb database supplemented using 50 private images. the paper [12] investigated and proposed a micro-pattern descriptor for identifying cancer cells and non-cancerous cells. accordingly, a developed framework was developed by combining two feature extraction approaches, local directional number pattern (ldnp), and the multi-scale weber local descriptor (mwld) methods, and loaded through ml classifiers (dt, ensemble, knn, nb, and rf). investigational consequences demonstrate that the designed feature methodology guaranteed an acceptable performance when compared to other current studies. the study [13] was concerned with building an effective automatic approach for identifying all-leukemia cells. the presented scheme comprised of two phases. the initial phase was to separate the wbcs. relevant features including shape, statistical, geometry, and discrete kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 89 cosine transform (dct) were derived from the fragmented regions in the second phase. to classify the segmented all-leukemia cells as healthy or abnormal, numerous classification approaches were applied to the derived features. the authors of [14] recommended that blood smear images be used to identify wbcs using a yolov2-nucleus-cytoplasm systematic model. particle swarm optimization (pso) has been used to improve the bag-of-features (bof) generated from wbc images of blood smears for identification. leukocyte-images for segmentation classification (lisc) and all-idb have been used to determine the identification outcomes. on both the all-idb1 and all-idb2 databases, optimized nave bayes (onb) exceeded optimized discriminant analysis (o-da) method. the onb classification algorithm, on the other hand, outperformed the oda classification method on the lisc database. the article [15] utilized deep cnns to handle the all identification task . to provide a superior all-leukemia cells classification, the weighted ensemble of deep cnns was investigated. the weights were calculated using the appropriate measurements of the ensemble candidates, including the area under the curve (auc), f1-score, and kappa coefficients. to generate a higher adaptation of the system, numerous data extensions and preprocessing were applied and the c-nmc-2019 all database was used to train and test a developed framework. the authors of [16] presented a classification scheme for all-leukemia cells and its subtypes. firstly, a thresholding procedure was used to differentiate the roi of lymphoblast from bone marrow aspirations. cnn, i.e., alexnet, was employed for categorization. for the evaluation, the 330 images database was employed and the classification accuracy obtained was 97.78 %. the study [17] employed nb and knn classifiers to categorize cancerous and benign cells based on geometric, color, statistical, and textural features. the accuracy of the categorization reached 92.8 % when 60 image smears were employed. the study [18] proposed a technique for classifying acute myeloid leukemia (aml) and its subtypes m4, m5, and m7. primarily, a color k-means method was performed for cell segmentation. applying multi-class svm classifier, classification was performed utilizing six statistical features. this resulted in segmentation accuracy of 87.00 % and classification accuracy of 92.90 %. the research utilized microscopic images of wbcs to design a computer-based enterprise development for identifying and categorizing chronic lymphocytic leukemia based on enhanced virtual neural network (evnn) classification in [19]. the suggested scheme had the maximum accuracy in identifying and categorizing all-leukemia cells using wbc images. in terms of accuracy, specificity, sensitivity, and error rate, the proposed technique ranked 76.60%, 89.90%, 97.80%, and 2.20 %, respectively. the study [20] presented a refined dl technique for accurate segmentation and categorization of wbcs. preprocessing-based identification and segmentation were the two primary methods in the proposed approach. simulated scans were performed with a generative adversarial network (gan) and standardized with color conversion throughout preprocessing. pretrained deep architectures, including shufflenet and, darknet-53 were performed to extract the optimal deep features out of each blood smear image. principal component analysis (pca) was employed to choose more relevant features, which were then combined sequentially for identification task. to diagnose all, the authors of [21] investigated an effective leukemia classification algorithm that employed two texture features extracted from the nucleus image, i.e. lbp and glcm approaches. the all-idb2 database, which contains 260 (130 normal and 130 blast) blood smear images, was utilized to train a two-class classification algorithm. with classification performance of 93.84 % and 87.30 %, respectively, lbp texture features outscored glcm texture features. the research paper [22] focused on a methodology for effectively identifying wbcs in complex blood smear images employing the watershed transform (wst) and circle fitting methodology. in preprocessing phases, the quantitative strategy incorporated segmentation and edge mapping derivation, and also parameterized circular estimation, that detected either isolated and overlapping wbcs, to differentiate overlapping wbcs. the system was estimated on a database of 384 wbcs images from the all-idb and ash image collections, with considerable overlap. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 90 all of the earlier approaches outlined above have the limitation of classifying all cells from microscopic according to subtype. this research developed an intelligent framework for classifying blood smear images into healthy and leukemic blood cells. for feature extraction, the framework utilized cslbp, gwt, and lgip descriptor approaches. a balanced set of 260 blood smear images from the all-idb2 database was utilized as training and testing sets. additionally, to tackle the most challenging features of identifying all-leukemia cells in microscopic blood images, a recommended model was constructed through using various independent and combination feature extraction techniques. 3. methods and materials 3.1 system architecture the presented scheme utilized blood smear images as data required to categorize allleukemia cells. to start, the methodology converted rgb color images to gray scale images and removed irrelevant regions to identify the areas of interest of normal and malignant cells. in addition, the approach evaluated at three various feature extractors: cslbp, gwt, and lgip. the cslbp approach was being computed to extract a feature set from blood smear images using the all-idb2 database. subsequently, from the same blood smear images, the gwt and lgip algorithms were also employed to extract two additional feature vectors. as training database, numerous individual and combination extracted features were generated and provided into the different classifiers. lastly, applying five well-known predictors, the combined features were being applied to categorize blood smear images to categorize normal and abnormal blood cells. figure 2 depicts the critical phases of the suggested design methodology. figure 2: workflow of proposed system kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 91 3.2 image pre-processing in the pre-processing step, after transforming the original microscopic blood images from rgb to grayscale image, the region of interest was identified, cropped, and resized to an appropriate dimension of 256 x 256 pixels. to generate relevant information, the region of interest on the blood smear images was identified by a substantial fraction primarily the wbc cells region. next, to achieve the enhancing effect and better classification performance, the contrast-limited adaptive histogram equalization method and the median filter were applied. lastly, image adjustment was utilized to increase the performance of the blood smear images before they were fed into the feature extraction stage. 3.3 feature extraction this stage entails extracting relevant features from input data to be utilized in identification tasks [23]. three groups of features, including cslbp, gwt, and lgip, were suggested and designed in this work to differentiate blood smear images into normal and abnormal blood cells. prior to implementing the fusion process, a normalization process was performed on the extracted feature sets, which is the most popular strategy for minimizing the range of numerical data. 3.3.1 center symmetric local binary pattern (cslbp) ojala et al. [24] presented the basic lbp generator, which is a robust feature descriptor that utilizes both shape and texture data to describe facial features. the lbp generator assigns a labeling to each pixel in the image through thresholding the intensity values in each pixel's 3 x3 neighborhood with the centered pixel intensity, then transforming the outcome to a binary representation applying equation (1). ( ) ∑ ( ) ( ) ( ) { } (2) where symbolizes the pixel intensity of the central pixel ( ), symbolizes the gray value of the eight nearby pixels, and ( ) symbolizes the adaptive threshold operation function. taking the data clockwise, beginning with the top left neighboring [25], yields the binary result. figure 3 depicts the basic lbp generator. figure 3: the basic lbp generator kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 92 the lbp generator is difficult to apply in the scope of an area identifier since it provides extremely extended histograms. the strategy for measuring pixels in the neighbor was adapted towards another addition to the previous lbp generator to respond to the challenges. the central symmetrical pairings of pixels was examined rather than each pixel to a central pixel [26]. heikkila et al. introduced a cslbp depending on a localized neighborhood's centered symmetrical pair of pixels [27]. the central pixel's value is omitted in cslbp, as well as the image can only be processed utilizing 16 bins. a mathematical equation for the cslbp generator is as follows: ( ) ∑ ( ( ⁄ )) ( ⁄ ) ( ) ( ) { } (4) where ( ⁄ ) represent the gray values of pixel pairings on a circle of radius r that are center-symmetric with reference to the central pixel at ( ), and ( ) is the adaptive threshold operational function. in the same way, the cs-lbp works that certain gradient generators evaluate gray level variations within couples of contrary pixels in a neighborhood. a feature for every pixel of the area was generated in this work using the cs-lbp generator, that was influenced by the lbp generator, and then a collection of 16 features for every image was derived from the database of all-idb2 images. 3.3.2 gabor wavelet transform (gwt) the local characteristics of an image, which including spatial localization, spatial frequency, and directional selection, are depicted using gabor-wavelets. gabor-wavelets therefore are utilized in a variety of disciplines, involving texture investigation and image segmentation tasks [28]. the spatial (2-d) gabor filter is a gaussian kernel function tuned throughout the spatial domain by a complicated sinusoidal plane wave (a plane wave for 2-d gabor filters), expressed by, ( ) ( ( ̂ ̂ ) ) ( ̂ ) (5) ̂ (6) ̂ (7) where the variables of ̂ and ̂ explicitly state the location of a light impulse in the peripheral vision, is the direction of a gabor function's regular to parallel stripes, is the gaussian standard deviation, and is the spatial aspect ratio that designates the ellipticity of a gabor function's support. utilizing gabor wavelets filters in 4 distinct scales and 6 directions, a collection of 48 features for every image was derived from the all-idb2 image database. 3.3.3 local gradient increasing pattern (lgip) lgip is a pixel-based binary image identifier which is robust to fluctuations in lighting and white noise. as a consequence, it can be operated to generate the binary vectors for the horizontal and vertical directions resulting through fractional image partition [29]. lgip is used to represent the magnitude and direction of an increasing trend in local intensity. lgip first computes gradients response in each pixel's 8 potential directions applying sobel masking as shown in figure 4. according to the gradient value's sign, each mask's gradient value is encoded into a single bit (1 or 0). as a consequence, every pixel in the truncated cxr image is allocated an 8-bit coding identifier. the resulting bit is set to 1 or 0 if the mask for the pixel response is positive. therefore, an 8-bit value is produced for every pixel, with each bit corresponding to the output of a certain mask. to speed up calculation, the eight bits can also be computed via intensity comparisons between the central pixel and its neighbors, as with the lbp generator. the sobel gradient generator was utilized in this study kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 93 to improve stability in the presence of non-uniform light variations and random noise, and a collection of 37 features for each cxr image was derived from the all-idb2 database. figure 4: sobel gradient masks in eight orientations [29]. 3.4 feature fusion and classification the data combination has been utilized to a broad variety of ml and computer vision disciplines. using a feature fusion method, an extracted feature vector that can be concatenated with another set of features created in the system design. multi-feature fusion is significantly boost the model's predictability [25]. a fusion of feature vectors was proposed in this paper, which was conducted using a combination of cslbp (1 x 16), gwt (1 x 48) and lgip (1x 37) methods. equations (8), (9), and (10) designate features derived by cslbp, gwt, and lgip, respectively. equation (11) describes how the derived feature vectors were combined through concatenation procedure. { } ( ) { } ( ) { } ( ) ( ) { } ( ) the cslbp, gwt, and lgip features were then combined with 101 features. this fusion sequence was provided to the classifiers to evaluate the recommended scheme and classify blast cells in blood smear images, and it functioned as the concluding input for both the training and testing the all-idb2 database. ml algorithms were utilized to detect patients with leukemia in the proposed workflow. to achieve the objective of diagnosing allleukemia cells among normal and healthy individuals, five supervised ml classifiers, dt, ensemble, knn, nb, and rf classifiers, were applied for making the final predictions. 3.5 performance metrics performance metrics is employed to determine the parameter space and feature extraction outcomes from multiple models. to evaluate the proposed model's performance in the classification of all-leukemia cells, the confusion matrix was used to calculate 7 popular performance measures: accuracy, precision, sensitivity, specificity, f1-score, mcc, and misclassification rate metrics. four different performance parameters, true positive (tp), true negative (tn), false positive (fp), and false negative (fn), were employed to generate the metrics defined by equations (12)– (18). kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 94 ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) √( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 4. experimental results the recommended method's primary objective is to differentiate between normal and abnormal all-leukemia cells. in this section, extensive experimentation was carried out to evaluate the recommended approach's performance in terms of confusion matrix metrics, including accuracy, precision, sensitivity, specificity, f1-score, mcc and misclassification error rate. furthermore, the method was compared to the most current existing methods. 4.1 database description the investigation was concluded through utilizing all-idb database , comprised of two image clusters all-idb1 and all-idb2 [30], and performance measurements. the identification systems' functionality was assessed using images of leukemic smears and also images of non-leukemic smears from the all-idb2 database. the all-idb2 database is a set of cropped regions of interest generated from the all-idb1 database, and all-idb2 images have gray scale characteristics that are similar to all-idb1 database. there are 260 images throughout this database, half of which are healthy cells and half of which are blast cells. the database is labeled, imin_y.jpg and it comprises a collection of the normal and blast cells' regions of interest. in the visual form, in denotes a three-digit numeric value, whereas y denotes a boolean. as y is 1, the raw sample equivalent to the patient is a normal one. when the value of y is 0, conversely, the associated patient is diagnosed with allleukemia. figure 5 shows two examples of images from the all-idb2 database: healthy lymphocytes and probable blast cells. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 95 figure 5: example images contained in the all-idb2: healthy lymphocyte (first row) and lymphoblast cells (second row). 4.2 results and discussion the recommended system's functionality was calculated employing extracted features generated from cslbp, gwt, and lgip values to recognize and classify all-leukemia cells. numerous methodologies, each with its own set of features, as well as various combinations of cslbp, gwt, and lgip features, have been suggested. to see which scenario may achieve acceptable results, those derived features subsequently categorized utilizing five supervised classification models (dt, ensemble, knn, nb, and rf) with each scenario. furthermore, the complete database was split into two groups: 80% for training the model and 20% for examining performance of the classifier through using holdout crossvalidation procedure. using the dt (table 1), ensemble (table 2), knn (table 3), nb (table 4), and rf (table 5) classifiers, the comprehensive category/class wise assessment from each scenario was measured by means of accuracy and average accuracy as (mean ± sd). according to the results shown in table 1, it is concluded that combining the gwt and lgip features (scenario 6) together attained the maximum overall accuracy of 93.07 ± 4.27%, whereas the classification overall accuracy of features extracted from cslbp (scenario 1) technique had the lowest recording 79.80 ± 6.85 % when the dt classifier method was employed. in the case of nb classifier use (table 2), it can be observed that the maximum classification overall accuracy of 90.19 ± 4.48 % was attained along with combining features extracted from the cslbp (16 features), and lgip (37 features) approaches, however gwt technique gave the lowermost performance outcomes recording 80.76 ± 4.79% as compared to the other scenarios. table 1: the quantitative classification accuracies of various modeling approaches based on the dt classifier. the bold values indicate the highest classification accuracy. methods extracted features per class accuracy (%) overall accuracy (%) regular cells all affected cslbp 16 83.46 ± 8.70 76.15 ± 8.65 79.80 ± 6.85 gwt 48 90.38 ± 4.15 95.38 ± 2.37 92.88 ± 3.51 lgip 37 87.69 ± 7.43 88.84 ± 5.64 88.26 ± 5.76 cslbp + gwt 64 88.46 ± 5.12 92.30 ± 4.44 90.38 ± 3.51 cslbp + lgip 53 89.61 ± 6.02 90.38 ± 5.51 89.99 ± 4.42 gwt+ lgip 85 92.69 ± 3.82 93.46 ± 3.02 93.07 ± 4.27 cslbp + gwt + lgip 101 91.15 ± 4.07 89.99 ± 4.51 90.57 ± 3.19 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 96 table 2: the quantitative classification accuracies of various modeling approaches based on the nb classifier. the bold values indicate the highest classification accuracy. methods extracted features per class accuracy (%) overall accuracy (%) regular cells all affected cslbp 16 89.61 ± 3.16 85.76 ± 6.29 87.69 ± 3.64 gwt 48 83.07 ± 8.14 78.46 ± 5.79 80.76 ± 4.79 lgip 37 84.99 ± 5.87 83.84 ± 5.67 84.42 ± 8.38 cslbp + gwt 64 90.76 ± 4.86 80.76 ± 5.43 85.76 ± 4.64 cslbp + lgip 53 91.53 ± 4.36 88.84 ± 5.86 90.19 ± 4.48 gwt+ lgip 85 93.07 ± 2.37 82.69 ± 9.46 87.88 ± 5.87 cslbp + gwt + lgip 101 91.92 ± 4.23 84.99 ± 6.24 88.46 ± 6.72 according to the results in the tables 3, 4, and 5, it is revealed that fusing the cslbp, gwt, and lgip features (scenario 7) together achieved the maximum overall accuracy of 97.49 ± 1.02%, 94.99 ± 2.74%, and 94.80 ± 2.40% by using ensemble, knn, and rf classifiers respectivel. conferring to the consequence obtained in tables 1–5, fusing the cslbp, gwt, and lgip features (scenario 7) together recorded the highest average accuracy of 97.49 ± 1.02 % with the ensemble classifier, followed by the combination of the cslbp and lgip features (scenario 5) with 97.11 ± 0.86 % with the knn classifier, and the classification average accuracy of feature extracted from cslbp approach seemed to have the lowest recording (79.80 ± 6.85%). table 3: the quantitative classification accuracies of various modeling approaches based on the ensemble classifier. the bold values indicate the highest classification accuracy. methods extracted features per class accuracy (%) overall accuracy (%) regular cells all affected cslbp 16 91.15 ± 6.29 92.69 ± 3.13 91.92 ± 5.42 gwt 48 94.61 ± 2.86 94.61 ± 2.49 94.61 ± 2.03 lgip 37 94.61 ± 2.13 95.76 ± 1.36 95.19 ± 2.75 cslbp + gwt 64 94.99 ± 3.07 97.30 ± 0.59 96.15 ± 2.86 cslbp + lgip 53 95.76 ± 3.36 98.46 ± 0.98 97.11 ± 0.86 gwt+ lgip 85 96.15 ± 1.62 97.30 ± 1.16 96.73 ± 1.22 cslbp + gwt + lgip 101 96.15 ± 2.56 98.84 ± 0.59 97.49 ± 1.02 table 4: the quantitative classification accuracies of various modeling approaches based on the knn classifier. the bold values indicate the highest classification accuracy. methods extracted features per class accuracy (%) overall accuracy (%) regular cells all affected cslbp 16 92.69 ± 3.12 92.30 ± 3.14 92.49 ± 3.56 gwt 48 94.23 ± 2.15 93.46 ± 3.29 93.84 ± 4.32 lgip 37 91.15 ± 5.14 80.00 ± 5.67 85.57 ± 3.42 cslbp + gwt 64 94.99 ± 2.59 93.84 ± 3.13 94.42 ± 2.11 cslbp + lgip 53 94.23 ± 3.53 92.69 ± 4.60 93.46 ± 3.64 gwt+ lgip 85 94.23 ± 2.51 93.84 ± 2.86 94.03 ± 3.99 cslbp + gwt + lgip 101 94.61 ± 3.13 95.38 ± 2.53 94.99 ± 2.74 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 97 table 5: the quantitative classification accuracies of various modeling approaches based on the rf classifier. the bold values indicate the highest classification accuracy. methods extracted features per class accuracy (%) overall accuracy (%) regular cells all affected cslbp 16 93.84 ± 3.71 83.84 ± 8.26 88.84 ± 3.93 gwt 48 91.15 ± 5.45 93.84 ± 3.71 92.49 ± 3.44 lgip 37 93.84 ± 2.79 86.15 ± 6.58 89.99 ± 4.13 cslbp + gwt 64 94.61 ± 2.86 88.84 ± 4.60 91.73 ± 3.39 cslbp + lgip 53 94.99 ± 3.64 87.30 ± 4.45 91.15 ± 1.85 gwt+ lgip 85 94.99 ± 2.07 91.92 ± 3.57 93.46 ± 3.64 cslbp + gwt + lgip 101 94.61 ± 3.71 94.99 ± 3.64 94.80 ± 2.40 considering on the empirical outcomes for all seven scenarios provided in figure 6, it is quite obvious that the various combinations of features generated from cslbp, gwt, and lgip techniques have a beneficial influence on the overall effectiveness and dominate the other scenarios including all classifiers. the results exposed that the fusion of the cslbp, gwt, and lgip approaches reached the highest average accuracy of 97.49 ± 1.02 %, 94.99 ± 2.74 %, and 94.80 ± 2.40 % using ensemble, knn, and rf classifiers respectively. furthermore, the fusion of gwt and lgip (scenario 6) and the fusion of cslbp and lgip (scenario 5) approaches achieved the peak average accuracy of 93.07 ± 4.27 %, 94.99 ± 2.74 %, and 90.19 ± 4.48 % using dt and rf classifiers respectively. accordingly, the combination of cslbp, gwt, and lgip approaches with the ensemble classifier resulted in the highest overall accuracy performance of 97.49 ± 1.02 % among the other learners for all scenarios. figure 6: overall accuracies performance comparison of the presented scheme scenarios utilizing various classifiers. the same consequence was discovered when different performance metrics (precision, sensitivity, specificity, f1-score, and mcc) were performed to evaluate the suggested workflow. the outcomes presented that the fusion of the cslbp, gwt, and lgip approaches reached the maximum precision rate of 98.87 %, 95.44 %, and 95.1 % performing the ensemble, knn, and rf classifiers respectively. moreover, the features extracted from gwt (scenario 2) method recorded the highest kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 98 precision rate of 95.38 % using the dt classifier; however, the lowest precision rate of 78.03 % was generated utilizing cslbp technique with the dt classifier. consequently, including all scenarios, the experimental results confirmed a maximum precision score of 98.87 % with the ensemble classifier among the other classifiers. figure 7 summarizes the output of a comparative of the precision percentages of seven scenarios utilizing various classifiers. figure 7: precision performance comparison of the presented scheme scenarios utilizing various classifiers. additionally, the combination of features from the cslbp, gwt, and lgip approaches similarly achieved the highest in terms of sensitivity percentage as 96.15 % was attained using the ensemble classifier (see figure 8) followed by the fusion of the cslbp and gwt with sensitivity rate of 93.97 ± 3.67 % with the knn classifier. conversely, the lowest sensitivity percentage of 83.07 % has been verified when the gwt technique was employed with the nb classifier. based on the investigational consequences for all five classifiers described in figure 8, it can be confirmed that the value of sensitivity percentage of fused features was higher than other features with the ensemble classifier. with regards to the specificity rates, the results shown in figure 9 proved that the advantage of the features derived from the fusion of the cslbp, gwt, and lgip techniques (scenario 7) and it was it undoubtedly produced great scores that clearly outperformed the other scenarios. the optimum result was achieved utilizing the ensemble classifier using the fusion of cslbp, gwt, and lgip features, which outperformed other classifiers with specificity percentages of 95.38 % and 95.00 % for the knn and rf classifiers, respectively. the specificity percentage of the cslbp approach utilizing the dt classifier, on the other hand, was the lowest (76.15 %). kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 99 figure 8: sensitivity performance comparison of the presented scheme scenarios utilizing various classifiers. figure 9: specificity performance comparison of the presented scheme scenarios utilizing various classifiers. in terms of f1-score percentages, the results presented in table 10 prove the effectiveness of the cslbp, gwt, and lgip approaches when combined, and it clearly generated outstanding results that dominate its other scenarios. the combination of the cslbp, gwt, and lgip features with the ensemble classifier yielded the greatest consequences (f1-score rate of 97.46 %), followed by f1-score percentage of 94.96% with the knn classifier, and the classification f1-score proportion of feature extracted from the gwt and lgip methods yielded the lowest scoring (76.48 %) with the nb classifier. the results regarding mcc rates were very satisfactory. according to the consequences in figure 11, it was discovered that combining the cslbp, gwt, and lgip features together attained the maximum mcc of 95.08 % with the ensemble classifier followed by 90.11% with the knn kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 100 classifier, whereas the classification mcc of features derived from the cslbp technique had the lowest scoring (60.12 %) with the dt classifier. figure 10: performance comparison of the presented scheme scenarios utilizing various classifiers. figure 11: mcc performance comparison of the presented scheme scenarios utilizing various classifiers. the experimentations from figure 12 also noticeably reported that the features extracted by the combination of the cslbp, gwt, and lgip approaches surpassed alternative scenarios and scored the maximum performance using the ensemble classifier with regard to other. considering the recorded results, the highest precision, sensitivity, specificity, f1-score, and mcc consequences of the features derived utilizing combined the cslbp, gwt, and lgip approaches were 98.87 %, 96.15 %, 98.84 %, 97.46 %, and 95.08 % respectively, and was obtained using 101 effective features. whereas, the lowest precision, sensitivity, specificity, f1-score, and mcc scores were realized using the cslbp method (78.03 %) with the dt classifier, the gwt method (83.07 %) with the nb classifier, the cslbp method (76.15 %) with the dt classifier, the gwt and lgip kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 101 methods (76.48 %) with the dt classifier, and the cslbp method (60.12 %) with the dt classifier respectively. figure 12: system performance comparison for the various scenarios using ensemble classifier. the effectiveness of the suggested scenarios was indeed evaluated in this study using the same database and computational situation through misclassification error rate measurement. the misclassification error rates for the developed models were evaluated, as shown in figure 13. the results showed that integrating the cslbp, gwt, and lgip features with the ensemble classifier leads in a minimal misclassification error of 2.51%, indicating that the recommended scenario performed considerably improved than other possible scenarios. as a result, this scenario was approved as a proposed technique for categorizing all-leukemia cells. figure 13: misclassification error rate comparison for various scenarios using ensemble classifier. finally, the recommended fusion system's performance was compared to several current framework techniques, as can be seen in table 6. as compared with conventional approaches, the suggested system generates remarkable results, especially in terms of overall accuracy rate. this is owing to the integration of the cslbp, gwt, and lgip approaches, which resulted in attaining its strengths. furthermore, the other studies used a large number of features, whereas the current proposal only 101 features and produced the optimum outcomes. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 102 table 6: the performance comparison literature for all-leukemia diagnostic techniques. previous study all-idb2 database accuracy (%) year classifier das et al. [31] 2020 glrlm +svm (rbf) 96.00 s. praveena et al. [32] 2020 greyjoa +dcnn 93.50 mondal et al. [15] 2021 xception 93.90 pradeep kumar das et al. [33] 2021 mobilenetv2 + resnet18 97.18 proposed work 2022 cslbp + gwt + lgip +ensemble 97.49 the aforementioned extensive experiments indicate that the designed scheme can accurately discriminate normal cell instances from blasts in blood smear images, that might serve therapists make a clear conclusive decision on respective diagnostic experts' opinions and the developed instrument. 5. conclusion early diagnosis of all in white blood cells is essential to reduce disease risk. the key objective of the proposed work is to perform all-leukemia cells classification utilizing raw blood smear images using feature fusion as well as a ml method. each trained framework was validated utilizing standardized performance measures in seven various scenarios. the recommended architecture was validated employing images of microscopic thin blood smears from the all-idb2 database. when compared to the ground truth obtained utilizing features extracted using individual feature extraction methodologies such as cslbp, gwt, and lgip, the presented feature fusion workflow seemed to have a superior overall classification accuracy of 97.49 ± 1.02%. furthermore, the presented framework was proved to be more accurate than previous studies for the categorization of all-leukemia cells based on experimental outcomes. reference [1] c. di ruberto, a. loddo, and g. puglisi, “blob detection and deep learning for leukemic blood image analysis,” appl. sci., vol. 10, no. 3, 2020, doi: 10.3390/app10031176. 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[30] i. i. conference and i. processing, “all-idb : the acute lymphoblastic leukemia image database for image processing ruggero donida labati , vincenzo piuri , fabio scotti università degli studi di milano , department of information technology ,” ieee int. conf. image process., pp. 2089–2092, 2011. [31] p. k. das, p. jadoun, and s. meher, “detection and classification of acute lymphocytic leukemia,” proc. 2020 ieee-hydcon int. conf. eng. 4th ind. revolution, hydcon 2020, sep. 2020, doi: 10.1109/hydcon48903.2020.9242745. [32] s. praveena and s. p. singh, “sparse-fcm and deep convolutional neural network for the segmentation and classification of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia,” biomed. tech., vol. 65, no. 6, pp. 759–773, 2020, doi: 10.1515/bmt-2018-0213. [33] p. k. das, s. meher, r. panda, and a. abraham, “an efficient blood-cell segmentation for the detection of hematological disorders,” ieee trans. cybern., vol. pp, 2021, doi: 10.1109/tcyb.2021.3062152.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.17 received:27 may 2018 | accepted: 02 july 2018 treating antibiotic resistance genes in proteus spp. were isolated from renal stone patients by crataegus rhipidophylla and adiantum capillus srwa ali mohammed mohammed abdul aziz hama ali dereh lattif mohammed medical microbiology department medical microbiology plastic and reconstructive surgery faculty of science and health faculty of science and health farwq medical city koya university koya university sulaimania, iraq koya, sulaimania, iraq koya, sulaimania, iraq dere44@icloud.com srwa.ali@koyauniversity.org mhamad.623513@gmail.com 102 abstract: nine isolates of proteus spp. were isolated from 100 urine samples of renal stone patients which were the urine specimens obtained directly from sulaimania teaching hospital laboratory, and identified according to the cultural characteristic, morphological, biochemical examination. the antibiotic susceptibility test for all isolates were conducted to nine antimicrobial agents including (ciprofloxacin (cip), tetracyclin(te), neomycin (n), gentamicin (cn), erythromycin (e), nitrofurintion (f), naldixic acid (na), imipenim (ipm), amoxicillin (ax). plasmid analysis of these isolates showed presence are (22) kb plasmid. curing of antibiotic resistance genes by using methanol extracts for leave of crataegus rhipidophylla and adiantum capillus was performed. the minimum inhibitory concentration of these medicinal plants through methanol extracts which were 8000 µg/ml and 1200 µg/ml for crataegus rhipidophyllaand adiantum capillus respectively. the sub minimum inhibition concentration (smic) was also determined. the results of transformation and curing experiments revealed that smic of crataegus rhipidophyllaextract was cured or eliminated plasmid completely, and (smic) of adiantum capillus was cured (cn, e, and ax) resistant genes. keywords: proteus spp., plasmid, antibiotic resistance, transformation, curing, medicinal plants 1. introduction proteus, providencia, and morganella; members of the enterobacteriaceae are agents of urinary tract and other extra intestinal infections. proteus species are relatively common causes of uncomplicated as well as nosocomial uti [1]. this rod shaped bacterium has the ability to produce high levels of urease. urease hydrolyzes urea to ammonia (nh3) and thus makes the urine more alkaline. if left untreated, the increased alkalinity can lead to the formation of crystals of struvite, calcium carbonate, the bacteria can be found throughout the stones, and these bacteria lurking in the stones can reinitiate infection after antibiotic treatment [2, 3]. antibiotic resistance" is a major problem in the world now, so the medicine manufactures yearly produce new generations of antibiotics to solve this problem, especially there are some bacteria considered a multiple antibiotic resistance as e. coli, klebsiella spp., salmonella spp., staphylococcus aureus, pseudomonas spp., proteus spp , providencia spp. and others. therefore, the recent studies towards using medicinal plants for solving this problem, by curing resistant plasmids or reducing some resistant genes which occur on plasmids dna considered a biological, medicinal and industrial (artificial) importance in their lines [4]. the aims of this study were isolation and identification of proteus spp. collected urine from renal stone patients by cultural, morphological and biochemical tests including api 20e test, then study the resistance of proteus spp. to different antimicrobials agents and then studying the effect of extraction of crataegus rhipidophylla and adiantum capillus extracts on the elimination of antibiotic resistant genes in some of isolated bacteria. 2. material and method isolation and identification of bacterial strains: 100 urine specimens were directly obtained from laboratory of sulaimania teaching hospital which have obtained the specimens from renal stone patients, the identification and characterization of isolates were determined on blood agar and macconkey agar. the biochemical tests of suspected bacteria that were detected by imvc (indole, methyl red (mr), vogesproskauer (vp) and simon's citrate agar), triple sugar iron agar (tsi agar) (mast diagnostic u.k.), urease, gelatinase, oxidase and catalase test in addition to the biochemical reaction test; api 20e identification system (biomérieux, france) was perform [5, 6]. antibiotic susceptibility testing: antibiotic sensitivity test was performed by applying a bacterial inoculum of approximately 1–2×108cfu/ml to the surface of mueller-hinton agar plate, and used disc diffusion method [7, 8]. the following antibiotic discs (drug concentration in µg) were used: ciprofloxacin 30µg, tetracyclin (te)10µg, neomycin (n) 30 µg, gentamicin (cn)10 µg, erythromycin (e)15 µg, nitrofurintion (f) 100µg, naldixic acid (na) 30 µg, imipenim (ipm) 10 µg, amoxicillin (ax) 25µg that obtained from pharmacy in koya city and used (0.5 mcfarland) of tested bacteria [9]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/crataegus_rhipidophylla mailto:dere44@icloud.com mailto:srwa.ali@koyauniversity.org mailto:mhamad.623513@gmail.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/crataegus_rhipidophylla https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/crataegus_rhipidophylla https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/crataegus_rhipidophylla http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/urease http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/urea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ammonia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/crystal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/struvite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/calcium_carbonate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/crataegus_rhipidophylla 103 selection of medical plants for study: these medical plants including crataegus rhipidophylla, adiantum capillus were obtained from local market in sulaimani city then preparation of crude extracts performed by (handa) [10] method. determination of minimum inhibitory concentration (mic): the minimum inhibitory concentration was determined for plant extract, which inhibited bacterial growth. the following dilution were prepared for each extract (100, 200, 300, 400, 500,600,700, 800,900,1000,2000,3000, 4000, 5000, 6000) µg/ml [11]. in addition, the smic of medicinal plant extracts was determined and used as curing agent. plasmid curing with medicinal plant extracts: the plasmid curing with medicinal plant extracts was tested by streaking method; nutrient agar was used as growth medium, after sterilization and cooling at 45˚c. final concentration of antimicrobial under study and (submic) of plant extract were added, the medium was mixed and poured in petri dishes, and after solidification it was inoculated by streaking method with proteus spp. then incubated at 37˚c for 24 hours. next day the sensitivity and resistance of isolate proteus spp. were recorded. plasmid dna extraction by alkaline lyses a single colony of bacterial isolates was grown in 10 ml of lb broth containing 50µg/ml erythromycin and incubated at 37c˚ for 24 hr. with shaking. bacterial cells were harvested by centrifugation at 10000 rpm for 10min, and then transferred to sterile eppendorf tube [12]. preparation of the competent cells many bacteria can be made competent by exposure to a divalent or multivalent cation, such as calcium chloride, manganese chloride [13.] dna uptake 100µl of prepared plasmid dna (0.1) ml added to tube containing 0.2 ml of competent cells. the mixture was placed on ice for 30 minutes, exposed to heat shock at 42 c˚for 6 minutes [14]. after that 1 ml of fresh nutrient broth was added to transformation mixture, and incubated at 37c˚ for 60 minutes to allow the expression of the antibiotic resistant genes. all samples of 0.1 ml from transformation mixture were spread on nutrient agar plates containing different antibiotics used, and 0.1 ml of competent cells spread on nutrient agar containing same antibiotics used as control, all plates were incubated at 37 ˚c for 24 hours as described by [15]. electrophoresis of plasmid dna: agarose gel electrophoresis was performed using 0.8% horizontal slab gels in tea buffer (ph 8.0) containing 50 mm tris, 20 mm sodium acetate, 2 mm edta, and 18 mm nacl [16] gels were stained with ethidium bromide (2µl) and ran at 60 volts for about 1.5 h. 3. results identification of proteus spp 100 urine specimens were directly obtained from laboratory of sulaimania teaching hospital which have obtained the specimens from renal stone patients. after isolation the characteristics of isolates were studied, through culturing them on differential medium, such as macconkey agar and blood agar. in this case, the isolates appear on the findings of non-lactose fermenting colonies with swarming on blood agar and chocolate agar plate, characteristic fishy smell, gram negative bacilli with active motility colonies, so the lighter-colored alkaline reaction is seen on emb agar. the biochemical test for bacterial isolates: reduced nitrate to nitrite, positive for (urea, catalase, phenylalanine and motility) , fermented glucose (with acid and gas) and produce heavy h2s,ferment sucrose and mannitol but do not ferment lactose, usually does not utilize citrate but hydrolyze urea and produce phenyl pyruvic acid, and negative for oxidase test [17] as shown in figure (1). in addition to the biochemical reaction test, api 20e identification system was performed according to analytical profile index (1999) as showed in figure (2). thus according above study from one hundred samples seven (9%) of the isolates were identified as proteus spp., and the results show two of them proteus volgares because indol test positive and others appear proteus mirabilis. figure (1) results of api 20e test used for identification of proteus spp thus according above study from one hundred samples nine (9%) of the isolates were identified as proteus spp., and the results show two of them proteus volgares because indol test positive and others appear proteus mirabilis. the study of [18] shows that e .coli was among the most predominant pathogenic bacteria isolated from the urine with a rate of (46.21%), while proteus mirabilis were (13.25%), and other species were (40.54%). antibiotic susceptibility test was conducted for nine isolates, nine widely antimicrobials used (cip, ne, te, cn, e, f, na, ipm, ax) which demonstrated in table (1) and used at disc diffusion kirby and bauer method. table (1) illustrate multidrug-resistance (mdr) phenotypes that resistant to more than one antimicrobial agents and high resistance rates were observed for erythromycin 77.77%, tetracyclin 66.66% and nitrfurintion 66.66%, and lower resistance rates were https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/crataegus_rhipidophylla 104 observed for ciprofloxacin 0%, gentamycin 22.22% and naldixic acid 22.22% as show in table (2). the study of [19] showed that antimicrobial susceptib table (1) the susceptibility of proteus spp. isolates to antimicrobials in (mm) r= resistant s= sensitive i= intermediate ciprofloxacin 10µg, tetracyclin(te)10µg, neomycin (n) 30 µg, gentamicin (cn)10 µg, erythromycin (e)15 µg, nitrofurintion (f) 100µg, naldixic acid (na) 30 µg, imipenim (ipm) 10 µg, amoxicillin (ax) 25µg table (2) resistance percentage rate to antimicrobial agents plasmid profile analysis: plasmid dna was extracted from proteus spp. isolates by alkaline lysis. investigation was done in order to find relationship between antibiotic resistance and genetic determinants. the results revealed that five of the isolates were undergone to plasmid extraction but just one of them have one plasmid the size of this plasmid about 2200bp in the lane 3. in lane 1 showed plasmid marker 1kb (it starts from 500bp to 10000bp) for measuring the size of plasmids as showed in figure (3-a). figure (2) the plasmid profile of proteus spp electrophoreses run at 85v for 1 hr. [a]lane 1: plasmid marker lane 3: proteus spp no.2 isolate [b] lane 1: plasmid marker lane 2: proteus spp no.2 isolate before transformation lane 3: proteus spp no.2 isolate after transformation lane 4: proteus spp no.2 after treating with ailanthus altissima lane 5: proteus spp no.2 after treating with adiantum capillus lane 6: dh10b e. coli plasmid less strain genetic site determination of antibiotic resistance in proteus spp. by genetic transformation: transformation process was done by adding proteus 2 to e. coli dh10b strain, the mixture was incubated for 24 hours. then, it was cultured on different antibiotics at final concentration. as a result, these resistance plasmids located on proteus 2 amoxicillin, erythromycin, and tetracycline transferred to the dh10b host successfully. on the other hand, the transformation failed to grow on nutrient agar with nitrofurantoin (f) at the final concentration. the present study showed three resistant genes transferred to competent cell such as (amoxicillin, erythromycin, and tetracycline).. table (3): transformation of the dna extracts of proteus 2 to e.coli dh10b strain characterization of plasmid dna containing proteus spp. isolates by agarose gel electrophoresis: agarose gel which was prepared by using 0.8 gm agarose powder in 100 ml te buffer. figure (2) demonstrated in lane 1; plasmid marker 1kb. lane 2 pr. 2 has one plasmid with molecular 2200bp; lane 3 pr.2 after transformation process to recipient strain e. coli dh10b. lane 4; shows pr.2 after treating with methanol extract of leave of hawthorn herb crataegus rhipidophylla which eliminated the plasmid with its all virulence factors completely. lane 5; shows pr.2 after treating with methanol extract of adiantum capillus and lane 6 shows dh10b e. coli plasmid less strain. electrophorese was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/crataegus_rhipidophylla 105 run at 60v for 1.30 hr, the length of the gel is 12cm and the width is 10cm. curing of plasmid dna in proteus spp. isolates by leaves of crataegus rhipidophylla and adiantum capillus extracts : methanol extract of crataegus rhipidophylla leaves at sub mic have good effect on eliminating the plasmid with all resistant genes and virulence factors at 8000µg/ml . while methanol extract of adiantum capillus leaves at sub mic used at 1200 µg/ml have good effect on eliminating some resistant genes that they are responsible for (e, cn and ax) resistant genes. table (4): curing effects of crataegus rhipidophylla and adiantum capillus extracts smic on proteus spp. no. 2 isolate the bacterium is sensitive previously to the cip, n, and ipm r: resistance s: sensitive 4. discussion in the present study from one hundred samples seven (9%) of the isolates were identified as proteus spp., and the results show two of them proteus volgares because indol test positive and others appear proteus mirabilis. this agree with the study of (sayran, 1995) [18] that showed e .coli was among the most predominant pathogenic bacteria isolated from the urine with a rate of (46.21%), while proteus mirabilis were (13.25%), and other species were (40.54%). the present study showed resistant genes of proteus 2 which located on plasmid transformed successfully to dh10bstrain. this agree with the study of srwa [20] showed that the transformation of two isolates of e. coli to e. coli dh5α strain was done successfully and observed in their results different kind of drug resistance genes. the present study determined methanol extract of crataegus rhipidophylla leaves at sub mic have good effect on eliminating the plasmid with all resistant genes and virulence factors at 80mg/ml . while methanol extract of adiantum capillus leaves at sub mic used at 12 mg/ml have good effect on eliminating some resistant genes that they are responsible for (e, cn and ax) resistant genes. the study of [21] used alcoholic extract of the dried fronds of adiantum capillus-veneris such as anti-inflammatory agents successfully. in general we found that methanolic extracts of crataegus rhipidophylla leaves, was more active for inhibition or decreasing the antimicrobial resistance testing bacteria, comparing with extract adiantum capillus. also the study of [22] used three medicinal plants for curing resistant genes that located on plasmid of gram negative bacilli salmonella spp. isolates have different activity on resistant genes that located on plasmids. the effect of tested medicinal plant extracts and acting as antimicrobial or curing effects for decreasing antibiotic resistant activity in proteus spp. isolates may be due to its containing active components such as adiantum capillus , the activity is may be due to their ability to form a complex with extra cellular and soluble proteins, and with bacterial walls [23] preclinical and clinical studies carried out in recent decades have shown that fruits of emblic leaf flower of hawthorn (crataegus spp.) possess antibacterial, antidiabetic, hypolipidaemic, anticancer, antiinflammatory, immunomodulatory, antiatherogenic, antihypercholesterolaemia, introduction 11 gastroprotective, hepatoprotective, cardiovascular protective and neuroprotective properties [24, 25]. 5. conclusion this study was concluded 9% of the urine specimens that obtained from sulaimania teaching hospital laboratory which were caused by proteus spp. the most antimicrobial resistance agent was erythromycin and more sensitive were neomycin and imipenim. so transformation process was done to the plasmid obtained from proteus merablis no. 2 to dh10b plasmid less strain and successfully (amoxicillin, erythromycin and tetracycline) resistant genes were transformed. then resistant genes of pr. 2 treated with two medicinal plants (adiantum capillus and crataegus spp.) used at sub mic as curing agents. refrences [1] a. h. richard.; 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[25] m. krishnaveni, and s. mirunalini, ‘‘therapeutic potential of phyllanthus emblica (amla) the ayurvedic wonder’’. journal of basic and clinical physiology and pharmacology, 21, 93–105, 2010. https://www.unido.org/fileadmin/user_media/publications/pub_free/extraction_technologies_for_medicinal_and_aromatic_plants.pdf https://www.unido.org/fileadmin/user_media/publications/pub_free/extraction_technologies_for_medicinal_and_aromatic_plants.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=bussmann%20r%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=20678568 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=malca-garc%26%23x000ed%3ba%20g%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=20678568 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=glenn%20a%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=20678568 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=sharon%20d%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=20678568 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=chait%20g%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=20678568 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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=ibraheim%20zz%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=23960744 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=ahmed%20as%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=23960744 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=gouda%20yg%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=23960744 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc3745073/ https://dx.doi.org/10.1016%2fj.jsps.2011.01.007  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 83 online course registration and advisory systems based on students’ personal and social constraints bamo nadir faraj aree ali muhammed computer engineering department computer engineering department engineering college engineering college komar university of science and technology komar university of science and technology sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq bamo.nadir@komar.edu.iq aree.ali@komar.edu.iq article info abstract volume 6 – issue 2 december 2021 doi: 10.24017/science.2021.2.8 article history: received 30/4/2021 accepted 24/10/2021 course registration is a challenging task that students face during the registration process sometimes resulting in enrolling on wrong courses, if proper guidance is not provided. this paper presents a web-based registration and advisory system which has been developed and implemented by komar university of science and technology (kust) which facilitates course registration for both students and administrative staff and which ensures that the best possible schedule and course/section combination is available to students based on their personal needs and the requirements of the course. the system assists students in making appropriate decisions by providing them with collated and analyzed data about each available course including pass rates, average grades, the number of students’ friends who have registered for the course or reviewed the course favorably and the number of subsequent courses for which the selected course is a prerequisite. the system can also help to reduce the workload placed on academic advisors, assisting them in this time demanding task. the data implemented in the system is taken from an existing database which collates course registration data from spring 2016 onwards and which will ensure the delivery of accurate results. keywords: online course registration system, academic advisory, individualized recommendation. copyright © 2021 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction many students suffer the consequences of inappropriate choices in course selection made during the registration process; if they are not guided carefully in this regard, it may cause them to miss their optimal study path or even to prolong the time taken to complete their study program unnecessarily [1]. in this paper, we present a registration system which we have designed and implemented which implements an academic advisory feature system to help students select the most suitable courses during registration. course registration is a routine process that is conducted at the start of each semester but it can be stressful, time consuming, tedious and confusing for students if they are not supported with appropriate guidance and advice. in some cases, the kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 84 registration process may result in students choosing unsuitable combinations of courses, a decision which could potentially lead to the student failing the entire semester. prior to the opening of the registration period, university administrative staff use a scheduling system to prepare a schedule for the offered courses which ensures that no time overlaps occur between courses for which a student is eligible. this system allows students to arrange their preferred schedule without the need to be worried about any scheduling clashes and ensures that they can obtain the maximum number of credit hours within the given semester. the maximum allowed credit hours range from 15 to 20 depending on the department in which the student is enrolled. the scheduling feature is part of a larger system that has been in place at kust since 2016. the data from previous years was also imported from the old system, and this allows the scheduling processes to be broken down into steps. before the registration window opens, students can log into the system and either send or accept friendship requests to and from other students in the same college or department. for example, all of the students at the college of engineering, which consists of the departments of civil engineering, computer engineering, petroleum engineering, and environmental engineering can apply to become friends since they share mutual courses throughout their academic career. the system then displays the schedules of selected friends to the student so that he or she can apply for the same schedule during the registration period. this socially aware element of the course recommendation feature is one of the crucial components of the system, as more than quarter of the students at kust have stated that the ability to study the same courses as their friends is the most influential factor in choosing which courses/sections to register for. many studies have shown the significant role which the ability of students to study with their friends plays in their performance and their subsequent academic success [2]. psychological studies have also revealed that students are better off and enjoy improved results when they study together in the same classes as their peers [3] [4]. the geographical region in which kust is located lacks a comprehensive public transportation network, and therefore students are forced to commute to the university using shared taxis with their friends. based on our observations and the results of a questionary conducted among students of kust, many cases were identified in which students did not accept offers to study course(s) for which they are eligible due to the fact that they could not afford to travel to the university alone. the questionnaire (see figure 1) also asked students to state their most important criteria when selecting a schedule, with 155 (25.7%) of the 604 respondents responding that the ability to study with friends was the most significant criteria. 36.1% of participants preferred schedules which allowed them to spend the minimum time possible at the university, while the remaining respondents stated a preference for schedules which offered the maximum number of permitted credit hours. the system implemented at kust provides a sufficient level of flexibility to satisfy the needs of all of the students from the above-mentioned groups. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 85 in contrast to traditional course registration systems that offer courses on a “first-come firstserved” basis, the proposed system allows students to register for their desired courses/sections without any availability constraints being applied; the courses will be divided automatically into a number of sections at a later date to allow all students who are friends to be registered for the same section. one drawback of the “first-come first-served” approach lies in the fact that courses are offered with a limited number of available places, an issue which is a source of considerable stress for students during registration, but which also places substantial request loads on the server and poor system performance. by removing the availability constraint the system can offer students a stress-free course registration process. kust currently offers three categories of courses: university, college and departmental courses. the university courses are those shared amongst the departments and thus large numbers of students are eligible to apply to these courses each semester. at the end of the registration period the system automatically divides the courses with a high number of applicants into multiple sections which are taught on the same day and at the same time while still ensuring that friends are allocated to the same sections. college and departmental courses are shared among students who are studying at the same college and departments, respectively. the teaching plan is a crucial element of student life at university, and any failure to take it seriously will reflect poorly on students' academic performance and may force them to repeat study years. under the previous arrangement, faculty members were responsible for giving advice to students during registration. this face-to-face advisory service often required the undivided attention of both students and the adviser, an obligation which faculty members often struggled to fulfil given their other professional responsibilities. in order to help students and ease the burden of faculty members, our system automizes each individual process ensuring that the involvement of the adviser is not required. the curriculum of the prerequisite systems is structured in such a way that a single course or a combination of courses can be marked as the prerequisite for another course. in such a system students can register for a course only once they have completed its prerequisites or earned a sufficient number of credit hours required by the course. this provides each student with the figure 1: student questionnaire kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 86 option to plan his or her own unique study plan throughout the program. some universities have also developed interactive study plan flowcharts (see figure 2: study plan of computer engineering dept.) allowing students to see the specific number of courses available to them in the following academic year by hovering over the individual prerequisite course [5]. . the collaborative filtering algorithm/approach [6] is used to recommend which course is more likely the student will pass among his/her eligible courses. for each and every course the student is eligible for also the system recursively queries the database to find students who have completed the course and their grade is less or equal to the student’s grade in the course prerequisite. the system then suggests the course to be taken by the student if the passing rate in the course amongst the found students is higher than 60%. for example, let us assume that a student has taken calculus i and calculus ii and has passed them successfully. one of the courses for which calculus ii (see figure 3: prerequisite graph of computer engineering department) is prerequisite for is advanced calculus. the system suggests taking advance calculus or not based on the query result. by following the system recommendations, students can reduce the chance of failing courses as a result of a lack of information about the nature of the course for which they are about to register. figure 2: study plan of computer engineering kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 87 in order to determine the relativity of the courses in the program more precisely, the required information is stored in the database relating to the category to which this course belongs. the categories for the computer engineering department include those related to math, physics, programming or hardware, but the categories will change for other departments. while the main purpose of this paper is to present the design and implementation of a registration and advisory system, some preliminary preparations are also required in order to integrate the system within the requirements of scheduling and other preparations from academic and administrative staffs. however, the system also has additional range of functionalities including those of grade reporting, transcript and diploma requests, financial related functionalities, student admission, attendance and many more. these features lie beyond the scope of the present paper and will be explored in other future research publications. 2. literature review while previous studies have divided the student advisory process from the function of course registration, our system merges both of these processes into a single solution which provides advisors with a considerable amount of information about students’ academic histories and the courses which are available to them. 2.1 advisory systems traditional methods of advising students are often demanding and require considerable amounts of onerous effort due to the ongoing changes in prerequisite courses and students’ desires for unique study paths. previous research in this field has demonstrated that academic advising is a crucial process, but studies have also revealed that the task is not only restricted to offering advice on courses; it also includes other responsibilities such as ensuring students complete their study programs in time, exploring the options for postgraduate studies and also providing career advice [7]. many researchers have focused on addressing these issues by designing web-based applications that can facilitate the task of academic advisors and help students to make figure 3: prerequisite graph of computer engineering department kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 88 appropriate decisions on course selection during the registration period [8][9][10]. other researchers have used fuzzy logic in their efforts to develop advisory systems [11]. 2.2 course registration technology has aided and simplified the process of course registration in a number of different ways. one system has been proposed based on collaborative filtering where courses are suggested based on student performance in previous semesters. this is accomplished by taking the grades of passed courses and the average grades when a course is taken multiple times or when it is passed in the first place in order to gain new experience or to enhance the gpa [12][13][14][15]. some systems are also integrated with students’ social media accounts in order to allow students to see how many of their friends on those social networks are taking a course in which he or she is interested [16]. course sequence recommendations, which consider the specific course constraints, have also been the focus of research [17]. another way to tackle the issues of course registration is by utilizing deep learning [18]. according to previous studies these systems are classified into basic computerized systems, single-intelligent systems and multi-intelligent systems as illustrated in table 1. system category drawbacks strength ref. basic computerized systems of this type are not integrated with any databases and are therefore difficult to modify in real-time. data entered by students may be inaccurate and hence inaccurate decisions can be made. [9] uses a single interface to eliminate duplication in the advisory process. [23] [24] singleintelligent neither decisions nor recommendations are automated. neither the student nor the adviser is provided with report documentation. eliminates a considerable amount of paperwork and simplifies the process by computerizing and digitalizing the procedures. [22] multiintelligent user interfaces are not suitable and it takes much longer to perform complex operations. the systems are more suitable for students and can support strategic decisions. [25] table 1: registration systems comparison in addition to eliminating the drawbacks of the previous systems, our system saves time and offers real-time feedback features for both advisors and students without the need for data entry and the potential of human error. similarly, the system has the huge advantage of integrating the two systems of course advice and course registration. 3. proposed system an overview of our proposed system is shown in figure 4. the system allows students to view a filterable list of scheduled courses and sections for which they are eligible in the coming semester. students can select their desired courses/sections from the presented list and apply personal conditions, such as their preferred days, times or their friends’ selected courses/sections, in order to filter the list. each course included in the list is accompanied by important information such as the pass rate of the course in previous semesters, the number of credit hours available and the type of the course to provide students with an overview of the course. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 89 once the courses have been selected, the system proposes a number of possible schedules sorted according to the number of the student’s friends sharing the same schedule and the filtering criteria that the student applied to the list of the selected courses. the student then has the option to register for a particular schedule or to mark it as a favorite. they also have the ability to modify their schedule during the registration process in order to revise their decisions. the system also implements several roles such as those of students, osar (office of student affairs and registrations, administrative staff, accounting office, directory of examinations, and departmental chairpersons, with the two main roles illustrated in the use case diagram below (figure 5). students have the ability to modify their scheduling completely during the registration process. osar has ultimate authority over the system and there are many more features available to them which are not illustrated in the use case diagram. figure 4: system overview figure 5: use case study kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 90 4. system implementation the system consists of two components. a backend web server was developed using spring framework [19] and backed by a mysql 5.7.8 [20] database, while the frontend client was developed using the vuejs javascript framework [21] and bootstrap 4 for css styling. the web server is a restful api which consumes and provides data in json format. it also uses json web token (jwt) for authentication purposes. the backend is separated from the frontend so that it can be accessed by both mobile and desktop applicants should this capability be added in the future. the system is hosted on the amazon elastic compute cloud (amazon ec2) to ensure scalability and load balancer integration when required. once the student has logged into the system and clicked on the registration button, he or she is presented with a list of all of the courses/sections for which they are eligible. each course contains information such as the pass rate of the course, the number of the user’s friends who have selected the course as their favorite or registered for the course and the weighting of the course. pass rate and course weight are the two most important pieces of information. the pass rate shows the percentage of students who passed the course on the first attempt while the course weight indicates the number of courses for which this course is prerequisite. this type of information is crucial during the course registration process as it allows students to make informed decisions when selecting the most appropriate combination of courses. figure 6 shows a screenshot of the main dashboard of the system from the students’ perspective. figure 6: system screenshot of student kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 91 students also can view their friends’ schedule by clicking on the combo box to choose a friend from the list. as was mentioned above, students from the same college can send friendship requests to an unlimited number of students but in order to complete the process, the request needs to be approved by the other students. once students have accepted the friend request, this item of information will become visible on the course panel to inform students of how many students among his/her friends have taken the course along with the ability to view their schedule (figure 7). in order to make the system more student friendly, students who are friends in the system can also send course suggestions to each other. this allows many groups of students to ensure that they stay together and speeds up the process of planning during registration; in theory, a single student can plan a course combination which can then be followed by the others, reducing the need of every student to explore every single case scenario when it comes to course selection. as was mentioned above, students will be provided with useful information such as the number of courses for which a particular course is a prerequisite; in order to see the course titles, they will only need to click on the specific number that represents the total number of courses that will be offered to them once they have successfully passed the current course. the system also provides concise information about all of the courses eligible during registration; by clicking on the course names, students will be redirected to a page where they can view course descriptions, instructor names, locations and the number of their friends who have taken the course previously (if any). 5. conclusion in this paper, we have presented a course recommender and academic advising system that can be used by tertiary education institutions during the course registration process. the processes of scheduling, registration, and academic advising are among most important of the routine tasks of higher education institutions, but these tasks are becoming increasingly challenging due to the increase in the number of students and the need to manage curricula in which individual students can select unique study paths. our research focuses on a system of registration and automated academic advising that can facilitate this process for students and faculty members, and also greatly aid university administrative staff. students can be relieved of stress during the registration process as place numbers in courses are no longer a source of concern, with students able to register for any course at any time during the process. in addition, students can ensure that they can attend classes with their friends who are following the same academic path and who have a similar eligibility for the offered courses. we would like to stress here that we do not consider this system as a full replacement for the role of traditional academic advisors. in fact, neither this system nor any other advancement in technology has ability to make decisions which are unfailingly accurate, because in many cases human beings will always have a greater understanding of the wider context of the decision-making process. nonetheless, our system can serve as a valuable assistant in the figure 7: friend's schedule screenshot kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 92 advisory process, facilitating the role of advisors and permitting them to make better decisions in a more efficient and time-effective manner. our system aims to ensure that by reducing their workload academic advisors’ involvement will remain as crucial as ever. the distinct advantage of the system is that combines the advisory and course registration systems, leveraging and analyzing the historical data to present the students with sufficient information to make a proper decision on what courses they should register for without the need of academic advisors. references [1] d. k. hatch and c. e. garcia, academic advising and the persistence intentions of community college students in their first weeks in college, vol. 40, no. 3. 2017. [2] s. j. schmidt, “the importance of friendships for academic success,” j. food sci. educ., vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 2–5, 2020. [3] s. chung, r. b. lount, h. m. park, and e. s. park, “friends with performance benefits: a meta-analysis on the relationship between friendship and group performance,” personal. soc. psychol. bull., vol. 44, no. 1, pp. 63–79, 2018. [4] j. flashman, “academic achievement and its impact on friend dynamics,” sociol. educ., vol. 85, no. 1, pp. 61–80, 2012. [5] “kust interactive flowchart.” [online]. available: http://flowchart.komar.edu.iq/. [accessed: 28-apr2021]. [6] r. morsomme and s. v. alferez, “content-based course recommender system for liberal arts education,” edm 2019 proc. 12th int. conf. educ. data min., no. edm, pp. 748–753, 2019. [7] e. hart-baldridge, “faculty advisor perspectives of academic advising,” nacada j., vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 10–22, 2020. [8] m. n. esraa afify, “a proposed model for a web-based academic advising system,” (international j. adv. netw. appl. (ijana, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 3345–3361, 2017. [9] l. keston and w. goodridge, “adviseme: an intelligent web-based application for academic advising,” int. j. adv. comput. sci. appl., vol. 6, no. 8, 2015. [10] r. s. abdulwahhab, h. s. al makhmari, and s. n. al battashi, “an educational web application for academic advising,” 2015 ieee 8th gcc conf. exhib. gccce 2015, no. march, 2015. [11] o. alhabashneh, “fuzzy-based adaptive framework for module advising expert system,” ann. emerg. technol. comput., vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 13–27, 2021. [12] n. b. salehudin, h. kahtan, h. al-bashiri, and m. a. abdulgabber, “a proposed course recommender model based on collaborative filtering for course registration,” int. j. adv. comput. sci. appl., vol. 10, no. 11, pp. 162–168, 2019. [13] a. bozyigit, f. bozyigit, d. kilinc, and e. nasiboglu, “collaborative filtering based course recommender using owa operators,” siie 2018 2018 int. symp. comput. educ. proc., 2018. [14] v. vaidhehi and r. suchithra, “an enhanced approach using collaborative filtering for generating under graduate program recommendations,” 2019 2nd int. conf. adv. comput. commun. paradig. icaccp 2019, pp. 1–6, 2019. [15] e. s. khorasani, z. zhenge, and j. champaign, “a markov chain collaborative filtering model for course enrollment recommendations,” proc. 2016 ieee int. conf. big data, big data 2016, pp. 3484–3490, 2016. [16] s. channarukul, n. saejiem, k. bhumichitr, r. jiamthapthaksin, v. nicklamai, and k. terdvikran, “socialaware automated course planner: an integrated recommender system for university registration system,” ecti-con 2017 2017 14th int. conf. electr. eng. comput. telecommun. inf. technol., pp. 545–548, 2017. [17] j. xu, t. xing, and m. van der schaar, “personalized course sequence recommendations,” ieee trans. signal process., vol. 64, no. 20, pp. 5340–5352, 2016. [18] s. zhang, l. yao, a. sun, and y. tay, “deep learning based recommender system: a survey and new perspectives,” acm comput. surv., vol. 52, no. 1, pp. 1–35, 2019. [19] t. downey, “spring framework,” 2021. [online]. available: https://start.spring.io/. [accessed: 29-apr2021]. [20] “mysql.” [online]. available: https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/installer/. [accessed: 27-apr-2021]. [21] “vuejs javascript framework.” [online]. available: https://vuejs.org/v2/guide/installation.html#npm. [accessed: 27-apr-2021]. [22] a. assiri, a. a. m. al-ghamdi, and h. brdesee, “from traditional to intelligent academic advising: a systematic literature review of e-academic advising,” int. j. adv. comput. sci. appl., vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 507–517, 2020. [23] e. nwelih and s. chiemeke, “framework for a web-based spatial decision supportsystem for academic advising,” african journal of computing and ict, vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 121–126, 2012 [24] m. talal al-nory, “simple decision support tool for university academic advising,” proc. 2012 int. symp. inf. technol. med. educ. itme 2012, vol. 1, pp. 53–57, 2012 [25] j. eckroth and r. anderson, ‘tarot: a course advising system for the future’, journal of computing kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 93 sciences in colleges, vol. 34, no. 3, jan. 2019, accessed: aug. 16, 2021. [online]. available: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.5555/3306465.3306481  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 94 a comparison between the mewma and mahalanobis distance control chart kawa m. jamal rashid university of sulamani college administration and economics informatics statistics department email: kawa.rashid@univsul.edu.iq article info abstract volume 6 – issue 2 december 2021 doi: 10.24017/science.2021.2.9 article history: received 17/8/2021 accepted 15/9/2021 statistical process control (spc) is approaching that uses statistical techniques to monitor the process. quality control methods are used widely in charts strategy. a traditional variable control chart includes three lines: the upper and lower control limit (ucl lcl), and the centre line (cl), all of which are represented by numeric values. a control chart illustrates the centerline of the average value of the quality feature under investigation. depending on numeric observation values, a process is either "in control" or "out of control."considering there are no questions regarding the observations and their values during the production process. however, when these observations include human judgments, assessments, and choices, a continuous random variable (xi) of a manufacturing process should be made up of the variable. the multivariate exponential weighted moving average (mewma) and mahalanobis distance control chart techniques are used when more than one variable is involved. today quality control has become one of the most essential techniques for studying all variables to control production or consumption decision factors. quality control's primary aim is to guarantee that the goods, services, or processes delivered satisfy particular standards and are reliable and satisfactory. the factor's direct approach is based on the product's quality. this study shows that the mddistance control chart has a good result. this paper aims to compare the mewma and mahalanobis distance chart for three compounds for water drinking production in the ala -factory in sulaimani provice of iraq. keywords: statistical process control (exponentially weighted moving average-ewma and multi exponentially weighted moving average (mewma) chart and mahalanobis distance copyright © 2021 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 95 1. introduction quality control methods are one of the most critical technologies to study all variables to control production. the primary strategy of quality control is to ensure that the products are in a high quality, processes provided meet consumers and are employed to ensure levels of quality in a product. quality control problems in the industry may involve more than a single quality characteristic. walter a shewhart (1924) was invented the quality control chart, which has formed the basis of extensive work in multivariate quality control; he was the first to recognize the need for considering quality control problems as multivariate. during the period of 1930-1940 hotelling performed a great deal of work on multivariate statistical control procedures. the hotelling’s t2 control chart is one of the most widely used tools in multivariate statistical process control. continuous multivariate approaches include three important properties, multivariate statistical process control is a collection of advanced techniques for monitoring and controlling and operational (1) is the procedure under your control? (2) type i errors must be specified. (3) they must take into account the variables' interrelationships. [1][2][5][6]. exponentially weighted moving average (ewma) chart (roberts, 1959) and cumulative sum cusum chart (page, 1954) are often used for detecting shifts in a sequence of independent normal observations with common variance coming from a particular process. the ewma chart relies on the specification of a target value and a known or reliable standard deviation estimate. for this reason, the moving average chart is best used after process control has been established [6][8]. the exponentially weighted moving average (ewma) control chart is a good alternative than shewhart control chart. in the shewhart control chart when we are interested in detecting small shifts. the performance of the ewma control chart is approximately equivalent to that of the cumulative sum control chart, and in some ways, it is easier to set up and operate. as with the cusum, the ewma is typically used with individual observations [2][3][4] if the observations xi are independent random variables with variance s2, then the variance of zi is: 𝜎𝑧𝑖 2 = 𝜎2 ( 𝜆 2 − 𝜆 ) [1 − (1 − 𝜆)2𝑖] (1) 2. the multivariate normal distribution the multivariate normal distribution model extends the univariate normal distribution model to fit multivariate observations. it is an essential direction in statistics that analyzes the relationships between more than one variable and analyzes the dependence between variables and between groups of variables. generally, we use the normal distribution to describe the behavior of a continuous quality characteristic. the univariate normal probability density function is: 𝑓(𝑥) = 1 √2𝜋𝜎2 𝑒 − 1 2 ( 𝑥 − 𝜇 𝜎 ) 2 − ∞ < 𝑥 < ∞ (2) the mean of the normal distribution is µ, and the variance is σ2. note that (apart from the minus sign) the term in the exponent of the normal distribution can be written as follows: (𝑥 − 𝜇)′𝜎2(𝑥 − 𝜇) (3) the measures of the squared standardized distance from x to the mean µ, whereby the term “standardized”. the distance is expressed in standard deviation units. the vector x′=[ x1, x2, . . . , xp]. be a p-component of variables given by x1, x2, . . . , xp, approach can be used in the multivariate normal distribution case. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 96 let µ′=[ µ1, µ2, . . . , µp] the variances and covariance’s of the random variables in x be contained in a (p x p) covariance matrix s, and let the vector of the means of the xs be the vector of the means the x’s,. the x's variances are the major diagonal elements of σ. the covariances are the offdiagonal elements. now the normalized or standardized distance is squared [5][7]. from x to µ is: (𝑥 − 𝜇)′σ−1(𝑥 − 𝜇) (4) in multivariate analysis, mahalanobis distance (md) has been a fundamental statistic, it was introduced by a famous indian statistician prof. p. c. mahalanobis in 1936.it has been applied by researchers in several different areas [6][8][10]. the mahalanobis distance (md) measured the distance of unknown observations from the reference points in multivariate space or measuring the distance between vectors about different practical uses, such as the difference between pairwise individuals, comparing the similarity of observations. it's a multivariate equivalent of the euclidean distance. one of the main reasons for using the md is that it is very sensitive to intervariable changes in the reference data, the idea of measuring how many standard deviations from the mean. [6][9] the mahalanobis distance formula is as: 𝑀𝐷𝐽 = 𝐷𝑗 2 = 𝑍𝑖𝑗 ′ 𝐶−1𝑍𝑖𝑗 (5) 𝑍𝑖𝑗 = (𝑧1𝑗, 𝑧2𝑗, …𝑧𝑖𝑗) (6) 𝑗 = 1 𝑡𝑜 𝑛 𝑖 = 1 𝑡𝑜 𝑘 𝑍𝑖𝑗 = 𝑋𝑖𝑗 − 𝑚𝑖 𝑆𝑖 (7) 𝐷2 = (𝑥 − 𝑚)𝑇. c−1. (𝑥 − 𝑚) (8) where: d2 : is the md x: is the vector of observations m: is the vector of mean c-1: is the inverse covariance matrix finally, the euclidean distance is calculated. the three procedures listed above are intended to address the issues with euclidean distance that we discussed before. so, how do you understand the formula above? let’s take the (x – m)t .c-1(x – m) is essentially the vector's distance from the mean. the covariance matrix is then divided by this (or multiply by the inverse of the covariance matrix) is what is the effect of dividing by the covariance? if the variables in your data set are strongly correlated, then the covariance will be high. dividing by a significant covariance will effectively reduce the distance. likewise, if the x’s are not correlated, then the covariance is not high, and the distance is not reduced much. so effectively addresses both the problems of scale and the vector's distance from the mean and the correlation of. the covariance matrix is then divided by this (or multiply by the inverse of the covariance matrix) [5][7]. let xi , i = 1, ..., n be random vectors with p components; its mean be e(xi) = µ and covariance matrix be cov (xi) = σ, the md space yi is generated by : 𝑦𝑖 = σ −1/2 (𝑥𝑖 − 𝜇) 𝑖 = 1,2, …. 𝑛 (9) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 97 3. hotelling’s t2 distribution some of the multivariate procedures for control charts are based heavily on hotelling’s t2 distribution introduced by an american mathematical statistician and an influential economic harold hotelling's father theorist t2 distribution (1947). the basis of several multivariate control charts or a multivariate sampling distribution, the t2 control chart can be used with data in subgroups or data that are individual observations to show how to construct a t2 control chart[1][5] . t2 = (�̅� − 𝜇0) 2 𝑠2/𝑛 (10) (x − μ)′s−1(x − μ) (11) where x is the sample mean vector and s is the sample covariance vector. the s matrix is a little more challenging to find. it is found from the vector of moving differences for each variable. for each variable, vi is found where: vi = xi+1 – xi this is done for both variables and the vector v contains the results for both variables:             = −1 2 1 m v v v v  where a m are number of samples. and v has a column for each variable and (m – 1) rows. the s can be found using the following: )1(2 1 ' − = m vv s (12) where v´ is the transpose of v then t2 is given by: t2 = (x –x’)'s-1(x -x) for the t2 control chart, we need to define or calculate is the ucl. and, of course, the upper control limit based on individual observations is given by the following:[7][8][11] 𝑈𝐶𝐿 = (𝑚 − 1)2 𝑚 𝛽 𝛼 𝑝 2 (𝑞−𝑝−1)/2 (13) where m = number of samples, p = number of variables, β = beta distribution, α = the confidence level and q = 2(m−1)2 3m−4 (14) it is well known that for a random sample of size n from a univariate normal population, x~n(μ, σ2), if we compute the sample mean x̅ and sample variance s2, then it t = (x̅ − μ)/( s √n ) will have a t distribution with (n -1) degrees of freedom[10][11] suppose that x1, x2, x3.... xn, are jointly distributed with a multivariate with a normal distribution, let the mean be as µ1, µ2, µ3,... µn and variances as σ1 2, σ2 2, σ3 2, , , σn1 2 for n >1 the characteristics may be independent and the covariance of xi and xj is given as 𝜎𝑖𝑗 = 𝐸(𝑋𝑖 − 𝜇𝑖)(𝑋𝑗 − 𝜇𝑗 ) (15) and the variance of xi is: σij = e(xi − μi)(xj − μj ) = e[(xi − μi) 2 = σi 2 (16) and the random variables can be shown as a vector: kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 98 hjpjmk x x x x pk k k k ==               = ,3,2,1,,3,2,1 2 1   (17) and the vector of e(x) value of x is:               = px x x  2 1 ̂ where m x x m k jk j  = = 1 and 1 )( 1 2 2 − − =  = m xx s m k jjk j hj pj  = ,3,2,1  (18) therefore we can calculate the value of hoteling t2 if we have two characteristics, x1 and x2 with a joint distribute with sample mean, variance and covariance between two variables , under these conditions the formula of hoteling t2 as: 𝑇2 = 𝑛 𝑆1 2𝑆2 2 − 𝑆12 2 [𝑆2 2(�̅�1 − �̅�01) 2 + 𝑆1 2(�̅�2 − �̅�02) 2 − 2𝑆12(�̅�1 − �̅�01)(�̅�2 − �̅�02)] (19) )ˆ()ˆ( 12  −−= − kkk xsxt (20) and the s as shows:               = 2 2 2 2 112 2 1 p p p s ss sss s    (21) therefore to determine the value of upper and lower limit given by:     1,, 1,, 2 )1/( )1/()1( −− −− −−+ −−− = pmp pmp fpmmpm fpmpm ucl   (22) pmp f pmm mmp ucl − − −+ = *,,*2* )( )1*)(1*(  (23) m:is the samples, m=m* if no sample and the ucl is equal the value of chi-square as: kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 99 ucl = χα,p 2 value of hotelling’s t2 percentile points can be obtained from the percentile points of the f-distribution given as a relation ta,p,n−1 2 = p( n−1 n−p )pa,p,n−p (24) where fa,p,n-1 represents to the f-distribution with p degree of freedom . ewma control charts are used to monitor the mean of a process and are interested in identifying minor shifts. they also incorporate historical data in addition to current data, but the weights attached to the data are exponentially decreasing as the observations become less recent, the new generation of value of zi is as: 𝑍𝑖 = 𝜆𝑥𝑖 + (1 − 𝜆)z𝑖−1 (25) were 0 < λ ≤ 1 is a constant and the starting value required with the first sample at i=1 is the process target value, so that 𝑍0 = 𝑢𝑜 sometimes the average of the data is used to start value, then it become 𝑍0 = 𝑥 if the observations xi are independent random variables with σ2 then the variance is: σxi 2 = σ√ λ 2 − λ (1 − (1 − λ)2i (26) then the ewma control chart would be constructed by plotting zi versus the sample number i. the centre line and control limits for the ewma control chart are as follows [6][7][10]: ucl, lcl = μ0 ± l lσ √n √ λ 2 − λ (1 − (1 − λ)2i) (27) from the ucl, and lcl that the term [1 − (1 – 𝜆)2i] approaches unity as i get larger, than the ulc and lcl it become as: ucl, lcl = μ0 ± lσ√ λ 2−λ (28) cl = μ0 where σx is the standard deviation, where l is the distance between the control limits and the centre line (cl). and λ is the constant such that 0 < λ ≤ 1. the quantity z0 is the starting value, and it is taken equal to the target mean µ or the average of the initial data in case when the information on the target mean is not available.[3][4][5][11] 4. application: numerical illustration there are numerical analysis and quality control charts to compare mahalanobis distance (md) and, mewma control chart shows the positive measurement aspects of the above presented and demonstrates which one has a good outcome. this paper used data from three chemical components of water to do so. (acl temp. (x3), conductivity (x1), tds (x2), and conductivity (x1). we have a random sample size (30) for the chemical analysis data for this application using the spss and statgraphics – xvi software and data as in table(1). we determine the value of md, multivariate t-squared control chart as shown in table(1). table (1) shows table (1) shows that the value of md and t-square.the max.value of md is (12.57) and the max.value for mewma is (42.53) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 100 table 1: contains three kinds of variables of compotes of water. sampl conductivity (x1) tds (x2) acl temp. c (x3) ewma for md value ewmafor tsquare value mdvalue tsquared -value 1 183.67 117.67 15.00 4.83 15.98 12.57 42.53 2 187.33 120.00 17.33 4.15 14.73 1.43 9.74 3 189.33 121.33 18.00 3.83 13.57 2.54 8.90 4 191.67 122.67 17.67 3.84 13.81 3.90 14.78 5 189.00 120.67 15.33 4.82 18.23 8.72 35.93 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 168.00 107.67 19.33 2.47 8.18 3.00 11.84 26 169.00 108.33 19.33 2.46 8.57 2.42 10.13 27 174.67 112.00 20.33 2.38 9.00 2.08 10.71 28 173.67 111.33 20.00 2.17 8.92 1.32 8.64 29 170.33 109.33 19.67 2.20 9.21 2.33 10.35 30 177.00 113.67 19.33 2.19 8.05 2.12 3.41 figure 1: md and t-square chart figure (1) shows that the md and t-square chart. it is seen that the md chart has a well-distributed chart, and it is seen that only one point is out of control and the upper control chart of md is (11.62), as shown in figure (2). from figure (3) of the multivariate t-squared chart, there are (5) points out of control, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 md t-squared kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 101 multivariate control chart -t-squared ucl = 11.62 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 10 20 30 40 50 figure 2: md control chart figure 3: t-square chart figure 4:ewma chart for md multivariate control chart -md ucl = 11.62 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 3 6 9 12 15 5.23 ewma chart for md-value 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 observation0 1 2 3 4 5 6 e w m a 2.90 0.57 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 102 variables md-value t-square quantile plot 0 10 20 30 40 50 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 pr op or tio n 15.38 ewma chart for t-square -value 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 observation 0 4 8 12 16 20 e w m a 9.34 3.30 figure 5: ewma chart for t-square figure (4) shows that the ewma-chart of md value, it is seen that the ucl, lcl (5.23 ,0.57), and cl is (2.9). there are two points out of control: process capability (2.33), and the ucl, lcl for t-square (15.38, 3.3). the cl is (9.34), and there are (4) points out of control, with process capability (6.04) as shown in figure (5). figure 6: density of ewma chart for t-square the density traces distribution of md has a better density than t-square, as shown in fig(6). the median of md is (2.098) and for t-square is(7.6) by the whitney-test, there is a statistically significant difference between the medians at the 95.0% confidence level, and the interval for the mean of md is (2.9 ±1. 12). the t-square is: (9.34 ± 3.58) with % 95 confidence, and for variance for md and tsquare are (9.31,93.84). figure 7: probability plot of ewma chart for t-square the box whisker plot has a good separation as shown in fig(8), the lower and upper quartile of md are (1.102,3.26), and for multivariate t-squared are (3.05,11.23), with interquartile range of md and tsquare are(1.95,7.97) and although for the histogram frequency. the md value has a good distribution frequency more than t-square, as shown in fig (9). md t-squared density traces 0 10 20 30 40 50 0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 d e n s it y kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 103 md -value t-square -2 3 8 13 18 23 28 33 38 43 48 53 15 10 5 0 5 10 15 fr e q u e n c y figure 8: box plot of md and t-square value figure 9 : histogram frequency of md and t-square value 5. conclusion the main goal of this research paper will be to using the md-distance control chart and the multivariate t-squared control chart. during all control charts are used. according to the comparison study, a good comparison between the mewma and md-distance control chart shows that the md-distance control chart has a good result. in general, the md-distance control chart has a good effect on variables and offers a good relationship between variables. box-and-whisker plot 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 md t-square kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 104 reference [1] a.faraz, hotelling’s t2control chart with double warning lines”, quality management department, air defense group, aerospace industries organization, tehran, iran. [2] a. mitra ,fundamentals of quality control and improvemen, fourth edition auburn university, college of business auburn, alabama copyright. 2016 by john wiley&sons, inc. allrightsreserved. [3] a s.t.a. niaki ,m.malakib, m.j. ershadi ,,a particle swarm optimization approach on economic and economicstatistical designs of mewma control charts 2011 ,scientia iranica [4] d.c. montgomery ’introduction to statistical quality control” , seven editions , arizona state university printed in the united states of america. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ,2013 [5] k. yang .j. trewm,”multivariate statistical methods in quality management “ copyright © the mcgraw-hill companies 2004 [6] g.taguchi and r. jugulum, ”the mahalnobis -taguchi strategy” : a pattern technology system.copyright 2002 john wiley & sons. ins. [7] k. j.rashid, 2017,” design of an exponentially weighted moving average (ewma) and an exponential weighted root mean square (ewrms) control chart, international journal of advanced engineering research and science (ijaers) [vol-4, issue-3, mar2017] [8] r. mawonike, 2017,” multivariate exponentially weighted moving average for monitoring coke production: a case of wankie colliery company, global journal of theoretical and applied mathematics sciences. issn 22489916 volume 7, number 1 (2017), pp. 1-16 [9] s.bersimis and,j.panaretos,2005, ”multivariate statistical process control charts and the problem of interpretation: a short overview and some applications in, university of economic and business, department of statistics, athens, greece [10] t.t. allen,, 2010, ”introduction to engineering statistics “ and lean sigma statistical quality control and design of experiments and systems second edition. [11] t. p. ryan, smyrna, georgia” 2011”, statistical methods for quality improvement, third edition copyright © 2011 by john wiley & sons, inc. all rights reserved. published by john wiley & sons, inc., hoboken, new jersey.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq| email: kjar@spu.edu.iq nurses’ knowledge regarding fooddrug interaction in the intensive care and emergency hospitals samir y. lafi aram salih mohammed amin kamali adult nursing department garmian administrative planning department college of nursing ministry of health university of raparin directory of health kalar, iraq rania, iraq prof.dr.samir@uor.edu.krd aramkamali.86@gmail.com bayan omar sharif health development and training center ministry of health slemani, iraq omerbayan82@gmail.com volume 4 issue 2 december 2019 doi: 10.24017/science.2019.2.6 received: 27 july 2019 accepted: 14 october 2019 abstract usually supplement is essential and fundamental components for ensure and creating the human body, also drugs seem survey the life of each individuals and ensure the wellbeing for a long life aimed most of illness, but in case nourishment sedate interaction ignored since of information shortage almost it or any reason may be lead to futile of medicine for the patients or cause life threatening condition because of that, one of the most significant ethical point in every health care setting in the world is patient's safety; and the care for patients must be improve in every countries to prevent complication of interaction between food and drug. the main objective of this cross-sectional study has been conducted to assess the nurses' knowledge regarding food-drug interaction (fdi) at the intensive care in both of shar and emergency hospitals in the slemani city, the data were collected during the period of october up to the end of december. non-probability, (purposive sample) of 78 nurses at both hospitals, a questionnaire was designed according literatures and books regarding fdi which contained 25 items, 8 items for demographic characteristics, and 17 items concerning fdi. the validity of the questionnaire was given to a panel of 7 experts, a pilot study was carried out to check the reliability of the questionnaire which determined through the use of stability reliability (test-retest) approach which was estimated as r = 0.81. the data were collected through the interviewing of the study sample and analyzed through the using of the statistical package for social sciences spss, version 23, and analyzed through the application of descriptive and inferential statistical mailto:prof.dr.samir@uor.edu.krd mailto:aramkamali.86@gmail.com mailto:omerbayan82@gmail.com kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 62 analysis. the findings of the present study conclude that more than half of nurses had low knowledge and none of them had high level of knowledge, also there is no significant association between the levels of knowledge with age, gender, educational level, years of experience and working place. the study suggested extends the knowledge of nurses regarding the fdi, by training courses from clinical pharmacologists. keywords: food-drug interaction, nurse, knowledge, intensive care unit, shar and emergency hospital 1. introduction to administer medication these three professionals of physician, nurses staff and pharmacist need to have the knowledge regarding the description of different medications because the administration of medication is a complex process [1]. food-drug interactions (fdi) happens once particular nutrients in foods act with medicine if eaten concurrently. the bioavailability, pharmacodynamics, and therapeutic effectuality of the drug may be resulted in changes in fdi[2].one of the most complications of fdi is medical error [3], in addition the medical error has a low risk rate for the patient by those nurses who has an experience five years and more [4]. institute of medicine recorded simply nearly 100 thousand deaths occur every year by medical errors just in united state of america.[5]. as well as, geriatric patients at high risk for fdi particularly who use quite two types of medications for their chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterolemia, and cardiovascular disease, thus these clients should be helped and recommended frequently for food and drug interactions[6].one of a major significant cause of complication and death worldwide is adverse drug reactions [7], because of that that nurses staff who administer drugs and pharmacists have very significant roles to play in adr monitoring and documenting[8]. on other hands adverse drug reactions adrs indicate the most important health problem among clients because of requiring immediate tackle, for instant, spinach or broccoli are some food that have been shown to cause a pharmacodynamics antagonism with some medication such as warfarin or inhibiting an enzyme that is participated in the metabolism of many medications by grapefruit juice which contains a bioflavonoid, thus, interactions between the food and drugs could have esoteric or deep outcome on the obedience and achievement of drug treatment[9]. 2. literature review every unit at the hospital needs some key skills in order to directly perform patient care, in this regard; intensive care unit (icu) is one of the most important areas to assess the nurses in a wide-range of field. the result of the patient is linked to higher nursing skill according to implication of studies. some of the active ways to lessen medication error such as subsequent drug direction or administration rules, a correct dosage computation, and resonance knowledge of pharmacology [10]. according to iom the nursing vocation is playing a significant role in patient protection and recognizing the client’s problems[11]. for achieving a safer level of nursing care, implementing the theoretical knowledge of nursing is very essential to become a strong experience for their practice[12].nurses must be attentive in monitoring for possible interaction fdi in counseling clients on about it to stay away when used a certain drugs and foods together. one of the main nurse’s roles is demonstrating information concerning fdi for patients to prevent occurring problems[13].harmful effect of drug is associated with low therapeutic index when they interact with food [14]. one of the main categories that increase the life threatening is a medication error during the administration of medication process, so health care worker specially pharmacists has a critical role to reducing these errors by making a suitable interference at each step and by kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 63 explaining the information for nurse’s staff who administer medications[15]. many elderly patients who admitted icu has more than two medications but they are always deprived from instructions regarding food-drug interaction, some may be taken advantage, but more frequently drug interactions lead to avoidable adverse events. more familiar with probable drug interactions might facilitate nurses predict a patient’s response to medications, because of that one of the major roles of a nurse leader is management of medication in any health care setting [16]. food-drug interaction are more possible to create a significant harmful effect for the patients [17].the alertness about food drug interaction appeared publication in the beginning of forties. fdi can occur frequently specially if neglected or no resolved immediately because may be lead to adverse reactions or therapeutic failure can occur [18]. the most people who exposed to this interaction are the elderly patient because most of them have more than two drugs and in can lead to serious situation for them [19]. several numbers of prescribed medication to patients is usually high in intensive care units; and most of them supplied food by naso gastric tube because they cannot take food by mouth, in the same time they have drugs too and can lead to serious changes such as problems of incompatibility between food and medication or toxicity can be occur. the best method for decreasing the complication or preventing of fdi is awareness of nurse’s staff about fdi, reading patient information leaflet about their own medications and understand the patients about interactions and any adverse reactions of the medication[20]. the present study was successful in assessing the knowledge of both nurse’s staff who are working in two different hospitals concerning fdi. the issues about food drug interaction is so difficult and complex dilemma to perfectly find out the effects of foods on a particular medication, because of this the researcher’s purpose in the present study is to assess the health care workers specially nurses, who administer the drugs and to become more knowledgeable about food drug interactions. 3. methods and materials quantitative design, cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted to assess the nurses' knowledge concerning interaction between food and drug at intensive care in both shar and emergency hospitals in the slemani city, and to determine some socio-demographic characteristic of the participants in the study sample. letter of permission therefore was sent to both hospitals from slemani general directorate of health before conducting this study.nonprobability, (purposive sample) of 78 nurses at both hospitals 37 nurses from emergency hospital and 41 nurses from shar hospital. for the purpose of data collection, the study tool was constructed and based on extensive review of related literature and studies which contained 25 items, 8items for demographic characteristics, and 17 items were regarding food and drug interaction. then the questionnaire was given to a panel of 7experts to check the validity. a pilot study was carried out to check the reliability of the questionnaire which determined through the use of stability reliability (test – retest) approach, which was estimated as r = 0.81. as well as, just both adult males and females of nurses who were administered medications in both icu participated in the present study. the data was collected during the beginning of october to end of december; 2017by the interviewing technique and it was analyzed through of using the statistical package for social sciences (spss, v. 23).chi-square test of association was used to compare proportions. fisher’s exact test was used too. a pvalue of ≤ 0.05 was considered statistically significant. 4. results seventy eight nurses participated in the study. their mean age (+ sd) was 28.38 + 3.67 years, ranging from 21 to 39 years. table 1 shows that the majority (78.2%) of the nurses was within group 25-34 years, and only 7.7% aged 35 years or more. no significant differences in the age distribution were detected between the two settings (p = 0.180). the males constituted 59% of the sample. no significant difference was detected in the gender distribution (p = 0.401). around two thirds (64.1%) of the sample were married, and the majority (93.6%) were diploma holder. again, the differences between the two groups regarding the marital status kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 64 and educational levels were not significant. it is evident in the table that 95.1% of nurses of the shar icu believe that their income is insufficient compared with 59.5% of nurses of the emergency icu (p < 0.001). the years of experience was less than 5 years among 44.9% of the sample, and only 10.3% of the nurses had 10 or more years of experience. the difference between the two settings was not significant. figure 1 indicated that more than half (55.1%) of nurses had low knowledge and none of them had high level of knowledge. table 2 showed that there are no significant association between the levels of knowledge with age gender, educational level, years of experience, and working place. table 1: socio-demographic characteristics of the study sample of both settings settings emergency hospital shar hospital total items no. (%) no. (%) no. (%) p age < 25 8 21.6 3 7.3 11 14.1 0.180* 25-34 26 70.3 35 85.4 61 78.2 ≥ 35 3 8.1 3 7.3 6 7.7 total 37 100 41 100 78 100 gender male 20 54.1 26 63.4 46 59.0 0.401 female 17 45.9 15 36.6 32 41.0 total 37 100 41 100 78 100 marital status single 13 35.1 15 36.6 28 35.9 0.894 married 24 64.9 26 63.4 50 64.1 total 37 100 41 100 78 100 level of education diploma 33 89.2 40 97.6 73 93.6 0.184* b.sc. 4 10.8 1 2.4 5 6.4 total 37 100 41 100 78 100 monthly income sufficient 2 5.4 0 0 2 2.6 <0.001* barely sufficient 13 35.1 2 4.9 15 19.2 insufficient 22 59.5 39 95.1 61 78.2 total 37 100 41 100 78 100 years of employment < 5 16 43.2 19 46.3 35 44.9 0.296* 5-9 15 40.5 20 48.8 35 44.9 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 65 figure 1: level of nurse’s knowledge regarding food drug interaction table 2: association between levels of knowledge with socio-demographic characteristics levels of knowledge low medium total no. (%) no. (%) no. (%) p age < 25 7 (63.6) 4 (36.4) 11 (100.0) 0.846* 25-34 33 (54.1) 28 (45.9) 61 (100.0) ≥ 35 3 (50.0) 3 (50.0) 6 (100.0) gender male 26 (56.5) 20 (43.5) 46 (100.0) 0.767 female 17 (53.1) 15 (46.9) 32 (100.0) educational level diploma 39 (53.4) 34 (46.6) 73 (100.0) 0.372* b.sc. 4 (80.0) 1 (20.0) 5 (100.0) years of experience < 5 21 (60.0) 14 (40.0) 35 (100.0) 0.208* 5-9 20 (57.1) 15 (42.9) 35 (100.0) ≥ 10 2 (25.0) 6 (75.0) 8 (100.0) working place emergency icu 20 (54.1) 17 (45.9) 37 (100.0) 0.856 shar icu 23 (56.1) 18 (43.9) 41 (100.0) total 43 (55.1) 35 (44.9) 78 (100.0) 5. discussion this study has chosen the nurses who administered medications in both icu in shar and emergency hospital in slemani city. the current study was chosen 78 nurses in both icu of ≥ 10 6 16.2 2 4.9 8 10.3 total 37 100 41 100 78 100 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 66 (shar and emergency hospital) in slemani city. the finding of the present study indicated that most participants’ age in both emergency and shar hospital was in group 25-34 years, in both hospital number of male was more than female, more than half of nurses in both area were married but the married nurses in emergency hospital was slightly higher. regarding the educational level, the most participant was graduated from medical institute but the majority of the nurses were in emergency hospital and they had a same degree but number of academic nurses in both setting was very little, however this place is a very critical area and need to nurses with a high quality of certificate. concerning monthly income, the nurse’s staff who worked in shar hospital had an insufficient economic status whereas the nurses in emergency hospital were slightly better. the final item in the socio demographic data is described years of experience, which indicated that, most number of nurses in both hospitals was between the 5-9 years of experience; moreover nearly half of nurses in both icu have less than five years of experience, but a little number of them had ten or more years of experience. the finding of the study in figure 1 demonstrated that more than half 55.1% of nurses had low knowledge, 44.9% had a moderate level of knowledge and none of them had high level of knowledge, this outcome was agree with the studies done by enwerem and okunji, 2015 in columbia[21] and jyoti et al., 2012 which showed that all nurses who participated in their study has scored low level of knowledge concerning fdi and they mentioned that impossible timing of foods and medications are lead to failure of the treatment [22].also the outcome of the current study is supported by the results of the study that done by moradi, et al, 2016 in iran that mentioned the mean scores of the fdi tool were at a low level[23]. also walumbwa, et al, 2008 detected in their study that the level of knowledge about fdi in nurse’s staff is not at an adequate level[24]. table 2 showed that there are no significant association between the levels of knowledge with age p = 0.846, gender p = 0.767, educational level p = 0.372, years of experience p = 0.208, and working place (p = 0.856), this result come along with the study done in palestine by radwan, et al., 2018 which reported that there are no significant association between participant’s knowledge scores and some socio demographic such as age, gender, level of education and years of expert. also they mentioned that the pharmacist is responsible for counseling clients regarding the types of nutrient to prevent eating particular drugs with it, so incorrect patient counseling occur resulting in adverse medical outcomes. insufficient knowledge of fdis may lead to integration of knowledge. clinically important of fdis among pharmacists is necessary for the helpfulness of the therapeutic process[25]. nazari and his colleague in (2011) delineated that the effect of the drug action are influenced by several foods, so the clinical pharmacists is responsible to control and reduce the events of food drug interaction by educating the nurse’s staff especially nurses who work in the intensive care unit [26]. both of food and medication are required for a healthy life, but some food with a specific drug make a side effect when used together. thus the fdi must be recognized very well. decrease in the medication’s bioavailability is lead to the effect of food on drugs, so the clinical pharmacists is responsible of monitoring for potential fdi and explaining patients concerning foods to prevent when using certain drugs[27].however there are few researches regarding the impact of nurse learning in avoidance or improvement of fdi; but a study believe that, educating the nurse’s staff has an important point to decrease or prevent fdi because nurses stay with the patients for a long time much more than physicians and the pharmacists because training course regarding this vital tool is very important. moreover they choose direct learning technique by clinical pharmacist for their nurses concerning food interactions. it has been revealed that fdi reduced by nearly a quarter percent after nurse’s education[26]. medications are described many times for cure from several diseases, and sick people can achieve a healthy and prolong a period of life by using drugs regularly but they must use the drugs by caution specially if used with some foods because fdi can contribute a main reason for interaction, moreover, neglecting this critical issue related to less knowledge about it[27]. drug food interaction is a condition that activity of the drug is affected by the food; for instance, lead to increase or decrease, or produce a new impact of the drug[28]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 67 there are many risk factor that affect the interaction between food and drug such as age, gender, co-morbidities of the drug, composition of the body and status of nutrition, because the pharmacologist and nurses has an awareness about it to avoid any occurring any complication[29]. finally medical errors is considered as a serious and complex health problem in a community because lead to big disaster such as death fdi[30]. 6. conclusion the outcome of the current study indicated that, the nurses in both setting had a low level of knowledge regarding food drug interaction. as well as, there are no significant association between the levels of knowledge with age, gender, educational level, years of experience, and working place. in this regard, the researchers recommended training course from clinical pharmacist for nurses especially those who administer medications in icu and much more study is required for recognition of this critical issue. reference [1] m. l. s. mota, i. v. barbosa, r. m. b. studart, e. m. melo, f. e. t. lima, and f. a. j. r. l.-a. d. e. mariano, "evaluation of intensivist-nurses knowledge concerning medication administration through nasogastric and enteral tubes," vol. 18, no. 5, pp. 888-894, 2010. [2] c. andrade, "fruit juice, organic anion transporting polypeptides, and drug interactions in psychiatry," the journal of clinical psychiatry, vol. 75, no. 11, pp. 1323-1325, 2014. [3] r. bushra, n. aslam, and a. y. khan, "food-drug interactions," oman medical journal, vol. 26, no. 2, p. 77, 2011. [4] m. a. getnet, b. b. j. n. r. bifftu, and practice, "work interruption experienced by nurses during medication administration process and associated factors, northwest ethiopia," vol. 2017, 2017. [5] l. kohn, j. corrigan, and m. donaldson, "committee on quality of health care in america.(2000)," to err is human: building a safer health system. [6] s. mouly, m. morgand, a. lopes, c. lloret-linares, and j. bergmann, "drug-food interactions in internal medicine: what physicians should know?," la revue de medecine interne/fondee... par la societe nationale francaise de medecine interne, vol. 36, no. 8, pp. 530-539, 2015. [7] m. d. mchugh, e. t. j. r. i. n. lake, and health, "understanding clinical expertise: nurse education, experience, and the hospital context," vol. 33, no. 4, pp. 276-287, 2010. [8] j. w. lee, j. k. morris, and n. j. j. t. a. j. o. m. wald, "grapefruit juice and statins," vol. 129, no. 1, pp. 26-29, 2016. [9] m. j. hanley, p. cancalon, w. w. widmer, and d. j. greenblatt, "the effect of grapefruit juice on drug disposition," expert opinion on drug metabolism & toxicology, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 267-286, 2011. [10] n. m. enwerem and p. o. okunji, "knowledge of food and drug interactions among nurses: assessment strategy for continuing education," international journal of higher education, vol. 6, no. 1, p. 122, 2016. [11] m. d. mchugh and e. t. lake, "understanding clinical expertise: nurse education, experience, and the hospital context," research in nursing & health, vol. 33, no. 4, pp. 276-287, 2010. [12] k. hill, "improving quality and patient safety by retaining nursing expertise," online journal of issues in nursing, vol. 15, no. 3, 2010. [13] s. valente, l. murray, and d. j. j. o. n. c. q. fisher, "nurses improve medication safety with medication allergy and adverse drug reports," vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 322-327, 2007. [14] p. j. p. o. t. n. s. mason, "important drug–nutrient interactions," vol. 69, no. 4, pp. 551-557, 2010. [15] t. l. rodziewicz and j. e. hipskind, "medical error prevention," in statpearls [internet]: statpearls publishing, 2019. [16] r. e. f. lima and s. h. d. b. j. r. l.-a. d. e. cassiani, "potential drug interactions in intensive care patients at a teaching hospital," vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 222-227, 2009. [17] a. khandeparkar and p. v. j. p. i. c. r. rataboli, "a study of harmful drug–drug interactions due to polypharmacy in hospitalized patients in goa medical college," vol. 8, no. 4, p. 180, 2017. [18] s. s. martínez, j. a. m. rodríguez, and e. r. j. f. h. carreño, "oral chemotherapy: food-drug interactions," vol. 39, no. 4, pp. 203-209, 2015. [19] e. m. segal et al., "oral chemotherapy food and drug interactions: a comprehensive review of the literature," vol. 10, no. 4, pp. e255-e268, 2014. [20] c. j. i. f. mestres miralles, nutrition and metabolism, vol. 4, núm. 4, p. 1-3, "current situation on nutrient-drug interactions in health care practice," 2017. [21] n. m. enwerem and p. j. i. j. n. okunji, "knowledge, attitudes and awareness of food and drug interactions among nurses with different levels of experience," vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 1-9, 2015. [22] j. benni, m. jayanthi, b. tubaki, and m. j. i. j. p. c. s. renuka, "knowledge and awareness of food and drug interactions (fdi): a survey among health care professionals," vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 97-105, 2012. [23] y. moradi et al., "nurses' pharmacology knowledge of food-drug interactions in ayatollah taleghani hospital of orumieh, iran," vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 1083-1087, 2016. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 68 [24] f. o. walumbwa, c. wu, and b. j. t. l. q. orwa, "contingent reward transactional leadership, work attitudes, and organizational citizenship behavior: the role of procedural justice climate perceptions and strength," vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 251-265, 2008. [25] a. radwan, a. sweileh, a. hroub, j. elaraj, and n. j. i. j. o. c. p. shraim, "evaluation of community pharmacists’ knowledge and awareness of food–drug interactions in palestine," vol. 40, no. 3, pp. 668-675, 2018. [26] m. a. nazari, j. salamzadeh, g. hajebi, and b. j. i. j. o. p. r. i. gilbert, "the role of clinical pharmacists in educating nurses to reduce drug-food interactions (absorption phase) in hospitalized patients," vol. 10, no. 1, p. 173, 2011. [27] s. otles and a. j. a. s. p. t. a. senturk, "food and drug interactions: a general review," vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 89-102, 2014. [28] c. owens, t. toone, m. j. j. o. n. steed-ivie, and f. sciences, "a survey of dietary supplement knowledge, attitudes, and use in a rural population," vol. 4, no. 5, p. 1, 2014. [29] s. a. sajid, r. sultana, m. masaratunnisa, s. naaz, and m. s. adil, "a questionnaire study of food–drug interactions to assess knowledge of people from diverse backgrounds," 2017. [30] f. j. m. p. oyebode and practice, "clinical errors and medical negligence," vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 323-333, 2013. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 1 epidemiology of pandemic covid-19 and its association with some chronic diseases in sulaimani city, iraq shaxawan azeez maulood muhammed babakir-mina community health department medical laboratory department college of health & medical technology college of health & medical technology sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaiamani, iraq sulaiamani, iraq shaxawan.maulood@spu.edu.iq muahmmed.babakir@spu.edu.iq salar ibrahim ali nursing department college of health & medical technology sulaimani polytechnic university sulaiamani, iraq salar.ali@spu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 7 – issue 1– june 2022 doi: 10.24017/science.2022.1.1 article history: received 14/10/2021 accepted 14/2/2022 this investigation aims to provide epidemiological features of the covid-19 patients that admitted to shahid dr hemin teaching hospital in sulaimani city, iraq. to carry out this work, cross-sectional method was used. a convenience sampling ndfrom 2 which started collection datamethod was applied for onlydecember 2020. the current study included thoctober to 31 371 patients who admitted for having covid-19. the data were collected from patient’s medical record and a direct interview method was used for filling in the questionnaire forms. the collected data were statistically analysed by spss program with considering a p-value ≤ 0.05 as a significant interpretation. the findings show that the age of patients ranged from 19-95 years old and mean age of the participants was (63.69±12.73). the majority of patients 159 (42.9%) were between 65-79 years old and followed by 124 (33.4%) of them were between 50-64 years old. male to female ratio was 2:1. most of the patients were retired 119 (32.1%) in comparison to other occupations and illiterate patients 151(40.7%) were dominance over other patient’s education levels. in addition, majority of patients had hypertension 278(74.9%), diabetes 132 (35.6%) and cardiovascular disease (cvd) 130 (35.0%). on the other hand, regarding to condition of patients 230 (62.0%) and 141(38.0%) of them were in severe and moderate stage of disease respectively. also, a. significant association were observed between the age group, occupation, education level, stage of the disease and patients’ outcome, while for gender, marital status keywords: epidemiology, risk factor, demographic properties, covid-19, sulaimanyah kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 2 and residency there were statistically non-significant. the presence of cvd, hypertension and diabetes increase the mortality rate among the patients. in conclusion, the age of covid-19 patients has a great impact on increasing mortality rate and the presence of comorbidities among the covid19patients significantly raise the mortality rate. copyright © 2021 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (sars-cov-2) is the causative agent for coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19). at the beginning, in december 2019, the first report of covid-19 was recorded in wuhan, china [1]. during a short time, a fast worldwide spread of covid-19 has occurred, which has posed a global life-threatening problem. therefore, the pandemic outbreak of covid-19 virus has announced in march 2020 by who [2]. in order to control this pandemic infection, a number of preventive actions has been performed for reducing the morbidity rate of covid-19; for instance, wearing facemasks, social distancing, and even lockdowns in and between the cities [3]. in spite of different levels of implementations in various regions; however, it has globally a very slight effect to pause covid-19 breakout. for instance, in more than 180 countries, a high morbidity rate has been recorded, and around 3.0% of fatality rate of covid-19 [4]. in addition to age, socio-economic conditions, and doubling risk for men compared to women, many clinical risk factors are unfavorable in their outcomes. body transplantation, severe obesity, untreated diabetes, severe copd, liver disorders, renal impairment, malignant hematomas and recent cancer lead to significant increases in mortality rate among covid-19 patients (1.5 to 5 times) [5]. furthermore, high blood pressure and distant cancer records are slightly elevated risk and only minor changes (less than 1.5 times) occur from 1 to 5 years ago for diabetes, heart disease, moderate obesity and cancer [6]. covid-19 has a link to more than 1 million deaths in nearly a year after the first reported case in wuhan in november 2019, and an active disease outbreak continues for spreading. therefore, it is crucial importance to know evolving footprint of epidemiology, in addition to the real condition and the potential implications of the epidemic. it is unclear how long it will take for the entire pandemic to spread across the planet, and this is expected to differ in the different regions. regardless, lessons learned in the first year may be helpful in improving responses to the current crisis [7]. in late september 2020, the official death toll from covid19 has passed one million. there are large differences in the average death rates between the countries and regions. in the early october 2020, the death rate in 66 countries was less than one per 100,000 inhabitants (involving mainly 21 small countries with no record of death), but in 17 countries, the death rate was over 50 per 100,000 inhabitants. these stark disparities are often real, and represent large differences in virus transmission, a wide range of infection mortality rates (ifr), and a decrease or increase in the number of deaths across sites [8]. therefore, the current study aims to determine epidemiological properties of admitted covid-19 patients to shahid dr hemin teaching hospital at sulaimani city/ kurdistan region of iraq and importantly to identify the potential effect of a number of risk factors including comorbidities among the patients on the outcome of covid-19 infections. 2. methods and materials to performing this work, prospective cross-sectional method was used and target groups of the study includes confirmed covid-19 patients by real time-polymerase chain reaction (rt-pcr) tests, and they were admitted to shahid dr hemin teaching hospital in sulaimani kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 3 during the period from 2th october to end of december 2020, which was 371 patients. a convenience sampling method has been used to select the participated patients who were admitted to the hospital. for data collection on the epidemiological properties, a questionnaire form was used, which is involved demographic section (gender, age, certificate degree, work, and place) and in another section includes clinical characteristics such as (signs, symptoms and presence of chronic diseases). statistical package for the social sciences (spss) applied for statistical analysis with considering a significant interpretation as (p-value ≤ 0.05). 3. results in the current study, 371 hospitalized patients were included with confirmed laboratory test for covid-19. the demographic data revealed that the range of participants’ age was from 19 to 95 years old ( mean 64) and most of them were between 65-79 years old group 159 (42.9%) and followed by 50-64 years old group 124 (33.4%), 35-49 years old 42 (11.3%), ≥ 80 years old group 39 (10.5%), and ≤ 34 years old group 7 (1.9%). statistical significant relationship was observed between age of patient groups and the outcome of the disease at p-value 0.0001 (table 1). the majority of respondent patients was male 249 (67.1%) in comparison with female 122 (32.9%). statistically, a non-significant association was revealed between patients’ gender and disease outcome (table 4.1). according to occupation, most of the respondent patients were retired 119 (32.1%); on the contrary, the least participants were students 1 (0.3%). furthermore, 90 (24.3%) and 48 (12.9%) of them were house wife and unemployed respectively. additionally, the number of self-employment, office employee, military, teacher and health-worker was 38 (10.2%), 30 (8.1%), 24(6.5%), 12(3.2%) and 9 (2.4%) respectively. there was a highly significant relationship between patients’ occupation and hospitalized patients outcome at p-value 0.0001 (table 1). for educational background, the higher number of patients was illiterate 151 (40.7%) and followed by literate 74 (19.9%) then diploma degree 65 (17.5%). while for both secondary with primary school were 31 (8.4%), 30 (8.1%) respectively and the least number of participants hold bachelor’s degree 20 (5.4%). there was a significant relationship between patient's education levels and hospitalized patient's outcome at p-value 0.013 (table 1). overall, 5 (1.3%) of them were single, 246 (66.3%) were married, and the others were 120 (32.3%) were widow. also, 242 (65.2%) of them were reside in the rural areas and 129 (34.8%) of them were live in the urban area. statistically, there was a non-significant relationship for both patient’s marital status and the residential places with the patient’s outcome (table 1). for the stage of disease, the result revealed that 230 (62.0%) and 141(38.0%) were recorded with severe and moderate condition of the disease respectively. in addition, more than half of them were recovered 220 (59.3%) and 151(40.7%) of them died (table 1). for outcome of hospitalized covid-19 patients, among 371 patients, 151 (40.7%) of them died and 220 (59.3%) recovered from the disease (table 1). table 1: the demographic properties of hospitalized covid-19 patients. variables category frequency percentage % pvalue age ≤ 34 7 1.9 0.0001 35-49 42 11.3 50-64 124 33.4 65-79 159 42.9 ≥ 80 39 10.5 gender male 249 67.1 0.313 female 122 32.9 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 4 occupation retired 119 32.1 0.0001 house wife 90 24.3 unemployment 48 12.9 self-employment 38 10.2 office employee 30 8.1 military 24 6.5 teacher 12 3.2 health-worker 9 2.4 student 1 0.3 education level illiterate 151 40.7 0.013 literate 74 19.9 institute 65 17.5 secondary school 31 8.4 primary school 30 8.1 university 20 5.4 marital status single 5 1.3 0.307 married 246 66.3 widow 120 32.3 residency urban 242 65.2 0.506 rural 129 34.8 stage of disease severe 230 62.0 0.0001 moderate 141 38.0 outcome death 151 40.7 0.045 recovery 220 59.3 in the current study, the effects of the presence of some chronic diseases on the covid-19 hospitalized patients’ outcome have been studied. the results showed that among 371 of hospitalized patients, 130 (35%), 278 (74.9%) and 132 (35.6%) of them suffered from chronic cardiovascular disease (cvd), hypertension and diabetes respectively. whereas, 241 (65%), 93 (25.1%) and 239 (64.4%) of them had no cvd, hypertension and diabetes respectively (table 2). table 2: the frequency of some chronic diseases of hospitalized covid-19 patients. variables category frequency percentage % cardiovascular disease no 241 65.0 yes 130 35.0 hypertension no 93 25.1 yes 278 74.9 diabetes no 239 64.4 yes 132 35.6 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 5 to reveal impact of cvd on increasing mortality rate among covid-19 hospitalized patient's outcome. the result shows among 151 death cases of the patients, 79 (52.3%) of them suffered from cvd, while 72 (47.7%) of them had no cvd. for recovery cases, among 220 recovered patients, a small number of them had cvd 51 (23.2%) suffered from cvd, whereas a high number of them 169 (76.8%) had no cvd. statistical significant relationship was observed between the patients who suffer from cardiovascular diseases and the patients’ outcome (p-value 0.0001) (figure 1). figure 1: effect of the presence of cvd on the outcome of covid-19 hospitalized patients. for hypertension, among 151 death cases of the patients, 132 (87.4%) of them had chronic hypertension, while 19 (12.6%) had no hypertension. in the recovery cases, among 220 recovered patients, a small number of them had hypertension 74 (33.6%), whereas a high number of them 146 (66.4%) had no hypertension. statistically, it was significant (p-value 0.0001) (figure 2). moreover, the finding reveals diabetic effect on the outcome of hospitalized covid-19 patients, in which 62 (41.1%) of them had diabetes and 89 (58.9%) had no diabetes. for recovery cases, 70 (31.8%) of them suffered from diabetes, whereas 150 (68.2%) of the patients was non-diabetics and it was statistically nonsignificant (p-value 0.078) (figure 3). figure 2: effect of the presence of hypertension on the outcome of covid-19 hospitalized patients. 52.3% 23.2% 47.7% 76.8% 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 death recovery n u m b e r o f c a se s patient's outcome impact of cvd on outcome of hospitalized covid-19 patients with cvd without cvd 87.4% 33.6% 12.6% 66.6% 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 death recovery n u m b e r o f c a se s patient's outcome hypertension effect on outcome of hospitalized covid-19 patients with hypertension without hypertension kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 6 figure 3: effect of the presence of diabetes on the outcome of hospitalized covid-19 patients. 4. discussion the current study’s results showed that the patients between 65-79 years old age groups had the highest fatality rate than other age groups of the patients, and a significant relationship was observed between patient’s age groups and covid-19 hospitalized patient's outcome. these findings were consistent with other research data, where elderly patients were one of the most significant risk factors for increased mortality among hospitalized covid-19 patients [9]. also, liu et al reported similar findings that elderly age groups have the significant risk factor for covid-19 mortality [10]. although all age groups have a risk for covid-19 infection but aging is more likely to develop serious illness and death because of the changes of physiology that associated with aging and potential underlying health problems. in case of gender, the results show that the male patients have a slightly higher mortality rate than the female patients; however, statistically, non-significant relationship was revealed between patients’ gender and hospitalized patients’ outcome. similarly, the findings of other investigations that performed in china and italy revealed that the gender of the patients has an impact on the hospitalized patients’ outcome, in which that men had a high probability to develop a severe condition and even death than females with a non-significant relationship [11, 12]. on the contrary, martos-benitez's concluded that females have a higher mortality rate than males with a significant relationship [13]. this difference in the current study could be related to the number of male participants were higher (67.1%) in comparison with females were much less (31.9%). also, there are fundamental variations in men's and women's immune systems that may affect the capacity to combat infections such as covid-19. women have often a higher resistance against infections in comparison to men, which may be mediated by a variety of variables; for instance, sexual hormones and increase of coronavirus receptors (ace 2) expression in men, as well as lifestyle variables; for example, greater smoking and drinking rates in males in comparison to females. furthermore, females have a higher responsibility than males in dealing with covid-19 epidemic. this may have a reversible impact on the implementation of preventative parameters; for instance, frequently washing hands, face mask usage, and directives to quarantine [14]. furthermore, retired patients showed highest death rate in comparison to other occupations and highly significant association was showed between the occupations and the patients’ outcome. this result is in agreement with several studies that showed high rates of covid-19 deaths among the retired patients [15-17]. while, a different finding was revealed with other studies, in which that registered employees had a slightly higher mortality rate than the other 41.1% 31.8% 58.9% 68.2% 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 death recovery n u m b e r o f c a e s patient's outcome diabetic effect on outcome of hospitalized covid-19 patients with diabetes without diabetes kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 7 occupations; however, its association was statistically non-significant [18, 19]. for the education levels, illiterate patients showed a higher mortality number with a significant association. whereas, different findings were observed with other studies, in which other education levels such as technical diploma and secondary school degrees showed a greater mortality rate [20, 21]. in spite of high mortality rate among the married patients, there was a non-significant relationship between the marital status and the patients’ outcome. however, another research work showed that single individuals are most likely to be at risk of death from the infection with a significant association [22]. these differences could be related to the number of married participants which were higher (66.3%) in comparison to other marital status. in the current study, the patients in the urban areas have the highest number of deaths compared to those in the rural area and there was a non-significant association between patients’ residency and the hospitalized patients’ outcome. these results are in agreement with several studies that showed high rates of covid-19 deaths among the urban residents but there was a non-significant relationship between the residency of the patients and the outcome of covid-19 patients [11,16,17]. while, our results are in contrast with the previous studies showing that covid-19 patients in the rural areas are mostly at risk of death from covid-19 with a significant association [23, 24]. the high density of population in the urban areas is believed to be more susceptible to covid-19 and it may has effect on the mortality rate. for stage of disease, a high mortality rate was recorded among patients with severe condition of covid-19 while its association was non-significant relationship. previous study identified older age as one of several risk factors that leaded to critical and death in the hospitalized covid-19 patients outcome [25] and other study found significant relation between stage of disease and hospitalized covid-19 patients outcome [13]. since the outbreak of covid-19, the effects of the presence of comorbidities with covid-19 has broadly investigated. for instance, among covid-19 patients, 20 – 30% of them are revealed with comorbidities, while in the covid-19 patients with critical condition, this proportion has raised to 50 – 80% [5-7]. furthermore, hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (copd), cardiovascular diseases, obesity, diabetes and cancer are considered as the most prevalent coexisting disorders of chronic diseases, in which the severity and mortality rates had several-fold greater than other population without comorbidities [5,6]. findings of the current investigation revealed that the covid-19 patients who suffer from chronic diseases; for instance, cardiovascular diseases, hypertension and diabetes had a severe stage of disease and with high mortality rate than the other patients who do not suffer from such comorbidities. in the case of recovery condition, the high rate of covid-19 recovery was observed among the patients who do not suffer from chronic diseases. these finding are in agreement with another investigation that showed the independent risk factor of copd has observed with the higher severity and mortality rates [16]. this findings reveal that presence of comorbidities have a great impact on increasing the mortality rate among hospitalized covid-19 patients. 5. conclusion the current findings showed that the high number of covid-19 hospitalized patients were elderly age groups and they had a higher mortality rate for covid-19 than the other age groups with a significant relationship between age of patients and covid-19 hospitalized patient's outcome. for the other parameters, such as gender, occupation, educational level, marital status, residency and stage of disease; there were slight differences in the mortality rate among the mentioned parameters. also, the higher mortality rate has dramatically increased among the covid-19 patients who suffer from chronic diseases and were in a severe stage of disease than other patients who do not have such comorbidities. in case of recovery condition, the high rate was showed among the patients who do not suffer from chronic diseases. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 8 reference [1] c. huang, y. wang, x. li, l. ren, l. zhao, y. hu, et al., “clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in wuhan,china,” lancet, 395, pp. 497–506, 2020. 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[7] j. ioannidis, “global perspective of covid-19 epidemiology for a full-cycle pandemic,” european journal of clinical investigation, 50(12), pp. e13423, 2020. [8] s. boccia, w. ricciardi, j. ioannidis, “what other countries can learn from italy during the covid-19 pandemic,” jama intern med, 180 (7), pp. 927–8, 2020. [9] m. al-hanawi, m. mwale, n. alshareef, a. qattan, k. angawi, r. almubark, “psychological distress amongst health workers and the general public during the covid-19 pandemic in saudi arabia,” risk management and healthcare policy, 13, pp. 733-42, 2020. [10] k. liu, y. chen, r. lin, k. han, “clinical features of covid-19 in elderly patients: a comparison with young and middle-aged patients,” the journal of infection, 80(6), pp. e14-e8, 2020. [11] j. ioannidis, c. axfors, c. ioannidis, “population-level covid-19 mortality risk for non-elderly individuals overall and for non-elderly individuals without underlying diseases in pandemic epicenters,” environmental research, 188, pp. 109890, 2020; [12] l. ren, y. wang, z. wu, z. xiang, l. guo, t. xu, “identification of a novel coronavirus causing severe pneumonia in human: a descriptive study,” chinese medical journal, 2020. [13] f. martos-benítez, c. soler-morejón, d. garcía-del barco, “chronic comorbidities and clinical outcomes in patients with and without covid-19: a large population-based study using national administrative healthcare open data of mexico,” internal and emergency medicine, pp. 1-11, 2021. [14] g. bwire, “coronavirus: why men are more vulnerable to covid-19 than women?” sn comprehensive clinical medicine, 2(7), pp. 874-6, 2020. [15] x. yang, y. yu, j. xu, h. shu, j. xia, h. liu, “clinical course and outcomes of critically ill patients with sars-cov-2 pneumonia in wuhan, china: a single-centered, retrospective, observational study,” the lancet respiratory medicine, 8(5), pp. 475-81, 2020. [16] m. arentz, e. yim, l. klaff, s. lokhandwala, f. riedo, m. chong, “characteristics and outcomes of 21 critically ill patients with covid-19 in washington state,” jama, 323(16), pp. 1612-4, 2020. [17] l. li, t. huang, y. wang, z. wang, y. liang, t. huang, “covid-19 patients' clinical characteristics, discharge rate, and fatality rate of meta-analysis,” journal of medical virology, 92(6), pp. 577-83, 2020. [18] n. chen, m. zhou, x. dong, j. qu, f. gong, y. han, “epidemiological and clinical characteristics of 99 cases of 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia in wuhan, china: a descriptive study,” the lancet, 395(10223), pp. 50713, 2020. [19] d. wang, b. hu, c. hu, f. zhu, x. liu, j. zhang, “clinical characteristics of 138 hospitalized patients with 2019 novel coronavirus–infected pneumonia in wuhan, china,” jama, 323(11), pp. 1061-9, 2020. [20] s. boccia, w. ricciardi, j. ioannidis, “what other countries can learn from italy during the covid-19 pandemic,” jama intern med, 180 (7), pp. 927–8, 2020. [21] b. saeed, r. al-shahrabi, o. bolarinwa, “socio-demographic correlate of knowledge and practice toward covid-19 among people living in mosul-iraq: a cross-sectional study,” plos one, 16(3), pp. e0249310, 2021. [22] s. drefahl, m. wallace, e. mussino, s. aradhya, m. kolk, m. brandén, “a population-based cohort study of socio-demographic risk factors for covid-19 deaths in sweden,” nature communications, 11(1), pp. 5097, 2020. [23] r. laxminarayan, b. wahl, s. dudala, k. gopal, s. neelima, k. reddy, “epidemiology and transmission dynamics of covid-19 in two indian states,” science, 370(6517), pp. 691-7, 2020. [24] m. mohanan, a. malani, k. krishnan, a. acharya, “prevalence of covid-19 in rural versus urban areas in a low-income country: findings from a state-wide study in karnataka,” india, 2020. [25] s. shi, m. qin, b. shen, y. cai, t. liu, f. yang, “association of cardiac injury with mortality in hospitalized patients with covid-19 in wuhan, china,” jama cardiology, 5(7), pp. 802-10, 2020. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |126 the effect of ileostomy closure timing on low anterior resection syndrome in patient who underwent low anterior resection for rectal cancer hemn hussain kaka ali qalandar hussein abdulkarim kurdistan center for high qualty anwar shexa hospital, zagros str, sulaimani gastroenterology &hepatology , kurdistan,iraq sulaimani, kurdistan, iraq. qalandaar@gmail.com hemnhkaka@gmail.com karzan seerwan abdulla barham m .m .salih department of surgery department of surgery college of medicine college of medicine faculty of medical sciences university of sulaimani, sulaimani, kurdistan, iraq faculty of medical sciences university of sulaimani, sulaimani, kurdistan, iraq. .karzan.abdulla@univsul.edu.iq barham.muhammed@univsul.edu.iq omar h ghalib hawramy 1. smart health tower, madam mitterrand str, sulaimani, kurdistan, iraq. 2. kurdistan center for gastroenterology &hepatology sulaimani, kurdistan, iraq. syamand orhaman ahmed kurdistan center for gastroenterology &hepatology sulaimani, kurdistan, iraq. syamandahmed@gmail.com article info abstract volume 6 – issue 1june 2021 doi: 10.24017/science.2021.1.13 article history: received 12/7/2021 accepted 29/7/2021 this is a multi-center retrospective study in patients, in whom low anterior resection had been done for rectal cancer, there ileostomy had been done to protect low lying colo-rectal anastomosis, closure of the ileostomy had been delayed in some patients due to patient own will, surgical complications (anastomotic leak) or course of chemotherapy. the aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of temporary ileostomy on postoperative bowel dyfunction which is named low anterior resection syndrome (lars) which is includes; defecation urgency, bowel evacuation difficulty, and loss of control for feces dara ahmed mohammed department of surgery college of medicine faculty of medical sciences university of sulaimani, sulaimani, kurdistan, iraq. dara.marif@univsul.edu.iq mailto:hemnhkaka@gmail.com kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |127 keywords: stoma closure, cancer of rectum, colon cancer, anterior resection, low anterior resection syndrome, radiotherapy and flatus. a total of 50 patients evaluated in the current study, the age of the participants was between 19 to 80 years old and the mean age was 51.96 years. the total number of males was (33, %66). majority of patients were overweight (21, 42%). the distant between tumors and anal orifice were less than 10 cm in (31,62%). the mean duration of fecal diversion was 7.17 months. loop ileostomy were closed before six months in (27,54%). the mean duration of diversion of patients had no lars was 6.87 months which is shorter than those of developed lars (7.31). lower bmi patients were more prone to develop lars, while obese patients are more susceptible to develop major lars. nineteen cases developed lars among those patient’s ileostomies closed before six months, and 15 cases developed lars in whom ileostomies closed after six months. copyright © 2021 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction colo-rectal cancer (crc) is the third most occurring lethal cancers in both genders in developed countries, followed by prostatic cancer in male, breast cancer in females, and lung cancer in both genders, which all have a similar tendency in cancer-specific mortality [1,2]. crc is one of the most occurring malignancies in european countries, with rectal cancer (rc) accounting for about 30% of cases and an annual incidence of 15-25 per 100,000 [3]. total mesolectal excision (tme) with a colo-rectal anastomosis near the pelvic floor is considered as a standard surgical care for rc [4]. the rate of rc survival has dramatically improved as the result of improvement in screening, surgery and chemoradiotherapy. more than 80% of patients with rc underwent low anterior resection (lar) procedure [5]. according to the data of national bowel cancer audit's (nboca), stoma is formed in more than 77% of low lying rectal malignant tumors patients, and in up to 27% of patients the stoma persists beyond 18 months after the surgery [6]. low anterior resection syndrome (lars) is defined as a subsequent change in the bowel habits following lar, resulting in a reduction in quality of life [7]. incidence of lars is about 90% in patients who are undergoing lar with sphincter preservation for low lying cancer of rectum [8]. ilars has been used to describe a broad range of symptoms such as evacuatory dysfunction, fecal urgency, and fecal incontinence [9]. lars has been evaluated in a variety of ways, and incontinence is the most focusing symptom in the majority of reports compared to other symptoms such as frequency of defecation, clustering of feces, incomplete bowel evacuation, and quality of life. the post-operative bowel dysfunctions can be assessed by the unique international scoring system which is evolved to evaluate the bowel function and it is called lars score [5]. the lars scoring system is short and it has more clinical value because it allows patients to be quickly classified into no lars, minor lars, and major lars groups, lars scoring system was publicized for the first time in 2012 and translated versions have been used among different nations [10]. this study aimed to evaluate the effect of ileostomy closure timing on lars in patients in whom lar had been done for low lying rectal cancer. 2. method and materials 2.1 study design this is a multi-centre retrospective study of patient in whom rc resection had been done from (2013 2020). the socio-demographic and clinical data were retrieved from the patients’ medical records and hospital data base. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |128 2.2 inclusion criteria patients who were diagnosed as rc and underwent sphincter preserving lar are included in this study. 2.3 exclusion criteria we exclude from our study any patient without diverting stoma, patient with local recurrent and patient with anal sphincter damage due to a previous surgery. 2.4 preoperative assessment patients who were diagnosed as rc underwent assessment by multidisciplinary team (mdt) for rectal cancer before the operation. decision of operation alone or neo-adjuvant treatment had been done according to the stage of the disease. after confirmation by tissue diagnosis. all patients underwent local and systemic assessment to determine the stage of their disease by colonoscopy, computed tomography (ct) scan of abdomen and chest, magnetic resonance imaging (mri) or eus and/or positron emission tomography (pet) scan. most of the patients were undergone down-staging with pelvic radiation therapy. 2.5 surgical intervention operation had been done by qualified surgeon in multiple centers where tme had been done with an acceptable safety margin. colo-rectal anastomoses had been done by circular stapler, diverting temporary ileostomy had been done to protect the anastomoses. the stoma were been closed after considerable time interval ranging from 1 month to 20 months. ileostomy closure had been delayed in some patients due to patient own will, surgical complications (anastomotic leak) or coarse of chemotherapy. 2.6 post-operative follow-up follow up have been done periodically with clinical examination, blood investigations including carcino-embryonic antigen (cea), colonoscopy and abdominal ct-scan. 2.7 statistical analysis the data were recorded using an excel sheet, later, they were transferred to the statistical package for the social science (spss) version 24 after coding. the descriptive analysis was calculated in form of percentage, mean, range and standard deviation (sd). 3. result a total of 50 patients participated in the current study, the age of them were between 19 to 80 years old with a mean age of 51.96 years at time of follow up. the total number of male patients were 33 (%66). majority of patients were overweight (21, 42%). the tumor was away from anal verge by less than 100 mm in 31 (62%) cases. the mean duration of fecal diversion was 7.17 months. loop ileostomy were closed before six months in 27 (54%) cases. four of 50 patients had a stoma closure beyond 18 months. early closure of the stoma was more in female compared to male. adjuvant chemotherapies were given to 37 (74%) cases. neoadjuvant long course radiotherapies were received by 26 (52%) cases and neoadjuvant short course radiotherapy by 28 (56%). overall, major lars developed in 24 (48%) cases, 10 (20%) patients reported minor lars, and 16 (32%) reported no lars. the prevalence of lars, both major or minor, was 19 of 27 and 15 of 23 in the early and late closure groups. table 1. table 1: characteristic and demographic data of participants kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |129 variable n (%) no. of the patients 50 male 33(66) female 17(34) age at the time of follow up, mean (sd) 51.96(13.51) duration of diversion mean (sd) 7.17(5.40) body mass index bmi under weight normal over weight obese 4(8) 11(22) 21(42) 14(28) t-stage t0-2 t3-4 18(36) 32(64) n-stage n0 n1 n2 18(36) 32(64) 0 distant of the cancer from anal verge  10 cm  10 cm 31(62) 19(38) the time of ileostomy closure ileostomy closed > 6 months ileostomy closed  6 months 27(54) 23(46) patient received neoadjuvant radiotherapy yes no 31(62) 19(38) patient received neoadjuvant chemotherapy yes no 19(38) 31(62) patient received adjuvant radiotherapy yes no 7(14) 43(86) patient received neoadjuvant long course radiotherapy yes no 26(52) 24(48) patient received neoadjuvant short course radiotherapy yes no 28(56) 22(44) no lars yes no 16(32) 34(68) minor lars yes no 10(20) 40(80) major lars yes no 24(48) 26(52) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |130 the mean duration of ileostomy in patients had no lars was 6.87 months which was shorter than those who developed lars (7.31) months, and 7.52 months in patient who developed major lars which was longer compared to those not developed lars (6.85). table 2: table 2: duration of ileostomy and development of lars the mean age of those patients who developed lars was 54.3 years, which was older than those developed had no lars 47.68 years. out of 17 females 14 (82%) developed lars, while only 38.7% of the male patients developed lars. out of 4 patients who bmi were lower than 18.5 kg/m2, 3 patients developed lars, while obese patients were more susceptible to develop major lars. neoadjuvant short and long course radiotherapy had a higher effect on developing major lars. table 3 table 3; characteristics and demographic effect on lars variable no lars minor lars major lars p value age (mean±sd) 47.68±15.70 55.10±14.88 53.5±11.04 <0.001 sex no (%) male female 13(81.3) 3(18.8) 8(80) 2(20) 12(50) 12(50) <0.001 bmi no (%) <18.5 18.5-24.9 25-29.9 >30 1(6.3) 4(25) 6(37.5) 5(31.3) 2(20) 1(10) 6(60) 1(10) 1(4.2) 6(25) 9(37.5) 8(33.3) <0.001 neoadjuvant short course radiotherapy yes no 4(50) 4(50) 2(33.3) 4(66.6) 10(71.4) 4(28.6) <0.001 neoadjuvant long course radiotherapy yes no 4(50) 4(50) 3(42.9) 4(57.1) 8(72.7) 3(27.3) <0.001 adjuvant chemotherapy yes no 12(75) 4(25) 7(70) 3(30) 18(75) 6(25) <0.001 adjuvant radiotherapy yes no 2(12.5) 14(87.5) 2(20) 8 (80) 3(12.5) 21(87.5) <0.001 variable duration of diversion mean±sd p value no lars yes no 6.87±3.66 7.31±6.10 0.058 minor lars yes no 6.81±4.85 7.26±5.59 0.423 major lars yes no 7.52±6.63 6.85±4.07 0.010 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |131 nineteen cases developed lars among those patient ileostomies closed before six months, and 15 cases developed lars in those ileostomies closed after six months. this means that early closure has a higher risk of developing lars with statistically significant difference. table 4 table 4: effect of ileostomy closure timing on lars time of ileostomy closure no lars minor lars major lars p value ileostomy closed  6 months, no(percentage) 8(50) 4(40) 15(62.5) <0.001 ileostomy closed  6 months, no(percentage) 8(50) 6(60) 9(37.5) 4. discussion loop ileostomy is the most common procedure performed in patient with lower rc aimed to prevent complications related to ileoanal and coloanal anastomosis [11]. although it is an essential choice for fecal diversion with the aim of minimizing clinical significance of anastomotic leakage, it is related with serious morbidity, declining life quality which may progress to an irreversible damage [12]. still there is controversy on the effect of temporary diverting stoma on the incidence of functional bowel alteration following lar [13]. there are a broad variety of potential disadvantages associated with stoma such as the need of reoperation, long hospital stays and dehydration [8]. other complications are skin problems, obstruction, bleeding, parastomal hernia, and rarely stoma stenosis [14]. in addition, loop ileostomy formation and closure have a considerable morbidity and increased costs [15]. the overall incidence of leakage and reoperation rates have been shown to be equal in both groups with or without stoma [16], therefore, the decision of making a is even more challenging and further study is needed [17]. anastomotic leakage is a risk factor for developing major lars [18], however, some studies showed no correlation between lars and anastomotic leak [5,19, 20]. a study reported that there is two-fold rise in the incidence of post-operative bowel dysfunction in patients with a diverting stoma [21]. loop ileostomy may alter microbiota and colonic environment [21], affecting the cell turnover of the epithelial lining of the intestine, and altering the structural and functional properties of the intestine [22]. evidences suggested that bowel dysfunctioning after rectal resection is associated with decreased neorectal compliance occurring with lower anastomosis, so it is important to preserve residual rectum as much as possible without affecting adequate tumor clearance [13]. lars may persist for many years after operation [23]. the best time for closure of stoma is 2 to 3 months [14]. most surgeons try to close diversion within 2 to 4 months after primary operation, however the timing of ileostomy closure is different between centers [21, 24]. to date it is recommended that if stoma is created it should be closed before six months after initial operation, since the incidence of lars is lower in that case [5]. there is a similar incidence of post-operative complications and anastomotic leakage between delayed closure and early closure of dyfunctioning stoma after surgery [25]. shaw et al reported that there is a delay in stoma reversal beyond 18 months in up to 40% of patients [26]. in contrast to our study which only 8% of patient got closure after 18 months. many studies reported that diversion stoma is related with post-operative side effects in up to 29% and mortality in a small number of cases [14]. adjuvant chemotherapy is considered as an important factor for delay of ileostomy reversal [27], however, vogel et al reported that there is no reason explaining the delay in stoma closure and there is lack of guidance regarding ideal time of closure of stoma [21]. surgeons think that chemotherapy has bad effect on surgical site regeneration after stoma reversal and recommended that ileostomy reversal better to be delayed till the end of chemotherapy [27]. tulchinsky et al said that reversal of stoma at the time of kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 |132 adjuvant chemotherapy didn’t has bad effect on post-operative hospital time, percentage of reversal complications and death rate compared to those closed after chemotherapy [28]. vrakas et al reported that the time between diversion creation and closure after lar is significantly impacted by chemotherapy [29], however, choi et al illustrated that stoma closure during and after chemotherapy are equally safe [27]. the current study demonstrated that the risk of developing lars between patients with and without chemotherapy is nearly similar. factors such as age of patient, small body mass index, end ileostomy and irradiation are considered as risk factor for the non-reversal of stoma [30]. current study also demonstrated that lower bmi patients are more at risk for developing lars, but obese patients are more prone to have major lars. one third of patient above 70 years undergo non-reversal [31]. the presenting study showed that older aged are at higher risk of developing lars. sun et al reported that preoperative radiotherapy decreased reversal rate [30], however, in another study they mentioned that preoperative radiotherapy doesn’t associate with non-reversal [32]. long coarse neoadjuvant radiotherapy, distance of anastomosis and loop ileostomy are considered as independent risk factors for the development of post-operative bowel dysfunction [20], however perioperative radiotherapy regarded as a risk factor for the loss of fecal controlling during the first six months after surgery, and different studies suggested that pre-operative radiation is a risk factor for developing post-operative bowel dysfunction [33]. similarly, to the present study showed long and short courses neoadjuvant radiotherapy significantly associated with development of lars. postoperative radiotherapy also has a risk of developing anal sphincter dysfunction [34]. nevertheless, radiotherapy is significantly affective in improving overall survival and that’s why the exclusion of this important line of management modality is not a good choice [35]. a study reported that tumor with short distance from anal orifice and tumor with bigger size are more related with lars after surgery [18], however, keane et al reported that longer distance is more associated with lars [8]. hughes et al reported that ileostomy reversal during the first 6 months after primary operation is associated with lower incidence of major lars but reversal beyond one year is associated with higher incidence of major post-operative bowel dysfunction [5], however, jiménezrodríguez et al reported that there is no association between timing of closure of stoma and lars [36]. several studies showed that longer time associated with increased risk of lars without statically significant difference [13,18,19]. keane et al reported that those experienced late stoma closure have a greater problem with soiling [8], however, in the current study early closure of the loop (< 6 months) is importantly related with the development of lars. vogel et al reported that cases with no post-operative bowel dysfunction had a mean duration of time of stoma reversal 10 weeks earlier than patients with major lars. this study had some limitations: a retrospective data was used for the analysis, the times of assessment of patients after surgery were variable between the patients. it was also difficult to retrospectively to collect a detailed information about participants, which is necessary for more detailed analysis. small sample size is another important limitation. the potential strength of this study is that only rectal cancer patients were involved, and there was no bias in this study due to included surgeries of patients with inflammatory bowel disease. 5. conclusion lars represents a major concern of both survivors of malignant rectal tumor and the colorectal surgeons. the current study found that the incidence of lars is about 68% among patients who had a loop 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[36] r. m. jiménez-rodríguez et al., “is the interval from surgery to ileostomy closure a risk factor for low anterior resection syndrome?,” colorectal dis., vol. 19, no. 5, pp. 485–490, 2017.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 2 | july 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.2.17 the causes of early neonatal death in sulaimani intensive care unite at maternity teaching hospital between jan 2016 feb 2017 pary m. azize sulaimani technical institute, nursing departmentq, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, kurdistan region; iraq pary.azize@spu.edu.iq layla a. muhammad sulaimani technical institute, midwifery department, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, , kurdistan region iraq layla.mukriany@gmail.com nasren a. kareem sulaimani technical institute, anesthesiadepartment, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, , kurdistan region iraq nasrenahmad45@yahoo.com abstract: early neonatal death refers to all deaths of liveborn infants occurring on or before the first seven days of life. there is a shortage of research on the specific causes of early neonatal death. this study has been conducted in order to assess causes of early neonatal death in sulaimani's neonatal intensive care unit at maternity teaching hospital. information was obtained retrospectively from the patients’ medical records, including (mother and neonate sociodemographic, maternal, fetal and labor causes of death). generally, this study found that in 2016 out of total 18.573 recorded delivery, 168 early neonatal deaths were analyzed from january 2016 to february 2017. however, this number was declined in comparison to the data of 2015, which estimated around 244 early deaths out of 21.142 total births. the mean age of mothers was ranged (28.22 ±7.69), 73.2% of neonate mothers were multi gravid with 67.3% of them delivered through normal vaginal, the majority of early neonate death was happening in the mean expected date delivery of (28.64 ± 2.90) weeks, with mostly weighing 7001.10 gm. regarding the maternal causes, more than a quarter of the mother had preeclamptic toxemia followed by (25% antepartum hemorrhage, 22.6% diabetes, respectively), in terms of the fetal causes, more than three-quarter of neonate were dead because of prematurity and the majority 85.2% were deceased because of the respiratory distress syndrome. almost no labor causes. the study also found that there is a significant association between gravidity, mode of delivery and maternal cause in p value < 0.05. however, that relationship was not found to fetal cause. moreover, there is also no significant relationship between fetal cause and (age of mother, expected date delivery and fetal weight) in p-value > 0.05 accept the gender of the neonate. in conclusion, some factors affecting early neonatal death have been identified in this study special care is essential for these children in order to reduce their mortality rates. keywords: early neonatal death, preterm death, stillbirth, maternal cause, neonatal cause, nicu 1. introduction any liveborn infant death occurring on or before the first seven days of life is called early neonatal death [1]. therefore, the first 7 days of the infant life accounts as the most critical period, which, the neonate might face many problems and diseases [2]. the majority of death is occurring during this time period, which estimated around three quarters of the neonatal deaths [3] .moreover, who (2016) reported that globally every year, 45% of all children under 5 years occur within the first month of life [4]. the majority of the neonatal death has taken place in the developing countries because of the lack adequate access to health care [5]. further, in iraq who (2010) reported that about 42% of the infant death happen in the neonatal period [6]. therefore, it is important to understand the main causes of death in early neonate life in order to provide an appropriate action and intervention plan to reduce the mortality rate [7]. early neonatal death used as a key indicator of the maternal health problem, so there is a significant relationship between high risk pregnancy and neonatal outcome. as a consequence, any obstetric complications before or during birth are more likely contributing to these deaths [8]. depending on the consistent recording of the pregnancy outcome, who reported that globally, preterm birth is the leading cause of neonatal death and estimated at 1 million deaths at 2013. in addition, over 184 countries, preterm birth contributes to 5%-18% of all neonatal deaths [9]. in many cases, the cause of premature labor cannot be identified. however, there are certain health conditions in the mother that increase the risk of preterm labor such as a mother with diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease and hypertension [10]. further, according to the march of dimes, if the mother is (16 years old or younger) or older (35 years old or older), is more likely to deliver preterm baby [11]. african americans have a higher incidence, as do women who lack access to prenatal health care [12]. there are also neonatal causes of death, such as low birth weight, intrauterine growth retardation, congenital anomaly and r.h isoimmunization [13], reflecting the poor nutrition, preceding and smoking during pregnancy, certain infections, such as urinary tract and amniotic membrane infections, history of preterm deliveries weakened cervix and early dilation (cervical incompetence), preeclampsia after 20 weeks (elevated blood pressure and protein in the urine) and finally premature rupture of the placenta (placenta previa). furthermore, the earlier born baby, the highest risk of having brain damage, blindness, hearing lost, cerebral palsy and also developmental delay. despite, after delivery they suffered from respiratory distress syndrome, brain damage, hypoglycemia, neonatal sepsis, pneumonia and anemia, which might cause a sudden death [14]. obstructed labor and fetal malpresentation, are also remain as a common cause of perinatal death in the absence of obstetric care. birth asphyxia and trauma often occur together during labor. in the most severe cases, the baby dies during birth or soon after, due to damage to the brain and other organs. less severe asphyxia and trauma will cause disability [15]. neonatal intensive care unit (nicu) is a special unit used to manage all the neonate baby who weighs less than normal and they also have a serious health problems, which they require a long stay in the hospital [16]. to reduce the chance of having an early neonatal death, it is important to emphasize on the prenatal care and encourage mothers to visit the health center regularly as standard [17]. furthermore, educate them to eat a high quality diet before and during pregnancy, drink lots of water every day and stop smoking [18]. to prevent the premature birth, there are medications if given early enough, which might slow or stop labor, progesterone hormone supplements also can prevent premature labor in some women. in addition, corticosteroids may also help the baby’s lungs and brain to mature more quickly during the final weeks of pregnancy [19]. 1.1. aim the aim of this study is to assess the causes of early neonatal death at sulaimani's neonatal intensive care unit at maternity teaching hospital from jan 2016 feb 2017, this aim will address the following objectives. 1.2. objectives determine the mother and neonate socio-demographic data estimate the most common maternal causes of early neonatal deaths find out the most common neonatal and labor causes of early neonatal deaths investigate the effects of different risk factors like (mother’s age, neonate gender, edd, birth weight and causes of death 2. methods and materials this retrospective based study was carried out in the neonatal intensive care unit at sulaimani's maternity teaching hospital for the period of one year from first jan 2016 to first of feb 2017. the main sample of this study involved 168 deaths, which consists of all early neonatal death find in the nicu in one year. a wellstructured questionnaire was used to record information about the patient information such as: mother and neonate socio demographic data, which includes (mother’s age, expected date delivery (week), gender, birth weight, gravidity and mode of delivery). to find the causes of early neonatal death, this study records the available maternal, neonatal and labor causes of death. additional information was also obtained from the obituary record of the deceased baby. permission was taken from the department of health and also from an authorized person at the maternity hospital in order to review the patient information in our study. data was analyzed using package known as statistical package for social science 21.0. descriptive statistics such as (frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation) were used in order to describe the data. fisher's exact test was used to find the relationship between the variables of study and f-test were used to determine the association between socio-demographics of the patients with variables of the study. 2. results the main sample of this study involved 168 patients, who were selected from the total labor in sumanai's nicu from january 2016 to february 2017. the sample was stratified by mother and neonate socio-demographic data, maternal, neonatal and labor causes of early neonatal death and some other causes of the premature death. table (1): distribution of mother and neonate socio-demographic characteristics characteristics frequency n=168 percent %100 mean ± s.d age of mother 28.22 ± 7.69 less than 20 12 7.1 20-29 87 51.7 30-39 56 33.3 40 and more 13 7.9 gender of baby male 82 48.8 female 86 51.2 expected date delivery 28.64 ± 2.90 (20-24) w 12 7.1 (25-29) w 94 56.0 (30-34) w 58 34.5 (35-40) w 4 2.4 birth weight less than 0.700 8 4.8 1.17 ± 0.36 0.700 1.10 79 47.0 1.10-1.50 29 17.3 1.50 and more 52 31.0 gravidity primi 45 26.8 multi 123 73.2 mode of delivery vaginal 113 67.3 c/s 55 32.7 table (1) shows that the mean age of the mothers was (28.22 ± 7.69) years, ranging from less than 20 to 40 and more, of the total study samples: 51.7% of the mothers were aged between 20 to 29; followed by 33.3% were aged between 30 to 39; 7.9% were aged 40 and more; merely 7.1% were aged less than 20 years. the mean expected date delivery of the total sample was (28.64 ± 2.90) weeks, more than half of the neonate 56.0% were delivered between 25 to 29 weeks, followed by 34.5% between 30 to 34 weeks; and a minority of them 2.4% were delivered between 20 to 24 weeks. in terms of birth weight: the mean and standard deviation of neonate weight were (1.17 ± 0.36), almost half of the neonates 47.0% weight were between 0.700 to 1.10 grams with the highest frequency compare to others; followed by 31.0% of them were 1.5 grams and more; 17.3% of them were between 1.10 gram to 1.50 grams and only 4.8% of them were weight less than 0.700. in terms of gravidity, 73.2% were multi gravida and 26.8% were primi. regarding the mode of delivery, majority 67.3% of the neonates were delivered through vagina and 32.7% were delivered by c/s. table (2) shows causes of early neonatal death. in terms of maternal cause pre eclamptic toxemia of the neonate mothers estimated as a higher range 31.%, followed by 25.0% antipurtum hemorrhage, 22.6% with diabetes millitus and 21.4% were rupture uterus. regarding neonatal causes, of the total samples: majority of the early neonatal death 79.7% were prematur; followed by 11.3% r.h isoimmunization; 5.4% congenital anomaly and 3.6% iugr. moreover, 97.7% of the total sample did not have any labor cause, otherwise, minority 1.2% of them had birth injury and birth asphyxia. it can be seen in the table (3) the causes of premature death, which: accounts as 134:168 early neonatal deaths. 85.2 % died as a result of rds, which were estimated the majority compared to other causes; 7.4% died because of septesimea; 3.7% died causing by hydropes fetalis; 3.7 % died causing by twine. as shown in the table (4) that there were no statistically significant relationship between neonatal cause and age of mother, expected date delivery, and neonatal weight because the p-value of these were greater than the common alpha 0.05. however, there were statistically significant relationship between neonatal cause and gender of the baby because pvalue were less than the common alpha 0.05. table (5) shows that there is a statistically significant relationship between mode of delivery and maternal cause because the p< 0.05 in relation to maternal cause among the study sample table (6) indicated that there is no statistically significant relationship between gravidity and neonatal cause because the p-value were greater than the common alpha 0.05. table (2): causes of early of neonatal death characteristics frequency n=168 percent 100% maternal cause antepartum haemorrhage (aph) 42 25.0 pre-eclamptic toxemia (pet) 52 31.0 diabetes mellitus (d.m) 38 22.6 rapture uterus 36 21.4 neonatal cause r.h isoimmunization 19 11.3 congenital anomaly 9 5.4 intrauterine growth retardation (iugr) 6 3.6 prematurity 134 79.7 labor cause brith injury 2 1.2 brith asphyxia 2 1.2 muconeumaspiration 0 0.0 none of them 164 97.6 table (3): causes of premature death premature causes frequency percent rds 114 85.2 septesimea 10 7.4 hydropes fetalis 5 3.7 twin 5 3.7 total 134 100.0 table (4): relationship between patients' criteria and neonatal causes variables f-test for comparing (neonatal cause) p-value sig. age 0.65 0.58 ns edd 0.63 0.593 ns gender of baby 3.417 0.019 s neonate weight 1.016 0.387 ns https://www.google.iq/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahukewjpt57i9yhvahxkhxokhrp9av4qfggqmae&url=https%3a%2f%2fpatient.info%2fdoctor%2fantepartum-haemorrhage&usg=afqjcnesdogssrkjwtnlclaafffjbmvz3a http://www.google.iq/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahukewikmuwl9yhvahub2bokhezwb1kqfgggmaa&url=http%3a%2f%2fgynaeonline.com%2fpet.htm&usg=afqjcngtfskqesfrebzjvecpqtkhdkt35w table (5): association between mode of delivery and maternal cause mode of delivery maternal cause a. p. h p. e. t d. m rupture uterus total vaginal 32 19.1% 35 20.8% 22 13.1% 24 14.3% 113 67.3% c/s 10 5.9% 17 10.2% 16 9.5% 12 7.1% 55 32.7% total 42 25.0% 52 31.0% 38 22.6% 36 21.4% 168 fisher’s exact 13.042 p-value 0.038 table (7): association between mode of delivery and neonatal cause mode of deliver y neonatal cause r.h isoimmu ni-zation congenital anomaly iugr prematur e total vagina l 13 7.7% 4 2.4% 3 1.8% 93 55.4% 113 67.3 % c/ s 6 3.6% 5 3.0% 3 1.8% 41 24.3% 55 32.7 % total 19 11.3% 9 5.4% 6 3.6% 134 79.7% 168 fisher’ s exact 3.23 p-value 0.35 it is clear in the table (7) that there is no statistically significant relationship between mode of delivery and neonatal cause because the p-value were greater than the common alpha 0.05. 3. discussion a retrospective quantitative study was chosen in order to find out the main causes of early neonatal death among all the neonate delivered at sulaimania maternity teaching hospital. this study found that in 2016 out of total 18.573 recorded delivery, 168 of them were dead in the early neonatal period. however, this number was declined in comparison to the data of 2015, which estimated around 244 early neonatal deaths. regarding the distribution of mother and neonatal demographic data, the current study found that the higher early neonatal death 51.7% were happening amongst mothers aged between 20 to 29; merely 7.1% were aged less than 20 years and the mean age of the mothers was (28.22 ± 7.69) years. therefore, there is no significant association between mother’s age and neonatal causes of death, in contrast to this result [20], conducted a systematic review and pointed to the impact of the young mother of having a low birth weight infant and preterm labor, which strongly related to the risk of early neonatal death, estimated as a higher risk of mortality rate in this present study. a retrospective cohort study conducted to determine the risk of the maternal age on the neonatal death, stated that in mother more than 44 years, immediate delivery is recommended to decrease the risk of losing the baby, this indicates that there is an effect of maternal age on the neonatal death [21].this study also observed differences between gravidity (primi and multi gravid) in terms, of early neonatal death and reported that almost three quarters of the early deaths happened in multi gravid, with mostly delivered through normal vagina. this finding is supported by the retrospective study was carried out to determine the effect of mode of delivery on the perinatal mortality, found that cesarean section was not impacted on the neonatal death [22]. our analysis stated that generally maternal and obstetric complication were significantly associated with child mortality. preeclamptic toxemia is a major cause of maternal, macerate and neonate death [23,5]. this current study found that pre-eclamptic toxemia (pet) were the main primary obstetric events that led to early neonatal deaths in pregnancies. these results are consistent with the literature reviewed to diagnose and manage the obstetric preeclapmsia [24]. found that preclamsia to be a disorder that considerably reflects on a neonatal outcome and leads them to death if they are not delivered earlier. with regard to the neonatal causes of early neonatal death as documented in the hospital records, prematurity accounts as a high risk of death in the newborn and are the leading cause of death [25]. the current study is in line with this fact and found that more than three quarters of the early neonatal deaths is prematurity who delivered between 25-29 weeks of gestation with low birth weight as the majority we re weighed between 0.700 1.10 gm. this finding supported by the descriptive, exploratory cross-sectional study obtained the information from the hospital mortality record system in cuiabá, indicated that prematurity and low table (6): association between gravidity and neonatal cause gravidity neonatal cause r.h isoimmunization congenital anomaly iugr premature total primi 6 3.5% 4 2.3% 0 0.0% 35 21.0% 45 26.8% multi 13 7.8% 5 3.1% 6 3.6% 99 58.7% 123 73.2% total 19 11.3% 9 5.4% 6 3.6% 134 79.7% 168 fisher’s exact 3.87 p-value 0.27 http://www.google.iq/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahukewikmuwl9yhvahub2bokhezwb1kqfgggmaa&url=http%3a%2f%2fgynaeonline.com%2fpet.htm&usg=afqjcngtfskqesfrebzjvecpqtkhdkt35w birth weight were the leading causes of early neonatal death, thus, they recommended improving a quality of prenatal care [1]. further, in a prospective hospital based study was conducted to identify the impact of low birth weight on neonatal mortality [26], also in consistent with our findings stated that lbw increase the risk of neonatal deaths. therefore, reduction and prevention of preterm birth with low birth weight through access to the advance quality of pre and postnatal care, which, might play an active role in reducing the neonatal mortality [27]. in terms of the labor cause of early neonatal deaths, the present study illustrated that majority 97.7% of the total sample did not have any labor cause. this could be argued by a prospective descriptive observational study conducted in the delivery room and adjacent neonatal area, seen that birth asphyxia and failure to resuscitation is the leading causes of neonatal death more than prematurity and low birth weight. consequently, this analysis indicates that there is almost a great labor care in our hospital delivery room with regular antenatal visits and resuscitation, which might reduce antenatal mortality. therefore, to promote, support and protect safe birth, it is important to use the standard maternity care to make the safe birth to the mother and their baby [28]. 4. conclusion some factors affecting early neonatal death have been identified in this study, which includes (maternal and neonatal demographic data, maternal and neonatal causes). this study found that generally, the number of early neonatal deaths in 2016 was declined in comparison to the data from 2015. in terms of mother and neonatal demographic data, this study concluded that the predominance of mother’s age were (25-29) years old., the majority of early neonate death was happening in the mean expected date delivery of (28.64 ± 2.90) weeks, with mostly weighing 7001.10 gm. more than a quarter of the mother had preeclamptic toxemia. regarding neonatal causes, prematurity and low birth weight were the leading cause of early neonatal death. respiratory distress syndrome was the commonest primary cause addressed, among all premature deaths. better quality of prenatal and antenatal care are recommended and also educating mother regarding some 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[27] hl. ersdal, e. mduma, e. svensen, j. perlman, “birth asphyxia: a major cause of early neonatal mortality in a tanzanian rural hospital,” pediatrics, vol. 129, pp. e1238-1243, 2012. [28] ja. lothian, “safe, healthy birth: what every pregnant woman needs to know,” the journal of perinatal education, vol. 18, pp. 48–54, 2009. acknowledgments the authors wish to thank the staff of statistics and recording system at a maternity teaching hospital especially mrs hawnaz for her cooperation in providing the data, and also the referees of the journal and conference for their helpful comments.we are deeply grateful to dr. shaho mohammad wasta abdullah, for his valuable guidance the statistical analysis. biography corresponding first author dr. pary m. azize is a lecturer who works with students to help them in expanding their knowledge regarding child health.. pary believes that nurses and doctors should work together in order to improve the quality of medical and nursing care. pary has worked on the scientific board of sulaimani department of health to develop the knowledge, practices and attitude of the nurses. pary has 8 publications nationally and internationally and received the first prize award at the research methods conference in one of the universities of england. pary is interested in reading scientific books, enjoys swimming at her, spare time and loves traveling. pary holds a phd in health applied study from plymouth university, england. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/pary_azize https://sites.google.com/a/spu.edu.iq/pary-azize/ second author layla a. mohamad has worked as an assistant lecturer at sulaimani technical institute, midwifery department, working with students to increase their scientific level practically. layla believes that by the good antenatal care and management of the premature baby in the standard nicu can survive premature baby from death layla interested in reading the general and history books and traveling abroad layla hold an msc degree in pediatric nursing third author nasren a. kareem has worked as an assistant lecturer and head of anesthesia department at sulaimani technical institute. nasren certified teacher in maternity and gynecology nursing. nasren believes that the healthy pregnancy can lead to the healthy baby and always instruct mother about, prenatal, antenatal and postnatal care. nasren do spend her free time reading a nursing book, listening to music and spending time with her family. nasren holds an msc degree in maternity nursing from https://www.uptodate.com/contents/preterm-labor-beyond-the-basics/abstract/5 https://www.uptodate.com/contents/preterm-labor-beyond-the-basics/abstract/5 https://www.uptodate.com/contents/preterm-labor-beyond-the-basics/abstract/5 https://www.uptodate.com/contents/preterm-labor-beyond-the-basics/abstract/5 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=gibbs%20cm%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=22742615 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=wendt%20a%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=22742615 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=peters%20s%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=22742615 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=hogue%20cj%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=22742615 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=abstract&list_uids=24641538 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=abstract&list_uids=24641538 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=uzan%20j%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=21822394 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=carbonnel%20m%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=21822394 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=piconne%20o%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=21822394 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=asmar%20r%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=21822394 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=ayoubi%20jm%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=21822394 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=english%20fa%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=25767405 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=kenny%20lc%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=25767405 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=mccarthy%20fp%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=25767405 https://www.google.iq/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahukewi8ukqg1prvahvdthqkhrdqdg8qfggjmaa&url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.dovepress.com%2fintegrated-blood-pressure-control-archive42&usg=afqjcnen01flfult4bp3avpyvbxoq7vdcw https://www.google.iq/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahukewi8ukqg1prvahvdthqkhrdqdg8qfggjmaa&url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.dovepress.com%2fintegrated-blood-pressure-control-archive42&usg=afqjcnen01flfult4bp3avpyvbxoq7vdcw https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=ersdal%20hl%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=22508912 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=mduma%20e%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=22508912 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=svensen%20e%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=22508912 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=perlman%20j%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=22508912 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22508912 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=lothian%20ja%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=19750214 http://www.google.iq/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahukewjbxmjgn53vahvgvhqkhvygbx8qfgggmaa&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.springerpub.com%2fthe-journal-of-perinatal-education.html&usg=afqjcnhfmmpzx5ret9uozotfeneggjllya http://www.google.iq/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahukewjbxmjgn53vahvgvhqkhvygbx8qfgggmaa&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.springerpub.com%2fthe-journal-of-perinatal-education.html&usg=afqjcnhfmmpzx5ret9uozotfeneggjllya https://www.researchgate.net/profile/pary_azize https://sites.google.com/a/spu.edu.iq/pary-azize/ nursing school at sulaimania university kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 1 | june 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.1.6 a study of oropharyngeal parasites infection in doves and domestic pigeons in some villages of garmian -iraqi kurdistan region mohammed abdulkareem wahhab sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq mohammed.wahhab@spu.edu.iq nawzad rasheed abdulrahman college of veterinary medicine, sulaimani university, sulaimani, iraq nawzad1954ra@gmail.com shahnaz abel-kader ali college of medicine, sulaimani university, sulaimani, iraq shahnaz.abdulkader@gmail.com abstract: the present study was performed in garmian area-iraqi kurdistan region on doves and domestic pigeons (columbids) which were collected during the period from the1st of december 2015 to 30th april 2016 to study the naturally occurring of oropharyngeal parasites and their prevalence rates of infections. the wet samples were swabbed from oral cavity and pharyngeal region of all birds, and then screened by wet mount searching for parasites. the results of the current study revealed that only one species of protozoan parasite was identified which was trichomonas gallinae. the results also showed that the total prevalence rate of infection from the total number of examined birds (249) was 54 (21.69%). out of the 142 doves (63 males and 79 females) and 107 domestic pigeons (62 males and 45 females) examined, 29 (20.42%) doves [13 (20.63%) males and 16 (20.25%) females)] and 25 (23.36%) domestic pigeons [15 (24.19%) males and 10 (22.22%) females) were infected with t. gallinae protozoon parasite. in the present study it was found that the two examined bird species were infected with this protozoon and there was a gradual rise in prevalence of infection from beginning to end of the study. small variations in the prevalence rate of t. gallinae infection between doves (20.42%) and domestic pigeons (23.36%) were observed but this variation not reached to the level of statistical significance (p >0.05). it is worthy to note that in all of the infected birds in the study trichomoniasis occurred without observation of any apparent secondary diseases or signs. in conclusion trichomoniasis is less common in urban doves and domestic pigeons in garmian area, kurdistan regioniraq. further research is suggested in relation to protozoan parasite in other bird species in a study will be conducted in all months of the year to find the reasons which affect the prevalence rate of infection and to estimate the parasite-host relationship. keywords: doves, domestic pigeons, oropharyngeal parasites, prevalence, garmian iraq. 1. introduction doves and domestic pigeons are spread everywhere on earth, especially found around human habitations, in farmland, villages and towns, domestication of pigeons have been performed for many years that they have been employed as a diet, pets or civilized and spiritual signs [1]. in other aspects columbids play a role as a store of trichomonads to other bird hosts [2]. as well as transmission of many diseases are occurred by columbiformes to humans beings and animals; many species of parasites infect columbids, resulting in reduced performance and mortality of the host [3,4]. trichomonas gallinae is a pathogenic sarcomastigophoran protozoa ordinarily found in the pharynx and respiratory tracts of columbiformes as well as in certain avian predators that feed on columbids [5]. this parasite is the cause of trichomoniasis in birds which is proliferative necrotic lesions known as “canker” in pigeons. turkeys, chickens, and a wide variety of wild birds are parasitized but with a varying degrees of pathogenicity [6,7,8,9,10]. after infection with t. gallinae the symptoms may appear as asymptomatic or mild disease to a sudden death within 4–18 days. the clinical manifestations include regurgitation, anorexia, or respiratory failure due to large choky materials which obstruct the respiratory tract that cause death by malnutrition [11,12,13]. trichomonads do not require an intermediate host or vector and are transmitted through direct contact or through ingestion of contaminated water or food. infected adults can transmit the parasite to their off springs during feeding activities. parental feeding of young is an effective method of parasite transmission. t. gallinae reproduces by longitudinal binary fission. cysts, sexual stages, or vectors are not known. the organism is transferred to squabs by infection of “pigeon milk” from adults. in chicken and turkey flocks, infection is spread by contamination of drinking water mailto:mohammed.wahhab@spu.edu.iq mailto:nawzad1954ra@gmail.com mailto:shahnaz.abdulkader@gmail.com and perhaps feed [10]. the life cycle of the parasite has no resistant stage or cyst just the trophozoite stage has been mentioned [7,10]. the aims of the current study were to identify the detected oropharyngeal parasites and show the prevalence rates of infection in doves and domestic pigeons in the study area during the period extended from the 1st of december 2015 to 30th april 2016 and also tried to compare the prevalence rates with those reported in the previous studies and explaining the reasons of differences if they are present. 2. materials and methods the current study was conducted between the times which extended from 1st of december 2015 to 30th april 2016 in garmian area-iraqi kurdistan region, its capital is kalar district which is located at 150 km. southeast of sulaimani district center, on apparently healthy doves and domestic pigeons. two hundred and forty nine doves (fig. 1 a) and domestic pigeons (fig.1 b) with different ages and genders were collected randomly from different districts, sub-districts and villages to identify the detected parasites and to study the prevalence rates of infections in both bird species. each collected birds were directly transmitted to the parasitological laboratory, enough special feed and water are provided to them, and immediately after gentle sampling all the birds were released. direct smears were prepared freshly by tissue swabs from oral cavity and pharynx of each sampled from dove and domestic pigeon, was mixed gently with a drop of normal saline on a clean, dry glass slides, and covered with a cover slip, examined under the light microscope as fresh mounts [7,14] to detect the flagellated parasite movement. then to detect the internal structures of the detected parasites a drop of logul's stain was added then covered with a cover slip [15,16]. trichomonad species were only observed by their motility and flagellates in the field of microscope (1000x) [17,18]. comparison of overall prevalence rates of the parasitic infections between the doves and domestic pigeons as well as their sexes was analyzed by using chi square test with employing spss programme. the statistical differences were distincted significant at p<0.05. photos were taken with iphone 6 (s) model mkqr2ah/a, camera12megapixel. figure (1): pictures of doves (a) and domestic pigeons (b) 3. results the only oropharyngeal parasite had been detected microscopically in this study using freshly prepared wet mount was trichomonas gallinae protozoon figure (2), which was observed in 54 out of 234 examined doves and domestic pigeons, thus the overall prevalence rate was 23.08%, and separately, of the total of 142 doves (63 males and 79 females) and 107 domestic pigeons (62 males and 45 females) inspected in study, 29 (20.42%) doves [13 (20.63%) males and 16 (20.25%) females)] and 25 (23.36%) domestic pigeons [15 (24.19%) males and 10 (22.22%) females) were infected with this parasite table (1). a statistical significant difference in the infection rate between the doves (20.42%) and domestic pigeons (23.36%) was not observed (χ² = 0.311, p=0.577 table-1), also this difference in the prevalence rates of infections between males and females in overall examined birds was not significant (χ² = 0.075, p=0.784 table-1). the organism was rapidly moving, pear-shaped protozoa, which have typically four free flagella arising from a basal granule at the anterior pole of the organism, a narrow prominent axostyle usually extends well beyond the posterior end of the body and an undulating membrane originates at the anterior pole of the body does not reach the posterior pole figure (2). these morphological features of the detected t. gallinae were similar to those described by [10,14,19,20,21]. the infection with t. gallinae in birds creates lesions which is a cheese-like appearance in buccal cavity and/or esophagus, whereas these lesions were not found in this study and any signs were not showed. table (1): rate of infection with trichomonas gallinae according to sex in doves and domestic pigeons (n=234). birds no. of examined birds no.and % of infected birds rate male fem ale male female doves (142) 63 79 13 (20.63%) 16 (20.25%) 29 (20.42%)b domes tic pigeon s (107) 62 45 15 (24.19%) 10 (22.22%) 25 (23.36%) b total % (234) 125 124 28 (22.4%) a 26 (20.97%) a 54 (23.08%) *values with same superscripts within a row and column were nonsignificant (p>0.05). figure (2): trichomonas gallinae trophozoite parasite from oropharyngeal cavity of naturally infected doves and domestic pigeons stained with lugol's stain 4. discussion the current study on oropharyngeal parasites in doves and domestic pigeons in garmian administration, kurdistan region-iraq was the first one that identified the trichomonas gallinae parasite in both examined bird species after [22] who recently reported this protozoan parasite in feral pigeons in sulaimani province, kurdistan region-iraq. in the study, the overall prevalence of infection with t. gallinae trophozoite in both birds in the study area was 23.08% (20.42% in doves and 23.36% in domestic pigeons), statistically the differences between the rates in doves and domestic pigeons as well as their sexes were not significant. prevalence of infection with t. gallinae differs in association to sex; there were no significant differences between the male and the female pigeons. in contrast to that recently reported by [23] the present study showed that t. gallinae in columbids did not cause any diphtheritic lesion in oral cavity and esophagus; this was similar to the results reported by [24] who found no lesions. however, subclinical infections with this protozoan are mainly occurred as the result of infection with apathogenic strains and host immune condition has a role to impact the progression of clinical disease [25]. the relatively high incidence of infections in otherwise normal columbids can be attributed to strain variations, acquired immunity, or both. pigeons are immune to disease from virulent strains of trichomonads after recovery from sublethal trichomoniasis [26] lesions and mortality in columbids were found due to a pathogenic strain of the parasite [27] the current prevalence was in line with the following studies conducted in iraq, neighboring countries and also in other countries in the world: [28] performed a study in different species of pigeons in mosul city, iraq, to document trichomoniasis during 2005-2007, three species of doves were included, stock dove (columba oenas), rock mountain dove (columba livia), and collared doves (streptopelia decaocto), the prevalence rates were 22%, 17.50% and 10%, respectively. another study in iraq among free-living urban pigeons from august to september 2007 was performed by [23] who reported a prevalent rate with trichomoniasis of 16% and [29] performed a pathological study of parasitism in racing pigeons in which the rate of infection with t. gallinae was 26.80% in ilam city, iran. [30] examined 44 pigeons in spain, trinidad, nine harboured t. gallinae at a rate of 20.45%. [31] investigated the rate of t. gallinae in domestic pigeon in guangdong province, china from july 2009 and january 2010 that was 33.90%. whereas, the results of the current study disagreed with those recorded by most researchers. recently three studies in iraq were conducted about the parasite [32] reported the incidence and occurrence of trichomoniasis in domesticated and wild pigeons at al-diwaniya city, the total percentages of positive results were 46%, 30.57%, for the two birds respectively. [33] found in a study of domestic and wild columbid birds in babylon province, the infection rate with t. gallinae in wood pigeons was highest which was 53.33% followed by palm doves, collared doves, domestic pigeons, rock pigeons 11.12 %,13.34% 30%, 40% and respectively. [34] found t. gallinae in domestic pigeons with obvious oral cavity lesion in al-diwaniya city, with the rate of 10.52%. in the center of iran, [35] performed a study on pigeons in which the total prevalence rate of t. gallinae was 70.09%. in a study conducted by [36] recorded infection of columba livia collected in various locations in khorasan province, iran, the prevalence of t. gallinae was 37.32%, and in isfahan, iran. [36] recorded the prevalence 57% of t. gallinae in (columba livia domestica) from january to june 2010. in a study monitoring the annual variation of t. gallinae infection for six years in doves a 5.6% of the mourning doves were seen to be positive for t. gallinae [38]. in perth, western australia, [39] found the t. gallinae of rock senegal doves (streptopelia senegalensis) and racing pigeons the rates of infections were 46% and 59% respectively. the reasons of various prevalences of t. gallinae infection reported in different bird species could not be interpreted well but generally it is thought that they were related to climatic factors, geographical and seasonal variations, immunity of the birds, host ages, difference in detection assays, while seasonal variation as a obvious reason was noticed in this study as well as in previous studies [40]. although it was proved that transmission of the t. gallinae can happen throughout the year, though many researchers go along with that wet seasons (spring and summer) are perfect for good outbreak [41,42]. previous studies showed huge differences in the rate of the trichomonads in columbids among countries in the world [38,39, 43]. prevalence rate of infection of t. gallinae in pigeons was higher at the warmer sites and times besides the lower rainfall [44], however these factors might support the low reported prevalence of the identified parasite in the present study which carried out in warmer regions and quite during the cold seasons of the year which were winter and spring seasons. host parasite relationship is much powerful so this fact was proved by the most previous studies in which authors recorded a high prevalence rate of t. gallinae infection and the low rate of pathological changes in columbid birds [45]. 5. conclusions the result of the present study indicated that the trichomonad infection was quite common in doves and domestic pigeons in this area. the prevalence rates of infections with this parasite for both examined birds were almost equal and statistical differences between these rates were not significant as well as between their sexes. this study was considered the first one that conducted in this area among the columbiformes. 6. recommendation it recommended that further investigations will be needed to survey the all bird species in this area around all seasons of the year in regards to prevalence rate of ecto and endoparasites, pathological effects of these parasites and their transmissions to other avian species, animals and humans. for accurate and facilitation of identifying the species of the detected parasites most developmental techniques such as elisa or pcr will be also recommended. 7. references [1] j. e. cooper (1984). a veterinary approach to pigeons. j small anim. pract., 24:505–516. 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[26] l. r. mcdougald (2008). ‗protozoal infections‘: histomoniasis (blackhead) and other protozoan diseases of the intestinal tract, in: y. m.saif; a. m. fadly; j. r. glisson; l. k. nolan and d. e. swayne (eds.) diseases of poultry. 12th edition, blackwell publishing, state avenue, ames, iowa, usa. [27] m. marx, g. reiner , h willems , g. rocha , k. hillerich , j. f. masello , s. l. mayr , s. moussa , j. c. dunn , r. c. thomas , s. j. goodman , k. c. hamer , b. metzger , j. g. cecere , f. spina , s. koschkar , l. calderón , t.romeike and p. quillfeldt (2017). high prevalence of trichomonas gallinae in wild columbids across western and southern europe. marx et al. parasites & vectors,10:242. [28] h. s. al-bakry (2009). prevalence of avian trichomoniasis in different species of pigeons in mosul. iraqi j. vet. sci., 23 (2):105-109. [29] a. m. bahrami, a. l. monfared and m. razmjoo (2012). pathological study of parasitism in racing pigeons: an indication of its effects on community health. african j. biotech., 11 (59): 12364-12370. [30] j. s. kaminjolo, e. s. tikasingh and g. a. a. ferdinand (1988). parasites of the common pigeon (columba livia) from the environs of port of spain. trinidad. bull. anim. hlth. prod. afric., 36:194 195. [31] s. b. qiu, c. yan, d. h. zhou , j. hou, q. q. wang, y. lin, h. c. fu, j. zhang, y. b. weng, h. q. song and r. q. lin (2012). high prevalence of trichomonas gallinae in domestic pigeons (columba livia domestica) in subtropical southern china. afric. j. microbiol. res., 6 (13): 3261-3264. [32] n. sabeeh and a. abdulaziz (2012). isolation of birds trichomoniasis from domesticated and wild pigeon at al-diwaniya city. al-qadisiya j. vet. med. sci., 11(1): 101-104. [33] h. m. al-rammahi, m. h. al-hasnawy and a. k. abbas (2013). concurrent infection of cestodes with trichomoniasis in domestic and wild columbides birds in babylon province. the iraqi j.vet. med., 37 (2): 192-198. [34] a. a. a. abed, h. a. naji and a. g. rhyaf (2014). investigation study of some parasites infected domestic pigeon (columba livia domestica) in al diwaniya city. j. pharm. biol. sci., 9 (4): 13-20. [35] kh. pirali-kheirabadi, m. shakhse-niaie and n. hossaini (2008). epidemiological aspects of pigeon trichomoniasis in center of iran. res. j. parasitol., 3(1): 20-24. [36] h. borji, g. h. razmi, a. h. movassaghi, e. moghaddas and m. azad (2011). prevalence and pathological lesion of trichomonas gallinae in pigeons of iran. j. parasitol. dis., 35 (2): 186 (abstract). [37] a. nematollahi, m. ebrahimi, a. ahmadi and m. himan (2012). prevalence of haemoproteus columbae and trichomonas gallinae in pigeons (columba domestica) in isfahan, iran. j. parasitol. dis., 36 (1):141-142. [38] j. h. schulz, a. j. bermudez and j. j. millspaugh (2 0 0 5). monitoring presence and annual variation of trichomoniasis in mourning doves. avian dis. 49: 387-389. [39] t. mckeon, j. dunsmore and s. r. raidal (1997). trichomonas gallinae in budgerigars and columbid birds in perth, western australia. australian vet. j., 75 (9): 652-655 (abstract). [40] m. h. saleem, m. s. khan, a. s. chaudry and h. a. samad (2008). prevalence of trichomoniasis in domestic and wild pigeon and its effect on hematological parameters. pakistan vet. j., 28 (2): 89-91. [41] c. vogel, h. gerlach and m. loffler (1994). "columbiformes", in:, b. w. ritchie, g. j. harrison and l. r. harrison (eds.), avian medicine: principles and application, wingers publishing inc., lake worth, florida. [42] r.w. gerhold, c.m. tate, s.e. gibbs, d. g. mead, a. b. allison and j. r. fischer (2007). necropsy findings and arbovirus surveillance in mourning doves from southeastern united states. journal of wildlife diseases, 43, 129-135. [43] j. a. conti and d. j. forrester (1981). interrelationships of parasites of white-winged doves and mourning doves in florida. journal of wildlife diseases, 17: 529-536. [44] n. bunburg, c. g. jones, a. g. greenwood and d. j. bell (2007). "trichomonas gallinae in mauritian columbides: implications or an endangered endemic." j. wildl. dis., 43 (3): 399-407. [45] o. krone, r. altenkamp and n. kenntner (2005). prevalence of trichomonas gallinae in northern goshawk from berlin area of northeastern germany. journal of wildlife diseases, 41, 304 309. acknowledgements thanks a lot to head of animal health department in kalar technical institute, for his excellent help in the providing of the parasitological laboratory. there was no funding support for our study before publishing, all the financial needs were provided by the authors. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 156 the antibacterial property of nigella sativa (black seed) oil against gram-positive and gramnegative bacteria sakar ahmed abdullah tara faeq m. salih medical laboratory department medical laboratory department college of health and medical technology college of health and medical technology sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq sakar.ahmad@spu.edu.iq tara.faeq@spu.edu.iq abdullah ahmed hama salar ibrahim ali research center, medical laboratory department nursing department college of health and medical technology college of health and medical technology sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq mls, college of health science salar.ali@spu.edu.iq university of human development sulaimani, iraq abdullah.hama@spu.edu.iq hassan hussein hamaamin department of biology college of science university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq hassan.hamaamin@unisul.iq article info abstract volume 6 – issue 2– december 2021 doi: 10.24017/science.2021.2.15 article history: received 11/10/2021 accepted 26/1/2022 antibacetrial resistance and bacterial genetic modification is one of the most challenges that face the world today, and it is heading toward the post-antibiotic era. traditionally, herbal extracts, medicinal plant oil extracts, and probiotics have been used as an alternative to antibiotics, because most bacteria become resistant agenst antibiotic inspit of drug side effects. this work is designed to estimate the antibacterial efficacy of nigella sativa (n.sativa) oil extracts against common antibiotic resistant bacteria, including methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (mrsa) and pseudomonas aeruginosa (p. aeruginosa). the black seed was purchased from the traditional herbal medicine market. the oil was extracted using hydro distillation and steam distillation method. the bacteria were obtained from a microbiology company and from clinical samples at the shar hospital in sulaimani provence. the gramnegative bacteria were; salmonella enterica (s. enterica), escherichia coli (e.coli), and pseudomonas aeruginosa (p. aerouginosa) while the gram-positive bacteria were; mrsa, bacillus subtilis (b.subtilis), and bacillus cereus (b.cereus). the keywords: nigella sativa, antimicrobial effect, antibiotic, multidrugresistant, mrsa. mailto:sakar.ahmad@spu.edu.iq mailto:tara.faeq@spu.edu.iq mailto:salar.ali@spu.edu.iq mailto:hassan.hamaamin@unisul.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 157 agar diffusion well technique and minimum inhibitory concentration (mic) were followed for determining the antibacterial effect of n. sative oil. the black seed oil components were analyzed by the gas chromatograph mass spectrum. the results revealed that the oil has direct effect on gram-positive bacterial growth, including mrsa, which is known as a multidrug resistance bacterium. bacillus subtilis was more sensitive than other strains, and the significant antibacterial effect of the extracted was observed against e. coil, while it has no significant effect on p. aeruginosa and salmonella enterica. determination of nigella sativa oil minimum inhibitory concentration (mic) for gram-positive bacteria is 100 ml for staphylococcus aureus and bacillus subtilis, and the mic was 200 ml and 400 ml for bacillus cereus and mrsa respectively. this study concludes that oil extract of nigella sativa is a good natural antimicrobial, it can be used against mrsa and other gram-positive bacteria. copyright © 2021 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction antibiotics have developed and been used effectively in the 20th century to treat major infectious diseases; however, antibiotic resistance phenomena have emerged against the available antibacterial drugs and even soon after the introduction of the newly discovered drugs [1]. therefore, it leads researchers to seek a new antibacterial agent with less bacterial resistance and fewer side effects [1]. the black seed is a common traditional herbal medicinal plant that is used in most countries as traditional medicine and food additive. the black seed oil content is a fixed oil, essential oil, proteins, and alkaloids, which consist of several active ingredients with antimicrobial activities and also have anti-inflammatory effects [2]. black seed is used traditionally for wound healing, which accelerates wound healing especially burn skin due to its antioxidant properties and prevents the peroxidation of membrane lipid into cells due to thymoquinone action that inhibits cyclooxygenase and 5-lipooxygenase and thereby attenuated inflammation [3, 4]. furthermore, black seed improves respiratory tract infections and asthma; as researchers revealed that after a daily administration of nigella sativa oil for two weeks, improvement of nasal dryness and obstruction were observed [5,6,7]. the black seed is traditionally applied for treating fever, flu, headache, vermifuge, scorpion stings, and snake bites. it also has been used as a carminative, diuretic, galactagogue [1]. rheumatoid arthritis is one of the diseases that may be cured by receiving placebo capsules that contain 500 mg of nigella sativa oil. moreover, an inflammatory biomarker of rheumatoid arthritis was measured after eight weeks and significant changes in biomarkers were observed, the patients experienced a significant serum interleukin 10 (il-10) increase, while malondialdehyde [mda] and nitric oxide [no] significantly decreased in the serum, which indicates that black seed may improve certain biomarker of inflammation and oxidative stress in rheumatoid arthritis and improve swelling and tenderness symptoms [8, 9]. nigella sativa seed is widely used worldwide for medical purposes especially in islamic medicine, nigella sativa seeds oil or crushed as a powder has therapeutic activities on respiratory, blood circulation, immunity, and endocrine system, in which the thymoquinone has a great role in the oil of black seed that has attributed for pharmacological properties [10]. nigella sativa consists of several bioactive compounds such as flavonoids, alkaloids, tannins, and phenolic, which have hypoglycemic, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, neuroprotective, antihistamine, and bronchodilator effects. and the investigation showed that pseudomonas aeruginosa and enterobacter aerogens resist black seed oil while the most sensitive strain was kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 158 s. epidermidis [11]. depending on many studies, they indicate that black seed contains thymohydroquinone and thymoquinone that have inhibitory activity against bacteria especially gram-positive bacteria [1]. many studies indicate that herbal medicine is an alternative for treatment exactly against bacterial infection in kurdistan [12,13]. therefore, in the current work, the antibacterial activity of black seed has been studied against seven strains of bacteria, including gram-positive bacteria strains and gram-negative bacteria with the determination of mics. 2. methods and materials 2.1 preparation of black seed oil the black seed (n.sativa) was purchased from the traditional herbal medicine market in sulaimani. the hot extraction (hydro distillation) of the oil was performed according to [14]; briefly, 100 gm of dried black seed was crushed then used for extraction. then the clevenger type apparatus was used for hydro-distillation of 100 gm seeds for 3 hours, and 500 ml distal water was added. the relative percentage was adapted to calculate oil content as a (v/w). the collected oil was poured into a dark bottle and preserved at 4 °c. finally, the filtrating and concentrating of oil extracts was performed evaporating the solvents under reduced pressure. dimethylsulphoxide (dmso) was used for the preparation of stock solution (50 mg/ml) and then aliquots. 2.2 bacterial strains and cultures seven clinical strains of both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria were purchased from the american type culture collection company (atcc), which are e. coli atcc® 8739™, p.aeruginosa atcc® 9027™, s.entrica nctc 6017, b. subtilis atcc® 6633™, s.aureus atcc® 6538p™, while the mrsa, and b. cereus was isolated from clinical samples (blood and urine) from patients admitted to shar-hospital in sualaimani province. the isolated bacteria (mrsa and b. cereus) were identified based upon biochemical tests according to standard microbiological techniques with their colony characteristics, bacterial culture, and biochemical [15,16], in which a single colony from each strain was picked, transferred, and suspended into a 5 ml of muller-hinton broth (mhb) tube, and then incubated for six hours at 37°c to get 0.5 mcfarland standard turbidity. before the use, the cultures were diluted 1in 10 with müller-hinton broth. 2.3 antibacterial activity the agar disc-diffusion assay was used (antibacterial susceptibility tests) to determine the black seed oil effect as described by bauer [16]; the diluted bacterial culture (100 µl) was inoculated on sterile common bacterial medium (müller-hinton agar plates) by spread technique method. the wells at 4 mm diameter were cut in müller-hinton agar. each well was filled with 20 µl of nigella sativa oil, the then incubated at 37c for 1 day. the most common antibiotic used as a positive control was gentamicin (10µg) and tween (20 µl ( was regarded as negative control, then incubated overnight. the diameter zones of inhibition of the oil were measured in (mm) manually by a common ruler. 2.4 minimum inhibitory concentration (mic) mic of n. sativa oil was achieved by using different dilutions of n. sativa oil against methicillin-resistance staphylococcus aureus, bacillus subtilis, b. cereus, and staphylococcus aureus. serial dilution was prepared as 50, 100, 200, 400, 600, 800µl concentrations of the oil using (tween 20 biochem company) as a solvent. the agar disk diffusion technique was used to evaluate the antibacterial activity of n.sativa oil on the bacteria, and pure tween 20 is considered as a control, then incubated at 37°c for 1 day [16]. 2.5 gaschromatography-mass spectrometry of n. sativa the bioactive of the oil was analyzed by gc-ms (qp 2010 plus shimadzu). the temperatures were set at 220°c and 250°c for injector and detector respectively. the dilution of oil was performed in methanol, and then a 1µl oil diluted oil sample was injected. for analysis, the company instruction was followed, the comparison with those of authentic kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 159 reference compounds was applied for the identification of the different compounds for identification of the chemical compounds found in the black seed. 3. result 3.1 antibiotic property of n. sativa the data of three replicate tests revealed that nigella sativa oil extract has a significant antibacterial effect mostly toward gram-positive bacteria. including, mrsa, which is regarded as a multidrug resistance bacterium was susceptible to the oil extract. the result (mean of three replicates) and standard division of zone of inhibition against bacillus subtilis were (26 ± 1.9) mm, staphylococcus aureus was (22 ± 0.5) mm, bacillus cereus was (20 ± 0.7) mm and methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus was (14 ± 1.2) mm (figure 1). figure 1: the inhibition zone of n. sativa oil against g+ve bacteria using three replicate for each sample the inhibition zone of the oil against (gram-negative bacteria) escherichia coli atcc® 8739™ was (11.5 ± 1) mm while there was no zone of inhibition against pseudomonas aeruginosa atcc® 9027™, salmonella entrica nctc6017 (figure 2and appendix 1). kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 160 figure 2: the antimicrobial activity of the n. sative oil toward g-ve bacteria ((escherichia coli, pseudomonas aeruginosa, and salmonella entrica) the high effects of n. sativa oil toward mrsa were observed in comparison with the common antibiotic disks which are used in this study. the results revealed the inhibition zone of n. sativa oil was (14 ± 1.2) mm. while the inhibition zone of tetracycline was (16 ± 0.8) mm, the mrsa was resistant to erythromycin, ampicillin, and gentamicin and there was no zone of inhibition (figure 3). figure 3: comparison of n. sativa oil effect with some antibiotics (tetracycline, erythromycin, ampicillin, gentamicin). against mrsa. 3.2 minimum inhibitory concentrations (mics) the mics were determined for each bacteria using three replicate for each bacteria and the mean of them was calculated firstly the serial dilution was prepared (100 µl, 800 µl, 600 µl, kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 161 400 µl, 200 µl, 100 µl, and 50 µl). the result of mic shows that the activity of oil extract of black seed on mrsa is at the concentration of 400 µl with (7 ± 1) mm of inhibition zone and 800 ml concentration was (10 ± 0.9) mm. while the concentration from 200 µl to 50 µl of oil has no inhibition zone. furthermore, the mics for b. subtilis bacteria, the lowest concentration of the oil is 200 µl with an inhibition zone of (9 ± 0.8) mm and there was an increase of inhibition zone with increasing the concentration of the oil; for instance, 400 µl and 800 µl concentrations, the inhibition zones were (18 ± 1.2) mm and (22 ± 1.9) mm respectively. however, with 100 µl and 50 µl concentrated there was no observable inhibition zone. in the case of s. aureus, 100 µl concentration of the extracted oil is considered as the lowest concentration at which the zone of inhibition was (9 ± 0.8) mm and there was an increase of inhibition zone with increasing the concentration of the oil; for instance, 200 µl and 400 µl and 800 µl concentrations have the inhibition zones of(15 ± 1.2) mm, (18 ± 0.4) mm and (20 ± 1.6) mm respectively and there was no inhibition zone with 50 ml concentration. finally, 200 µl of the extracted oil was considered as the lowest concentration at the inhibition zone of (11 ± 1) mm was observed with b. cereus and for 400 µl and 800 µl concentrations, the inhibition zones were (14 ± 0.5) mm and (17 ± 1.1) mm respectively, while there was no observed inhibition zone with 100 µl and 50 µl concentration, the mics of the n. sativa oil were shown in [figure 4]. 3.3 chemical constituent’s analysis of n. sativa oil extract gc–ms analysis data detected several constituents found in n. sativa oils. most of the components in the extracted oil in methanol were shown in [figure 5]. the determination of oil extract complex was performed by comparison of the retention time mass spectral data of compounds with the references compounds according to the nist library. figure 4: determination of mic for n. sativa oil against some gram-positive bacteria. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 162 figure 5: nigella sativa oil extract analyzed by gc-ms shows the common compounds. 4. discussion black seed ( n.sativa) is a herbal medicinal plant, which has a flat, trigonous, and angular appearance, it contains some bioactive substances which have medical importance [17]. the black seed has many nutritional and pharmaceutical roles and especially in curing several clinical conditions; respiratory problems, diarrhea, hyperglycinemia, and many cancer cells [18, 19]. many studies indicated that black seed has bactericidal and pharmacological effects, they stated that many bacterial infections and especially gram-positive bacteria can be killed or inhibit the growth of bacteria by black seed oil also it has an anti-inflammatory effect [17-19] while our study evaluates the effect of n.sativa oil on the most common resistant bacteria to the antibiotics, and it is known as marsa. turkmani et al., state that among many herbal medicinal plants the n. sativa is emerging as a miracle herb this related to a rich historical and religious background because oils have an important role in human health, curative and protective actions like possessing antitumor activity, in addition, it is used to the backing stomach, intestinal health as well as kidney and liver work [20]. the current investigation emphasized a number of the previous researches that have achieved for determining the antimicrobial action of the n. sativa oil extract. the results revealed oil extract of n. sativa has effective antibacterial action against gram-positive bacteria; however, such effect did not show with gram-negative bacteria except e. coli that is effectively inhibited by n. sativa oil, and these results are in agreement with other researches [19] they indicated that the black seed oils can inhibit the growth of s. aureus and this effect may be due to the two important active compounds that present in n. sativa oils, which are thymoquinone and melanin. in the case of e. coli, our results are not agreed because there was a strong zone of inhibition by black seed oil against e. coli. this difference in results may be due to using a different strain of the bacteria as the bacterial strain of e. coli was not mentioned in his study [19]. regarding the effect of black seed oil on mrsa growth, our finding was supported by othman et al.[21] they indicated a remarkable antibacterial effect of n. sativa oil against pathogenic gram-positive, therefore, the potential antibacterial action of black seed oil against mrsa requires serious attention because mrsa is considered as an opportunistic heptanal pentane 2,3dimethyl 1-octan-1,1d2-ol pentane 2-cyclopropyl 1 2 3 4 5 area % 19.82 16.08 22.53 21.16 19.52 0 5 10 15 20 25 % kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 163 bacterium among cutaneous microflora while it is responsible for a variety of infections such as wound infections and septicemia, which has likely a threat to human health. moreover, black seed oil revealed an inhibitory effect against s. aureus, and mic was 200 ml concentration. this result is similar to emeka et al.[22] that demonstrated a dramatic inhibition of bacterial growth by active components found in n. sativa oil. the results obtained from this study showed the predominant spectrum of black seed oil antibacterial action against b. subtilis and b. cereus, these results are supported by javed et al [23] and zuridah and his colleagues [24] they stated that the phenols and thymoquinone which are soluble in methanol and it reveals a great antibacterial effect against b. subtilis, also a study by shova, showed a similar result against b. cereus even at a very low concentration [25]. but safhi et al. [26] disagreed with our results they showed negligible activity of n. sativa against b. subtilis. despite growth inhibition of e. coli by black seed oil; however, such effect was not observed against p. aeruginosa and s. entrica. this result is agreed with the finding by ferdous et al.[27], which stated that e. coli is greatly susceptible to n. sativa oil; whereas, p. aeruginosa showed resistance for such oil. many factors may affect the oil and antibiotic's action on the bacteria such as mode of action of the antibacterial, the bacterial structure, virulence factors, presence of the toxin, and presence of spore. the effect of black seed oil was scientifically demonstrated in the extensive research done by emeka et al. [22] which showed that the significant influence of oil on the multidrug-resistant staphylococcus aureus. mrsa mostly causes skin untreatable infections and abscesses. in the united states, about 40% of nosocomial infection typically involves mrsa [28]. mrsa has instantly become a major health concern globally because it resists various antistaphylococcal agents. urgently newer antimicrobials infectious agents are genuinely needed to combat this potential problem. in our study, the gc-ms analysis of the n. sativa composed of 5 essential compounds all of them is an extraordinary mixture of organic compounds alkaloid and shows high biologically active such as (heptanal, benton 2,3-dimethyl, 1-octan-1,1-d2-ol and pentane, 2cyclopropyl). black seed qualitative analysis compounds are undoubtedly shown that black seed inhibits bacterial growth revert to the chemical composition, the present study indicates that one of the main characteristics of black seed is a very good natural antibiotic for grampositive bacteria that was similar to a study by krishnapura [29]. the identification structure of the compound using a mass spectrometer to determine the compounds contained in the essential oil samples (nigella sativa l.) analyzed can be seen from the relative abundance of mass fractions of molecules of the molecular ion. therefore, the purpose behind gcms analysis is to identify the chemical components in a proper way depending on the mass transfer of substance into the solvent also electron ionization plays a series role in the routine analysis of small molecules [30]. the basic components of n.sativa oil consist of the varied mixture (thymoquinone, p-cymene, and 4-terpineol) as the highest amount of a chemical compound [31] these results differ with our results because we investigate (heptanal, pentane 2,3-dimethyl, 1-octan-1,1-d2-ol and pentane, 2-cyclopropyl) this due to environmental factors like location and genetic makeup. 5. conclusion the current study concludes that n. sativa oil is a good antimicrobial agent especially against gram-positive bacteria and more interestingly the common resistant bacteria (mrsa) is significantly inhibited by this oil. therefore, n. sativa oil may be a good medication for bacterial skin infections and it will be medically used alone or mixed with the skin lesion or cream after approvement with the global drug agency. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 164 reference [1] e. halawani, "antibacterial activity of thymoquinone and thymohydroquinone of nigella sativa l. and their interaction with some antibiotics," advances in biological research, vol. 3, no. 5-6, pp. 148-152, 2009. [2] i. yaman, a.s. durmus, s. ceribasi, and m. yaman, "effects of nigella sativa and silver sulfadiazine on burn wound healing in rats," veterinarni medicina, vol. 55, no. 12, pp. 619-624, 2010. [3] h. hosseinzadeh, s. parvardeh, m. n. asl, h. r. sadeghnia, and t. ziaee, "effect of thymoquinone and nigella sativa seeds oil on lipid peroxidation level during global cerebral ischemia-reperfusion injury in rat hippocampus," phytomedicine, vol. 14, no. 9, pp. 621-627, 2007. [4] m. a. mansour, m. n. nagi, a. s. el‐khatib, and a. m. al‐bekairi, "effects of thymoquinone on antioxidant enzyme activities, lipid peroxidation and dt-diaphorase in different tissues of mice: a possible mechanism of action," cell biochemistry and function, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 143-151, 2002. [5] j. ahmad, r. a. khan, and m. a. malik, "a study of nigella sativa oil in the management of wheeze associated lower respiratory tract illness in children," african journal of pharmacy and pharmacology, vol. 4, no. 7, pp. 436-439, 2010. [6] a. m. alsamarai, m. a. satar, and a. h. a. alobaidi, "evaluation of therapeutic efficacy of nigella sativa (black seed) for treatment of allergic rhinitis," in allergic rhinitis: intech, 2012. [7] h. işık, a. çevikbaş, u.s. gürer, b. kıran, y. üresin, p. rayaman, e. rayaman, b. gürbüz, and s. büyüköztürk, "potential adjuvant effects of nigella sativa seeds to improve specific immunotherapy in allergic rhinitis patients," medical principles and practice, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 206-211, 2010. [8] t. a. gheita and s. a. kenawy, "effectiveness of nigella sativa oil in the management of rheumatoid arthritis patients: a placebo controlled study," phytotherapy research, vol. 26, no. 8, pp. 1246-1248, 2012. [9] s. kheirouri, v. hadi, and m. alizadeh, "effects of nigella sativa oil extract on inflammatory cytokine response and oxidative stress status in patients with rheumatoid arthritis; a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial," 2014. [10] s. gharby, h. harhar, d. guillaume, a. roudani, s. boulbaroud, m. ibrahimi, m. ahmad, s. sultana, t.b. hadda, i. chafchaouni-moussaoui, z. charrouf., "chemical investigation of nigella sativa l. seed oil produced in morocco," journal of the saudi society of agricultural sciences, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 172-177, 2015. [11] a. r. khan and k. kour, "wide spectrum antibacterial activity of nigella sativa l. seeds." [12] a. a. hama and s. a. qadir, “the antimicrobial activity of pomegranate (punica granatum) juice,” international journal of scientific & engineering research, vol. 5, no. 10, pp. 796–798, 2014. [13] s. m. weli, s. i. kareem, o. h. shareef, g. rauf, c. g. raouf, and a. a. hama, “the effects of the aqueous extract of the leaves of the local plant eruca sativa on lipid profile and some minerals in the blood of male white mice eruca sativa” iraqi journal of science vol. 62, no. 4, pp. 1088–1093, 2021. [14] m. samadi, z. z. abidin, r. yunus, d. r. awang biak, h. yoshida, and e. h. lok, “assessing the kinetic model of hydro-distillation and chemical composition of aquilaria malaccensis leaves essential oil,” chinese j. chem. eng., vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 216–222, 2017. [15] l. b. reller, m. weinstein, j. h. jorgensen, and m. j. ferraro, "antimicrobial susceptibility testing: a review of general principles and contemporary practices," clinical infectious diseases, vol. 49, no. 11, pp. 1749-1755, 2009. [16] a. bauer, "antibiotic susceptibility testing by a standardized single disc method," am j clin pathol, vol. 45, pp. 149-158, 1966. [17] m. kanter, o. coskun, and m. budancamanak, "hepatoprotective effects of nigella sativa l and urtica dioica l on lipid peroxidation, antioxidant enzyme systems and liver enzymes in carbon tetrachloridetreated rats," world journal of gastroenterology: wjg, vol. 11, no. 42, p. 6684, 2005. [18] k. fararh, y. atoji, y. shimizu, and t. takewaki, "isulinotropic properties of nigella sativa oil in streptozotocin plus nicotinamide diabetic hamster," research in veterinary science, vol. 73, no. 3, pp. 279-282, 2002. [19] m. a. khan and h. younus, "thymoquinone shows the diverse therapeutic actions by modulating multiple cell signaling pathways: single drug for multiple targets," current pharmaceutical biotechnology, vol. 19, no. 12, pp. 934-945, 2018. [20] m. o. al turkmani, f. karabet, l. mokrani, and c. soukkarieh, "chemical composition and in vitro antioxidant activities of essential oil from nigella sativa l. seeds cultivated in syria," international journal of chemtech research, vol. 8, no. 10, pp. 76-82, 2015. [21] b. r. othman et al., "occurrence of methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus in raw shellfish at retail markets in malaysia and antibacterial efficacies of black seed (nigella sativa) oil against mrsa," food control, vol. 90, pp. 324-331, 2018. [22] l. b. emeka, p. m. emeka, and t. m. khan, "antimicrobial activity of nigella sativa l. seed oil against multi-drug resistant staphylococcus aureus isolated from diabetic wounds," pakistan journal of pharmaceutical sciences, vol. 28, no. 6, 2015. [23] s. javed, a. a. shahid, m. s. haider, a. umeera, r. ahmad, and s. mushtaq, "nutritional, phytochemical potential and pharmacological evaluation of nigella sativa (kalonji) and trachyspermum ammi (ajwain)," journal of medicinal plants research, vol. 6, no. 5, pp. 768-775, 2012. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 165 [24] h. zuridah, a. fairuz, a. zakri, and m. rahim, "in vitro antibacterial activity of nigella sativa against staphylococcus aureus, pseudomonas aeruginosa, klebsiella pneumoniae, escherichia coli and bacillus cereus," asian journal of plant sciences, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 331-333, 2008. [25] n. a. shova, "comparative study on the antibacterial activities of neem oil, mustard oil and black seed oil against staphylococcus aureus, klebsiella pneumoniae, bacillus cereus, salmonella typhi and pseudomonas aeruginosa," brac univeristy, 2017. [26] m. safhi, m. alam, s. sivakumar, j. aamena, a. tairiq, and i. fakhrul, "antibacterial spectrum of black seed oil against selected human pathogenic bacteria," j pharm res, vol. 8, pp. 1726-8, 2014. [27] a. ferdous, s. islam, m. ahsan, c. hasan, and z. ahmed, "in vitro antibacterial activity of the volatile oil of nigella sativa seeds against multiple drug‐resistant isolates of shigella spp. and isolates of vibrio cholerae and escherichia coli," phytotherapy research, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 137-140, 1992. [28] k. callahan, n. beck, e. duffield, g. shin, and j. meschke, "inactivation of methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (mrsa) and vancomycin-resistant enterococcus faecium (vre) on various environmental surfaces by mist application of a stabilized chlorine dioxide and quaternary ammonium compound-based disinfectant," journal of occupational and environmental hygiene, vol. 7, no. 9, pp. 529534, 2010. [29] k. srinivasan, "cumin (cuminum cyminum) and black cumin (nigella sativa) seeds: traditional uses, chemical constituents, and nutraceutical effects," food quality and safety, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 1-16, 2018. [30] j.-p. rauha, j.-l. wolfender, j.-p. salminen, k. pihlaja, k. hostettmann, and h. vuorela, "characterization of the polyphenolic composition of purple loosestrife (lythrum salicaria)," zeitschrift für naturforschung c, vol. 56, no. 1-2, pp. 13-20, 2001. [31] m. s. ahamad bustamam et al., "stability study of algerian nigella sativa seeds stored under different conditions," journal of analytical methods in chemistry, vol. 2017, 2017. appendix 1: the oil extract effect through antibiotic sensitivity test against marsa, s.cereas, b.subtilis and s. aureas  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq| email: kjar@spu.edu.iq effects of additive materials on indirect tensile strength and moisture sensitivity of recycled asphalt pavement (rap) soz muhammed ebrahim hardy kamal karim civil engineering department civil engineering department engineering college engineering college university of sulaimani university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq sozsoz098@gmail.com hardy.karim@univsul.edu.iq volume 4 issue 2 december 2019 doi: 10.24017/science.2019.2.8 received: 17 august 2019 accepted: 20 october 2019 abstract using reclaimed asphalt pavement with additives as part of new road construction has economic and environmental advantages. as an attempt to preserve aggregate resources and save money, and knowing the effects of the selected additive materials, this study was done in sulaimani city. the samples of the rap were selected from the sulaimani municipality stockpiles. the ignition and centrifuge testing machines were used to separate the aggregate and binder of the rap. based on the standard deviation of the obtained asphalt content, the blend was decided to be 40% rap and 60% new material. the aggregate tests were conducted to evaluate the characteristics of the par aggregate. the performance grade test was done for the reclaimed asphalt binder. three types of additives, which were styrene butadiene-styrene (sbs), crumb rubber (cr), and polypropylene (pp), mixed with the reclaimed asphalt binder with three different percentages of the binder which were 3%, 5%, and 7%. indirect tensile strength (its) test was performed to the conditioned and unconditioned mixtures. to evaluate the effects of additives on the moisture sensitivity of the reclaimed mixtures, its ratios were obtained. most of the percentages of additives decreased the its of the conditioned and unconditioned samples. the only percentage of the additive material increased the its was 5% of pp in conditioned case. however, additives did not benefit the its, they benefited the itsr greatly. the best obtained itsr for each additive material were 7% sbs, 3% cr, and 5% pp that had 99.71%, 97.1%, and 90.7%, respectively. keyword: rap, styrene butadiene–styrene (sbs), crumb rubber (cr), recycled atactic polypropylene (pp), performance grade (pg), indirect tensile strength, moisture sensitivity. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 70 1. introduction recycling of asphalt pavement, which is a developed technique to rehabilitate pavement structures having permanent deformation and evident structural distress, dates back to the early 1900s [1]. the first data on the use of reclaimed asphalt pavement were documented in 1915 [2]. the cost of asphalt binder was raised during oil crisis in 1970’s; therefore, using of rap became an interesting subject [3]. based on the numerous agencies and organizations’ experiences, the national cooperative highway research program (nchrp) published synthesis of highway practice no. 54, and recycling materials for highways and report no. 224, guidelines for recycling pavement materials in 1978 and 1980 [1]. recycling of asphalt pavement was becoming great attention in highway industry after implementing the kyoto protocol in 2005[4]. increasing oil price made engineers and organizations to implement recycled asphalt pavement in highway constructions. using rap does not only have economic benefit, it also has environmental benefits by protecting petroleum and aggregate resources and saving landfill space. nowadays, the waste materials of road construction have been increasing and they have impacts on environment. based on the reporting of some municipalities, every year 400,000 tons of recycled materials used in this manner. [5]. hot recycling, in which virgin materials and rap are combined, is the most widely techniques that is used for mixing rap in new hma [4]. the percentage of blended rap with new asphalt mixture are determined based on the production process, paving technology and the rap properties, [6]. in many cases, specifications do not let engineers to use high percentages of rap. currently, the amount of rap used is normally not exceed 25% [1]. today, polymerized asphalt, which consists of blending additives with asphalt binder, are used to improve the essential properties of asphalt cement binders. also, polymer modified binders are used to improve the performance of asphalt mixtures such as rutting resistance, thermal cracking, fatigue damage, stripping, and temperature susceptibility. in addition, mixing small amounts of polymer dramatically modifies the rheological properties of the asphalt binder [7]. additives such as sbs, crumb tire, and polypropylenes are among the additives that are used to improve properties of hma and rap binders and mixtures. the most commonly used polymer is sbs, which increases rutting resistance and decreases the fatigue resistance of the recycled polymer modified asphalt pavement mixtures [8]. on the other hand, using sbs polymer modified binder in rap mixture increases resistance to fracture failure from the semi-circular notched fracture test [9]. crumb rubber (cr), which is an elastic binder additive, reduces cost of pavements and solves waste disposal-problem. dry and wet techniques can be used for blending cr with new hma. the cr is blended with the aggregates of the mixture in a dry process, while it is blended with asphalt binder in the wet process [10]. adding ground cr to asphalt binder results in increasing both the linear viscoelastic modulus and the viscosity at high in-service temperatures [11]. based on the results of cao w. study, adding recycled cr to asphalt mixtures in a dry process improves the engineering properties of asphalt mixtures, and the rubber content has a considerable effect on resistance of permanent deformation and cracking [12]. moreover, adding cr increases the mineral aggregate voids in the superpave mix design, as well as, improves the rutting resistance of asphalt mixtures [13]. the study of oliver jwh et al. mentioned some positive effects of cr in asphalt pavement such as reducing reflective cracking and low-temperature cracking, increasing fatigue life, and improving tensile strength [14]. another appropriate additive material that are used with asphalt binder and mixture is polypropylene (pp). it has many benefits such as appropriate process ability, integral hinge property, low density, low cost, high softening point and good mechanical properties. the application of using polypropylene is somehow limited because it relatively has moderate fracture performance, particularly at sub ambient temperature [15],[16]. putman, b. j. et al. in 2005 evaluated the performance of 9.5 mm thick pavement using superpave mix designs containing reclaimed asphalt pavement. two aggregate types in kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 71 different resources were used to design twelve asphalt concrete mixtures. the three-tire concept, which was 15% in the first time and more than 25% in the third time, was used. cr was added to the each of the mixtures. conclusively, the rutting resistance of the mixtures was improved; however, the its of the mixtures containing rap was not affected. in addition, the mixtures with cr binder modifier increased the obtained higher rutting resistance than the mixtures with no cr, while cr did not significantly affect the its or moisture susceptibility [17]. f. xiao and s. n. amirkhanian in 2009 investigated the moisture susceptibility of rubberized asphalt concrete (rac) containing rap material. the tests, which were conducted, were viscosity of the asphalt binder, toughness and its. several mixtures with different cr types, two different sources of rap materials, and various rubber and rap percentages were evaluated. adding rap materials improved the its values and reduced the moisture susceptibility of the mixture; however, adding cr to the mixture had a slightly negative impacts on the mixtures [13]. kim s. et al. in 2009 used asphalt pavement analyzer (apa) and the indirect tensile tests (idt) to investigate the performance of rutting and cracking of sbs polymermodified asphalt mixture mixed with rap. different percentages of rap were used, which were 0%, 15%, 25%, and 35%. regardless of the amounts of rap materials in hma, the rap mixtures with sbs modified binders worked well [18]. reyes-ortiz et al. in 2012 evaluated the mechanical responses of dense-graded hma mixtures after partial, and then total replacements of aggregates by recycled asphalt material and using asphalt binder grades of 60/70 and 80/100. four different percentages of 15%, 20%, 35%, and 100% of recycled asphalt material were replaced the granular materials. the values of the highest its and resilient modulus in both wet and dry conditions were obtained from the hma mixtures that produced with 100% replacement of granular material by rap material [4]. ahmed, n. g., and qasim, h. a. in 2017 studied fatigue and moisture susceptibility characteristics of rap mixtures in iraq. four different percentages of recycled asphalt material of 0%, 5% ,10%, and 15% were blended with asphalt binder of grade 40/50. the experimental tests, which include four point repeated load and indirect tensile strength tests, indicated that the inclusion of rap materials improved fatigue properties of hma mixtures; fatigue life (nf) at recycled asphalt pavement material content of (15%) increased by (157.1%), (100%), and (150%) at testing temperature 25, 10, and 40°c respectively. the modified lottman test indicated that hma with rap and additive material had a great resistance to moisture damage through increasing the indirect tensile strength. based on the four-point repeated load and idt tests, the amount of new binder that needed to be mixed with the rap mixture can be reduced because it does not have significant effects on the quality of the produced mix [19]. yan y. et al. in 2017 prepared fourteen mixtures of reclaimed asphalt pavement with different combinations of polymer modified rap content including 0%, 20%, 30%, and 40%. the polymer modified asphalt (pma) blends behaved effectively when they met the recovery requirements for multiple stress creep recovery (mscr); as well as they had satisfactory values for the energy density of the binder fracture. when the rap content was increased, the mixtures had higher tensile strength, lower failure strain, and lower fracture energy. it meant that with increasing the rap content stronger mixtures and more brittle mixtures were obtained. all of the rap mixtures had acceptable cracking performance because they showed dissipated creep strain energy to failure values above 0.75 kj/m3 and energy ratio values above one [20]. wang j. et al. in 2017 evaluated the effect of rejuvenating agent on different modified rap contents (0%, 30%, 50% and 70%) mixtures. three tests, which included freeze-thaw split, semi-circular bending, and dynamic modulus, were conducted for the reclaimed rap. the rejuvenating agent was assessed whether improve the properties of aged modified asphalt or not. it was realized that using the rejuvenating agent in the modified asphalt for the rap had negative effects on moisture susceptibility and low-temperature cracking resistance, kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 72 especially when high agent content was used. the dynamic modulus of recycled and hma mixtures tended to be consistent when loading frequency reached a higher value [21]. j. wang et.al. in 2018 evaluated the properties of hot mix asphalt with different percentages 0%, 30%, 50%, and 70% rap-sbs replacement in terms of rutting, low-temperature anticracking, and moisture susceptibility. hmas mixture with higher percentages of rap-sbs exhibited better rutting resistance, and lower anti-cracking properties and moisture susceptibility. when the rap-sbs percentage was less than 30%, the anti-cracking property of the recycled mixture was basically close to that of hma mixture between −20 to −10°c, and the moisture susceptibility of the two types of mixture was similar when the percentage was less than 50%, but the durability of both recycled mixtures was poor. when subjected to f-t cycles, the strength of mixtures with rap-sbs was more sensitive than that of hma mixtures, especially for mixtures with high rap-sbs percentages [22]. d. singh et.al. in 2018 evaluated fracture properties of asphalt mixture at intermediate temperature, as well as moisture sensitivity of asphaltic mixture containing recycled asphalt pavement and warm mix additive (wma). five different rap contents, which were 0%, 10%, 20%, 30%, and 40%, were used. two different types of wma additives with two different percentages were considered that were 2% wax based “sasobit” and 0.5% chemical based “evotherm”. also, a mixture, which was without wma additive was considered. the fracture properties of different asphalt mixtures were assessed using a test known as semicircular bending test. the fracture property of the mixture with no wma additive was improved with increasing the recycled asphalt material content. on the other hand, the addition of chemical-based and wax-based wma additives exhibited an overall reduction in fractured resistance. moreover, the asphalt mixture with wax-based wma additive showed better fracture performance compared to the corresponding mixture with chemical-based wma additive. at the same time, adding of both wma additives decreased the its under both dry and wet conditions. also, adding wma additive exhibited a negative effect on moisture sensitivity of the mixtures [23]. 2. methods and materials in order to take the rap material samples, six samples in different locations in the stockpiles of sulaimani municipality were taken, and then mixed. the stockpiles were used to store the recycled asphalt material obtained from cold milling process in different streets in sulaimani city. in order to avoid taking contaminated rap with rubbish and other unwanted waste materials, care was taken during sampling process. the pavement ages, taken from streets, were 15 to 20 years old with asphalt content of 4.6% and asphalt grade of 50/60. to know the asphalt binder content in the rap mixture, two methods were used to extract it, which were ignition and centrifuge methods. in each method, ten samples of two kilograms were taken, and then the mean value was considered as the asphalt binder content of each of them. the average value of the mean values of ignition and centrifuge methods was taken as the final result of the asphalt binder content of the rap. based on the standard deviation of the asphalt binder content obtained from the ignition and centrifuge method, the percentage of the rap material mixed with the new hot mix asphalt was determined. the rap aggregates obtained from the ignition and centrifuge methods were evaluated and compared to the superpave specification design. many tests were done for the rap aggregate that were sieve analysis, los-angeles abrasion, impact resistance, specific gravity, angularity, sand equivalent, and flaky and elongation tests. the same tests were done for the new and blended aggregates, too. after obtaining the aged binder, performance grade tests were done for the aged and rap asphalt binder. short and long-term aging were done for the samples by using rolling thing film oven test (rtfot) and pressure aging vessel (pav) tests, respectively. to https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/additives kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 73 find the performance grade of the selected binder blends, the aged binder samples were then tested for the dynamic shear rheometer (dsr) and bending beam rheometer (bbr) tests. to compensate the hard grade of the aged asphalt binder in the recycled asphalt material, softer virgin binder was used that was 60/70 grade. three percentages of 3%, 5%, and 7% were mixed with the rap. the additive materials were styrene butadiene–styrene (sbs), crumb rubber (cr), polypropylene (pp). three aggregate gradations were designed for the blended aggregates of new and rap aggregates, and then were analyzed volumetrically. the best aggregate blend was chosen to be used as superpave mixture design. two tests of maximum theoretical specific gravity (gmm) tests were done and the average value was taken. based on the gmm, the effective specific gravity (gse) of the selected aggregate blend was obtained. superpave gyratory compactor device was used to prepare 50 samples of the mixtures to find the optimum asphalt content for the reclaimed asphalt mixtures with and without using additive materials. thirty unconditioned samples with and without additive materials, which were designed for 7% air voids, were prepared to find the indirect tensile strength. to evaluate moisture sensitivity of the mixtures, thirty conditioned samples prepared and tested for the indirect tensile strength. the ratio of the indirect tensile strength obtained from the conditioned samples to unconditioned samples indicated the effects of moisture sensitivity of the mixtures. 3. results 3.1. rap asphalt content: the mean values of the ten samples of asphalt content for the rap material extracted from ignition and centrifuge methods were 4.4% and 3.1%. the obtained asphalt content in the centrifuge method was underestimated because some asphalt remained in the voids of the aggregates; however, the asphalt content obtained from ignition method was overestimated because some of the mineral aggregates were burnt off; therefore, the average value of the asphalt binder content of the two methods was considered as the final rap asphalt content, which was 3.75%. because of lighting and volatilization during asphalt pavement service, the asphalt content of the rap was decreased compared to original asphalt content, which was 4.6%. based on the study of (njdot, 2009), [24], the percentage of the rap that should be used was 50% when the ignition method was used because the standard deviation was 0.14 that was less than 0.3; while, the percentage of the rap that should be used was 30% when centrifuge method was used. because the standard deviation of the centrifuge method was 0.37 that it was located between 0.3 and 0.4. therefore, 40% of the rap was used as an average value. 3.2. characterization of rap aggregate: after drawing the gradation lines for aggregates obtained from ignition and centrifuge methods, it was realized that there is a slight difference between them as shown in figure 1. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 74 figure 1: comparison of the gradations of the rap aggregates extracted by the centrifuge and ignition methods despite the slight difference between the specific gravities of the aggregates obtained from the ignition and centrifuge methods as shown in table 1, all types of the coarse and fine aggregates specific gravities obtained from ignition method were higher than the values obtained from the centrifuge method; since all of the asphalts in the coarse and fine aggregate pores were burnt in the ignition method, the absorption value in the ignition method was higher than obtained from the centrifuge method. table 1: specific gravity types of rap aggregate description coarse aggregate fine aggregate ignition centrifuge ignition centrifuge apparent sp.g 2.708 2.644 2.453 2.456 bulk sp.g 2.574 2.552 2.408 2.420 effective sp.g 2.641 2.598 2.427 2.435 water absorption 1.919 1.355 0.766 0.610 the aggregates in the ignition method was burnt and weakened; therefore, the aggregate weight loss of the ignition method was higher than the aggregate loss in the centrifuge method in the la and impact tests. as shown in the table 2, the weight loss of the aggregates using both mentioned methods are acceptable for road construction because the weight losses are less than 30%. table 2: la and impact of rap aggregate description centrifuge ignition la 18.9 % 23.7 % impact 21.9 % 28.1 % the percentage of the flaky and elongated aggregate particle in the rap was 2.73%, which is appropriate for using in the superpave mixture design because it is less than 10%. the 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 0.01 0.1 1 10 100 p e rc e n t p a ss in g particle size (mm) ignition centrifuge kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 75 angularity of the coarse aggregate was 88.23%, which also is acceptable to be used for superpave mixture because for the particles have 10 mm or greater diameter and for 3 to 10 esal, the percent of angularity should be greater than 60. 3.3. performance grade test for rap and blended asphalt binders with no additives the blends of 40% rap with 60% virgin asphalt binder performance grade test results are shown in table3. as shown in the table, the average seven-day maximum design temperature of the reclaimed asphalt pavement binder without using additive material was 64 °c., while the low temperature grade is -22. as a result, the performance grade of the blended reclaimed asphalt binder is p 64-22. table 3: performance grade of asphalt binder 40% of aged and 60% of new asphalt binder properties specification pg (t) c° measured value original dsr, g*/sin δ ≥ 1.0 kpa 64 1.69 rtfo dsr, g*/sin δ ≥ 2.2 kpa 70 3.39 s @ 60/sec mpa max. 300 mpa -22 149.476 m value @ 60/sec min. 0.3 0.312 grade (pg) 64 22 3.4 superpave mix design: to obtain the best aggregate gradation for the superpave mixture design, three aggregate gradations were prepared and graphed. figure 2 shows the results of the graph of power 0.45 for the three trials of gradations that designed for the blends consisting 40% rap and 60% new aggregates figure 2: trial gradations for the three blends for each of the blends, two samples were taken to find gmm and gse, and then the average value were taken as shown in table 4. after finding the optimum asphalt content for each of the blends, volumetric analyses were done in order to evaluate the trail blends. then the results of the volumetric analyses were compared with the superpave mixture design criteria for aggregate nominal size of 19 mm. because blend 1 had the best results regarding 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 0 1 2 3 4 5 p e rc e n t p a ss in g sieve sizes 0.45(mm) blend 1 blend 2 blend 3 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 76 the superpave mixture design criteria, it was selected as the gradation that was used for preparing the mixtures. blends 2 and 3 were not selected because their vma were smaller than 13%. the specific gravity types and water absorption of blend 1 were found as shown in table 5. table 4: volumetric properties summary for the three blends description blend 1 blend 2 blend 3 criteria avg. gmm 2.399 2.393 2.407 avg. gse 2.540 2.533 2.549 oac % 5 4.9 4.4 vma % 14 12.7 12.9 > 13 vfa % 66 69 69.7 65 75 gmm at nini % 87 86 85 < 89 gmm at nmax % 98.4 95.7 95.2 d/b 0.87 0.84 0.76 0.6 – 1.2 table 5: specific gravity of blend 1 aggregate description coarse aggregate fine aggregate apparent sp.g 2.669 2.551 bulk sp.g 2.540 2.472 effective sp.g 2.604 2.503 water absorption 1.914 1.266 other tests that are needed as the requirements in the superpave mixture design requirement were conducted for the blend 1, too. the coarse-aggregate angularity was 92.42%, which was greater than the required coarse-aggregate angularity 90% for the particle size greater than 10mm. the percentage of flat and elongated particles of coarse aggregate was 2.7, which is smaller than 10 %. the los-angeles and impact tests for aggregate blend 1 were 18.26% and 20.89%, respectively. table 6 shows the results of the optimum asphalt content and volumetric property analyses of the rap mixtures with and without using additive materials. table 6: optimum asphalt content and volumetric properties for the mixtures mixture types oac % vma % vfa % gmm at nini % d/b designed 5 14 67 87.1 0.87 sbs 3% 6 16.3 76.5 87.7 0.7 sbs 5% 5.65 13.45 74 86.7 0.75 sbs 7% 6.2 16.64 75 87.5 0.67 cr 3% 5.75 15.8 74 86.4 0.71 cr 5% 6.25 16 73 86.4 0.7 cr 7% 6.5 16.7 75.93 87.2 0.65 pp 3% 6.2 16.1 75 86.1 0.69 pp 5% 6.45 16.75 75 87 0.65 pp 7% 6.4 16.7 75.1 87.3 0.65 the results of the its for the unconditioned sample mixtures are shown in figure 3. as shown in the figure, when the ratios of additive materials of sbs, and cr were increased, the itss were decreased. using pp additive material decreased the its, too; however, when 5% of pp was used, a little difference was occurred in its. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 77 figure 3: unconditioned indirect tensile strength vs. mixture types the results of the its for the conditioned sample mixtures are shown in figure 4. as shown in the figure, when the ratios of additive materials were increased, the itss were decreased. the only percentage of additive materials that caused increasing its in conditioned case was 5% of pp. figure 4: conditioned indirect tensile strength vs. mixture types regarding the itsr, table 7 shows that most of the mixtures itsr were greater than 80%, while only two mixtures were sensitive to moisture conditions that were the mixtures containing 3% sbs and 7% pp. the highlighted cells in the table show the best obtained itsr for each additive material, which were 7% sbs, 3% cr, and 5% pp that had 99.71%, 97.1%, and 90.7%, respectively. 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000 it s , k p a mixture types kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 78 table 7: average value for the itsr of conditioned and unconditioned mixtures type conditioned unconditioned tsr load, kn s1, kpa load, kn s2, kpa blended 13860 1410.45 16867 1716.46 82.17 sbs 3% 13036 1316.50 16485 1664.82 79.08 sbs 5% 13210 1339.17 14533 1473.29 90.90 sbs 7% 12945 1297.23 12983 1301.04 99.71 cr 3% 12003 1183.65 12361 1218.96 97.10 cr 5% 12292 1216.86 13188 1305.56 93.21 cr 7% 10621 1057.36 12113 1205.89 87.68 pp 3% 12499 1262.27 14714 1485.96 84.95 pp 5% 15421 1552.69 17001 1711.77 90.71 pp 7% 12594 1269.45 16675 1680.81 75.53 4. conclusion after using sbs, cp, and pp additive materials in rap, the following conclusions can be reached regarding its and itsr:  despite using additive materials decreased the its of the reclaimed asphalt pavements for the conditioned and unconditioned situations, using additive materials benefited moisture sensitivity of the reclaimed asphalt pavements.  the only percentage of the additive material that benefit the its was 5% of pp, which increased the its for the conditioned case from 1410 to 1552 kpa, and it caused little change in the unconditioned case. also, 5% of pp increased the itsr from 82.17% to 90.71%.  it can be said that using additive materials did not benefit the its; however, they benefited the itsr greatly, because the itss were not decreased greatly in the conditioned situations compared with the unconditioned situations.  the best obtained itsr for each additive material were 7% sbs, 3% cr, and 5% pp that had 99.71%, 97.1%, and 90.7%, respectively. reference [1] d. newcomb, e.r. brown, and j. a. epps, quality improvement series 124: designing hma mixtures with high rap content: a practical guide, national asphalt pavement association, lanham, md, 2007. 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[7] l. h. lewandowski, “polymer modification of paving asphalt binders”. rubber chemistry and technology, 67(3): 447, july-august, 1994. [8] l. n. mohammad, i. i. negulescu, z. wu, c. daranga, w. h. daly, and c. abadie., “investigation of the use of recycled polymer-modified asphalt binder in asphalt concrete pavements”. journal of the association of asphalt paving technologists, pp. 551–594., vol. 72, 2003. [9] b. g. li huang, d. vukosavljevic, x. shu, and b. k. egan. “laboratory investigation of mixing hot-mix asphalt with reclaimed asphalt pavement”. in transportation research record: journal of the transportation research board, no. 1929, transportation research board of the national academies, washington d.c., pp. 37–45, 2005. [10] b. v. kök, & h. çolak, “laboratory comparison of the crumb-rubber and sbs modified bitumen and hot mix asphalt”. construction and building materials, 25(8), 3204-3212, 2011. [11] fj. navarro, p. partal, f. martínez-boza, c. gallegos “thermo-rheological behavior and storage stability of ground tire rubber-modified bitumen fuel”, 83:2041–9, 2004. [12] w. cao, “study on properties of recycled tire rubber modified asphalt mixtures using dry process”. construct build mater, 21:1011–5, 2007. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 79 [13] f. xiao, s.n. amirkhanian, j. shen, b. putman “influences of crumb rubber size and type on reclaimed asphalt aavement (rap) mixtures”. construct build mater, 23:1028–34, 2009. [14] jwh. oliver “rutting and fatigue properties of crumb rubber hot mix asphalts”. in: proceedings of the asphalt rubber 2000 conference, vilamoura, portugal, p. 221–40, 2000. [15] m. zahedi, r. bayat, & m. n. jalal, ''the most appropriate mixing method of polypropylene fiber with aggregates and bitumen based on binder mix design''. international journal of engineering & technology, 3(3), 333, 2014. [16] a. yazdani, s. pourjafar, & a. rahimpour, “optimization of asphalt binder modified with pp/sbs/nano clay nan composite using taguchi method”., in proceedings of world academy of science, engineering and technology (no. 67). world academy of science, engineering and technology, july 2012. [17] b. j. putman, j. aune, & s. n. amirkhanian, "recycled asphalt pavement (rap) used in superpave mixes made with rubberized asphalt". in mairepav 4th international symposium, maintenance and rehabilitation of pavements and technological control, ismarti, belfast, northern ireland, 2005. [18] s. kim, g. a. sholar, t. byron, & j. kim, “performance of polymer-modified asphalt mixture with reclaimed asphalt pavement”. transportation research record, 2126 (1), 109-114, 2009. [19] n. g. ahmed, & h. a. qasim, “fatigue and moisture sustainability characterization of reclaimed asphalt pavement mixtures in iraq”. journal of engineering and sustainable development, 21 (1), 178-192, 2017. 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[24] new jersey department of transportation. “recycled asphalt pavement in hma mix”. njdot bureau of research quarterly progress report, 2009.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.36 a hybrid spiral project based learning model for microprocessor course teaching mohammad tarik m. computer engineering dept. college of engineering university of mosul kirkuk (alternative location), iraq eng.mohammadtarik@gmail.com zena tarik m. college of engineering university of mosul kirkuk (alter. location), iraq zahraa tarek m. mechatronics engineering dept. college of engineering university of mosul kirkuk (alter. location), iraq farah tareq m. computer science dept. college of computer and mathematics science university of mosul kirkuk (alter. location), iraq abstract: high demands for technology increase every day. these demands required expert engineers with high skills to keep up with technology demands. engineering departments need to responded for this requirement to develop their educational methods. researchers began to develop educational methods and measure their effectiveness. this paper develops an educational method to educate microprocessor course. the educational model mixed the spiral method and project based learning to achieve the desirable goal. educational activities used in the educational method like lecture, lab, and project. also, virtual lab developed to achieve better learning performance. the proposed educational method evaluated in two ways. first, statistical analysis for students’ scores shows significant differences and improvement in the learning outcome. second, students survey shows very positive impact on students learning. keywords: hybrid education method, microprocessor course, education methodology, project based learning, spiral education method, virtual lab, microprocessor. 1. introduction in the current time, our life rapidly changes and continuously develops in every day. this development rises the market requirements where it need high skilled engineering special in technology field. for reaching this goal, it demands to reduce the gap between the teaching information in the course and the technical skilled demands in the market. new educational methodologies for engineering courses organized by researchers to improve the quality of course education [1-4]. problem based learning methodology is an educational method [5] . this method decrease the gap theory and practice where it is based on real problem [6]. many literatures used the project based learning [5-9] to educate engineering aspects because pbl used experiments for learning. this method will provide earlier stage of training by these activities during the university education that will lead to better engineers. engineers will graduate with high rich skills required to face the real life [10]. the pbl have some limitation where the students cannot deal with projects or go in the depth of topics without having the necessary knowledge. on the other hand, spiral teaching method [11] another education method presented by researchers. this method has a concepts to educate topics at different points of time [12]. at the beginning students learn basics without details, as education progresses, subject details come in and related with the basics to reinforce it.as a result of this, many literatures used spiral teaching method [12-15] to educate engineering courses. this paper aims to develop hybrid educational method by mixing spiral teaching method and pbl method to achieve better learning performance, better than pbl and spiral teaching method. two methods mixing eliminate the limitation in the pbl. the paper organized as follow: (1) introduction, (2) spiral project based learning model, (3) microprocessor course material, (4) educational model for microprocessor course, (5) evaluation and discussion, (6) conclusion, and (7) references. 2. spiral project based learning model to achieve better students learning performance. this paper proposed an educational method called hybrid spiral project based learning. this hybrid method mixes two learning methodology, projects based learning (pbl) and spiral learning teaching methods as shown in figure 1. the proposed method uses many educational activities like lectures, virtual lab, projects, and lab. spiral method constructs the out boundaries of the teaching direction in the proposed educational method. learning course divided in to number of steps to simplify the course load on the students. lecturer will teach students each step and then progress to the next in ascending order. the learning information in the current step based on the learning information in the previous step and so on. in this way students will encounter the topic in each step to expand their skill level and knowledges about the course. important principles must teach in the beginning steps and other principles come next. every step contains all of teaching activities mentioned before. problem based learning method used inside every step. this method adds dynamic teaching approach to the proposed method in this paper. this method focuses on students in which the learning process actively engage students in investigation process to solve problems. every aspect in each course step can be determined as a problem, this idea capture students interest. also, it pushes them forward for serious thinking, explore, discussion making with other about the aspects.as a result, students acquire deeper knowledge about the aspect, and increase the possibility for long term retention of knowledge and skills. furthermore, it develops students research skills, discussion, communication skills with other. lecturer here responsible for facilitate learning and guide students in developing knowledge about aspects in the right way. figure 1: spiral project based learning scheme. closed loop model used in the technic for providing feedback information to enhance the students learning performance. feedback information can be used by the lecturer for assessing students to determine the weak points in their knowledge and help them to pass over. also, it used by students to know the difference between their current level and the required achievement level. students will make more efforts to reduce this amount to reach the desirable level. 3. microprocessor course materials 3.1. microprocessor training kit microprocessor lab handles different activities using development boards. this boards have specific type of processor, different types of peripherals, integrated development environment, and programing interface. the development board that used in this paper was 8086 microcomputer trainer (mts-86c). it manufactured by k&h taiwan company. this company offers different types of educational training equipment’s. mts-86c board helps the students to understand processor architecture and how deals with processor and peripheral chips. moreover, it can cover a range of teaching experiments for microprocessor and its peripherals. the k&h mts-86c kit, shown in figure 2 contains five main parts.8086 cpu, system-user memory, word standard chip sets, input/output devices, and external interface. the 8086 processor could be programed with different types of programing language, low-level and high-level programming languages. in this course, low level programing language used to teach processor programing. which it helps students to understand the time cycles and the size required for every instruction and program. as a result of this, students will program processors with the most efficient way. further information about the kit can be found in [16]. figure 2: k&h mts-86c kit. 3.2. virtual lab for microprocessor kit many electronic simulation programs are currently more separated than before. these programs simulate electronic components, processors, microcontrollers and also many things. they are currently become one of the electronic design steps to analyze and test the perspective design. furthermore, it may be used for academic purposes. these programs provide capability to design rich virtual lab. there are many programs from different companies like proteus, mutism, spice and etc. proteus design suit founded by labcenter electronics ltd. it has the capability to simulate electronic components with animated features as led, oscilloscope, and etc. moreover, this program simulates many mcu of different brand pic, avr, arm, and etc. it simulates the mcu by applying the task code to the mcu part in the schematic. also, it simulates the digital and the analog components with processor in the schematic. the program indicates all types of error due to software issue in the task code or in hardware issue in the design[17]. in the paper, proteus simulation suit used to design two virtual kits. the first virtual kit contains 8086 processor and supporting elements for the processor as shown in the figure 3. this one used to teach the students how to deal with processor. figure 3: virtual kit part a. second virtual kit contains 8086 processor, peripheral chips, and electronic components as shown in figure 4. many peripheral chips included like programmable peripheral interface (ppi 8255), programmable interval timer (pit 8253), and universal synchronous / asynchronous receiver/ transmitter (usart 8251). this virtual kit used to teach students how to make connection between the processor and peripheral chips, and to teach them how to deal with these chips. figure 4: virtual kit part b. 3.3. lab experiments hands-on the proposed hands-on experiments course in this paper effectively concentrated on engaging students during lab. each experiment in the hands-on course, it designed to lead students through the procedure without significantly need for lecturer supervision. the hands-on contains number of experiments that shown in table 1. each of them require between one and half hour or 2 hours to complete the procedure. the overall time for each lab was 3 hours. each experiment, also, divided in to sub parts with ascending order in complexity, starting with basic principles ending by full target details. at the end of each experiment, students require to perform classwork in the same topic of the experiment. table 1: hands-on experiments title. hands-on experiments ex.1 basic skills for hardware development ex.2 basic skills for software development ex.3 real-mode assembly language programming methodology ex.4 real-mode processor programming i ex.5 real-mode processor programming ii ex.6 basic skills for peripheral hardware ex.7 programmable peripheral interface ex.8 programmable interval timer ex.9 universal synchronous / asynchronous receiver/ transmitter 4. educational model for microprocessor course. the educational model for microprocessor course centered on the proposed hybrid spiral project based learning in this paper. at first, course goal determined by the lecturer and then the course divided in to number of steps as required. dividing process insure that every step related to the preceding and the next steps with ascending order. feedback used to provide information about the progressing to achieve course goal as shown in figure 5. figure 5: overall course scheme. after dividing the course into steps, each step goal determined by the lecturer. based on that the lecture, virtual lab, lab and project designed to achieve the goal as shown in figure 6 and 7. each lecture in the course was between one and half hour to two hours. feedback information for this stage reacquire at least one homework and quiz. after lecture, virtual lab introduces the lab that tight to the step goal that last between half hour to one hour. during virtual lab, a wide discussion area opened between students and lecturer. lab period required between two hours to two half hours. figure 6: course learning activity. figure 7: step scheme. the lab starts by short lecture to introduce topic then area of discussion between students and lecturer about the topic as shown 8. students divided to groups each with two to three students. each group flow the experiment procedure in the hands-on manual. experiment procedure focus on students without need for lecturer with ascending complexity order, starting by simple topic problem then mid complexity and finally complicated one. after completing the procedure, every group work on classwork which based on fully real-life problem. the lecturer directs the discussion and collect the complex issue that normally similar between students to help them to pass it. quiz and class work in every lab provide a feedback information to measure students understanding about the topic. all the lab activity based on project based learning. furthermore, project is the final activity to achieve step goal and move forward for next step. each project based on real life problem which can be solved by the knowledge from the current step and the preceding steps.one week is the dead time for completing the project. the same cycle performed for each step until the course completed. during the course, every four steps, theoretical and practical exams performed also final theoretical and practical exams performed for all the course. figure 8: lab scheme. 5.evaluation and discussion after course completion, overall assessment performed to evaluate students’ knowledge about the microprocessor course. the proposed method in this paper evaluated in two approaches. first of all, learning methodology evaluation to validate the proposed methodology by collecting students impacts to a number of questions. secondly, learning methodology effectiveness to validate the effectiveness of methods to learn essential information about the course and how much the students understand about it. 5.1. learning methodology evaluation online survey performed for students to collect their impact at the end of the course. the online survey divided in to two parts: first part covered the first five steps of the course and the second covered the four last steps. the two parts answered by students to validate the proposed methodology. also, the online survey provides a facility for each student to provide his opinion about the methodology. each question in the survey had number of possible answers to choose. each student only need to click on the answer he wants. only one survey for each student accepted. survey questions shown in table 2 and percentage results for every choice shown in table 3. table 2: survey questions. table 3: survey questions results. according to the survey, 33.75% of students enjoy this experience, 46.65 % of them found it good, 19.6% of them found it acceptable, and no one found it boring and annoying (question 1). some of the students mention in question six, that they found this experience improve their thinking capability in solve problem. result shown in figure 9.a. about 80% of students found the relation between the lecture, virtual lab, lab, and project good and excellent (question 2) as shown in figure 9.b. also ,97% of the students found the sequence of learning good sequence (question 4) as shown in figure 9.c. from the results of questions two and four, that the proposed learning methodology had properly design and it achieved the desirable mixing between the spiral methods and the pbl. figure 9: questions result chart. (a)question 1. (b)question 2. (c)question 4. s questions title 1 describe your experience with the course learning methodology? 2 describe amount of relation between the lecture and the lab? 3 what do you think about the learning methodology that used in the course? 4 do you think that the course taught in proper sequence 5 at end of the course, how do you evaluate the information you gained in the course? 6 write your opinion about the methodology? s possible choice and results 1 annoying 0% boring 0% acceptable 19.6% good 46.65% enjoyable 33.75% 2 without relation 0% week relation 0% acceptable relation 20.25% good relation 47.15% complete relation 32.6% 3 acceptable 3.55% average 3.55% good 14.55% very good 22.3% excellent 56.05% 4 without sequence 0% random sequence 0% acceptable sequence 0% average sequence 2.85% good sequence 97.15% 5 acceptable 3.55% average 7.15% good 49% very good 30.45% excellent 9.85% a b c about 92% of students had positive impact to the educational methodology (question 3) as shown in figure 10.a. where about 56% of them found it excellent .36% of them found it very good and good. some of students suggested to increase the lab time to cover more problems to enhance their abilities and improve their knowledges. also, 89% of students found the information that the learned in the course, was good and better (question 5) as shown in figure 10.b. all the statistical analysis of the survey results shown the overall reaction of students’ majority to the learning model of microprocessor course was positive. where the students interested in the course because it contains many real-life problems based on the proposed methodology .as a result, the proposed method in this paper validate and can be can be used in deferent engineering course. figure 10: questions result chart. (a)question 3. (b)question 5. 5.2. methodology effectiveness measurement to evaluate the learning methodology effectiveness, quantitative measurements performed to analyze the effectiveness using statistical tests. two measurements performed to test students’ learning level of knowledges and students’ learning skills. first of all, t-test hypothesis statistical test performed to compare quantitative measurements result of the proposed method and the classical method. in statistic, it is impossible to prove that something right but it is possible to prove that something wrong [18]. from this concept, a t-test hypothesis performed to test that there are no differences between the result of proposed education method and the classical method. a three hours exam performed to collect the hypothesis test data. the exam measured two different knowledges parts. first part, knowledge learned through the proposed learning methodology. second, knowledge learned through the classical conventional education method. the two parts have the same weight degree in the exam, sixty degrees for each part. the questions consist from calculation questions (20%), design questions (40%), answer questions (20%), and programing questions (20%). the hypothesis test applied on the exam scores result in the following: the t state value (3.53) for the test greater than the t critical (2.14). also, the p-value (0.003) smaller than the alpha value (0.05). as a result, there is significant differences between the two methods results. also, the mean value result for the proposed method 42.6 had greater than the result from the classical method 33.73. the significant difference and the greater mean value for the proposed method indicated statistical evidences of much higher learning performance of the hybrid spiral project based learning method than the classical method. hypothesis test results shown in table 4. most of the students score improved while using the proposed method. figure 11 show sample results of students’ scores. table 4: t-test hypothesis statistical test results. figure 11: students samples score. second measurement performed to measure students learning skills. students learning skills evaluated by examining the projects outcomes. all the results shown efficient use of the course skills. furthermore. a statistical test performed to correlate students’ final exams scores and the final projects scores. person correlation coefficient test performed on the data and the score is (0.799). this score shows strong positive correlation between exams and projects. which it indicates tight coupled between skills learning and the knowledge level learning in the proposed hybrid spiral project based learning. finally, all the measurement performed indicate the effectiveness of the proposed method in educational microprocessor course and other engineering courses. 6.conclusion this paper proposed hybrid educational method named “hybrid spiral project based learning method” for engineering educational courses. this paper investigates the impact of the proposed method on students learning microprocessor course to illustrate the method. where the course teaches using spiral method and project based learning. statistical tests analysis validates the method and provide evidence about the improvement in knowledge and skills learning. i recommended to use this model in other engineering courses. measurement classical method proposed method mean 33.73333333 42.6 variance 56.4952381 82.82857143 t stat 3.53693384 p(t<=t) two-tail 0.003285081 t critical two-tail 2.144786688 a b 7. reference [1] a. selvaggio, a. sadiki, t. r. ortelt, r. meya, c. becker, s. chatti, et al., "development of a cupping test in remote laboratories for engineering education," in 2016 13th international conference on remote engineering and virtual instrumentation (rev), 2016, pp. 122-126. 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[13] g. joshi and p. desai, "building software testing skills in undergraduate students using spiral model approach," in 2016 ieee eighth international conference on technology for education (t4e), 2016, pp. 244-245. [14] l. jing, z. cheng, j. wang, and y. zhou, "a spiral stepby-step educational method for cultivating competent embedded system engineers to meet industry demands," ieee transactions on education, vol. 54, pp. 356-365, 2011. [15] d. c. panda, "teaching electromagnetic theory with spiral curriculum approach to undergraduates," in 2013 ieee applied electromagnetics conference (aemc), 2013, pp. 1-2. [16] l. k&h mfg. co. (available online in aug/2017). mts-86c 8086 microcomputer trainer. available: http://www.kandh.com.tw/products_2.php?prod=205 [17] l. e. ltd. (available online aug / 2017). proteus design suite available: https://www.labcenter.com/ [18] d. c. howell, fundamental statistics for the behavioral sciences duxbury press, 1999. http://www.kandh.com.tw/products_2.php?prod=205 https://www.labcenter.com/  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.44 training robot arm 5 degree of freedom for tracking the desired route using mlp zahed kamangar mechanical engineering dept. faculty of engineering islamic azad university sanandaje, iran zahed.kaman@iausdj.ac.ir soran saeed college of informatics it department. sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, krgiraq soran.saeed@spu.edu.iq asrin zardoie information technology engineering dept. faculty of engineering islamic azad university sanandaje, iran asrin.zardoie@yahoo.com abstract: this paper work presents a new method of controlling the robot arm. the control system is the most important part of industrial robot. in industrial robot arms, it is very important to control the desired path and direction. in this paper, the presented control method is a multilayer neural network. which controls and compares the location of the joins at the end point of the path relative to the zero position (the beginning of the path-static state). and try to learn the ultimate position of each joints due to changes in angles and direction of movement to carry out the motion process. the superiority of this method is that it can operate without considering 3d space (working space), the dynamic equations, and have cartesian coordinates of the points on the desired path. innovating this method of controlling the choice of the route is based on feedback from the vision system and human intelligence. this way, the operator selects and applies how to move the joints and the links of the robot and the method of walking the path. applying the path through the movement of links and motion of joints and changing their angles in order to reach the end effector to the end point of the path. in this system, using the potentiometers (volumes) as an encoder connected to the axis of the joints, it is possible to obtain the location of the joints on the basis of variations in the voltage range and convert it to the equivalent digital 1024-0 values as has been used the mlp neural network input. keywords: joints, mlp, degree of freedom, end effector, zero position, encoder. 1. introduction today, the use of industrial robots is very impressive and, as in the past, it is not only monopoly of heavy industry and automotive industry. this requires the use of more commonly used control methods with a simpler user interface. the reasons behind the use of robots in the industry can be seen in improving the quality of production, production capacity and cost reduction due to the replacement of human resources. the non-linear and multi-variable nature of the robotic arm model and the uncertainty of occurrence several parameters such as speed, precision, and repeatability in the process of traversing the routing conditions make it difficult to precisely control the position of the robot and track tracking errors hence, if the paths defined for the robot, including multiple joint combinations, in parallel or sequentially to reach the end nozzle to the end point, makes the route generation process very complex. smart controllers for controlling the robot, including fuzzy, fuzzy control neurological, neural, and visual machine use, each of which has disadvantages and advantages, but what is apparent is the lack of coverage of all robot control variables in the shortest time or high accuracy and ease of route creation by the user. most controllers based on equations. the dynamics of the robot engine is designed and cannot be done in general all components of the robot and its variables, such as torque, momentum, acceleration and stability are controlled. of course, this is evident and due to the dependence of the controllers on wide-dimensional dynamic equations and parameters such as voltage control, the flow of joint stimuli and their dynamical equations are limited and complex. in this paper, our control components are not applied gates, but the positions and angles of joints are based on the numerical value of the encoder of the stimuli. as a fuzzy controller, its design does not depend on the dynamics of the mechanism. 2. related work there bring been a significant number fascinating literatures accessible for route. about arm robot. “in 2015, mexico transformed 3. 4 million engine vehicles furthermore possessed seventh spot around vehicle makers comprehensively. this level about yield might have been twice that about 2005, when mexico might have been tenth biggest producer in the world”. [1]. the car business need taken an focal part in the methodology for industrialization, which toward preparing and taking in arm robot control degree which may be have a place with control framework might have been those principle a feature will settle on those preparing speeder. this paper expects with plan what's more actualize all the arm robot framework also train those arm which need the capacity with move 5 level to this approach we utilized artificial intelligent . for loathe paper exhibited an elective result for regulating robotic arm utilizing fpaa engineering that might have been the in those controller may be outlined eventually tom's perusing utilizing fpaa will work every last one of joints and the writer pointed that he utilized innovation in the modifying those development for robotic arm used to train arm robot, what's more fpaa, phytotoxicn controller, driver circuit, way tracking, arm controller. mailto:zahed.kaman@iausdj.ac.ir [2] reasonable results that meets expectations great clinched alongside true controllers would necessary with control all joint. in turn specialist motioned that the playing point of presenting an extra decrease ratio, enhancing general effectiveness [3]. k. hosoda, et al. after beginning starting with a launch on gatherings give a stable start, it might have been workable to show the robot running to five steps toward immaculate ffw control. likewise [4].furthermore it might make seen that those material exhibits a stress unwinding conduct comparable of the human muscle [5]. also canny hunt algorithm will be recommended will characterize the way that prompts those fancied position what's more introduction of a mechanical robot's controller end effector. the look algorithm bit by bit methodologies those fancied setup by selecting also assessing an amount of elective robot's configurations [6]. further exploration paper, inverse for jacobian grid will be approximated by recreated neural networks. the individuals approximated neural models necessity help used inside control law particularly. should each level of adaptability of the robot manipulator, a two layer feedforward neural framework might make perceived. [7]. it might make checked that those suggested versant feathery skeleton might model those flawed is concerned concerning delineation a nonlinear fill in of the joint position slip besides its gone through subordinate. [8]. markos to as considerably paper presentation a novel 5dof robot technique to hand gesture distinguishment. from handy reasons, the exceptional framework requirement been formed toward directing, including under the individuals nonlinear streamlining. [9]. internet-enabled innovations to mechanical technology training are putting on imperativeness similarly as internet platforms encouraging furthermore pushing ability preparation. we produced a web lab for bioinspired mechanical technology utilizing a minimal effort 6 degree-of-freedom robotic articulator for a neuro-inspired controller [10]. another relate paper bargains for movement control for a self-sufficient portable robot utilizing a canny multi-layer perceptron (mlp) what's more. spiral groundwork capacity (rbf) neural system based systems [11]. 3. approache, methods & materals in this paper work, a new system have been implemented a control methodology based on the documentation that we have obtained from the results of the test on a robust study sample of the robot arm 4r. in order to understand better the control method, the below block diagram is provided. (figure 1.0). figure 1.0 block diagram control method. based on the operational control system’s algorithm, introduced in the block diagram, the neural network compares the inputs that take the encoders as motors position to the corresponding values of the motors that are assigned to the system's learning mode by the operator to the final position of each joint. if the repeat path is correct, it will be completed. if the angles of the engines are different from the values learned, the network tries to deliver the numerical values of the encoders by moving the engines in the direction of the cw or ccw to the previously learned values. below is a general form of the euler-lagrange equation of the arm of the robot 4r (1), in which the robot is designed in this paper. 𝑫(𝒒)�̈� + 𝑪(𝒒,𝒒)�̇�̇ + 𝒈(𝒒) = 𝝉 (1) to get the position of the robot joints, we have used potential potentiometers (volumes) instead of industrial anchors or anchor motors. in this plan, with the installation of potentiometers along the axis of the joints, given that all joints are of type r, we can have proper feedback from the direction and position of the motors and the corresponding angles and positions of the joints of the robot figure 2 ("a"," b"). given that potentiometers can provide variable resistance based on their suffering, we have been using high-end potential potentiometers to enable the movement of joints and angle variations with a higher resolution and accuracy. figure 2: joint no. 1 and potentiometer connected to the shaft confessions (a) figure 2: joint no. 3 and potentiometer connected to the shaft confessions (b). the implemented model of the robot studied in this paper is shown in matlab's software, figure 3(a), along with a robot specification built below to better understand the test robot. figure 3(b). figure 3 (a). robot model 4r robot matching and dynamic equations. figure 3 (b). a view of the robot made. by moving the links to the robot, the hand-operated pacemaker is connected to the joys by the operator, and the voltage changes applied to it can be carried out. in the proposed neural network, the range of variations for each joint is values between 0-1023, which, in reality, are subject to variations in the voltage range of 0-5 volts of a 5 k 20-degree potentiometer, which changes the position of the joints in terms of angle as voltage variations in our discretion. in training mode, the operator applies a path that is already in place to reach the robot from source to destination in terms of the angle shift of one or more joints in parallel with successive steps. by keeping the final nozzle at the end point and keeping the position of the joints under the influence of the applied angles for 3 seconds, it will learn the process of tracking the path by the robot. in this case, all angular changes and the position of the robot joints, which are read in the form of changes in the level of the voltage level of volumes is controlled by microprocessor adc ports, and the corresponding values are sent to the computer through the serial port and entered into the mlp neural network. the computer then recognizes the input values as the final values required to navigate the path with these movements. a dataset is provided to express the relationship between the joint angle and the measured value of a potentiometer. which is used for correct functioning of the robot controller during the process of repetition of training movements. this data contains 100 locations for each joint. each position defined for each joint, including changes in three parameters, the direction of movement, the rotational angles of the actuator connected to it, and the amount of potentials of that joint, are relative to the values of the initial position of the joint. the neural network implemented in the robot controller operates by creating a logical mathematical relationship between the values of the parameters of the positions of each joint in the data. the neural network considers the mathematical relation considered by the data in the data position as the weight of the inputs of the network's neurons. the designed neural network, by examining the mathematical relationship, can determine the direction of motion and the rotation angle of the stimuli to reach the joint position. this is done by comparing the position of the moment (position feedback) of the joint, which is the same amount of potentiometer attached to it, with the final position determined for the joint, under the influence of the mathematical relation obtained from the database. the potentiometers that are fitted along the axis of each joint, and are also referred to in this paper, volume, have 20 rounds to adjust their resistance capacity. which is set to zero-mode at position 10 round and with a resistance of 2.5 kilo-ohm, i.e. the median value. the joints are also in the zero-mode robot, all in the middle position of their movement, and this is the same with the average amount of volumes, which is 2.5 kilograms. the feedback position of the joints in each direction clockwise or counterclockwise to the end of the motor course with the values of <2.5< kω received from the potentiometers. the zero point of the robot is when all the joints are in the middle position of their movement, while the 5kω potential potentiometers connected to them are also in a position of 2.5kω. in the next step, with the zero setting of the robot and turning it on after choosing the direction of movement of each of the engines, according to the amount of potentiometers learned in the training mode, they began to move the joints of the links so that the values of the potentiometers corresponding to the values trained close. in this scheme we consider the inputs of the neural network under study as read values of potentiometers, which are the corresponding position of the joints, as nerve neurons. in the work of the network, the mlp network is implemented as a single-layer network and we conducted our training based on it. after viewing the network output, which is the same as the final position of the joints after the path is repeated, and comparing them with inputs that contain the optimal path created with the desired angles, is considered in the network as neuron, it is understood having a high error in the performance and accuracy of the network in performing joint movements and changing the angle of the joints. therefore, the network has been expanded to two layers, and in this case again, tests with a fixed path profile, such as the one-layer mode, are performed, and the results are very valuable and the report is presented in the following tables. (table 1 and table 2). the results from the linear perceptron 2 linear regression network designed under the robot tracking test are presented in (table 4 a, b). figure 4.0. robot mechanical modeling made by specifying the number of joints. 3.1 path number 1.0: the value of the angles determined for the joints in degrees, along with the strength of the potentiometers of the joints and their respective digital values for tracking path number 1. table 1.0 (a) illustrations the value of the angles 1-layer the value of the angles determined for the joints in degrees, along with the strength of the potentiometers of the joints and their corresponding digital values for tracking the path no. 1 under the influence of the 1-layer network along with tracking error rates. table 1.0 (b) illustrations the value of the angles 1-layer the value of the angles determined for the joints in degrees, along with the strength of the potentiometers of the joints and their corresponding digital values for tracking the path no. 1 under the influence of the 2-layer network along with tracking error rates. table 1.0 (c). illustrations the value of the angles 1-layer the value of the angles determined for the joints in degrees, along with the strength of the potentiometers of the joints and their corresponding digital values for tracking the path no. 2 under the influence of the 1-layer network along with tracking error rates. 3.2 path number 2.0: the value of the angles determined for the joints in degrees, along with the strength of the potentiometers of the joints and their respective digital values for tracking path number 2.0. table 2.0(a). illustrations the value of the angles 2-layer the value of the angles determined for the joints in degrees, along with the strength of the potentiometers of the joints and their corresponding digital values for tracking the path no. 2 under the influence of the 2-layer network along with tracking error rates. joi nt approxim ate angle (degree) potentiome ter (ohm) digital approxim ate error (approx imate 1 28.5 2394.78 490 5% 2 47.5 2342.01 479 5% 3 63.7 2230.76 456 10% 4 54.6 2237.08 458 10% joi nt approxim ate angle (degree) potentiom eter (ohm) digital (approxim ate) error (approxi mate) 1 56.5 2310.83 467 7% 2 94 2284.72 462 7% 3 80 2255 461 12% 4 35.5 2224.43 455 12% joi nt angle degree potentiometer (ohm) direction cw,ccw digital 1 60 2458.33 ccw 502.97 2 100 2430.56 ccw 497.29 3 90 2562.5 cw 524.28 4 40 2527.77 cw 517.18 joi nt approxim ate angle (degree) potentiom eter (ohm) digital approxim ate error approxm ate 1 56.5 2310.83 467 7% 2 94 2284.72 462 7% 3 80 2255 461 12% 4 35.5 2224.43 455 12% table 2.0(b) illustrations the value of the angles 2-layer table 2.0(c) illustrations the value of the angles 2-layer figure 5(a): simulation of tracking the no.2 specified path without error by the robot, by applying a 1-layer and 2-layer neural network. figure 5(b): simulation of tracking the no.1 specified path without error by the robot, by applying a 1-layer and 2-layer neural network. 4. test considering the values in the above tables related to robot motion feedback, the angle of joints in terms of degrees and the values of potentiometers attached to the shaft joints, and the study of the performance of the mlp network in both single-layer and two-layer modes for the two different paths we concluded in this technique, the more number of layers in the grid is, the more accurate the robot's performance is seen in the training path and the less error. when the joints involved in the training movement on the robot have a large variation of the values by angles. the robot has a greater error in the repetition of the learned motion in the joints near the base of the robot, due to the inability to control and hold the joints at the desired angle with the help of the operator by the operator in the process of their simultaneous movement in training. the simulation result is shown to us when the robot performs combinational motions involving several joint periods simultaneously, with a higher error rate than the movements required to run a path in sequence. the results of the above tests are related to the simultaneous motion and the sequential movement tables for both paths are shown in the table below (table 3) and practically have a very slight error in all cases. for this reason, we solve the problem of repeatability error in the process of tracking the paths by simultaneously moving the network joints into two layers and five inputs, and the result is presented in table 1 (c) and table 2 (c). the accuracy of the network in two modes is the path of number 1 and path no. 2 under the influence of the twolayer network in both consecutive and simultaneous motion of the joints and the error is close to zero. 5. results the results of the test of track path no.1.0 and path no. 2.0 in the mode of sequential movement of joints, influenced by the network of 1 layer and 2 layers with error detection as illustrates in table 3.0. joi nt approximate angle (degree) potentiom eter (ohm) digital approxi mate error approxim ate 1 59.5 2433.74 497 1% 2 99 2406.25 492 1% 3 89 2536.87 519 1% 4 39.5 2502.49 512 1% joi nt approxim ate angle (degree) potentiom eter (ohm) digital (approxim ate) error (approxim ate) 1 29.7 2495.62 510 1% 2 49.5 2440.62 499 1% 3 69.3 2426.87 496 1% 4 59.4 2433.75 497 1% and the results from the linear regression network designed in this project, implemented in weka software, and the general characteristics of the network, as illustrates in table 4.0 both (a and b). during system testing. table 3.0. illustrations the value of the angles for both path no.1.0 and path no.2.0. table 4.0 (a). === run information === scheme: weka classifiers functions linear regression -s 0 -r 1.0e-8 relation: data new instances: 271 attributes: 2 rotation output test mode: 10-fold cross-validation === classifier model (full training set) === linear regression model output = 3.789 * rotation + 0.0078 time taken to build model: 0.01 seconds === cross-validation === === summary === correlation coefficient 1 mean absolute error 0.2499 root mean squared error 0.2891 relative absolute error 0.0968 % root relative squared error 0.097 % total number of instances 271 table 4.0 (b). === run information === scheme: weka classifiers functions linear regression -s 0 -r 1.0e-8 relation: data new instances: 271 attributes: 2 rotation output test mode: 10-fold cross-validation === classifier model (full training set) === linear regression model output = 3.789 * rotation + 0.0078 time taken to build model: 0.01 seconds === cross-validation === === summary === correlation coefficient 1 mean absolute error 0.2499 root mean squared error 0.2891 relative absolute error 0.0968 % root relative squared error 0.097 % total number of instances 271 error in percent (approximate) network layer joint path no.1.0 1 onelayer °30 1 1 twolayer 1.23 onelayer °50 2 1 twolayer 1.35 onelayer °70 3 1 twolayer 1.30 onelayer °60 4 1 twolayer path no.2.0 1.3 onelayer °60 1 1 twolayer 1.5 onelayer °10 0 2 1 twolayer 1.4 onelayer °90 3 1 twolayer 1 onelayer °40 4 1 twolayer 6. conclution using the mlp linear regression neural network in both 1-layer and 2-layer modes, according to one-handed data, shows that in the case of a 2-layer network, the error rate of the network output and the encoders are 1layer in a reasonable amount. the attention has been diminished and much less time has been taken to optimize and run the route. 7. recommendation the recommendation for improving the performance of this arm control system for timely, operational and economic reasons: 1. use of high-frequency processors such as arm controller. 2. use of external a / d circuits with a resolution of 24 bits. 3. use of electric actuators of permanent magnet motors of dc motors. 4. use of work space calculations along with joint analysis and implementation of base model controllers 5. simultaneous use and integration of the machine vision control method with the method presented in this paper work for controlling the arm for greater stability. 8. reference [1]. edited by rudolf traub-merz. (2017)published by: friedrich-ebert-stiftung, hiroshimastraße 28, 10785 berlin, and isbn: 978-3-95861-597-7 [online] available from: http://library.fes.de/pdffiles/iez/13154.pdf. [2]. t. salih, omar and yehea o., (2014). “an alternative solution for controlling robotic arm using fpaa technology” [online] available from: www.jatit.org/volumes/researchpapers/vol28no1/6vol28no1.pdf [3]. y. asano, et. al. (2012). ““lower thigh design of detailed musculoskeletal humanoid [4]. "kenshiro"”, in proc. ieee/rsj international conference on intelligent robots and systems [5]. iros, pages 4367–4372, oct. 2012. isbn 978-14673-1736-8. doi: 10.1109/iros.2012. 6386225. [6]. k. hosoda, et. al. (2012). “anthropomorphic muscular-skeletal robotic upper limb for understanding embodied intelligence”. advanced robotics, 26(7):729–744. [7]. m. jäntsch, et. al. (2013).” anthrob – a printed anthropomimetic robot”. in proceedings of the ieee-ras international conference on humanoid robots (humanoids). 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[13]. p.k.panigrahi, saradindu ghosh, dayal r parhi, (june 2014)., “intelligent leaning and control of autonomous mobile robot using mlp and rbf based neural network in clustered environment”, international journal of scientific & engineering research, volume 5, issue 6. http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/iez/13154.pdf http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/iez/13154.pdf  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.47 eog signal modeling using double exponential smoothing for robot arm control system soran ab. m. saeed2 college of informatic information technology dept. sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, krg, iraq soran.saeed@spu.edu.iq avan m. ahmed3 kurdistan institution for strategic studies and scientific research avan.ahmed@kissr.edu.krd naufel b. mhammed1 kurdistan institution for strategic studies and scientific research naufel.muhamad@kissr.edu.krd abstract: this paper present a novel way of modeling eog signal to use in a robot arm control system, two procedures implemented, offline procedure to measure and modeling eog for building a pattern reference model ,and online procedure used to control the robot arm. by comparing online measured eog and the eog pattern in reference model suitable manipulation instruction generated by the micro controller. the double exponential smoothing method used for building the pattern reference model, the accuracy of the reference model tested with main squire error (mse) and main absolute error (mape) measures. auto correlation analysis applied to study the existing pattern and linearity of eog signal with eye movements. eog signal measurement for this research classified in to five kinds: eog horizontal (left and right) vertical (up and down), and blinking. the eog signal models of this research saved and used as a reference model file to classify the eye movements. a measurement and robot arm control system constructed by using arduino olimix 328, olimix sensor shield, and robot arm driving circuit, arduino c used as a programming environment, minitab software used to build the model and correlation analysis ,brain bay software used to control and signal processing. key word: correlation, double exponential smoothing, electrooculography, eye movement, robot arm controller. 1.0 introduction and background electrooculography will be a strategy for measuring those resting potential of the retina, coming about indicator will be called the electro oculogram eog [1]. eog indicator will be in light of electrical possibility contrasts between the corneal also retina at eye development will be realized, the plentifulness of this sign ranges the middle of (15-200) μv also its recurrence part try from 0 on 100 hz [2]. numerous analysts attempted different systems on identify what’s more dissect eye movement, uzma siddiqui and a. n shaik [1]. present a new technology of placing electrodes to record the polarization potential or corneal-retina potential. manuel merino, et. al., [2] developed a signal processing algorithm to detect eye movements. abdulla xan et. al., [3] worked on amplification, noise removal and digitalizing of eog signals .damian pakulski and artur gmerek [4] developed a method to record and analyze eog signals using classifier based on artificial neural network (ann).c.kvitha and g. nagappan [5]built a “navigation perspective algorithm” to explore an wheelchair utilizing eog signs. arthi. encountered with urban decay because of deindustrialization, engineering concocted, government lodgi. v what's more sureshr. norman [6] recommend an alternate eog estimation frameworks for the interfacing what’s more control appliances. veena g. ukken et. al. , [7] planned a eog built arm-hand control framework utilizing zigbee remote innovation organization. krishna mehta [8] reviewed distinctive routines about eog sign investigation. ngyen kim-tien what's more nguyen truong-thinh [9] introduced an different approaches to control the electrically powered wheelchair toward utilizing eog indicator recognition, the client controls the velocity also controlling utilizing eog and emg signs. zhao l. v, et. al. [10] assembled an hci framework dependent upon eog, those framework comprise of eog, securing unit, eog design distinguishment what's more control unit. hassein shahabi. et. al. [11] exhibited another system for evacuating squinting impact starting with eeg signal, two models about eog, eeg also kalman channel been utilized. siriwadee anugsakun, et. al. , [12] suggested an strong order algorithm of the eye developments (eight movements). the algorithm was based on the onset analysis and classification and first derivative technique. chun sing louis tsui ,et, al.[13] present a novel handfree control system for an electric –powered wheelchair based on emg signal and eog for attention shift detection andreas bulling ,etl ., [14] investigation of eye movements presented. eye movement used to recognize mental activities in this work a novel procedure for eog modeling presented. in this research, we applied double exponential smoothing (des) method to analyze and modeling the eog signal. the predicted eog signal will be evaluated according to eye movement’s angle and amplitude of eog signal, the digitized output used to manipulate a robot arm. moreover, we used accurate data acquisition system with five sensor system for vertical, horizontal, and blinking eye movements. 2.0 methods and materials kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.47 2.1exponential smoothing and correlation in smoothing procedure recent observation are given larger weight than older observations in such a way that weight given to post data decrease exponential with time is exponential smoothing [15].the general form of des[16],[17] is: let x (t) be the actual data at time t, t= 1, n then f’ (t) = α x (t) + (1-α) f (t-1) (1) f’ (t) =α f’ (t) + (1-α) f’ (t-1 (2) f’ (t+h) = f’ (t) (3) where f’ (t), f’ (t): the smoothing or derived value of time (t) α: smoothing constant 0≤α≤1 f’ (t+h): the prediction of time (t+h) made at time t, i.e., h period in to the future. forecasting provides many performance measures for forecasting algorithms. the following notations used to describe the measures [18]: f’ (t) the prediction of time t e (t) prediction error at time t, e(t) =x(t)= f(t) then: the cumulative prediction error cfe =∑e (t), t=1, .n (4) the mean square error mse= [e (t)] ^2 /n , t=1, n (5) the mean absolute percent error mape=100[|e (t) |/x (t)]/n , t=1....n (6) while the correlation is apure scale –free measure of strength of linear association between two random variables [19].the correlation between x and y can be estimated as: r=c(x,y)/[σ(x) σ(y)] (7) c(x,y): covariance σ (x): standard deviation of x σ (y): standard deviation of y 2.2 eog signal measurements the resultant eog signal measurement are in low frequencies, thus this research uses band pass filter with range of ( 1-30 ) hz [20]. the olimex 328 arduino used to control sensor shields. five sensors method used to measure the eog signals, the picture of the complete system arrangement show in fig. 1.0, the block diagram of eog measuring and control was built using brain bay software, as shown in fig. 2.0. figure 1 eog beased robot arm control system. figure 2 measuring block diagram of eog signals the electrodes output signal will be supplied to the eog bio amplifier. a three channel output of the bio amplifier will divided as channel 1 for vertical eye movement, channel 2 for horizontal eye movement, and channel 3 will be used for blinking signal. a three smeller processing steps applied to the three channels. the output of channel 1 pass to a low pass filter with an upper limit of 40 hz. the average of each 10 sample calculated for the filter signal. a threshold output used as trigger of erp-detect process. the erp–detect compare the pattern similarity between the outputs of the average and saved one in fileread depending on pattern similarity exciting in a channel, an instruction will be send to the parallel port through the comrader. the range of eye movement is 100 o for vertical and 120 o for horizontal eye movements as shown in fig. 3.0 [21]. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.47 figure 3 range of eye movements angle. the vertical eye movement measured as up (eog vu) and down (eog vd), while the horizontal eye movement measured as left (eog hl) and right (eog hr).the measured eogvu in fig.4.0. figure 4 measured eog vu. showing good pattern repetition, the average frequency plot varies between (3-15)hz and during eog rising, the frequency of the eog signal is decreased and approached to less than three hz, while the power in band shows two peak values. the measured eog vd in fig5 shows higher peak values in power band, which can be used in pattern recognition to discriminate between eog vu and eog vd. figure 5 measured eog vd the measured eog hl and eof hr shown in figs.6-7 respectively.using the diffirence in power band peaks, agood discrimination between the two signals can be stasfied. the eog signals of horizontal left and right are shown in figs.5.0-6.0 respectively. figure 6 measured eoghl kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.47 figure 7 measured eog hr while the eog of blinking is shown in fig.8, the fast response of eye blinking shown in fig.7.0.the lonely high peaks in power band used to deduct the eye blinking. figure 8 measured eog of eye blinking 2.3. eog reference model: the predicted models has been calculated by using the numerical data from the measured eog signals, fig.9.0 shows the actual and the predicted model of (eog hl), the following is an example of calculating the 5 th value of the predicted eog hl signal, the different behave of increasing and decreasing among the prediction eod hl and eog hr signal gave a big help for pattern recognition of eye movements. figure 9 actual and predicted eog hl. let α = 0.56 and default f (0) = f / (0) = x (1) x (t) = x (5) = 4.7 f (t-1) = 4.1 then: f (t) = [0.56(4.7)] + [(1-0.56) (4.1)] f (t) = 4.436 f / (t) = (0.56*4.436) + [(1-0.56) (4.1)] f / (t) = 4.288 then: f (t+h) = 4.288 percentage error = (100%) – [(4.288/4.7)*100] = (100%) – (91.2%) = 8.8% the same procedure repeated for the other eog signals. to calculate the predicated signals for the different eog measurements. figure 10 actual and predicted eog hr kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.47 the predication and actual eog hr is shown in fig10.0 and the predication of eog vu and eog vd are shown in figs.11 and 12.the resultant models show a high predication performance. figure 11 actual and predicted eog vu figure 12 actual and predicted eog vd. for the eye blinking the actual and predicted eog signal shown in fig. 13.this model appeared less performance than the other models, the reason of this behave is caused by the sudden change of eog potential as a result of high speed movement during the blinking. figure 13 actual and predicted eog blinking an autocorrelation analysis is applied to evaluate the suitability of the eog prediction models. figs.14-18 show the eight leg autocorrelation graphs of eog models. the resultant graphs show a good confidence of the prediction models. figure 14 autocorrelation of eog hl figure 15 autocorrelation of eog hr figure 16 autocorrelation of eog vu figure 17 autocorrelation of eog vd figure 18 autocorrelation of eog blinking 4.0 results robot arm controller constructed eog models used to control a robot arm with five degree of freedom types tr5. the digital output of the measurement system used as an input to arduino 328 control board. an interface and drive circuit constricted to manipulate the robot arm (tr5) the flow chart of measurement and control process shown in fig.19.the basic idea of the system based on comparing the measured signal with models saved previously in separate files to decide the type of eye movement and the amount of this movement, the result will be transferred in binary form to the parallel port then to the control and drive circuit to manipulate the robot arm. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.47 figure 19 flow chart of measuring and control system the block diagram shown in fig .20 illustrates the measurement and control system in a simple way. figure 20 block diagram of robot arm controller 4.0 conclusion in this paper, we proposed eog based robot arm controller. a double exponential smoothing module applied with high accuracy and sensitivity, a high correlation factor between eog outputs with eye movement has been proved. the software filtering and pattern recognition caused the low cost of measuring and control system. the offline and online eog measurements helped to build efficient eog prediction models. the comparison technique used in this research gives a good benefits of reducing the needed time for pattern recognition of measured eog signal. references: [1] u. siddiqui and a. n. sheikh, “an over view of electrooculography” international journal of advanced research in computer and communication engineering, vol.2, issue 11, november 2013. [2] a method of eog signal processing to detect the direction of eye movements. in: 2010 first international conference on sensor device technologies and applications. [online] venice, italy: ieee. available at: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5632116/ [3] a. khan, et. al. “electrooculogram based interactive robotic arm interface for partially paralytic patients” , itee journal vol.1 , issue 1, december 2012 [4] d. pakulski, and ar. gmerek, ”the electrooculography control system” . pomiary automatyka robotyka. pp. 160-163. par 12/2012 [5] c. kavitha and g. nagappan, (may 2015). “sensing and processing of eog signals to control human machine interface system”, international journal of since, engineering and technology research (ijsetr), vol.4 issue 4, pp 1330 – 1336, may 2015 [6] v. arthi and n. suresh, “analysis of electrooculography signals for the interface and control of appliances”, international journal of multidisciplinary and current research , vol.3, pp 87-90, jan/feb 2015. [7] j. veena, etl,. “eog based prostatic arm/ hand control”, international journal of innovative research in science engineering and technology, vol.4, issue.5. pp. 3693-3698, may 2015 [8] k. mehta “a review on different method of eog signals analysis” , international journal of research in science engineering and technology , vol.5 , issue.2., pp. 1862-1865., feb 2016 [9] n. kim –tiem and n. truong –thinh., "using electro ocalogram and electromyogram for powered wheelchair " , international conference on robotic and biomimetics , proceeding of ieee ,phuket ,thailand, dec 2011. [10] l.v. zhao, et. al. "development of a human computer interface system using eog" ,helth,scientific research, june 2009. [online] available from: ,http://www.scrip_org/journal/health. [11] h. shahabi, et. al,. "eeg eye blink artifact removal by eog modeling and kalman filter " ,5 th international conference on biomedical engineering and informatics (bmei), oct 2012. [12] s. aungsakun., et. al,. “development of robust electrooculography (eog) –based human – computer interface controlled by eight directional eye movements ", international journal of physical science, vol.7 (14), pp.2196-2208, march 2012. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.47 [13] c. louis tsui, et. al., "emg-based hands-free wheelchair control with eog attention shift detection " ,international conference on robotics and biomimetics,sanya china, dec 2007. [14] b. andreas, et. al., "eye movement analysis for activity recognition using elecrooculography", ieee transaction on pattern analysis and machine intelligence , 2010. [15] f. gary, et .al., “business statistics”, allyn and bacon inc. , 7 wells avenue. newton. massachusetts, 1987. [16] minitab,. “single and double exponential smoothing”, may 2001 , [online] available from: http://ww.minitab.com/support/. [17] pham and hoang,. (editors, “handbook of engineering statistics” springer/verlag. london. 2006 [18] r. shumay and d. stoffer, “time series analysis and its applications” , springer, newyork. 2011 [19] d. gerbing, “auto correlation’, school of business administration, portland state university, june 2016. [20] n. steinhausen, “applications of the electric potential sensors for healthcare and assistive technology”, phd. thesis, university of sussex, falmer , brighton uk, march 2014. [21] [online] available from: https://www.quora.com/in-1st-person-videogames-why-dont-they-introduce-peripheralvision. http://ww.minitab.com/support/  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 46 assessment of hepatic mineral composition in sheep, cattle, chicken, and fish in erbil city, kurdistan region-iraq abdulqader a. hussein samad s. omer animal resources fish resources and aquatic animals agricultural engineering sciences agricultural engineering sciences university of salahaddin-erbil university of salahaddin-erbil erbil, iraq erbil, iraq abdulqader.hussein@su.edu.krd samad.omar@su.edu.krd iman s. ali bnar f. suleiman fish resources and aquatic animals animal resources agricultural engineering sciences agricultural engineering sciences university of salahaddin-erbil university of salahaddin-erbil erbil, iraq erbil, iraq iman.ali@su.edu.krd bnar.sulaiman@su.edu.krd article info abstract volume 6 – issue 1june 2021 doi: 10.24017/science.2021.1.6 article history: received: 20/02/2021 accepted: 27/04/2021 liver mineral concentrations of 232 samples from slaughtered animals, including lamb, yearling, sheep, and cattle, checkin, and fish were detrmined, using x-ray fluorescence spectrometer, to provide data regarding to the liver mineral concentrations (mg/kg dry weight). the mean liver zn and co liver conentrations of lambs (286, 1.9), yearling (233, 1.7), sheep (254, 1.8), and cattle (276, 1.8) in majority samples were adequate, while liver pb concentrations of mentioned animals (45.3, 48.1, 46.4, 39.6) mg/kg respectively were high and exceeded toxic levels. in checkin, the mean liver cu, zn, and co were also adequate, with the mean values of (26.4), (298.8), and (1.8) mg/kg respectively. though, the mean liver fe concentration (2257.0 mg/kg) was high, and liver pb concentration (6.2 mg/kg) was reached toxic level. in fish, for majority liver samples, the mean concentration of cu (191.8), fe (6800.0), zn (202.8), co (3.3), pb (8.6), and ni (6.3) were high and toxic. in conclusion, liver pb (and ni only in fish) concentration in all studied animals for the majority of examined sample were higher than normal and toxic. wherese, other studied minerals in majority of liver samples were adequate. therefore, it can be concluded that human and animal health at a potential risk due to high keywords: liver, minerals, ovine, bovine, checkin, fish mailto:abdulqader.hussein@su.edu.krd mailto:samad.omar@su.edu.krd mailto:iman.ali@su.edu.krd mailto:bnar.sulaiman@su.edu.krd kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 47 consuming ovine, bovine, checkin, and fish which contain high concentration of pb and ni in erbil city. 1. introduction minerals are exist in human and animal environment. there are minerals such as iron, copper, zinc, manganese, cobalt, chromium, and selenium which are considered as essential elements in human and animal health. wherese, minerals such as lead, nickel, arsenic, cadmium and mercury are considered as a toxic at certain levels ([1]; [2]). these minerals which are important and have their importance through involvement in formation of many enzymes and proteins contributed in key metabolic pathways. thus, inappropriate supply of these minerals could retard the activity of enzymes, leading to metabolic disorders causing disease, reduce performance and economic loses. however, minerals when given to animals at higher levels than their requirements, exceeding the tolerance limit of the organism, can also lead to the alteration in cellular events, including lipid metabolism, gene expression, and distribution in hepatocytes, kidney damage, disruption in the nerve system, ae well as growth and reproduction retardation [3]; [4]. consequently, exposure of animals to either high levels of minerals, or fed them levels lower than dietary requiremnt, can adversely affect animal production and health [4]. moreover, dietary minerals that are offered at higher level than their requirements, however, by adapting to absorption and excretion, animals can limit the undesired accumulation of these minerals in tissues, or increasing in the mineral content of manure [5] : [6]. this may also elevate the amount of minerals in the soil and consume them through plants, which in long term, may consequence on animal when they consume plants in pastures. human consumption of meat and meat products derived from animal that accumulated high levels of minerals could adversely affect human health. in the food chain, due to its poisonous nature, bioaccumulation and bio-magnification, the existence of heavy metals may cause a serious threat. additionally, the risk of exposure to heavy metals in meat and meat products is a threat for both human health as well as food safety because of their toxic nature. it could be noted, however, that the chemical forms of metals can be alter, but they can neither be degraded nor destroyed. hence, international organisation such as the food and agricultural organization (fao), world health organization (who), us environmental protection agency (usepa) have been set the maximum permisible limit concentrations of heavy metals in foodstuffs. recently, it has been reported that the level of heavy metals including pb, ar, and ni from imported meat of both lambs and beef in erbil city were found higher than permitted levels set by international organization, which is considered as a risk to consumers health [7]. in kurdistan region, ruminant animals mostly are not kept or housed in controlled farms that has fence and belonged pastures, while animals are free grazing along runways and other sites that might have been contaminated with toxic substances, or drink water from ditches, streams, rivers and other possible contaminated water sources. these animals are more liable to exposure to high levels of contaminants in the environment. these minerals are accumulated in the organs and other tissues such as liver and intestines which are sold in the market for consumption. meat from sheep, cattle, poultry and fish can form an essential part of the human diet and contribute to consumers' overall exposure to toxic dietary elements. liver is recognised as a most important organ, involving in the metabolic processes and storage of minerals. it is regarded to be representative as a most eloquent signs of any disturbance in the body. in addition, liver is the subject of different types of infectious, toxic, metabolic, nutritional, traumatic attacks or diseases [8]. in addition, liver contanis metal–binding proteins, by which heavy metals can accumulate at high concentrations. hence, special consideration should be given to determine the concentration of minerals in liver. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 48 in view of the fact that there are very poor documented data on tissue minerals content of domestic animals in erbil citykurdistan. the elements selected for this study are either known to be physiologically important in farm animals (cu, fe, zn, and co) ([9]; [4]) or to be of interest to food safety organisations (pb and ni) [10]. therefore, this study aimed to investigate hepatic minerals concentrations in sheep, cattle, chicken, and fish in erbil city where animals were raised or imported from other countries. 2. methods and materials 2.1. sample collection a total of 281 ovine and bovine (local and imported such as indian and brazilian) livers samples were used in this study. the animals were not selected by sex, age, or breed, though on the acknowledged assumption that the lambs were weaned lambs, yearling aged no more than one year, and sheep over 2 years of age. ovine and bovine liver samples were collected from slaughtered animals in erbil city central slaughter house, chicken (broiler) liver samples were obtained from different slaughterhouses. moreover, fish liver samples were collected from fishes in 5 different ponds. the collected species was common carp (cyprinus carpio) . all liver samples were from animals belong to the territories of erbil city in north of iraq. liver samples were collected through different time of the years 2018 and 2019. the number of animals per species were as followings; lamb (47), yearlings (34), sheep (32), cattle (50), chicken (20), and fish (49). 2.2. sample preparation approximately 50g of liver tissue for each of ovine, bovine, and chicken were collected using stainless steel knives. visible fat was removed, as well as connective tissue and major blood vessels. moreover, whole fish liver samples were collected. liver samples were packed in polyethylene bags, properly identified and preserved in a freezer at -20°c. then, collected liver samples were oven dried at 60°c for 72 hours. 2.3. sample analysis the dried liver samples were analysed for copper (cu), iron (fe), zinc (zn), cobalt (co), and lead (pb) concentrations using x-ray fluorescence spectrometer (genius 9000 xrf, usa) according to the procedures of [11]. all the results were expressed in mg/kg dry basis. reported reference values, if given in wet weight (ww), were converted to dried weight dw for comparison purposes by multiplying reported ww values by 3.5, which is the mid-point of the standard conversion rates used (range 3.0 to 4.0) ([12]; [4]). in addition, reference ranges reported in si units (µmol/kg) were converted to mg/kg by using the conversion factors provided by [12] and [4]. 2.4. statistical analysis the experiment was a complete randomised design (crd). one-way analysis of variance (anova) was used to test for significant differences in hepatic minerals concentrations between species using genstat version 19.1 (vsn int. ltd., oxford, uk). fisher's unprotected least significant difference test was applied between the means at a significant level of p<0.05. 3. results and discussion to the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive report about the selected minerals in erbil city-iraq from ovine, bovine, chicken, and fish liver; hence, only minimal comparisons can be made between our results and other data. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 49 3.1. ovine and bovine generally, the mineral content evaluation in livestock is complicated. besides, it is often impractical to determine minerals content in the diet or consumption of minerals in the pasture feeding situation or when offered a diet containing of various feed ingredients. liver has been proposed as organ, using as an indicator for the status of several minerals concentration in ruminant, poultry, and fish ([13]; [14]; [15]). other tissues do not represent consistently animal body mineral status. therefore, the current study used the best method, which is liver tissue, to evaluate the mineral status in ovine, bovine, chicken, and fish [16]. the mean (± standard deviation), median, and minimum, and maximum of liver essential trace minerals including cu, fe, zn, and co and non-essential minerals such as pb were measured in ovine, bovine, chicken, and fish. the obtained data are discussed in the framework of suggested values for classifying minerals status of these animals and they are also compared with minerals concentrations reported in the literature. to our knowledge, this is the first attempt to evaluate mineral content in slaughtered ovine, bovine, chicken, and fish in erbil city. copper. iron, zinc, and cobalt is essential to all animals and functions as a cofactor in many enzyme systems. although, deficiency or toxicity of these minerals in livestock could cause improvement in health and production [4]. liver zn, co and pb concentrations, in the present study, of ovine and bovine were presented in table 1. these values were cpmpared with the diagnostic range for liver zn, co, and pb concentrations in ovine and bovine (table 2). the majority of liver zn concentration of analysed samples were adequate. in addition, there was no significant difference (p>0.05) in hepatic zn concentrations between lambs, yearling, sheep, and cattle, with the mean value of 286, 233, 254, and 272 mg/kg respectively (fig1). these mean values with median values of liver zn concentration were adequate and slightly higher than normal range. zn deficiency was not evidenced for examined animals. the minimum liver zn concentration were ranging from 97 to 108 mg/kg, which is adequate. though, the maximum liver zn concentration in examined animals reached high and a toxic level. the toxic level was just found in two cattle liver samples (>1400 mg zn/kg). while, the high liver zn concentration (for ovine 350-1400, and bovine 300-600 mg/kg) (table 3) were observed in 12, 6, and 5, and 6 liver samples of lambs, yearling, sheep, and cattle respectively. similarly, [17] reported high liver zn concentration in sheep (4937 mg/kg dw) and cow (6489 mg/kg dw). both zn and cu are reported as antagonistic of each other. the high levels of either element will reduce absorption and metabolism of the other. they competitively bind to metallothionein. increased dietary zn results in decreased liver cu concentration. intakes of zn impacts on cu utilisation [18]. an increase of dietary zn in lambs diet from 45 mg/kg dw to 225 and 479 mg/kg dw reduced concentrations of cu liver from 1625 to 1310 and 1158 mg/kg dw respectively [19]. the mechanism underlying the metabolic cu-zn interaction has been proposed to potentially involve metallothionein (mt) as zn is suggested to induce mt [20]. where zn displaced cu from sulfydryl binding site and then cu bound to mt is excreted into intestinal lumen [21]. the mean, median, maximum, and minimum liver co concentration of all examined animal were ranging from 1 to 3 mg/kg and these values are within normal range stated [1] and [4]. they proposed deficient, normal, and toxic concentration of liver co concentration for both ovine and bovine were 0.04-0.06, 0.08-0.12, and 20-67 mg/kg respectively. the weaned lambs had higher (p<0.05) liver co concentration compared with other studied animals (fig. 1). liver co concentration of ovine and bovine in the current study were much lower compared to liver co concentration in sheep (22.4 mg/kg dw) and cow (34.5 mg/kg dw) in sulaymania city [17]. these difference in liver co content could be due to the difference in dietary co intake. the essentiality of co for mammals is linked to vitamin b12 and there is no specific requirement for co by mammalian tissues, though this mineral is required for the synthesis vitamin b12 via rumen microorganisms [22], which is a catalyst in the activity of methylmalonyl-coa mutase and methionine synthase [23]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 50 table 1: liver zn, co, and pb concentrations of slaugtered ovine and bovine, with the diagnostic range minerals animals mean±sd median minimum maximum zn lamb 286±145 258 108 794 yearling 233±88 207 136 564 sheep 254±117 203 97 670 local cattle 272±259 200 99 1664 co lamb 1.9±0.18 1.8 1.6 2.3 yearling 1.7±0.10 1.7 1.6 2.1 sheep 1.8±0.30 1.8 1.4 3.0 local cattle 1.8±0.27 1.7 1.0 3.0 pb lamb 45.3±13.39 45.2 21.6 81.7 yearling 48.1±12.60 47.13 20.53 85.1 sheep 46.4±12.55 49.9 16.1 72.5 local cattle 39.6±12.62 41.4 20.6 71.7 diagnostic range of liver zn, co, and pb1 animals zn co pb ovine adequate 263 0.04.06 0.11-2.8 high 350-1400 0.08-0.12 17.5 toxic >1400 20-69 >35 bovine adequate 25-200 0.04.06 0.35-3.5 high 300-600 0.08-0.12 7 toxic >1000 20-69 >33 1 [12]: [4] figure 1: liver zinc (zn), cobalt (co), and lead (pb) concentrations (mg/kg dry weight) of slaughtered local lambs, yearlings, sheep, and cattle in erbil city abattoir. error bars indicate sed. a,b means with different superscripts are significantly different (p<0.05) a a a a 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 l iv e r z n c o n c e n tr a ti o n ( m g /k g d w ) animals b a ab a 1.60 1.65 1.70 1.75 1.80 1.85 1.90 l iv e r c o c o n c e n tr a ti o n ( m g /k g d w ) animals b b b a 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 l iv e r p b c o n c e n tr a ti o n ( m g /k g d w ) animals kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 51 liver pb concentrations greater than 30 and 33 mg/kg dw are taken as indication that the animal was at risk of toxicity to pb, while 7 mg/kg dw was considered as an adequate ([12]; [4]). the mean and median liver pb concentration of all studies animals were ranged between 38.5 and 49.9 mg/kg. the maximum liver pb concentration was 85.1 mg/kg in yearling animals, while the minimum level was 16.1 mg/kg in sheep. these values were considered more than adequate and high, exceeding the toxic level 33 mg/kg dw. liver pb content were lower (p<0.05) in cattle than lamb, yearling, and sheep. the results of current study were in accordance with the high liver pb concentration in sheep (38.9 mg/kg dw) and cow (37.9 mg/kg dw) reported in anbar city [24]. however, the higher liver pb. in cow (75 mg/kg dw) and the lower liver sheep pb concentration 8.8 mg/kg dw) were reported in sulaymania city [17]. it can be speculated that the cause of the toxic level of pb in animals liver may be due to contaminations that transferred to animals via direct water, livestock feed, industrial effluent, and vehicle emission and from dirty slaughter places. as pastures on road borders polluted by high levels of pb, coming from fuel vehicle gases. as pb tetraetileno was found in this fuel [25]. however, no data could be collected on diet, in this study. it is much more concise to test the dietary pb content in several feed factories and farms in different site of erbil city. this information can then be used to determine whether the high liver pb content coming from diet or environment. lead despite of having biological functions in animal body but is highly toxic to both animals and humans. this makes pb regards as one of the most danger minerals to animal and human health, has worldwide distribution and is accumulated in environment by industrial pollution [2]; [26]. the effects of pb on rumen microorganisms has not been fully understood. although, it is assumed that pb somehow can reduce or inhibit growth of rumen microorganisms, by which the rate of rumen microbial is reduced and forage digestion declines as well [27]. while, the adverse effect of pb on human health could be due to the absorption of pb in the small intestine, and then sequestered by the liver, transported in the erythrocytes, where it replaces fe in several enzymes concerned with haemoglobin production. in addition, lead poisoned animal can be considered a risk to public health, since there is an accumulation of this mineral in animal tissues that used for human consumption it may result in human toxicities [28]. 3.2. chicken the results for the five minerals, including cu, fe, zn, co, and pb, found in all liver chicken samples in erbil city are summarised in table 3. however, a scarcity of data and information are available regarding establishment of normal and toxic liver mineral concentrations in chicken. the diet is the main route of entry of most minerals into the animal body. in the environment, the source of minerals is coming from the combustion of waste disposal, fossil fuels, domestic sewage, and mining industries. in addition, forestry and farming are also contribute to the metal content in the environment via using of fertilizers and pesticide [29]; [26]. in the current study, the mean and median, with both maximum and minimum liver cu and co concentration of chicken were an adequate. liver cu concentration in poultry were ranging from 6.4 to 32 mg/kg dw, and chroning cu poisoning was 127 mg/kg dw [4]. in addition, liver co concentration lower than 1 mg/kg dw was suggested as a deficient, and the level of 1.7-2.3 mg/kg dw were normal [30]. though, the higher concentration of chicken liver cu (158.3 mg/kg dw), but similar liver co concentrations (5.9 mg/kg dw) were reported in a study conducted in sulaymaniah city-iraq [17]. although, liver fe concentration was ranging between 2257 to 3100 mg/kg, and these levels were considered as high but not reached toxic level of liver fe concentration. the excess level of liver fe concentration in poultry was set at 1000 mg/kg dw and the toxic level was 5992 mg/kg [4]. the similar reasons of high liver fe concentration in ovine and bovine can be speculated. although, the high level of fe had no adverse effect on liver cu concentration in the chickens from the current study. that is could be due to difference in cu metabolism between ruminants and poultry [1]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 52 table 2: slaughtered chicken liver minerals concentration (mg/kg dry weight). cu fe zn co pb mean±sd 26.4±16.97 2257±347.80 298.8±82.38 1.8±0.08 6.2±0.98 median 24.4 2122.0 280.3 1.8 5.9 minimum 4.8 1958.0 204.6 1.6 4.7 maximum 60.8 3100.0 501.2 1.9 7.7 in poultry, liver zn concentration 40-80 mg/kg dw are set as an adequate, while 400 mg/kg dw as a high, and concentration greater than 400 mg/kg dw being suggestive of toxicosis [8]. in comparison with these levels, the mean and median in most liver zn concentrations of slaughtered broilers in this study were within normal range. however, there were 3 samples of maximum liver zn concentration (501 mg/kg) that exceeded the toxic threshold 400 mg/kg dw. although, almost 3 times higher liver zn concentration (1324 mg/kg dw) in chicken has been reported by [17]. generally, livestock show a high tolerance to high dietary zn intake and the extent of tolerance depends on the presence of other minerals such as cu, and fe in diet. in the current study, liver pb concentration were between 4.7 (almost 5) and 7.7 mg/kg dw. physiologic pb concentrations in livers of poultry are 0.1–5 mg/kg dw, but the high level is set at 5-18 mg/kg dw, with concentrations of greater than 18 mg/kg dw being suggestive of toxicosis [4]. there were 19 chickens with liver pb concentrations greater than 5 mg/kg, and only one liver sample was 4.7 mg/kg. however, none of liver samples contained or exceeded (18 mg/kg dw) toxic level of pb. 3.3. fish the order of the fish liver mineral concentration was fe ˃ zn ˃ cu ˃ pb ˃ ni ˃ co, with the mean values of 6800.0, 202.8, 191.8, 8.6, 4.9, and 3.3 mg/kg respectively (table 5). the mean and median of all analysed hepatic zn, cu, fe, pb, and ni (except co) concentrations were higher than maximum permissible level(table 4). the minimum liver cu and zn were below permissible limit, while minimum liver fe concentration (2434 mg/kg) was higher than permissible limit. [31] observed that more iron concentrations resulted in decreased feeding rate and reduced growth, with behavioral changes. it is observed that zn resulted in sublethal stress and elevated rbc count in fish [32]. it’s also stimulated immune system via enhancing wbc count. similarly, the high level of cu could cause several disturbances such as the reduction of fish resistance to diseases through disrupting migration, altering swimming, impairing respiration, oxidative damage, disrupting osmoregulation structure and pathology of vital organs such as liver , gills, kidney, and other stem cells [33]. table 3: liver cu, fe, zn, co, pb, and ni concentrations (mg/kg dry weight) in common carp fish from erbil city ponds, and maximum permissible level of these minerals in fish1 cu fe zn co pb ni mean±sd 191.8±121.10 6800.0±6650.00 202.8±177.30 3.3±0.43 8.6±1.63 6.3±4.9 1 median 149.1 5730.0 122.7 3.0 8.9 4.9 minimum 11.5 2434.0 10.17 2.1 4.2 0.3 maximum 523.7 50201.0 772.8 3.8 12.0 20.1 maximum permissible limit of trace minerals in fish according to some international standards 20-30 100 30-100 -0.2-2 0.5-1.0 1 adapted from [37] kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 53 moreover, reducing sperm and egg production [34]. the fish liver demonstrated as potential storage to accumulate various trace minerals. this potential to preferentially concentrate trace minerals in liver over muscle may attributed to elevated reaction rate with metallothioneins exist in liver. therefore, the accumulation of these trace minerals in fish liver, in present study, is likely due to the role of liver in storage, metabolism and detoxification [35]. the mechanism by which explain the high hepatic cu and zn concentrations are mainly attributed to a natural binding protein such as metallothionein’s (mt), which has a high affinity to bind with these minerals and acts as an essential metal store to attain enzymatic and other metabolic requirements. in the same way, fe tends to store in liver tissues as aresult of the physiological role of the liver in blood cells and hemoglobin synthesis [36]. lead is a persistent mineral which has been characterized as a priority hazardous substance [38]. in the present study, the minimum liver concentrations of pb was 4.2 mg/kg, which is greater than maximum acceptable concentration of lead in fish (0.2-2 mg/kg). [39] reported that pb could result in weaken the immune system and increased susceptibility to infections. nickel (ni) is an essential element for living organisms, it is toxic when ingested in higher quantities. nickel and nickel compounds are also well recognized as carcinogens [40]. the majority of liver fish samples were found higher than permissible limit (0.5-1.0 mg/kg). the mean and median liver fish ni concentration were 6.3 and 4.9 mg/kg respectively, while the maximum concentration was 20.1 mg/kg. these levels are much greater than permissible limit. according to the [41], the ni exposure may lead to various health disorders such as nickel allergy, contact dermatitis, and organ system-toxicity. liver co concentrations were within acceptable range mean value of cobalt in fish livers was 3.3 mg/kg, whereas minimum recorded concentration was 2.1 mg/kg, while maximum recorded concentration was 3.8 mg/kg. these values are lower than liver co concentration (5.2-16.7 mg/kg) in common carp fish from farms in central iraq [42]. results of the current study were in acordance with the results of [43] whose founds that all study minerals in livers of c. carpio were in excess of permissible levels. similar results have been reported that the very high fish liver concentrations of cu, zn, and pb, exceeding permissible levels [44]. it is stated that the high hepatic minerals concentration in fish can be used as an indication of water contamination by these minerals and monitor the extent to which water is polluted. this is due to the fact that the hepatic metal concentration in fish is proportional to those in aquatic environment [45]. water contamination may, in other words, cause fish to be contaminated with heavy metals from anthropogenic domestic and industrial activities [46]. in addition, the very high hepatic contentration of cu, zn, and pb have been attributed to contamination of water by industrial waste from untreated waste of factories along the tigris river in baghdad-iraq [44]. the high liver fish concentration of all analysed minerals (except co), with exceeding the maximum permissible limit in most of the studied fishes. these may affect fishes and human health safety [4]. a strong correlation has been reported between liver minerals concentration and fish meat minerals concentration [47]. hence, it can be suggested that studied fishe are not suitable for human consumption. 4. conclusion the mean and median of analysed livers samples of ovine and bovine slaughtered in erbil city for essatial minerals such as zn and co were within normal range. although, mean and median liver pb concentrations were exceded toxic levels. checkin liver cu, zn, and co contents were adequate based on their mean and median concentrations. while, fe liver concentration was high. chicken liver pb concentrations were reached toxic level. the mean and median fish liver concentrations for essantial minerals such as cu, fe, zn, co were higher than the maximum premissible concentration of these minerals in fish. in addition, liver fish concentrations for both pb and ni were also exceded the maximum premissible and resached toxic levels. this study kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 54 revealed toxic levels of liver pb and ni (only in fish) in studied animals in ebil city. hence, it may be safe to say that high number of these animals are not fit for consumption due to their carcinogenic effects on animal and human health. in addition, it also suggests the environment and aquatic ecosystems pollution by these heavy metals. references [1] e,l, underwood, n.f. suttle, the mineral nutrition of livestock, 3rd edition, cabi publishing, wallingford, uk, 2004. 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[25] w.k. rumbeiha, w.e braselton, d. donch, “a retrospective study on the disappearance of blood lead in cattle with accidental lead toxicosis,” journal of veterinary diagnostic investigation, 13(5), pp.373-378, 2001. doi:10.1177/104063870101300501 [26] l.s.l.d.s. reis, p.e. pardo, a.s. camargos, e. oba, e., “mineral element and heavy metal poisoning in animals,” journal of medicine and medical sciences, pp.560-579, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00204-014-1355-y https://doi.org/10.1016/s0960-8524(99)00017-6 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0960-8524(99)00017-6 https://doi.org/10.1081/css-100102999 https://doi.org/10.1053/s1055-937x(03)00053-7 https://doi.org/10.1093/jn/133.5.1506s https://doi.org/10.1017/s0954422411000059 https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00183321 https://doi.org/10.4141/cjas89-096 https://doi.org/10.2527/2006.843635x https://doi.org/10.1093/jn/122.7.1384 https://doi.org/10.1177%2f104063870101300501 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 1 – june 2021 | 55 [27] s.t. strojan, c.j.c. phillips, “the detection and avoidance of lead-contaminated herbage by dairy cows,” journal of dairy science, 85(11), pp.3045-3053, 2002. doi:10.3168/jds.s0022-0302(02)74390-7 [28] d. swarup, r.c. patra, r. naresh, p. kumar, p. shekhar, “blood lead levels in lactating cows reared around polluted localities; transfer of lead into milk,” science of the total environment, 347(1-3), pp.106-110, 2005. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2004.12.055 [29] l. friberg, g.f. nordberg, v.b. vouk, handbook on the toxicology of metals, elsevier/north-holland biomedical press, 1979. [30] m. gabrashanska, s. tepavitcharova, m. galvez-morros, m. mitov, “investigation of the effect of cobalt compounds on uninfected and infected with ascaridia galli chicks,” experimental pathology and parasitology, 4(7), pp.26-32, 2001. [31] m. debnath, r.k. saha, d. kamilya, d. saikia, h. saha, “effects of water borne iron on spawn of indian major carps (catla catla (ham.), labeo rohita (ham.) and cirrhinus mrigala (ham.)),” bulletin of environmental contamination and toxicology, 89(6), pp.1170-1174, 2012. doi:10.1007/s00128-012-0844-z. [32] p.p. buthelezi, v. wepener, d.p. cyrus, “the sublethal effects of zinc at different water temperatures on selected haematological variables in oreochromis mossambicus,” southern african journal of aquatic sciences, 25(1), pp.146151, 2000. doi:10.2989/160859100780177659, [33] c.a. woody, s. o’neal, effects of copper on fish and aquatic resources, fisheries research and consulting, alaska, usa, pp. 26. w2013ecopperf062012.pdf (conservationgateway.org) [34] f. solomon, “impacts of copper on aquatic ecosystems and human health,” environment and communities, 25(8), pp.25-28, 2009. [35] f. jabeen, a.s. chaudhry, “monitoring trace metals in different tissues of cyprinus carpio from the indus river in pakistan,” environmental monitoring and assessment, 170(1-4), pp.645-656, 2010. doi:10.1007/s10661-009-1263-4. [36] n. sakulsak, “metallothionein: an overview on its metal homeostatic regulation in mammals,” international journal of morphology, 30(3), pp.1007-1012, 2012. doi:10.4067/s0717-95022012000300039. [37] j.o. wilberforce, f. nworie, r.o. oti-wilberforce, “comparative assay of heavy metals in gills and muscles of common fishes in afikpo, ebonyi state, nigeria,” world applied sciences journal, 34(2), pp.268-272, 2016. doi: 10.5829/idosi.wasj.2016.34.2.15657 [38] d.g. sfakianakis, e. renieri, m. kentouri, a.m. tsatsakis, “effect of heavy metals on fish larvae deformities: a review,” environmental research, 137, pp.246-255, 2015. doi:10.1016/j.envres.2014.12.014. [39] s.l. shah, a. altindağ, “alterations in the immunological parameters of tench (tinca tinca l. 1758) after acute and chronic exposure to lethal and sublethal treatments with mercury, cadwium and lead,” turkish journal of veterinary and animal sciences, 29(5), pp.1163-1168, 2005. [40] p.r. shakya, “nickel adsorption by wild type and nickel resistant isolate of chlorella sp.,” pakistan journal of analytical & environmental chemistry, 8(2), p.5, 2007. [41] institute of medicine, dietary reference intakes applications in dietary planning, subcommittee on interpretation and uses of dietary reference intakes and the standing committee on the scientific evaluation of dietary reference intakes, institute of medicine of the national academies, the national academies press, washington dc, pp. 248, 2003. doi: 10.17226/10609 [42] a.a. hantoush, g.a. al-najare, a.h. amteghy, h.t. al-saad, k. abd ali, “seasonal variations of some trace elements concentrations in silver carp” marsh bulletin, 7(2), pp.126-136, 2012. [43] a.m. yousafzai, m. siraj, a. habib, d.p. chivers, “bioaccumulation of heavy metals in common carp: implications for human health,” pakistan journal of zoology, 44(2), pp. 489-494, 2012. [44] m. mensoor, a. said, “determination of heavy metals in freshwater fishes of the tigris river in baghdad,” fishes, 3(2), p.23, 2018. doi:10.3390/fishes3020023 [45] b. jezierska, m. witeska, metal toxicity to fish, 1st edition, university of podlasie, siedlce, polannd, pp. 318 , 2001. [46] j. sun, y. ji, f. cai, j. li, heavy metal removal through biosorptive pathways. in: sharma s., sanghi r. (eds) advances in water treatment and pollution prevention. springer, dordrecht, pp. 95-145, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4204-8_5 [47] s. faxneld, s. danielsson, e. nyberg, a. bignert, “conversion factors for metals between liver, muscle and wholebody in perch,” report 1, swedish museum of natural history, 2015. https://www.divaportal.org/smash/get/diva2:811293/fulltext01.pdf [48] b.h. marouf, “association between serum heavy metals level and cancer incidence in darbandikhan and kalar area, kurdistan region, iraq,” nigerian journal of clinical practice, 21(6), pp.766-771, 2018. doi: 10.4103/njcp.njcp_384_16 https://doi.org/10.3168/jds.s0022-0302(02)74390-7 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2004.12.055 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00128-012-0844-z https://doi.org/10.2989/160859100780177659 https://www.conservationgateway.org/conservationbygeography/northamerica/unitedstates/alaska/sw/cpa/documents/w2013ecopperf062012.pdf https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2014.12.014 https://doi.org/10.17226/10609 https://doi.org/10.3390/fishes3020023 https://www.divaportal.org/smash/get/diva2:811293/fulltext01.pdf https://doi.org/10.4103/njcp.njcp_384_16 kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 104 evaluating the effect of time and temperature on the ph, titratable acidity &brix of pasteurized lowto-no nectar orange drinks packed in paper based aseptic packages azeen kamal al-deen mohammad nashmil ali abdul kurdistan institution for strategic studies & scientific research kurdistan institution for strategic studies & scientific research sulaimaniya, iraq sulaimaniya, iraq azeen.mohammad@kissr.edu.krd nashmil.abdul@kissr.edu.krd mohabad hussen jalal kurdistan institution for strategic studies & scientific research sulaimaniya, iraq article info abstract volume 7issue 1june 2022 doi: 10.24017/scince.2022.1.9 article history: received: 28/2/2022 accepted: 25/6/2022 orang drink is the most popularflavored drink consumed in iraq, and it can be found in markets of all sizes and in all regions, exposing it to a wide range of storage temperature and storage time. in this work, the impact of temperature and storage duration was studied on three different local brands of orange drink with low-to-no nectar content; all were packed in laminated aseptic cartons (lac). samples were stored in a fixed and controlled temperature environment ranging between 10°c and 50°cfor a period of 5 weeks and the samples were tested for the values of brix, titratable acidity (ta) and ph at the beginning and at the end of each week. the findings revealed that there was no statistically significant difference found (p > 0.05), which showed that there is low-to-no evidence that the selected range of storage temperature and time in this study significantly affected the values of brix, ta and ph. keywords: laminated aseptic carton drink incubation linear regression kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 105 1. introduction extending the shelf life of any consumed product is an ever-ending quest of the fast moving consumable goods (fmcg) industry. shelf life is defined as the time, under defined storage conditions, during which food remains safe, retains desired sensory, chemical, physical and biological characteristics as well as complies with any label declaration. [1] in addition to the storage conditions, there are many more factors influencing the shelf life of fmcg products. some of these factors are related to the products themselves (intrinsic factors), and others are related to the processes of manufacturing, moving, packing and storing the products; which are factors the final product encounters as it moves from manufacturing to retailing and consumption (extrinsic factors). intrinsic factors include water activity, ph value, titratable acidity, available oxygen. extrinsic factors include time–temperature profile during processing, temperature control during storage and distribution, exposure to light (uv and ir) during processing, storage and distribution, consumer handling. [2] similar researches have been conducted on the effect of storage conditions, these researches focused in general on high nectar juices or concentrated juice. they also focused on can, glass and pet bottles that could lead to different results compared to laminated aseptic cartons (lac). in addition, the type of juice and environment (geographical location) might have an impact on the results. little research was found on orange drink packed in lac and produced or stored in an environment and conditions similar to that found in iraq. one research was done on the effect of packaging material and storage conditions on the value of vitamin c and the ph value of a pasteurized cashew apple juice, the juice was packed in pet bottles and high-density polyethylene sachet, and it was stored at 30°cand 4°c for 4 months. there were significant differences (p>0.05) in the value of vitamin c (48mg/100ml – 159mg/100ml) and ph (5.0– 6.2) of the juice stored at 30±1°c as compared with those samples stored at 4°c.[3]another research was done to evaluate several properties of pasteurized roselle-fruit juice blends packed in plastic bottles, the samples were stored at 28°c and 4°c for 6 months. over that period the ph ranged from 2.34 to 4.37 (at 28°c) and 2.34–3.38 (at 4°c), titratable acidity rangedfrom 3.12 to 1.28 (at 28°c) and 3.12–1.24 (at 4°c), the reducing sugar (rs) value for roselle-fruit ranged from 2.95 to 9.92 mg/100 g (at 28°c) and 2.95–9.32 mg/100 g (at 4°c). [4] figure 1:different layers of lac. [10] the type of packaging used was also shown to affect the intrinsic chemical properties. selecting one packaging materials across all samples is important to eliminate the packages as a variable. in general, there are four types of packaging materials used for packing liquid fmcgs, paperboard cartons, cans, plastic, and glass. in addition to complying with current rules and regulations, it is critical to carefully select the correct packaging material to provide the required protections for the packed products. [5] plastic sachets and plastic bottles are not kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 106 suitable for products that needs to have long shelf life. as the material has lower resistance to sunlight penetration and heat, unwanted changes in the packed product properties happen at a faster rate. laminated aseptic cartoon (lac) packages provide better protection against sunlight and heat penetration in compression with the other types of packages. it is not unusual for products packed in sachets to have a shelf life of less than one month while products packed in lac can have a shelf life that exceeds 9 months. [6] [7] for this study lac packaging was selected, as it is a common type of packaging used for drinks in iraq. the packing process of drinks in lac includes pasteurization of the drink followed up by packaging the drink using aseptic packaging methods. to produce the final product the formed drink first passes through a pasteurization station where it is commonly heated up to 95–98°c for a period of 10–30s, followed by a cooling cycle. the pasteurized product is then packed into lac packages and sealed using aseptic filling and packing machines in a closed aseptic environment. the lac normally consists of seven layers as shown in fig. 1. each layer has specific properties and is used to protect against a certain extrinsic factor including light, oxygen, odor, and moisture. a sealed lac also keeps the product sealed away from surrounding environment until the package is opened (i.e. seal is broken) [8] [9] [10] figure 2:laminated aseptic carton (lac) package. [11] in iraq, the most consumed juices (as called commercially) are low-to-no nectar drinks. we will refer for both low nectar juice and no nectar drink as”drink” in this study. moreover, within the many flavors, orange is the iraqi consumers’ favorite. the main sales channels to end consumers consists of small to medium sized markets and grocery stores. these markets normally store the drinks in storage conditions that could prevent the packages from direct exposure to sunlight, rain, winds but not necessary the local temperatures. this is especially true for aseptic packaged drinks as the most companies with products packed aseptically in carton packages, fig. 2, claim that the technology does not demand that drinks are stored in a controlled temperature but can be stored in ambient temperature. [7] preventing changes in the properties of packed juices and drinks is one of the major concerns of the mass production beverage industries; especially when the shelf life is expected by retailers and consumers to become longer, and the storage conditions are becoming more diverse as the same product can be shipped to different countries having different environmental conditions, or can go through different sessions of the year during its shelf life. in this study, the effect of two extrinsic factorson a set of intrinsic chemical properties of a selected fmcg product was examined and tested, these factors are the storage temperature and storage time. the product selected is low-to-no nectar orange drink packed in lac packages and the set of intrinsic properties tested are the ph value, the brix value, and the titratable acidity value of the drinks. these three properties are submitted for testing as per iraqi regulations and the results must be within a certain threshold for allowing the product to be sold for consumers. understanding the change in these values during the shelf life of the kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 107 products will indicate if they may deviate from initial conditions enough to fall beyond the accepted thresholds. in addition, studies suggest that these values relate directly to the product test and consumer acceptability. [12] [13] 2. methods and materials 2.1 materials the samples consisted of orange drink commercially packed in lac packages. samples where were bought from local wholesalers. the wholesalers stored thedrinksin warehouses without controlled temperature (ambient weather), and the production date of any sample did not exceed 45 days (shelf life of products is 12 month). three local brands were selected, each belonging to a different local company/factory in order to evaluate if there would be significant variation in the results between different brands when all are subjected to the same test procedures. having three companies allows to progress with farther study in cases wheresignificant variations were observed which might not be possible to understand without examining factors related to the manufacturing stages as well. one brand is known by the wholesalers for having high quality standards, one brand is known for having moderate quality standards, and one brand is known for having low quality standards. the standards differentiation was labeled based on the feedback of the wholesalers and the distributers. attention was paid to selecting samples with no signs of damages to the packages to minimize any variableswhich could result from the damages. the ingredients of each brand, as labeledon the packages by the companies which produced the filled packages, are:  brand 1 ingredients: water, sugar, orange juice from improving materials, citric acid, sodium benzoate, fruit pectin e-440, vitamin c beta-carotene (pro-vitamin a) natural identical orange flavour.  brand 2 ingredients: water, sugar, citric acid, stabilizer: gmc, natural orange flavour, permitted colors: e110 e102. potassium sorbate sodium benzoate xanthan gum.  brand 3 ingredients: filtered water, sugar, orange concentrate, citric acid, thickeners, orange flavour. 2.1 methods 126 samples were tested in total over a period of 5 weeks, 42 samples from each brand. a 5week incubation period is an average period used in other studies conducted for similar objectives. all samples kept sealed and unopened until the testing time. the ph, brix, and titratable acidity (ta) tests were done for the orange drinks from each individual sample. for each test two samples from each brand were tested individually in order to have repeated results for the same brand under the same conditions to highlight any extreme variations in the results between both samples of each brand which might be a result of a defected sample or testing errors. at the start of the study, two samples from each brand were tested and the average results were recorded as the initial conditions before subjecting the samples to the selected temperatures and incubation times. for subjecting the samples to the selected temperatures and conditions, ten samples from each brand were grouped together and placed in a controllable fridge having a set temperature of 10°c. the same was repeated 4 more times and each group was placed in a controlled temperature of 20, 30, 40, and 50°c respectively using controllable incubators. the range of 10-50°c was selected to mimic the known weather temperatures in iraq throughout the year. the samples were incubated for a total period of 5 weeks, at the end of each week, 2 samples from each brand were taken out, tested for the values of ph, brix and ta, then the average result was recorded. there were extra samples to be used randomly either to confirm tests or to replace damaged samples. the diagram below, fig. 3, illustrate the samples distribution over the incubation period and the selected temperatures. ph, ta, and brix testing methods were as follow:  ph value was measured using a calibrated digital ph meter  titratable acidity, expressed as % citric acid, was calculated using the simple titration method [14]: kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 108 ( ) (1) tv = titration value, nn = normality of naoh, v = vol. madeup, we = equivalent weight of citric acid, vt = volume taken for titration, ws = weight of sample.  brix was measured using a brix refractometer figure 3. complete characterization process kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 109 3. results and discussion to highlight the overall changes in results and to minimize human and testing method errors, the results were calculated for each test individually then the averages were calculated once over the range of selected incubation temperatures and the range of selected incubation times. table 1 shows the records of the tests. in table 1, the columns list the incubation temperatures and tests, and the rows list the incubation times and brands. any selected column and row will intersect at the test result for a desired incubation temperature, brand and incubation time. an example is the value of ph test at 20°c for brand 2 after 3 weeks of incubation time which is 4,identified by crossing column no. 5 and row no. 9. table 1: average test results for all the samples throughout the incubation times and temperatures 3.1 titratable acidity table 2 lists the calculated average results for titratable acidity (ta) as a function of temperature and as a function of time. these results are used to plot two graphs as shown in figure 4, one graph shows the average change of ta in relation to temperature and the other graph shows the average change of ta in relation to incubation time. the solid lines on the graphs are the plots of the real results. the dashed lines on the graphs are linear regressions used to better visualize how the ta value changes in relation to temperature and in relation to time. each brand in figure 4 is labeled with a unique color. the results show that ta was affected more in relation to temperature (i.e. as incubation temperature increased) and less as a function of time (i.e. as incubation time increased). the value of ta for all brand was increasing with the increase of both incubation time and incubation temperature. the standard deviation for the ta ranged from 8.7% to 11.9%. the linear regression (lr) equations, table 3, are useful to mathematically define both the magnitude of the slope for the lr lines drown in the graph (figure 4) and the average change column ref. no. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 row ref no temperature °c 10 20 30 40 50 test ta ph brix ta ph brix ta ph brix ta ph brix ta ph brix brand 1 week 0 0.26 3.8 4.5 0.26 3.8 4.5 0.26 3.8 4.5 0.26 3.8 4.5 0.26 3.8 4.5 1 week 1 0.26 3.89 4.5 0.26 3.79 4.5 0.19 3.71 4.5 0.33 3.6 4.5 0.28 3.9 4.5 2 week 2 0.25 3.6 4.5 0.25 3.6 4.62 0.22 3.48 4.6 0.3 3.6 4.5 0.29 3.9 4.5 3 week 3 0.25 4.23 4.6 0.25 4.23 4.55 0.25 4.24 4.6 0.26 3.4 4.5 0.26 3.5 4.5 4 week 4 0.25 3.8 4.5 0.26 3.81 4.5 0.24 3.81 4.5 0.25 3.6 4.5 0.26 3.5 4.5 5 brand 2 week 0 0.26 4.1 10 0.26 4.1 10 0.26 4.1 10 0.26 4.1 10 0.26 4.1 10 6 week 1 0.26 4.01 10 0.26 4.02 10 0.26 3.93 10 0.3 3.8 10 0.24 4.05 10 7 week 2 0.26 4.2 10 0.26 3.96 10 0.12 3.83 10 0.29 3.9 10 0.29 3.85 10 8 week 3 0.25 4.25 10 0.25 4 10 0.25 4.1 10 0.26 3.95 10 0.26 3.9 10 9 week 4 0.26 4.04 10 0.25 4.02 10 0.26 3.87 10 0.25 3.8 10 0.26 3.9 10 10 brand 3 week 0 0.26 3.6 9 0.26 3.6 9 0.26 3.6 9 0.26 3.6 9 0.26 3.6 9 11 week 1 0.26 3.54 9 0.26 3.5 8.9 0.26 3.47 8.9 0.3 3.6 8.6 0.29 3.5 9 12 week 2 0.24 3.83 8.8 0.26 3.63 9 0.19 3.52 9.5 0.3 3.8 9 0.27 3.7 8.5 13 week 3 0.25 3.5 9.5 0.25 3.7 9.5 0.25 3.98 9.5 0.25 3 8.5 0.25 3 8.5 14 week 4 0.28 3.58 9 0.3 3.59 9 0.3 3.58 9 0.25 3.7 8.5 0.25 3.6 8.6 15 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 110 in test results per time unit or temperature unit. the percentage change for ta values ranged from a minimum of %0.54 throughout the temperature and incubation time ranges to a maximum of %1.01 with the exception of brand 1 change with time that had a slop of %2.45.to farther explore the effect of the incubation time and incubation temperature on the results the p-value (p) was calculated from the average results. all the ta results were found to be not statistically significant (p > 0.05) which suggests that there is no evidence of the results being significantly affected by the change in the incubation time and incubation temperature. table 2: average results for titratable acidity as a function of temperature and time temp °c brand 1 brand 2 brand 3 time brand 1 brand 2 brand 3 10 0.254 0.258 0.258 week0 0.26 0.26 0.26 20 0.256 0.256 0.266 week1 0.26 0.26 0.27 30 0.232 0.23 0.252 week2 0.26 0.24 0.25 40 0.281 0.273 0.274 week3 0.25 0.25 0.25 50 0.271 0.262 0.266 week4 0.25 0.25 0.27 figure 4:the average change in titratable acidity value for each brand table 3: linear regression equations for titratable acidity ( ) ta (a) linear regression as function of time (w) (brand 1) (2) ( ) ta (a) linear regression as function of time (w) (brand 2) (3) ( ) ta (a) linear regression as function of time (w) (brand 3) (4) ( ) ta (a) linear regression as function of temperature (t) (brand 1) (5) ( ) ta (a) linear regression as function of temperature (t) (brand 2) (6) ( ) ta (a) linear regression as function of temperature (t) (brand 3) (7) 3.2 ph table 4 lists the calculated average results for ph as a function of temperature and as a function of time. these results are used to plot two graphs as shown in figure 5, one graph shows the average change of ph in relation to temperature and the other graph shows the average change of ph in relation to incubation time. the solid lines on the graphs are the plots of the real results. the dashed lines on the graphs are linear regressions used to better visualize how the ph value changes in relation to temperature and in relation to time. each brand in figure 5 is labeled with a unique color. the results show that ph value was affected more in relation to temperature (i.e. as incubation temperature increases) and less as a function of time (i.e. as incubation time increases). the value of ph was decreasing with the increase of both incubation time and incubation temperature. this is inverse compared to ta results, the reverse behavior of ta and ph is kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 111 expected, if one increases the other decreases. the magnitude of change in ta was higher than the magnitude of change in ph for both temperature and time and for all brands.the standard deviation for the ph ranged from 3% to 5.8%. the linear regression (lr) equations, table 5, are useful to mathematically define both the magnitude of the slope for the lr lines drown in the graph (figure 5) and the average change in test results per time unit or temperature unit. the percentage change for ph values ranged from a minimum of %0.13 throughout the temperature and incubation time ranges to a maximum of %1.06 with the exception of brand 1 change with time that had a slop of %1.37.the results were found to be not statistically significant (p > 0.05) which suggests that there is no evidence of the results being significantly affected by the change in the incubation time and incubation temperature. table 4: average results for ph as a function of temperature and time temp °c brand 1 brand 2 brand 3 time brand 1 brand 2 brand 3 10 3.86 4.12 3.61 week0 3.8 4.1 3.6 20 3.84 4.02 3.6 week1 3.78 3.96 3.52 30 3.81 3.96 3.63 week2 3.63 3.94 3.69 40 3.6 3.91 3.54 week3 3.92 4.04 3.43 50 3.72 3.96 3.48 week4 3.7 3.92 3.61 figure 5. the average change in ph value for each brand table 5: linear regression equations for ph ( ) ph (p) linear regression as function of time (w) (brand 1) (8) ( ) ph (p) linear regression as function of time (w) (brand 2) (9) ( ) ph (p) linear regression as function of time (w) (brand 3) (10) ( ) ph (p) linear regression as function of temperature (t) (brand 1) (11) ( ) ph (p) linear regression as function of temperature (t) (brand 2) (12) ( ) ph (p) linear regression as function of temperature (t) (brand 3) (13) 3.3 brix table 6 lists the calculated average results for brix as a function of temperature and as a function of time. these results are used to plot two graphs as shown in figure 6, one graph shows the average change of brix in relation to temperature and the other graph shows the average change of brix in relation to incubation time. the solid lines on the graphs are the plots of the real results. the dashed lines on the graphs are linear regressions used to better visualize how the brix value changes in relation to temperature and in relation to time. each brand in figure 6 is labeled with a unique color. the brix results showed the lowest change both in relation to temperature and in relation to time. brix value was almost constant for all tested samples; and when it was not constant, the biggest standard deviation from the mean value in any test was no more than 3%.the linear kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 112 regression (lr) equations, table 7, are useful to mathematically define both the magnitude of the slope for the lr lines drown in the graph (figure 5) and the average change in test results per time unit or temperature unit. the percentage change for brix values ranged from a minimum of %0 throughout the temperature and incubation time ranges to a maximum of %0.18 with the exception of brand 3 change with time that had a slop of %1.17. the results were found to be not statistically significant (p > 0.05) which suggests that there is no evidence of the results being significantly affected by the change in the incubation time and incubation temperature. table 6: average results for brix as a function of temperature and time temp c brand 1 brand 2 brand 3 time brand 1 brand 2 brand 3 10 4.52 10 9.07 week 0 4.5 10 9 20 4.53 10 9.09 week 1 4.5 10 8.9 30 4.54 10 9.19 week 2 4.54 10 8.9 40 4.5 10 8.72 week 3 4.55 10 9.1 50 4.5 10 8.72 week 4 4.5 10 8.8 figure 6. the average change in brix value for each brand table 7: linear regression equations for brix ( ) brix (b) linear regression as function of time (w) (brand 1) (14) ( ) brix (b) linear regression as function of time (w) (brand 2) (15) ( ) brix (b) linear regression as function of time (w) (brand 3) (16) ( ) brix (b) linear regression as function of temperature (t) (brand 1) (17) ( ) brix (b) linear regression as function of temperature (t) (brand 2) (18) ( ) brix (b) linear regression as function of temperature (t) (brand 3) (19) 4. conclusion the results from this study suggested there is little to no evidence that the selected extrinsic factors, incubation time and temperature, had any effect on the examined intrinsic chemical properties. it can be concluded from the results that the low-to-no nectar orange drinks packed aseptically in laminated aseptic cartons (lac) experience no significant changes in the values of brix, titratable acidity and ph when incubated at temperatures within the ranges 10°c-50°c for incubation time up to 5 weeks. the following can be considered for future work: • longer incubation time: for this study a total incubation time of 5 weeks was decided which is on average 1 week longer than other studies conducted on the same subject. changes in the intrinsic chemical properties, if any, would be more significant if the incubation time was extended and the average of the results would be less effected with human errors, if any. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 113 • use medium to high nectar products: the results from this study could be different depending on the product ingredients and contents, a higher nectar concentrate could result in results that change more significantly with the extrinsic factors. reference [1] l.manzocco, s.calligaris, m.anese, and m.c.nicoli, “the stability and shelf life of coffee products”. woodhead publishing series in food science, technology and nutrition, pp. 375–398, 2016. [2] p. subramaniam and p. wareing, the stability and shelf life of food. woodhead publishing, 2016.adeshina fadeyibi, zinash osunde, and mohammed gana yisa, “optimization of processing parameters ofnanocomposite film for fresh sliced okra packaging.”. journal of applied packaging research 11(2):1-20, 2019 [3] t. sirichan, i. kijpatanasilp, n. asadatorn, and k. assatarakul, “optimization of ultrasound extraction of functional compound from makiang seed by response surface methodology and antimicrobial activity of optimized extract with its application in orange juice,” ultrason. sonochem., vol. 83, p. 105916, 2022. [4] m.s. alamri, a. a. q. e. a., “food packaging’s materials: a food safety perspective”. saudi journal of biological sciences, pp. 4490–4499, 2021. [5] s.k. anin, w. e., and adubofuor*, j., “effects of two packaging materials and storage conditions on the quality of fresh taste, a natural and locally produced orange drink in ghana”. african journal of food science and technology, 1(6), pp. 132–138, 2020. [6] tetra pak.(2021). tetra pak packaging solutions for food and beverages.available: https://www.tetrapak.com/solutions/packaging. [7] tetra pak.(2021). juice pasteurization – can we do better. free book.available: https://www.tetrapak.com/content/dam/tetrapak/publicweb/gb/en/processing/white_paper_optimized_pasteuriz ation.pdf [8] m. c. sanjana, r. hemegowda, and r. e. sushma, “aseptic packaging–a novel technology to the food industry,” int j trend sci res dev, vol. 3, pp. 307–310, 2019 [9] g. voicu, g. a. constantin, e.-m. stefan, p. tudor, m. g. munteanu, and t. żelaziński, “aspects regarding the aseptic packaging of food products,” acta tech. corviniensis-bulletin eng., vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 85–90, 2019. [10] greatview, (2021). greatview, the responsible choice. available: https://greatviewpack.com/ [11] x.-y. wang et al., “effects of fruit bagging treatment with different types of bags on the contents of phenolics and monoterpenes in muscat-flavored table grapes,” horticulturae, vol. 8, no. 5, p. 411, 2022. [12] a. gámbaro et al., “the impact of sensory attributes of mandarins on consumer perception and preferences,” j. agric. food res., vol. 6, p. 100196, 2021. [13] s. xing et al., “dynamic prediction model of ripening degree of chinese spicy cabbage under fluctuation temperatures,” food packag. shelf life, vol. 30, p. 100744, 2021.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.15 received:21 may 2018 | accepted: 28 june 2018 a case-control study for assessing risk factors for congenital anomalies among children in sulaimani city niaz mustafa kamal nasih othman anesthesia department kurdistan institute for strategic studies technical collage of health and scientific research sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani iraq sulaimani, iraq nasih.othman@kissr.edu.krd niaz.kamal@spu.edu.iq 90 abstract: congenital anomalies comprise a wide range of abnormalities in body structure or function that are present at birth and are of prenatal origin. these are defined as structural changes that have significant medical, social or cosmetic consequences for the affected individual, and typically require medical intervention. according to our knowledge, research is scarce on these conditions in sulaimaniyah city. therefore, the current study was conducted to investigate potential risk factors for congenital anomalies. a case-control study was carried out from march to august 2017 involving 400 children (200 cases and 200 controls) aged 0-5 years. required data were obtained on the risk factors through face to face interviews with mothers of cases and controls. the data were using descriptive statistical methods, chi-square and logistic regression using stata 11, calculating odds ratios and condensing p value less than 0.05 as statistically significant. the mean age of the children was 1.9 years and age of their mothers at the time of pregnancy was 28 years. congenital heart anomalies were the commonest type accounting for 27.5%. significant risk factors for congenital anomalies were family history (or=2.24, p= 0.007), maternal obesity (or= 2.26, p= 0.001), mothers age over 30 (or=2.78, p= 0.002) and mothers not using folic acid during pregnancy (or=2.12, p= 0.0007). in general, in order to control and prevent the cases of cm, it is important to provide health education and policies to reduce environmental and maternal risk factors. further, studies with larger sample size are needed to investigate incidence and risk factors of congenital anomalies. keywords: sulaimani, anomalies, down syndrome, consanguinity, microcephaly, cleft lip. 1. introduction congenital anomalies or birth defects are defined as “structural or functional anomalies (for example, metabolic disorders) that occur during intrauterine life and can be identified prenatally, at birth, or sometimes may only be detected later in infancy, such as hearing defects” [1]. early intrauterine period (between the 3 rd and the 8 th weeks of gestation) is the vital period of life for the normal development of organs, any problem within that period may result in congenital malformations [2]. congenital anomalies are among the leading causes of infant mortality and morbidity around the world responsible for over 300,000 neonatal deaths in 2015[1]. the effect of birth defects is mainly severe in the middleand low-income countries where health care resources are limited compared to high-income countries [3, 4]. the long-term disability caused by congenital anomalies may have a significant impact not only on a child’s well-being and development but also on families, health care systems and societies[2]. congenital anomalies are classified into two types of defects includes minor and major defects, the most common major structural birth defects include congenital heart disease (chd), neural tube defects, orofacial clefts and limb reduction defects[5]. generally, congenital anomalies that involve the cns and the cardiovascular and musculoskeletal systems have been reported to be the most common [2]. the congenital anomalies may be caused by genetic (30–40%) or environmental factors (5–10%) and approximately 50% of all congenital anomalies cannot be linked to a specific cause[6]. among genetic causes, chromosomal abnormality makes up about 6%, single gene disorders about 25%, and multifactorial about 20–30%. in about 50% of cases, the cause is unknown[4]. potential risk factors that have contributors to congenital malformations includes low socioeconomic and parents educational levels, malnutrition (micronutrient and macronutrient), maternal infections ( e.g. diabetes and rubella) , lack of environmental protection policies, unsafe working conditions during pregnancy, medication use during pregnancy, common use of home remedies of unknown composition and chemical household cleaners[5]. in addition, growth restriction, preterm delivery, mother’s age and weight during pregnancy and parental consanguinity are also associated with birth defects [7, 8]. furthermore, it has been reported that there is an association between environmental exposures such as air pollution, alcohol consumption, environmental tobacco smoking, radiation, pesticides and pregnancy outcomes such as pregnancy loss, stillbirth, fetal growth, preterm birth and congenital anomalies [9-11]. there have been no studies on the risk factors associated with birth defects in sulaimani; therefore, the current study was 91 undertaken to determine the risk factors associated with congenital anomalies in the governorate. 2. methods and materials the participants of this hospital-based case-control study were children aged 0-5 years as well as their mothers. data were collected from sulaimani pediatric and maternity teaching hospitals in addition to 3 private hospitals as zhyan, harem, and international hospital. a total of 400 children ( 200 cases of congenital anomalies and 200 controls without congenital anomalies) were included in the study, and data were collected from their mothers interviewed between march and october 2017. the pediatric teaching hospitals provides a wide range of health services for children and infants, while maternity and private hospitals provide care for pregnant women including deliveries in the city. the cases were enroled by recruiting all newborn infants and children with congenital anomalies attending the hospital for follow up or for other reasons during the study period. meanwhile, 200 children without congenital anomalies attending the pediatric teaching hospital for others diseases or who were born healthy during the same period of study were selected as controls randomly depending on the list of daily admission to the ward. inclusion criteria were any child aged 0-5 years and resident in sulaimani city were eligible for inclusion in both cases and controls. maternal age was categorized as ≤ 25years, 26-35 years and ≥ 35years; maternal bmi was categorized as 18.5-24 kg/m 2 (normal weight), 25-29 kg/m 2 (overweight) and ≥30 kg/ m 2 (obese); gestational age of 39-41 weeks as full-term and ≤ 38 weeks as preterm [12] . the information on mother's weight during pregnancy was collected from antenatal care booklet issued by the health centers. the children variables analyzed were birth weight, categorized as <2500 grams (low birth weight) and ≥ 2500 grams (normal weight). information on the risk factors was collected from face to face interview with mother/caregivers after explaining the aims of the study was done for the mother's cases an controls and obtaining informed consent. privacy and confidentiality were respected. the study did not involve any harmful intervention to the children and their mothers. the study was approved by the ethics committee of technical college of health and permission was also taken from all hospitals. obtained data were statistically analyzed using descriptive statistical methods (frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation). chi-square test was applied to compare categorical variables, and odds ratios were calculated for potential risk factors using logistic regression in stata version 11. p value equal to and less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant for all analysis and smaller p values were reported as <0.001 if they were smaller than 0.001. 3. results the sample included 200 cases with different anomalies (100 boys and 100 girls) and 200 controls without congenital anomalies (110 boys and 90 girls) with the mean age of 1.9 (sd 1.5) years. the mean maternal age at the time of pregnancy was 28 year (sd 6.1). a number of sociodemographic characteristics of the children cases and controls are demonstrated in table 1. there was no significant association between gender, ethnicity, mother's occupation, mother's education and consanguineous marriage with congenital anomalies. there were similar numbers of cases from inside and outside the city (49.5% vs. 50%), while in the control 63.5% were from inside and 36.5% were from outside of sulaimani city. majority of cases and controls were of kurdish ethnicity (95% of cases and 91.5% of controls). majority of mothers in cases and controls were unemployed (80.5% vs. 87%). among cases, 80.5% of mothers were educated and 19.5% were not while in controls this was 86% vs. 14%. with respect to family history, 19% of cases had child relative with cm while this was only 9.5% in cases and the difference was statistically significant (χ²: 7.4, p= 0.007). figure 1 summarizes the pattern of congenital anomalies seen in the children. the congenital heart diseases were the most common (27.5%) followed by down syndrome(20.5%). while microcephaly, imperforate anus and macrocephaly were the least common types (3%, 2.5%, and 2%) respectively. figure 1: frequency distribution of congenital anomalies. the distribution of pregnancy and environmental risk factors of exposed cases and controls are shown in table 2. as seen from this table, higher maternal age, obesity, gestational diabetes, low birth weight, preterm delivery, exposure to radiation and failure to take folic acid during pregnancy were significantly associated with the presence of congenital anomalies in the child. table 3 shows crude odds ratios for potential risk factors. children who had a relative with cm were 2 times at greater risk of being born with congenital malformations compared to those who didn’t have relative with cm (or=2.24, p=0.007). low birth weight was a highly statistically significant risk factor for the development of cm with (or=2.85) compared to children born with normal weight (p<0.0001). premature children had 2 times greater risk of being born with cm 27.5% 20.5% 13% 11% 8.5% 6% 6% 3% 2.5% 2% 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 types of anomalies 92 compared to full-term children (or= 1.88, p=0.02). this result also indicates that higher maternal age is associated with an increased risk of cm as children of mothers aged 26-35 and 36 years and older had an odds ratio of (2.78, p= 0.002) and (1.6, p= 0.01) respectively compared to mothers aged 25 years and younger. amongst mothers who have gestational diabetes the odds ratio for having a child with cm was 9, compared to those who did not have gestational diabetes (or 9.37, p= 0.01). children born to mothers who did not use folic acid during pregnancy were more prone to having cm compared to those born to mothers who used folic acid (or= 2.12, p= 0.0007). compared with normal weight mothers (bmi 18.5-24), overweight and obese mothers were at a higher risk of having children with cm (or 1.96, p= 0.05; or 2.26, p= 0.001) respectively. adjusted odds ratios were calculated to control for confounding in pairs of variables related to each other including maternal age and child's order, the presence of a sibling with cm and consanguineous marriage, child relative with cm and consanguineous marriage, premature birth and low birth weight and gestational age and bmi during pregnancy (table 4). when we adjusted for consanguinity, family history remained significantly associated with cm (aor: 2.32, ci: 1.22-4.06, p0.007). with respect to premature birth and low birth weight, after we adjusted for premature birth, low birth weight remained as statistically significantly associated with cm (aor:1.73, ci:1.20-2.49 p0.003). moreover, when adjusted for low birth weight, premature birth also remained highly significantly associated with cm (adjusted or 2.69, ci: 1.62-4.45, p< 0.0001). in addition, when adjusted for obesity, gestational diabetes remained a significant risk factor for cm with an odds ratio of 10.67 (95% ci: 1.06-106.5, p0.01). similarly, when adjusted for gestational diabetes, overweight and obese mothers during pregnancy remained at a significantly higher risk of having a child with cm with an odds ratio of 1.67 (95% ci 1.0-2.8, p 0.05), 2.30 (95% ci 1.38-3.86, p 0.001) respectively. table 1: distribution of cases and controls mothers with socio-demographic characteristics characteristics exposed cases (200) (n %) exposed controls (200) (n %) chi-square p value gender 1.0 0.3 male 100 (50) 110 (55) female 100 (50) 90 (45) residence 7.8 0.005 inside sulaimani 99 (49.5) 127 (63.5) outside sulaimani 101 (50.5) 73 (36.5) ethnicity 1.95 0.2 kurd 190 (95) 183 (91.5) arab 10 (5) 17 (8.5) mother's occupation 3.10 0.08 employed 39 (19.5) 26 (13) unemployed/ housewife 161 (80.5) 174 (87) mother's education 2.17 0.1 education 161 (80.5) 172 (86) non-education 39 (19.5) 28 (14) consanguineous marriage 1.30 0.3 yes 79 (39.5) 68 (34) no 121 (60.5) 132 (66) history of anomalies in the family 7.39 0.007 positive 38 (19) 19 (9.5) negative 162 (81) 181 (90.5) others child with cm 0.35 0.6 siblings 7 (3.5) 5 (2.5) none 193 (96.5) 195 (97.5) table 2: distribution of pregnancy and environmental risk factors of cases and controls characteristics cases number ( %) controls number (n %) chi-square p value pregnancy risk factors mode of delivery 0.12 0.7 normal vaginal delivery 97 (48.7) 101 (50.5) caesarean section 102 (51.3) 99 (49.5) mother's age 11.68 0.003 ≤25 58(29) 88(44) 26-35 109(54.5) 94(47) ≥36 33(16.5) 18(9) gestational weight bmi kg/m 2 93 normal weight 18.5-24 41 (20.5) 67 (33.8) 10.51 0.005 overweight 25-29 66 (33) 64 (32.3) obese ≥30 93 (46.5) 67(33.8) gestational diabetes 6.7 0.01 yes 9(4.5) 1 (0.5) no 191 (95.5) 199 (99.5) terms of pregnancy 5.61 0.02 neonates at term (39-41) weeks 156 (78) 174 (87) neonates at pre-term ≤38 weeks 44 (22) 26 (13) birth weight 18.63 <0.0001 low birth weight g < 2500 67 (33.5) 30 (15) normal birth weight g> 2500 133 (66.5) 170 (85) environmental risk factors exposure to radiation 3.90 0.05 exposed 10 (5) 3 (1.5) unexposed 190 (95) 197 (98.5) used of folate during pregnancy 11.50 0.001 yes 125 (62.5) 156 (78) no 75 (37.5) 44 (22) table 3: maternal exposed to sociodemographic and pregnancy risk factors of a child with congenital anomalies risk factors odds ratio (95% ci) chi square p value consanguineous marriage no yes reference 1.27 (0.84-1.81) 1.30 0.3 sibling with cm no yes reference 1.42 (0.44-4.54) 0.34 0.6 exposure to x-ray unexposed exposed reference 3.45 (0.92-12.58) 3.9 0.05 gestational weight bmi kg/m 2 normal weight 18.5-24 kg/m 2 overweight 25-29 kg/m 2 obese ≥30 kg/m 2 reference 1.69 2.26 (1.0-2.84) (1.363.8) 3.89 10.5 0.05 0.001 the family history of anomalies negative positive reference 2.24 (1.23-4.05) 7.37 0.007 birth weight normal birth weight >2500g low birth weight < 2500 reference 2.85 (1.73-4.70) 18.85 <0.0001 terms of pregnancy neonates at term (39-41) weeks neonates at pre-term ≤38 weeks reference 1.88 (1.11-3.22) 6.5 0.02 mother's age during pregnancy ≤25 26-35 ≥ 36 reference 1.6 2.78 (1.13-272) (1.4-5.50) 6.62 9.44 0.01 0.002 gestational diabetes no yes reference 9.37 (1.15-76.21) 6.6 0.01 used of folate during pregnancy yes no reference 2.12 (1.36-3.33) 11.47 0.0007 table 4: adjusted odds ratio and 95% confidence intervals for risk factors significantly associated with congenital malformation risk factors adjusted odds ratio p value 95% ci trend p value family history anomalies adjusted for consanguinity 0.007 0.003 no reference yes 2.23 0.007 1.22-4.06 premature birth adjusted for low birth weight neonates at term (39-41) weeks reference neonates at pre-term ≤ 38 weeks 1.73 0.003 1.20-2.49 94 low birth weight adjusted for premature birth <0.0001 0.01 0.001 normal weight reference low birth weight 2.69 <0.0001 1.62-4.45 gestational diabetes, adjusted for bmi during pregnancy no reference yes 10.67 0.01 1.06-106.5 bmi (kg/m 2 ) during pregnancy adjusted for gestational diabetes normal weight 18.5-24 kg/m 2 reference overweight 25-29 kg/m 2 1.67 0.05 1.0-2.8 obese ≥30 kg/m 2 2.30 0.001 1.38-3.86 4. discussion congenital anomalies are one of the most prevalent causes of mortality in children. the study shows a raised risk of congenital anomalies in children whose mothers exposed to potential risk factors as environmental and reproductive risk factors. our study finds a number of risk factors that associated with congenital anomalies as higher maternal age, gestational diabetes, low birth weight, child relatives and not suing tonic drugs during. our study reported that congenital heart disease and down syndrome were the most common types of congenital anomalies compared to other types[13-15]. the result of the present study showed that the being borne with low birth weight (<2500 grams) was significantly increased the possibility of developing congenital anomalies. in the study conducted northwest iran has been showed that children borne with low birth weight are a convincing factor in developing cms [16]. major congenital malformations were significantly associated with family history. in a case-control study conducted in pakistan, family history was reported as one of the main risk factors of cms in infants[17]. also in study surveillance survey was done in albama reported the family history significantly increased the chance of infants being born with cm [18]. we found when family history adjusted for consanguinity remained significantly associated with the presence of cm in children the aor 2.23 and the (p 0.007). in accordance with the studies were conducted in northern africans, southeast asians and central americans [19]. among the maternal characteristics, prematurity (< 37 completed weeks) was a significant risk factor which is similar to studies done in united state and england [20, 21]. when these variables combining ( premature birth and low birth weight), the adjusted or was 1.73 (95% ci 1.224.06). also birth weight and premature birth, the adjusted or was 2.96 (95% ci 1.62-4.45), the two variable remained significantly associated with the developing of cm among children cases. which is similar to the two study were done in england and northwest iran [16, 21]. our study also found that increased maternal age is a strong risk factor related to cm in comparison with younger mothers which is similar to the studies was done in the united state[22, 23]. maternal consumption of tonic drug as folic acid during pregnancy is a protective factor for decreased risk for having children with cm. similar to the study conducted in netherland which reported that folic acid intake during pregnancy lowers the risk of children being born with cm [24]. the result of the present study found that mothers with diabetes mellitus were 9 times at greater risk of having children with congenital malformations. this in line with the study done in university of chile clinical hospital reporting gestational diabetes associated with cm [25]. hence, more attention should be taken to the control of diabetes especially during the first trimester of pregnancy. we found a woman who was overweight or obese were significantly had at greater risk for giving birth to infants with cm compared to the normal weight women. mothers with diabetes and increased weight during pregnancy were giving birth with congenital anomalies, we found this result was statistically significant when we adjusted the variables bmi with diabetes the aor10.67 (95% ci 1.06-106.5). likewise, when we adjusted diabetes with bmi also remained statistically significant with cm among overweight and obese women the aor 1.67(95% ci 1.0-2.8), aor 2.30 (95% ci 1.38-3.86) respectively [26, 27]. a systemic review and metaanalysis were done at newcastle university and a population-based cohort study in sweden reported that increased mothers weight during pregnancy was related to cm [28, 29]. the results of the study reported that parental consanguinity is not associated with the presence of cm which is on the contrary with the study was done islamic republic of iran [30]. this difference could be due to a sample size. logistics regression analysis also confirmed that risk factors were an independent risk factor for congenital anomalies. our study is not without limitations. the probability of selection bias especially in the selection of controls exists. there is also the probability of information bias (recall bias) in collecting information form mothers. the study does not include all possible risk factors which limit comparison with other studies. therefore, further studies are required to investigate a wider range of risk factors. 5. conclusion congenital malformations are a common health problem in the region; the congenital heart defects being the most common. based on the results of this study, the most important and significant risk factors for developing cm are prematurity, family history, maternal obesity, low birth weight, higher maternal age, gestational diabetes and not using folate during pregnancy. in order to improve the child and newborn health and control and reduce congenital anomalies, it is necessary to plan programs and policies for decreasing these risk factors, providing a proper counseling, recognizing dangerous pregnancies, prompt management of maternal illness, and improving antenatal care. 95 acknowledgment the authors 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[26] j. rankin, p. w. tennant, k. j. stothard, m. bythell, c. d. summerbell, and r. bell, "maternal body mass index and congenital anomaly risk: a cohort study," int j obes (lond), vol. 34, pp. 1371-80, sep 2010. [27] a. garcia-patterson, l. erdozain, g. ginovart, j. m. adelantado, j. m. cubero, g. gallo, et al., "in human gestational diabetes mellitus congenital malformations are related to pre-pregnancy body mass index and to severity of diabetes," diabetologia, vol. 47, pp. 509-514, mar 2004. [28] k. j. stothard, p. w. tennant, r. bell, and j. rankin, "maternal overweight and obesity and the risk of congenital anomalies: a systematic review and meta-analysis," jama, vol. 301, pp. 636-50, feb 11 2009. [29] s. johansson, e. villamor, m. altman, a. k. bonamy, f. granath, and s. cnattingius, "maternal overweight and obesity in early pregnancy and risk of infant mortality: a population based cohort study in sweden," bmj, vol. 349, p. g6572, dec 2 2014. [30] z. mosayebi and a. h. movahedian, "pattern of congenital malformations in consanguineous versus nonconsanguineous marriages in kashan, islamic republic of iran," east mediterr health j, vol. 13, pp. 868-75, julaug 2007.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 76 article info abstract volume 7 issue 1june 2022 doi: 10.24017/science.2022.1.7 article history: received: 07/4/2022 accepted: 14/6/2022 architectural heritage is the cultural and civilizational achievements that man inherited from his ancestors, acquiring a qualitative value that has proven its importance and originality in resisting the forces of change. it is becoming a visual reference. the architectural heritage has been exposed to natural and human factors that caused much damage. this requests to deal with these factors at every level through joint action, which includes the maintenance and protection of heritage buildings. one of the essential parts of the preservation process is the reuse of the building, whereby an actual or new function is given to the building to preserve, sustain and reconfigure it in a way that preserves its originality, composition, and balance without compromising its relationship with the environment. the research problem is the fragile focus on the importance of functional value when starting the architectural preservation work, even though it requires an in-depth study of the extent of the impact of this change on preserving the heritage value of the building. the study aims to clarify the process of preservation in heritage buildings and the use of the rehabilitation process based on the architectural characteristics of the building. for this purpose, the analytical method approach of pre-and post-conservation blueprints was used through photographs to illustrate the impact of functional change in preserving the building's heritage value. the new role can introduce new values, such as political, historical, or social, to satisfy the needs of the new structure. from here, the research concludes that preserving the permanence of the architectural heritage can be keywords: architecture heritage, conservation, preservation, rehabilitation, permanence. the role of architectural preservation processes on the permanence of heritage buildings of value sham mustafa qadir banaz n. muhealdeen architecture department architecture department college of engineering college of engineering university of sulaimani university of sulaimani sulaymaniyah, iraq sulaymaniyah, iraq sham.qadir@univsul.edu.iq banaz.muhealdeen@univsul.edu.iq mahmood ahmed khayat sherko karim kader maruf architecture department engineering and projects department college of engineering presidency, sulaimani polytechnics university salahaddin university sulaimani polytechnics university erbil, iraq sulaymaniyah, iraq dr.m.khayat@gmail.com sherko.kader@spu.edu.iq shava shirwan ibrahim agha engineering and projects department presidency, sulaimani polytechnics university sulaimani polytechnics university sulaymaniyah, iraq shava.agha@spu.edu.iq mailto:sham.qadir@univsul.edu.iq mailto:dr.m.khayat@gmail.com kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 77 achieved through cooperation between all values and that the functional value significantly affects the permanence of the heritage building. 1. introduction the significance of architectural conservation is expanding, particularly in the modern era, by means of it is considered one of the scientific disciplines [1]. due to the fact that architectural tradition is transmitted down through the generations, it provides positive components for imagination and induction in new building and construction projects [1]. the preservation as described by "fielden" is a struggle against the collapse and destruction of structures or infrastructures due to of a variety of reasons, usually caused by people themselves [2]. while the human race is a component of construction, it is also a major cause of destruction owing to many reasons, the most important of which is negligence due to a lack of knowledge and interest in heritage. furthermore, "sanpacles" defines architectural preservation as; "maintaining the constructions and buildings along with preventing them from falling if not repaired, as well as servicing the parts that were negatively affected in the past." when preservation reached a more comprehensive level, it was meant to refer to as urban preservation, which is defined as a process of planning, protecting, and increasing the value of a complex of historically or architecturally significant buildings and sites [2]. from here, the research problem can be summed up as follows: inaccuracy in the influence of each historical building's change in function on the permanence of heritage buildings of value. the research aims: to identify, analyze, and prioritize physical values for conservation measures based on the function of each historic property. the researchers hypothesized that: because there are many different architectural design values, each of which includes a large number of sub-values, each with its significance and weight of attachment. are the main factors that determine the historical structure's long-term viability being in the ability to meet present and future community needs, maintain and enhance the balance of the form, and prosper via functionally occupying the building? the research limited conserved heritage buildings similar in scale, have been renovated in the same period, and designed by the same architects (foster and partners), and also have different types of functional changes (same function, partial changes in function, different functions). the study includes an induction methodology to prove the research hypotheses through an analytical approach that incorporates graphical analyses for three different kinds of heritage buildings. the analyzing process to diagnosis function value is depend on the modifications described in the case studies. the quantitative content analysis is applied to assess the relationship between the values and conservation in this study, while the qualitative content analysis is utilized to evaluate the relationship between architectural heritage and conservation. 1.1. heritage building (with a distinct architectural style) heritage building is a building or facility with historical, symbolic, aesthetic, architectural, urban, or social value. it has been agreed that the buildings, the heritage facilities or the distinguished architectural style should be characterized by the following: • community acceptance: to gain community acceptance and positive interaction so that it can continue. • cultural and social phenomenon: to be expressive of physical, intellectual or ethical phenomenon in a particular time dated. • resilience and continuity: that is its current state permits for its continued existence and the opportunity of coping with it. before starting a conservation project, it's significant to find out what to be achieve, then come up with a presenting strategy. the goal could be as simple as maintaining a structure or as kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 78 sophisticated as exhibiting it in its entirety, with its documentation and historical context, for educational and artistic purposes. this will include assessing the structure's core values [2]. as the main purpose of heritage building renovation is to restore a property to its original condition of function through repair or change while preserving the historic, architectural, and cultural characteristics. this can be accomplished by carefully considering factors such as minimizing changes to the building's defining characteristics, distinguishing the new from the old while maintaining architectural integrity, and retaining the historic building's essential character even if new additions are removed in the future [3]. 1.2. the approach to conservation process buildings deteriorate over time due to a variety of factors such as aging, weathering, and use depletion. because the level of building wear is determined by the construction, materials, and servicing, repair approaches may change depending on building cultures and technologies. the main goal of heritage building restoration and conservation, which is comparable around the world, is to retain and preserve the work of the original builder for both present and future generations. [2]. identifying the architectural style of the existing building is critical whether the project entails rehabilitation, restoration, an addition, reconstruction, or simply changing materials. the character of a building is defined by its features and details. the roof, overhangs, doors, porches, windows, railings, artistic work, and trim are all examples of this. these elements should be considered as buildings change and evolve due to new uses and ownership because they could be an essential part of the building's historic character [3] international organizations and conservation experts stress the fundamental importance of documentation for cultural heritage identification, conservation and management [4]. thorough documentation is the first step to preserving buildings and structures of great architectural or historical value [5]. middle-eastern states often continue to face tremendous challenges related to the anticipated goals for the conservation of their respective natural and cultural heritage. political instabilities, socio-economic transformations and overall global changes put pressure on the region’s ability to invest in funds to protect and conserve heritage sites within the region for future generations [6]. 1.3. international conventions and agreements on the preservation of architectural heritage internationally there is an agreement on the status of continuity in the content of heritage for its significant necessity in the sustainability of societies. therefore, firstly, it is essential to identify the technical sources referred to in the definition and codification of the basics of heritage and the need of preservation, which are often "charter, convention and law". then, the development of the concepts, theories and objectives related to heritage preservation and in accordance with the most famous international conventions and agreements should be discussed in parallel with the historical sequence of their publication in order to reach a renewed vision of the concept of preservation of heritage in the twenty-first century [7] (table1). different views about the conservation and restoration of heritage buildings have arisen throughout history; nevertheless, most theories emphasize maintaining a heritage building with minimal intervention when necessary [2]. the main objective of each of the conventions and agreements is to become a mandatory application to be applied in the signatory states, that is to say, those international conventions become laws within these countries. through a brief overview of the most important objectives affirmed by the international charters and agreements on heritage, a clear development is evident in the world heritage concept, which began with the heritage figures and all its cultural, aesthetic and social values. however, it has to be clarified that these international conventions represent theoretical aspects that require applications and through which solutions can be found to the problems facing heritage, meanwhile highlighting the objectives and decisions on architectural preservation. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 79 table 1: the most important objectives and resolutions affirmed by the international charters and conventions concerned with the preservation of architectural heritage. 1.4. value assessment all architectural heritage-related actions require value assessment; as fielden points out the first stage is to describe the goal of the conservation project [5]. the next step is to determine the 'values' in the object, monument, or location that makes up the cultural property in question, and place these values in order of priority. the object's core messages will be honored and retained to this extent. the values are divided into three categories: 'emotional,' 'cultural,' and 'use' values [2] (figure 1). functional value is crucial when considering building repair or refurbishment, particularly for newer structures. building surveyors can make a significant contribution in this field. international conventions and agreements objectives and decisions regarding the preservation of architectural heritage t h e w o r ld w id e d e v e lo p m e n t o f th e c o n c e p t o f c o n se r v a ti o n o f a r c h it e c tu r a l h e r it a g e 1 charter of athens 1931 all disciplines should be involved in the preservation of architectural history. 2 un charter 1945 supporting international cooperation in the preservation of heritage. 3 4591 hague convention great interest in, architectural, artistic, historical and religious heritage buildings and arte fact 4 charter of venice 1964 preserving the archaeological character of the buildings and what is inside them 5 italy charter for restoration 1972 pay attention to all works of art from any era was in a holistic manner 6 4591 paris convention cultural and natural heritage preservation as archeologically significant architectural works. 7 the european charter for architectural heritage (ecah) 1975. the importance of transferring the architectural heritage to future generations in its original state 8 charter iccrom 4591 protecting heritage buildings from damage and destruction 9 4591 the lahore charter, international symposium on the conservation of islamic architectural heritage the original uses of heritages and sites can be dispensed with, provided should conform to the original functions 10 the lausanne charter for the preservation and management of archaeological heritage 1990. preservation of the archaeological heritage of switzerland as part of physical heritage. 11 new zealand's charter for the protection of cultural heritage sites 1992 preserve architectural heritage as an individual's identity and entity. to provides a model to compare the past and the present, for communication between eras 12 burra charter 1999 protecting the heritage by using methods that can contain the aesthetic, historical, scientific, and spiritual values of a location from the past to the present, and then into the future. 13 paris convention 2003 preserving heritage buildings that possess architectural, aesthetic, historical, documentation, archaeological, economic, social, political, religious and symbolic values kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 80 2. case study the induction methodology is used to three different types of heritage buildings using an analytical approach that includes graphical analysis. the analyzing procedure for diagnosing function value is based on the case studies' modifications. after the theoretical phases of the preservation of architectural buildings were discussed, there is a practical study. three conserved heritage buildings have been selected as case studies. the criteria is based on comprehensive types of functional changes (same function, partial change in function, different function). they are designed from the same architects (foster and partners), similar in scale and have been renovated in the same period of time. the analysis of each case study starts with general information about the building, brief history, and dates related to construction and remodeling. besides, the strengths and weaknesses points have been highlighted for the projects. the samples are as follow:  same functionreichstag building / new german parliament  a partial change in functionbritish museum  different functionthe hearst tower 2.1 the first project: reichstag building / new german parliament between 1884 and 1894 the reichstag was constructed. during the german empire and the weimar republic, it was the seat of parliament. the structure was severely destroyed during world war ii. it has been repaired and renovated since 1994. the reichstag now serves as the seat of germany's federal parliament [8]. a building's physical characteristics reflect its historic character (i.e. shapes, forms, materials, colours, size, height, setting, and others). historic buildings' mass is usually altered by new additions. as a result, old and new should coexist [3]. one technique to preserve historic character is to put the new addition back from the front wall plane, making the non-historic side less noticeable. the reichstag's creation of the new german parliament was merely the most recent chapter in the building's lengthy, complicated, and controversial history. the building is neither completely new nor merely a restored historical edifice. it is combination of old and new. the work priority was attached to three main principles: in term of its construction, the conversion was to meet the demands of a modern working parliament, secondly, it was to take account of historical links, and thirdly, the design was to be environment friendly. the first principle related to the functional needs of the client, the german bundestag (table 2) (figure2). figure 1: the main and sub values and resolutions affirmed by the international charters and conventions concerned with the preservation of architectural heritage (source: researchers based on [2]. • documentary • historic • archaeological and age • aesthetic and architectural. • townscape • landscape and ecological • technological and scientific • functional • economic • social (also including identity and continuity) • educational • political • wonder • identity • continuity • respect and veneration • symbolic and spiritual emotional values cultural values use values main values kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 81 table 2: reichstag building / new german parliament adjustments before after architect paul wallot foster and partners floor area (m 2 ) ≈ 61,2006 floors ≈ 61,2006 floors current use parliament in the german empire german federal parliament materials steel+ glass same materials intensity of use low low circulation elements stairs+ lifts same elements add or removed part no added part year plans elevations distribution of functions 1894 wallot 1971 baumgarten 1999/ foster figure 2: architectural details and building function of reichstag building / new german parliament [8]. 2.2 the second project: british museum the british museum was established in 1753 and first opened to the public in 1759. it was the world's first national museum, encompassing all branches of human knowledge and welcoming visitors from all over the globe. the structure was constructed in 1852 using cutting-edge technology, including concrete floors, a cast-iron frame filled with london stock brick, and portland stone on the building's front layer [9]. designers frequently employ techniques such as repeating historical characteristics and using the same materials and colours for new additions. however, if there is no visual contrast between what is old and what is contemporary, imitating a full architectural style and design will not preserve the historical relevance and integrity [3]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/paul_wallot kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 82 the redesign of the great court made it possible to see the previously concealed area again, making it accessible to the general public, as well as providing two new exhibition spaces: the sainsbury galleries and the welcome trust gallery (table 3) (figure3). table 3: british museum adjustments before after architect sir robert smirke foster and partners floor area (m 2 ) 75,000 92,000 current use natural history museum national museum and library materials concrete + cast iron-+ brick adding: magnificent glass+ steel roof intensity of use medium high circulation elements stairs + lifts adding more stairs and lifts add or removed part added horizontally year plans elevations distribution of functions 1753 1857 2000 figure 3: architectural details building function of british museum. [9]. 2.3 the third project: the hearst tower construction on the building began in 1927 and ended in 1928. the international magazine building was the original name for the 3,700-square-meter structure. the difficulty in designing such a tower at a distance of seventy years was to produce a creative conversation between old and new, similar to the approach used in the reichstag and the great court at the british museum [10]. the building is also significant from an environmental standpoint. it was constructed using 90% recycled steel and is projected to use 26% less energy than its conventional counterparts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/natural_history_museum,_london https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/national_museum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/library kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 83 as a result, it was the first office building in manhattan to receive a gold rating under the leadership in energy and environmental design (leed) program of the us green buildings council [10]. in buildings, change is happening, especially when more services are required. because new additions have the ability to modify the building's architectural character, it's vital to use acceptable preservation methods to verify that additions blend in with the historic resource [3]. the cast stone facade has a two-story foundation and four levels set back from it. the structure of the building was reinforced from the start to accommodate an office tower, and plans for nine extra floors were filed in 1946 but never implemented. the building was designated a landmark site in 1988 by the new york city landmarks preservation commission as a "significant monument in the architectural heritage of new york." (see table 4) (figure4). table 4: the hearst tower adjustments before after architect joseph urban, george b. post foster and partners floor area (m 2 ) 79,525 6 floors 79,52546 floors current use hearst magazine building world headquarters of media conglomerate hearst communications materials cast stone adding: stainless steel + low e-clear glass circulation elements stairs+ lifts adding more lifts (21lifts) intensity of use low high add or removed part added vertically year plans elevations distribution of functions 1928 2003 figure 4: architectural details and building function of the hearst tower. [10]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/joseph_urban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/george_b._post kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 84 3. result and discussion  via the analysis of the case studies, it is possible to reach the suitability of the new use of the buildings and the needs and requirements for that function, as shown in table (5).  the new function can add new values such as political, historical, or social, which has to meet the demands of the new building.  the ratio of circulation elements alters as the building expands (vertical or horizontal), which is one of the crucial elements for building efficiency.  the buildings that show a high level of permanence have highly responded to the new demands environmentally, historically, and the modern functions.  some materials, such as stainless steel and low-e-clear glass, have been added to the hearst tower, to increase the durability and then the permanence of building value.  the amount of added or removed parts does not have a great impact as long as the building responds to the new functional and environmental needs. table 5: the suitability of the new use of the buildings and the needs and requirements for that function reichstag building british museum the hearst tower re-use aim new german parliament museum + library the world headquarters of media the added value political historical social the noticeable adjustments hardly noticeable not noticeable highly noticeable conservatio n level medium strong medium the suitability of the new circulation elements suitable suitable very suitable re-use activity fitting very efficient very efficient very efficient new structure fitting traditional traditional modern direction of additional or removed parts horizontal horizontal vertical amount of additional or removed parts 10% added 30% added 60% added kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022| 85 4. conclusion it is necessary to study all the formal aspects of the building in the case of adding or removing an element or re-designing the original element so that it fits with the content, context and heritage concept of the building. as this contributes to creating an integrative relationship between the historical events of the building and as far as possible from the introduction of other elements because it affects the value of the original heritage of the building. the permanence of the historical building depends on the extent to which it can meet the current and future requirements of the community, maintain and enhance the balance of the form and value system within the urban landscape, and its ability to succeed economically and environmentally through functionally occupying the building. the process of preserving buildings with architectural heritage still depends on accurate documentation and registration processes according to all international schools and charters, and without them, preservation would be somewhat distorted, both in terms of concept and in terms of application. as in the process of preserving heritage buildings, we focus on maintaining and using them in a way that maintains their original architectural character through suitable usage while not reducing the value of the heritage. as for the function of the building, its importance in preserving heritage buildings is the importance of restoration, registration, and maintenance, and this should be studied for each building separately and according to its current status. it is clear that there are different perspectives on the adaptive reuse of heritage buildings, whether by keeping the same function of the building, making partial changes, or having a different function, yet the scope of preservation should be on a comprehensive level and not on a detailed level only, as its success depends on its ability to meet the current and future requirements of society and on its ability to continue to occupy the building functionally. 5. recommendation  the original form, shape and material of the building should be preserved, and minimal interventions should be made in the building, under the supervision of a specialized team of architects, archaeologists, construction experts, mechanics and electricians, specialists in the field of conservation.  before beginning the conservation procedure, all design values should be thoroughly examined and analyzed.  the study urges architects to collaborate with experienced engineers in teams to register, restore and maintain the historical building, through studying all building values and specifies. reference [1] h. elborombaly, integrated methodology for redevelopment heritage cities threw sustainability, heritage cities, luxor, cairo, egypt, pp. 12 -17, 2006. [2] f. bernard, conservation of historic buildings, third edition, architectural press, linacre house, jordan hill, oxford ox2 8dp, 200 wheeler road, burlington, 2003. [3] planning department city of muskegon, muskegon homeowners’ and citizens’ guide for historic preservation, by: planning department city of muskegon ; 2003. [4] a. orbasli, tourists in historic town urban conservation and heritage management, london and new york, first published 2000 by e & fn spon11 new fetter lane, london ec4p 4ee, 2011. [5] s. al-qaisi, “urban conservation as a mechanism of communication between form and moral values,” phd thesis, baghdad university, department of architecture, pp. 89-90, 2011 [6] w. christoph, and a. janne, experience with the rehabilitation of the old town of aleppo, btu cottbus, a panel presented in the conference of, urban development of baghdad and further cities in iraq, held in cottbus, cottbus, germany,2010. [7] a. shaheen, restoration and maintenance of historic monuments, press of the supreme council of antiquities, cairo, 2002 [8] b. schulz, the reichstag: sir norman foster’s parliament building, prestel pub, 2000. [9] n. foster, d. sudjic, and s. de grey, norman foster and the british museum. prestel pub, 2001. [10] d. parker and a. wood, the tall buildings reference book, routledge, 2013. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021/ 181 the epidemiological characteristics of coronavirus disease (covid-19) in halabja province/kurdistan –iraq osama hamid shareef othman abdulrahman mohammed medical laboratory science department medical laboratory science department halabja technical college of applied sciences halabja technical college of applied sciences research center research center sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university halabja, iraq halabja, iraq osama.shareef@spu.edu.iq othman.mohammed@spu.edu.iq dashty aziz ghafor ari shareef ali department of laboratories department of laboratories general directorate of health in halabja general directorate of health in halabja ministry of health ministry of health halabja, iraq halabja, iraq dashtybalkhay@yahoo.com ari.shareef@yahho.com hardi rafat baqi ali aziz ali medical laboratory technology department department of laboratories shaqlawa technical college general directorate of health in halabja erbil polytechnic university ministry of health erbil, iraq halabja, iraq hardi.baqi@epu.edu.iq aliazizbanishary@gmail.com aryan mahmood faraj syamand ahmed qadir medical laboratory science department medical laboratory technique department halabja technical college of applied sciences halabja technical institute research center research center sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university halabja, iraq halabja, iraq aryan.faraj@spu.edu.iq syamand.qadir@spu.edu.iq ali muhi aldeen omar aljabary food science and quality control department halabja technical college of applied sciences sulaimani polytechnic university halabja, iraq ali.omar@spu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 6 – issue 2– december 2021 doi: 10.24017/science.2021.2.17 the new highly transmitted pathogenic viral infection started from wuhan, china, at the end of 2019. the world health organization (who) publicized that it phylogenetically belongs to severe acute respiratory syndrome (sars), introduced as covid-19 pandemic disease. the first confirmed case in the kurdistan region of iraq (krg) was on mailto:osama.shareef@spu.edu.iq mailto:othman.mohammed@spu.edu.iq mailto:dashtybalkhay@yahoo.com mailto:ari.shareef@yahho.com mailto:hardi.baqi@epu.edu.iq mailto:aliazizbanishary@gmail.com mailto:aryan.faraj@spu.edu.iq mailto:syamand.qadir@spu.edu.iq mailto:ali.omar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021/ 182 article history: received 12/9/2021 accepted 26/1/2022 march 01, 2020 and the first covid-19 case in the halabja province/krg was recorded on march 27, 2020. this study was designed when the wafa hospital was constructed in the halabja city and it is specified for patients who infected with corona disease. the data were collected from april 14 to the end of december 2020. samples were obtained from nasopharyngeal using a sterilized swab according to the who guidelines, and then the real-time pcr (rt-pcr) machine was used for analysis. this study particularly represented the epidemiological characteristics of covid-19 disease on population of halabja province. during this study, 5183 cases were tested. among these, 2796 (54%) cases were confirmed as positive result including all ages, males and females. among 3116 male cases, high number of 1646 (60.1%) males had the disease, while less number of 1150 female cases infected with the disease. in addition, the most confirmed positive cases were among (30-39) and (40-49) year groups with 1521 and 1223 cases, respectively. the lowest positive cases were among over 80 years old and below 9 years old with 10 and 3 cases, respectively. besides, the confirmed cases for other age groups for both sexes were a (50-59) year old was 397, a (60-69) year old was 205, and (70-79) was 77. finally, the data showed that, the common confirmed cases were among groups 20-59 years old and the rare cases were under 9 and over 80 years. to recap our research observed that the viral infection in both genders was common in middle age between 20 to 59 years old. besides this, the infection was rare in people were under 10 years and above 80 years old. keywords: covid-19, halabja, male, female, rt-pcr, wafa hospital. copyright © 2021 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (sars-cov-2) is a new type of virus belongs to the coronaviridae family that affected the lower respiratory system and caused an infectious disease named covid-19 [1], [2]. covid-19 emerged in late december 2019. on january 30, 2020, who declared the virus as a public health emergency. compared to other coronaviruses, covid-19 is less deadly but far more transmissible [3]. respiratory droplets and direct contact are the first modes of transmission from human to human [4], [5]. after an incubation period of 5 to 6 days, the most common symptoms are fever, dry cough, fatigue and headache [1], [6]. before the invention of vaccines such as moderna, pfizer, sinopharm and astrazeneca, different methods were followed as a prevention way. for example, using supplements and supporting the immune system with different kinds of macronutrients such as carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins as well as the micronutrients including vitamins and minerals [7]. on of november 21, 2020, there was 57,274,018 confirmed cases of covid-19 worldwide, resulting in 1,368,000 deaths [8]. up to march 14, 2020, krg as most of the countries and a neighboring of iran, that had the third-highest number of covid-19 deaths after china and italy [9] with 14,991 cases [10]. krg includes four major cities: erbil, sulaymaniyah, duhok and halabja. halabja locates in 14 km far away from the iranian border. the first confirmed covid-19 cases in krg were in sulaymaniyah province on march 01, 2020, including four travelers returning to krg from iran. on march 27, the first confirmed covid-19 case was reported in halabja. in response to this case, the krg announced to lockdown and closed the borders and airports, ban on travel between cities, cancelling public events and friday prayers, shopping centers, universities, schools, and bazaars. these restrictions resulted in decreasing the covid-19 cases for a period. the situations were kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021/ 183 caused new peak in the number of new cases and deaths because of raising the infected and death cases. by the november 24, 2020, 94,421 cases have been confirmed, resulting in 3,036 deaths in krg [11]. the main signs of this disease are evaluated by clinical examination include blood pressure, lung sounds, and heart rate. for the symptoms are experienced by patients with mild covid‐19 might be cough, high temperature, sore throat, diarrhea, muscle or joint pain, fatigue, headache, and loss of sense of smell and taste. symptoms of covid‐19 are pneumonia include confusion, pain or pressure in the chest, breathlessness, loss of appetite, and high temperature (above 38 °c) [12], [13]. the most crucial action of krg, ministry of health, to deal with the covid-19 was opening a new molecular laboratory in halabja city on april 13, 2020 to detect this virus from the infected people. the covid-19 patients were identified based on their real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (rt-pcr) test from nasopharyngeal swab samples. this study aimed to summarize and analyze the epidemiological characteristics of the covid-19 disease in halabja province, including age and gender, on a relatively large sample size from april to december 2020 to provide reliable information for the prevention and control of this pandemic disease. 2. methods and materials 2.1. study design in early january 2020, a real-time rt-pcr diagnostic test was proposed for covid-19 [14], [15]. in early april 2020, the samples were also tested by a real-time pcr laboratory/ halabja citykrg. all diagnosed cases of covid-19 were analyzed in there, starting from early april 2020 to the end of december 2020. this study did not require informing the patient individually because all data were handled as a de-identified set to protect patient confidentiality and privacy. 2.2. isolation and management cases by collaboration of both ministries of interior and the ministry of health of the krg, a protocol for quarantine, isolation and managing the cases was planned. in the halabja city, the wafa hospital was then constructed and it had 50 beds that were prepared for covid-19 cases. 2.3. data source and study duration the data used in this study were collected in the central laboratory, department of molecular, general hospital of halabja city, krg. also, they were available in the coronavirus/dashboard system of the krg website [16]. the data were collected for nine months since from the first reported case of covid-19 in halabja on april 14, 2020, until december 31, 2020. all case records contained name, gender, age and test result. all cases were recorded with no duplications. the covid-19 cases were collected from the molecular laboratory record unit as a single dataset. all personal information and identification were hidden. 2.4. laboratory methods and testing the oropharyngeal and nasopharyngeal samples were collected from suspected patients with covid-19 and required information by a paramedic's trained team for sample collecting at the wafa hospital of the halabja city. they were collected from the suspected patients with covid-19 to test by an rt-pcr following who guidelines [17]. 2.5. quantitative real-time rt-pcr this was the most common method which used for the detection of covid-19. this had rapid detection and high sensitivity. to detect covid-19, many companies and scientific teams have been successively proposed and developed methods in the last few year [18], [19]. the reagents used were rta viral rna isolation kit, high pure viral rna kit, roche, add a bio, biobase (automated), qiaamp (qiagen automated and manual), kogene biotech, eligene, for nucleic acid extraction and genesis primer design kit, daan gene kit, eligene kit and powerchek™ kit, kogen biotech, lightcycler® multiplex rna virus master, roche, stat-nat covid-19 multi, mutaplex for coronavirus detection. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021/ 184 2.6. statistical analysis completely randomized design (crd) within the factorial experiment (two factors) was performed. the data were offered to the analysis of variance using xlstat software. means comparisons were conducted following the duncan's multiple range test at 0.05. 3. results 3.1. epidemiology total number of 5183 suspected cases of covid-19 was tested in halabja province. more than half of these cases were positive (n=2796, 54%), while the negative cases were (n=2387, 46%). these data were collected from april 14, 2020, until december 31 2020. the majority of the participants were male (n=3116, 60.1%). among these male cases, 1646 cases had the covid-19 (figure 1). less female cases were recorded in this region than males (n=2067, 39.9%) and only 1150 female participants had the covid-19. the distribution of the confirmed cases is shown in figure 2. the age groups were divided into ten subgroups, starting with (0-9) to (90-99) years old, respectively. each sub-group of age shows the mean for both male and female in both positive and negative cases, separately. the most prominent age groups reported among the cases were between: (30-39) and (40-49) years old with (n=1521) and (n=1223), respectively. figure 1: confirmed covid-19 cases in the halabja province by gender. fisher (lsd)/ analysis of the differences between groups with a confidence range of 95.00 % were used. atest of positivity by age groups kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021/ 185 btest of negativity by age groups figure 2: age distribution with confirmed covid-19 by mean of both male/female in halabja province. fisher (lsd)/ analysis of the differences between groups with a confidence range of 95.00 % were used. 3.2. the rate of infection according to age subgroups the positive and negative cases for subgroup ages of both genders were clarified in table 1. the positive confirmed case for adults included group ages of (20-29), (30-39) and (40-49) years with (n=472), (n=788) and (n=701) represented both male and female, respectively. this was compared to people with the same age groups who had no the covid-19 disease with (n=531), (n=733) and (n=522), respectively. in addition, positive confirmed cases for both genders in infants, children, and teenagers were age groups (0-9) and (10-19) years old with (n=7) and (n=119), respectively. in contrast, those who had the same age groups were reported as negative confirmed for covid-19 with (n=36) and (n=132), respectively. in addition, the positive cases of older ages were (50-59), (60-69), (70-79), (80-89) and (90-99) years old with (n=397), (n=205), (n=77), (n=27) and (n=3), respectively. however, for the same ages groups negative cases were reported with (n=652), (n=317), (n=127), (n=36) and (n=10), respectively. table 1: covid-19 cases based on age subgroups in halabja province. age subgroups result positive negative total kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021/ 186 (n) (n) age 0-9 7 36 43 10--19 119 132 251 20-29 472 531 1003 30-39 788 733 1521 40-49 701 522 1223 50-59 397 255 652 60-69 205 112 317 70-79 77 50 127 80-89 27 9 36 90-99 3 7 10 total 5183 the covid-19 was commonly found in 20-59 years of age in both sexes, whereas positive cases in over 80 and below 9 years old were relatively rare. the highest number of infections by the virus was found in male group aged 30-39 (n=522, confirmed positive cases) (figure 3, a). the rate of this age group was significantly different from the other age groups. the followings had different rate of infection to the virus compared to the first age group, male age group 40-49 (n=427, confirmed positive cases), and female age groups 40-49 (n=274, confirmed positive cases) and 30-39 (n=266), respectively. the rest of the participated age groups were less infected with the disease. for instance, a few numbers of the infectious cases were recorded in male 0-9 (n=3), female 0-9 (n=4), male 80-89 (n=18) and female 80-89 (n=9). a similar pattern was noticed among age groups in both genders for the confirmed negative cases (figure 3, b). however, there were some exceptions. for example, a significant number of the participants were negative for the virus that belonged to age group male 20-29 (n=315, confirmed negative cases). atest of positivity by age groups and gender btest of negativity by age groups and gender kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021/ 187 figure 3: confirmed covid-19 cases in the halabja province by age groups and gender. fisher (lsd)/ analysis of the differences between groups with a confidence range of 95.00 % were used. 4. discussion by observing the results of the current study, it can be seen that more than half of the tested samples were resulted positive for the virus. this higher percentage of positive rate shows cases two possibilities: either the actual infection rates were too high in the population, or the number of tests was too low compared with the population living in the city. however, the higher percentage of positive rate also indicated higher transmission rates of the virus among the population. yet, by studying the krg's dedicated website for the covid-19, the second hypothesis seems to be more accurate in halabja's case [20], [21]. many factors contributed to the lower testing levels at the beginning of the pandemic, including insufficient resources and the social stigmatization that came with the pandemic as patients with symptoms avoided admission to the hospitals or testing centers to keep away from the social impacts accompanied with the covid-19 patients. it was well-known that covid-19 created an unprecedented situation around the globe that led the public in many countries to mistrust the scientific facts and stigmatize the covid-19 infection [22], [23]. according to this study results, the majority of the infected patients were male. in the local community of halabja city, it is evidence that males have more outdoor activities and social lives than females. that is due to many social norms of kurdish society. so, males are more exposed to the virus than females. though, the females also had a high level of infection. this difference in infection rate was also reflected in the mortality rate per gender in the infected patients. a review article by lakbar et. al shows that the infection severity and mortality rates of the males are higher than their female’s counterparts [24]. the data is broken down according to the different age groups to compare the groups’ susceptibility and indicate the highest risk group to infect covid-19. accordingly, people in their (31-39) for both genders are the most that face the risk of infection. the (21-29) and (41-49) age groups came at the second higher group of patients. according to monod et al., young people in their early 21-29 years old up to late forties face the highest transmission rates in covid-19 and, therefore, sustain resurging covid-19 among themselves [25]. however, the favorable rates among young children and elderly patients were relatively low. the reason might be related to the small sample numbers for these two groups. although the rates of infection in children are low, it can infect children, although the severity of the infection was not the same as the adults. it was milder and sometimes asymptomatic [26]. the result of this study shows the epidemiology of covid-19 in halabja province. however, the study and the methods employed have limitations, including the lack of the severity of infection and the mortality rate in the subjects. the study was merely based on the positive and negative test results of kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021/ 188 the patients who had signs and symptoms. so, many positive cases might have been missed especially those who were asymptomatic or had mild symptoms. regarding the molecular testing, there might have also been some false negative test results due to improper sampling techniques or the accuracy of the test kits used for the diagnosis. regardless of the limitations, the results of the study present the covid-19 profile in halabja province in a clear and scientific way that can be used to interpret the epidemiology of the pandemic disease in the targeted region. 5. conclusion current research observed that the viral infection in both genders was common in middle age between 20 to 59 years old. besides this, the infection was rare in people were under 10 years and above 80 years old. the viral infection in all various ages was higher in the male of halabja province. this may be due to social contact, outdoor working, and the number of men workers is much higher than women in healthcare organizations. these factors might have cause spreading and raising the number of this infection. in addition, people in middle age have more social contacts, outdoor task performance, and outgoing. moreover, a low infection rate in elderly people was observed. this may be related to more care to them from care providers as a result of their outdoor missions and task performance inability. however, the children and teenagers in the city normally go out of home and make social contact, but the infection in adolescents especially the children under 10 years old was in a low rate. this may return to the krg stopped all educational activities in all sectors and the infection among children was not symptomatic. reference [1] s. p. adhikari, s. meng, y. j. wu, y. p. mao, r. x. ye, q. z. wang, c. sun, s. sylvia, s. rozelle, h. raat, and h. zhou, "epidemiology, causes, clinical manifestation and diagnosis, prevention and control of coronavirus disease (covid-19) during the early outbreak period: a scoping review," infect dis poverty, vol. 9, no. 1, p. 29, mar 17 2020, doi: 10.1186/s40249-020-00646-x. 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[26] i. m. ciuca, "covid-19 in children: an ample review," (in eng), risk manag healthc policy, vol. 13, pp. 661-669, 2020, doi: 10.2147/rmhp.s257180. https://gov.krd/coronavirus-en/dashboard/ https://gov.krd/coronavirus-en/dashboard/ https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/331509 https://gov.krd/coronavirus-en/dashboard/ https://gov.krd/coronavirus-en/dashboard/ https://doi.org/10.1016/s1473-3099(20)30498-9  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 9 implementation of simplified data encryption standard on fpga using vhdl salim qadir mohammed communication department technical college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq salim.muhammed@spu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 7 – issue 1june 2022 doi: 10.24017/science.2022.1.2 article history: received:15/12/2021 accepted:14/03/2022 due to enormous development in communication devices, globally internet-connected networks are largely used in all human activities. the security of information has been becoming a major concern for all users and clients, who depend on the network system. cryptography has played a significant role to combat these challenges and improve confidentiality, integrity, and authentication of data communication in the network. the data encryption standard (des) is one of the most familiar types of cryptography. the selection of hardware implementation tools is important for researchers and academics to design and build prototypes of their model proposals efficiently. therefore, this paper, focuses on hardware implementation of a simplified des (s-des) model with minimum fpga resources in terms of configurable logic blocks (clb). this is to reduce the complexity and the number of logic elements used in the design, which in turn leads to reduction in the latency and improvement in throughput of the system. the s-des program has been deployed using quartus ii software environment using vhdl language. s-des consists of symmetric encryption, decryption, and key generation blocks. the s-des has been successfully synthesized, compiled, and implemented on altera cyclone iv4cx150 fpga device. the implementation of the s-des for two rounds required only 32 clb which is supersedes the available implementation in the literature. keywords: cryptography, des, s-des, fpga, vhdl 1. introduction the protection of confidential information is fundamental demand in recent applications like financial transactions, e-mail clients, online audio/video meetings, using authentication techniques. the authenticate network internet-connected needs some ways, to guarantee the authorized people have the right to get data transferred through an insecure channel. therefore, to achieve this mission to provide a secure system; cryptography is required [1]. the definition of cryptography is originated from ancient greek, which means “hidden”. it is kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 10 a science or knowledge that keep information system secure and safe by transform messages into a particular form to maintain authentication through transmitting an unsafe medium. the cryptographic is the procedure to change the plaintext into ciphertext and get it back into plaintext, by using some mechanisms, which are called the encryption and decryption methods. in contrast, cryptanalysis is the attempt to find vulnerabilities and weaknesses in a cryptographic algorithm. many or most applications nowadays are used cryptography in the authentication process, for example, credit cards, wireless cell phones, online shopping, ip prepaid tv, etc. cryptography is always needed in many control applications, such as carcontrol devices, smart elevators, electrical trains, etc. the most famous type of cryptography is the data encryption standard. the des is an algorithm used to encrypt the data for keeping it immune from unauthorized persons. des is firstly presented and developed by ibm in 1970, and officially authorized in the united state of america in,1977 by the national institute of standards and technology (nist). des is widely employed for various applications, especially, confidential information is essential. despite, it has been replaced by the advanced encryption standard (aes), since 2001.but practically is still dependent on it for many hardware or program applications [2]. cryptography can be implemented either by using a software program or hardware tools. fpga is one of the efficient hardware tools, which can be programed by vhdl (very highspeed integrated circuits hardware description language) language [3]. high security of data transferred can be achieved with using cryptography techniques, that required a complex design and high cost.des can be implemented with software or hardware, like fpga and asic.hardware design has advantages of high throughput and faster than software model.des is still used in some applications and the triple des is widely use nowadays. also, des is seen as based for other symmetric algorithms and actually it is the best model to explain the symmetric encryption algorithm [4]. so, using des provides a considerable level of security with simple design and cost effective. in this paper, simplified data encryption system, which consists of encryption, decryption and keys generation are designed with codes, that written in vhdl language, then synthesized and converted into proprietary interconnect description by usually vender provided synthesis tools. the output file that contains the interconnect description is called a bit stream. the design is accomplished by downloading via jtag (joint test action group) cable into fpga device offered by altera, cyclone family “cyclone iv 4cx150fpga”. the rest of this paper is organized as follows. section 2 presents the literature review and highlights the objectives of the paper. section 3, describes field programmable gate array (fpga) idea and its utilization and its implementations. section 4, explains the methodology basis of the proposed system in detail, and shows the system’s architecture. section 5 illustrates the experimental results. section 6 presents the conclusion. 2. literature review ke wang [5] in 2009 presented a proposal model of des that was implemented on xilinx virtex4 fpga for two rounds. his design has successfully implemented the data encryption standard. the proposed des algorithm of [5] has been implemented on four different fpga family boards, without given information of the number of logic blocks that required to build this model. prasetyo k.n. et al. [3] in 2014 proposed the blowfish data encryption model used for the internet of things (iot) and implemented it on xilinx virtex4 fpga.the result showed a better outperform. the symmetric key size of the blowfish algorithm was varied from 448 bits to 384 bits, 320 bits, 256 bits, 128 bits, and 64 bits. due to limited fpga resources, it is impractical to implement this algorithm with these length of keys on fpga hardware. purvi garg et al. [6] in 2015 presented cryptanalysis of simplified data encryption standard based on genetic algorithm. their outcomes showed, that the genetic algorithm has higher kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 11 performance than brute force to analyze s-des, but without hardware implementation on fpga device. soufiane, and seddik [2] in 2015 presented high throughput fpga implementation of data encryption standard using time variable sub-keys technique. the proposed design was implemented on xilinx fpga board. des model accomplished a data rate of 9453.47 mbps using 2046 clb slices. their results exhibited that the designed execution was fast hardware implementations with considerable security. however, the design required a large number of 2046 of fpga clb slices, in addition to synchronization issue between sender and receiver. pandey j. g. et al. [1] in 2016 proposed des design and implemented on xilinx virtex5 fpga. des model has been achieved efficiently and showed good performance with few numbers of clb slices. s-boxes are the only nonlinear part in the des algorithm, that provide confusion, which is essential to build a strong and secure encryption algorithm. simple or analytical methods may have negative impact on security of encryption algorithm. chabukswar p. m. et al. [7] in 2017 proposed an enhanced model of des by using four different methods for key generation. multiplexers are used to execute s-boxes in substitution of f-functions. the design has been implemented on xilinx virtex fpga.dynamic key generation consists from four types of keys (direct, lfsr, chaotic and 2s’ complement keys) for des encryption, which is used in short term applications. the design of [7] was complex and suffered from synchronization issues when the length of the original key kept 64 bits. oukili s. et al. [8] in 2017 presented high throughput fpga implementation of aes using parallel processing on xilinx virtex6 fpga. the aes model achieved a data rate of 79 gbps using 4830 clb slices. their results showed fast hardware implementations with considerable security. the s-boxes are most crucial element of aes implementation. using combinational logic gates to design s-boxes must be uncompromised with achieving high security of algorithm. kristianti v. e. et al. [9] in 2018 proposed des design by using 8 round algorithms based on a system on chip (soc). the proposed des design has been implemented on xc3es500e fpga. des implementation has shown that, only 9.7% of resources were required while it needed 21.2% resources in conventional method design with 16 rounds. in spite reduction of resources usage for 8 rounds, but the design still consumes large amount of 374 slices. zeebaree s. r. m. et al. [10] in 2019 proposed high throughput parallel /sequential simplified data encryption code breaker when was implemented on xilinx fpga. they proposed two models one with a sequential single processor element and the second model with parallel 512 parallel processors elements. their result showed that the second model is very fast toward breaking the code compared to the first one. the proposed algorithm has been implemented on fpga hardware that contains 512 parallel processor elements and utilizes 3816 clb slices. arnab roy et al. [11] in 2020 proposed a triple data encryption standard (tdes) algorithm combined with linear feedback shift register (lfsr) and the design is implemented on a pipelined fpga board device. lfsr is used to increase security of the system by randomized the symmetric keys for both encryption and decryption parts. a parallel pipelined improves throughput of the proposed approach. the proposed model is written by verilog hdl code and the program is implemented on fpga board from vertex-7 device provided by xilinx. the authors have showed, that the parallel pipelined implementation of pseudo lfsr with tdes has a better performance than non-pipelined model in terms of throughput, but required more resources. the pseudo-randomized pipelined tdes required 6220 luts slices. sara m.h. et al. [12] in 2021 proposed an approach to concatenate the international data encryption algorithm (idea) with aes to improve security of aes.the proposed model is implemented in real -time fpga device offered by xilinx. the design model consists two types of encryptions, idea and aes together, but increases the complexity of the model which requires many clbs. al-salam h.i.m.et al.[13]in 2021 presented different models of cyber security systems like single, dual, and quad types. models are mainly consisting three major parts, uart, fifo and des algorithm. the fpga implementation of models have kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 12 showed a better performance of quad model among others. the presented model consumes large amount of fpga resources, it required 27962 logic elements. as mentioned previously in literature review, the fpga resources can be considered as one of the most crucial factors to obtain low cost, high performance, reconfigurable and robust algorithms. therefore, this paper has focused on optimum usage of fpga resources, through providing efficient vhdl codes for the s-des algorithm. achieving necessary properties, that are required to build a strong ciphers algorithm, which includes confusion and diffusion by using permutation operations for many blocks. at the same time keeping the nonlinearity of s-boxes to improve security of the algorithm. 3. field programmable gate array (fpga) fpgas’ core is usually consisting of an array of programmable logic cells and programmable interconnect matrix. an fpga array is surrounded with programmable i/o (input /output) cells. fpga is capable of reprogramming after manufacturing and installing in the fields [14]. figure 1 gives basic architecture of fpga. figure 1: generic fpga architecture [14] logic block or function block is actually comprising a look-up table (lut) and a d flip-flop to provides construction logic gate circuits as shown in figure 2. clb is based on one or more lut to store a binary logic (0 or 1) in sram (static ram) [15]. the program codes have been written in vhdl or verilog languages are converted through software provided by different vendors into configuration output file called a bit stream. this bit stream can be downloaded into fpga device by jtag cable to store in sram memory or flash memory. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 13 figure 2: look-up table (lut) and a d flip-flop for many of latest fpga devices, both bit-serial and bit-parallel configuration modes are supported. the leading fpga manufacturers include xilinx, altera, actel and cypress semiconductor. fpga is enabling to implement digital signal processing applications with optimum facilities that is required a high throughput compared to other digital signal processing processors. fpgas ability of redesigning in hardware, provides a unique specialty for hardware implementation in many dsp (digital signal processing) applications [16]. conventionally, technicians who want to design dsp using fpga hardware implementation by hdl language such as verilog hdl and vhdl, which can be achieved without writing any vhdl codes through using dsp builder. this tool enables designers to work in a matlab environment, then program the fpga boards by codes that have been generated by the dsp builders. altera’s dsp builder software offers interaction between simulink and fpga hardware as shown in figure 3. it facilitates hardware implementation of dsp purposes, runs a systemlevel verification software to the designer who is not familiar with vhdl design codes, and lets the designer to execute dsp applications in fpgas without hdl. figure 3:dsp builder altera fpga [16] kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 14 4. methodology edward schaefer had introduced the simplified data encryption standard, for the first time at santa clara university. the s-des is a symmetrical encryption class derived from the data encryption standard technique which, is generally based on feistel’s approach proposal [13]. the s-des was for simplification of the des principles and educational activities. so, it is not quite secure for application purposes. in the simplified data encryption standard method, a block of 8-bit of plaintext is has taken with a 10-bit of the key as an input, that would be processed into digital binary. the plaintext and the private key, which has been converted and, then portioned into data block form with 8-bit of ciphertext length as output. this conversion process is called encryption. to obtain the transmitted plaintext, the decryption process has been done. the decryption algorithm is achieved, when the ciphertext is received with the same private key, that must send to both sender and receiver simultaneously in a secure channel by repeating all steps of the encryption algorithm with reversing the order of subkeys used only. in the receiver the decryption has been done, when 8-bit block ciphertext is provided with the 10-bit key, the result is the transmitted plaintext with a length of 8-bit as output [4]. if the plaintext is in different forms like alphabet or symbols, it must be changed at first into a decimal format or hexadecimal format by using ascii code table, then after that, it has been transformed to the binary format [10]. the complete process of encryption and decryption algorithms can be shown in figure 4[4]. figure 4: s-des [4] kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 15 4.1 the encryption of (sdes) algorithm the encryption procedure of the s-des algorithm, basically can be divided, into five steps, which can be seen in figure 4 as the followings: 1an initial permutation (ip), it is nothing more than just change the positions of input bits in order to randomize the plaintext data bits to increase the security of the message. 2a complex function block, which is labeled fk, has been included some operations, like xored, permutation, and substitution operations and depends on sub keys that are provided by the key generation block. 3the swap stage, that switches (sw) the two halves of the data, l1 (the left most significate bits) and r1 (the right least significant bits). 4the complex function block for the second round. 5the inverse of the initial permutation (ip –1 ) stage. 4.2 the architecture of f-function (fk) the function block fk is a complex configuration of simplified data encryption standard algorithm, consisting of the following components, expansionpermutation, xored function, substitution functions-choice (s-box), permutation as can be seen in figure 5. figure 5: s-des encryption fk details the operations are done in the function fk would be as followings: let l0 and r0 are the input plaintext after separated it into 4-bit left and 4-bit right for each one. the r0 block esteem would be entered to the expansion-permutation block to apply expansion from 4-bit into 8-bit and permutation process due to this sequence. 1. apply expansion/permutation e/p input = [ 1 2 3 4] e/p output = [4 1 2 3 2 3 4 1] kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 16 2. the e/p output is xored with sub key1 that is received from the key generated process, the result will be passed into the substitution-choice s-box block 3. the s-des perform substitutions using s-boxes, where it considered as a square matrix with 4-element by 4-element dimensions. the input is used to select row and column of the selected element outputs from s0 and s1 according to the s-boxes tables below, where the input bit1bit4 specifies row (0,1,2,3 in decimal) and bit2bit4 specifies the column (0,1,2,3 in decimal). the two-bit output of each s-boxes (s0 and s1) are concatenated to be the input the next permutation with length of four bits. =| | =| | 4. the last block will do permutation for input = [1 2 3 4] apply permutation p4 output = [2 4 3 1]. 5. the output of permutation p4 is xored with the l0 and the result is the left half l1 with 4-bit length (msb) of the f-function fk1 of the first stage and second half would be the same right part of the data output from (ip) initial permutation r0 with 4-bit length (lsb), it will be denoted by r1. 4.3 key generation block the key generation process is the main crucial part in the encryption algorithm procedure as whole. in general, the main key can be provided by many several ways for example, designed by using linear feedback shift register (lfsr) and send this private key to both sender and receiver through a secure channel. this main key, which has length of 10-bit is used to generates subkeys as follows: the 10-bit private key is at first permutated with p10 permutation operation the result would be p10 output= [3 5 2 7 4 10 1 9 8 6]. the output of p10 permutation has been separated into l, where the most significant bit (msb) and r, where the least significant bit (lsb) and each has five-bit length. the l and r block are rotated shift left by one bit, then concatenated together to passed into p8 permutation block. the p8 permutation output would be p8 output = [6 374 8 5 10 9]. the output of p8 permutation has been considered as subkey1(k1) generation, which is used in first round in fk function. the l block and r block after rotated shift left by one bit passed into another rotated shift left, but with two bits. the output of both l and r blocks after shifting by two bits concatenated together and subjected as input to the p8 permutation block. the output of p8 permutation block p8 output = [6 374 8 5 10 9] is the second subkey2 generated (k2), where used in the second round of fk function. the block diagram of key generation circuit can be seen in the figure 6. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 17 figure 6: key generation circuit 4.4 the encryption / decryption operation the input plaintext with length of 8-bit is encrypted or decrypted through procedure consisted from five stage has been mentioned previously, which are initial permutation (ip), the ffunction fk1, swap operation, the second f-function fk2 and, finally inverse permutation (ip-1). the operation of ffunction fk is has been illustrated in 4.2 section, therefor the process of the encryption is as the following: the 8-bit plaintext message is basically, permutated with initial permutation (ip) and the output of this stage would be ip output ip= [2 6 3 1 4 85 7]. the output of (ip) initial permutation is passed into f-function one fk1 the outputs of this function are l1 and r1 halves blocks with 4-bit each, then entered the swap block to switching it from left to right and vice versa. the same operation is done in the second f-function fk2 and the output of this stage is concatenated then, passed into the inverse permutation (ip-1). the output of inverse permutation (ip-1) is (ip-1) output = [4 1 3 5 7 2 8 6], where the output of this block is represents the ciphertext message with 8-bit length need to send it with the private key to the receiver. in general, for each round the process would be as the followings: li = ri−1 (1) ri = li−1 ⊕ f (ri−1, ki) (2) this mean, the left half of next round is the right half of previous round and the right half of the next stage is the result of left previous round xored with f-function of right half of previous stage with subkey of this stage [5].in the receiver in order to decrypt the received message the same procedure, which has been done in the encryption algorithm need to repeated ,but with one exceptional thing. the decryption algorithm is identical to the encryption algorithm, but with the reverse order of subkeys, which mean in the first f-function the second subkey2 (k2) is used at first, then in the second f-function the first subkey1 (k1) is used as clearly seen in figure 4. 5. results and discussion the proposed design architecture of simplified data encryption standard as shown in figure 4, is implemented in vhdl design language, and synthesized using altera de2i-150 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 18 development and education board, altera cyclone iv 4cx150fpga device. as seen in figure 7. figure 7: implementation of s-des on fpga board 5.1 fpga board results after the fpga device has been programmed and configured to implement the designed sdes. the required configuration file is generated by quartus ii complier. altera’s de2 board allows a configuration to be done in two different ways, known as jtag and as modes. the programming has been done by using jtag usb cable. the eight-red led (8 red led) in left side has been used as sender plaintext, while in the middle is ten red led has represent the private key and the 8-green led (8 green led) in right side it is the received plaintext after the decryption algorithm is used. it is obvious the same message has been received even when, the key was changed. the fpga device summary report for number of logic elements and other components are used in the proposed s-des architecture is given in figure 8. figure 8: fpga device summary report kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 19 5.2 the simulation result simplified data encryption standard has been implemented with vhdl and simulated in rtl level, which shown in figure 9, with altera cyclone iv 4cx150fpga device on quartus ii simulator. figure 9: rtl level of s-des algorithm simulation result for encryption and decryption is shown in figure 10. the simulation has been achieved on quartus ii simulator and running the simulation on run functional simulation mode. as shown in figure 10, the received plaintext is arranged to be under the sender plaintext in the simulation waveform editor, in order to be easier for observation, while the received ciphertext is putted under the received plaintext and the private key at the bottom. simulation has achieved for several sending plaintexts with different keys and the received ciphertexts have been successfully decrypted to get back the plaintexts. figure 10: simulation result for s-des algorithm kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 1 – june 2022 | 20 6. conclusion in this paper, s-des algorithm is implemented for encryption plaintext in transmitter and decryption of ciphertext in receiver side. keys generator are designed separately, it was used in both encryption and decryption operations. f-function is used as a component in both encryption and decryption designs. the substitution choice block in f-function is required in the simplified s-des algorithm, which is designed by using multiplexers based on look-up tables in altera fpga quartus ii software environment. the s-des is worked successfully when the design executed practically on fpga board. due to an efficient vhdl programing, only 32 logic elements were required to build this model, which means using less hardware resources. reference [1] j. g. pandey, a. gurawa, h. nehra, and a. karmakar, "an efficient vlsi architecture for data encryption standard and its fpga implementation," 2016, pp. 1-5: ieee. [2] s. oukili and s. bri, "fpga implementation of data encryption standard using time variable permutations," 2015, pp. 126-129: ieee. [3] k. n. prasetyo, y. purwanto, and d. darlis, "an implementation of data encryption for internet of things using blowfish algorithm on fpga," in icoict, 2014, pp. 75-79: ieee. [4] c. paar and j. pelzl, understanding cryptography: a textbook for students and practitioners. springer science & business media, 2009. [5] k. wang, "an encrypt and decrypt algorithm implementation on fpgas," in fifth international conference on semantics, knowledge and grid, zhuhai, china, 2009, pp. 298-301: ieee. [6] p. garg, s. varshney, and m. bhardwaj, "cryptanalysis of simplified data encryption standard using genetic algorithm," american journal of networks and communications, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 32-36, 2015. [7] p. m. chabukswar, m. kumar, and p. balaramudu, "an efficient implementation of enhanced key generation technique in data encryption standard (des) algorithm using vhdl," in iccmc, erode, india, 2017, pp. 917921: ieee. [8] s. oukili and s. bri, "high speed efficient advanced encryption standard implementation," in isncc, marrakech, morocco, 2017, pp. 1-4: ieee. [9] v. e. kristianti, e. p. wibowo, a. pertiwi, h. afandi, and b. soerowirdjo, "finding an efficient fpga implementation of the des algorithm to support the processor chip on smartcard," in eiconcit, makassar, indonesia, indonesia, 2018, pp. 208-211: ieee. [10] s. r. m. zeebaree, a. b. sallow, b. k. hussan, and s. m. ali, "design and simulation of high-speed parallel/sequential simplified des code breaking based on fpga," in icoase, kurdistan region,iraq, 2019, pp. 76-81: ieee. [11] a. g. arnab roy, deva nand, "fpga implementation of a pipelined and pseudo-randomized tdes algorithm," ieee vol. 2021 5th international conference on trends in electronics and informatics (icoei), pp. 171-176, 2020. [12] g. g. h. sara m. hassan, "real-time fpga implementation of concatenated aes and idea cryptography system," indonesian journal of electrical engineering and computer science (ijeecs), vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 71-82, april 2021. [13] h. i. m. al-salman, ehkan, p. and al-doori, m.h., "fpga-based design of multiple models for industry 4.0 cyber security," journal of physics: conference series vol. 1997, no. 1, p. 012031, 2021. iop publishing [14] i. grout, digital systems design with fpgas and cplds. elsevier, 2011. [15] y. zhou, "novel very fast fft processors: on dsp algorithm design and fpga-based implementation," 2006. [16] f. r.-t. reconfiguration, "white paper fpga run-time reconfiguration: two approaches," 2008.  kurdistan journal for applied research kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2, issue 3, august 2017 p-issn: 2411-7684 – e-issn: 2411-7706 the plastic waste problema pledge for volunteer activities http://dx.doi.org/10.24017/science.2017.3.61 yolande g. kolstee royal academy of art the hague the hague, the netherlands y.kolstee@kabk.nl abstract: in this explorative study, an overview of up to date data on plastic waste is given. different methods of handling the plastic waste problem are described. the focus lies on volunteering. in order to get a picture of the plastic waste problem, a non-exhaustive overview is given of recent scientific and policy reports in paragraph 2. in paragraph 3 the guidelines of the unep and iswa report on global waste management is described. other sources emphasize the importance of additional measurements. those are e.g. self-organising volunteer activities in (higher-) education and volunteer cleaning up activities, respectively described in paragraph 4 and 5. in a small sample investigation to the motives for taken part in cleaning-up activities, undertaken in the netherlands, europe, two hypotheses were tested ‘cleaning-up is a token activity’ and ‘taking part in cleaning-up activities promotes environmental-friendly behaviour’. in paragraph 6 the method of the inquiry is described and in paragraph 7 we see from there some evidence for an expanding involvement with pro-environmental behaviour as a result from beach cleaning-up activities. in paragraph 8 we conclude that the need for involvement with the plastic waste problem of all and on all levels, is necessary. the contribution of volunteer activities like self-organizing groups in universities or cleaning-up projects, seems to be an important factor in behavioural change to tackle the problem of plastic waste. keywords: plastic, waste, volunteering, green offices. 1. introduction the enormity of the plastic waste problem is manifest and urgent for all, politicians, industry, traders, labourers, farmers. we are all inhabitants of the earth, we are ‘earthlings’. all social classes are affected, rich as well as poor, people in villages as well as in huge megacities, whether living in dry or wet areas in the world, in sea or land climates. the visibility of polluted and dirty rivers that take their content to the oceans, has created awareness of the problematic nature of plastic and the disposal thereof. pictures of polluted beaches, estuaries and riverbanks, pictures of debris gyres in the ocean, pictures of wounded or killed birds, turtles and fishes by pollution from plastic, are widespread and shared by social media like facebook and instagram. there are numerous websites showing places where ‘you don’t want to be’ in a top-10 of the worlds most polluted and or dirtiest rivers beaches and lakes. without going into detailed theoretical implications of the impact of social media or the power of pictures, we might detect a global growing awareness of the environmental impact of the human lifestyle. in urban areas in the western world, waste collection and sustainable waste disposal is a serious responsibility and ongoing concern of (health) authorities. cleanliness of the area, or at least invisibility of waste, is increasingly important in the image of a city and the country. three recent and still problematic examples are naples, beirut and rio de janeiro. • the naples waste management crisis, where mountains of solid waste lined the streets for months and collectors stopped picking up the waste because all of the region’s landfills were full, leading to unprotected disposal [1]. • in beirut, lebanon, the ‘rubbish crisis’ (as stated by the guardian december 21, 2015) which started autumn 2015, has caused serious problems and hindered the development of the city that has suffered under war activities. “household waste is pushed to the periphery and piled in hills near the mouth of the city’s river. streets look like rivers of garbage and mounds of waste along the bank reach the height of roadway overpasses [2].”. • in rio de janeiro, open water was part of the summer olympics 2016. the pollution of the water was extreme and surpassed limits of acceptance for sportsmen and women. in places where there is not an acute management or political crisis as in the three cities above, but where a proper waste disposal system is lacking, people live with, and often amidst (plastic) waste and they seem not to be able to dispose this. often (former) landfills are overloaded, there seems to be no way out for plastic waste, but –often open airburning, resulting in air pollution and direct health problems for those in the neighbourhood of such fires. awareness in community members or civilians of the plastic problem seems to grow every year. an example is clean up the world, “a community based, environmental campaign that inspires and empowers communities from every corner of the globe to clean up, fix up and conserve their environment. in its 22nd year, clean up the world holds in conjunction with the united nations environment programme (unep), mobilises an estimated 35 million volunteers from 130 countries annually, making it one of the largest community-based environmental campaigns in the world [3].”. social media like facebook and instagram contain thousands of volunteering-groups aiming to inspire people to change their lifestyle by e.g. being scrupulous of accepting single use plastics, like plastic straws, shopping bags and water bottles. this study aims to contribute to the understanding of enormity of the plastic waste problem as such and to contribute to insight in the effects of volunteer activities in cleaning-up and in self-organizing activities in higher education through ‘green offices’, both part of the 17 un [4] sustainable development goals. these un goals emphasis the connectedness of education, sustainable consumption and production and the healthiness of the oceans and seas. to solve the problem of plastic waste, we need, next to industrial and technological solutions, to know more of how to involve as many people in as many social classes of society as possible, since people’s behaviour is an important factor in pollution. 2. plastic waste considered the vulnerability of our planet earth in terms of climate change has been officially confirmed in the united nations conference on climate change in paris, december 2015, 21th conference of the parties (cop21) [5]. parallel to the climate change, the pollution of the oceans, seas and other open water systems like rivers and lakes are a huge and acute problem for marine and fresh water life, and therefore a threat for life on earth in general. see mammals, fish, shellfish, aquatic plants, corals as well as sea birds are seen entangled and destroyed in plastic rubbish. even more venomous is the problem of the micro plastics that are affecting all life in the oceans. “there is a ubiquitous presence of plastic in oceans. plastics are durable, and resistant to biodegradation. many plastics will fragment in response to uv radiation or influence of movement. biodegradable plastics doesn’t seem to be the solution (…) [6].”. since plastic is almost not bio-degradable, it turns over time into small parts [7]. small parts [8] can come from a variety of sources, including cosmetics, clothing, and industrial processes. micro plastics can be found in the bulk of the great pacific garbage patch [9] the popular name of concentrations of marine debris. micro plastics are recognized to persist in the environment at high levels, particularly in aquatic and marine ecosystems where they enter [10] the food chain. charles moore, founder and research director of algalita marine research and education, did find a so far unknown gyre of plastic in the south pacific as announced in july 2017 [11]. the recent report of eunomia: ‘plastic in the marine environment’ states: “knowledge of the sources and fate of plastics in the marine environment is far from complete, but what is known is deeply troubling. increasing awareness of the problems associated with marine plastics is beginning to translate into calls for action (...). prevention is preferable to cure, and the greatest opportunity to prevent plastic entering the ocean is to take steps to reduce plastic litter on land [12].”. most of the waste in rivers (shores) and on beaches that is not securely disposed of, will enter via fresh water rivers in the oceans, this so-called land-based ocean trash originates on land. this trash can be distinguished from marine-based trash, which refers to trash that is dumped, spilled, or lost while at-sea. uncontrolled burning of waste in the open air is often an act of despair, since no other solutions to get rid of the waste are at hand. “plastic pollution doesn't just dirty beaches—its effects can be felt throughout the ecosystem [11]”. plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean linked worldwide data on solid waste, population density, and economic status, and estimated the mass of land-based plastic waste entering the ocean. research calculated that 275 million metric tons (mt) (= 275 billion kilogrammes) of plastic waste was generated in 192 coastal countries in 2010, with 4.8 to 12.7 million mt entering the ocean [13]. the urgency of management of (plastic) waste is recognized by the vast majority of political leaders [5]. a flow of reports is produced by researchers all over the world, astonishing figures about the amount of plastic material in our eco-system are communicated via newspapers and digital mass communication media. a recent unique report of science advances, the first report that calculates how much plastic has been made ever, states: “we estimate that 8,300 million metric tons (mt) as of virgin plastics have been produced to date. as of 2015, approximately 6,300 mt of plastic waste had been generated, around 9% of which had been recycled, 12% was incinerated, and 79% was accumulated in landfills or the natural environment. if current production and waste management trends continue, roughly 12,000 mt of plastic waste will be in landfills or in the natural environment by 2050 [14].”. 3. global waste management: guidelines based on the impressive work of the united nations environment programme (unep, 2015) a report of more than three hundred pages, the international solid waste association (iswa), made a global waste management outlook (gwmo) [15] that calls out for (technological) measurements in every sense and on every level. in this report, the costs and benefits of waste management are set against the costs of inaction. without taking action we will see from the viewpoint of public health, more gastrointestinal and respiratory infections and blocked drains that aggravate floods and spread infectious diseases. from the viewpoint of environmental impact of open dumping and burning, we will see more severe land, fresh water, groundwater and sea/ocean pollution, as well as (local) air pollution contributing to climate change. the gwmo [15, p 3] states that “costs to society of inaction exceed the financial costs of proper waste management by a factor of 5-10: in terms of healthcare, lost productivity, flood damage and damage to tourism and businesses”. from this report stems guidelines for four groups of actions to be taken that are intertwined and need to be addressed as far as possible at the same time and not in a chronological order. there is need for action at all directions at the same time. bottom line is: bring wastes under control. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cosmetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/clothing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/great_pacific_garbage_patch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/great_pacific_garbage_patch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/marine_ecosystem http://www.algalita.org/about-algalita/ http://www.algalita.org/about-algalita/ table 1: simplified guidelines gwmo [16] bring wastes under control ensure access for all to basic waste services deal with the hazardous substances in wastes stop uncontrolled dumping and burning bring hazardous wastes under control focus on waste prevention focus on the ‘feedback loops’ tackle the problem at the source close a clean material circle move from a linear to a circular economy these guidelines appeal on social (e.g. waste prevention), technical (e.g. close a clean material circle) and governance (e.g. ensure access) actions. executing these guidelines requires ‘changing paradigms’: “we must also approach our problems with a holistic perception in order to achieve sustainable solutions. we now understand that our world is deeply interconnected through webs of relationships, many in ways which are simply not apparent to us or which we have not evolved to perceive [17].”. dealing and executing the guidelines of the gwmo, requires change in behaviour and orientation on as much levels as possible. on the social and economic level, good practices examples are ‘waste to wealth projects’ in several countries in africa (e.g. ruanda). technical challenges to clean-up the ocean with cutting edge technology are planned to be executed by the project of dutch boyan slat: the ocean clean up [18]. recently the norwegian billionaire kiel inge røkke announced to invest in building a research vessel that will collect up to 5 tons of plastics from the water daily [19]. complimentary volunteer actions on cleaning-up and educational level will be discussed in paragraph 3 and 4. in paragraph 5 a limited investigation in motives for cleaning up activities is discussed. complimentary activities focusing on human awareness of waste as threat towards our planet huge efforts have to be taken to get the plastic waste problem under control. in addition to and complimentary to the guidelines of the global waste management report, many volunteer activities are carried out. following are examples of activities to enhance environmental awareness. volunteer cleaning up activities (beach, river banks, natural parks, cities) and stewardship reports on drivers for volunteering in general [20], or in specific domains like in culture or sports [21] show characteristics of volunteers that have a relatively strong relationship with their work, study or hobby. the study ‘environmental volunteering’ [22] suggests that the environmental issues addressed in volunteer programmes and the standards of volunteer organisations constitute critical predictors of a volunteer’s personal commitment to participation in an organisation. learning and contact with nature clearly emerged as the most important factors in volunteer motivation for environmental activities. another recent study on predicting volunteer commitment [23] found that helping the environment and learning about nature were important initial motivations. other motivations, including social factors and project organization, were found to be significant predictors of volunteer commitment. volunteers also indicated many significant changes in their environmental outlook and actions during their involvement in stewardship activities. cleaning-up cleaning is usually considered low class labour [24] and is ranked in the lower paid jobs [25]. it is therefore remarkable that so many people are contributing to cleaning-up activities. for most of them cleaning-up is not their work, nor their study or hobby. however, clean up the world estimates “35 million volunteers from 130 countries annually, take part in cleaning-up activities [26]”. clean up the world claims to be one of the largest community-based, environmental campaigns that inspires and empowers communities from every corner of the globe to clean up, fix up and conserve their environment. although cleaning-up seems to be an end-of-pipe method, or regarded an approach as fighting a losing battle, cleaning-up activities are advised in the uk report ‘plastics in the marine environment’ ‘the most practical measure that can be deployed is to focus efforts on regular beach clean-up. by removing beach litter, we are therefore cleaning the oceans [12] [27] p.4.’. community building (e.g. via facebook and other social media) social media like facebook contain thousands of environmental volunteering-and pressure groups [28] aiming to inspire people to change their lifestyle by being scrupulous of accepting single use plastics e.g. ’ban the plastic straw’ or ‘ban the plastic bottle’. that's is why new steps like refuse (single use plastic) and upcycle instead of recycle are added to the ‘old’ waste ladder [29]: prevention-reuse-recycle-recovery-disposal, updated in 2010 to reduce-reuse-recycle-energy-incineration. 4. self-organising activities in higher education: green offices the way universities educate the future intellectual elite in the light of sustainability, can be a part of the problem or a part of the solution. to draw attention to the importance of high quality volunteering activities by students a short discussion of the work of green offices [30] follows. society increasingly requires universities to address sustainability challenges, such as climate change, social inequality, ecological degradation and the spread of undemocratic ideologies, through their education, research, community engagement, operations and governance [31]. green offices are sustainability hubs that empowers students and staff as well as initiates its own activities to advance sustainability at the university and beyond. they integrate existing (sustainability) initiatives, actors, activities, policies and strategies. a green office concerns education, research, community, operations and governance, in line with the un sustainability goals. a critical issue is the level of awareness of sustainability issues within the organization of the university. to make an inventory thereof the maastricht university green office and rootability gug developed a model with indicators for sustainability assessment and reporting [30]. the movement has by now in europe 27 green offices in 6 countries and 3 partner institutes. the partner in the netherlands is called ‘studenten voor morgen” (students for tomorrow). they rank universities (that want to take part) at sustainable criteria. the winner of the year gets an award: the ‘sustainabul’ a combination of sustainable and 'bul' (bul= dutch popular language for diploma). 5. sample investigation of motives of volunteering in the dutch beach-clean-up from 2013 on, in the netherlands every august a beach clean-up is organized by the foundation for the north sea (stichting de noordzee) sponsored by a large company for dredging and marine activities, working worldwide, boskalis [32]. this beach clean-up tour covers the complete north sea coast of the netherlands, divided into 30 stages, in the first years 30 days on a row, one stage of approximately 6 hours per day in august, later compacted into two weeks, starting at the begin and the end of the coastal line at the same time, meeting each other in the midst. . table 2: results garbage collection by beach-clean up in the netherlands year # participants garbage collected in kilo *average persons per stage 2016 2.320 19.203 77 2015 2.015 11.555 67 2014 1.479 20.078 49 2013 563 6.590 19 * the number of persons per stage differs. stages do differ in attractiveness as some stages are between popular beaches with taverns while others are more ‘isolated’. distances vary from 10 to 16 kilometres. the weather is unpredictable: on cold or rainy days people might choose not to participate or to choose a different day. the organisers introduced a maximum of participants. the amount of waste in kilos varies and the number of participants is increasing. the relationship is not clear, was there more garbage on the beach in 2014 or did the volunteers were more eager in collecting? the purpose of a small investigation was to learn more of the motives for participation on a beach clean-up. having in mind the notes on clean-up activities and volunteering, as described in paragraph 3, i was wondering if they experienced this clean-up as a token activity. i was triggered by the insight of oksana mont that “a behavioural re-bound effect takes place when people feel their small token actions (e.g. recycling paper) justify inaction in other areas, e.g. driving a car instead of taking public transport (…). the ‘if-everyoneslogan’ underlines that everyone's contribution is worthwhile significant, and that others are also taking responsibility for their behaviour and making changes. small changes are vital as people need to start somewhere. they need to feel that they are doing something good and that they're part of a group. however, the biggest misconception is that small individual changes will lead to significant results, since the sum of small individual changes usually only results in small aggregate improvements [33].”. more or less in contrast with this opinion, in a recent study support was found for the hypothesis that “environmental self-identity is related to one’s obligationbased intrinsic motivation (that is, feelings of moral obligation) to act pro-environmentally, which in turn affects proenvironmental actions. as expected, the obligation-based intrinsic motivation mediates the relationship between environmental self-identity and environmentally-friendly behaviour [34]”. their findings suggest that “strengthening environmental self-identity may be a cost-effective way to promote proenvironmental actions, as people with a strong environmental self-identity are likely to act in an environmentally-friendly manner without an external incentive to do so [34].”. we saw in paragraph 3 that ‘volunteers also indicated many significant changes in their environmental outlook (…) [23].’. to use both insights, two hypotheses were set up to focus the limited inquiry among volunteers of the dutch beachclean up. hypothesis a: ‘participants of the beach cleanup realised themselves that their activity was a token activity, a ‘make-good’ contribution to a cleaner beach and north-sea, that they carried out to compensate for their otherwise environmental-unfriendly behaviour’. hypothesis b was ‘taking part in clean-up activities strengthen the relationship with nature and by this a broader environmental-friendly behaviour is promoted’. 6. set up and results preliminary inquiry among volunteers of the dutch beach-clean up in august 2016 method: at the start of a stage in the beach clean-up in 2016, after a short introduction to the volunteers who were assembled at the meeting point explaining the purpose of the inquiry to their reasons for participating, 50 questionnaires were handed out and later 32 filled out questionnaires were received. during the break and afterwards 10 persons were interviewed (average duration of the interview was 30 minutes). the questionnaire had only one open question next to some identifying questions like age, formal education, and gender. the respondents could give their email or (cell-)phone number if they were willing to go into detail in future research. the answers on the open question were during processing categorized in seven categories. some people wrote down various reasons point by point, others made a page-long story, some wrote down just a few words. table 3: reasons mentioned for volunteering in beach clean-up reasons mentioned frequency 1.love for nature / beach 29 2.fun/ having a day out /group activity 17 3. duty /responsibility 7 4. annoyance 6 5. good example / education 5 6. other 3 7. coming into action 1 discussion of the reasons mentioned in table 3 follows in the next paragraph. to get a picture of the participants, following are categories of age, gender and education. table 4 characteristics of participants who took the questionnaire and or took part in the interview ages # persons <20 2 31-40 10 41-50 7 51-60 6 61-70 2 71-80 2 total 32 gender # persons man 12 woman 18 no answer 2 total 32 education # persons foreign 1 secondary level 3 vocational level 3 un. of applied sciences 13 master 7 no answer 5 total 32 willingness to continue the contact for further questioning email and or phone number 23 16 the largest group is between 31 and 40 years. there were no participants in the category of 21 and 30 years, probably due to the age group with small children (the distance was too long for very small children and it is difficult to use buggies on the beach). two people of 70+ took part. more women than men participated, and their educational level was relatively high (20 out of 32 on university level). the majority was willing to let me contact them by email and or phone for future research. they will be contacted after the 2017 beach clean up for further inquiry. 7. discussion results motives for taking part in a beach-clean up activity all respondents answered the main (open) question: can you explain as extensively as possible, why you are taken part in a stage of the beach clean-up? there were no predefined categories, all texts came out of themselves. their description of their motives contained often more than one reason. ten persons were willing to express their feelings on beach-littering and cleaning-up in an interview. the majority (29 out of 32) mentioned an environmentalrelated reason: love for nature and more specific love for the sea and the beach. three persons also mentioned explicitly that they are motivated by their religion. none of the informants expressed the idea of a token activitythey spontaneously (meaning: not asked) said, that they did not feel that their participating in this beach clean-up was ‘green-washing’ for their eventually environmental-unfriendly behaviour. in contrary: they expressed their concern with waste on the beach, and mentioned that they expand their cleaning-up activities to their living environment where they were used to remove littering from others and were keen on avoiding unnecessary plastic wrappings and developed a broader environmental outlook. most participants expressed their feeling of contributing to a healthier and cleaner living environment as well as contribute to a healthier north sea. interesting is the high score in category 2: fun/having a day out, taking part in a group-activity. the ‘fun’ aspect could be an indicator of a life-style aspect: having a nice day at the beach and doing something good for the environment at the same time. this might be a starting point to a better understanding of motivations for changes in behaviour. activities generating a ‘feel-good’ moment for participants are apparently motivating. this might be a similar phenomenon as seen in ‘social’ festivals where instead of stipulating the severity of the issue at hand, music and other amusement are ingredients to contribute to a positive atmosphere. in category 6, i stored remarks as: ‘my father made me go’ and ‘my work organised my participation.’ the three people who were more or less send to the cleaning-up activity and had no intrinsic motivation, explained at the end of the day, that they changed their mind and were convinced of their future participation in cleaning-up activities. these results seem not to support hypothesis a (cleaningup is a token activity) and seem to confirm hypothesis b (taking part in cleaning-up activities promotes environmental-friendly behaviour). 8. conclusion literature on the problem of plastic waste in the oceans doesn’t leave space for doubt: living on earth is in danger since plastic enters all elements of very detailed and refined eco-systems. there is a need for a new holistic paradigm which sustainable producing and consuming. meanwhile the plastic waste problem has to be handled. measurements on various levels requires involved people and committed communities. volunteer activities play an important role. setting up green offices in institutes for higher education mobilises and initiates sustainable education, sustainable institutes and a sustainable future elite. there is evidence [12] that (for the time being) cleaning up activities are practical and effective. the albeit very limited investigation on the motives of dutch volunteers showed that acting ‘environmental-friendly’ can be pleasant and stimulating and promotes environmental-friendly behaviour in others areas of life. how cleaning-up activities are related to encourage proenvironmental behaviour over time and in various areas of life, has to be investigated, preferably over a longer time. for further inquiry, the participants of 2016 will be contacted. in this future research, it might be necessary to dive deeper in the motivational aspect for cleaning-up activities by e.g. using the new ecological paradigm scale (nep), to provide more insight in moral arguments for pro-environmental behaviour. 9. reference [1] united nations human settlements programme, “solid waste management in the world’s cities”, dunstan house, london, 2010. [2] “rubbish pick up resumes in lebanon in bid to end crisis”, aljazeera.com, 2016. [online]. available: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/03/trashpickup-resumes-lebanon-month-garbage-crisisbeirut-160320035647973.html [accessed 15-jul 2017]. [3] “about clean up the world “ cleanuptheworld.org, 2017. [online]. available: http://www.cleanuptheworld.org/en/about/aboutcuw.html [accessed 10 -jul -2017]. [4] “sustainable development goals-united nations”, united nations sustainable development, 2017. [online]. available: http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustai nable-development-goals/. [5] the un conference in paris was attended by 150 heads of state and government from around the world, as well as by 117 ministers responsible for international climate negotiations. some of these treaties are administrative in their nature and not immediately visible because some results will come up later, in a few years. [6] united nations environment programme, “biodegradable plastics and marine litter. misconceptions, concerns and impacts on marine environments.”, unep, nairobi, 2015. [7] while there is some contention over their size, the u.s. national oceanic & atmospheric administration classifies micro plastics as less than 5 mm in diameter. in: arthur, c., j. baker and h. bamford in international research workshop on the occurrence, effects and fate of microplastic marine debris. university of washington tacoma, tacoma, wa, usa, 2008. [8] two classifications of micro plastics currently exist: primary micro plastics are manufactured and are a direct result of human material and product use (like shampoo, cosmetics and scrubbers), and secondary micro plastics are microscopic plastic fragments derived from the breakdown of larger plastic debris. [9] “what is the great pacific garbage patch?”, oceanservice.noaa.gov, 2017. [online]. available: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/garbagepatch. html . [accessed 2-jun-2017]. [10] a. andrady, “micro plastics in the marine environment”, marine pollution bulletin, vol. 62, no. 8, pp. 1596–1605, 2011. [11] “guess how many giant patches of garbage there are in the ocean now”, popular science, 2017. [online]. available: http://www.popsci.com/south-pacific-garbagepatch [accessed 21-july2017]. [12] eunomia research & consulting, “plastics in the marine environment”, bristol, uk, 2016. [13] j. jambeck, r. geyer, c. wilcox, t. siegler, m. perryman, a. andrady, r. narayan, k. law, “plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean”, science, vol. 347, no. 6223 pp.768-771, 2015. [14] r. geyer, j. r. jambeck, k. l. law, “production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made”, science advances, vol. 3, no. 7, p. e1700782, 2017. [15] international environmental technology centre, “global waste management outlook, summary for decision-makers”, united nations environment programme, 2015. [16] gwmosummary [15], page 4 [17] stebbing and tischner, “changing paradigms: designing for a sustainable future”, cumulus think tank, vol.1, aalto, 2015. [18] the ocean cleanup, www.theoceancleanup.com, the ocean cleanup, 2017. [online]. available: http://www.theoceancleanup.com/.[accessed: 7jul-2017]. “at the ocean clean up, we’re developing the first feasible method to clean up world’s ocean garbage patches. five vast areas of open ocean, known as the subtropical gyres, act as a trap for ocean plastic. we specifically focus on the north pacific accumulation zone also known as ‘the great pacific garbage patch’ since about 1/3 of all oceanic plastic is concentrated in that one area between hawaii and california (cózar et al., 2014)”. [19] t. zareva, “a norwegian billionaire is building a giant boat to collect plastic pollution from the ocean”, big think, 2017. [online]. available: http://bigthink.com/design-for-good/a-norwegianbillionaire-is-building-the-worlds-biggest-yachtto-collect-plastic-from-the-oceans.[accessed 15jul-2017]. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/03/trash-pickup-resumes-lebanon-month-garbage-crisis-beirut-160320035647973.html http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/03/trash-pickup-resumes-lebanon-month-garbage-crisis-beirut-160320035647973.html http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/03/trash-pickup-resumes-lebanon-month-garbage-crisis-beirut-160320035647973.html http://www.cleanuptheworld.org/en/about/about-cuw.html http://www.cleanuptheworld.org/en/about/about-cuw.html http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/ http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/ https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/garbagepatch.html https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/garbagepatch.html http://www.theoceancleanup.com/.%5baccessed http://bigthink.com/design-for-good/a-norwegian-billionaire-is-building-the-worlds-biggest-yacht-to-collect-plastic-from-the-oceans.%5baccessed http://bigthink.com/design-for-good/a-norwegian-billionaire-is-building-the-worlds-biggest-yacht-to-collect-plastic-from-the-oceans.%5baccessed http://bigthink.com/design-for-good/a-norwegian-billionaire-is-building-the-worlds-biggest-yacht-to-collect-plastic-from-the-oceans.%5baccessed [20] r. bekkers, r. and a. de wit, “participation in volunteering: what helps and hinders”, european commission, brussels, 2014. [21] j. d’souza, n. low, l. lee, g. morrell, j. hall, “drivers of volunteering”, the national centre for social research, uk, 2011. [22] g. liarakou, e. kostelou and c. gravilakis, “environmental volunteers: factors influencing their involvement in environmental action”, environmental education research, vol.17, no. 5. pp. 651-673, 2011. [23] r. ryan, r. kaplan and r. grese, “predicting volunteer commitment in environmental stewardship programmes”, journal of environmental planning and management, vol.44, no.5, pp. 629-648, 2001. [24] “jobs rated report 2017: ranking 200 jobs”, careercast.com, 2017. [online]. available: http://www.careercast.com/jobs-rated-2017-jobsrated-report?page=9. [accessed 1-jul-2017]. in the ranking of 200 jobs garbage collector is on # 187. [25] "gemiddeld salaris per beroep – gemiddeld inkomen", gemiddeld-inkomen.nl, 2017. [online] available: http://www.gemiddeldinkomen.nl/gemiddeld-salaris-per-beroep. garbage collector (in dutch ‘vuilnisman’), is listed # 224 from 257 professions. [26] “about clean up the world”, cleanuptheworld.org, 2017. [online]. available http://www.cleanuptheworld.org/en/about/aboutcuw.html [27] from the eunomia report [12] this quote; ‘the main contributor is larger plastic litter, including everyday items such as drinks bottles and other types of plastic packaging. primary micro-plastic emissions also have an important role. the remainder comes from plastics released at sea, the majority as a result of fishing activities – for example, due to lost and discarded fishing gear. 94% of the plastic that enters the ocean ends up on the sea floor. there is now on average an estimated 70kg of plastic in each square kilometre of sea bed. barely 1% of marine plastics are found floating at or near the ocean surface, with an average global concentration of less than 1kg/km2. this concentration increases at certain mid-ocean locations, with the highest concentration recorded in the north pacific gyre at 18kg/km2. by contrast, the amount estimated to be on beaches globally is five times greater, and importantly, the concentration is much higher, at 2,000kg/km2. while some may have been dropped directly, and other plastics may have been washed up, there is a ‘flux’ of litter between beaches and the sea’. [28] a list of dominating environmental groups: "the environmental groups that dominate facebook", mnn mother nature network, 2017. [online]. available: https://www.mnn.com/earthmatters/climate-weather/blogs/the-environmentalgroups-that-dominate-facebook. [29] "waste hierarchy: lansink's ladder by ad lansink", recycling.com, 2017. [online]. available: http://www.recycling.com/downloads/wastehierarchy-lansinks-ladder/. [30] 5 steps towards your green office. rootability. 2017. [31] unisaf: university sustainability framework [32] https://boskalis.com/ and https://www.noordzee.nl/ [33] o. mont, “nordic policy brief. improving nordic policymaking by dispelling myths on sustainable consumption”, lund university, lund, 2013. [34] e. van der werff, l. steg and k. keizer, “it is a moral issue: the relationship between environmental self-identity, obligation-based intrinsic motivation and pro-environmental behaviour”, global environmental change, vol.23, no. 5, pp 1258-1265, 2013. [35] m. anderson, “the new ecological paradigm scale”, the berkshire encyclopaedia of sustainability: measurements, indicators, and research methods for sustainability”. pp. 260-262, 2012. biography the author changed her focus of interest after having worked from 2008 to 2014 in the field of augmented reality, as head and founder of the ar-lab in the hague (in a consortium of universities and business/museums). taking part in the first beach clean-up in 2013, she decided to concentrate on sustainability. being an educator (she studied pedagogy and educational science with a specialization in organisation and management at leiden university) research in learning and motives for behaviour (change) are a perfect match in this new field. paradigms, moral arguments, based whether on religion, spirituality or pro-environmental insights are part of her research theme. https://scholar.google.nl/citations?user=b4dkwkuaaa aj&hl=nl http://www.tandfonline.com/author/kostelou%2c+eleni http://www.gemiddeld-inkomen.nl/gemiddeld-salaris-per-beroep http://www.gemiddeld-inkomen.nl/gemiddeld-salaris-per-beroep  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq comparative study of cervical pap smear and visual inspection of the cervix to detect premalignant disease of the cervix rozhan yassin khalil khanda abdolrahman qader obstetrics & gynecology department obstetrics & gynecology department college of medicine sulaimani general directorate of health sulaimani university ministry of health sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq rozhan.khalil@univsul.edu.iq khandaabdolrahman@yahoo.com article info abstract volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 doi: 10.24017/science.2020.1.15 article history: received : 03 february 2020 accepted : 15 june 2020 the goal of current study is to compare visual inspection method of the cervix by using acetic acid sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values with pap smear test values. this cross sectional study was obtained in sulaimani city kurdistan region at maternity teaching hospital throughout the period (first september 2012) to (first february 2001). this study include 115 samples were reproductive women and premenopausal between ages 20-50 years old with symptomatic women ( vaginal discharge, dyspareunia, post coital bleeding , intermenestrual bleeding ) and prepared patients for a pap smear test done for them. the cervix was painted with 5% concentration of acetic fluid for visual inspection method and monitored for aceto-white wounds and biopsies were taken from suspected areas. after that, the samples in 95% concentration of the ethyl alcohol were fixed. the results shows that, 114 samples among all other samples were appropriate for analyzing, statistical data analyzed by epi info software program and chi-squared test used to find significance between variables with considering p-value less or lower than 0.05 as significant level. the result indicate that sensitivity rate was 16% for visual inspection method, specificity 71%, positive predictive value 3.13% and negative predictive value 93.9% to detect pre-cancerous lesion of the cervix. in conclusion, cervix visual inspection method for cancer had a low rate sensitivity compare with pap smear with a non-significant relationship between the two methods and pap smear needed to conform visual inspection for cervical cancer. keywords: pap smear, premalignant disease of cervix, visual inspection, acetic acid, cervical cancer. copyright © 2020 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 211 1. introduction non communicable diseases problem in developing countries become more and more due to lack of proper and effective program to control it, one of this non communicable diseases are cancer. according to globocan 2012 report cervical cancer in a list of all cancers in women is fourth and seventh in all cancer worldwide with estimate 528,000 new cases. in addition, mortality of cervical cancer approximately 266,000 deaths occurred worldwide in 2012 while in the developing countries were (445,000 cases), it rank in the second frequent cancer and in the developed areas rank in 11th (83,000 cases). also, in less developed regions nearly nine in 10 (87%) deaths occur in the cervical cancer cases, which is make cervical cancer the most frequent cancer among women in the middle and eastern africa [1]. cervical cancer deaths in the middle of the 20th century among women at the united states was most repeated cause of cancer death, now it is at 14th ranks for cancer deaths [2]. the decrease of cervical cancer mortality was due to; detection in early stages of cancer increased and detection and treatment of pre-invasive cervix lesions, over all reduces the incidence of invasive cancer [3]. high mortality rate of cervical cancer among developing areas mostly related to that cervical cancer diagnosed in third and fourth cancer stages and absence of good and organized screening tests [4]. persistent cervical infection is necessary involve human papillomavirus (hpv) infection to develop cervical cancer, studies stated that hpv were positive in near in all cervical cancer cases and hpv type 16 (hpv16) responsible of 55% to 60% of all cervical cancers [5]. most histological subtypes of all cervical cancers are squamous cell carcinoma which is responsible of 70% cervical cancer and adenocarcinoma are responsible of 25% cervical cancer [6]. cervical cancer progress from long term of precancerous wounds that could effectively diagnosed with screening and controlled only by treatment can be effectively cured [1]. microscopic examination of pap smears to detect cytological abnormalities and subsequent treatment avoids development of cancer [7]. beside human papillomavirus factor there are many other main risk factors that may increase risk of cervical cancer to occur which are multiple sexual partner, history of sexual transmitted diseases (std), immunosuppression, sex debut in early age, not participate in a screening or living in area lack of good screening program and smoking tobacco [8]. pap smear is the traditional papanicolaou (pap) smear which described in 1943 by dr.george papanicolaou, which identify intraepithelial neoplastic lesions or atypical squamous cell in the cervix [9]. cytology-based prevention programs is difficult to imply in developing countries because they do not have enough resources, which need well organized laboratories and specialized personnel [10]. newer approaches include pap smear are expensive, time consuming and not widely available, therefore other alternative screen tests used in limited resources areas for example visual inspection (via) method by using acetic acid which is a simple low-cost technique because cervix easily accessed. some studies suggest that via match the pap smear for detecting cervical cancer performance [11]. via based on health care trained ability to detect aceto white in the cervical transformation zone [12]. cervical cancer can be treated by surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, or use mixture of these methods with consideration the site of recurrence, kind of primary treatment, the patient symptoms, duration of disease-free, performance status and the beneficial degree of given treatment [13]. the goal of the current study is to compare the visual inspection method of the cervix with using acetic acid sensitivity value, specificity value, positive predictive value and negative predictive value with pap smear values to predict pre-cancerous lesion of the cervix. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 212 2. methods and materials it is cross-section study, samples collected in sulaimani maternity teaching hospital in sulaimani city kurdistan region during six months period from first september 2012 to first february 2013, in every working day, this study included 115 women were referred from the clinic by gynaecologist to the hospital and examined in consultation unit were detailed history was taken women put in dorsal position, for the cervix visual method inspection using bivalves speculum (cusco speculum) without using disinfectant to not affect the result, cervix were painted by researcher using 5% concentration of acetic fluid and after that looking for aceto-white wounds. in addition, researcher taken pap smear samples of suspected areas biopsied then obtained samples in 95% ethyl alcohol concentration were fixed to take into the pathology department and checked by the same pathologist. the inclusions criteria include: reproductive women between ages 20-50 years old with symptomatic women ( vaginal discharge, dyspareunia, post coital bleeding, inter menstrual bleeding) and prepared patients for a pap smear test. in addition, the exclusion cases: were pregnant women, vaginal bleeding, people with obvious growth of cervix, those who transformation zone not seen. preparation of cervix visual inspection and pap smear: dorsal position was choose for each woman for taking sample with her lower limb bended at the hip and knee, the labia were separated by using index and thumb fingers, all genitalia and the perineal area were inspected, no any visible lesion like wart was observed. the cusco’s bivalve speculum passed and fixed to see the cervix which was not lubricated under an intense light lamp. the end of the ayres’ spatula then inserted at the external os and to scrape the all squamocolumnar junction swept 360° rotatory movement either in a clockwise or anticlockwise direction. the smears were equally spread on two pre-labelled frosted slides and immediately immersed into 95% alcohol concentration for fixation. questionnaire forum used to record patients demographic data, tests result and medical history like used and type of contraception method, per cent of vaginal discharge, postcoital bleeding, inter menstrual bleeding, dysparunia, immune compromise, smoking and history of first labour, ethical approval taken from maternity hospital and women acceptant taken verbaly. data entered to microsoft excel spreadsheet with identity number (id) for each questionnaire forum and analyzed by epi info software program for statistical analysis, to calculate frequency and percentage on table or charts and chi-squared test obtained to find significances of the correlation between variables, 0.05 p-value considered as a significant level. 3. results a number of 115 women in the age ranged from 20 to 50 years old with mean and standard deviation (sd) (35.3±7.389), parity was ranged 0 to 8 with 3.3±1.651 mean and sd, most the women were from urban area 80(70%) than rural 34 (30%) and majority of women were housewife 99(87%) while employer 5(4%) were less and women teacher were 10(9%) were conducted this study. most of the women at age group (30-39) years old followed by 40-50 years and minimum numbers were at 20-29 years old group. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 213 figure 1: age groups of patients majority of women in this study married at 16-20 years old and followed by 21-23 years old, 11-15 years old lower or equal than 26 years old respectively, while were less in 11-15 years old group and mean and sd duration of marriage were 19.04±3.966. figure 2: patients age groups of marriage women who gave birth were major 98% and from this rate, 42% of them gave 3-4 births, 35% gave 1-2 births and 21% gave 5 or more birth prospectively. figure 3: frequency of given birth number groups natural contraceptive method 52 (45.2%) women were more than un natural way ( iucd, contraceptive pill) 61(53.5%) and icud 41 (36%) women users were more comparable to pill kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 214 20 (17.5%) women users in un natural contraception methods. majority of women did not have post-coital bleeding 102 (89.5%), dysparunia 79 (69.3%) and intermenstrual bleeding 107 (93.9%), however, most women had vaginal discharge 97 (85.1 %). table1: frequency distribution of the studied sample to some clinical features. variable frequency (%) contraception none 1 (0.9%) unnatural contraception iucd 41 (36%) pills 20 (17.5%) natural contraception 52 (45.6%) post-coital bleeding yes 12 (10.5%) no 102 (89.5%) dysparunia yes 35 (30.7%) no 79 (69.3%) intermenstrual bleeding yes 7 (6.1%) no 107 (93.9%) vaginal discharge yes 97 (85.1 %) no 17 (14.9%) most women in visual inspection were negative 82 (71.9 %) for observation of cervical cancer compare to positive cases (32 (28.1%) of cervical cancer in total 114 cases. table 2: result of visual inspection method visual inspection frequency (%) negative 82 (71.9 %) positive 32 (28.1 %) total 114 (100 %) pap smear by bethesda system on studied women shows that 88(77.2%) women had infection, 14(12.3%) women had metaplasia, 5(4.4%) women had ascus, 4(3.5 %) women had inflammation and 1(0.9%) for each of atrophic virginities, bloody, lsil and normal. pap smear positive as ascus and lsil were 5.3% of 114 cases because bloody field cases not considered in a calculation. table 3: frequency of pap smear results as stated in the bethesda system. pap smear frequency (%) bloody 1(0.9%) atrophic virginities 1 (0.9 %) normal 1 (0.9 %) infection 88 (77.2 %) inflammation 4 (3.5 %) metaplasia 14 (12.3 %) ascus 5 (4.4 %) lsil 1 (0.9 %) total 115 (100 %) compare results of both pap smear (golden standard) with visual inspection by 2 by 2 table (table), observe that 1 case in both methods was positive and 77 cases negative in both methods while 5 cases were negative in visual inspection and positive in pap smear and 31 cases were positive in visual inspection and negative in pap smear. the relationship between pap smear method and visual inspection method were non-significant with p-value 0.46. tests sensitivity were16.67%, specificity were 71.3% and positive predictive value 3.13% were while negative predictive value was 93.9% for visual inspection comparing with pap smear. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 215 table 4: relation between visual inspection and pap smear results for a premalignant disease of the cervix test pap smear total positive negative visual inspection positive 1 31 32 negative 5 77 82 total 6 108 114 punch biopsy (without colposcopy) done for 32 cases with a positive whitish area, results confirmed dysplasia in only 1% cases while most of the cases were normal 70% and 16% of cases had an infection. figure 4: percentage of punch biopsy results 4. discussion a total number of cases contained in the current study was 115 women who were referred from clinics by the senior gynaecologist to obstetrics and gynecology unit in maternity teaching hospital in sulaimani, were symptomatic from september 2012 to february 2013. a women in his study (115 cases), their age ranged from 20 to 50 years old. current study age group not similar to khan [14] study at 2007 were age ranged from 25 to 65 years old and denny carry on a screening in the south african women at the age range from 35 to 65 years old [15]. this study revealed the corresponding number for patients with ascus and lsil were related to parity (range: 2-8) similar to fotra results, found that multiparty is by itself is risk factor due to an effect of hormones on cervical epithelium during pregnancy and normal vaginal delivery causes damage to the cervical epithelium [16]. in a singh [17] study by via method among 27 women, 25 cases were diagnosed compare with pap smear test only 20 cases were noticed. goel [18] study of 30 dysplasia cases, only in 15 pap smear cases were positive and by via 29 cases and jeronimo [19] by pap smear test detected 15 cases over all 35 cin 1 cases and five cases among 13 cin 2-3 cases and by visual method diagnosed 20 cases among 35 cin 1 cases and 11 cases detected on cin 2-3. cin lesions cannot be diagnosed by naked eye examination because usually they are asymptomatic and cervix often looks normal. currently cervical colposcopy and cytology also punch biopsy for colposcopic with direct guided they are only reliable and practical ways for diagnosis. this varies from laboratory to laboratory and one of the main problem is inconsistent reporting with pap smear test. there are many efforts to standardizing pap smear reporting for example using the bethesda system. but still, they are not succeeded and until now there is no universally agreed reporting system. over all, high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions (hsils) are not have any problem such as cin 2 and cin 3 in most reporting systems. the problems rise with borderline group for example atypical squamous cells of unknown significance (ascus) or atypical glandular cells (agus) [20]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 216 in the current study results, stated that 5.3% of pap smear tests for ascus and lsil was abnormal. denny [15] stated 8.2% as an incidence of abnormal pap smear. a project in the zimbabwe university on cervical cancer, they claimed 14.6% women that participated in their project had an abnormal result by pap smear test [21]. megevand reported 13% pap smear abnormality in their sample study [22]. although, cecchini observed only in 1% of their study population abnormal pap smear [23]. current study showed a lower percentage than those studies might be related to the way of sample collection by wooden ayre spatula or reading by cytologist and a low number of cases. in the current study, via method for detect dysplasia only one mild case detected at the same time not detected any other dysplasia (mild and severe), however even this mild dysplasia case did not detect by pap smear. five cases of ascus and only one lsil case observed by pap smear but not detected by via method. might preparation of acetic acid way and other materials used for pap smear have an effect on these results. in the singh study among 27 cases, by via method 25 cases were observed and by pap smear method 20 cases were observed [17]. in a goel study among 30 dysplasia cases, in only 15 pap smear cases were positive and in via method 29 positive cases [18]. jeronimo observed 15 positive cin 1cases by pap smear method among 35 and five positive cases among 13 of cin 2-3 while by via method indicate 20 cin 1 positive cases among 35 and 11 positive cases of cin2-3 [19]. the biopsy dysplasia (by punch biopsy, without colposcopy) confirmed incidence in the current study was only 1%. goel stated dysplasia on histopathology 7.5% confirmed rate in their population study [17] while jeronimo and singh dysplasia rate in their studies were 2.49% and 3.6%, respectively [19]. the difference dysplasia rate between the current study with mentioned studies might related to that these studies included a larger sample comparing to the current study. for the current study, women who came to the hospital tested were those had different symptoms and those might be relate to a high-risk people but biopsy not performed for all patients, only when a whitish area on cervix was seen after acetic acid applied. furthermore, contributory factors that also might be affected to the low dysplasia rate of confirmed biopsy in the current study. in the comparison of visual inspection method with pap smear method in the current study without colposcopy or colposcopy directed guided biopsy, pap smear method was considered as the standard measure. in the current study, via method was performed for all samples and a biopsy was performed if any lesions observed by naked eyes but in other studies for example; goel study indicate pap smear method with colposcopy or colposcopy direct guided biopsy as standard measure [18]. the via method accuracy (sensitivity) in the current study indicated that to diagnose precancerous lesions was 16.67%, the specificity 71.1%, the positive predictive 3.13%, and the negative predictive 93.3%. bomfim performed a similar study with colposcopy in northeast brazil stated that, if one or more tests were positive performed by specialized for example; nurses or physicians. for the lgsil and hgsil, the sensitivity was 100% for visual method compare to 18% for pap smears method and 78% rate specificity for visual inspection method in comparison with 100% for pap smears method. furthermore, the positive predictive value (ppv) for lgsil of visual inspection method was 15.6% and for hgsil was 2.8% while visual inspection method negative predictive value (npv) was a lot more and reported 100% for each two methods. positive predictive value (ppv) rate were 97% and 99% respectively for pap smear method. bomfim reported that visual inspection method might be a very good test for screening for diagnose cervical cancer and indicate that physicians and also nurses are capable of performing visual inspection test assessment. for the current study low sensitivity and high specificity for visual inspection method might relate to these reasons; this study included few numbers of false positives and low number of studied cases also not guided biopsy by colposcopy [24]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 5 – issue 1 – june 2020 | 217 5. conclusion this study demonstrates that visual inspection test compares to standard pap smear tests have a low sensitivity with non-significant relation between two methods and visual inspection test must be confirmed by a pap smear test for screening of premalignant cervical cancer. reference [1] j. ferlay, i. soerjomataram, r. dikshit, s. eser, c. mathers, m. rebelo, et al., "cancer incidence and mortality worldwide: sources, methods and major patterns in globocan 2012," international journal of cancer, vol. 136, pp. e359-e386, 2015. [2] s. rebecca, n. deepa, and j. ahmedin, "cancer statistics, 2012," ca cancer j clin, vol. 62, pp. 10 -29, 2012. [3] d. saslow, d. solomon, h. w. lawson, m. killackey, s. l. kulasingam, j. cain, et al., "american cancer society, american society for colposcopy and cervical pathology, and american society for clinical pathology screening guidelines for the prevention and early detection of cervical cancer," ca: a cancer journal for clinicians, vol. 62, pp. 147-172, 2012. [4] s. albert, o. oguntayo, and m. samaila, "comparative study of visual inspection of the cervix using acetic acid (via) and papanicolaou (pap) smears for cervical cancer screening," ecancermedicalscience, vol. 6, 2012. [5] j. m. walboomers, m. v. jacobs, m. m. manos, f. x. bosch, j. a. kummer, k. v. shah, et al., "human papillomavirus is a necessary cause of invasive cervical cancer worldwide," the journal of pathology, vol. 189, pp. 12-19, 1999. [6] w. small jr, m. a. bacon, a. bajaj, l. t. chuang, b. j. fisher, m. m. harkenrider, et al., "cervical cancer: a global health crisis," cancer, vol. 123, pp. 2404-2412, 2017. [7] a. b. miller and w. h. organization, "cervical cancer screening programmes: managerial guidelines," 1992. [8] p. a. cohen, a. jhingran, a. oaknin, and l. denny, "cervical cancer," the lancet, vol. 393, pp. 169 -182, 2019. [9] e. shepard, "george papanicolaou: development of the pap smear," medical center archives of new york presbyterian/weill cornell, vol. 2015, 2011. [10] b. zahid, n. khawaja, and r. tayyeb, "prevalence of abnormal cervical cytology and its relation with age and parity," annals of king edward medical university, vol. 11, 2005. [11] r. sankaranarayanan, r. wesley, s. thara, n. dhakad, b. chandralekha, p. sebastian, et al., "test characteristics of visual inspection with 4% acetic acid (via) and lugol's iodine (vili) in cervical cancer screening in kerala, india," international journal of cancer, vol. 106, pp. 404-408, 2003. [12] a. bhattacharyya, j. nath, and h. deka, "comparative study between pap smear and visual inspection with acetic acid (via) in screening of cin and early cervical cancer," journal of mid-life health, vol. 6, pp. 53-58, april 1, 2015 2015. [13] m. peiretti, i. zapardiel, v. zanagnolo, f. landoni, c. p. morrow, and a. maggioni, "management of recurrent cervical cancer: a review of the literature," surgical oncology, vol. 21, pp. e59 -e66, 2012/06/01/ 2012. [14] s. khan, r. jha, and p. r. pant, "accuracy of cytology, visual inspection with acetic acid or lugol’s iodine in cervical cancer screening," nepal journal of obstetrics and gynaecology, vol. 2, pp. 48-53, 2007. [15] l. denny, "the prevention of cervical cancer in developing countries," bjog: an international journal of obstetrics & gynaecology, vol. 112, pp. 1204-1212, 2005. [16] r. fotra, s. gupta, and s. gupta, "sociodemographic risk factors for cervical cancer in jammu region of jand k state of india first ever report from jammu," cancer, vol. 6, p. 8, 2014. [17] k. singh and s. more, "visual inspection of cervix with acetic acid in early diagnosis of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia and early cancer cervix," j obstet gynaecol india, vol. 60, pp. 55-60, 2010. [18] a. goel, g. gandhi, s. batra, s. bhambhani, v. zutshi, and p. sachdeva, "visual inspection of the cervix with acetic acid for cervical intraepithelial lesions," international journal of gynecology & obstetrics, vol. 8 8, pp. 25-30, 2005. [19] j. jeronimo, o. morales, j. horna, j. pariona, j. manrique, j. rubiños, et al., "visual inspection with acetic acid for cervical cancer screening outside of low-resource settings," revista panamericana de salud pública, vol. 17, pp. 1-5, 2005. [20] f. lim, "management of premalignant lesions of the cervix," annals-academy of medicine singapore, vol. 31, pp. 357-365, 2002. [21] l. gaffikin, p. blumenthal, j. mcgrath, and z. chirenje, "visual inspection with acetic acid for cervicalcancer screening: test qualities in a primary care setting," the lancet, vol. 353, p. 869, 1999. [22] e. megevand, l. denny, k. dehaeck, r. soeters, and b. bloch, "acetic acid visualization of the cervix: an alternative to cytologic screening," obstetrics & gynecology, vol. 88, pp. 383-386, 1996. [23] s. cecchini, r. bonardi, a. mazzotta, g. grazzini, a. iossa, and s. ciatto, "testing cervicography and cervicoscopy as screening tests for cervical cancer," tumori journal, vol. 79, pp. 22-25, 1993. [24] s. bomfim, e. santana‐franco, and l. bahamondes, "visual inspection with acetic acid for cervical cancer detection," international journal of gynecology & obstetrics, vol. 88, pp. 65-66, 2005.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 |20 lora: a proposed connectivity technology for internet of things applications in the kurdistan region of iraq sarko salahalddin ahmed bakhtiar ibrahim saeed information technology internet of things and systems engineering, research group (iot-serg) technical college of informatics technical college of informatics sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaymaniyah, iraq sulaymaniyah, iraq sarko.salahadin@spu.edu.iq bakhtiar.saeed@spu.edu.iq article info abstract volume 6 – issue 2– december 2021 doi: 10.24017/science.2021.2.3 article history: received 1/10/2021 accepted 1/11/2021 the internet of things (iot) has become one of the most important trends of this century. recent advances in many different communication technologies and protocols, and access to low-cost and low-power microcontrollers and sensors have made it more prevalent. globally, most iot adoption comes from developed countries such as the united states, united kingdom, western europe, and east asia, as these countries have a wellestablished nationwide iot infrastructure. in contrast, the iot application in developing countries such as kurdistan region of iraq (kri) remains restricted as deployment faces main challenges. on the one hand, selecting the right technology for iot applications can be complicated with so many iot connectivity technologies such as cellular, wi-fi, low power wide area network (lpwan), bluetooth, and zigbee on the market. on the other hand, the main impediment seems to be the lack of iot infrastructure technologies in developing countries. in this paper, a comparative study on the main lpwan technologies has been carried out in terms of cost and coverage of the network and range to become connectivity technology for iot applications in the kri. based on the study, lora technology has been presented and proposed as the optimal connectivity technology to establish an iot infrastructure for the kri. the proposed network enables the deployment of iot applications easier and faster. in addition, various lora based iot applications have been proposed that benefit many sectors. to show case the significance of the new infrastructure, a lora-based weather monitoring station has been proposed as a case study. the proposed lorawan infrastructure can accommodate a vast range of applications and will revolutionize iot applications in the kri as it enables data transmission over a long distance while using extremely low power. keywords: lpwan, iot, lora, lorawan, sigfox, nb-iot, and kri copyright © 2021 kurdistan journal of applied research. mailto:sarko.salahadin@spu.edu.iq mailto:bakhtiar.saeed@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 21 all rights reserved. 1. introduction the internet of things (iot) is among the newly emerging communication frameworks extending the world wide web and allowing machine to machine (m2m) communications. until quite recently, humans fully controlled internet-connected devices, which consisted mainly of tablets, laptops, and smart phones. however, the iot will allow any kind of gadget to connect to the internet, such as smart tags and sensors [1]. smart houses and smart cities are examples of the use-cases of the iot, which is becoming increasingly popular. as a consequence, the network scale and density is increased. according to ericsson's mobility report [2], the connected iot device population will grow from seven billion in 2017 to twenty billion in 2023, which translates to a 19% annual growth rate. gadgets with sensing abilities that can interact with the environment, other equipment, and people to make smart decisions are used widely in the iot. wireless networks are necessary to link iot devices while maintaining high reliability and energy efficiency. batteries power the majority of the iot end gadgets. they are typically expected to operate between five and 10 years without the need for repair or maintenance. additionally, these iot end-nodes should span a large geographic area.for instance, forest monitoring projects deploy end-nodes all over the forest. these devices then communicate smaller payload data between each other over a wide distance to send valuable data such as temperature, humidity, and other essential parameters [2][3]. globally, the vast majority of iot adoption comes from developed countries. each of the following factors contributes to the growth and development of iot: government efficiency, local infrastructures such as networks and cloud infrastructure, accessible resources, and a favorable environment for innovation and investment. economic concerns undoubtedly play a part as well [4]. international data corporation (idc), a market intelligence company specializing in information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology; has released a rating of countries' capability for internet of things (iot) development (the g20 internet of things development opportunity index ranking) utilizing thirteen criteria. according to the study, the united states, south korea, and the united kingdom are the three nations most prepared to create and profit from the iot. the united states performed incredibly well on ease of doing business, government effectiveness, creativity, cloud infrastructure, and gdp and technology expenditure as a percentage of gdp. despite its small gdp, south korea performed very well in iot-related spending and has a corporate climate that encourages development and encourages attractive investment possibilities. similarly, the united kingdom scored well on criteria of business ease, government effectiveness, institutional quality, start-up processes, creativity, and broadband penetration [5]. australia emerged as the ranking's standout nation, scoring exceptionally high on ease of doing business and start-up processes, government effectiveness and institutional quality, as well as creativity and education. australia's results indicate that the nation has the essential elements for an iotready corporate environment. beyond the countries outside the g20, there are undoubtedly nations with a high level of maturity in terms of the iot and significant deployments. for example, in the netherlands, two rival lpwan technologies, lorawan and sigfox, provide countrywide iot coverage [6]. the nation boasts a robust cloud infrastructure and many iot installations, which are often highlighted. additionally, the country has the things network (ttn), which intends to build lorawan networks in every city on the planet. the network establishes a global infrastructure to enable a global iot [7]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 22 in contrast, the iot application generally in the developing countries and particularly in the kri1 are minimal and facing main challenges [8][9][10]. the factors that significantly impede iot adoption are relevant to the kri, lack of modern infrastructure, lack of research in the field, and unstable power resources. despite some recent efforts by some universities to hold conferences and workshops by some mobile operators relevant to iot [11][12][13], challenges still exist, and iot applications remain minimal. to date, to the best of the author's knowledge, unfortunately, it seems to be very difficult for researchers to find a significant iot project or application in the kri, even though there is a very small number of iot projects at undergraduate levels at some universities. these projects are based on a basic level of microcontrollers and sensors and are not suitable for real iot applications. there are also difficulties in selecting the right iot connectivity technologies. several iot technologies on the market include wi-fi, cellular, lpwan, bluetooth, and zigbee. although. the kri does not have any iot network, but it has an excellent internet infrastructure that can be utilized as a backbone for any future iot network. for instance, three mobile operators, asiacell, korek and zain, provide excellent cellular coverage in 2g, 3g and 4g lte for voice and internet access. in addition, several internet providers are using 4g lte coverage, such as fastlink and tishknet [14]. figure 1 shows the internet coverage of fastlink in the region [15]. figure 1: fastlink internet coverage [15]. also, many companies provide an excellent fiber-optic infrastructure in the main cities and towns, such as iq net and others [16]. as the iot networks require internet connectivity using either ethernet, wi-fi or cellular, an iot network can be established based on this wide internet coverage. but iot use cases need more advanced technologies to operate in a cost-effective, low-power manner along with lowcomplexity end devices that can cover long-distance communications wirelessly. because most iot end nodes are sensors supplied by batteries, the power consumption profile will be similar to those devices should be carefully configured to maximize battery life. since end devices are dispersed around a wide area of service, communication ranges must go from a few hundred meters to several kilometres. the remaining part of the paper proceeds as follows: section 2 reviews the leading lpwan iot connectivity technologies that can become the infrastructure for iot networks, emphasizing on lora. in section 3, various lora based iot applications has been proposed that benefit many areas., a focus on a case study in section 3.4 is provided to showcase the 1 the kurdistan region of iraq (kri) is a relatively new autonomous region in northern iraq. it borders the kurdish regions of iran to the east, turkey to the north, and syria to the west, along with the rest of iraq to the south. the regional capital is erbil, known. the region is officially governed by the kurdistan regional government (krg). kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 23 significance of the new infrastructure. finally, sections 4 and 5 present the discussion and conclusion. 2. iot connectivity technologies iot wireless technologies allow different objects to communicate with one another, resulting in smart applications. this section presents the leading iot technologies. as many papers review various iot technologies, this section focuses only on the main players with the potential to build a wide range of infrastructure networks. there are mainly three network technology categories for iot applications: standard wireless technologies, cellular-based lpwan and proprietary lpwan. the suitability of each type to become connectivity technology has been evaluated in terms of cost, network coverage, and range. 2.1 standard wireless technologies the main internet access technologies such as wi-fi and cellular networks (2g, 3g, 4g/lte, 5g) play the primary role in connecting many consumer gadgets to the internet worldwide. there are already many iot devices that use these technologies. 2.1.2 wi-fi wi-fi is a collection of solutions for wlan. unlike bluetooth and zigbee, which offer interdevice networking, wi-fi offers last mile wireless connectivity for gadgets to the world wide web with greater distances and data rates (dr) [17]. in reality, wi-fi has undergone many iterations of development to achieve better connections. in particular, ieee 802.11a and ieee 802.11b were launched in 1999, with ieee 802.11a supporting dr up to 54 mbps in 5 ghz and ieee 802.11b supporting 11 mbps in 2.4 ghz. ieee 802.11g was launched in 2003, and it offered dr of up to 54 mbps at 2.4 ghz. although, because of the low connectivity and capability, ieee 802.11a/b/g models could not satisfy the high demand for hypermedia apps through wlans. as a result, in 2008 and 2014, new iterations of wlans, namely ieee 802.11n and ieee 802.11ac, were launched. these modern generations utilized dense modulation and multiple input multiple output (mimo) technology to provide higher dr of up to 600 mbps in ieee 802.11n and 7 gbps in ieee 802.11ac, which offered a much broader connection distance than the other generations of ieee 802.11a/b/g. ieee 802.11ah, also known as wi-fi halow, launched in 2017 so that iot gets expanded connection distance and low-energy usage. it works under the unlicensed sub 1 ghz connection bands, except white space bands of tv, and occupies only 1mhz of bandwidth on average. as can be seen, although wi-fi offers high-throughput data transfer for both company and home-based environments. significant scalability, coverage, and power consumption constraints render the technology unsuitable for iot applications, especially vast networks of battery-powered iot sensors. however, as most buildings have internal wi-fi and ethernet coverage-connected via fibre, adsl, 4g lte or a wireless link, the technology can become an excellent backhaul for iot networks. most of the iot gateway devices have ethernet or wi-fi backhaul connectivity [18]. 2.1.3 cellular (2g, 3g, 4g/lte, 5g) cellular networks connect physical things such as sensors to the internet using the same network for mobile communications. the network is best-suited for iot solutions that require long-distance data transfers combined with low latency [19]. with the deployment of the latest generations, such as 4g and 5g, that data transfer increased, and the latency decreased. 3g, 4g/lte, and 5g cellular networking systems are some of the very appropriate and efficient standards for precision agriculture, where a significant volume of fast data must be exchanged and calculated. for example, in lte-advanced release 10, the downlink dr can go as high as 3 gbps, and the uplink dr can go as high as 500 mbps, with a delay of no more kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 24 than ten milliseconds [20]. furthermore, 5g is supposed to support high-speed end-to-end communication, allowing for car parking. moreover, a lot of gadgets could be assisted in a kilometer-square radius. in contrast to lte, the new 5g can operate on high-frequency bands, allowing for broader channel bandwidths. 5g technology, which offers high dr and wider connections ranges by appealing to the ideal of high-speed connections or real-time connections, can allow new capabilities on farm equipment, particularly in rural areas. nevertheless, the presence of cellular networks and the economic viability of 5g in farms remains a challenge [21]. hardware, maintenance, monthly charges for rates and data plans, and power usage are all factors to consider. pose new challenges to this solution for many iot applications. in some developing countries, the new generations have more challenges. for instance, in the kri, 4g was deployed in 2020 [22], and zain was the first telecommunications company in iraq to provide 4g-lte services in a "test phase" after meeting all licensing requirements. mobile operators will profit from 4g infrastructure. in contrast, 5g has already been deployed in many developed countries [23]. to that end, cellular networks can provide an excellent choice as backhaul for an lpwan system. 2.2 cellular-based lpwan to provide iot further expansion and evolution, the mobile industry has developed and standardized these technologies. in cellular iot, also known as mobile iot, devices and sensors connect to the internet by utilizing mobile networks. the existing telecommunication network operators support these lpwan technologies. the standards are inside the licensed spectrum and developed and governed by the 3rd generation partnership project (3gpp) and gsma [24]. the cellular iot applications use various technologies like lte-m, nb-iot and ec-gsm-iot. the main features are longer battery life, better coverage, and lower costs. however, for building a network that covers a wide area numerous cost considerations should be made, including spectrum (licensing) fees, installation costs, and terminal prices. in this regard, cellular-based lpwan costs more than proprietary lpwan technologies such as sigfox and lora as they are built on the existing cellular network [25]. 2.2.1 nb-iot the narrow band iot, also known as nb-iot, is a narrow-band communication type of protocol that uses 180 khz of bandwidth in iot applications [26]. the downlink communication rate of this technology is 250 kbps, while the uplink communication rate is 20 kbps per second. another problem is the implementation of nb-iot, which necessitates a hardware upgrade of the current lte framework. moreover, nb-iot can only be implemented via a carrier provider's communication service. as a result, it is costly and does not provide the transparency that other iot technologies do [27]. in-band, guard-band lte, and standalone modes are all possible modes that can be used with nb-iot. while the in-band mode uses the lte connection band, standalone utilizes an exclusive variety such as gsm connection bands, guard-band mode uses the unused portion of the lte band. since this technology does not allow hand-over, it is not viable for mobile iot use cases. this technology is already implemented in some places and is currently being implemented in others. nevertheless, unlike lora and sigfox, this technology includes a hardware update of the current lte model, making it more challenging to deploy [26]. 2.3 proprietary lpwan 2.3.1 sigfox sigfox is an lpwan framework that provides a complete iot networking service based on its patented features [28]. sigfox uses an ip-based network to link its exclusive base stations to kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 25 the back-end servers, configured with innovative software adjusted radios. moreover, binary phase shift keying, commonly known as bpsk modulation, is used to link the end devices to these base stations via a sub-ghz ism band frequency with a specific range of 100 hz. unlicensed ism bands in north america, europe, and asia include 915 mhz, 868 mhz, and 433 mhz, consequently, which sigfox utilizes. sigfox uses a very narrow band to use the frequency bandwidth effectively. at the same time, they are experiencing a minimal amount of noise, resulting in low energy usage, high recipient sensitivity, and cheap antenna models that are possible at the cost of a maximum throughput of just 100 bps. the framework sigfox began as an uplink-only system but later developed into a bidirectional system with significant connection asymmetry. downlink communication can only occur after an uplink communication, for example, information from the base stations to the end-nodes. each day, the maximum quantity of message data sent via the up-link is restricted to 140 messages. and the size of every up-link message can have a maximum payload length of 12 bytes [25]. nevertheless, the amount of message data sent over the downlink is restricted to 4 messages daily, which implies that every up-link message will not be acknowledged. each downlink message can have a maximum payload length of eight bytes. the effectiveness of the up-link connection is protected by using frequency and temporal diversity, as well as signal to duplicate when recognitions are inadequate. every end-device message data is sent out many times, usually three times on various frequency channels. because of this, in europe, the frequencies band between 868.180 mhz and 868.220 mhz are divided into four-hundred orthogonal 100-hertz channels, which amidst them forty channels are not utilized. since the base stations can accept message data on every track simultaneously, the end-node can select a channel frequency randomly to send their message data. this further disentangle the end-system model and makes the gadget. 2.3.2 lora lora is an rf-based modulation technique that is optimized for lpwans [25]. the name lora refers to the capability of the technology to establish extremely long-range communication systems. lora, which semtech developed to standardize lpwans, allows long-range connections of more than 5 kilometres in city areas and up to 15 kilometres in farm areas considering the distance between the points. the ultra-low power consumption of systems using lora is one of its key features that allow the development of battery-reliant gadgets that can work for ten years. a network architecture based on the open-source lorawan protocol and implemented in a star network topology is suitable for applications that need long-range or deep mortar-and-brick connections. amidst a massive number of low power consuming gadgets that collect and communicate small amounts of data. the chirpspread-spectrum, also known as css modulation, diffuses a narrow-band connection over more channel bandwidth and obtains bidirectional communication [29]. lora, similar to sigfox, operates on unlicensed ism-bands, which include 868 mhz in europe, 433 mhz in asia, and 915 mhz in america. figure 2 shows an infographic of the latest lorawan implementation around the world. the ability to implement lora base stations by regular users to expand the connection is another advantage of using lora. to enforce the data rate and range advantage, lora employs six diffusing factors from spread factor sf7 to sf12. a wider range at the expense of a lower data rate is possible with a higher spreading factor, and vice-versa. based on the diffusing factor and bandwidth of the channel, the lora data rate ranges from 300 to 50 kbps. furthermore, messages sent with different diffusing factors can also be received by lora base stations at the same time [30][25]. the lorawan sets the network's connection protocol and framework design, while the physical-layer of lora enables for the network's long-range connection link. the network and protocol architecture have the most significant impact on a kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 26 node's battery life, quality of service, network bandwidth, security, and the range application range that can be supported by the network[31]. figure 2: deployment of lorawan in the world countries [29] 2.3.2.1 architecture a mesh network architecture is used in many currently deployed networks. individual endnodes in a mesh network relay other node information to extend the network's contact range and cell size. although this improves coverage, it also adds complexity and decreases the network bandwidth while shortening battery life since nodes accept and relay data from other end-nodes that are possibly meaningless to them. long-range networking is possible through long-range star architecture that makes the most sense for maintaining battery life. figure 3 shows the architecture of lorawan. figure 3: lorawan architecture a sensor or actuator that supports lorawan and is remotely connected to a lorawan system by using radio gateways utilizing the rf modulation of lora is known as a lorawan-enabled end device. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 27 a gateway of lorawan accepts lora adjusted rf message data from every end-device within listening range and transmits them to a network server (ns) linked to the internet through an ip structure. the connection between an end system and a specific gateway is not fixed. rather than, several gateways located across the area may service the same sensor. as shown in figure 3, every uplink-generated packet relayed by the end-node is accepted by all of the gateways in range with lorawan. due to the high probability that one gateway would receive the messages, this configuration significantly reduces packet error rates. it also reduces battery use for mobile and nomadic sensors while allowing cheap geolocation, considering that the utilized gateways are capable of geolocation. wi-fi manually wired ethernet can all be used to backhaul ip signals that are coming from a gateway to a network back-end. the ns controls every aspect of the network. it simultaneously controls connection variables to adjust the network to the constantly unstable variables. it uses 128-bit aes links for security in the communication of user device to device information, meaning that it transports it from the lorawan system to the devices. this dynamic similar to the application in the cloud system, along with traffic control from lorawan server to the ns, which returns the cycle afterward. the network system confirms the validity of any data collector on the system as well as every message's legitimacy. on the other hand, the network server is unable to view or access the data of platform. sensor device data must be safely handled, interpreted, and managed by application servers. they also produce all software downlink data for linked end devices [31]. 2.3.2.2 lora physical layer lora modulation builds on conventional diffusing spectrum concepts to lower the power needed to send data through channels. bit rate (rb) in available connections could be calculated from the bandwidth bw, the coding rate cr, and the spreading factor sf as in (1) [31]: rb = sf * 𝐵𝑊 2𝑆𝐹 * cr (1) [32] in terms of interference management, lora modulation outperforms frequency hopping techniques. with a decrease in sensitivity of less than 6 db, the configuration can withstand disturbances of variable energy such as 30% in terms of symbol length. sf is the most critical parameter in determining service reliability. data rate (dr) is a lot, and the corresponding period is concise since it uses the lower range of spreading-factor numbers. the higher the sf, the wider the coverage. however, it lowers the service reliability. spreading factors that range from severe to twelve can use orthogonal connections; for example, different systems could communicate simultaneously using the exact frequency band-connections with no disturbance [33]. 2.3.2.3 lorawan mac layer lorawan, a mac-layer that controls intermediate-usage for nodes that use many frequencies, lora alliance developed and maintained the lorawan open standard. as shown in figure 4, there are three key access groups: a and b and c, which are present for various energy use schematics. this protocol assumes every message sent from a node should be handled by the accepting gateway to prevent unwanted messaging. the receive windows can be used to manage acknowledgement messages, but the ack mechanism was not one of the protocol's key concerns when it was designed. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 28 figure 4: lora physical and lorawan mac layer the device's class is determined by how the receive windows are managed. class-a devices only allow the accepting windows two following a message-data that has been sent. as a result of this approach, class-a devices use power very efficiently. a receiving window is opened by class b devices regularly. beacons are used to synchronize these windows. to minimize downlink latency, class-c devices eventually hear the network constantly. these devices are the most energy-intensive and need a reliable power supply. the adaptive data rate (adr) mechanism is used to control the dr of the connection between end-devices and gateways. the data rate varies depending on the distance between 0.3 and 50 kbps. the adr scheme optimizes the dr of each individual device. moreover, dr controls the range and power usage of devices. the higher the power consumed through transmitting a byte, the lower the data rate, but the greater the connection range. greater dr uses power more efficiently in energy expenditure by each transmitted byte. however, the range is smaller, and packet-drop rates are more prevalent. the lorawan configuration uses the system work with the biggest possible dr. an activation method is needed to join a lora network. the standard model defines two methods for activation includes activation by personalization (abp) and over-the-air activation (otaa). abp configures nodes to operate in a particular lorawan system. as a result, the network and application sessions are pre-installed on the devices. otaa, on the other hand, requires devices to submit a joining message to a particular lora system to get an address for the device and an authorization token . otaa activation works with dynamic network-keys and roaming [33]. 3. lora based iot applications lorawan supports a broad range of iot applications applicable to a wide variety of markets. recently, a significant amount of research has proposed and implemented iot-based monitoring solutions in many different areas. this section discusses and offers several potential applications for the kri where lora-wan can significantly impact and be utilized effectively. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 29 3.1 water resources water is regarded as the most important and valuable natural resource on our planet and plays a crucial role in developing the most economic and agricultural sectors. the kri primary water sources are groundwater, rivers, dams, ponds, wells, and springs [34]. in addition, from 2009 to 2017, kurdistan's population grew at an incredible rate [35]. this necessitates an increase in irrigation and drinking water capacity. therefore, an adequate water resource management system is required. for instance, displaying the water level in dams and the level measurement with a lorawan-based system will keep the area safe from severe issues like water crises. additionally, the system assists in making an informed decision, such as developing a water management plan to reduce use or consulting a professional evaluation. by adopting a water level monitoring solution, users can better understand the situation from anywhere and at any time. 3.2 agriculture iot applications enable efficiencies that reduce environmental impact, protect resources, and minimize expenses in this sector. additionally, the applications can provide significant improvements, such as water reduction for farms. the iot is becoming increasingly apparent in the field of smart farming and agriculture. the goal of these applications is to collect and monitor agricultural data at the same time. 3.3 smart energy metering traditional utility operations are performed with many labor forces by sending personnel to the field, which is costly. a lora based application can easily collect data remotely and manage the billing system. as this field has many challenges and is not yet regulated in the kri, lora technology can benefit significantly. 3.3.1 electricity metering new innovative power metering solutions are an attractive alternative to other connection options for iot networks and smart grid applications, thanks to the emergence of lpwan technology. cost and resource savings result from better monitoring. for example, lar. tech[36], a russian intelligent technology innovator and member of the lora alliance, provides a module that can be used with energy meters to gather data remotely in broad urban areas—using meters that integrate lora. lar. tech has also developed an automated meter reading (amr) solution for the power grid industry. following a successful trial in 2017, lar. tech began rolling out 50,000 smart energy meters to install 1 million by the end of 2023 [37]. 3.3.2 water metering utility providers may effectively gather data and analys it in real-time by installing a smart metering system composed of sensors and gateways that use the lorawan standard, simplifying operations and saving expenses. for instance, birdz [6], a nova veolia subsidiary and a global pioneer in resource optimization, used lorawan technologies to help clients manage their energy more efficiently. customers use these solutions to reduce non-revenue water and promptly discover problems in their water distribution network, including major municipal utility providers. birdz runs approximately 400,000 end devices in the city of lyon, france, as an example. since its implementation, over 1,200 leaks have been discovered, saving about one million cubic meters of water each year. in addition, lyon's water network efficiency has increased by 8%, from 77 percent in 2015 to 85.2 percent in 2019 [37]. 3.3.3 gas metering meters used in a gas utility application must be capable of operating for long periods of time and communicating data on a regular basis. gas utilities may increase safety and economy by integrating smart metering technology with sensors for intelligent valves, gas pressure monitoring, and gas leak detection on the same network. cavagna group [38], a leading supplier of intelligent solutions and equipment for regulating and controlling compressed gases, has created a line of advanced smart meters based on lora devices and the lorawan https://www.semtech.com/uploads/technology/lora/app-briefs/ab-semtech-lora-smart-agr-vinduino.pdf kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 30 protocol. to link the meters to cloud platforms, smart meters use lora devices embedded in them. using cavagna group's platform or a third-party application, utility companies may access and analyze meter data. to that end, it has allowed utilities to develop new billing methods that benefit utility customers while also monitoring real-time, accurate gas use. customers can make energy-saving modifications to their behaviors using data given by these billing models [37]. 3.4 case study: lora-based weather monitoring station the weather monitoring system is primarily used to track the change in climatic and meteorological conditions in specified regions by collecting various data like air temperature and relative humidity, pressure, wind speed and direction, and rainfall rate. in the kri, weather stations are traditional, and most of the works are performed manually. in addition, due to the cost, additional stations can not be easily deployed in other places whenever required. in a visit to the sulaimany directorate of meteorology and seismology, a governmental department responsible for monitoring the weather and concerned with earthquakes and related phenomena in the city, it has been noted that most of the works are performed manually. for example, they take weather parameters like air temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, dew point, wind speed and direction, etc., every ten minutes. then, all data are sent to the meteorological center in erbil every three hours through the viber communication network. based on the analysis, the authors proposed a lora-based weather monitoring system to this department. 3.4.1 proposed weather system architecture figure 5 illustrates a proposed weather station architecture using lorawan protocol to transmit sensor data. the end-node comprises weather sensors like air temperature, pressure, relative humidity, wind speed and direction. all sensors are directly connected to the microcontroller (mcu) that is responsible for dada acquisition. after measuring, the lora module transmits the collected data to the getaway and then to a network server (ns). finally, the collected data can be analysed and visualized on iot platform. figure 5: proposed weather system architecture kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 31 4. discussion table 1 summarizes the main characteristics of lpwan technologies alongside wi-fi and cellular. table 1. summary of iot connectivity technologies [19][27] sigfox nb-iot lorawan wi--fi cellular (2g, 3g, 4g/lte , 5g) frequency band sub-ghz ism: eu (868 mhz), us (902 mhz) licensed 700–900 mhz sub-ghz ism: eu (433 mhz, 868 mhz), us (915 mhz), asia (430 mhz) 2.4-60 ghz 900mhz , 2100mh z, 2600mh z, 390ghz channel bandwidth 100 khz 200 khz 125 khz 20 or 40 mhz 364 kbps, 3 mbps, 100 mbps, 10 gbps modulation dbpsk, gfsk qpsk css dssc gmsk, qpsk, qpsk and qam range 10 km in urban, 40 km in rural area 1 km in urban, 10 km in rural area 5 km in urban, 15 km in rural area 100m 50 miles, 35 miles, 10 miles, 1,000 miles payload size 12 b (ul), 8 b (dl) 125-b (ul), 85-b (dl) 243 b 1500 b unknow n data rate 100 bps (ul), 600 bps (dl) 158.5 kbps (ul), 106 kbps (dl) 03–37.5 kbps (lora), 50 kbps (fsk) maximum 54mbps12gbps 64 kbps, 144 kbps-2 mbps, 100 mbps1gbps, 1 gbps< bidirectional mostly unidirectional and limited halfduplex yes/halfduplex yes/half-duplex yes/fullduplex yes/fullduplex battery life 5-10 yr 5-10 yr 5-10 yr hours continiu s power cost of building a network 4000€/ base station 15000€/ base station 100€/ gateway >1000€/base station 300-500€ >15000€ / base station reliability yes yes yes yes yes kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 32 table 2 summarises the iot applications with connectivity technologies based on the requirements of selected iot applications. table 2. connectivity technologies for iot applications[25][39] requirements iot applications communication technologies data rates video camera streaming wi-fi, 4g-lte, 5g system for cooking zigbee, bluetooth, wi-fi water meter and energy nb-iot, sigfox, lora, zigbee latency self-driving, wellbing sensors wi-fi, 5g, lora, sigfox sensors for waste management nb-iot, zigbee, sigfox, lora coverage sensors for smart farming wi-fi, 4g-lte, 5g, lora, sigfox, nb-iot, appliances for the smart house wi-fi, bluetooth, zigbee, power tracking, smart-retail wi-fi, bluetooth, zigbee, 5g, pollution monitoring lora, sigfox, nb-iot reliability patient monitoring in real time 5g, lora smart-farming lora, sigfox, nb-iot mobility autonomous vehicles 5g smart traffic-lights lora, sigfox, nb-iot, zigbee for various iot applications, short-range, medium-range, and long-range technologies are utilized. for instance, short-range technologies such as bluetooth can be used to support innovative home iot applications. for medium-range technologies such as zigbee and wi-fi, more data rates and coverage can also be used for high data rates and low delay indoor use cases. long-range technologies are needed to be utilized in a lot of gadgets distributed in a broad region. lte and 5g can efficiently serve multi-media and apps very reliably with low delay in terms of connectivity. generally, lorawan and sigfox networks give connectivity distance, cost-effective implementation, fewer linking problems, and a solid device and battery lifespan. nb-iot and other cellular technologies are best suited for higher-value iot applications. from the features, lorawan seems to be the optimal candidate for building an infrastructure for iot applications in the kri, as the cost of building a network is inexpensive compared to other technologies, and no licence is required for lora as it operates in the unlicensed ism radio band which is available worldwide. 5. conclusion the iot market is projected to grow exponentially in the years to come. this growth offers potential opportunities to individuals and businesses alike. with many iot connectivity technologies on the market, selecting the right technology for iot applications can be complicated, particularly in developing countries. the paper set out to review various iot connectivity technologies in the kri. the study has identified and proposed lora connectivity as the optimal connectivity technology that enables the deployment of iot applications easier and faster. the lora's main features of wide range coverage, low power requirement, and relative cost of the required hardware make this technology the primary candidate. the proposed lorawan infrastructure can accommodate a wide range of applications and revolutionise iot applications in the region. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 33 in the kri, establishing a lora-based network infrastructure is more effective and achievable by individuals and institutions. lorawan networks can be built as public, private or enterprise networks; this enables a region like the kri to befit significantly from this technology to establish its own iot infrastructure. in addition, various lora-based iot applications have been proposed that benefit many sectors. a potential application has been set out as a case study to showcase the significance of the new technology. reference [1] s. k. goudos, p. i. dallas, s. chatziefthymiou, and s. kyriazakos, a survey of iot key enabling and future technologies: 5g, mobile iot, sematic web and applications, vol. 97, no. 2. 2017. 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[online]. available: https://freedomhouse.org/country/iraq/freedomnet/2021. [accessed: 04-oct-2021]. [23] k. buchholz, “where 5g technology has been deployed,” statista, 2020. [online]. available: https://www.statista.com/chart/23194/5g-networks-deployment-world-map/. [accessed: 26-jul-2021]. [24] “the cellular internet of things.” [online]. available: https://www.3gpp.org/news-events/1906-c_iot. [accessed: 22-sep-2021]. [25] k. mekki, e. bajic, f. chaxel, and f. meyer, “a comparative study of lpwan technologies for large-scale iot deployment,” ict express, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 1–7, 2019. [26] b. foubert and n. mitton, “long-range wireless radio technologies: a survey,” futur. internet, vol. 12, no. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 34 1, 2020. [27] n. islam, b. ray, and f. pasandideh, “iot based smart farming: are the lpwan technologies suitable for remote communication?,” proc. 2020 ieee int. conf. smart internet things, smartiot 2020, pp. 270–276, 2020. [28] b. vejlgaard, m. lauridsen, h. nguyen, p. mogensen, and m. sørensen, “2017 ieee 85th vehicular technology conference (vtc spring).,” 2017. [29] t. m. workgroup, “a technical overview of lora and lorawan what is it?,” 2015. [online]. available: https://lora-alliance.org/resource-hub/what-lorawantm. [accessed: 25-apr-2021]. [30] j. petäjäjärvi, k. mikhaylov, m. pettissalo, j. janhunen, and j. iinatti, “performance of a low-power widearea network based on lora technology: doppler robustness, scalability, and coverage,” int. j. distrib. sens. networks, vol. 13, no. 3, 2017. [31] semtech, “lora and lorawan : technical overview,” semtech tech. pap., no. december 2019, pp. 1–17, 2020. [32] r. kufakunesu, g. p. hancke, and a. m. abu-mahfouz, “a survey on adaptive data rate optimization in lorawan: recent solutions and major challenges,” sensors (switzerland), vol. 20, no. 18, pp. 1–25, 2020. [33] lora alliance technical commitee, “lorawan 1.1 specification,” lorawan 1.1 specif., no. 1.1, p. 101, 2017. [34] “water resources in iraq.” [online]. available: https://water.fanack.com/iraq/water-resources-in-iraq/. [accessed: 26-sep-2021]. [35] m. a. yousuf, n. rapantova, and j. h. younis, “sustainable water management in iraq (kurdistan) as a challenge for governmental responsibility,” water (switzerland), vol. 10, no. 11, pp. 1–19, 2018. [36] “the company «lartech» offers solutions for street and indoor lighting,” lar.tech, 2021. [online]. available: https://lar.tech/en/solutions/lighting. [accessed: 04-oct-2021]. [37] m. pégulu, “conserving utility resources with lorawan iot solutions,” 2021. [online]. available: https://blog.semtech.com/conserving-utility-resources-with-lorawan-iot-solutions. [accessed: 28-jun-2021]. [38] “ultrasonic smart meter gas metering solution,” cavagna group. . [39] j. petäjäjärvi, k. mikhaylov, r. yasmin, m. hämäläinen, and j. iinatti, “evaluation of lora lpwan technology for indoor remote health and wellbeing monitoring,” int. j. wirel. inf. networks, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 153–165, 2017.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) printissn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq 50 proceeding conference (not peer reviewed): 5th international conference on the health and medical science : toward gathering iraqi medical powers (ichms 2021) implication of diabetes mellitus in telomere length and alteration in some age related cell senescence markers of aged men in kurdistan region-iraq kaniaw r. khafar esmail s. kakey nursing department biology department medicine technical college faculty of science and health sulaimani polytechnic university koya university sulaimani, iraq koya koy45, kurdistan region – f.r. iraq kaniaw.khafar@spu.edu.iq esmail.kakey@koyauniversity.org article info abstract proceeding conference (not peer reviewed): 5th international conference on the health and medical science : toward gathering iraqi medical powers (ichms 2021) (cannot be used for academic title promotion or for postgraduate students) indications of cell maturing including telomere length and mitochondrial work, just as oxidative pressure and incendiary markers affect one another and structure a complicated organization, which all influenced in age related sicknesses, for example, diabetes mellitus. for this cause, this current investigation was designed to study and compare of some oxidative and molecular markers in healthy aged and diabetic aged men older adults. the study design was the setting of a medium private laboratory with participants being common people, which was classified into three groups according to age and health complication, control young, healthy aged, and diabetic aged groups. blood sera was obtained for oxidative status including catalase (cat), superoxide dismutase (sod), total antioxidant capacity (t-aoc), 8-hydroxy-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-ohdg), and malondialdehyde (mda)) and molecular markers (including telomere length (t/s) and mitochondrial dna copy number (mtdna)). the findings highlighted that oxidative and molecular markers have significant changes with ageing and high changes significantly associated with diabetes mellitus of aged group. in conclusion, various oxidative stress, cell and mitochondrial biomarkers have been affected by normal ageing and the effects of ageing were complicated significantly in diabetic aged elderly. keywords: oxidative stress markers, molecular markers, diabetic mellitus adults, aging adults, man. copyright © 2019 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 51 1. introduction more recently, aging is described as decreasing and deteriorating functional characteristics at the stage of cells, tissues and organs [1]. some consider aging to be continuous development, which includes embryonic development, maturation, adult period of activity, and aging; although this is controversial [2]. in the previous two decades, the importance of chronological and biological aging has acquired significant recognition. a complicated feature of wide science concern is also the biological foundation of aging, particularly due to its inherent link with prevalent human illnesses [3]. in comparison, chronological age is the quantity of years an individual has been alive, while biological age refers to the age of a person who appears. biological age, also known as physiological age, requires consideration of many way of life parameters, including exercise, sleep practices and diet [4]. since aging requires an uncertain relationship at the level of cells, tissues, organs, and processes, it is difficult to have an evidently specific biomarker for agerelated illnesses. that is why it is frequently believed that there is no best quality standard instrument for measuring high aging. this is why a large group of biomarkers is used to examine the aging process. the plausibility of complementing biomarkers used to assess physiological ability with molecular-based markers has increased the range of predictions for safe aging [5-7]. growing old is the important danger factor for cardiovascular diseases, reactive oxygen species, and oxidative stress have long been related to ageing, and elderly sicknesses inclusive of diabetes [8]. to explain the maturing system, various speculations have been executed. one theory is that the strange collection of natural waste product inside the life form is responsible for the senescence of organs or tissues [9]. the hypothesis of glycation shows that glucose fills in as a maturing middle person. glycation is a programmed non-enzymatic reaction to the decrease of free sugar with free amino gatherings of proteins, dna and lipids that make up the results of amadori. amadori items go through various irreversible drying out and adjustment responses, bringing about cutting edge glycation final results [9]. such effects can be practically identical to high groupings of glucose and more limited life expectancies in individuals with alzheimer's sickness and diabetes [10]. the course of glycation brings about a diminishing of protein work and harmed tissue adaptability, for example, veins, skin and ligaments [11, 12]. in the presence of hyperglycemia and tissue oxidative pressure, the glycation reaction is amazingly improved [13]. this involves it in the pathogenesis and aging of diabetic complications [14]. in view that there aren't any enzymes to separate glycated merchandise from the human frame, the approach of glycation is in keeping with the hypothesis that metabolic waste accumulation promotes aging [9]. the principle point this research a bunch of binding together signs of glycation and free radical hypothesis of aging that has been characterized giving a framework to knowing the course of mitochondrial aging and oxidative in typical aging and diabetic aging at more established grown-ups work through check some atomic and oxidant status. 2. methods and materials experimental design the experiment design is that of a cohort study within the setting of a medium private laboratory with sixty participants being common male people were equally classified into three groups according to age and healthy status of participants: a) control young group (20-40 years old) (n=20); b) healthy aged group (60-80 years old) (n=20) and c) diabetic aged group (60-80 years old) (n=20). all samples were obtained from sulaimani nursing house and new medical center (private laboratory) from december-2016 to april-2017. data collection reagents and equipment were purchased from roche (germany). fasting blood samples (10 ml) were obtained of all participants divided in to two parts, 5 ml of blood were gathered for 52 evaluation of molecular markers (mtdna and t/s), and hba1c in container tubes with edta as an anticoagulant at a concentration of 50 microns. 5 ml into vacuum tubes (non-heparinized) for the assay of serum. the serum was separated by centrifugation (15,000×g for 10 min), kept at –80 °c and assessed by human elisas kit, as recommended by the manufacturer. the serum concentration of each cat, sod, taoc, 8-ohdg and mda.were estimated using the elisa kit (elabscience biotechnology inc.) they reagent with biotek elx800 uv (biotek instrument, inc./usa) elisa microplate reader. mitochondrial biomarkers (mtdna) assay isolation of dna the dna extraction procedure for the 50 blood samples was performed as follows. the conventional phenol-chloroform technique has been implemented with certain changes particular to the laboratory standard operating procedure. 1. 1 ml of each blood sample was transferred to a 15ml polypropylene tube. 2. 7ml distilled water was added to samples, then the mixture was shaken vigorously for 10 minutes. 3. this was followed by centrifugation of the mixture at 3000rpm for 10 minutes. 4. the supernatant was discarded and another 7ml distilled water was added to the pellet. 5. steps 1 to 4 were repeated 3 times to achieve a clean and colorless supernatant. 6. the supernatant was discarded and 300ul lysis buffer plus 50ul proteinase k was added to the pellet, followed by incubation of the mixture at 37°c overnight. 7. 300ul of phenol was added to the mixture. 8. the new mixture was inverted several times then transferred to a 1.5ml polypropylene tube, followed by centrifugation of the mixture at 14000g at 4°c for 13 minutes. 9. the upper phase was transferred to a new tube. 10. 300ul chloroform was added. 11. the mixture was inverted several times then centrifuged at 12000g at 4°c for 11 minutes. 12. the upper phase was transferred to a new tube. 13. 300ul of isopropanol was added to the mixture. 14. 40ul sodium acetate was added to the mixture. 15. the mixture was inverted several times and then incubated at -20°c, followed by centrifugation of the mixture at 12000g at 4°c for 10 minutes. 16. the supernatant was discarded. 17. 500ul of ethanol 70% was added to the dna pellet. 18. the mixture was inverted several times and then centrifuged at 14000g at 4°c for 6 minutes. 19. step 17 was repeated for a second time to achieve cleaner or pure dna. 20. the supernatant was discarded and let the pellet to dry at room temperature for 7 minutes. 21. 40ul double-distilled water was added to the pellet. 22. the mixture was incubated at room temperature to achieve full resolution of the pellet. 23. uv-visible spectrophotometry was applied for the quantification of the dna samples. 24. finally, dna samples were stored at -20°c for further analysis by real-time pcr. designing oligo primers specific to mitochondrial 16srrna and β2 microglobulin genes in order to quantify mitochondrial counts in samples, mitochondrial 16srrna genes have been chosen to be amplified by real-time pcr. also, the nuclear β2 microglobulin gene was chosen as a single copy normalizer gene. primers have been built using the gene runner software. the sequence for forward and reverse primers for the genes referred to above is shown in table 1. 53 table 1: primers used for mitochondrial 16srrna and β2 microglobulin genes qpcr qpcr setup for each sample, the qpcr experiment was performed in duplicates using realq plus 2x master mix green on the ab stepone plus real-time pcr instrument. the general procedure was enacted by venegas and halberg [15]. qpcr data analysis after the acquisition of ct values for mt16srrna and β2 microglobulin genes from real-time pcr, information was evaluated using the following formula [16, 17]. relative mitochondrial dna content = 2 × 2δct patient control mitochondrial count = mtdna patients / mtdna controls telomere length t/s by using real-time pcr after extracted the dna, designing oligo primers specific to telomeres 16srrna and β2 microglobulin genes. telomeric hexamer repeats were targeted in order to quantify the length of telomeres in the samples. the longer the telomere length, the more binding sites available for such primers. as a result, no particular amplicon size is expected. beta globin was chosen as a single copy normalizer gene. primers have been accepted from cawthon, 2009 [18]. the sequence of forwarding and reverse primers for the genes referred to above are presented in table 2. table 2: primers used for telomeres 16srrna and β2 microglobulin genes qpcr. gene primer sequence(5’ to 3’) amplicon size (bp) annealin g (°c) t e lo m e re telg acactaacgtttgggtttgggtttgggt ttgggttagtgt 62 tgttaggtatccctatccctatccctatc cctatccctaaca telc b e ta g lo b in hbgu cggcggcgggcggcgcgggctgggcgg cttcatccacgttcaccttg 106 84 gcccggcccgccgcgcccgtcccgccgg aggagaagtctgccgtt hbgd qpcr setup qpcr experiment was performed for each sample in duplicates using realq plus 2x master mix green on an ab stepone plus real-time pcr instrument. the general procedure was adopted from cawthon, 2009 [18]. gene primer sequence(5’ to 3’) amplicon size (bp) annealin g (60°c) mt16srrn a forward tatcattttcgggggaagg 104 60 reverse cgtagtaatccaggtcgg forward tgctgtctccctgtttgatgtatct 86 60 gb2m reverse tctctgctccccacctctaagt 54 qpcr data analysis after the acquisition of ct values for telomere length and single-copy gene from real-time pcr, data were analyzed using the following formula [18]. t/s ratio = 2-δct t/s ration among samples= (t/s) cases/ (t/s) controls statistical analysis spss 22 software was used to analysis the results. anova test was used to differentiation between groups. the outcomes had been expressed because the mean ± standard deviation (sd). differences with values of p<0.05 had been considered statistically significant. 3. results glucose and hba1c levels in male aged groups the glucose level increased significantly in the diabetic aged group (127.8±6.84 mg/dl) in comparison to its level in control group (99.08±9.31 mg/dl) and healthy aged group (102.6 ± 8.36 mg/dl). the high hba1c level (6.419% ± 0.12) was found in the diabetic patient group, while hba1c level in healthy aged groups were close to control group (table 3). table 3: glucose and hba1c levels in men aged groups. groups parameters control young a healthy aged b diabetes c p-value a vs b a vs c b vs c glucose (mg/dl) 99.08 ± 9.31 102.6 ± 8.36 127.8 ± 6.84 0.170 0.0001 0.0001 hba1c (%) 5.304 ± 0.19 5.515 ± 0.19 6.419 ± 0.12 0.410 0.0001 0.0001 oxidative stress markers in male aged group. table 4 showed that the level cat in diabetic aged group is strongly significant decrease (p=0.0001) and decreased significantly with aging. regarding the sod, the result showed that the control aged group had the highest value (4.022±1.12 u/ml) in contrast the lowest level was found in diabetic aged group when compared to healthy aged and control groups. taoc results in this study revealed a maximum level (1.421±0.76 mmol/l) in the control young group (20-40) and non-significantly decreased with aging. its level increased significantly in the diabetic aged group (1.090 ± 0.09 mmol/l) in comparison to its level in healthy aged group (1.357 ± 0.13 mmol/l). the result in the table 4 showed that the highest level of 8-ohdg and mda were found in the diabetic groups table 4: oxidative stress markers in men aged group. groups parameters control young a healthy aged b diabetic aged c p-value a vs b a vs c b vs c cat (pg/ml) 135.3 ± 20.4 120.1 ± 14.63 106.1 ± 13.6 0.0001 0.0001 0.000 sod (u/ml) 4.022 ± 1.12 3.595 ± 0.14 3.184 ± 0.16 0.0001 0.0001 0.727 taoc (mmol/l) 1.421 ± 0.76 1.357 ± 0.13 1.090 ± 0.09 0.0001 0.0001 0.761 8-ohdg (ng/ml) 0.418 ± 0.12 1.119 ± 0.18 1.691 ± 0.12 0.0001 0.0001 0.000 mda (µmol/l) 0.582 ± 0.10 0.611 ± 0.01 0.710 ± 0.09 0.0001 0.0001 0.000 55 mitochondrial genetic markers in male aged group. regarding the mtdna in the current study, results showed a marked reduction in diabetic patients aged groups, and healthy aged groups that moderately decreased in comparison to the control group (145.50±20.97). as seen in table 5. in the table 5, the highest rate of t/s was found in the control group (701.0±23.72) in contrast to the healthy aged which showed a reduction in t/s (604.9±12.24), followed by renal disease group (570.5±22.87) and parkinson's disease groups (522.9±12.40), they are its level moderately decreased, while there was the highest reduction in the level of the t/s (517.6±17.04 and 490.6±19.62) more found in diabetic patient and cvd groups consecutively. statistically, all results showed a highly significant difference between each group (p=0.0001). table 5: mitochondrial genetic markers in men aged group groups parameters control young a healthy aged b diabetic aged c p-value a vs b a vs c b vs c mtdna 145.50 ± 20.97 127.5 ± 10.44 108.5 ± 9.96 0.0001 0.0001 0.0001 t/s 701.0 ± 23.72 604.9 ± 12.24 517.6 ± 17.04 0.0001 0.0001 0.0001 4. discussion glucose and hba1c levels the result of the current study revealed an increase in the level of the glucose by age advancing. a previous study proved that blood glucose level tends to increase with age [19], also in line with the research carried out in the usa in a community aged 65 years or older after testing, it accounted for more than 37% of the rise in glucose levels and was at danger of rising diabetes [20]. the present results revealed that glucose level increased in the aged diabetic patient. a previous study reported that elevated blood glucose can also be an indicator of metabolic syndrome [21]. fasting of blood glucose is recommended as a proxy for the accumulation of risk factors, including obesity, hypertension and blood pressure associated with cardiovascular disease [22]. hba1c concentration rises steadily until the age of 79 years [23]. previous studies reported that sensitivity and specificity of hba1c have been reported to be elevated in the older population (mean age of more than 69 years) and this study insists that elevated levels of hba1c have been found in both sexes in (65-85) age groups [24, 25]. a previous study found that hba1c sensitivity and specificity were improved in subjects with a median age of 49.9 years [26]. the current study showed that the high rate of hba1c was found in the diabetic patient aged group, and a previous study reported that higher hba1c levels could be a predictor of cognitive decline in people with diabetes [27]. this might not be irrelevant to the fact that hba1c plays a substantial role in the regulation of glucose homeostasis and a stronger predictor for diabetes in general. oxidative stress markers in this study, significant decrease was seen in the cat levels in advanced aged groups and its level declined with aging. previous reports found that the level of activity for cat decreased with aging [28, 29]. decreasing cat level has been displayed to boost oxidative dna and protein modification and hoist the improvement of a few diseases [30]. also the lowest level of cat was found in the diabetic aged group in comparison to the healthy aged group and a previous study measured cat levels in the blood of the control group as for matters with cardiovascular and osteoarticular pathologies such as myoma, also risen cat levels in hyperglycemia patients because hyperglycemia doubled the development of hydrogen peroxide and controlled cat gene expression [31]. 56 it is previously reported that the decrease in the level of sod with aging [32, 33], decrease in sod activities with age may further accelerate the aging process. the role of sods in signalling pathways that modulate aging is increasingly understood. sod genes are necessary for normal oxidative stress resistance and life span and have been targets for the development of aging mechanisms [34]. herbal dietary merchandise with antioxidant interest have acquired special interest in latest a long time because of their function inside the regulation of oxidative stress correlated with brain getting older and persistent situations [35]. the t-aoc level in this study showed a significant decrease with aging. the previous study showed that the activity of taoc is significantly lower in the elderly age group than the middle-aged group [36], which is reported that t-aoc is a possible new strategy in explaining the mechanism of biological aging and an innovative goal for human therapeutic intervention. also the previous research shows a decrease in total antioxidant ability with ageing and suggests that this decrease could be correlated with free radical damage mechanisms to lipids, proteins and dna throughout ageing [37]. the total antioxidant activity provides an illustration of all potential oxidants in a cell. some reactive species have oxidative powers and various natural defences address the correct process of cytoplasmic oxidation antioxidant properties. the effect of antioxidants cannot be overemphasized as the production of free radicals facilitates the aging process [38]. also these results are supported by previous study, the negative association between the total antioxidant potential and the oxidative stress level is triggered by certain pathophysiological modifications that represent cardiovascular disease, metabolic dysfunction, tissue damage, dna and/or other macromolecules in the body [39]. oxidative strain assumes a critical part inside the advancement old enough related illnesses like atherosclerosis and sort 2 diabetes mellitus [40]. 8-ohdg elevated in normal aging and this result is consistence with the previous studies [41, 42]. the previous study proved that dna harm has a tendency to boom with age, as repair features become much less efficient [43]. similar reports have suggested that dna damage by oxidative stress was a causal factor for aging [44]. 8-ohdg is a result of oxidative dna harm and is a touchy marker of raised oxidative pressure [45]. the height of 8-ohdg mirrored the development of dna harm with getting more established. the measure of eight-hydroxy2'deoxy-guanosine (8-ohdg) in dna outstandingly increased with age [46]. the expanded 8ohdg level has been distinguished as a marker in the pathogenesis of some degenerative sicknesses, atherosclerosis and diabetes [47, 48]. aging is trailed by the amassing of 8-ohdg in atomic dna in different tissues. an age-related amassing of dna harm may assume a part in the expanded rate of disease among matured individuals and creatures [49]. likewise, an expansion in dna harm can cause the combination of a repercussion of wrong proteins and subsequently weaken cell trademark [50]. the mda level was increased by aging. in line with current findings, it has been shown that aging and stress increase the free radical production and development of ros, thereby increasing lipid peroxidation and, consequently, mda levels in blood and tissues during the aging process [51]. it is previously reported that damaging of peroxidants increased with aging process due to increased mda and decreased antioxidants [52]. mda was detected in the maximum level in diabrtic aged group when compared to healthy ahed groups. it is previously confirmed that an increase in mda with diabetic patients [53]. a past report revealed that developing of malondialdehyde stages among a diabetic people may be ascribed to the height in peroxidative harm to lipids from oxidative pressure created all through diabetes [54]. mda is oxidative stress end product that is developed in excessive amount as by product of the antioxidant defence mechanism in many pathophysiological disorders affecting the cardiovascular system, such as hypercholesterolemia, diabetes and hypertension [55, 56]. mitochondrial genetic markers the mtdna copy number level showed significant decreasing with aging. the finding is consistent with aprevious study [57]. also a preceding take a look at determined that the mtdna feature decreased for the duration of ageing, together with a decline in tca cycle enzymes, a reduction in breathing capacity and a rise in the improvement of reactive oxygen species (ros) in each human and animal model. a previous take a look at recommended that a relative 57 deficiency of mitochondrial antioxidants might make a contribution to the big age-related decreasing in mitochondrial dna molecules material in skeletal muscle, liver, and heart tissue [58]. in addition, such modifications can lead to dna mutations, cell death, inflammation and decreased function of the stem cells, which contribute to tissue degeneration [59, 60]. the purpose why mtdna reproduction quantity declined in aged people or animals is that one hypothesis assumed getting older as a result of the aggregation of damage to biomolecules because of the overproduction of highly poisonous reactive oxygen species (ros) over their lifespan. this idea has been known as the mitochondrial aging theory because mitochondria are the principle wellspring of ros in the cell [61]. this result is supported that ros development may cause in decreasing of mtdna molecules or loss of function in mtdna through simple modification [62]. such aging-related mitochondrial changes are added to the fact that age is the main cause for several disorders in the population [63]. an decrease in the level of t/s with aging is agreement with previous studies [64, 65] recorded that the level of t/s was decreased with aging and peoples with decreasing telomeres may be assumed to be at a higher risk of age-related pathologies, such as frailty, suggested as a clinical measure of biological age [66]. take a look at first suggested an affiliation between shorter telomere and accelerated threat of loss of life in individuals aged ≥60 years [67]. according to this research, it also showed that the length of telomere was shorter for the age of more than 60 years [68]. at the same time as in agreement with several research, they have got now not determined a significant affiliation among lowering of telomere duration and age, a number of which have used small age group samples [69]. also previous studies confirmed that decreasing of telomere length have a positive relationship with health complications like in type 2 diabetes patients [70]. 4. conclusion this observe research possibly provide a therapeutic goal for aging and age-related disease. on the other hand, ‘‘check some molecular levels and oxidant status’’, can be itself considered a hallmark of healthy ageing and diabetic aging. glucose and hemoglobin a1c levels are increased with aging, and this increase was strongly associated with diabetic disease. while the level of the antioxidants were decreased and the level of oxidative markers were increased with aging and the effects of ageing were complicated significantly in diabetic aged elderly. the copy number of mtdna and length of telomere were decreased with aging, and both are more associated with diabetic disease. reference [1] j. santos, f. leitão-correia, m. j. sousa, and c. leão, "dietary restriction and 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[70] r. y. zee, a. j. castonguay, n. s. barton, s. germer, and m. martin, "mean leukocyte telomere length shortening and type 2 diabetes mellitus: a case-control study," translational research, vol. 155, pp. 166169, 2010.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.11 received 28 may 2018: | accepted: 07 july 2018 assessment of herpes simplex virus type 1 and 2 by ihc in association with cd14 antigen in placental tissues from women with miscarriage zainab a. hamid solaf j. ali ali hattem hussain department of microbiology department of community health department of community health baghdad medical college technical college of health technical college of health university of baghdad sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university baghdad, iraq. sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq zainabhamid96@gmail.com solaf.jawhar@spu.edu.iq ali.hussain@spu.edu.iq 66 abstract: among many viral causes of miscarriage, maternal infections caused by herpes simplex virus type -1 (hsv-1) and herpes simplex virus type-2 (hsv-2) infections are important causes. cd14 was implicated in immune mechanisms, and might be involved in pregnancy loss. the aim of this study was to detect the possible occurrence of two hsv-1 and hsv-2 infections as well as the immunological factor cd14 in placental tissues from patients with spontaneous abortion using immunohistochemistry techniques. immunohistochemistry technique assay was used to detect placental infection with hsv-1& hsv-2 as well as cd14 in 40 women with spontaneous miscarriage and in 40 healthy deliveries in baghdad/iraq. the ihcexpressions of hsv-1, hsv-2, and cd14 proteins were detected in 4(10%), 15(37.5%), 15(37.5%) in placental tissues from miscarriage women, respectively. the association between cd14 with hsv-1 and hsv-2 among the placental tissues from miscarriage patients was constituting (5%), (20%) with hsv-1 & hsv-2, respectively. the considerable proportion of hsv-1, hsv-2, and infections found in the placental tissues from miscarriage women could drag the attention of obstetricians to implicate these viruses as possible targets in the etiology of spontaneous abortion case and there is possible association of cd14 with hsv-1 and hsv-2 in women with abortion. keywords: herpes viruses, immunohistochemistry, miscarriage, pregnancy, placenta, cd14. 1. introduction the causes of abortions in many cases are still unknown [1]. however microbial infections represent a major cause in abortion, of which viruses appear to be the most frequently involved pathogens [2]. among many viruses, human herpes virus infections of placenta may be harmful in pregnancy leading to disorders in fetal growth, premature delivery, miscarriage, or major congenital abnormalities [3], and some of them can produce chronic or recurrent maternal infection. in particular, cmv during pregnancy can reach the placenta by viremia. herpes simplex virus type 2 and less frequently type 1 cause recurrent infections of the genital tract and can lead to abortion [4]. among many possible causes of abortions, immunological factors might be attributed to abortion, yet these factors have not been clearly elucidated. the cd14, cd 56, cd100, cd72, cd45, and hla-g implicated in immune mechanisms and are involved in pregnancy loss [5]. the aim of this study was to investigate the differences in the occurrence of two herpetic viral infections in placental tissues from patients with spontaneous abortion through determination of infections with hsv-1, and hsv-2 involving the placenta as a possible causes for subsequent abortion as well as to have an insight in a panel of the immunological factor cd14 shared in the placental microenvironment in an attempt to find a close relationships of this markers to the state of abortions by using immunohistochemistry technique. 2. methods and materials this retrospective study made the use of paraffin embedded placental tissues which were collected from histopathological archives of teaching laboratories at al-yarmouk teaching hospital /iraq and belonging to (40) female patients with miscarriage as patients group, their ages were ranged between 19 to 43 years, and 40 placental tissues of normal delivery as a control group. expose mouse and rabbit specific hrp \dab detection ihc kit ab80436 (2013) abcam was used for detection of hsv-1, hsv-2 and cd14 protein specific primary antibodies. statistical analysis of data was carried out using the available statistical package of spss-22 (statistical packages for social sciences version 22). 3. results the ihcexpressions of the proteins of any of the tested markers were detected as a brownish discoloration or signal at nuclear or cytoplasmic localizations. the hsv1 protein was detected in 4 out of 40 (10 %) placental tissues from miscarriage women, herpes simplex virus type-2 antigen was noticed in 15 out of 40 (37.5%) of ihc reactions in the miscarriage placental tissues group. the score results of cd14 – ihc reaction in miscarriage 67 placental tissues group show that (37.5%) were positive for this marker while the control group has showed 7.5% of the examined placental tissues. it was noticed that 57.5% (23 out of 40) of placental tissues of miscarriage group showed negative reactions for both hsv-1(ihc) and cd14(ihc) where as a percentage of 5%(2 out of 40) of placental tissues have positive-ihc reactions of both cd14 molecule and hsv-1 protein . in the control placental tissues, positive results for both hsv-2 and cd14 was 2.5 % ( 1 out of 40) cases where as 92.5% were negative for both these markers. (table 4, figure 1). statistically the association of the hsv-1 and cd14, showed no significant differences among miscarriage group (p>0.05), while significant differences was found among health control group (p<0.05). it was noticed that 45 % (18 out of 40) of placental tissues of miscarriage group showed negative reactions for both hsv-2(ihc) and cd14(ihc) whereas 20%(8 out of 40) of placental tissues have positive-ihc reactions of both cd14 molecule and hsv-2 protein. in the control placental tissues, positive results for both hsv-2 and cd14 was 5 %(2 out of 40) cases where as 90% were negative for both these markers. (table 5, figure 4-26). statistically the association of the hsv-2 and cd14, showed no significant differences among miscarriage group (p>0.05), while significant differences was found among health control group (p<0.05). table (1): immunohistochemical signal scoring & signal intensity results of hsv-1 detection in tissues from miscarriage and successfully delivered women. hsv-1 ihc signal score & signal intensity miscarriage group control group p value no % no % hsv-1ihc positive score negative 36 90.0 38 95.0 0.396 positive 4 10.0 2 5.0 score i 2 100 score ii 1 25.0 score iii 3 75.0 hsv-1ihc positive intensity weak / i 1 50.0 moderate / ii 4 100 1 50.0 strong / iii *significant difference between proportions using pearson chi-square test at 0.05 level table (2): frequencies distribution of immunohistochemical reaction results of hsv-2 protein according to their signal scoring and signal intensity. hsv-2 ihc signal score & signal intensity miscarriage group control group p value no % no % hsv-2ihc positive score negative 25 62.5 37 92.0 0.001* positive 15 10.0 2 5.0 score i 3 20 3 100 score ii 6 40.0 score iii 6 40.0 hsv-2ihc positive intensity weak / i 3 20.0 1 66.7 0.252 moderate / ii 11 73.3 1 33.3 strong / iii 1 6.7 *significant difference between proportions using pearson chi-square test at 0.05 level table (3): stratification of signal scoring and signal intensity of immunohistochemical reactions for detection of cd14 protein in the studied groups. cd14 ihc signal score & signal intensity miscarriage group control group p value no % no % cd14ihc positive score negative 25 62.5 37 92.0 0.0001* positive 15 37.5 3 7.5 score i 9 60.0 2 100 score ii 1 6.7 score iii 6 40.0 cd14ihc positive intensity weak / i 3 20.0 2 66.7 0.217 moderate / ii 7 46.7 1 33.3 strong / iii 5 33.3 *significant difference between proportions using pearson chi-square test at 0.05 level 68 table (4): association between hsv-1 and cd14 in the studied placental tissues. cd14 ihc score miscarriage group control group hsv-1 ihc score hsv-1 ihc score negative positive total negative positive total negative 23 (57.5%) 2 (5%) 25 (62.5%) 36 (90. %) 1 (2.5%) 37 (92.5%) positive 13 (32.5%) 2 (5%) 15 (37.5%) 2 (5%) 1 (2.5%) 3 (7.5%) total 36 (90%) 4 (10%) 40 (100%) 38 (95%) 2 (5%) 40 (100%) p value 0.586 0.019* *significant difference between proportions using pearson chi-square test at 0.05 level table (5): the association between hsv-2 and cd14 in the studied placental tissues. cd14 ihc score miscarriage group control group hsv-2 ihc score hsv-2 ihc score negative positive total negative positive total negative 18 (45%) 7 (17.5%) 25 (62.5%) 36 (90. %) 1 (2.5%) 37 (92.5%) positive 7 (17.5%) 8 (20%) 15 (37.5%) 1 (2.5%) 2 (5%) 3 (7.5%) total 25 (62.5%) 15 (37.5%) 40 (100%) 37 (92.5%) 3 (7.5%) 40 (100%) p value 0.109 0.0001* *significant difference between proportions using pearson chi-square test at 0.05 level figure 1: microphotograph of ihc staining of trophoblastic placental tissues from miscarriage patients (red arrow): a-hsv1 in cell cytoplasm showed score 3 and moderate intensity. bnegative ihc-signal staining for hsv1. chsv2 in cell cytoplasm showed score2 and strong intensity. dihc staining for cd14 within the inflammatory cells of trophoblastic placental tissues showed score 3 and strong intensity. 4. discussion infection with herpes simplex is common in women of reproductive age. it can be contracted and transmitted to the fetus during pregnancy and the newborn [6]. extra villous trophoblast cells express hsv entry mediators and are susceptible to infection by hsv-1, which may result in impaired placental invasion and miscarriage [7]. the infrequency with which congenital hsv-1 infection occurs may be attributed to several factors, these factors: the prevalence in reproductive-aged women of protective antibodies against hsv1, and the possibility that the placenta functions to preventing vertical transmission of hsv from the maternal to the fetal circulation as a physical barrier. our results are a bit higher than another earlier study done by sifakis, and associates (1998), who examined women with spontaneous abortion by pcr and serological assays and found hsv1/2 genome in 3 cases (2.9%), out of total cases [8]. hsv-1 well known to infect both orofacial areas, yet in some developed countries herpes simplex virus type 1 has yet emerged as the prominent causative agent in genital lesions. changes in sexual behaviors of young adults may partly explain its incidence in the genital tract [9]. our results disagree with earlier reports regarding this subject here in a study done by robb and coworker (1986) who examined 200 cases of spontaneous abortion for detection of hsv antigen [10]. they found that placental hsv positivity (39% positive) was significantly correlated with spontaneous abortion. villous trophoblast cells were found resistant to infection by hsv-1 and may serve as a barrier that prevents vertical transmission of hsv-1 although these villous syncytiotrophoblast is in direct contact with 69 maternal blood and forms a continuous layer between the maternal and fetal circulation [7]. however, in a previous study done by hideki koi, et.al, they found that primary maternal infections with hsv-1 were common during pregnancy and associated with an increased risk of miscarriage e, perhaps as a result of placental dysfunction. among the placental tissues (40) in the miscarriage group, only 15 cases (37.5%) showed positive hsv-2 – ihc reactions. statistically, the overall hsv-2 –ihc scoring of miscarriage placental tissues on comparing to their tissues control showed significant differences (p<0.001). our study showed a significant correlation between hsv infection and the studied cases of abortions according to our findings, hsv-1 infections may be acquired before the pregnancy, therefore, it is associated with low risk of occurrence of spontaneous abortions. our results are consistent to these done by syridou et al [11], where by using nested pcr they found 6% (1/18) of specimens in sa group were hsv1/2 positive, while in consistent to our result since they did not detect hsv infection in their control group. similar results were found in study done by matia et.al, in iran using pcr, were they found that 2.8% (1/35) of samples taken from aborted materials were hsv positive [12]. more recently in a study done to investigate the prevalence of herpes simplex virus-1/2 infection by molecular and serological techniques in women with spontaneous miscarriage in the first trimester of pregnancy has found hsv-1/2 dna using real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (real-time qpcr), and serological assays that (7) out of the (1,716) specimens were positive for hsv-1/2 dna and by serology, 39.7% for hsv igg, the lack of virus dna in the majority of cases indicates that hsv-1/2 infection is not commonly associated with spontaneous abortion[13]. since hsv-2 infection is ubiquitous, the risk of fetal transmission gave this virus the importance as a global public health issue, particularly because hsv-2 infection is most common among women of childbearing age. the primary infection with hsv-2 has been inconclusively linked with abortions [14]. the present results are consistent with kapranos and kotronios results, where they proposed a significant role for hsv2 in the first trimesterrelated pregnancy losses (as detected by the sensitive and accurate nestedpcr). here in, these researchers detected hsv-2 (43.2%) in those with early pregnancy losses and among them (16.7%) of cases could be related to those cases with elective pregnancy termination [15]. this might be explained in that herpetic viral reactivation could frequently occurs during the first months of pregnancy which frequently be related to the effects of progesterone-linked immuno-depression. on comparison, the present results were higher than the results of other study done on a total of 210 serum samples from women in baghdad with history of abortions who were screened for the presence igm and igg antibodies in their sera against herpes simplex virus type 2, using (elisa) and they found that (4.76%) of these sera were positive for hsv2 igm antibodies in the group of recurrent spontaneous abortion cases [16]. this and present results could be explained in that these infectious agents may induce a shift of immune response during pregnancy from th2 to th1 and consequently lead to a rejection as an abortion process and the presented results are supported by the results of makhseed, et.al.[17]. the present results were higher in comparison to a study done in brazil (by using polymerase chain reaction (pcr) and has showed a percentage of (9.0%) of hsv-2 in the maternal-side placental tissues (decidua) samples, whereas only seven cases (3.5%) were positive for hsv2 on the fetal side [18], which in turn might reflect a great deal of variations of infection rates within the regions or geographical variations within the individual immune status. our results disagree with a study done by eskild et al, who examined 281 women with fetal deaths after the 16th weeks of gestation and 961 controls of live born children to assess the relations of fetal deaths with an infection of herpes simplex virus type-2. they found no evidence of an association between hsv-2 infection during pregnancy and fetal deaths using serological assays [19]. the present results got their importance and also supported by the results of ei kalu et.al, who had found that first episode of hsv-2 infection among pregnant women in benin, nigeria were associated with an increased risk of spontaneous abortion occurrence [20]. the cd 14 surface antigen is expressed on monocytes as co-receptor for detection of bacterial lipopolysaccharide, and as such this function makes cd14 as one of innate immune system [21]. the current study detects of cd14 in the miscarriage placental tissues group (37.5%) than cd14 antigen expression in control placental tissues group (7.5%). significant differences (p <0.05) were found between placental tissue in the miscarriage and control groups. the obtained results are in agreement with the findings of a study done by quenby, et al, where he found that there was an elevated expression in cd4+, cd14+, cd16+, cd56+and mhc class ii+ cellular surface markers in tissues obtained from placental women with recurrent miscarriage. however, there are few reports about the role of cd14 during miscarriage cases [22]. the explanations for the higher rates of cd14 expression in the current results might be related to the presence of mild inflammation in miscarriage pregnancy which might result in activation of monocytes due to inflammatory response to low levels of fetal antigens derived from fetal tissues or placenta. this inflammation is mediated by innate immune mechanisms of which active monocyte (increased intracellular reactive oxygen species, and expression of surface cd14, cd11b, and cd64 receptors) are one of them, and as observed and stated by je lim, et al [23]. thus, this study has revealed an increase in the expression of cd14 which is among many possible mechanisms which might be associated with miscarriage. two possibilities can explain the increment in cd 14 expression: first one is that abortion will lead to inflammation and this will increase cd14+ monocytes whereas the second is that due to the immunological process these cd 14 + monocytes will mediate the 70 secretion of cytokines like tnf and others which are in turn would have role and then lead to the abortion. this finding did not rule out the possibility that endotoxin might also be an etiologic factor in spontaneous miscarriage. the possibility that endotoxin might be another etiologic factor in increase cd 14 + monocytes as a possible immune mechanism against bacterial infection. regarding the expression of the immunological markers in relation to the hsv-1 infection , and although the current study revealed no statistical significant relationships between cd14 protein expression and such viral infections there are still slightly evidence of correlation. the results of cd14 could be related to escape of hsv-1 from host immune system , and although macrophages play a vital role in controlling herpes simplex virus type-1 , the herpes simplex virus type 1 that was detected in our series of patient is one of the viruses that cause persistent infection which possess genes that encode ligands for inhibitory receptors that mainly expressed on macrophage cells in order to escape from host immune system. hsv-1 infection caused most macrophage cells to cluster as well as to be attached to each other. in addition , hsv-1 infection changed the expression levels of cd14 [24], the results of current study revealed that collectively, herpes simplex virus use an inhibitory immune receptor to enter and invasion into the cells and that is beneficial to the virus because binding to inhibitory receptors may provide entry. regarding the expression of the cd14 in relation to the hsv2 infection the results suggested that there is a considerable role for cd14 in association with hsv-2 in the studied groups since it has been detected in both miscarriage and healthy control study groups., although there has been a lack of association between hsv-2 and cd14 since j. arii et.al, denoted that hsv-2 was not able to infect primary human cd14-positive mononuclear cells [25], which predominantly consist of monocytes or macrophages, the results presented herein are in accordance with ellermann who claimed a possibility for different susceptibilities of these cells to the hsv-2. during infection of hsv-2 macrophages are activated and increased antiviral potential, the macrophage antiviral activity has either intrinsic or extrinsic effects [26]. the extrinsic antiviral activity refers to the ability of macrophages to inactivate virus outside the macrophage or to inhibit viral replication in other cells. the intrinsic antiviral activity depends on other factors on macrophage differentiation and has been correlated to ifn activity. in conclusion the highest percentage of hsv2 infections in patients might indicate for an important contribution of such virus in the etiologic development of miscarriage among patients group. although hsv-1 infection was not found commonly, yet such hsv-1 infection rates should be considered critically at this time, since this virus has recently emerged as a prominent causative agent in genital lesions. the increased expression of cd14 marker in the miscarriage patients could indicate either an inflammatory influx of cd14 associated with results from abortion or an immunological process via cd 14 + monocytes which mediate the secretion of cytokines like tnf and others that in turn would have role leading to these abortions. 5. conclusion the considerable proportion of hsv-1, hsv-2, and infections found in the 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[6] g straface, a selmin, v zanardo, m de santis, a ercoli, g scambia, " herpes simplex virus infection in pregnancy," infectious diseases in obstetrics and gynecology, 27 (1), pp. 287-293, 2012. [7] k hideki, z jian zhang, a makrigiannakis, s getsios, c maccalman, j strauss, s parry, "syncytiotrophoblast is a barrier to maternal-fetal transmission of herpes simplex virus," biology of reproduction, 67 (5), pp. 1572–1579, 2002. [8] s sifakis s, e koumantakis , m koffa, m ergazaki , da spandidos , "detection of herpes simplex virus (hsv) in aborted material using the polymerase chain reaction technique," gynecologic and obstetric investigation, 45 (2), pp. 109-115, 1998. [9] r gupta, t warren, a wald, “genital herpes,” the lancet, 370 (9605), pp. 2127–2137, 2007. [10] ja robb, k benirschke, r barmeyer, "intrauterine latent herpes simplex virus infection: i. spontaneous abortion," human pathology, 17 (12), pp. 1196-209, 1986. 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[19] a eskild, s jeansson, b stray‐pedersen, p jenum, " herpes simplex virus type‐2 infection in pregnancy: no risk of fetal death: results from a nested case–control study within 35,940 women," obstetrics and gynecology, 109 (9), pp. 1030-1035, 2003. [20] e kalu, c ojide, a chuku, i chukwuonye, f agwu, v nwadike, f korie, g okafor, " obstetric outcomes of human herpes virus-2 infection among pregnant women in benin, nigeria," nigerian journal of clinical practice, 18(4):453-461, 2015. [21] d ranoa, s kelley, r tapping, " human lipopolysaccharidebinding protein (lbp) and cd14 independently deliver triacylated lipoproteins to toll-like receptor 1 (tlr1) and tlr2 and enhance formation of the ternary signaling complex," journal of biology chemistry, 288 (14), pp. 9729-41, 2013. [22] s quenby, m bates, t doig, j brewster, lewis-di jones, pm johnson, g vince, "preimplantation endometrial leukocytes in women with recurrent miscarriage," human reproduction, 14(9):2386–2391, 1999. [23] je lim, t kim, nw lee, mj oh, hj seol, jy min, hj kim, " cd14 receptor gene promoter polymorphism: awakening maternal immunity during pregnancy," journal of international medical research, 34 (2):176-82, 2006. [24] a reichard, n cheemarla, n bigley,"socs1/3 expression levels in hsv-1-infected, cytokine-polarized and -unpolarized macrophages," journal of interferon & cytokine research, 35 (1), pp. 32-41, 2015. [25] j arii, m uema, t morimoto, "entry of herpes simplex virus 1 and other alphaherpesviruses via the paired immunoglobulinlike type 2 receptor α," journal of virology, 83 (9):4520-4527, 2009. [26] s ellermann-eriksen, "macrophages and cytokines in the early defence against herpes simplex virus," virology journal, 2 (1), pp. 59-64, 2005. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.12 received: 15 june 2018 | accepted: 17 july 2018 knowledge, attitudes and practices of waterpipe smokers in sulaimani city/ kurdistan region of iraq bestun ibrahim hama rahim abdulrahman m. ibrahem niaz mustafa kamal community health department piramagrun hospital anesthesia department sulaimani technical institute general directorate of health in sulaimani technical college of health sulaimani polytechnic university ministry of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq bestun.rahim@spu.edu.iq abdulrahman.ibrahem@spu.edu.iq niaz.kamal@spu.edu.iq 72 abstract: waterpipe smoking is a global phenomenon, particularly among youths and young adults. this practice is rising in the middle east countries. waterpipe comprises many chemical toxins as cigarette smoke. waterpipe smoking can cause several health problems. a descriptive case-series study was performed from 10 th of october 2017 to 20 th of december 2017 in eight waterpipe cafeterias in sulaimani city. the current study involved 230 waterpipe smokers. a structured questionnaire was used to collect data. p-value ≤0.05 was used to show a level of significance. the age range of the waterpipe smokers was 16-39 years with the mean age was 24.63 years. the age distribution was a sharp peak in the age group of 21 to 25 years, over two fifths (40.9%) of the study subjects lay in this age group. the waterpipe smoking was higher in the individuals with high education level (52.2%). regarding the participants’ occupations, the frequency of the waterpipe smoking was higher among self-employment. over two-thirds of participants (68.7%) were unmarried. the main motives for waterpipe smoking were life pressures, pleasurable experience, and habit (31%, 27%, and 25% respectively). the majority of participants had a good knowledge about the negative health effects of waterpipe smoking. approximately half of the participants (48.3%) possessed waterpipe at home, over two thirds (68.3%) of subjects preferred smoking waterpipe with their friends, half of the respondents (50.0%) preferred smoking waterpipe at the cafeteria. likewise, over half of participants (51.3%) smoked waterpipe every day. the main reason for the intention to quit waterpipe was a health concern. keywords: waterpipe smokers, knowledge, attitudes, practices, motives, sulaimani. 1. introduction a waterpipe smoking is a universal phenomenon, especially in adolescents and young adults [1]. the prevalence of water pipe smoking in the middle east area and worldwide is escalating [2]. universally there are an estimated 100 million daily waterpipe smokers [3]. tobacco smoking is one of the leading causes of death globally. in its traditional form, it was consumed mostly by old people in the rural areas of mediterranean and south asian countries. in spite of this, in the past 30 years or so, there has been a remarkable increase in its use in the urban individuals, mainly in adolescents and young adults. this tendency is worrisome for various reasons; namely, unlike cigarette smoking, there are insufficient legislation and regulation in place concerning the advertising, sale, and smoking of waterpipe. secondly, the perception of the waterpipe smoking is less harmful and danger compared to a cigarette, united with the flavours in which waterpipe is obtainable; make it socially more acceptable than cigarettes. it is not surprising that waterpipe bars have increased exponentially in urban areas [4]. the burning temperature of tobacco for a waterpipe use is around 900°c, compared to 450°c for a cigarette, which could produce varied types and levels of harmful tar and other chemical agents. waterpipe smoke also contains remarkable concentrations of nicotine, and heavy metals. emerging literature recommends that smoke from waterpipe contains numerous toxins as cigarette smoke, including volatile aldehydes, carbon monoxide, nicotine and carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. furthermore, the blood nicotine levels are reached on a single waterpipe use while it takes 10 cigarettes to reach the similar level if only cigarettes are smoked [5]. waterpipe smokers are at risk for the same types of diseases as are caused by smoking cigarette, including coronary heart disease, several types of cancers such as cancers of the mouth, lung, oesophagus and stomach. in addition decreased lung function, and reduced fertility. sharing a waterpipe may increase the risk of transmission of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, herpes, viral hepatitis, and other infections [6]. one reason for the 73 popularity of waterpipe smoking, even among people that do not smoke tobacco, maybe the absence of knowledge of toxicant effects related to this practice [7]. this study was carried out to investigate sociodemographic, knowledge, attitudes and practices background of the waterpipe smokers as well as to identify the motives for waterpipe smoking in sulaimani city. the study will support health professionals in planning to control and prevention of waterpipe smoking in sulaimani city and will aid researchers for suggesting hypotheses for future waterpipe studies. 2. materials and methods subjects and study design a descriptive case-series study was performed from 10 th of october 2017 to 20 th of december 2017 in eight waterpipe cafeterias in sulaimani city which were highly visited by waterpipe smokers. convenience sampling method was used for the selection of the cases. the current study involved 230 waterpipe smokers. the size of the study sample was determined by depending on the obtainable time for conducting the study and number of subjects who visited the settings of the study. adolescent and young adult waterpipe smokers were included in this study. the response rate was high (97%). a constant effort was made to clarify the significance of the study and its benefits to the participants and community. a structured questionnaire was used to collect data which was comprised of socio-demographic, knowledge, attitudes, practices, and motives for using waterpipe variables. statistical analysis data were analysed by using statistical package for the social science (spss version 22, ibm statistics.inc) with consideration procedures to ensure high quality of data and minimizing error. these included testing questionnaires, data entry, consistency checked all data collection and entry. the chi-square (χ2) test was used for comparisons among subgroups. p-value ≤0.05 was used to show a level of significance. quantitative and qualitative variables were respectively expressed as mean± 95% confidence intervals (ci) and percentage. texts, figures, and tables were used for reporting the results. ethical considerations ethical approval was obtained from both of sulaimani technical institute and the directorate of prevention health in sulaimani city for performing this study. the individuals were recruited for this study informed in detail about the objective of the study and they were free to take part in the study also participation was voluntary. a verbal consent was taken from the respondents. the confidentiality of the collected information was guaranteed. 3. results socio-demographic characteristics of participants out of 230 participants, the vast majority of subjects (99.1%) were males and only 0.9% was females. the age range of the waterpipe smokers was 16-39 years with the mean age was 24.63 (95%ci 23.94-25.32) years. the age distribution was the sharp peak in the age group of 21 to 25 years, over two-fifths (40.9%) of the study subjects lay in this age group. in relation to the participants’ educational levels, the waterpipe smoking was higher in the subjects with high education level (52.2%) as compared with the other educational levels (table 1). table1: socio-demographic characteristics of participants characteristics number (%) gender male 228 (99.1) female 2 (0.9) age group (year) 16-20 53 (23) 21-25 94 (40.9) 26-30 55 (23.9) 31-35 20 (8.7) ≥ 36 8 (3.5) education illiterate 12 (5.2) primary 11 (4.8) secondary 87 (37.8) high education 120 (52.2) occupation student 79 (34.4) government employed 38 (16.5) self-employment 95 (41.3) unemployed 18 (7.8) family size < 4 64 (27.8) ≥ 4 166 (72.2) marital status married 67 (29.1) unmarried 158 (68.7) separated 5 (2.2) residence urban 221 (96.1) suburban 6 (2.6) rural 3 (1.3) 74 regarding the participants’ occupations, the frequency of the waterpipe smoking was higher among self-employment followed by student, and government employed (41.3%, 34.4%, and 16.5% respectively). around three-quarters of the waterpipe smokers (72.2%) lived within a family with ≥ 4 members. over two-thirds of participants (68.7%) were unmarried. there was a predominant urban distribution of respondents as compared to suburban, and rural (96.1%, 2.6%, and 1.3% respectively) (table 1). motives for waterpipe smoking the figure illustrates motives for waterpipe smoking among participants in this study; the main motives were life pressures, pleasurable experience, and habit (31%, 27%, and 25% respectively). figure 1: relative frequencies of motives for waterpipe smoking health knowledge about waterpipe smoking the result demonstrated that frequency of health knowledge of respondents about negative effects of waterpipe smoking to the human health was slightly higher among waterpipe smokers who started smoking waterpipe at age <18 compared to those started it at age ≥18, but there was no statistically significant association was shown (p>0.05). overall, the participants were aware about health effects of waterpipe on human health. only 33.5% of the respondents believed that waterpipe smoking was more addictive than cigarette smoking (table2). practice toward waterpipe smoking more than two-fifths of participants (43.5%) were reported to have started the waterpipe smoking before the ages of 18 years. the result reported, roughly half of participants (48.3%) possessed waterpipe at home. however, the frequency of possession of the waterpipe at home was slightly higher in the subjects who started waterpipe smoking at age <18 than those started waterpipe smoking at age ≥18, but this association was not statistically significant (p=0.207). over two-thirds (68.3%) of subjects preferred smoking waterpipe with their friends and half of the respondents (50.0%) preferred smoking waterpipe at the cafeteria. likewise, over half of the participants (51.3%) smoked waterpipe every day. the result revealed that 27.4% of the respondents were cigarette smokers, this practice was higher in subjects with age <18 at starting waterpipe smoking than respondents with age ≥18 at starting waterpipe smoking (35% and 21.5% respectively), this association was statistically significant (p=0.02) (table3). attitude toward waterpipe smoking the result indicated that intended to quit waterpipe smoking was higher in participants who started waterpipe smoking at age ≥18 than those who started it at age <18 (53.8% and 28.0% respectively) this association was highly significant (p< 0.001). the study showed that the reasons of intention to quit waterpipe were health, economic, and social concerns (67.4%, 20.4%, and 12.2% respectively); there was not any statistically significant association between reasons of intention to quit waterpipe smoking and subjects’ age at starting waterpipe smoking (p=364) (table4). 4. discussion this study is based on convenience sampling method among teenagers and young adults in sulaimani citykurdistan region/ iraq. out of 230 waterpipe smokers, 228 (99.1%) were males and only 2 (0.9%) were females. similarly, a study was conducted in malaysia demonstrated that only 16% of waterpipe smokers were females[8]. our finding might be due to the fact that our study was conducted at cafeterias and smoking waterpipe by females is unacceptable in our community especially in public places. results suggested that majority of waterpipe users were started waterpipe smoking at age of ≥ 18 years. the most significant age group of waterpipe smokers observed in the current study was 21 to 25 years, 40.1% of the participants lay in this age group. likewise, a study in malaysia reported that two-fifths of waterpipe smokers belonged to the age group (22 to 24) [8]. distribution of the waterpipe smoking in relation to participants’ education, secondary and high educated individuals came in higher percentage in comparing with other educational levels. the students in high school need more health education program, as a study was carried out in iran, indicated that 48% of students, who used drugs, started it for the first time when they were 18 years old or younger [9]. regarding marital status, more than two thirds of subjects were unmarried. similarly, another study was carried out in malaysia reported that majority of waterpipe smokers were single [8].our finding could be due to the fact that single individuals having more free times for leisure activities. besides, they have less responsibility. deal with presures 31% pleasurable experience 27% habit 25% stop smoking cigarettes 3% enjoy smell 3% socialize with friends 3% others 8% 75 table 2: health knowledge about waterpipe smoking (number = 230) knowledge number % age at starting waterpipe smoking p value (χ2-test) < 18 ≥ 18 number (%) number (%) harmful to the health yes 165 71.7 72 (72.0) 93 (71.5) 0.838 no 51 22.2 21 (21.0) 30 (23.1) don’t know 14 6.1 7 (7.0) 7 (5.4) increases risk of cancers yes 142 61.8 62 (62.0) 80 (61.5) 0.611 no 47 20.4 18 (18.0) 29 (22.3) don’t know 41 17.8 20 (20.0) 21 (16.2) increases risk of respiratory diseases yes 168 73.0 74 (74.0) 94 (72.3) 0.741 no 39 17.0 15 (15.0) 24 (18.5) don’t know 23 10.0 11 (11.0) 12 (9.2) increases risk of cardiovascular hazards yes 156 67.8 69 (69.0) 87 (66.9) 0.934 no 39 17.0 16 (16.0) 23 (17.7) don’t know 35 15.2 15 (15.0) 20 (15.4) spreads infections by sharing waterpipe yes 137 59.6 61 (61.0) 76 (58.5) 0.912 no 61 26.5 26 (26.0) 35 (26.9) don’t know 32 13.9 13 (13.0) 19 (14.6) may harm unborn babies and passive smoker yes 142 61.7 60 (60.0) 82 (63.1) 0.784 no 40 17.4 17 (17.0) 23 (17.7) don’t know 48 20.9 23 (23.0) 25 (19.2) has health risks as cigarettes smoking yes 127 55.2 54 (54.0) 73 (56.2) 0.945 no 69 30.0 31 (31.0) 38 (29.2) don’t know 34 14.8 15 (15.0) 19 (14.6) contains more nicotine than cigarette yes 121 52.6 57 (57.0) 64 (49.2) 0.318 no 62 27.0 22 (22.0) 40 (30.8) don’t know 47 20.4 21 (21.0) 26 (20.0) more addictive than cigarette yes 77 33.5 38 (38.0) 39 (30.0) 0.423 no 124 53.9 51 (51.0) 73 (56.2) don’t know 29 12.6 11 (11.0) 18 (13.8) 76 table 3: practice toward waterpipe smoking (number = 230) practices number % age at starting waterpipe smoking pvalue (χ2-test) < 18 ≥ 18 number (%) number (%) possession of waterpipe at home yes 111 48.3 53 (53.0) 58 (44.6) 0.207 no 119 51.7 47 (47.0) 72 (55.4) with whom smoke waterpipe family individuals 8 3.5 2 (2.0) 6 (4.6) 0.003 friends 157 68.3 62 (62.0) 95 (73.1) anyone 49 21.3 32(32.0) 17(13.1) alone 16 6.9 4 (4.0) 12 (9.2) place of smoking waterpipe at a cafeteria 115 50.0 36 (36.0) 79 (60.8) 0.003 at home 15 6.5 7 (7.0) 8 (6.2) anywhere 100 43.5 57 (57.0) 43 (33.1) frequency of smoking waterpipe once a month 19 8.2 9 (9.0) 10 (7.7) 0.003 once a week 47 20.5 13 (13.0) 34 (26.2) 2-5 times per week 46 20.0 14 (14.0) 32 (24.6) daily 118 51.3 64 (64.0) 54 (41.5) cigarette smoker yes 63 27.4 35 (35.0) 28 (21.5) 0.02 no 167 72.6 65 (65.0) 102 (78.5) table 4: attitude toward waterpipe smoking (number = 230) attitudes number % age at starting waterpipe smoking pvalue (χ2-test) < 18 ≥ 18 number (%) number (%) intend to quit waterpipe smoking yes 98 42.6 28 (28.0) 70 (53.8) < 0.001 no 132 57.4 72 (72.0) 60 (46.2) reasons health concern 66 67.4 16 (57.1) 50 (71.4) 0.364 economic concern 20 20.4 7 (25.0) 13 (18.6) social concern 12 12.2 5 (17.9) 7 (10.0) 77 according to the study results, several factors deal with increasing waterpipe smoking. the researchers classified them into internal and external factors. the most waterpipe smoking perceived in this study were; 31% of the participants smoked the waterpipe to deal with pressures, 27% related to pleasurable experiences of waterpipe smoking and 25% of them smoked it as a habit. this finding is consistent with a finding of a study was conducted in india that indicated 27.3% of participants had a pleasurable experience as a reason for waterpipe smoking. furthermore, a study was performed in saudi arabia to determine the characteristics, reasons behaviour and knowledge towards waterpipe smoking indicated that several reasons cited for waterpipe smoking; pleasure and happiness (76%), handling with pressure (78%), and acceptance by society (91%) [10]. while another study was conducted in the usa, indicated the influence of friends, family fashion, and loneliness were the additional motives to waterpipe smoking [11]. regarding respondents’ knowledge, totally they were aware of the risks and harmful effects of waterpipe smoking. our result is consistent with the finding of a study was conducted among adults in jordan [12]. in contrast, a study was carried out in the united states reported that individuals were mainly unaware of the toxicant effects associated with waterpipe smoking [7]. only one-third of the participants (33.5%) believed that waterpipe smoking was more addictive than cigarette smoking; our finding is in agreement with the finding of the study was performed in chicago [3]. moreover, a systematic review study demonstrated that the majority of people anticipated waterpipe tobacco smoking was less addictive than cigarette smoking [13]. in the present study, approximately half of the participants (48.3%) owned waterpipe instrument at home; this might encourage them to smoke waterpipe in anytime and more frequently. in this study sample, 68.3% of the respondents preferred smoking waterpipe with their friends. similarly, two other studies indicated that the majority of waterpipe smokers preferred smoking waterpipe with their friends [14, 15]. our results showed that 60.8% of those who started waterpipe smoking at age ≥ 18 years and only 36% of those who started waterpipe smoking at age <18 years preferred to practice waterpipe smoking at restaurant café, these results are in agreement with the findings of a study was conducted in saudi arabia [16]. this is might be due to some waterpipe cafeterias do not allow those less than 18 years of old to smoke waterpipe. regarding the frequency of water pipe smoking more than half of the study participants (51.3%) practiced waterpipe smoking daily. according to the researchers, around 100 million people smoke waterpipe every day [17, 18]. on the contrary, two studies were performed in the south-eastern united states and pune (india) revealed that daily waterpipe smoking was practice in a low percentage [14, 19]. in current study, the majority of the study participants (72.6%) were a non-cigarette smoker. likewise, a study was undertaken in san diego indicated that the bulk of waterpipe smokers were a non-cigarette smoker [20]. the outcome of waterpipe use in non-smokers is especially worrisome because it moves them into tobacco use when the remained tobacco naive behind them. this result is consistent with a study was conducted among youths in lebanon [21], while it is inconsistent with another study was carried out in kuwait [22]. among countries with low and middle revenue, where the waterpipe smoking is more popular, the relationship between cigarette smoking and waterpipe smoking is unnoticeable [23]. there is a worldwide increasing of waterpipe smoking in the recent years also it continues in rising [2], there is little known about the user’s cessation-related attitudes. to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study was conducted in sulaimani city to address the quitting of waterpipe smoking related attitude. behavioural change specified according to stage-based models to influence the cessation of waterpipe smoking, like trans-theoretical model-based alcohol, tobacco, and other drug intervention [24] and ecological model intervention [25]. the addictive behavioural modification can be improved through five stages; pre-contemplation stage with no intent to quit, contemplation stage with starting an intention to quit, preparation for the behavioural modification, action and change, and finally maintaining the change [26]. in the present study, the intention to quit waterpipe smoking in the study sample was significantly higher with increasing age, in which the participants started waterpipe smoking at age ≥18 years old more likely intend to quitting compared to individuals started waterpipe smoking at age <18 years old. the result of our study is consistent with the result of survey was conducted among arab americans in houston, texas, usa [27]. in contrast, two previous studies were performed on waterpipe smokers indicated that no significant association between age and intention of quitting waterpipe smoking [28, 29]. overall, 57.4% of the waterpipe users were not intended to quit waterpipe smoking. while 42.6% of the participants intended to cease it. three reasons for interesting to quit it were explained; the first one was the health concern, the second was the economic concern and the last one was the social concern. interestingly, in the majority of them (67.4%), the health concern was the great reason for interesting to quit waterpipe smoking. this result is in agreement with the study was carried out in syria in 2005 [30]. furthermore, another study was conducted among jordanian adolescents revealed the same result [15]. the most common waterpipe smoking quitting motivation is due to health risk concern and the health warning on tobacco packages are within the most notable interference to transfer the smoking health risks [31, 32]. our finding might be due to some of the cafeterias hanged leaflets about the negative health effects of waterpipe on human health. strengths and limitations despite evidence that the present study permits good evaluation of knowledge, practice, and attitude of 78 waterpipe smokers, in addition, the current study provides the basis for performing further studies on waterpipe smoking in the future, the limitation of this study should be noted. the convenience sampling is an important limitation of our study. however, high number of people participated in the current study, it included only two females, so it could be required a larger sample size. due to, we selected merely waterpipe smokers we could not find the prevalence of waterpipe users. 5. conclusion in our study sample, dealing with pressures, pleasurable experience and habit were the most motives for waterpipe smoking. there was no significant difference between participants whose started waterpipe smoking at age < 18 and those started waterpipe smoking at age ≥ 18 in their knowledge related to waterpipe smoking. overall, they were aware of waterpipe risks and harmful effects on human health. while only one-third of participants believed that waterpipe smoking is more addictive than cigarette smoking. more than half of the subjects practiced waterpipe smoking on a daily basis. finally, about twofifths of the respondents intended to quite waterpipe smoking and the main motive of intention to quit waterpipe smoking was related to the health concern. 6. recommendation provide health education programs for waterpipe smokers to encourage them to stop smoking waterpipe, as well as increase public 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[32] h. a, l. q, b. je, g. ga, s. c, and c. km, "predictors of cessation in a cohort of current and former smokers followed over 13 years," nicotine tob res, vol. 6(suppl3), pp. s363s369, 2004. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 144 recognition of health care provider's patient safety culture in kurdistan/iraq ismail ahmed ali shewaz abdalrahman hussein shahid dr. aso hospital college of nursing sulaimani general directorate of health university of raparin ministry of health rania, iraq sulaimani, iraq shewaz.kaiwan@gmail.com ismailqaradaxy@gmail.com shelan omar ali fuaad azad muhamad college of nursing college of nursing university of raparin university of raparin rania, iraq rania, iraq shilanomer1997@gmail.com shaima.azad1422@charmouniversty.org article info abstract volume 6 – issue 2– december 2021 doi: 10.24017/science.2021.2.14 article history: received 11/10/2021 accepted 25/1/2022 globally, improving and promoting patient safety has been given a lot of attention in order to develop the standard of healthcare and conserve the clients from trauma. the study purposed to recognize the perception of the health care provider (hcp) regarding patient safety culture. a quantitative design /descriptive method was carried out during the period from 12th to 24thjanuary 2019 at rania teaching hospital. data was collected through a hard copy self-managed survey form using the hospital survey on patient safety culture (hsopsc). data was entered in to spss and analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. the final study sample included 130 cases (74.5% response rate). the total mean positive answer rate for the hospital survey dimensions was (42.28%) with a range of (4.6% 79%). approximately 60% of hcp was perceived patient safety culture practice negatively. however, only two dimensions from 11 had reached a positive response rate by respondents which include teamwork within units and organizational learning dimensions. while, the frequency of reporting errors dimension had least positive agreement toward psc. almost, three fourths of the study sample was indicated that had not reporting events in the previous year. also, staffs have acknowledged that patient safety grade had in acceptable level in their hospital. statistically, the results of the study showed a significant association between (educational status, work areas and staff position) and a mean score of hsopsc (p < 0.05). these findings demonstrated that attitudes and perception of hcp about patient safety culture are extremely low. fundamentally, there is a necessity for systemic change at the level of health organization and continuous training course for hcp to improve patient safety culture are strongly recommended. keywords: patient safety, safety culture, health care provider, kurdistan/ iraq copyright ©2021 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 145 1. introduction the most important domain of healthcare quality in a universal concern is patient safety. medical mistakes are a vital patient safety concern, due to prolonged hospital lodging, morbidity and death rate, causing an increase in healthcare costs [1]. nowadays, the health care system is highly complex. health services frequently are introduced under pressurized circumstances and progress rapidly, due to a diversity of technology and individual decisions and ruling by healthcare staff. medical mistakes in such an environment could happen [2]. as a result of the diversity in making the error, in an international report by slawomirski and their colleagues, it is estimated that 10 in every 100 clients is harmed while receiving hospital services in countries with high-income. however, the heaviest burden from adverse events due to mortality and morbidity carry on in countries with low income [3] . an important part of healthcare quality is patient safety culture (psc), which could be defined as the general attitude of humans and associations, supported by a shareable group of ideas and ethics that are purposed at minimizing chances for a client's adverse event [4]. the evaluation of a safe environment to protect patients from errors in healthcare organizations is considered to be a first critical step for promoting the quality of health care [5]. three components of safety culture had been recognized in the literature, containing psychological components, behavioral components, and circumstantial components [6]. extra awareness had been ordered globally to the subject of patient safety after the liberation of the report "to err is human" in the united states in 1999. the fundamental operator of safety is an organizational culture, which directly affects the safety of healthcare, including values, behaviors, and standard style within institutions. the life-threatening care will persist to happen, in the absence of non-propping the patient safety by the institutional culture [7]. patient safety culture is influenced by several factors, particularly human-made. the who had introduced fundamental descriptions regarding human factors relevant to patient safety including organization and management; leadership; teamwork and communication, managers’ and team leadership; conditions awareness; accountability and risk management; stress management; fatigue and workplace hazards[8]. ongoing assessment to identify deficiencies following the areas of patient harmlessness culture starts with measures such as a data-based assessment of the current safety culture and surveys of healthcare staff and leaders on awareness of the commitment to safety issues. also, a vital point in assessing safety culture is aiding the administrators to realize its effect on the incidence of mistakes. as well provides to recognize common causative risks to mistakes. protocol management and research survey are reliable methods that contribute to the evaluation of a client's protection culture [9]. however, healthcare services in developed countries involved a several high technological interventions, such as electronic medical records, medication barcoding, and computerized physician order entry systems [10]. this study was purposed to recognize the perception of the hcp's concerning patient safety culture in raniya district kurdistan-iraq. 2. methods and materials 2.1 research design and sample the descriptive non-experimental study was carried out from 12th to 24th january 2019 in rania teaching hospital at rania district-kurdistan/iraq. it involved eight units of the hospital including: emergency, medical ward, surgical ward, laboratory, coronary care unit (ccu), operation room, pharmacy, and radiology unit. the total sample size was taken in the present study is (174) health care providers from both genders. 2.2 inclusion and exclusion criteria all participants (medical profession) from both genders in different specialty and facility who take care for patients (directly or indirectly) were included. managers, administrators, medical students and respondents who disagree to take part in the study were excluded. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 146 2.3 questionnaire design the questionnaire consisted of two parts include socio-demographic data & the "hospital survey on patient safety culture (hsopsc)". the socio-demographic data was designed by the researcher using literature to profit the participant's eligibility. this sheet consists of seven items which include age, gender, level of education, staff position, setting of work, years of employment and type of patient's profession. the original survey " hsopsc " was designed by agency for health care research and quality [11]. the questionnaire has been translated in to kurdish language by the researchers and was evaluated by bilingual nursing experts using forward translation [12]. the (hsopsc) section are made up of 42 open-ended questions that focused on 12 dimensions of safety including: "teamwork within units; organizational learning; management support for patient safety; overall perceptions of patient safety; feedback and communication about error; communication openness; frequency of event reported; teamwork across units; staffing; handoffs & transitions; non-punitive response to errors". also, the two single questions were associated with the questionnaire regarding errors reported annually and hospital evaluation in relation to patient safety by participants. 2.4 questionnaire validity and reliability the instrument validity was reviewed by seven experts who have practiced health care professional for more than 10 years from different specialties including (medicine, adult nursing, community health nursing, maternity, advanced nursing) related to the field of the study. their responses indicated that minor changes should be done to a few parts of the instrument tool respectably. the pilot study was executed at rania teaching hospital sharing (15) health care providers which selected randomly from both genders. it was executed from 20th december to 27th december 2018. to a large extent, the pilot study indicates that the tool used was clear with little change in some items to expand respondents understanding of the tool. however, the "director/leader presumption and activities progressing patient safety " dimension did not handle accurately by respondents during the process of the pilot study; therefore, it was excluded from the main research study. the sample of the pilot study was excluded from the main study sample. the kurdish questionnaire tool's reliability was examined by employing cronbach's alpha test. the split-half coefficient was (r= 0.83) indicating a good reliable tool in the kurdish language. 2.5 rating and scoring to employ the research questionnaire, a likert scale (five-point) has been used. the study instrument was rated and scored according to author's recommendation: for positively warded items (from one = for strongly disagree to five = for strongly agree) scale has been placed. also, for negatively warded items five-point scales placed as follow: (from five= for strongly disagree to one = for strongly agree). 2.6 data collection and analysis the purposive sampling was used for this study. a hard copy of the self-administered questionnaire was used to obtain data from participants. after obtaining the oral consent of each respondent the researchers gave instructions to participants on how to deal with the questionnaire. a total of (174) questionnaire was distributed to participants. the final sample size was included made up of 130 participants (response rate: 74.5%) in the main study. the whole data was encoded and inserted into statistical package for the social sciences-version 22 programs for more statistical analysis. descriptive statistical analysis such as mean, standard deviation, variance, and frequency was employed to summarizing, interpreting data and obtain a percentage of the responses. as well as, inferential statistics examined the association between such variables from demographic characteristic and mean score of the hsopsc. cronbach's alpha (split-half coefficient) test has been applied to examine the internal consistency of the instrument. almost, a t-test is employed to find out important differences between the means of two groups. also, in order to identify an association kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 147 between more than two independent variables, analysis of variance anova was applied to mark statistical variation. 3. results from the sample surveyed as shown in table 1 the participant's mean age was (mean ± sd: 33.63 ±7.36). also, the majority of respondents were female (51.5%) and most of them (60.8%) had a diploma. however, the highest (41.5%) staff positions participated in this study was institute nurse. as well, the emergency unit proportionally had higher (17.7%) participation rate. on the other hand, the studied data indicate that the majority (36.2%) of the samples had 5-10 years of employment and most of them (90.8%) acknowledged that they had direct contact with patients. table1: socio-demographic data of the participants variable items f % age groups 20-30 52 40.0 31-40 56 43.1 41-50 18 13.8 51 and greater 4 3.1 gender male 63 48.5 female 67 51.5 level of education postgraduate 2 1.5 bachelor's degree 37 28.5 diploma 79 60.8 secondary school 12 9.2 staff position physician/physician in training 9 6.9 college nurse 17 13.1 institute nurse 54 41.6 secondary nursing school 12 9.2 technician (e.g. lab, radiology) 22 16.9 pharmacist/ assistants 4 3.1 anesthesiologist/ assistants 12 9.2 setting of work many different hospital units 4 3.1 medicine 20 15.4 surgery 15 11.5 emergency 23 17.8 ccu 18 13.8 pharmacy 5 3.8 laboratory 18 13.8 radiology 4 3.1 operating room 23 17.7 years of employment less than 5 y 30 23.1 5-10 47 36.2 11-15 19 14.5 16 and over 34 26.2 direct contact with patient yes 118 90.8 no 12 9.2 total 130 100 the overall positive response rate for the entire scale as illustrated in table 2 was 42.28% ranging from (1.5% to 95.4%). as well as, among the 38 questions that represent patient safety culture dimensions’ more than half of the studied items (22question) had not reached the positive response rate by 50%. the highest positive response rate achieved on this survey (95.4%) is within the organizational learning dimension’s which worded positively "our staffs are in energetic acting things to progress client safety". however, participants (1.5%) show a high negative response rate kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 148 concerning the frequency of errors recorded dimension’s which mentioned: "when an error is created and could injure the patient, but did not, how frequently is this recorded?". table 2: hospital survey average positive answer rate variable average positive response rate % hospital work area/unit (18 items) "teamwork within units" 1. in this department, staff supports each other. 77.7 3. as a team, we work together to finish a lot of work rapidly. 92.3 4. in this department, the staff respects each other. 76.2 11. other staff helps out when a single area in this department is too busy. 58.5 "organizational learning" 6. in order to improve patient safety, we are working seriously. 95.4 9. errors have caused appropriate changes over here. 65.4 13. following any changes made to progress client safety, efficacy will be assessed. 76.2 "overall perceptions of patient safety" 15. to obtain extra work completed, patient safety should not be sacrificed. 82.3 18. our organizations and techniques are perfect at stopping mistakes from incidence. 68.5 10. the further dangerous errors do not occur here merely just by chance. (negatively worded) 23.8 17. in our ward, troubles of patient safety exist. (negatively worded) 12.3 "staffing" 2. our staff is sufficient to control the workload. 25.4 5. health care providers in this ward work extra time to supply effective care for clients. (negatively worded) 9.2 7. to supply effective care for clients, we utilize extra non-permanent employees. (negatively worded) 10.8 14. we perform a lot of work too fast, as in "crisis mode". (negatively worded) 2.3 "non punitive response to errors" 8. employees see their faults are held facing them. (negatively worded) 17.7 12. following an error is announced, it looks like an individual is being written up, not the trouble. 26.9 16. employees are concerned regarding errors they create are saved in their own file. (negatively worded) 67.7 communications (6 items) "feedback & communication about error" 1. depend on errors reports, our staff receives feedback concerning changes set in the units. 46.9 3. mistakes that occur in our unit we are knowledgeable about. 53.1 5. in this ward, we debate methods to overcome mistakes. 23.1 "communication openness" 2. employees will openly speak up whenever catch anything that could impact patient's care negatively. 42.3 4. employees are independent to critique the orders or actions of such administrators. 38.5 6. employees are scared to inquire about things that do not appear good. (negatively worded) 52.3 your hospital (11 items) "management support for patient safety" 1. to progress patient safety, medical institution administrations supplies desired job environment. 50.8 8. medical institution administrator's activities manifest that client safety is a more important issue. 69.2 9. medical institution administrators appear concerned about client safety solely following harmful errors. 25.4 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 149 "teamwork across units" 4. medical departments show perfect job collaboration between them as required. 66.9 10. there is work coordination among hospital departments to provide high-quality care for patients. 68.5 2. there is no appropriate collaboration among hospital departments. (negatively worded) 30.0 6. the work with employees with different hospital departments is frequently not pleasant. (negatively worded) 26.2 "handoffs & transitions" 3. when transporting patients within departments, things "fall between the cracks". (negatively worded) 29.2 5. between staff rotation, significant data on patient care frequently is lost. (negatively worded) 26.9 7. numerous problems happen in the interchange of data within hospital departments. (negatively worded) 28.5 11. in this hospital, staff rotations are trouble for patients. (negatively worded) 25.4 "frequency of events reported" 1. an error had occurred, however, is cut off and repaired before impacting the client, how frequently is this recorded? 8.5 2. when an error is created but does not injure the patient, how frequently is this recorded? 3.8 3. when an error is created and could injure the patient, but did not, how frequently is this recorded? 1.5 the study results indicated that only two dimensions from 11 had reached positive response rate by respondents which include "organizational learning" (79%) and "teamwork within units" (76.2%) dimensions. while, the highest deficiencies (4.6%) positive response rate of the study sample caught at the area of frequency of events reported dimension figure 1. figure 1: the response rate on patient safety culture dimensions in rania teaching hospital figure 2 shows an illustration of participants' responses to the first question regarding events recording in their work areas. the majority of the study sample (75.38%) was acknowledged that no events had reported in the previous twelve months. as well as, the minority of them (1.54%) was indicated that only about 5 events were reported in their work area. 79% 76.2% 48.5% 47.9% 46.7% 44.4% 41% 37.4% 27.5% 11.9% 4.6% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% f re q u e n cy % patient safety dimensions kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 150 figure 2: events recording frequency in work areas figure 3 shows an illustration of participants' responses to the second question regarding rating patient safety grades in their hospital. the majority of health care staff (64.6%) was agreed that patient safety grades in their hospital had an acceptable level. also, only (1.6%) of the study sample graded their hospital as an excellent level in providing patients safety. the association between the characteristic of the study sample and the mean score of the hospital survey is shown in table 3. an analysis of variance test statistically indicates no figure 3: hospital-patient safety grade significant relationship in the staff perception regarding psc among various subgroups such as age groups and years of employment (p>0.05) by mean score of hospital survey. in addition, an independent t-test statistics do not represent any significant association between men (m=3.10, sd=0.25) and women (m=3.06, sd=0.29), (p=0.473). however, the sample 1.6% 16.9% 64.6% 12.3% 4.6% 0.0% 10.0% 20.0% 30.0% 40.0% 50.0% 60.0% 70.0% excellent very good acceptable poor failing kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 151 survey revealed a statistically significant relationship among different work areas, staff position and level of education. hcp who working in many work areas and the emergency unit had a higher score than staff working in the operating room (p=0.014). also, in terms of specialty, the institute nurse and secondary nursing school had a higher mean score than college nurse (p=0.001). similarly, staff who holding diploma degrees had a higher score than those who holding a postgraduate degree in relation to psc (p=0.006). table 3: association between the socio-demographic characteristic by mean score of hsopsc variable no mean sd statistical analysis and p-value age group 20-30 52 3.06 0.31 f: 0.647 p:0.586 31-40 56 3.07 0.24 41-50 18 3.16 0.26 greater than 50 4 3.04 0.10 gender male 63 3.10 0.25 t: 0.518 p: 0.473 female 67 3.06 0.29 work area/unit many different hospital units 4 3.09 0.10 f: 2.537 p: 0.014 medicine 20 3.00 0.29 surgery 15 3.02 0.34 emergency 23 3.09 0.27 ccu 18 2.99 0.27 pharmacy 5 2.99 0.17 laboratory 18 3.07 0.18 radiology 4 2.95 0.18 operating room 23 2.88 0.23 staff position physician/physician in training 9 2.99 0.09 f: 4.193 p:0.001 college nurse 17 2.87 0.26 institute nurse 54 3.11 0.28 secondary nursing school 12 3.11 0.23 technician (e.g. lab, radiology) 22 3.05 0.18 pharmacist 4 3.02 0.37 anesthesiologists 12 3.32 0.26 level of education postgraduate 2 2.87 0.07 f: 4.366 p: 0.006 bachelor 37 2.96 0.23 diploma 79 3.13 0.28 secondary nursing school 12 3.11 0.23 years of employment less than 5 years 30 3.09 0.22 f: 2.183 p: 0.093 5-10 47 3.02 0.31 11-15 19 3.04 0.22 16 and over 34 3.17 0.26 4. discussion 4.1 demographic characteristic in the present study, the data analysis regarding age demonstrates that the majority of hcp represent young adult. proportionally, female participants were representing the major part of the study sample. also, the majority of the study participant had diploma degree, most of them kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 152 were institute nurses and having about 10 years of experience which approximately acknowledged that had direct contact with the patient. 4.2 patient safety culture survey globally, assessment of patient safety in the medical institutions had been increasing demand using hsopsc which was designed by ahrq not in western countries but also in developing countries. particularly, this request aimed to obtain more knowledge related to patient safety conditions in the present day and to put plans for action concerning this issue in the future. the sample of 130 respondents from seven units within rania teaching hospital was assessed. in general, the hospital survey dimension's average positive response was low. however, the areas with high deficiencies among hospital survey include nine dimensions that received the lowest positivity by participants, indicating incredible weakness in practicing patient's protection. our results are similar to the studies conducted by researchers from jordan and turkey that indicates staff had negative perception toward patient safety culture. whereas al. nawafleh and their colleagues in jordan reported that the total positive awareness was 42%, indicating a lower perception of health care staff concerning psc [9]. as well as, bodur and filiz from turkey acknowledged that the overall patient safety culture score for physician and nurses were lower than the standard score 44% [13]. however, our results are higher than the mean score of a study conducted by researchers in egypt that found only 33.3 % of healthcare workers had a positive perception toward patient safety[14]. these outcomes show that health care providers had negative feedback in relation to the culture of patient safety, reflecting the weakness of patient protection from harm. also, systems and procedures in the hospitals were not adequate in preventing medical errors from happening to the patients. furthermore, the reasons behind deficiency in patient safety culture among hcp include health management planning, inadequate administrative arrangements, inadequate training courses for staff and geopolitical and economic crisis that faces kurdistan region in three decades. nonetheless, there are a lot of data even in the developing countries indicates that psc is taken as priority in healthcare delivery system. to a large extent, our results are lower than the data from previous studies done by researchers in (taiwan, saudi arabia, oman and iran),, which received a higher outcome toward a culture of patient safety. a study via both researchers chen and hui li shows that the average positive reply rate was higher than 60%, indicating that healthcare workers in the republic of china are feeling confident about patient safety culture within their health institutions [15]. also, the study result by alahmadi, indicate that awareness of patient safety among participants had increased and continuing advancement efforts [16]. in addition, oman's researchers reported that the mean score of hsopsc was 58%, indicating a positive perception of health care staff toward patient safety culture [17]. furthermore, our results also are slightly lower as compared to iranian health staff with positive response rate (50%) [18]. the outcome of the present survey detected that hcp attitude toward patient safety in kurdistan, particularly, within two dimensions are hopeful. a dimension "organizational learning and group work within departments" was gained a higher positive answer compared to other dimensions of client safety. our discovery agrees with other work done by the researchers [19, 20]. as well as, other studies reported dimension positive scores are low in average regarding patient safety culture [13, 21]. nevertheless, the researchers acknowledge great attention and immediate action toward the areas of deficiency such as: first, enhance management support concerning patient's protection; second, improving culture free from punitive; third, encourage organizational education; fourth, focusing on patient transport from one unit to other in the hospital [22]. furthermore, the "frequency of events reported" dimension has been recorded as the least positive score received than the other dimensions. this is mostly due to the malpractice in medical protocols and not taken the issue of safety as a priority within the medical institutions. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 153 also, under-reporting errors may be related to some obstacles such as the legal responsibility of medical malpractice, fearfulness of "blame and punishment", and lack of a universal system that specified and reported mistakes, and who's participates in the recording and relieving the impacts of mistakes [23]. numerous studies had also declared that not reporting errors is prevalent, especially when the real injury happens [16, 24]. mistakes could occur at any stage of healthcare service, during an assessment, diagnosis, intervention, monitoring, and even at discharging patients. almost, before 21 years, the institute of medicine acknowledged that "despite nearly all of the incidents were mostly due to human mistakes. mistakes are commonly produced by the wrong regulation that lay humans toward faultiness" [5]. in the present study, participants replied to specific question regarding reporting events prior 12 month and patient safety grade. the majority of respondents (75.6%) were acknowledged that no events had reports in the previous 12 months and most of them (64.6%) rated their hospital as acceptable level. our findings are consistent with those of other researchers [13, 25]. otherwise, numerous studies showed less than such outcomes. [4, 26]. 4.3 association between socio-demographic characteristic the study results also revealed that educational status, work areas, and health care provider profession statistically had a greater impact on the culture of patient protection within the hospital. our findings with respect to education degree indicated that staffs with diploma had higher scores toward patient safety culture rather than bachelor and postgraduate profession. a possible reason could be due to spending more time and effort by diploma participant with patient care, therefore gained more knowledge related to patient safety. also, nurses within the emergency department had higher scores in comparison to other work settings. the possible reason could be related to that hcp take more training courses in this unit to overcome the different types of trauma and emergency cases related to safety issues. this result is consistent with the study done by danielsson and their colleagues [27]. however, the present study found no statistical difference between years of employment and mean score of hsopsc. this result is agreed with the study done by other researchers [28, 29]. on the contrary, some studies have shown that those who had long experience in their profession had higher scores than those with less experience related to the patient safety dimension [14, 30, 31]. 4.4 limitations the current study had some limitations such as time limitations and sample size limitations due to the study was conducted in partial implementation of the demanding for study graduate in of bachelor science in nursing/ college of the nursing/ university of raparin. 5. conclusion kurdish health care providers' attitudes and perceptions towards patient safety culture from mistakes have declined, also hcp from different work areas and professions have different attitudes towards patient safety. however, the positivity in perception for the component of group works within departments and systemic learning is hopeful as a starting point to develop patient safety. fundamentally, there is a necessity for systemic change at the level of health organizations, improve reporting of medical errors, and use of electronic medical records (emr) within the hospital. also, in order to promote patient safety, conduct regular assessment, training courses to raise the standard of care are strongly recommended. moreover, building comprehensive research concerning patient safety culture within hcp in a larger sample size is recommended. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 154 reference [1] a. rajalatchumi, t. s. ravikumar, k. muruganandham, m. thulasingam, k. selvaraj, m. m. reddy, and j. balachander "perception of patient safety culture among health-care providers in a tertiary care hospital, south india," journal of natural science, biology, medicine, vol. 9, no. 1, p. 14, 2018. 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[27] m. danielsson, p. nilsen, h. rutberg, and k. årestedt, "a national study of patient safety culture in hospitals in sweden," journal of patient safety, vol. 15, no. 4, p. 328, 2019. [28] f. el-jardali, h. dimassi, d. jamal, m. jaafar, and n. hemadeh, "predictors and outcomes of patient safety culture in hospitals," bmc health services research, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 1-12, 2011. [29] s. a. park, s. j. lee, and g. u. choi, "survey of factors associated with nurses’ perception of patient safety," asian pacific journal of cancer prevention, vol. 12, no. 8, pp. 2129-2132, 2011. [30] a. a. ammouri, a. k. tailakh, j. k. muliira, r. geethakrishnan, and s. al kindi, "patient safety culture among nurses," international nursing review, vol. 62, no. 1, pp. 102-110, 2015. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 155 [31] ü. y. güneş, ö. gürlek, and m. sönmez, "a survey of the patient safety culture of hospital nurses in turkey," collegian, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 225-232, 2016.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq prevalence and molecular characterization of 𝛽𝛽-lactamase resistance gene in multidrug resistance bacteria, proteus spp. sabiha s. salih shno j. mohammed imad m noori laboratory department bacteriology department nursing department college of health central laboratory college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani teaching hospital sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, raq sulaimani,iraq sulaimani,iraq sabiha.salih@spu.edu.iq muhamad.shno@yahoo.com emadmajeed87@gmail.com lana ma mohammed taib a hama soor laboratory department laboratory department college of health college of health sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani/iraq sulaimani/iraq lana.amin@spu.edu.iq taib.ahmed@spu.edu.iq 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) doi: 10.24017/science.2019 .ichms.2 received: 9 may 2019 accepted: 23 june 2019 abstract existing of drug resistance bacteria in meat is a series health concern and b-lactamase is responsible to generate multi drug resistances in bacteria. meat is a source of delivering food born pathogen bacteria including proteus species. recently proteus bacteria developed drug resistance against many antimicrobial drugs and it causes difficulty in patient’s treatment. hence its important to indicate the rate of proteus species, p. mirabilis and p. vulgaris, in meat of different animals and to find the prevalence of b-lactamase resistance genes (blatem-1, blacmy, blacmy2, blashv, blaoxa, and blactx) in proteus species. molecular identification of proteus bacteria was confirmed by pcr amplification of part of 16s rrna using proteus specific set of primers. 70 meat samples (cattle, sheep, chicken, turkey, goat, and fish) were collected in local meat shops in the center of sulaimani city. 29 (41.4%) samples were positive to proteus species and 22 (75.87%) isolates were p. mirabilis and seven (24.13%) were p. vulgaris based on conventional biochemical tests. the drug sensitivity test was performed for all isolates using a disk diffusion assay (kirby bauer test). the multi drug resistance were found in all isolates and the most common drug resistance phenotype were against tetracycline, rifampin, and doxycycline, while the imepenem, tobramycin, and meropenem remain more affective against the bacteria. resistance genes, blatem-1 and blashv were found in five mailto:sabiha.salih@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 21 isolates (17.2%) of proteus. three isolates (10.3%) were positive to blatem-1 resistance gene and two isolates (6.8%) were positive to blashv. all resistance genes recorded in this study were recovered in p. mirabilis and none of them was reported in p. vulgaris. none of the isolates was positive to blactamase genes, blacmy, blacmy2, blaoxa, and blactx. keywords: meat born pathogen, proteus spp., antibiotic sensitivity test, resistance genes, 𝛽𝛽-lactamase. 1. introduction increasing bacterial resistance against common antibacterial drugs is a series health concern and appearing and exchanging antimicrobial resistance among different bacteria makes a complex problem. bacteria gain resistance because of different factors and the most common one is existing of drug resistance genes and improper using of antibiotics [1]. in animal industry, antibiotic has been used to promote animal growth in addition to therapeutic and prophylactic purposes [2]. the development of drug resistance in pathogen bacteria that due to the heavy consuming of antibacterial medicines is very well studied. animal meat is a good source of nutrition to bacteria, so it becomes a grate reservoir of pathogenic bacteria including salmonella species, shiga toxin producing e. coli strains, and proteus [3, 4, 5]. the zoonotic properties of food born bacteria in combination with producing toxin and bearing resistance genes accelerate the seriousness of the diseases and even death in untreatable cases. millions of cases that resulted from food born pathogens have been recorded yearly globally in sporadic patients and even in outbreak cases in some countries. the outcome of the diseases can be seen in appearing of a million diarrhea symptom in children due to enteropathogenic bacteria and about three million death casualties annually [5]. beta-lactam antibiotics are a commonly used antibiotics against different gram negative bacteria. ampc 𝛽𝛽 -lactamases is an enzyme generated by bacteria and it woks to lyse beta lactam class antibiotics. ampc betalactamse has been studied well for more than forty years since a drug resistance gene discovered in gram negative bacteria against beta-lactam. bacteria produce betalactamse to fight against beta lactam antibiotic as a strategy to survive [6, 7]. its important to study and investigate ampc beta lactamase, specifically in medical aspects because of its ability to deactivate many types of commonly used antibacterial including cephalosporins, penicillins, cephamycins, oxyimino-cephalosporins, and monobactams [6]. the disability of extended spectrum beta lactamases (esbl) inhibitor clavulanic acid against betalactamse gene favour bacteria to have stronger resistance pattern against eslb and beta lactam antibacterial drug. ampc 𝛽𝛽 –lactamase proteins can be expressed from either chromosome or plasmid. many bacteria express the enzyme chromosomally including shigella, enterobacter, serratia marcescens, enterobacter cloacae, citrobacter freundii, hafnia alvei, pseudomonas aeruginosa, morganella morganii. escherichia coli, and acinetobacter species laghawe avinash et al., 2012, [7, 8, 9]. the plasmid bearing ampc beta lactamse gene is expressed constitutively, while some of them expressed through beta lactam induction similar to chromosomal gene. the spreading of plasmid bearing ampc resistance gene is easier than chromosomal gene and this makes plasmid ampc beta lactamase gene to be clinically more important. enterobacteriacae exchange plasmid bearing resistance gene continuously to develop resistance against beta lactam antibacterial medicines such as in salmonella spp., klebsiella spp., proteus mirabilis, and escherichia coli [10]. in some gram negative bacteria, the occurrence of ampc beta lactamase is high but its not well studied in proteus species especially in sulaimani city. proteus recently shows resistance against many antibacterial medicines and this cannot be detected accurately through regular antibiotic sensitivity test phenotypically and its not guided by clinical and laboratory standards kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 22 institute (clsi) until now [11, 12]. polymerase chain reaction (pcr) has been developed to amplify and rapid identification of resistance genes [13]. this method can be used to detect six different beta lactamase genes in gram negative bacteria, proteus species including blatem-1, blacmy, blacmy2, blashv, blaoxa, and blactx [13, 14, 15]. the aim of this study was to 1finding the rate of proteus species in raw meat of different animals in local meat shops. 2to find multi drug resistance pattern of proteus against commonly used antimicrobials. 3to detect the existing beta lactamase resistance genes in proteus species. 2. methods and materials sample collection a total of 70 meat samples (beef, sheep, turkey, chicken, fish) were collected from local meat shops in the centre of sulaimany city from december 2018 to january 2019. every single sample was purchased from different shop to collect a variety of samples and represent different types and sources of bacterial contamination. the samples were put into a sterile container and kept cold at 4-10°c until they are arrived to the laboratory for further processing. sample processing for every sample, 10 gm of the meat sample was weighed and homogenised in 90 ml of nutrient broth using sterile blender. the homogenised meat was put into a flask container and was then incubated for 16 hours at 37 °c in shaking incubator. isolation and identification of proteus species all culture media and biochemical tests were purchased from accumedia lab (neogene culture media, heywood, uk). for isolation of gram negative bacteria, proteus species, approximately 20 μl of the overnight culture was taken and streaked on macconkey`s agar and incubated at 37°c overnight. the colonies were taken and streaked again on nutrient agar to detect swarming properties after overnight incubation at 37 °c. the samples from swarming were taken to obtain a typical colony on macconkey`s agar. after incubation, a colonies were taken and transfer to the macconkey`s agar containing swarming inhibition substance to further confirmation of the proteus species swarming characteristic. molecular identification of proteus species dna extraction a fresh single colony was dissolved in 100 ul of sterilized distilled water and the mixture was boiled at 99°c for 15 minutes using thermo-cycler heating blocks (applied biosystem 2727, california, usa). two ul of the boiled bacteria was used as dna template for pcr amplification of the gene of interest. polymerase chain reaction for the detection of proteus species for specific molecular detection of proteus bacteria, 16s rrna gene (201 bp) was pcr amplified using oligoes and protocols according to [16]. the pcr volume of 20 μl was used for pcr reaction and it was containing a mixture of 10 μl of 2x premix redtaq dna polymerase (sbsbio, beijing, china), 0.5 μm of each primers and 2 μl of dna template (boiled colonies). the pcr running condition was started at temperature of 94°c for 5 min, and 35 cycles of 94°c 30 sec, 55°c 30 sec, 72°c 30 sec, with the final extension temperature 72°c for 7 minutes. the pcr products were then fractionated on 1% agarose gel using dna gel electrophoresis and visualized by blue light excitation of fluorescence dye, goodview (sbsbio, beijing, china) using smartdoc 2.0 imaging system (accuris, nj, usa) kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 23 identification of proteus species, p. vulgaris and p. mirabilis after pcr confirmation of proteus bacteria, simmons citrate test was used to identify proteus species. a fresh single colony was incubated into a slant agar of simmons citrate and the culture was incubated aerobically at 37°c for 24 hours. the selection depended on changing color from green to blue for positive biochemical reaction (citrate utilization) in the presence of proteus mirabilis and not color change (no citrate utilization) for negative result in the case of p. vulgaris [17]. antibiotic sensitivity test antibiotic sensitivity test was performed using kirby bauer test (disk diffusion test) according to the protocol described by the clsi (2002) [12]. antibiotic sensitivity test was performed for 13 different antimicrobials as follow, amoxicillin (ax 25), tobramycin (tob 10), amoxicillinclavulanic acid (amc 30), tetracycline (te 10), doxycycline (do 10), imipemem (imp 10), trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole (sxt 25), meropenem (mem 10), ciprofloxacine (cip 10), gentamycin (cn 10), rifampin (ra 5), amikacin (ak 10), and cefotaxime (ctx 30). the antibiotic disks were purchased from bioanalyse pharmaceutical (bioanalyse, ankara, turkey) and the results were interpreted according to the clear zone diameter measured around the disc according to the manufacturer chart. polymerase chain reaction of 𝛽𝛽-lactamase resistance genes pcr amplification for six β-lactamase resistance genes (blatem-1, blacmy, blacmy2, blashv, blaoxa, and blactx) was carried out using multiplex pcr. multiplex pcr was divided into two groups, g1 were blatem-1, blacmy, blacmy2, and g2 were blashv, blaoxa, and blactx. the universal primers were taken and used according to [15, 18]. the pcr mixture was carried out in 20 μl volume reaction containing 10 ul 2x redtag dna polymerase premix, 0.2 μm of each primer, and 2 μl of dna extracted from boiled colonies. the pcr was run under the following condition, it started with 94°c for 5 min, and 35 cycles of 94°c 30 sec, 55°c 30 sec, 72°c 30 sec, with the final extension temperature 72°c for 7 minutes using thermo cycler (applied biosystems 2727, calif., u.s.a.). the reaction dna product was resolved on 1% dna agarose gel, stained with goodviw fluorescence dna stain (sbsbio, beijing, china) and visualized under blue light transilluminator using smartdoc 2.0 imaging system (accuris, nj, usa). 3. results prevalence of proteus vulgaris and proteus mirabilis a total number of 70 meat samples were processed. the samples were collected from different animal and organs including beef 10 samples, sheep 10 samples, goat 10 samples, turkey 10 samples, fishes 10 samples, chicken 10 samples, and chicken liver 10 samples. out of these samples 29 (41.4%) isolates were confirmed as proteus bacteria by swarming properties of proteus and specific pcr confirmation of 16s rrna (201 bp) (figure 1). meat is a good source of nitrogen, carbon and energy so it considers as a good reservoir for pathogen bacteria. many pathogen bacteria can grow on meat and become a source of food born bacterial diseases in human. simmons citrate test was undertaken to identify two species of proteus, p mirabilis and p. vulgaris, based on ability of bacterial species to utilize citrate. p. mirabilis recorded the highest rate in meat (22 isolates, 75.87%) in compare to p. vulgaris (seven isolates, 24.134%) (figure 1). kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 24 figure 1. identification and the rate of proteus species in raw meat. pcr confirmation of proteus bacteria (the left image). the percentage of p. mirabilis and p. vulgaris in raw meat (the right image). antibiotic susceptibility examination antibiotic susceptibility test was carried out using kirby-bauer disc diffusion test on muller hinton agar. the pattern of antibiotic susceptibility testing of isolates were different in their susceptibility against 13 common antibacterial discs (figure 2). all isolates showed 100% resistance to three antimicrobials, tetracycline, rifampin, and doxycycline. multi drug resistance were found in all isolates for many types of antimicrobial especially tetracycline, rifampin, and doxycycline, and tobramycin. the overall antibiotic resistance pattern of proteus bacteria was like the following; tetracycline (100%), rifampin (100%), and doxycycline (100%), gentamycin (65.5%), tobramycin (62%), amoxicillin (93.1%), amoxicillin-clavulanic acid (82.7%), imepemem (68.9%), trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole (93.1), meropenem (65.5%), ciprofloxacine (68.9%), amikacin (65.5%). amikacin, imepenem, and ciprofloxacin remained active against proteus and most of proteus species showed the highest rate of susceptibility to them. figure 2. antibiotic susceptibility pattern of proteus species isolated from different raw meat in local meat shops in sulamiani city. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 25 prevalence of 𝛽𝛽-lactamase resistance genes existing of 𝛽𝛽-lactamase genes in gram negative bacteria enable the bacteria to express βlactamase enzyme to hydrolyze and deactivate common β-lactam ring of antibiotics, cephalocporins and ampicillin [6]. this leads to developing bacterial resistance against these antibiotics. among 𝛽𝛽-lactamase resistance genes, shv, ctx-m, tem, cmy, cmy2, and oxa are the most common and well documented [19]. this study investigated the existence of these resistance genes in p. mirabilis and p. vulgaris by pcr amplification of their conservative region using gene specific set of primers. blacmy, blacmy2, blaoxa, and blactx pcr amplification was carried out to find different β-lactamase resistance genes using universal gene specific primers. all proteus isolates showed negative result to four types of β-lactamase resistance genes, blacmy, blacmy2, blaoxa, and blactx. so none of the isolates carry these types of resistance genes on their chromosome and plasmids. blatem out of 29 proteus isolates, three isolates (10.3%) were positive to one type of β-lactamase resistance genes, blatem (1080 bp) (figure 3). all three resistance genes were found in p. mirablis (100%) and blatem was not recorded in p. vulgaris (0%). two isolates bearing blatem showed multidrug resistance to many beta lactam antibiotics, amoxicillin and amoxicillin-clavulanic acid and one isolates showed the resistance pattern to another new generation of β-lactam of antibiotics, cefotaxime. figure 3. pcr amplification of blatem and blashv resistance genes in proteus species. the amplicons were resolved on 1% dna agarose gel and the size of the genes were compared to the dna ruler of 1.2 kb. blashv blashv resistance gene (797 bp) was found in two proteus isolates (6.8%) (figure 3). all positive isolates to blashv belonged to p. mirabilis (100%). one of the p. mirabilis expressing the enzyme of blashv gene became resistance against amoxicillin-clavulanic and cefotaxime, and amoxicillin, but the second isolate is still sensitive to extended spectrum and new generation of β-lactam, amoxicillin-clavulanic acid and cefotaxime, respectively. 4. discussion meat of animal is sterile and does not contain any bacteria [20], but it can be contaminated after slaughtering. the sources of meat contamination are variable starting from post slaughter processing until it arrives to the markets and home kitchens. bacterial contamination may come from intestinal content of the the animal during visceral removal or sources from environment including butcher’s hands, tools and transportation equipments [21, 22, 23]. meat is a good source of food, carbon, nitrogen and energy, for bacteria growth and meat bearing pathogens leads to transmitting of pathogens to human, causeing infection and intoxication [24]. proteus is one of the bacterial pathogens that transmit from animal meats and causes infection in human. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) | 26 it has been found through different studies that food born proteus leads to diseases in human such as uti, rheumatic arthritis, and hospital acquired wound infection [25, 26, 27]. in this study, the rate of proteus in animal meat was 75.8% and it shows the risk of zoonotic diseases in sulaimani city. meat of different animals contains proteus species and it shows the existence of zoonotic pathogen in markets and makes a public health concern. the common type of proteus in meat in sulamani city was p. mirabilis, 75.8%. proteus mirabilis is one of the common causes of a hospital acquired human infection among other proteus species so it attracts a public health concern more than other species [27]. this study agrees with other international studies that p. mirabilis is the most common species in raw meat of different animals [28, 29, 30, 31]. isolates of proteus in this study showed a complete resistance (100%) to the most common antibiotics, tetracycline, rifampin, and doxycycline. in addition, multi drug resistance were found in all isolates for many types of antimicrobial especially tetracycline, rifampin, and doxycycline, and tobramycin. a high percentage of bacterial resistance towards tetracycline is comparable with previous studies [32, 33]. appearing drug resistances against trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole) and ciprofloxacine is of significantly important because they are known to be used as common and very affective antibacterial agents against gram negative bacteria [19]. similar multi drug resistance have been found against other gram negative bacteria globally [34, 35]. moreover, resistance was found in this study against common 𝛽𝛽lactam antibiotics, amoxicillin, amoxicillin-clavulanic acid. this is significantly important because these antibiotics are used against wide ranges of proteus infection in human [36]. the existence of 𝛽𝛽-lactamase gene is significantly important and it’s a health concern. this enzyme destroys 𝛽𝛽-lactam ring of antibiotics and enable the bacteria to resist common 𝛽𝛽-lactam ring antibiotics. six of these resistance genes were known as common 𝛽𝛽-lactamase resistance genes, (blatem-1, blacmy, blacmy2, blashv, blaoxa, and blactx) [19] and they were investigated in this study in proteus species. a specific set of primers used to amplify these genes specifically using polymerase chain reaction in two groups of multiplex pcr. out of 29 proteus isolates, three isolates (10.3%) were positive to blatem and two isolates (6.8%) were positive to blashv resistance genes. all five resistance genes were found in p. mirablis (100%) and none of them was recorded in p. vulgaris (0%). none of the other four resistance genes, blacmy, blacmy2, blaoxa, and blactx, was reported in this study. isolates bearing blatem and blashv showed multidrug resistance to many beta lactam antibiotics, amoxicillin and amoxicillin-clavulanic acid cefotaxime. so in this study, blatem and to blashv were the commonly reported resistance genes are in proteus species and they exist only in p. mirabilis. the rate of 𝛽𝛽-lactamase genes is less common in proteus species than in other gram negative bacteria [37, 38]. this study agrees with previous finding to report the presence of 𝛽𝛽-lactamase genes in proteus species [39, 40]. in general, there were no 𝛽𝛽-lactamase resistance genes reported in many studies [37] or its less commonly reported [34], but five isolates of proteus (17.2%) were found in sulaimany city. this is clinically importance and it is alarming because it hits the value of many 𝛽𝛽-lactam antibiotics and impose the patients to face difficulty in treatment. this study strongly agrees with the finding in karbala city in iraq which reported the highly occurrence of both resistance genes, blatem and blashv, in proteus mirablis [41]. 5. conclusion the 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[41] ts. barrak, ka. yasamin, and ma. muhannad, “molecular and bacteriologic study of β-lactam resistance proteus mirabilis associated with urinary tract infection in holy karbala province, iraq,” j. pharm. sci. and res. vol. 10(3), 2018, 549-555, 2018.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq improved image compression scheme using hybrid encoding algorithm yusra ahmed salih aree ali mohammed loay edwar george database technology department computer science department remote sensing and gis department college of informatics college of science college of science sulaimani polytechnic university university of sulaimani university of baghdad university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq baghdad, iraq yusra.salih@spu.edu.iq aree.ali@univsul.edu.iq loayedwar57@scbaghdad.edu.iq volume 4 issue 2 december 2019 doi: 10.24017/science.2019.2.9 received: 28 august 2019 accepted: 24 october 2019 abstract a color image compression is the most challenging task in the field of multimedia. during last decades several techniques are developed for improving the quality, coding time and compression ratio using different coding strategies. in this work, an effective compression method for hybrid images is proposed based on the discrete wavelet transformation and hybrid encoding algorithm (huffman and spiht). this paper's primary participation is to take advantage of the hybrid encoding technique to maintain the quality of the reconstructed image and the reduction of time complexity. the sample test images are taken from both standard image database and highquality images (sd and hd). the performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated by using different metrics such as (psnr, compression ratio and encoding time). test results indicate that the time and compression ratio of encoding are improved in the expense of the image quality. keywords: hybrid coding, dwt, adaptive quantization, psnr, compression ratio, encoding time. 1. introduction image compression is a distinctive picture transmission option because of the limitation of the channel bandwidth and the request for fast transmission. the increasing of spatial and color resolution is required to obtain the high-quality image. for saving these images the problem of the storage limitation is also faced. for the above reasons the image compression plays an important role. an immense amount of information that existed on the on-line websites can be shown in either graphical or pictorial in the nature. therefore, applying compression algorithm on the data proceeding storage and/or transmission is one of the crucial real-world and kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 91 considerable concern [1]. compression method is split into compression of data and multimedia compression [2]. multimedia has a large storage size that requires plenty of time to upload and download over a network. multimedia can be represented by different elements such as (image, video, audio, etc.,) files. image compression can be implemented in both spatial and frequency domain for separating the objects (energy compaction) from the background (noise) [3]. for image compression, frequency transformation shows better compression ratio than the spatial domain. it is possible to classify compression methods either lossless or lossy technique [4]. the lossless compression especially helpful in picture archiving and makes it possible to compress and decompress the picture without loss of any data; the recreated image is identical to the original image. the lossy compression increases the compression ratio with some quality degradation relative to the original image [5]. lossy compression has a broad variety of uses such as (television transmission, video conferencing, and facsimile transmission, etc.,) in these circumstances specific amount of error is acceptable. image compression is intended to eliminate the number of bits required to represent an image. lossless image compression is determined by the low compression ratio while in lossy compression algorithms the coded image acquires a high compression ratio based on human visual properties [6, 7]. in [8] the compression-based transformation has a low computational complexity and capable of accumulating the lowest number of coefficients of signal energy. there is (dft) discrete fourier transform, (dwt) discrete wavelet transform, and (dct) discrete cosine transform based compression method with reversible, linear, corresponding and continues power characteristics. [9]. recently, most research in image encoding has focused on the discrete wavelet transform (dwt). discrete wavelet transform is basically partitioning the image into four various frequency bands (ll, lh, hl and hh) where the ll sub-band represents the image approximation while the hh sub-band represents the detail and the noise in the image [10]. dwt provides adaptive spatial-frequency resolution that is relevant to the characteristics of human visual system (hvs). it can provide better image quality than dct, especially when the compression ratio is greater [11]. set partitioning in hierarchical trees (spiht) coding algorithm presented by said and pearlman [12] is a very effective technique for image compression based on wavelet transforms. spiht is an enhanced and expand version of embedded zero tree wavelet (ezw) encoding algorithm. it affords an embedded bit stream from which the best reconstructed images in the mean square error sense can be take out at various bit rates [13]. the rest of the paper is organized as follows; in section 2, the related works are described. in section 3 the proposed algorithm is presented through different phases. in section 4 and 5 test results of the proposed scheme are evaluated and discussed. finally, the main conclusions are outlined in section 6. 2. related work l.b jaffar et al. [14] have performed a comparative analysis of dct and dwt image compression. an experimental result showed, dwt algorithms do better than dct algorithm algorithms. the most distinctive feature of using dwt and inverse dwt, it’s not just going to compress an image efficiently, but will also help maintain the image quality as it was in its original form, which was hardly possible in other image compression techniques earlier. h.p jagadish and m.k lohit [15] have presented dwt and dct implementation lossy based techniques with the huffman encoding algorithm. test results have indicated the high quality of reconstructed image (psnr) compared to the previous algorithms. experimental findings showed that a compression ratio of up to 0.8456 is achieved. j. chunlei and s. shuxin [16] have proposed a hybrid compression technique that makes use of both fractal concept and spiht concept. experimental results presented that the hybrid image compression algorithm not only increases the coding efficiency and the quality of the reconstructed image but also the encoding time of an image was reduced. b. sunil and s. shipra [17] have proposed a hybrid approach to compression which consists of two stages. at first, a highpass filter, filters the image to get the regions with information. later, a huffman-based hybrid system and adaptive interpolation are kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 92 used to encode the original picture. the obtained compression ratio was enough high, however, psnr and ssim are better than other available techniques. results showed that for the same compression ratio, it provides better quality images than jpeg2000. l. wei et al. [18] have presented the spiht and huffman combination coding approach. the experimental results showed that the method has saved a lot of bits in transmission for further enhancing the compression performance. k. chandrashekhar and s. monisha [19] have developed compression of images using integrated waveletbased image coding methods such as ezw, spiht and modified spiht in combination with huffman encoder for further compression. simulation results indicated that the hybrid algorithm bring a better psnr values at low bit rates. a.m. aree and a.h jamal [20] have developed hybrid schemes (dwt and dct) for image-based compression. they used distinct compression thresholds for the wavelet coefficients of each dwt band (ll and hh) to obtain a greater compression ratio while applying dct transform on (hl and lh) band. encoding entropy (variable shift coding) is used to encode the coefficients. experimental findings showed that the hybrid dwt and dct can greatly improve the encoding efficiency algorithm. a.n. ahmed and h. hussain [21] have proposed a compression technique based on the dwt transformation. in which the redundancy of dwt detail coefficients is reduced by the threshold and by huffman encoding further reduced. the quality of the compressed images was assessed using certain variables such as cr and psnr. experimental findings showed that the proposed method supplied a sufficiently greater compression ratio compared with other thresholds methods. r. bhawna et al. [22] have carried out a comparative study of compression algorithm jpeg and spiht.with distinct compression ratios, distinct kinds of normal test images are regarded. some objective picture quality measurements such as psnr, maximum difference (md), least mean square error (lmse), structural similarity index (ssim) and picture quality scale (pqs) are used to assess image quality. the comparison is based on the outcomes for all above measurements. compression based on spiht obtained better outcomes for all the quality parameters compared to jpeg. j.p.smitha and p.g. jayanand [23] have made a comparative analysis of compression methods. performance test results showed that the run length encoding (rle) is lossless method and can preserve the image quality but cannot be applied to medical images because it has a very low compression ratio. jpeg coder efficiency performs at average bitrates for a reduced compression ratio dct-based picture, due to the artifacts from the blockbased dct system, image quality passes down at greater compression ratios. on the other hand, at low bit rates, waveletbased coding offers significant improvements in image quality due to overlapping baseline functions and improved wavelet transform energy compaction attribute. spiht is the most effective method as regarding of compression ratio and psnr value. despite the rise in compression degree, spiht maintains the image quality well. 3. methods and materials a modern compression system for images based on a hybrid (spiht and huffman) encoding using dwt and adaptive quantization is proposed. the main contribution of the proposed scheme is to improve the compression ratio of the picture while maintaining the quality of the reconstructed image, and reducing encoding time especially for high quality images. this describes the steps of the suggested technique as follows:  convert input color image from rgb into yuv color space.  apply dwt to the y component that decompose the gray picture into four distinct subbands (ll, hl, lh, hh) while adding the u, v parts in the reconstruction stage.  perform adaptive quantization according to the wavelet bands. the approximation band (ll) is quantized with a small quantization step whereas the details sub-bands (hl,lh,hh) are quantized with a larger quantization step. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 93  encoding the quantized ll band with the huffman coding to preserve the reconstructed image quality (i.e., psnr).  encoding the quantized other bands using spiht algorithm to reduce encoding time and increase the compression ratio.  the output of the above steps is a compressed image.  to reconstruct the original image from the compressed image, each sub-band is applied to decode, dequantize, idwt, and reverse color conversion. the algorithm's overall block diagram is shown in figure 1. figure 1: general block diagram of hybrid image compression scheme. 3.1 compression steps in this section the necessary steps to compress a color image are described in detail as follows: 3.1.1 color space conversion (rgb to yuv) using the yuv color space can be helpful for image/video compression. it encodes a color image / video that takes into consideration human eye characteristics that allow decreased bandwidth for parts of chrominance without perceptual distortions. equations shown below are used to perform the color space conversion from rgb to yuv. 𝑌 = 0,299 ∗ 𝑅 + 0,587 ∗ 𝐺 + 0,114 ∗ 𝐵 (1) 𝑈 = −0,14713 ∗ 𝑅 − 0,28886 ∗ 𝐺 + 0,436 ∗ 𝐵 (2) 𝑉 = 0,615 ∗ 𝑅 − 0,51499 ∗ 𝐺 − 0,10001 ∗ 𝐵 (3) an example of converting the rgb color space into yuv is demonstrated in figure 2. figure 2: color space conversion rgb2yuv. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 94 3.1.2 forward discrete wavelet transforms (fdwt) on y-component, the first level dwt is implemented. this creates four separate sub-bands. low-pass ll band and three high-passes (hl-vertical, lh-horizontal and hh-diagonal) bands. the ll band includes coefficients of approximation, while the rest of the sub-bands have detailed coefficients as shown in figure 3. figure 3: fdwt applied on y-component. 3.1.3 adaptive quantization adaptive quantization step is applied at the cost of image quality to the sub-band coefficients produced by the fdwt in order to reduce the number of bits needed to represent them. the output is a sequence of integer numbers which have to be encoded bit-by-bit. the quantization steps according to different bands are tuning to control the quality of reconstructed image. for the high compression ratio, the large quantization step is required but this lead to degrade the image quality and the technique will be lossy. with no quantization step the compression is lossless. in order to maintain the image quality, the approximation coefficients (ll) need the smaller step of quantization than the detailed coefficients. 3.1.4 hybrid encoding technique firstly, a huffman encoding algorithm is applied on the approximation coefficients to take the advantage of compressing the image data in a lossless manner while the image quality is preserved. secondly, the spiht encoding algorithm is performed on the detailed coefficients which can be helpful for reducing the encoding time. finally, the total encoded bit stream obtained from both the huffman and spiht encoding techniques can be transmitted or stored for further processing. figure 4 represents the block diagram of the compression steps. 3.2 decompression stage this stage is used for reconstructing the original image. it started by applying the hybrid decoding (huffman and spiht) algorithms, followed by the inverse adaptive quantization method to retain the transformed coefficients (approximation and detailed). to convert the transformed coefficients from frequency into spatial domain the first level of inverse discrete wavelet transformation (idwt) is applied. finally, the color space conversion for yuv to rgb is performed to get the original image. in figure 5, the block diagram of the inverse compression steps is shown. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 95 figure 4: forward compression block diagram. figure 5: inverse compression block diagram. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 96 4. results in this section, the test sample images and the involved parameters which affect the quality, the compression ratio and computational time are illustrated in the next sub sections. 4.1. test samples the implementation of the proposed hybrid compression scheme will be tested on the set of images including sd and hd qualities as shown in figure 6. image type, file sizes and the resolutions are illustrated in table 1: table 1: test sample images no. image type resolution bpp. 1 lenna.bmp sd 512 × 512 24 2 peppers.bmp sd 512 × 512 24 3 baboon.bmp sd 512 × 512 24 4 rose.bmp hd 1280 × 720 24 5 bird.bmp hd 1280 × 720 24 6 grape.bmp hd 1280 × 720 24 figure 6: test sample images. 4.2 quality measure parameters to evaluate the objective quality between the uncompressed and reconstructed images, psnr is determined. for calculating the compression gain, compression ratio between uncompressed and compressed image size is used. finally, the computation time is obtained through encoding and decoding time. 4.2.1 peak signal to noise ratio the calculation of psnr is based on equation 4:          mse psnr 2 10 255 log10 (4) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 97 where mse is the mean squared error between the input image ijx and the output image ijy of the size nm  , which is calculated by the equation 5:        m i n j ijij yx nm mse 1 2 1 1 (5) 4.2.2 compression ratio the following formula is used to determine the cr: image compressed of size image original of size cr (6) 4.2.3 test results without quantization in this section, the result of psnr, cr, encoding, and decoding time is presented for both sd and hd images. table2 shows the simulation results for psnr and cr without performing quantization while in table 3 the encoding and decoding processing time are shown. in table 2 and 3, the first level of wavelet decomposition is applied on the tested images. in table 4 and 5, the effect of the wavelet band levels for the same performance parameters as mentioned in table 2 and 3 are presented. the tests are performed using only the proposed hybrid scheme. table 2: psnr and cr for different coding schemes. table 3: encoding and decoding time for different encoding technique. image name huffman spiht hybrid psnr cr psnr cr psnr cr lenna 57.88 2.04 42.26 5.48 44.76 3.03 peppers 57.15 1.97 42.03 5.44 43.54 2.8 baboon 57.19 1.58 35.71 5.59 40.24 2.66 rose 57.69 5.2 28.43 21.18 43.85 8.29 bird 57.34 4.75 21.19 21.19 42.49 8.35 grape 57.86 4.42 27.81 21.29 41.00 7.21 image name huffman spiht hybrid et dt et dt et dt lenna 31.19 28.76 7.12 3.94 17.12 13.9 peppers 32.03 29.69 7.16 3.95 17.81 14.48 baboon 39.88 36.75 7.73 4.62 19.49 16.28 rose 44.62 42.14 7.7 3.03 22.26 17.09 bird 49.92 46.93 8.14 3.04 24.35 19.12 grape 53.42 50.64 7.45 2.8 26.89 21.18 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 98 table 4: psnr and cr for different levels of dwt. table 5: et and dt for different levels of dwt. 4.2.4 test results using adaptive quantization the adaptive quantization steps are applied on the entire bands (ll, lh, hl and hh) for different dwt levels of decomposition. in table 6, the results of psnr and cr are given only for sd image whereas in table 7 the same results are presented for hd image. in both tables, to maintain the quality of the reconstructed image, the quantization step performing on the ll band is equal to one. according to the table 6, the hybrid method is optimal in terms of psnr and cr for different wavelet levels. when the quantization step is increased the psnr is decreased while the cr is increased. however, when the same method is applied on the hd image the relation between psnr and cr is not optimal for different quantization steps. to overcome this problem, another quantization step is found based on the log2 of the maximum value in each band (approximation and details) separately as described by the equation 7. where cij represent the dwt coefficients. table 8 presents the effect of the new quantization step on the psnr and cr for hd image and compared with one that there is no quantization |))((|log 2 ij cmaxq  (7) table 6: effect of adaptive quantization on psnr and cr for sd image. image name level-1 decomposition level-2 decomposition level-3 decomposition psnr cr psnr cr psnr cr lenna 44.76 3.03 42.5 4.48 42.24 4.73 peppers 43.54 2.80 42.31 4.42 42.06 4.71 baboon 40.24 2.66 39.65 3.92 35.8 5.24 rose 43.85 8.29 38.35 13.18 34.04 16.74 bird 42.49 8.35 37.13 12.77 36.48 16.01 grape 41.00 7.21 35.27 12.35 30.87 16.45 image name level-1 decomposition level-2 decomposition level-3 decomposition et dt et dt et dt lenna 17.12 13.9 10.24 6.97 7.46 4.76 peppers 17.81 14.48 9.67 6.98 7.73 4.99 baboon 19.99 16.39 13.19 9.69 8.63 5.88 rose 22.26 17.09 11.12 6.72 7.47 3.25 bird 24.35 19.12 11.71 7.06 8.17 3.84 grape 26.89 21.18 12.44 7.87 7.67 3.44 q.steps level-1 decomposition level-2 decomposition level-3 decomposition psnr cr psnr cr psnr cr 5 41.52 3.69 40.94 5.12 40.66 5.46 10 37.54 4.34 36.46 6.54 36.11 7.13 15 35.98 4.46 34.48 6.85 34.03 7.5 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 99 table 7: effect of adaptive quantization on psnr and cr for hd image. table 8: hybrid method results with and without quantization for hd image. 5. discussion compression techniques such as huffman, spiht and hybrid (huffman and spiht) are applied on a set of standard and hd images. from the outcomes acquired, it is shown that the drawback of using spiht for reconstructed hd images is the low value of psnr while huffman coding for all images (sd+hd) requires more encoding time. the proposed hybrid coding scheme improves the quality of the images with high psnr values at lower bitrates compared to the previous methods. the psnr and cr values of the images with the three techniques are mentioned above in table 2 and table 3 for one level of wavelet decomposition. the same tests are performed for different wavelet levels. results indicate that the psnr has an optimal value in level one whereas the cr is getting higher value in level three with a significant reduction of encoding time. another improvement in psnr, cr and et is added through the adaptive quantization which is applying on the entire wavelet bands. results in table6 and table7 show that the value of cr is increased for both sd and hd images while preserving the quality of reconstructed image with an acceptable value of psnr. finally, the optimal cr value is achieved with the proposed method is 17.52 for the hd image ‘rose. bmp’ with the psnr 36.89 db.as indicated in table 8. figure 7 illustrates the quality values of the original and reconstructed sd and hd images for our proposed schemes using quantization step. table 9: psnr vs. cr between proposed and previous. q.steps level-1 decomposition level-2 decomposition level-3 decomposition psnr cr psnr cr psnr cr 5 45.06 8.14 40.77 12.93 36.4 16.52 10 42.12 9.13 40.77 12.93 36.4 16.52 15 40.81 9.23 38.67 13.15 34.36 16.71 decomposition levels without quantization with quantization psnr cr psnr cr level-1 43.85 8.3 42.18 12.7 level-2 38.35 13.18 38.01 15.86 level-3 34.04 16.74 36.89 17.52 image name spiht ref. [24] proposed psnr cr psnr cr psnr cr lenna 38.49 54.93 40.27 84.78 40.67 81.87 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 100 from table 9, the cr o f the suggested techniq ue is noted, for the lenna image is equal to 81.87 that are between 54.93 of the conventional spiht and 84.78 in b. kranthi et al. [24]. this result is acceptable because there is an improvement in the psnr value. psnr improvement of 5.66% is achieved compared to the conventional spiht. figure 7:psnr comparison with and without quantization: (a) original image lenna, (b)reconstructed image with-out q, psnr=42.24 db, (c) reconstructed image with q, psnr=36.34 db, (d) original image (rose),(e) reconstructed image without q, psnr=43.85 db, (f) reconstructed image with q, psnr=36.89 db. 6. conclusion a hybrid (standard and high definition) image compression system based on dwt and hybrid (huffman + spiht) coding algorithm is suggested in this research work. this method is tested on different images using distinct wavelet decomposition levels (first, second and third). to reduce the number of bits needed to represent the transformed wavelet coefficients an adaptive quantization is applied. conducted results indicate that, the cr value equal to17.52 with (psnr=36.89db) for hd image. while for the standard image the cr value equal to 6.54 with (psnr=36.46db). the encoding time for the proposed scheme is decreased from 7.46 s to 4.16 seconds for the lenna image. 7. future works the future work will be using more sophisticated techniques to improve the compression ratio for hd images (2k,4k and 8k) while preserving the quality of reconstructed image. another point will be the benchmarking of the proposed method using the same datasets, working toward the implementation of the proposed hybrid encoding techniques (huffman + spiht) for the h.265 video encoding standard and the encoding of videos with fast object movements. references [1] a.s. mohammad, c.a. white, h. gundrum, "sub band image compression using wavelet transform and vector quantization," in proceedings of 39th ieee conferences on circuits and systems, vol. 2, pp. 659 – 662,1996. 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[22] r. bhawna, b. rakesh, b.lsavina, "comparison of jpeg and spiht image compression algorithms using objective quality measures," in proceedings of ieee conference on multimedia, signal processing and communication technologies, pp. 90 – 93,2009. [23] j.p. smitha, p.g. jayanand, "performance analysis of medical image compression techniques, "in proceedings of 3rd asian himalayas international conference on internet, pp. 1 – 4,2012. [24] b. kranthi, m. krishna, b. kamaraju, b. rajasekhar, "enhanced image compression algorithm for image processing applications," international journal of computer science and information technologies, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 1509-1515, 2014. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) journal homepage: http://www.spu.edu.iq/kjar issn 2411-7684 (print) – 2411-7706 (online) march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 76 kjar short article evaluating e-court services using the usability tests model case study: civil court case management sarkhell nawroly1, hozan hama rashid1, soran saeed1*, nizar ali1 1department of computer sciences, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, kurdistan region, iraq. *corresponding author: soran.saeed@spu.edu.iq received│november 21, 2016 accepted│march 13, 2016 abstract electronic court (e-court) is an initiative to deliver services to citizens and court agencies (mainly lawyers). it enables citizen to view information and court agencies to access court services through online services. its implementation has improved the efficiency of governance and court services in sulaimani. however, it is the first evaluation study on the e-court to reveal the facilities of the e-court system using the usability test model. this paper aims to evaluate the e-court services in sulaimani by using usability test and analysis. the usability test model consists of four main parts which include effectiveness, efficiency, learnability and satisfaction. effectiveness test; means whether a particular task can be done by users. simply, test for efficiency; means doing the task fast without getting frustrated. learnability test; focuses on the number of clicks to accomplish tasks and errors that participants make during the test, this can be used to measure learnability. simply, all participants vote by rate to determine the level of satisfaction. generally, satisfaction can be defined as to what extent it is enjoyable or pleasant. a specific test is conducted to get data then the data is analysed based on usability tests model. in the test; five different tasks are given to five users. all the tests are recorded. the test only applied to the civil court as a pilot due to all the courts work in the similar process. key words: e-court, effectiveness, efficiency, learnability and satisfaction. introduction e-court is a strategy for less developed countries, like iraq, as sulaimani city is a part of krg-iraq, to improve the quality, efficiency, transparency and effectiveness in their services. in addition, e-court has the potential to build better relation between the courts and its constituents (jin-fu and duo, 2009). moreover, it will be able to facilitate towards the achievement of the economic, reduce load, environment in sulaimani; the initiative has to some extend increase the efficiency of the court in providing better services to its citizens. however, low acceptance against high investment considered the introduction of ecourt is a strategy that needs to be optimized (mait, 2008) (carter and belanger, 2004). even though the court has increased efforts to promote usage among court staff, to promote http://www.spu.edu.iq/kjar mailto:soran.saeed@spu.edu.iq kjar short article civil court case management, sarkhell et al, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 77 usage among court staff, the acceptance rate remains low. perceived barriers and benefits influence the agreement rate which include factors such as culture change, and low it skills. the level of court staff satisfaction will consequently be a vital indicator to further usage and adoption on a large scale basis, by using the usability tests model, this paper will thus evaluate the user satisfaction towards e-court services. the implementation of e-court in sulaimani began in 2014; the budget of the e-court system is provided by sulaimani governorate and implemented by the aktors, the estonian company, also it is monitoring by sulaimani governorate it board. the vision of e-court focuses on effectively and efficiently delivering services from the court to the citizens of sulaimani, enabling the court to become more responsive to the needs of its citizens (mampu, 2009). the sulaimani court has 7 court parts; their descriptions are shown in (table 1). research paper model the usability tests model has been formulated with the aim of providing a scale of the evaluation on e-court, which is a web based system, to expose the level of satisfaction derived by the users (horan and abhichandani, 2006). the model includes four categories (effectiveness, efficiency, learnability, and satisfaction). effectiveness is the rate of the completed uncompleted tasks by the users. efficiency means conducting tasks without problems. learnability test focuses on the number of clicks to accomplish tasks and errors that participants make during the test. the level of satisfaction is voted by all the participants then the rate is determined (user focus (n,d) 2012). the usability testing is shown below in the (figure 1). figure 1: usability testing (source: group quality). materials and methods a test was used as an instrument to collect primary data from respondents. this section provides the details about the data collection procedure from using the e-court system and data analysis method 4.1 data collection we apply user testing in this research; we give tasks to the users then record the process throughout the testing for each user. table 2 shows the tasks that given to the users. task 1 -5 (explanation) 1: the first task is about registering or recording a new case in the court. 2: the second task; is to find a registered case based on its name, the name should be registered. 3: the third task deal with searching for a recorded case based on its type and then finding the necessary case. 4: the fourth task is about changing the appointment of a case which means to change the date of a case to another date later. kjar short article civil court case management, sarkhell et al, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 78 table 1: description of e-court application. court registry data c iv il p ri m a ry prime register case number, names of participants, places of residence, type of case, name of judge, case summary; daily register case number, hearing date, hour/minute, names of participants, case type, notes fees register the fees collected by the court in the lawsuits and matters emanating therefrom shall be recorded in this register. register of legal distributions date of entry, case number/letter number, name of court (to), signature register of decisions (separate registry of urgent decisions) case number, date (month), names of participants, date of decision, register of incoming cases from the court of appeal case number, names of participants, result of the appeal court proceeding register of outgoing cases to the court of appeal case number, date of referral, the name of the court (to) register of incoming and outgoing letters/register of files/register of documents date, number of the case, place of issue, document number, date of the document, subject of the document, attachment, notes, recipient and date of delivery for outgoing documents (e.g. judgments) register of notifications number of the case, court, the date of the suit’s notification to be notified to the plaintiff and the defendant, the date specified for attendance before the court, the nature of the suit and the date of delivery, the summoner. the register of trusts all bonds/securities and other sums deposited in the court’s treasury and the name of the depositor and the suits’ numbers shall be registered herein. the depositor shall be given a receipt of payment. table 2: illustrate test of a number of tasks conduct by the users for primary court. tasks 1 add new case 2 find someone’s case under name ( for example: hawkar kamaran ali) 3 search for a registered case based its type 4 change the appointment of any case 5 show the total number of registered cases from 01/06/2015 01/11/2015 kjar short article civil court case management, sarkhell et al, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 79 4: the fourth task is about changing the appointment of a case which means to change the date of a case to another date later. 5: the last task is about showing the list of cases by using different parts such as loan and by the name of the judge in between two dates. results and data analysis effectiveness testing effectiveness means whether a particular task can be done by users (liu et al. 2010). after the test was finished, all participants accomplished task1 (add new case) and task 3 (search for a registered case based its type). three out of five 60% completed task 5 (show the total number of registered cases from 01/06/2015 01/11/2015). only the 3rd and the 5th participant were able to accomplish all the tasks. table 3 illustrates a ratio of completed tasks and the number of accomplished tasks. approximately, all of the tasks are achieved. consequently, the web application of e-court is effective. table 3: shows the result of effectiveness analysis. efficiency testing the smart phone video recording software recorded the time when participants did the tasks. some tasks were more difficult to complete than the others. the statistics in (table 4) reveal the average time spent on tasks in minute. it can be clearly seen that the average time to complete the first task takes more time than the other tasks which is 9 minutes and 20 seconds. however, task 5 consumes the least time to achieve it which is 2 minutes and 27 seconds in average. the average time on task 2 and task 3 take nearly the same time to finish which is 2 minutes and a half. on the other hand, task 4 takes under 4 minutes to accomplish. secondly, not much difference between the average time to accomplish task 2, 3, 4 and 5. also, task 1 approximately needs time to achieve as much as the other tasks. to sum up, the library website is efficient enough due to it does not take a long time to conduct some routine tasks. participant task 1 task 2 task 3 task 4 task 5 finished tasks 1 √ √ √ √ 4 2 √ √ √ √ 4 3 √ √ √ √ √ 5 4 √ √ √ √ 4 5 √ √ √ √ √ 5 success 5 5 4 5 3 completion rates 100% 100% 80% 100% 60% kjar short article civil court case management, sarkhell et al, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 80 table 4: illustrates the average time on tasks. tasks p1 p2 p3 p4 p5 avg time on tasks task 1 10.2 9.0 8.8 9.0 9.0 9.2 task 2 3.0 2.3 2.0 2.3 1.5 2.2 task 3 3.0 2.2 2.2 2.1 1.4 2.2 task 4 6.0 5.3 1.6 2.0 2.5 3.5 task 5 3.0 2.0 1.5 1.5 1.4 2.3 sum of time 25.0 20.8 16.0 16.8 15.8 avg of sum=18.88 learnability testing the number of clicks to accomplish tasks and errors that participants make during the test can be used to measure learnability (yaghoubi et al., 2011). the sum of the number of clicks for all of the four tasks was hit a peak with participant 1 which is just under 110 clicks. however, the total number of clicks hit a low with the 4th participant and which is nearly 95 clicks. on the other hand, all the participants make mistakes or errors while doing the test especially on task 3 and 5. the summation of errors made by participant 2 and 3 is the same which is 5 mistakes, whereas, the 4th participant just made 4 mistakes. the difference between mistakes of 1st and 5th participant is only 1 mistake. overall, based on the table and analysis; the ecourt system is learnable because the number of mistakes and errors are tiny. however, all participants made mistakes on task 3 and 5. the data in (table 5) shows the number and summation of clicks and errors made by the participants. table 5: shows the numbers and summation of clicks and errors. tasks clicks/p1 p2 p3 p4 p5 error by p1 p2 p3 p4 p5 task 1 53 52 49 45 46 1 0 0 0 1 task 2 13 12 10 11 13 1 1 0 0 1 task 3 15 13 14 13 14 3 2 3 2 2 task 4 14 13 10 11 12 0 0 0 0 0 task 5 12 12 11 13 11 3 2 2 2 3 sum of clicks/errors 107 102 94 93 96 8 5 5 4 7 kjar short article civil court case management, sarkhell et al, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 81 satisfaction testing simply, all participants vote by rate to determine the level of satisfaction. generally, satisfaction can be defined as to what extent it is enjoyable or pleasant (jiang 2009, horan, et al. 2006). the ratio in (table 6) illustrates the participants vote on each task. according to the vote rate and the above statistical equation, the average of the rate shows that all participants were satisfied with the web application of the e-court. table 6: shows the satisfaction rate. average bar = summation of avg / 5 = 97.52% participants task 1 task 2 task 3 task 4 task 5 p1 95% 98% 95% 98% 95% p2 100% 100% 95% 100% 95% p3 100% 100% 96% 100% 96% p4 100% 100% 96% 100% 92% p5 100% 100% 94% 100% 93% avg. rate 99% 99.6% 95.2% 99.6% 94.2% recommendations users recommendation  search purpose: e-court system need to match reference number of the document that came manually from outside the system as e-court system gives automatically their number.  search purpose: user might write important notes in the note field for any application forms, the search need to have an option to show a list of documents that have note written on.  search purpose: an option to search for waiting list cases, but did not give any results.  search purpose: search for reference number of document is the best way as it is not easy to look for arabic names as do not have unified spelling when it written in kurdish.  search and efficiency: search filtering need to be added by the user’s permission, even though the user can not open the other cases that been search for, but still show the whole list that take longer time to find what user want.  accuracy: clients still bring their document to staff to be scanned, and sometimes one paper document left in the scanner, to overcome this problem feeder scanner or some staff might work in scanning clients document before coming in outside the department office.  usability, efficiency and accuracy: more computer skills courses in general and on the system need it and typing training skill needs.  usability: some buttons need to be exchanged up to down as the original document of the court. increase training course for users.  usability: the system still accepts numeric in the field of names.  usability: change seen date of case takes longer kjar short article civil court case management, sarkhell et al, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 82 as expected, due to partially doing the process manually, staff have to print document and the judge seen it then sign it, and then come back to the staff to scan it into the system to record the new seen date, due to that the fully electronic system need to be implemented.  usability: the system does not bring summited back to edit it in case of any mistakes occur.  usability: even though some cases are submitted the final decisions, but still show in waiting field.  usability: need to draw some lines in the interface to distinguish between parts, for example: between complaint and the complaint on.  usability: explanation description on buttons in kurdish.  efficiency: developer work on the requested changes by the court in times of the day that not be a pick time work, not to be off line in that time.  efficiency: all staff has to inform of any changes happen to the system and the way the staff operate and with their permissions.  usability: the layout of the typist page has to be more user friendly with layout and font colour.  usability: close case option need to be informed where it goes, should add some categories while it held till next time opens again until the final decisions be made.  efficiency purpose: need fast scanners and more printers, especially in the court halls.  efficiency and accuracy: staff needs to organize their electronic document before the time on seen in the court halls.  user satisfaction: users are happy with the new system, but still do same job manually and electronically, manually do not need as the electronically hit the purpose. authors recommendation  weekly meeting needed to inform all staff what have changed by the system developers and what has staff are learned or experienced. then staff have a note book to write suggestions and questions and have they experienced to share it with the developers  digital signature needed to make the process fast, transparent, environmental and easier.  more course on it skills, on the interface and typing and more it support staff needed.  encourage staff by given appreciation letter, certificate and bonuses.  encourage academics from universities to do evaluation test and do publication on the system as it is beneficial for both of sides.  availability to access the e-court system by citizen to use the service online.  explain to staff who to ask for different issues, for example people who are dealing with it issue are different from software issue.  continuously interview users to get the usability test faster.  finance department: need an extra column of date next to the pay to know when it been paid.  encourage the users by giving certificates or bonus.  enhance queuing system as client might disturb kjar short article civil court case management, sarkhell et al, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 83 staff while working online that might cause mistake in entering information. expectation: this system might improve the convenience, accessibility and quality of interactions among users. moreover, it is expected to improve information flow, and processes within court agencies, to improve the speed and quality of policy development, and to improve coordination and enforcement (mampu, 2009, mait, 2008). conclusions citizen’s, agencies and staff satisfaction is an important indicator in giving a general idea as to how well the court has transformed its services in accordance with its citizen’s needs. the level of satisfaction will also be a vital indicator to further usage and adoption on a large scale basis. the usability test model presented in this paper the satisfaction of all participants. by the time the court staff will be much familiar with the system, learn from the mistakes and get more experience, and this experience add a great value to give better services in the limit time to their citizen, and government agencies. references jin-fu w. (2009) and h. duo, "customer-centered egovernment service quality evaluation: framework and case study," international colloquium on computing, communication, control, and management. mampu (2009) "“e-government malaysia: way forward”," 1 e-government conference. mait (2008). e-government in malaysia. available from: www.mait.com jiang x. (2009) "measurement of public satisfaction evaluation on egovernment: based on structural equation model," iita international conference on control, automation and systems engineering. liu y., et al. (2010) "customer satisfaction measurement model of egovernment service," service operations and logistics and informatics (soli), ieee. yaghoubi n. m. et al. (2011), "e-government and citizen satisfaction in iran: empirical study on ict offices," world applied sciences journal 12, 10841092. horan t. a. and abhichandani t. (2006) “evaluating user satisfaction in an e-government initiative: result of structural equation modeling and group discussions," journal of information technology management. xvii, 187-198. horan t. a., et al. (2006), "assessing user satisfaction of e-government services: development and testing of quality-in-use satisfaction with advanced traveler information systems (atis)," proceedings of the 39th hawaii international conference on system sciences. carter l. and belanger f. (2004), "citizen adoption of electronic government initiatives," in proceedings of the 37th hawaii international conference on system sciences. userfocus,(n,d),(2012).“usability testing” [online] available from: http://www.userfocus.co.uk/consultancy/usabilitytesti ng.html http://www.mait.com/ http://www.userfocus.co.uk/consultancy/usabilitytesting.html http://www.userfocus.co.uk/consultancy/usabilitytesting.html evaluating e-court services using the usability tests model case study: civil court case management sarkhell nawroly1, hozan hama rashid1, soran saeed1*, nizar ali1 abstract introduction materials and methods results and data analysis recommendations conclusions references  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 71 modelling and simulation of perturb and observe mppt algorithm based on the pi controller for photovoltaic system ahlam mohamad shakoor hersh hasan taha petroleum and energy kirkuk refinery department technical college of engineering north refineries company sulaimani polytechnic university ministry of oil sulaimani, iraq salah al-din, iraq ahlam.shakoor@spu.edu.iq herieshhassan@gmail.com article info abstract volume 7 issue 2 december 2022 doi: 10.24017/science.2022.2.6 article history: received: 19/06/2022 accepted: 20/11/2022 the most popular type of renewable energy is photovoltaic (pv) because it is a sustainable source and environmentally friendly. the power generated by a pv system varies with changes in ambient conditions such as temperature and sun radiation; therefore, tracking the maximum power generation from a photovoltaic system independent of temperature and radiation factors is very important. in the literature, a number of methods for achieving the maximum power point has been presented. in this study, the maximum power point tracking (mppt) system employing perturb and observe (p&o) algorithm is implemented based on the proportional and integral (pi) a controller on proposed pv system to harvest the highest power production from (pv) system and enhance the system performance. the proposed pv system is composed of a photovoltaic array, (dc to dc) boost type converter and an mppt algorithm utilizing perturb and observe method. 1soltech 1sth-220-p module type was chosen in this study for the simulation and proposed pv the array consists of 40 rows of pv modules connected in parallel, while each row consists of 10 modules connected in a series. matlab/simulink was used for stimulating all elements of the pv system. the proposed model is used to simulate and optimize the photovoltaic array output current, voltage and power features under various environmental conditions including solar temperature and radiation. the simulation results showed that maximum power point tracking approach using perturbation and observation provide high efficiency to get the highest energy from the pv system regardless of variations in environmental conditions. dc toward dc boost type converter with perfect performance and more voltage increase is also successfully simulated on the developed pv system. keywords: solar energy, a pv system, mppt technique, p & o technique, matlab/simulink, dc dc boost converter http://www.spu.edu.iq/ kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 72 1. introduction energy is a requirement around the world that contributes via economic progress and social development. human dependency on nonrenewable resources such as fossil fuel for the generation of energy has created several environmental problems, such as carbon emissions, ozone, depletion and global warming [1, 2]. over the last few years, energy policy and global warming have become major concerns on the global agenda. climate change is an important thing that developed countries are planning to handle. europe, for example, has set an objective to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 20% and generate at least 20% of its electricity from renewable sources [3]. to compensate for the damage caused by fuel consumption, it was directed to the consumption of an alternative source of energy, which is renewable energy resources, including hydro, solar, biomass, geothermal, tidal and wind [4]. renewable energy is now being employed to generate electricity, and its demand increases with increasing consumption of electricity. solar energy might be the most effective and the best of all renewable energy sources because it is the most sustainable, readily available, and cleanest energy source [1,5]. there are several applications for photovoltaic modules, including batteries, charging, water pumping, street lighting and grid-connected pv systems (hybrid systems). most solar panels have an efficiency of approximately 20%, which indicates that only 20% of the received solar energy is changed into electrical energy and that the amount of energy a person needs in one year is equal to the amount of energy that the sun gives off in one year [6, 7]. the photovoltaic conversion process allows converting solar energy into electricity without any environmental impacts and semiconductor materials such as germanium and uses silicon to perform photoelectric conversion [6]. improving photovoltaic system efficiency to increase the energy provided is an important factor because it will raise profits and reduce the price of generated electricity to match the price of energy generated from additional resources. the main component of a solar energy production system is the photovoltaic module. each unit consists of a series and parallel pv cells; these cells also consist of a p-n junction semiconductor device. the power generated by the pv module mainly depends on environmental conditions such as solar irradiation and cell temperature. therefore, under different environmental conditions, the unstable power generated has been obtained from a photovoltaic array, and nonlinear characteristics for the current and voltage are produced [2, 8]. as a result, the optimal operating point for generating maximum energy from a solar system varies, and achieving the maximum power value is required for extracting the highest level of energy from the photovoltaic (pv) of the system and then delivering that energy to the load. therefore, various algorithms for mppt have been applied to achieve the maximum power point (mpp), enhancing the performance and efficiency of the pv system and minimizing the cost [7,9, 10]. several algorithms are used to reach the highest level of energy generated from the photovoltaic system, including incremental conductance (ic), perturb and observe (p&o), the artificial neural network (ann), fuzzy logic, a fractional short circuit current and a fractional open circuit voltage [8, 9, 11]. among many methods for tracking the maximum power point of a photovoltaic system, the most frequently employed perturb observe (p&o) and incremental conductance due to its lower mpp tracking time, easy application and other economic aspects [8, 9, 12]. the pi controller-based perturb plus observe (p&o) algorithm was applied in the present research and represented programmatically using matlab/simulink software. in this technology, the controller changes the output voltage from the photovoltaic array by a small amount and detects the power. the controller continues to make further changes in the same path if the power generated increases until the power stops rising. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 73 2. modelling of pv array modelling photovoltaic arrays for various environmental conditions is very important in designing a pv system size and its mppt controllers. the main component of photovoltaic arrays is the photocell, which is a number of cells constructed in parallel and in series shapes to create the module [4, 11]. the single diode and double diode are the most common and popular photovoltaic modules [8]. the single diode module is used in this work to analyse the features of the pv modules. the single-diode identical circle diagram of a photovoltaic cell is presented in diagram 1. the main circuit involves a current basis (iph), a diode (d), shunt resistance (rsh) and series resistance (rs). figure 1: diagram of the schematic of a single-diode model equivalent circuit for a photovoltaic (pv) cell[8]. the equations of the pv module’s mathematical model characterizing the current-voltage (i-v) characteristics are given below [6,7, 9, 10]: 𝐈𝐩𝐯 = 𝐈𝐩𝐡 − 𝐈𝐝 − 𝐈𝐑𝐬𝐡 (1) 𝐈𝐩𝐡 = [𝐈𝐬 + 𝐊𝐢 (𝐓 − 𝐓𝐫)] 𝐆 𝐆𝐫 (2) 𝐈𝐝 = 𝐈𝐬 [𝐞𝐱𝐩( 𝐪(𝐕𝐩𝐯+𝐈𝐩𝐯𝐑𝐬) 𝐊𝐓𝐀 ) −𝟏] (3) 𝐈𝐬 = 𝐈𝐫𝐬( 𝐓 𝐓𝐫 )𝟑𝐞𝐱𝐩 [𝐪𝐄𝐠( 𝟏 𝐓𝐫 − 𝟏 𝐓 )] (4) 𝐈𝐫𝐬 = 𝐈𝐬𝐜/ [𝐞𝐱𝐩 ( 𝐪𝐕𝐨𝐜 𝐍𝐬𝐊𝐀𝐓 ) − 𝟏] (5) 𝐈𝐑𝐬𝐡 = (𝐕𝐩𝐯 + 𝐈𝐩𝐯𝐑 𝐬)/𝐑𝐬𝐡 (6) in this model, shunt resistance rsh has a negligible effect because its value is very high compared with the small value of series resistance rs; therefore, the current passing through shunt resistanceirsh can be neglected, and the output current of the pv module becomes: 𝐈𝐩𝐯 = 𝐍𝐩𝐈𝐩𝐡 − 𝐍𝐩𝐈𝐬 [𝐞𝐱𝐩( 𝐪(𝐕𝐩𝐯+𝐈𝐩𝐯𝐑𝐬) 𝐊𝐓𝐀𝐍𝐬 ) −𝟏] (7) where: a: diode ideality factor (1−1.5). ego: band gap energy (1-1.8 ev). g: solar irradiance, w/m2. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 74 iph: photo current measured by (a). ipv: photovoltaic array output current measured by (a). is: diode reverse saturation current measured by (a). isc: short circuit current of the pv module at 1000 w per m 2 and 25 degrees celsius. isr: the current is in reverse saturation at the reference temperature of the photovoltaic cell, a. k: boltzmann's constant (1.3805 * 10-23 j/k). ki: temperature coefficient of cell short circuit. np, ns: number of coupled, which are connected in (parallel and series) cells. q: electron charge value (1.6*10-19 c). rs: resistance in a series, ω. rsh: shunt resistance, ω. t: cell operating temperature, °c. tr: reference temperature (25 °c). voc: open circuit voltage, v. vpv: photovoltaic voltage, v. both p/v with i/v features of the photovoltaic system mainly depend on the temperature of the cells and solar irradiance. to display the nonlinear features of the photovoltaic module in various operational conditions, a 1soltech, 1sth-220-p module was chosen in this study for the simulation. the developed array consists of 400 modules (10 series connection modules & 40 parallel connection units), and each module contains 60 cells. the module parameters of the pv scheme under standard conditions are shown in table 1, while figure 2 shows the p/v and i/v characterization of the solar panel. table 1: photovoltaic module parameters. parameters symbol value output power for each module pout 218.871 w open circuit voltage voc 36.6 v short circuit current isc 7.97a mpp voltage vmp 29.3 v mpp current imp 7.47 a diode saturation current i0 2.9757*10-10 a diode ideality factor a 0.98928 shunt series rs 0.38174 ohms shunt resistance rsh 350.2415 ohms cells per module ncell 60 figure 2: p/v and i/v characteristic curves of photovoltaic modules[13]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 75 3. methods and materials 3.1.maximum power point tracking method (mppt) the maximum power point tracker, or mppt, is a dc-to-dc electronic converter that enhances matching between the load and pv panel. the mppt system modifies the electrical operating conditions of the panels so that they can supply the optimum amount of power. the mppt method compares the panel output and battery voltage. then, an algorithm is utilized for estimating the absolute extreme power that the solar system can produce [10, 14]. there are two groups that mppt algorithms can be divided into: traditional algorithms such as perturb and observe (p&o), incremental conductance (ic), and fractional short circuit current with fractional open circuit voltage, while the second group involves modern algorithms such as the artificial neural network (ann) and metaheuristic with fuzzy logic [6,10]. an effective mppt technique must include the following features [10]:  it must be able to accurately and truly present the universal maximum power point. an efficient pv system that uses precise mppt technology.  it must have a fast-tracking speed. pv systems with slow tracking speeds have less extracted power and are less efficient.  it must be willing to work effectively in both partial shade and a homogeneous insolation situation. under penumbral conditions, it is difficult to determine the maximum true global energy point because there are some local optimizations in the pv curves.  it must be independent of the system, meaning it must operate effectively with a variety of pv systems.  it must not be overly complicated. simplicity has its advantages.  the maximum power point should not oscillate around its desired value.  it must be able to harvest the maximum ppt point effectively after rapid changes in operating conditions such as irradiation and temperature. the photovoltaic array, dc-to-dc converter, mppt control algorithm and load make up the majority of the developed mppt system, as presented in figure 3. figure 3: diagram of the pv maximum power point tracking (mppt) system. 3.2. perturb and observe (p&o) control technique this technique is also known as the mppt "hill climb" method, which is one of the algorithms used in this study. to enhance the performance of mppt, adjustable perturb and observe technology was created on the basis of a proportional and integrated controller (pi). this makes pv array power converter (dc dc) load voltage & current sensing pwm generator controller mppt algorithm (p&o) kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 76 it possible to improve the ability of pv panels to transform solar energy into electrical power. the performance of the solar system changes depending on the amount of solar radiation. whenthe sunlight level is low, the pv panel cell efficiency is also low. the average efficiency is 12 percent. however, monocrystalline silicon cells may achieve up to 15percent efficiency. as a result, during irradiance variation, solar sheet systems need to be tuned to operate at extreme power generation [14]. the perturb and observe mppt approach is applied in this study to maintain the mpp point for changing degrees of radiation. this algorithm worked by increasing or decreasing (alarming periodically), including introducing a disturbance in the power operating voltage. both the current and voltage source are supplied to the photovoltaic cells to achieve the output power; the algorithm maintains the same direction (voltage increase) if the power is raised; otherwise, it changes the direction of movement. this approach is implemented at each step of the mpp tracing until the mpp is achieved. the algorithm automatically oscillates around the correct value once it reaches the mpp [5, 7, 9]. this indicates that the current or voltage changes in the opposite direction when the power decreases. the pv scheme is modelled using matlab/simulink, and the mppt algorithm is modelled using matlab/function system. the scheme of the perturb and observe algorithm used is shown in figure 4. figure 4: flow diagram of the perturb and observe (p&o) algorithm. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 77 the perturb & observe algorithm operates on the basic principle that on the maximum power value, the variation of photovoltaic power (δppv) and the variation of pv voltage (δvpv) become zero [15]. figure 5 shows thefundamental operation of the perturb and observe algorithm. figure 5: the operation concept of the perturbation and observation (p&o) algorithm [14]. 3.3. (dc to dc) boost power converter the direct current voltage produced by the photovoltaic array was unstable throughout the day due to variations in irradiation level and temperature. therefore,a uniform output voltage issuppliedfrom the photovoltaic system, which is connected to the dc-to-dc power converter and steps it up to a higher value required by the load. maximum power point tracking (mppt) is a load balancing issue, and a dc-to-dc power converter is required to modify the duty cycle to gain load resistance to the involvement resistance of the panel [6]. in this process, a boost converter is useful for stabilizing unbalanced voltage and adjusting the photovoltaic yield voltage. the dc-to-dc boost converter is designed to be 100% efficient; it states that the involvement power and the output power are equal, and when the mosfet is turned on, at this point, both the current source and inductor current source could be equal. to maintain the stability of the boost converter output voltage, the duty cycle is adjusted, which determinesthe output voltage rate of the solar pv system in each switching cycle. [4,16]. all publications [4, 5, 8, and 17] represented the output voltage of the boost converter as follows: 𝐕𝐎 = 𝐕𝐈 𝟏−𝐃𝐂 (8) where: vo:boost converter output voltage, v. vi:boost converter input voltage, v. dc:duty cycle (0-1). figure6 shows the main schematic sketch of a dc-to-dc boost converter. since the proportional & integral (pi) of the controller is operating, the output voltage and current may be regulated and brought back to their steady state levels after they were initially transient. in addition, it shows that the dc-to-dc boost converter works well when coupled to the battery charging system [18]. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 78 figure 6: dc-dc boost converter circuit diagram [16]. 4. results and discussion the major schematic sketch of the developed photovoltaic system is shown in figure 7, which was designed based on mathematical models using matlab/simulink. the simulation results for the pv module selected for this study are shown in figure 8. the results are shown with characteristics of p/v and i/v at a constant cell temperature at 25 degrees celsius and a different radiation level. the photovoltaic array consisting of 10 modules in series and 40 modules in parallel was also simulated under different operating conditions. figure 9 shows the p/v plus i/v features of the photovoltaic array at a constant cell temperature of 25degrees celsiusand different irradiances of 300 w/m2, 500 w/m2, 700 w/m2, and 1000 w/m2. figure 10 displays the characteristics of p/v plus i/v curves of a photovoltaic array with a constant irradiance of 1000 w/m2 and various cell temperatures of 15 °c, 25 °c, 40 °c, and50°c. the simulation results show that when the cell temperature is stabilized, the pv output current, voltage and power increase with increasing radiation and vice versa, while with increasing cell temperature and radiation stabilization, the pv output power, current and voltage decrease and vice versa. figure 7: photovoltaic system simulation model. pv array dc-dc boost converter kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 79 figure 8: photovoltaic module (1 soltech-1sth-220-p) i/v and p/v features influenced by solar radiation at 25 °c. figure 9: thei/v and p/v characteristic curves of the photovoltaic array (1 soltech-1sth-220-p, 10 modules in series and 40 modules in parallel) affected by solar radiation at 25 °c. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 80 figure 10: i/v and p/v characteristic curves of the photovoltaic array (1 soltech-1sth-220-p, 10 modules in series and 40 modules in parallel) affected by cell temperature at 1000w/m2. in this work, an mppt-based proportional and integral (pi) controller algorithm is implemented on the developed pv array and simulated under different operating conditions to achieve the maximum power of the photovoltaic array. figures 11 and 12 show the pattern of radiation changes throughout the duration of the day and the energy generated by the photovoltaic system at various levels of radiation, respectively, using the perturb and observe algorithm, while figures 13 and 14 show the pattern of temperature changes throughout the duration of the day and the energy produced by the photovoltaic system atdifferent temperature levels, respectively, using the perturb and observe algorithm. then, the simulation results of the perturb and observe technique were analysed and compared with the photovoltaic output power to determine the tracking efficiency, as shown in table 2. the results show that with continuous variations in temperature and irradiance, the perturb and observe algorithm has good performance, and tracking efficiency remains high and reaches 99.9%, except under conditions of 300 w/m2 and 25 °c, in which the algorithm does not give high performance and tracking efficiency. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 81 figure 11: sun irradiance variations. figure 12: the pv system output power at different levels of irradiance and 25 °cusing thep&o mppt algorithm. figure 13: sun irradiance variations. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 82 figure 14: pv system output power at different levels of cell temperature and 1000 w/m2 irradiance using the p&o mppt algorithm. table 2: pv and mppt output power comparison. the developed system effectively simulates a boost converter (dc to dc) with higher voltage gain and performance, and the simulation results are shown in figure 15. figure 15: the boost converter dc-to-dc output voltage under standard condition (25oc & 1000w/m2). constant cell temperature of 250c solar irradiance (w/m2) pv represents output power (w) pv power using (p&o) mppt (w) tracking efficiency (%) 300 26420 18010 68.17 500 44330 44328 99.995 700 61930 61924 99.99 1000 87550 87505 99.95 constant irradiance of 1000 w/m2 cell temperature (0c) pv represents output power (w) pv power using (p&o) mppt (w) tracking efficiency (%) 15 91020 90996 99.97 25 87550 87505 99.95 40 82140 82131 99.99 50 78470 78404 99.92 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 7 – issue 2 – december 2022 | 83 5. conclusion in this research, the mathematical plan with simulation of the pv array is developed using matlab/simulink, and then under various environmental conditions, including cell temperature, solar radiation, and characteristics of the i/v plus p/v curves to the module and the panel are evaluated and analysed. mppt technology using a perturb and observe algorithm is proposed in this work toobtain the maximum power output from the photovoltaic scheme, and the proposed algorithm is applied based on the proportional and integral (pi) of the controller to improve the performance of the system. the proposed solar system and dc-to-dc converter have been connected for the purpose of controlling the output voltage of the photovoltaic system and then step it up to the higher level required by the load. system design and the related algorithms are created using matlab/simulink and matlab/function. the simulation results show that the implemented mppt scheme responds speedily and accurately with high tracking efficiency when solar radiation and temperature conditions change rapidly over time. the dc-dc converter has also been successfully applied to the proposed system with high voltage gain and efficiency. references [1] g. k. singh, “solar power generation by pv (photovoltaic) technology: a review,” energy, vol. 53, pp. 1–13, 2013. [2] h. islam et al., “performance evaluation of maximum power point tracking approaches and photovoltaic systems,” energies, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 365, feb. 2018. [3] a. khan, m. d. aqil, n. malik, f. ullah, and a. khalid, “comparative analysis of mppt techniques for sepic based pv system,” int. j. eng. work., vol. 8, no. 01, pp. 01–07, 2021. [4] a. suresh and r. resmi, “a competitive study on mppt techniques employed in solar pv systems,” in journal of physics: conference series, vol. 2070, no. 1, pp. 012084, nov. 2021. [5] s. rout, "mathematical modelling of grid connected photovoltaic system using matlab/simulink and hardware implementation." international journal of computer applications, vol. 975, pp. 8887, 2015. [6] p. r. kareem, “simulation of the incremental conductance algorithm for maximum power point tracking of photovoltaic system based on matlab,” diyala j. eng. sci., vol. 12, no. 01, pp. 34 – 43, 2019. [7] r. chandra meena and s. k. sharma, “mathematical modeling of photovoltaic cells using matlab/simulink and mppt techniques,” int. j. adv. res. electr. electron. instrum. eng., vol. 4, no. 8, august 2015. [8] y. wang et al., “an advanced maximum power point tracking method for photovoltaic systems by using variable universe fuzzy logic control considering temperature variability,” electron., vol. 7, no. 12,pp. 335, dec. 2018. [9] h. rezk and a. m. eltamaly, “a comprehensive comparison of different mppt techniques for photovoltaic systems,” solar energy, vol. 112, pp. 1-11, 2015. [10] a. r. jordehi, “maximum power point tracking in photovoltaic (pv) systems: a review of different approaches,” renewable and sustainable energy reviews, vol. 65, pp. 1127–1138, nov. 2016. [11] a. q. al-shetwi and m. zahim sujod, “modeling and simulation of photovoltaic module with enhanced perturb and observe mppt algorithm using matlab /simulink grid connected photovoltaic power plant provided with fault ride-through view project power electronics view project modeling and simula,” vol. 11, no. 20,pp. 12033-12038, 2016, [online]. available: www.arpnjournals.com [12] m. lokanadham and k. v. bhaskar, “incremental conductance based maximum power point tracking (mppt) for photovoltaic system.”int. j. eng. res.& app. (ijera), vol. 2, no. 2, pp.1420-1424, apr. 2012. [13] n. selman, “comparison between perturb & observe, incremental conductance and fuzzy logic mppt techniques at different weather conditions,” int. j. innov. res. sci. eng. technol., vol. 5, pp. 12556– 12569, jul. 2016. [14] w. a. santosa, s. anam, and f. a. pamuji, “design and implementation of solar charge controller with p&o mppt for light-fishing in ujung pangkah, gresik,”jaree (journal adv. res. electr. eng., vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 4–7, 2020. [15] h. s. lee and j. j. yun, “advanced mppt algorithm for distributed photovoltaic systems,” energies, vol. 12, no. 18, pp. 3576, sep. 2019. [16] c. b. ali, a. h. khan, k. pervez, t. m. awan, a. noorwali and s. a. shah, "high efficiency high gain dc dc boost converter using pid controller for photovoltaic applications," 2021 international congress of advanced technology and engineering (icoten), pp. 1-7, 2021. [17] h. u. prabhu and m. r. babu, “performance study of mppt algorithms of dc-dc boost converters for pv cell applications,” proc. 7th int. conf. electr. energy syst. icees, 2021, no. february, pp. 201–205, 2021. [18] m. irwanto et al., “photovoltaic powered dc-dc boost converter based on pid controller for battery charging system,” j. phys. conf. ser. , vol. 1432, no. 1, pp. 012055, 2020. 1. introduction 5. conclusion  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.121 feature selection and radial basis function network for parkinson disease classification ashraf osman ibrahim faculty of computer science, future university, khartoum, sudan arab open university, sudan ashrafosman2@gmail.com walaa akif hussien faculty of computer science, future university, khartoum, sudan walaa.akif@gmail.com ayat mohammoud yagoop faculty of computer science, future university, khartoum, sudan ayatmahmoud618@gmail.com mohd arfian ismail soft computing & intelligent systems research group, faculty of computer system and software engineering, university malaysia pahang, pahang, malaysia arfian@ump.edu.my abstract: recently, several works have focused on detection of a different disease using computational intelligence techniques. in this paper, we applied feature selection method and radial basis function neural network (rbfn) to classify the diagnosis of parkinson’s disease. the feature selection (fs) method used to reduce the number of attributes in parkinson disease data. the parkinson disease dataset is acquired from uci repository of large well-known data sets. the experimental results have revealed significant improvement to detect parkinson’s disease using feature selection method and rbf network. keywords: parkinson’s disease, feature selection, artificial neural networks, classification, radial basis function, attributes reduction. 1. introduction parkinson’s disease (pd) is a long term disorder of the central nervous system that affects the motor system . parkinson's primarily influences neurons in specific zone of the brain called the substantia nigra [1, 2]. parkinson disease progresses, amount of dopamine produced in the brain decreases, which lead patient to uncontrollable movement as a normal person. [3]. the key reason of this decline is not recognized yet; nevertheless researchers are conducting many researches to find out a solution. there are primary symptoms of the pd can be noted as tremors in the hands, legs, arms, jaw and face. hardness or hardening of limbs and trunk. slow movement (motion). positive instability, or poor balance and coordination. these symptoms also become more noticeable [4, 5]. parkinson’s disease can’t be diagnosed easily in the early stages since there are many factors to analyze. in the initial of the disease, the most noticeable symptoms are shaking, stiffness and slow movement [4]. [4]. problems of thinking and behavior may also occur. actually, in the advanced stages of the disease the dementia becomes common. in addition, more than a third of people with pd commonly feel with depression and anxiety [5]. there are further symptoms contain sensory, sleep, and emotional problems [4, 5]. major motor symptoms are collectively called "parkinsonian syndrome" [6]. parkinson's disease is thought to include genetic and environmental aspects. a persons with a family members who affected with pd are more likely to get the same disease [7]. there is a higher risk among people exposed to some pesticides and between those who have been injured in the head while there was a lower risk for those who smoking tobacco and drink coffee or tea [7, 8]. the motor symptoms of the disease are caused by cells death in the nigra, a region of the brain's middle. this leads to inadequate dopamine in these areas[4]. generally, the cause of these death of cells is not understood but contains the growth of proteins in lewy bodies in neurons [7]. mainly, the diagnosis of typical cases is depend on symptoms, with the use of some tests such as neuroscience to exclude other diseases. even though, there is no cure for parkinson's disease [9, 10]. the primary treatments are usually with levodopa antiparkensonian, with once can used dopamine stimuli becomes less effective levodopa. with disease progression and nerve cells are still lost, these drugs become less effective, at the same time they produce complex involuntary movements characterized [11]. this paper is organized as follows. section 2 presents the literature review. section 3 discusses materials and methods. section 4 gives brief about the data. section 5 shows the results of the study. section 6 concludes the paper. 2. literature review there are many studies in the literature introduced how to help in diagnoses this disease in early stage, these studies used different methods, most of these methods based on application of neural network. mehmet can [12] used neural network system with backpropagation together. the process of designing neural network system is boosted by filtering. this lead to a significant increase of robustness. in addition, the common voting of 11 parallel networks, recognition rates reached to greater than 90 in spite of 3:1 imbalanced class distribution of the parkinson’s disease data set. p. durga , v. sutha jebakumari, d. shanthi [13] used various data mining techniques such as; naive bayes, sequential minimal optimization (smo), j48, bayesian network and multilayer perceptron and they show a mailto:ashrafosman2@gmail.com mailto:email@univ.com mailto:email@univ.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/central_nervous_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/motor_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/motor_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/dementia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/dementia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/major_depressive_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/sleep_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/emotion good accuracy results. marius enes [14], applied three types of probabilistic neural network (pnn), have been used to classification process. the monte carlo search (mcs), incremental search (is) and hybrid search (hs) were use to the smoothing the factor search. the actual model has providing diagnosis accuracy about 79% and 81%. indira rustempasic, mehmet can [15] used artificial neural networks, they study the neural network performance using backpropagation along with a majority voting structure. for train samples the authors used boosting by filtering technique with seven committee machines and they used principal component analysis (pca) for reduction the data. they concluded in their results the use of proposed techniques had a good results and the ablity of classification the parkinson's disease is good as well. in addition, [16] applied four different computational approaches to diagnosis of parkinson disease and compare the classification results. another work in [17] conducted comparative study for the performance of svm, mlp and rbn on a parkinson’s disease tremor classification. in addition, [18] were used probabilistic neural network, feed forward, artificial immune system and learning vector quantization and study these methods then got the comparative of the results. recent studies employed hybrid methods for parkinson’s disease, the research conducted by [19] proposed a new hybrid intelligent method to predict of pd progression by using adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (anfis) and support vector regression (svr). they used noise removal, clustering and prediction methods. [20] implemented feature dimension reduction technique and developing sequential forward selection algorithm along with the kernel principal component analysis approaches. with accomplish the linear classification from claiming voice records for sound control for healthy and sick people the authors applied the fisher’s linear discriminant analysis (flda), maximum a posteriori (map) decision rule and svm with rbf network for classification tasks. [21] displayed the hybridization of the wavelet analysis hybrid and support vector machine can produce efficient classification accuracy for parkinson's gait identification. most of the previous studies focused on using artificial neural networks to find a pattern that can be used to classify the parkinson’s disease. in this paper, mainly we focus on using the feature selection algorithm to reduce the attributes that can help rbf network to give high classification accuracy for the parkinson’s disease. 3. methods and materials recently, the improvements in the area of the artificial intelligence (ai) led to the emanation of the decision support systems and expert systems for medical applications. artificial intelligence (ai) are techniques for classification, in this section, we propose using feature selection and the rbf network used as a classifier. for preprocessing the data set we used min-max normalization method. it converts a value to b value which fits between [c, d] values, to transform data set to the range [0.0, 1.0] as in equation 1. normalization = (x-min(x))/ (max(x)-min(x) (1) 3.1 radial basis function network (rbfn) is an artificial neural network, mostly used for classification purposes. the classification in rbf is carried out by computing the similarity of inputs to samples from the training set. each neuron is stored as a "prototype", which is just one sample of a training set. to classify a new input; all neurons calculate euclidean distance between inputs and their model. figure 1, show the architecture of the rfb network. figure 1 rbf network architecture [22] 3.2 feature selection algorithm is the procedure of select a subset of related features for use in model construction. there are three reasons for using feature selection methods:  simplify prototypes to make them easier to interpret by users.  to reduce the training times.  to enhance the generalization via reduce over fitting. fs method is like a combination of a search method for offering new feature subsets, alongside an evaluation measure which scores the different feature subsets. however, the simplest method is to test every potential subset of features finding the particular case which minimizes the error rate. this may be an exhaustive search of the space, also will be computationally ungainly for everything except the lowest of feature sets. we used feature selection algorithms to minimize the number of features and choose the best feature that gives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/overfitting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/overfitting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/feature_selection#cite_note-bermingham-prolog-2 http://chrisjmccormick.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/architecture_simple2.png high accuracy. four feature selection algorithms were used in this study; cfs subset eval, info gain attribute eval, principal components and wrapper subset eval and as search method we used ranker and best first. 3.3 evaluate model usually to evaluate the performance of the classifiers need one of the evaluation measures. we have classified parkinson's disease data set to classify the patient either healthy or sick. sensitivity, specificity and accuracy were used to evaluate the model. the correct positive samples that generate the classifier are called sensitivity (sen). on the other hand, the correct negative samples which depend on the number of true negatives and false positives is called specificity (spe). the equations 2-4 show the calculation of the evaluation method. the sensitivity (sen) is given by: sen = ⁄ (2) where, t-pos is the number of true positives correctly classified as healthy and pos is the number of positive healthy samples. the specificity (spe) is given by: spe = ⁄ (3) true positive, false positive, true negative and false negative are suitable to calculate the accuracy. the classification the accuracy is given by: accuracy = ⁄ (4) with these equations we calculate the accuracy of our classifier with the feature selection algorithm. 4. data set the data set was made by the university of oxford, in collaboration with the national centre for voice and speech, denver, colorado, who recorded the speech signals. the original study published the feature extraction methods for general voice disorders. this dataset is composed of a range of biomedical voice measures from 31 people, 23 with parkinson's disease (pd). in the table data, every column is a particular voice measure, and each row corresponds one of 195 voice recording from these individuals ("name" column). the key purpose of this data is to discriminate healthy people from those with pd. according to "status" column in the table, 0 values set for healthy and 1 values set for sick people. table 1 describes the dataset attribute in details. table 1: data set attributes description attribute description mdvp:fo(hz) average vocal fundamental frequency mdvp:fhi(hz) maximum vocal fundamental frequency mdvp:flo(hz) minimum vocal fundamental frequency mdvp:jitter(%) mdvp:jitter(abs) mdvp:rap mdvp:ppq jitter:ddp several measures of variation in fundamental frequency mdvp:shimmer mdvp:shimmer(db) shimmer:apq3 shimmer:apq5 mdvp:apq shimmer:dda several measures rpde d2 two nonlinear dynamical complexity measures dfa signal fractal scaling exponent spread1 spread2 ppe three nonlinear measures of fundamental frequency variation nhr hnr two measures of proportion of noise to tonal ingredient in the voice 5. result and discussion this section provides the experimental results along with some discussion about the results. table 2 shows the classification accuracy for all feature subsets a, b, c and d, (including the data set before feature selection) for cross validation and training set test. table 2: classification accuracy % dataset subset a subset b subset c subset d cross validation 68.20 76.41 71.80 65.64 79.49 training set 78.97 75.90 77.43 69.23 83.59 as we can notice from the table 2 that the highest accuracy is from the subset d, from this result, we can understand that the features which subset d contains it has the best prediction, but at the same time we can’t consider d as the best subset, because it has only four features which are not the best representation of the data set. moreover, we can see that the subset c has the lowest accuracy value, which means that subset c’s features don’t contain the best feature for prediction. we can see that the accuracy when we use subset becomes higher than the accuracy before the feature selection. table 3, shows the measurement criteria for the model evaluation. table 3: measurement criteria for the model measureme nt criteria partition datas et subs et a subs et b subs et c subs et d correctly classified instances validati on cross 133 149 140 128 155 training set 154 151 128 135 163 incorrectly classified instances validati on cross 62 46 55 67 40 training set 41 44 67 60 32 kappa statistic validati on cross 0.34 0.48 0.38 0.26 0.56 training set 0.54 0.49 0.26 0.36 0.65 mean absolute error validati on cross 0.39 0.34 0.36 0.43 0.31 training set 0.32 0.32 0.43 0.41 0.29 root mean squared error validati on cross 0.46 0.43 0.45 0.47 0.41 training set 0.40 0.40 0.47 0.45 0.30 relative absolute error validati on cross 80.88 70.64 76.19 89.09 65.18 training set 67.14 65.99 89.09 84.79 60.72 root relative squared error validati on cross 94.11 87.11 91.03 95.92 82.84 training set 81.92 81.33 95.92 92.18 77.87 the results in table 3, show the measurement criteria of the models. the results show how the feature selection algorithms make the classification more reliable. in addition, the best result comes from subset d which its output occurred after using wrapper subset evaland as a feature selection algorithm. table 4, shows the confusion matrices for the model of training and cross validation test data partition after and before feature selection. table 4: the confusion matrices for the training and cross validation test model desired output training set data cross validation set test sick healthy sick healthy dataset sick 108 10 85 33 healthy 31 46 29 48 subset a sick 113 5 104 14 healthy 41 36 36 41 subset b sick 106 12 91 27 healthy 41 36 39 38 subset c sick 95 23 92 26 healthy 37 40 41 36 subset d sick 105 13 102 16 healthy 19 58 24 53 all these measurements proofs that the accuracy after feature selection has higher value than the accuracy before feature selection. in addition, the best result from the previous measurement comes from subset d which was selected after using wrapper subset evaland as a feature selection algorithm. wrapper subset evaland feature selection algorithm and rbf network when used to classify the parkinson disease shows better accuracy results. 6. conclusion one of the most significant challenges is choosing the right classifier algorithm for the classification the medical data. in the present study, we choose the rbf network as a classifier approach, we used a feature selection algorithm to reduce the attribute of the parkinson disease that can help rbf network to increase the accuracy results. four algorithms of the feature selection were used and divided the dataset to four subsets according to these algorithms, after the classification we compared between the results of the dataset and the four subsets, which a proof that feature selection helps improving the classification results. 7. reference [1] w. dauer and s. przedborski, "parkinson's disease: mechanisms and models," neuron, vol. 39, pp. 889-909, 2003. 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[22] pp. http://mccormickml.com/2013/08/15/radialbasis-function-network-rbfn-tutorial/, 2013. http://mccormickml.com/2013/08/15/radial-basis-function-network-rbfn-tutorial/ http://mccormickml.com/2013/08/15/radial-basis-function-network-rbfn-tutorial/ kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.64 writer identification on multi-script handwritten using optimum features abstract: recognizing the writer of a text that has been handwritten is a very intriguing research problem in the field of document analysis and recognition. this study tables an automatic way of recognizing the writer from handwritten samples. even though much has been done in previous researches that have presented other various methods, it is still clear that the field has a room for improvement. this particular method uses optimum features based writer characterization. here, each of the samples written is grouped according to their set of features that are acquired from a computed codebook. this proposed codebook is different from the others which segment the samples into graphemes by fragmenting a certain part of the writing known as ending strokes. the proposed technique is employed to a locate and extract the handwriting fragments from ending zone and then grouped the similar fragments to generate a new cluster known as ending cluster. the cluster that comes in handy in the process of coming up with the ending codebook through picking out the center of the same fragment group. the process is finalized by evaluating the proposed method on four datasets of the various languages. this method being proposed had an impressive 97.12% identification rate which is rates the best result on the icfhr dataset. keywords: off-line text-independent writer identification, feature extraction, codebook, fragments. i. introduction the objective of offline writer identification is to determine the specific writer who has written a certain article from a group of known writers. the identification is mainly based on matching the writing preference of the individual that can be picked out form his/her handwriting. writer identification has become a very important field in document analysis and recognition in the past twenty years. this can be attributed to the fact that there are some very diverse applications in forensics, biometrics as well as paleography. there are two main families of approaches for writer identification that have been proposed by the various researchers and practitioners. the first one is global approaches [1, 2, 3, 4] which mainly looks at the general look and feeling of writing. the second one is local approaches [5, 6, 7, 8] which uses local feature that have been acquired from characters, graphemes or even sub graphemes of the writing. the third one is combining global and local features [9, 10] which is common for bettering the writer identification performance. recent research that has been carried out on writer identification have mainly concentrated on the extraction of redundant patterns in writing which are commonly known as codebook [5, 6, 7]. in all these researches that have been conducted, the ink trace is divided into graphemes, sub-graphemes or k adjacent segments, which are then grouped into clusters that represent the frequent writing shapes constituting the codebook. the codebook can be attributed to a specific writer where specific writing patterns are grouped together and attributed to each writer [6, 11]. the can also be grouped as universal if the redundant patterns have been acquired from a global dataset under study [12] or even from an independent dataset [7, 9, 10]. it is the general conclusion that the universal codebooks tend to depict better results in comparison to the writer based codebooks [6, 11]. out of the commonly known codebook base methods, the universal codebooks specific to graphemes/ fraglets are acquired from [10, 12]. the graphemes are acquired from a process of segmentation founded on the evaluation of the upper contour minima. the graphemes of writing which are being researched are then compared to the codebook patterns in order to count the number of occurrences of each of the codebook entries in certain writing. the writer is then characterized by the probability distributions of the codebook patterns in certain writing. this process has been criticized due to its dependence on the segmentation process and if any chance the segmentation process breaks down, then there is an impact on the process that follow including the features extraction, clustering and identification. also, the process has the disadvantage of containing the semantic data of the script being studied. the criticism above has been looked at by siddiqi et al. in [9]. he proposed that the codebooks be generated from the stroke fragments or the sub graphemes. the fragments can be acquired by studying a reduced scale of observation and grouping the text into a large number of small sub-images (windows) of size n×n pixels. clustering of the patterns is then done to come up with a set of representative patterns constituting the codebook. interestingly, the codebook generated from this method ahmed abdullah ahmed computer science dept. kurdistan technical institute sulaimani heights, sulaimani, iraq ahmed.abdullah@kti.edu.krd harith raad hasan sulaimani polytechnic university, kurdistan technical institute sulaimani, iraq harith.hasan@spu.edu.iq omar ismael al-sanjary faculty of information science and engineering management and science university, omar_ismael@msu.edu.my fariaa abdalmajeed hameed technical college of informatics sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, iraq fariaa.hameed@spu.edu.iq has some very simple writing shapes and its effectiveness is equivalent of the bulacu et al [10]. similar to the latter however, this method is also dependent on an independent dataset that is used in acquisition of the codebook. this paper is organized in such a way that we first look at the datasets; the other section discusses the details of the proposed method as section three. section four will then present the experimental results and lastly section five contains the conclusions. ii. data sets in this study, we will look at four different data sets namely 1) grds data set [13], (2) iam data set [14], (3) kurdish handwritten data set (kurd) and (4) icfhr handwritten database [15]. following is a brief description of all the datasets named above. a. grds data set the gdrs [13] is a new dataset generated by a research group in the computational intelligence laboratory at the national center for scientific research “demokritos”, greece. it has 26 independent writers who have all been acquired from eight different sample texts written the four different languages that is english, german, greek and french. all languages have each two texts. the dataset has been employed in the icdar 2011 writer identification contest [13]. b. iam data set the iam data set [14] has form with hand written english texts of dissimilar content by 650 different writers. one page is credited to 350 writers, two pages with 300 writers and at last four pages containing 125 writers. it is the most common dataset for not only evaluation of writer identification but also handwriting recognition as well as other related tasks. in our study, we make use of 600 documents by 300 different writers. c. kurd data set this dataset was developed at the research laboratory at kurdistan technical institute – iraq. the reason as to why it was developed was that there was need to evaluate writer recognition systems in reference to the kurdish text. there were a total of 1076 people of varied ages as well as educational backgrounds who contributed to 4 pages each. there were allowed to write any content and they were not also restricted to the type if color they used nor the writing instrument. the pages were then scanned at 300 dpi and then stored in the tiff format. this study has made use of 800 document by 200 various writers. d. icfhr data set this is an arabic writer identification data base that is in use in the current study. this is a very essential data due to the fact that it contains various samples of unrestricted arabic handwritten documents that have been scanned using 256 grey levels equivalent to 600 dpi. the texts have been volunteered by 206 writers who are all varied in nationality, educational background, age and gender. each writer was requested to write 3 paragraphs in arabic. once this was done, the data set was organized to evaluate the work done by the participants in the competition [15]. the first two paragraphs were used for training while was used for the testing. the first two paragraphs were then taken for certain writers to test the ability of the system to tell the unknown writers. figure 1: samples from the iam, grds, kurd and icfhr data sets. some of the images scanned in arabic, english, french, german, greek and kurdish that were acquired from the data set have been shown in figure. the summary statistics of the four data sets is illustrated in table 1. table 1 summarizes the statistics of the four data sets. icfhr kurd grds iam arabic 550samples english 52samples 600samples kurdish 800samples german 52samples greek 52samples french 52samples iii. methodology this section discusses the techniques that have been utilized by proposed a new method to describe the writer of a given writing samples by using new features known as optimum features. the proposed method has already gone through the pre-processing stage (binarization process, connected components detection, and removal of punctuation marks). the primary process of this technique is divided into five steps with the aim of representing the writer’s distinctive way, starting with contour detection to extract significant information from the handwriting. this distinguishes the writer through his writing style with the help of moore’s algorithm. curve fragmentation is employed to a locate and extract the handwriting from ending zone as small fragments, and the fragments are normalized in order to have equalized coordinates of the fragment points to the origin (0, 0). the similar fragments of ending strokes are grouped together to create the ending cluster. this cluster lead to develop a new codebook called ending codebook by choosing the center of every similar fragments group. the entire phases/steps of writer representation are further discussed in the next sub-sections. a. contour detection the pre-processing stage on the grayscale of the handwritten images began with binarization process through otsu’s algorithm [16], and applying connected components detection to detect the writing with the help of 8-connectivity method, after which punctuation marks are removed. following the above pre-processing stage, the proposed technique used contour detection for the extraction of information from the writing shape that provides a description of the writer characteristic. contour detection, better known as border following is used on digital images for extracting writing boundary as features that are subsequently used in writer representation. in other words, the accurate contour extraction will generate accurate features that will contribute to the chances for accurate writer representation of the samples. in the current study, moore’s algorithm [17] is used to locate a black pixel after which it is referred to as the ‘start’ pixel. the algorithm necessitates going back to the white pixel every time a black pixel is hit and going around the current pixel in a clockwise direction, visiting every pixel in its moor vicinity, until the black pixel is hit. it eradicates the moment where the start pixel is visited for the second time and the black pixels that have been walked over will serve the pattern contour. in this regard, the contour tracing step is significant as the extracted writing boundary will be revealed on the writer description. the proposed method obtained the significant code from the script’s writing contours that includes the writing specification and enables the preservation of the writerdependent variations between character shapes. b. curve fragment extraction in the proposed method, the curves fragment taken from the contours of connected components are used, as the primary study focus entails the extraction of the fragments of the connected components that contains significant and effective information that assists in writer identification. the above is carried out instead of segmenting the writing in small windows to form a codebook in a method that has been extensively utilized in writer identification as this may not carry any semantic information [18]. moreover, the primary aim behind the analysis of handwriting fragments is to examine the shapes that appear repeatedly in varying characters/graphemes in a specific writing sample. to this end, specific parts of different characters share common patterns that are drawn by the writer in the same way regardless of the written character. this is demonstrated by figure 2, where different characters fragments written by the same writer are similar (e.g. ending strokes). this can also be much noted in the samples of writing fragments as illustrated in figure 3 where different characters with the same form was excerpted from figure 2. figure 2 similar patterns in different characters: (a) sample from iam data set [14], (b) sample from icfhr data set [15]. figure 3 excerpt patterns of ending stroke the proposed method concentrates on the important writing areas that provides the most important information on the basis of the foundation of this study and the theoretical work contributed by the handwriting analysis experts which contends that ending-strokes is deemed to be the most significant handwriting parts as they can contribute in predicting personality traits. figures 2, 3 support this theory of the handwriting experts [19,20] which serve the main concern of this study. the significant of the proposed method is to characterize the handwriting based on the ending strokes not like previous studies which are employed all the handwriting text to represent the writer. the current method extracted number of contour fragments from text image with a particular length or number of points (lf) with specific overlapping gap which both have been empirically selected, based on series of experiments that have been applied with different length of fragment and variant overlapping gap. the best length of fragment was 45 points with 15 points as overlapping gap. furthermore, every contour fragment with (lf) points can be employed as a code and the number of such codes can be manipulated by modifying the distances between the starting fragment points (overlapping gap). these distances can be fixed to a certain value in this study overlapping gap was 15 points. the curve fragment extraction variables of connected component “you” are presented in figure 4. figure 4 curve fragment code extraction approach for two fragments where (lf = 45 and gap = 15), b1 and e1 are the beginning point and the ending point of a segment with lf points on the contour once all the fragments of the connected components have been extracted, the proposed method computes the average of the distances between all points of each fragment with the left or right side of the bounding box of the connected component depend on script whether left to right or right to left writing. if the fragment is located near to that area means this fragment in the ending zone, and any fragment not belong to the ending zone will be discarded. distance calculation of every fragment points in the connected component inside the bounding box, this process is very critical because it is determining the location of each fragment based on their location the proposed method decide if the fragment assign as an ending stroke or discard the fragment. moreover, the ending zone have been determined empirically based on number of experiments have been applied with different size of connected components such as 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50% from the actual size of the bounding box of the connected components based on these experiments the optimum size of the ending zone was (η = 30%) of the connected components which is consider as area of interest, figure 5 illustrates the ending zone. figure 5 determining ending region after compute, the distance of the fragment points with the left or right side of the bounding box which is represent the border of the connected component, the current technique divides the fragment to ending strokes and other strokes based on their location, figure 6 illustrates the ending strokes after removing unwanted strokes. as mentioned before 41 curve fragments have been extracted from the connected component “you”, and now the proposed method reduced the number of extracted fragments to 30 % because it has been deleted unimportant fragments which are not located at the ending region of a connected component. based on the theory of the handwriting analysis experts which says all the fragments that are located in the ending zone of the connected component is important to represent the writer. figure 6 contour and shapes of extracted fragments of the ending zone when lf = 45 and gap = 15 using curve fragment method after the entire curve fragments of the ending zone have been extracted, the next step involves the normalization of the coordinates of every fragment to prepare them for the process of clustering. c. fragment normalization it is crucial to normalize the patterns coordinates to origin coordinate (0, 0) and the standard deviation of one prior to grouping the similar fragments into clusters. normalization employs the following relations [21]. ⃗ ( ⃗⃗ ) ( ) ( ) in the above equations, ⃗⃗ and ⃗ depict the collections of x and y coordinates of a contour fragment, μx and μy depict the averages, while σx and σy depict the standard deviation of ⃗ and ⃗ , respectively. in this respect, vectors that have the normalized fragments coordinates are all of the same length 2lf, and they represent codes that are used for training a codebook and for extracting feature vectors from samples of handwriting. after the normalization of the curve fragments, the next step of the proposed method is the clustering of the normalized code fragments into different categories and this is carried out by conducting a comparison of the extracted fragments with the help of euclidean distance to identify the similarity/differences between the two fragments. d. clustering of fragments to reiterate, in the prior section, every sample was represented as a curve fragments code set. in this section, the fragments are grouped according to their pairwise similarity. moreover, the fragments within each cluster are different from those of other clusters, and every individual cluster depicts a set of segments. the current method requires the selection of a clustering algorithm that does not call for the determination of a priori number of clusters. accordingly, the hierarchical clustering is used to group all the similar patterns in one cluster and for the calculation of the fragments distance, the euclidian distance measures is employed to measure the distance among the fragments. this method begins with each object as one class, and then the merging of objects into classes until the entire objects that are similar are merged in one cluster. this calls for the proposed model to provide a definition of a distance (or similarity) measure that enables the comparison between the two classes. the hierarchical clustering is presented in figure 7. in the present study, such pattern is deemed as seven fragments which are grouped together all the similar fragments in one cluster based on similarity threshold. in this research, the threshold similarity to merge the clusters is 50% which is empirically determined. figure 7 hierarchical clustering the distance found between the two classes is computed as the average distance between patterns features in various clusters. the present study used the average-link technique for clustering purpose, where the distance between two classes is referred to as the average of the distances between the entire objects within the two classes. the method is specifically presented in the following equation. (2) where, ic and jc be two classes. dist defines the distance between ic and jc . furthermore, owing to the unknown number of classes for each writer, the study makes use of the distance criterion to depict the number of clusters, where for every writer, the proposed method produces one set of clusters from the ending strokes. figure 8 illustrates an example of clustering similar fragments. there are different numbers of clusters, with each cluster containing homogenous groups of similar segments which are distinct to each particular cluster. the clusters are separated by the black square as presented in figure 8. e. codebook generation in this section, the generation of writer’s codebook namely ending codebook, is explained. every cluster contains different number of fragments and each has seemingly homogeneous groups of similar patterns that are distinct to itself (different from other cluster elements). after grouping the similar fragments, the most similar member of each cluster is selected by calculating the distance among the fragments through euclidian distance measures. the average distance of each fragment is then calculated to identify the center fragment in every cluster. consequently, all the centers and their cardinalities are gathered to form the new codebook. in the generation stage, a new codebook will be produced known the ending codebook as depicted in figure 9. figure 8 clusters of ending strokes for the writing sample from icfhr data set [15] , ( , ) ( , ) i j i j x c y c dist c c avg dist x y    figure 9 ending codebook generation v. writer identification as discussed earlier, each document in the reference dataset is depicted by a set of patterns in the ending codebook and the test document t is depicted by the codebook. in this context, the dissimilarity or similarity between the writing samples is identified by calculating the distance between their respective features and test document t is compared with trained document d . according to [9, 22], different distance measure can be utilized for the comparison of two distributions of sample 2  distance, hamming distance, bhattacharyya, minkowski and non-intersection. such studies reached to the conclusion that 2  distance showed optimum performance among the other distances. thus, the result presented in the next sections is according to the 2  distance which is defined by the following equation; 2dim 2 1 ( ) ( , ) i i i i i p q p q p q       (3) in the equation (equation 3), and denote the two similarities (histograms) for comparison, denotes the segment i of the histogram and dim denotes the total number of histogram segments. the distance is calculated for the ending codebook. vi. experimental results in order to quantitatively evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme, a query document is compared with all the documents in the training document and computes the similarity index (distance) with each of these documents. the retrieved list is then sorted in the order of increasing distance from the query document. ideally, the writer at rank 1 should match the writer of the query document. however, this study retrieves a longer list of probable writers up to a given rank n to increase the chances of finding the author of query document in the list (top n). for each evaluation, this study reports the top1, top5 and top10 identification rates. top 1 means that the query document is matched with the first ranked sample in the sorted list. similarly, top10 means that the writer of the query document is within the top 10 writers retrieved by the system. this study evaluates the performance of ending codebook. initial experiments were conducted on different data sets, 206 writers from the icfhr dataset [15], 600 documents of 300 different writers from iam data set [14], 208 documents of 26 different writers in four different languages (german, english, french, and greek) from grds data set [13] and finally we have used 800 documents of 200 different writers from kurd data set. table 2 summarizes the results of ending codebook on different data sets. table 2 performance of the proposed method on different data sets data set # writers identification rate kurd 200 94.63 % icfhr [15] 206 97.12 % iam [14] 300 95.59 % grds [13] 26 100.0 % in addition to the above evaluations, the following results provides a performance comparison between the proposed writer identification method with the stateof theart methods found in the literature that have been implemented using the same icfhr2012 database [15]. the benchmark was performed against four recent methods, which are: (1) oriented basic image feature columns and the delta encoding [23]; (2) combination of edge-hinge and grapheme features proposed by [24] – their method was implemented in 2012 using the icfhr dataset by wayne zhang [15]; (3) oriented basic image features (obifs) system according to local symmetry and orientation [15, 25]; (4) svms with a diffusion kernel by yanir serroussi via yt team [15, 26]. it is worth mentioned that the benchmarked methods 2, 3 and 4 were the top 3 performers published in icfhr2012 competition on writer identification challenge 2: arabic scripts held in 2012 [15]. it is observed from the table 3 that the results clearly revealed the domination of the proposed method over the existing methods: the identification rate was markedly improved by about 2 to 4 percentage points table 3 performance comparisons of writer identification methods authors year dataset writers performance wayne zhang [15] 2012 icfhr 206 95.3 % newell and griffin [15] 2012 icfhr 206 95.3 % yt team [15] 2012 icfhr 206 93.29% newell and griffi [23] 2014 icfhr 206 95.3 % proposed method 2017 icfhr 206 97.12 % vii. conclusions this paper studied the offline text-independent writer identification problem using ending codebook approach. the ending fragments code extraction methods were introduced and their performances were examined. results achieved through these approaches were better than the performances of the existing methods. this technique extracts the code from the contour detection of connected components and they have the advantage of using the repeatedly appearing shapes which might be parts of different characters. besides, this method extracts from particular area of writing which is ending strokes. four databases, namely, grds, iam, kurd, and icfhr were used for testing the method. viii. references [1]. d. chawki, l. souici-meslati, "a texture based approach for arabic writer identification and verification," in machine and web intelligence (icmwi), international conference on ieee, pp. 115-120, 2010. 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[26]. h.j. escalante, t. solorio, m.m. gómez, “local histograms of character n-grams for authorship attribution,” proceedings of the 49th annual meeting of the association for computational linguistics: human language technologies, 1, pp. 288–298, 2011.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 44 a hybrid artificial neural network and particle swarm optimization algorithm for detecting covid-19 patients alla ahmad hassan tarik a. rashid information technology computer science and engineering technical college of informatics college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university university of kurdistan hewler sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq alla.ahmad.hassan@spu.edu.iq tarik.ahmed@ukh.edu.krd article info abstract volume 6 – issue 2– december 2021 doi: 10.24017/science.2021.2.5 article history: received 12/10/2021 accepted 21/11/2021 covid-19, one of the most dangerous pandemics, is currently affecting humanity. covid-19 is spreading rapidly due to its high reliability transmissibility. patients who test positive more often have mild to severe symptoms such as a cough, fever, raw throat, and muscle aches. diseased people experience severe symptoms in more severe cases. such as shortness of breath, which can lead to respiratory failure and death. machine learning techniques for detection and classification are commonly used in current medical diagnoses. however, for treatment using neural networks based on improved particle swarm optimization (pso), known as psonn, the accuracy and performance of current models must be improved. this hybridization implements particle swarm optimization and a neural network to improve results while slowing convergence and improving efficiency. the purpose of this study is to contribute to resolving this issue by presenting the implementation and assessment of machine learning models. using neural networks and particle swarm optimization to help in the detection of covid-19 in its early stages. to begin, we preprocessed data from a brazilian dataset consisted primarily of early-stage symptoms. following that, we implemented neural network and particle swarm optimization algorithms. we used precision, accuracy score, recall, and fmeasure tests to evaluate the neural network with particle swarm optimization algorithms. based on the comparison, this paper grouped the top seven ml models such as neural networks, logistic regression, nave bayes classifier, multilayer perceptron, support vector machine, bf tree, bayesian networks algorithms and measured feature importance, and other, to justify the differences between classification models. particle swarm optimization with neural keywords: particle swarm optimization, neural networks, logistic regression, nave bayes classifier, multilayer perceptron, support vector machine, bf tree, bayesian networks. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 45 network is being deployed to improve the efficiency of the detection method by more accurately predicting covid-19 detection. preprocessed datasets with important features are then fed into the testing and training phases as inputs. particle swarm optimization was used for the training phase of a neural net to identify the best weights and biases. on training data, the highest rate of accuracy gained is 0.98.738 and on testing data, it is 98.689. copyright © 2021 kurdistan journal of applied research. all rights reserved. 1. introduction severe respiratory infection in december 2019, wuhan, china, identified a highly infectious ailment known as coronavirus type 2 (sars-cov-2) or corona virus disease (covid-19). since it has spread so quickly, it has drawn a lot of attention. because of how quickly it has spread over the world, it has gotten people's attention. as a result of touch, breath, and mouth droplets, they have spread swiftly over the globe. it may cause harm to both people and animals because of its ease of transmission. sars or severe acute respiratory syndrome is a viral infection that causes fever, shortness of breath, and coughing. covid-19 or corona virus 2 it is important to know how many individuals have been exposed to the virus so that people may be separated and the viral illness chain can be broken, since research [1] shows that the virus is disseminated mostly by personal contact or oral secretions. covid-19 (the coronavirus pandemic of 2019) is a regular occurrence [2] there have been 76,710,234 cases and 1,693,700 fatalities globally since december 20, 2020 [3]. efforts are being made to find new vaccinations and medicinal techniques via international alliances and competitions. people with covid-19 who were unable to breathe on their own were shown to benefit by steroids in the healing research [4]. many early therapies for the lethal virus, such as hydroxychloroquine and lopinavir/ritonavir, did not substantially reduce mortality rates in hospitalized patients and were often removed from the trial [4]. both remdesivir [5] and these studies were flawed scientifically and conducted before scientists had a thorough understanding of illness development [6]. for covid-19 treatment, three drugs are expected to be available by the end of the year. while remdesivir is often used in the united states as well as japan and australia, dexamethasone and failover are more commonly used in the united kingdom and japan. vast progress has been achieved in vaccine manufacturing despite widespread misconception regarding the benefits of drugs in patients with pre-existing illnesses such as type 2 diabetes and loss of consciousness [7–8], underlying malignancy and immunodeficiency. more than 60 vaccines are now in human clinical trials, with 18 moving to the final step [9]. it has now been approved for use in the united states, canada and a number of other countries for both vaccines, mrna-1273 from moderna and bnt162b2 from pfizer. to avert a worldwide covid-19 outbreak, at least 60% to 70% of the world's population must be protected, according to a center for disease research study [10]. the worldwide pandemic is expected to continue for at least another 18–24 months, with heat waves occurring on a regular basis in a variety of locations, assuming various degrees of mitigation [10]. in light of this, it is clear that thorough public health measures, such as screening persons with appropriate symptoms and determining those who need testing and quarantine or hospitalization, are critical. covid-19 symptoms may be diagnosed and treated using these kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 46 parameters. from the ordinary cold to life-threatening disease, covid-19 has been associated to a range of symptoms [11]. concerns about one's health having an understanding of these symptom patterns may help hospitals and healthcare providers make better treatment decisions. it has been linked to unproductive coughing, exhaustion, and fever by the world health organization (who). breathlessness, fever, and exhaustion may occur in certain highrisk situations [12]. in addition to shortness of breath or trouble breathing, covid-19 participants reported a wide range of symptoms including muscular pains, chills, a raw throat, nosebleeds, headache, chest discomfort, and eye irritation. patients with diabetes, asthma, and heart problems are more likely to get the virus [13]. on average, covid-19 has a short incubation period of five to six days in people who have been exposed to the virus and are exhibiting symptoms. a surge in infectious illnesses occurs as a consequence of people who are infected with covid-19 sharing their germs with others. as a result, diagnosing, monitoring, and managing the illness becomes more difficult since many infected people are symptomless. covid-19's propagation has been aided by the features listed above. the symptoms of this viral illness are clearly visible. it might range from no symptoms at all to a full recovery with no negative health effects. as a consequence, patients, visitors, and medical professionals are exposed to the 2019-ncov virus due to a lack of timely diagnosis and the limitations of diagnostic devices. as a result, the health insurance and financial services industries are placed in grave danger. covid-19 is a global pandemic that requires the use of non-clinical technologies such as data mining, machine learning, intelligent machines, and other machine learning methodologies. healthcare organizations may save a lot of money and time if they used non-therapeutic methods to diagnose and treat 2019-ncov infections. 2. related work the first case of covid-19 was observed less than two years ago. since then, and over 190 countries have experienced covid-19 cases. mostly everyone nowadays is fearful of that kind of virus. the biggest reason for this consideration is that covid19 disease is becoming more widespread by the day. many essential steps are being taken to assist slow or stop the spread of the disease. many countries have declared a state of emergency. people are taking all precautions, such as social distancing, hand sanitization of soap or hand sanitizer, and so on. in this section, we highlight research that used artificial intelligence to obtain disease solutions, with a focus on classification to recognize positive covid-19 and negative cases, as this is the aim of our work. based on the intelligent systems and symptoms used to detect covid19, the relevant works could be classified into two major groups: describes the literature that proposed various artificial intelligence techniques for covid-19 detection, such as neural networks and particle swarm optimization algorithms, and also symptoms-based techniques for covid-19 detection. 2.1. detection of covid-19 using artificial intelligence methods learning, interpretation, and problem solving are all examples of human-like mental functions that may be performed by a computer via the use of artificial intelligence. there are several techniques and methods that we will use often in our work that are covered in this part. it was in 2012 when hong and zhou and et al. [14] attempted to build an accurate forecasting model using grnns, back propagation neural networks (bpnns), and rbfnns. according to the statistics, pnn is more popular than artificial neural networks. an individual cell dataset from pap smears was analyzed using the pso approach in 2017 by a number of specialists, including arifin [15]. data training and testing were created using the pso strategy, and the data set was then tested using the categorizing data mining technique to verify that kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 47 the training had been successful. besides arifin, zhang, gong and cheng used pso in 2017 as well. using the pso technique and the hybrid phenotype methodology, this study looked at a massive amount of data. according to the study's findings, the metric hyper volume of five data sets can be improved by more than 0.8 by integrating two separate methodologies (hv) [16]. based on the lee-carter model, richman and wüthrich [17] used neural networks to provide a variety of rate estimates in 2018. the kernel analysis is done using a "probabilistic neural network (pnn)." pnn helps to speed up the training process [18]. to create a dynamic classification system with decreased statistical parameters, pnn utilizes statistics and neural networks. pnn was also used to characterize and evaluate the capacity of bacteria to flourish in areas with and without bacteria. working conditions affect evolution [19]. using previously published chest x-ray pictures, woniak et al. [20] developed a unique method for identifying respiratory system malignancies. it was suggested that neural networks based on momentum and probabilistic information may be employed instead (pnn). the velocity of the fragmented nodule curves was discovered to be a feature after bulk fragmentation in chest x-ray images. nodules may be categorized using pnn with 92% accuracy, according to the trials. handfoot-mouth disease outbreaks in 2019 might be predicted using a neural network, according to jia et al. [21]. machine learning was used by hamer et al. [22] to forecast the spatial and temporal distribution of hazardous disorders. aside from predicting epidemics of cardiovascular disease [23,24], influenza [25], and epidemic diarrhea [26], strategies based on artificial intelligence have been proposed. neural networks are studied by ke et al. [27] by merging visual features with heuristic techniques. for the procedure to work, there are a number of steps: probability models for the detection of respiratory illnesses are first developed using essential characteristics and an artificial neural network (ann). using heuristic methods, these damaged lung cells may then be identified directly, emphasizing the value of early diagnosis. an artificial intelligence strategy to identifying covid 19 patients in ct scans was announced by china in 2020 [28]. over 40,000 ct scan images from 106 individuals were used to train the model on coronavirus identification using the unet++ [29] architecture framework. radiologists' time-consuming efforts may be considerably reduced if this strategy is used. [30] in the words of wong and wang, artificial intelligence system covid-net was published by researchers who used an imbalanced dataset that included a small number of covid-19 images from healthy and other non-covid respiratory tract infection patients, as well as nearly 16,000 images from healthy and other non-covid respiratory tract infection patients. the researchers trained and tested their method using this imbalanced dataset. finally, as well as in a prior study soon et al. [31] including nine covid-19 positive people, the link between chest x-rays and ct pictures was found. deep learning (dl) model types specific to neural networks have been developed by others, such as covid-net [30] and resnet50 [32]. in 31 occurrences, covid-net identified covid19 as positive, but resnet50 identified 25 instances of covid19 positivity. a seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average (sarima) and a neural network non-linear auto regression were used by wang et al. [33] to analyze tuberculosis incidence data in china (nnnar). they are employing a broad bacterial illness, covid-19-induced lung infection, and a developing neural network to search for covid-19 auto. this is not the first time that a transfer learning approach has been used. a broad variety of anomalies in big sets of basic medical data may be identified with surprising accuracy using transfer learning [34]. [35] chouhan et al. used numerous neural network models in datasets to extract test features. a network's classification performance is based on the characteristics listed above. in order to ensure that the diagnosis is allocated to the most popular categorization, the data from each network is aggregated using the results of the popular vote. in order to extract covid characteristics from routine computed kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 48 tomography testing, li et al. [36] built a covnet neural network. as the most often used encoder-decoder networks for feature extraction, the u-net and its variations collect lowand high-level characteristics through the encoder and conceptual features via the decoder. unet++ was used by chen et al. [28] to detect the existence of a covid-like disorder. a capsule network was utilized by afshar et al. [37] to detect covid patients in x-ray images. mei et al. [38] used computed tomographic observations of symptoms, prior visibility, and laboratory tests to quickly identify covid-19 positive people. table 1: summary of the modality and method of each author explained in the above section. author modality (dataset) method hong and zhou et al. textual bpnn, grnn, and rbfnn arifin et al. data image pso, cfs zhang et al., gong et al. and cheng et al. data image pso combined hybrid mutation method richman et al., wüthrich et al. textual probabilistic neural network (pnn) woźniak et al. chest x-ray images probabilistic neural network (pnn) jia et al. textual neural network hamer et al. textual ml algorithms ke et al. data image neural network , heuristic algorithms china et al. ct images ai model (unet++) wang and wong et al. chest x-ray image ai system (covid-net) soon et al. cxrs and ct images neural network-tailored deep learning wang et al. textual sarima, nnnar apostolopoulos et al. and bessiana et al. data image neural network chouhan et al. data image different neural network li et al. ct images neural network (covnet) chen et al. ct images unet++ afshar et al. x-ray images capsule network mei, et al. ct images, textual ai algorithms 2.2. covid-19 detection based on symptoms a chinese dataset was used by ahamad et al. [39] to help with the covid-19 diagnosis in 2020. information on the subject's sex (male or female), age (in years), travel history (if applicable), and separation was also included in the dataset. in addition to the xgboost and svm models examined by the reviewers, they also considered the dt, rf, and gbm models. if you want to know your age, xgboost will have the greatest accuracy, with more than 85%. it is also more expensive, and it may result in a drop in viral test findings if you rely on chest imaging to diagnosis respiratory diseases." ct imaging data was examined in combination with many symptoms, visibility, laboratory tests (white cells, neutrophils, proportion neutrophils, immune cells, and percentage immune cells), age, sex, and temperature in order to boost the confidence in covid-19 test findings [38, 39]. researchers that examined picture data using a deep cnn and compared the effectiveness of svm, rf, and mlp designs determined that mlp was the most accurate design in general. the researchers then integrated the photos and clinical data. similarly, increased demand for images raises prices and may kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 49 restrict access to covid-19 test findings in lowand middle-income nations. thus, based on their symptoms and other demographic data, zoabi et al. [40] predicted the number of infected individuals in 2021. a gradient boosting machine learning model was constructed to detect the instances. sex, being over 60 years old, having had prior contact with an infected person, and five early symptoms were all examined in the study: cough, fever, sore throat, dyspnea, and headache. those who did point out a flaw in the user data did so since it seemed to include flaws and biases as well. when this bias is eliminated, the auc of the proposed system drops to 0.862 [41]. banik et al. [42] set out to evaluate the chance of a person developing a covid19 viral infection. numerous techniques are now being researched, including linear svm, lr, mnb, and dt, in order to develop an adequate model for predicting the chance of infection based on clinical symptoms. the aforementioned technique has a proportion of criteria that are equally important. several characteristics, on the other hand, are significantly more essential when it comes to constructing covid-19 instances. finally, zoabi et al. [40] categorized covid-19 cases as positive or negative based on their gender, age, and symptoms (sore throat, cough, headache, fever, and dyspnea), as well as their association with a wellknown example. the authors developed a gbm strategy using data from israel's ministry of health. while using both a reduction set and the original set of features, the gbm technique must have an auroc of 86 percent and 90 percent, respectively. the experts perceived gender to be more significant throughout the categorization process, which is consistent with previous findings. additionally, we enhanced by comparing the use of several methodologies to classification. apart from a cough, a fever, a sore throat, breathlessness, and a headache, to improve performance, we took advantage of symptoms linked with olfaction abnormalities, rhinorrhea, and taste disorders. table 2: summarizes the modality and method of each author explained in the above section. author modality (dataset) method ahamad et al. textual xgboost, svm, dt, rf, and gbm models mei et al. ct images, textual dcnn, svm, rf, and mlp models zoabi et al. textual machine learning model banik et al. textual machine learning algorithm(lr, mnb, l svm, dt) zoabi et al. textual gbm model the effectiveness of nn and pso in the field of medical diagnosis is demonstrated in this work. early detection of this disease may help doctors, clinics, and patients in controlling or reducing the effects of covid-19. 3. methods and materials 3.1 system overview the research approach includes the preparation of data, the description of new data sets, the collection of data, the extraction of features, the classification of data, and the comparison of data (figure 1). preprocessing the data from 55,676 patients from brazil resulted in the creation of several datasets including information about patients who underwent covid-19 testing utilizing these balanced and unbalanced techniques. the methodological stages involve preparing data, describing new data sets, extracting features, and performing comparisons. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 50 figure 1: a summary of the original study methodological approach. we used both balanced and unbalanced data sets to apply the pso with nn (psonn) classification models. to compare classification models, we used logistic regression, nave bayes classifier, multilayer perceptron, support vector machine, bf tree, bayesian networks, and other techniques. the following classification metrics were calculated as well: precision, recall, accuracy score, and f-measure [43]. 3.2 system preparation 3.2.1 proposed method this paper employs the proposed automatic covid-19 detection system based on pso with nn (psonn). pso is used in the training program of the psonn system, which is an improvement of a dataset method. figure 2 presents a step by step process of psonn's main procedures. the software is implemented in java language. since all of the datasets are received training with psonn, the process is optimized in the source code. the network will also be studied and the results would be assessed in the following step. one of most complex process is the psonn, that merges the pso optimization algorithm with bpnn activities. pso is being used to evaluate input weights, that are then use for bpnn to check whether the system. lastly, the results will be presented and compared. 3.2.2 methods: manual first pre-processing is performed to convert the data collected, that is in physical copy file format and excel spreadsheets, to a format suitable for analysis, and therefore we can refer to the final list of the beginning pre-processed data. following that, samples are divided into 2 parts known as training and testing sets. the following step is preprocessing, which involves balancing data in each class sample. when all of the data sets are used together, feature selection is performed. the final set is then fed into psonn. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 51 figure 2: the proposed flowchart of the psonn automatic covid-19 detection system. 3.3 data set: 3.3.1 data description the original brazilian covid-19 real data (from the 26 brazilian states and the federal district) contained information about tested patients, including early-stage symptoms, comorbidities, demographic data, and symptom descriptions. virus and antibody tests were used on the patients. we preprocessed the dataset by removing rows with duplicated instances and asymptomatic patients, selecting only completed tests that were marked as positive or negative, using string matching algorithms to correct some inconsistencies, and removing rows with duplicated instances and asymptomatic patients. to select features, we also focused on the most common and relevant demographic information and reported early-stage symptoms, and we balanced the data by random under sampling using the near miss algorithm, taking into account positive and negative cases. the preprocessing produced a dataset containing 2,674 patients. the decrease in the number of patients from 55,676 to 2,674 was caused by asymptomatic patients, duplicated data, few reported symptoms by some patients, and the need for information about the dates of symptom onset and testing. we built and tested supervised machine learning models for covid-19 detection in brazil using this dataset, which was based on early-stage symptoms and basic personal information. this dataset is associated with the study "machine learning models for covid-19 detection in brazil using symptoms." kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 52 3.3.2 data collection: the initial data set consisted of 55,676 patients. on the other hand, data collecting is not a significant addition to this research. the original data were obtained by the campina grande public health agency in paraiba state, northeast brazil. this governmental agency receives reports on all covid-19 tests conducted in campina grande. local health department personnel removed patient identifiers; however, the captured data was re-used to facilitate this research. healthcare providers, security experts, nationality, test type, pyrexia, raw throat, shortness of breath, sense of smell diseases, cough, chills, strange taste, headache, extra symptomatology, lab results, chronicity, test status, and symptomatology definition are all categorical features included in the raw given dataset. 3.4 feature extraction: identifying the significant features helps to improve the accuracy and reliability because it ignores features that have little relevance to the system. 3.5 data preprocessing we preprocessed the data using the java programming language. pattern matching algorithms are used to pre-process the initial data gathering in order to eliminate discrepancies. the existence of empty columns of symptoms established inconsistency; moreover, the same symptoms appeared in a column dedicated to a full review of symptoms. additionally, the following occurrences were excluded from the 55,676-person sample as a result of our differential diagnosis: patients with missing tests or ambiguous final classifications (n=12,929), instances of redundancy (n=251), outliers due to user error (n=10,408), tests of various types that are not rt-pcr or rapid (n=771), patients with an unknown gender, and patients without symptoms (n=11,269). patients without symptoms were excluded from the study because demographic and symptomatologic information were used as inputs to the algorithms. by removing components associated with symptom definitions, the dimensionality of the derived features from the original data set is decreased. for example, fatigue was eliminated after it was reported by 228 of the 55,676 patients. due to the increasing focus on symptoms, the data sets do not cover chronic illnesses or residual characteristics (e.g., nationality). the following criteria were created based on the most often seen symptoms (fever, raw throat, shortness of breath, olfactory abnormalities, cough, and chills, for example). table 3: data sets containing demographic and symptom information from patients who are symptomatic including both types of tests. properties 20,021: unbalanced 3128: balanced demographic properties gender 8919: male (%44.55) 1639: femlate (%52.40) healthcare provider 2485 475 symptoms fever 9169 1856 raw throat 5976 848 shortness of breath 3704 1082 olfaction diseases 1967 522 cough 11,641 1944 chills 1159 266 strange taste 1596 387 headache 4034 577 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 53 during preprocessing, categorical data are turned into binary characterizations. a score of zero indicates that the patient is female, while a number of one indicates that the patient is male. the number 0 represented a good response to the following characteristics of healthcare providers: fever, raw throat, shortness of breath, olfactory illnesses, cough, chills, taste abnormalities, and headache, while the number 1 indicated a negative response. the near-miss approach was used to undertake under sampling [44], which included both positive and negative covid-19 cases. to prevent the use of simulated data in the training and testing sets, under sampling was employed rather than over sampling. additionally, as previously stated, imbalanced data were assumed without under sampling in order to boost the test's representativeness and imitate a real-world scenario in which the percentage of negative covid-19 instances is greater than the proportion of positive covid-19 cases. we identified significant demographic factors (gender and healthcare providers) in unbalanced and balanced data sets, as well as taste abnormalities and headaches (table 3). healthcare professionals were considered important due to the high frequency of sars-cov-2 infection. additionally, there seems to be no agreement on whether the proportions of men and women exposed to the virus who develop severe acute respiratory syndrome vary (which, in general, is a 50/50 split) [45, 46]. additionally, the imbalanced data set contains 20,021 individuals who had rt-pcr and rapid assay examinations. patient numbers were reduced as a result of missed tests, redundancy, outliers due to user error, test type, and asymptomatic patients. both imbalance data sets have 1564 positive and 18,457 negative covid-19 cases (7.81 percent and 92.19 percent, respectively), while the balanced data set has 1564 occurrences of each class. 496 female patients (2.48%) tested positive, whereas 10,606 male patients (52.97%) tested negative. male patients had 1068 positive findings (5.33%), whereas female patients received 7851 negative findings (39.21 percent). the most commonly reported symptom (n=11,641, 58.1 percent) was coughing. the second most often reported symptom was fever (n=9169, 45.8%). at least 5976 (29.9 percent) of persons with symptomatic conditions had persistent symptoms (figure (3)). 3128 patients were assessed in the balanced data set using rt-pcr and rapid tests. the near-miss method produced a similar number of positive and negative cases; 496 (15.86%) of female patients tested positive, while 993 (31.75%) tested negative. males had 1068 positive cases and 571 negative cases (34.14 percent) (18.25 percent ). cough and fever, the two most often reported symptoms, remained top and second, respectively. the other symptoms were reported by 1082 (34.6 percent) of patients (figure (4). figure 3: the incidence of symptoms for the 20,021 participants in both imbalance data sets who were symptomatic kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 54 figure 4: the rate of symptoms for the 3128 patients in both balanced data sets who may have been symptomatic. finally, the unbalanced rt-pcr data set has 916 cases of covid-19 (32.96 percent positive) and 1863 cases of covid-19 (67.04 percent negative), whereas the balanced data set contains 916 cases of each class. the imbalance data set had 648 instances of positive covid-19 and 16,594 instances of negative covid-19 (3.76 percent and 96.24 percent, respectively), whereas the balanced data set contained 648 occurrences of each class. the six models are presented based on a comparison of the results of the categorization models from various types of testing. as a result, there is no need to utilize several approaches or to choose an individual patient's profile in order to acquire the testing results and outcomes discussed in this study. 3.6 implementation components this section explains and clarifies the findings of the experiment. the system is implemented using the java programming language. performance analysis is used to evaluate the proposed strategy's precision, f-measure, accuracy, and recall. 90% of the dataset is used for training, whereas 10% is used for testing. among the operating systems that can assist with distribution are windows 7, windows 8, and windows 10. 4. results and discussions 4.1 introduction this section explains data collection and the methods in each test before and after applying research contribution. the design analysis of the obtained results, as observed in section three, is also displayed. 4.2 experimental result analysis this section included the maximum accuracy of the proposed covid-19 identification into a particle swarm optimization with neural network (psonn) model through an experimental research. the pso is used to determine the bpnn training session's ideal weights and biases, 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 both balanced dataset balanced dataset kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 55 which may subsequently be used to assess the bpnn. the proposed model is validated and analyzed using well-established methods. the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the proposed particle swarm optimization neural network (psonn) outperforms traditional neural networks. as a result, performance evaluation parameters such as accuracy, recall, and f1-measure are considered. additionally, the datasets are divided into training and testing portions, with 90% of the datasets used for training and 10% for testing. java is used to implement the preferred particle swarm optimization technique based on neural networks (psonn). 4.3 the proposed model in the introduced model, the dataset is employed as the system's input features. the preprocessed data is normalized. this psonn model is used in conjunction with pso as a classification model to create weights and biases. the model employs two hidden layers (12 neurons in the first and 8 neurons in the second) and 14 input neurons, but only one output neuron is employed. as seen in table (4) the model classifier's parameters both the training and testing phases use the same set of parameters. the matrix displays the degree to which the misclassifications are equivalent. this indicates that the bulk of misclassifications occur one class above or below the correct categorization. this is mostly because the labeling function is same. confusion matrix for the model's validation phase, which includes extensive results (see table (8)). the model's testing phase exhibits the same confusion matrix as the training phase, with almost all sample mis-classifications occurring one class above or below the actual class label. table 4: the initial parameters of the model input data classifier w hidden c2 c1 epoch particles fever, throat pain, dyspnea,cough,cor yza, headache, olfactory disorders,taste disorders, gender, are you professional 1 0.729 6 1.4944 1.4944 500 24 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 56 figure 5: classification accuracy of the psonn system 4.4 performance evaluation numerous statistical measures, such as true positive (tp), true negative (tn), false positive (fp), and false negative (fn), may be used to approximate the suggested approach (fp). the following table summarizes these values (5). table 5: description of statistical values description output perfect defected perfect tp fp defected fn tn these statistical parameter values are evaluated using the following equations, which are formulated below. 1. accuracy: it is the ratio of true patterns to the sum of all patterns. it can be explained as accuracy = (tn+tp)/(tn+tp+fn+fp) as a result, the proposed particle swarm optimization with neural network (psonn) model has an accuracy on training data of 0.98.73 and an accuracy on testing data of 98.689. table 6: model—results of training accuracy on training data=98.73. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 model training testing positive negative tp=1093 fp=0 1093 fn=27 tn=1020 1047 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 57 table 7: model results of testing accuracy on testing data=98.689 the results demonstrate the model's efficacy throughout both the testing and training phases (see figure 5). the fundamental reason for this is that the pso approach calculates the network's optimum weights, resulting in the network being generalized. the change is advantageous solely for classification; it has no effect on the outcome when the system is used for prediction. thus, this text has been categorized; this type of modification is highly advantageous. the system's model obtains an accuracy of 98.73 percent throughout the testing phase, outperforming basic bpnn models without pso. 2. precision: it is the ratio of true positive patterns to the sum of all positive patterns. it can be explained as precision = tp/(tp+fp) as a result, the precision for the proposed pso with nn (psonn) model is 1.0000. 3. f-measure: both precision and recall values are required to calculate the value of the fmeasure. it can be explained as f-measure= 2 × (recall x precision) /( recall + precision) the proposed approach has an f-measure value of =0.98.7. 4.5 comparative analysis the comparison study for the suggested method and existing algorithms, such as nave bayes classifier, bayesian networks, logistic regression, multilayer perceptron, support vector machine, bf tree, and others is described in this section. psonn methods suggested in this paper can be detected using the weka3.9.4 explorer [43]. precision, recall, f-measure, and accuracy score classification models' mean values were among the best achieved using a 10fold cross-validation and testing set (8,9). similar findings were obtained when unbalanced and balanced data sets were used. the table contains the values for the proposed and present approaches (8,9). table 8: the classification models' results of a tenfold cross-validation (unbalanced and balanced) datasets and models precision recall f-measure accuracy score naïve bayes 0.891 0.868 0.880 0.878 bayesian networks 0.891 0.868 0.880 0.878 logistic regression 0.847 0.897 0.871 0.875 multilayer perceptron 0.988 0.962 0.975 0.974 support vector 0.869 0.889 0.879 0.880 bf tree 0.972 0.968 0.970 0.970 proposed psocnn 1.0000 0.975 0.987 0.987 table 9: the results of the testing set for classification models utilizing both unbalanced and balanced classification models. datasets and models precision recall f-measure accuracy score naïve bayes 0.890 0.866 0.878 0.876 bayesian networks 0.890 0.866 0.878 0.876 logistic regression 0.848 0.897 0.872 0.975 multilayer perceptron 0.994 0.958 0.975 0.974 support vector 0.881 0.885 0.883 0.883 bf tree 0.985 0.982 0.983 0.983 proposed psocnn 1.0000 0.975 0.987 0.987 positive negative tp=244 fp=0 244 fn=7 tn=283 290 kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 58 the results of the existing and presented approach are seen in the tables above. the accuracy achieved for the covid-19 detection, the presented approach, which obtained 98.73 on training data and 98.68 on testing data, was compared to existing approaches such as nave bayes classifier, bayesian networks, logistic regression, multilayer perceptron, support vector machine, bf tree, and the proposed particle swarm optimization with neural network (psonn). the accuracy of the existing approaches naïve bayes classifier, bayesian networks, logistic regression, multilayer perceptron, support vector machine, bf tree algorithms using both unbalanced/balanced 10-fold cross-validation and testing set are 0.878, 0.878, 0.875, 0.974, 0.880 ,0.970 respectively for 10-fold cross-validation and 0.876, 0.876, 0.975, 0.883 ,0.983 respectively for testing set. the precision level for the presented approach is 1.0000, whereas the precision levels for the existing techniques, naïve bayes classifier, bayesian networks, logistic regression, multilayer perceptron, support vector machine, bf tree algorithms using both unbalanced/ balanced 10-fold cross-validation and testing set are 0.891, 0.891, 0.847, 0.988, 0.869, 0.972 respectively for cross-validation and 0.890, 0.890, 0.848, 0.994, 0.881, 0.985 respectively for testing set. this demonstrates that the precision level for the presented approach was high and that it performed well, giving an effective result. the recall value for the proposed method is 0.97.5, whereas the recall values for the existing algorithms, nave bayes classifier, bayesian networks, logistic regression, multilayer perceptron, support vector machine, bf tree algorithms using both unbalanced/balanced cross-validation of 10-fold and testing set are 0.868, 0.868, 0.897, 0.962, 0.889 ,0.968 respectively for 10-fold cross-validation and 0.866, 0.866, 0.897, 0.958, 0.885,0.982 respectively for testing set. finally, the f-measure value for the presented method is 98.7, whereas the f-measure values for the existing approaches, nave bayes classifier, bayesian networks, logistic regression, multilayer perceptron, support vector machine, bf tree algorithms using both unbalanced/balanced 10-fold cross-validation and testing set are 0.880, 0.880, 0.871, 0.975, 0.879, 0.970 respectively for cross-validation and 0.878, 0.878, 0.872, 0.975, 0.883, 0.983 respectively for testing set. as a result of this comparative analysis, the presented approach outperforms the existing approaches in recall, precision, accuracy, and f-measure. figures (6), (7),(8) and (9) show the comparative analysis graph in bar and line diagrams using both unbalanced/balanced dataset 10-fold cross-validation and testing set . kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 59 figure 6: bar diagram for the comparative analysis using 10-fold cross-validation both unbalanced/balanced dataset. figure 7: bar diagram for the comparative analysis using testing set both unbalanced/balanced dataset. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 60 figure 8: line diagram for the comparative analysis using 10-fold cross-validation both unbalanced/balanced dataset. figure 9: line diagram for the comparative analysis using testing set both unbalanced/balanced dataset. the x-axis in figures (6), (7), (8), and (9) depicts covid-19 detection performance measures such as accuracy, recall, precision, and f-measure. the y-axis displays the parameter values. 0.75 0.8 0.85 0.9 0.95 1 1.05 accuracy precision recall f-measure naivebayes bayesiannetworks logisticregression perceptron supportvector bftree proposed psocnn 0.75 0.8 0.85 0.9 0.95 1 1.05 accuracy precision recall f-measure naivebayes bayesiannetworks logisticregression perceptron supportvector bftree proposed psocnn kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 6 – issue 2 – december 2021 | 61 the proposed strategy is marked by a grey background color. bayesian networks, logistic regression, multilayer perceptron, support vector machine, and bf tree are represented by blue, red, green, purple, sky blue, and orange, respectively. this analysis demonstrates unequivocally that the provided technique surpasses current algorithms in terms of accuracy, precision, recall, and f-measure when compared to the nave bayes classifier, bayesian networks, logistic regression, multilayer perceptron, support vector machine, and bf tree. as a result, the approach provided here is favored for identifying covid-19. 5. conclusion recent results validated the use of adopting covid-19 categorization methods in brazil, which are mostly based on non-invasive symptoms. to compare the classifier model, we utilized actual data from 55,676 patients, as well as the cross-validation technique of 10-fold, classification, and the nn with pso. the neural network with particle swarm optimization was widely acknowledged as the best classification strategy for reliably and rapidly classifying symptomatic patients for testing. comprehensive documentation of the following characteristics in symptomatic individuals aids in the diagnosis of covid-19: sex, health care professional, sore throat, fever, shortness of breath, olfactory difficulties, cough, rhinorrhea, taste abnormalities, and headache. for instance, patients who live in impoverished but also very difficult environments benefit from the use of non-invasive symptoms. the following points are actually mainly concluded in this paper: (1) adding an extra hidden layer to the presented model's cases and scenarios helps improve a state's accuracy. (2) trying to improve accuracy is greatly aided by changing an accuracy method of calculation that included walls and floors rounding functions. (3) pso achieves the highest accuracy rate in the psonn system. because of the use of pso for weight optimization as well as a start changing in the accuracy calculation, this model outperformed each other. we have noticed that in recent years, machine learning and optimization algorithms are still considered one of the most promising algorithms in terms of being integrated with other technologies. this means that the changes and developments in it are continuing to come up with new methods that can be more effective and capable of yielding more satisfying results. for future works, the authors advise the readers to hybridize and evaluate the current proposed algorithm with the following research works: [47-63]. reference [1] a. altan and s. karasu, "recognition of covid-19 disease from x-ray images by hybrid model consisting of 2d curvelet transform, chaotic salp swarm algorithm and deep learning technique," chaos, solitons & fractals, vol. 140, p. 110071, 2020. 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[63] b. a. hassan, t. a. rashid, and h. k. hamarashid, “a novel cluster detection of covid-19 patients and medical disease conditions using improved evolutionary clustering algorithm star,” comput. biol. med., p. 104866, 2021. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) journal homepage: http://www.spu.edu.iq/kjar issn 2411-7684 (print) – 2411-7706 (online) march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 50 kjar review article effects of chemical weapons on cancer development in human belal a. muhammad1,2 1biomedical research unit, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, kurdistan region, iraq. 2department of medical laboratory science, komar university of science and technology, sulaimani, kurdistan region, iraq. corresponding author: belal.muhammad@spu.edu.iq received│december 28, 2015 accepted│january 20, 2016 abstract although use of chemical weapons has low probability, it can cause a large scale casualties among exposed people if it is used. these kind of weapons have been used by human being since ancient history. however, the first large scale usage started with world war i followed by world war ii. several regulations and guidelines have been set by different organizations such as north atlantic treaty organization and organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons to limit the usage of these weapons. however, till the present time the world is not free from the risk of these weapons on human life. while the effects of chemical weapons on certain human systems including respiratory and immune systems as well as the dermatological complications have been extensively studied, the relation between chemical weapons and cancer development has not been fully understood. this review addresses the definition and usage of chemical weapons in addition to the types of chemical agents used in their production. evidences about the chemical weapons and cancer development have also been thoroughly discussed. in summary, it appears that data regarding carcinogenicity of chemical weapons in human are both limited and contradictory. accordingly, any claim about the carcinogenic effects of these kind of weapons in the exposed victims need to be properly validated. key words: chemical weapons, chemical agents, cancer, sulfur mustard, nerve agents. introduction since ancient age, different forms of chemical weapons have been used by human being. the greatest advance in using and developing these weapons has occurred during the 19th century especially with the start of world war i (wwi) (szinicz, 2005). the effects of chemical weapons on certain human systems such as respiratory and immune systems as well as the dermatological complications have been extensively studied in the literature (case and lea, 1955, beebe, 1960, dacre and goldman, 1996, ghanei and vosoghi, 2002, salih et al., 2008, salih et al., 2009, ghanei and harandi, 2010, haines and fox, 2014, gupta, 2015). however, the association between chemical weapons and cancer development remained poorly understood. the concern of cancer development related to chemical weapon probably paved from the fact that some of the chemical agents used in http://www.spu.edu.iq/kjar mailto:belal.muhammad@spu.edu.iq kjar review article chemical weapons & cancer, belal a m, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 51 manufacturing the chemical weapons such as mustard or sulfur mustard (sm) gases are classified as group 1 carcinogens to human by the international agency for research on cancer (iarc) (iarc, 2012). however, how cancer of a specific organ or site is developed after exposure to these chemicals is an important issue yet to be clarified. available data in the literature are sparse, not consistence, and have lots of limitations. this review is an effort toward clarification of the concept of chemical weapons and their relationship to cancer development in human. definition of chemical weapons chemical weapons have been described in different ways. to simplify this, specialists considered any weapon that uses a manufactured chemical agent to harm humans as a chemical weapon. however, to be more accurate, the term chemical weapon and chemical agents has been carefully defined by some organizations such as organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons (opcw) and north atlantic treaty organization (nato). opcw has issued an important document in nineties known as chemical weapons convention (cwc) and asked the countries across the world to support it. up to now, more than 190 countries have participated in this convention which contains enormous information about the chemical weapons. the convention aims to eliminate an entire category of weapons of mass destruction by prohibiting the development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, retention, transfer or use of chemical weapons by states parties (opcw, 2015). according to the opcw, the term chemical weapon can be applied to any toxic chemical or its precursor that can cause death, injury, temporary incapacitation or sensory irritation through its chemical action. the same reference stated that munitions or other delivery devices designed to deliver chemical weapons, whether filled or unfilled, may also be considered as weapons themselves (opcw, 2015). chemical agents are exist either naturally or developed through different industries. the above definition can be applied to both of these categories to include any chemical agent used in the production of weapons of mass destruction. similarly, a chemical agent has been defined by nato as a chemical substance which is intended for use in military operations to kill, seriously injure or incapacitate people because of its physiological effects (nato handbook on the medical aspects, 1996). by looking at both of the definitions above it appear that the purpose of use is more important than the chemical agent itself. some toxic chemical agents are necessary for human use in agriculture and industries such as riot control agents, herbicides, smoke and flame. therefore, these chemicals have been excluded from the definition of chemical weapon. however, use of these chemicals in large quantities may cause a mass destruction. moreover, some of the chemical agents may be used together as a mixture, and also, new agents are constantly being discovered. a proper solution for this would be to expand the definition of chemical weapon to include any chemical substances that its intended purpose is prohibited by the cwc (opcw, 2015). kjar review article chemical weapons & cancer, belal a m, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 52 historical background of the usage of chemical weapons the usage record of chemical agents as weapons in war can be traced back centuries down to prehistoric times. some simple form of chemicals such as toxic fumes has been used in wars since the fifth century b.c. (wmd, 2015). however, their usage was limited due to restricted knowledge at that time. at early years of 19th century the knowledge about chemistry and the hazardous effect of chemical agents has increased and resulted in the usage of some chemicals in the production of mass destruction weapons. the first effective use of chemical warfare emerged in the world war i (wwi) starting with germans attack with chlorine gas against their enemies at ypres, belgium which resulted in massive casualties (szinicz, 2005, chemical weapons, 2015, wmd, 2015). since then, the usage of chemical weapons have been expanded and more dangerous chemical agents have been used in their production. one of the most series usage in the modern age was that practiced by the iraqi forces ruled by saddam hussain’s regime which resulted in thousands of casualties (szinicz, 2005, chemical weapons, 2015, wmd, 2015). table 1 shows selected historical usage of different types of chemical weapons within the modern age (from 1914). types of chemical agents used in chemical weapons many types of chemical agents have been used in manufacturing of chemical weapons. these agents are classified into several groups based on their biological mode of action on human body. table 2 shows some characteristics of main groups of chemical agents including choking, blister, blood, nerve and riot control agents. chemical weapons and cancer cancer is a multifactorial disease which may develop over time as a result of exposure to many chemical, biological, or radiological agents. among the different types of chemical agents used to make mass destructive chemical weapons, sulfur mustard (sm) has been reported to be carcinogenic (iarc, 1975, iarc, 1987), especially in case of long (occupational) exposure (ghanei and vosoghi, 2002). however, carcinogenicity of sm following a single exposure is a subject of controversy. it has been long shown that chronic exposure (i.e., long time continuous exposure) to sm increased the risk of respiratory cancer (wada and kambe, 1968, manning et al., 1981). studies have also shown the mortality rate of those who have injured from sm during ww i among the british and american these findings were further supported by a later study performed by easton et al, (1988) who showed evidence about lung and upper respiratory tract cancers following mustard gas exposure (easton et al., 1988). development of other types of cancer such as chronic myelocytic leukemia (cml) in war victims exposed to mustard gas was also shown to be increased (ghanei and vosoghi, 2002). in a more recent study, an iranian team have performed a big long-term follow-up cohort study kjar review article chemical weapons & cancer, belal a m, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 53 table 1: historical usage of chemical weapons. selected usage of different types of chemical weapons within the modern age (from 1914) is presented. adapted from (szinicz, 2005, opcw fact sheet 4, 2015, wmd, 2015). a full chronological usage list of chemical weapons across the history is presented in the supplementary table si. time description m o d e rn a g e (f ro m 1 9 1 4 ) november 1914—first use of the irritant chloroacetone by french forces and soon after by germany and russia (szinicz, 2005) april 22, 1915—germans attack the french with a lung-damaging agent chlorine gas at ypres, france. this was the first significant use of chemical warfare in wwi as weapon of mass destruction (szinicz, 2005, chemical weapons, 2015, wmd, 2015) september 25, 1915—first british chemical weapons attack; chlorine gas is used against germans at the battle of loos (szinicz, 2005, chemical weapons, 2015, wmd, 2015) december, 1915—first use of the lung-damaging agent phosgene by german forces (szinicz, 2005) june 1918—first u.s. use of gas in warfare (chemical weapons, 2015, wmd, 2015) 1919—british use adamsite against the bolsheviks during the russian civil war (chemical weapons, 2015, wmd, 2015) 1922-1927—the spanish use chemical weapons against the rif rebels in spanish morocco (chemical weapons, 2015, wmd, 2015) 1935–1936—use of tear and mustard gases against ethiopians during italian invasion of abyssinia (szinicz, 2005, chemical weapons, 2015, wmd, 2015) 1963-1967—use of chemical weapons (phosgene and mustard gases) by egypt against yemen (szinicz, 2005, chemical weapons, 2015, wmd, 2015) 1983-1988—use of sulphur mustard, tabun and sarin by iraqi forces during iraq–iran war (szinicz, 2005, chemical weapons, 2015, wmd, 2015) 1987-1988—use of different kind of chemical weapons (hydrogen cyanide, mustard gas, and sarin) by iraqi forces against the kurds, most notably in the in the anfal campaign and halabja massacre in 1988 (szinicz, 2005, chemical weapons, 2015, wmd, 2015) for iranian veterans who exposed to sm versus unexposed individuals and concluded that the single exposure to the sm during the iraq-iran war increased the incidence of cancer (zafarghandi et al., 2013). however, soon after, this claim has been heavily disapproved by some other iranian researchers criticizing inaccuracy in the parameters taken into account (karbasi-afshar et al., 2013). sm has been shown to be mutagenic causing mutations and chromosomal aberrations in a variety of different species using many different laboratory techniques (auerbach, 1947, heston, 1950, dacre and goldman, 1996). kjar review article chemical weapons & cancer, belal a m, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 54 table 2: types and characteristics of chemical agents based on their mode of action (i.e. the route of penetration and their effect on the human body) adapted from (opcw fact sheet 4, 2015). agent persistency rate of action mode of action physiological effects dispersal choking agents chlorine (cl) phosgene (cg) diphosgene (dp) chloropicrin (ps) chloropicrin (ps) chloropicrin (ps) low low low low variable delayed delayed rapid absorption through lungs fluid builds up in lungs, choking victim gas blister agents sulfur mustard (h, hd) nitrogen mustard (hn) phosgene oxime (cx) lewisite (l) very high high low high delayed delayed immediate rapid absorption through lungs, skin burns skin, mucous membranes and eyes; causes large blisters on exposed skin; blisters windpipe and lungs; large number of casualties, low percentage of deaths liquid, aerosol, vapor and dust blood agents hydrogen cyanide (ac) cyanogen chloride (ck) arsine (sa) low low low rapid rapid delayed absorption through lungs cyanide destroys ability of blood tissues to utilize oxygen, causing them to ‘starve’ and strangling the heart gas nerve agents tabun (ga) sarin (gb) soman (gd) cyclosarin (gf) vx low low moderate moderate very high very rapid very rapid very rapid very rapid rapid absorption through lungs (gseries); contact with skin (vx) causes seizures, loss of body control; paralyses muscles, including heart and diaphragm; lethal doses can cause death in five minutes liquid, aerosol, vapor and dust riot control agents tear gas (cs) pepper spray (oc) low low immediate immediate absorption through lungs, skin, eyes causes tears, coughing and irritation to eyes, nose, mouth and skin; constricts airway and shuts eyes (oc) liquid, aerosol however, attempts to seek confirmatory results in laboratory animals have not been consistent (dacre and goldman, 1996). moreover, evidence considering a short-term, high dose single exposure of sm as a direct causative agent of lung cancer is lacking in the literature probably due to its lethality (gupta, 2015). however, cases of human lung cancer due to long-term exposure to sm are well documented (ghanei and harandi, 2010). therefore, any claim about carcinogenic effect of sm in exposed victims needs strong evidence coupled with careful assessment of parameters taken into account. till the time of this review preparation, no studies were found in the kjar review article chemical weapons & cancer, belal a m, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 55 literature to proof the direct carcinogenicity of sm or other chemical agents (such as nerve gases) used in mass destruction weapons especially after a short time single exposure. cancer development is a long process which may take several months to several years to appear. this require victims of the chemical weapon to survive long enough to be monitored for any sign of cancer development. however, people who expose to nerve gases die soon after exposure due to the fact that nerve gases are among the most dangerous known chemical agents that could rapidly kill the victims by any route of exposure (reutter, 1999). this might be the reason why studies about cancer development in people who exposed to nerve agent containing chemical weapons is rare, if any. in contrast, many studies about the effects of sm on human health are available as discussed above. other health effects of chemical weapons in human including gene abnormalities have also been studied in the literature. for example, a rare hemoglobin variant known as hb iraq-halabja has been first reported in a patient from halabja (deutsch et al., 1999), a kurdish city at northern iraq which was exposed to chemical weapon attack in 1988 by saddam hussein’s regime. similarly, mutations in p53 tumor suppressor gene have been detected in japanese mustard gas workers (takeshima et al., 1994). however, these mutations have not been firmly linked to carcinogenesis. moreover, data regarding the effects of sm exposure on human productivity including pregnancy are either lacking or contradictory (gupta, 2015). studies also evaluated the effect of chemical warfare agents on the overall health status of survivors in halabja including respiratory and dermatological problems as well as immunological defects (salih, al-jaff et al., 2008, salih, al-jaff et al., 2009). in addition, many other health complications following exposure to chemical weapons have also been extensively studied. since addressing these issues is not within the scope of this review, readers can get a comprehensive view from an excellent book recently published in 2015 entitled “handbook of toxicology of chemical warfare agents” (gupta, 2015). conclusions there is no doubt that chemical weapons are among the most dangerous mass destruction weapons ever used in the history. since it is first large scale usage in wwi millions of casualties have been recorded in different parts of our planet. these casualties can generally be categorized into two main groups based on the outcome of the exposure: (a) victims who exposed to a very high dose of the chemical agents are usually die soon after exposure, (b) those who exposed to less effective dose of the chemical agents show various direct and indirect complications including respiratory, dermatological, and immunological complications. to a less extent some of these chemical agents such as sm may cause systemic toxicities including immunohematopoietic complications which may lead to carcinogenesis especially in case of prolonged and/or repetitive exposure. however, cut edge evidence regarding tumourigenecity of chemical weapons in human is kjar review article chemical weapons & cancer, belal a m, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 56 still very limited. similarly, effects of these agents on productivity, birth defects, and new generation of children derived from survivors are left unclarified. therefore, it is very important that scientists address these issues and make it clear whether there is any actual risk of genetic abnormalities and malignancies in people who exposed to chemical weapons especially issues related to the productivity and their offspring. practical studies in this regard will not only provide a better insight into the possible health consequences of these agents but will also reassure the victims and help them to understand the amount of risk they should expect in their remaining life. references auerbach, c. (1947). the induction by mustard gas of chromosomal instabilities in drosophila melanogaster. proc r soc edinb biol. 62, 307-320. beebe, g. w. (1960). lung cancer in world war i veterans: possible relation to mustard-gas injury and 1918 influenza epidemic. j natl cancer inst. 25, 1231-1252. case, r. a. and a. j. lea (1955). mustard gas poisoning, chronic bronchitis, and lung cancer; an investigation into the possibility that poisoning by mustard gas in the 1914-18 war might be a factor in the production of neoplasia. br j prev soc med. 9, 62-72. chemical weapons. (2015). chemical weapons. fact sheets, critical issues retrieved december 28th, 2015, available from: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/resources/factsheets/critical-issues/4582-chemical-weapons. dacre, j. c. and m. goldman (1996). toxicology and pharmacology of the chemical warfare agent sulfur mustard. pharmacol rev. 48, 289-326. deutsch, s., r. darbellay, r. offord, a. frutiger, j. kister, h. wajcman and p. beris (1999). hb iraqhalabja beta10 (a7) ala-->val (gcc-->gtc): a new beta-chain silent variant in a family with multiple hb disorders. am j hematol. 61, 187-193. easton, d. f., j. peto and r. doll (1988). cancers of the respiratory tract in mustard gas workers. br j ind med. 45, 652-659. ghanei, m. and a. a. harandi (2010). lung carcinogenicity of sulfur mustard. clin lung cancer. 11, 13-17. ghanei, m. and a. a. vosoghi (2002). an epidemiologic study to screen for chronic myelocytic leukemia in war victims exposed to mustard gas. environ health perspect. 110, 519521. gupta, r. c. (2015). handbook of toxicology of chemical warfare agents. london, england, elsevier: ap: 1 online resource (1,199 pages). haines, d. d. and s. c. fox (2014). acute and longterm impact of chemical weapons: lessons from the iran-iraq war. forensic sci rev. 26, 97-114. heston, w. e. (1950). carcinogenic action of the mustards. j natl cancer inst. 11, 415-423. iarc (1975). iarc monographs on the evaluation of the carcinogenic risk of chemicals to man: some aziridines, n-, s& o-mustards and selenium. iarc monogr eval carcinog risk chem man. 9: 1-268. iarc (1987). overall evaluations of carcinogenicity: an updating of iarc monographs volumes 1 to 42. iarc monogr eval carcinog risks hum suppl. 7: 1-440. iarc (2012). iarc monographs on the evaluation of carcinogenic risks to humans, vol 100, a review of human carcinogens. . iarc monogr eval carcinog risks hum. 100. karbasi-afshar, r., y. panahi and a. saburi (2013). other considerations about carcinogenicity of sulfur mustard. cancer causes control. 24, 2251-2252. manning, k. p., d. c. skegg, p. m. stell and r. doll (1981). cancer of the larynx and other occupational hazards of mustard gas workers. clin otolaryngol allied sci. 6, 165-170. nato handbook on the medical aspects (1996). nato handbook on the medical aspects of nbc defensive operations, "part iii chemical":, u.s. department of defense, department of the army, february 1996. opcw (2015). brief description of chemical weapons, organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons. retrieved december 28th, 2015. opcw fact sheet 4. (2015). what is a chemical weapon? organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons. retrieved december 28th, 2015, available from: https://www.opcw.org/fileadmin/opcw/fact_sheets/ fact_sheet_4_-_cw_types.pdf. http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/resources/fact-sheets/critical-issues/4582-chemical-weapons http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/resources/fact-sheets/critical-issues/4582-chemical-weapons http://www.opcw.org/fileadmin/opcw/fact_sheets/fact_sheet_4_-_cw_types.pdf http://www.opcw.org/fileadmin/opcw/fact_sheets/fact_sheet_4_-_cw_types.pdf kjar review article chemical weapons & cancer, belal a m, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 57 reutter, s. (1999). hazards of chemical weapons release during war: new perspectives. environ health perspect. 107, 985-990. salih, a. h., b. m. a. al-jaff and b. m. m. (2008). the effect of chemical warfare agents on the immune system of survivors in halabja. journal of zankoy sulaimani (jzs) 11, 41-52. salih, a. h., b. m. a. al-jaff and b. m. m. (2009). common health complains among chemical bombardment survivors in halabja. j. duhok univ. 12, 312-316. szinicz, l. (2005). history of chemical and biological warfare agents. toxicology. 214, 167-181. takeshima, y., k. inai, w. p. bennett, r. a. metcalf, j. a. welsh, s. yonehara, y. hayashi, m. fujihara, m. yamakido, m. akiyama and et al. (1994). p53 mutations in lung cancers from japanese mustard gas workers. carcinogenesis. 15, 2075-2079. wada, s. and s. kambe (1968). [air pollution and lung cancer]. gan no rinsho. 14, 916-921. wmd. (2015). proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (wmd): history of usage and proliferation, social issues and debate topics webpage, library index. retrieved december 28th, 2015, available from: http://www.libraryindex.com/pages/1888/proliferation -weapons-mass-destruction-wmd-historyusage-proliferation.html. zafarghandi, m. r., m. r. soroush, m. mahmoodi, k. h. naieni, a. ardalan, a. dolatyari, f. falahati, m. mirmohammadkhani, b. mousavi and m. ghanei (2013). incidence of cancer in iranian sulfur mustard exposed veterans: a long-term follow-up cohort study. cancer causes control. 24, 99-105. http://www.libraryindex.com/pages/1888/proliferation-weapons-mass-destruction-wmd-history-usage-proliferation.html http://www.libraryindex.com/pages/1888/proliferation-weapons-mass-destruction-wmd-history-usage-proliferation.html http://www.libraryindex.com/pages/1888/proliferation-weapons-mass-destruction-wmd-history-usage-proliferation.html kjar review article chemical weapons & cancer, ba muhammad, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 58 supplementary table si: a comprehensive chronological usage of different types of chemical weapons across the history. adapted from (szinicz, 2005, chemical weapons, 2015, wmd, 2015). date description a n c ie n t a g e ( b . c .) 600 b. c., solon (the athenian dictator) used helleborus roots (active ingredients: protoanemonin, steroidal saponines, bufadienolides) to contaminate water supplies during the siege of kirrha (szinicz, 2005). 431–404 b. c., spartans ignite pitch and sulphur to create toxic fumes at platea and delium during the peloponnesian war (szinicz, 2005, wmd, 2015). about 200 b. c., carthaginians used mandrake roots (active ingredients: tropane alkaloids, e.g. scopolamine, atropine) to spoil wine for sedating their enemies (szinicz, 2005). m id d le a g e (a . d .) 960-1279 a.d., arsenical smoke used in battle during china's sung dynasty (szinicz, 2005, wmd, 2015). 1452–1519 a.d., leonardo davinci proposes the use of smoke containing arsenic to lay siege to adversary fortifications (szinicz, 2005). circa 1570 a.d., the austrian knight veit wulff von senftenberg reports on hunyadi using arsenical smoke when defending belgrade against the turks (szinicz, 2005). june 19, 1845 a.d., 1095 out of 1150 men of the kabyl tribe ouled-rhia died of suffocation in the cave of nemchia after the french colonel pelissier had given the order to generate smoke by burning freshly cut wood (szinicz, 2005). m o d e rn a g e (f ro m 1 9 1 4 ) august 1914—first use of the irritant ethylbromoacetate by french military forces (szinicz, 2005) october 1914—first (and only) use of the sneezing agent o-dianisidine chlorosulphonate (niespulver) by german forces (szinicz, 2005) november 1914—first use of the irritant chloroacetone by french forces and soon after by germany and russia (szinicz, 2005) april 22, 1915—germans attack the french with a lung-damaging agent chlorine gas at ypres, france. this was the first significant use of chemical warfare in wwi as weapon of mass destruction (szinicz, 2005, chemical weapons, 2015, wmd, 2015). september 25, 1915—first british chemical weapons attack; chlorine gas is used against germans at the battle of loos (szinicz, 2005, chemical weapons, 2015, wmd, 2015). december, 1915—first use of the lung-damaging agent phosgene by german forces (szinicz, 2005) kjar review article chemical weapons & cancer, ba muhammad, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 59 july, 1916—first use of the so-called blood agent hydrogen cyanide by french forces (szinicz, 2005) october, 1916—first use of the so-called blood agent cyanogen chloride by french forces (szinicz, 2005) july 10/11, 1917—first use of an arsenical sternutator– diphenylchloroarsine –by german forces, followed by the use of phenyldichlorarsine in september 1917 and diphenylcyanoarsine in may 1918. this type of agent known as (masken-brecher: mask breaker) because it could form very fine aerosols capable of passing through the common mask filters of that time after being released by burning (szinicz, 2005) july 12/13, 1917—first use of the skin damaging agent bis (2-chloroethyl) sulfide (sulphur mustard) by german forces at ypres, followed by further usage by france and the united kingdom (szinicz, 2005) march, 1918—first use of the skin damaging arsenical agents ethyland methyldichloroarsine by german forces (szinicz, 2005) february 26, 1918—germans launch the first projectile attack against u.s. troops with phosgene and chloropicrin shells. the first major use of gas against american forces (szinicz, 2005, chemical weapons, 2015, wmd, 2015) june 1918—first u.s. use of gas in warfare (chemical weapons, 2015, wmd, 2015). 1919—british use adamsite against the bolsheviks during the russian civil war (chemical weapons, 2015, wmd, 2015). 1922-1927—the spanish use chemical weapons against the rif rebels in spanish morocco (chemical weapons, 2015, wmd, 2015). 1935–1936—use of tear and mustard gases against ethiopians during italian invasion of abyssinia (szinicz, 2005, chemical weapons, 2015, wmd, 2015). 1937–1945—use of tear gas (chloracetophenone), sternutators (diphenylcyanoarsine), phosgene, mustard gas and lewisite by japanese during their invasion of china (szinicz, 2005) 1942—nazis begin using zyklon b (cyanide adsorbed onto a powder base) in gas chambers for the mass murder of concentration camp prisoners (szinicz, 2005, chemical weapons, 2015, wmd, 2015). december 1943—a u.s. ship loaded with mustard bombs is attacked in the port of bari, italy by germans; 83 u.s. troops die in poisoned waters (chemical weapons, 2015, wmd, 2015). april 1945—germans manufacture and stockpile large amounts of tabun and sarin nerve gases but do not use them (chemical weapons, 2015, wmd, 2015). kjar review article chemical weapons & cancer, ba muhammad, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 60 1962-1970—u.s. uses tear gas and four types of defoliant, including agent orange, in vietnam (szinicz, 2005, chemical weapons, 2015, wmd, 2015) 1963-1967—use of chemical weapons (phosgene and mustard gases) by egypt against yemen (szinicz, 2005, chemical weapons, 2015, wmd, 2015). 1975-1983—alleged use of yellow rain (trichothecene mycotoxins) by soviet-backed forces in laos and kampuchea. there is evidence to suggest use of t-2 toxin, but an alternative hypothesis suggests that the yellow spots labeled yellow rain were caused by swarms of defecating bees (chemical weapons, 2015, wmd, 2015). 1983-1988—use of sulphur mustard, tabun and sarin by iraqi forces during iraq–iran war (szinicz, 2005, chemical weapons, 2015, wmd, 2015). 1987-1988—use of different kind of chemical weapons (hydrogen cyanide, mustard gas, and sarin) by iraqi forces against the kurds, most notably in the in the anfal campaign and halabja massacre in 1988 (szinicz, 2005, chemical weapons, 2015, wmd, 2015). 1994 and 1995—aum shinrikyo terrorist attack in matsumoto: use of sarin (szinicz, 2005). october 23, 2002—use of fentanyl analogues against rebels: assault made by russian special forces in order to free hostages kept in a music-theatre in moscow (szinicz, 2005). effects of chemical weapons on cancer development in human belal a. muhammad1,2 abstract introduction definition of chemical weapons historical background of the usage of chemical weapons types of chemical agents used in chemical weapons chemical weapons and cancer conclusions references  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 3 | issue 1 | june 2018 | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.1.4 received: march 10, 2018 | accepted: april 22, 2018 smart home system based on gsm network halgurd nawzad awl bakhtiar ali karim communications engineering communications engineering technical college of engineering technical college of engineering sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq halgurd.awl@spu.edu.iq bakhtiar.ali@spu.edu.iq 17 abstract due to increasing robbery and intrusion, establishing home-security system has become a correlated part of the modern houses, buildings, and offices. as the family members are not at home all the time, the traditional home security system, which makes alarm sound only, may not be efficient enough. alternatively, global system for mobile communications (gsm) based security system can provide higher level of security and convenience compared to the traditionally used systems. the main objective of the current paper is to design and implement cost-efficient and reliable security, safety and home automation system for protection and occupants’ convenience. if any undesired events, such as intrusion, gas leakage and fire occurs in the house, our system warns the homeowner in real-time using short message service (sms). with the proposed system home appliances can also be controlled in three ways, namely sending sms from the authorized numbers to the system through gsm network, smartphone app using bluetooth module and infrared (ir) control using ir module. keywords: security, gsm, arduino, sensor, safety sms. 1. introduction nowadays, security is one of the crucial issues in the world. home security system has altered significantly over the last decade and it is expected that the change will be continuing in the coming years. burglary and other household thefts have been increasing noticeably. besides, safety from gas leakage, fire and controlling appliances remotely have become the essential requirements for the modern homes, offices and buildings. therefore, currently used security systems, which mainly rely on video monitoring, need to be enhanced to meet the acceptable level of security [1]. to solve the above-mentioned limitations, a smart home system has been proposed. the proposed system allows the user to obtain both security and safety. in security section, unauthorized person is detected using passive infrared (pir) sensor and arduino uno. then, the property owner will be informed by short message service (sms) through global system for mobile communication (gsm) networks. this system aims to prevent accessing unapproved people to the property while the landlord is not at home. in the safety section, gas and smoke sensors are used to ensure the property is safe enough. if any of the abovementioned sensors is activated, the landowner is notified directly with the help of gsm module by sending sms to the authorized party. additionally, the home appliances can be switched on and off remotely through the system in three ways, namely sending sms from the registered number to the system, using smartphone app, and infrared (ir) remote control. different types of home security systems have been studied in literature. the study conducted in [2] used zigbee based wireless sensor networks (wsns) to control smart appliances. the final goal was to produce industrial and home automation system. the proposed system in [3] utilized embedded micro-web server. interment protocol (ip) connectivity and android based app were the main parameters to control and access the smart devices remotely. such system integrates temperature sensing, power plugging, and light switching functionalities. web camera based security system is presented in [1]. whenever the camera detects a motion, two functions are performed namely, a sound alarm is triggered and a mail is delivered to the landowner. the system is based on atmega644p microcontroller which receives the signals from the sensors and makes decision accordingly. the authors in [4] integrated home automation system based on zigbee with wi-fi networks using traditional home gateway. the system can be accessed remotely through the gateway which allows network interoperability. to show the reliability of the system four difference devices namely, safety sensor, zigbee remote control, radiator valve, and light switch have been tested. bluetooth based home automation system is presented in [5]. the network architecture of the system consists of a main controller and some bluetooth sub-controllers. there is a wired communication between each home appliance and subcontrollers. after receiving information from the home devices, the sub-controllers send data to the primary controller wirelessly. due to expense of bluetooth technology and to limit the required physical wiring, one bluetooth module is assigned for several appliances. however, long access delay could be the main drawbacks of this architecture which may have negative impact on the system performance. our system is different from the previously designed ones in terms of functionalities since it has ability to 18 carry out all security, safety, and home automation tasks. in addition, cost-effective materials are used in the experiment, therefore, the system cost is comparatively low. this paper is composed of five parts and organized as follows: section two will explain main method and materials used in the experiment. in section three, the proposed system will be explained in detail. in section four, the obtained results will be presented and comprehensively discussed. the final section will conclude the main points of the paper and make suggestion for the future works. 2. methods and materials the proposed system in this paper is generally divided into two parts. the first part concerns with security and safety in which the system works as a transmitter. in the second part, the system can perform home automation functionalities and works as a receiver. then, both parts are integrated to create a reliable smart-home system which has security, safety and home automation functionalities. the primary components used in the system are explained below. 2.1 arduino uno arduino is an open-source platform which can be programed with personal computer (pc) to control different types of electronic devices such as sensors, lights, loudspeakers, motors [6]. the arduino board used in the system is shown in figure 1. figure 1: arduino uno board 2.2 pir sensor pir sensor is an electronic device that is used to detect an object’s motion. this came for the fact that energy is emitted from all objects, which have temperature higher than absolute zero, in the form of radiation. pir sensor is basically designed to detect such radiation. the object’s motion is captured by this sensor when the distance between them is equal or less than 6 meters. the setup time of this sensor is between 10-60 second [7]. figure 2: pir sensor [7] 2.3 gsm module (sim900a) sim900a is the dual band gsm/ general packet radio service (gprs) system and its operation frequencies are 850 mhz, 900mhz, 1800 mhz, and 1900 mhz. the connection between this module and pc or microcontroller is made with the help of rs232 and serial cable. internet access, voice call, and sms are the functions performed by this module [8]. figure 3 shows the gsm module used in our system. figure 3: gsm module 2.4 relay relay is an electronically operated switch which is used to open and close another switch which has ability to carry lager amount of current [9]. in this paper we use relay, shown in figure 4, when we want to control high power appliances, such as tv and air condition via low-power arduino output signal. the relays are connected to the arduino output pins while the home applicants are connected to the output of the relays. figure 4: relay 2.5 bluetooth module bluetooth module is a bluetooth serial port protocol (spp) module which has 3mbps data rate and operates on 2.4ghz. this module is designed to provide short range serial communications; therefore, it can be easily used to interface with arduino [10]. we use this module when we want to control electrical devices through smartphone app. figure 5: bluetooth module 19 2.6 remote control we use the remote control shown in figure below to turn the home appliances on and off with the help of ir receiver. figure 6: ir remote control 2.7 infrared (ir) receiver this piece of hardware is used to receive signal from the remote control and transfers the received signal into an understandable form by the arduino. the arduino then performs a specific task based on the received data from the ir receiver. figure 7: ir receiver it is worth mentioning that the sensors, bluetooth module, and ir module are connected to the input pins of the arduino since they take signals from outside into arduino. while the relays, buzzers and laser are connected to its output pins since these components are derived by the signals coming out from the arduino. 3. proposed system the architecture of the proposed system is shown in figure 8. as can be seen that the core part of the system is an arduino board which receives the signals from all the sensors connected to its inputs then sends the instructions to the gsm module and turns on the lasers and the buzzer. when the system works as home automation system, the gsm module tells the arduino what to do based on the content of the received sms from the registered number. in our system the home appliances can be controlled not only through gsm network, but also mobile app and remote control. the electrical devices connected to the relays can be turned on and off in either way. figure 8: system block diagram the working principle of the proposed system is illustrated in the following flow chart. figure 9: flow chart representation of the system before implementing the system, we use a special program to draw the schematic diagram that shows how the elements are connected. figure 10: schematic diagram of the system then, the schematic diagram shown above has been transferred to a prototype of the proposed system as can be seen in figure 11. figure 11: system implementation 4. results and discussion the implemented system shown in figure 11, has been tested thoroughly and the obtained results have been presented and discussed in the following steps: as we 20 mentioned above, the system works in two main modes namely, transmitting mode and receiving mode. 4.1 transmitting mode three types of sensors are used in this mode these are pir sensor, gas sensor and smoke sensor. to make the system more realistic, two lasers and one piezo buzzer have been used in the system. in the first step we have tested the pir sensor as shown in figure 12. when an object’s motion has fallen into the working range of the sensor, the sensor has been activated and has sent a signal to the arduino. then the arduino has sent relevant instruction to the gms module, which has an active sim card in it, to inform the authorized party by sending sms to the registered number. meanwhile, the two lasers have been flashed and the piezo buzzer has turned on. figure 12: receiving sms from the system when pir sensor is activated. figure 13: receiving sms from the system when smoke sensor is activated. similarly, the two other sensors, gas sensor and smoke sensor, have been tested by methane gas and smoke respectively. consequently, the lasers and the buzzer have turned on and the mobile phone has received the notification messages at each case as shown in the following figures. figure 14: receiving sms from the system when gas sensor is activated. for further confirmation the three sensors have been tested together and the obtained results are depicted in figure 15. figure 15: receiving sms from the system when all sensors are activated. the figure above is a complete result of the transmitting mode of the system when all the sensors (i.e. motion, gas, and smoke) have been activated. in such case the arduino receives the signal from the all sensors. after manipulating the received signals, it sends instruction to the gsm module to notify the homeowner about each case. as a result, the mobile phone has received a message that shows all the sensors have been activated instantaneously. 4.2 receiving mode in this mode two relays play an essential role. these relays are used to switch on and off the home appliances through the low-power arduino output. in terms of distance, this mode is categorized as local and global remote control. in the former case, infrared and bluetooth communication links are used to control the home appliances via ir remote control and smartphone app respectively. based on our program, the ir remote control works as follows: number1 pressed: relay1 on number2 pressed: relay1 off number3 pressed: relay2 on number4 pressed: relay2 off when the control button is pressed, it sends the related signal to the ir receiver which is linked to the arduino. 21 after receiving the signal, arduino sends out instruction to the electrical device through selected relay. finally, the electrical devices will be turned on or off depending on the pressed number on the ir remote control. for controlling the electrical devices through bluetooth, a smartphone is connected to the system and a special app so-called bluetooth electronic is used as shown in figure below. figure 16: bluetooth electronic app for switching electrical devices the buttons shown on the front page of the app (i.e. buttons inside the blue rectangle) are used to turn the relays on or off just like we have done with ir remote control. the button label (i.e. whether it is number1 or number2 etc. compared to the remote control) starts from left to right. for example, if we want to turn on the appliance connected to relay1 via this app, we need to press the first button on the left (this button is just like pressing number1 on the remote control). after pressing the button of the app (i.e. bluetooth electronic app), the smartphone sends a signal to the bluetooth module connected to the arduino. when arduino received the signal from bluetooth module, it turns on or off the device (via relay) based on the pressed button on the app. in the latter case (i.e. global remote control), the sms is sent from the mobile phone to the system through gsm network and the system response (whether turns the electrical devices on or off) is based on the message content. the message should have the following structure: 𝑎𝑥𝑏𝑥 when 𝑎 represents relay1 and 𝑏 represents relay2. the value of 𝑥 decides whether switch on or off the appliance connected to that relay (i.e. 𝑥=0 and 𝑥=1 mean turn off and turn on the electrical device respectively). to test this approach, we have sent a message contained 𝑎1𝑏1 to the system. consequently, the devices connected to those relays have been turned on. similarly, when we have sent 𝑎0𝑏0, the devices connected to those relays have been turned off. one of the important aspects of our system is that there is a good correlation between all the ways of controlling appliances in the receiving mode. that is, when a home appliance turned on, for example, by smartphone app, it can be turned off by gsm message or ir remote control and vice versa. 5. conclusion in this paper a cost-efficient security, safety, and home automation system have been proposed, designed and implemented. the proposed system allows property security/protection by using pir sensor, arduino and gms module. the system also provides remotely controlling electrical devices at home through text messaging, smartphone app, and ir control. therefore, the system meets comparatively higher level of user satisfactions since they can protect their homes and control their electrical devices regardless where they are. the most important aspect of our system is that it informs the property owner about any events, such as intrusion, fire or gas leakage, in real time which is not the case for the traditionally used video-streaming based system. the current system can be further improved by adding ip camera to it. in that case if any unauthorized movement or gas leakage or fire is detected, the system will capture the event(s) then sends the picture to the authorized parties through a predefined way such as email. reference 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[accessed: feb. 24, 2018]. https://www.tutorialspoint.com/arduino/arduino_tutorial  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 3 | issue 1 | june 2018 | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.1.8 received: march 6, 2018 | accepted: may 6, 2018 histopathological and morphological alterations in salivary gland of house fly musca domestica l., induced by oral administration thiamethoxam karim mohammed ahmed crop protection dep. bakrajo technical institute sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq karim.ahmed@spu.edu.iq 40 abstract: the current work the effect of actara insecticide belongs to chemical family neonicotinoid. active component of thiamethoxam in three concentrations: 0.750 ppm, 1.5 ppm and 2.25ppm on adult house fly salivary glands . histopathological and morphological effects revealed important alterations produced by this insecticide in histological and morphology of the adult house fly gland tissue categorized by increasing gland duct lumen diameter. these alterations are possibly related with excretion function of salivary gland might be accountable for removing this insecticide. results show thiamethoxam is a powerful insecticide that performances histologically in salivary glant tissue, triggering alterations in the glands form, cytoplasm with extreme vacuolation , disruption cell membrane, obvious disorganization tissues cells ,terminating in progressive deteriorating phase with changes in nucleus glandular cell's, such alterations occurred together in its size and form of gland , disintegration of nucleus ,and presence of apoptosis(fragmentation) nucleus, accelerating the process of glandular degeneration ,and interfering with feeding process of house fly particularly when the peak concentration of insecticide was used. keywords: musca domestica, muscidae, salivary glands, thiamethoxam. 1. introduction musca domestica linnaeus (diptera: muscidae) is exist in all over the warm regions in world, it is more adaptable [1].house fly is distributed globally and is a pest in homes, dairies, food processing, barns, poultry houses , and recreation areas. it can develop a generation within two weeks in summer as it has great breeding potential [2]. house flies characterizes a pest of great importance of economic in poultry production, and live stocks, contaminating animals; products and transferring a various pathogens to animals, as well as producing problems by attacking domestic regions nearby livestock units, disturbing life quality of these inhabitants [3]. house fly is the significant veterinary and medical pests that reasons annoyance, putrefied food and performance as a carrier for more than 100 pathogens to animal human [4,5]. it is recognized as a public health pest producing a severe threat to livestock and human by transmission several pathogenic organisms such as cysts of protozoa , parasitic helminthics , enteropathogenic bacteria ,and enterovirus .[6,7, 8, 9].the structure and function salivary glands of insects veterinary and medical importance have been slight studied [10]. insect salivary glands are the biggest exocrine organs and are essential for feeding. [11]. the structure of salivary glands is complex, than can create materials necessary for nutrient mobilization, and digestive enzymes, which can be used to distinguish nourishing behaviors of insects [12]. insect salivary glands generally have at least a secretory and restorative region. the major secretary component is saliva which is chiefly composed of water which is transport from hemolymph across cells of salivary gland and into lumen of the gland [13].since these glands remove substances from the hemolymp[14, 15, 16],they have ability to absorb poisonous substances that are not removed by the tubules of malpighian. these compounds can accelerate cell death in salivary glands and change their gene expression. 2. methods and materials 2.1. rearing technique adult house flies were collected from local area using a sweep net and reared in laboratory at 25±2co rh 40-50%, photoperiod 12:12 (l:d). the rearing method described by [17]. flies kept in typical boxes of 40 cm x 30cm x 30 cm. the sides of the boxes had meshes and the base hard board of wood. frontal side with long sheath cloth for purpose feeding and cleaning [18 ]. adult flies were supplied with food consisting of sugar solution 10% and powdered milk. mixture of milk and wheat flour was prepared at a weight proportion 3:1 and 50gm of this mixture was put into small pots for oviposition site [19]. 2.2. preparation of insecticide thiamethoxam belongs to the neonicotinoids, with contact, stomach and systemic activity, is used to control sucking insects both on plants and on companion animals. thiamethoxam acts on the nervous system of the insect. mailto:karim.ahmed@spu.edu.iq 41 the compound mimics acetylcholine and binds to the acetylcholine receptor site, which damages the target insect’s nervous system causing death. [20]. 0.0125 gm of thiamethoxam ® was dissolved in a volume glucose solution( 10% w/v) then the volume completed to 1000 ml by glucose solution( 10% w/v) to prepare a stock solution with 25 ppm thiamethoxam and from stock solution different concentration (0.750 ppm ,1.5 ppm,and 2.25 ppm were prepared. in this experiment, adults house flies were picked up randomly(male and female ) from the rearing cage the adult house flies exposed to three concentration of thiamethoxam (0.750ppm,1.5ppm and 2.25 ppm ). these concentrations were by preliminary rang-finding tests [21, 22, 23, 24]. thiamethoxam was used as formulated product actara 25 wg, from (syngenta) [25]. prior the experiment, flies were starved two hours. bioassay experiments were performed on first progeny of adults produced by the field-collected flies [26]. a bait (oral) method was used for all insecticide bioassay in order to evaluate the toxicity of insecticide, ten adult flies 3-days old were used for each dose in the three replication, to be 30 insects in each dose and the control take the same trend while the control groups were provided by sugar solution 10 % [27]. 2.3 dissection observations have been made with light microscopic (olympus, japan) on salivary gland. the adult of house fly was dorsally fixed on a slide, then body of fly flooded by physiology saline 0.9 %nacl (0.9 gm nacl per 100 ml distilled water). insect's abdomen cut longitudinally by sharp scalpel [28].salivary glands were picked up by using a spear-shaped head needle firmly and stained by dilute methylene blue (0.01 %). the salivary gland were exam by light microscopic (hamilton blp 1400, taiwan), the magnification of 40x. photographs were taken by computerized microscopecamera (gkb color digital camera, taiwan).system magnification power 1680x. 3. result the salivary gland of adult house fly is simple and tubular with mono layer of epithelial cells surrounded by membrane and connective tissue. the fine structure of house fly salivary gland shows epithelial cell. the cell nucleus is large with nucleolus. the glands are composed of glandular cells (epithelial cell) which are convex externally. they are of uniform width throughout their whole length, except the slightly swollen blind termination. these blind ends lie one both sides of the ventral and posterior region of the abdomen, generally embedded in the fat-body (fig.1a). ultra structural examination of untreated salivary gland of house fly (orally administrated with 10% sugar solution) revealed that the cells of normal adult salivary gland control flies regular shape polygonal shape and intact cells, surrounded by cell membrane, which are convex externally. the cell nucleus is large with nucleolus (fig.1 a). the treated salivary gland cells of adult house fly with different concentration (0.750 ppm, 1.5ppm, 2.25ppm) of thiamethoxam lost their original form, becoming irregular increasing lumen gland diameter (dilated lumen) and the cells become swollen than those of control group and the posterior end of salivary gland became flattened the adult salivary glands of flies treated with different concentration revealed numerous morphological alternations (fig.1 b, c and d) compared to control (fig1 a). the salivary gland of treated adult house flies with low concentration (0.750 ppm) of thiamethoxam (fig.2 b). the cells appear to somewhat affected. this effectiveness caused a slight damage of the cells. the first sign is fine granulation of cytoplasm with course of nucleus and cytoplasmic vacuolation in comparison with control (fig.2 a). while this affection was clearly observed on salivary gland cells of adult house flies were treated with (1.5 ppm) of thiamethoxam. the nuclei of cells the enlargement and invagination of some nuclear cell envelope, also an increase in vacuole quantity and highly granulation of cytoplasm with the disruption of cell membrane between the cells (fig.1c). the salivary gland cells of adult house flies that were treated with (2.25ppm) of thiamethoxam , the treated glands with sever morphological changes, the cell with malformation nuclei (irregular in shape) ,the cytoplasm with highly vacuolation and course granulation and the salivary gland cells characterized by completely decay cells and rupture of cell membranes (fig.1d). 42 fig. 1: salivary gland of adult house fly (musca domestica l) ingested different concentrations of thiamethoxam(neonicotinoids). (a) morphology apart of control salivary gland duct of house fly the gland is simple and tubular. it has a monolayer of epithelial cells (ep) surrounded by basement membrane (bm) and connective tissue. they are of uniform width throughout their whole length, except the slightly swollen blind end (be) termination. (b) apart of control salivary gland duct of house fly provided by sugar solution (10 %) have normal duct shape with intact cells and with circular blind end. (c) apart of treated salivary gland duct of house fly treated with 0.750 ppm thiamethoxam, show primary sign of poising the salivary duct, the cells swollen. (d) apart of treated salivary gland duct of house fly treated with 1.5 ppm thiamethoxam , show advanced of poising the salivary duct ,the cells more swollen , and the blind end of salivary (be) gland change in shape become cylindrical shape. (e) apart of treated salivary gland duct of house fly treated with 2.25 ppm of thiamethoxam , show primary more of poising the salivary duct(sd),the cells swollen , and the gland duct become dilated in diameter. (sd) =salivary duct; (be) =blind end; (fb) =fat body; (t) =trachiole; (ep) =epithelial cell; (cm) =cell membrane. bars =25 µm . fig.2. salivary gland of adult house fly (musca domestica l) ingested different concentrations of thiamethoxam (neonicotinoids). 43 (a) salivary gland duct of house fly provided by sugar solution (10 %) have normal intact cell (polygonal) surrounded by cell membrane with large nucleus and nucleolus. (b) salivary gland duct of house fly treated with 0.750 ppm of thiamethoxam(neonicotinoids), some primary signs of poising appeared on the cells. the cytoplasm of the cells with fine granulation (arrow ahead) ,with small vacuoles.the nuclei changed in size and shape (enlargement of nucleus).the nuclei are containing debris(n), and the cell changes in shape became oval shape. (c) salivary gland duct of house fly treated with 1.5 ppm of thiamethoxam(neonicotinoids), while this affection was clearly observed on salivary gland cells of adult house flies were treated with (1.5 ppm) of thiamethoxam. the nuclei of cells the enlargement and invagination of some nuclear cell envelope, also an increase in vacuole quantity and highly granulation of cytoplasm (arrow ahead) with the disruption of cell membrane between the cells. (d) salivary gland duct of house fly treated with 2.25 ppm of thiamethoxam(neonicotinoids),the salivary gland cells of adult house flies that were treated with (2.25 ppm) of thiamethoxam , the salivary gland with sever morphological changes, the cell with malformation nuclei (irregular in shape) ,the cytoplasm with highly vacuolation(arrow ahead) and course granulation and the salivary gland cells characterized by completely decay cells and rupture of cell membranes. (ep) =epithilaial cell; (cm) =cell membrane; (n) =nucleus bars =25 µm. 4. discussion the current work shows the thiamethoxam induced cytological and morphological alterations occurs in salivary gland duct of the adult house fly. the changes observed in treated of house fly by (0.750 ppm.)thiamethoxam of were categorized by alteration in shape and size of salivary duct and chiefly an increase of duct lumen compared to control group . the damage caused by thiamethoxam in gland duct developed more extensive as the concentration of thiamethoxam increased, culminating in the glands of flies cured with thiamethoxam of (2.25 ppm). this results in agreement with [29] who stated that morphological alterations detected in type 1 acini, as well as in their cells, propose that these organs might be participated in the removing of toxic substances present in circulation hemolymph of tick that needs to eliminate from the gland. these, in treated adult house flies the increase lumen diameter of salivary gland suggest a role of gland for eliminating poisonous compounds from hemolymph. even at low concentration, thiamethoxam was capable to cause glandular tissue damages cooperating organ metabolism. the current study revealed that the salivary gland cells in individuals subject to (0.750 ppm) of thiamethoxam morphologically altered; change in of cell structure and enlargement of the nucleus, and cytoplasm vacuolation compared to the control group. this results in agreement with [30, 31]. who reported that when the salivary gland of female ticks treated with concentration of 206 ppm of permethrin were detected the first signs of glandular tissue disintegration, such as the existence of vacuolation in cytoplasm and more ever, in nucleus of acinar cell, alterations in form of cell which become irregular in the shape, size increasing, and disposition of chromatin were also detected. in medium concentration of thiamethoxam (1.5 ppm) the nuclei of treated adult salivary gland cells showed significant changes in their shape, and some of them fragmented, besides this some nuclei present hypertrophy .this data suggest an advanced in the degenerative processes exposed to higher concentration of thiamethaxam in relation to the other treatment groups. this results is in agreement with [32] who stated when the females of ticks treated with 1033 ppm, the cortical area cells lost their integrity in structure ,observation cytoplasmic contraction, existence of vacuoles between the nerves cells(vacuolation),loss of form (out line) and difficult to determination cellular boundaries, in addition decreasing cell size , this is in agreement with [33,34,35,36] whose stated that when the cortical region cells of ticks rhipicicephalus sanguineus(acari :ixodidae) trated by 1031 ppm permethrin existing nuclei with excessive alterations in shape(irregular in outline) ,with fragmented blebs, decreased in size and condensation of chromatin network. throughout cell death by apoptosis, breakdown of nucleus is one of the first changes detected, categorized by the compression and sidelining of chromatin, and bleb appearance, finally followed by the breakdown of the nucleus. as the thiamethoxan insecticide increase (2.25ppm), changes in then salivary gland cells of treated adult house flies developed more sever demonstrating that this concentration would cause more important destruction to treated adult salivary gland cells. the doses triggering glandular cell disintegration progress, resultant in formation amorphous mass consist of cells remains which no longer be recognized, also the existence of numerous apoptotic bodies and several fragmented nuclei with picnotic feature, and rupture of gland cell membrane. these results in agreement with similar results were found by [37] which suggested that in individuals of ticks subject to 2060 ppm of permithrin, only afew acini cells recognized, with others ones categorized as intermediate, subsequently they lost their histological and morphological characteristic owing to disintegration. in this situation, characteristics of salivary gland tissue like a loss of acini cells form; 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[27] j.g. scott, t. g. alefantis, p.e kuufman d. a. rutz, “insecticide resistance in house flies from caged-layer poutry facilities,” pest manag. sci., 56: 147-153, 2000. [28] t.t. mahmuod, “comparative anatomical and physiological studies on the syrphid fly syrphidae,” pack. j. ind. res., (35): 182184, 1992. [29] c.p.pereira, p.r.olivera, k.c.furquim, g.h.bechara, m.i.camargo-mathias, and effect of fipronil (active ingredient of frontline) on the salivary gland cells of rhipicephalus sanguineus females (latreille, 1806. acari: ixodidae), 2009. [30] e.f.nodari, g.c.roma, k.c.furquim, g.h.bechara, m.i.camargo-mathias, “cytotoxic effects of permethrin in salivary gland of rhipicephalus sanguineus (latreille, 1806) (acri: ixodidae) semiengorged females,” exp.parasitol, 128:151158, 2011. [31] e.f.nodari, e.f.nodari, g.c.roma, k.c.furquim, p.r.oliveira, g.h bechara, m.i. camargo-mathias, microscopy research and technique, 75:1012-1012, 2012. [32] g.c.roma, m.i. camargo-mathias, p.r.olivera, k.c.furquim, g.h.bechara, neurotoxic action of permethin in rhipicephalus sanguinus (laterille,1806) (acari: ixodidae) female ticks. morphological and cytochemical evaluation of the central nervous, 2013. [33] l.d.bowen, s.m.bown, programmed cell death, cell biol. int., 17:365-380, 1990. [34] l.d. bowen, apoptosis or programmed cell death in tumors and tissues, chapman and hall, 1993. [35] j.f.kerr, g.c.gobe, c.m.winter ford, b.harmon, anatomical methods in cell death, in l, m. schwarz and osborme b,a (ed.) academic press, pp.1-27, 1995. [36] g.hacker, the morphology of apoptosis, cell death res., 301:517, 2000. [37] k.c.furqium, g.h. bechara, m.i.camargo-mathias, markers of cell death in salivary glands of males of the tick rhipicephalus sanguineus (latreille, 1806) (acari: ixodidae). parasitol.int., 57, 396-404, 2008 b.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 3 | issue 1 | june 2018 | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.1.12 received: may 3, 2018 | accepted: june 6, 2018 impact of diabetes mellitus type 2 in the activity of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase in human erythrocyte salih awla hamzah luqman awla hamza heshu sulaman rahman laboratory health of animals cell and molecular biology biochemistry veterinary internal medicine biotechnology and molecular sciences laila qasim diabetic center veterinary in makhmur center putra malaysia erbil, iraq erbil, iraq kuala lumpur, malaysia salih.hamza78@gmail.com dr.luqman.hamza89@gmail.com heshusr77@gmail.com 58 abstract diabetes mellitus is a metabolic affliction saunter that is characterized by a nobler than normal blood glucose poise. glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (g6pd) enzyme code (e.c.1.1.1.49) is an underlying enzyme in the phosphogluconate pathway. in this study, g6pd vitality in the mortal erythrocyte of male and female patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus was assessed utilizing a spectrophotometer at 340 nm. the activity of the enzyme increased with elevated glycated haemoglobin (hba1c) levels. g6pd activity was found to be significantly associated with type 2 diabetes mellitus. the association between g6pd and diabetes mellitus was significant (p < 0.001). moreover, g6pd was positively correlated with hba1c levels (r = 0.572). the following mean ± standard deviation values were obtained: g6pd activity (iu/g hb), 3.1103 ± 0.79349; hba1c (%), 8.6600 ± 1.63120; hb (g/dl), 13.4933 ± 1.38836; platelet count (103/µl), 283.4667 ± 58.59312; wbc (103/µl), 7.4890 ± 1.49842; hct (%), 45.0100 ± 2.63430; and bs (mg/dl), 230.2667 ± 75.67760. the results showed that an elevated hba1c up leads to increased g6pd performance in the human erythrocyte, which is concerning to glucose levels in the special (blood). keywords: g6pd, diabetes mellitus, human erythrocyte. 1. introduction g6pd (e.c.1.1.1.49) is the primary enzyme go is denuded in monosaccharose phosphate pathway. this enzyme is found in the cytosol and mitochondria. moreover, it converts glucose-6-phosphate accompanied by nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate nadp+ into 6-phosphogluconolactone and nadph, nadph plays a bulky profession in the hexose monophosphate shunt. nadph participates in the synthesis of biochemical molecules like fatty acids, lipids, and several amino acids. furthermore, this cofactor plays a concerned in preventing cell damage [1,2,3]. metabolic processes synthesis reactive oxygen species (ros), which result in free radicals that combine with proteins, lipids, and several molecules. the harmful species are removed by antioxidants, such as reduced glutathione (gsh), which prevents cell damage [4,5]. the decrease in nadph leads to a deficiency in reduced gsh in thriving cells, aide installs death [6]. the housekeeping enzymes are g6pd, gsh reductase, and 6phosphogluconate dehydrogenase, which are found in animal tissues, plants, microorganisms, and blood cells [7]. the different techniques will be used, and they can be isolated from various sources, such as the kidneys and liver of rats [8,9,12], human erythrocytes [10], liver of rainbow trout [11], [12]. the kinetic properties and characteristics of the enzymes have been assessed. if there is an increased production of free radicals, the number of ros also increases. the species (ros) are an attraction with component of cells, such as proteins, lipids, and sugars. this link causes the accumulation of ros, which leads to cell damage, pathogenic disorders, and diabetes [13,14,15]. the pentose phosphate pathway has two main functions: synthesis of rna, dna, and ribose-5-phosphate required for nucleotide synthesis in the cell and the synthesis of nadph, which is a reducing power in reductive biosynthesis. in addition, phosphorylated carbohydrates, such as erythrose-4phosphate, are required for aromatic amino acid and vitamin synthesis, and sedoheptulose-7-phosphate, which is a component of the bacterial cell wall, is also synthesized in the same manner [16,17,18]. nadph plays a significant role in the reduction of fatty acid, biosynthesis of cholesterol nitric oxide, reduction of gsh, detoxification of the drug and xenobiotic, and reduction of peroxides in the cell [20]. reduced gsh and gsh-dependent enzymes keep the cell away from internal and external toxic compounds and ros [21]. when oxygen depletion and h2o2 formation in phagocytes are high, the activity of ppp also increases [6]. xenobiotics are considered non-toxic when nadph is used along with cytochrome p450 detoxification systems and gsh peroxidase. among the important enzymes of the sorbitol pathway, aldose reductase also uses nadph [19]. in addition, nadph allows ribonucleotides to be converted into deoxyribonucleotides for dna synthesis. nadph is also required for several water-insoluble compounds [16,17,18]. diabetes mellitus is characterized by raised aldohexose levels within the blood. there are 2 styles of polygenic disease mellitus: kind one polygenic disease, that is understood as insulindependent polygenic disease, and kind two dm, that is understood as insulin-independent polygenic disease. to decrease the risk of polygenic disease, glucose level mailto:salih.hamza78@gmail.com mailto:dr.luqman.hamza89@gmail.com mailto:heshusr77@gmail.com 59 within the blood should be controlled [22]. the sickness is treated by dynamical way habits, and patients should engage in physical activities. moreover, they should have a nutritious diet and must take glucose-lowering medications [23]. diabetes is a disease which described by egyptian from 1500 bce [24]. chinese used diabetes for sweet urine, also japanese and korean used this term. sweet urine and blood came from matthew dobson in 1776 [25]. in 1990, the diabetes pathogenesis have been understood [26]. frederick banting and charlis best have improved treatment by using insulin in 1921 and 1922, also discovered drug metformin for type 2 of diabetes. by novo nordidesk was improved insulin nph [27]. the drug sulfonylurea was used since 1942. in 1950, the drug biguainides has been used for diabetes (type 2). rosalyan and solomon berson gained a nobel prize for discovering the radioimmunoassay about insulin in1977 [28]. in 1990 discovered the thiazlidinedion which used as sensitivity to insulin. the new medicine discovered for diabetes (gila monster) [29]. the deficiency of g6pd causes a deficiency of nadph production, which leads to decreases of detoxification processes. if detoxification system, minimizing cause cell damage and several diseases which link directly with parkinson's diseases, immune impairment in function syndrome, fibromyolgie and cancer [30,31]. in contrast, recent studies have shown that acute hyperglycaemia will increase g6pd and 6pgd within the heart muscle [32]. especially, high aldohexose levels have an effect on the g6pd activity in human erythrocytes in men and women. in recent years, studies have shown that diabetes mellitus dm is related to oxidative stress. symptom stimulates the assembly of reactive element species [33]. raised aldohexose levels within the blood cause modifications in nadph metabolism within the tissues. moreover, in ppp, there are changes in enzymes adore g6pd and 6pgd, that are essential for manufacturing nadph. nadph could be a reducing power in reactive synthesis [34]. thus, this study aimed to evaluate the effect of type ii dm on g6pd activity in human erythrocytes. 2. materials and methods one hundred millimole/liter tris-buffer, ph 8.0, 10 millimole/liter mgcl2, 0.5 millimole/liter edta, 310 millimole/liter nadp+ (r1), 0.6 millimole/liter glucose-6-phosphate (r2), 0.2 g/l digitonin (r3), and 0.9 g/ml nacl. data of the blood test results of thirty patients with kind two dm at the diabetic center of laila qasim in erbil, iraq were collected. among the patients, twenty were women and ten were men. in total, three milliliters of blood were collected for every patient and placed in edta tubes. the g6pd kit was utilized in this study. a photometer (apel pd 303) was accustomed find the g6pd activity in patients with kind two polygenic diseases. 2.1. experiment the hemoprotein levels (g/dl) of the patients were determined, and 0.2 ml of homogenized blood was washed 3 times with two ml normal saline (0.9 g/dl). the sample was centrifuged at 1500 rpm between every washing, and therefore the supernatant was eliminated (preventing the elimination of erythrocytes). in the end, the erythrocytes were suspended in 0.9 ml of haemolysing solution (vial r3). when material possession it symbolizes quarter-hour at 2–8°c, the suspension was centrifuged once more. the supernatant (haemolysate) was used at intervals one hour. 2.2. measurement of enzyme activity the chemical agent 3ml (r1) was additional to fifty µl haemolysate. the sample was mixed and incubated for five minutes at 37°c. then, 100 µl of r2 was additional, and g6pd activity was measured employing a photometer at 340 nm [35]. calculate g6pd activity as follows: iu/g hb = (abs/min x 5000) / hb expressed in g/dl 2.3. statistical analysis one-way-anova-using-spss-statistics. 3. results in the laboratory, the g6pd activity within the human erythrocytes of patients with the polygenic disease was assessed. table (1) showed the activity of g6pd in both male and female. the activity of g6pd per patient in male was greater than the activity of g6pd in females. table (2) shows the mean ± sd of g6pd activity, glycated hemoprotein (hba1c) level, hb, platelet count, wbc, hct, and blood sugar. high glycated hemoprotein (hba1c) level was considerably related to g-6-pd enzyme activity within the human erythrocyte (p < 0.001) as seen in table (3). table (3) displays the correlation pair of data. g6pd activity raised, as shown in figures (1) and a (2) of depicts the info that was collected from thirty patients. figures 3 show the relation among the thirty patients in terms of blood sugar levels in patients with type 2 polygenic diseases. the normal range of g6pd is (5.0 – 14.0) iu/ g hb [36]. figure 1: the relationship between hba1c and the activity of g6pd in human erythrocyte. 60 table 1: total activity g6pd in male and female among type 2 diabetic patients parameter no. of samples total activity activity per patient total activity g6pd in males 10 31.25 3.12 total activity g6pd in females 20 59.91 2.99 table 2: the blood parameters and g6pd activity among type 2 diabetic patients figure 2: the relationship between the activity of g6pd in human erythrocyte and blood sugar. figure 3: the blood sugar of diabetic patients for thirty samples, minimum values, maximum value, mean and standard deviation 4. discussion glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (e.c.1.1.1.49) is the primary enzyme that is essential in ppp, and it produces 1mol of nadph. nadph is important for the removal of ros and prevention of cell damage [37,38]. ros is stimulated by high glucose levels, which damages the nucleus by linking with dna and rna. by controlling the glucose level in the blood, the number of ros in cells is decreased [39]. high glucose level in the blood leads to hyperglycaemia, which results in micro and macrovascular disorders [40]. high glucose level enhances the superoxide anion levels, which leads to increased g6pd, 6pgd, and nadph oxidase activities [41]. these effects may be avoided by the treatment or control of glucose levels among patients with diabetes and hba1c. in hyperglycaemia, a large amount of glucose pyruvate is suitable for the tca cycle to be oxidized. the electron transfer chain increases the electron granter of nadh and fadh2. hyperglycaemia leads to enhanced voltage inclination in the mitochondria membrane, which is important for preventing the transfer of electron in the complex (ιιι) to return into coenzyme q, and this leads to an increase in superoxide [42]. this study first evaluated the g6pd activity using kits for g6pd and also assessed the correlation between g6pd activity and hba1c in both men and women. the activity increased with the increase in hba1c. therefore, the glucose level in the blood must be controlled. the inhibition or deficiency in the g6pd among patients with diabetes causes several health problems. in my studies the enzyme activity of g6pd is increasing. g6pd activity is significantly associated with hba1c based on other tests (p < 0.001). in diabetes patients sort (ιι) the g6pd activity is lower value than the normal range but the value of the activity is parameter mean ± sd g6pd activity iu/g hb 3.1103 ± 0.79349 hba1c % 8.6600 ± 1.63120 hb (g/dl) 13.4933 ± 1.38836 platelet (103/µl) 283.466 ± 58.59312 wbc (103/µl) 7.4890 ± 1.49842 hct % 45.0100 ± 2.63430 b.s mg /dl 230.2667 ± 75.6776 table 3: pair sample correlations of activity g6pd, bs, hb, plt, wbc and hct. n correlation p value significant activityg6pd & hba1c 30 0.572 0.001 activity g6pd & hb 30 -0.029 0.878 activity g6pd & plt 30 0.345 0.062 activity g6pd & wbc 30 0.151 0.425 activity g6pd & hct 30 0.110 0.562 activity g6pd & bs 30 0.221 0.241 bs & activity g6pd 30 0.221 0.241 bs & hba1c 30 0.362 0.050 bs & hb 30 -0.033 0.861 bs & plt 30 -0.216 0.251 bs & wbc 30 -0.283 0.130 bs & hct 30 0.184 0.331 hba1c & activity g6pd 30 0.572 0.001 hba1c & hb 30 0.074 0.696 hba1c & plt 30 0.366 0.046 hba1c & wbc 30 0.151 0.427 hba1c & hct 30 0.364 0.048 hba1c & bs 30 0.362 0.050 blood sugar mg/dl n um be r o f p at ie nt s 61 becoming near the normal range with increasing hba1c value. several studies have shown that there is increased g6pd activity in the human erythrocyte of patients with type 2 dm. this result 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[45] a. khanam, q.s. akter, f. karim, m.r. zannat, “karim f, zannat mr ‘erythrocyte glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase level in type 2 diabetes male.’,” mymensingh med. j. mmj, akter qs, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 103-107, jan. 01 2018. [46] h. c. yang et al., “what has passed is prolog: new cellular and physiological roles of g6pd,” free radic. res., vol. 50, no. 10, pp. 1047-1064, 2016.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq determination of acetyl salicylic acid in aspirin tablets lana mohammed ali mariwan abdulla hama salih omed ismael hayder chemistry department medical laboratory department chemistry department college of education technical college of health college of science university of sulaimani sulaimani polytechnic university university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq lana.ale@univsul.edu.iq mariwan.abdulla@spu.edu.iq omed.ismael@univsul.edu.iq volume 4 issue 2 december 2018 doi: 10.24017/science.2019. 2.15 received: 02 september 2019 accepted: 01 december 2019 abstract drug analysis is an important method for determination of active components of any therapeutic drugs. hplc, spectrometry, direct titration and back-titration are common effective techniques in drug analysis. they were used in this study in comparative way for determination of the correct amount of acetyl salicylic acid in aspirin formulations. the aim of this study is to analysis of aspirin and compares both direct titration and back-titration techniques to the standard hplc technique in order to find alternative, easy and cheaper procedure to assess the quality of active components of medications aspirin in particular in sulaimani city. additionally spectrophotometric technique were also used and compared with the standard hplc method. the samples were collected from different local drug stores in which distribute medications to pharmacies and they were from different companies. the analyses were performed after preparing solution from each of the samples with standard solution for titration procedures. both direct and back-titration techniques were used to find the concentration of active components in aspirin samples then compared with the data from standard hplc as a reference value. the study showed that those companies which provide medications to this region were used standard amount of acetyl salicylic acid in aspirin tablets. the result from spectrophotometric method showed more accurate than both direct and indirect titration when compared to the reference value from standard hplc technique due to the high rate of accuracy and precision of this method. however, the result also showed some inconsistent data in terms of the back titration compared to direct titration due to the inaccuracy in back titration. this study concluded with the necessity for quality control to use all these techniques for monitoring all medications which interring this region. keywords: drug analysis, hplc, titration, back-titration, aspirin, spectrophotometer, acetyl salicylic acid. mailto:lana.ale@univsul.edu.iq mailto:mariwan.abdulla@spu.edu.iq mailto:omed.ismael@univsul.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 152 1. introduction drug analysis has a long history for quality control of the drugs from different source of productions through the worldwide. in order to control the quality of drugs to save the life of patient that they supposed to use drugs as a treatment, it is important to find an alternative procedure to determine the quality of drugs compared to the standard hplc (high performance liquid chromatography) method. hplc is a most common and standard method that were used for drug analysis from several years ago.[1] drug discovery and manufacture needs several steps before using for treatment. for drug analysis there are other methods have been used but they were not continuing for some limitations, including long procedure, high cost, need more staff and time consumption. the reversed phase hplc technique previously used successfully for analysis of cocaine and it’s metabolites in urine samples and plasma as well, the results from this method were found consistence with previous recorded results. here the method of titration (direct and indirect titration) and spectrophotometric method was tried to ensure the quality of aspirin currently taken by patient and to compare the results and the possibility to replace hplc method. the hplc technique is standard but the high cost of the machine make limitation for some laboratories. aspirin, an acetyl derivative of salicylic acid, is a white crystalline, a weak acid substance its melting point 135oc.[2] acetyl salicylic acid decomposed quickly when dissolved in a solutions of ammonium acetate or carbonates, citrates and hydroxides of metals.[2] acetylsalicylic acid is quite stable in dry air but it will hydrolysis to acetic acid and salicylic acid in the presence of humidity. nowadays, aspirin is the most used salicylate derivative.[3] aspirin (acetyl salicylic acid) is considered as intriguing anti-inflammatory and analgesic-pyretic drug.[4] in addition, aspirin in a low-dose has an anticoagulant potential and is used in long term to reduce the risk of heart attack. aspirin is the first known non-steroidal antiinflammatory drugs (nsaid), and it interfere the action of some drugs, such as warfarin and methotrexate.[2, 5] aspirin considered the most widely used pain relievers in patients with mild to moderate pain, migraines, and fever.[6] people with headaches, joint pain, or other aches in their body, can took aspirin or another antiinflammatory drug. however several fruits, vegetables, and herbs contain natural aspirin such as eggplant, figs, grape fruit grapes, pistachios, pine nuts, almonds, etc.[3, 7] medications can be analysed by titration and several other techniques such as titration. titration process is performed by gradually addition of standard solution (i.e. a solution of known concentration) to the solution of analyte or unknown concentration. the addition is stopped when the equivalence point is reached. it occurs when moles of titrant equals moles of analyte according to the balanced equation. back titration: a back titration is a titration method where the concentration of an analyte is determined by reacting with a known amount of excess reagent. the remaining excess reagent is then titrated with another second reagent. the second titration's results show how much of the excess reagent was used in the first titration and the original analyte concentration can then be calculated. in a back titration, a known amount of reagent is added to a solution and allowed to react, and the excess is titrated. a back titration may also be called an indirect titration.[8] spectrophotometric method have been used previously by some researchers for determination of asa in aspirin and other medications such as paracetamol, clopidogrel,[9-10] and some analgesic drugs were also analyzed,[11] they were showed that this method was quite accurate and not showed any evidence of impurities interference during application of the method. the method is quit straight forward and more accessible compared to titration and other procedures. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 153 the reviewed literature revealed that other procedures have been used for quantitative determination of aspirin by the methods of coupling reaction,[12] hplc,[13] uv. visible spectrophotometry,[9-10] electrochemistry,[12] fia automatic flow injection analysis,[14] complexometry,[15] and flourimetry.[16] the comparative study of both spectrophotometry and hplc reported that the data obtained were in reference range.[17] in general these methods were used also for different formulations, such as paracetamol.[10] and clopidogrel.[18] several researcher from all over the world used these methods to determine the quality and quantity of active component in medicine especially aspirin.[19] here in this study, the focus were on quantitative determination of acetyl salicylic acid in aspirin or the purity of aspirin that currently present in the local market in sulaimani city, and distributed for public and private pharmacies. the aim of this work is also to evaluate the quality of the aspirin and its availability in high quality will be assessed. the direct and back-titration techniques [8] as well as spectrophotometric method will be used and comparing to standard hplc techniques in term of the capacity and accessibility of these techniques that could be used for determination purity of aspirin. 2. methods and materials all chemicals, reagents and glassware that were used in this study are readily available in the laboratories, or bought and borrowed from other laboratories from this region. they were from sigma-aldrich or fisher companies. both titration and back-titration techniques were used and compared with standard hplc method. the spectrophotometer in this research was used for analysis of the samples. 2.1 sample collection the samples were collected randomly from local drug stores and from pharmacies in sulaimani city. the sample size was nineteen samples and from nineteen different local and international companies. 2.2 solutions preparation methods and calculations the samples were prepared by using distilled water and ethanol, standard solution were prepared from each samples then used for titration with freshly prepared standard solution of reagent then titrated by classical titration techniques with end point detector by indicator. (acid –base titration procedure).[8, 20] each sample of aspirins were dissolved in aqueous ethanol because aspirin itself not dissolve well in water, phenolphthalein indicator was used to detect end point. the titrations were done with standard solution of sodium hydroxide naoh, and then the correct volumes were recorded. standard solution of hcl was prepared from standardization by borax. standard solution of naoh was prepared from standardization by standard hcl solution. the percentage of purity was calculated for each sample by the following equation: % purity of aspirin in the sample = 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙 𝑚𝑜𝑙𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑎𝑠𝑝𝑖𝑟𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑚𝑜𝑙𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑎𝑠𝑝𝑖𝑟𝑖𝑛 the samples weight were taken one by one then grinded to be in powder form, the weighed samples were dissolved in ethanol then completed in 100 ml volumetric flask ( 1gm/ 1gm). the actual mole of aspirin is the mole of acid that actually reacted with the standard naoh solution. therefore by considering the samples of aspirin are pure the calculations of each tablet are theoretical mole of aspirin. fecl3 has been used for spectrophotometric determination of asa in aspirin samples for the formation of colored complex to read by the spectrophotometer. for this purpose a series of solution was prepared for different concentration of asa, after formation of complex with fe+3 the absorbance were read at 530 nm. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 154 3. results and discussion the table 1 and table 2 showed the comprehensive data obtained from direct and indirect titration respectively for analyzed aspirin tablets from various sources, and for each of them the reference value from hplc were provided in order to observe the difference in the result obtained from the techniques were used. the percentage of labeling for each tablets were also showed. the tablet of aspirin from iranian company entry 1 in table 1 showed a very little different value from the result of direct titration and back-titration entry 1 in table 2 and the same with standard hplc technique (reference value), this result can be considered by the good value, because the value considered very close to the hplc data. however, for some companies the data were found very different when compared to the hplc data, for example entries 11, 15, 18 in table 1 or these companies might produce low quality of aspirin to the kurdistan market. table 1: the data of titration and hplc procedures entry company name weight gm/ tablet percent labeling % titration hplc 1 a.s.a iran 100 mg 0.1182 84.6 72 67.85 2 a.s.a uk 300 mg 0.3389 88.5 71 69.4 3 a.s.a iraq 100 mg 0.1314 76 65.3 59.3 4 a.s.a iran 100 mg 0.2799 36 31.6 29.7 5 a.s.a gi 5 mg 0.1974 38 31 33.9 6 a.s.a eu 100 mg 0.1265 79 53.75 59.9 7 a.s.a london 300 mg 0.3355 90 73.6 79.4 8 a.s.a boots gi 75 mg 0.19996 38 37 35.7 9 a.s.a cox 300 mg 0.34136 87.7 70 89.3 10 a.s.a pars iran 81 mg 0.16093 49.7 42 47.8 11 a.s.a polspirin 100 mg 0.1581 63.2 50.4 75.8 12 a.s.a bulgaria 100 mg 0.16413 61 52 49.5 13 a.s.a austria 100 mg 0.21466 46.5 39.2 45.4 14 a.s.a romania 100 mg 0.1807 55 54.6 54.4 15 a.s.a india 81 mg 0.1831 44.2 33.6 40.6 16 a.s.a ld usa 81 mg 0.12202 44 56.5 62.4 17 a.s.a jusparin 81 mg 0.12485 64 59 64 18 a.s.a erbil 75 mg 0.0965 77.7 60 50.1 19 a.s.a kardikern spain 100 mg 0.2637 38 58 52 a.s.a=acetyl salicylic acid; ld= low dose the best results can be observed for the product of romania (table 1, entry 14), because the result from direct titration and reference value from hplc were nearly the same value (54.6, 54.4 respectively) and also the value of back-titration is nearly similar (50). the product of iraqi company (table 1 and table 2, entry 18) were showed little different in amount of a.s.a in their product for both titration and back-titration (60, 58.8 respectively) compared to the reference value of hplc (50.1), this difference could be due to present of lower concentration of the acetyl salicylic acid in the product of this company. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 155 table 2: the results of back-titration and hplc data entry company name weight gm/ tablet percent labeling % backtitration hplc 1 a.s.a iran 100 mg 0.1182 84.6 69.7 67.85 2 a.s.a uk 300 mg 0.3389 88.5 67.7 69.4 3 a.s.a iraq 100 mg 0.1314 76 68.8 59.3 4 a.s.a iran 100 mg 0.2799 36 37.2 29.7 5 a.s.a gi 5 mg 0.1974 38 32.2 33.9 6 a.s.a eu 100 mg 0.1265 79 68.4 59.9 7 a.s.a london 300 mg 0.3355 90 53.2 79.4 8 a.s.a boots gi 75 mg 0.19996 38 33.8 35.7 9 a.s.a cox 300 mg 0.34136 87.7 54.6 89.3 10 a.s.a pars iran 81 mg 0.16093 49.7 36 47.8 11 a.s.a polspirin 100 mg 0.1581 63.2 68.3 75.8 12 a.s.a bulgaria 100 mg 0.16413 61 42.11 49.5 13 a.s.a austria 100 mg 0.21466 46.5 45.92 45.4 14 a.s.a romania 100 mg 0.1807 55 50 54.4 15 a.s.a india 81 mg 0.1831 44.2 33.2 40.6 16 a.s.a ld usa 81 mg 0.12202 44 57.8 62.4 17 a.s.a jusparin 81 mg 0.12485 64 51.4 64 18 a.s.a erbil 75 mg 0.0965 77.7 58.8 50.1 19 a.s.a kardikern spain 100 mg 0.2637 38 58.5 52 a.s.a=acetyl salicylic acid; ld= low dose the result of back-titration for the sample of aspirin from london (table 2, entry 7) showed (53.2) which is not very accurate compared to titration value in table 1 entry 7 which is 73.6 and reference value 79.4, as it can be seen again in entry 9 and entry 17. these results from the current technique considered better results compared to those from voltammetry[21] method regarding accuracy. conversely, the accuracy and precision of both type of titration method were found very low compared to hplc method. the result also stated that there are some differences in the product of these companies. interestingly, despite the variation in the value of most brands but they can be considered in the official ranges [9] and most of the results shown here can be considered close to the reference value except those discussed earlier (table 1 and table 2 entries 7 and 9). the figure 1 showed the absorbance of the prepared series of solution from aspirin sample at 530 nm of maximum wave length, the linear correlation obtained is showed here for different concentration of asa in aspirin samples. the maximum absorbance was obtained for optimum concentration at 1 x10-2 m of each aspirin samples. kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 156 figure 1: spectrophotometric calibration curve. the data of spectrophotometric analysis method showed in table 3, these data can be described by better data that were obtained for aspirin analysis than both types of titrations, but not accurate as the data obtained from standard hplc method, due to stability of the colored solutions of the formulations. the average difference between this method and hplc or labeling data were found between 0.08 to 19 digit numbers entry 13 and 6, the large difference can be explained by the low quality of some aspirin samples and the high quality of some of the samples in reverse.[18] table 3: the results of spectrophotometric method and hplc data entry company name weight gm/ tablet percent labeling % spect. hplc 1 a.s.a iran 100 mg 0.1182 84.6 67.2 67.85 2 a.s.a uk 300 mg 0.3389 88.5 64.5 69.4 3 a.s.a iraq 100 mg 0.1314 76 57.9 59.3 4 a.s.a iran 100 mg 0.2799 36 25.9 29.7 5 a.s.a gi 5 mg 0.1974 38 38.7 33.9 6 a.s.a eu 100 mg 0.1265 79 63.3 59.9 7 a.s.a london 300 mg 0.3355 90 75.8 79.4 8 a.s.a boots gi 75 mg 0.19996 38 35.1 35.7 9 a.s.a cox 300 mg 0.34136 87.7 90.3 89.3 10 a.s.a pars iran 81 mg 0.16093 49.7 48.5 47.8 11 a.s.a polspirin 100 mg 0.1581 63.2 75.1 75.8 12 a.s.a bulgaria 100 mg 0.16413 61 45.7 49.5 13 a.s.a austria 100 mg 0.21466 46.5 42.2 45.4 14 a.s.a romania 100 mg 0.1807 55 55.1 54.4 15 a.s.a india 81 mg 0.1831 44.2 45.3 40.6 16 a.s.a ld usa 81 mg 0.12202 44 61 62.4 17 a.s.a jusparin 81 mg 0.12485 64 64.5 64 18 a.s.a erbil 75 mg 0.0965 77.7 52.4 50.1 19 a.s.a kardikern spain 100 mg 0.2637 38 37.9 52 a.s.a=acetyl salicylic acid; ld= low dose; spect.= spectrophotometric method from the figure and table 3 can be observed that the fact of the low quality of some aspirin available in present time at local market. for example entry 18 when compared with the percent of labeling, the difference is very large but it is very close to the reference value from hplc method. while for entry 19 there is no large difference between percent of labeling with practical value but high difference with hplc reference. r² = 0.9905 -0.05 0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0 0.02 0.04 0.06 a b so rb a n ce concentration of aspirin (gm/ 100 ml) series1 linear (series1) λmax 530 nm kurdistan journal of applied research | volume 4 – issue 2 – december 2019 | 157 4. conclusion in conclusion, the data obtained from both titration and back-titration methods in determination of the purity of aspirin were in acceptable range and comparable with the data from the standard hplc method. this means that the quality of aspirin that currently distributed or used were good except some of them have low quality in term of purity or the amount of asa. this also means these methods can be used as an alternative way for quality control of medications which inter the region. however, both types of titration method also showed not easily to use and technically difficult when compared to hplc. but the access for titration and back-titration methods were found easier when compared to the voltammetry. the results from spectrophotometric technique showed that the method is more economically suitable and the data are more accurate due to high rate of accuracy. the data from spectrophotometric method also showed that the quality of the aspirin in sulaimani local drug stores was good even the product of erbil showed the data in reference range. these advantages of spectrophotometric method encouraged to be considered for quality control of drugs. reference [1] b. nikolin, b. imamović, s. medanhodžić-vuk, and m. sober, "high performance liquid chromatography in pharmaceutical analyses," bosnian journal of basic medical sciences, vol. 4, 2004. [2] k. schrör, acetylsalicylic acid. germany: british library cataloguing-in-publication data, 2009. [3] p. silverman, m. seskar, d. kanter, p. schweizer, j. p. metraux, and i. raskin, "salicylic acid in rice biosynthesis, conjugation and possible role," plant physiology, vol. 108, pp. 633-639, 1995. [4] bayer inc. (2014, product monograph. available: www.healthcanada.gc.ca/medeffect [5] m. c. koester, "an overview of the physiology and pharmacology of aspirin and nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs," journal of atheletic training, vol. 28, pp. 252-259, 1993. [6] c. s. kwok and y. k. loke, "critical overview on the benefits and harms of aspirin," pharmaceuticals, vol. 3, pp. 1491-1506, 2010. [7] m. yusuf, et al., "salicylic acid: physiological roles in plants," ed, 2013, pp. 15-30. [8] d. c. harris, quantitative chemical analysis, 7 ed., 2007. [9] g. motan and a. pui, "studies of different types of aspirin by spectrophotometric methods," acta chemica iasi, vol. 22, pp. 155-164, 2014. [10] g. murtaza, et al., "development of a uv-spectrophotometric method for the simultaneous determination of aspirin and paracetamol in tablets," scientific research and essays vol. 6, 2011. [11] a. m. el-didamony, m. z. saad, and n. o. saleem, "spectrophotometric determination of some analgesic drugs in pharmaceutical formulations using n-bromosuccinimide as an oxidant," journal of the association of arab universities for basic and applied sciences, vol. 17, pp. 43-50, 2015/04/01/ 2015. [12] s. s. mohamed, "comparative analytical study for determination of acetyl salicylic acid in bulk and pharmaceutical formulations," journal of al-nahrain university, vol. 16, pp. 1-10, 2013. [13] m. h. bhuyian, p. d. h. rashid, a. islam, and m. tareque, "development and validation of method for determination of clobetasol propionate and salicylic acid from pharmaceutical dosage form by hplc," british journal of pharmaceutical research, vol. 7, pp. 375-385, 2015. [14] j. fernández, m. castro, and m. valcárcel, "automatic continuous on-line monitoring of salicylic acid and acetylsalicylic acid in pharmaceuticals," journal of automatic chemistry, vol. 12, pp. 263-266, 1990. [15] v. martínez-merino. (2007, determination of the free salicylic acid concentration in aspirin by forming fe+3 complexes available: www.iupac.org/publications/cd/medicinal_chemistry/ [16] b. scientific, "fluorimetric determination of acetylsalicylic acid in aspirin," british pharmacopeia, vol. 2, 1993. [17] a. sani, a. ahmed, t. alemika, m. a. sani, a. ojuolape, a. sani, a. bukola, s. zakama, and i. mohammed, "comparative quantitaive analysis of different brands of 300 mg aspirin tablet marketed in maiduguri metropolitan council (mmc)," international journal of pharma sciences and researc, vol. 3, 2012. [18] r. t. suhas gurav, vishali salunkhe, devprakash, senthilkumar g.p., "spectrophotometric determination of clopidogrel bisulfate in pharmaceutical formulations," american journal of pharmtech research, vol. 1, 2011. [19] s. mitic, g. miletic, a. pavlović, s. tošić, and s. sunaric, "quantitative analysis of acetylsalicylic acid in commercial pharmaceutical formulations and human control serum using kinetic spectrophotometr," acta chim. slov. , vol. 55, pp. 508-515, 2008. [20] bellevue college. (2017, titration of synthesised aspirin. available: https://www.bellevuecollege.edu/chemistry/courses/chem161/ [21] c. cofan and c. radovan, "anodic determination of acetyl salicylic acid at a mildly oxidized borondoped diamond electrode in sodium sulphate medium," international journal of electrochemistry, 2011. http://www.healthcanada.gc.ca/medeffect http://www.iupac.org/publications/cd/medicinal_chemistry/ http://www.bellevuecollege.edu/chemistry/courses/chem161/  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 1 | june 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.1.1 effect of gyttja and nitrogen applications on growth and flowering of snapdragons (antirrhinum majus l.) plant in the two soils depth abstract: plant morphological attribute has been reported to be increased through the application of organic material (gyttja) to the soil. snapdragons (antirrhinum majus l.) was studied under plastic house conditions to determine the effect of two different soil depth-sh (0-20 cm and 2040 cm), four different gyttja doses-gd (0, 1, 2, and 3%), and three different nitrogen doses-nd (0, 140, and 280 mg kg -1 ) on some of the plant’s morphological characters; plant height (ph), fresh weight per plant (fwp), number of leaves per plant(nlp), stem diameter(sd), number of branches per plant (nbp), number of flower per spikes (nfps) and flower spike length (fsl). the results showed that gyttja application at doses of 3%, significantly increased ph, sd, nbp, nfps, and fsl, while fwp increased only at 2% gyttja application dose and decreased at the 3% dose. the application of 280 mg kg -1 of nitrogen significantly increased (ph, fwp, nlp, nbp, nfps and fsl). all parameters increased at (0-20 cm) soil depth, and the gd x sh x nd interaction had a significant effect on (sd, nlp, nfps and fsl). these results suggest that adding of gyttja with nitrogen fertilizer to the calcareous and infertile soil will enhance the morphological attributes of plants. keywords: gyttja, snapdragons plant, nitrogen fertilizer, soil depth. 1. introduction the agricultural soils in bakrajo, sulaimani, kurdistan region/iraq, contain low organic matters. this is because of cultivation system, high rate of soil erosion, land degradation and dry and hot microclimate. in order to address the agricultural, environmental and economic problems organic materials are essential to add to this agro-ecosystem [1]. there are higher and more active microbial population in the soils supported by organic inputs in compare to those managed with mineral fertilizers [2]. to improve soil properties and fertile its content, materials such as (leonardite, gyttja, poultry manure, sewage sludge, etc.) are commonly used [3], thus also address some of the soil-borne pathogens and plant diseases [4]. gyttja is a semi-formed lignite coal cover layer that is black or brown mud with organic matter and not used for fuel due to low calorie [5, 6, and 7]. the (ec) was 0.68 mmhos/cm -1 , the acidity (ph) of gyttja was 7.75, total lime content was 32.5% and total organic carbon content was 25.5%. total nitrogen content was 0.84% and total phosphor of gyttja was 17 mg kg −1 . the amounts of fulvic and humic acids were 27.49 and 40.78%, respectively [1, 8]. snapdragons (antirrhinum majus l.) is the most common flower growing in gardens and parks. the name comes from its character when pinch the flowers at the sides with the thumb and index finger, open and closes like the mouth of a dragon. snapdragon cultivars growth and flowering based on their response to day length and temperature [9]. the bright and colored flowers and the ability of the plant to adapt in local growing conditions make it easy to produce and spread [10]. snapdragon is desirable for cut flowers because of its wide range of petal colors and smell. the snapdragon cut flowers are sensitive to ethylene, and their vase lives are relatively short [11, 12, 13]. the aim of this study was to assess the gyttja effects, nitrogen applications and soil depth on some morphological characters of snapdragons. 2. methods and materials the experiment was carried out during the years 20152016, and snapdragons plants were used as test plants, under plastic house condition, in the ornamental plants department, technical institute of bakrajo, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani iraq. gyttja was gained from lignite deposits at the afsin elbistan (kahramanmaraş, eastern turkey). the effect of gyttja on plant growth was tested by using four different gyttja doses (0, 1, 2, and 3 % plant (w/w), and three different nitrogen doses (0, 140, and 280 mg/ kg -1 -n). the nitrogen fertilizer was added as urea at three doses after 25 days of sowing. 2.1. soil and gyttja analysis the soil used for growing snapdragons was taken at two different soil depths (0-20, 20-40) cm from bakrajo, sulaimani, kurdistan region/iraq. after collections the both of soil was dried by air and sieved (<2 mm) in the laboratory to determine physical and chemical properties (table 1). based on these values, both of soils have low organic matter and varied in macro and micronutrients contents, the soil ph was slightly alkaline and the amount of lime in the depth (0-20) lower than of (20 ardalan j. mjeed ornamental plant dept, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, iraq ardalan.majeed@spu.edu.iq mariwan a. ali ornamental plant dept, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, iraq mariwan.ali@spu.edu.iq kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 1 | june 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.1.1 40), and organic matter, p, cu, fe, zn and ec contents in the soil depth (0-20) cm were very high compared with lower soil depth. the (ec) and acidity (ph) of both soil depth and gyttja were measured in h2o suspension by using a glass electrode calomel electrode system [14]. the walkley-black method was used for determining organic matter (o.m) in gyttja and soil depth samples [15]. uv-vis spectrophotometer was used to determine the concentration of phosphorus in soil by using a solution of 0.5 n sodium bicarbonate nahco3 at ph 8.5 [16]. the dtpa-tea extraction method that was developed by [17] for extracting metal micronutrients in neutral and calcareous soils was used for measuring plant available (mn, cu, fe, and zn) and the ammonium acetate (1n nh4oac) at ph 7.0 solution was used for assayed macronutrient (ca, mg, k and na) [18] by using perkin elmer 3110 atomic absorption spectrophotometer (aas). the total lime (caco3 %) in the soil was evaluated by using scheibler calcimeter method [19]. the gyttija used in the experiment was slightly alkaline, low ec, high calcium carbonate and organic matter content (table 2). finally the gyttja was mixed manually at each application rate until the gyttja2kg soil mixture was homogenous for each pot. table l: the properties of the soil: parameters soil depth (0 – 20) cm soil depth (20 – 40) cm ph 7.65 7.74 ec (mmhos/cm -1 ) 2.0 1.56 caco3 (%) 24.5 32.1 o.m. (%) 2.30 1.27 ca (mgkg -1 ) 4521 5485 mg (mgkg -1 ) 223.2 153.7 na (mgkg -1 ) 48.1 44.2 k (mgkg -1 ) 203 255 p (mgkg -1 ) 4.07 2.37 fe (mgkg -1 ) 9.22 7.8 zn (mgkg -1 ) 1.43 0.85 cu (mgkg -1 ) 2.60 1.06 mn (mgkg -1 ) 27.2 35.16 table 2: properties of gyttja used in the study: parameters value ph 7.70 ec (mmhos/cm -1 ) 0.86 caco3 (%) 31.8 organic matter (%) 42.1 2.2. plant characteristic plants was harvested 90 days after planting and to record the following morphological attributes including, plant height (ph) cm, fresh weight per plant (fwp) g, number of leaves per plant (nlp), stem diameter (sd) cm, number of branches per plant (nbp), number of flower per spikes (nfps) and flower spike length (fsl) cm, the plants need to uprooted and washed with tap water. 2.3. statistical analysis experiment was performed by randomized complete block design (rcbd) with three replications was used in this study to test main and interaction effects. the data sets were analyzed with (ibm spss advanced statistics version 20.0.0). for direct comparison of treatments, duncan’s’ multiple comparison tests were used. (anova) analysis of variance was used for testing the main effect, the interaction of all variables; sh, gd and nd for all treatments at statistical significance level (p ≤ 0.05). the figures were designed using graph pad prism version 6.0 software. 3. results and discussion the results of (anova) for the different soil depth, gyttja doses, nitrogen doses, and their interactions regarding the measured morphological characters of snapdragons plant are shown in (table 3). nitrogen and gyttja doses had significant effects on all parameters. soil depth showed significant variation in nbp, nfps, and fsl. however, the effect of soil depth was nonsignificant on (ph, fwp, nlp and sd). soil depth showed significant variation in nbp, nfps, and fsl. however, the effect of soil depth was nonsignificant on (ph, fwp, nlp and sd). the interaction between the soil depth and gyttja doses has affected all the characters except fsl. the interaction of soil depth and nitrogen doses had a significant effect only on nlp and fsl. the interaction between gyttja doses and nitrogen doses significantly affected all morphological snapdragons characters except ph. the interactions between sh x gd x nd were significant for all treatments except nfps and ph. duncan’s multiple comparison tests have indicated that the application of 140 and 280 mg kg -1 nitrogen doses significantly increased ph, fwp, and nlp. however, nbp, nfps, and fsl were significantly higher than control when 280 mg kg -1 nitrogen was used (table 4.). the stem diameter has shown linear increases when 140 mg kg -1 nitrogen was applied. nitrogen was added as an experimental factor in this study because previous researches recommended that the application of n together with the gyttja positively affects the plant growth. this might be due to the decrease in nitrogen loss by leaching. moreover, nutrient uptake by plants is controlled not only by nutrient supply but also by the demand of the plant. according to [21] peat and leaf compost as growing substrates with sufficient supply of n content are good for healthy plant growth. applying gyttja at 3% enhanced the morphological attributes; ph, sd, nbp, nfps, nlp and fsl in the snapdragons plant, but it does not increase fwp (table 5). the fresh weight per plant increased at 2% gyttja kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 1 | june 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.1.1 application. the gyttja application presented maximum stem diameter which is also supported by [21] table 3: the anova results of the treatments and their interactions for the measured morphological attributes of snapdragons plant. parameters plant height (cm) fresh weight per plant (g) no. of leaves per plant stem diameter (cm) no. of branches per plant no. of flowers per spike flower spike length (cm) source df f-value sig. f-value sig. f-value sig. f-value sig. f-value sig. f-value sig. f-value sig. soil depth (sh) 1 7.004 0.770 7.281 0.206 61.661 0.145 10.509 10.509 0.162 1.730 0.001 57.845 0.000 37.902 0.000 gyttja dose (gd) 3 110.66 7 0.000 39.550 0.000 166.139 0.000 43.353 0.000 70.471 0.000 202.537 0.000 203.331 0.000 nitrogen dose (nd) 2 87.550 0.000 71.838 0.000 118.363 0.000 60.720 0.004 57.261 0.000 112.755 0.000 63.211 0.000 sh* gd 3 1.567 0.000 16.761 0.000 4.907 0.005 21.794 0.000 0.684 0.000 6.055 0.001 0.704 0.554 sh * nd 2 2.349 0.274 8.098 0.102 4.397 0.018 6.806 0.061 3.381 0.392 0.746 0.480 10.429 0.000 gd* nd 6 1.963 0.051 21.190 0.000 11.973 0.000 12.236 0.000 0.975 0.000 3.515 0.006 9.737 0.000 sh * gd * nd 6 1.668 0.072 11.301 0.017 5.300 0.000 10.123 0.000 1.420 0.004 2.158 0.064 7.471 0.000 who observed thickest stem of dahlia in sand, silt, and leaf mould medium. results showed that plants gave a maximum increase in fwp in 2% gyttja doses containing media. in this respect, [22, 23] observed the fresh weight per plant increases in the media containing organic matter. the peak in a number of plants shoots presented the vital vegetative plant growth. also it helped by nutrient rich and growing media. the maximum numbers of plant shoots were recorded in the result of treatment gyttja, n + topsoil that showed the enhanced vegetative growth in antirrhinum majus l. these findings are similarly seen in both researches done by [24, 25] first was on sinmondsia chinensis that the maximum number of shoots in organic material. the second was using coconut compost growing media in combination with silt + organic material increased side branches. table 4: the effect of the nitrogen doses on some measured morphological attributes of snapdragons plant. nitrogen dose (mg/kg -1 ) plant height (cm) fresh weight per plant (g) no. of leaves per plant stem diameter (cm) no. of branches per plant no. of flowers per spike flower spike length (cm) 0 89.375b 81.166b 334.38b 1.066b 10.50c 34.46c 25.92b 140 111.666a 120.792a 553.54a 1.370a 24.17b 46.79b 27.33b 280 105.292a 130.208a 540.92a 1.213ab 30.96a 53.83a 34.17a *means in the same column followed by the same symbol are not significantly different at p ≤ 0.05 level based on duncan test. table 5: the effect of the gyttja doses on some measured morphological attributes of snapdragons plant. gyttja dose (%) plant height (cm) fresh weight per plant (g) no. of leaves per plant stem diameter (cm) no. of branches per plant no. of flowers per spike flower spike length (cm) 0 75.28d 57.44c 261.06c 1.000b 9.28c 28.00d 17.28d 1 95.28c 74.28b 429.50d 1.128b 14.78b 38.17c 27.11c 2 107.17b 82.39a 574.22b 1.128b 30.61a 51.11b 33.94b 3 112.11a 73.06b 640.33a 1.611a 32.83a 62.83a 38.22a *means in the same column followed by the same symbol are not significantly different at p ≤ 0.05 level based on duncan test. based on estimated marginal mean, both of soil depth effects on morphological attributes of snapdragons plant were compared together are shown in (table 6). mostly, all parameters (fwp, nlp, nbp, nfps and fsl) of the plants grown in the soils depth (0-20) cm were higher than those grown in soil depth (20 – 40) cm. this might be due to the higher amount of organic matter and some macro-micronutrients in the soil depth (0-20) cm than the second depth. the gyttja amended soils (0-20) cm had higher morphological attributes with nitrogen fertilizer compared with soil in (20-40) cm, due to that material contains high amounts of organic matter (42.21%) and having a stronger relationship between them. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 1 | june 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.1.1 table 6: the effect of the soil depth on some measured morphologic attributes of snapdragons plant. soil depth (cm) plant height (cm) fresh weight per plant (g) no. of leaves per plant stem diameter (cm) no. of branches per plant no. of flowers per spike flower spike length (cm) 0-20 101.67 114.390a 527.556a 1.27 23.333a 49.083a 31.111a 20-40 102.56 107.060b 425.000b 1.16 20.417b 40.972b 27.167b *values represent based on estimated marginal mean. duncan’s multiple comparison tests indicated that all the morphological attributes of snapdragons plants grown in the soils amended with gyttja in soil depth (0-20) cm better than soil (20-40) cm. the ph had statistically increased by increasing with gyttja doses with n-140 mg kg -1 and gets the high vale at 3% (115.04) cm followed at 2% (103.39) cm and 1% (92.43)cm over 0 % of gyttja doses, although maximum increases (94.66)cm in ph was obtained with n-control and at 3% of gyttja doses (fig1 a). the fwp (129.393) gm statistically increased in the fertilized with n-280 mg kg -1 at 2% of gyttja dose and (123.067) gm decline was observed with 3% doses, and in the non-fertilized treatments the fwp statistically was increased at 3% (119.197) gm followed by 2% (101.303)gm and 1% (80.720)gm over the 0% of gyttja (60.200) gm (fig1 b). when the soil fertilized with n-140 mg kg -1 , the sd increased significantly at 3% doses (1.64) cm over the 0% doses (0.90) cm, and there were no statistical differences between 1, and 2% doses (1.09) cm, whereas in the non-fertilized treatment the sd expanded by increasing of gyttja doses, but statically a similar effect by 2 and 3% doses was observed (0.93), and (0.96) cm respectively (fig1 c). in the fertilized treatment n-280 mg kg -1 maximum increases in nfps (79.660) was observed at 3% application followed by 2% (61.660) and by 1% (46.660) over the 0% (40.000), although in the nonfertilized treatment the nfps increased at 1,2,3% over the control (33.660, 42.330 and 59.660) respectively (fig1 d). the nbp (49.000) statistically increased in the fertilized with n-280 mg kg -1 at 2% of gyttja dose and decline (42.700) was observed at 3% doses. in the nonfertilized treatments the nbp was increased statistically at 3% (15.660) followed by 2% (13.330) and at 1% (10.330) over the 0% of gyttja (5.330) (fig1 e). in addition, nlp was significantly increased by gyttja application over the control. in the fertilized treatment n-140 mg kg -1 the nlp (883.000) initially increased till the 2% doses, however a steady decrease was observed with increasing at 3% (733.000), when the soil nonfertilized the nlp significantly increased at 3% doses (569.700) over the control (120.700), and statistically there were no differences between 1, and 2% doses (388.7), and (414.000) respectively (fig 1f). finally, in the fertilized treatment n-280 mg kg -1 maximum increases in fsl (48.33)cm was shown at 3% application followed at 2% (41.330)cm and at 1% (33.330)cm over the 0% (25.660)cm, although in the non-fertilized treatment the fsl increased at 1,2,3% over the control (29.000, 31.660, and 38.330)cm respectively (fig 1g). kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 1 | june 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.1.1 p la n t h e ig h t ( c m ) 0 1 % 2 % 3 % 0 1 % 2 % 3 % 0 5 0 1 0 0 1 5 0 n 1 4 0 m g k g 1 n c o n t r o l a a d b c d c b g y t t j a d o s e + ( 0 2 0 ) c m s o i l d e p t h n o . o f b r a n c h e s p e r p la n t 0 1 % 2 % 3 % 0 1 % 2 % 3 % 0 2 0 4 0 6 0 n 2 8 0 m g k g 1 n c o n t r o l a a b c d b c d g y t t j a d o s e + ( 0 2 0 ) c m s o i l d e p t h f r e s h w e ig h t p e r p la n t ( g ) 0 1 % 2 % 3 % 0 1 % 2 % 3 % 0 5 0 1 0 0 1 5 0 n 2 8 0 m g k g 1 n c o n t r o l a a d b c b d c g y t t j a d o s e + ( 0 2 0 ) c m s o i l d e p t h n o . o f l e a v e s p e r p la n t 0 1 % 2 % 3 % 0 1 % 2 % 3 % 0 2 0 0 4 0 0 6 0 0 8 0 0 1 0 0 0 n 1 4 0 m g k g 1 n c o n t r o l a a d bc bc d g y t t j a d o s e + ( 0 2 0 ) c m s o i l d e p t h s t e m d ia m e t e r ( c m ) 0 1 % 2 % 3 % 0 1 % 2 % 3 % 0 . 0 0 . 5 1 . 0 1 . 5 2 . 0 n 1 4 0 m g k g 1 n c o n t r o l a a a b c c b b g y t t j a d o s e + ( 0 2 0 ) c m s o i l d e p t h f lo w e r s p i k e l e n g t h ( c m ) 0 1 % 2 % 3 % 0 1 % 2 % 3 % 0 2 0 4 0 6 0 n 2 8 0 m g k g 1 n c o n t r o l g y t t j a d o s e + ( 0 2 0 ) c m s o i l d e p t h a a b c d b d c n o . o f f lo w e r p e r s p ik e 0 1 % 2 % 3 % 0 1 % 2 % 3 % 0 2 0 4 0 6 0 8 0 1 0 0 n 2 8 0 m g k g 1 n c o n t r o l a a d c b b c d g y t t j a d o s e + ( 0 2 0 ) c m s o i l d e p t h a b c d e f g figure 1: plant growth measurements (mean ± se) of antirrhinum. measurements contain plant height (ph) cm, fresh weight per plant (fwp) g, number of leaves per plant(nlp), stem diameter(sd) cm , number of branches per plant(nbp), number of flower per spike (nfps) and flower spike length(fsl) cm. that figure illustrated the best interaction between four gyttja doses (0, 1, 2, and 3%), tow soil depth (0-20) (20-40), and three nitrogen doses (0, 140, and 280 mg kg -1 ), compare with non-fertilized treatment (ncontrol). the abbreviation (a) means the greatest effect on plant morphological attributed. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 1 | june 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.1.1 4. conclusion a number of experiments were conducted to test how gyttja application to the soil affects soil properties and plant growth. this study shows that the morphological attributed (ph, sd, nbp, nfp and fsl) had increased with gyttja application at 3%. based on these results, it was observed that nitrogen dose 280 mg kg -1 had major effects and increases (ph, fwp, nlp, nbp, nfps and fsl). the snapdragons plants response was more in (020) cm than the (20-40) cm soil. this means that the top soil contains higher organic matter and macromicronutrients than other soil depth. based on the fresh weight per plants, the combination of (soil (0-20) cm, 2% gyttja dose, and 280 mg kg -1 n application) had the greatest interaction. 5. references [1] a. karaca, c. t. oguz, and t. nihal, “effects of a humic deposit (gyttja) on soil chemical and microbiological 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[2] w.a. dick, “influence of long-term tillage and crop rotation combinations on soil enzyme activities,” journal of sssa. 48:569–574, 1984. [3] f. j. stevenson, “humus chemistry: genesis, composition, reactions,” 2nd edn. wiley, new york, 1994. [4] h. kheyrodin, h. antoun, “effect of tillage and manure application on soil microbial biomass and respiration and on enzyme activities,” wcss, pp, 2144, 2002. [5] s. ural, and f. yuksel, “geotechnical characterization of lignite bearing horizons in the afsin-elbistan lignite basin,” se turkey, eng geo 75:129–146, 2004. [6] a.r. demirkiran, a. akkaya, m.f. türkmener, m. c. türkmener, and s. akkaya, “toprak verimliliini arttirmada kullanilabilecek alternatif organik bir materyal: gidya (gyttja),” 5. dünya su forumu, sulamatuzlanma toplantisi, sanliurfa, türkiye (turkish).bildiri pp, 159-168, 2008. [7] h. dikici, k. saltali, s. bingolbali, “equilibrium and kinetics characteristics of copper (ii) sorption on to gyttja,” bull. environ. contam. toxicol. 84: 147–151, 2010. [8] n. tamer, and a. karaca, “gidya’nin toprakta enzim aktiviteleri ile kadmiyum kapsami üzerine etkisi," a.ü. fen bilimleri enst., toprak anabilim dali, msc thesis, ankara, turkish, 2014. [9] m. n. rogers, “snapdragons, in introduction to floriculture,” 2 nd edition. (eds.): r. a. larson. academic press, inc. new york, pp, 93-112, 1992. [10] r. asghari, “comparing the effects of growth bed and planting density on the growth and flowering characteristics of snapdragon,” agricultural higher education center, karaj, iran. pp, 23056622, 2014. [11] c. y. wang, j. e. baker, r. e. hardenburg, and m. lieberman, “effects of two analogs of rhizobitoxine and sodium benzoate on senescence of snapdragon,” journal of am. soc. hortic. sci. 102: 517–520, 1977. [12] e. j. waltering, and w. g. van doorn, “role of ethylene in senescence of petals-morphological and taxonomical relationship,” journal of exp. bot. 39, 1605–1616, 1988. [13] m. serek, e. c. sisler, and m. s. reid, “effects of 1-mcp on the vase life and ethylene response of cut flowers,” plant growth regul. 16, 93–97, 1995. [14] g. w. thomas, “soil ph and acidity,” in d.l. sparks (eds.) method of soil analysis: chemical methods. part 3. sssa. madison, wi. p, 475–491, 1996. [15] d. w. nelson, l.e. sommers, “total carbon, organic carbon, and organic matter,” in d.l. sparks (eds.) methods of soil analysis, part 3, chemical methods, sssa. book series number 5, sssa., madison, wi, p, 961-1011, 1996. [16] s. kuo, “phosphorus,” in d.l. sparks (eds.) methods of soil analysis, part 3, chemical methods, sssa book series number 5, sssa. madison, wi, pp. 869 – 921, 1996. [17] w. l. lindsay, w. a. norvell, “development of a dtpa micronutrient soil test for zinc, iron, manganese, and copper,” journal of sssa. 42, 421–428, 1978. [18] p. a. helmke, d. l. sparks, “lithium, sodium, potassium, rubidium, and calcium,” in sparks, d.l., (eds.) methods of soil analysis, part 3, chemical methods, sssa. series number 5, madison, wi, p, 551–574, 1996. [19] r. h. loeppert, d.l. suarez, “carbonate and gypsum,” in d.l. sparks (eds.) method of soil analysis: chemical methods. part 3. sssa. madison, wi, p, 437–475, 1996 [20] m. benito, a. masaguer, r. d. antonio, and a. moliner, “use of pruning waste compost as a component in soil less growing media,” bioresource technology, vol.96. 597-603, 2005. [21] m. kiran, j. din, k. waseem, m. s. jilani, and m. q. khan, “effect of different growing media on the growth and development of dahlia (dahlia pinnata) under the agro-climatic condition of dera ismail khan,” pakistan journal of biological sciences, vol.10, 4140-4143, 2007. [22] t. wang,and e. a. konow, “fertilizer source and medium composition growth of moth orchid,” hortic sci, 34: 515-520, 1999. [23] a. t. liopa, d. chalikiopoulos, and a. papasavvas, “effect of chitin on growth and chlorophyll content of two medicinal plants,” journal of medical plants research, vol.4, 499508, 2010. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 1 | june 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.1.1 [24] m. a. bashir, m. ahmad, and m. a. anjum, “effect of various potting media on growth of rooted jojoba (simmondsia chinensis) cuttings. international journal of agriculture and biology, vol.9, 147-151, 2007. [25] a. riaz, m. arshad, a. younis, a. raza, and m. hameed, “effect of different growing media on the growth and flowering of zinnia elegans cv. blue point,” pakistan journal of botany, vol.40, 1579-1585, 2008. acknowledgment the authors wish to express their deep thanks to prof. dr. hüseyin dikici and research assist. ömer faruk demir for all of their assistance with the analysis in soil laboratory, university of kahramanmaras sutcu imam. i would like to thank my dear friends, especially assist. lec. shara salih ali and assist. lec. haval mohamed for his kindness, help, and he supported me during my experiments. authors ardalan j. mjeed received the bsc degree in agriculture / soil and water department from salahaddin university/ erbil / iraq in 2007; msc in bioengineering and sciences department, specialization soil and plant nutrition from kahramanmaras sutcu imam university / turki in 2014. he is also rapporteur of the department of ornamental plants in bakrajo technical institute from sulaimani polytechnic university (spu) /iraq. mariwan a. ali received his bsc in agriculture/ horticulture department from sulaimani university/ iraq in 1978; msc in agriculture / horticulture department, specialization ornamental plants and landscaping from sulaimani university/iraq in 2001. he is also head of ornamental plant department in bakrajo technical institute from sulaimani polytechnic university (spu) /iraq.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq molecular identification of fusarium proliferatum from toenails: a case report sazan jamal gharib nawroz abdul-razzak tahir medical laboratory department sulaimani technical institute horticulture department sulaimani polytechnic university college of agricultural sciences, zakho university university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq sazan.gharib@spu.edu.iq nawrozbiology@gmail.com volume 4 – special issue: 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) doi: 10.24017/science.2019 .ichms.13 received: 9 june 2019 accepted: 6 july 2019 abstract fusarium is a saprophytic fungus which is broadly disseminated in soil, plant debris and other organic substrates. these fungi can affect indigenous tissue in immunocompromised patients and result in some fungal infections such as onychomycosis, bone and joint disease, or sinusitis. in this paper, we report a 56-year-old female has diabetes milletus who established to disseminate fusarium infection in her left first toenail from the dermatology department / khabat skin center, sulaimani province, iraq. to study of these fungi as the true causative agents of nail infection, we describe a pcr/sequencing assay to confirm routinely diagnosis of the infecting fungi in this case with toenail onychomycosis. designation of the ordinary laboratory of fusarium is very challenging because of the septate hyphae of fusarium are hard to discriminate from those of aspergillus, which has a more favourable consequence and this time-consuming. therefore, molecular tools were used for identification of f. proliferatum from this case by amplifying its region of rdna using a pair of universal primers its1 and its4. infectious fungal molecular detection advances the select of right antifungal therapy, in that way improving the medication rate of nails infections. dna sequence analysis and phylogenetic tree of the amplified its-rdna was used for species identification of this strain of f. proliferatum. for final identification sequencing of dna has been carried out by [macrogen korea] using forward primer its1, the obtained consensus of query sequence was compared with the its dna database on the blast homepage, aligned and diagnosed strain deposited to the genbank and we received an accession number (mk112619). the sequence of the f. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 129 proliferatum amplicon was aligned using clustalw and the alignment was used to make phylogenetic analysis using mega software version x. to the best of our knowledge, the isolated fusarium in this paper is the first case of its kind to be sequenced and reported by the molecular method in kurdistan region of iraq keywords: fusarium proliferatum, toenail, onychomycosis, pcr, its region, iraq. 1. introduction nail infection (onychomycosis) due to fungi is a communal disease of the fingernails or toenails of dermatophytes, yeasts, and non-dermatophytic molds. today, onychomycosis is a major public health case due to its growing incidence and has considerable clinical implications as well as helping as an illness reservoir [1]. the occurrence of nail infection has been described to be 23% through europe [2] and 20% in east asia [3]. in north america, the prevalence of onychomycosis is up toward 14% [4], with fungaldisease accountable for 50% of all nail disease [5]. nail diseases come to be more public with growing oldness and generally toenails are impacted (80% of cases). nail trauma, frequent water immersion, occlusive footwear, athlete's foot, diabetes mellitus, immunosuppression and smoking are the principal deterrent determinants for onychomycosis [6]. other susceptibility variables including increased occurrences of nail disease such as decreased peripheral mobility, diabetes, nail trauma, and bad nail hygiene were also worried. however not life-threatening, it can have important clinical implications, like secondary bacterial diseases, chronicity, therapeutic problems and disfiguration, besides serving as an illness reservoir [7]. molds are soil-living saprophyte fungi and some are pathogens. they have commonly been deemed to contaminate the skin and nails ' fungi or secondary pathogens, but some of them may be main contaminants e.g., scopulariopsis brevicaulis, fusarium sp, aspergillus sp., scytalidium hyalinum and, recently, onychocola canadensis [8,9,10,11,12]. fusarium spp. is a leading cause of human infections, especially in immunocomporomised patients [13]. the pathogen frequently infects soft tissues by traumatic inoculation in ordinary hosts [14]. the types of these diseases are onychomycosis [15], keratitis and endophthalmitis [16], and mycetoma [17]. fusarium is a non-dermatophytic mould found in the form of soil saprophytes and pathogens of plants. human illnesses are likely the consequence of different catalyzing variables of deficient immune status. older-age immunocompetents are also susceptible to multiple unassumed saprophytic and plant pathogens. it is therefore of utmost significance that this newly evolving fungal pathogens be properly identified and that adequate therapy be instituted as soon as possible to control human infections so that spread infections can be prevented [18]. in the current study, we reported a case of onychomycosis in a left first toenail of a 56-yearold female with a chronic toenail lesion caused by a non-dermatophytic mold, fusarium proliferatum, a saprophytic organism commonly found in soil, plant debris and other organic materials that can induce local tissue infections in diabetic patients like onychomycosis. a mixture of morphology, molecular and phylogenetic research disclosed it was f. proliferatum [19]. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 130 2. case presentation a 56-year-old female with chronic diabetes mellitus, from khabat skin center in march 2017with greenish discoloration and disfigurement in her great left toenail, had depressed nail plate and interdigital maceration, no itching pain and discharge were noted (fig.1: a and b). there was a history of probable onychomycosis on her both toenails (not verified by mycological examination) two years previously (in 2015), that completely disappeared after treatment with antifungal therapy. on examination, left great toenail was green to light yellow in color and there were dystrophic changes in the nail plate that toenail (fig.1). the associated factor for this study case was previously diagnosed (of 4 years duration) diabetes mellitus, and at the time of sampling, the patient had undergone diabetes medication. koh examination and lpcb stain from the nail clipping sample from this study case revealed numerous hyaline branched and septate hyphae and chlamydospores provocative reproductive constructions. a culture on sda at 30°c (room temperature) from the left toenail grew fusarium proliferatum and the patient was settled on oral itraconazole 200 mg/day and advanced to use it for at least 3-4 months. figure 1: the first toenail of the left feet of 56 years-old woman showing depressed nail plate and extensive greenish discoloration in here left the first toenail due to fusarium proliferatum. 3. methods and materials 3.1 sample collection, processing and cultivation on selective media specimen of nail clipping from the affected nail was collected after proper sterilization of the affected nail with 70% alcohol. the sufficient amount of sample was transported in the folded dry square of the paper envelope to the mycology research laboratory in zakho university / faculty of science/biology dept. quickly for mycological examination [20,21].the mycological studies were performed in mach 2017. sample obtained from the toenail clipping was divided into two portions; one portion was placed on the surface of a clean slide, observed through direct microscopic examination after mounting in 1-2 drops of 20% koh solution (merck, germany), covered with a clean cover slip, the slide was passed through the burner flame several times (the koh will digest the host material and keratin and also clear the fungal elements) [22], the process is speeded up by gently heating , then incubated for a 5-30 min., finally each slide was examined by using light microscope (cx 40 olympus usa) for the presence of fungal (hyphae, transversally septate macro and/or micro conidia and chlamydospore) [23]. direct microscopy for this case was positive (found branched septate hyphae). the remaining part of the nail cuts were also grown on two sets of dextrose agar from sabouraud (sda) medium (cm41; oxoid, uk): one plate of sda with antibiotics and cycloheximide) [sigmaaldrich] (500 mg/l), and one slant of sda contained antibiotics but without cycloheximide, kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 131 which was incubated at 30°c (room temperature) for 2-3 weeks. after 5 days, growth was seen on both plate and slant cultures in the form of white, cottony colonies which later turned pink in color (figure 2). there has been no detection of bacteria growth in culture. detailed research of their colonial characters and microscopic morphology in lacto phenol cotton blue (lpcb) mounts has recognized the extracted fungal isolate to species level as far as possible. primary isolation of the fungus was depended on morphological characteristics of the culture (macroscopic and microscopic feature of the colonies), colonies were examined microscopically for identification of (existence, shape and arrangement) of irregular branched septate hyphae, and sickle-shaped macroconidia and other structures needed for diagnosis of this genus such as septate microconidia and chlamydospore (figure 3). contaminant molds were excluded during the microscopic examination, while diagnosed species of fusarium isolates were sub cultured and purified again in a new agar slant of sda and maintained for further confirmation by molecular method. 3.2 molecular studies 3.2.1 isolation of fungal dna fungus dna was isolated and purified via taking a proper amount from the fresh colony (21 day-olds colony grown on sda medium) by grinding in existence of liquid nitrogen for first braking up of mycelia. total dna extraction of fungi by molecular biology kit (ez-10 spin column fungal genomic dna mini-preps kit) was isolated as suggested by the manufacturer. phenol-chloroform was used formerly for dna isolation but was substituted as a kit by the quicker and environmentally friendly product. to shatter the cell wall and cell membrane, the mycelium had to be powdered before the lysis move. about 100mg (approximately 5 cubic mm) [24] of fungal tissue (mycelia/spores) on sda was weighted out in a mortar, grinded with a pestle to dust and thaw with liquid nitrogen. transfer grinded sample to a clean 1.5 ml microtube containing 180 μl universal digestion buffer, add 20μl proteinase k to the specimen and blend carefully by stirring and incubation for 60 min at 56 °c. 100 μl universal of buffer pf was added, mix, then inverting, and incubate at -20°c for 5 minutes. centrifuge at 12,000 x g for 5 minutes at room temperature. transfer the supernatant to a new 1.5 ml tube.5. add 200 universal buffer bd, mixes thoroughly by vortexing. add 200μl ethanol (96 %), mix well by vortexing. transfer the combination to the column ez-10 in a reserve tube of 2 ml. centrifuge at (12,000 rpm) for 1 min. discard the flow-through. add 500μl universal pw solution, and centrifuge for 60 seconds at (12,000 rpm). discard the flow-through. add 500μl universal wash solution, and centrifuge for 1 min at (12,000 rpm). reject the flowthrough. to dry the ez-10 membrane, the empty column puted in the micro centrifuge and spin for a 2 min at (12,000 rpm). discard the supernatant and it to a clean 1.5 ml centrifuge tube. then add 100 μl buffer te directly onto the ez-10 membrane. incubate at room temperature for 1 min, centrifugation for 1 min at (12,000 rpm) to elute the dna. the dna sample was kept at 4°c for further use. purified genomic dna arranges 20-50kb in length (www.bioneer.com). 3.2.2 detection of genomic dna the concentration and purity (quantitative estimation) of the fungal dna was completed by agarose gel electrophoresis and nano drop uv spectrophotometer at 260\280 nm. to detect the presence of genomic dna 6μl of the fungal dna sample was mixed with 1μl of loading dye and loaded in the agarose gel (1.5%). the gel was run at 90 volts for 45 min. until the loading dye migrated to the suitable distance from the well then, the gel was examined by gel image desktop to see the dna band was visualized under ultraviolet trans illumination [25]. and the purity and concentration of genomic dna measured by dispensing 1μl from the dna specimen on the lower optical pedestal after cleaning and calibration by deionized distilled water the lever arm was closed and selected (measure). the software automatically measured the concentration and purity of nucleic acid specimen [26]. http://www.bioneer.com)/ kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 132 3.2.3 pcr and primer preparation the its1 and its4 primers were provided by {mwg-biotech ag germany} in lyophilized form, dissolved in sterilized deionized distilled water to obtain 10 pm as a final concentration and stored in the deep freezer until using [27] as shown in table (1). the pcr master mix contained all the components needed for the pcr reaction except dna template and primer, it containing (2x master mix) which containing: prime top dna polymerase (1u), 1.5mm mgcl2, reaction buffers (ph 8.5), 250 μm of each dntp (datp,dctp,dgtp and dttp) and stabilizer and tracking dyes which function as loading dyes. pcr reactions were carried out in (thermocycler, eppendorf) pcr machine, components requirements for pcr reaction are provided in table (2). thermo cycling program for isolated fungus was as following conditions: an first denaturation ( 94°c, for 5 min.) ,then 35 cycles of denaturation ( 94°c , 1 min.), annealing (58°c , 1 min.) and extension (72°c ,1 min.), with a final extension step (72°c ,10 min.), table (3).the pcr products were analyzed by electrophoresing 10μl of amplicons in 2% agarose gel in tbe buffer , dyed with bromide of ethidium and provided for 90 minutes at 75 volts. the gel was visualized and photographed under a computerized uv trans-illuminator. undigested (unrestricted) λ dna (100 bp) was used as a reference to conclude the size of fragments. table 1: oligonucleotide primers used in the pcr reaction. primer sequence 5'→3' its1 (forward) tccgtaggtgaacctgcgg its4 (reverse) tcctccgcttattgatatgc table 2: components required for pcr reaction. components volume (µl) concentration 2x ready master mix 5μ 1x forward primer 2μl 10pmol reverse primer 2μl 10pmol template dna 5μl <250ng deionized water 11μl total volume 25μl table 3: pcr program for amplification by its1 and its4 primers. steps temperature time (min.) number of cycles initial denaturation 94°c 5 1 denaturation 94°c 1 35 annealing 58°c 1 extension 72°c 1 final extension 72°c 10 1 3.2.4 sequencing, multiple alignment and phylogenetic tree in rdna the gene of internal transcribed spacer region was amplificated by using its1 and its4 primers and caused in pcr pattern of 471 bp for fusarium oxysporum. the its1 fragment from this strain of fusarium in the current study, which preliminary amplified using its1 and its4 primers were sequenced using only forward primer its1 and 10μl of purified pcr amplicon according to macrogen company/korea, by using automated dna sequencer. alignment and checking of the obtained query sequences were conducted using bioedit sequence alignment editor 7.0.5.3 (http://www.mbio.ncsu.edu/bioedit/bioedit.html). for final diagnosis confirmation, the obtained consensus of query sequence was compared with the kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 133 its dna database. the recent sequences have been deposited (mk112619) in genbank table (4). sequence of the isolated fungus was aligned using clustalw and mega software version x. phylogenetic analyses using the neighbour-joining (nj) method [28] was performed for this strain with the mega version x software using p-distance model [29] with the ‘pairwise deletion of gap option’. the robustness of the branches were assessed by bootstrap analysis with 1000 replicates. 4. results a. primary isolation and culture processing mycological examination relies on species level is very important for the choice of best therapeutic agents. based on clinical examination, a 56-year-old diabetic woman showed the evidence of toenail onychomycosis who’s screened for nail diseases or dermatomycoses as a case report in this study, in march 2017. in the mycological test of the case, which included direct koh examination before specimen cultured, considered positive for the left toenail, due to evident of numerous hyaline branched and septate hyphae and reproductive structures suggestive of chlamydospores. while the white, cottony causative agent after 5 days incubation on sdacc at 30°c was fusarium proliferatum (figure 2). the genus and species diagnosis confirmed after staining with lpcb stain; irregular branched septate hyphae, sickleshaped hyaline septate macroconidia, few microconidia and pyriform chlamydospore were observed under a light microscope. the sequencing of the its-region of the isolated strain from this clinical specimen confirmed isolation of the same fungus in this case study. figure 2: colonial morphology of f. proliferatum after three weeks of incubation at 30°c on sda. b. molecular identification after phenotypic diagnosis, we applied the pcr and sequencing technique successfully for the investigated strain of f. proliferatum using universal fungal primers for amplifying its region of rdna as a molecular tool. fungus genomic dna was extracted from isolated fungus using liquid nitrogen and molecular biology kit (ez-10 spin column fungal genomic dna minipreps kit, canada). fungus dna was observed by electrophoresis on 1.5% agarose gel. the its region on rdna was amplified by by means of universal primers its1 and its4 which yielded in pcr product size of 471bp for the studied isolate, as shown in (figure 3). recognition pattern on agarose gel 2%, later confirmed by sequence analysis, table (4). the current practical pcr finding was sequenced using only forward primer its1 on automated sequencer according to (macrogen company, korea) and comparison of the obtained sequence with the other fusarium species its-dna on blast search tool home page. alignment of the obtained sequence of the isolated strain of the genus in this study plus the reliable genbank sequence confirmed the fact that different species of non-dermatophytic moulds have different its1 and its2 sequence, make the its region as a good target for post kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 134 pcr manoeuvres such as sequencing. the obtained sequence was deposited in genbank and we received accession number, table (4). figure 3: agarose gel electrophoresis (2%) of its-pcr products of f. proliferatum (lane 6), m: 100bp molecular size marker. table 4. fragment size of pcr-its region in tested f. proliferatum. isolate size of pcrits (bp) genbank accession no. for its1-5.8s-its2 region f. prolieratum 471 bp mk112619 results of blas analysis concluded that; the fungus was f. proliferatum based on the high identity value of (96%) and (0) e-value. used blast search tool, to compare the resulting sequences with sequences of rdna accessed at genbank, the phylogenetic analysis for f. proliferatum showed that the obtained sequences share 96% homology to fusarium proliferatum strains: iranian isolate (mh547040), bangladesh strain (mk446840), pakistani strain (mk583509), tunisian strain (mh329789), indian strain (mk751710), and chinese strain (mk158224), (figure 3) and table (5). together, morphological and molecular identification showed that fusarium isolate was f. proliferatum, genbank accession no. is (mk112619). this isolate was aligned with six accession sequences of f. proliferatum. the distance scale between sequences is 0.05%, whereas 0.041 is the ideal tree with the branch length sum. as shown in (figure 3), some of the branches have elevated bootstrap values. the phylogenetic tree divided all species into two clades. our isolate showed a separate clade. figure 3: phylogenetic tree of f. proliferatum based on the nucleotide sequence of its-rdna. the values on the branch represent the bootstrap values. a kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 135 table 5: phylogenetic tree of f. proliferatum depending on the nucleotide sequence of its-rdna. no. isolate species genbank acc. no. geographic location similarity 1. f. proliferatum (mh547040), iran 96% 2. f. proliferatum (mk446840) bangladesh 96% 3. f. proliferatum (mk583509) pakistan 96% 4. f. proliferatum (mh329789) tunisia 96% 5. f. proliferatum (mk751710) india 96% 6. f. proliferatum (mk158224) china 96% 5. discussion mycological examination in this case study detected positive result for both direct koh and culture of f. proliferatum in the left first toenail of the suspected case. in the present study, fproliferatum represented a common etiological agent of toenail onychomycosis. in previous studies in iraq, fusarium species is also recorded from nail infection particularly by not by molecular method, only by routine and conventional morphological approach. and this species of fusarium may be replacing other mold fungi such as aspergillus sp., scopulariopsis brevicaulis, scytalidium dimidiatum [11,12], fusarium spp., scytalidium hyalinum and, recently, onychocola canadensis [8,9,10], as an etiology for toe nail onychomycosis in iraq with much lower frequency than reported previously. the pcr-based technique is reliable for most typing purpose. recently, sequencing of its region is the golden typical for delineation of dermatophyte species [30, 31]. therefore, in a recent investigation, a molecular approach was employed to confirm the identification of the fusarium strain isolated formerly by culture and classical methods from patients with chronic onychomycosis. dna extracted using solid phase method after dipping in liquid nitrogen followed by pcr amplification of its region of ribosomal dna with pair of diverse primers. in the present study, the fact which observed during the its-pcr amplification was differ from the previous studies, as expected, size of pcr products from fungal species with different base pair length, (figure 4) that the pattern band was 471 bp for this species of fusarium on the gel during the electrophoretic analysis for genus. the difference refer to a genetic alteration in the its region or false diagnosis. consequently, the investigation of its region by sequencing method was provided with a simple technique for fungal characterization [32]. the diverse length of its region among fungal species confirmed the results of laboratory conventional identification [33,34]. the finding pcr product was sequenced according to macrogen company/ korea using one primer its1 and our sequence was placed in genbank with accession no. mk112619 (its). for phylogenetic analysis, sequences of the amplified product was retrieved from genbank in fasta format. neighbor-joining (nj) technique for phylogenetic analysis [28]. it was accomplished with the mega v. x software [35]. the phylogenetic tree was built by pdistance model kimura [36] with the ‘pairwise deletion of gaps option’. a nucleotide blast search with 471bp and indicated an extreme homology of 96% with f. proliferatum of iranian isolate (mh547040), bangladesh strain (mk446840), pakistani strain (mk583509), tunisian strain (mh329789), indian strain(mk751710), and chinese strain (mk158224),table(5).the isolate mk112619.1 (s10) clustered with several accession numbers (mentioned previously) in a common ancestor, but with the supporting of different bootstraps (figure 3).the low distance between the different accessions indicated that the variations among the accessions were low. the comparison between our isolate and the its reference sequences that were obtained from the ncbi database confirmed the identification of isolates at genus and species level. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019)| 136 6. conclusion in this study, we achieve that there is an epidemiological alteration regarding the etiological agent in our region. fusarium proliferatum also may be replacing other 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[36] m. kimura, “a simple method for estimating evolutionary rates of basesubstitutions through comparative studies of nucleotide sequences”, journal of molecular evolution 16: 111–120, 1980. 1. introduction 3.2 molecular studies 3.2.1 isolation of fungal dna fungus dna was isolated and purified via taking a proper amount from the fresh colony (21 day-olds colony grown on sda medium) by grinding in existence of liquid nitrogen for first braking up of mycelia. total dna extraction of fungi by molecular biol... 3.2.2 detection of genomic dna the concentration and purity (quantitative estimation) of the fungal dna was completed by agarose gel electrophoresis and nano drop uv spectrophotometer at 260\280 nm. to detect the presence of genomic dna 6μl of the fungal dna sample was mixed with 1... 3.2.3 pcr and primer preparation the its1 and its4 primers were provided by {mwg-biotech ag germany} in lyophilized form, dissolved in sterilized deionized distilled water to obtain 10 pm as a final concentration and stored in the deep freezer until using [27] as shown in table (1). ... table 1: oligonucleotide primers used in the pcr reaction. table 2: components required for pcr reaction. table 3: pcr program for amplification by its1 and its4 primers. 3.2.4 sequencing, multiple alignment and phylogenetic tree a. primary isolation and culture processing mycological examination relies on species level is very important for the choice of best therapeutic agents. based on clinical examination, a 56-year-old diabetic woman showed the evidence of toenail onychomycosis who’s screened for nail diseases or d... figure 2: colonial morphology of f. proliferatum after three weeks of incubation at 30 c on sda. after phenotypic diagnosis, we applied the pcr and sequencing technique successfully for the investigated strain of f. proliferatum using universal fungal primers for amplifying its region of rdna as a molecular tool. fungus genomic dna was extracted ... 6. conclusion  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 special issue: 2nd international conference on the health & medical sciences | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.2.18 received: 16 june 2018 | accepted: 18 july 2018 influence of omega-3 and green tea extract on alcohol-induced liver injury in rats ridha hassan hussein zana hassan ibrahim department of biology department of biology college of science college of science university/sulaimani university/raparin sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq ridha.hussein@univsul.edu.iq zana.ibrahim@raparinuni.org 107 abstract: drinking alcoholic beverages recently is common in many parts of the world, liver is a principal organ that involved in toxic effects of alcohol and it remains a serious health problem globally. fatty liver (steatosis) was induced in male albino rats by alcohol 40% orally (3.76gm/kgm bw/day) for the period of 4 weeks, then green tea extract (gte) and omega-3 (omg-3) fish oil were used as treatments for improvement and investigating their comparison potential role for the next 4 weeks. at the end of the experiment, the rats were fasted overnight, blood samples through the cardiac puncture and liver organ were collected for biochemical and histopathological analysis respectively. biochemical parameters including: lipid profiles: (total cholesterol (tc), triglycerides (tg), high density lipoprotein-cholesterol (hdl-c) and low density lipoprotein-cholesterol (ldlc), serum malondialdehyde (mda), liver function tests (lft): (serum albumin (alb), serum total protein (tp), total serum bilirubin (tsb), serum alkaline phosphatase (alp), serum alanine aminotransferase (alt), and serum aspartate aminotransferase (ast) and finally hepatic histological changes were also investigated. alcoholic rats were associated with significant elevation (p<0.05) in the levels of serum tc, tg, ldl-c, mda, tsb, alt, ast and alp, whereas the levels of serum hdl-c and tp significantly (p<0.05) decreased with no significant change (p>0.05) of serum alb level. treatment of alcohol-fed rats with gte and omg-3 oil either alone or in their combination have significant role (p<0.05) in lowering the injury effects of alcohol evidenced by reversing the results obtained on serum lipid profiles, mda, lfts and hepatic histological changes after their treatments during the amelioration study. ethanol consumption impaired hepatic functions, disturbed lipid metabolism, induced hyperlipidemia and increased oxidative stress. aqueous extracts of gt and omg-3 oil significantly improved alcohol-induced liver injury through improvement of serum markers of hepatic injury, their hypolipidemic actions and hepatic histologic recovery. co-treatments of gt+omg-3 have more protective effect or faster progression against ald than their treatments alone. keywords: alcohol, liver injury, ald, green tea, omega-3. 1. introduction the alcohol-induced liver injury is one of the most common cause of liver diseases worldwide [1], most widely diagnosed forms are alcoholic fatty liver; alcoholic hepatitis and alcoholic cirrhosis [2]. the occurrence of alcoholic liver disease (ald) is mediated by many mechanisms such as oxidative stress, acetaldehyde, hypoxia, and membrane alterations [3]. omega-3 fatty acids are a family of polyunsaturated fatty acids (pufa) [4], eicosapentaenoic acid (epa) and docosahexaenoic acid (dha) considered the biologically important long-chained omega-3 pufa, are found in large amounts in fish oil [5], they are integral components of the phospholipid bilayer in neuronal cell membranes, making them relevant to membrane physiology and neurotransmission [6]. green tea is a beverage consumed worldwide, useful in the prevention of pro-oxidative states mediated by the formation of free radical species in different pathological situations [7]. . 2. literature review alcohol as a psychophysical and mood-altering agent is one of the oldest and most widely used on earth. although there are some beneficial aspects of moderate consumption of alcohol such as anxiolysis and vasodilation, chronic ethanol consumption is significantly implicated in the pathogenesis of a variety of disorders, including ald [8]. world health organization (who) in 2005 reported that approximately 2 billion people consume alcohol worldwide and about 76 million of them are suffering from alcohol consumption disorders [9], and europe is the heaviest drinking region in the world, over 20% of the european population aged ≥15 reported heavy episodic drinking (five or more drinks on one occasion, or 50g alcohol) at least once a week [10]. in the highly developed countries two-thirds of adults use alcohol. after heart disease and cancer alcoholism and alcohol-related diseases constitute the third largest health problem in the usa, affecting over 10 million people and causing about 200,000 deaths each year, 7.9 deaths/100 000 in the usa and other developed 108 countries [10]. alcohol is metabolized in the liver, for this reason, the liver is especially vulnerable to alcohol-induced injury such as fatty liver, hepatitis, fibrosis, cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma [11]. both alcohol and its primary metabolites diminish or impair the hepatic antioxidant homeostasis, and the repeated incidences of these phenomena cause oxidation of cellular lipids, proteins, and dna, and then finally leading to hepatic cell injury [12]. it is well known that only a small proportion of heavy drinkers develop the advanced form of liver cirrhosis, therefore other factors such as gender, age, nutrition, genetic background and additional environmental influences, particularly chronic viral infection play a role in the pathogenesis of ald [13, 14], with the pattern of drinking (daily versus binge) and total alcohol intake (quantity and frequency) [15]. the most common and earliest response to heavy alcohol intake is the accumulation of fat, largely triglyceride (tg) in hepatocytes (steatosis), this may result from the increase of tg synthesis, inhibition of fatty acid oxidation and excessive oxidative stress [16]. dietary fish oil such as epa and dha are thought to have protective effects against fatty liver. these effects are due mainly to the combined effects of inhibition of lipogenesis by inactivation of srebp-1c and stimulation of fatty-acid oxidation by activation of ppara in the liver. [17]. green tea is a beverage made from natural tea leaves (camellia sinensis) which is gaining importance around the world [18], and considered as a medicine or a healthful beverage since ancient times [19]. epidemiologic studies suggest that gt consumption reduces serum aminotransferases, commonly used markers of liver damage. the hepatoprotective activities of gt are attributed to its catechins that scavenge ros/rns. green tea also protects against oxidative stress indirectly through its hypolipidemic activities that reduce steatosis and by improving antioxidant defenses, reduces nos expression and rns release from macrophages. it also inhibits nadph oxidase translocation in mast cells [20]. so this study aimed the use of omega-3 fish oil and extracts from gt for the treatment of alcohol-induced liver injury in animal model. 3. methods and materials animals and housing in this study, 36 male albino rats of 150-200 gm in bw and 8 weeks old were used, they were housed under standard laboratory conditions, of controlled temperature (22 ± 4 ◦c), with about 12:12 light/dark cycles, and given standard rat diet with tap water ad libitum. the experiment composed of 6 groups, each group with 6 rats: group 1: negative control, group 2: alcoholinduced liver injury (model), group 3: model + omg-3 which was supplemented with (5%) w/w in their diet and group 4: model + gte which was supplemented with (1.5%) in their drinking water, group 5: recovery group and group 6: model + co-treatments of gte with omg3 oil. green tea extract dried green tea leaves were chopped into small pieces then grinded till they became powder, then the gte was made according to [21], by soaking 15gm of instant green tea powder in 1 l of boiling distilled water, the mixture was kept in water bath with occasional stirring for 5 min. the solution was filtered to make 1.5% gte. this solution was provided to rats as their sole source of drinking water. sample collections at the end of the study, all rats were fasted overnight and then anesthetized with di-ethyl ether. blood samples were collected through cardiac puncture, placed into gel tubes (10 ml), put in water bath (37◦c) for 15 min, and finally centrifuged at 3000 rpm for 30 min. [22]. the serum obtained was analyzed for biochemical parameters using full-auto analyzer (cobas-311). liver organs also separated, put in 10% formalin for histological examinations. histological study the protocol used for histological study depends on [23] procedure. all liver samples were fixed in 10% formal saline, desired parts were taken by histopathologist, and then they were dehydrated through ascending concentrations of ethanol (70%, 95%, and 100%), cleared in xylol, followed by infiltration and then embedded in paraffin wax. four μm thick paraffin sections were stained by haematoxylin and eosin. 4. results aspartate aminotransferase (ast) alcohol-induced liver injury rats showed significant elevation (p<0.05) in ast level (198.00 ± 5.367 u/l) in comparison with their corresponding control rats (104.33 ± 5.719 u/l). treatment of alcoholic rats with gt and omg-3 both significantly lowered (p<0.05) serum ast activity (169.83 ± 7.696 u/l) and (132.67 ± 6.103 u/l) respectively when they were compared with their respective model rats. more ever co-treatments of alcohol-fed rats with gt+omg-3 (118.50 ± 6.438 u/l) also lowered serum ast activity significantly (p<0.05) when they were compared with their respective model group (198.00 ± 5.367 u/l). regarding the effect of time on alcohol-fed rats, it also positively affected serum ast activity (133.83 ± 10.694 u/l) when compared with model rats. (table 1 & figure 1). alanine aminotransferase (alt) alcohol-induced liver injury rats were associated with significant increase (p<0.05) in serum alt activity (75.50 ± 3.507 u/l) in comparison with their control rats (47.83 ± 1.621 u/l). both treatments of gt, omg-3 and their co-treatments for alcohol-fed rats lowered serum alt activity (49.17 ± 0.910 u/l), (62.17 ± 3.085 u/l) and (50.67 ± 2.108 u/l) significantly (p<0.05) in comparison with their respective model group (75.50 ± 4.507 u/l). the same positive effect can be seen in positive control rats which they depend on time for physiologic recovery (64.17 ± 1.990u/l). (table 1 & figure 2). 109 alkaline phosphatase (alp) alcohol-induced liver injury rats were associated with significant increase (p<0.05) in serum alp level (411.50 ± 17.899 u/l) in comparison with their respective control rats (162.17 ± 18.069 u/l). treatment of alcoholic rats with omg-3 showed no significant change (p>0.05) in serum alp level (399.50 ± 35.286 u/l), while treatment of gt (276.33 ± 20.939 u/l) significantly lowered (p<0.05) serum alp level in addition to co-treatments of gt+omg-3, (203.00 ± 22.686 u/l) when they were compared with their respective model group (411.50 ± 17.899 u/l). furthermore, time-dependent treatment in pc group has also positive significant lowering effect (p<0.05) on serum alp level (293.17 ± 4.308 u/l) when they were compared with model rats. (table 1 & figure 3). serum total bilirubin (stb) total serum bilirubin in alcohol-induced liver injury rats (0.215 ± 0.017 mg/dl) were associated with significant increase (p<0.05) in comparison with their respective control rats (0.166 ± 0.010 mg/dl). treatments for alcoholic rats with gt and omg-3 showed significant decrease (p<0.05) in tsb level (0.033 ± 0.004 mg/dl) and (0.028 ± 0.001 mg/dl) respectively, at the same time co-treatments of, gt+omg-3 (0.093 ± 0.004 mg/dl) also showed significant decrease (p<0.05) when they were compared with their respective model group (0.215 ± 0.017 mg/dl). furthermore, time dependent treatment in pc group has also positive significant lowering effect (p<0.05) on tsb level (0.030 ± 0.002 mg/dl) by comparing with model rats. (table 1 & figure 4). 4.1.1.5. serum albumin (alb) alcohol-induced liver injury rats were associated with no significant change (p>0.05) in serum alb level (3.280 ± 0.123 gm/dl) in comparison with their respective control rats (3.390 ± 0.043 gm/dl). all treatments of alcohol-induced liver injury rats with gt, omg-3 and gt+omg-3 (3.448 ± 0.111 gm/dl), (3.766 ± 0.159 gm/dl) and (4.085 ± 0.228 gm/dl) respectively showed significant decrease (p<0.05) in serum alb level in comparisons with their respective model group (3.280 ± 0.193 gm/dl). additionally time for positive control rats leads to significant elevation (p<0.05) in serum alb level (3.926 ± 0.090 gm/dl) when compared with model rats. (table 1 & figure 5). serum total protein (tp) alcohol-induced liver injury rats were associated with significant decrease (p<0.05) in serum tp level (4.808 ± 0.179 gm/dl) in comparison with their respective control rats (5.801 ± 0.114 gm/dl). the whole experiment treatments of alcoholic rats with gt, omg-3 and gt+omg-3 showed significant increase (p<0.05) in serum tp level (6.096 ± 0.082 gm/dl), (7.166 ± 0.221 gm/dl) and (6.038 ± 0.176 gm/dl) respectively in comparison with their respective model group (4.808 ± 0.179 gm/dl). the same directional effect on serum tp has been recorded by time in pc rats (5.826 ± 0.090 gm/dl). (table 1 & figure 6). table 1: influence of gte and omg-3 on serum markers of hepatic-injury in alcoholfed rats. (mean ± se). the same letters mean no significant differences, while the different letters mean significant difference (p<0.05). figure 1: influences of gte and omg-3 on serum ast enzyme activity in alcohol-induced liver injury rats (p < 0.05). figure 2: influences of gte and omg-3 on serum alt enzyme activity in alcohol-induced liver injury rats (p < 0.05). figure 3: influences of gte and omg-3 on serum alp enzyme activity in alcohol-induced liver injury rats. (p < 0.05). 110 figure 4: influences of gte and omg-3 on serum stb level in alcohol-induced liver injury rats. (p < 0.05). figure 5: influences of gte and omg-3 on serum alb concentration in alcohol-induced liver injury rats (p < 0.05). figure 6: influences of gte and omg-3 on serum tp concentration in alcohol-induced liver injury rats (p < 0.05). lipid profile and malondialdehyde (mda) serum total cholesterol (tc) alcohol-induced liver injury rats were showed a significant increase (p<0.05) in serum tc level (62.17 ± 2.358 mg/dl) when they were compared to their corresponding control group (46.50 ± 1.232 mg/dl). all treatments for alcoholic rats either alone or in combinations like gt, omg-3 and gt+omg-3 lowered serum tc level significantly (p<0.05) (50.50 ± 1.432 mg/dl), (47.17 ± 2.626 mg/dl) and (37.83 ± 2.120 mg/dl) respectively when they were compared with their respective model group (62.17 ± 2.358 mg/dl). the time shows no significant (p>0.05) effect on serum tc level in alcoholic rats (65.00 ± 2.082 mg/dl) (table 2 & figure 7). serum triglyceride (tg) alcohol-fed rats were showed a significant increase (p<0.05) in serum tg level (106.0 ± 12.482 mg/dl) in comparison with their corresponding control group (69.00 ± 5.698 mg/dl). all treatments for alcoholic rats either alone or in combinations with gt, omg-3 and gt+omg-3 significantly lowered (p<0.05) serum tg level (46.00 ± 6.962 mg/dl), (66.83 ± 8.408 mg/dl), (41.83 ± 6.605mg/dl) respectively when they were compared with their respective model group (106.0 ± 12.482 mg/dl). the time without treatment shows no significant (p>0.05) effect on serum tg level (51.33 ± 2.552 mg/dl) in alcoholic rats (table 2 & figure 8). serum high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (hdlc) alcohol-induced liver injury rats were showed a significant decrease (p<0.05) in serum hdl-c level (26.783 ± 1.713 mg/dl) in comparison with their respective control rats (51.083 ± 1.001mg/dl). the treatments of alcoholic rats with gt and omg-3 significantly increased (p<0.05) serum hdl-c level (35.500 ± 1.335 mg/dl) and (36.333 ± 2.319mg/dl) respectively, in addition to gt+omg-3 co-treatments (50.033 ± 2.269 mg/dl) when they were compared with model group (26.783 ± 1.713 mg/dl). positive control rats showed significant elevation (p<0.05) in serum hdl-c level (33.333 ± 2.290 mg/dl) when they were compared with model rats (table 2 & figure 9). serum low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (ldlc) serum ldl-c in alcohol-induced liver injury rats significantly (p<0.05) elevated (21.467 ± 1.3630 mg/dl) in comparison with their corresponding control rats (14.083 ± 1.363 mg/dl). treatment of alcoholic rats with gt (19.917 ± 5.575 mg/dl) showed no significant change (p<0.05), while omg-3 treatment showed a significant decrease (p<0.05) in serum ldl-c concentration (15.933 ± 0.634 mg/dl) when they were compared with alcohol-fed group (21.467 ± 1.3630 mg/dl). the co-treatments of alcoholic rats with gt+omg-3 significantly (p<0.05) lowered serum ldl-c level (15.183 ± 0.647mg/dl) when they were compared with alcohol-fed group (51.333 ± 2.290 mg/dl), while positive control rats (22.233 ± 0.930 mg/dl) shows no significant effect (p>0.05) (table 2 & figure 10). serum malondialdehyde (mda) a significant increase (p<0.05) in serum mda level can be seen in alcohol-induced liver injury rats (3.917 ± 0.101 μmol/l) in comparison with their respective control rats (1.667 ± 0.055 μmol/l). all treatments of alcoholic rats either alone or in a cotreatment method with gt, omg-3 and gt+omg-3 showed significant decrease (p<0.05) in serum mda level (2.667 ± 0.172 μmol/l), (1.750 ± 0.202 μmol/l) and (1.367 ± 0.215 μmol/l) respectively when they were compared with their respective model group (51.333 ± 111 2.290 mg/dl). in addition, the time dependent recovery (2.917 ± 0.186 μmol/l) positively affected serum mda level in alcohol abstinence group, if they were compared with model rats (table 2 & figure 11). table (4-2): the protective roles of gte and omg-3 oil on serum lipid profiles and mda in alcohol-fed rats. (mean ± se). the same letters mean no significant differences while the different letters mean significant differences (p<0.05). figure (4.7): the effects of gte and omg-3 on serum tc level in alcohol-induced liver injury rats. (p < 0.05) figure (4.8): the effects of gte and omg-3 on serum tg level in alcohol-induced liver injury rats. (p < 0.05) figure 9: the effects of gte and omg-3 on serum hdl-c alcohol-induced liver injury rats. (p < 0.05). figure 10: the effects of gte and omg-3 on serum ldl-c in alcohol-induced liver injury rats. (p < 0.05). figure 11: the effects of gte and omg-3 on serum mda in alcohol-induced liver injury rats. (p < 0.05). histopathological changes in liver tissues the histopathological examination of the liver showed a clear difference between the control and alcohol-induced liver injury rats. the results from h&e staining assay showed that the livers from control group showed structural intactness and normal architecture towards the periphery (figure 12) from the central vein without any impaired progression. conversely, ethanol intoxication causes the pathological changes in the livers of model rats including fatty change or fat deposition (microvesicular steatosis), mild multifocal hydropic degenerative change, mild portal tract inflammation, venous blood congestion, dilation of blood sinusoids, swelling of hepatocytes (hypertrophy), shrunken of hepatocytes with condensed nuclei, hyper eosinophilia and inflammation (figure 13). 112 figure 12: liver histological features of normal control rats (a) central vein with normal texture, (b) central area and (c) portal area (including bile duct, hepatic artery and portal vein) (h&e staining of liver tissues, 5 μm thick and 40x mp). figure (4.13): liver histopathological changes in alcoholic rats; (a) inflammatory cells adjacent to vein, (b) central vein congested with blood, (c) dilation of blood sinusoids, (d) hepatic cell degeneration (swelling & shrunken), (e) fatty change and (f) inflammation (10x).(h&e staining of liver tissue, 5 μm thick, 40x mp). 5. discussion effects of gte and omega-3 on liver injury biomarkers the present study indicated that ethanol administration caused injury to the livers of alcohol-fed rats. this is confirmed by the results obtained from enzymatic markers of liver injury. alcohol caused significant elevation in the levels of serum ast, alt, alp and tsb with significant decrease in the tp level; these findings are in agreement with previous studies conducted by [24, 25, 26, 3, 27, 28, 29 & 30]. on the other hand serum alb level showed no significant change, this is inconsistent with [24] who showed significant decrease in serum alb level in rats. enzymatic activities alt and ast have long been considered as a sensitive indicator of hepatic injury [24 & 31]. they are linking carbohydrate and amino acid metabolism [32]; catabolize amino acids, allowing them to enter into the citric acid [33]. damage to the liver after ethanol ingestion is a well-known phenomenon, and the obvious sign of hepatic injury is the leakage of cellular enzymes into the plasma [24]. in this study the increased levels of serum enzymes such as ast, alt and alp have been observed in alcohol administered rats, which indicate the increased permeability and damage of hepatocytes. [34] stated that hyper-bilirubinemia in alcohol-fed rats may be a result of releasing unconjugated bilirubin from damaged and dead hepatocytes which is a chemical break-down product of hemoglobin that conjugated with glucuronic acid in hepatocytes to increase its water stability. at the same way increasing the tsb level indicated a reduction in the excretory capability of the liver as a consequence of liver injury [35]. according to [36] significant change in serum tp by alcohol ingestion probably indicate that the buffering capacity of the blood has been enhanced through impairment in the normal functions of the liver, insignificant change in serum albumin level could indicate that serum levels of metals, ions, fatty acids and amino acids has not been compromised. in treatment study of the current work treatments of alcoholic rats with gt and omg-3 alone or in combinations positively lowered the levels of serum enzymatic markers of liver injury (ast, alt and alp) and stb when they were compared to their corresponding model group, except for omg-3 treatment on alp enzyme which is shows no significant change. these results were in accordance with previous studies carried out by [37, 38, 39, 40, 41 & 42]. green tea, a popular beverage in asia, is continually reported to have a wide range of health benefits, including anti-inflammation, anti-oxidative and immunestimulating effects [43]. the protective effect of green tea is connected with its components called flavonoids which possess scavenging free radical properties [21]. the current study revealed that aqueous gte have a potential role in stabilizing plasma membrane as well as repairing hepatic tissue damage and improvement of liver function caused by alcohol, as it is confirmed by the results obtained in serum transaminase enzymes and tsb levels. the results of the present study strongly suggest that gte protects against oxidative damage to hepatic tissue by preventing excessive lipid peroxidation and by maintaining serum hepatic marker enzymes, tp, and alb of alcoholic rats near normal concentrations. [34] described that treated nafld patients with epa reduce serum alt and ast concentrations when compared with patients who refused epa supplementation. interestingly, liver perfusion was also improved by epa, perhaps reflecting an enhancement of hepatic microcirculatory function. in most cases, the improvement in bilirubin concentration was rapid and reached a normal level, whereas alp concentration was not significantly decreased during the first 4 weeks after initiating therapy with omegaven [19], regarding stb and alp, this agrees with the results of our study. analysis of our data showed that administration of omg-3 fish oil to alcohol-fed rats resulted in a significant increase in serum tp and alb levels, these findings were in agreement with [41] who studied hepatoprotective activity of omega-3 fish oil against thioacetamide-induced fibrosis in rats. in addition [42], demonstrated that the increase in concentration of serum tp and alb within the normal range in rabbits fed on economic control diet supplemented with 0.5 and 1.0 ml fish oil per day/kg live bodyweight may reflect an increase in the hepatic function when animals were fed on fish oil. 113 albumin, the most abundant plasma metal-binding protein, is an important extra cellular antioxidant regulating glutathione levels in lungs epithelial cells, shown to possess free radical scavenging properties. therefore, significantly raised albumin is important as it may scavenge reactive oxygen species [1]. effects of gte and omega-3 on serum lipid profile and mda as [7] mentioned, one of the best known biological effects of heavy ethanol consumption is the production of fatty liver and hyper lipidemia. in addition, [44] also reported the same observations in humans and rodents. the molecular mechanisms beyond this action cited by [45], which explained that alcohol can disturb lipid metabolism through modulating lipogenic gene expression. moreover, [29] similarly indicated that lipid homeostasis in vertebrate cells is regulated by a family of membrane-bound transcription factors designated srebps, which regulate fatty acid, triglyceride and cholesterol synthesis. in vivo, srebp-2 preferentially activates the genes of cholesterol metabolism, whereas srebp-1 specially activates the genes of fatty acid and tg metabolism in the liver and most other intact tissues. finally ppar-α can activate both fatty acid oxidation and export; thereby it protects against the accumulation of tg, improves the enzymatic defenses against oxidative stress. furthermore, [45] mentioned that chronically feeding alcohol to rodents resulted in a significant increase in the srebp-1c level, which in turn elevates fatty acid synthesis in hepatocytes via upregulation of srebp-1c and its downstream lipogenic genes. one of the mechanisms by which alcohol is proposed to mediate its toxic effects is through oxidative stress and oxidative damage due to an increased production of ros which characterized by increasing the products of lipid peroxidation [46]. this is improved by the current study in which the levels of serum mda significantly elevated in alcohol-treated rats. the same results approved by earlier studies like [2 & 47]. this data is directly proportional to those results obtained on hdl-c and ldl-c by this study, which it plays a major role in the mobilization of lipids between body tissues and peripheral blood. the study treatment of gt and omg-3 even in their combinations mode improved the levels of serum tc, tg, ldl-c and mda concentration. these improvement effects of gte and omg-3 oil were also confirmed by previous studies such as [48, 49, 50, 32 & 51]. malondialdehyde is a major reactive aldehyde, resulting from the peroxidation of biological membranepolyunsaturated fatty acid, used as an indicator of tissue damage [32]. [32] documented that gte inhibiting hepatic lipid peroxidation, usually by suppressing adipose lipogenic activities and maintains body with proper lipid metabolism, in [47] mentioned that giving gt simultaneously with ethanol to rats resulted in normalization of lipid peroxidation process by the action of catechins which are water-soluble antioxidants that reduce the mobility of the free radicals into the lipid bilayer as well. [49] stated that pufas, particularly those from the omg-3 family, increase the fatty acid oxidative capacity of tissues through their ability to function as ligand activators of ppar-α and thereby induce transcription of several gene-encoding proteins affiliated with fatty acid oxidation. these data are consistent with [52] who explained that omg-3 fatty acids exert potential hypocholesterolemic effect through inhibition of key enzymes related to cholesterol synthesis and transfer such as 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl reductase and acyl coa: cholesterol acyltransferase and selectively lower triglycerides by increasing glucose flux to glycogen, increasing mitochondrial β-oxidation, and decreasing triglycerides synthesis, an effect that is mediated partially by ppar-a activation. furthermore; [53] revealed that nefas are substrate for tg synthesis and suggested that the tg lowering effect of n-3 pufa could be due to an increased stimulation of β-oxidation, which leads to a decrease in available nefa for tg formation. they also stated that hdl-2 and hdl-3 are the most characterized hdl subclasses, and hdl-2 involved in scavenging more cholesterol from the peripheral tissues compared to hdl-3. omega3 pufa has been shown to increase the concentration of hdl-2 particles; even without obvious change in total hdl concentration. omg-3 fatty acid supplementation has free radical scavenger activity, it may also stimulate vitamin e incorporation into membranes to avoid lipid peroxidation and ros resulting from increased membrane omega-3 fatty acid treatment, hence omega-3 could be a potential treatment for oxidative stress [54]. effects of gte and omega-3 on liver histopathology findings of the current study from histopathological analyses of liver revealed that ethanol-treated rats experienced microvesicular steatosis, mild multifocal hydropic degenerative change, mild portal tract inflammation, venous blood congestion, dilation of blood sinusoids, swelling of hepatocytes (hypertrophy), shrunken of hepatocytes with condensed nuclei, hyper eosinophilia and inflammation in comparisons with normal controls which showed structural intactness and normal histologic architecture. this finding corroborates with previous findings [55, 56, 11, 12 & 23]. the marked fatty changes in the hepatic tissue correlated with the abnormal biochemical parameters observed in the present study. steatosis; accumulation of lipids in the hepatocytes, is the most striking initial manifestation of alcohol-induced liver injury which are highly sensitive to further alcoholic insult leading to the development of more severe manifestations of alcohol-induced liver diseases such as hepatitis, fibrosis, cirrhosis and eventually hepatocellular carcinoma [50]. upregulation of sterol regulatory element-binding protein (srebp)-1c is one of the mechanisms in the development of steatosis [57]. whereas [58] belonged this to that alcohol is rich in calories and devoid of nutrients, thus contributing to lipid accumulation in the liver. the histological observations of the current study basically supported the demonstrated results obtained from the serum enzyme assays and lipid profiles. the alcohol treatment induced the marked accumulation of lipid droplet in the numbers and volumes in the 114 hepatocytes as fatty liver progression. in addition, [44] previously reported that fatty change could be explained on the basis that alcohol ingestion induced a pronounced increase in nadh/nad+ ratio, leading to increased concentration of glycerol-3-phosphate which favors triglycerides synthesis and accelerates their hepatic accumulation. fortunately, the fatty liver is a reversible condition [59]. although results of the biochemical assays of the current study are important for investigating the improvement effects of gte and omg-3 fish oil on ethanol induced liver injury, the external investigation of the hepatic histopathologic changes were also carried out. the present study clearly confirmed that the treatment of alcohol-fed rats with gte and omg-3 oil exhibited beneficial effects both in their combinations and separately. the same results were approved by earlier studies including [17, 37, 60, 21 & 40]. the mechanisms underlying the hepatoprotective effects of omega-3 fatty acids are not completely understood. [17] indicate that habitual intake of fish oil prevents development of fatty liver in response to ethanol consumption. the molecular mechanism by which small amounts of dha/aa exert their protective effects against liver steatosis is poorly understood. a pufa diet may decrease the rates of fat biosynthesis while it increases the fat transport and degradation. in addition, these pufas may restore the expression of the ppar-α, whose expression is dys-regulated by ethanol [61]. lipid peroxidation due to ros production during ethanol oxidation favors lipid accumulation in hepatocytes [62, 37 & 47] documented that gte could markedly decrease hepatic fatty changes through protection against oxidative damage and suppressing srebp-1 maturation, and hence, lipogenesis in the liver. also [32] reported that gt is an excellent source of acidic polysaccharides including neutral rhamnose, arabinose, fucose, xylose, mannose, glucose and galactose in a molar percent, which are able to confer a strong protection against the hepatic damage via the activation of the hepatic antioxidant system and the reversal of lipid peroxidation. finally, [60] stated that omega-3 fas exert an inhibitory effect on hepatic fa synthesis and stimulate hepatic lipolysis. in general, it should be noted that most of the physiological responses for any treatment on experimental animals have doseand time-dependent properties. this also could be applied on the current study during the induction of liver injury or recovery part. in this study; although different doses were not carried out among groups, the physiologic autorecovering capacity of experimental rats were studied which depending on time without any treatment after they were exposed to liver injury. it should also be noted that time-dependent recovery in the current study showed positive effect for most parameters especially for hdl-c, tsb and tp which they were closed to their baseline records after the period of four weeks. this could indicate that body homeostasis always help to normalize physiological disorders. on the other hand, more significant improvement or rapid amelioration can be seen when physiologic treatments were used for the same duration. furthermore, current study showed that combinations of gt and omg-3 have more positive or stronger physiologic effect on alcoholinduced liver injury in almost all parameters than their treatments alone, according to [63] this may due to their greater bioavailability together than their treatments alone, this is well sensed in lft parameters of the current study which are showing the liver either functions properly or not. 6. conclusions the results of the present study could draw the following conclusions: 1. ethanol consumption can impair hepatic functions, which associated with significant increase in serum ast, alt, alp and tsb with significant decrease of serum tp, but failed to make significant change of serum alb. 2. ethanol intoxication markedly disturb lipid metabolism, induced-hyperlipidemia and increased oxidative stress. 3. alcohol abuse has no significant effect on wbc, plt, mch, mchc and mcv while parameters of body oxygen suppliers (rbc, hct and hgb) increased. 4. administration of alcohol alters histologic patterns of liver tissue; most noticeably induce fatty liver (steatosis), mild hepatocyte degeneration, blood congestion and dilation of hepatic blood sinusoids. 5. aqueous extracts of gt and omg-3 oil significantly prevent and improve alcoholinduced liver injury through improvement of serum markers of hepatic injury, their hypolipidemic actions and hepatic histologic recovery. 6. co-treatments of gt+omg-3 have more protective effect or faster progression against ald than their treatments alone. 7. alcohol abstinence help to recover the damaged effects of alcohol consumption according to the time, but faster retrains or more effective results obtained when gt or omg-3 were administered at the same time. 8. most significant improvement effect on lipid profile and serum mda level were shown by omega-3, whereas most effective histologic action recorded by gte treatment. reference [1] p. yao, k. li, y. jin, f. song, s. zhou, x. sun, a. nüssler and l. liu, "oxidative damage after chronic ethanol intake in rat tissues: prophylaxis of ginkgo biloba extract", food chemistry, vol. 99, no. 2, pp. 305-314, 2006. 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[63] b. giunta, h. hou, y. zhu, j. salemi, a. ruscin, r. shytle and j. tan, "fish oil enhances anti-amyloidogenic properties of green tea egcg in tg2576 mice", neuroscience letters, vol. 471, no. 3, pp. 134-138, 2010.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 2 | july 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.2.26 novel method for laparoscopic common bile duct exploration performed using a disposable bronchoscope (ambu® ascope tm). yousif mahmood aawsaj specialist registrar general surgery university hospital of north durham, county of durham and darlington nhs foundation trust, uk yousifaawsaj@doctors.org.uk andrew gilliam consultant upper gi surgeon university hospital of north durham/ county of durham and darlington nhs foundation trust, uk andrew.gilliam@nhs.net ibrahim k ibrahim clinical fellow in surgery freeman hospital/ newcastle nhs foundation trust, uk ibracadabra87@outlook.com abstract: laparoscopic common bile duct (cbd) exploration can be performed following choledocotomy or via the trancystic approach. laparoscopic cbd exploration is limited in some benign upper gastrointestinal units due to the cost of sterilization of the re-usable choledochoscope. we have recently published a case series confirming the safety and efficacy of the 5mm re-usable bronchoscope for cbd exploration. this case series evaluates a single-use bronchochoscope (ambu ascopetm) for laparoscopic cbd exploration. data were collected from electronic records of the patients from january 2015 until december 2016; all the cases had confirmation of cbd stones. twenty-one patients had cbd exploration using the disposable bronchochoscope. there were 7 male and 14 female (median age 42). 8 procedures were performed as emergencies and 13 were performed electively. all the cases were done laparoscopically apart from one planned as an open procedure due to previous extensive open surgery. twenty cases had their cbd cleared using disposable bronchoscope and one needed subsequent special test follow up. choledocotomy was performed in 15 and tran’s cystic approach was performed in 6. no t-tube was used in the laparoscopic cases. 2 cases were performed as day case surgery. median postoperative hospital stay was 2.5 days. in conclusion, the disposable bronchoscope is safe and effective for use in cbd exploration with results comparable to our previously published case series. it has guaranteed sterility and is cost effective compared to the re-usable bronchoscope especially when initial capital outlay, sterile processing and maintenance costs are considered. keywords: laparoscopic common bile duct exploration, disposable bronchoscope (ambu® ascope tm) 1. introduction there are two commonly adopted approaches to treat common bile duct (cbd) stones, the single stage procedure of laparoscopic cholecystectomy and cbd exploration or endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ercp) followed by laparoscopic cholecystectomy. recently, a published meta-analysis has shown no difference in the outcome between laparoscopic cbd exploration and ercp in terms of duct clearance, morbidity and mortality [1]. the current practice of cbd exploration involves the use of a re-usable sterilized choledocoscope introduced to the duct via either choledocotomy or the transcystic approach. however, many benign upper gastrointestinal units are struggling to manage the logistics and cost of sterilization. over last two years, we have been using disposable bronchoscope for laparoscopic cbd exploration. there is one case report showed successful use of this kit for this procedure [2]. the feasibility of using disposable bronchoscope for laparoscopic cbd exploration has been presented in case series that we published from different institution [3]. the aim of this series to show, in line with our previous work, the safety and efficacy of using disposable bronchoscope for laparoscopic cbd exploration. 2. method the study period was from january 2015 to december 2016 when we began to use the ambu® ascope 2tm in our institution. all cases required a laparoscopic common bile duct exploration were included. data was collected retrospectively from electronic record of patients and analyzed retrospectively. patients were consented for using this equipment to explore common bile duct and the company manufactured disposable bronchoscope has given the permission to use it for common bile duct exploration. equipment and procedure: the ambu® ascope 2tm was used for common bile duct exploration. this is a sterile, single use flexible bronchoscope. it is currently used in bronchoscopy and in tracheal intubation which is available in two sizes (3.8 mm and 5mm). it is a one piece unit with a single dimensional flexible tip manipulated from a hand piece (150 degree flex in the 5mm model and 130 degrees in the 3.8mm model). we only used 5 mm bronchoscope in our series. there is a single instrument channel which has a diameter of 2.2mm. this allows the passage of standard endoscopic baskets. the light source comes from a series of led lights on the tip of the instrument. the image is projected to a high resolution 6.5” lcd screen with a resolution of 640x480 pixels. it can be connected to a larger monitor via a dpi port. there is a suction port on the hand piece for bronchoscopy which use for connection of water irrigation tubing. this necessitates a standard 3 way connector. http://dx.doi.org/10.24017/science.2017.2.26 mailto:yousifaawsaj@doctors.org.uk mailto:andrew.gilliam@nhs.net mailto:ibracadabra87@outlook.com our standard laparoscopic cbd exploration was performed using four ports. all cases included for cbd exploration were eligible when cbd diameter more than 10 mm. choledoctomy was performed using choledocotome or disposable aspiration needle; transcystic approach was performed following cystic duct dilatation. absorbable 3/0 suture was used to close the choledocotomy and in these cases two drains were used one in sub-hepatic and the other in sub-phrenic spaces. t-tube was used only when there was concern of retained stones. 3. results twenty one patients had cbd exploration using the disposable bronchochoscope. there were 7 male and 14 female. patients median age was 42 (range 15 to 81 years). 8 procedures were performed as emergencies and 13 were performed electively. all the cases were done laparoscopically apart from one planned as an open procedure due to previous extensive open surgery. there was no conversion in laparoscopic cases. ninteen cases were performed using disposable bronchochoscope primarily and two cases had their cbd explored after unsuccessful ercp. twenty cases had their cbd cleared using disposable bronchoscope and one needed subsequent ercp due to impacted retained stone. choledocotomy was performed in 15 and transcystic approach was performed in 6. no t-tube was used in the laparoscopic cases. 2 cases were performed as day case surgery and there were performed using transcystic approach. median overall hospital stay was three days (range 1 to 9 days) median post-operative hospital stay was 2.5 days (range 1 to 4 days). there was two patient had umbilical port site wound infection and one had non-specific chronic abdomen pain. 4. discussion and conclusion the re-usable choledocoscope has been used conventionally for cbd exploration. the cost associated with using the standard re-usable choledocoscope has limited the number of cbd exploration by many surgical units. the ambu® ascope 2tm disposable bronchoscope was initially intended for difficult intubation by anesthetics. this has been used for 7 years and evaluated by several studies [4-6]. recently, case report showed successful exploration and clearance of common bile duct by open procedure [2]. we presented our case series using ambu® ascope 2tm disposable bronchoscope for cbd exploration. our results in terms of duct clearance, complication and hospital stay were in line with series we published from different institution using the standard scope 3. the results were comparable with other series in the literature [7-9]. our series showed better outcome in terms of duct clearance and hospital stay in comparison with previous series we published from different institute. our series showed cbd clearance in 20 from 21 patients, while previous series we published showed 7 of 9 cbd clearances. the initial average cost of re-usable choledocoscope about £12000 in addition to sterilization (which could be £200-£300 per choledocoscope), maintenance and other extra costs (storage and cleaning). disposable bronchoscope costs between £180 to £220. we found the advantage of using ambu® ascope 2tm disposable bronchoscope are cost effectiveness, sterility and free high resolution 6.5” lcd screen provided by the company. we also found that the kit is easy to use, lightweight and good quality image comparable to the image from re-usable choledocoscope. availability of ambu® ascope 2tm disposable bronchoscope makes it convenient and accessible especially if cbd exploration performed in more than one site in the same organisation. in conclusion, further evaluation is needed to assess the role of disposable bronchoscope in common bile duct exploration. we recommended that using ambu® ascope 2tm disposable bronchoscope is safe, feasible and cost effective. the comparable results and significant financial effectiveness makes disposable bronchoscope safe alternative to expensive re-usable choledocoscope and it can be applied widely for common bile duct exploration. conflict of interest: mr yousif aawsaj, dr ibrahim khalil ibrahim, mr andrew mitchell and mr andrew gilliam have no conflicts of interest or financial ties to disclose. references [1] bv. dasari, cj. tan, ks. gurusamy, dj. martin, g. kirk, l. mckie, et al., (2013) “surgical versus endoscopic treatment of bile duct stones,” cochrane database syst rev, vol. 12, pp. 12, 2013 [2] w. irvine, s. bradley, e. minford, “novel use of ambu® ascope™ 2 for choledochoscopy,” international journal of surgery, vol. 12, pp. s21, 2014. [3] y. aawsaj, d. light, j. brown, l. horgan, “use of the ambu(®) ascope 2(tm) in laparoscopic common bile duct exploration,” surg endosc, vol. 30, pp. 5153-5155, 2016. [4] jk. chan, i. ng, jp. ang, sm. koh, k. lee, p. mezzavia, et al. “randomised controlled trial comparing the ambu® ascope™2 with a conventional fibreoptic bronchoscope in orotracheal intubation of anaesthetised adult patients,” anaesth intensive care, vol. 43, pp. 479-84, 2015 [5] i. hodzovic, ar. wilkes, “clinical evaluation of the ambu® ascope™,” anaesthesia, vol. 68, pp. 784-5, 2013. [6] ms. kristensen, bb. fredensborg, “the disposable ambu ascope vs. a conventional flexible videoscope for awake intubation -a randomised study,” anaesthesiol scand, vol. 57, pp. 888-95, 2013. [7] y1. aawsaj, d. light, l. horgan, “laparoscopic common bile duct exploration: 15-year experience in a district general hospital,” surg endosc, vol. 30, pp. 2563-6, 2016. [8] ds. chan, pa. jain, a. khalifa, r. hughes, al. baker, “laparoscopic common bile duct exploration,” br j surg, vol. 101, pp. 1448-52, 2014. [9] a. mattila, j. luhtala, j. mrena, h. kautiainen, i. kellokumpu, “an audit of shortand long-term outcomes after laparoscopic removal of common bile duct stones in finland,” surg endosc, vol. 28, pp. 3451-54, 2014. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) journal homepage: http://www.spu.edu.iq/kjar issn 2411-7684 (print) – 2411-7706 (online) march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 61 kjar short article morphological and morphometric study of echinococcus granulosus (metacestode) in sulaimani province/ kurdistan region, iraq abdullah a. hama1*, osama h. shareef2 1department of medical laboratory, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, kurdistan region, iraq. 2department of medical laboratory technique, sulaimani polytechnic university, halabja, kurdistan region, iraq. *corresponding author: abdullah.hama@spu.edu.iq received│january 01, 2016 accepted│february 02, 2016 abstract hydatid disease (echinococcosis) is a parasitic infection caused by the larval stage of echinococcus granulosus with the global distribution. this disease is endemic in iraq and kurdistan region with no strategy and long-term control plan. the strain identification of this parasite is essential to improve both monitoring and prevention of the disease. for this reason, the present on the morphological characterization of the larval stage of echinococcus granulosus isolated from sheep, cattle, and human beings, was carried out in sulaimani as an atempt to determine the polymorphism among echinococcus hooks isolated from diferent hosts. the morphometric of hooks were evaluated by (computerized morphometric) software. a significant difference was found in the blade length and width (guard) of the hook isolated from a different intermediate host of echinococcus. this finding suggested that different strains of e. granulosus are responsible for animal and human infection in kurdistan-iraq. key words: echinococcus granulosus, hook, hydatid cyst, strain. introduction hydatid disease is a silent zoonotic infection caused by the larval stages of echinococcus granulosus with global distribution (mero et al., 2013). cystic echinococcus poses a significant economic and public-health concern in iraq and kurdistan ( hama et al., 2012). humans become infected accidentally by ingesting food or water contaminated with fecal material containing e. granulosus eggs passed from infected carnivores, or during handling pet or infected dogs (eckert et al., 2002; who 2006; satoskar, et al., 2009). the larval stage (metacestode) of echinococcus can grow in various body organs, the commonest sites of infection are the liver and lungs (markell et al., 1999), whereas, the transmission of the disease from human to human and between other intermediate host are not recorded (rood and kelly, 2009). the strains of e. granulosus were adapted with different intermediate hosts such as sheep, pigs, cattle, horses, camels, goats and cervid (sánchez et al., 2010). http://www.spu.edu.iq/kjar mailto:abdullah.hama@spu.edu.iq kjar short article morphology of e. granulosus, abdullah & osama, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 62 there are ten distinct genotypes (g1-g10) based on the molecular tool (rinaldi et al., 2008), also morphological and biochemical criteria were studied for strain identification by many researchers (kumaratilake and thompson, 1983), (latif et al., 2010). the strains of e. granulosus were adapted with different intermediate hosts such as sheep, pigs, cattle, horses, camels, goats and cervid (sánchez et al., 2010), at least, seven of these strains were infective to human (eckert et al., 2002). the morphological and biochemical characterization were reliable methods for recognizing of e. granulosu strains (harandi et al. 2002), identification of the strains which are responsible for human echinococcosis is a significant point for control and the means of diagnosis (hama et al., 2012). echinococcosis is considered a major endemic disease in iraq and kurdistan and its seriousness in humans and animals have been recognized by many epidemiological and biological studies (magid, 2008, abdullah, 2010). although there are no adequate molecular, morphological and biochemical studies of e. granulosis. the morphological and molecular characterization will open a new clue in strain identification and will be of great help in building effective control measures and predictive epidemiology (rahimi et al., 2007). materials and methods the hydatid cysts isolated from sheep (n=15) and cattle (n=5) collected from new sulaimani abattoir, and the human liver hydatid cysts (n=6) collected from sulaimani scientific hospital after the surgical operation. the fluid and a germinal layer of each cyst were collected in the sterile tube individually, then transferred to laboratory directly. the cyst fluid and germinal layer were washed three times with phosphate buffer solution (pbs) (latif et al., 2010). the protoscoleces were separated using centrifugation and preserved in 10% formalin. the protoscoleces were gently crushed under cover slip in a drop of normal saline then 188 hooks from different protoscolex (125 large hooks and 63 small hooks) were measured for total, blade, width (guard) and hand. a procedure described by almeida et al., (2015) was followed for hook mesuerment using a microscope (olympus, uk) supported with a camera and morphometric software (micam). statistical analysis was carried out using one-way anova, chi-square test to determine the probability value (p-value) by using spss (version 17). results the microscopic examination shows morphological aspects of protoscoleces and hook. there are two rows of hooks on the rostellum with a large hook intercalated by a small hook (figure 1a), both large and small hooks vary morphologically, although all hooks possess a handle, blade, and width (figure 1b). the result of this study confirmed morphologically there are different strains of echinococcus granulosus in kurdistan (figure 2). kjar short article morphology of e. granulosus, abdullah & osama, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 63 figure 1: photometric graph of echinococcus granulosus metacestodes isolated from sheep. a) represent rostellum of protoscoleces double row of hook 10x. b) represent large and small hook of protoscoleces 40x, a= large hook, b= small hook. h=hand, w=width (guard), bl=blade, tl=total length. figure 2: photometric graph of echinococcus granulosus metacestodes. the rostellum hooks from different intermediate hosts. a) isolated from human liver cyst 40x. b) isolated form sheep liver cyst 40x. table (1) shows the morphological structure of small hook, the mean of the total length of the small hook (tl) of human, sheep and cattle isolates were 17.6 µm, 17.6 µm, and 18.6 µm respectively. the significant differences were shown in hand and width (guard) region of the hook isolated from human, sheep and cattle. table (2) shows morphometric of the large hook of the rostellum from the different intermediate host. the total length of large hooks of human, sheep and cattle isolated were 22.3 µm, 22.24 µm, and 22.17 µm respectively, the statistically significant difference (p≤ 0.05) were recorded only in the blade region of the hook of a different source (intermediate hosts). kjar short article morphology of e. granulosus, abdullah & osama, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 64 table 1: the mean±sd of the total length, blade, width (guard) and hand of small hooks. intermediate host human sheep cattle total p-value total number of the hook (n) 20 39 4 63 total length (µm) 17.6±1.3 17.6±0.9 18.6±0.8 17.7±1 0.28 blade (µm) 8.7±1.1 8.1±1 6.8±1 8.1±1 0.6 hand (µm) 6±1.4 7±0.4 9.5±0.8 8.88±1 0.00 width (guard) µm 5.2±0.6 6±0.7 6.4±0. 8 5.78±0.7 0.00 table 2: the mean±sd of the total length, blade, width (guard) and hand of large hooks. intermediate host human sheep cattle total p-value total number of the hook (n) 22 67 36 125 total length (µm) 22.3±1 22.24±1.3 22.17±1 22.23±1.3 0.9 blade (µm) 11.5±1.4 10.55±1.7 10.65±1.8 10.7±1.6 0.03 hand (µm) 6.89±1 7.26±14 7/54±0. 8 7.27±1 0.08 width (guard) (µm) 6.69±1.1 6.7±0.7 7.1±0.7 6.82±0.8 0.06 discussion the rostellum hooks morphology and size have been used for identification of species and strain in echinococcus and other cestodes by hobbs et al. (1990). many researchers have suggested that the hook shape is influenced by the host (sweatman and williams, 1963, hobbs et al., 1990). while the blade lengths of the large and small hook were not affected by the host, that make it more reliable aspect than hook number and total hook length for separation of different species and strains of echinococcus. this conclusion will decrease their precision as taxonomic tools (lymbery, 1998). a similar morphological study in peru (almeida et al., 2009) agreed with the finding of the present study for the presence of polymorphism among rostella hooks. similarly, antoniou and tselentis (1993) suggested that width (guard) of large hooks was more slender than the guard of the small hooks. the present study has confirmed the existence of different strains of echinococcus granulosus in kurdistan-iraq, this result agree with (hama et al., 2012) study that identified sheep and cattle strain in kurdistan-iraq using a molecular marker. also, this study aimed to discriminate strains of echinococcus granulosus morphologically, a result which is in agreement with the previous study in kurdistan carried out by hama et al., (2015). the accurate diagnosis of echinococcus species and strains is valuable from an epidemiological and control point of view. kjar short article morphology of e. granulosus, abdullah & osama, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 65 acknowledgment the author is pleased to thank directorate of sulaimani slaughter house and sulaimani scientific hospital for their cooperation during sample collection. references abdullah, a. m. (2010). epidemiological, comparative enzymatic and total protein content of hydatid cyst of ecchinococcus granulosus isolated from sheep and goats in duhok province, kurdistan region of iraq. m.sc. thesis, college of education, univ.of duhok. almeida, f.; oliveira, f.; neves, r.; siqueira, n. (2015). morphometric characteristics of the metacestode echinococcus vogeli rausch & bernstein, 1972 in human infections from the northern region of brazil. 480–486. doi: 10.1017/s0022149x14000376 antonio, m., and tselentis, y., (1993). studies on echinococcus granulosus using the scanning electron microscope. ii. the hooks. parasitology research, vol.79, pp.543-546. eckert, j.; gemmell, m. a.; meslin, f. x.; pawlowski, z. (2002). who / oie manual on echinococcosis in humans and animals: apublic health problem of global concern. paris: office international des. epizooties. pp: 225. hama, a.a.; mero, w. s., and jubrael, j.m. s., (2012). molecular characterization of echinococcus graulosus first report of sheep strain in kurdistan – iraq. second international conference on echological, environment al and biological sciences (eebs 2012) bali (indonesia). hama, a. a.; hassan, z.i.; mero, w.m.; interisano, m.; boufana, b., and casulli, a. (2015) epidemiology : open access a morphologically unusual echinococcus granulosus (g1 genotype) cyst in a cow from kurdistan iraq. 2–4. doi: 10.4172/21611165.s2-005 harandi, m. f.; hobbs, r. p.; adams, p. j.; mobedi, i.; morgan-ryan, u. m., and thompson, r. c. a. (2002). molecular and morphological characterization of echinococcus granulosus of human and animal origin in iran. j.parasitol., 125:367–373. hobbs, r. p.; lymbery, a. j., and thompson, r. c. a. (1990). rostella hook characters of echinococcus granulosus (batsch, 1786) from natural and experimental australian hosts, and its implications for strain recognition. parasitology 101: 273-281. kumaratilake, l.m., and thompson, r. c. a. (1983). a comparison of echinococcus granulosus from different geographical areas of australia using secondary cyst development in mice. int. j. parasitol., 13:509-515. latif, a. a.; tanveer a.; maqbool, a.; siddiqi n.; kyaw-tanner, m., and traub, r. j. (2010). morphological and molecular characterisation of echinococcus granulosus in livestock and humans in punjab, pakistan. j. vet. parasitol., 170: 44-49. lymbery, a. j., (1998). combining data from morphological traits and genetic markers to determine transmission cycles in the tape worm, echinococcus granulosus. parasitology 117 (pt 2:185–92. magid, n., (2008). prevalence of hydatid cyst among slaughter animal in duhok province, m.sc. thesis, college of veterinary medicine, univ. of duhok. markell, e. k.; john, d.t., and krotoski, w.a. (1999). medical parasitology. 8th ed. w. b. saunder company. pp: 253-261. mero, w.m.s.; jubrael, j. m.s.; hama, a.a., (2013). prevalence of hydatid disease among slaughtered animals in slemani province / kurdistanzakho university jornal. rahimi, h. r.; kia, e. b.; mirhendi, s. h.; talebi, a.; fasihi, h. m.; jalali-zand n., and rokni, m. f.(2007). a new primer pair in its1 region for molecular studies on echinococcus granulosus. j. public, health. 36: 45–49. rinaldi, l.; maurelli, m. p.; capuano, f.; perugini, a. g.; veneziano, v., and cringoli, s. (2008). molecular update and cystic echinococcosis in cattle and water baffaloes of southern italy. j. blackwell verlag. zoonosis, public. health. 55:119123. rood, k. a., and kelly, j. (2009). prevention of hydatid disease. anim. health., 1: 1-7. sanchez, e.; caceres, o.; naquira, c.; garcia, d.; patino, g.; silvia, h.; volotao, a. c., and fernandes, o. (2010). molecular characterization of echinococcus granulosus from peru by sequencing of the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit one gene. res. dev. j., 105(6): 806-810. satoskar, a. r.; simon, g. l.; hotez, p. j., and tsuji, m. (2009). medical parasitology, landes bioscience, texas. pp: 320. sweatman, g. k., and williams, r. j., (1963). comparative studies on the biology and morphology of echinococcus granulosus from domestic livestock, moose, and reindeer. parasitology 53: 339-390. who, (2006). the control of neglected zoonotic diseases. meeting with the participation of fao and oie. geneva. morphological and morphometric study of echinococcus granulosus (metacestode) in sulaimani province/ kurdistan region, iraq abdullah a. hama1*, osama h. shareef2 abstract introduction materials and methods results discussion acknowledgment references kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) journal homepage: http://www.spu.edu.iq/kjar issn 2411-7684 (print) – 2411-7706 (online) march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 84 kjar case report encysted hydrocele of canal of nück fadhil ahmmed mohialdeen1, muhammed babakir-mina1*, mohammed ibrahim mohialdeen gubari1 1department of community health, sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, kurdistan region, iraq. *corresponding author: babakir-mina@spu.edu.iq received│november 22, 2015 accepted│january 17, 2016 abstract the canal of nuck is analogous to a patent processus vaginalis in a male, which normally loses its communication to the peritoneal cavity within the first year of life. failure of obliteration of this tract can result in a hydrocele. we present a case of 38 years old lady referred to our surgical unit from gynecologist as left obstructed femoral hernia. a fluid filled sac (encysted hydrocele of canal of nück) with small indirect inguinal hernia. key words: inguinal hernia, hydrocele, herniorrhaphy, and canal of nück introduction the canal of nuck in female is analogous to the processus vaginalis of the male, and it is named after anton nuck, the 17th century dutch anatomist. during embryological development the vaginalis processes is a peritoneal invagination into the inguinal canal and in the female it accompanies the round ligament or the gubernaculum. in both sexes it obliterates completely by the first year of life. when it fails to obliterate completely, it can result either in a congenital hernia or a hydrocele (jedrzejewski et al., 2008). the canal of nuck is the persistence of the small processus vaginalis which usually obliterates and disappears long before birth. it is homologous to hydrocele of the spermatic cord in male and has been a rare cause of inguinal canal swelling in women (stickel et al., 2004). normally the hydrocele of the canal of nuck presents as a painless, translucent, irreducible lump in the groin. however the overlying fascia of external oblique may not allow transillumination. case report a 38 yearsold lady was referred to our surgical unit from gynecologist as left obstructed femoral hernia. on examination there was a tender a swelling of the left inguinal region, tense, irreducible, but above the inguinal ligament. she had history of three years of this swelling. inguinal exploration was performed and the findings were as follows: a fluid filled sac (encysted hydrocele of canal of nück) with small indirect inguinal hernia. excision of the sac was performed completely with the round ligament of the uterus, then inguinal herniorrhaphy with obliteration and http://www.spu.edu.iq/kjar mailto:babakir-mina@spu.edu.iq kjar case report encysted hydrocele of canal of nück, fadhil a m, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 85 closure of the internal inguinal ring closure of the fascial layers was performed successfully without drain (figure 1). the patient discharged home on the same day evening uneventfully. figure 1: a) the female hydrocele. b) the cyst with the round ligament. discussion during fetal development in the male, the testicle descends through the inguinal canal into the scrotum pulling along a sac-like extension of the peritoneum. by the first year of life, this extension condenses into a fibrous cord—the processus vaginalis, preventing the communication of peritoneal cavity with the scrotum. a thin membrane of this original extension remains surrounding the testicle which is named the tunica vaginalis. if this extension of peritoneum fails to close, based on the size of the defect, fluid or abdominal contents may enter the inguinal canal, resulting in a hydrocele or hernia. congenital hernia or hydrocele, though more common in males, is rarely seen in females. in the female fetal development, round ligament of the uterus descends into the inguinal canal to the labium major. the peritoneal fold that descends the round ligament is named the canal of nuck. the canal of nuck cyst is thin walled, contains clear fluid and is lined by cuboidal or flattened mesothelial cells. normally the hydrocele of the canal of nuck presents as a painless, translucent, irreducible lump in the groin. however, the overlying fascia of external oblique may not allow transillumination. if by the first year of life this communication fails to close, it can also result in an indirect hernia or a hydrocele (sternberg, 1999). the differential diagnosis for an inguinal mass in a female includes indirect hernia, lymphadenopathy, cold abscess, bartholin's cyst, post-traumatic hematoma, rarely cystic lymphangioma, neuroblastoma metastasis in groin and ganglion (pandit et al., 2000, and poenaru et al., 1999). there are three types of a hydrocele of canal of nuck. the most common type is one with no communication with peritoneal cavity forming an encysted hydrocele along the tract of descent, from the inguinal ring to the vulva. second type results when there is a persistent communication with the peritoneal cavity. a third type is a combination of the two as a result of the inguinal ring constricting the hydrocele like a belt so that part is communicating and part is enclosed, giving this the name of hour glass type. a b kjar case report encysted hydrocele of canal of nück, fadhil a m, march 2016 march 2016 │ volume 1│ issue 1 page 86 however, any of these types of hydroceles are extremely rare in females (counseller and black, 1941). hydroceles are more common in males probably because of the differences in migration of the gonads. a hydrocele can result from either a persistent patency of the processus vaginalis with peritoneal communication as in this patient, or with proximal obliteration at the deep ring with over-secretion and under-absorption in the distal segment. the canal of conclusions the curative treatment of this condition is surgical excision of the cyst with closure of the neck at the deep ring. references counseller vs, black bm (1941). hydrocele of the canal of nuck: report of seventeen cases. ann surg. (113) 625–30. jedrzejewski g, stankiewicz a, wieczorek ap (2008). uterus and ovary hernia of the canal of nuck. pediatr radiol. (38) 1257–8. pandit sk, rattan kn, budhiraja s, solanki rs. (2000). cystic lymphangioma with special reference to rare sites. indian j pediatr. (67) 339– 41. poenaru d, jacobs da, kamal i (1999). unusual findings in the inguinal canal: a report of four cases. pediatr surg int. (15) 515–6. stickel wh and manner m (2004). female hydrocele (cyst of the canal of nuck) sonographic appearance of a rare and little-known disorder. mdj ultrasound med (23) 429–32. sternberg ss (1999). diagnostic surgical pathology, 3rd edn. philadelphia: lippincott, williams and wilkins. encysted hydrocele of canal of nück fadhil ahmmed mohialdeen1, muhammed babakir-mina1*, mohammed ibrahim mohialdeen gubari1 abstract introduction case report discussion conclusions references  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.4 architectural exploration of blind cfo estimation in ofdm systems for prototyping on a reconfigurable platform sedik younis college of electronics engineering ninevah university mosul, iraq sedkibakir@gmail.com a. al-dweik communication eng. depart. khalifa university abu dhabi, uae arafat.dweik@kustar.ac.ae bayan sharif communication eng. depart. khalifa university abu dhabi, uae bayan.sharif@kustar.ac.ae c. c. tsimenidis school of engineering. newcastle university newcastle, uk charalampos.tsimenidis@ncl.ac.uk abstract: this paper presents two architectures for prototyping an advanced carrier frequency offset (cfo) estimation technique for ofdm systems on field programmable gate array (fpga). the parallel stream architecture (psa) exploits the fpga parallelism while the multiplexed stream architecture (msa) employs multiplexing for more efficient hardware implementation. the dual-mode of operation for the proposed architectures has been proposed to achieve optimum performance depending on channel conditions. the proposed architectures with different implementation alternatives have been simulated and verified for fpga implementation using the xilinx’s dsp design flow. the estimation accuracy and the resource utilization for the proposed architectures have been evaluated. the prototyping results showed that msa allows for more resource efficient implementation, where a single fft core can be shared between parallel streams compared with psa. keywords: cfo estimator, ofdm, architecture, fpga, hardware, prototyping. 1. introduction recently, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (ofdm) has gained considerable interest due to the high spectral efficiency and capability to deal with severe channel impairments encountered in wireless transmission. consequently, ofdm has been considered in several standards and applications [1] [2]. in spite of the desirable features, ofdm systems are very sensitive to synchronization errors, particularly carrier frequency offsets (cfo). the presence of cfo will introduce an inter-carrier interference (ici) due to the loss of orthogonality among the subcarriers which dramatically degrade the performance of the whole system. therefore, the inner receiver must estimate and eliminate the possible influence of the unknown cfo where accurate cfo estimation is critical for ofdm systems with high impact on the communication performance as only offsets of small fraction of the subcarriers spacing can be tolerated. for example, a signal-to-interference ratio (sir) of 20 db is achieved for frequency offsets less than 4% of the subcarriers spacing [6]. the cfo can be estimated by inserting pre-known information at the transmitter such as pilots or training sequences. such methods are power and bandwidth inefficient and usually known as data-aided (da). on the other hand, the non data-aided (nda) or blind methods are power and bandwidth efficient where the estimation can be performed with the help of only unknown data symbols or by exploiting the intrinsic information inherited in ofdm symbol. constructing a robust, accurate and efficient blind cfo estimator is a very challenging task. therefore, it has been considered in the literature in many publications [5]-[8]. for example, the cyclic prefix based estimator (cpe) utilizes the cp redundancy in the ofdm symbol structure where the cfo is estimated by maximizing the sliding correlation between the data points in the start and end of the symbol. although this scheme has a low computational complexity, it has a very sensitive performance in multipath fading channel as part of the cp will be corrupted by the inter-symbol interference (isi). recently, two blind cfo estimators for ofdm systems have been proposed in [7] and [8]. these estimators are based on minimizing the power difference between either adjacent subcarriers in the same ofdm symbol or the same subcarrier in consecutive ofdm symbols and they are called power difference estimator (pde)-frequency and pde-time, respectively. as frequency domain methods, the computational requirements of the pde estimators are higher than the cpe. however, these estimators have accurate and robust performance even in severe frequency selective fading channels compared with other blind cfo estimation techniques. the rapid increase in the processing requirements of state of the art wireless devices has exceeds the speed of current digital signal processors (dsps) which cannot fulfilled the system throughput requirements. therefore, fpgas has emerged as an attractive option for implementation of highly complex signal processing due to their performance and configurability [4]. in addition, the implemented system can enjoy the highly parallel architecture and embedded multiplier for fpga solution which is far more cost efficient than application specific integrated circuit (asic) implementation. due to its robust performance and in contract to the cpe, the pde estimators can be utilized to estimate the fractional cfo in the acquisition and tracking phase of the synchronization process. hence, this paper aims to http://dx.doi.org/10.24017/science.2017.3.4 mailto:sedkibakir@gmail.com investigate efficient hardware architecture for prototyping the pde cfo estimator on fpga device. the model based design using xilinx system generator (xsg) has been used. the high level design flow to map the considered cfo algorithm into flexible and configurable hardware architecture has been investigated. the design flow includes the mapping of the algorithmic steps to the xsg fpga intellectual property (ip) components. the proposed architecture designs are evaluated in terms of estimation accuracy and the required hardware resources. this paper consists of four sections. section ii introduces basic idea of the pde-frequency and pde-time cfo estimator for ofdm systems. section iii describes the structure of the hardware that is used to prototype the considered cfo estimation algorithm on fpga. section iv presents the evaluation results of the proposed cfo estimation architecture. 2. blind cfo estimator for ofdm systems in this section, the algorithm of the pde cfo estimators for ofdm systems is presented. using the pde method, the cfo can be estimated using the frequency domain data based on measuring the power difference either between adjacent subcarrier in the same ofdm symbol or the same subcarrier in consecutive ofdm symbol. this section presents the two possible realizations of the pde scheme for blind cfo estimation in ofdm systems. in the noise-free case and with perfect cfo compensation i.e. 𝜖̂ = 𝜖, the fft output on the kth subcarrier can be expressed as in this case, the power of the kth fft output is given by, for constant modulus (cm) constellations |𝑑𝑘(𝑙)| 2 = |𝑑|2 which is assumed to be normalized to one, then (2) can be written as, a. pde-frequency by assuming that the channel changes slowly in the frequency domain, then the channel frequency response over any two adjacent subcarriers is approximately equal. thus, however the approximation given in (4) becomes equality only when the cfo is estimated and compensated perfectly. consequently, by minimizing the power difference between all subcarriers over ofdm block, the following cost function can be formulated [10], where l is the number of ofdm blocks used in the estimation process. the cfo estimates can be obtained by minimizing (5), where µ denotes the trial values of the cfo. b. pde-time this scheme is based on the assumption that the channel changes slowly in the time domain. consequently, the channel frequency response at subcarrier k over two consecutive ofdm symbols is approximately constant. therefore, again this is valid if the cfo is perfectly compensated. therefore, by minimizing the power difference between the same subcarrier in consecutive ofdm symbol, the following cost function can be formulated [11], and the cfo estimates can be obtained by minimizing (8), by noting that, and thus, the cost function given in (5) and (8) can be simplified to and the above cost function can be approximated by the following simple sinusoid, where a and c are constants independent of µ with a<0. since the cost function is sinusoidal, the minimization process, which is usually, performed using methods such as the line search or the gradient descent, can be replaced by the curve fitting method [10] [11]. the curve fitting method leads to closed-form estimation of ǫ by evaluating (5) and (8) at three special trial points, namely −1/4, 0, 1/4. then the cfo estimate 𝜖̂ as follows 3. architecture design in this section, the architecture design for prototyping the pde cfo estimator on fpga device will be described. the xilinx system generator (xsg) design flow has been used to map the considered algorithm into fpga hardware realization. using the matlab/simulink combined with the xsg as the main design tool allows a simple and intuitive hardware design and simulation tool for dsp algorithms. using xsg will bridge the gap between simulation and implementation by rapid prototyping matlab co-simulated algorithms into fpga runnig blocks providing a balance between hardware abstraction level and real-time system implementation. a. parallel-stream architecture (psa) as described before the pde estimators require to evaluate the cost function for three trail carrier frequency offsets, e.g. j(-1/4), j(0) and j(1/4). utilizing the highly efficient fpga parallelism feature, the cost function for the three trail points can be computed in parallel. therefore, the direct mapping for the pde will result into streams processing the input data using three parallel fft cores. the schematic diagram for the proposed parallel-stream architecture for the implementation of the pde estimator is shown in fig. 1. the cfo compensated streams to compute the j(-1/4) and j(1/4) are generated by heterodyning the output of xilinx direct digital synthesizer (dds) core with the received ofdm data. the dds generates a complex sinusoid with a trail cfo which is used to compensate the impaired received ofdm data using a complex multiplier. the two streams can be generated using a single dds where the second input stream is generated by negating the output of the dds. then the xilinx fft core has been used to generate the frequency domain data for the parallel input stream. the fft core has been configured to operate in a pipelined streamed input/output mode based on radix-2 butterfly algorithm to reduce the time spent in the transform phase and to provide high throughput for the output stream. since the fft block provides a streaming mode for computing the discrete fourier transform (dft), there is no stalling of input and the architecture data-path can be heavily pipelined where the inputs arrive at the fft block as soon as all the previous inputs for processing enter. as a result, the streaming radix-2 fft block takes a minimum time for fft transform among all the fft core libraries provided with xsg. the power difference module is used to sequentially accumulate the subcarriers power difference values. the power difference module can be configured to compute the power difference of the adjacent subcarrier or the same subcarrier in consecutive ofdm symbols of the fft output stream. then, the computed cost function are used to estimate the cfo where the cordic module is configured in a polar mode to compute the angle of the input vector. the cordic algorithm is implemented in 3 steps: step 1: coarse angle rotation. the algorithm converges only for angles between -pi/2 and pi/2, so if x < zero, the input vector is reflected to the 1st or 3rd quadrant by making the x-coordinate non-negative. step 2: fine angle rotation. the resulting vector is rotated through progressively smaller angles, such that y goes to zero. in the i-th stage, the angular rotation is by either +/atan(1/2i), depending on whether or not its input y is less than or greater than zero. step 3: angle correction. if there was a reflection applied in step 1, this step applies the appropriate angle correction by subtracting it from +/pi. fig. 1. parallel-stream architecture of the pde cfo estimator for ofdm systems b. multiplexed-stream architecture (msa) in order to reduce the computational complexity, a resource efficient implementation for the pde cfo estimator on fpga using single fft core has been proposed. the core design for the proposed multiplexedstream architecture is shown in fig. 2 where the three parallel input streams are multiplexed into one stream and a single fft core has been used to compute the frequency domain data for the multiplexed input streams. the easiest way to realize this architecture is to use the dual-port ram block. the three input streams are stored in a dual-port ram which enables simultaneous access to the memory space at different sample rates using multiple data widths. the stored data read from the dual-port ram with higher sampling rate and multiplexed into a single stream for fft processing. the clock frequency for the fft core in the multiplexedstream design should be three times faster than the counterpart in the parallel-architecture design. the computed cost functions for the multiplexed-streams are demultiplexed and then processed to estimate the cfo. fig. 2. a resource efficient multiplexed-stream architecture of the pde cfo estimator for ofdm systems table 1: comparison the hardware resource utilization for the psa and msa 4. fpga prototyping results this section presents the hardware evaluation and fpga prototyping results for the proposed pde cfo estimator architecture. for hardware designer, it’s important to tune the word length of the designed system such that it will have a little impact on the accuracy of the output parameters. moreover, the impact of cordic iterations on the estimation accuracy is also reported. the design has been implemented using the xsg design flow and synthesis using the xilinx ise synthesis tools and then placed and routed to obtain the hardware area utilization results. the target device is a xilinx virtex6 fpga (xc6vsx315t) with package 3ff1156. to test the proposed system, 104 ofdm symbols impaired with a normalized cfo=0.4, n=64 and ng=16 have been generated in matlab and passed to the hardware architecture through the gate way-in block. the mean square error (mse) has been used to evaluate the estimation accuracy of the hardware architecture. the word-length has a significant impact on the area consumption, throughput and accuracy. to configure the word length for the proposed architecture, the mse for the hardware estimated cfo is evaluated for different word-length values as shown in fig. 3. for noiseless channel, it is obvious that the mse decreases as the word-length increases. however, increasing the wordlength requires more hardware resources. therefore, to tune the word-length without degrading the estimation accuracy, a practical situation is considered where a noisy channel with snr=40 db is used. it is clear that the mse for the pde-time and pde-frequency start to saturate for word-length >12 and increasing the word length will not help to further improve the estimation accuracy of the proposed architecture. therefore, a word-length of 12-bit can be used to achieve minimal resource utilization while preserving the accuracy for the estimation algorithm. the impact of the cordic processor elements (pes) on the accuracy of the estimated cfo is illustrated in fig. 4. for noisy channel with snr=40 db, it is clear that the mse for the pde-time and pde-frequency start to saturate for pes>10. therefore, using 10 pes for the cordic will be sufficient to preserve the estimation accuracy with minimal hardware utilization. the hardware resource utilization and the maximum frequency for the proposed architectures are illustrated in table (1). it is clear that both the parallel-stream and multiplexed stream architectures are suitable to fpga implementation with a maximum 3% occupation of the chip area. the msa 5. conclusion this work investigated an efficient fpga prototyping architecture for cfo estimation in ofdm systems. a parallel and multiplexed-stream architecture for the pde cfo estimator has been designed and evaluated. the designed architectures mapped into fpga using xsg design ıow. prototyping results confirmed that the proposed architectures leads to an efficient fpga implementation occupying a small portion of the device resources with high throughput. the prototyping results for the multiplexed-stream architecture showed that a saving of 50% in the resource utilization can be achieved compared with the parallel-stream architecture. fig. 3. mse vs. word-length for the proposed hardware architecture of the pde-time and pde-frequency cfo estimation algorithms fig. 4. mse vs. the number of cordic pes for the proposed hardware architecture of the pde-time and pde-frequency cfo estimation algorithms 6. reference [1] r. nee and r. prasad, ofdm wireless multimedia communications, artech house, boston, 2000. [2] k. fazel and s. kaiser, multi-carrier and spread spectrum systems from ofdm and mc-cdma to lte and wimax, wiley, 2nd edition 2008. [3] t. schenk, rf imperfections in high-rate wireless systems: impact and digital compensation, springer, 2008. [4] r. woods, j. mcallister, y. yi and g. lightbody, fpga-based implementation of signal processing systems, john wiley & sons, 2008. [5] t. schmidl and d. cox, "robust frequency and timing synchronization for ofdm," ieee trans. commun., vol. 45, pp. 1613-1621, dec. 1997. [6] j. van de beek, m. sandell, and p. borjesson,"ml estimation of timing and frequency offset in ofdm systems," ieee trans. signal proc., vol. 45, pp. 1800-1805, jul. 1997. [7] x. zeng and a. ghrayeb, “a blind carrier frequency offset estimation scheme for ofdm systems with constant modulus signaling,” ieee trans. commun., vol. 56, no. 7, pp. 1032–1037, jul. 2008 [8] a. al-dweik, a. hazmi, s.younis, b. sharif and c. tsimenidis, "carrier frequency offset estimation for ofdm systems over mobile radio channels," ieee trans. on vehi. tech., vol. 59, no. 2, feb. 2010. [9] i. diaz, l. wilhelmsson, j. rodrigues, j. lofgren , t. olsson and v. owall, "a sign-bit autocorrelation architecture for fractional frequency offset estimation in ofdm"in proc. ieee iscas, may. 2010. [10] i. diaz, l. wilhelmsson, j. rodrigues, t. olsson and v. owall, "sign-bit based architecture for ofdm acquisition for multiple-standards", in proc ieee norchip, nov. 2009.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 website: kjar.spu.edu.iq | email: kjar@spu.edu.iq the effect of injectable medication procedure on the level of pain among early childhood patients farida a. k. tahir department of midwifery sulaimani technical institute sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq farida.tahir@spu.edu.iq pary m. azize nursing department sulaimani technical institute sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq pary.azize@spu.edu.iq aram n. abdul razzaq school of nursing university of sulaimani sulaimani, iraq najataram@yahoo.com volume 4 – special issue: 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019) doi: 10.24017/science.2019 .ichms.3 received: 14 june 2019 accepted: 5 july 2019 abstract children are often exposed to painful procedures during hospitalization. validated age appropriate scales are available to assess pain among pediatric patients. the aim of this study is to find out the effect of injectable medication procedure on the level of pain among early childhood patients. this descriptive cross -sectional study was designed to assess the physiological and behavioral characteristic of pain using cries pain rating scale for both medical and surgical conditions, which contains (cry, spo2, heart rate, facial expression and sleep pattern). the study has been conducted for twelve weeks duration in the pediatric wards at medical and surgical hospitals in the sulaimani city – kurdistan region of iraq between 1st march to 1st jun 2019. fifty early childhood aged between (1 month3years) were participated and assessed pre injectable medication procedure and after. cries pain scales were applied to the children and shows that there is a highly significant differences between pain and the physiological , behavior characteristics between pre and after procedure in the pvalue < .00001 such as crying was developed from high pitch crying to inconsolable in post-procedure. consumption of o2 also increased. in terms of heart rate was increased up to 20% than baseline, while, in the post-procedure, the change was more than 20% of the baseline. facial expression was also changed to contracted face in the post procedure. sleeping from short interval to absent sleeping mailto:najataram@yahoo.com kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019| 30 was shown. significant variation between pre and postprocedure were assessed. further variation between medical and surgical condition for mean score of every scale of cries were assessed. the implications of this study will impact on health professional’s education; practice and future research are also recommending. keywords: pain, cries, pain rating tools, consequence of pain. physiological sign, behavioral sign 1. introduction when exploring the history in the nature of pain, it is important to recognize that there are several definitions of pain, all acknowledging a multifaceted phenomenon of pain and over the past few decades grow to be the subject of many research studies [1]. generally pain is measured using three methods: 1. self-report, 2. behavior, and 3. physiological measurement, based on the age and cognitive development of the children [2]. during hospitalization, children are often exposed to painful procedures, several deferent scales have been validated to assess pain in specific populations of pediatric patients, pain was assessed using indicator from cries pain score [3]. pain in neonates has been often underreported and under management [4]. in addition, early exposure to pain can lead the way babies respond to pain later in life. therefore, the health professionals should put into consideration the importance of assessing and managing pain clinically [5]. pain experience is a feeling that occurred as a consequence of diagnostic, such as a procedure pain or therapeutic interventions and also as a result of the disease process like infantile colic. neonates cannot report their pain by word, which lead them to depend on others to assess and manage their pain. as a consequence, they might need a long term treatment. in order to provide an adequate management of pain, accurate assessment is essential. some physiological and behavioral parameters are measured through cries pain rating tool, which aid a consistent pain management, so pain assessment is added to the list of vital sign and become the 5th [6]. several validate and reliable pain scales exists to measure acute pain in term and preterm neonates [7]. most of these scales are designed in combination of both, behavioral indicators of pain, which include non verbal facial expression, some jerky body movements, and change in the pattern of crying. and/or physiological indicators of pain, which include ( tachycardia, change in respiratory rate, blood pressure and oxygen saturation [sao2], vagal tone, palmer sweating, and plasma cortisol or catecholamine levels). cries is one of the behavioral scale that used to measure and observe these 5 parameters in letter such as c for crying, r for the requirement of oxygen supplementation (for sao2 > 95%), i for increases in heart rate and or blood pressure, e for facial expression, and s for sleeplessness [8]. the aim of this study is to assess the effect of injectable medication procedure on the level and experience of pain among early childhood. 2. methods and materials design of the study descriptive cross sectional study is implemented to assess the effect of injectable medication procedure on the level of pain among early childhood. setting of the study the study was conducted in the pediatric medical and surgical wards in the sulaimani city – kurdistan region of iraq the study sample 50 early childhoods who admitted to pediatric hospitals in medical and surgical wards were monitored. the early childhood is with different categories (infants age of one month to 12 kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019| 31 months and toddlers’ age from 1 year to 3 years) and condition of health is medical or surgical and both gender male and female. the study instrument cires pain scale were used for the purpose of the present study, the researcher assesses the effect of injectable medication procedure on the level of pain among early childhood pediatric hospital, it was based on extensive review of related literature and study. the data collection consists of two parts, which include demographic data, which consists of (age, gender and condition of the early childhoods) and cries pain scale which consists of (cry, spo2, heart rate, facial expression and sleep) find it in figure1 figure 1: cries pain rating tool [8] rating scales and scores cries pain scale are consisted of three-point scores (0, 1, 2) using in every category this assessment tool is based on observations and objective measurements. it is monitored and gives score by a healthcare professional, such as a nurse or physician. each parameter has two points to assign, with a rating of 0 for signs of no pain and a rating of 2 for signs of maximal pain. the items were rated and scored in figure 1. the total score in cries pain scale if from 10 scores divided as the following: 1 0 = relaxed and comfortable 21 to 3 = mild discomfort 34 to 6 = moderate pain 47 to 10 = severe discomfort/pain method of data collection some demographic data were obtained such as ( age. gender and the child’s health condition). data. were applying on the patient level of pain in order to compeer the condition of child in terms of pain before and after injectable medication procedure collected through the use of cries pain scale. statistical data analysis the obtained data of the respondents to the cries pain scale were entered to the computer and analyzed through the use of statistical package social science (spss version 22); the data analyzed was performed through the following approaches descriptive statistics such analysis was performed through the computation of the following frequencies distribution and percentage % = frequency / sample size * 100 kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019| 32 mean of scores (ms) mean of score was calculated from the ordinal data according to the three levels of scales as (0,1,2) the highest of the scores indicated the severity of the pain. in the present study, the highest level of mean of scores indicates the high level of pain among the early childhoods in providing injectable medication procedure care. a mean score of < 0.66 was considered mild pain, a mean score of 0.67 1.32 was considered moderate pain, and mean score of 1.33 2 was considered severe pain. m.s = ∑fi xi ∑fi for mean to spo2 and heart rate per-procedure and post-procedure mean = sum n the normal spo2 is less an equal 95 mean of spo2 = 95+96+97+98+99+100 6 = 97.5 the average (mean) of spo2 is equal to 97.5. this average or (mean) is the baseline for spo2 for calculate the per-procedure and postprocedure to assess cries pain scale. heart rate newborns (1-12) months (80-180) beat/minute toddler (1-3) years (80-140) beat/minute the mean for heart rate (baseline) is mean of heart rate for infants (1 month to 12 months) equal to 130 beat/minutes. mean of heart rate for toddlers (1 year to 3 years) equal to 120 beat/minutes. this average is the baseline for heart rate for calculate the per-procedure and post-procedure to assess cries pain scale the formula to finding percent change is % change = pre−procedure−baseline baseline % change = 𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝−𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝−𝑏𝑏𝑏𝑏𝑝𝑝𝑏𝑏𝑏𝑏𝑏𝑏𝑝𝑝 𝑏𝑏𝑏𝑏𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑏𝑏𝑏𝑏𝑏𝑏𝑝𝑝 3. results table 1: demographic data demographic frequency % cumulative percent age 1-12 months 11 22% 78% 1-3 years 39 78% total 50 100% 100 gender male 27 54% 54% female 23 46% total 50 100% 100% condition of patients medical 26 52% 52% surgical 24 48% total 50 100% 100% table 1 show that all the participants were early childhood patients aged between (1 month 3 years., 1-12 months) are (11,22%), and (39, 78%) were children aged between 1-3 years. regarding gender, (27, 54%) of them were male and (23, 46%) female. the conditions of children such as medical and surgical conditions were almost equal. kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019| 33 figure 2: mean consequence of pain this bar graph shows mean of all categories of cries pain scale, which consist three score. a mean score of < 0.66 was considered mild pain, a mean score of 0.67 1.32 was considered moderate pain, and mean score of 1.33 2 was considered severe pain. the different between pre-procedure and post-procedure is significant changes. pre-procedure for cry scale the mean show is on 0.72 that is on moderate pain, significant change on post-procedure were observed, the mean increased to 1.44, which mean severe pain. spo2 on pre-procedure the mean of scale was 0.02, which showed that the participant have relaxed with a little of pain. however, in the post-procedure the consumption of spo2 were raised to the mean score 0.6. in terms of heart rate scale, there was also a significant change in the mean scale in pre-procedure was 1.1 and post-procedure was 1.58, which means the participant feels severe pain. another scale is facial expression in pre-procedure the mean was 0.86 the participant feels moderate pain and post-procedure mean is 1.52 the participant feels severe pain. the last scale is sleep pattern in pre-procedure the mean was 0.92. while, in the postprocedure the mean was raised to 1.62, so participant feels severe pain. figure 3: mean of total score and consequence of pain this bar graph shows the effect of injectable medication procedure on the total score of the level of pain. the mean shows significant changes between pre-procedure and post-procedure. pre-procedure mean score was 3.64 mean the participant feels mild pain. while, the total score of post-procedure were increased to 6.76. 3.64 6.76 0 2 4 6 8 pre-procedue post-procedure sc or e 10 mean mean of total score 0.72 1.44 0.02 0.6 1.1 1.58 0.86 1.52 0.92 1.62 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 pre-procedure post-procedure cry spo2 heart rate facial expression sleep kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019| 34 table 2: differences between medical and surgical consequence of pain for total score this table shows variation between medical condition and surgical condition of the total score of participant depending on cries pain scale. medical condition, pre-procedure the patient feels moderate pain the percentage is 65.4% and post-procedure the participant feel severe pain the percentage is 53.8%. surgical condition, pre-procedure the participant feel mild pain the percentage is 54.2% and post-procedure the patients feel severe pain the percentage is 62.5%. the table shows significant variation between medical and surgical condition table 3: differences between medical and surgical consequence of pain for mean of scales this table shows slight variations between medical condition and surgical condition because the mean score for every scales is changes between pre-procedure and post-procedure table 4: differences between medical and surgical consequence of pain for total mean score mean cry spo2 hr facial sleep medical pre-procedure 0.8 0.03 1.11 0.92 1 post-procedure 1.42 0.69 1.61 1.5 1.73 surgical pre-procedure 0.62 0 1.08 0.79 0.83 post-procedure 1.45 0.54 1.54 1.66 1.66 this table shows slight variations between medical condition and surgical condition because the mean score for every scales is changes between pre-procedure and post-procedure this table shows a slight variation between medical and surgical condition. significant changes between pre-procedure and post-procedure for each condition. medical condition, pre-procedure mean score is 3.92 and the post-procedure mean score is 6.8 the score is significant increased. surgical condition, pre-procedure mean score is 3.33 and the postprocedure mean score is 6.7 the score significant increased. 4. discussion children’s pain is often under-reported, as a child’s cognitive development is one of the factors that can affect a child’s understanding of what is happening around them in relation to scoring their pain and using pain rating tools. therefore, multidimensional behavioral pain total score relaxed 0 mild 1-3 moderate 4-6 severe 7-10 total f % f % f % f % f mean pre-procedure medical 0 0 9 34.6 17 65.4 0 0 26 3.92 post-procedure medical 0 0 2 7.7 10 38.5 14 53.8 26 6.8 pre-procedure surgical 1 4.2 13 54.2 9 37.5 1 4.2 24 3.33 post-procedure surgical 0 0 0 0 9 37.5 15 62.5 24 6.7 child’s conditions mean medical pre-procedure 3.92 post-procedure 6.8 surgical pre-procedure 3.33 post-procedure 6.7 kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019| 35 scale are used in assessing the pediatric pain [9]. this study has been used cries pain scale, as it is an age appropriate scale that used to assess pain experience among the early childhood pre and post injectable medication procedure. this is proved by some studies, which stated the validity and reliability of this instrument to use for pediatric populations especially early childhood [7, 10, and 11]. a significant variation of the level of pain between pre imp and post has found in this study, as this proved by using cries to measure all the five parameters of the observational scale. regarding the measurement of pain, crying is the first objective sign in cries tool, as this study has measured the pattern of crying before the imp and after the procedure, found that the crying started from the beginning of the procedure with a high pitch crying to inconsolable crying until after of the procedure. thus, one of the emotional responses to the stimuli among children is crying, as they could not be able to express pain by words [12]. the needle phobia among children and adolescence been studied clinically, they reported that the fear of injection is mostly associated with needle phobia during the needle puncture [13]. in terms of the saturation of oxygen and level of pain, spo2 is the second parameter of cries that monitored in this study and found that spo2 on pre-procedure the mean of scale was 0.02, which showed that the participant have relaxed and a little pain been felt. however, in the post-procedure the consumption of spo2 were raised to the mean score of 0.6. in the study of the applying cries scale in measuring the consequence of pain, mentioned that the level of oxygen are decreased during the painful procedure [3]. regarding heart rate, this study found that heart rate scale is increased up to 20% than baseline and repeated in the postprocedure , which leads to increase to more than 20% than baseline. this is in consistent with the analyzed data during 2009 2010 from national hospital ambulatory medical care survey in emergency department and found that pain can leads to tachycardia [14]. one of the non verbal indicators of pain experience among children is facial expression [15]. the present study depends on what darwin’s stated about the characteristic of pain through facial expression as follow: [in pain] the mouth may be closely compressed, or more commonly, the lips are retracted, with the teeth clenched or ground together…the eyes stare wildly as if in horrified astonishment [16] it consider as the most persistent in pre-procedure, as occasional grimace were presented, however, in the post-procedure that shape were changed to the contracted face. sleeping pattern was also monitored pre and post imp, which was stated by the caregiver as a short interval and in the post-procedure was absent sleeping. thus, stress and poor health are the two main interrelated factors that the children concerned, which affect the quality of sleep. as sleeping consider to be a significant indicator of poor health status [18]. to examine the association between pain and sleep, a large crosssectional cohort study was conducted on cancer patients and conclude that, especially cancer pain may strongly affect sleeping and strongly concerned by the them and their caregivers [19]. a significant variation has shown between pre-procedure and post-procedure in every parameter of the cries total score 5. conclusion pain is a fifth vital sign recently; therefore, well-tested multidimensional instruments may be preferable. the cries pain scale is beast scale for ages of early childhoods and the scale shows significant changes between pre-procedure and post-procedure this is mean the cries pain scale is fit for this age and accordant to the result found the effect of injectable medication procedure on the level of pain. workshop for nurses and physician is required in order to educate them how to use the cries pain scale kurdistan journal of applied research | 3rd international conference on health & medical sciences: insight into advanced medical research (ichms 2019| 36 reference [1]. k. hanoch kumar, p. elavarasi. “ definition of pain and classification of pain disorders”. journal of advanced clinical & research insights 3, 87–90. 2016. 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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=finan%20ph%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=24290442 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=goodin%20br%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=24290442 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/elink.fcgi?dbfrom=pubmed&retmode=ref&cmd=prlinks&id=24290442 1. introduction 5. conclusion  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 3 | issue 1 | june 2018 | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.1.13 received: january 20, 2018 | accepted: june 3, 2018 effect of milk proteins aggregation using transglutaminase and maillard reaction on ca2+ milk gel hassan m. s. alfayadh mohammed l. hamk kocher j. ibrahim department of food industry department of food industry department of food science technical college of applied sciences technical college of applied sciences faculty of agricultural sciences sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university university of sulaimani halabja, iraq halabja, iraq sulaimani, iraq hassan.salieh@spu.edu.iq mohammedhamk@gmail.com kocherjamal@gmail.com jasim. m. s. al-saadi department of dairy sciences college of food science al-qasim green university babil ,iraq jasim_salih@yahoo.com 63 abstract effect of transglutaminase, maillard reaction induced crosslinking and combination of transglutaminase and maillard reaction induced crosslinking between whey proteins and caseins in milk on calcium milk gel properties were investigated. treatment of milk with transglutaminase, maillard reaction and transglutaminase + maillard reaction cause to the appearance of new high mw protein bands. water holding capacity , gel strength and sensory scores of gel samples increased and spontaneous whey separation decreased in calcium-induced milk gel made from transglutaminase and combination of transglutaminase and maillard reaction treated milk compare with calcium-induced milk gel made from untreated milk alone. keywords: calcium milk gel, maillard reaction, transglutaminase, crosslinking 1. introduction generally there are two major methods for milk coagulation, by adding rennet or using acids [1], siamand, et al. were able of producing milk gel by adding calcium chloride and elevating milk temperature to 85 ͦ c. the best texture and sensory properties was noticed for gels made with the addition of 13.5 mm of calcium chloride [2]. development of calcium milk gel processing will provide milk industry with another useful product, with high nutritional value and high acceptability which can help to increase dairy product consumption. reaction between proteins through formation of covalent bonds leading to the formation high molecular weight aggregations is called crosslinking [3]. under conditions such as treatments at high temperature, alkaline ph, and enzyme activity, cross-linking can occur. during milk processing, many types of crosslinking can develop in proteins .the first type of cross-linking in milk proteins is interactions via formation of disulfide bonds [4]. besides, dehydroalanine formation may cause protein association by means of creation of lysinealanine and histidinealanine [5]. besides that, maillard reaction has the ability to induce protein aggregation through its advanced products [6]. many factors can effect maillard reaction ratio in foods such as temperature, humidity, ph, and nature of the reactants. temperature and humidity are the most important factors affecting mr occurrence during food processing and storage [7, 8]. role of induced maillard reactions in milk on yoghurt was studied and found that yoghurt made from milk with induced maillard product had better sensory properties and texture in comparison with control yoghurt [9]. transglutaminase has recently been applied in the food industry. the main application of this enzyme is to improve the functional properties of protein [10]. transglutaminase induce the reaction between the amino acid glutamine in proteins and various primary amines such as that of lysine. many researchers confirmed that transglutaminase is able to induce crosslinking in food proteins leading to change the known properties of foods like their nutritional, textural and sensory properties [11 12 13]. the purpose of this research aimed to examine the role of maillard reaction crosslinking and transglutaminase treatment on physiochemical and sensory properties of calcium–milk gel. 2. materials and methods 2.1. materials dried milk (al mudhish , 26% protein , 28% fat and 27% lactose ) produced by oman food stuff factory was purchased from local market . transglutaminase (microbial) was obtained from ajinomoto (japan). 2.2. modification of milk proteins by maillard reaction milk powder (26% protein, 28% fat and 27% lactose) was subjected to maillard reaction at 70 ᵒc and 65% relative humidity for 4 hours [14]. mailto:hassan.salieh@spu.edu.iq mailto:mohammedhamk@gmail.com mailto:jasim_salih@yahoo.com 64 2.3. enzymatic modification of milk milk powder and maillard modified milk powder was dissolved in water (13%) and transglutaminase was added (50 unit enzyme/g protein) .the solution was hold at 40±1 ᵒ c for 4 hours. 2.4. milk gels production reconstituted milk temperature was elevated to 85 °c and kept at this degree for 20 min, after that milk was cooled to 20 ±2 °c and 13.5mm calcium chloride was added , after that the temperature was raised to 85±1 °c and kept at this degree for 20 min for gel formation . gel samples were kept at 5-7 °c for 28 days. 2.5. electrophoresis electrophoresis in reducing conditions for samples were done following laemmli method [15]. 2.6. gel strength texture analyzer (ct3 (4500), brookfield engineering lab) at 20 ± 2 °c was used for the determination of the strength of milk gels. the instrument parameters were: a cylinder (radius = 1 cm) was press into gel to a depth of 2 cm with 5.0g trigger and speed of 0.1 cm/sec. 2.7. water holding capacity milk gel ability to hold water holding was recorded according to doleyres, et al. [16]. 2.8. spontaneous whey separation whey separated internally from gels was collected and measured [17]. 2.9. sensory evaluation gels were tested by 8 panelists from technical college of applied sciences. sensory evaluation degree was divided for the properties: flavor, body, texture, bitterness and color. 2.10. statistical analysis the results of all experiments were the mean of 3 replications. variations among treatments were tested using lsd [18].the level of significant was p < 0.05. 3. results and discussion 3.1. effect of transglutaminase and maillard reaction on milk proteins cross-linking in milk proteins can change the characteristics of proteins. protein polymerisation can improve the texture of yoghurt [19], cheeses and milk proteins films [10, 20]. electrophoresis for proteins in milk treated with transglutaminase, maillard reaction and transglutaminase + maillard reaction are summarized in fig. 1. sdspage bring to light that treatment of milk with transglutaminase ,maillard reaction and transglutaminase + maillard reaction cause the synthesis of aggregated protein bands. formation of these aggregates was a result of proteins crosslinking and these bands had higher molecular weights in comparison with native milk proteins. proteins polymerization bands were clear in milk samples treated with transglutaminase, maillard reaction and transglutaminase + maillard reaction, however the density of bands shows that the concentration of crosslinked proteins was lower in maillard reaction treated milk in comparison with other samples, probably due to the high glutamyl residues in milk proteins and the high content of lysine promote protein polymerization stimulated by tg [21]. in addition, in maillard reaction treated milk, the formation of advanced mr outcomes may cause synthesis of aggregated protein mixtures [22]. figure 1 reducing electrophoresis of milk after treatment with transglutaminase and maillard reaction, (1) control (2) transglutaminase treated milk (3) maillard modified milk (4) maillard and transglutaminase treated milk the high glutamyl residues in milk proteins and the high content of lysine promote protein polymerization stimulated by tg [21]. in addition, in maillard reaction treated milk, the formation of advanced mr outcomes may cause synthesis of aggregated protein mixtures [22]. electrophoresis results showed that crosslinking increased in milk samples treated with transglutaminase, maillard reaction and transglutaminase + maillard reaction and this crosslinking reduce the pore size of the protein network, which affect the textural properties of resulting gels [6]. 3.2. effect of transglutaminase and maillard reaction on ph of calcium milk gels changes in ph values of calcium milk gels during storage are given in figure (2). ph values of gel samples made from controlled milk , maillard modified milk, transglutaminase treated milk and maillard and transglutaminase treated milk were 6.21 , 5.61 , 6.13 and 6.09 respectively after 1 day of storage at 7 ᵒc , and during storage for 28 d, the ph of the gels prepared decreased to 5.87 , 5.05 ,5.82 and 5.72 respectively . 65 figure 2: ph of gel samples during storage 1 day ( ) and 28 day ( ). (c) control, (m) maillard modified milk, (tg) transglutaminase treated milk and (m+tg) maillard and transglutaminase treated milk. the low ph values of gel samples after 1 d of storage is caused by the effect of high temperature .on-nom, et al. [23] found that milk ph decreased from 6.67 to 6.08 after heat treatment at 80°c for 20 minute while chandrapala, et al. [24] observed a drop in milk ph from 6.55 to 6.09 after milk heating at 90°c for 10 minute. beside that the higher decrease in ph of maillard reactions gel samples is caused by the activity of maillard reactions in formation acids like formic acid (6). the decreases in ph of calcium milk gels during cold storage may result from ca+2 role in reducing negative charges of caseins [25]. 3.3. spontaneous whey separation of calcium milk gels spontaneous whey separation was determined by measuring the volume of whey separation on the top of the samples. spontaneous whey separation (%) of milk gel samples made from control, maillard modified milk, transglutaminase treated milk and maillard and transglutaminase treated milk were 1, 12, 0.5 and 0.4 ml respectively after 1 day of storage at 7 ͦ c .these values changed during storage at 7 ͦ c until they reach to 0.5, 10, 0.5 and 0.5ml respectively, after 28 day of storage (figure 3). figure 3 spontaneous whey separation (%) of gel samples, 1 day ( ) and 28 day ( ). (c) control, (m) maillard modified milk, (tg) transglutaminase treated milk and (m+tg) maillard and transglutaminase treated milk the high spontaneous whey separation (p <0.05) of calcium-induced milk gel sample made from maillard modified milk is due to the increase in its acidity which cause to form an open texture gel, leading to increase spontaneous whey separation and decrease whc [26]. 3.4. water holding capacity of calcium milk gels whc has been defined as the amount (g) of water held per 100 g of protein. the quantity of moisture kept by a protein depends upon its primary structure (especially the number of hydrophilic amino acids), conformation of proteins, surface properties and processing history [27]. the whc of the calcium–milk gels made with control, maillard modified milk, transglutaminase treated milk and maillard and transglutaminase treated milk were 21, 12, 38.5and 38%, respectively in the first day of storage (figure. 4). figure 4: water holding capacity (%) of gel samples.1 day ( ) and 28 day ( ). (c) control, (m) maillard modified milk, (tg) transglutaminase treated milk and (m+tg) maillard and transglutaminase treated milk. these results confirm the capability of calcium–milk gels to hold liquids and this binding increased with using transglutaminase in preparation. the whc of the gels increased with storage time for all treatments used. after 28 days at 7°c, the whc of calcium–milk gels made with control , maillard modified milk, transglutaminase treated milk and maillard and transglutaminase treated milk were 31, 14, 39.7and 42.2%, respectively. this enhancement in whc during storage is related to the effect of calcium in increasing the quantity and intensity of bonds between milk proteins [28].besides that, the higher whc in calcium–milk gels made with maillard and transglutaminase treated milk is related to the function of mr in induce interactions between milk proteins which make calcium–milk gel proteins network stronger and have more ability to keep water [9]. 3.5. gel strength of calcium milk gels determination of gel strength is an indicator to the intensity of gel structure [29]. gel strength (pa), is shown in figure 5. the gel strength of calcium–milk gels made with control, maillard modified milk, transglutaminase treated milk and maillard and transglutaminase treated milk were 733, 1110, 1125 and 1090 pa respectively after 1 day of storage at 7°c. these results indicate that gel strength increased with using maillard reaction and transglutaminase for preparation of the gels; this increase may be related to the effect of these treatments in increasing crosslinking between milk proteins [10 30]. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 c m tg m+tg p h 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 c m tg m+tg s p o n ta n e o u s w h e y se p a ra ti o n ( % ) -5 5 15 25 35 45 c m tg m+tg w a te r h o ld in g c a p a ci ty (% ) 66 figure 5: gel strength (pa) of gel samples 1 day ( ) and 28 day ( . ) (c) control, (m) maillard modified milk, (tg) transglutaminase treated milk and (m+tg) maillard and transglutaminase treated milk. gel strength increased gradually during storage at 7°c for all treatments used in this study. after 28 days of storage, gel strength of the gels manufactured with control, maillard modified milk, transglutaminase treated milk and maillard and transglutaminase treated milk reached 960, 1240, 1310 and 1315 pa, respectively. these results indicate that ca+2 role on formation of cross-linked milk proteins continues during storage ,and this result from the fact that the positive charges of ca+2 can neutralize casein negative charges and form bridges between casein micelles[25]. sensory properties of calcium–milk gels the sensory results of gel samples prepared from control, maillard modified milk, transglutaminase treated milk and maillard and transglutaminase treated milk during storage at 7 °c for 28 days is summarized in figure 6. figure 6: sensory evaluation scores (100) of gel samples. 1 day ( ) and 28 day ( ). (c) control, (m) maillard modified milk, (tg) transglutaminase treated milk and (m+tg) maillard and transglutaminase treated milk. sensory studies showed that the total scores after 1 day of storage at 7 °c were 80.6 ,75.3 ,84.3 and 83.1 for gels control , maillard modified milk, transglutaminase treated milk and maillard and transglutaminase treated milk respectively and these values changed to 80 , 78.5 ,90.5 and 89.5 at the end of storage period at 7 °c respectively . among all calcium–milk gels prepared in this study, the gel prepared from maillard modified milk got the lowest sensory scores by the panelists and this is related to separation of whey on the upper layer of gel. the increment in sensory evaluation score during storage is due to the effect of added calcium and millard reaction in induce cross linking of milk proteins which increase the bonding between milk proteins and make milk gel proteins network stronger [28 30].a similar result was obtained by [2] with calcium–milk gel prepared using 13.5 mm calcium chloride . 4. conclusions gels were made from control milk, maillard modified milk, transglutaminase treated milk and maillard and transglutaminase treated milk using high temperature treatment and ca+2 . treatment of milk with transglutaminase and maillard + transglutaminase increase the cross-linking between milk proteins and this improve gel strength, whc and sensory evaluation score of the gels. references [1] p. f. fox and p. l. h. mcsweeney, "dairy chemistry and biochemistry", blackie academic and professional publishers, london, new york, pp. 347-378,1998. 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[30] k. m. k. kebary and h. a. morris, "effect of homogenization of reconstituted nonfat dry milk and butter oil mixtures on curd formation and characteristics", cultured dairy products journal, vol. 25, pp 12-18,1990. http://www.google.iq/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=crc%20cr%c3%aft.%20rev.%20food%20sci.%20nutr.&source=web&cd=1&ved=0cckqfjaa&url=http%3a%2f%2fjournalseek.net%2fcgi-bin%2fjournalseek%2fjournalsearch.cgi%3ffield%3dissn%26query%3d0099-0248&ei=ultrubsqh_ht4qty9yg4cg&usg=afqjcnfabiwlp-sxd5kt0cuz32xfw0m_nw http://www.google.iq/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=crc%20cr%c3%aft.%20rev.%20food%20sci.%20nutr.&source=web&cd=1&ved=0cckqfjaa&url=http%3a%2f%2fjournalseek.net%2fcgi-bin%2fjournalseek%2fjournalsearch.cgi%3ffield%3dissn%26query%3d0099-0248&ei=ultrubsqh_ht4qty9yg4cg&usg=afqjcnfabiwlp-sxd5kt0cuz32xfw0m_nw http://www.cabdirect.org/search.html?q=do%3a%22cultured+dairy+products+journal%22  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 3 | issue 1 | june 2018 | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.1.11 received: march 12, 2018 | accepted: june 6, 2018 evaluation of four tomato genotypes resistance to root-knot nematode nask m. faraj rebin a. qadir crop protection crop protection bakrajo technical institute bakrajo technical institute sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq nasik.faraj@spu.edu.iq rebin.qadir @spu.edu.iq 53 abstract the root-knot nematode incited by meloidogyne incognita is one of the top diseases affecting tomato production worldwide. nematicides can be effectively used to control the disease, but is costly and harmful to human life and environmental pollution. alternatively resistant cultivars can be used inexpensive and eco-friendly. resistance evaluation of five tomato cultivars (red rock, king rock, presto f1, super queen and super regina) were tested using randomized complete block design with five replications and three nematode inoculums (0, 500 and 1500 egg/second juvenile per pot). the statistical analysis gave significant differences among the genotypes, nematode densities level with their interactions. among genotypes, red rock recorded significantly highest plant height (57.0) cm, presto f1 (37.8) cm, king rock (35.2) cm, super regina (30.1) cm and super queen showed lowest (25.4) cm. as an alternative for managing the nematodes, further experiments are required in the field for applying plant resistances. keywords: lycopersicon esculentum, nematode diseases, disease resistance, meloidogyne incognita. 1. introduction there are several types of vegetables that have high rate of consumption by human around the world and tomato (lycopersicon esculentum) known to be included as one of the wide used vegetable worldwide [1]. the crop has developed into number of agricultural species and can adjust a variety of environmental conditions, different production procedure and food applicability. tomato fruits in fresh or processed form have played a major role as an essential food commodity [2]. root-knot nematodes (rkn) are the most important parasitic in the tropics. meloidogyne incognita is one of the most widespread parasitic nematodes that infect plants in the tropical and subtropical regions [3, 4]. the genus meloidogyne occurs as a pest on a very wide range of crops globally causing up to 5 % yield losses [5] and annual loss of $157 billion globally [6]. meloidogyne spp. are able to destroy a big number of crops, especially veggies,in the tropical and sub-tropical and causes a destructive yield losses [7]. all control methods of rkns can be categorized under one or more principles. chemicals are used to eliminate nematodes but because of their cost and serious effects, nematicides are not attractive to farmers. use of resistant cultivars might be the environmental procedure to manage rkns. resistance against meloidogyne spp. has seen in several edible crops [8] but it is not applied frequently. the most essential evidence is the resistance against species (arenaria, incognita, and javanica) which returns to the meloidogyne in mi-gene bearing tomato type and are consumed extendedly. though, resistant breaking numbers of meloidogyne incognita and meloidogyne javanica have been reported in greece and spain [9, 10] and this may decrease the current application. resistance against some meloidogyne spp was reported in prunes root stocks in france and spain [11, 12]. resistance against m. javanica was also found in plum and peach root stocks from france, italy and spain [13]. the aim of this research was to identify resistance against m. incognita among five different tomato cultivars. 2. materialsand methods 2.1. experiment: the research was set up in a farmer greenhouse located in village (grdabor) near piramagrun mountain 30 km west of sulaimani governorate, ikr/iraq. after preparation of the research requirement, the experiment was set up on 15th july 2017. 2.2. source of nematodes: nematode inoculums were separated from the roots of infected tomatoes plant collected from infested fields of sulaimani. based on the morphological observations the nematodes species identified due to the perineal patterns images it was proved by one egg mass of a specific culture. from tomato root grown in greenhouse only 30 females were separated. the separation of the perineal patterns were assessed according to [14]. 2.3. propagation of tomato genotype seedlings: seeds of five tomato cultivars (red rock, king rock, presto f1, super queen and super regina) were separately planted in polystyrene seedling trays filled with sterilized soil. seedlings were taken care of by daily watering and weekly fertilizing in the green house. soil for the experiments pots (2 l) were composed of sand with a percentage of 65%, 25% clay and 10% o.m. tomato seedlings (five-week old) were transplanted into the pots. 54 2.4. nematode inoculums: infected tomato plant by southern root-knot nematodes was clearing from soil derbies. the galled root was slit into small pieces and shacked manually for 2-3 min in beaker contains 500 ml of 0.5% sodium hypochlorite (naocl) [15]. m. incognita eggs and juvenile's collections were standardized and concentrated according to [16]. tomato seedlings with age of 5 weeks which 7 days passed their transplanting into the pots, were inoculated with 3 levels m. incognita, control (0 second juveniles /eggs pot), low (500 second juveniles/eggs pot) and high (1500 second juveniles /eggs pot). in a triangle shape 3 holes were dinged with size of 2cm from the roots. 2.5. data collection: this experiments plant was harvested (55) days by the period of the nematode inoculation. the plant parts were separated from the roots by cutting off at the level of the ground then the vegetative parts of the plant were separated individually in a paper bags. by gently shaking the plants were washed and stored at a refrigerator at 4 ˚c. plant height (ph) cm, fresh weight per plant (fwp) gm, dry weight per plant (dwp) gm and root gall index (gi) 0 – 5 scale; where 0=no knots (highly resistant), 1=1-2 knots (resistant), 2=3-10 knots (moderately resistant) , 3=11-30 knots (moderately susceptible), 4=31-100 knots (susceptible), and 5= over 100 knots/ plant root (highly susceptible). by using red coloring stains the system of the root were colored [18], egg mass index (emi) were checked by applying a (0 5) scale, where 0=no egg masses, 1= 1-2 egg masses, 2=3-10 egg masses, 3=11-30 egg masses, 4=31-100 egg masses, and 5= >100 egg mass / root system [17]. 2.6. statistical analysis experiment was designed by randomized completely blocks design (rcbd) with five replications. all the data were analyzed by (anova) by (jmp program from sas version 7.0.1). minimum variation lsd at (0.05) was used for comparing mean differences. the figures were drawing by graph pad program version 7.0. 3. results 3.1. identification: the morphological characteristics of perineal pattern are similar to m. incognitaas described by [19]. meloidogyne incognita perineal pattern was oval shaped to round, striate usually wavy, in most cases with raised, squared, dorsal arch, lateral field weakly demarcated by forked striae (fig 1). figure 1:m. incognita detected photo. 3.2. experiment: anova analysis indicates significant effect of tomato varieties on all parameters (p≤0.05). however, different nematode levels (n) affected ph, fwp, dwp, gi and emi significantly. additionally, there was a high significant influence between interaction nematode level (n) × tomato cultivars (c) for all parameters (table 1). pooled data from appreciation marginal means (lsd) test, the ph was recorded relatively high for rr (577.000) cm and significantly reduced for sq (25.400) cm. the fwp and dwp were statistically high in rr (50.133 and 6.100) gm respectively, the minimum decrease fwp was in sq (29.600) gm, for dwp was recorded low in kr (3.806) gm. among all tomato genotypes the gi and emi were recorded the lowest in rr (1.200, 1.866), respectively. on the other hand, the gi was showed high in sr (3.333), then the emi was showed high in ss and kr (3.333) (table 2). data from nematodes densities level shown in table 3. inoculums densities of meloidogyne incognita significantly affected morphological attribution of tomato plants. with an increase in the inoculums level significant decreases happened in the all parameters. the n1 was relatively recorded high measurements for all morphological attributes, except gi and emi were uninfected. the infected plants decrease dwp and increase gi and emi by increasing inoculums level respectively. however, there were no significant differences between inoculated treatments fwp and dwp. table 1: anova for the effect of four genotypes and their 3 population levels of meloidogyne incognita with interaction on ph, fwp, dwp, gi and emi. (p≤0.05). parameters ph (cm) fwp (gm) dwp (gm) gall index egg mass index source df f-value sig. f-value sig. f-value sig. f-value sig. f-value sig. cultivar (c) 4 276.6571 0.000 94.9955 0.000 76.0714 0.000 153.3636 0.000 146.5625 0.000 nematode level (n) 2 68.4935 0.000 39.5495 0.000 77.6126 0.000 1054.162 0.000 1257.692 0.000 cultivar * nematode level(c*n) 8 4.4298 0.000 5.2642 0.000 8.7149 0.000 24.7027 0.000 48.4862 0.000 * lsd for treatments were significant at (p≤0.05) 55 table 2: mean of selected genotypes for yield and rkn resistance parameter (means ±sd). tomato cultivars ph (cm) fwp (gm) dwp (gm) gall index egg mass index super regina(sr) 30.133(d)± 6.534 38.466(b)±10.120 4.473(b)± 1.420 3.266(d)± 2.400 3.333(c)± 2.440 super queen (sq) 25.400(e)±6.870 29.600(c)± 4.980 4.053(c)± 0.570 2.800(c)± 2.111 2.333(b)± 1.760 king rock(kr) 35.266(c)± 8.300 36.933(b)± 4.680 3.806(c)± 0.720 3.333(d)± 2.440 3.333(c)± 2.440 red rock(rr) 57.000(a)±3.760 50.133(a)±2.670 6.100(a)± 0.870 1.200(a)± 1.010 1.866(a)± 0.740 presto f1(pf) 37.800(b)± 2.910 31.000(c)± 3.800 3.373(d)± 0.360 2.466(b)± 1.880 2.133(b)± 1.680 *datum are means of five replications where used to compare among plant genotypes. ph, fwp, dwp, gi: emi. *datum means with equal letter none differ significant by lsd at (p≤0.05). table 3:impact of inoculums of meloidogyne incognita for yield and rkn resistance parameter (means ±sd). nematode inoculum ph (cm) fwp (gm) dwp (gm) gall index egg mass index 0 j2s (n1) 43.480(a)± 10.420 42.520(a)± 8.810 5.172(a)± 1.460 0.000(a)± 0.000 0.000(a)± 0.000 500 j2s (n2) 34.560(b)± 12.900 35.200(b)± 8.820 4.224(b)± 1.000 3.640(b)± 1.380 3.400(b)± 1.530 1500 j2s (n3) 33.320(b)± 11.510 33.960(b)± 8.780 3.688(c)± 0.800 4.200(c)± 1.120 3.800(c)± 1.380 *datum are means of five replications where used to compare among plant genotypes. ph, fwp, dwp, gi and emi. *datum means with equal letter none differ significant by lsd at (p≤0.05). lsd tests showed that all the parameters were decreased by increasing nematode inoculums level. gi and emi were not founded in all non-infested plants (fig 2). the morphological features of tomato genotypes were found to be increasing at healthy plants compared to low level and high level of nematode inoculums. in sq cultivar , the ph increases in non infested plants (34) cm following by low level (21.4) cm and high level (20.8) cm. fwp and dwp were recorded great at healthy plants (35.2) and (4.46) gm, low level (27.8) (3.96) gm and high level (25.8) (3.74) gm, respectively. also gi and emi were increasing by increasing level of inoculums, low level (3.8) (3.2) and high level (4.6) (3.8) respectively (fig 2a). in rr genotype, the plants without nematode level, parameters such as ph, fwp and dwp recorded high values compared to other levels (60.8) cm , (52.8) gm, (7.12)gm respectively; the low level inoculums (ph: 57.2 cm, fwp: 49.4 gm, dwp: 6.06 gm, gi: 1.4 and emi: 1.2), and high level (ph: 53 cm, fwp: 48.2 gm, dwp: 5.12, gi 2.2 and emi: 1.4) (fig 2b). the ph, fwp and dwp of sr cultivar healthy plants were showed high values (36.6) cm, (51) gm and (6.26) gm respectively. in addition, ph, fwp, dwp, gi and emi by low level and high level application (27.2 cm, 31.6 gm, 3.9 gm, 4.8 and 5) (26.6 cm, 32.8 gm, 3.26 gm, 5 and 5) respectively (fig 2c). in kr genotype, maximum value morphological attributes observed in non infected plants ph (46) cm, fwp (39.6) gm and dwp (4.48) gm. gi and emi were recorded high value for both levels of nematode (5). ph (30.5) cm, fwp (36.2) gm and dwp (3.7) gm for low level. although, high level inoculums recorded low value for ph (29) cm, fwp (35.4) gm and dwp (3.24) gm (fig 2d). finally pf genotype, the plant without nematode level, parameters such as ph, fwp and dwp recorded high (40) cm, (34.4) gm and (3.54) gm respectively. the low level inoculums showed low ph (36.2) cm, fwp (31) cm, dwp (3.5) gm, gi (3.2) and emi (2.6), compared to other nematode inoculums level the high level of nematode recorder lowest ph (37.2) cm, fwp (26.6) gm, dwp (3.08) gm, also showed highest gi (4.2) and emi (3.8) (fig 2e). 4. discussion the sustainable protected agricultural glasshouses face several nematodes challenge, particularly [20]. the rkn, m. incognita, in the tropical and subtropical origins a ruinous disorder of many crops owns a spreader host range (crops and weed) but not all are similarly good at sustaining nematode reproduction. nematicides are usually expensive. they may lead to environmental pollution and their toxic residues may accumulate in edible plant products. therefore, employ resistant genotype with methods of nematode control will shift the farmer from the concept of control to the concept of management. results showed that number of galls indices were high on the root systems of the highly tolerance cultivar compared to susceptible and moderately susceptible. minimum gall indices were recorded in the moderately resistant and resistant cultivars. plant ability to inhibit growth or reformation of the nematode generally based on the resistance. less and no gall indices indicated on highly resistant plant. plant with less or mid ranges of resistibility response results a moderate reproductions amount however, a susceptible plant enable normal nematode growth to occur, and the occurrence of any disease that follows [21]. in the present experiment variability has been noticed in emi and gi of m. incognita on five tomato genotypes. susceptible cultivars showed great number of galls while lowest on moderately resistance and resistance genotypes. when comparing the resistant cultivar and the susceptible one the development of the rkn eggs are poor [22]. however, the number of eggs is based on the quantity of the nematodes that is in the maturity reproductive stage and then the measurement of the resistance provided only once. the highly tolerance host plants permitted j2s to penetrate the roots, is at the development stage and formed eggs while, the plants that are resistible stopped their development for a while and as well stopped their reproductions. [23]. in the whole 5 genotypes of tomato that screened from the resistance to susceptible and based on the whole genotypes a huge differences revealed in their reaction to rkns. one cultivar (tomato rr) was found to be resistance, 56 and two others (sq) (pf) were moderately resistance, while the last two (sr) (kr) were susceptible. in this study growth parameters given significant results with the amount of resistances against nematode. in tolerance plants galls are maintained by females of meloidogyne and are with highly cellular modification. the highly tolerance cultivar showed maximum decrease in plant yield compared to moderately susceptible and susceptible cultivars [24]. resistant genotypes showed better results concerning growth. the conclusion of the research work detect that meloidogyne incognita quelled the tomato development with boost in inoculums and related decrease in the plant development. harm reasoned by meloidogyne incognita raised by raising inoculums thus there was raising harm among rising nematode densities and plant yield. previous researches study have screened tomato cultivars to rkns [25] and reported among 14 tomato genotypes only four of them resistant against m. incognita. [26] reported different response of cotton cultivars against rkns and could help to minimize losses by the pest.[27] found okra genotypes resistant to tolerance in their response to m. incognita. figure 2: effect of different nematode inoculums (0, 500, 1500 egg/ j2 per plant) on different tomato genotypes, plant morphological measurement contain ph cm, fwp gm, dwp gm. the figure showed nematode resistance parameter, gall index and egg mass index (mean value ± standard error). 0 j 2 s 5 0 0 j 2 s 1 5 0 0 j 2 s 0 1 0 2 0 3 0 4 0 5 0 s u p e r q u e e n n e m a t o d e i n o c u l u m s l e v e l p a ra m et er m ea n v a lu e 0 j 2 s 5 0 0 j 2 s 1 5 0 0 j 2 s 0 2 0 4 0 6 0 k i n g r o c k n e m a t o d e i n o c u l u m s l e v e l p a ra m et er m ea n v a lu e 0 j 2 s 5 0 0 j 2 s 1 5 0 0 j 2 s 0 2 0 4 0 6 0 8 0 r e d r o c k n e m a t o d e i n o c u l u m s l e v e l p a ra m et er m ea n v a lu e 0 j 2 s 5 0 0 j 2 s 1 5 0 0 j 2 s 0 1 0 2 0 3 0 4 0 5 0 p r e s t o f 1 n e m a t o d e i n o c u l u m s l e v e l p a ra m et er m ea n v a lu e 0 j 2 s 5 0 0 j 2 s 1 5 0 0 j 2 s 0 2 0 4 0 6 0 s u p e r r e g i n a n e m a t o d e i n o c u l u m s l e v e l p a ra m et er m ea n v a lu e a b c d e p la n t h e ig h t( c m ) f r e s h w e ig h t/p l a n t( g ) d r y w e ig h t/p la n t( g ) g a ll i n d e x e g g m a s s 57 5. conclusion the findings of current study showed that there are statistically differences among tomato genotypes in their response to meloidogyne incognita. rr genotype was found resistant. pf and sq were found moderately resistant. the cultivation of moderately resistant and resistant genotypes would help to minimize the losses caused by rkns. the approach will also help to diminish environmental pollution hazards and keep management processes more economical. moreover, these genotypes could be used in breeding programs to introduce new resistant genotypes to rkns. references [1] j. c. norman, "tropical vegetable crops. arthur h. stockwell ltd, ilfracombe, great britain," pp. 52-77, 1992. 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[26] m. a. khan, s. a. khan, i. ul-haq and r. w. khan, “evaluation of resistance to root knot nematode (meloidogyne incognita) in cottoncultivars,” transylvanian review, vol. 24, no. 11, p. 32013208, 2016. [27] s. mohanta andk.c. mohanty, ''screening of okra germplasms/varieties for resistance against meloidogyne incognita''. j. plant prot. environ, 9, 66-68, 2012.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 3 | issue 1 | june 2018 | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.1.9 received: march 6, 2018 | accepted: may 6, 2018 ovarian development of house fly (musca domestica l.) (diptera: muscidae) karim m. ahmed havall m. amin crop protection dep. crop protection dep. bakrajo technical institute bakrajo technical institute sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimany, iraq sulaimany, iraq karim.ahmed@spu.edu.iq havall.amin@spu.edu.iq 45 abstract: the ovarian development of musca domestica, was examined under light microscope. there are two ovaries in the adult female of fly. each ovary was formed of about 60-70 polytrophic ovarioles. the ovariole in cross sections organized in several circles. from cytological observations, ovary development and oogenesis could be divided in to 6 stages; ovaries with no noticeable follicle cells existing were characterized as (stage1), the follicle-growing stages considered as (stage2, 3), the vitellogenen in stages (stages4, 5(and mature egg stage (stage6). the oocyte initiated development at first stages of oogenesis; the nurse cells and follicle epithelial cells were considered to fulfill important functions with regard to the growth of the oocyte. keywords: musca domestica, muscidae, ovarian development, oogenesis. 1. introduction musca domestica is the insect that breeds in a wide diversity of organic substance mainly domestic waste which affects animal husbandry and environment. house flies consider a significant pest associated with transmission of numerous human and animal pathogens [1, 2]. they caused great amount of diseases like cholera, typhoid, paratyphoid, salmonellosis, polio, coxsackie virus, hepatitis, amoebae dysentery, and bacillus dysentery [3, 4] as well as transmission of shigellosis and other diarrhea disease [5]. the house fly one of the sanitary importance, show rapid development of the ovary after emergence and numerous eggs are laid during the adult stage, studies on the ovarian development of house fly are necessary for comprehension of life cycle and for analysis of the action of chemosterilants [6]. the ovary of insect are organs bilaterally situated and consist of a number of ovarioles categorized as meroistic (teletrophic and polytrophic) or panoistic. the simplest ovary is panoistic type and there are no trophocyte or nurse cells, while the meroistic ovariole contains both types of cells. in panoistic ovary oocyte cells are supplied by the epithelial follicle cells, while in merostic ovary nutrition is supplied by both trophocyte and follicular cells [7, 8]. panoistic ovary are exist in stoneflies, fleas, apterygotes insects, grasshoppers, stoneflies, crickets, termites, dragonflies and some beetles [8, 9], meroistic type are present in butterflies, moth, and flies [10]. ovaries of insect are consist of tubular parts termed ovarioles. generally, the developed ovarioles comprise of three distinic regions: (1) the terminal thread, which connects the ovariole to the fat bodies; (2) germarium region, where mitotic divisions of the germ cells occurred in this region; and (3) vitellarium region, employed by lined arrangement of the ovarian parts consist of somatic cell and germ line called ovarian follicles. adult insect females naturally produce a great amount of eggs to transmission their genesis and to that end they participate significant resources [11]. in the period of oogenesis, carbohydrates, lipids and proteins other substances are commonly accumulated in the development oocyte [12]. synthesis of yolk proteins is a vital process for the growth of the egg. in this time, quick growth of oocyte arises owing to yolk substance accumulation [13]. vitellogenesis, is synthesizing a cluster of proteins creating outside the ovary, is the chief constituent of the yolk and deposited as vitellin in oocytes [14]. insect ovaries are three kinds, meroistic telotrophic, meroistic, telotrophic and panoistic [15, 16]. in three kinds of ovary follicle epithialial cells enclosed the germ cell and interrelate with it closely throughout oocyte growing. panoistic ovary is the primitive in morphology, comprising of an oocyte encircled by a follicle epithial cell layer. other meroistic ovaries have more complex cytological origins and physiologies. oogonium divides in to produce cystocytes which are group of related cells remain joined by cytoplasmic channels. single cell of the cystocytes develops to oocyte and rest developed to nurse cells. trophocytes (nurse cell) straight donate macromolecules substances and cytoplasm to the growing oocyte throughout vitellogenesis. investigation of reproductive system of insect female is imperative founded on the point that such organs as the ovary goal to precisely yield several progeny in every generation in the somewhat short life time of adult insects. previous investigation has been showed to examine the ultrastructure insect ovaries in various species (cochliomyia hominivora)[17]; the snipe fly(rhagio lineola)[18]; (tinearia altemata) [19]; dragon fly [20]; apis mellifera [21] and haemato pinssuis [22]. in order to fill gap of information of development of this insects, the purpose of this work was hence to examine the ovaries this insect by light microscope. this should give insight in to ovarian morphology and likewise into 46 consecutive growth of ovarian. availability of such facts would be valuable as biological information about musca domestica which might be useful toward fly control labors and applications of the field forensic entomology. 2. methods and materials 2.1. fly rearing adult flies were collected from local area using a sweep net and reared in laboratory at 25±2co rh40-50%, photoperiod 12:12 l: d [23]. flies kept in typical boxes of 40 cm x 30cm x 30 cm. the frame of the boxes with 25 meshes and the base was of hard board. the front side with long sheath cloth for purpose of feeding and cleaning [24]. adult flies were supplied with food consisting of sugar solution 10% and powdered milk. milk and wheat flour mixture was prepared at the weight proportion 3:1 and 50gm of this mixture were placed in small pot as an oviposition site [25]. 2.2. light microscope analysis to evaluate the alterations in growing of the insect ovaries by light microscope (motic, china), adult females raised from the same group were forgone by transporting them from boxes through a tube into a refrigerator at 4co and left for 10min [26]. females isolated from male adults of house flies by pressing gently on the abdomen of fresh killed fly which cause the ovipositor extended and determined the sex of fly [27]. this process repetitive everyday commencement with anew arisen female adult flies (12 hours old) till the females become 5days old. following the forgone adult female flies fixed for 24h. in carnoys fluid [28]. flies fixed in graded ethanolic concentrations (10%, 30%, 50%, 70%, 80%, 90%, 95% and 100%) which are prepared by dilution from absolute ethanolic solution to attained dehydration. then the flies were placed into xylene to attain clearness and fixed in paraffin [29]. flies were successively sectioned at thickness of 5µm and then sections of tissues stained with eosin and haematoxylin to reveal overall histological alterations. all sections were exanimate by compound microscope (motic, china) and photographed using amounted camera (amscope 500china). 2.3. stages of ovarian development as the oogenesis is synchronous in house fly, the sorting of ovarian growth was founded on the situation of the greatest progressive follicles when conveying individuals to a specific stages of oogenesis [30, 31]. ovaries with no noticeable follicle cells existing were considered stage1 and stage2 initiated when the development oocyte totally encircled with epithelial follicle cells. the trophocytes situated at the frontal end of the follicle, while oocyte situated at the posterior end (stage3). the terminal oocyte enlarged in size quickly throughout the vitellogenesis period, and yolk protein substance deposited in to growing oocyte (stage4). at the end of the vitellogenesis once the secretion of chorion was finished, trophocytes (nurse cells) and epithelial follicle cells disintegrated (stage5). the mature oocyte is enveloped in the chorion. oocyte in this period attained full grown of normal egg shape, as the process of ovulation continuous, mature egg expelled from ovaries, while vacant follicle remnants contracted and distorted creating sphere-shaped body recognized as corpus luteum, and the existing of follicle remnants in ovary is the indication of (stage 6). 3. results a pair of ovaries was observed on house fly (musca domestica l.), each one with (60-70) ovarioles. the ovaries are white in color; abundantly provided with the trachea and located ventral-dorsally in abdomen cavity on both side of hind gut. posteriorly all ovarioles releases in to the lateral oviduct. medially the lateral oviducts unite medially to make the common oviduct. each ovaries of mature female house fly consist of about 60-70 ovarioles which are organized in 4-5 circles (fig.1a). the dorsal ventral directions of the follicle point to arranged in different directions (fig.1b). immediately after emergence the ovarioles is white in color, glowing and minor forms of about (0.25mm) in length. the ovariole gradually increases in size and the egg in the ordinary situation takings four days to developed and become mature and the egg laying normally begins five days after of emergence of flies. growth of follicle could be divided in to 6 stages from the cytological and morphological features in relation to the period after emergence. these stages were the follicle-differentiating stages (stage1), the follicle growing stages (stage2, 3) the vitellogenic stages (stage 4, 5) and the mature egg stage: stage(6). stage1: no noticeable follicle cells existing in ovary were considered as stage1 (fig.1c). stage2: the primary follicle differentiated from the germarium, which was almost spherical in shape and small in size which distinguish in to single minor oocyte and enlarged in size and the oocyte was completely encircled with follicle epithelial cells (fig.1d). stage3: the follicle has become ellipsoidal and the oocyte hypertrophic, the size of follicle enlarged. the oocyte initiated to increase in size inhabiting about one third of the egg follicle and become entirely disconnected from the residual of nurse cells, meanwhile the nurse cells occupied the remnant two thirds (fig.1e). 47 figure 1: maturation stages of house fly ovary (a) c.s. ovary of the adult female of housefly (4x). (b) l.s. ovary of the adult female of house fly (4x). (c) stage 1 : c.s. of germanium (germ region) of the ovary of female house fly (100x). (d) c.s. first follicle (10x). (e) c.s. of the second stage of follicle (10x), third stage of oocyte, nurse cells situated at frontal end of the oocyte (40x). c.s.: cross section; l.s.: longitudinal section; oc: oocyte; o: ovariole; fc: follicular cell; od: ovary duct; c: cystocyte; gc: germ cell; no: oocyte nucleus; nc: nurse cell nucleus stage4: the follicle has become elongated and oocyte has initiated the development. follicular epithelial cells are columnar; those around the nurse cells extremely thin. the basal oocyte increases in size and becomes elongated at the beginning of vitellogenesis (fig.2a). the epithelial cells become columnar, resulting in intracellular spaces in the follicular epithelium and separate from the ooplasm forming spaces all along the epithelial lining oocyte (fig.2b). in this stage also the nurse cells have attained their maximum sizes with development circular nuclei have been enlarged, from anterior part to the boundary of the oocyte, and initiation of vitellogenesis in the oocyte (fig.2c). stage5: the oocyte has reached its maximum size (fig.2d); the nucleus of oocyte situated at the frontal part of oocyte and just beneath the vitelline membrane. as the consequence of the elongation of the oocyte, the epithelial follicle cells were became lengthened due to the expanding surface of the oocyte, the nurse cells have degenerated in the anterior portion of the oocyte (fig.2, e). protein, lipid, and glycogen are deposited abundantly in the ooplasm, forming yolk spheres. dna has been concentrated in the degenerated nurse cells (fig.2f). follicular epithelium that finally becomes thinner and secreted chorine over the oocyte. 25 µm 25 µm 25 µm 25 µm 25 µm 48 figure 2: maturation stages of house fly ovary (a) c.s. of oocyte that become elongated, stage 4 (40 x). (b) c.s. of oocyte the epithelial cells become columnar, (100x). (c) c.s. of the oocyte with big nurse cell nuclei (100x). (d) stage5. l.s. of the follicle, cells have degenerated (10x). (e) l.s. of the oocyte, the nurse cell degenerated (40x). (f) l.s. of nurse cell (100x). c.s.: cross section; l.s.: longitudinal section; oc: oocyte; is: inter cellular space; fc: follicular cell; os: ovariole sheath; s: space between the oocyte and follicular cell; nc: nurse cell ; od: ovary duct; dn: degenative nurse cell; n: nucleus of nurse cell. stage 6: the mature oocyte is enveloped in the chorion (fig.3a). oocyte attained full size and shape and resemble the typical mature egg (fig.3b). the follicle increased in size. due to the disappearance and degeneration of nurses cells, oocyte only remain and occupied the follicle. the mature oocyte consists of three main parts: the chorion, the vitelline membrane, and yolk mass. the yolk bulk substance employed the entire inside the vitelline membrane (fig.3c). two types of granular yolk spheres exist as big spheres and minor spheres. the epithelial follicle cells extinct after the construction of the vitelline membrane and complete deposition of the yolk. the excretion and deposition of the chorion followed, and it was consisted of the internal thin homogenous layer, the endo chorion (enc), which appeared to be consisted of granular filament layer , and the exochoiron (exc), which was thicker than the endo chorion (fig.3d). the follicular cell between the nurse cell and oocyte has disappeared. 4. discussion the study focused on the biological reproduction of insect pests concerning sexual development is of greatest importance if flies are successful to be controlled. this is particularly factual for those species able to creating great numbers of progenies by females. in this respect, the present study was dedicated to studying the development and morphology ovary of the female reproductive ovaries of house fly (musca domestica l.) using light microscope. musca domestica comparable to other insects has polytrophic ovaries in which the ovary contains large number mature eggs which are ready for fertilization for production of progeny. in deterring the development stages ovarian in flies, little variation arises among the several researches upon evaluation of the number stages of ovarian and variable description that have been stated [26]. the present work revealed 25 µm 25 µm 25 µm 25 µm 25 µm 25 µm 49 figure 3: maturation stages of house fly ovary (a) c.s. of the oocyte, the mature oocyte is enveloped in the chorion. (10x). (b) l.s. of the oocyte, the follicle reached of typical egg shape (10x). (c) c.s. of the oocyte (40x). (d) c.s. of chorion mature egg (100x). (e) mature egg (4x). c.s: cross section; l.s.:longitudinal section; oc: oocyte; od: ovary duct; ch: chorion; ym: yolk material; vm: vitelline membrane; lg: large granule; sm: small granule; exc: exochoiron; end: endochoiron; ae: anterior end; pe: posterior end; lcr: longitudinal curved ridge. that from cytological observation of oogenesis in female house fly ovary could be divided in to 6 stages; ovaries without noticeable follicles characterized as (stage1), the follicle growing stages (stage2, 3) the vitellogenic stages (stages4,5) and the mature egg stage(stage6). this finding corroborates with [32] which reported that the ovarian development and oogenesis in musca domestica path through progressive (6) stages in the ovary, and also corroborates with [33, 34, 35] who stated that the oogenesis was subdivided in to 6 stages in musca domestica. in cross sections the ovarioles of house fly are organized in 4-5 circles. this in agreement with [32] which reported in cross sections, the ovarioles of female of house fly is organized in 4-5 circles. the first period of oogenesis was signed by appearance a new follicle and leaving the germarium region, the follicular epithelial cells were organized around anew formed follicle and the follicle was incompletely disconnected from germarium region and the oocyte was not enclosed by epithelial cells. related notes were stated by [36, 37] for a. aegypti, c. pipiens quinquefasciaatus, and a. gambiae and by [38] culex pipiens quinquefasciaatus. in the normal course of development of considerable changes have been observed in the epithelial follicle cells of the ovary of musca domestica. this in agreement with [39, 40] have also observed the appearance of clear spaces between the apical regions of the follicular cells in melanopus sanguinipes( orthoptera, acrididae) and dragon fly pantala flensavesc(anisoptera, libellulidae). in house fly, the basal oocyte increases in size and become spherical at the beginning of vitellogenesis. the epithelial cell becomes columnar, resulting in intra cellular separate from the ooplasm forming spaces at the time of vitellogenesis. this finding corroborates with [41]. the presence of yolk granules at the apex of follicular cells in present evidence for the intracellular pathway for protein accumulation inside the oocyte. investigators like [42, 43] have also reported that the proteins from the hemolymph are transported through the intracellular spaces of the epithelium in to the developing oocytes during 25 µm 25 µm 25 µm 25 µm 25 µm 50 vitellogenesis of the insects. it is opined that the enlargement of the inter follicular channels is one of the vitellogenic events in the follicular cells at the one set of vitellogenesis. according to [44] the potency of the inter follicular channels is directly correlated with increasing in the vitellogenin uptake. follicular epithelial cells cover the development oocyte, throughout yolk synthesis, the epithelial cells of separate follicles proceeded from columnar shape to cuboid shape to squamous and the epithelial follicle cells lengthened owing to the development of the oocyte, the gathering of yolk substance in oocyte, which in its continuing enlargement drives the nurse cells up to the frontal end of the follicle. in future stages, the follicle develops slower and packed with yolk granules which become considerably bigger and opaque. these observations were consistent with those [45] and with [38] for culex pipiens quinquefasciaatus. [46] indicated that the epithelial follicicle cells of mansonia species in young follicle are cuboidal in shape, when the follicle lengthened, the epithelial cells increasingly shrinks in thickness. at last stages of development, the epithelial cells were very thin. based on [47], through out of the development mosquito ovary stages, the epithelium cells became gradually thinner and is lastly reduced in to clusters collapsed cells hard to be noticed. this also determined in the oocyte of melanogrylus desertus, columnar epithelium cells in previtellogenic oocyte slowly altered from cuboidal shape to squamous shape when yolk synthesis proceed [48]. the processes of vitellogenesis stage was signed by the presence of nurse cell at the frontal end of the growing oocyte, and continued until the whole growth egg shell (chorion). a great quantity of yolk protein substance was accumulated in to the growing oocyte throughout this stage, which produced a quick alteration in the ovarian organization, and the nucleus of oocyte became less visible, meanwhile it was closely enclosed by yolk substance. types of the terminal follicle, in combination with the index of ovarian, provided precise determination for the stages of oogenesis and were reliable with the finding of [49]. the house fly oocyte terminate the development after the nurse cell had disintegrated after the yolk protein synthesis was ended, and the development of creating chorion (egg shell) initiated, this phenomenon would indicate that the function of the nurse cells was strictly related to oocyte development, when the growth of oocyte complete, the outcome of nurse cells were remain outside of the chorion, after egg laying the relics of the nurse cells were seen in the ovary these observations were consistent with [37] for culex pipiens quinquefasciaatus. 5. conclusion histological observation of ovarian development of house fly revealed that the evidence from present work not only funds the earlier finding of the quick ovarian growing of this insect, but also ability to create various progeny or eggs in every generation. evidence from present work pertaining to the ability of quick ovarian maturation, great production of progeny, and moderately long lifetime of this insect are of special anxiety if fly control plans are being considered. particularly essential in regions with ambient temperature like tropical subtropical and in regions that musca domestica could be associated in the medical transmission of pathogens. reference [1] a.malik, n.singh, s.satya, “house fly (musca domestica): a review of control strategies for a challenging pest,” journal of environmental science and health, b.42:453-469, 2007. 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[46] w.a.samarawickrema, “changes in the ovarariole of mansonia (mansonioides) mosquitoes in relation to age determination,” ann. trop. med. parasitol., 56:110-126, 1962. [47] d.s.bertram, “the ovary and ovarioles of mosquitoes. monogrser world health,” 47: 195-210, 1962. [48] c.ozlem, “oocyte development in melano gryllus desertus (pallas, 1771) (orthoptera: gryllidae),” turk j. zool., 41:203208, 2017. [49] p.e.kendra, w.s.montgomery, n.d.epsky, r.r.heath, “assessment of female reproductive status in anastrepha suspense (diptera: tephritidae),” florida entomologist, 89: 144151, 2006 d.valle, “vitellogenesis in insect and other groups-a review,” mem. inst. oswaldo cruz, 88:1-26, 1993.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 3 | issue 1 | june 2018 | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.1.62 application of neuroscience on architecture: the emergence of new trend of neuroarchitecture mohammad reza maleki department of architecture sanandaj branch, islamic azad university sanandaj, iran mr.maleki@iausdj.ac.ir qader bayzidi department of architecture sanandaj branch, islamic azad university sanandaj, iran q_bayzidi@srbiau.ac.ir abstract: understanding and knowing neuroscience and its sub-branches applications as well as their interconnections has a significant effect on science development. simoltaneous application of neurology, psychology and architecture gain a new trend named “neuroarchitecture” or “basic nerve architecture”. this paper tries to consider this new trend through qualitative research and descriptive analysis method based on library information analysis. in this way current paper firstly deals with this subject background and neuroscience definition and then refers to entry areas of this subject to other sciences. then basic information related to human brain and measurement instruments of neurology science will be presented. this paper deals with neuroscience on economy, education, aesthetics, and environment psychology in architecture areas. at the end concluding discussion will be presented through analytic model of neuroscience influence on architecture (neuroarchitecture) and its application method. keywords: neuroscience, psychology, neuroarchitecture, architecture, human brain. 1. introduction we are witnessing significant growth of neuroscientists capabilities. these specialists directly investigate cerebral cortex activities on various time, places and frequencies. on the other hand integration of psychology and physiology leads to technique incorporation resulted to amazing progress of understanding brain activities and its different parts. today many social sciences researchers use nervous imaging as a standard instrument or approach. this concept application reaches the peak when economy science begins to use nervous imaging techniques on its researches [1]. new method and combination of neurology with other fields has been developed after disappointing from traditional methods. neuroarchitecture or basic nerve architecture is the result of integration of 3 fields of neurology, psychology and architecture which studies effective, sensitive, recognitive and affective reactions to environmental stimulus. researches measures brain activities changes by using technologies like magnetic resonance imaging and eye tracking method and other ways to help us to understand effects of artifacts environments on human behavior in his surrounding effectively or which parts of brain involves in planning and creativity process.authors are encouraged to use referencing tools to automate the references and citations. 2. research process 2.1. resarch questions 1.what is neuroscience and what is its application in various fields of science? 2.what are measurement instruments and brain activities visualization? 3.what is neuroscience application on architecture(neuroarchitecture)? 2.2. research methods research method of current paper is based on qualitative evaluation and descriptive analysis method as well as logical reasoning. it is based on studying and analyzing library information, their comparison and interpretation and conclusions. qualitative research deals with interpreting conditions and emphasizing on researcher role as a vital element of research results [2]. this research allows researchers to interact with subject and use flexible ways to gather and analyze data, consider phenomena studied through a comprehensive view [3]. at first this paper considers “neurology science” background and its application, then it reviews human brain medical information and its specifications. in the following part it presents this science applied field in architecture. 2.3. literature review neurology is the knowledge of studying fauna structures, functions, and nervous system which is on various levels from cellular and molecular to anatomy, behavioral science and medical pathology. neurology is the translation of an english word neuroscience but this word usage in persian is differed from english one. neurology in persian is the same as english word of neuroscience but neuroscience is referred instead of neurology. dr. raymond damadian performed the first m.r.i scan with his group inventive tool in a small laboratory in broklin of newyork on 1977. i could observe alive brain activity without any harmful rays or toxic chemicals. and this is how neurology is created. the main purpose of neuroscience is to extract hidden information from mailto:q_bayzidi@srbiau.ac.ir individuals brain without using questions or questionnaire or interview but information is directly extracted. several studies had been performed on the field of neurology and other fields during last years which mostly deals with training, educational science, marketing and medical topics. mahmood talkhabi (2012) studied difficulties and hopes of linking two field of neurology and education on his paper “alliance between neurology and education: challenges and hopes”. he stated in concluding point that neuroscience give data as one of multiple approaches by which instructors can reinforce and justify their scientific views and thoughts. mohammad torabi name and seyed kamal kharrazi (2012) studied the intersection of neuroscience, cognitive studies and medical education on their paper under the title of “neuroscience, cognitive studies, new ways of medical education”. firoozeh asghari and bahman zandi (2012) on their paper “language neurology, interdisciplinary studies on linguistic” stated that studying this subject opens new gates of research for investigators about the first and second language learning biological foundations and on the other hand it plays a fundamental role on solving problems of thousands of patients suffering from dysphasia. saman shekh esmaieli and etal (2013) on their paper “types of researching neurobiology marketing and its effects on marketing components” found that development of neurobiology marketing is significantly effective on understanding customers behaviors and could be effective on recognizing customers tastes, their expectations and motivations, behavior anticipation and justification of success or failure of marketing massages. there is a few papers on architecture and neuroscience which did not directly consider this subject but refers to neuroscience through another major issue. one of these papers belongs to seyed amir saeed mahmoodi (1998) under title of “training architecture a planning practice, using hidden talents of students”. author introduces a pattern on planning practice to utilize students talents with using two hemispheres of the brain characterizations. he studied the basic structure of planning and practices which could reinforce creative power though training these practices and applying students hidden talents. various foreign papers deal with applying neuroscience and architecture contrary of internal researches. this paper will refer to some of them. 3. discussion 3.1. neuroscience as an interdisciplinary studies an interdisciplinary area is integrating knowledge, methods and experiences of two or more scientific and expert area in order to understand and solve a complicated problem or multi facet social difficulties which is beyond the capacity and knowledge of one discipline or specialty. it is quoted from klein and newel that “interdisciplinary studies are process of answering to every problem, solving a problem or studying extensive categories or complicated ones which can not be solved based on solely on discipline or specialty”[4]. neuroscience is recognized as one of the decisive and strategic sciences in future world. the importance of this interdisciplinary field is mostly due to its potential findings effects on other scientific areas and social fields. eventually it will effect on all aspects of society life and welfare. during last two decades some fields as social sciences, education, laws, morality, art, philosophy, medical, technology and engineering and architecture has been benefitted from neuroscience achievements and even it is possible that current process of some fields face new challenges because of these findings. so necessity of training and investigating this subject is supposed as a national need. hence architecture science takes advantage of other sciences achievements like every other sciences and in turn it has been applied on variety of areas. table (1) briefly refers to the influence of neuroscience on other disciplines. 3.2. neurosciences this area studies the brain and its activities. cognitive neuroscience is based on that mental activities derive from brain activities thus explaining cognitive processes require gathering information about brain while psychology considers mental incidences independent of brain activities. the purpose of cognitive neuroscience is to understand the nature and structure of mental activities. the approach of this science toward brain is a processing one. it means that mental activities are explained based on how to process the sub systems in which each of them is responsible of performing specific mental activities like reading a word or sentence , visual recognition of objects or humans, solving mathematics problems. these processor sub systems are explained based on brain activities patterns and brain structural information [5]. 3.2.1. the reason for suitability of neuroscience method on studying human behaviors human brain is a precise and immediate predictor of his/her behavior. about 95% of our decision happens on unconscious level or unconscious brain. excitement is one of key stimulant of human behaviors. studying excitement and its visualization on brain is easy but expressing excitement is difficult. human produce very lower added noise by comparing speech because of this it is more applicable. since neuroscience directly deals with individual brain, it is a suitable method. 3.2.2. basic information in relation to human brain only 2% of body weight is consisted of human brain and consumes 20% of oxygen and 25% of blood glucose. medium weight of brain of mature individual is 1/3 to ¼ kilogram. brain occupies about 80% of human skull and the rest is filled equally by blood and spinal fluid. live brain tissue is semi-solid like toothpaste and consists of tangled deep grooves. this level is called brain membrane and houses 100 milliard neurons. table 1: the main branches of neuroscience [6]. branch explanation behavioral neuroscience applying biology principles on study of genetic mechanism, physiology and behavioral evolvement on human and animals cellular neuroscience study of neurons on cellular level and their physiological characterizations clinical neuroscience consisting expertise like neurology and psychology cognitive neuroscience study of biological substrate, understand and emphasize on mental processing computational neuroscience study the brain from information processing view or to use computer stimulus or hypothetical model to assess function of nervous system cultural neuroscience study of how brain ,mind and genes shape cultural values, improve skills and beliefs developmental neuroscience study of process of creating and forming and renovating nervous system molecular neuroscience it is a branch of neuroscience which study biology of nervous system by using molecular, genetical and related methods neuroengineering it is a branch of biomedical engineering basics which is used to understand renovation and replacement of nervous system neuroimaging using various techniques to assess brain structure and to understand its activities neuroinformatics it is one of the bioinformatic principles which relate nerves data structures with computational models and analytical instruments neurolinguistics study of parts of the brain related to comprehension, creating and acquiring language on human neurophysiology study of nervous system using physiological principles social neuroscience an interdisciplinary branch assesses biology principles, collective process and behaviors including affective neuroscience branch systems neuroscience nervous system science studies functions of neural circuits and systems neuromarketing study of nervous system and its role on decision making for market neuroarchitecture study of planning environment effects on users of that environment human brain is divided into two parts based on one classification: unconscious and conscious. professor zaltman from harvard university added new elements to freuds hypothesis through enjoying his theory of unconscious mind. according to zaltman interpretation , unconscious mind orders but conscious mind obeys. you make decision by your unconscious mind but conscious mind rationalize this decision. indeed 95% of our decisions origins from unconscious mind and only 5% is from conscious one. zaltman believes that research institution has reached to extempore layer or costumer/consumer reasoning by applying usual and customary questionnaire which is only 5% of the matter while 95% are ignored. psychologists use iceberg example in this regard. usually we see a small part of iceberg but its huge part is under the water and we cannot see it. conscious mind is the known part out of iceberg but unconscious mind is that huge part under the water (figure 1). a prominent psychologist ned hermann believes that mind consists of 3 layers including: 1-extempore layer 2wisdom layer 3-creativity layer. extempore layer is the elementary and surface level and accessible part of mind. wisdom layer is a logical, farsighted and computational part of the mind. if you ask someone to be present at the thought room in order to find a solution to a problem, then this part will be involved. creative layer indeed begins with breaking paradigm. main mechanism of creative layer is changing frameworks, breaking frameworks and connecting non-linkable topics to each other. researches performed in neuroscience show that brain consists of 3 different parts with distinct structures figure 2) which each of them have a distinctive function and purpose, although these parts are in connection with each other and interact [7] : 1-lizard brain or cortex : its expertise is thinking. this part of brain processes the logical data and its inferences offers to other parts. voluntary works, learning and logical decisions are performed by leadership of this part. 2mid brain : it is involved with memory and its duty is processing excitements and feelings and offers the result of its work to other parts. 3old brain or reptilian brain: its duty is decision making. this part of brain deals with human survival and saving it. this part continues this duty for millions of years because of this it is so-called reptilian brain. table 2: old brain stimulants [11]. row old brain characterization explanation 1 agocentric old brain only tickling its survival selfishly 2 sensitive to conflict old brain is aroused when something changes. this brain cannot decide without conflict. conflict is formed through two methods as good as possible. 1. story telling: old brain likes listening to story and a fabulous real story can vary it. for example your solution story to solve a problem helps audience to have a feeling that he needs the same solution and changes. 2. visual tools: we only could remember 10% of what we hear verbally after passing 72 hours but rate of remembering increases to more than 65% after adding picture. 3 skeptic and incredulous the old brain has a skeptic and incredulous nature and helps us to continue our life more than thousand years. it should be fed by tangible and objective information. 4 the importance of first and last old brain is more alert automatically at the beginning and end of reaction. old brain is aroused in case of changing these conditions 5 the importance of sense of sight and see pictures vision nerve act 25 times faster than auditory nerves and they are directly connected to brain. 60% to 80% of all transferred information to brain is through vision pictures. new brain analyzes words but old brain analyzes pictures. 6 thrilling old brain is aroused by excitement and feelings. cares to the five senses 7 gaining pleasure and peace, avoiding pain and sadness delicious foods, gas coolers, beautiful and expensive cars and…will not being sold if it was not so. most of involuntary and basic decisions are made by old brain like breathing [8]. the most important point is that scientists concluded that most of human decisions are made by old brain. for example why people claim liking bitter coffee while drinking sweet coffee? the reason is that we usually use our new brain to answer while being questioned and we try to present the best and most logical possible answer. but our old brain has more influence on our performance when we are drinking coffee in real situation. neuroscience has shown that old brain could be aroused and by 7 stimulus and reacted to them which shortly are explained in table (2). figure 1: conscious and unconscious mind [9]. figure 2: conscious and unconscious mind [10]. 3.2.4. onboxing an expression which means taking pictures or recording a video of the stages and details of opening a product from the box and checking its accessories and the product itself is expanding rapidly. these films or photos are available to the public in a virtual environment. the popularity of this video is the product of mirror neurons. the attraction and effectiveness of onboxing is the same; when you see that someone is doing something, you feel that you are doing the same action and enjoy a real action. the example of onboxing in architecture is pictures and videos that a designer does by software such as 3dmax, root and rhino before making a project. 3.2.3. familiarity with brain mirror neurons cells that are responsible for the biological foundation of cognitive responses are called neurons. in our brain, there are more than 100 milliard neurons and trillions of connections between neurons. mirror neurons, as its name suggests, is a neuron that activates when a living creature performs an action or when it is seen that the action is done by the other one. therefore, the mirror neuron reacts in the observer neuron in a way as though it were doing it by itself. mirror neurons have necessary potential to understand behavior, imitative learning and the simulation of the behavior of other people. these neurons enable us to understand the thoughts and emotions of others (empathy). 3.2.5. neuroscience tools the six following methods are more reliable and secure than other methods for measuring and illustrating brain activities: fmri: functional magnetic resonance imaging : application imaging is related to brain magnetic resonance and is the brain's most advanced scan tool. this technique measures the magnetic properties of blood hemoglobin (a part of the red blood cell that is supposed to carry oxygen). in other words, it measures the amount of oxygen blood in the brain. when the brain carries out a special task, that part of the brain will need more fuel. the fuel of brain is oxygen and glucose. hence, if a part of brain has more activity, it will also increase its fuel consumption and the oxygenated blood collection will illuminate in a red light in that part of the brain. investigating these interactions, neuroscientists realize which part of the brain is used at any given time. this method is 10 times more accurate than the ansi device in location recognition, but it has less precision in time recognition and the activities of the brain cannot be investigated instantaneously in the millisecond. eeg: electroencephalography: electrodes on a person's head are investigated with the use of special warheads. brain waves are recorded at very short intervals. some new e.e.j's can record brain waves up to 10,000 times per second. in the e.e.j, the activity of the brain rest mode is recorded. then the person is exposed to a stimulus or message. this situation causes changes in the electrical response of the brain. with comparing the electrical activity of the brain in both states, rest and duty (providing stimulant), we can investigate the specific function of brain in relation to the stimulus precisely. one of the limitations of electroencephalography is its inability to recognize the precise location of stimulation of neurons in the brain. this limitation, especially in the lower parts and old structures of the brain, is further enhanced due to the inability of the electrodes to capture electrical signals in the lower parts of the brain (figure 3). meg: magneto encephalography: like the e.e.j method, it is also limited to activities that are performed on the surface of the brain and cannot detect activities that are carried out inside the depth of brain. although the use of this method is very expensive and has some limitations, few studies indicate relationship between specific frequencies with controllable cognitive functions such as object detection, evaluation of linguistic memory and recalling specific incidents. since this method is costly, the best use is to measure activity in the locations that we know that these specific activities are processed in that location of the brain. qeeg: quantitative electroencephalography: qeeg or quantitative electroencephalography is a kind of e.e.g that provides the quantitative analysis of waves. with this method, brain waves are recorded in different eye states closed or open, and in the time of doing cognitive tasks such as reading, and after complicated calculations are done, the activity of each wave is represented by a numerical value and also a colorful map. with studying these figures and their maps with a natural and reference model, it is possible to survey and study the function of the brain. the advantages of this method include lack of its negative effects (nonradiation, radioactive injection or other harmful methods) and the ability to check the function of the entire brain. facial coding: facial decoding is a method that uses facial muscle changes to evaluate advertisements. various studies have demonstrated that when frowning, smiling and other excitements, different types of facial muscles are activated. therefore, knowing the composition of the different muscles of the face, instantly you can figure out what kind of emotion a person has; is he upset or happy? does he feel hate or anger? in this way, webcam registers the emotional responses of the image viewer through a computer when he or she is looking, and then it analyzes the unconscious and intricate emotional indexes to achieve a deeper understanding of the emotional involvement of an addressee. biometrics: the biometric systems use human biological and behavioral attributes to identify, and they can be further used as complementary to previous approaches such as e.e.g. there are two types of biometrics in biometric evaluation. a) behavioral techniques: in this method, one of behaviors of a person is analyzed, for example, an individual's analysis through signature. b) physical and physiological characteristics: it is often more precise analysis such as fingerprints and eye iris, thermal diagram of the face, heart rate variability (gsr), respiration rates, muscle tension, body temperature, heart rate variability and … zoravicki (2010), kening et al. (2008) and calvert et al. (2004) categorized the types of tools used in neuroscience researches into techniques that record metabolic activities. moreover, tools that measure electrical activity in the brain can be observed in the figure (4). 3.3. the application of neurology in the architectural economy neuroeconomy is the name of a new branch of knowledge, a point of intersection of psychology, economics and neuropsychology, and its purpose is to survey human economic decisions from the perspective of these sciences. in these matters, human behavior is evaluated under the category of benefits and profits, and their responses. in fact, neuromarketing is the direct results of this field of knowledge [11]. product designers try to understand customer preferences to design products that have the most attraction for the target market. it is clear that consumers are influenced by the society, culture and their basic expectations. moreover, most of their unconscious attitudes are influenced by previous uses. the use of brain imaging techniques can enable product designers to recognize consumers' preferences and wishes and present more attractive products to the market [12]. according to maureen (2011), the first experimental study of neuronal marketing was carried out in 2003 and it was published in the next year. in this experiment, a group of people drank coca-cola or pepsi, and at the same time, their brain was scanned using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fmri), an appropriate methodology for discovering the active parts or regions of the brain. finally, it was concluded that when people knew the brand of the product that they were consuming, the certain parts of their brains were activated whereas the certain parts of the brain would not be activated if they did not know it. according to this study, when people realized that they were consuming coca-cola, they said that they preferred coca to pepsi, and the anterior lobe of the brain was activated, an area that associates between attention and accuracy, controls short-term memory and coordinates thinking, especially planning. when people did not recognize the used brand, they reported that they preferred pepsi and the structure of the system that was responsible for either emotional or instinctive behavior was activated. these findings showed that emotional stimuli or those product brands have an effect on the activity of the brain and consequently, on the manner of shopping behavior. figure 3: eeg [13]. it's the same in architecture, for example, when we put a nice architectural design drawn by a senior university student on a table and ask some architects to score this design that the name of university student is written on, the results of the grades will be completely different if the name of one of the contemporary architects is replaced by the name of the university student. it's the same psychological impact on decision making. it is possible to study and do research about how to present a design of architecture (prasanth), how to express and defend the design, how to interact with an employer and many other matters whose results can be a new window in the architectural economy and marketing. 3.4. application of neurology in architecture education design is a complex multifaceted process in which hands, eyes and mind collaborate together. understanding specific cognitive processes and forms of knowledge used in creative ways is essential. neuroscience provides valuable tools for thinking analysis and design processes that complement traditional design research. neuroscience testing is for studying creative processes, visualization and learning skills in the fields of art and design. the purpose of this experiment is to identify the processes of design activity and the role and functions of the different areas of the brain at design time. researches in the field of design show that in two broad areas, lack of studies is seen: 1) neurological research in design; and 2) empirical research in the aspects of design visualization. human brain is composed of two hemispheres that behavioral characteristics are derived from. researchers in the sciences of neurology and psychiatry believe that the characteristics of two brain hemispheres are very different and consider human behavior as the result of referring to these hemispheres [15]. the two hemispheres of the brain can be seen in figure (1) and their characteristics can be known. as we can see, the right hemisphere of the brain can be described as a space hemisphere which deals with the matters of imaginations, emotions and space, and the left hemisphere is introduced as a verbal hemisphere which is more closely related to the matters of language, logic, and computations [16]. figure 4: classification of neurological instruments [14] most people rely on brain left hemispheric commands because it is possible to express words and remarks through the left hemisphere and to use it for rational thinking and reasoning in solving day-to-day problems [17]. in design, most of analyses and decisions are the result of using the left hemisphere. but paying attention to the characteristics of the right hemisphere of the brain which include spatial, non-verbal, and visual thinking, a person can use the hemisphere in the design process through employing hidden talents in the production of ideas and space imagination. the flourishing of hidden talents is possible through the appropriate and simultaneous application of the two brain hemispheres. the way of activation of both brain hemispheres during design process as a diagram of the information flow between them is introduced as simultaneous attention to design issues in the figure (5). as it was already mentioned, in this interactive pattern, the studies and analyses that the left hemisphere usually carries out should coincide with visual studies and the use of other perceptions which are the functions of the right hemisphere of the brain. finally, with the use of this template and the characteristics of both hemispheres, decision making about the major and minor aspects of a matter is accomplished and achieving to a unique and better answer becomes possible [18]. figure (6). 3.5. the application of neurology in architectural aesthetics neurotic (neurological anesthetics) is a relatively new area in the cognitive sciences of nerves that includes neonatal aesthetic experience, especially in visual arts. neurotic researches are done with the use of photographic techniques and neurophysiology such as m. r. i, the function f.m r. i and electroencephalography. neuroscience has recently helped a lot in revealing aesthetic features. science, art and creativity are not really clear in different people. parallel studies on the characteristics of art and the principles of brain organization have been highlighted through neurotic studies. beauty as a mental experience can be examined through comprehensive studies in the areas of neuroscience, psychology, humanities and cultural perspectives. in addition, there are undoubtedly other factors such as cultural foundation. in neuroscience, it is believed that art refers to divergent goals for problem solving [19]. an artist concentrates on ordinary events deeply every day and uses the abilities of the upper cortex, but ultimately what makes work artistic, apart from creativity, is an outlet from the emotional system at the bottom surface of the brain cortex. in fact, artists use the combined properties of visual features in order to produce aesthetic components [19]. nowadays, the controversial matter of neurotic does not limit only to the areas of physiology, psychology and sociology [20]. figure 5: characteristics of the two hemispheres of the human brain [18]. figure 6: introducing an interactive iattern in the design process for using latent talent [18]. . in two recent decades, scientific and experimental approaches related to neuroticism have been concentrated and focused by scientists. the analysis of quantitative and qualitative data extracted from brain, from the aspects of structure, programming and interpretation, leads to clearer insight about researches (neuropsychiatric) more than the emotional and logical features of this phenomenon. the present studies are useful through the analysis of different domains and research methods in cognitive neurosciences and they are not limited only to fmri, erp and transcranial magnetic stimulation [21]. the level of literacy, emotional intelligence, and specific social and cultural characteristics are potential confounding factors affecting the quality of the aesthetic perception of individuals in nerve studies the serious effect of the combination of emotions and the clear vision of the activity of the cerebral cortex has long been analyzed in the theories of wittgenstein, lukacs and freud [22]. neuroticism as a term developed by zeki (1999) studies the neurotransmission of beauty perceptions in art. neuroticism can be descriptive or empirical. descriptive neuroticism is the study of the relationship between brain exercises and aesthetic experience. data and results are categorized in qualitative type. in the experimental neuroticism, like other empirical sciences, the matters of the quantity and the production of data are considered. the method used by zeki is to study the neuronal mechanism of brain response to art and consequently, the aesthetic experience of a complex subject. on the other hand, the results of neurological researches related to the perception of beauty are observed heterogeneously. such a disagreement may be due to the absence of a consistent consensus in the definition of ''aesthetic experience''. therefore, before empirical findings are analyzed, it is important to determine our intended aesthetics [23].. insistence on the similar hypotheses of zeki and its conceptual strength, the study of basic nerve mechanisms, the aid of the brain response to art, and the definition of aesthetic experience are considered as a complex problem [24]. an aesthetic experience is to allow a viewer to percept, touch and feel an art work and each one activates the emotional, dynamic and cognitive mechanisms in its own turn. the aesthetic experience of a visual artistic art with visual analysis begins with an actuator and then leads to levels beyond processing. this processing progress may lead to an aesthetic experience based on some of the biological and visual mechanisms that modify and change due to some factors such as subject, personal inclinations, awareness and prior knowledge and familiarity with the subject. there is considerable disparity in the results of studies that have attempted to clarify neural connections in relation to beauty emotions. one of the reasons for these differences is the lack of consensus on the definition of aesthetic sense. therefore, it is very important to refer to the definition of the concept of aesthetics before analyzing empirical findings, and then a criterion is considered to compare them. some researchers have used the brain to study the psychology of aesthetics [25], and some have used beautiful objects to analyze the properties of the brain [26]. . feelings are different from the aspects of aesthetic experience and cognitive processes of rewarding in persons. this distinction means the concepts of beauty pleasure and evaluation that is related to the emotional and cognitive components of an aesthetic experience. in this study of neuroticism, participants are usually asked to have aesthetic evaluation about a visual stimulator and to judge it from the aspects of beauty and ugliness explicitly. cavobatta and zeki (2004) used the fmri to study the nerve of communication in aesthetic perception and when various categories were observed from painting (landscapes, wildlife, portraiture, etc.), the responses of the participants (beautiful, neutral or ugly) were recorded. the results of the nuclear imaging showed that stimulus was judged as beautiful, ugly and neutral, different activities were recorded in the orbitofrontal cavity of the brain (ofc). orbitofrontal cortex (ofc) is the area of frontal lobe front cortex in the brain that involves in the cognitive process of decision making. the observed activities in the ofc decreased from baseline when people judged the ugly stimulant and in contrast, when the highest active level in the ofc was activated, the stimulant was beautifully judged. in the study of jacobsen et al., a study was done with the use of fmri, the activity of the interstitial region was significant in the aesthetic experience [27]. in this study, participants were asked to evaluate abstract geometric shapes whose level of symmetry and complexity had been manipulated. it was observed that symmetry with stimulus complexity had affected aesthetic judgment significantly. the imaging results showed that there was a difference in comparison between the two modes. activity in the involved areas in visual-motor processes, i.e., interplanetary groove and abdominal premolar cortex increased [28]. the beauty of the shown symmetrical patterns had been perceived more than their non-symmetrical ones. this was due to the continuous activities of the interplanetary groove for symmetry and beauty judgment [21]. this activity intensifies when people guess the intention of artistic activity or see the consequences of actions. the pleasure that people gain from looking at beautiful objects are automatically transferred to the brain reward system. for example, fascinating faces will activate areas in the brain, even without thinking about the charm of these faces. a similar answer to music and even architecture is seen. the role of expectations has also been studied in our enjoyment of artworks. people rated the abstract pictures that had the museum label more valuable than the similar pictures labeled by the computer. if it is imagined that a picture is labeled by the museum, it will make people consider it more luxurious. it is proved that even knowing the title of an artwork can deepen aesthetic experience. the originality of art works can have more effect than its copies on aesthetic pleasure. in fact, neural responses to the original and copies of the rembrandt portraiture have been observed. neuroticism is in its early days. the concepts and priorities of this science are evolving. the scope of this science goes beyond the traditional notions of cognitive neuroscience such as perception, feeling, attention, conception, and decision making. the greatest challenge for neuroticism specialists is to overcome psychological inferences based solely on the location of neuronal activity. these results should be used as a production of neuroticism theories rather than validating a theory. 3.6. application of neurology in environment psychology experiences are created through stimulation of the senses. these sensations send neural impulses among the nerves to the brain where they are decoded. the brain depends on several important chemicals that allow for decoding to occur in order to facilitate an emotional response. among these chemicalsare the neurotransmitters including acetylcholine, dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, and serotonin [29]. in order for a person to be mentally and in turn physically healthy, these neurotransmitters must remain in balance with one another. imbalances may result in the development of psychological disorders. medicine is typically prescribed to help regain balance and decrease effects of the diseases. synthetic stimulants, however, tend to lose of effectiveness over time causing only a temporary change[30]. this is because they function as dopamine agonists, “mimicking the action of dopamine rather than replenishing the inadequate supply.” [31] experience caused by the physical environment can also lead to an alteration in the production of each neurotransmitter through natural stimulation. while one is a substance that triggers a euphoric reaction synthetically, the other allows for the body to naturally “engineer” this euphoric feeling “through exposure of images and activities that stimulate a strong emotional response.” [32] due to the differences in our genetic makeup, this strong emotional response can be achieved in quiet opposing ways. dr. marvin zuckerman argues that these emotional responses as well as our behavior are dependent on a sensationseeking trait. writing over 200 articles and book chapters [33]. zuckerman contends that this trait is defined by the “seeking of varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and experiences, and the willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financials risks for the sake of such experiences.” [34] in his article, sensation seeking in england and america: cross-cultural, age, and sex comparisons, [35] he argues that it can be measured and scaled based on a person’s reaction to risk. while zuckerman sensation seeking scale (sss) is heavily reliant on the participant’s response to a question, psychopharmacological studies were done in attempt to find a biological explanation for the differences between low and high sensation seekers. it was concluded that dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with the pleasure system of the brain as well as enjoyment and motivation, is strongly correlated to the ss trait [36]. depending on the classification of personality type, low sensation vs high sensation, particular experiences lead to the increase in dopamine to reach a “mental high”. for hss, thrilling experiences lead to pleasure due to them being able to handle the high levels of stimulation and risk, while for lss, these experiences lead to anxiety. lss find pleasure in experiences that are stress reducing, while hss find these places to be boring due to the lack of stimulation [37]. evolutionary speaking, both of these personality types are necessary. “in a diverse society, you need both types,” zuckerman says. “you need people to keep the books and make laws and have families, and you need your adventurers like columbus to explore and find excitement.” [38] figure 7: genetic differences of humans [43]. roger ulrich is also responsible for defining the field of evidence-based design (ebd), “the deliberate attempt to base health care building design decisions on best available evidence.” [39] this evidence is based off of the studies done such as his own as well as ones conducted during the woods hole conference. in addition, research conducted by environmental psychologists have also aided in the delineation of 3 main principles of stress reduction: social support, control, and the integration of nature into the design [40]. ebd has become very popular in the healthcare design field in the last decade. by putting the focus on the experience of the patient, architects are able to decrease their stress levels. this decrease in stress allows the body’s immune system to feel a sense of euphoria due to the dopamine increase. triggering the emotional centers, nerve chemicals and hormones are released that alter how the immune cells fight disease. glaciar skywalk,this arch pathway is situated on a cliff edge in jasper, canada. offering a breathtaking view of the surrounding landscape, the glaciar skywalk, is described to be equivalent to “a rollercoaster in the park.” lofted 918 feet in the air, the visitor receives a rush of adrenaline when they transition from the thick steel structure to the thin glass membrane, creating a “strange sensations that you’re practically standing on air.” [41] amusement parks, the thrill of the extremes brings many hss to locations like this. brightly colored rides, with continuous looping structures stimulate visually. rides use elements of scale as well as sudden change such as giant drops to create an adrenaline rush. not only is the experience of dropping at great speeds fear inducing, but the small compressive carts tied with the idea that you cannot escape until completion also elicits fear. paimio sanatoriums, designed by alvar aalto, this project integrates nature and architecture in order to 11chievi a healing effect. light was a central aspect to the project due to the contention, which was later proven, that light aids with healing. the site and material were both crucial in 11chieving this tranquil effect. soothing colors were also to ease the strain and further relax tuberculosis patients [42]. vals spa, located in the mountains of switzerland, this design strives to connect architecture with the site as well as create relaxing effects through the interplay of dark vs light, open vs closed space. the flowing circulation allows one to move from exterior space to the inside with ease. figure 8: glaciar skywalk. figure 9: amusement parks. figure 10: therme vals. figure 11: paimio sanatorium. 4. conclusion at the present time, the traditional techniques of research methodology such as questionnaires, scrolling and survey forms are less used. many researches use penetrating techniques in the depths of the minds of individuals so that they can achieve to realities and can reduce error rates as much as possible. the purpose of this paper is to depict a clear and comprehensive picture of neuroscience, as well as to demonstrate the practical and empirical aspects of the tools of this science in the field of architecture. a better understanding of neuroarchitecture (neurological architecture) may increase our knowledge of the basic concepts related to human and the environment. in the figure 12, the neuroarchitecture is shown as an interdisciplinary orientation and the scientific fields of its subset. figure 13, the areas of application of neuroarchitecture as a particular orientation and in architecture as general orientation have been specified. in spite of implicit utility, neurological architecture (neuroarchitecure) is still in its early stages, and many studies and researches have to be done in this regard. in spite of the growth of its concepts, there are still many questions and ambiguities in the use of its concepts and tools. this paper explains about this method and its applications in architecture apart from the literature review, definitions and tools. it is hoped that this article has been able to solve a small part of the study vacuum in this area and to give some solutions in its practical application and implementation. figure 12: neuroarchitecture as an interdisciplinary orientation and the disciplines of its subcategories. figure 13: areas of use neuroarchtecture. 5. reference [1] p. h, kenning, & h. plassmann,. “how neuroscience can inform consumer research. neural systems and rehabilitation engineering”, ieee transactions on, 16(6), 532-538, 2008. 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[accessed july. 1, 2014]. biography qader bayzidi: ph.d. in architecture from science and research branch of islamic azad university, tehran, iran in 2013. dr. bayzidi joined the faculty of architecture at sanandaj branch of islamic azad university in 2002 and has also cooperated with university of kurdistan since 2002. holding the position of assistant professor, he is head of department of architecture from 2009 to now, as well as department of urban design & planning since 2016. his teaching & research interests include the dual concept of globalization and regionalism in contemporary architecture, the relationship between culture and architecture, contextual architecture, theories and manifestoes of architecture, identity & sense of place, methods of architectural education, methods of architectural design, and urban renovation. he published ten journal papers and more than 50 conference papers. accordingly, he participated as a member of scientific and judgement board in several international conferences and competitionson architecture. dr. bayzidi is supervising sixteen m.arch. and five ph.d. mohammad reza maleki: ph.d. student of architecture, department of architecture, sanandaj branch, islamic azad university, sanandaj, iran. faculty member of urban and rural development institute binas. board member of mava consulting engineers. his teaching & research interests include identity and sense of place, methods of architectural education, architectural design methods, residential architecture, neuroarchitecture, and phenomenology. he published six journal papers and more than 25 conference papers. http://www.jneurosci.org/content/33/32/12982.full http://www.jneurosci.org/content/33/32/12982.full http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/16460/1/addiction-and-type-t-personality-addicted-to-horror.html http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/16460/1/addiction-and-type-t-personality-addicted-to-horror.html http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/16460/1/addiction-and-type-t-personality-addicted-to-horror.html http://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug06/frisky.asp http://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug06/frisky.asp http://www.oncologynurseadvisor.com/evidence-based-design-a-new-concept-in-health-care-facilities-that-puts-the-focus-on-patients/article/373488/ http://www.oncologynurseadvisor.com/evidence-based-design-a-new-concept-in-health-care-facilities-that-puts-the-focus-on-patients/article/373488/ http://www.oncologynurseadvisor.com/evidence-based-design-a-new-concept-in-health-care-facilities-that-puts-the-focus-on-patients/article/373488/ http://www.oncologynurseadvisor.com/evidence-based-design-a-new-concept-in-health-care-facilities-that-puts-the-focus-on-patients/article/373488/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19639918 http://clapway.com/2014/07/11/incredible-thrill-and-adventure-in-jasper-with-new-glacier-skywalk/ http://clapway.com/2014/07/11/incredible-thrill-and-adventure-in-jasper-with-new-glacier-skywalk/ http://clapway.com/2014/07/11/incredible-thrill-and-adventure-in-jasper-with-new-glacier-skywalk/ http://www.architecturaldigest.com/blogs/architectseye/2013/06/paimio-sanatorium-alvar-aalto-architecture-visit-finland-blog http://www.architecturaldigest.com/blogs/architectseye/2013/06/paimio-sanatorium-alvar-aalto-architecture-visit-finland-blog http://www.architecturaldigest.com/blogs/architectseye/2013/06/paimio-sanatorium-alvar-aalto-architecture-visit-finland-blog 1 kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 3 | issue 1 | june 2018 | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.1.1 received: february 22, 2018 | accepted: march 14, 2018 effect of manganese and ascorbic acid on the growth and yield of faba bean (vicia faba l.) hand jawad kadiem hawrez ali nadir ali abbas khraibet plant production plant production plant production technical college of applied sciences technical college of applied sciences technical college of applied sciences sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university halabja, kurdistan region, iraq halabja, kurdistan region, iraq halabja, kurdistan region, iraq hindjawad20@gmail.com hawrez.nadir@spu.edu.iq ali_altai_65@yahoo.com abstract this study was carried out in the field of halabja technical college of applied sciences, sulaimani polytechnic university, during the year 2015-2016. the objective of the study is to investigate the effect of the foliar application of manganese and ascorbic acid on the growth and yield of (vicia faba l.).the field experiment was included nine concentrations and combination mn and asa was applied, using complete randomized block design with three replicates. the highest value of yield and the number of branches per plant were 146.66 gm, 4.11 when plant applied mn 40 ppm+ asa 60 pp (t9). the maximum number of pods per plant (14.47) was given from t9 mn 20 ppm+ asa 60 ppm. the highest seed per pods was 2.26 obtained from (t8), and the maximum 100seeds weight was received from t2 asa 30 ppm (45.43 gm). thus, the greatest weight of pods was found from control and t2 asa 30ppm (13.4 gm). the most length of pods and the height of plant were given from both (t4) mn 20ppm and (t3) asa 60ppm (9.49 cm) (106.87 cm) respectively. the lowest seed number per pods, 100-seed weight and length of pods were given from control, t3 and t5 (1.71, 33.12 gm and 8.06 cm) respectively. then t5 (mn20ppm +asa 30ppm) have given the minimum yield, weight of pods, plant height, number of branches per plant ( contributory wit-h t7) and number of pods per plant ( 41.66 gm, 10.10 gm, 81.98 cm, 3.25 and 4.46). as a result, in this study, we can recommend to conduct more studies on micronutrients for different crops. keyword: faba bean, manganese, ascorbic acid, yield, growth, foliar application. 1. introduction faba bean (vicia faba l.) is a mediterranean region cultivar crop; it belongs to the family of (fabaceae) and consists of two subspecies vicia faba l. and vicia faba paucijuga murat [4, 8]. consequently, among coolseason crops faba bean is ranked fourth after pea, chickpea and lentil [1, 5, 8]. [6] reported that the faba bean is an ancient crop from the mediterranean. despite faba is well adapted to a wide range of ecological conditions and has become a basic inter crop in winter, the declining soil fertility due to loss of organic matter and cultivate them for the restoration n (nitrogen), and fixation n from faba bean increased the nitrogen to the next crop in the soil [1]. faba bean contains protein, carbohydrate, fat, fiber, vitamins, and minerals, condense tannins, vicine and convicine which are used as food from human and animal [7, 9, 10, 16]. faba bean from kurdistan-iraq is cultivated for food as vegetable pods and dried beans, and is grown in rainfall area and somewhere irrigation condition can be cultivated in the different climatic zone [12]. faba bean cultivation for higher yield has a high requirement for major element especially nitrogen [2]. the faba bean traditionally is cultivated in kurdistan-iraq. the faba bean intercropping is worldwide applied for increase yield and withstanding pest and diseases from the soil [3]. foliar application of fertilizer is to increase yield and quality of faba bean, and it has more impact than the application from the soil when the root withstands uptake the nutrition [13]. however, micro elements applied from the foliar are better than the soil [13,14]. thus, both of manganese and ascorbic acid lead to increase yield in to the plant and shear in to the plant cells [15]. manganese has a major role in faba bean such functions as photosynthesis and complex protein synthesis, manganese has also an important role in faba bean seed [15]. cultivation area from in iraq 2008 is 1250 hectors, and approximately production is (7000) tons [11] and [12]. the target of excellent plant nutrition is to guarantee that crops uptake the amount of nutrients need for optimal yield [15]. the aim of the study was to study the effect of the manganese and ascorbic acid on growth and yield of (vicia faba l.) in order to develop and upgrade the production of the crop in halabja, kurdistan region – iraq. 2. material and method the field experiment was carried out in the field of halabja technical college of applied sciences, sulaimani polytechnic university, during the year 20152016. the complete randomized block design was used for the experiment with three replications. in this study, nine concentrations were used including controls sprayed by the distilled water (table 1). tow sprays were used, the first one month after germination, and the second was 15 days after that. the plants totally have being sprayed until wet them, using the hand-held sprayer, and manganese sulphate mnso4-5h2o as source. table 1: concentration of manganese and ascorbic acid used in this study. t re a tm e n ts concentration (ppm) ascorbic acid manganese t1 control(distilled water) distilled water t2 30 mailto:hindjawad20@gmail.com mailto:hawrez.nadir@spu.edu.iq mailto:ali_altai_65@yahoo.com 2 t3 60 t4 20 t5 30 20 t6 60 20 t7 40 t8 30 40 t9 60 40 the experimental unit includes two rows with width 60cm width and 5m length. the distance between plants was 25cm. the cultivar used in this study was local variety. the experiment was sown on november17, 2015, after conducting all the soil crop managements for this crop the effect of the treatments was studied, and data recorded on yield and yield attributes of the crop on ten randomly selected plants and the mean of each of number of pods/plant, weight of pods (gm), yield (gm), number of seeds/pod, length of pod (cm), plant height (cm), fresh weight 100 seeds (gm), and number of branches/plant were evaluated. the harvesting was carried out from april. the statistical analysis were done by one way anova, and the comparisons of means realized by the bonferroni's multiple comparison range test at p<0.05, by the (graphpad prism version 5.00) program. 3. results and discussion collected data for yield analysis from foliar applications by manganese and ascorbic acid showed non-significant differences between the treatments at p<0.05 (figure 1). the highest yield was found in the treatment t9 mn+ ascorbic acid 40ppm+60ppm (146.66 gm). the lowest was recorded from treatment t5 manganese+ ascorbic acid 20 ppm+30ppm (41.66 gm), and other treatments t2, t4, t3, t7, t6, t8 and t1( 145.66, 137.77, 131.66, 128.77, 109.30, 108.33 and 91.0 gm) respectively are found between the two values. the results were with other researches results [15], but contrast with [2]. t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7 t8 t9 1.0×100 2.0×100 4.0×100 8.0×100 1.6×101 3.2×101 6.4×101 1.3×102 2.6×102 treatments y ie ld o f p la n t (g m ) figure 1: the effect of manganese and ascorbic acid on the yield of plan in (gm). the columns show the mean of the yield and error bar show the range of the yield. there were no significant differences between the treatments at p<0.05 in the number of seeds per pod maximum number of seeds per pod was recorded from t8 manganese 40ppm + ascorbic 30 ppm (2.26 seeds) and the minimum number of seeds per pod was recorded from control (1.71seeds) (figure 2). that local species of faba bean used for the study contain one or two seeds, but very tasty, and the average numbers of seed per pods are the same constant character for the cultivar species. the other treatments t6 (2.02 seeds), t4 (1.97 seeds),t9 (1.95 seeds),t2 ( 1.93 seeds), t7 (1.92 seeds), t5 (1.90 seeds) and t3 (1.86 seeds) are located between the two values. comparable result was found by [8, 20, 21, and 22] in faba bean, [19] in garden bean. t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7 t8 t9 0 1.0×100 2.0×100 3.0×100 treatments n u m b e r o f s e e d s /p o d figure 2: effect of manganese and ascorbic acid on the number of seeds/pod. there were no significant differences between the treatments at p<0.05 in the number of seeds/pod. the maximum weight for hundred seeds was recorded from treatments of t2 ascorbic acid 30 ppm. (45 .43gm), the minimum hundred seeds weight was recorded from the control (36.33gm) and the other treatments t9 mn40ppm + asa 60ppm (41.43gm), t4 mn 20ppm (41.12gm), t6 mn 20ppm + asa 60ppm (41.10gm), t7 mn 40 ppm (41.05 gm), t8 mn 40ppm+asa 30ppm (37.00gm), t5 mn 20ppm + asa 30ppm (38.86gm), are located between the two values (figure 3). [8, 21] worked on the faba bean obtained similar results. [19] was cited from [8] stating that the growing seasons affect the branch number per plant, it is caused to reduce the yield. t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7 t8 t9 1.0×100 3.2×100 1.0×101 3.2×101 1.0×102 treatments 1 0 0 s e e d s w e ig h t (g m ) figure 3: effect of manganese and ascorbic acid on the 100 seeds weight (gm). information from (figure 4) explain the weight of pods (gm), and the comparison between treatments dose not appeared significant differences at p<0.05. however, the 3 highest weight was obtained from treatments t1 control and t2 application ascorbic acid 30ppm (13.4 gm), and the lowest was given from treatment t5 foliar application mn20ppm+ asa30 ppm (10.10 gm).that results are contrast with [12]. so, the result revealed by the application of manganese and ascorbic acid did not affect the weight of pods, and these results is in agreement with [18] worked on faba bean with exogenous application of salicylic acid. t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7 t8 t9 1.0×100 2.0×100 4.0×100 8.0×100 1.6×101 3.2×101 treatments w e ig h t o f p o d s ( g m ) figure 4: effect of manganese and ascorbic acid on the weight of pods per (gm). no significant differences were appeared between the treatments at p<0.05 regarding the pod length. foliar application of t4 manganese 20 ppm on faba bean recorded the longest length of pod (9.49 cm), and that result is not a significant different comparison to the other parameters, the shortest length of pods was recorded from control (8.06 cm) and the other treatments t6 (9.43 cm), t9 (9.22 cm), t8 (9.16 cm), t3 (9.15 cm), t2 (9.03 cm), t7 (8.76 cm) and t5 (8.15 cm) are located between the two values (figure 5). the results agree with [8, 22] in faba bean and [16] in green bean. pod length is directly related to the genetic factors [22]. t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7 t8 t9 0 5.0×100 1.0×101 1.5×101 treatments l e n g th o f p o d ( c m ) figure 5: effect of manganese and ascorbic acid on the length of pods (cm). plant height from different parameters were applied from the study; there was no significant interaction between parameters at p<0.05 (figure 6). the highest plant was given from treatment t3 foliar application by ascorbic acid 60 ppm (106.87 cm), and the lowest was given from treatment t5 when applied mn 20ppm and asa 30ppm (81.98 cm). approximately, the similar result were found from [21].that result is contrast with those [20] worked on 10 genotypes of faba bean, and the maximum record from was (50 cm) and [16] in green bean. t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7 t8 t9 0 5.0×101 1.0×102 1.5×102 treatments h e ig h t o f p la n t (c m ) figure 6: effect of manganese and ascorbic acid on the height of plant (cm). the addition of manganese and ascorbic acid at different concentrations had no significant effect on the number of plant branches in faba bean at p<0.05 (figure7). the highest number of branches was recorded from treatment t9 mn 40ppm and asa acid 60ppm (4.11),while the minimum value was 3.25 by each of t5 mn 20ppm and asa 30ppm and t7 mn 40 ppm and the other treatments t2(3.83), t3(3.41), t8(3.40), t4 and t6(3.35) , t1(3.33) are between the two values. these results are in agreement with those of [12]. similar results were found by [8, 21] that have worked on different genotypes of faba bean. t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7 t8 t9 0 1.0×100 2.0×100 3.0×100 4.0×100 5.0×100 treatments n u m b e r o f b ra n c h s ( p la n t) figure 7: effect of manganese and ascorbic acid on the number of branches were grown on the plant. there were no significant differences between the treatments in the numbers of pods per plant at p<0.05 (figure 8). the highest number of pods per plant was found in (t9) mn 40ppm and asa acid 60ppm (4.46), and the lowest was recorded in treatment t5 mn 20 ppm with asa 30 ppm (6.23), and the other treatments t7 (24.40),t5, (13.56) t3, (13.36)t2, (12.93) t8, (11.56) t4, (11.16) t1 and (9.36) t6 are between the two values. similar results were found with [16] study on faba bean and applied phosphorus fertilizers and foliar application with zinc. [22] reported 21.6 to 19.2 pods/plant for faba 4 bean genotypes in eastern africa, and [8] reported 9.6 to 6.7 pods/plant for faba bean application method of phosphorus in faba bean in the absence of moisture stress, and also [17] reported 4.67 to 19.33 pods per plant applying zinc, iron and manganese on green beans, and finally [21] reported to 3.6 to 10.0 pods per plant working on faba bean (vicia faba l.) in a shortseason mediterranean-type environment. t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7 t8 t9 0 5.0×100 1.0×101 1.5×101 2.0×101 2.5×101 treatments n u m b e r o f p o d s ( p la n t) figure 8: effect of manganese and ascorbic acid on the number of pods per plant. 4. conclusion the results of this study have indicated that there was no significant effect for the addition of manganese and ascorbic acid on the characterizes of growth and yield for faba bean. although, it is summarized that combination of the foliar application of manganese and ascorbic acid generally leads to the increasing of yield and it's components for faba bean. we suggest that more studies will be better about foliar application with another concentration of different microelements in the future. 5. references [1] a. magdi, t. horiuchi, and s. oba. "evaluation of the spad value in faba bean (vicia faba l.) leaves in relation to different fertilizer applications." plant production science 6.3, pp. 185189, 2003. [2] m. h. hendawey and younes a. m. a., "biochemical evaluation of some faba bean cultivars under rainfed conditions at el-sheikh zuwayid." annals of agricultural sciences 58.2, pp. 183-193, 2013. [3] f. fenliang, f. zhang, y. song, j. s. xingguo b.t. guo, and l. li."nitrogen fixation of faba bean (vicia faba l.) interacting with a non-legume in two contrasting intercropping systems." plant and soil 283.1-2, pp. 275-286, 2006. [4] t.,cengiz. "estimates of broad‐sense heritability for seed yield and yield criteria in faba bean (vicia faba l.)." hereditas140.3, pp. 222-225, 2004. [5] a.m. torres, c.m. avila, n. gutierrez, c. palomino and m.t. moreno. "marker-assisted selection in faba bean (vicia faba l.)." field crops research 115.3, pp. 243-252, 2010. [6] d. gerard, s. b. m. baum, b. redden, m. sadiki, m. j. suso, m. vishniakova, and x. zong. "diversity maintenance and use of vicia faba l. genetic resources." field crops research 115, no. 3,pp. 270-278, 2010. [7] c. katell, p. marget, c. peyronnet, b. carrouee, p. arese, and g. duc.. “nutritional value of faba bean (vicia faba l.) seeds for feed and food. “field crops research, 115(3), pp. 329-339, 2010. [8] m. a. turk, and a. m. tawaha. "impact of seeding rate, rate and method of phosphorus application in faba bean (vicia faba l. minor) in the absence of moisture stress." biotechnologie, agronomie, société et environnement 6.3, pp.171-178, 2002. [9] e. sayed and h. e. ahmed. "impact of magnetic water irrigation for improve the growth, chemical composition and yield production of broad bean (vicia faba l.) plant." american journal of experimental agriculture 4.4, pp.476, 2014. [10] l. a. rubio, g. gardocz, s. bardocz, p. dewey and a. pusztai. “nutritional response of growing rats to faba beans (vicia faba l., minor) and faba bean fractions”. british journal of nutrition, 66(3), pp. 533-542, 1991. [11] faostat “food and agriculture organization of the united nations”. http:// faostat. fao. org/site/ s67/ desk, 2000. [online]. j. agri. ro.pp. 73(4): pp.1685-1699. [12] , a. a. abdulla, “effect of foliar spray of citric acid on the growth and green yield of broad bean (vicia faba l.) growth in southern iraq”. journal of basrah researches sciences, 39(1b), p. 1817-2695, 2013. [13] m. a. atiia , m. a abdalla, s.m.m. allam. "effect of zinc and cobalt applied with different methods and rates on the yield components of vicia faba l." wwjmrd, 2(2), pp.52-58, 2016. . [14] , a. a. el-hosary, and s. a. s. mehasen. "effect of foliar application of zinc on some new genotypes of faba bean." annals of agric. sc., moshtohor 36.4, pp. 2075-2086.1998. [15] p. sharifi, and m. paymozd. "effect of zinc, iron and manganese on yield and yield components of green beans." current opinion in agriculture 5.1, pp.15, 2016. [16] s. p. loss, k. h. m. siddique, r. jettner, and l. d. martin "responses of faba bean (vicia faba l.) to sowing rate in southwestern australia. i. seed yield and economic optimum plant density." australian journal of agricultural research 49.6, pp. 989-998, 1998. [17] s.a. orabi, b.b. mekki and f.a. sharara. "alleviation of adverse effects of salt stress on faba bean (vicia faba l.) plants by exogenous application of salicylic acid." world appl sci j 27.4, pp. 418-427, 2013. [18] t. thomson, g.s. patel, j.b. thakar and k.s. pandya "effect of foliar application of acetyl salicylic acid and ascorbic acid on yield and yield attributes of garden pea (pisum sativum l.) cv. bonneville." int. j. curr. microbiol. app. sci 6.6, pp.1982-1986, 2017. [19] j. mwanamwenge, s. p. loss, k. h. m. siddique and p. s. cocks. "growth, seed yield and water use of faba bean (vicia faba l.) in a short-season mediterranean-type environment." australian journal of experimental agriculture 38.2, pp.171-180, 1998. [20] , m. o al-rifaee. h. d., munir a. turk, and a.m. tawaha. "effect of seed size and plant population density on yield and yield components of local fababean (vicia faba l. major)." international journal of agriculture and biology 6.2, pp.294-299, 2004. [21] t. e. kubure, c.v. raghavaiah, and i. hamza. "production potential of faba bean (vicia faba l.) genotypes in relation to plant densities and phosphorus nutrition on vertisols of central highlands of west showa zone, ethiopia, east africa." advances in crop science and technology, pp.1-9, 2016. [22] n.k.b. el-gizawy and s.a.s. mehasen. "response of faba bean to bio, mineral phosphorus fertilizers and foliar application with zinc." world applied sciences journal 6.10,pp..1359-1365, 2009. https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=j_of5h8aaaaj&hl=en&oi=sra https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=giyihskaaaaj&hl=en&oi=sra  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 1 | june 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.1.13 comparison of porosity models for fluidized beds sherko ahmed flamarz sulaimani polytechnic university, sulaimani, iraq sherko.flamarz@spu.edu.iq abstract: the paper describes a comparison between four numerical models of porosity, for better understanding the influence of porosity on the hydrodynamics (macroscopic and microscopic) behaviors of fluidized beds. the study has been done through an approach based on combine discretecontinuum to achieve the simulations. this approach deals with the modeling of the interactions between the fluid-solid. in which the discrete approach is used for localizing the position and velocity of each individual particles based on newton’s 2nd law of motion, using a numerical time stepping scheme. while the continuum approach is based on finite volume method, which is solved the fluid flow equations (navier-stokes equations). the geometry of fluidizing column was; column diameter (d=0.096 m) and column height (h=1 m). glass grains were firstly deposited inside the column, and then subjected to the range of inlet water velocity (0-0.14 m.s-1). the results of simulations are point out those four models of porosity, achieved comparable results for simulating fluidized beds. the simulations results were compared and showed a good agreement and consistency with the experimental data in the literatures. in other hand, the simulations results revealed that the models of porosity, which based on the microscopic scale, are most reliable between the models of porosity. however the differences between these models must be analyzed and kept in mind in order to select the appropriate porosity model. the results revealed that the porosity is an important parameter which effect on the hydrodynamics behavior of fluidized beds during the fluidization processes. keywords: numerical simulation; porosity; fluid-solid flow; discrete approach; continuum approach; circulating fluidized bed. 1. introduction many of industrial applications include of two phase flow (solid phase and fluid phase). processes like fluidization, pneumatic transport, spouted beds, sedimentation, etc. in each of those processes, it is an important fact to reach a homogeneous distribution for the solid phase. although it is not possible to obtain homogeneity for the solid phase in the whole of the bed, then it is pivotal to know the intensity distribution of the solid phase in various parts of the system to predict the behavior of the solid phase in the processes. the solid phase (solid particles) distribution or concentration is called porosity or bed voidage () which is represent the ratio of volume taken by fluid to the total volume occupied by solid particles and the fluid. the porosity is main factors in describe and characterize the hydrodynamics behavior, heat and mass transfer properties of fluid-fluidized beds. in the case of spherical particles the porosity can vary between ( =0.476) in case of a stationary bed, up to ( =1) which the last solid particle has been removed from the volume of the system (apparatus). 2. literature review a number of different studies and researches are achieved to understand the act of porosity (bed voidage) on the hydrodynamics of two phase flow. different experimental methods are developed for observation and measurement of the bed porosity allocation in fluidization processes. methods of measurements can generally be divided into mechanical, pressure, electrical capacitance and optical methods. according to the processes, the measurements can be divided into local, zone and averaged over a part or all the bed [l, 13]. although of certain limitations of experimental techniques (experimental instrumentations and measurement methodology), but experimental techniques have provided valuable information on concentration (porosity) of solid phase in fluid-fluidized beds. mathematical (theoretical) models are proposed for predicting the solid concentration profile in fluidized beds [1417]. the lacks in mathematical models are still need to experimental validation for fluidized systems. in other hand, empirical studies have been made for understand the macroscopic behavior of fluidized beds. gidaspow and ettehadieh [18] have proposed the first computational approach model to estimate the porosity distributions for 2d fluidized bed. bouillard et al. [10, 19] have studied and extensive the experimental and theoretical work by proposing a model to study the fluidization process in a two-dimensional bed. in recent years, with the progress in calculation capacities pushed the computational models to develop and reproduce mechanical behaviors in macroscopic and microscopic levels, of complex units involving multiphase flows. many of models have been studied circulated fluidized beds and proposed some models of porosity as secondarily in their researches [20-25]. tanaka et al. [26] investigated the cluster formation in a circulating fluidization in gas–solid flows, and the effect of global porosity on the inhomogeneous and stability of the system. helland et al. [27-31] have been studied the effects of the porosity on the value of the drag force, through the formation of cluster in circulating fluidized beds. it can be noted that pure researches of porosity is rare in numeric side and still in experimental works depends on the visual (macroscopic), thus the motivations of present work are; present four numerical models of porosity, for examination and prediction the hydrodynamics macroscopic and microscopic behaviors of fluidized beds, applying a combine discretecontinuum approach to achieve the simulations, numerical results of a fluidized bed simulation will present and compare to experimental results, in order to select the appropriate porosity model, and optimize the hydrodynamics behavior of fluidized beds through a porosity model, and used it as dependable design tool for fluidized beds systems. 3. methods and materials 3.1 numerical method in order to describe the hydrodynamic characteristics of fluidized beds, these must related to the porosity, particle size, and physical properties for the fluid and the particles. four models of porosity are tested through a combine of discrete-continuum. this combine is provided an effective method for numerical simulations of fluid-solid fluidized beds. in continuum approach, the fluid phase is evolved in the computational fluid dynamics (cfd) system, and the solid phase is treated by the discrete approach (dem) [32-35]. 3.2 discrete approach model the originality of the discrete element code (sigrame) consists in using as contact solver the bipotential initiated by de saxcé [36]. in a fluidized bed system, consists of n particles, the maximum number of contacts between the particles is an important parameter in numerical modeling. the discrete code sigrame which is house code uses the separating method combined with connectivity table [37]. this combined is reducing the cycle of calculation time. moreover, it uses the nscd concept developed by jean and j.-j moreau [38, 39], which allows to model correctly the dynamic effects but also to work with a step of discretization ( st 3 10   ) in comparison with the explicit codes ( st 7 10   ). in the present study, the particles are spherical non-deformable and non-penetrable. by choosing q as parameters of configuration, the coordinates of the center of gravity of the particles. the mechanical equation to be modeled is in the following:  r)t,q,q(fqm ext   (1) where extf represent the known external forces and  r is the unknown internal forces associated with unknown prior contact reactions. each couple of particles i and j which are candidates for contact (figure1), the local reaction fc (contact force) is given by: nfff ntc  (2) where n is the normal unit vector from particle j to particle i, tf is the friction force and nf is the normal force. the algorithm of calculation cycle is using a numerical time stepping scheme. figure1 contact force between two particles the movement of each particle is governed by the laws of newton’s second law of motion, for i-th particle, by: i,di,bi,ci i i fffgm dt dv m  (3) 2 5 2 iiii i i rmiandt dt d i   (4) where im represent mass, , ir is the radius, and iv is the velocity of the i-th particle, g is acceleration due to gravity, i,cf is the contact force between the particles which is calculated by the discrete code, i,bf is the float (buoyancy) force, i,df is the drag force, ii is the moment of inertia and i is the angular velocity of i-th particle, it is the torque. the particle-fluid drag force (di felice drag force model) [40] is obtained from:     12 1250 iififfii,di,d vvvvdc.f (5) where i,dc is the drag coefficient of the fluid on the particle i, id , i are the diameter and porosity of the particle i, f , fv are the density and velocity of the fluid.    i is the corrective function to take in account the presence of other particles in neighbors of the particle i in to consideration, and  is empirical coefficient can expressed as;             2 51 65073 2 10 irelog. exp.. (6) where fiififi dvvre   is the particle reynolds number, the drag force coefficient ( i,dc ) is implemented in the combine model as (brown and lawler) [41]:   i . i i i,d re . re. re c 8710 1 4070 1501 24 6810   (7) 3.3 continuum approach model the continuum approach (computational fluid dynamics (cfd)) has developed in last two decades with the increase of capacity of the computers. the cfd codes are able to solve the governing equations of fluid flow for laminar and/or turbulent flows [35]. in this study, the cfd code is code_saturne (version 3.0) and salome platform (version 7) for design the geometry of the case study. the code is open source cfd software developed by edf of france, the code is based on finite volume method which solves the navier–stokes equations for 2d and 3d flows. the code accepts meshes with any type of cell (tetrahedral, hexahedral, polyhedral …) and any type of grid (structured, unstructured, hybrid …).the locally-averaged continuity and navier-stokes equations (pressure-velocity coupling) are solved by simplec method [42]. the assumptions were no slip boundaries and unstructured meshes are used for the column walls in the cfd model. the k-ε model is used in this work, which largely applied for its simplicity. the mass balance and the momentum balance of the fluid gives: 0   )v.( t ff f   (8) fp.)vv.( t )v( fffff ff      (9) where f , fp , fv represents density, pressure, and velocity of the fluid flow respectively , t denotes the time,  is fluid viscous stress tensor and f is the gravity force. 3.4 combine discrete-continuum (cfd-dem) the calculation by the cfd allows us to obtain the field of velocity in every knot of the mesh m. the technique to calculate the speed of every particle p decomposes into 2 stages: i) look what is the element e of m which contains the particle p, ii) calculate the speed of the particle p from the speeds of the knots of the element e:    ne j jp,jp vv 1  (10) where j  denotes the basic functions calculated in the center of the particle p, ne is the number of the nodes in the element. the calculated speed is used to compute the drag force on the particle. to optimize the calculation time, table of inverse connection is build. the search for the knot i of the meshing m the closest of p so allows, from the table of inverse connection, to look for the element e only on the patch of elements connected in i and not on all the elements of m (figure 2). figure 2 sketch of particles in mesh arrangement 3.5 models of porosity the porosity in the vicinity (neighborhood) of each particle is estimated according to 4 models that will be comparing; • first model (mod1) is defined by: 0,476otherwise 4; if 13101   bb nn, (11) where b n represent the number of contacts of the particle, the value of 0,476 corresponds to the porosity of a sphere in a cube [29]. • second model (mod2) is defined by: max t,pmax v vv   (12) where maxv is the volume defined by the height of the highest particle in the fluidized bed, and t,pv is the total volume of the particles [16]. • third model (mod3) which uses the mesh m serving for the detection of the contacts is defined by: e e,pe v vv   (13) where ev is the volume of the mesh e containing the particle and e,pv is the volume of the particles contained in the mesh [43]. • fourth model (mod4) calculates a local porosity from a rev (representative elemental volume) around each particle, detailed in [35]: rev rev,prev v vv   (14) where revv is the volume of the rev and rev,pv is the volumes of the particles in the rev. the calculation of the porosity in models 3 and 4 requires the calculation of the volume of grains contained in a mesh or a rev; this can be obtained by the following formula:       j yjxjjrev,p hahaav  3 4 (15) where   represents the positive part, xh and yh are the deviations between the center of the particle j of radius j a and the edges of the rev (figure 3). figure 3 sketch of rev 4. results and discussion the hydrodynamic characteristics of fluidized beds including porosity (bed voidage) and bed height were investigated for fluidized beds. the geometry of fluidizing column (pipe) has the dimensions (d=0.096 m, h=1 m), as depicted in (fig.4-a,b), to compare the performance and affectivity of the four models of porosity. glass grains were firstly generated and deposited inside the column under gravity, see table 1, and then subjected to the flowing water. non slip boundaries are used for the column walls in the cfd model. the numerical parameters employed are listed in table 1. the cfd model consist of unstructural mesh with; 944 tetrahedron elements, 369 nodes, 69 edges, and 2470 triangles (fig.4-c). 4.1 porosity (bed voidage) figure 5 (a-f), shows the fluidized bed porosity for the four models as a function of time of simulation for a range of inlet water velocity. figure 5-a, depicts the porosity for the four models with low velocity of inlet fluid (water) velocity, the values of porosity are close ( 590. ) for the fluidized bed. the values of porosity are increase according to the model of porosity with the increases of inlet fluid velocities, where the porosity values of model four (mod 4) is developed more than the other models. in other hand, the porosity values of model one (mod1) are less than the other values, because its model are based in general porosity for the fluidized bed. figure 4 sketch of fluidized bed, a) sketch of column, b) geometry 3d, c) meshing table 1: simulation parameters. parameter value particle diameter [mm] 2 number of particles 2400 density of particle [kg/m3] 2300 young's modulus [gpa] 70 poisson coefficient 0.35 coefficient of friction 0.3 coefficient of restitution 0.9 column diameter (m) 0.1 column length (m) 1 initial bed height [m] 0.1 porosity initial 0.4 density of water [kg / m3] 1000 dynamic viscosity of water [pa.s] 0.001 dem time step [s] 5x10-5 simulation time [s] 10 4.2 bed height figure 6 is revealed the relation between the bed height (normalized bed heights) and the inlet liquid velocity. comparison with the experimental results [35], we seek to find the appropriate model of porosity. figure 6 reveals that the bed height increase for three models (mod 2, mod 3 and mod 4) with increase the inlet liquid velocity. the figure 6 shows that the mod 4 results are the closest to the experimental results. figure 7 (a-f), depicts the bed height of fluidized bed for the four models of porosity as a function of time of simulation. the bed height is developed and increased with the increase of inlet liquid velocity. bed height values for model four (mod4) are greater than the rest of the values for other models developed and increased with the increase of inlet liquid velocity (figure 7-f). figure 6 normalized bed heights versus inlet liquid velocity. figure 5 variation of porosity for the four models with the time of simulation, for inlet water velocity; a) vf =0.04, b) vf = 0.06, c) vf=0.08, d) vf = 0.10, e) vf =0.12, and f) vf =0.14 m/s. while the bed height values for model 1 (mod1) are not developed and the particles are still in the base of the column. figure 8 shows the snapshots of fluidized beds for the four models, at inlet liquid velocity (vf= 0.14 m/s) and time 10 second. the visualization of fluidization process revealed the fact that models (mod 1 and mod 2) are efficient to present the movement and position of the particles. the porosity model of mod 1 and mod 2 are based on the macroscopic scale (general porosity of the bed). while the third model (mod 3) is more efficient as compared with first and second models, because it based on the microscopic scale (level of the elements of the meshing). the fourth model (mod 4) is based on the microscopic scale (level of individual particles and formation of clusters), which make mod 4 is most reliable between all the models of porosity. all of these reasons makes the mod 4 is the nearest to the actual fluidized beds in fluidization process. the comparison between the two models; model 3 and model 4 can be done at the level of clusters formation as shown in figure 9. the hydrodynamics of the suspended particles in multi phase flows system, depend on the drag force is the only source which raises the relative motion between particles. the porosity calculation (porosity model), and porosity function effect directly on the magnitude of drag force (eq.5), which reveal the difference in the hydrodynamic behavior (cluster formation) of the two models (mod3 and mod4), the results of this work are consistency with these studies [9, 16, 28, 29, and 44]. figure 7 variation of bed height for the four models with the time of simulation, for inlet liquid velocity, a) vf =0.04, b) vf = 0.06, c) vf=0.08, d) vf = 0.10, e) vf =0.12, and f) vf =0.14 m/s. figure 8 fluidized beds for the four models of porosity at the end of simulation (t =10 s with vf= 0.14 m/s). 4.3 fluidized beds test for model 4 the bed being initially at rest at t = 0, the introduction of the fluid causes the particles to fluidize preferably in the column, as can be seen in fig. 10 at times t = 0.5s, and t = 1s . the expansion of the bed is maximal at t = 6 s approximately, before the fluidized bed drops off slightly. figure 9 comparison between two snapshots of model 3 and model 4 the results are very strongly dependent on the porosity function, which requires us to verify the validity of the porosity model 4 (eq. 14). fig.10 shows a heterogeneity of the particle distribution in the chamber (for t = 6s, t = 8s and t = 10 s) that can be related to cluster formation. figure 10 position of fluidized particles over time (t = 0-10 s) for porosity model 4 with vf = 0.14 m/s. 5. conclusion four models of porosity have been investigated and compared. the study has been done through an approach based on combine discrete-continuum to achieve the simulations. the results of the comparisons and validation of the four models of porosity revealed a good consistency with the experimental results. the simulations results revealed that the model of porosity (mod 4), which based on the microscopic scale, is most reliable between all the models of porosity. in the longer term, models of heat transfer and transfer of material between the fluid and the particles (e.g. during a drying operation) will be integrated into the software. this will provide a multi-physical code combining fluid and granular aspects, heat exchanges, material exchanges, inter-particle cohesion and grinding. the applications are as much in the process industries (reactors, dryers) as on larger scale (wave effect on the rock fill structures ...). nomenclatures m mass of particle, kg r radius of particle, m d diameter of particle, m aj radius for the particle j (m) d diameter of column, m v volume, m3 g acceleration due to gravity, m/s2 t time, s n normal unit vector, dimensionless v velocity, m/s i moment of inertia of a particle, kg·m²/rad2 t torque, n.m p pressure, n/m2 cd drag force coefficient, dimensionless fext external force, n r internal force, n fc contact force, n ft tangential force (frictional force), n fn normal force, n fd drag force, n fb float (buoyant) force, n f gravity force, n ne number of nodes nb number of contacts re reynolds number, dimensionless greek letters  density, kg/m3  viscous stress tensor, pa  porosity (void fraction), dimensionless µ viscosity, pa.s  angular velocity of a particle, rad/s  empirical coefficient, dimensionless j basic functions, dimensionless subscripts  empirical coefficient, dimensionless f fluid (liquid) phase i for i th particles (solid phase) p particle 6. reference [1] g. l. matheson, w. a. herbst and p. h. halt, “characteristics of fluid-solid systems,” industrial engineering chemical, (41), pp.1099, 1949. 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[44] s. d. kim,yo h. kim, s. a. roh and d. h. lee, “solid circulation characteristics in an internally circulating fluidized bed with orifice-type draft tube,” korean journal chemistry engineering, (19), 5, pp. 911-916, 2002.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 3 | issue 1 | june 2018 | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.1.6 received: march 8, 2018 | accepted: may 2, 2018 effect of growing seasons, plant extracts with various rates on black bean aphid, aphis fabae (aphididae: homoptera) rebin a. qadir havall m. amin ardalan j. majeed crop protection crop protection ornamental plants bakrajo technical institute bakrajo technical institute bakrajo technical institute sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq rebin.qadir@spu.edu.iq havall.amin@spu.edu.iq ardalan.majeed@spu.edu.iq 22 abstract: four plant extracts: eucalyptus (eucalyptus sp), onion (allium cepa linn), garlic (allium sativum) and cinnamon (cinnamomum sp) with three extraction rates (0, 1 and 3) % in 2016 and 2017 seasons were used against aphid population in broad bean (vicia faba). some plants characteristic; plant height (cm), fresh weight.plant-1 (g), dry weight.plant-1 (g), number of pods.plant-1, and aphid’s dead number after 6 hours and 24 hours were taken. eucalyptus affected significantly on number of pods.plant-1compared with the other extraction (7.416). as the extraction rate increased, all parameters increased. pearson’s correlation test for traits in 2017 season indicated that there were a significant strong correlate and better than 2016 season among number of pods .plant-1, fresh weight.plant-1 (r = 0.770**), dry weight .plant-1 (r = 0.816**), and m24 (r = 871**). based on number of pods.plant-1, the best interaction between the season, extraction types, and extraction rates, was a combination of the 2017 season × eucalyptus extraction × 1% extraction rate. keywords: plant extracts, aphis fabae, broad bean, biological control, bioactivity 1. introduction broad bean is commonly known as broad bean or field bean which is grown in winter. total cultivated area in the world about 25.2 million hectares with 19.7 million tones total production per year. many countries such as mediterranean, middle easter, chinese, indian, african and south american use bean as a standard source of their diet, in addition, it has an impressive importance as inexpensive and protein and carbohydrates rich substance [1, 2].broad bean can be consumed as vegetable as fresh, but if dry seeds and pods was needed the plants will be leaved in the field until the maturity of the pods when it became dry. they contain fibers, carbohydrates, vitamins, proteins and minerals) in addition to (phytic acid alkaloids, saponins and tannins was previously studied [3, 4]. several herbivores and pathogens will infect faba bean which consequently absorb nutrient and energy from plants. aphid is considered one of the world-wide insect pests attacking faba bean and destroying most of the yields. there are about four thousand species were found and about two hundred and fifty species from this pests are harmful to different crops as well as the ornamental plants. one of them is black bean aphid (aphis fabae scop.) is a major polyphagous pest of agricultural crops. the pest can cause to death of plants and causes reductions in the yield quantity and quality. field losses infested by this pest can reach above 50% [5]. this insect pierce leaves, stems, flowers and young pods during adulthood and nymphs and leads to yellowing plants, withering and dying. furthermore, it is a vector of more than 30 plant viruses, such as those of tomato and peas, potato, beets, cucurbits, crucifers etc. [6]. aphis fabae is often control by application of the insecticides which are highly expensive and toxic [7]. results show that insect resistance against pesticides has been increased [8] pesticides may cause the destruction of useful insects (pollinators, parasitoids and predators), as well as their disadvantages against humans and wildlife ecosystems [9], therefore, it is necessary to seek for an alternative of managing procedure of the insect. fertility management practices is the best way for soil amendment as it could change up-take of organic matter and nutrients by plants and also affect soil microorganism and soil-borne pathogens[10]. moreover, soil o.m and macro-micronutrients encouraged changes in the soil biota [11] and it impact on the aphid in an indirect way which may reform the plant media and create better relationship between soil pathogen and the aphid insect. during previous year's, some new bioactive plant extracts were examined and found that they have insecticidal properties and safe ecologically [12]. it has been found that there are more than 2000 plant species belong to 170 families which possess insecticidal properties [13]. different parts of the herbaceous plant (dried+ fresh) were used [14, 15]. few researches concerning this matter in iraq-kurdistan region. in last decades bioactivity of botanical extracts against aphid species investigated by researchers. among them, aphis fabae [16, 17; 18; 19; 20; 21], aphis citricola [22] aphis craccivora [23], aphis gossypii [24; 16, 17], aphis nerii [16], brevicoryne brassicae [24, 25], lipaphis erysimi [26; 27], melanocallis caryaefoliae [28], myzus persicae [29; 16, 17; 30; 31; 32] and schizaphis graminum [12]. also, the plant extract repellent property vs. aphids was largely studied, among the aphid species, aphis gossypii [33], brevicoryne brassicae [24], and myzus persicae [29; 30; 16]. the aim of this study is to investigate the effect of different plant extracts based on dry matter of eucalyptus, onion, garlic and cinnamon for the control of black bean aphid. 23 2. methods and materials 2.1. experimental site: this study was carried out at bakrajo technical institutesulaimani polytechnic university (spu), iraqi kurdistan region during (2015-2016) and (2016-2017) seasons under the rainfall condition. the location is at (35°32.976"n latitude and 45°21.537" longitude), located at 8 km south sulaimani. averages of just four months of rainfall as well as maximum and minimum temperatures, relative humidity and wind rates are shown in table 1. table 1: bakrajo environmental conditions: parameters 2016 (average 4 month) 2017 (average 4 month) rain (mm) 81.22 85.75 maximum temp. (℃) 17.2 16.4 minimum temp. (℃) 11.3 4.91 relative humidity (%) 23.2 25.9 wind (km/h) 5.6 6.04 2.2. preparation of botanical extracts: 100 grams of dried materials for each of eucalyptus (eucalyptus sp) et1, onion (allium cepa linn) et2, garlic (allium sativum) et3 and cinnamon (cinnamomum sp) et4, were grinded to fine powder by an electric mixer for 5 minutes separately, then each was soaked in one liter of water. %100 of extracts preserved in well-dark cleaned glass bottles provided with tags at 25 °c which is a room temperature for twenty-four hours. after this period the mixtures were filtered through whitman filter paper separately and stock of distilled water was also prepared to obtain required concentration (0, 1and 3%) er1, er2, and er3.then immediately used to perform the experiments respectively. 2.3. application of extracts in field: seeds of local variety of faba bean were sown by hand drill method and successive seedlings were grown in 3x2 m individual field-plots. when the plant height reached 20-25 cm, the field of the experiment were checked once a week for observing signs and symptoms of the aphids and recording any damages happened until it reaches the level of the economic threshold. number of aphid (both immature and adults) were recorded on the indicated shoots (10 cm apical). the following parameters were taken: number of aphids/plant (before and after botanicals spray), plant height (ph) cm, fresh weight.plant-1 (fwp) g, dry weight.plant-1 (dwp) g, number of pods.plant-1 (npp). the counting aphid dead numbers individually (mortality) were also taken after 6 hours (m6h) and 24 hours (m24h) spraying. 2.4. soil properties: physicochemical properties for the soil was determined for each season. table 2 shows some of these properties defined by [34 and 35]. physicochemical characteristics were determined following procedures described by [37, 38, 39, 40, and 41]. table 2: physicochemical properties of the soil used in the study: parameters 2016 2017 ph 7.65 7.5 electric conductivity (mmhos/cm) 2.0 2.12 calcium carbonate (%) 2.45 2.49 organic matter (%) 2.30 2.48 calcium (mgkg-1) 4521 4322 magnesium (mgkg-1) 223.2 280.78 potassium (mgkg-1) 203 245 phosphor (mgkg-1) 4.07 3.47 zinc (mgkg-1) 1.43 1.37 manganic (mgkg-1) 27.2 35 2.5. statistical analysis: factorial experiment in randomized complete block design (rcbd) with four replicates was used in order to test main and interaction effects of seasons, four plant extractions and three applications rates. analysis of variance was carried out for the data using jmp statistical discovery and the means were compared according to lsd at 0.05 level. correlation between mean values was analyzed by (spss program version 20.0.0). 3. results the results of anova for the seasons, application of dissimilar plant extractions, extractions rate, and their interactions in regard to some measured aphid death and plant features are shown in table 3. there was a significant effect of the treatments on most of the measured parameters in the broad beans plant except for ph, and np which were non-significantly affected by seasons. the interaction effect of the s×et, and s×et×er for the m6h, m24h, and ph, and the interactions between s × er for the m24h, ph, and np, were also nonsignificant. table 3: the anova results of the treatments and their interactions for the effect plant extracts from different plants against a. fabae. parameters mortality after 6h (%) mortality after 24h (%) plant height (cm) fresh weight/plant (g) dry weight/plant (g) no. of pods/plant source d.f f-ratio p>f fratio p>f fratio p>f fratio p>f fratio p>f fratio p>f season (s) 1 104.108 0.000 12.3909 0.012 2.7326 0.149 440.9326 0.000 249.9261 0.000 1.7263 0.236 extractions type (et) 3 308.7971 0.000 314.3005 0.000 7.7259 0.000 38.9103 0.000 63.1768 0.000 14.013 0.000 extractions rate (er) 2 1382.834 0.000 1437.707 0.000 43.2872 0.000 178.0183 0.000 262.0481 0.000 103.4472 0.000 s×et 3 0.9517 0.420 0.5561 0.645 1.5689 0.205 7.703 0.000 7.5872 0.000 4.0822 0.010 s×er 2 4.3473 0.016 0.716 0.492 2.8628 0.064 3.5828 0.033 13.0696 0.000 2.4173 0.097 et×er 6 74.4139 0.000 76.8073 0.000 3.0819 0.010 11.1089 0.000 15.6004 0.000 3.5743 0.004 s×et×er 6 0.7151 0.638 0.8193 0.558 1.8824 0.096 2.9858 0.012 2.809 0.017 2.7341 0.019 24 table 4 shows that different plant extracts have significant effects on all parameters. while et1 gave maximum mortality after 6h (49.03%), 24h (52.21%), et4 gave the minimum percent of the motility which were 14.96% and 16.17% after 6h and 24h, respectively. et1 and et2 gave maximum plant height (55.33cm) and fresh weight.plant-1 (82.25g), respectively, while et4 gave minimum dry weight.plant-1 (7.54g) and no. of pods.plant-1(5.17g). table 4: effects of botanical extract on aphid mortality (%) and yield performance of broad bean plants. extractions type (et) (%) mortality after 6h (%) mortality after 24h (%) plant height (cm) fresh weight/plant (g) dry weight/plant (g) no. of pods/plant et1 49.083a 52.208a 55.333a 77.000b 11.300a 7.416a et2 35.791b 38.541b 52.208a 82.250a 11.033a 7.125a et3 31.958c 33.583c 52.708a 78.083b 11.345a 7.416a et4 14.958d 16.166d 46.291b 61.125c 7.537b 5.166b lsd 2.259 2.371 3.877 4.197 0.657 0.818 *numbers within a column carrying the same letters are not different significantly according to (lsd, p < 0.05) table 5 shows that er3 significantly increased mortality after 6h (48.84%) and 24h (52.38%). minimum ph (42.63cm), fwp (54.78g), dwp (6.54g) and np (3.84) obtained from the control (er1). table 5: effects of botanical extract rate on aphid mortality (%) and yield performance of broad bean plants. extraction rate (er) (%) mortality after 6h (%) mortality after 24h (%) plant height (cm) fresh weight/plant (g) dry weight/plant (g) no. of pods/plant er1 3.218c 3.312c 42.625b 54.781b 6.537b 3.843b er2 46.781b 49.687b 56.718a 84.781a 12.225a 8.031a er3 48.843a 52.375a 55.562a 84.281a 12.150a 8.468a lsd 1.956 2.054 3.358 3.635 0.569 0.708 *numbers within a column carrying the same letters are not different significantly according to (lsd, p < 0.05) table 6 shows that all the parameters expect ph and np significantly affected by growing seasons. higher mortality% after 6 and 24 h and dwp which were (35.08%), (36.25%) and (12.74g), respectively obtained from the second season (s2), while higher fwp (85.00g) obtained from the first season (s1). table 6: effects of different seasons on aphid mortality (%) and yield performance of broad bean plants. season mortality after 6h (%) mortality after 24h (%) plant height (cm) fresh weight/plant (g) dry weight/plant (g) no. of pods/plant s1 30.812b 34.000b 52.500 85.000a 7.782b 6.937 s2 35.083a 36.250a 50.770 64.229b 12.735a 6.625 lsd 1.024 1.564 2.559 2.420 0.752 0.581 *numbers within a column carrying the same letters are not different significantly according to (lsd, p < 0.05) according to the maximum means, the best interactions of m24h, ph, and np (78.000 %, 68.250 cm, and 10.750) respectively, were observed in s2 × et1 × er2, only for m6h increases with er3 (75.000). however, the s2 × et3 × er2, and s1 × et2 × er2 interactions were mostly affected to dwp, fwp (17.875, 114.500) g respectively. finally, the minimum value of all parameters was obtained by untreated plants (using distill water) in the experiment (table 7). table 7: the best interaction between the season, extraction types, and extraction rates in the experiment. parameters mortality after 6h (%) mortality after 24h (%) plant height (cm) fresh weight/plant (g) dry weight/plant (g) no. of pods/plant interactions s2 × et1 × er3 s2 × et1 × er2 s2 × et1 × er2 s1 × et2 × er2 s2 × et3 × er2 s2 × et1 × er2 maximum mean 75.000 78.000 68.250 114.500 17.875 10.750 interactions s1 × et2 × er1 s1 × et1 × er1 s2 × et1 × er1 s2 × et4 × er1 s1 × et4 × er1 s1 × et4 × er1 minimum mean 2.250 2.000 39.250 45.750 4.800 3.500 lsd 5.533 5.809 9.497 10.282 1.609 2.004 base on the person’s correlation coefficient between studied traits illustrated for season s1 in (table 8), generally there was a positive significant correlation between all traits. the result showed that npp has the strongest correlation (r = 0.751**) with fwp. following this traits dwp and m24h were showed the most correlation with npp (r = 0.725**, r = 0.709**) respectively. the stronger positive correlation was observed between ph and m24h (r = 0.793**). also, highly significant and positive relation was observed among dwp with m24h (r = 0.924**). the broad bean plants were treated with the different types of plant extraction after 24h the death percentage of aphid was increased. result for correlation indicated that there were a significant positive correlate among npp with fwp, dwp and m24h (r = 0.770**, r = 0.816**, r = 25 0.871**) respectively in s2 (table 9). later this trait the fwp (r = 0.891**) and m24h (r = 0.892**) showed the strong correlation with dwp, although the same correlation was observed between fwp with m6h and m24h (r = 0.819**). finally, for both season a very strong positive correlation between m24h and m6hwere observed. table 8: correlation coefficients among aphid mortality (%) and yield performance of broad bean plants in 2015-2016. parameters correlation with mortality after 6h (%) mortality after 24h (%) plant height (cm) fresh weight/plant (g) dry weight/plant (g) no. of pods/plant mortality after 6h (%) 1 mortality after 24h (%) 0.994** 1 plant height (cm) 0.786** 0.793** 1 fresh weight/plant (g) 0.854** 0.856** 0.747** 1 dry weight/plant (g) 0.910** 0.924** 0.762** 0.881** 1 no. of pods/plant 0.698** 0.709** 0.688** 0.751** 0.725** 1 **correlation is showing significances at 0.01 levels by using (2-tailed) test. table 9: correlation coefficients among aphid mortality (%) and yield performance of broad bean plants in 2016-2017. parameters correlation with mortality after 6h (%) mortality after 24h (%) plant height (cm) fresh weight/plant (g) dry weight/plant (g) no. of pods/plant mortality after 6h (%) 1 mortality after 24h (%) 0.996** 1 plant height (cm) 0.692** 0.699** 1 fresh weight/plant (g) 0.819** 0.819** 0.564** 1 dry weight/plant (g) 0.888** 0.896** 0.592** 0.891** 1 no. of pods/plant 0.861** 0.871** 0.671** 0.770** 0.816** 1 **correlation is showing significances at 0.01 levels by using (2-tailed) test. 4. discussion application of materials such as water extract on the plant plays nowadays an important role in reducing aphid number which infests plants. use of plant natural water extracts for the purpose of aphid control is of special concern in agriculture as they reduce environmental pollution compared to industrial compounds. researchers have found that plant extracts are of noticeable influence on reducing aphid numbers and increasing yield in broad bean. all botanical water extracts had effects on reduce of aphid numbers and increase morphological attribute with plant yield. previous study evaluated water extract of eucalyptus and garlic reduced the number of aphids, also water extracts of tobacco and neem have been tested and showed a great result to control aphids [36]. repelling activities of natural essential oils is of great importance in showing potential toxic action against aphids. researchers found some properties of plant natural essential oils which are of special concern in controlling aphids among those are ginger (zinigiber spp.), lavender (lavandula officinalis chaix), peppermint (mentha piperita), spear-mint (mentha spicata), thyme (thymus vulgaris) and rosemary (rosmarinus officinallis) oils [37, 38]. among the 13 tested substance compounds contained in rosemary oil a repellent action in relation to mentha persicae is exhibited by such compounds as linalool, d,1-camphor and terpineol. according to [37] rosemary oil also gives repellent action when related to aphid of the cotton which is known as (aphis gossypii glover) and as well as the aphid of the potato plant (macrosiphum euphorbiae thomas), and the extraction of ginger oil. 5. conclusion growing season, extraction types and rates influence the black bean aphid and thus resulted in the improving of quantity and quality of the yield. eucalyptus plant extract gave the best effect in decreasing the number of aphid after 6 and 24 hours compared to the other plant extracts. both 1% and %3 rates of extracts recorded better results in increasing mortality%,, plant height, fresh weight .plant-1, dry weight.plant-1 and number of pods. 2017 season was superior for increasing death number of aphid. 6. references [1] i. kubo, “new concept to search for alternate insect control agents from plants”, in elsevier: naturally occurring bioactive compounds 3, eds., rai, m. and m. carpinella, amsterdam, pp: 61-80, 2006. 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[38] m. hori, “the effects of rosemary and ginger oils on the alighting behavior of myzus persicae (sulzer) (homoptera: aphididae) and on the incidence of yellow spotted streak,” appl. entomol. zool, 34(3), pp. 351–358, 1999. kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 3 | issue 1 | june 2018 | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.1.5 received: february 4, 2018 | accepted: april 22, 2018 a comparison between core biopsy and imaging techniques (ultrasound and mammography) in diagnosis of breast cancer in slemani breast center taher abdullah hawramy dara ahmed mohammed hasan abdullah . ahmed department of general surgery department of anatomy department of general surgery kurdistan board for medical specialization(kbms) college of medicine sulaimani teaching hospital sulaimani, iraq sulaimani university general directorate of health hawramytahir@yahoo.com sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq dara.marif@univsul.edu.iq hasan2heroiy@yahoo.com 34 abstract breast cancer is the global health problem. it is the highest prevalent site-specific cancer in women throughout the world and the most common reason of death in middle age women, following lung cancer. up to 5% of breast cancers are caused by inheritance. male breast cancer accounts for less than 1%. mammography is the first imaging study to evaluate breast abnormalities, ultrasound is particularly useful in young women with dense breasts. core needle biopsy permits the analysis of breast tissue architecture and whether invasive cancer is present. to compare core needle biopsy and imaging, accuracy of each modality for the purpose of the diagnosis and their impact on preoperative planning before surgical treatment. a retrospective cohort study was performed in 70 cases of breast cancer during 2015-2017 at slemani breast center/ kurdistan region. inclusion criteria any patient with diagnosed as breast cancer for whom core biopsy and imaging techniques (ultrasound and mammography) were done, age 25 years and above. exclusion criteria, patient with breast mass who did not underwent: one of the two modalities, age below 25 years, pregnant women. in the current study: mean age / year for the participants were mean age = 51.34 year ± 12.85 sd), sixty nine cases were female and one male. by core biopsy (97.1%) is positive for malignancy. in this study: results about 34.28% of birads v (ultrasound)lesions proved to be positive for malignancy by core biopsy, 1.43% of birads v were negative for malignancy and the association were statistically highly significant, for birads iii lesions 17.14% were proved as positive for malignancy by core biopsy. about 45.7% of birads v (mammography were positive for malignancy by core biopsy and the associations were found to be statistically highly significant and for birads iii 12.85% of lesions were positive for malignancy by core biopsy. there was statistically significant association between radiological investigation(ultrasound, mammography) and histopathological finding (core biopsy). keywords: breast cancer, mammography, ltrasound, and; core biopsy 1. introduction breast cancer is the global health problem [1]. it is the well known cancer in women world-wide accounting for 21-23% of all cancers diagnosed in women [2,3]. it is the highest prevalent site-specific cancer in women throughout the world and the most common reason of death in middle age women, following lung cancer [1,4,5]. the incidence of this type of cancer in the world continues to rise with more than 1.4 million new cases diagnosed annually [3]. in united kingdom 1 in 12 ladies will develop the disease during their lifetime compared to unites states has 1-in-8 lifetime risk [5,6]. up to 5% of breast cancers are caused by inheritance (brca1, brca2, p53 and pten) [1,3,4,6]. male breast cancer accounts for less than 1% [1,6]. if breast cancer is diagnosed earlier: better and less aggressive treatment options are possible and mortality falls. accurate premanagement diagnosis of cancer is important for optimal therapeutic planning [7,8]. breast imaging techniques: are used to detect small breast lesion, evaluate clinical findings and guide diagnostic procedures [1]. radiological and histopathological results are supposed to be harmony if the histpathological results give an acceptable explanation for the radiological results and vice versa. when the evaluation of results (radiological and histopathological) is accomplished a management workup is recommended [9]. in 1993 the breast imaging reporting and data system (bi-rads) lexicon was invented by the american college of radiology (acr), for purposes of diagnosing uncertain results. birads category:  category 0: incomplete, further imaging evaluation.  category i: negative, yearly check up.  category ii: benign lesion recommends screening annually.  category iii: likely to be a benign lesion shortinterval followup.  category iv: suspicious finding biopsy recommended. 35  category v: highly suggestive of malignant lesion work-up must be considered.  category vi: known or confirmed [1,10-,13]. mammography is the first imaging study to evaluate breast abnormalities. it can be used as a screening tool to find unexpected breast cancer in asymptomatic females, have a better prognosis and require less aggressive treatment than cancer identified by palpation. it is sensitivity increasing with age as the breast becomes less dense [1,4,6]. nowadays mammography is the most reliable way for early diagnosis of breast tumour; however, it has some drawbacks. density of breast tissue is one of the reason that make the diagnosis difficult, the differentiation between tumour and normal dense breasts in mammography is very poor, which can affect the diagnosis [8]. indicators for breast cancer survival that affect the prognosis include size of tumour , type of tumour, grade of tumour, mammographic findings, status of regional lymph node, and metastasis [14]. nowadays ultrasound is a major modality of imaging for the diagnosis of breast diseases. it is a useful diagnostic tool in young females with dense breasts. it is distinguishing cysts from solid lesion, it can detect, localized impalpable areas of breast pathology. it is an important method of resolving equivocal mammographic finding and it is useful to guide invasive techniques such as fine needle aspiration, core-needle biopsy and needle localization of suspicious breast lesion [1,4,6-8]. core needle biopsy permits the analysis of breast tissue architecture and whether invasive cancer is present, it also helps the patient and surgeon to discuss the specific management plan of a breast cancer before therapy begins [3,4]. 1. advantages of core needle biopsy: it is a good diagnostic tool in the assessment of microcalcifications, used when fnac not conclusive, it provides tissue pieces showing architectural features of the lesion for identification and differentiation between dcis and invasive ductal carcinoma and tissue usually available for adjunctive tests (hormone receptor). 2. disadvantages: accuracy of the procedure is operator dependant, false negatives may be due to associate missing of tumour sampling, if core needle biopsy is compared with fnac it shows more complications as (pain, hematoma, hemorrhage and tumour cells seeding in the tract), core biopsy needs adequate fixation and processing and it is more expensive and time consuming than fnac [15]. 3. aim of the study: comparison between core biopsy and imaging techniques (ultrasound and mammography) in breast cancer diagnosis. 4. specific aims of the study: to compare core needle biopsy and imaging, the accuracy of each modality for thepurpose of the diagnosis and their impact on preoperative planning before surgical treatment. 5. justification of the study: identifying breast cancer can be achieved through history, physical examination and radiological studies with the gold standard being histology to reach a definitive diagnosis. with the current advances in reporting with the use of birads, the standardization is achieved, but its accuracy in terms of histological correlation remains unanswered. this study will try to establish the same and also aid in improving the management of patients. 2. patient & method a retrospective observational study was performed in 70 cases of breast cancer during 2015-2017 at slemani breast center/ kurdistan region. inclusion criteria any patient diagnosed with breast cancer for whom core biopsy and imaging techniques (ultrasound and mammography) were done and age 25 years and above. exclusion criteria, patient with breast mass who did not undergo one of the two modalities, age below 25 years and pregnant women. data analyzed with statistical package for the social science (spss) version 20 software program, for comparison between means using a student t-test, p-value equal or less than 0.05 regarded as statistically significant, while p-value equal or less than 0.001 regarded as statistically highly significant.  study design: retrospective cohort study.  duration: september 2015 to september 2017.  setting: this study was carried out in slemani breast center, which is located in slemani / kurdistan region. it receives patients from all parts of slemani governorate and seen by a breast surgeon and a breast physician. the center was established in 2007 and registered more than 903 patients diagnosed with breast cancer, follow up and management was done for them.  sampling method and sample size:  a convenient sampling with a sample size of 70 cases of breast cancer.  ethical considerations:  a research protocol was approved by research and ethical committee of the kurdistan board for medical specialties and a formal acceptance letter was obtained from the ethical committee of the college of medicine / slemani university.  data collection: data collection was done through patients’ records.  the questionnaire: the questionnaire had been divided into five sections; (1)demographic characteristics (including age, gender, marital status, occupation, education level and residency); (2)medical history (including duration of diagnosis , past medical diseases, bmi, co-morbidities and past surgical diseases); (3)family history of breast malignancy; (4)breast examination (breast mass, nipple retraction, nipple discharge and axillary lymph node involvement); (5)ultrasound, mammography and core needle biopsy. regarding mammography and ultrasound: in each patient, full clinical examination of both breasts was performed by breast physicians and breast surgeons at slemani breast center, and the imaging results classified according to birads category. ultrasound has a crucial role for studying breast pathologies, and it is particularly 36 important in women with dense breasts and aged under 40 years. mammography taken (in two view) of each breast [16,17].  regarding core needle biopsy: minimally invasive breast biopsies (mibb) are performed to clarify unclear mammography and ultrasound of the breast [18]. a core needle biopsy is the last step when a mammogram or other radiological studies found to be abnormal [8]. 3. results the mean age/ year is 51.34 ± 12.85 sd. sixty nine cases were female and one male. by core biopsy (97.1%) is positive for malignancy. in study results about 34.28% fall into birads v (ultrasound) lesions proved to be positive for malignancy by core biopsy, 1.43% of birads v were negative for malignancy and the association were statistically highly significant. for birads iii lesions 17.14% were proved to be positive for malignancy by core biopsy. about 45.7% of birads v (mammography) were positive for malignancy by core needle biopsy and the associations were found to be statistically highly significant and for birads iii 12.85% of lesions were positive for malignancy by core needle biopsy. demographic characteristics of the study sample: mean age/ years = 51.34 ± 12.85 sd table 1. distribution of the research sample according to the demographic characteristics; the highest percentage was among females (98.6%), while only (1.4%) was male, married (90%) and inside city center accounts (54.3%). table 1. demographic characteristics of the research sample. variables frequency percentage (%) gender male female 1 1.4 69 98.6 marital status single married widow divorced 4 5.7 63 90.0 1 1.4 2 2.9 residency inside city outside city 38 54.3 32 45.7 total 70 100 table 2. mammographic results of the research, the highest percentage (47.1%) of the study sample under the category of birads v. table 2. mammographic results of the research. mammography frequency percent (%) birads 0 1 1.4 birads i 1 1.4 birads ii 1 1.4 birads iii 10 14.3 birads iv 21 30 birads v 33 47.1 birads vi 3 4.3 total 70 100 table 3. ultrasonographic finding of the research, the highest percentage (38.6%) of the study sample under the category of birads iv table 3. ultrasonographic finding of the research. ultrasound frequency percent (%) birads ii 2 2.9 birads iii 13 18.6 birads iv 27 38.6 birads v 25 35.7 birads vi 3 4.3 total 70 100 table 4. core needle biopsy results of the study sample, most of the study sample (97.1%) are positive for malignancy. table 4. core needle biopsy results of the study sample. core biopsy frequency percent (%) positive for malignancy 68 97.1 negative for malignancy 2 2.9 total 70 100 table 5. association between ultrasound and core biopsy of the participants, highest percentage (38.57%) of the study sample were among birads iv. and the association were statistically highly significant. 37 table 5. association between ultrasound and core needle biopsy of the participants. table 6. association between mammography and core needle biopsy of the participants, highest percentage (47.13%) of the study sample were among birads v. and the association were statistically highly significant. table 6. association between mammography and core biopsy of the participants. 4. discussion the ideal assessment for patients with suspicious breast lesion is a triple assessment (clinical, radiological and histopathology) [19]. the diagnostic results of breast diseases can be achieved with mammography and ultrasound or both. which are fast, easily accessible and cost effective. combination with core needle biopsy will provide enough clue for definitive management , either surgery for malignant, or regular followup benign diseases [16]. during the past decade, the diagnostic work-up for breast cancer has undergone major changes, this in turn created many controversies. surgical excisional biopsy has been replaced by other alternatives like fnac, and more commonly used core needle biopsy [20].  demographic characteristics of the study sample: in the current study, mean age / years for the participants was (mean age = 51.34 year ± 12.85 sd), which is consistent with a study was done in india [19] (mean age = 52.66), a study was done in south korea [21] (mean age = 51.4 ±9.5 sd), a study was done in usa [22] (mean age = 52.39 ±10.3 sd), our study is inconsistent with a study done in puerto rico [11] (mean age = 57 years), a study was done in spain [23] (mean age = 57 years) , a study was done in turkey [24] (mean age = 55 years) and a study was done in canada [25] (mean age = 58.1 years). in the current research showed the incidence of female to male ratio was (69:1), similar result was found in a study was done in israel [26] in which female to male ratio was (67:1).  core needle biopsy: it was used as a gold standard in the diagnosis of breast cancer. in the current study, 68 cases (97.14%) were diagnosed to be malignant by core biopsy, the other 2 cases (2.86%) were diagnosed to be negative for malignancy by core biopsy, but later on proved to be malignant by excisional biopsy, the same results was found in a study done in bulgaria [27] in 2016 in which study (93.7%) of cases diagnosed as malignant by core biopsy and (6.3%) of which were benign.  association between ultrasound birads and histopathology findings (core needle biopsy): in the current study results, about 34.28% of birads v lesions proved to be positive for malignancy by core needle biopsy, 1.43% of birads v were negative for malignancy and the association were statistically highly significant; in contrast to a study was done in india [2] in 2013 in which 93.2% of birads v were found to be malignant by core biopsy, our explanation for this difference belongs to the difference in sample size and in our study we collected only cases which were diagnosed as breast cancer, while in that study both malignant and benign breast lesions were included. for birads iii lesions 17.14% were proved as positive for malignancy by core biopsy, 1.43% of them were negative for malignancy by core biopsy and the association were statistically highly significant; in contrast to a study done in india [2] in 2013 were 1.6% of birads iii lesions diagnosed as positive for malignancy.  association between mammographic birads and histopathology findings (core needle biopsy): about 45.7% of birads v were positive for malignancy by core biopsy and the associations were found to be statistically highly significant, the same results were found in a study was done in kenya[15] in 2015 43.8% of birads v were positive for malignancy, while in a study was done in puerto rico [11] in 2003 about 79.4% birads v were positive for malignancy; this difference may be due to a high number of participants. for birads iii 12.85% of lesions were positive for malignancy by core biopsy, only 1.43% of them were negative for malignancy by core biopsy, in contrast to a study was done in kenya [15] in 2015 in which 1.6% of birads iii lesions were found to be positive for malignancy, and in a study was done in puerto rico [11] in 2003 about 4.5% of birads iii were diagnosed to be malignant. in a study was done in austria [17] in 2004 less than 2% of birads iii were diagnosed to be malignant. we can understand that 13% of invasive breast cancer fall in birad-3 by ultrasound screening, which is high compared to results reported in other studies conducted ultrasound core biopsy total p-value positive for malignancy negative for malignanc y biradsii 2 (2.85%) 0(0%) 2(2.85%) ≤0.001 biradsiii 12(17.14%) 1 (1.43%) 13(18.57%) biradsiv 27(38.57%) 0 (0%) 27(38.57%) birads v 24(34.28%) 1 (1.43%) 25(35.71%) biradsvi 3 (4.3%) 0 (0%) 3(4.3%) total 68 (97.14%) 2 (2.86%) 70 (100%) mammography core biopsy total pvalue positive for malignancy negative for malignancy birads 0 1 (1.43%) 0 (0%) 1 (1.43%) ≤0.001 birads i 1 (1.43%) 0 (0%) 1 (1.43%) birads ii 1 (1.43%) 0 (0%) 1 (1.43%) birads iii 9 (12.85%) 1 (1.43%) 10 (14.28%) birads iv 21 (30%) 0 (0%) 21 (30%) birads v 32 (45.7%) 1 (1.43%) 33 (47.13%) birads vi 3 (4.3%) 0 (0%) 3 (4.3%) total 68 (97.14%) 2 (2.86%) 70 (100%) 38 which was 4.5%, this might reflect many reasons including the quality of the ultrasound machine, skill of the radiologist also local variables can be a factor. the result with mammography in our study was 14% for breast cancer, which are in the birad-3 category of mammography , while other studies are reported lower rates around 5% of breast cancer in birad-3 by mammography. thus we understand that in our locality these non-invasive screening tools downgrade birads and should be more cautious dealt, thus further invasive diagnostic tests can be requested in birad-3 cases to have least false negative results. 5. conclusion there was statistically significant association between radiological investigations (ultrasound & mammography) and histopathological finding (core needle biopsy).  mean age of the study participants were 51 years.  most of the participants were female.  most of the core biopsy results were positive for malignancy.  there was a statistically significant association etween ultrasound and histopathological finding (core needle biopsy).  statistically significant association was found between mammography and core needle biopsy. 6. recommendations 1. encourage use of the standardized bi-rads lexicon among radiologists involved with breast imaging. 2. further education of breast physicians and breast surgeons about the bi-rads assessment categories and the correlation with core needle biopsy. 3. patients with category bi-rads iii should undergo core needle biopsy because of the high percentage of malignant results were found in our study. references [1] k. kelly hunt, c. marjorie green and a. thomas buchholz. “diseases of the breast”, in sabiston textbook of surgery. the biological basis of modern surgical practice, 19th ed. courtney m. townsed, r. daniel beauchamp, b. mark evers, and l. henneth mattox, ed. philadelphia: elsevier saunders; 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[24] m. baykara, zeynep özkan , yeliz gül , özgen aslan and leyla güngör. “effectiveness of the triple test and its alternatives for breast mass evaluation”j. breast health, vol.9(4),pp.195199,oct.2013. [25] m. naseem, joshua murray, f. john hilton, jason karamchandani, derek mura c. dali, hala faragalla, chanele 39 polenz, dolly han, david bell, and christine brezden-masley. “mammographic microcalcifications and breast cancer tumorigenesis: a radiologic-pathologic analysis”, bmc cancer, vol.15, pp.307-315,april 2015. [26] r. steinitz, l. katz and m. ben-hur “ male breast cancer in israel: selected epidemiological aspects”, isr j med sci., vol. 17, (9-10), pp.816-21, oct.1981. [27] d. dobromir dimitrov, p. martin karamanliev , s. tashko deliyski, anisla gabarski , p. petar vatov , o. ruzha gencheva. et. al. “diagnostic value of tru-cut biopsy in diagnosing breast lesions”, jbcr, vol. 9 (2), pp.126-129, 2016.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) print-issn: 2411-7684 | electronic-issn: 2411-7706 volume 3 | issue 1 | june 2018 | doi: 10.24017/science.2018.1.14 received: march 15, 2018 | accepted: june 24, 2018 intelligent application implementation model for automated agent negotiation wrya anwar hayder mohammed hassan husain it department it department kalar technical institute kalar technical institute sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani polytechnic university sulaimani, iraq sulaimani, iraq wrya.hayder@spu.edu.iq mohamad.hassan@spu.edu.iq 68 abstract -in the last few years multi-agents communication has seen an increased concern. the first main driver was intelligent agent is claimed to be the next generation model for complex and distributed system engineering. second the agents can automate process and communication on behalf of the agent’s users for proper actions and decisions. there are many concerns about how to implement communications among different agents in term of applied technology. in this paper we propose a restapi and json technology as implementation tools that can be applied to implement intelligent web-based applications. rest is stands for representational state transfer which is allowing communication between web-based agents. json (javascript object notation) is a lightweight data format makes it easy for agents to parse and interchange data. this study has merged rest-ap and json technology into an automated negotiation model, and then a prototype is developed to successfully apply the proposed model. this model can facilitate application in business application negotiations and even internet of things (iot) where http protocol is used. keywords: multi-agent system, automated negotiation, web-based agent technology, e-commerce automated, intelligent application, negotiation web agents 1. introduction intelligent agents are being promoted to be the future trend in distributed computation theory of complex systems. agent study has seen a great concern from various perspectives and levels. agent has been defined as a computer or machine embedded in some environment, that capable of autonomous actions in response to specific inputs perceived from external environment [1]. 1.1. intelligent agent’s properties a set of characteristics have been appointed, by which an agent should be determined. firstly, agents should have well defined boundaries and clearly defined problem solving entities. second, it must suit precise domain or embedded in a particular environment. thirdly, designed to fulfill specific purpose objectives and achieve specific goals. last but not least, it also should capable of specific behavior in pursuit of their need in order to respond to the environment requests [2][3]. in term of agent properties there are numbers of important properties that have been appointed, that should be performed by the agents including:  reactiveness: the ability of agents to change their behavior according to a new condition in the environment, such as identifies changes in users’ needs.  pro-activeness: this means that agent should act autonomously according to the user’s goals. by autonomously it meant agent should act on our behalf.  social ability: social behavior of agent tends to be the ability of several heterogeneous agents to interact with each other. the social behavior of intelligent agent has been defined by three main activities such as:  cooperation: as the name proposes is the ability of agent to cooperate with another agent to achieve specific object.  collaboration: suggests that agents complete each other tasks to perform desired actions.  negotiation: is the ability of agents to negotiate on behalf of their owners about a specific negotiation object, in order to achieve agreement according to their design specifications [4]. figure 1: intelligent agent’s properties agents’ negotiation includes various forms of interactions starting from simple form of data interchanges to a complex contract agreement. applying automated negotiation requires the intelligent application to perform process of data exchange so that it can achieve acceptable agreement. even though web intelligent agent reactiven ess proactiveness social ability cooperation collaboration negotiation 69 applications have been widely available, still not many researches have studied how to make these applications more intelligent to support automated negotiation. in this paper we propose using rest-api and json as web implementation technology to be used, which may leads to advance the future of web applications. as well as promoting business applications ability for automated negotiation. 1.2. rest-api and json web services rest-api key concept is by representing information as resource; this resource can be text information, document or image. these resources then can be easily transferred and communicated by applications using standard http protocol. each resource is identified by a resource identifier uri which will be available for any http application request. for instance http://bookstore/book/{price}, in this example the book information such as name, price or any other attributes are represented as resource that can be requested and exchanged by http request[5]. the second main principle of rest architecture is the methods or function that can be performed on those resources. rest is using methods that are defined in standard http protocol, the main methods are: a. get get function is to retrieve resources. whenever a client agent wants an information resource it can execute get method for such purpose. b. post post method can be used by client agent to add resource information to a server agent, not just retrieving. c. put put method is to update resource information. by using this method a client agent can put a resource message with a new content to replace resource on the server agent. d. delet delete is to remove an existing resource. when a client agent calls delete method all member of that resource will be removed [6][7][8]. third main concept this web service is the format of the resource information being exchanged. the resource data required to be in a standard format. javascript object notation (json) is a standard data exchange format between agents. json stores data in a key-value format which is easy to understand by all the object oriented programming languages [9]. for instance: book info= { "bookname":"java how to program", "author":"paul deitel" "orginalprice": "$164.60" "bookrate: 3.8/5 } 2. literature review and related works electronic negotiation system is defined as process between two or more agents by intelligent software and applications [10]. agent negotiation has been studied in literature in three main domains includes: 2.1. negotiation strategies and techniques there are three common negotiation techniques that have been widely adopted in literature for automated negotiation support. most of the techniques are adopted from artificial intelligent domain, which can be summarized as following:  game theoretic techniques originally game theory is concerned with the study of computational game design, for example chess game. researchers had mentioned negotiation and bargaining in the literature of game theory before agent studies have been emerged. then it rapidly became obvious that the strategies of game theories can be applied between intelligent agents. from this point the game computational theory adopted by automated negotiation researchers since it is applicable between two selfinterested agents. in computer science this domain has been covered by computational theory studies. it can be applied in a particular automated negotiation scenario.  heuristic techniques these techniques determine the computation associated with the negotiation space, by costs. as result the priority is for the optimal solution instead of the good one. it minimizes the complexity of the argument behind the computation decision. in their simplest protocol agents can only accept or reject proposals.  argumentation-based techniques the main motivation for argumentation-based technique is to permit extra data to be communicated regarding the negotiation proposals. thus, in many cases it is important to provide some additional data to establish the agreements. for example rewards can be provided for other agents if they accept the proposal [11][12]. 2.2. negotiation models the majority of the research studies try to propose theoretical model that deal with specific scenario. it is difficult to cover all models that covered by other researchers, but some related models can be mentioned. the models that going to be covered are about commercial models to automate negotiation between seller agents and buyer agents.  rule-based automated negotiation rules are very promising technique for agent negotiation. the model defines agent roles by using rules that specifically organized to perform a particular response. for instance, rules that support negotiation admission. while others for proposals validity checking, finally rules for other negotiation protocol aspects [13].  learning-based negotiation agents it is described as learning model framework that allows the agents investing in deeper analysis of the past experience interactions. in this model an agent uses its past interaction experience to learn about other agents. 70 then depending on the learned model the agent makes an effective interaction strategy for the future [14].  multi-attributes-based negotiation agent the aim of this model is to provide the client agents with extra attributes to negotiation upon for a proposed product. this leads to better satisfying the need of clients and better understanding of agreements proposals [15].  ontology-based approach intelligent agent supposed to perform on behalf of the owners. to achieve this purpose agent supposed to be supported with negotiation knowledge. it is better to organize this knowledge, in order to facilitate the agent negotiation decision making ability. the ontology-based model applied for such purpose. these agents are using specific protocols that help them to properly organize knowledge. the knowledge can be separated into public and private knowledge experience to preserve the privacy of strategic knowledge during negotiation [16].  combined negotiation agent combined negotiation is a model that suitable for agents which interested in variety of products. as result they can be engaged in many negotiations simultaneously. these concurrent negotiations are independent of each other’s as it is with the products. this model tends to help user’s agent to be involved in more than one negotiation at once [17]. 2.3. negotiation issues  protocol issues building autonomous agents to perform sophisticated negotiation is very broad area. assumed the wide range of possibilities, it is difficult to employ universally purpose protocol for each automated negotiation [18].  negotiation objects it is the domain that the agents negotiate about, to reach a specific agreement. each domain can be determined by a single attribute for instance price, while other domains can be determined by hundreds of attributed to be negotiated such as quality, terms and conditions, etc. [1].  agents’ decision making ability in order to meet the negotiation objectives, agents supposed to be design to make decisions based on agreement argumentation. the decision can be at once or through many rounds.  negotiation technology application the limitation use of technology systems to support automated negotiation has been assigned to some factors including:  the complexity of the electronic commerce applications considered to be a challenge for researchers. the new web-based systems made millions of user exposed to online commerce negotiation practices. this development of new technologies leads to difficulties in managing user’s data variety and communication.  the limitations of information communication protocols that facilitate standard data exchange between the agents.  computational and resource constraints that required to manage the delegation of negotiation process [19]. developing automated negotiation system requires technologies to be implemented and applied. even technology implementation is an important aspect of applying negotiation agent, but it has been widely covered by the researchers. most of the research works concerned with negotiation strategies and models. the development of rest-api and json for web application created more promising future for implementing intelligent web-based applications. by using json, nowadays applications can store and process data more effective and efficient. the restapi in other hand made it easier to communicate and exchange data. restful application can perform four main functions of data communication using http requests. these four functions are (get) to retrieve information from other agents. (post) http request can be used to pass json data to other agents. (put) request create and/or update the data on other agents. (delet) request makes it possible to delete data on remote agents. using rest requests the agents can perform all four necessary operations that required in automated negotiation, which they are read, create, update and delete data. in this paper work we propose an implementation model that emerge rest-api as communication protocol and json as data format to perform automated negotiation. the implementation will be for a simple scenario of a seller agent (sa) and client agents (ca). as it has been mentioned this scenario has been covered by other researchers in term of negotiation strategy, protocol and design [20][21][22], while in this paper we propose the technology implementation practice of how to apply this scenario in developing web application. 3. proposed implemtation model we propose an automated negotiation implementation model that provides the behavioral architecture in form of web application services. this work service is easy to implement framework for completely intelligent application system. it facilitates the basic operations needed by e-commerce platform as well as it is a cost saving technology of development. the working process: seller agent (sa) provides a book selling service; it sells books with reduction ration depending on client agents (ca) attributes. for instance: client age, profession, quantity, original price and book rate. many other attribute can be added according to different negotiation situation. the (ca) look for specific book of his interest. once the book is matched the sa and ca are going to communicate with each other to start negotiation. the ca has it is json data object and aps codes for request behavior, while the sa has its own data retrieved from database stored in json format. in addition the sa has 71 its own api codes for behavior based on number of issues taken into consideration. here we took five attribute in consideration to demonstrate the implementation work, since the principle is understood it can be applied to any situation and number of attributed. figure 2: proposed automated negotiation implementation model as it the figure depicts the client agent (ca) initiate the request for the book using get api. if the request matched existing book form a book seller agent, then the ca uses post api to pass attributes in json format to the sa. depending on the ca attributes the agreement data the sa calculate the amount of reduction from the original price and respond it to the ca. finally, if the ca accept the new price it uses put api to save the agreement deal or uses delete api to delete and cancel the agreement. the implementation algorithm process is as following: client agent (ca): makes the initial request //protocol: get //contenttype: application/json url=localhost/selleragent //requested data: from (url) get book data where { "bookname":"java how to program” "orginal price":"prince" } seller agent (sa): returns book based on get request //api: get api http 200 ok { bookname: "bookname", bookprice: "prince" } //return book data from seller agent databse query= select bookname, orginal price, author, bookrate from books where bookname=bookname data=execute(query); //send back data to ca // client recives json-data { "bookname":"java how to program", "author":"paul deitel", "orginalprice": "$164.60", "bookrate": "3.8/5" } ca: client agent posts attributes data as json //protocol: post //contenttype: application/json attributes={ "age":20, "profession ":"student", "quantity": 2, "maxprice":35, "minprice":15 } send(atrributes) sa: receives client attributes and calculate reduction // return a value based on api get request http 200 ok { "studentage": "age", "studentprofession" : " profession ", "requestquantity ": " quantity ", "maxprice" : " maxprice ", "minprice ": " minprice " } // return reduction ratio select reduction _attributes from book_reduction where reduction_attributes=ca_attributes //calculating reduction reduction_price=orginal_price*∑ attributes𝑛𝑘=0 //response will be send(reduction_price) ca: final confirmation // if the reduction price suits the client agent preference then the final confirmation will be ok //protocol: put //contenttype: application/json confirm={ "id":"client hashing id", " confirmstate ":"agreed" } open("put", url) send(confirm) //otherwise agreement is canceled confirm={ "id":"client hashing id", " confirmstate ":"canceled" } open("delete", url) send(confirm) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/115707.java 72 4. proposed applications prototype the result of the proposed model and code of the above section simply developed into a bookstore business intelligent applications. the code in the above section represents the basic principles of the applied prototype implementation; the detailed implementation process can easily be understood by other researchers or developers. in this study work the model developed into a simple prototype application to illustrate how such model can be applied. as it is mentioned earlier there are going to be a books seller agent application which offers books with negotiating price and criteria as it shown in figure below. figure 3: seller agent application at the left side of the seller application there are negotiating criteria as preferred by seller agent for instance: figure 4: seller agent negotiating criteria in the other hand there are clients’ applications, where buyers can open and sign up there information attributes in order to use these services, as it is shown by the next figure. figure 5: sign up for buyer agent application after client verification then a buyer client can set up his negotiating criteria for his desired books. then the application can negotiated on his behalf from many seller agents by sending and receiving information using rest-api and json data exchange as it shown below: figure 6: buyer agent application as it can be seen form the above main home page of buyer application, a client can add his favorite books with his suitable criteria as below: 73 figure 7: buyer agent negotiation criteria the application then can use rest api and json data form to communication information with seller agencies and propose list of result to the buyer clients, as below: figure 8: buyer agent application negotiation list 5. evaluation comparison of rest-api and other web services even though other web service technologies are exist, but rest-api and json are newer technology and have a qualified performance metrics for this purpose. other familiar technologies that exist for data communication between agents’ platforms are:  soap (simple object access protocol): is a standard messaging protocol used to machine-tomachine communication [23].  amqp (advanced message queuing protocol): is an open standard messaging middleware to support communication among different platforms [9].  corba (common object request broker architecture): is a standard protocol which intends to facilitate message communication between different machine platforms [24]. there are metrics which qualifies rest and json performance to be suitable for such research purpose. these metrics are proposed for software application evaluation as following [8]. table 1 rest-api performance preferences generally, rest-api became preferable by developers because it is more light weighted, easy to develop and integrated with existing web applications. in addition it uses less bandwidth which makes it preferable for less memory devices such as mobile application [25]. 6. discussion rest-api and json differ from other negotiation services in many ways, as it has evaluated and discussed by other researchers. rest-api and json services are relatively new and open source, which means it has no cost and license restriction for any company. it also a standard format, it can be implemented by any applications using http metrics rest soap amqp corba simplicity simple to design more code specification required not straight forward not much familiarized data format support support json and xml does not support json requires other software tools additional library required cost free-api open source maintenance cost is higher software broker tool is required commercial implementat ion cost execution time shorter response time slower response execution time consuming execution time consuming resource consumption simple http requests, less resource consuming more memory consuming longer process more resources required memory leak issue in corba program 74 protocol and object oriented programming. other important value of rest-json is simplicity in comparison to the other distributed complex processing. it is easy to implement applications using rest with json services, because it is closely related to the http protocol. rest is a light-weight alternative to applications with limited resources and bandwidth as it is only using url to represent information resources. finally, we used this web service because despite its simplicity and powerfulness, it has not been implemented for such purpose. our work contribution intends to apply this technology in intelligent negotiation domain. such technology can transform the way current online business system work. 7. conclusion this paper reviews many aspects of multi-agents system in particular the online commerce system. there are many researches have covered the strategy and models of automated negotiation system, but only few research work concerned with implementation practices of how to apply this concept in term of application development. in this work propose a very easy and cost effective technology to implement intelligent web application in order to perform online automated negotiation system. even though the model is applied for one case scenario, but it can be easily applied for a huge complex ecommerce system. 8. future work agents are getting their way through in intelligent commerce applications. there are still much works need to be done as future work plan to make it practically applicable. one important aspect need to be studded is expanding the http protocol behavior for e-commerce domain in precise. then creating more advanced restapi routines that can handle more complex and intelligent auctions. reference [1] n. r. jennings, p. faratin, a. r. lomuscio, s. parsons, m. j. wooldridge, and c. sierra, “automated negotiation: prospects, methods and challenges,” group decision and negotiation, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 199–215, 2001. 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[23] m. w. khan and e. abbasi, “differentiating parameters for selecting simple object access protocol (soap) vs. representational state transfer (rest) based architecture,” journal of advances in computer networks, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 63–6, 2015. [24] s. buciuc, communications using the common object request broker architecture (corba). google patents, 2017. [25] m. w. khan and e. abbasi, “differentiating parameters for selecting simple object access protocol (soap) vs. representational state transfer (rest) based architecture,” journal of advances in computer networks, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 63–6, 2015.  kurdistan journal of applied research (kjar) | print-issn: 2411-7684 – electronic-issn: 2411-7706 | kjar.spu.edu.iq volume 2 | issue 3 | august 2017 | doi: 10.24017/science.2017.3.63 investigating the role of urban spaces in reduction of digital divide between citizens (case study: bam-e tehran recreational complex) ahoora babaei department of architecture, sanandaj branch, islamic azad university, sanandaj, iran. email: ahoora.babaei@gmail.com qader bayzidi department of architecture, sanandaj branch, islamic azad university, sanandaj, iran. email: q_bayzidi@srbiau.ac.ir abstract: the information and communication technologies and their ever expanding and development have transformed all the basic concepts of human life, including the collective life of humans in urban spaces. now these technologies have caused gradual and sometimes sudden changes in the concepts of space, so that, along with urban spaces, we are witnessing the creation of virtual environments with a wide variety of inclusive activities. this phenomenon led to the formation of virtual communities with a metropolitan state and the virtual universe formation in parallel with the real world. one of the implications of dual spatial and globalization for life of human beings is the creation of a crisis called the digital divide, which is associated with individualism, the reduction of social interactions levels, reducing collective life in the city's social spaces. the present study is carried out aimed to explain the role and capabilities of urban spaces on reducing the individuality of the crisis and promoting interactive levels and social integration. for this purpose, in the research process, three methods of environmental mapping, observation of behavior and interview with users in the bam-e tehran recreational complex have been used. the results showed that cyberspace is not considered as a substitute for physical space and serves as a complement to complete the social functions of urban spaces. therefore, the creation of smart environments in this urban space and the creation of a hybrid space of physical and cyberspace, called the cyber park, will lead to an everincreasing active presence of citizens and the promotion of levels of social interaction and ultimately reduce the digital divide among citizens. keywords: urban space, icts, digital divide, social interactions, cyberspace, dual spatial and globalization. introduction humanity has long been dependent on space and physical setting in order to meet its operational needs, and has continuously made the physical and spatial changes of the settings to optimize performance and accountability. in the turbulent world of today and in the era of information and communication technologies, all human behavior has been affected and has changed the behavior patterns of citizens in the urban community, so that we are seeing systematic, gradual, sudden, superficial, deep, and comprehensive changes in patterns of consumption, residence, social and citizenship patterns, and so on..urban physical setting with significant potential and capacities as a responsive space to meet the needs of citizens has been changed by social, cultural, political events and so on because of the widespread expansion of information and communication technology and the changes caused by the emergence of the information society and is constantly rebuilding a new space. as a result of these changes due to digital technologies, social life, and communication, it has become a new form that creates differences in the perception of the nature of civilian life and the dual specialization as a collective life in the real world. one of the implications of dual specialization and globalization for life of human beings is the creation of a crisis called the digital divide, which has reduced the citizenship interactions levels, collective life in the city's physical setting. the present study is trying to answer these questions. what are the differences between the urban space in the digital age and urban space in the past considering the full implication of digital technologies in the everyday life of social activists? can urban spaces act by applying physical changes to reduce the existing digital divide and strengthen social role? should new requirements and standards be defined in urban space of digital age for collective actions? literature review near the end of the 2nd millennium, a number of important events have transformed the outlook for human life. the technological revolution which has focused on information technology is rapidly reestablishing the material basis of society ]1[. all of these revolutions industrial, information technology ... are characterized by acquisition and etc, by influence in all areas of human activity, not as a source of external influence, but as a tangible one in which such an activity is interwoven. in other words, these revolutions are focused on the process ]1[. the new information technologies link the various parts of the world to one another in global networks. computer communications have created a vast collection of virtual communities ]1[. beyond the use of digital communications for informal social relationships as well as the instrumental use of this system, observers have become aware of the phenomenon of the virtual communities formation, which may increase the state of the metropolis and globalization of them by reinforcing social networks that are culturally dominant ]1[. thus, based on the emerging paradigm of globalization, with the development of the social space, we have entered the dual-space world from single-space universe, which is based on the industrial and technological foundations, and in the light of which, the world of simultaneous communications has been digitized, as well as the widespread and inclusive of world computer communication devices finds its meaning ]2[.human communications in such a space has faced new challenges. in such a space, people are exposed to new communication day by day and in many ways; they are faced with the social world and, consequently, with values, norms, customs, and new issues. the shaped universes each have single users. therefore, they can't be considered separate from each other, because both have a common point. thus, the new world must be considered as a continuation of life in a new space, in which all processes are arisen in two physical and virtual dimensions ]4[. the emergence of the virtual universe with the physical world has created fivedimensional combinations that have created great and paradigmatic changes in the living space. these five compounds are the cyber-physical of human communications, the cyber-physical of time, the cyber-physical of work, the cyberphysical of culture, and the virtualization of dependencies and attachments ]3[. now, as modern communications and industrial technologies with the emergence of the internet, and especially the web over the past two decades, have provided the foundation for the same longterm wish of man, we live in a two-world space; the first world is the real physical world. and the second world is world is real, but virtual ]3[. the emergence of the virtual universe over time changed the region in the physical world. the definition of time, place, reality, work, and many other basic concepts has undergone profound transformations. this profound transformation continued so far as to affect human identities. the concept of the second life of man, the wings of a new identity in the new world were formed from here, but, meanwhile, the change in human relations was the most important change that created this two-world space. in fact, the change in the communication space could bring the experience of a different social interaction into human life ]4[. technological changes are so fast and the dissemination of computer communications is so rapid that most of the research that was carried out in the 1980s is no longer applicable to social trends of the 1990s, that is precisely the same moment when modern communication culture is emerging ]1[. deleuze and guattari (1987) say that new forms of social relationships and networks are formed due to spreading cyberspace and advancing in new generation communications, and eliminate the boundaries of individual and collective identities, and even produce and reproduce different identities in cyberspace. according to mohseni (2001), on the interconnection of technology and social changes, augborn argues that technology is always the first factor in social change and since technology is changing rapidly and changes in social institutions are slowly taking place, cultural lag that is a kind of the distance between the systems of society will arise]7[. also, according to mcluhan's theory, human beings are influenced by electronic communication devices, their social life is subverted, and all manifestations of human culture are changing. with the advent and development of information technologies and the formation of electronic environments, this discussion has arisen in specialized and general circles, in which individualism develops and disrupts the spirit of collectivism of individuals in societies and ultimately leads to a decrease in the active presence of users in interpersonal, group communications and social actions ]8[. new technologies redefine content and interact with social institutions, such as government, education, and commerce ]4[. according to henry lefebvre, multiculturalism is defined against monoculture life and functional integration instead of isolating and linking spaces instead of segmentation of them]15[. such a space which is considered as integrated virtual reality, has features such as homeless, being beyond time, being pure industrial, unlimited civil laws relying on the nations state, from transformed epistemology, from post modernity, availability at the same time, being in space and having cultural, religious, economic, political space as well as freedom of new physical and sexual identity ]2[. the place and time are the fundamental and material aspects of human life. the paradigm of information technology, and the social forms and processes that have originated from the current process of transformation, are working together to transform the place and time ]1[. today, the real world is combined with virtual world in such a way that its separation is very difficult. time does not have the past space-based concept. cultures are highly integrated and have lost their past spatial and temporal viability. therefore, it is natural that identity faces with crisis in the new space in relation with time and space aspects and spacebased culture]19[. in social theory, the definition of a place is not possible without reference to social functions. david harvey, in his book, "the condition of post modernity", says: time and space can't be understood independently of social action. from the perspective of social theory, the place is the support of the social functions that occurs at a time ]9[. in a study published by craig et al on the relationship between cyberspace and urban space in 2016, they found that cyberspace does not act as a successor to urban spaces, but serves as a complement to improving the functional levels of urban spaces. in this study, which was conducted in 50 different states of the united states between 2000 and 2011, using the death of distance theory, several hypotheses were arisen, so that based on them if the internet is used as an effective alternative to urban areas, residents of the marginalized areas of the city and villages had higher demands to benefit from virtual spaces. after studying, they rejected their hypothesis and, given the higher level of requests made by urban residents compared to residents of the village and civic suburbanites, they found that the presence of cyberspace would improve the performance of urban space and respond to the user activity needs, and as a result, cyberspace can be considered as complementary to urban space performance]13[. in 2006, adriano de souza raised another view of urban reality in the 21st century, in which the contemporary city has become into a hybrid space developed between physical and digital spaces and limited by information and communication technology. the duality of public spaces has become an influential fact on the many changes in urban typology and the redefinition of spatial, social, and technological needs]14[. today, new digital layers have been added to the city's image which brings new and varied experiences for the public mind from different layers, both through direct communication and communication created by digital technologies, and in fact leads to redefine public spaces, which include both physical and digital aspects ]12[. therefore, information and communication technology can be considered as a kind of urban infrastructure that is effective in facilitating communication and information exchange. considering the probable effects of new technology and introducing it into the main urban infrastructure should be considered at all stages of designing and implementing the development of urban environments. accordingly, the impact of information technology should be investigated at various scales and levels in urban environments ]15[. the advent of modern technologies has created a new experience of urban spaces with information boards and digital and light advertising. modern technology provides a new redefinition of urban spaces. a strong element has been added to the defining elements of urban spaces. the new technology has provided innovative features to create a more attractive environment and experience richer than the urban environment for designers. if these new technologies are not used seriously in a variety of fields, urban environments will ultimately become inadequate of the rejection of reality and will be greatly affected and lose its meaning by the course of developments, culture and national identity in urban areas ]15[. urban spaces were considered as the main source of information and politics, as well as embracing diverse discussions and discourses before the invention of digital media. in addition, economic activity has driven the use of markets and retail outlets in public spaces as a place to go shopping]24[. with the growing growth of communication technologies, activities in the public domain were reduced because the information was easily accessible from the home by the internet, which would sometimes make it unnecessary for parts and even for most of the physical displacement. this phenomenon led to the growth of electronic purchases, as well as the daily discussion of online communities. the internet has shaped a new form of communal spaces called the message market and the death of distance theory ]11[. today, people engage in both cyberspace and physical spaces, formal or informal gatherings for the purpose of exchanging information, publish their experiences, or eliminate various types of restrictions such as time and space. since the main role of open collective spaces is related to provide social encounters between people, staying in the way that they can rest and recreate the environment and enjoy, virtual networks have added communication channels and new media to real space. the following table compares the patterns of communication and social events influenced by the presence of digital technologies in the lives of the people of the community]23[. investigating the emerging social structures in different areas of activity and human experience leads to a comprehensive outcome. as a historical process, the functions and processes dominant in the information age are increasingly organized around the networks every day. networks form new social from of our societies, and the expansion of network logic generates dramatic changes in operations and outputs of production processes, experience, power and culture ]1[. dreyfus's view is that whatever people use the network more, they more tend to crawl in an unreal and lonely world, because the use of social networks reduces individual involvement in the physical and social world ]16[. social relations of space and communication pattern social relationships in real space social relationships in the network type of relationship face to face online and through the network geographical distance close far relationship form relationships are somewhat necessary the relations are selective and varied the scope of the relationship limited number diversity and plurality of individuals and groups type of engagement fairly constant relatively variable and multiple relationship evolution relationships are gradual relationships are faster attitude and desire attitudes and interests are different and sometimes close attitudes and interests are somewhat the same language common language different languages table 1 comparing social events in two real and virtual spaces ]8[ the increasing use of the internet, satellite, computer and ... among the various strata of the society has caused various social groups to be exposed to these new means of communication and their indigenous world is linked to global issues through these new means of communication ]17[. other studies conducted by other researchers, in particular saroukhani and rezaei ghadi (2012), koohi and hasani (2012), show that with the increasing expansion of new media such as virtual social networks, especially in transitional societies, the modernization process weakens traditional links. these media can affect citizens' attitudes and behaviors and reduce empathy, national belonging, and social cohesion ]20, 21[. memar et al quoted tomba define the three features of social networks as follows: the space-time compression, the lack of sense of space, and the faded ranges and changed communities, we must keep in mind that every human must be in a special space or time]18[. continued advances in the era of information technology and revolution that has emerged by mobile phones, wireless internet, bluetooth, the global positioning system (gps) and all of their utilities, have had a tremendous impact on the interpersonal interactions ways and interactions between humans and the physical environment around them, and this question arises that "how the nature of these technologies affects the level of use and establishing relationships in communal spaces, and how urban planners can create a new kind of vitality, attractiveness, security and sustainability of communal spaces using the foundations of these technologies? ]11[. in studies conducted by keith hampton et al on the effects of technology on social interactions, and in response to questions about how have the changes been made in the behavior of humans in the collective space of the digital age? and how much human interaction in the pre-epochs of electronic devices has undergone a change?, using the time-lapse photography method in the bryan park in the early 1980's and comparing it with a film that was similar to that of the contemporary era, they examined the behavior of people in this area by using the pps indicators. they arrived at interesting results that people in the past tended to relate more to face-to-face relationships and social life, but in the present day, people are more inclined to individualism in urban spaces by using communicative technologies, and are less interested in collective life and social mixing. they also found that mobile telecommunication and electronic communication equipment was largely used only by those who are single in urban areas or who are waiting for someone to join them or to be used in transit spaces between two destinations in order to spend time ]5[. methods and materials this article is concerned with the long-term evolution of urban societies as they struggle, change and evolve through the introduction of new communications technology. a challenge we face is recording, representing and understanding the patterns of presence and use of diverse forms of interaction spaces that are emerging in our scope of the study through the use of digital technologies. in the research method used in present study, in order to explain the basic notions and the concerns raised therein, the research method is analytical-survey using the three tools of environmental mapping, behavior study and interview with users over the two-month period, in the study area used. therefore, we will explain how to use the research tools and, by introducing the scope of the study, we will analyze the findings and elaborate them. environmental mapping tool: using satellite maps, the study site first is limited and then activity layers, users, breathing space, transition spaces, passages and population centers are determined by staining on maps and how the overlapping different layers harvested is analyzed with two other tools. viewing and studying users' behavior tool: mainly by flushing in space and visual perceptions using video recording, time-lapse method, variables such as usage time, duration of use, location, as well as the frequency of use of digital tools by users in urban space were studied. took results and findings are presented in the form of tables and charts separated by each variable. interviewing users tool: according to the statistical center of iran report, the stationary population of tehran in 2017 has been counted as 1360,000 people, which was used to determine the sample size using the cochran formula. the sample size of the statistical population was 385 people, who were randomly selected among the users over the age of 6 years in the two months period, interviews on the type and type of use, as well as the reason for use of these technologies when they were present in the urban space, were studied. introducing the scope of study bam-e-tehran complex begins at the highest point of the velenjak street at an altitude of 1830 meters and ends at a height of 1910 meters above sea level at the tochal ski lift 1th station. bam-e tehran recreational complex, as one of the successful urban spaces in northern tehran, has been able to play a significant role in attracting citizens in order to spend leisure time using the natural bedding in the mountain range of tochal. the beautiful and hearty landscapes, the clean air of the mountains, add to the cleanliness and refinement of the area. there are many leisure and tourism facilities along the 2kilometer walking route of the complex, in addition to restaurants serving iranian and international food, fast food and coffee shops, as well as sports and flower equipment booths. due to its location in one of the northernmost parts of tehran, bam-e tehran recreational complex, has always served as a service space for all citizens of tehran. about the reasons for choosing this urban space among other urban spaces of tehran, in order to carry out the research process, it can be admitted that due to the location of the complex, by looking at the activity indicators proposed by jan gehl and the triple classification of activities in urban space, essential, optional and social, bam-e tehran recreational complex can be considered as a subset of spaces with the responsive performance to citizens' optional activities. with this explanation, it can be said that this urban space with the purpose of the destination space is considered as a suitable space to pass leisure for the citizens, so users refer to this complex in a fully selective manner, which is one of the main aspects of distinguishing this complex with other urban space in tehran. given that this can be considered as a destination space, it can be concluded that the functions of this urban space attract more and more users, hence it seems that existing functions leads to the active presence of users, and the promotion of the level of collective living in this space. the fact is around 20 years past, it was the space of common sense, of knowledge, of social practice, a space hitherto as the environment of and channel for communications. but today, with the full penetration of digital technology, cyberspace, and its links with people's life, according to observations, the growing presence in the virtual world by citizens in this urban space has reduced the active presence of users, collective participation, collective life, consequently, the social functions of this urban space. therefore, we are witnessing the transformation of an active to passive urban space. in the following, analysis of the data extracted from the research tools, the reasons for inactivity, and solutions for improving the performance are presented. discussion and results looking at the environmental maps obtained, the areas with high population density are concentrated near the active users and at the edges of this urban space. there is also a direct relationship between the use of digital technologies and population density. therefore, the largest statistical population studied, through the observing and interview with users tools, was considered at the high-density sites. figure 1 shows how overlapping of various activity layers, and density of points of use of virtual spaces and digital technologies. figure 1 overlapping of the layers of communication, performance and population density which use cyberspace source: authors. by using the observing and studying behavior tool, users in this urban space can be categorized in terms of the duration of the use of digital communication and cyberspace technologies into the three time intervals which had the highest frequency. also in the other category, the duration of the users' presence was considered in three time intervals. the results of the relationship between the two variables, the duration of users' presence in space, and the duration of the use of digital technologies and cyberspace can be seen in table 2. duration (min) duration of presence (minutes) up to 20 10 20 less than 10 9 12 22 less than 30 12 28 70 60 30 48 66 117 up to 60 69 106 209 total table 2 relationship between duration of users' presence in space and duration of use of digital and cyber security technologies, source: authors figure 2 comparison of the variables including duration of presence and duration of the use, source: authors according to fig. 2, it can be said that the duration that people in this urban space use digital technologies and cyberspace have a direct relationship with duration of their presence in space, and whatever more people spend their leisure in this space, spend the longer time in cyberspace. therefore, it can be concluded that bam-e tehran recreational complex, in order to continue the active presence of users and the continuity of collective actions, needs to strengthen social functions in order to respond better. regarding the observations and usual frequency in the multiplicity of users 'use of cyberspace and digital technologies, the three categories were considered for the number of referrals, which results from the relationship between the two variables, the duration of the users' presence in space, and the number of visits are presented in table 3. duration of presence (minute) number of visits to cyberspace 0 3 4 7 up to 7 less than 30 12 20 23 30 60 33 38 41 up to 60 97 69 52 total 142 127 116 table 3 relationship between the duration of users' presence in space and number of visits to cybernetics, source: authors figure 3 comparison of the variables, including duration of presence and frequency of use, source: authors the results of the comparative study in figure 3 show that whatever more people spend more time in this complex, they go to cyberspace more often. this suggests that this urban space is much replaced by cyberspace, which can be attributed to the exact updating of cyberspace and the uniformity of physical space. to find out why the relationships created between the variables discussed with the observation tool and environmental mapping tool, we reach the third step in the research that we are interviewing with site users. in the first step, how and type of use of digital technologies were asked from interviewees whose results and dimensions are shown in table 4. the results indicate that the use of digital technologies has been the most widely used, despite the presence of people in communal spaces, the social function of cyberspace is the most frequent. therefore, social functions in this urban space should be in line with the greater social interference of citizens and increase the various dimensions of social life in cyberspace with facilities in the physical space. such facilities include the creation of virtual social environments dedicated to this urban space in which citizens have the possibility of interaction and social integration to strengthen collective life. type of use dimensions frequency percent searching for health and hygiene. health messages, medical advices, health advice 43 11.16% communicating with service provider websites. asking questions and getting answers in a variety of areas: psychology, scientific research, cooking 62 10.16% getting information from government agencies. studying news, conferences, call for recruitment of government agencies 35 9.09% sending and receiving email. correspondence interactions via electronic mailbox 291 58.75% calling over the internet. voip 136 32.35% participating in social sites. including membership on sites such as facebook, twitter and instagram 342 83.88% ordering or buying goods and services. including ordering and purchasing goods from online and online sales sites 178 23.46% watching tv over the internet. internet and non-web networks through special online distribution software 93 15.24% game, photo, movie or music. online games, software downloads, photos, videos or music 194 38.50% reading newspapers, magazines and books. newspapers and online magazines and e-books 87 59.22% personal web page management control, deleting and adding information for sharing 357 72.92% table 4 types of using digital technologies in urban space, source: authors reasons to use cyberspace from the perspective of users frequency percent 385 100% selective activities 154 40% uniformity in the physical space function 263 68.31% duplication of activities in physical space 302 78.44% being diverse 180 46.75% being inclusive 207 53.76% death of distances (distance interactions) 286 74.28% updating every one minute 298 77.40% selective interactions with preferential social class 284 73.76% table 5 opinions of interviewees for using cyberspace, source: authors the nature of digital spaces provides a virtual concept of freedom and security, since its users can choose groups with their preferences for interactions, define boundaries and limits for their personal bubble, choose one type of immunity and share their opinions freely. conclusion the role of information and communication technology networks in the processes of shaping social interactions, as well as their optimization, potential, and their return in this public space, was analyzed, which has provided new ways of recognizing and exchanging them as new examples of behavioral models. in table 6, the physical and virtual public space has been compared in different ways, which can be understood the differences existing in the past urban space with contemporary urban space in the digital age. table 6 physical and virtual physical general comparison, source: authors urban space in the digital era requires new essentials in order to continue its social functions, which urban designers and planners must consider them as new components of urban space design in order to rebuild a collective life. since cyberspace and digital technologies are recognized as complementary to urban spaces, allocating and adding digital activities to physical activity can play an important role in enhancing levels of social interaction, citizen participation, social mixing, and increasing the active presence of citizens in the physical settings of the city. regarding the fact that on average, 85.71% of users have used digital technologies with the aim of presence in social networks and establishing interactions, the establishment of a virtual social network dedicated to bam-e tehran complex can increase social interactions and reduce the existing digital divide among the citizens. on average, 73.37% of users believe that they visit cyberspace because of uniformity in performance, and duplication of activities in physical space. also, 77.40% of the users believe that people are interested in referring cyberspace because it is updated every minute. therefore, with the participation of users with the help of digital technologies, social events and collective actions can be updated and we can avoid repetition of activities, which will result in active engagement and more interaction among users. 74.28% of users consider the reason for visiting virtual spaces to be able to create remote interactions while preserving their personal bubbles in the physical space, which, in order to meet this need, smart furniture that connect across the city space with other furniture act as a communication medium and create social interactions in a variety of contexts, such as smart and multimedia entertainment, social and local information, as well as information exchange about the same environment. this study has been conducted in order to achieve the best and most effective solutions that allow us to integrate physical and digital tools in urban space, and gives us 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